c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
When two things occur successively we call them cause and effect if we believe one event made the other one happen. If we think one event is the response to the other, we call it a reaction. If we feel that the two incidents are not related, we call it a mere coincidence. If we think someone deserved what happened, we call it retribution or reward, depending on whether the event was negative or positive for the recipient. If we cannot find a reason for the two events' occurring simultaneously or in close proximity, we call it an accident. Therefore, how we explain coincidences depends on how we see the world. Is everything connected, so that events create resonances like ripples across a net? Or do things merely co-occur and we give meaning to these co-occurrences based on our belief system? Lieh-tzu's answer: It's all in how you think.
— Liezi, Lieh-tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living
Don't be afraid to be afraid. Have fear, and then conquer the shit out of it.
— D. Antoinette Foy
Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends.
— Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory
A true friend doesn't have guts
—  they beat you up and later plead with you to beat them back.
There are three sides to every story: yours, theirs, and the truth somewhere in the middle.
— Sherrilyn Kenyon, Styxx
Understanding languages and other cultures builds bridges. It is the fastest way to bring the world closer together and to Truth. Through understanding, people will be able to see their similarities before differences.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
The truth doesn't get you very far on the streets, or in a group home, or even in high school. That's probably why the idea of Liars, Inc. appealed to me. Everybody lies. You might as well get paid for it.
— Paula Stokes, Liars, Inc.
It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.
— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
What would you do if you only had one day left in this world? Spend it with the people you love? Travel to the far corners of the earth to see as many wonders as possible? Eat nothing but chocolate? Would you apologize for all your mistakes? Would you stand up to those you'd never had the courage to face? Would you tell your secret crush that you loved him or her? Why is it that we wait till the last minute to do the things we should be doing all along?
— Jodi Picoult, Off the Page
If the Creator stood before a million men with the light of a million lamps, only a few would truly see him because truth is already alive in their hearts. Truth can only be seen by those with truth in them. He who does not have Truth in his heart, will always be blind to it.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
I love you too, I wanted to say with as much hurtful sarcasm as I could muster, but she hadn't seen me, and I kept quiet. I did love her, of course, but mostly just because loving your mother is mandatory, not because she's someone I think I'd like very much if I met her walking down the street. Which she wouldn't be anyway; walking is for poor people
— Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
Die Wahrheit hat keinen Erfolg.
— Confucius, Gespräche
Once you reject fear, you will become the perfect candidate to receive and reflect Truth.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
God is peace, bliss, beauty and truth. Focus your energy on that, life will be like that.
— Amit Ray
....Kebenaran tidak perlu di iklankan...
— Fidel Castro
Dream Song:The heavens Go with me. 
— Frances Densmore, American Indians and Their Music
The language of light can only be decoded by the heart.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
I’m glad I see with my eyes and not the pages I’ve read.
— Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro
Life without any wonder left in it is flat and stale.
— David Eddings, The Belgariad, Vol. 1: Pawn of Prophecy / Queen of Sorcery / Magician's Gambit
If we don’t honor our truth, how can we expect anyone else to do so?
— Alexandra Katehakis, Mirror of Intimacy: Daily Reflections on Emotional and Erotic Intelligence
Don’t take yourself too seriously. Take yourself as seriously as death itself. Don’t worry. Worry your ass off. Have iron-clad confidence, but doubt. It keeps you alive and alert! Believe you are the baddest ass in town – and [that] you suck! It keeps you honest. Be able to keep two completely contradictory ideas alive and well inside of your heart and head at all times. If it doesn’t drive you crazy, it will make you strong. And when you walk on stage tonight to bring the noise, treat it like it’s all we have – and then remember it’s only rock’ n’ roll.
— Bruce Springsteen
It takes more effort to avoid the truth than it does to face it.
— Robert J. Braathe
The Christian God is interested in relationship with us, and not just relationship, but union, and not just union, but such a union that everything He is and has—all glory and fullness, all joy and beauty and unbridled life—is to be shared with us and to become as much ours as it is His. The plan from the beginning, in the Christian vision, is that God would give Himself to us, and nothing less, so that we could be filled to overflowing with the divine life.
— C. Baxter Kruger, Jesus and the Undoing of Adam
সারা জীবন পাশাপাশি থেকেও এক সময় একজন অন্যজনকে চিনতে পারে না। আবার এমনও হয়, এক পলকের দেখায় একে অন্যকে চিনে ফেলে।
— Humayun Ahmed
A lie twice believed is self decieved
— Brandon Mull, A World Without Heroes
Any problems that may occur have ultimately been caused by you, because you are responsible for where you are and what you are doing there.
— Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain
I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it.
— Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Volume I
But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.
— Arthur C. Clarke
But I do know which is the least popular. The truth.
— Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why
Still anyone who trusts a serpent deserves its bite. The wise see a creature for what it is, not what it says it may be.
— Alice Hoffman, The Dovekeepers
He was attractive. I knew that. And I knew that attractive people always got away with things.
— David Levithan, Every You, Every Me
It is such a supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they're used. The fact that they exist at all, their presence in our lives, will wreak more havoc than we can begin to fathom. Nuclear weapons pervade our thinking. Control our behavior. Administer our societies. Inform our dreams. They bury themselves like meat hooks deep in the base of our brains. They are purveyors of madness. They are the ultimate colonizer. Whiter than any white man that ever lived. The very heart of whiteness.
— Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living
I'm not saying she was lying to me, but she just acted so different before I got to know her, and if she really isn't like what she was at the beginning, I wish she could have just said so.
— Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
And though there’s a grain of truth in every rumor, I’ve found that the worst gossip usually starts with something harmless.
— Kathleen O'Dell, The Aviary
Physicists have come to realize that mathematics, when used with sufficient care, is a proven pathway to truth.
— Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
Despite how entertaining certain stories were, at the bottom of every item of gossip there was someone getting hurt.
— Sherwood Smith, Crown Duel
Maybe the truth is I really want to like you instead.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
It was amazing how it worked: the tiniest bit of truth made credible the greatest lies.
— Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex
It’s strange how what drives us may abandon us midstream, how what tickles our ears with lies one moment may tell us truths that knock us on our emotional ass the next. After all, it is an unbelievably real world, with Darwin scribbling his thoughts into books and telling us what monkeys we are. Each of us explores possibility, hungry for sustaining adoration, yet we know enough to render ourselves helpless. We strive and strain, bellow and believe, we learn, and everything we learn tells us the same thing: life is one great meaningful experience in a meaningless world. Brilliance has many parts, yet each part is incomplete. We live, heal and attempt to piece together a picture worth the price of our very lives. The picture I saw presented demonic executioners, who crippled those daring to look and consumed souls without defense. They’re everywhere. Some are people we know. Others are the great fears and addictions of our lives.
— Christopher Hawke
Truth is dangerous.
— Melina Marchetta, Froi of the Exiles
However cozy things seemed, the facts of life were the same. You couldn't escape death: It would get us all in the end.
— Rachel Ward, Numbers
Not every instance requires a response. Truth resides silently in the seat of power.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
You're stubborn- anyone ever tell you that before?
— Carrie Ryan, The Dark and Hollow Places
A lie's true power cannot be accurately measured by the number of people who believe its deception when it is told, it must be measured by the number of people who will go out after hearing it trying to convince others of its truth.
— Dennis Sharpe
Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.
— Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale
Nothing is needed more than truth, and in relation to it everything else has only second-rate value."This unconditional will to truth—what is it? Is it the will not to allow oneself to be deceived? Or is it the will not to deceive? For the will to truth could be interpreted in the second way, too—if only the special case "I do not want to deceive myself" is subsumed under the generalization "I do not want to deceive." But why not deceive?But why not allow oneself to be deceived?Note that the reasons for the former principle belong to an altogether different realm from those for the second. One does not want to allow oneself to be deceived because one assumes that it is harmful, dangerous, calamitous to be deceived. In this sense, science would be a long-range prudence, a caution, a utility; but one could object in all fairness: How is that? Is wanting not to allow oneself to be deceived really less harmful, less dangerous, less calamitous? What do you know in advance of the character of existence to be able to decide whether the greater advantage is on the side of the unconditionally mistrustful or of the unconditionally trusting?
— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
The truth, he thought, has never been of any real value to any human being - it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.
— Graham Greene
Drosophila,” I said, remembering the word.“What?” Lily asked.“Why do girls always fall for guys with the at ention span of drosophila?”“What?”“Fruit flies. Guys with the attention span of fruit flies.”“Because they’re hot?”“This,” I told her, “is not the time for being truthful.
— Rachel Cohn, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares
DNA tells you all the secrets of life,’ he used to say. Except for one—how to live it.
— Jennifer Donnelly
Nine out of ten significant people have to do with money or war!
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
I'm afraid to have a boyfriend. I don't know how to do that and not lose who I want to be. And I'm afraid of what it means to be close to a guy, a guy I might really like."There it was: the truth.
— Julia Karr, XVI
It's not enough to listen to their words. You have to mine their silences for buried ore. It's often only in the lies that we refuse to speak that truth can be heard at all.
