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075c74c Very quickly, very suddenly, words fell through my mind. They landed on the floor of my thoughts, and in there, down there, I started to pick the words up. They were excerpts of truth gathered from inside me. mind thoughts truth words Markus Zusak
2008602 Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah. The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in awhile and watch your answers change. richard-bach truth Richard Bach
6a2b7e3 Only God may be adored, because only God is unlimited goodness, truth, and beauty, and thus only God deserves unlimited love. beauty catholicism christianity god goodness inspirational jesus-shock love philosophy spirituality theology truth unlimited-beauty unlimited-goodness unlimited-love unlimited-truth Peter Kreeft
4db4dc1 Hope is bulletproof, truth just hard to hit christopher-moore hope truth Christopher Moore
3646bd3 I am relieved. May I now have the truth? truth white-lies Georgette Heyer
f00a2f4 I think that when in doubt about the truth of an issue, it's safer and in better taste to select the least numerous of the adversaries. doubt minority-opinion oppression subversion truth Ayn Rand
fba7e52 The difficulty with humorists is that they will mix what they believe with what they don't--whichever seems likelier to win an effect. belief comedian humor humorist insincerity truth John Updike
5ddcba5 "Not for a moment did he consider keeping a journal. He would never allow anyone to read his private thoughts; therefore, he did not risk writing them down. "I'd rather take it to my grave," he said. And anyway, when was a journal ever honest? "It either tells a lot of truths to cover a single lie, " he said, "or a lot of lies to cover a single truth." lies private-thoughts truth Michael Finkel
0838bbd All idealisation makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity -- it is to destroy it. truth Joseph Conrad
bffde8a Probably one or two moments in your whole life you will hear a dark whispering spirit, a voice coming from the center of things. It will have blades for lips and will not stop until it speaks the one secret thing at the heart of it all. Kneeling on the floor, unable to stop shuddering, I heard it plainly. It said, You are unlovable... secrets shame truth Sue Monk Kidd
4201d00 The word of God came down to man as rain to soil, and the result was mud, not clear water. (Bistami) Pg. 128 missunderstanding truth Kim Stanley Robinson
c7c77e4 I always run away from the simplest phrases because they never contain all of the truth. To me the truth is something which cannot be told in a few words, and those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning. truth writing Anaïs Nin
e41d1f7 It doesn't make you a monster to want, she said, her voice very gentle. It's what you do with it that matters. horror monsters truth Jim Butcher
cd29102 Thought is creative - Fear attracts like energy - Love is all there is. growth light love peace strength trust truth Neale Donald Walsch
c4888c0 "We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth, We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung, And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth. honor hope lost love torment truth youth Rudyard Kipling
2ebbee2 I saw that she didn't want to answer that question and so I asked again: when mouths close it's because there's something important to be said. maxim silence suffering the-witch-of-portobello truth Paulo Coelho
aa5d1d5 Better the comfort of a lie than the absurdity of the truth. truth Tanya Huff
f0c9331 "Drosophila," I said, remembering the word. "What?" Lily asked. "Why do girls always fall for guys with the at ention span of drosophila?" "What?" "Fruit flies. Guys with the attention span of fruit flies." "Because they're hot?" "This," I told her, "is not the time for being truthful." boys fruit-flies time-for-truth truth Rachel Cohn
376b4af You will be flogged for being right and flogged for being wrong, and it hurts both ways--but it doesn't hurt as much when you're right. truth Hunter S. Thompson
112efc9 When a man really tells the truth, the first truth he tells is that he himself is a liar. honesty liars truth G.K. Chesterton
3688522 "Not bad, not bad at all," Diotallevi said. "To arrive at the truth through the painstaking reconstruction of a false text." philosophy-of-religion religion theology truth Umberto Eco
9a09ec1 Bitter though it may be to many, Cadfael concluded, there is no substitute for truth, in this or any case. ellis-peters truth Ellis Peters
e779191 In oppressing, one becomes oppressed. Men are enchained by reason of their very sovereignty; it is because they alone earn money that their wives demand checks, it is because they alone engage in a business or profession that their wives require them to be successful, it is because they alone embody transcendence that their wives wish to rob them of it by taking charge... marriage truth Simone de Beauvoir
6a57e41 I tell you this true story just to prove that I can. That my frailty has not yet reached a point at which I can no longer tell a true story. inspirational talent truth writing Joan Didion
19e02dc A divided kingdom cannot defend itself from its adversaries. A divided person cannot face life in a dignified way. divided life truth Paulo Coelho
e7a2a2a People's lives take them strange places. They do strange things, and... well, sometimes they can't talk about them. memory stories strange truth Alan Moore
245b660 Fat men take a cushion with them wherever they go. hilarious humour humourous truth George R.R. Martin
8e14d2d Give me sweet lies, and keep your bitter truths. truth George R.R. Martin
44e635d But should you ever come to a time when you need to say something upon my behalf, say this, 'The last truth is that there is no magic. truth Raymond E. Feist
