The Dreamer

Over the crest of the Hill of Sleep,
Over the plain where the mists lie deep,
Into a country of wondrous things,
Enter we dreaming, and know we're kings.

Murmur or roar as it may, the stream
Laughs to the youngster who dreams his dream.
Leave him alone till his fool's heart breaks:
Dreams all are real till the dreamer wakes!

Dorothea Mackellar

The Hour Before Dawn

A CURSING rogue with a merry face,
A bundle of rags upon a crutch,
Stumbled upon that windy place
Called Cruachan, and it was as much
As the one sturdy leg could do
To keep him upright while he cursed.
He had counted, where long years ago
Queen Maeve's nine Maines had been nursed,
A pair of lapwings, one old sheep,
And not a house to the plain's edge,
When close to his right hand a heap
Of grey stones and a rocky ledge
Reminded him that he could make.
If he but shifted a few stones,
A shelter till the daylight broke.
But while he fumbled with the stones
They toppled over; 'Were it not
I have a lucky wooden shin
I had been hurt'; and toppling brought
Before his eyes, where stones had been,
A dark deep hollow in the rock.
He gave a gasp and thought to have fled,
Being certain it was no right rock
Because an ancient history said
Hell Mouth lay open near that place,
And yet stood still, because inside
A great lad with a beery face
Had tucked himself away beside
A ladle and a tub of beer,
And snored, no phantom by his look.
So with a laugh at his own fear
He crawled into that pleasant nook.
'Night grows uneasy near the dawn
Till even I sleep light; but who
Has tired of his own company?
What one of Maeve's nine brawling sons
Sick of his grave has wakened me?
But let him keep his grave for once
That I may find the sleep I have lost.'
What care I if you sleep or wake?
But I'Il have no man call me ghost.'
Say what you please, but from daybreak
I'll sleep another century.'
And I will talk before I sleep
And drink before I talk.'
And he
Had dipped the wooden ladle deep
Into the sleeper's tub of beer
Had not the sleeper started up.
Before you have dipped it in the beer
I dragged from Goban's mountain-top
I'll have assurance that you are able
To value beer; no half-legged fool
Shall dip his nose into my ladle
Merely for stumbling on this hole
In the bad hour before the dawn.'
Why beer is only beer.'
'But say
''I'll sleep until the winter's gone,
Or maybe to Midsummer Day,''
And drink and you will sleep that length.
'I'd like to sleep till winter's gone
Or till the sun is in his srrength.
This blast has chilled me to the bone.'
'I had no better plan at first.
I thought to wait for that or this;
Maybe the weather was accursed
Or I had no woman there to kiss;
So slept for half a year or so;
But year by year I found that less
Gave me such pleasure I'd forgo
Even a half-hour's nothingness,
And when at one year's end I found
I had not waked a single minute,
I chosc this burrow under ground.
I'll sleep away all time within it:
My sleep were now nine centuries
But for those mornings when I find
The lapwing at their foolish dies
And the sheep bleating at the wind
As when I also played the fool.'
The beggar in a rage began
Upon his hunkers in the hole,
'It's plain that you are no right man
To mock at everything I love
As if it were not worth, the doing.
I'd have a merry life enough
If a good Easter wind were blowing,
And though the winter wind is bad
I should not be too down in the mouth
For anything you did or said
If but this wind were in the south.'
'You cty aloud, O would 'twere spring
Or that the wind would shift a point,
And do not know that you would bring,
If time were suppler in the joint,
Neither the spring nor the south wind
But the hour when you shall pass away
And leave no smoking wick behind,
For all life longs for the Last Day
And there's no man but cocks his ear
To know when Michael's trumpet cries
'That flesh and bone may disappear,
And souls as if they were but sighs,
And there be nothing but God left;
But, I alone being blessed keep
Like some old rabbit to my cleft
And wait Him in a drunken sleep.'
He dipped his ladle in the tub
And drank and yawned and stretched him out,
The other shouted, 'You woul
d rob
My life of every pleasant thought
And every comfortable thing,
And so take that and that.' Thereon
He gave him a great pummelling,
But might have pummelled at a stone
For all the sleeper knew or cared;
And after heaped up stone on stone,
And then, grown weary, prayed and cursed
And heaped up stone on stone again,
And prayed and cursed and cursed and bed
From Maeve and all that juggling plain,
Nor gave God thanks till overhead
The clouds were brightening with the dawn.

William Butler Yeats

Extinguish Thou My Eyes

Extinguish Thou my eyes:I still can see Thee,
deprive my ears of sound:I still can hear Thee,
and without feet I still can come to Thee,
and without voice I still can call to Thee.