— Karen Marie Moning
My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing,' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'the truth' can be.
— Frank Herbert, Dune
Let me say no more. Words do no justice to the hidden meaning. Everything immediately becomes slightly different when it is expressed in words, a little bit distorted, a little foolish...It is perfectly fine with me that what for one man is precious wisdom for another sounds like foolery.
— Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Young people," McDonald said contemptuously. "You always think there's something to find out.""Yes, sir," Andrews said."Well, there's nothing," McDonald said. "You get born, and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies in school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you're ready to die, it comes to you — that there's nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain't done it, because the lies told you there was something else. Then you know you could of had the world, because you're the only one that knows the secret; only then it's too late. You're too old.""No," Andrews said. A vague terror crept from the darkness that surrounded them, and tightened his voice. "That's not the way it is.""You ain't learned, then," McDonald said. "You ain't learned yet. . . .
— John  Williams, Butcher's Crossing
Once again, we are reminded that awakening, or enlightenment is not the property of Buddhism, any more than Truth is the property of Christianity. Neither the Buddha nor the Christ belongs exclusively to the communities that were founded in their names. They belong to all people of goodwill, all who are attentive to the secret which lives in the depths of their breath and their consciousness. (14)
— Jean-Yves Leloup, Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity
Verily, knowledge is a lock and its key is the question.
— Imam Ja'Far Al-Sadiq
The truth is often one's best shield.
— James Rollins, The Devil Colony
Perception was easily accomplished, required little effort, and it never had to stand the test of reality.
— Terry Goodkind, Soul of the Fire
This thought strengthened in me my belief that all men, without exception, deserve to be pitied, if only because they are alive.
— Alberto Moravia, The Woman of Rome
. . . there is a wish in the heart of mankind to be distracted and confused. Truth is but one attraction, and not always the most powerful.
— Joyce Carol Oates
A lie, as you probably know, has a taste all its own. Blocky and bitter and never quite right, like when you pop a piece of fancy chocolate into your mouth expecting toffee filling and you get lemon zest instead.
— Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper
So do flux and reflux--the rhythm of change--alternate and persist in everything under the sky.
— Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles
I think the discomfort that some people feel in going to the monkey cages at the zoo is a warning sign.
— Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
Many people falsely believe that if you want to be holy, you are not allowed to enjoy life...Holiness brings us to life. It refines every human ability. Holiness doesn't dampen our emotions; it elevates them. Those who respond to God's call to holiness are the most joyful people in history. They have a richer, more abundant experience of life, and they love more deeply than most people can every imagine. They enjoy life, all of life.
— Matthew Kelly, Rediscover Catholicism
I didn't care about truth
—  I cared about beauty. It took me many years--it took the experience of lived time--to realize that they really are the same thing.
Behold the power of the truth. When people see its shadow on the wall, they don't want to take the time to look away.
— Mira Grant, Feed
Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that the mere fact of our existence should keep us all in a state of contented dazzlement.
— Lewis Thomas
The beauty and gift of truth, is that it is not dependent upon your belief in order to remain true
— A. Dragonblood
Nobody wants to tell a truth which harms himself.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
How can you expect me to believe that?""whether you believe it or not does not change the nature of truth
— P.C. Cast
What makes art Christian art? Is it simply Christian artists painting biblical subjects like Jeremiah? Or, by attaching a halo, does that suddenly make something Christian art? Must the artist’s subject be religious to be Christian? I don’t think so. There is a certain sense in which art is its own justification. If art is good art, if it is true art, if it is beautiful art, then it is bearing witness to the Author of the good, the true, and the beautiful
— R.C. Sproul, Lifeviews: Make a Christian Impact on Culture and Society
We the people have no excuse for starry-eyed sycophantic group-think in the Information Age. Knowledge is but a fingertip away.
— Tiffany Madison
In those moments it's hard to remember that an angry voice is an invisible thing incapable of drawing blood.
— Amanda Howells, The Summer of Skinny Dipping
It has struck me that people seldom listen to the meaning of underlying words.There are only a few people who recognize the silence beyond the scream,the gentle weeping that hides beyond tough statements.They hear only the words,the sentences,when there is so much more to take in.People who are too self-absorbed to notice,really see or fathom others.Often,they don't even know themselves.
— Esther Verhoef, Close-up
There are no means of finding what either one person or many can do, but by trying - and no means by which anyone else can discover for them what it is for their happiness to do or leave undone
— John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women
I dedicate this to all those who did not live to tell it. And may they please forgive me for not having seen it all nor remembered it all, for not having divined all of it - from The Gulag Archipelago
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Maybe, it is easier to forget the past,than to overcome the pain caused by it.Maybe, it is one of some other reasons,why men forget their prehuman ancestor.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
I offer no apologies to those whom I may have rendered uncomfortable with my open and honest assertions. The truth is often harsh and uncomfortable to embrace.
