c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Look, it's easy to outsmart a werewolf or a vampire," Jace said. "They're no smarter than anyone else. But faeries live for hundreds of years and they're as cunning as snakes. They can't lie, but they love to engage in creative truth-telling. They'll find out whatever it is you want most in the world and give it to you—with a sting in the tail of the gift that will make you regret you ever wanted it in the first place." He sighed. "They're not really about helping people. More about harm disguised as help.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Ashes
Somebody knows.
— Ally Carter
The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma.
— Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous.
— Madeleine L'Engle
It’s hard to throw away history. It was like you were throwing away a part of yourself.
— Jenny Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty
That is all very senseless, but this senselessness has a pretty mouth, and it smiles.
— Robert Walser, Jakob von Gunten
If she spoke, she would tell him the truth: she was not okay at all, but horribly empty, now that she knew what it was like to be filled.
— Jodi Picoult, Plain Truth
Hell is truth seen too late.
— Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
If we really saw war, what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be impossible to embrace the myth of war. If we had to stand over the mangled corpses of schoolchildren killed in Afghanistan and listen to the wails of their parents, we would not be able to repeat clichés we use to justify war. This is why war is carefully sanitized. This is why we are given war's perverse and dark thrill but are spared from seeing war's consequences. The mythic visions of war keep it heroic and entertaining…The wounded, the crippled, and the dead are, in this great charade, swiftly carted offstage. They are war's refuse. We do not see them. We do not hear them. They are doomed, like wandering spirits, to float around the edges of our consciousness, ignored, even reviled. The message they tell is too painful for us to hear. We prefer to celebrate ourselves and our nation by imbibing the myths of glory, honor, patriotism, and heroism, words that in combat become empty and meaningless.
— Chris Hedges, Death of the Liberal Class
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
— Ludwig Boltzmann
I have always been afraid... Always been pretending to follow you closely, alwyas been pretending to sharpen my teeth, when the truth is, I am ... scared to death just treading on your shadow.
— Tite Kubo
I’ve never had anyone’s approval, so I’ve learned to live without it.
— Pat Conroy, The Great Santini
To force oneself to believe and to accept a thing without understanding is political, and not spiritual or intellectual.
— Gautama Buddha
A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.
— Mark Twain
Speak the truth do not become angered and give when asked, even be it a little. By these three conditions one goes to the presence of the gods.
— Gautama Buddha
Feelings can be like wild animals-we underrate how fierce they are until we've opened their cage
— Richard Paul Evans, The Sunflower
Beasts bounding through time. Van Gogh writing his brother for paintsHemingway testing his shotgunCeline going broke as a doctor of medicinethe impossibility of being humanVillon expelled from Paris for being a thiefFaulkner drunk in the gutters of his townthe impossibility of being humanBurroughs killing his wife with a gunMailer stabbing histhe impossibility of being humanMaupassant going mad in a rowboatDostoevsky lined up against a wall to be shotCrane off the back of a boat into the propellerthe impossibilitySylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potatoHarry Crosby leaping into that Black SunLorca murdered in the road by the Spanish troopsthe impossibilityArtaud sitting on a madhouse benchChatterton drinking rat poisonShakespeare a plagiaristBeethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafnessthe impossibility the impossibilityNietzsche gone totally madthe impossibility of being humanall too humanthis breathingin and outout and inthese punksthese cowardsthese championsthese mad dogs of glorymoving this little bit of light towardusimpossibly
— Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
The naked truth is always better than the best-dressed lie.
— Ann Landers
Sometimes we don’t get second chances, Owen. Sometimes things just end.”He winces. “We didn’t even get a first chance.
— Colleen Hoover, Confess
We are willing to believe anything other than the truth.
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Why is this so hard?” I whispered.His pulse leaped crazily at my admission. “Everything worth fighting for is hard.
— Rachel Vincent, Shift
Every decent con man knows that the simplest truth is more powerful than even the most elaborate lie.