Sever my arms from me, I still will hold Thee
with all my heart as with a single hand,
arrest my heart, my brain will keep on beating,
and Should Thy fire at last my brain consume,
the flowing of my blood will carry Thee.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

Sonnet XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Pablo Neruda

Arduous trip

The longest, most arduous trip in the world is often the journey from the head to the heart. Until that round trip is completed, we remain at war with ourselves. And, of course, those at war with themselves are apt to make casualties of others,
including friends and loved ones.

William Sloane Coffin, Jr. (1924-2006)

Guidelines

Guidelines for bureaucrats:

(1) when in charge, ponder
(2) when in trouble, delegate
(3) when in doubt, mumble

James H Boren

Love not me

Love not me for comely grace,
For my pleasing eye or face,
Nor for any outward part,
No, nor for my constant heart,
...For those may fail or turn to ill,
...So thou and I shall sever.
Keep therefore a true woman's eye
And love me still but know not why:
...So hast thou the same reason still
...To dote upon me ever.

Love not me

Inside

"We are always the same age inside."

Gertrude Stein

Experience

Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience.

Victoria Holt

Illusion of control

Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.

David Sedaris

Dolphinese

It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English -- up to fifty words used in correct context -- no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.

Carl Sagan

Journals and diaries

After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
Jean Cocteau

I read less of everything now. With only fond memories of others' work, it will be interesting to give my own journal writing a try now.
Jonathan Carroll

I think this journal will be disadvantageous for me, for I spend my time now like a spider spinning my own entrails.
Mary Bokin Chesnut



I write journals and would recommend journal writing to anyone who wishes to pursue a writing career. You learn a lot. You also remember a lot... and memory is important.
Judy Collins

Keep a journal, and learn how to see how you as an individuals sees information so you can learn your own sign language. Meditate and practice psychic self defense and surrounding yourself with prayer.
John Edward

Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.
Carl Sandburg

The keyboard is my journal.
Pharrell Williams



A diary means yes indeed.
Gertrude Stein

A lot of the images in my work are a kind of visual diary of places I've been, what I've seen, heard, smelt.
Francesca da Rimini

A proper family diary with everyone's events and parties in it really helps organise the household.
Anthea Turner



From the night, his solitude, the poet finds day and starts a diary that is lethal to the inert. The dark landscape yields a dialogue.
Salvatore Quasimodo

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
Oscar Wilde

In early draft it never satisfied me, and that was when it clicked into place and it went so well as a diary.
Colleen McCullough



It would be curious to discover who it is to whom one writes in a diary. Possibly to some mysterious personification of one's own identity.
Beatrice Webb

Keep a diary, and someday it'll keep you.
Mae West

Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us.
Oscar Wilde



One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.
Franz Kafka

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.
Pablo Picasso

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.
James M. Barrie



The notes I have made are not a diary in the ordinary sense, but partly lengthy records of my spiritual experiences, and partly poems in prose.
Edvard Munch

Today I start a diary; it is against my usual habbits, but out of a clearly felt need.
Robert Musil

What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it. Dull to the contemporary who reads it and invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it.
Walter Scott

The Choice

He'd have given me rolling lands,
Houses of marble, and billowing farms,
Pearls, to trickle between my hands,
Smoldering rubies, to circle my arms.
You- you'd only a lilting song,
Only a melody, happy and high,
You were sudden and swift and strong-
Never a thought for another had I.

He'd have given me laces rare,
Dresses that glimmered with frosty sheen,
Shining ribbons to wrap my hair,
Horses to draw me, as fine as a queen.
You- you'd only to whistle low,
Gayly I followed wherever you led.
I took you, and I let him go-
Somebody ought to examine my head!

Dorothy Parker

If You Were Coming in the Fall

If you were coming in the fall,
I'd brush the summer by
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As housewives do a fly.

If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls,
And put them each in separate drawers,
Until their time befalls.

If only centuries delayed,
I'd count them on my hand,
Subtracting till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemen's land.

If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I'd toss it yonder like a rind,
And taste eternity.

But now, all ignorant of the length
Of time's uncertain wing,
It goads me, like the goblin bee,
That will not state its sting.

Emily Dickinson

Pleasure

Then a hermit, who visited the city once a year, came forth and said, "Speak to us of Pleasure."

And he answered, saying:

Pleasure is a freedom song,

But it is not freedom.

It is the blossoming of your desires,

But it is not their fruit.

It is a depth calling unto a height,

But it is not the deep nor the high.

It is the caged taking wing,

But it is not space encompassed.

