c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.
— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
To hate others is ugly.To hate yourself is uglier.
— Hlovate, Rooftop Rant
The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.
— Bruce Feirstein
People always say life is too short for regrets. But the truth is, it's too long.
— Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper
No matter what you do, someone always knew you would.
— Ami McKay, The Birth House
The ORDINARY RESPONSE TO ATROCITIES is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work. Folk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told. Murder will out. Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims.The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. People who have survived atrocities often tell their stories in a highly emotional, contradictory, and fragmented manner that undermines their credibility and thereby serves the twin imperatives of truth-telling and secrecy. When the truth is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery. But far too often secrecy prevails, and the story of the traumatic event surfaces not as a verbal narrative but as a symptom.The psychological distress symptoms of traumatized people simultaneously call attention to the existence of an unspeakable secret and deflect attention from it. This is most apparent in the way traumatized people alternate between feeling numb and reliving the event. The dialectic of trauma gives rise to complicated, sometimes uncanny alterations of consciousness, which George Orwell, one of the committed truth-tellers of our century, called "doublethink," and which mental health professionals, searching for calm, precise language, call "dissociation." It results in protean, dramatic, and often bizarre symptoms of hysteria which Freud recognized a century ago as disguised communications about sexual abuse in childhood. . . .
— Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
My son, ﻿do not forget my teaching,But let your heart ﻿keep my commandments;For ﻿length of days and years of lifeAnd peace they will add to you.Do not let ﻿﻿kindness and truth leave you;Bind them around your neck,Write them on the tablet of your heart.So you will ﻿find favor and good reputeIn the sight of God and man.Trust in the Lord with all your heartAnd ﻿do not lean on your own understanding.In all your ways ﻿acknowledge Him,And He will ﻿make your paths straight.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: New International Version
Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods. For these men know that, once ignorance is put aside, that wonderment would be taken away, which is the only means by which their authority is preserved.
— Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
Why did adults have to be so thick? They always say “tell the truth,” and when you do, they don’t believe you. What’s the point?
— Rick Riordan, The Red Pyramid
Since then your sere Majesty and your Lordships seek a simple answer, I will give it in this manner, neither horned nor toothed. Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen.", April 18, 1521)
— Martin Luther, Luther's Works, 33: Career of the Reformer III
Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.
— Mahatma Gandhi
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.
— Desmond Tutu
But love is much like a dam: if you allow a tiny crack to form through whichonly a trickle of water can pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure, and soon no one will be able to control the force of the current. For when those walls come down, then love takes over, and it no longer matters what is possible or impossible; it doesn't even matter whether we can keep the loved one at our side. To love is to lose control.
— Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
The Universe doesn't like secrets. It conspires to reveal the truth, to lead you to it.
— Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies
Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire - meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead.
— Bret Easton Ellis
Over time, hidden truths morph in the dark soil of deceit into something much worse.
— Patti Callahan Henry, Between The Tides
The truth is the kindest thing we can give folks in the end.
— Harriet Beecher Stowe
I have no name," she purred. "I'm whoever the keepers of my fate tell me to be.
— Sarah J. Maas, The Assassin and the Underworld
I shouldn't believe anything I say, if I were you-and that includes what I just told you.
— Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair
Our kindness may be the most persuasive argument for that which we believe.
— Gordon B. Hinckley
It's easy to talk big, but the important thing is whether or not you clean up the shit.
— Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
Well, it seems to me that there are books that tell stories, and then there are books that tell truths... The first kind, they show you life like you want it to be. With villains getting what they deserve and the hero seeing what a fool he's been and marrying the heroine and happy endings and all that... But the second kind, they show you life more like it is... The first kind makes you cheerful and contented, but the second kind shakes you up.
— Jennifer Donnelly, A Northern Light
People are basically irritating. Myself included. 
— Sherrilyn Kenyon, Devil May Cry
There's nothing wrong with stretching the truth. We stretch taffy, and that just makes it more delicious.
— Stephen Colbert
They dispute not in order to find or even to seek Truth, but for victory, and to appear the more learned and strenuous upholders of a contrary opinion. Such persons should be avoided by all who have not a good breastplate of patience.