— Ally Carter, Uncommon Criminals
Truth.It feels cool, like water washing over my sticky-hot body. Cooling a heat that's been burning me up all my life.Truth, I say inside my head again, just for that feeling.
— Kathryn Stockett, The Help
We become slaves the moment we hand the keys to the definition of reality entirely over to someone else, whether it is a business, an economic theory, a political party, the White House, Newsworld or CNN.
— B.W. Powe, Towards a Canada of Light
It takes a certain ingenuous faith - but I have it - to believe that people who read and reflect more likely than not come to judge things with liberality and truth.
— A.C. Grayling, The Heart of Things: Applying Philosophy to the 21st Century
Understanding is a three edged sword: your side, their side, and the truth.
— J. Michael Straczynski
But love wasn't about sacrifice, and it wasn't about falling short of someone's expectations. By definition, love made you better than good enough; it redefined perfection to include your traits, instead of excluding them. All any of us wanted, really, was to know that we counted. That someone else's life would not have been as rich without us here.
— Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care
If you have feelings for someone, let them know. It doesn’t matter if they can be in your life or not. Maybe, it is just enough for both of you to release the truth, so healing can occur. The opposite is true, as well. If you don’t have feelings for someone then never let another person suggest that you do. Protect your reputation and be responsible for the wrong information spread about you. Never allow anyone to live with a false belief or unfounded hope about you. An honorable person sets the record straight, so that person can move on with their life.
— Shannon L. Alder
The best way to show that a stick is crooked is not to argue about it or to spend time denouncing it, but to lay a straight stick alongside it
— Dwight L. Moody
Discussion is impossible with someone who claims not to seek the truth, but already to possess it.
— Romain Rolland, Above the Battle
Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson
,the rest of the girls pretended not to notice. That's just what best friends do.
— Sara Shepard, Pretty Little Liars
To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.
— John Locke
You know there's no such thing as a complete lie. There's always some truth in there.
— David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson
It is only prudent never to place complete confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived.
— René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy
If only they would all just leave me alone with my books and my letters, I would be content to let life, and the world pass me by
— Alison Weir, Innocent Traitor
Before speaking, consult your inner-truth barometer, and resist the temptation to tell people only what they want to hear.
— Wayne W. Dyer
Of all the weapons she had commanded, Elizabeth knew the least of love; and of all the weapons in the world, love was the most dangerous.
— Seth Grahame-Smith, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Complete Letters, 1868-1871
Because this is the way things are meant to be.(Press Tilton)
— D.J. MacHale
Truth is neither in the scripture nor in the words of prophets. It is in your heart, feel it, discover it and expand with it.
— Amit Ray, OM Sutra: The Pathway to Enlightenment
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.
— Winston S. Churchill
If I had a shiny gun I could have a world of fun Speeding bullets through the brains Of the folks that cause me pains :)
— Dorothy Parker
They'll say you are bador perhaps you are mador at least you should stay undercover.Your mind must be bareif you would dareto think you can love more than one lover.
— David Rovics
It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the truth.
— Blaise Pascal
But I'm going to try to tell the truth. Except for the parts I'm leav­ing out, because there's still stuff I'm just not going to tell you. Get used to it.
— Robin McKinley, Dragonhaven
Don't change your mind just because people are offended
—  change your mind if you're wrong.
Alive or dead, the truth won't rest. Rise up while you can.
— Mira Grant, Feed
A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.
— Arthur C. Clarke, The Exploration of Space
Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him.
— E.M. Forster, Howards End
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
Any time you are with anyone or think of anyone you must say to yourself: I am dying and this person too is dying, attempting the while to experience the truth of the words you are saying. If every one of you agrees to practice this, bitterness will die out, harmony will arise.
— Anthony de Mello
Everything is permitted, Nothing is true.
— Oliver Bowden, Assassin's Creed: Renaissance
But no. There is a difference between the truth and what we wish were true.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Slow Regard of Silent Things
Truthfulness so often goes with ruthlessness. 
— Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact. It is better to say, “I am suffering,” than to say, “This landscape is ugly.
