Famous Quotes & Sayings

Henry David Thoreau

Exaggerated history is poetry, and truth referred to a new standard.

Henry David Thoreau

You may rely on it that you have the best of me in my books, and that I am not worth seeing personally, the stuttering, blunderingclod-hopper that I am. Even poetry, you know, is in one sense an infinite brag and exaggeration. Not that I do not stand on all that I have written,--but what am I to the truth I feebly utter?

Henry David Thoreau

A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view.

Henry David Thoreau

The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality.

Henry David Thoreau

Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood; her own straightforwardness is the severest correction.

Henry David Thoreau

Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

Henry David Thoreau

If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Henry David Thoreau

If we dealt only with the false and dishonest, we should at last forget how to speak truth.

Henry David Thoreau

As the least drop of wine tinges the whole goblet, so the least particle of truth colors our whole life.

Henry David Thoreau

Where there is a lull in truth an institution springs up.

Henry David Thoreau

In all perception of the truth there is a divine ecstasy, an inexpressible delirium of joy, as when a youth embraces his betrothed virgin.

Henry David Thoreau

I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth.

Henry David Thoreau

Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower into a truth.

Henry David Thoreau

Truth is always paradoxical.

Henry David Thoreau

Men are probably nearer the essential truth in their superstitions than in their science.

Henry David Thoreau

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.

H. L. Mencken

Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.

H. L. Mencken

The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth - that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Sacrifice life to truth.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

General abstract truth is the most precious of all blessings; without it, man is blind; it is the eye of reason.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Abstract truth is the eye of reason.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

Jeremy Collier

Truth is the band of union and the basis of human happiness. Without this virtue there is no reliance upon language, no confidence in friendship, no security in promises and oaths.

Jean Shepherd

The truth will always have a market.

Jean Rostand

It is sometimes well for a blatant error to draw attention to overmodest truths.

Jean Rostand

Truth is always served by great minds, even if they fight it.

Jean Rostand

There are big and little truths, but all belong to the same race.

Jean Rostand

When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic.

Jean Rostand

There are moments when very little truth would be enough to shape opinion. One might be hated at extremely low cost.

Jean Rostand

Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth.

Jean Vanier

I remember that throughout history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it always...whenever you are in doubt that that is God's way - the way the world is meant to be. Think of that and then try to do His way.

Jeffrey Sachs

Our interconnectedness on the planet is the dominating truth of the 21st century. One stark result is that the world's poor live, and especially die, with the awareness that the United States is doing little to mobilise the weapons of mass salvation that could offer them survival, dignity and eventually the escape from poverty.

Jeff Gannon

Is there some truth out there? Yes. Is there a lot of falsehood out there? Absolutely.