— Casper Odinson Cröwell, Vor Forn Sidr
As when astronaut Mike Mulhane was asked by a NASA psychiatrist what epitaph he'd like to have on his gravestone, Mulhane answered, "A loving husband and devoted father," though in reality, he jokes in "Riding Rockets," "I would have sold my wife and children into slavery for a ride into space.
— Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
Truth is not a reward for good behaviour, nor a prize for passing some tests. It cannot be brought about. It is the primary, the unborn, the ancient source of all that is. You are eligible because you are. You need not merit truth. It is your own....Stand still, be quiet.
— Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
When people stargazing, they stare at stars,and many other things which they've already presumed commonly and universally as stars.
— Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza
Overconfidence blurs out the risk. Inferiority magnifies it.
— Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza
All these angels start coming out of the boxes and everywhere, guys carrying crucifixes and stuff all over the place, and the whole bunch of them - thousands of them - singing “Come All Ye Faithful” like mad. Big deal. It’s supposed to be religious as hell, I know, and very pretty and all, but I can’t see anything religious or pretty, for God’s sake, about a bunch of actors carrying crucifixes all over the stage. When they all finished and started going out the boxes again, you could tell they could hardly wait to get a cigarette of something. I saw it with old Sally Hayes the year before, and she kept saying how beautiful it was, the costumes and all. I said old jesus probably would’ve puked if he could see it.
— J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Smartass Disciple: Master, I’m going to change the whole world.Master of Stupidity: It changes within you. It changes without you.
— Toba Beta
The way of truth is like a great road. It is not difficult to know it. The evil is only that men will not seek it.
— Mencius
To seek truth requires one to ask the right questions. Those void of truth never ask about anything because their ego and arrogance prevent them from doing so. Therefore, they will always remain ignorant. Those on the right path to Truth are extremely heart-driven and childlike in their quest, always asking questions, always wanting to understand and know everything — and are not afraid to admit they don't know something. However, every truth seeker does need to breakdown their ego first to see Truth. If the mind is in the way, the heart won't see anything.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
I will go wherever the truth leads me. It is secular scholarship, Rebbe; it is not the scholarship of tradition. In secular scholarship there are no boundaries and no permanently fixed views.”Lurie, if the Torah cannot go out into your world of scholarship and return stronger, then we are all fools and charlatans. I have faith in the Torah. I am not afraid of truth.
— Chaim Potok, In the Beginning
To become a lifelong reader, one has to do a lot of varied and interesting reading.
— Kelly Gallagher, Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It
I have come to see this fear, this sense of my own imperilment by my creations, as not only an inevitable, necessary part of writing fiction but as virtual guarantor, insofar as such a thing is possible, of the power of my work: as a sign that I am on the right track, that I am following the recipe correctly, speaking the proper spells. Literature, like magic, has always been about the handling of secrets, about the pain, the destruction and the marvelous liberation that can result when they are revealed. Telling the truth, when the truth matters most, is almost always a frightening prospect. If a writer doesn’t give away secrets, his own or those of the people he loves; if she doesn’t court disapproval, reproach and general wrath, whether of friends, family, or party apparatchiks; if the writer submits his work to an internal censor long before anyone else can get their hands on it, the result is pallid, inanimate, a lump of earth. The adept handles the rich material, the rank river clay, and diligently intones his alphabetical spells, knowing full well the history of golems: how they break free of their creators, grow to unmanageable size and power, refuse to be controlled. In the same way, the writer shapes his story, flecked like river clay with the grit of experience and rank with the smell of human life, heedless of the danger to himself, eager to show his powers, to celebrate his mastery, to bring into being a little world that, like God’s, is at once terribly imperfect and filled with astonishing life.Originally published in The Washington Post Book World
— Michael Chabon
There are few things in life worse than a long-winded lawyer.
— John Grisham, The Rainmaker
Ladies! I encourage you NOT to be so easily flattered by what a man has. Be flattered by his strength, courage, integrity, and character as a man. Be impressed by his ability to be honest, faithful, loving, and respectful to you. Be impressed because he can communicate and openly express his feelings. Be impressed because he’s got confidence, direction, and purpose in his life. Be impressed because he’s a quality man, NOT a fine man. Real Talk!
