Quotes About Truth

The soul is what knows—and draws us towards—truth, beauty, and goodness. Moreover, for Emerson, each person's soul is only a part of the great, universal "over-soul." He describes the soul as a vast ocean, with our individual souls being tiny inlets into the shore. Individuality is an illusion—really, we're all connected, like fingers extending from one hand.

Beauty, in its largest and profoundest sense, is one expression for the universe. God is the all-fair. Truth, and goodness, and beauty, are but different faces of the same All. But beauty in nature is not ultimate. It is the herald of inward and eternal beauty, and is not alone a solid and satisfactory good. It must stand as a part, and not as yet the last or highest expression of the final cause of Nature.

Far off, men swell, bully and threaten: bring them hand to hand, and they are a feeble folk.

Whilst thus the poet animates nature with his own thoughts, he differs from the philosopher only herein, that the one proposes Beauty as his main end; the other Truth.

There is for every man a statement possible of that truth which he is most unwilling to receive, — a statement possible, so broad and so pungent that he cannot get away from it, but must either bend to it or die of it.

whatever instances can be quoted of unpunished theft, or of a lie which somebody credited, justice must prevail, and it is the privilege of truth to make itself believed.

A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and of virtue, will purge the eyes to understand her text.

Si la maldad y la vanidad usan el abrigo de la filantropía, ¿debería yo callar?

We are now so far from the road to truth, that religious teachers dispute and hate each other, and speculative men are esteemed unsound and frivolous. But to a sound judgment, the most abstract truth is the most practical. Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena. Now many are thought not only unexplained but inexplicable; as language, sleep, madness, dreams, beasts, sex.

What is History," said Napoleon, "but a fable agreed upon?

Truths will harmonize; and as for the falsities and mistakes, they will speedily die of themselves.

This relation between the mind and matter is not fancied

What is common to them all,—that perfectness and harmony, is beauty.

No truth so sublime but it may be trivial to-morrow in the light of new thoughts.

If I cannot brag of knowing something, then I brag of not knowing it.

The next great influence into the spirit of the scholar, is, the mind of the Past,—in whatever form, whether of literature, of art, of institutions, that mind is inscribed. Books are the best type of the influence of the past, and perhaps we shall get at the truth,—learn the amount of this influence more conveniently,—by considering their value alone.

education is more precious than that which we call so.

We boast our emancipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any idols it is through a transfer of the idolatry.

I would put myself in the attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot. I blench and withdraw on this side and on that. I seem to know what he meant who said, No man can see God face to face and live.

Whilst we behold unveiled the nature of Justice and Truth, we learn the difference between the absolute and the conditional or relative. We apprehend the absolute. As it were, for the first time, we exist. We become immortal, for we learn that time and space are relations of matter; that, with a perception of truth, or a virtuous will, they have no affinity.

fundamental law of criticism. A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and of virtue, will purge the eyes to understand her text. By degrees we may come to know the primitive sense of the permanent objects of nature, so that the world shall be to us an open book, and every form significant of its hidden life and final cause. A new interest surprises us, whilst, under the

same spirit which gave it forth,—is the fundamental law of criticism. A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and of virtue, will purge the eyes to understand her text. By degrees

The one thing in the world of value is the active soul,—the soul, free, sovereign, active. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although in almost all men obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul active sees absolute truth and utters truth, or creates. In this action it is genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound estate of every man.

The condition of true naming, on the poet's part, is his resigning himself to the divine aura which breathes through forms, and accompanying that.