b949655 "Regrets are useless, " the Fool replied. "All you can do is start from where you are." regret truth useless Robin Hobb
1d5614e Loving the same man or woman all your life, why, that's like supposing the same candle could last you all your life marriage truth Leo Tolstoy
542af2c Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it. For them there is no winter food problem. They have fires and warm clothes. The winter cannot hurt them and therefore increases their sense of cleverness and security. For birds and animals, as for poor men, winter is another matter. Rabbits, like most wild animals, suffer hardship. truth Richard Adams
5c37262 I saw the truth, I saw and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the ability to live on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of people. good-and-evil goodness truth Fyodor Dostoyevsky
bb9a3aa If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth; if you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote. truth voting Tim O'Brien
770f88d Understanding knowledge as an essential element of love is vital because we are bombarded daily with messages that tell us love is about mystery, about that which cannot be known. We see movies in which people are represented as being in love who never talk with one another, who fall into bed without ever discussing their bodies, their sexual needs, their likes and dislikes. Indeed, the message is received from the mass media is that knowledge makes love less compelling; that it is ignorance that gives love its erotic and transgressive edge. These messages are brought to us by profiteering producers who have no clue about the art of loving, who substitute their mystified visions because they do not really know how to genuinely portray loving interaction. knowledge love love-at-first-sight love-quotes mass-media pop-culture romance romantic television truth tv bell hooks
d90ea88 It was always this way: The more people talked, the more they obscured. You didn't need to argue for the truth. You could see it. language speaking talking truth Max Barry
c6d7790 I sit with and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with and , where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of the evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon and ... and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. aristotle aurelius balzac dumas honoré-de-balzac marcus-aurelius shakespeare truth veil william-shakespeare W.E.B. Du Bois
3e7323b Of course, not everything is unsayable in words, only the living truth. truth words Eugène Ionesco
552249c Be true, unbeliever. doubt faith truth Stephen R. Donaldson
d836f70 Well, listen a moment, Monsieur Mayor; I have often been severe in my life towards others. It was just. I did right. Now if I were not severe towards myself, all I have justly done would become injustice. Should I spare myself more than others? No. What! if I should be prompt only to punish others and not myself, I should be a wretched indeed! - Javert to M. Madeleine justice truth Victor Hugo
47ad36b Time turns our lies into truths. time truth Gene Wolfe
7205990 "Most of us hoped to be able to trust. When we were little we did not yet know the human invention of the lie - not only that of lying with words but that of lying with one's voice, one's gesture, one's eyes, one's facial expression. How should the child be prepared for this specifically human ingenuity: the lie? Most of us are awakened, some more and some less brutally, to the fact that people often do not mean what they say or say the opposite of what they mean. And not only "people," but the very people we trusted most - our parents, teachers, leaders." disillusionment hope innocence lie society truth Erich Fromm
da16c12 "When a person seeks," Siddhartha said, "it can easily happen that his eye sees only the thing he is seeking; he is incapable of finding anything, of allowing anything to enter into him, because he is always thinking only of what he is looking for, because he has a goal, because he is possessed by his goal. Seeking means having a goal. Finding means being free, being open, having no goal. You, Venerable One, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for, striving to reach your goal, you overlook many things that lie close before your eyes." seeking truth Hermann Hesse
be81384 Pimping is an art, Whoreson. There are very few pimps in this world who can really take the title of being a pimp. Just because a man gets his money from a whore, that don't make him no true pimp. Real pimps are really rare. pimping street-life truth wisdom wisdom-in-fiction Donald Goines
0d2ece0 Many things in this period have been hard to bear, or hard to take seriously. My own profession went into a protracted swoon during the Reagan-Bush-Thatcher decade, and shows scant sign of recovering a critical faculty--or indeed any faculty whatever, unless it is one of induced enthusiasm for a plausible consensus President. (We shall see whether it counts as progress for the same parrots to learn a new word.) And my own cohort, the left, shared in the general dispiriting move towards apolitical, atonal postmodernism. Regarding something magnificent, like the long-overdue and still endangered South African revolution (a jagged fit in the supposedly smooth pattern of axiomatic progress), one could see that Ariadne's thread had a robust reddish tinge, and that potential citizens had not all deconstructed themselves into Xhosa, Zulu, Cape Coloured or 'Eurocentric'; had in other words resisted the sectarian lesson that the masters of apartheid tried to teach them. Elsewhere, though, it seemed all at once as if competitive solipsism was the signifier of the 'radical'; a stress on the salience not even of the individual, but of