— Stephanie Lahart
Man kann davon überzeugt sein, sich etwas zu wünschen - vielleicht jahrelang - solang man weiß, dass der Wunsch unerfüllbar ist. Steht man aber plötzlich vor der Möglichkeit, dass der Wunschtraum Wirklichkeit wird, dann wünscht man sich nur noch eins: Man hätte es sich nie gewünscht.
— Michael Ende, Die unendliche Geschichte
The truth, my friend, is an awesome thing, to be handled with wisdom and with courage denied to ordinary people. Most of us must make do with illusions. Or else -- or else we could not endure.
— Ruth Tessler Goldstein, The Heart Is Half a Prophet
Out of this nettle - danger - we pluck this flower - safety.
— William Shakespeare
Simple the life, simpler will be your instincts, the laws that govern universe will obey your simplicity.
— Santosh Kalwar
Smartass Disciple: If you are really a master, then make me see miracles!Master of Stupidity: Go to sleep and dream, then wake up thirty years later!
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
Something went klunk. Like a nickel dropping in a soda machine. One of those small insights that explains everything. This was puberty for these boys. Adolescence. The first date, the first kiss, the first chance to hold hands with someone special. Delayed, postponed, a decade's worth of longing--while everybody around you celebrates life, you pretend, suppress, inhibit, deprive yourself of you own joy--but finally ultimately, eventually, you find a place where you can have a taste of everything denied.
— David Gerrold
A professionally trained actress should be a better liar, wouldn't you think? But no. I am pathetically underachieved in that area. I can think of a great lie. I'm plenty imaginative. But before the words are even out of my mouth, there's a weird tickle of unease in my armpits, a horsefly of guilt lands on the back of my neck, and before I can stop myself, that gassy little bubble of truth belches out.
— Kristin Chenoweth, A Little Bit Wicked: Life, Love, and Faith in Stages
It is as if Little Red Riding Hood had asked the wolf: "Dear Grandmother, what is the truth for?" And the wolf had replied: "The truth helps me tell you better lies.
— Sara Castro-Klarén, Understanding Mario Vargas Llosa
confront your greatest fearsvoice your biggest problemsacknowledge your tiniest issuesthe longer you stay silentthe louder they becomethey won't disappear if you ignore themthey will spread and affect all aspects of your life
— Connor Franta, Note to Self
The Buddha taught complete honesty, with the extra instruction that everything a person says should be truthful and helpful.
— Sylvia Boorstein
...we are singing today of the WIPE-OUT GANG - the WIPE-OUT GANG buys, owns & operates the Insanity Factory - if you do not know where the Insanity Factory is located, you should hereby take two steps to the right, paint your teeth & go to sleep....
— Bob Dylan
All idealisation makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity — it is to destroy it.
— Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent
I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
— Peter Jackson
It is debatable whether blind faith is truly faith at all. Faith is the perceptive gray area where scientific facts meet an individual's experiential truths - the extreme of the former is left feeling in the dark whereas the latter is caught blinded by the light. By proper scientific method, it is intellectually dishonest for me to declare the existence of God with utmost certainty, but to my individual spirit, I would be intellectually dishonest to deny the existence of God even for a second. This leaves the best of both worlds, as the believer is called to be able to give reasons for his faith, a deviation from mere fantasy.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
One swallows the lie that flatters, but sips the bitter truth drop by drop.
— Denis Diderot, Rameau's Nephew / D'Alembert's Dream
But memory is like plaster: peel it back and you just might find a completely different picture.
— Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care
When you start putting pen to paper, you see a side of your personal truth that doesn't otherwise reveal itself in conversation or thought.
— Anthony Kiedis, Scar Tissue
When someone you love makes compassion, kindness, forgiveness, respect and God an option, you can be sure they have made you an option, as well.
— Shannon L. Alder
For every good reason there is to lie, there is a better reason to tell the truth
— Bo Bennett
The truth is, it's really only okay to be yourself if that self is within an accepted range of 'normal'.
— Stacey Kade, The Ghost and the Goth
Truthfulness, honor, is not something which springs ablaze of itself; it has to be created between people. This is true in political situations. The quality and depth of the politics evolving from a group depends in large part on their understanding of honor. Much of what is narrowly termed "politics" seems to rest on a longing for certainty even at the cost of honesty, for an analysis which, once given, need not be re-examined…It isn't that to have an honorable relationship with you, I have to understand everything, or tell you everything at once, or that I can know, beforehand, everything I need to tell you. It means that most of the time I am eager, longing for the possibility of telling you. That these possibilities may seem frightening, but not destructive to me. That I feel strong enough to hear your tentative and groping words. That we both know we are trying, all the time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us.
— Adrienne Rich
It's exhausting, the energy it takes to unknow a truth.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Doomed
The truth is that judgment and fear will never stop, but they don't actually do anything.