— Giordano Bruno
The person you hurt the most in this world was the person that brought you into it.
— Vannary Rang
The trouble with denial is that when the truth comes, you aren't ready.
— Nina LaCour, We Are Okay
Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.
— Thomas Merton
Be a light unto the world, and hurt it not. Seek to build not destroy. Bring My people home. How? By your shining example. Seek only Godliness. Speak only in truthfulness. Act only in love. Live the Law of Love now and forever more. Give everything require nothing. Avoid the mundane. Do not accept the unacceptable. Teach all who seek to learn of Me. Make every moment of your life an outpouring of love. Use every moment to think the highest thought, say the highest word, do the highest deed. In this, glorify your Holy Self, and thus too, glorify Me. Bring peace to the Earth by bringing peace to all those whose lives you touch. Be peace. Feel and express in every moment your Divine Connection with the All, and with every person, place, and thing. Embrace every circumstance, own every fault, share every joy, contemplate every mystery, walk in every man’s shoes, forgive every offense (including your own), heal every heart, honor every person’s truth, adore every person’s God, protect every person’s rights, preserve every person’s dignity, promote every person’s interests, provide every person’s needs, presume every person’s holiness, present every person’s greatest gifts, produce every person’s blessing, pronounce every person’s future secure in the assured love of God. Be a living, breathing example of the Highest Truth that resides within you. Speak humbly of yourself, lest someone mistake your Highest Truth for boast. Speak softly, lest someone think you are merely calling for attention. Speak gently, that all might know of Love. Speak openly, lest someone think you have something to hide. Speak candidly, so you cannot be mistaken. Speak often, so that your word may truly go forth. Speak respectfully, that no one be dishonored. Speak lovingly, that every syllable may heal. Speak of Me with every utterance. Make of your life a gift. Remember always, you are the gift! Be a gift to everyone who enters your life, and to everyone whose life you enter. Be careful not to enter another’s life if you cannot be a gift. (You can always be a gift, because you always are the gift—yet sometimes you don’t let yourself know that.) When someone enters your life unexpectedly, look for the gift that person has come to receive from you…I HAVE SENT YOU NOTHING BUT ANGELS.
— Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 2
There are powers far beyond us, plans far beyond what we could have ever thought of, visions far more vast than what we can ever see on our own with our own eyes, there are horizons long gone beyond our own horizons. This is courage- to throw away what is our own that is limited and to thrust ourselves into the hands of these higher powers- God and Destiny.To do this is to abide in the realm of the eternal, to walk in the path of the everlasting to follow in the footprints of God and demi-gods. The hardest part for man is the letting go. For some reason, he thinks himself big enough to know and to see what's good for him. But in the letting go........is found freedom. In the letting go........ is found the flight!
— C. JoyBell C.
Love does not cost anything. Kind words and deeds do not cost anything. The real beauty of the world is equal for everyone to see. It was given by God equally to all, without restrictions. Everyone, was given a beautiful vehicle in which to express love to others. Feelings are free to express and give to ourselves and each other through our willingness to give and care. What is complicated about this... Why have we made others feel they have to climb mountains and swim oceans in order to make a difference. All we need to understand my friends, is that human life was given equally to us all, not partially but in totality. The sun was given to all. It does not shine on the few. So, just has nature is indifferent to our station or situation, we need to know that we are all equal. We need to focus on the things that are constant and not place our values on things that can be blown away with the next, great, wind.Value life in what ever house it dwells. For when it comes time that we are all stripped to bare bones before the divine and facing eternity, we will understand that the only law we were meant to follow, was to love ourselves and each other. Nothing more...nothing less.
— Carla Jo Masterson
In all debates, let truth be thy aim, not victory, or an unjust interest.
— William Penn
Once you start recognizing the truth of your story, finish the story. It happened but you're still here, you're still capable, powerful, you're not your circumstance. It happened and you made it through. You're still fully equipped with every single tool you need to fulfill your purpose.
— Steve Maraboli
In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution - is not my solution.
— Zadie Smith, White Teeth
It's only words... unless they're true.
— David Mamet
I don't play with my life by talking bullshit.I might have some chances in this bitchy life,but I've got only one fuckin' chance to give...my best shot.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
When i tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do.