the trait, and from that atomization into the lump of the category. Surely one thing to be learned from the lapsed totalitarian system was the unwholesome relationship between the cult of the masses and the adoration of the supreme personality. Yet introspective voyaging seemed to coexist with dull group-think wherever one peered about among the formerly 'committed'. Traditionally then, or tediously as some will think, I saw no reason to discard the Orwellian standard in considering modern literature. While a sort of etiolation, tricked out as playfulness, had its way among the non-judgemental, much good work was still done by those who weighed words as if they meant what they said. Some authors, indeed, stood by their works as if they had composed them in solitude and out of conviction. Of these, an encouraging number spoke for the ironic against the literal mind; for the generously interpreted interest of all against the renewal of what Orwell termed the 'smelly little orthodoxies'--tribe and Faith, monotheist and polytheist, being most conspicuous among these new/old disfigurements. In the course of making a film about the decaffeinated hedonism of modern Los Angeles, I visited the house where Thomas Mann, in another time of torment, wrote . My German friends were filling the streets of Munich and Berlin to combat the recrudescence of the same old shit as I read: The path to this concept of enlightenment is not to be found in the pursuit of self-pity, or of self-love. Of course to be merely a political animal is to miss Mann's point; while, as ever, to be an apolitical animal is to leave fellow-citizens at the mercy of Ideolo'. For the sake of argument, then, one must never let a euphemism or a false consolation pass uncontested. The truth seldom lies, but when it does lie it lies somewhere in between. apoliticism argument atheism berlin bought-priesthood cape-coloureds cold-war communism conviction critical-thinking enlightenment euphemism eurocentricism faith film george-hw-bush george-orwell german-people germany groupthink hedonism humanism individualism irony journalism left-wing-politics lies literary-criticism literature los-angeles margaret-thatcher monotheism munich orthodoxy personality-politics politics polytheism populism postmodernism potus progress radical-politics religion right-wing-politics ronald-reagan russia science sectarianism self-love self-pity socialism solipsism south-africa soviet-union thomas-mann totalitarianism tribalism truth united-states xhosa-people zulu-people Christopher Hitchens
c52d22f The joke is generally in the oddest way the truth and yet not the fact. humour joke truth G.K. Chesterton
2df0bbe I am older than you. Believe me, there is no other way to live on earth. Men are not open to truth or reason. They cannot be reached by a rational argument. The mind is powerless against them. Yet we have to deal with them. If we want to accomplish anything, we have to deceive them into letting us accomplish it. Or force them. They understand nothing else. We cannot expect their support for any endeavor of the intellect, for any goal of the spirit. They are nothing but vicious animals. They are greedy, self-indulgent, predatory dollar-chasers science truth Ayn Rand
5de7d50 "Petra turned to her. "Everybody lies about who they are. Name one person here who isn't doing that and I will drop out right now!" Shanti felt that snake of truth coil around her legs, threatening to squeeze. "I didn't mean..." "No one ever does." Petra said, shoving the baton back at Shanti." -- truth Libba Bray
82cf365 Nine out of ten significant people have to do with money or war! people truth war Jonathan Safran Foer
e91baf3 It appears that we've given up on the long-range view. That we've decided not to think about consequences--about cause and effect. Maybe that's why I feel that I live in exile. I used to live in a country that had a future. politics truth Ursula K. Le Guin
29519b0 Belief in the lie is the life of the lie. lies truth Ursula K. Le Guin
120dd15 I might be 30 years old, but a girl never outgrows the need for her mother. humor inspiration truth Debbie Macomber
b46b9bd But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound. ishmael moby-dick profundity society truth Herman Melville
b0f2db3 The truth will set us free. But freedom is cold and empty and frightening, and lies can often be warm and beautiful. lies truth George R.R. Martin
ed540bb In all of knowable reality, God is unique. He is knowable not like the multiplication table or the table of elements; he alone is knowable as the one totally in control of being known. He is not at the disposal of the human mind. He is known when he wills to be known. Yet he is known in and through created reality, which is known naturally. Therefore the glory of God is exalted most not when we know God apart from observation and reading and study, but when we know God as a result of his free and gracious self-revelation in and through our earnest observation of and meditation on his work and Word in history. faith god knowledge revelation study truth John Piper
9d2d89a "I can see how I could write a bold account of myself as a passionate man who rose from humble beginnings to cut a wide swath in the world, whose crimes along the way might be written off to extravagance and love and art, and could even almost believe some of it myself on certain days after the sun went down if I'd had a snort or two and was in Los Angeles and it was February and I was twenty-four, but I find a truer account in the Herald-Star, where it says: "Mr. Gary Keillor visited at the home of Al and Florence Crandall on Monday and after lunch returned to St. Paul, where he is currently employed in the radio show business... Lunch was fried chicken with gravy and creamed peas"." storytelling truth Garrison Keillor
