c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
These are the three stages of enlightenment, the three glimpses of satori. 1. The first stage enlightenment:A Glimpse of the WholeThe first stage of enlightenment is short glimpse from faraway of the whole. It is a short glimpse of being. The first stage of enlightenment is when, for the first time, for a single moment the mind is not functioning. The ordinary ego is still present at the first stage of enlightenment, but you experience for a short while that there is something beyond the ego. There is a gap, a silence and emptiness, where there is not thought between you and existence. You and existence meet and merge for a moment. And for the first time the seed, the thirst and longing, for enlightenment, the meeting between you and existence, will grow in your heart. 2. The second stage of enlightenment:Silence, Relaxation, Togetherness, Inner BeingThe second stage of enlightenment is a new order, a harmony, from within, which comes from the inner being. It is the quality of freedom.The inner chaos has disappeared and a new silence, relaxation and togetherness has arisen.Your own wisdom from within has arisen.A subtle ego is still present in the second stage of enlightenment. The Hindus has three names for the ego:1. Ahamkar, which is the ordinary ego.2. Asmita, which is the quality of Am-ness, of no ego. It is a very silent ego, not aggreessive, but it is still a subtle ego.3. Atma, the third word is Atma, when the Am-ness is also lost. This is what Buddha callas no-self, pure being.In the second stage of enlightenment you become capable of being in the inner being, in the gap, in the meditative quality within, in the silence and emptiness.For hours, for days, you can remain in the gap, in utter aloneness, in God. Still you need effort to remain in the gap, and if you drop the effort, the gap will disappear. Love, meditation and prayer becomes the way to increase the effort in the search for God. Then the second stage becomes a more conscious effort. Now you know the way, you now the direction. 3. The third stage of enlightenment: Ocean, Wholeness, No-self, Pure beingAt the third stage of enlightenment, at the third step of Satori, our individual river flowing silently, suddenly reaches to the Ocean and becomes one with the Ocean.At the third Satori, the ego is lost, and there is Atma, pure being. You are, but without any boundaries. The river has become the Ocean, the Whole.It has become a vast emptiness, just like the pure sky. The third stage of enlightenment happens when you have become capable of finding the inner being, the meditative quality within, the gap, the inner silence and emptiness, so that it becomes a natural quality. You can find the gap whenever you want.This is what tantra callas Mahamudra, the great orgasm, what Buddha calls Nirvana, what Lao Tzu calls Tao and what Jesus calls the kingdom of God.You have found the door to God. You have come home.
— Swami Dhyan Giten
He has come to the most dreadful conclusion a literary man can come to, the conclusion that the ordinary view is the right one. It is only the last and wildest kind of courage that can stand on a tower before ten thousand people and tell them that twice two is four.
— G.K. Chesterton, Heretics / Orthodoxy: Nelson's Royal Classics
What you choose also chooses you.
— Kamand Kojouri
The worst part of being okay is that okay is far from happy.
— Anna Todd
It must have been then that I began to lose faith in reasonable argument as the sole measure of truth.
— Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard's Egg
It can be difficult to speak truth to power. Circumstances, however, have made doing so increasingly necessary.
— Aberjhani, Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays
Truth must be found in reality, not systems.
— Joseph Beuys, What Is Art?: Conversations with Joseph Beuys
The most popular labor saving device is still money.
— Phyllis George
Like most novelists, I like to do exactly the opposite of what I'm told. It's in my nature as a novelist. Novelists can't trust anything they haven't seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands. (Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech, JERUSALEM POST, Feb. 15, 2009)
— Haruki Murakami
Basically all the religions,sciences and powers of the world boil down to a simple truth. The Best Story Teller will win in the end!
— Stanley Victor Paskavich
Not all deceptions are palatable. Untruths are too easy to come by, too quickly exploded, too cheap and ephemeral to give lasting comfort. Mundus vult decipi, but there is a hierarchy of deceptions.Near the bottom of the ladder is journalism: a steady stream of irresponsible distortions that most people find refreshing although on the morning after, or at least within a week, it will be stale and flat.On a higher level we find fictions that men eagerly believe, regardless of the evidence, because they gratify some wish.Near the top of the ladder we encounter curious mixtures of untruth and truth that exert a lasting fascination on the intellectual community.
— Walter Kaufmann
A man says something. Sometimes it turns out to be the truth, but this has nothing to do with the man who says it.
— Karen Joy Fowler, Sarah Canary
For there to be harmony and peace, everything must be balanced. And for there to be balance, there must be equality. And where there is equality, there will be justice. And where justice is honored and preserved, there will always be truth. Eliminate the concept of division by class, skills, race, income, and nationality. We are all equals with a common pulse to survive. Every human requires food and water. Every human has a dream and desire to be happy. Every human responds to love, suffering and pain. Every human bleeds the same color and occupies the same world. Let us recognize that we are all part of each other. We are all human. We are all one.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
A Man who is doing his True Will has the inertia of the Universe to assist him.