— Simone Weil
Silence the angry man with love. Silence the ill-natured man with kindness. Silence the miser with generosity. Silence the liar with truth.
— Gautama Buddha
It is a costly thing, looking on the true face of Love.
— Rick Riordan, The House of Hades
We have our Arts so we won't die of Truth
— Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing
I think that when the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be there yet. It dont move about from place to place and it dont change from time to time. You cant corrupt it any more than you can salt salt.
— Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.
— Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth
...we will stand amazed to see the topside of the tapestry and how God beautifully embroidered each circumstance into a pattern for our good and His glory.
— Joni Eareckson Tada
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself -- that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.
— George Orwell, 1984
Never do anything that you can't admit doing, because if you are that ashamed of whatever it is, it's probably wrong.
— Ashly Lorenzana
A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.
— Terry Pratchett, The Truth
If the difference between guys and men is still unclear, here are a few examples that apply to dating: A guy uses women to build his self-esteem. A man already has it. A guy likes to "hang out" with a woman he's interested in. A man asks her out. A guy doesn't make a move until he's sure there's no risk. A man is bold and clear with his intentions. A guy plays games with a woman. A man has no time for games because they keep him from getting to know the woman. A guy will become bitter and angry with a woman when she denies him. A man accepts that dating involves risk. A guy fears and worships women. A man respects and adores them but fears and worships only God. Guys are cool and indifferent. Men are hot and passionate.
— Stephen W. Simpson, What Women Wish You Knew about Dating: A Single Guy's Guide to Romantic Relationships
People who pride themselves on their "complexity" and deride others for being "simplistic" should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.
— Thomas Sowell, Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays
Don't worry about being effective. Just concentrate on being faithful to the truth.
— Dorothy Day
Tis strange,-but true; for truth is always strange;Stranger than fiction: if it could be told,How much would novels gain by the exchange!How differently the world would men behold!
— George Gordon Byron, Don Juan
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods." (1794)]
— Edmund Burke, On Empire, Liberty, and Reform: Speeches and Letters
She was reflecting back on a truth she had learned over the years: that people heard what they wanted to hear, saw what they wanted, believed what they wanted.
— Jeffery Deaver, The Bodies Left Behind
The truth is, immigrants tend to be more American than people born here.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone— to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink — greetings!
— George Orwell, 1984
Life's wildest moment---she kneels on the sidewalk. Everything else she does is lies, lies.
— Henry Miller, Sexus
It is difficult to see ourselves as we are. Sometimes we are fortunate enough to have good friends, lovers or others who will do us the good service of telling us the truth about ourselves. When we don't, we can so easily delude ourselves, lose a sense of truth about ourselves, and our conscience loses power and purpose. Mostly, we tell ourselves what we would like to hear. We lose our way.
— Jon Katz
Some truths are truths, no matter who says them.
— Patricia Briggs, Raven's Strike
But some secrets are too delicious not to share.
— Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
How sad it was, Carmen thought, that you acted awful when you were desperately sad and hurt and wanted to be loved. How tragic then, the way everyone avoided you and tiptoed around you when you really needed them. Carmen knew this vicious predicament as well as anyone in the world. How bitter it felt when you acted badly to everyone and ended up hating yourself the most.
— Ann Brashares, Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood
I am not afraid to die
—  I am only afraid of saying goodbye to you forever.
Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment.
— Janet Fitch, White Oleander
Seek only light and freedom and do not immerse yourself too deeply in the worldly mire.
— Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
Totoo pala na kulang ang salita para sa lahat ng nararamdaman.
— Eros S. Atalia, Ligo Na U, Lapit Na Me
More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren't so busy denying them
— Harold J. Smith
What is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious.
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
I like the truth, even when it does trouble me.
— Juliet Marillier, Wildwood Dancing
Faith and Reason are like two wings of the human spirit by which is soars to the truth.
— John Paul II
A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written.
— Tim O'Brien
What are heavy? sea-sand and sorrow.What are brief? today and tomorrow.What are frail? spring blossoms and youth.What are deep? the ocean and truth.