a9fe107 The stupid part is that he isn't interested in... in getting serious. We get along. We have fun together. For him, that's enough. And it's so stupid for me to get hung up on him. him life love truth Jim Butcher
4fef06a He has come to the most dreadful conclusion a literary man can come to, the conclusion that the ordinary view is the right one. It is only the last and wildest kind of courage that can stand on a tower before ten thousand people and tell them that twice two is four. truth G.K. Chesterton
cb7bcc5 The past is a distant, receding coastline, and we are all in the same boat. Along the stern rail there is a line of telescopes; each brings the shore into focus at a given distance. If the boat is becalmed, one of the telescopes will be in continual use; it will seem to tell the whole, the unchanging truth. But this is an illusion; and as the boat sets off again, we return to our normal activity: scurrying from one telescope to another, seeing the sharpness fade in one, waiting for the blur to clear in another. And when the blur does clear, we imagine that we have made it do so all by ourselves. past truth Julian Barnes
73dc8db No, honestly, my mouth shouldn't be able to function unless my brain's engaged. function life mouth thing-to-ponder truth Jodi Picoult
fbf888a Fragments are the only forms I trust. form trust truth writing Donald Barthelme
54773ad But what [Orwell] illustrates, by his commitment to language as the partner of truth, is that 'views' do not really count; that it matters not what you think, but how you think; and that politics are relatively unimportant, while principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them. orwell politics principles truth Christopher Hitchens
df60ecc The first duty of an Author is --- I conceive --- a faithful allegiance to Truth and Nature; his second, such a conscientious study of Art as shall enable him to interpret eloquently and effectively the oracles delivered by those two great deities. --- Charlotte Bronte nature truth writing Juliet Barker
4e78919 "Who are you?" the woman said at last. "Lyra Silver--" "No, where d'you come from? What are you? How do you know things like this?" Wearily Lyra sighed; she had forgotten how roundabout Scholars could be. It was difficult to tell them the truth when a lie would have been so much easier for them to understand." scholars truth Philip Pullman
df49780 All of history is a malleable instrument in my hands. Ohhh, I have accumulated all of these pasts and I possess every fact--yet the facts are mine to use as I will and, even using them truthfully, I change them. truth Frank Herbert
2531c62 "The Chinese poet George Wu ... recorded on his comlog: "Poets are the mad midwives to reality. They see not what is, nor what can be, but what must become." Later, on his last disk to his lover the week before he died, Wu said: "Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers." truth Dan Simmons
223362e When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose. liar philosophy truth Harry G. Frankfurt
ecfc5b6 Real people are actively trying to live like fake people, so real people are no less fake. Every comparison becomes impractical. This is why the impractical has become totally acceptable; impracticality almost seems cool. life media relationship truth Chuck Klosterman
9599de9 I am the hope of the universe. I am the answer to all living things that cry out for peace. I am protector of the innocent. I am the light in the darkness. I am truth. Ally to good! Nightmare to you! dragon-ball-z goku inspirational truth Akira Toriyama
fd168b0 "You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland, that for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination." "A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting." "You did, Doctor, but none the less you must come round to my view, for otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you until your reason breaks down under them and acknowledges me to be right." reality truth Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
003e291 God gives us not only the truth but also the ability to believe it; not only the new thing to see but also the new eye to see it with. christianity faith god jesus-shock philosophy spirituality theology truth Peter Kreeft
9224d1b Only poets and philosophers see the world as it really is, for only to them is it given to live without illusions. To see clearly is to not act. illusions philosophers poets truth Fernando Pessoa
f05c12a People talk of sorrow as if it is soft, a thing of water and tears. But true sorrow is not soft. True sorrow is a thing of fire, and rock. It burns your heart, crushes your soul under the weight of mountains. It destroys, and even if you keep breathing, keep going, you die. The person you were moments ago dies... Gone. Everything solid, everything real, is gone. It doesn't come back. The world is forever fractured, so that you walk on the crust of an earth where you can always feel the heat under you, the press of lava, that is so hot it can burn flesh, melt bone, and the very air is poisonous. To survive, you swallow the heat. To keep from falling through and dying for real, you swallow all that hate. You push it down inside you, into that fresh grave that is all that is left of what you thought the world would be. loss truth Laurell K. Hamilton
b05a871 One swallows the lie that flatters, but sips the bitter truth drop by drop. truth Denis Diderot
8d52355 When people don't know what's going on, it's human nature for them to imagine a version that's ten times worse than the truth! human-nature imagine leadership truth Kenneth H. Blanchard
c07a270 "It is as if Little Red Riding Hood had asked the wolf: "Dear Grandmother, what is the truth for?" And the wolf had replied: "The truth helps me tell you better lies." truth Sara Castro-Klarén