— Julien Smith, The Flinch
We are more severe judges of our own acts... We judge our thoughts, our intents, our secret curses, our secret hates, not only our acts.
— Anaïs Nin, A Spy in the House of Love
I'm one of my sensations.
— Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro
It is simply a confession that with all that I've seen in the last few years, all the events I've been invited to, and all the people whom I've met, I am less and less impressed by "impressive" things or people who are presented as having things figured out. I am impressed by people who are honest and kind. I am inspired by moments of vulnerability, moments of confession and compassion, moments where someone makes it clear that they are a person in need of other people and someone else makes it clear that the first person is not alone.
— Jamie Tworkowski
When you can't tell the truth, tell *a* truth.
— Greg Cox, The Bestseller Job
They're the ones inside a soap bubble. Not me.
— Antonia Michaelis, The Storyteller
He told us that nations of men fell into disorder, so nations of law were set up instead. He told us that nations of law then forgot justice and let the law become a Game, a Game in which the moves and the winning were more important than truth. He told us to seek justice rather than the Game.
— Sheri S. Tepper, Wizard's Eleven
As a writer of philosophy, it's good to ask oneself, 'Will I still believe this a week from now, or months, or even years?
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
...the law of empathy, by which he could, by his will, transfer himself into an object or a work of art, and thus inflence the outer world. He did not feel redeemed by the work he did. He did not seek redemption. He sought to see what others did not, the projection of his imagination.
— Patti Smith, Just Kids
Maybe I could dole out the truth in tiny pieces that, once assembled, would make a picture that resembled a reality in which I hadn’t done anything wrong.
— Paula Stokes, Liars, Inc.
The universe contains many planets which make it what it is – a unified system. In addition, our bodies contain many organs, and each part is congruent to a planet in our solar system. The universe we see out our eyes is a mirror of what is within us. This is what God meant by making man in his image. We are all made as a reflection of God and that reflection of him is within us. Furthermore, not only are all religions connected to the same Truth, or Cosmic Heart, but this concept is also mirrored in the pantheons of ancient religions, where each of the many gods simply represented one set of characteristics of the ONE. And in all cases, these many gods symbolized the planets, therefore mimicking the different parts of the universe and the ONE God’s many mirrors (He Who is All). The structure behind all polytheistic religions of the past and present is one and the same. They are all built on the same foundation as Nature.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Loving the same man or woman all your life, why, that's like supposing the same candle could last you all your life
— Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata
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. It is not possession of the Truth, but rather the pursuit of Truth by which he extends his powers and in which his ever-growing perfectibility is to be found. Possession makes one passive, indolent, and proud.
— Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Someone with a fresh mind, one not conditioned by upbringing and environment, would doubtless look at science and the powerful reductionism that it inspires as overwhelmingly the better mode of understanding the world, and would doubtless scorn religion as sentimental wishful thinking. Would not that same uncluttered mind also see the attempts to reconcile science and religion by disparaging the reduction of the complex to the simple as attempts guided by muddle-headed sentiment and intellectually dishonest emotion?...Religion closes off the central questions of existence by attempting to dissuade us from further enquiry by asserting that we cannot ever hope to comprehend. We are, religion asserts, simply too puny. Through fear of being shown to be vacuous, religion denies the awesome power of human comprehension. It seeks to thwart, by encouraging awe in things unseen, the disclosure of the emptiness of faith. Religion, in contrast to science, deploys the repugnant view that the world is too big for our understanding. Science, in contrast to religion, opens up the great questions of being to rational discussion, to discussion with the prospect of resolution and elucidation. Science, above all, respects the power of the human intellect. Science is the apotheosis of the intellect and the consummation of the Renaissance. Science respects more deeply the potential of humanity than religion ever can.
— Peter   Atkins
Why should I struggle through hundreds of pages of fabrication to reach half a dozen very little truths?''For fun?''Fun!' He pounced on the word. 'Words are for truth. For facts. Not fiction.
— John Fowles, The Magus
Ask yourself: what is it, that if I believed it down to my core, would change everything?
— Kamal Ravikant, Live Your Truth
The act of going within, finding our truth, and then sharing it, it helps us far more than we know.
— Kamal Ravikant, Live Your Truth
The truth is usually left for us to hunt and gather independently, if we are so inclined.
— Raquel Cepeda, Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina
If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish.
— Confucius, The Analects
The fact is, there is no foundation, no secure ground, upon which people may stand today if it isn’t the family. If you don’t have the support and love and caring and concern that you get from a family, you don’t have much at all. Love is so supremely important. As our great poet Auden said, ‘Love each other or perish’.
— Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
My mother always says people should be able to take care of themselves, even if they're rich and important.
— Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
The most dangerous of all falsehoods is a slightly distorted truth.
— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books
If anything or anyone removes peace from you or inflicts confusion and judgment on you, this thing or person is not of God regardless of whether or not that person or thing has wrapped itself/himself in the wrapping paper with God's face printed all over it. Don't stop believing in God but stop believing in that person, in that thing. The wrapping paper with God's face stamped all over it isn't really God.
— C. JoyBell C.
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 the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught.
— Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth -- only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair.
— C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
People only lie because they are afraid of the truth
— Madison Reil
Jesus didn't speak of hell so that we could study, debate and write books about it. He gave us these passages so that we would live holy lives. Jesus evidently hates it when we tear into our brothers or sisters with demeaning words, words that fail to honor the people around us as the beautiful image-bearing creatures that they are.
— Francis Chan, Erasing Hell: What God Said about Eternity, and the Things We've Made Up
You get what you give, but also what you're willing to take.
— Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife,' I said, sighing.'Is it?' said Veronica, looking surprised. 'Universally acknowledged? Surely that presupposes life similar to human societies beyond this planet, and besides--''No, no, it's a quote from ... Never mind,' I said.
— Michelle   Cooper, The FitzOsbornes in Exile
We go on our hands and knees and crawl our way towards the truth
— Ian McEwan, Atonement
Truth is a risky proposition. It's the nature of mediocre human beings to believe that lies are necessary, that they serve a purpose, that truth is subversive, that candor is dangerous, that the very scaffold of communal life is supported by lies.
— Anne Rice, The Wolf Gift
But it's important to acknowledge that while we may make mistakes, in the long run, we may also learn from them.
— Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key
When you think you're right, you're most likely wrong.
— Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care
Knowing belongs to man's intellect or reason
—  loving belongs to his will. The object of the intellect is truth
Yet we must say something when those who say the most are saying nothing.
— Augustine of Hippo
The best way to show people true things is from a direction that they had not imagined the truth coming.
— Neil Gaiman
I almost cried. But I didn't, because if you're in seventh grade and you cry while wearing a blue floral cape and yellow tights with white feathers on the butt, you just have to curl up and die somewhere in a dark alley.
— Gary D. Schmidt, The Wednesday Wars
She told the truth as she saw it, and she died for it. I came along for the ride, and I lived. It wasn't worth it. But it was the truth, and it was what had to happen.
— Mira Grant, Feed
My mother told me that truth is like my skin, a beautiful, protective covering, and the things that people say or do can be easily changed or discarded. She told me truth comes from the heart.
— Stewart Lewis, You Have Seven Messages
I don't reckon misery loves any damn thing at all.
— Bruce Machart, The Wake of Forgiveness
It is better to be divided by truth than united in error.
— Bruce Bickel
The truth is, the Devil's job is easy.
— Tyler Edwards, Zombie Church: Breathing Life Back Into the Body of Christ
Because supposedly those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Comments are free but facts are sacred.
— C. P. Scott
They should know that just because things get difficult, it's no reason to believe God is on vacation.
— Harry H. Harrison Jr., 1001 Things Every Teen Should Know Before They Leave Home:
You have to notice the truth in order to be able to avoid it.
— Sarah Schulman, The Mere Future
You want me to be truthful.. for your convenience.. but in turn.. you consider to be mendacious for your own convenience.. !! Gr8..!!
— Abhijeet Sawant
In fact we put so many things in our mouths we constantly have to be reminded what not to eat. Look at that little package of silicon gel that's inside your sneakers. It says DO NOT EAT for a reason. Somewhere sometime some genius bought a pair of sneakers and said Ooooh look. They give you free mints with the shoes
— Morgan Spurlock, Don't Eat This Book
Truth is the same always. Whoever ponders it will get the same answer. Buddha got it. Patanjali got it. Jesus got it. Mohammed got it. The answer is the same, but the method of working it out may vary this way or that. (115)
— Swami Satchidananda, The Yoga Sutras
The planet was being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what was being manufactured was lousy, by and large.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Breakfast of Champions
I feel strangely free at such times. To behave properly is to be always courteous, always clever, and subtle and elegant. But now, when I am so alone, I do not have to be any of these things. For this moment, I am wholly myself, unshaped by the needs of others, by their dreams or expectations or sensibilities. But I am also lonely. With no one to shape me, who stands here, watching the moon, or the stars, or the clouds?