— Christina Rossetti
You will never be entirely comfortable. This is the truth behind the champion - he is always fighting something. To do otherwise is to settle.
— Julien Smith, The Flinch
The best gifts come from the heart, not the store.
— Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key
Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true.
— Robert Brault
Comfort is no test of truth. Truth is often far from being comfortable.
— Swami Vivekananda
I've nothing against people who love truth. Apart from the fact that they make dull companions.
— Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale
If you're not gonna tell the truth, then why start talking?
— Gene Wilder
A thing can be true and still be desperate folly, Hazel.
— Richard Adams, Watership Down
All along — not only since she left, but for a decade before — I had been imagining her without listening, without knowing that she made as a poor a window as I did. And so I could not imagine her as a person who could feel fear, who could feel isolated in a roomful of people, who could be shy about her record collection because it was too personal to share. Someone who might have read travel books to escape having to live in the town that so many people escape to. Someone who — because no one thought she was a person — had no one to really talk to.
— John Green, Paper Towns
Politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth.
— Paul Krugman
He spoke again as if he hadn’t just shattered his promise and her security. Her house of glass now lay in a pile of shards.
— Aleatha Romig, Consequences
Well and good if all things change, O Lord God, provided I am rooted in You.
— San Juan de la Cruz
A woman has to be intelligent, have charm, a sense of humor, and be kind. It's the same qualities I require from a man.
— Catherine Deneuve
You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing.
— René Descartes
If what he said was the truth, it broke her heart. If what he said was a lie, it was broken anyway.
— Christine Feehan, Oceans of Fire
Herodotus says, "Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects.
— Mark Twain
...oppression is as American as apple pie... 
— Audre Lorde
Because even if the lie is beautiful, the truth is what you face in the end.
— Lauren DeStefano, Fever
We should write as we dream; we should even try and write, we should all do it for ourselves, it’s very healthy, because it’s the only place where we never lie. At night we don’t lie. Now if we think that our whole lives are built on lying-they are strange buildings-we should try and write as our dreams teach us; shamelessly, fearlessly, and by facing what is inside very human being-sheer violence, disgust, terror, shit, invention, poetry. In our dreams we are criminals; we kill, and we kill with a lot of enjoyment. But we are also the happiest people on earth; we make love as we never make love in life.
— Hélène Cixous
I became aware that the invincible power that has moved the world is unrequited, not happy, love.
— Gabriel García Márquez
When you hate someone you used to love, and you think he's done something awful - he probably has.
— E. Lockhart, The Boyfriend List: 15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs and Me, Ruby Oliver
All I do is lie, and that has made me immune to compliments.
— David Sedaris
We too, must shatter the mirrors. We must look in to ourselves and root out the distortions until that thing which we know in our hearts is perfect and true, stands before us.
— Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain
He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear.
— George Orwell, 1984
Facts are the enemy of truth.
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Despite my firm convictions, I have been always a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.
— Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
They're just words. And words alone don't really mean anything. It's what you feel and what you believe when you say them that matter.
— Dana Reinhardt, How to Build a House
The greatest art belongs to the world. Do not be intimidated by the experts. Trust your instincts. Do not be afraid to go against what you were taught, or what you were told to see or believe. Every person, every set of eyes, has the right to the truth.
— Blue Balliett, Chasing Vermeer
Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years.Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene,' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person.Why am I glad this is the case? To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can't take your sins away, because I can't abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn't offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There's no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It's just a part of wish-thinking, and I don't think wish-thinking is good for people either.It even manages to pollute the central question, the word I just employed, the most important word of all: the word love, by making love compulsory, by saying you MUST love. You must love your neighbour as yourself, something you can't actually do. You'll always fall short, so you can always be found guilty. By saying you must love someone who you also must fear. That's to say a supreme being, an eternal father, someone of whom you must be afraid, but you must love him, too. If you fail in this duty, you're again a wretched sinner. This is not mentally or morally or intellectually healthy.And that brings me to the final objection - I'll condense it, Dr. Orlafsky - which is, this is a totalitarian system. If there was a God who could do these things and demand these things of us, and he was eternal and unchanging, we'd be living under a dictatorship from which there is no appeal, and one that can never change and one that knows our thoughts and can convict us of thought crime, and condemn us to eternal punishment for actions that we are condemned in advance to be taking. All this in the round, and I could say more, it's an excellent thing that we have absolutely no reason to believe any of it to be true.