525a7bd Hey, metaphysics seminar is on the roof. Just take the elevator up and keep walking until you hit the sidewalk. Anything is true if enough people believe it. sucide truth David Mitchell
701c373 "Dad, is she serious?" John shrugged. "I argue with your Mama, I sleep on the couch and she doesn't feed me. So i dont argue with your mama." humor laugh-out-loud relationships truth truth-of-life Molly McAdams
8a22a51 If all the world spoke, acted, or kept silence with intent to deceive, --if dearest interests were at stake, and dearest lives in peril, --if no one should ever know of her truth or her falsehood to measure out their honour or contempt for her by, straight alone where she stood, in the presence of God, she prayed that she might have strength to speak and act the truth for evermore. personal-integrity strength truth Elizabeth Gaskell
6203484 Is a man truly what he see himself to be?' 'Only if what he sees is true. man preception truth Lloyd Alexander
10be694 "That part of your life is over. Set it aside as something you have finished. Complete or no, it is done with you. No being gets to decide what his life is "supposed to be"...'Be a man. Discover where you are now, and go on from there, making the best of things. Accept your life, and you might survive it. If you hold back from it, insisting this is not your life, not where you are meant to be, life will pass you by. You may not die from such foolishness, but you might as well be dead for all the good your life will do you or anyone else." aside be complete dead decide destiny discover done end fate finish forget forgo future good honesty life meant not over part past path present section set survive to truth Robin Hobb
26f476e The subtlest lie of all is the full truth. paradox subtlety truth untruth Michael Moorcock
515f804 Leave old pains alone. When they cease coming to call, do not invite them back. honesty invite memories memory pain pains ponder remember reminiscence summon truth Robin Hobb
556e012 She was utterly unlike what she had been when he first saw her. Both morally and physically she had changed for the worse. [...] He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. relevant truth Leo Tolstoy
4a4c65a Everything's different from us. That's why everything exists. being clarity existence god life love meaning paganism pantheism reality seeing truth universe Alberto Caeiro
fb92cf8 When I was a child, I thought grown-ups and teachers knew the truth, because they told me they did. It took years for me to discover that the first step in finding out the truth is to begin unlearning almost everything adults had taught me, and to start doing all the things they'd told me NOT to do. Their main pitch was that achievement equaled happiness, when all you had to do was study rock stars, or movie stars, or them, to see that they were mostly miserable. They were all running around in mazes like everyone else. happiness truth Anne Lamott
2220dfe Aberrations of the human mind are to a large extent due to the obsessional pursuit of some part-truth, treated as if it were a whole truth. evil truth Arthur Koestler
fd0fbf0 ... the mind was designed not to defend what we want, but to discover what is ultimately true, which should shape our wants and satisfy them more deeply with God. The purpose of the mind is not to rationalize subjective preferences, but to recognize objective reality and to help the heart revel in God. god intellect mind objectivity truth John Piper
64d7d08 What I want is for you to build a bridge. A bridge that connects these two parts of my life so I don't have to choose one or the other I don't want to choose Because the thing about choices? You get something while you lose something else. If you choose wrong you risk losing everything. inspirational life love truth wisdom Lisa Schroeder
2f2aaa6 Now I existed solely thanks to the quantum paradox, my brain a collection of qubits in quantum superposition, encoding truths and memories, imagination and irrationality in opposing, contradictory states that existed and didn't exist, all at the same time. digital-identity digitalization identity internet meta network social-media truth Robin Wasserman
5766731 I'll go from world to world until I find a time and place where you can come awake in safety. And I'll tell your story to my people, so that perhaps in time the can forgive you, too. The way that you've forgiven me. comprehension crazy ender forgivness genius life love regret truth Orson Scott Card
d5bc964 It has an unhappy effect upon the human understanding and temper, for a man to be compelled in his gravest investigation of an argument, to consider, not what is true, but what is convenient. convenience truth understanding William Godwin
544989d There's a convention that one doesn't speak ill of the dead. That's stupid, I think. The truth's always the truth. On the whole it's better to keep your mouth shut about living people. You might conceivably injure them. The dead are past that. But the harm they've done lives after them sometimes. funeral harm truth Agatha Christie
fd1610e No,' Dahlia said, 'because I think people like him think work is supposed to be drudgery punctuated by very occasional moments of happiness, but when I say happiness, I mostly mean distraction. You know what I mean?' 'No, please elaborate.' 'Okay, say you go into the break room,' she said, 'and a couple people you like are there, say someone's telling a funny story, you laugh a little, you feel included, everyone's so funny, you go back to your desk with a sort of, I don't know, I guess afterglow would be the word? You go back to your desk with an afterglow, but then by four or five o'clock the day's just turned into yet another day, and you go on like that, looking forward to five o'clock and then the weekend and then your two or three annual weeks of paid vacation time, day in day out, and that's what happens to your life. p-163 truth Emily St. John Mandel
