True Quotes (page 64)
And this tenderness was not like. That which a certain poet. At the beginning of the century called true. And, for some reason, quiet. No, not at all. It rang out, like the first waterfall, It crunched like the crust of bluish ice. And it prayed with a swanlike voice, And it broke down right before our eyes.
Anna Akhmatova
It is an absolutely vain endeavor to attempt to reconstruct or even comprehend the nature of a human being by simply knowing the forces which have acted upon him. However deeply we should like to penetrate, however close we seem to be drawing to truth, one unknown quantity eludes us: man's primordial energy, his original self, that personality which was given him with the gift of life itself. On it rests man's true freedom; it alone determines his real character.
Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt
You’re lying,” he said-not angry, not accusing. Just as if
he was stating the facts, in a way that she wasn’t.
“I am not-”
“You can say it a million times, but that doesn’t make it any more true.” Peter smiled then, so
guileless that Lacy felt it smart like a stripe from a whip. “You might be able to fool Dad, and the
cops, and anyone else who’ll listen,” he said. “You just can’t fool another liar.
Jodi Picoult
You may of course ask whether we really need to refer to "saints". Wouldn't it suffice just to refer to decent people? It is true that they form a minority. More than that, they always will remain a minority. And yet I see therein the very challenge to join the minority. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.
Viktor E. Frankl
the mystic must be steadily told,—All that you say is just as true without the tedious use of that symbol as with it. Let us have a little algebra, instead of this trite rhetoric,—universal signs, instead of these village symbols,—and we shall both be gainers. The history of hierarchies seems to show that all religious error consisted in making the symbol too stark and solid, and was at last nothing but an excess of the organ of language.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is true that we Russians have sent only four doctors into space in forty years of flight, but still I might have had chance to fly to Mir or International Space Station except for one fact. This is that I cannot urinate—is this the right word, Mr. Roth?—I cannot urinate on wheel of bus.
Dan Simmons
Yes, suddenly I saw it clearly: most people deceive themselves with a pair of faiths: they believe in eternal memory (of people, things, deeds, nations) and in redressibility (of deeds, mistakes, sins, wrongs). Both are false faiths. In reality the opposite is true: everything will be forgotten and nothing will be redressed. The task of obtaining redress (by vengeance or by forgiveness) will be taken over by forgetting. No one will redress the wrongs that have been done, but all wrongs will...
Milan Kundera
Who are you writing to, Linus?"This is the time of year to write to the Great Pumpkin. On Halloween Night, the Great Pumpkin rises out of his pumpkin patch and flies through the air with his bag of toys for all the children!"You must be crazy! When are you going to stop believing in something that isn't true?"When *you* stop believing in that fellow with a red suit and the white beard who goes, 'Ho, ho, ho!'" "We're obviously separated by denominational differences.
Charles M. Schulz
The Sophists had this idea: Forget this idea of what's true or not—what you want to do is rhetoric; you want to be able to persuade the audience and have the audience think you're smart and cool. And Socrates and Plato, basically their whole idea is, "Bullshit. There is such a thing as truth, and it's not all just how to say what you say so that you get a good job or get laid, or whatever it is people think they want.
David Foster Wallace