— Aleister Crowley
Just because they're a story doesn't mean they're not real.
— Heather Bouwman, The Remarkable & Very True Story of Lucy & Snowcap
It did not seem odd to Max that what he had imagined about Stumps was really true, because this was exactly how games you made up worked. Of course they were true. In your mind.
— Pauline Clarke, The Return of the Twelves
TRUTHWhenever you stand up For your conscience, Be prepared to be hated By the wicked. But never, ever,Let that scare you;For whenever you Stand up for God, By him, You are loved.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
We were so little when you took away all our sins.
— Maggie Stiefvater, Sinner
Stand up for what is just against the unjust.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
He who stands by his heart has God in him. Our conscience is what unites us with God.
— Suzy Kassem
I believe that if there is a huge chunk of white/truth in you, you will be drawn mostly to truth. If there is a lot of black/ego in you, you will naturally migrate to darkness/ego. We can't change our natural compositions or our attraction to certain lighting, but we can slowly change our angle of perception. Anyone can work on balancing their inner lighting simply by adjusting their outer lenses. All you have to do is learn to use your heart before your mind to see things. There is no light greater than truth, and it shines at the heart of all creation. Be like a butterfly and celebrate it every day. It is inside you. Be aware of it so it can cultivate it to grow stronger and bigger.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
However unlikely it may seem, it is the truth and, therefore, one hundred percent likely.
— Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
Each one of us comes out of our mother's body crying, with or without exceptions. But we are not aware of it. Are you? Do you remember that you cried the very first time you come out of your mother's body? If not, then why are you crying now?
— Santosh Kalwar
Some men can love forever, some for six years, some for six months, and others for six hours.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
The only cure to all this madness; is too dream, far and wide, if possibility doesn't knock, create a damn door. If the shoe doesn't fit, don't make it. If the journey your travelling seems to far fetched and wild beyond your imagination; continue on it, great things come to the risk takers. And last but not least, live today; here, right now, you'll thank your future self for it later.
— Nikki Rowe
Take lightly what you hear about individuals. We need not distort trust for our paltry little political agendas. We tend to trust soulless, carried information more than we trust soulful human beings; but really most people aren't so bad once you sit down and have an honest, one-on-one conversation with them, once, with an open heart, you listen to their explanations as to why they act the way they act, or say what they say, or do what they do.
— Criss Jami, Healology
Don’t be afraid to stand tall in YOUR truth! Boldly and confidently face everything that has, and is, keeping you bound. Fight for your inner peace! Fight for your happiness! Fight for everything and everybody that’s important to you! You are NOT a victim! Don’t even play into that. You owe it to yourself to LIVE! Live your life without the regrets, without the resentments, without the unforgiveness, without the blame game, without the self-pity, without any and everything that keeps you from experiencing true joy within! You are too important to waste your life away! Learn to appreciate and value your life, but most importantly, learn to appreciate and value yourself! You count too, no matter what you’ve done!
— Stephanie Lahart
It’s stranger than every strangenessAnd the dreams of all the poetsAnd the thoughts of all the philosophers,That things are really what they seem to beAnd there’s nothing to understand.
— Alberto Caeiro, The Keeper of Sheep
We’re fine.’ A few feet away, Aurum snarled quietly, which meant Nico was lying.
— Rick Riordan, The Blood of Olympus
ARTThe world is full of confusion and contradiction. We cannot expect to do anything that is absolutely right. We can only measure rightness by the truth within ourselves. And our own truth will never be quite the same as somebody else's. I wish that I could touch you and be sure that it was the right thing to do. I only want to touch you briefly. Just once so that you will know. We are flesh and blood and full of faults. But we are also full of warmth. The world is full of confusion but there is compassion in its midst. communication via simple touch can transmit so much of us in just one minute. Like a painting or a piece of music. I want to touch your soul. I only wish I could be sure it was the right thing to do.
— Jay Woodman, SPAN
Think about it this way--our actions speak truth our words cannot.
— Na, I'll Be Seeing You
The man stopped talking and was looking at the sunset.But what does someone who hates and loves want with a sunset?
— Alberto Caeiro, The Keeper of Sheep
That casual glance was the beginning of a cataclysm of love that had still not ended half a century later.
— Gabriel García Márquez, Liefde in tijden van cholera
This is the reason why atheists protest the “God” gene and religious will hate andprotest religion as a virus. They were blindfolded at an early age, and their psychological issues werethe blindfold. The facts are often used as weapons rather than information to convey truth.
— Leviak B. Kelly, Religion: The Ultimate STD: Living a Spiritual Life without Dogmatics or Cultural Destruction
Some, often without knowing it, suffered from being deprived of the company of friends and from their inability to get in touch with them through the usual channels of friendship, letters, trains, and boats. Others, fewer these, Tarrou may have been one of them, had desired reunion with something they couldn't have defined, but which seemed to them the only desirable thing on earth. For want of a better name, they sometimes called it peace.