026990d The self-congratulatory popular account insists that Dr. King called on the nation to fully accept its own creed, and the walls came a-tumbling down. This conventional narrative is soothing, moving, and politically acceptable, and has only the disadvantage of bearing no resemblance to what actually happened. martin-luther-king-jr truth Timothy B. Tyson
36b54c2 Let every writer tell his own lies That's freedom of the press. freedom-of-the-press lies lying news the-news truth Norman Mailer
2ea5eba When the truth emerges, it can't be ignored. Nor will it wait. honesty-quotes telling-the-truth truth women women-s-fiction women-writers Barbara Delinsky
f2380a2 The real world was far too real to leave neat little hints. It was full of too many things. It wasn't by eliminating the impossible that you got at the truth, however improbable; it was by the much harder process of eliminating the possibilities. truth Terry Pratchett
15fd1c2 We are all of us, to some degree or another, brainwashed by the society we live in. We are able to see this when we travel to another country, and are able to catch a glimpse of our own country with foreign eyes.. the best we can hope for is that a kindly friend from another culture will enable us to look at our culture with dispassionate eyes. culture doris-lessing indoctrination truth Doris Lessing
d1827bf I am the only one of us who brings in any money. the other two cannot make money fortune telling. this is because they only tell the truth, and the truth is not what people want to hear. it is a bad thing and it troubles people, so they do not come back. truth neil gaiman
6ae4478 Mama believed in loyalty above all, even at the cost of self-denial. She also believed it was always best to tell the truth, to tell it plainly, without fanfare, and the more disagreeable the truth, the sooner you had to tell it. truth Khaled Hosseini
ec52b84 When we are ready to let go of our old controls, we admit that we were powerless over the incest or abuse...We have often thought, 'If only I could have stopped it,' but we could not have stopped it. We let go of the 'if only' now and sit still with our stark powerlessness...In our surrender to powerlessness, we touch ourselves with the gift of truth. abuse-recovery abuse-survivors child-abuse child-sexual-abuse child-sexual-abuse-survivor healing if-only incest letting-go powerless powerlessness survivor survivor-of-abuse survivors-of-abuse truth Maureen Brady
31f031c You can tell people the truth, but they'll never believe until the event. Until it's too late. In the meantime, the truth will just piss them off and get you in a lot of trouble faith religion truth Chuck Palahniuk
5a5ac12 The pursuit of truth is not important. The pursuit of that truth is important which helps you in reaching your goal that is provided you have one. truth Ayn Rand
c27d3c4 But what a feeling can come over a man just from seeing the things he believes in and hopes for symbolized in the concrete form of a man. In something that gives a focus to all the other things he knows to be real. Something that makes unseen things manifest and allows him to come to his hopes and dreams through his outer eye and through the touch and feel of his natural hand. dreams hero hopes reality symbol truth Ralph Ellison
688e1d1 She had argued for a broad interpretation, which imposed a duty to answer questions truthfully, and not to hide facts which could give a different complexion to a matter, but on subsequent thought she had revised her position. Although she still believed that one should be frank in answers to questions, this duty arose only where there was an obligation, based on a reasonable expectation, to make a full disclosure. There was no duty to reveal everything in response to a casual question by one who had no right to the information. disclosure facts information lying questions questions-and-answers truth Alexander McCall Smith
e846d40 "The concept of divine revelation was central to Augustine's epistemology, or theory of knowledge. The metaphor of light is instructive. In our present earthly state we are equipped with the faculty of sight. We have eyes, optic nerves, and so forth- all the equipment needed for sight. But a man with the keenest eyesight can see nothing if he is locked in a totally dark room. So just as an external source of light is needed for seeing, so an external revelation from God is needed for knowing. When Augustine speaks of revelation, he is not speaking of Biblical revelation alone. He is also concerned with "general" or "natural" revelation. Not only are the truths in Scripture dependent on God's revelation, but all truth, including scientific truth, is dependent on divine revelation. This is why Augustine encouraged students to learn as much as possible about as many things as possible. For him, all truth is God's truth, and when one encounters truth, one encounters the God whose truth it is." light revelation sproul the-consequences-of-ideas truth R.C. Sproul
76ac7ec Tell the story, gather the events, repeat them. Pattern is a matter of upkeep. Otherwise the weave relaxes back to threads picked up by birds to make their nests. Repeat, or the story will fall and all the king's horses and all the king's men. . . . Repeat, and cradle the pieces carefully, or events will scatter like marbles on a wooden floor. memories truth Ann-Marie MacDonald