— Christopher Hitchens
When one experiences truth, the madness of finding fault with others disappears.
— S.N. Goenka
Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever.
— Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
It takes a fearless, unflinching love and deep humility to accept the universe as it is. The most effective way he knew to accomplish that, the most powerful tool at his disposal, was the scientific method, which over time winnows out deception. It can't give you absolute truth because science is a permanent revolution, always subject to revision, but it can give you successive approximations of reality.
— Ann Druyan
Use your intellect to guide you, and you will end up putting peopleoff. Rely on your emotions, and you will forever be pushed around.Force your will on others, and you will live in constant tension. Thereis no getting around it—people are hard to live with.
— Sōseki Natsume
There is an inmost center in us all, where truth abides in fullness;....and, to know, rather consists in opening out a way where the imprisoned splendor may escape, then in effecting entry for a light supposed to be without.
— Robert Browning
I didn't want the sun to rise. I didn't want the world to continue turning. I wanted the whole planet put into stasis until I could catch up.
— Anna Sheehan, A Long, Long Sleep
Submit to God and be at peace with him
—  in this way prosperity will come to you.
Never assume the obvious is true.
— William Safire
Now you know how badly someone wanted you, Charley. Children forget that sometimes. They think of themselves as a burden instead of a wish granted.
— Mitch Albom, For One More Day
After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth', and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
It's often only in the lies we refuse to speak that any truth can be heard at all.
— Karen Marie Moning, Darkfever
Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor, — all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked, — who is good? not that men are ignorant, — what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.
— W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
you have to be the prude or the slut, and if you pick one, other people hate you for it, and you can’t trust anyone anymore, because they’re all after the same thing, and you see that you can never go back to how was before…
— Ned Vizzini
Truth has power. And if we all gravitate toward similar ideas, maybe we do so because those ideas are true...written deep within us. And when we hear the truth, even if we don't understand it, we feel that truth resonate within us...vibrating with our unconscious wisdom. Perhaps the truth is not learned by us, but rather, the truth is re-called...re-membered...-re-cognized...as that which is already inside us.
— Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol
The perfect killer has no friends. Only targets.
— Brent Weeks, The Way of Shadows
Coffee, she'd discovered, was tied to all sorts of memories, different for each person. Sunday mornings, friendly get-togethers, a favorite grandfather long since gone, the AA meeting that saved their life. Coffee meant something to people. Most found their lives were miserable without it. Coffee was a lot like love that way. And because Rachel believed in love, she believed in coffee, too.
— Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper
Truth is the only safe ground to stand on.
— Elizabeth Cady Stanton
News flash, Bozo. Don't ever tell a girl to relax. It only makes us madder.
— Jess Rothenberg, The Catastrophic History of You and Me
Errors do not cease to be errors simply because they’re ratified into law.
— E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
We tilt our heads back and open wide. The snow drifts into our zombie mouths crawling with grease and curses and tobacco flakes and cavities and boyfriend/girlfriend juice, the stain of lies. For one moment we are not failed tests and broken condoms and cheating on essays; we are crayons and lunch boxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds. For one breath everything feels better.Then it melts.The bus drivers rev their engines and the ice cloud shatters. Everyone shuffles forward. They don't know what just happened. They can't remember.
— Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls
Once in a while it really hits people that they don't have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.
— Alan Keightley
The image isn't reality. Even though we're used to thinking that way alot of the time. We show a kid a picture of a dog and say 'This is a doggie' - but it's not. It's just an image.
— L.J. Smith, The Forbidden Game
What was the point of trying to run away if people were going to insist on reminding you of what you were running from?