— William Blake
I'm not mean, I'm honest. Nobody is ever straightforward. But sometimes people need to hear the truth.
— Jessica Warman, Breathless
You can't let the truth bring out the worst and let it get the best of you.
— Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality
We’re so wrapped up with egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks—we’re involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don’t get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing?
— Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
Why do you so earnestly seek the truth in distant places?Look for delusion and truth in thebottom of your own heart.
— Ryōkan
Language always betrays us, tells the truth when we want to lie, and dissolves into formlessness when we would most like to be precise.
— Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry
The truth is more important than the facts.
— Frank Lloyd Wright
Imagine you come upon a house painted brown. What color would you say the house was?""Why brown, of course.""But what if I came upon it from the other side, and found it to be white?""That would be absurd. Who would paint a house two colors?"He ignored my question. "You say it's brown, and I say it's white. Who's right?""We're both right.""Non," he said. "We're both wrong. The house isn't brown or white. It's both. You and I only see one side. But that doesn't mean the other side doesn't exist. To not see the whole is to not see the truth.
— Megan Chance, The Spiritualist
There are so many things I want to tell her, so many things she doesn't know; like how I remember when she first came home from the hospital, a big pink blob with a perma-smile, and she used to fall asleep while grabbing on to my pinter finger; how I sued to give her piggyback rides up and down the beach on Cape Cod, and she would tub on my ponytail to direct me one way or the other; how soft and furry her head was when she was first born; that the first time you kiss someone you'll be nervous, and it will be weird, and it won't be as good as you want it to be, and that's okay; how you should only fall in love with people who will fall in love back... I feel an ache in my throat, but i manage to smile. Two conflicting desires go through me at the same time, each as sharp as a razor blade: I want to see you grow up and Don't ever change.
— Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall
This is what comes of having a heart, even a very small and young one. It causes no end of trouble, and that’s the truth.
— Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There
Intelligent, thinking people could take things like this in their stride, just as they took the larger absurdities of deadly dull jobs in the city and deadly dull homes in the suburbs. Economic circumstances might force you to live in this environment, but the important thing was to keep from being contaminated. The important thing, always, was to remember who you were.
— Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road
Because I was dying.　　And Warner could’ve let me die. He was angry and hurt and had every reason to be bitter. I’d just ripped his heart out; I’d let him believe something would come of our relationship. I let him confess the depth of his feelings to me; I let him touch me in ways even Adam hadn't. I didn't ask him to stop.　　Every inch of me was saying yes.　　And then I took it all back. Because I was scared, and confused, and conflicted. Because of Adam.　　Warner told me he loved me, and in return I insulted him and lied to him and yelled at him and pushed him away. And when he had the chance to stand back and watch me die, he didn’t.　　He found a way to save my life.　　With no demands. No expectations. Believing full well that I was in love with someone else, and that saving my life meant making me whole again only to give me back to another guy.　　And right now, I can’t say I know what Adam would do if I were dying in front of him. I’m not sure if he would save my life. And that uncertainty alone makes me certain that something wasn't right between us.
— Tahereh Mafi
Mothers were the only ones you could depend on to tell the whole, unvarnished truth.
— Margaret Dilloway, How to Be an American Housewife
For people who say they hate being lied to, just start telling them nothing but the pure truth--about everything. That will teach them
— Seth Adam Brown
Those who are enslaved to their sects are not merely devoid of all sound knowledge, but they will not even stop to learn!
— Galen
They're so broke that they've actually cut essential services. In many places, they've cut policemen, because, who the fuck needs them? Or firemen, son of a bitch, it's much more fun watching something burn down.
— Lewis Black
...nothing in the world is harder than convincing someone of an unfamiliar truth.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear
No one dies of fatal truths nowadays: there are too many antidotes.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
They don't actually want you to do your own thing, not unless it's their thing too.
— Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War
Accomplishments don’t erase shame, hatred, cruelty, silence, ignorance, discrimination, low self-esteem or immorality. It covers it up, with a creative version of pride and ego. Only restitution, forgiving yourself and others, compassion, repentance and living with dignity will ever erase the past.