Ay, in very truth, pleasure is a freedom-song.

And I fain would have you sing it with fullness of heart; yet I would not have you lose your hearts in the singing.

Some of your youth seek pleasure as if it were all, and they are judged and rebuked.

I would not judge nor rebuke them. I would have them seek.

For they shall find pleasure, but not her alone:

Seven are her sisters, and the least of them is more beautiful than pleasure.

Have you not heard of the man who was digging in the earth for roots and found a treasure?

And some of your elders remember pleasures with regret like wrongs committed in drunkenness.

But regret is the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement.

They should remember their pleasures with gratitude, as they would the harvest of a summer.

Yet if it comforts them to regret, let them be comforted.

And there are among you those who are neither young to seek nor old to remember;

And in their fear of seeking and remembering they shun all pleasures, lest they neglect the spirit or offend against it.

But even in their foregoing is their pleasure.

And thus they too find a treasure though they dig for roots with quivering hands.

But tell me, who is he that can offend the spirit?

Shall the nightingale offend the stillness of the night, or the firefly the stars?

And shall your flame or your smoke burden the wind?

Think you the spirit is a still pool which you can trouble with a staff?

Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure you do but store the desire in the recesses of your being.

Who knows but that which seems omitted today, waits for tomorrow?

Even your body knows its heritage and its rightful need and will not be deceived.

And your body is the harp of your soul,

And it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds.

And now you ask in your heart, "How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?"

Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,

But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.

For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,

And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,

And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.

People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees.

Khalil Gibran

Evening Love Song

Ornamental clouds
compose an evening love song;
a road leaves evasively.
The new moon begins

a new chapter of our nights,
of those frail nights
we stretch out and which mingle
with these black horizontals.

Rainer Maria Rilke

To a Lady

Good madam, when ladies are willing,
...A man must needs look like a fool;
For me I would not give a shilling
...For one who would love out of rule.

You should leave us to guess by your blushing,
...And not speak the matter so plain;
'Tis our's to write and be pushing,
...'Tis yours to affect disdain.

That you're in a terrible taking,
...By all these sweet oglings I see,
But the fruit that can fall without shaking,
...Indeed is too mellow for me.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Idle life

He rides in the row at ten o clock in the morning, goes to the Opera three times a week, changes his clothes at least five times a day, and dines out every night of the season. You don't call that leading an idle life, do you?

Oscar Wilde, 1856-1900, An Ideal Husband (1895)

Only the poet

There is a pleasure in poetic pains
Which only poets know.

William Cowper (1731-1800)

Beware

Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.

John Wesley (1703-1791)

Knowledge and wisdom

Ours is a world in which knowledge accumulates and wisdom decays.

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

Government

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.

Socrates

3/4

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Around the corner

"There is one thing which gives radiance to everything. It is the idea of something around the corner."

Chesterton, Gilbert

Colour

The lovely things that I have watched unthinking,
Unknowing, day by day,
That their soft dyes have steeped my soul in colour
That will not pass away -

Great saffron sunset clouds, and larkspur mountains,
And fenceless miles of plain,
And hillsides golden-green in that unearthly
Clear shining after rain;

And nights of blue and pearl, and long smooth beaches,
Yellow as sunburnt wheat,
Edged with a line of foam that creams and hisses,
Enticing weary feet.

And emeralds, and sunset-hearted opals,
And Asian marble, veined
With scarlet flame, and cool green jade, and moonstones
Misty and azure-stained;

And almond trees in bloom, and oleanders,
Or a wide purple sea,
Of plain-land gorgeous with a lovely poison,
The evil Darling pea.

If I am tired I call on these to help me
To dream -and dawn-lit skies,
Lemon and pink, or faintest, coolest lilac,
Float on my soothed eyes.

There is no night so black but you shine through it,
There is no morn so drear,
O Colour of the World, but I can find you,
Most tender, pure and clear.

Thanks be to God, Who gave this gift of colour,
Which who shall seek shall find;
Thanks be to God, Who gives me strength to hold it,
Though I were stricken blind.

Dorothea Mackellar

As Once the Winged Energy of Delight

As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.

Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.

To work with Things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;
the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions...For the god
wants to know himself in you.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Again and again

Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Song of the Flower

I am a kind word uttered and repeated by the voice of nature;
I am a star fallen from the blue tent upon the green carpet.
I am the daughter of the elements with whom winter conceived;
To whom Spring gave birth;
I was reared in the lap of Summer and I slept in the bed of Autumn.

At dawn I unite with the breeze to announce the coming of light;
At eventide I join the birds in bidding the light farewell.