61929ea The blame of course belonged to Clyde, who just was not much given to talk. Also, he seemed very little curious himself: Grady, alarmed sometimes by the meagerness of his inquiries and the indifference this might suggest, supplied him liberally with personal information; which isn't to say she always told the truth, how many people in love do? or can? but at least she permitted him enough truth to account more or less accurately for all the life she had lived away from him. It was her feeling, however, that he would as soon not hear her confessions: he seemed to want her to be as elusive, as secretive as he was himself. relationships romance truth Truman Capote
becc919 I'm right and wrong, moral and immoral, good and bad, a hero and a villain, and I've been just as capable of truth as I have been lies. bad chasing-impossible good good-and-bad hero hero-and-villain immoral katie-mcgarry lies moral moral-and-immoral pushing-the-limits right right-and-wrong truth truth-and-lies villain wrong Katie McGarry
5bcb784 "[Men] prefer the foolish belief and the passions of the earth [to the enlightenment of their souls]. They believe the absurd and shrink from the truth." "No, they do not. They are afraid, that is all. And they must remain on earth until they come to the way of leaving it." "And how do they leave? How is the ascent made? Must one learn virtue?" Here she laughs. "You have read too much, and learned too little. Virtue is a road, not a destination. Man cannot be virtuous. Understanding is the goal. When that is achieved, the soul can take wing." enlightenment fear mankind philosophy soul truth understanding virtue Iain Pears
6cb31c5 The credibility of the teller is the ultimate test of the truth of a proposition. (102) proposition test truth Neil Postman
a1b53ae He woke up and fought another battle and won. Then he went to bed and slept again and dreamed again and then he woke up and won again and slept again and he hardly noticed when waking became sleeping. Nor did he care. ender genius life purpuse sleep truth Orson Scott Card
c0eab14 There's just as much money to be made in the wreck of a civilization as in the upbuilding of one. money truth wreck Margaret Mitchell
1bbd13d Shit, money, and the World, the three American truths, powering the American mobility, claimed the Slothrops, clasped them for good to the country's fate. But they did not prosper... about all they did was persist truth Thomas Pynchon
282da5a This is the power of myth: that we can experience invisible spiritual realities and truths greater than visible, material things in story form. harry-potter myth truth John Granger
39c4f41 When I say 'I will be true to you' I am drawing a quiet space beyond the reach of other desires. No-one can legislate love; it cannot be given orders or cajoled into service. Love belongs to itself, deaf to pleading and unmoved by violence. Love is not something you can negotiate. Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation. ... When I say 'I will be true to you' I must mean it in spite of the formalities, instead of the formalities. formalities love reason temptation truth Jeanette Winterson
0ce5998 "You ought to go to a boy's school sometime. Try it sometime," I said. "It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques." honest life money phony sex truth J.D. Salinger
d625f9c As though everything truly had to be faced without fear, as a mere fact of life - we don't choose the things that happen to us, but we can choose how we react to them. hippie inspirational paulo-coelho truth Paulo Coelho
0b76a55 The media knows what sells--conflict and division. It's also quick and easy. All too often anger works better than answers; resentment better than reason; emotion trumps evidence. A sanctimonious, sneering one-liner, no matter how bogus, is seen as straight talk, while a calm, well-argued response is seen as canned and phony. media truth Bill Clinton
5249bff Why should I struggle through hundreds of pages of fabrication to reach half a dozen very little truths?' 'For fun?' 'Fun!' He pounced on the word. 'Words are for truth. For facts. Not fiction. irony truth John Fowles
667b300 Thinking is man's only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one's consciousness, the refusal to think - not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment - on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict 'It is. evil good john-galt life man mind morality morals objectivism philosophy pursuit-of-happiness rational reason think thinking truth values virtue wisdom Ayn Rand
44811e3 For this wire is as a part of our body, as a vein torn from us, glowing with our blood. Are we proud of this thread of metal, or of our hands which made it, or is there a line to divide these two? electricity truth Ayn Rand
f55046d Academic masochism reflects a metaphysical prejudice that the truth should be a hard-won treasure, that what is read or learnt easily must therefore be flighty and inconsequential. The truth should be like a mount to be scaled, it is dangerous, obscure and demanding. Under the light of the library reading room, the academics' motto reads: the more a text makes me suffer, the truer it must be. books love truth Alain de Botton
24edb93 I wrote. Something. Yes. And you were truthful. No. You weren't truthful? I was accurate. truth writing Richard Flanagan
3195c4a "We want them to see their home planet," Mrs. Whatsit said. The Medium lost the delighted smile she had worn till then. "Oh, why must you make me look at unpleasant things when there are so many delightful ones to see?" Again Mrs. Which's voice reverberated through the cave. "There will no longer be so many pleasant things to look at if responsible people do not do something about the unpleasant ones." goodness standing-up-for-what-is-right truth Madeleine L'Engle
be67685 Men are men, unfortunately, no matter what their shape, and inclined to sin. ray-bradbury sin truth Ray Bradbury
27fd820 The only sure camouflage was unpredictability. inspirational truth Margaret Atwood