— Shannon L. Alder
In this treacherous worldNothing is the truth nor a lie.Everything depends on the colorOf the crystal through which one sees it
— Pedro Calderón de la Barca
To love someone with all of your heart requires reaching them where they are with the only words they can understand.
— Shannon L. Alder
when you feel like hope is gone, look inside you and be strong and you'll finally see the truth- that hero lies in you.
— Mariah Carey
Most women go through life looking for love, and looking for someone to treat them like a queen. For some women finding real love seems to be something that will never happen. I believe that finding love is not as hard as people make it seem. The reason that some women can't find real love is because they look for more than just real love. A lot of women know what they need in a relationship, and thats for a man to love that woman with all of his heart, and to treat her real good. Most women have guys in their life or guys that try to get with them that could really love them and treat them real good. Those are usually the guys that get forced into that friend zone or rejected upfront. See those guys could give them what they need, but not what they want. “Wants” can be anything from a woman wanting a man to have certain materialistic things, or she could want him to look a certain way, those are a few examples of the things that some of them want, but they vary depending on the female. What some females don't understand is that none of the things that they want has anything with love or how that person will treat you. You could find a man that looks perfect, has a house and car, he can be a college graduate with a good job, and you could still end up being with a person that doesn't truly love you, and will treat you like shit. What I am trying to say is that the person who could treat you good and really love you could already be in your life, but you could have been blinded by the things you want in a man so you overlooked the person that you were really looking for. And by the way there are men that do the same thing; I just wanted to be clear on that.
— Taisen Deshimaru
But the truth doesn't need to be known, or believed, to be true.
— Chris Crutcher, Deadline
As I looked out at the water, I realized there was nowhere to go, nowhere left to run. And I just had to stay here, facing this terrible truth. I felt, as more tears fell, just how tired I was, a tiredness that had nothing to do with the hour. I was tired of running away from this, tired of not telling people, tired of not talking about it, tired of pretending things were okay when they had never, ever been less than okay.
— Morgan Matson, Second Chance Summer
But my memories are like a fire in winter—whenever I'm cold I can warm my hands at them.—Ditta
— Madeleine L'Engle, The Joys of Love
I really am happy for Kiley. And for you and every other happily married lady. Except for that I'm not happy for you. I kind of want you all to drop dead.
— Rainbow Rowell, Attachments
Fiction just makes it all more interesting. Truth is so boring.
— Charlaine Harris, Dead as a Doornail
It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak and another to hear.
— Henry David Thoreau
Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun.
— Leonardo da Vinci
There's release in knowing the truth no matter how anguishing it is. You come finally to the irreducible thing, and there's nothing left to do but pick it up and hold it. Then, at last, you can enter the severe mercy of acceptance.
— Sue Monk Kidd, The Mermaid Chair
The truth is seldom welcome, especially at dinner.
— Margaret Atwood, Morning in the Burned House
Turgenev was a very serious fellow but he could make me laugh because a truth first encountered can be very funny. When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great.
— Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
The Gift of Truth excels all other Gifts.
— Gautama Buddha
Truth! Freedom! Justice! And a hard-boiled egg!
— Terry Pratchett, Night Watch
He was always seeking for a meaning in life, and here it seemed to him that a meaning was offered; but it was obscure and vague . . . He saw what looked like the truth as by flashes of lightening on a dark, stormy night you might see a mountain range. He seemed to see that a man need not leave his life to chance, but that his will was powerful; he seemed to see that self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion; he seemed to see that the inward life might be as manifold, as varied, as rich with experience, as the life of one who conquered realms and explored unknown lands.