— Albert Camus
It takes two of us to discover truth: one to utter it and one to understand it.
— Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam
I think about this, not like someone thinking, but like someone breathing,And I look at flowers and I smile...I don’t know if they understand meOr if I understand them,But I know the truth is in them and in meAnd in our common divinityOf letting ourselves go and live on the EarthAnd carrying us in our arms through the contented SeasonsAnd letting the wind sing us to sleepAnd not have dreams in our sleep.
— Alberto Caeiro
Don't buy into a superficial reality. It has an expiration date.
— Truth Devour, Wantin
Live, you say, in the present;Live only in the present.But I don’t want the present, I want reality;I want things that exist, not time that measures them.What is the present?It’s something relative to the past and the future.It’s a thing that exists in virtue of other things existing.I only want reality, things without the present.I don’t want to include time in my scheme.I don’t want to think about things as present; I want to think of them as things.I don’t want to separate them from themselves, treating them as present.I shouldn’t even treat them as real.I should treat them as nothing.I should see them, only see them;See them till I can’t think about them.See them without time, without space,To see, dispensing with everything but what you see.And this is the science of seeing, which isn’t a science.
— Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro
Poverty is not a disgrace, but it's terribly inconvenient
— Milton Berle
All works of nonfiction, or memoir, have to first and foremost be art before they can be true. They have to be artful first before they can be truthful... If you emphasize the truth-telling at the expense of art, nobody is going to be interested in it. And if you sacrifice truth in the name of art, you risk triviality. There's a constant balance between those two.
— Alan Shapiro
When we begin to reflect Christ, the Bible, when more understood as being centered around Christ, seems to be potentially every man's biography regarding God's promised experiences and truth for him - his individual, unique path of humbling oneself before the Lord and then being exalted by the Lord back into his true and righteous personhood. Many followers may speak of it merely to try to change other people (before changing themselves), but the prophets speak of it as a living word which miraculously tells their very own experiences.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
I am the only one of us who brings in any money. the other two cannot make money fortune telling. this is because they only tell the truth, and the truth is not what people want to hear. it is a bad thing and it troubles people, so they do not come back.
— Neil Gaiman, American Gods
I don’t need words, I just need you to come back.” - Taryn
— Suzanne Wright, Feral Sins
He gave himself to them completely, with no guilt, no shame, no reservation, and in that surrender he found a quiet, shining pearl he had never known existed - himself. He was Sam. He was Sunshine. He was Peaches.
— Heidi Cullinan, Special Delivery
The truth must be quite plain, if one could just clear away the litter.
— Agatha Christie, A Caribbean Mystery
Could mankind declare it was truly wise? Did man know everything on earth, or would he ever? Certainly not!
— E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
The truth had lacerated him to the bone, had punctured his heart, and had ripped through his soul. The truth had slain him and tended to his wounds. The truth had hated him and loved him. The truth had opened his eyes to his own faults.
— Brenda Sutton Rose, Dogwood Blues
Truth may be stranger than fiction, but fiction is truer.
— Frederic Raphael
Justice, love, truth, peace and harmony, a serene unity with science and the laws of the universe.
— Luther Burbank
Be positive. Be true. Be kind.
— Roy  Bennett
One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This too shall pass.
— Alain de Botton
I say what other people only think, and when all the rest of the world is in a conspiracy to accept the mask for the true face, mine is the rash hand that tears off the plump pasteboard, and shows the bare bones beneath.
— Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White
I need to be casual but not too casual. Dressy but not too dressy. I need him to think I just threw on the first thing I found and that I'm not taking this too seriously or overthinking it or even that I was thinking about it at all. Because I'm not. I'm totally not thinking about him, and I don't want him to think I was thinking about him, but I don't want him to think that I'm not thinking about him, because clearly he thought about me enough to ask me out and it would be mean not to be thinking about him at all, so I need just the right amount of thinking, and I'm not sure if that means boots and a skirt or skinny jeans and ballet flats. Help!
— Gemma Halliday, Social Suicide
If it's true what is said, that only the wise discover the wise, then it must also be true that the lone wolf symbolizes either the biggest fool on the planet or the biggest Einstein on the planet.
— Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality
She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.
— Oscar Wilde
You must first of all think justly. Don’t sit in judgment over others when you don’t know the truth of the matter.
— Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Bumi Manusia
Perhaps conscience did not always produce cowards. Sometimes it made a man feel better about himself.
— Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Supremacy
Trust the story ... the storyteller may dissemble and deceive, the story can't: the story can only ever be itself.
— James Robertson, And the Land Lay Still
Intellectuals are judged not by their morals, but by the quality of their ideas, which are rarely reducible to simple verdicts of truth or falsity, if only because banalities are by definition accurate.