— Morgan Matson, Second Chance Summer
Belief means not wanting to know what is true.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Yes, I want money more than anything else in the world.”“Then you’ve made the only choice. But there’s a penalty attached, as there is to most things you want. It’s loneliness.
— Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind
People resist a census, but give them a profile page and they'll spend all day telling you who they are.
— Max Barry, Lexicon
It is much harder to lie to someone's face.But.It is also much harder to tell the truth to someone's face.
— David Levithan, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares
You know the games I play And the words I say When I want my own way You know the lies I tell When you've gone through hell And I say I can't stay You know how hard it can be To keep believing in me When everything and everyone Becomes my enemy and when There's nothing more you can do I'm gonna blame it on you It's not the way I want to be I only hope that in the end you will see It's the Opheliac in me
— Emilie Autumn
All cynics are disappointed idealists. The more stars in the eyes, the harder the fall.
— Josh Lanyon, Fair Game
I have a theory that as long as you have one good friend, one real friend, you can get through anything.
— Dana Reinhardt, How to Build a House
There were a hundred shades between a truth and lie, and she knew them all.
— V.E. Schwab, A Conjuring of Light
It’s not unpatriotic to denounce an injustice committed on our behalf, perhaps it’s the most patriotic thing we can do.
— E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
So it is more useful to watch a man in times of peril, and in adversity to discern what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off, reality remains.
— Titus Lucretius Carus
If a man has so much heat he burns your skin when he touches you, he's the devil. Run away
— Sarah Addison Allen
Truth has to be given in riddles. People can't take truth if it comes charging at them like a bull. The bull is always killed. You have to give people the truth in a riddle, hide it so they go looking for it and find it piece by piece; that way they learn to live with it.
— Chaim Potok, The Gift of Asher Lev
The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
Martha: Truth or illusion, George; you don't know the difference.George: No, but we must carry on as though we did.Martha: Amen.
— Edward Albee, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Good writing is remembering detail. Most people want to forget. Don't forget things that were painful or embarrassing or silly. Turn them into a story that tells the truth.
— Paula Danziger
I'd rather hear an ugly truth, rather than an obscure lie.
— Ana Monnar
Antonin Artaud wrote on one of his drawings, "Never real and always true," and that is how depression feels. You know that it is not real, that you are someone else, and yet you know that it is absolutely true.
— Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
... just because [butterflies'] lives were short didn't mean they were tragic... See, they have a beautiful life.
— Lisa Genova, Still Alice
when you're a kid, they tell you that it's what's on the inside that counts. Looks don't matter . But that's not true. Guys like Phoebus in The Hunchback, or Dorian, or the old Kyle Kingsbury-- they can be scumbags to women and still get away with it because they're good-looking. Being ugly is a kind of prisoner.
— Alex Flinn, Beastly
The poet's job is to put into words those feelings we all have that are so deep, so important, and yet so difficult to name, to tell the truth in such a beautiful way, that people cannot live without it.
— Jane Kenyon
We do not have to be ashamed of what we are. As sentient beings we have wonderful backgrounds. These backgrounds may not be particularly enlightened or peaceful or intelligent. Nevertheless, we have soil good enough to cultivate; we can plant anything in it.
— Chögyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
What more could you want? How about dominion over this 'beautiful place'? Beauty doesn't last. Friends and family decay. Power is the only thing that goes on forever."Jack answered with his gut. "No, love goes on forever.
— P.C. Cast, Awakened
Michael: There's nothing here to fear.Lucifer: Well, there's always the truth.
— Mike Carey
If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72
Be wise today so you don't cry tomorrow.
— E.A. Bucchianeri
I think all of us are looking for that which does not admit of bullshit . . . If you tell me you can bench press 450, hell, we'll load up the bar and put you under it. Either you can do it or you can't do it—you can't bullshit. Ultimately, sports are just about as close to what one would call the truth as it is possible to get in this world.
— Harry Crews, Getting Naked with Harry Crews: Interviews
He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person's failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: King James Version
To make a true choice, we must have true knowledge.
