There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.

Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better.

Through Kurt I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that’s stripped down.

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.

Half a truth is better than no politics.

Lyrics are so important, but they’re really underrated.

For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.

Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.

In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.

What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.

Words can be said in bitterness and anger, and often there seems to be an element of truth in the nastiness. And words don’t go away, they just echo around.

The chief ingredients in the composition of those qualities that gain esteem and praise, are good nature, truth, good sense, and good breeding.

Truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive; persuasive words are not good.

There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

Lying is not only saying what isn’t true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler.

Young men and women, your education is ever important – to us, to you, and to God.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Life is an unanswered question, but let’s still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.

Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.

The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and, however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true to fact. The people are turbulent and changing, they seldom judge or determine right.

Expectations are a form of first-class truth: If people believe it, it’s true.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, ‚Truth is the daughter of Time.‘

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.

Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.

All good books have one thing in common – they are truer than if they had really happened.

My work and my family are very important to me.

No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

I think carrying moral baggage is very dangerous for an artist. If you have a duty, it’s to be true and not cover up the cracks.

Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.

Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

All you have in business is your reputation – so it’s very important that you keep your word.

Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.

After many years of great mercy, after tasting of the powers of the world to come, we still are so weak, so foolish; but, oh! when we get away from self to God, there all is truth and purity and holiness, and our heart finds peace, wisdom, completeness, delight, joy, victory.

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

I heard a definition once: Happiness is health and a short memory! I wish I’d invented it, because it is very true.

Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.

Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?

Peace if possible, truth at all costs.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

Most damage that others do us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion.

Things don’t have to change the world to be important.

Winning – that’s the most important to me. It’s as simple as that.

Time discovers truth.

Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worse kind of suffering.

Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.

Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

One crime has to be concealed by another.

Seeing is not always believing.

The truth is often terrifying, which I think is one of the motifs of Larry and Andrew’s cinema. The cost of knowledge is an important theme. In the second and third films, they explore the consequences of Neo’s choice to know the truth. It’s a beautiful, beautiful story.

Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness.

Intense feeling too often obscures the truth.