— Perry Anderson, Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas
You can always tell the heart of man by what he do, and by what he don't do...
— Steven J. Carroll, The Road to Jericho
This thing I am feeling, I’m almost certain, is the closest I’ll ever come to standing somewhere in between truth and reconciliation.
— Raquel Cepeda, Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina
Rule number one: Why is it that the one time a cute guy talks to you, you have a friend who’s in crisis?
— Candace Bushnell, The Carrie Diaries
These ideas can be made more concrete with a parable, which I borrow from John Fowles’s wonderful novel, The Magus.Conchis, the principle character in the novel, ﬁnds himself Mayor of his hometown in Greece when the Nazi occupation begins. One day, three Communistpartisans who recently killed some German soldiers are caught. The Nazi commandant gives Conchis, as Mayor, a choice — either Conchis will execute the three partisans himself to set an example of loyalty to the new regime, or the Nazis will execute every male in the town.Should Conchis act as a collaborator with the Nazis and take on himself thedirect guilt of killing three men? Or should he refuse and, by default, be responsible for the killing of over 300 men?I often use this moral riddle to determine the degree to which people are hypnotized by Ideology. The totally hypnotized, of course, have an answer at once; they know beyond doubt what is correct, because they have memorized the Rule Book. It doesn’t matter whose Rule Book they rely on — Ayn Rand’s or Joan Baez’s or the Pope’s or Lenin’s or Elephant Doody Comix — the hypnosis is indicated by lack of pause for thought, feeling and evaluation. The response is immediate because it is because mechanical. Those who are not totally hypnotized—those who have some awareness of concrete events of sensory space-time, outside their heads— ﬁnd the problem terrible and terrifying and admit they don’t know any 'correct' answer.I don’t know the 'correct' answer either, and I doubt that there is one. Theuniverse may not contain 'right' and 'wrong' answers to everything just because Ideologists want to have 'right' and 'wrong' answers in all cases, anymore than it provides hot and cold running water before humans start tinkering with it. I feel sure that, for those awakened from hypnosis, every hour of every day presents choices that are just as puzzling (although fortunately not as monstrous) as this parable. That is why it appears a terrible burden to be aware of who you are, where you are, and what is going on around you, and why most people would prefer to retreat into Ideology, abstraction, myth and self-hypnosis.To come out of our heads, then, also means to come to our senses, literally—to live with awareness of the bottle of beer on the table and the bleeding body in the street. Without polemic intent, I think this involves waking from hypnosis in a very literal sense. Only one individual can do it at a time, and nobody else can do it for you. You have to do it all alone.
— Robert Anton Wilson, Natural Law: or Don't Put a Rubber on Your Willy
We tend to be judged because of our actions.
— Roxy Writer
Lots of men think that women should tell the truth, explain their feelings. These men should use their wishes more wisely. (Prepare To Die!, p.27)
— Paul Tobin, Prepare to Die!
One way or another, I think we are all destined to learn the same lessons in life. Universal truths are universal truths. They cannot be changed.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
I never talk back. I listen and always remember your every word, so come pen or mouse, never forget that I will treasure your thoughts forever. Yours truly, Paper.
— L.M. Fields
Since the beginning of the world, a prayer is a prayer and a curse is a curse-- no matter the people-- no matter the language-- Man has given a thousand different namesto his god, but look into the face of each one-- long enough-- hard enough-- You will find one truth.
— Mike Mignola, B.P.R.D., Vol. 13: 1947
It is our action that determines the viability of our dream.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
The true value of a man is not determined by his possession, supposed or real, of Truth, but rather by his sincere exertion to get to the Truth.
— Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Since when does anyone get the option to do the easiest?
— Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper
We both know that, my friend, but a man's perception soon becomes his reality.
— Tim LaHaye, Nicolae
You always supposed to have that i'm number 1 mentality,don't let anyone make you feel like you is number 2 when they not even worth being number 1 !!!
— jojo1980
Imani ni nia ya kujua kisichoweza kujulikana na hupeleka watu kwenye ukweli. Kuamini hupotosha, na ni nia ya kudharau kinachoweza kujulikana.
— Enock Maregesi
Many Christians are "devoured" by worldly interests that distract them from spiritual service to God.
— Victor H Ernest, I Talked with Spirits
Is it not by learning to read the book of nature with the eyes of faith that we come to recognize the drop of divinity that resides in our own souls though hidden, master? In the end is this not faith; to seek the light that takes us further, the light of Christ that brings that to which reason and knowledge alone can never raise itself? This is truth!
— Adriana Koulias, Temple of the Grail
Tonight started innocently enough. Most terrible things do, right?
— Na, I'll Be Seeing You
I learned a little of beauty-- enough to know that it had nothing to do with truth...
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEART OF MEN?The Death of Rats looked up from the feast of the potato. SQUEAK, he said.Death waved a hand dismissively. WELL, YES, OBVIOUSLY ME, he said. I JUST WONDERED IF THERE WAS ANYONE ELSE.