— W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
it seems a shame to have to sneak to get to the truth.To make the truth such a dirty old nasty thing.You gotta sneak to get to the truth, the truth is condemned.The truth is in the gas chamber.The truth has been in your stockyards.Your slaughterhouses.The truth has been in your reservations, building your railroads, emtying your garbage.The truth is in your ghettos.In your jails.In your young love,not in your courts or congress where the old set judgement on the young.What the hell do the old know about the young?They put a picture of old George on the dollar and tell you that he's your father, worship him.Look at the madness that goes on, you can't prove anything that happened yesterday.Now is the only thing that's real.Everyday, every reality is a new reality.Every new reality is a new horizon,a brand new experience of living.I got a note last night from a friend of mine.He writes in this note that he's afraid of what he might have to do in order to save his reality, as i save mine.You can't prove anything.There's nothing to prove.Every man judges himself.He knows what he is. You know what you are, as i know what i am,we all know what we are.Nobody can stand in judgement, they can play like they're standing in judgement.They can play like they stand in judgement and take you off and control the masses, with your human body.They can lock you up in penitentiaries and cages and put you in crosses like they did in the past,but it doesn't amount to anything. What they're doing is, they're only persecuting a reflection of themselves. They're persecuting what they can't stand to look at in themselves,the truth.
— Charles Manson
If you feel obsessed to prove something to the world, then you'd need world attention to be able to prove it.
— Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza
I have no ambition to govern men
—  it is a painful and thankless office.
ONE BUT MANYOne God, many faces.One family, many races.One truth, many paths.One heart, many complexions.One light, many reflections.One world, many imperfections.ONE.We are all one,But many.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
To really change the world, we have to help people change the way they see things. Global betterment is a mental process, not one that requires huge sums of money or a high level of authority. Change has to be psychological. So if you want to see real change, stay persistent in educating humanity on how similar we all are than different. Don't only strive to be the change you want to see in the world, but also help all those around you see the world through commonalities of the heart so that they would want to change with you. This is how humanity will evolve to become better. This is how you can change the world. The language of the heart is mankind's main common language.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Contentment and happiness didn't exist in my life for more than a few moments at a time, and they were really only illusionary. There was always something hidden. Lying in wait to spring up and ruin everything.
— Sylvia Day, Bared to You
As you see the opening get closer, you just can't get fast enough. And finally, just when you think you'll never get there, you see the opening right in front of you.
— Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
The truth between two people always cuts two ways.
— Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock
Reality is far more vicious than Russian roulette. First, it delivers the fatal bullet rather infrequently, like a revolver that would have hundreds, even thousands of chambers instead of six. After a few dozen tries, one forgets about the existence of a bullet, under a numbing false sense of security. Second, unlike a well-defined precise game like Russian roulette, where the risks are visible to anyone capable of multiplying and dividing by six, one does not observe the barrel of reality. One is capable of unwittingly playing Russian roulette - and calling it by some alternative “low risk” game.
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
Leowin: Don't worry Luthiel. 'Truth's existence never depended upon belief.
— Robert Fanney
People who have a religion should be glad, for not everyone has the gift of believing in heavenly things. You don't necessarily even have to be afraid of punishment after death; purgatory, hell, and heaven are things that a lot of people can't accept, but still a religion, it doesn't matter which, keeps a person on the right path. It isn't the fear of God but the upholding of one's own honor and conscience. How noble and good everyone could be if, every evening before falling asleep, they were to recall to their minds the events of the while day and consider exactly what has been good and bad. Then, without realizing it you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time. Anyone can do this, it costs nothing and is certainly very helpful. Whoever doesn't know it must learn and find by experience that: "A quiet conscience mades one strong!
— Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
Don’t spoil me with your lies, love me with your truth.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
The seeker after truth should be humbler than the dust. The world crushes the dust under its feet, but the seeker after truth should so humble himself that even the dust could crush him. Only then, and not till then, will he have a glimpse of truth.
— Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth
My mom said I was an escapist at heart.... that I preferred imaginary worlds to the real one
— Amy Plum, Die for Me
What is important is not what you hear said, it's what you observe.
— Michael Connelly, Trunk Music
For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and to provide for it.
— Patrick Henry
I only feel like myself when I am alone.
— Peter Cameron, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You
There is no truth on this island of yours. Rather, there are as many truths as there are stars in the sky; and every one of them different.
— Juliet Marillier, Daughter of the Forest
Inside each of us resides the truth, I began, the absolute truth. But sometimes the truth is hidden in a hall of mirrors. Sometimes we believe we are viewing the real thing, when in fact we are viewing a facsimile, a distortion.
— Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain
I've heard it said that God is in the details. It's the same with the truth. Leave out the details, the crucial heart, and you can damn someone with the bare bones of it.
— Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty
Sometimes, a lie is told in kindness. I don't believe it ever works kindly. The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost.
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Accidents happen. Our bones shatter, our skin splits, our hearts break. We burn, we drown, we stay alive.
— Moïra Fowley-Doyle, The Accident Season
It's one thing to think you're worthless, and quite another for somebody else to tell you that you are.
— Jennifer Echols, Dirty Little Secret
The truth comes to me. The truth loves me.
— Sylvia Plath
It is a time of change,'' Sazed said. ''Perhaps it is also time to learn of other truths, other ways.
— Brandon Sanderson, The Well of Ascension
All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news.
— George Orwell, Why I Write
All I could say was, "I don't know what to do." I remember her taking me by the shoulders and looking me in the eye with a calm smile and saying simply, "Tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
In Western Civilization, our elders are books.
— Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild: Essays
One of the few things in life that cannot possibly do harm in the end is the honest pursuit of the truth.
— Peter Kreeft, Pocket Handbook of Christian Apologetics
But just because you love something, I added to myself, doesn't mean you'll ever be great. Not if you don't work. Most people stink at the things they love.
— Amy Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
The ego lusts for satisfaction. It has a prideful ferocious appetite for its version of "truth". It is the most challenging aspect to conquer; the cause for most spiritual turmoil.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
There is no compulsion for man to accept the truth. But it is certainly a shame upon the human intellect when man is not even interested in finding out as to what is the truth! Islam teaches that God has given man the faculty of reason and therefore expects man to reason things out objectively and systematically for himself. To reflect and to question and to reflect.
— Maurice Bucaille, The Qur'an and Modern Science
The human ego is the ugliest part of man. We lift up men who only show us darkness, and put down those brave enough to show us the light. Likewise, people engage in darkness when it is light outside, and acknowledge the light only when it is dark. We abandon those fighting for us to cheer behind those fighting against us. And, we only remember good people and God when it is convenient for us, and take them for granted because their doors are always open - only to chase after closed doors and personalities void of substance and truth.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Emotional states are fairly quick bursts of neuronal gossip. Traits, on the other hand, are more like the neuronal equivalent of committed relationships.
— Yongey Mingyur
I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
You can tell people the truth, but they'll never believe you until the event. In the meantime, the truth will just piss them off and get you in a lot of trouble.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor
For my true thoughts have spent more time in your company than in anyone else's, these last two or three months, and where my thoughts are, there am I, in truth".
— A.S. Byatt, Possession
The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power.
— Mary Pickford
Nobody can turn you into a slave unless you allow them. Nobody can make you afraid of anything, unless you allow them. Nobody can tell you to do something wrong, unless you allow them. God never created you to be a slave, man did. God never created division or set up any borders between brothers, man did. God never told you hurt or kill another, man did. So why is man your god, and not the Creator?
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Beware:Ignorance Protects itself.IgnorancePromotes suspicion.SuspicionEngenders fear.Fear quails,Irrational and blind,Or fear looms,Defiant and closed.Blind, closed,Suspicious, afraid,IgnoranceProtects itself,And protected,Ignorance grows.
— Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents
It is impossible to enslave, mentally or socially, a bible-reading people. The principles of the bible are the groundwork of human freedom.
— Horace Greeley
In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed. When a booby trap explodes, you close your eyes and duck and float outside yourself. .. The pictures get jumbled, you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed.
— Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance.
— Oswald Chambers
Too many people out there tell us what we can and cannot do but…they don’t know who we are, what’s put in us.
— Alex Rogers, I'm Only Human After All
We cannot decide to love. We cannot compel anyone to love us. There's no secret recipe, only love itself. And we are at its mercy--there's nothing we can do.
— Nina George, The Little Paris Bookshop
IF her life had taught her anything, it was that you never really knew what people had going on beneath the surface. People were shit. The only difference between them and animals was people felt the need to hide it.
— Stacia Kane, Unholy Ghosts
Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood.
— Alice  Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
Religion carries two sorts of people in two entirely opposite directions: the mild and gentle people it carries towards mercy and justice; the persecuting people it carries into fiendish sadistic cruelty. Mind you, though this may seem to justify the eighteenth-century Age of Reason in its contention that religion is nothing but an organized, gigantic fraud and a curse to the human race, nothing could be farther from the truth. It possesses these two aspects, the evil one of the two appealing to people capable of naïve hatred; but what is actually happening is that when you get natures stirred to their depths over questions which they feel to be overwhelmingly vital, you get the bad stirred up in them as well as the good; the mud as well as the water. It doesn't seem to matter much which sect you have, for both types occur in all sects....
— Alfred North Whitehead, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead
The Truth is found when men (and Women) are free to pursue it.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
We're all pieces of the same ever-changing puzzle;some connected for mere seconds, some connected for life,some connected through knowledge, some through belief,some connected through wisdom, some through Love, and some connected with no explanation at all. Yet, as spiritual beings having a human experience, we're all here for the sensations this reality or illusion has to offer. The best anyone can hope for is the right to be able to Live, Learn, Love then Leave. After that, reap the benefits of their own chosen existence in the hereafter by virtue of simply believing in what they believe. As for here, it took me a while but this progression helped me with my life: "I like myself. I Love myself. I am myself.
— Stanley Victor Paskavich
She was never going to seek gainful employment again, that was for certain. She'd remain outside the public sector. She'd be an anarchist, she'd travel with jaguars. She was going to train herself to be totally irrational. She'd fall in love with a totally inappropriate person. She'd really work on it, but abandon would be involved as well. She'd have different names, a.k.a. Snake, a.k.a. Snow - no that was juvenile. She wanted to be extraordinary, to possess a savage glitter.
— Joy Williams
Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied.
— Zadie Smith
Chaos is more freedom; in fact, total freedom. But no meaning.
— Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
I can be forced to live without happiness, but I will never consent to live without honor.
— Pierre Corneille
Stop lying to yourself. When we deny our own truth, we deny our own potential.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
The hidden well-spring of your soul must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea;And the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes.But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure;And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line.For self is a sea boundless and measureless.Say not, “I have found the truth,” but rather, “I have found a truth.”Say not, “I have found the path of the soul.” Say rather, “I have met the soul walking upon my path.”For the soul walks upon all paths.The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
A thousand times I was ready to regret and take back my rash statement - yet it had been the truth.
— Hermann Hesse
A scientist can pretend that his work isn't himself, it's merely the impersonal truth. An artist can't hide behind the truth. He can't hide anywhere.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
But as long as something is never even started, you never have to worry about it ending. It has endless potential.
— Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever
Truth is naturally universal...and shines into many different windows, though many are clouded.
— Anya Seton, Green Darkness
Kant thought things, not because they were true, but because he was Kant.
— W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
I think there's a difference between (a) offending people for its own sake, which I don't necessarily want to do, because some people are good and decent and it would be unkind to upset them simply to indulge my own self-importance, and (b) challenging their prejudices, their preconceptions, or their comfortable assumptions. I'm very happy to do that. But we need to be on our guard when people say they're offended. No one actually has the right to go through life without being offended. Some people think they can say "such-and-such offends me" and that will stop the "offensive" words or behaviour and force the "offender" to apologise. I'm very much against that tactic. No one should be able to shut down discussion by making their feelings more important than the search for truth. If such people are offended, they should put up with it.
— Philip Pullman
You don’t want me to stand against the council. You want a magic wand, so you can walk around smacking people with it until everything’s just the way you like it. But guess what, Faythe? Life doesn’t work like that. Life bites, and the harder you fight it, the more leverage it has to tear your heart right out of your chest. And if you really want to wake this particular sleeping dog, the truth is that if you’d just taken that "damn ring" five years ago, none of this shit would ever have happened!
— Rachel Vincent, Pride
Featherweight by Suzy KassemOne evening,I sat by the ocean and questioned the moon about my destiny.I revealed to it that I was beginning to feel smaller compared to others,Because the more secrets of the universe I would unlock,The smaller in size I became.I didn't understand why I wasn't feeling larger instead of smaller.I thought that seeking Truth was what was required of us all –To show us the way, not to make us feel lost,Up against the odds,In a devilish game partitioned byAn invisible wall.Then the next morning,A bird appeared at my window, just as the sun beganSpreading its yolk over the horizon.It remained perched for a long time,Gazing at me intently, to make sure I knew I wasn’t dreaming.Then its words gently echoed throughout my mind,Telling me:'The world you are in –Is the true hell.The journey to Truth itselfIs what quickens the heart to become lighter.The lighter the heart, the purer it is.The purer the heart, the closer to light it becomes.And the heavier the heart,The more chained to this hellIt will remain.'And just like that, it flew off towards the sun,Leaving behind a tiny feather.So I picked it up,And fastened it to a toothpick,To dip into inkAnd write my name.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self-esteem and true humility arise out of that realization. In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
That man is best who sees the truth himself. Good too is he who listens to wise counsel. But who is neither wise himself nor willing to ponder wisdom is not worth a straw.
— Hesiod
What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms – in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
We don't need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have mastered is the occasional capacity to acknowledge with good grace that we may, in one or two areas, be somewhat insane.
— Alain de Botton, The Course of Love
Power is not a means
—  it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution
I suppose that we women are such cowards that we think a man will save us from fears, and we marry him.
— Bram Stoker, The New Annotated Dracula
The truth doesn't always make a good story, does it? 
— Lev Grossman, The Magicians
Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people.
— Audre Lorde
Do you want this to be a love story?
— Jenny Downham, You Against Me
It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.
— Thomas Paine
Sometimes when I see a bad performance and people still clap... I wonder if they're clapping because they liked what they saw or because they're happy it's over?
— Kanye West, Thank You and You're Welcome
Everything he had ever done that had been better left undone. Every lie he had told — told to himself, or told to others. Every little hurt, and all the great hurts. Each one was pulled out of him, detail by detail, inch by inch. The demon stripped away the cover of forgetfulness, stripped everything down to truth, and it hurt more than anything.
— Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders
I tried.Can't do it.Brain's empty.
— Sharon Creech, Love That Dog
Nothing is easier than self-deceit.For what every man wishes,that he also believes to be true.
— Demosthenes
I don't know what sort of world she will live in and I have no fixed opinions concerning how she should live in it. I only know that if she does not come to value what is true above what is useful, it will make little difference whether she lives at all.
— Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history... It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science.
— Rachel Carson
It is very hard to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings – much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.
— George Eliot, Adam Bede
While people argue with one another about the specifics of Freud's work and blame him for the prejudices of his time, they overlook the fundamental truth of his writing, his grand humility: that we frequently do not know our own motivations in life and are prisoners to what we cannot understand. We can recognize only a small fragment of our own, and an even smaller fragment of anyone else's, impetus.
— Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
For those who like that sort of thing," said Miss Brodie in her best Edinburgh voice, "That is the sort of thing they like.
— Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
And where love ends, hate begins
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Everything is true,' he said. 'Everything anybody has ever thought.''Will you be all right?''I'll be all right,' he said, and thought, And I'm going to die. Both those are true, too.
— Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won't get mixed up. It was the best advice Francie every got.
— Betty  Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20 and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.Deuteronomy 30:19-20 (NIV)
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: The New King James Version
Eyes blinded by the fog of thingscannot see truth.Ears deafened by the din of thingscannot hear truth.Brains bewildered by the whirl of thingscannot think truth.Hearts deadened by the weight of thingscannot feel truth.Throats choked by the dust of thingscannot speak truth.
— Harold Bell Wright, The Uncrowned King
I am an inconsistent creature. Perhaps it is the pressure of my past, and not my own perverse mind, that has made me into this contradictory being. I am all too well aware of this fault in myself. You must forgive me.
— Sōseki Natsume, Kokoro
I have now been an officer in this Church for a very long time. I am an old man who cannot deny the calendar. I have lived long enough and served in enough different capacities to have removed from my mind, if such were necessary, any doubt of the divinity of this, the work of God. We respect those of other churches. We desire their friendship and hope to render meaningful service with them. We know they all do good, but we unabashedly state—and this frequently brings criticism upon us—that this is the true and living Church of our Father in Heaven and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
— Gordon B. Hinckley