The plains are decorated with my beautiful colours,
And the air is scented with my fragrance.

As I embrace slumber the eyes of night watch over me,
And as I awaken I stare at the sun,
Which is the only eye of the day.

I drink dew for wine, and harken to the voices of the birds,
And dance to the rhythmic swaying of the grass.

I am the lover's gift; I am the wedding wreath;
I am the memory of a moment of happiness;
I am the last gift of the living to the dead;
I am a part of joy and a part of sorrow.

But I look up high to see only the light,
And never look down to see my shadow.
This is wisdom which man must learn.

Khalil Gibran

Stigmas

Stigmas are the corollaries of values. If work, independence, responsibility, respectability are valued, then their converse must be devalued, and seen as disreputable. The Victorians, taking their values seriously, also took seriously the need for social sanctions that would stigmatize and censure violations of those values

Gertrude Himmelfa

Let us be true

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Matthew Arnold (1822-88)

Truthful

"To be persuasive, we must be believable;
to be believable, we must be credible;
to be credible, we must be truthful."

Edward R. Murrow

Like glasses

"Words, like glasses, obscure everything they do not make clear."

Joseph Joubert

Look sharply

Look sharply after your thoughts. They come unlookedfor, like a new bird seen on your trees, and, if youturn to your usual task, disappear; and you shallnever find that perception again; never, I say--but perhaps years, ages, and I know not what events andworlds may lie between you and its return!

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

The ongoing process of becoming a writer

In the ongoing process of becoming a writer, I
read and re-read the authors I most loved. I read
for pleasure, first, but also more analytically,
conscious of style, of diction, of how sentences
were formed and information was being conveyed,
how the writer was structuring a plot, creating
characters, employing detail and dialogue.

And as I wrote, I discovered that writing, like
reading, was done one word at a time, one
punctuation mark at a time. It required what
a friend calls "putting every word on trial for
its life": changing an adjective, cutting a phrase,
removing a comma, and putting the comma back in.

Francine Prose (1947- )

Religion

Religion : A daughter of Hope and Fear explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

Ambrose Bierce

Tongue and eye

Be slow of tongue and quick of eye.

Miguel de Cervantes

The half

The half is greater than the whole

Hesiod

Far away

"Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead."

Louisa May Alcott

Mistakes

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."

Albert Einstein

You

"You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection."

Buddha

Luck

Luck affects everything. Let your hook always be cast; in the stream where you least expect it there will be a fish.

Ovid

Monotony

When all is said and done, monotony may after all be the best condition for creation.

Sackville, Margaret

One step

"From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step."

Diderot, Denis

As Once the Winged Energy of Delight

As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.

Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.

To work with Things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;
the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions...For the god
wants to know himself in you.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Sonnet

Now let the draughtsman of my eyes be done
marking the line of petal and of hill.
Let the long commentary of the brain
be silent. Evening and the earth are one,
and bird and tree are simple and stand still.
Now, fragile heart swung in your webs of vein,
and perilous self won hardly out of clay,
gather the harvest of last light, and reap
the luminous fields of sunset for your bread.
Blurs the laborious focus of the day
and shadow brims the hillside slow as sleep.
Here is the word that, when all words are said,
shall compass more than speech. The sun is gone;
draws on the night at last; the dream draws on.

Judith Wright

Reluctance

OUT through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.
The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept tand accept the end
Of a love or a season?

Robert Frost

I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed

I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.

When the landlord turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove's door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!

Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!

Emily Dickinson

All he knew

And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,
That one small head could carry all he knew.

Oliver Goldsmith

The bookful blockhead

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,
with loads of learned lumber in his head.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

Mirth

Mirth is God's medicine. Everybody ought to bathe in it.Grim care, moroseness, anxiety, - all this rust of life,ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth. It is betterthan emery. Every man ought to rub himself with it.

Henry Ward Beecher

Echo

Come to me in the silence of the night;
...Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
...As sunlight on a stream;
. . . Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
...Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
...Where thirsting longing eyes
. . . Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
...My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
...Pulse for pulse, breath for breath;
. . . Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.

Christina Rossetti (1830-94)

Immortality

The influence of each human being on others in this life is a kind of immortality.

John Quincy Adams

I Am a Painter

I am a painter,
Painting pictures all the time,
Yet when I set them near your beauty
I want to throw them all away.

I am a sculptor, carving images
and filling each with life,
Yet when I compare these with your beauty
I want to dump them in a fire.

O bringer of sweet wine,
Enemy of the sober,
You have laid waste to
every house I ever built!

My soul has merged with yours -
Water into water, wine into wine.
Now there is only love
and the scent of your rose perfume.