— Terry Pratchett, The Truth
After so many years even the fire of passion dies, and with it what was believed the light of the truth. Who of us is able to say now whether Hector or Achilles was right, Agamemnon or Priam, when they fought over the beauty of a woman who is now dust and ashes?
— Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
Šausmīgi daudz taisnību. Nojukt var, ja nav savējās.
— Imants Ziedonis, Epifānijas
The fact that, in the United States, there are people serving ten-year prison terms for growing marijuana plants in their backyards while Wall Street racketeers, who have defrauded millions of people and destroyed the global economy, walk free is a kind of bizarre hypocrisy that boggles my mind.
— Mark Haskell Smith, Heart of Dankness: Underground Botanists, Outlaw Farmers, and the Race for the Cannabis Cup
Scarlet watched a leaf fall to the ground, lying dead amoung the other leaves on the forest floor. "A brief life seems pointless."Tristan thought for a moment. "Isn't that what life is, though? A brief opportunity to exist? A short gift?
— Chelsea Fine, Anew
I point out truths when I see them, Brightlord Sadeas. Each man has his place. Mine is to make insults. Yours is to be in-sluts.
— Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings
Love, he told himself, was open to interpretation like any other abstract indulgence but followed the same principles everywhere, irrespective of everything else. One, either won or lost in love, there was no bridge in between, and he decided he had lost, lost to himself, if not to her.
— Faraaz Kazi
Certain people will be upset when you speak the truth. They might get mad. They might get really mad. That's because they are still living the lie you've exposed. Stay strong. Speak truth. Do not allow yourself to get pulled back into their lie just to make others happy and yourself miserable. You are free. Stay free.
— Toni Sorenson
There's nothing more aggravating in the world than the midnight sniffling of the person you've decided to hate.
— Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
— Winston  Churchill
The worst thing about talk ... is that there's no way to lay it to rest. Every fresh breeze brings a new speculation.
— Susan Wittig Albert, The Tale of Hill Top Farm
Rhiannon's Law #14: There is a reason the truth hurts. When you cease to feel the sting, it means you've stopped caring. And damn, wouldn't that be a total fucking waste?
— J.A. Saare, The Renfield Syndrome
There are two kinds of truth
—  The truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The fist of these is science and the second is art.
Any actor who tells you that they have become the people they play, unless they’re clearly diagnosed as a schizophrenic, is bullshitting you.
— Gary Oldman
Why does she have to be such a...such a...""Go on," I said. "The truth is never cussing, Son.""Such a bitch!
— Stephen King, Full Dark, No Stars
The poor themselves can create a poverty-free world. All we have to do is to free them from the chains that we have put around them!
— Muhammad Yunus
A man without pleasure is a man without any idea what life is about
— Michael  Grant, BZRK
Truth is always stranger than fiction. We craft fiction to match our sense of how things ought to be, but truth cannot be crafted. Truth is, and truth has a way of astonishing us to our knees. Reminding us, that the universe does not exist to fulfill our expectations. Because we are imperfect beings who are self-blinded to the truth of the world’s stunning complexity, we shave reality to paper thin theories and ideologies that we can easily grasp – and we call them truths. But the truth of a sea in all it’s immensity cannot be embodied in one tidewashed pebble.
— Dean Koontz, A Big Little Life:  A Memoir of a Joyful Dog
There’s a Chinese proverb that says “Wisdom is avoiding all thoughts that weaken you & embracing those that strengthen you” Your mind is like a Ferrari (Or your favorite car) it is Awesome!...but if you put sand on the gas tank it won’t run. Don’t put sand (negativity) on your mind. Think positive, encouraging, uplifting thoughts, & the negative will soon evaporate.
— Pablo
And remember that within every lie, there is a truth hidden. Know the truth to defeat the lie.
— T.A. Miles, Raventide
When boy likes you, you say no thank you. You don't kick him on the ground.
— Jenny Han, Clara Lee and the Apple Pie Dream
Curiosity is the most powerful thing you own. Imagination is a force that can actually manifest a reality.
— James Cameron
The truth is not good or bad, it is just the truth.
— J.B.  Thomas, Little Moments Of Truth
But it is a writer's duty to write and speak and record the truth, always the truth, no matter whom may be offended.
— Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
Women were created gullible. It they weren't no babies would be born.
— Dakota Dawn
Women have no appreciation of good looks-at least, good women have not.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Ο θάνατος είναι πάντα από μόνος του μια απόδειξη ειλικρίνειας.
— Graham Greene, The Comedians
If something is wrong, it matters not if a thousand men are for it; you must still oppose it. If something is just, no amount of popular outcry should stay you from your course.
— Terry Goodkind, Naked Empire
We are always trying to convert people to a belief in our own explanation of the universe. We think that the more people there are who believe as we do, the more certain it will be that what we believe is the truth. But it doesn't work that way at all.
