Quotes to inspire and reflect

The greater amount of truth is impulsively uttered; thus the greater amount is spoken, not written.

Truth is no road to fortune.

We have an idea of truth, invincible to all scepticism.

There would be too great darkness, if truth had not visible signs.

There are many kind of eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes—therefore there must be many lands of “truths,” and consequently there can be no truth.

The will to truth is merely the longing for a stable world.

The truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man persuades another man to believe.

There is an innate decorum in man, and it is not fair to thrust Truth upon people when they don’t expect it. Only the very generous are ready for Truth impromptu.

The smallest atom of truth represents some man’s bitter toil and agony; for every ponderable chuck of it there is a brave truth-seeker’s grave upon some lonely ash-dump and a soul roasting in hell.

The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it.

To be mistaken is a misfortune to be pitied; but to know the truth and not to conform one’s actions to it is a crime which Heaven and Earth condemn.

If truth is a value it is because it is true and not because it is brave to speak it.

Truth, like gold, is not less so for being newly brought out of the mine.

To love truth for truth’s sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.

Duration is not a test of true or false.

Truth is man s proper good, and the only immortal thing was given to our mortality to use.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

It profits not me to have any man fence or fight for me, to flourish or take a side. Stand for truth and tis enough.

Political truth is a libel—religious truth blasphemy.

Unless you expect the unexpected you will never find [truth], for it is hard to discover and hard to attain.

Truth always lags last, limping along on the arm of Time.

One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world.

To love the truth is to refuse to let oneself be saddened by it.

Say not, "I have found the truth,” but rather, “I have found a truth.”

Truth may sometimes come out of the Devil’s mouth.

Truth—that long clean clear simple undeviable unchallengeable straight and shining line, on one side of which black is black and on the other white is white, has now become an angle, a point of view.

Truth has already ceased to be itself if polemically said.

The soul is unwillingly deprived of truth.

No man has a right perception of any truth, who has not been reacted on by it, so as to be ready to be its martyr.

All necessary truth is its own evidence.

Truth is a woman. That is why it is enigmatic.

Truth is what most contradicts itself.

Truth is a matter of direct apprehension—you can’t climb a ladder of mental concepts to it. y

Truth disappears with the telling of it.

On a huge hill, / Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and he that will / Reach her, about must, and about must go.

The Truth has such a face and such a mien, / As to be loved needs only to be seen.

The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind—.

Opinion is a flitting thing, / But Truth, outlasts the Sun— / If then we cannot own them both— / Possess the oldest one—.

The superior man is anxious lest he should not get truth; he is not anxious lest poverty should come upon him.

They who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.

The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

The form of truth will bear exposure, as well as that of beauty herself.

To know, to get into the truth of anything, is ever a mystic act, of which the best logics can but babble on the surface.

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.

How could sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.

There exists an obvious fact that seems utterly moral: namely, that a man is always a prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them. One has to pay something.

There is no permanent absolute unchangeable truth; what we should pursue is the most convenient arrangement of our ideas.

Truth’s fountains may be clear—her streams are muddy, / And cut through such canals of contradiction, /That she must often navigate o’er fiction.