Quotes about truth
Honesty, lies and the difficulty of telling one from the other. Quotes about truth from philosophers, judges and satirists.
The library has 1,444 quotes on this topic. Here are 60 of the most quoted, no more than four from any one writer.
60 quotes about truth
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Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.
Mark Twain Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar, in Following the Equator -
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, The instruments of darkness tell us truths, Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s In deepest consequence.
William Shakespeare Macbeth, Act i. Sc. 3 -
To be honest as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.
William Shakespeare Hamlet, Act ii. Sc. 2 -
Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye, And where care lodges, sleep will never lie.
William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet, Act ii. Sc. 3 -
O, what may man within him hide, Though angel on the outward side!
William Shakespeare Measure for Measure, Act iii. Sc. 2 -
Envy will merit as its shade pursue, But like a shadow proves the substance true.
Alexander Pope Essay on Criticism, Part ii. Line 266 -
Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.
Robert Louis Stevenson El Dorado, Virginibus Puerisque -
Let a man overcome anger by love, let him overcome evil by good; let him overcome the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth!
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 223 · translated by F. Max Müller -
No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.
Francis Bacon Of Truth -
If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.
Samuel Johnson Life of Johnson (Boswell). Vol. ii, Chap. v. 1763 -
The true way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others.
François de La Rochefoucauld Maxims, Maxim 127 · translated by J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell -
The greatest difficulties lie where we are not looking for them.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
Neither man nor angel can discern Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks Invisible, except to God alone, By His permissive will, through Heaven and Earth.
John Milton Paradise Lost, Bk. iii., Line 682 -
A wit’s a feather, and a chief a rod; An honest man’s the noblest work of God.
Alexander Pope Essay on Man. Epistle iv, Line 247 -
Let us, then, be what we are, and speak what we think, and in all things Keep ourselves loyal to truth and the sacred professions of friendship.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -
Where London’s column, pointing at the skies, Like a tall bully, lifts the head and lies.
Alexander Pope Moral Essays. Epistle iii, Line 339 -
’Tis not enough your counsel still be true; Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do.
Alexander Pope Essay on Criticism, Pt. III -
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.
James Russell Lowell The Present Crisis -
Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.
François de La Rochefoucauld Maxims, Maxim 218 · translated by J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell -
An honest man’s word is as good as his bond.
Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. xxxiii -
If it must be that I go down, let me go down linked to truth.
Abraham Lincoln June 28 -
If I know my relation to myself and the outer world, I call it truth. Every man can have his own peculiar truth; and yet it is always the same.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Life and Character, No. 163 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
Not by tonsure does an undisciplined man who speaks falsehood become a Samana; can a man be a Samana who is still held captive by desire and greediness?
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 264 · translated by F. Max Müller -
People seldom tell the truths that are worth telling. We ought to choose our truths as carefully as we choose our lies and to select our virtues with as much thought as we bestow upon the selection of our enemies.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
The action of genius is in a way ubiquitous: towards general truths before experience, and towards particular truths after it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Life and Character, No. 339 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
Honest statesmanship is the employment of individual meannesses for the public good.
Abraham Lincoln April 8 -
Wut’s words to them whose faith an’ truth On war’s red techstone rang true metal; Who ventered life an’ love an’ youth For the gret prize o’ death in battle?
James Russell Lowell The Biglow Papers. Second Series. No. x -
Whatever is calculated to improve the condition of the honest, struggling laboring man, I am for that thing.
Abraham Lincoln January 7 -
All I am in the world, I owe to the opinion of me which the people express when they call me “Honest Old Abe.”
Abraham Lincoln January 4 -
In art there is no such thing as a universal truth. A truth in art is that whose contradictory is also true.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin Is pride that apes humility.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Devil’s Thoughts -
The superior man in everything considers righteousness to be essential. He performs it according to the rules of propriety. He brings it forth in humility. He completes it with sincerity. This is indeed a superior man.
Confucius Analects, XV.17 · translated by James Legge -
If a man is sufficiently imaginative to produce evidence in support of a lie he might just as well speak the truth at once.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
In a hamlet of ten families, there may be found one honourable and sincere as I am, but not so fond of learning.
Confucius Analects, V.27 · translated by James Legge -
Difficult is the conception of men, difficult is the life of mortals, difficult is the hearing of the True Law, difficult is the birth of the Awakened.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 182 · translated by F. Max Müller -
He who does not anticipate attempts to deceive him, nor think beforehand of his not being believed, and yet apprehends these things readily (when they occur); is he not a man of superior worth?
Confucius Analects, XIV.33 · translated by James Legge -
Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumour of oppression and deceit, Of unsuccessful or successful war, Might never reach me more.
William Cowper The Task, Book ii. The Timepiece. Line 1 -
I waive the quantum o’ the sin, The hazard of concealing; But, och! it hardens a’ within, And petrifies the feeling!
Robert Burns Epistle to a Young Friend -
Just as those who do not love Plato more than truth cannot pass beyond the threshold of the Academe, so those who do not love beauty more than truth never know the inmost shrine of art.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
If, because a man’s discourse appears solid and sincere, we allow him to be a good man, is he really a superior man? or is his gravity only in appearance?
Confucius Analects, XI.20 · translated by James Legge -
What a true saying it is that he who wants to deceive mankind must before all things make absurdity plausible.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Science, No. 575 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!
Walter Scott Marmion, Canto vi. Stanza 17 -
We possess truth and goodness only in part, and mingled with falsehood and evil.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 385 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
The philosophers have promised you that, and have been unable to do it. They neither know what is your true good, nor what is your true state.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 430 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
Let him hate himself, let him love himself; he has within him the capacity of knowing the truth and of being happy, but he possesses no truth, either constant or satisfactory.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 423 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
True fortitude I take to be the quiet possession of a man’s self, and an undisturbed doing his duty, whatever evil besets him or danger lies in his way.
John Locke -
For truth has such a face and such a mien, As to be lov’d needs only to be seen.
John Dryden The Hind and the Panther, Part i. Line 33 -
Man’s true nature, his true good, true virtue, and true religion, are things of which the knowledge is inseparable.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 442 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
Titles are marks of honest men, and wise; The fool or knave that wears a title lies.
Edward Young Love of Fame, Satire i. Line 145 -
A moderately honest man with a moderately faithful wife, moderate drinkers both, in a moderately healthy house: that is the true middle class unit.
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists -
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
John Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn -
Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.
Francis Bacon Essays -
When a heretic wishes to avoid martyrdom he speaks of “Orthodoxy, True and False” and demonstrates that the True is his heresy.
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists -
One man prays thus: How shall I be able to lie with that woman?
Marcus Aurelius Meditations, Book IX.40 · translated by George Long -
Life is a sincerity. In lucid intervals we say, “Let there be an entrance opened for me into realities; I have worn the fool’s cap too long.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson Representative Men -
Not in passivity but in activity lie the evil and the good of the rational social animal, just as his virtue and his vice lie not in passivity but in activity.
Marcus Aurelius Meditations, Book IX.16 · translated by George Long -
Trust men, and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays: First Series -
Women and wine, game and deceit, Make the wealth small, and the want great.
Benjamin Franklin Poor Richard’s Almanack -
Each mind has its own method. A true man never acquires after college rules.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays: First Series -
Surely nobody would be a charlatan who could afford to be sincere.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays: Second Series