— Paulo Coelho, The Pilgrimage
Eventually everything connects — people, ideas, objects...the quality of the connections is the key to quality per se...I don't believe in this 'gifted few' concept, just in people doing things they are really interested in doing. They have a way of getting good at whatever it is.
— Charles Eames
If you're explaining, you're losing.
— Ronald Reagan, The Reagan Diaries
In God's eyes, a man who teaches one truth and nothing else is more righteous than a man who teaches a million truths and one lie.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
You have to believe what you're saying if you're going to convince me. I just can't break that rule, even if I want to.
— Ashly Lorenzana
When you recognize or experience the truth about yourself you automatically feel love, because love is a quality of your true consciousness and true ideas.
— Tae Yun Kim, Seven Steps to Inner Power
It's harder to pick and choose when you're dead. It's like a photograph, you know. It doesn't matter as much.
— Neil Gaiman, American Gods
It is, I suppose, the common grief of children at having to protect their parents from reality. It is bitter for the young to see what awful innocence adults grow into, that terrible vulnerability that must be sheltered from the rodent mire of childhood.
— Katherine Dunn, Geek Love
...if desire is predominant it can deform love between man and woman and rob them both of it.
— John Paul II, Love and Responsibility
The thirst for knowledge is like a piece of ass you know you shouldn't chase; in the end, you chase it just the same.
— George Pelecanos, Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go
It is much easier to believe lies than the truth." "Why?" asked Janna. "Because lies are manufactured to satisfy the emotions. A mother would rather believe her pretty girl lazy than accept the fact that she's a dumb cluck. Germans would rather believe they were stabbed in the back than that they lost a fair fight. And anyone would rather blame someone else for his misfortunes. The truth is hard. Don't fool with it unless you realize that.
— Hilda van Stockum, The Borrowed House
I turn sentences around. That’s my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around. Then I lie down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning. And if I knock off from this routine for as long as a day, I’m frantic with boredom and a sense of waste.
— Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer
Clearly I miss Him, having been brought up in religion. But now a man must be responsible to himself.
— Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
No, honestly, my mouth shouldn't be able to function unless my brain's engaged.
— Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care
Truth was funny, because it was an insistent thing, maybe as powerful and insistent as some force of nature, the push of water or wind. You could keep it out only so long, but it had its own will and its own needs, and maybe you could keep it at bay with lies, but not for long, not for always.
— Deb Caletti, The Six Rules of Maybe
Truths are as much a matter of questions as answers.
— Ozzie Zehner, Green Illusions
My mother was teaching me that the inside of something was not necessarily its outside. Always look carefully, she told me. Look with more than your eyes.
— Alice Hoffman, Incantation
Shit, money, and the World, the three American truths, powering the American mobility, claimed the Slothrops, clasped them for good to the country's fate. But they did not prosper... about all they did was persist
— Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
I know many versions of truth that explain one fact.
— Toba Beta
Me truthful... you mendacious.. !!
— Abhijeet Sawant
Anyway, back to the crush. Sorry to shift gears so fast, but we both know why we're here. I mean, if I wanted to discuss the existential angst of motherhood I'd be writing in a journal. Diaries are for the down and dirty, the stuff you don't want people to ever find out about you. Journals are the things you leave open around the house, hoping a literary agent will wander in, read it and declare you the next genius of your age.
— Lani Diane Rich
If history is written by the victorious, what if the victors lied?
— Michael Duncan
Eventually, there's certain limit in telling bare fact through words.It ain't about diction constraints, but common ability to understand.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
Telling the truth can be a dirty job.
— Francesca Marciano, Casa Rossa
Nothing can stop a lie whose fashion has come...
— Thomas Williams
Confession is always weakness. The grave soul keeps its own secrets, and takes its own punishment in silence.
— Dorothy Dix
Damn it, how will I ever get out of this labyrinth?
— Simon Bolivar
Goldstone has done terrible damage to the cause of truth and justice and the rule of law. He has poisoned Jewish-Palestinian relations, undermined the courageous work of Israeli dissenters and—most unforgivably—increased the risk of another merciless IDF assault.
— Norman G. Finkelstein, Goldstone Recants: Richard Goldstone Renews Israel's License to Kill
He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him aright
— Blaise Pascal
Art-making is not about telling the truth but making the truth felt
— Christian Boltanski
Language can't describe reality. Literature has no stable reference, no real meaning. Each reader's interpretation is equally valid, more important than the author's intention. In fact, nothing in life has meaning. Reality is subjective. Values and truths are subjective. Life itself is a kind of illusion. Blah, blah, blah, let's have another scotch.
— Dean Koontz, False Memory
Things conceived by minds and made by hands can never be quite the same, even if they try their best to be identical, because they're never the same from day to day or even moment to moment.
— Stephen King, Bag of Bones
The public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities.... A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry and bewildered that they always use two stupid expressions--one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by these words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true.