Every drop of my blood calls out,
"Dye me with the color of your love.
Make me the jewel of your affection."

In this house of water and clay
my heart is in ruins.
O Beloved, don't leave this house
else it will crumble to the ground.

Rumi

Tragedy

Every human being on this earth is born with a tragedy, and it isn't original sin. He's born with the tragedy that he has to grow up. That he has to leave the nest, the security, and go out to do battle. He has to lose everything that is lovely and fight for a new loveliness of his own making, and it's a tragedy. A lot of people don't have the courage to do it.

Helen Hayes

Partial impartiality

"Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial."

Lichtenberg, Georg

T is for TRUTH

Truth, like milk, arrives in the dark
But even so, wise dogs don't bark.
Only mongrels make it hard
For the milkman to come up the yard.
~Christopher Morley, Dogs Don't Bark at the Milkman

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
~Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia

I never dreamed of being Shakespeare or Goethe, and I never expected to hold the great mirror of truth up before the world; I dreamed only of being a little pocket mirror, the sort that a woman can carry in her purse; one that reflects small blemishes, and some great beauties, when held close enough to the heart.
~Peter Altenberg



The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.
~William James

Men ardently pursue truth, assuming it will be angels' bread when found.
~W. MacNeile Dixon

The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.
~Rebecca West



It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.
~Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy

Truth is rarely writ in ink; it lives in nature.
~Martin H. Fischer

When I tell any truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do.
~William Blake



Truth only reveals itself when one gives up all preconceived ideas.
~Shoseki

There is no Truth. There is only the truth within each moment.
~Ramana Maharshi, attributed

Truth is after all a moving target
Hairs to split,
And pieces that don't fit
How can anybody be enlightened?
Truth is after all so poorly lit.
~Neil Peart, Turn the Page



Theories are private property, but truth is common stock.
~Charles Caleb Colton

It is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth.
~Oscar Wilde

My truths do not last long in me. Not as long as those that are not mine.
~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin



Truth breeds hatred.
~Bias of Priene, Maxims

If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?
~Dogen

People always think something's all true.
~J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye



Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch, nay, you may kick it all about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Professor at the Breakfast Table

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.
~Leo Tolstoy

Truth is the breath of life to human society. It is the food of the immortal spirit. Yet a single word of it may kill a man as suddenly as a drop of prussic acid.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes



I am the fellow citizen of every being that thinks; my country is Truth.
~Alphonse de Lamartine, "Marseillaise of Peace," 1841

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.
~Jean-Paul Sartre

Truth is a great flirt.
~Franz Liszt



We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.
~Denis Diderot

All great truths begin as blasphemies.
~George Bernard Shaw, Annajanska, 1919

...Science and mathematics
Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it,
They never touch it: consider what an explosion
Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky the world
If any mind for a moment touch truth.
~Robinson Jeffers, "The Silent Shepherds," The Beginning & the End



The greatest truths are the simplest: so likewise are the greatest men.
~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.
~Simone de Beauvoir

Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives... by make-believe.
~W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, 1938



When one has one's hand full of truth it is not always wise to open it.
~French Proverb

Truth is no Doctoresse, she takes no degrees at Paris or Oxford... but oftentimes to such an one as myself, an Idiota or common person, no great things, melancholizing in woods where waters are, quiet places by rivers, fountains, whereas the silly man expecting no such matter, thinketh only how best to delectate and refresh his mynde continually with Natura her pleasaunt scenes, woods, water-falls, or Art her statelie gardens, parks, terraces, Belvideres, on a sudden the goddesse herself Truth has appeared, with a shyning lyghte, and a sparklyng countenance, so as yee may not be able lightly to resist her.
~Charles Lamb

We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable.
~Alexander Solzhenitsyn



The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.
~Attributed to James A. Garfield

Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first, it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third it is regarded as self-evident.
~Arthur Schopenhauer

There is no truth. There is only perception.
~Gustave Flaubert



There are truths that shield themselves behind veils, and are best spoken by implication. Even the sun veils himself in his own rays to blind the gaze of the too curious starer.
- Amos Bronson Alcott

Truth comes out of error more readily than out of confusion.
- Francis Bacon

Truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show the masks and mummeries of the world half so stately and daintily as candlelights.
- Francis Bacon



You never find yourself until you face the truth.
- Pearl Bailey

The truth of truths is love.
- Philip James Bailey

The greatest truths are the simplest.
- Hosea Ballou

If it is not true it is very well invented.
[It., Se non e vero, e molto ben trovato.]

- Giordano Bruno