e67b086 Some of the greatest advances happen when people are bold enough to speak their truth and listen to others speak theirs. bold collaboration leadership listen managers truth Kenneth H. Blanchard
31cf0f2 "Is there anything else you haven't told me?" My head spun. So much had happened and we still needed to stop a powerful magician. Death was a real possibility. I needed Valek to know how I felt. feelings love resist truth Maria V. Snyder
b6b620a Life without any wonder left in it is flat and stale. real-life realistic smart true truth David Eddings
e4e4216 The others were trying to spare you from pain. The truth can be devastating. We spend much of our lives protecting ourselves from it and shielding others as well. We use lies to take the edge off life. We dream of a better tomorrow. We hide from our regrets and inadequacies. We try to exaggerate the good and downplay the bad. We even mange to hide from the inescapable reality that sooner or later we and everyone we love is going to die. life pain truth Brandon Mull
eab9cb3 Certain American uses of deconstruction, Derrida has observed, work to ensure 'an institutional closure' which serves the dominant political and economic interests of American society. Derrida is clearly out to do more than develop new techniques of reading: deconstruction is for him an ultimately political practice, an attempt to dismantle the logic by which a particular system of thought, and behind that a whole system of political structures and social institutions, maintains its force. He is not seeking, absurdly, to deny the existence of relatively determinate truths, meanings, identities, intentions, historical continuities; he is seeking rather to see such things as the effects of a wider and deeper history of language, of the unconscious, of social institutions and practices. deconstruction derrida language meaning relativism truth Terry Eagleton
c2957bb Open your eyes. This horrible mess is your life. There is no sense in waiting for it to get better. Stop putting it off and live it. life live mess see time truth wait Robin Hobb
af5203e There are different ways people make this place. Sweat, exercise and pain is one way. You can see them in the gyms, in the well-ordered swimming pools. You can see them jogging in the small, worn parks. Another way to make your place is TV. A bright, brash place, always well lit, full of fun and jokes that tell you when to laugh so you never miss them. World news carefully edited so that it's not too disturbing, but disturbing enough to make you glad that you weren't born in a foreign country. News with music to tell you who to hate, who to feel sorry for, and who laugh at. television truth world David Mitchell
14e2cc2 Nothing fucks up a religion like an intervention from a real God. intervention religion truth Christopher Moore
675a192 Right is just and true. truth Victor Hugo
11a6bdf When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don't expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie. stories truth words Diane Setterfield
18b4bdc Este incredibil cat de completa este iluzia care ne face sa credem ca frumusetea este in genere bunatate. life truth Leo Tolstoy
86bd1d3 It seemed incredible to me now that I had never understood. I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth. This was what I had done. I had built up false pictures in my mind and sat before them. I had never had the courage to demand the truth. shyness truth Daphne du Maurier
347c822 Authentic love must be founded on reciprocal recognition of two freedoms... life love respect truth wisdom Simone de Beauvoir
389df44 Either help or give up. Right now devil's advocate is just another name for asshole. irony practicality truth James S.A. Corey
ffff59f I've noticed...that whenever a man is asked to be realistic he is being asked to betray something in which he believes. It is the favorite argument of those who believe that only the end matters, not the means. philosophy truth wisdom Louis L'Amour
e5af397 When I was ten years old, one of my friends brought a Shaleenian kangaroo-cat to school one day. I remember the way it hopped around with quick, nervous leaps, peering at everything with its large, almost circular golden eyes. One of the girls asked if it was a boy cat or a girl cat. Our instructor didn't know; neither did the boy who had brought it; but the teacher made the mistake of asking, 'How can we find out?' Someone piped up, 'We can vote on it!' The rest of the class chimed in with instant agreement and before I could voice my objection that some things can't be voted on, the election was held. It was decided that the Shaleenian kangaroo-cat was a boy, and forthwith, it was named Davy Crockett. Three months later, Davy Crockett had kittens. So much for democracy. It seems to me that if the electoral process can be so wrong about such a simple thing, isn't it possible for it to be very, very wrong on much more complex matters? We have this sacred cow in our society that what the majority of people want is right--but is it? Our populace can't really be informed, not the majority of them--most people vote the way they have been manipulated and by the way they have responded to that manipulation--they are working out their own patterns of wishful thinking on the social environment in which they live. It is most disturbing to me to realize that though a majority may choose a specific course of action or direction for itself, through the workings of a 'representative government,' they may be as mistaken about the correctness of such a choice as my classmates were about the sex of that Shaleenian kangaroo-cat. I'm not so sure than an electoral government is necessarily the best. government majority-view truth David Gerrold
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