— Oscar Wilde
Perception is the lie that we convince ourselves exists
— Melissa Bradley
Tell all the Truth, but tell it slant/Success in Circuit lies...
— Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
It’s a sort of furtiveness … Like we were a generation of furtive. You know, with an inner knowledge there’s no use flaunting on that level, the level of the ‘public’, a kind of beatness – I mean, being right down to it, to ourselves, because we all really know where we are – and a weariness with all the forms, all the conventions of the world … It’s something like that. So I guess you might say we’re a beat generation.
— Jack Kerouac
What a myth never contains is the critical power to separate its truth from its errors.
— Walter Lippmann
The joke is generally in the oddest way the truth and yet not the fact.
— G.K. Chesterton, All Things Considered
Davy once asked me if I thought it was better to be a has-been than a never was, but maybe it doesn't make much of a difference. In the end, people are just people, and the only things that matter are whether they are good or bad, loving or unloving, loved or unloved.
— Todd Strasser, Famous
..we all do it. We talk about people we don't like until they become famous. Then we love 'em.
— Daniel Black
No one, from pontiffs to professors, has a monopoly on the truth. In the end, we are all just travelers--not scientists or mystics or any one brand of thinker. By nature, we are scientists and mystics, reductionists and holists, left-brained and right-brained, mixed up creatures trying to catch an occasional glimpse of the truth. The best we can do is to be tolerant of both sides of our nature--knowing that these reflect the twin aspect of the universe--and learn from whatever wisdom is offered.
— David Darling, Soul Search: A Scientist Explores the Afterlife
There is not a single untruth, no -but after ten lines Truth shrieks, she runs distraught and disheveled through her temple's corridors; she does not know herself. 'I can endure lies,' she cries. 'I cannot survive this stifling verisimilitude
— Thornton Wilder, The Ides of March
One doesn't intentionally to alter the truth, just enhance it and make it more memorable.
— John H. Alexander
It's not an easy thing to tell a true story.
— Allen Morris Jones
There's a weird logic that explains a common truth.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
i realize you cant just throw real gems at ppl...because they think cubic zirconia is the real thing lol
— Fee Scott
Humor is the whole truth.
— Frigyes Karinthy, Please Sir!
When you love someone, they deserve to know the truth
— Lorna Seilstad, Making Waves
No one can attain to truth by himself. Only by laying stone on stone with the cooperation of all, by the millions of generations from our forefather Adam to our own times, is that temple reared which is to be a worthy dwelling place of the Great God.
— Leo Tolstoy
The number of those who have nothing to recommend them and of those in whom nothing but good can be found is probably equal
— Murasaki Shikibu
no matter what you call him...we all pray to the same source
— Fee Scott
So why did poor artists originally hang around in cafes?""I don't know. Inspiration from the atmosphere.""Ha! No, you've been tricked, too, just like the rest of us. Cafes didn't have inspirational atmosphere at first. That only came later, when you knew artists had been hanging around in them.
— Arthur Phillips, Prague
It’s a truth I love you,It’s a hope you do,And may I live and die with it,Not knowing that you don’t.
— Amit Abraham
He didn't want to play football. He wanted to be told the truth.
— John Boyne
Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with.
— Richard M. Rorty
The teachers complain that the students today are all lazy, ignorant, and stupid. But the truth is that you're smarter than they are. You're not even old enough to drive and you already know that none of this matters.
— Charles Benoit, You
Nothing factual that I write or say will be as truthful as my fiction.
— Nadine Gordimer
Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein
It was only vanity and discouragement that sometimes made me feel alone with my endless love, but now that I was taking one of the risks my heart had urged upon me I could also feel I was not alone. If endless love was a dream, then it was a dream we all shared, even more than we all shared the dream of never dying or of traveling through time, and if anything set me apart it was not my impulses but my stubbornness, my willingness to take the dream past what had been agreed upon as the reasonable limits, to declare that this dream was not a feverish trick of the mind but was an actuality at least as real as that other, thinner, more unhappy illusion we call normal life. After all, the intimations of endless love were the same now as they were thousands of years before, while normal life had changed a thousand times and in a thousand different ways. Which then, was more real?
— Scott Spencer, Endless Love
Justice based purely on laws is about as accurate as a portrait created out of large low-resolution color pixels.If you stand back far enough it looks good.Come any closer and the glaring approximations overtake all semblance of the original.Justice should be viewable under the microscope, not from a telescope.And for that it needs to be based not on law but on truth.
— Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
It would be well to realize that the talk of ‘humane methods of warfare’, of the ‘rules of civilized warfare’, and all such homage to the finer sentiments of the race are hypocritical and unreal, and only intended for the consumption of stay-at-homes. There are no humane methods of warfare, there is no such thing as civilized warfare; all warfare is inhuman, all warfare is barbaric; the first blast of the bugles of war ever sounds for the time being the funeral knell of human progress… What lover of humanity can view with anything but horror the prospect of this ruthless destruction of human life. Yet this is war: war for which all the jingoes are howling, war to which all the hopes of the world are being sacrificed, war to which a mad ruling class would plunge a mad world.