— Kij Johnson, The Fox Woman
But keeping secrets is a discipline. I never use to think of myself as a good liar, but after having had some practice I had adopted the prevaricator's credo that one doesn't so much fabricate a lie as marry it. A successful lie cannot be brought into this world and capriciously abandoned; like any committed relationship it must be maintained, and with far more devotion than the truth, which carries on being carelessly true without any help. By contrast, my lie needed me as much as I needed it, and so demanded the constancy of wedlock: Till death do us part.
— Lionel Shriver
Men of the world who value the Way all turn to books. But books are nothing more than words. Words have value; what is of value in words is meaning. Meaning has something it is pursuing, but the thing that it is pursuing cannot be put into words and handed down. The world values words and hands down books but, though the world values them, I do not think them worth valuing. What the world takes to be values is not real value.
— Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu
A humble man will always receive the best that others have to offer
—  for he recognizes the truth
The church must suffer for speaking the truth, for pointing out sin, for uprooting sin. No one wants to have a sore spot touched, and therefore a society with so many sores twitches when someone has the courage to touch it and say: “You have to treat that. You have to get rid of that. Believe in Christ. Be converted.
— Oscar A. Romero, The Violence of Love
Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.
— Mark Twain
They would not find me changed from him they knew — Only more sure of all I thought was true.
— Robert Frost
Thus we have on stage two men, each of whom knows nothing of what he believes the other knows, and to deceive each other reciprocally both speak in allusions, each of the two hoping (in vain) that the other holds the key to his puzzle.
— Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before
Dementia was like a truth serum.
— Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter
BERENGER: And you consider all this natural?   DUDARD: What could be more natural than a rhinoceros?   BERENGER: Yes, but for a man to turn into a rhinoceros is abnormal beyond question.   DUDARD: Well, of course, that's a matter of opinion ...   BERENGER: It is beyond question, absolutely beyond question!  DUDARD: You seem very sure of yourself. Who can say where the normal stops and the abnormal begins? Can you personally define these conceptions of normality and abnormality? Nobody has solved this problem yet, either medically or philosophically. You ought to know that.   BERENGER: The problem may not be resolved philosophically -- but in practice it's simple. They may prove there's no such thing as movement ... and then you start walking ... [he starts walking up and down the room] ... and you go on walking, and you say to yourself, like Galileo, 'E pur si muove' ...   DUDARD: You're getting things all mixed up! Don't confuse the issue. In Galileo's case it was the opposite: theoretic and scientific thought proving itself superior to mass opinion and dogmatism.   BERENGER: [quite lost] What does all that mean? Mass opinion, dogmatism -- they're just words! I may be mixing everything up in my head but you're losing yours. You don't know what's normal and what isn't any more. I couldn't care less about Galileo ... I don't give a damn about Galileo.   DUDARD: You brought him up in the first place and raised the whole question, saying that practice always had the last word. Maybe it does, but only when it proceeds from theory! The history of thought and science proves that. BERENGER: [more and more furious] It doesn't prove anything of the sort! It's all gibberish, utter lunacy!   DUDARD: There again we need to define exactly what we mean by lunacy ...   BERENGER: Lunacy is lunacy and that's all there is to it! Everybody knows what lunacy is. And what about the rhinoceroses -- are they practice or are they theory?
— Eugène Ionesco, Rhinoceros / The Chairs / The Lesson
Original sin is not only the violation of a positive command … but … attempts … to abolish fatherhood, destroying its rays which permeate the created world, placing in doubt the truth about God who is Love and leaving man with only a sense of the master-slave relationship.
— John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope
We must think things not words, or at least we must constantly translate our words into the facts for which they stand, if we are to keep to the real and the true.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Just because other people think something, that doesn't make it true.Maybe there's some truth in that, but it's unsatisfying, bitter-tasting truth.
— Cynthia Lord, Rules
Truth is something believed in heart.Fact is anything happened in realities.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Listening to people espouse beliefs different from mine is informative, not threatening, because the only thing that can alter my worldview is a new and undeniable truth, and contrary to what Jack Nicholson says in 'A Few Good Men', "I CAN handle the truth.
— Michael J. Fox, Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist
Do you believe in the value of truth, my dear, or don’t you?”“Of course I believe in the truth,” said Rhoda, staring.“Yes, you say that, but perhaps you haven’t thought about it. The truth hurts sometimes – and destroys one’s illusions.”“I’d rather have it all the same.” said Rhoda. “So would I. But I don’t know that we’re wise.”Mrs. Oliver; Rhoda Dawes
— Agatha Christie, Cards on the Table
A man may say, "From now on I'm going to speak the truth." But the truth hears him and runs away and hides before he's even done speaking.
— Saul Bellow