— Cassandra Clare, Lord of Shadows
I have been finding treasures in places I did not want to search. I have been hearing wisdom from tongues I did not want to listen. I have been finding beauty where I did not want to look. And I have learned so much from journeys I did not want to take. Forgive me, O Gracious One; for I have been closing my ears and eyes for too long. I have learned that miracles are only called miracles because they are often witnessed by only those who can can see through all of life's illusions. I am ready to see what really exists on other side, what exists behind the blinds, and taste all the ugly fruit instead of all that looks right, plump and ripe.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
I've always liked the moonless night best. It's easier to say things in the dark. It's easier to be yourself.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear
Why do people respect the package rather than the man?
— Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
Loving another person is a wonderful thing, and if that love is sincere, no one ends up tossed into a labyrinth. You have to have more faith in yourself.
— Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
Love without truth is sentimentality
—  it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness
An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy. If a man's mind is open on these things, let his mouth at least be shut. He can say nothing to the purpose. Outside the Tao there is no ground for criticizing either the Tao or anything else.
— C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
He said the truth is like that water: it doesn't matter how hard you try to bury it
—  it'll always find some way back to the surface. It's resilient.
Becoming hurts.
— Kat Howard
One could argue that it's romantic to die for love. Of course, then you're dead and unable to take that honeymoon trip to the Alps with all the other fashionable young couples, which is a shame.
— Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty
I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all.
— Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
Watching my parents I've learnt a lesson many do not recognize. True love is not signaled by romantic, candle light dinners, red roses glistening with dew, or even Valentine's day celebrations. While these things may accompany our feelings, love is truly more than all those! Love is being with your spouse even when its not pleasing. Sometimes, love is walking down the hall, with your spouse hanging onto your shoulders and walking at a turtle's pace down the hall, just because surgery made life a burden. Love is patient, love is kind, love is Jesus! May we always remember love is not always tied in bows!﻿
— Mary Kate
Her last conscious thought was disgust at life; her senses had lied to her. The world was not made of energy and delight but of foulness, betrayal, and lassitude. Living was hateful, and death was no better, and from end to end of the universe this was the first and last and only truth.
— Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife
A need for revenge can burn long and hot. Especially if every glance in a mirror reinforces it.
— Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
People tend to look on the beliefs of the past as being primitive and unintelligent, yet we are seeing more truth in the past every day.
— Jennifer L. Armentrout, Obsidian
Judging is preventing us from understanding a new truth. Free yourself from the rules of old judgments and create the space for new understanding.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
Because even though the truth can set you free, that doesn't mean it won't be painful.
— Ally Carter, Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy
There is no truth except the truth that exists within you. Everything else is what someone is telling you.
— Neale Donald Walsch, Home with God: In a Life That Never Ends
Yes my lord, but questions are dangerous, for they have answers
— Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart
A student to teacher: “I am so alone; I don’t know what to do?” Teacher: “Do not worry about being alone, we always come alone and go alone. In a very sweet accident, we meet others who are alone and start to be part of them in various forms of relationships such as friends, husband, wife, mother, father, sister and so on. So, life is about sharing a moment together, not thinking as if you are alone.
— Santosh Kalwar, Quote Me Everyday
In wine, there's truth.
— Pliny the Elder, Natural History
It's funny whom we end up choosing to love and who ends up choosing to love us. It's rarely the people we think it should be.
— Robin Jones Gunn, Gardenias for Breakfast
He looked at me intently, from what seemed behind the veil of a grave experience. Then slowly and prophetically, he said the scariest thing I'd ever heard: "Because the answer to a heartfelt question, Jack, will always break your heart.
— Thomas H. Cook, Master of the Delta
Truth resides in every human heart,and one has to search for it there,and to be guided by truth as one sees it.But no one has a right to coerce othersto act according to his own view of truth.
— Mahatma Gandhi
Those who understand history are condemned to watch other idiots repeat it.
— Peter Lamborn Wilson
re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.[From the preface to Leaves Grass]
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with telling the truth. I know it isn’t fashionable.
— Craig Ferguson
Don't live by my words, don't die by them, chew them slowly digest them, and smile if they give nourishment to your soul.