— James Connolly
For outward show is a wonderful perverter of the reason.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
With the beginning of life, comes the thirst for truth, whereas the ability to lie is gradually acquired in the process of trying to stay alive.
— Gao Xingjian
Don't forget that we lawyers, we're a higher breed of intellect, and so it's our privilege to lie. It's as clear as day. Animals can't even imagine lying: if you were to find yourself among some wild islanders, they too would only speak the truth until they learned about European culture.
— Yevgeny Zamyatin, Islanders And, The Fisher Of Men
The media—stenographers to power.
— Amy Goodman
Neatness, madam, has nothing to do with the truth. The truth is quite messy, like a wind blown room.
— William J. Harris
We are the decisive factor in the affairs of the universe.
— Derek Prince
I worship impersonal Nature, which is neither "good" or "bad", and who knows neither love nor hatred. I worship Life; the Sun, Sustainer of life. I believe in the Law of everlasting struggle, which is the law of life, and in the duty of the best specimens of our race — the natural élite of mankind — to rule the earth, and evolve out of themselves a caste of supermen, a people 'like unto the Gods'.
— Savitri Devi, Pilgrimage
An Idea is nothing but Information, It won't do us any harm until we accept it as perception of truth in our mind, which in time will potentially evolve and construct major events in history.
— Djayawarman Alamprabu, Feared Intellectualism
You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland, that for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.”“A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting.”“You did, Doctor, but none the less you must come round to my view, for otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you until your reason breaks down under them and acknowledges me to be right.
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Red Headed League
It is not history. But I am beginning to wonder strongly what is the nature of history. Is it only memory in decent sentences, and if so, how reliable is it? I would suggest, not very. And that therefore most truth and fact offered by these syntactical means is treacherous and unreliable. And yet I recognise that we live our lives, and even keep our sanity, by the lights of this treachery and this unreliability, just as we build our love of country on these paper worlds of misapprehension and untruth. Perhaps this is our nature, and perhaps unaccountably it is part of our glory as a creature, that we can build our best and most permanent buildings on foundations of utter dust.
— Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture
You govern people, you do good and bad things.If you don't have guts to do bad, then step aside.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Whether Hindus or Greeks, Egyptians or Japanese, Chinese, Sumerians, or ancient Americans -- or even Romans, the most "modern" among people of antiquity -- they all placed the Golden Age, the Age of Truth, the rule of Kronos or of Ra or of any other gods on earth -- the glorious beginning of the slow, downward unfurling of history, whatever name it be given -- far behind them in the past.
— Savitri Devi, The Lightning And The Sun
The self-congratulatory popular account insists that Dr. King called on the nation to fully accept its own creed, and the walls came a-tumbling down. This conventional narrative is soothing, moving, and politically acceptable, and has only the disadvantage of bearing no resemblance to what actually happened.
— Timothy B. Tyson, Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story
The religious definition of truth is not that it is universal but that it is absolute.
— W.H. Auden, Enchafed Flood
Ellie: "You could lie to me. You could tell me to be encouraged, that good will triumph over evil."Richard: "Good will triumph over evil."Ellie: "Liar.
— Joan Bauer, Squashed
Belief has nothing to do with facts,especially for the unbelievable facts.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
The truth is not so important as the leaving of it behind.
— Clare Francis, Keep Me Close/Betrayal Duo
Deriving truth from joy may be far more easier than generating joy from the truth.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
When mortals discuss about the eternity,conclusively it will be a lifetime discussion.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
There was a way in which my grandmother's true self was not these guests' business
—  no one's true self was the business of more than a very small number of family members or close friends.
A person obsessed with ultimate truth is a person asking to be relieved of money.
— Robert B. Laughlin
Hoax needed to complete the premises of truth.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
I never thought of clothes as having a life of their own -but they do. We all wear an outer layer to hide who we really are.
— Dee White, Letters To Leonardo
Nothing exists without its opposite.
— Chris Crutcher, Whale Talk
America's intellectual community has never been very bright. Or honest. They're all sheep, following whatever the intellectual fashion of the decade happens to be. Demanding that everyone follow their dicta in lockstep. Everyone has to be open-minded and tolerant of the things they believe, but God forbid they should ever concede, even for a moment, that someone who disagrees with them might have some fingerhold of truth.
— Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon
Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served the state, no history that gave an inkling of how it had been and what had happened. And no love, only egotism, infatuation and lust.
— Kingsley Amis, Jake's Thing
Even today, I've no idea what the truth is, or what I did with it.
— Luis Buñuel, My Last Sigh
In no man's land, alien is the queen.
— Toba Beta