— Stanley Victor Paskavich
Thanks to my mother, I was raised to have a morbid imagination. When I was a child, she often talked about death as warning, as an unavoidable matter of fact. Little Debbie's mom down the block might say, 'Honey, look both ways before crossing the street.' My mother's version: 'You don't look, you get smash flat like sand dab.' (Sand dabs were the cheap fish we bought live in the market, distinguished in my mind by their two eyes affixed on one side of their woebegone cartoon faces.)The warnings grew worse, depending on the danger at hand. Sex education, for example, consisted of the following advice: 'Don't ever let boy kiss you. You do, you can't stop. Then you have baby. You put baby in garbage can. Police find you, put you in jail, then you life over, better just kill youself.
— Amy Tan, The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life
The First Splendid Truth: To be happy, I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.
— Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
If only there were a dogma to believe in. Everything is contradictory, everything is tangential; there are no certainties anywhere. Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense. The whole of world history can be explained as development and progress and can also be seen as nothing but decadence and meaninglessness. Isn't there any truth? Is there no real and valid doctrine?" Joseph Knect said to his Music Master "there is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend rather, you should long for perfection in yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived not taught
— Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
The true value of man is not determined by his possession, supposed or real, of Truth, but rather by his sincere exertion to get to the Truth. It is not possession of Truth by which he extends his powers and in which his ever-growing perfectability is to be found. Possession makes one passive, indolent and proud. If God were to hold all Truth concealed in his right hand, and in his left only the steady and diligent drive for Truth, albeit with the proviso that I would always and forever err in the process, and to offer me the choice, I would with all humility take the left hand. 
— Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
There is no formula to relationships. They have to be negotiated in loving ways, with room for both parties, what they want and what they need, what they can do and what their life is like. In business, people negotiate to win. They negotiate to get what they want. Maybe you’re too used to that. Love is different. Love is when you are as concerned about someone else’s situation as you are about your own.
— Morrie Schwartz
You don't destroy what you want toacquire in the future.
— Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth. 
— Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science
Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.
— Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
The worst thing in life is having parents that always stand against you and never with you. They discourage you, instill fear in you, hold you back, push you down and never encourage you to fly forward. When I have kids, they'll already be born with propellers with added wings. Even if one tells me they want to go learn how to ride lions in Africa, if their heart is driving that desire, I'd say "DO IT".If we throw blankets over our children's dreams, we darken their world and extinguish their desire to live. I'd rather my kid die with a wild fire in his/her heart than with a malfunctioning or drained out fuse. Always allow your kids to keep humming with dreams and ideas that fuel their passions. Never tell them something is impossible. If you have a really strong determined kid, they'll go out there killing themselves trying to do the unachievable just to prove you wrong. And if you have a weak kid, they'll give up on life and settle for bagging Cokes and potato chips at your local grocery store.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
You want me to pin my entire operation, the entire revolution on some teenaged love story? I can't believe this.
— Victoria Aveyard, Red Queen
The first casualty when war comes is truth.
— Hiram Johnson
I think my quarry is illusion. I war against magic. I believe that, though illusion often cheers and comforts, it ultimately and invariably weakens and constricts the spirit.
— Irvin D. Yalom, Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy
An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. 
— Jef Mallett
All you know is what you think you know, but that isn't always what's real.
— Carrie Vaughn, Kitty's Big Trouble
I’ve had enough of someone else’s propaganda… I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.
— Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Of all the things that are beyond my power, I value nothing more highly than to be allowed the honor of entering into bonds of friendship with people who sincerely love truth. For, of things beyond our power, I believe there is nothing in the world which we can love with tranquility except such men.
— Baruch Spinoza, The Letters
Deceit for personal gain is one of history's most recurring crimes. Man's first step towards change would be thinking, counter-arguing, re-thinking, twisting, straightening, perfecting, then believing every original idea he intends to make public before making it public. There is always an angle from which an absolute truth may appear askew just as there is always a personal emotion, or a personal agenda, which alienates the ultimate good of mankind.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy