Never Knowing The Truth Quotes & Sayings

Knowing is not simply a material act, since the object that is known always conceals something beyond the empirical datum. All our knowledge, even the most simple, is always a minor miracle, since it can never be fully explained by the material instruments that we apply to it. In every truth there is something more than we would have expected, in the love that we receive there is always an element that surprises us. — Pope Benedict XVI

She was ten years old, after all. Alone and helpless and afraid. But here is truth, gentlefriends, no matter the number of suns in your sky. At the heart of it, two kinds of people live in this world or any other: those who flee and those who fight. Your kind has many terms for the latter sort. Berserker. Killer instinct. More balls than brains. And it shouldn't surprise you, knowing what little you know already, that in the face of this thug and his blade, and laden with memory of her father's execution never flinch never fear instead of wailing or breaking as another ten-year-old might have, young Mia gripped the stiletto she'd fished from the darkness, and slipped it straight up into the puppy-choker's eye. The — Jay Kristoff

Knowing now I would never be alone again never lonely again as in those years God allowed me to be thus as if He did not exist forcing onto me the bitter knowledge that He did not exist in truth or if He did His existence touched in no way upon my own. — Joyce Carol Oates

I will not live to see you grow to womanhood, so I have written my story for you, my beloved grandchild, so that you can know the truth of what happened here so many years ago. I'm sure that in the course of your life you have wonderd about whispered conversations that stop when you are near. Wondered too about the knowing looks cast at you and your family. I am equally sure that your father has never found it in his heart to tell you the truth you are about to read. I beg you not to be angry with hime for withholding the truth from you. He has suffered greatly for my sins. — Susan Boles

When you've tired of me," she said softly, precisely, "Apollo will still be my brother. Will still be there for me."
"I'll never tire of you," he said, knowing with every thread of his soul that he spoke the absolute truth.
"Then prove it."
He knew what she asked with such an open and vulnerable face. Something within him shriveled and died ... he'd been on the rack too long for a penance he wasn't sure he could ever entirely pay.
"You know ... " His voice was hoarse, the croaking of a dying man. He licked his lips. "You know why I cannot. — Elizabeth Hoyt

It was incomprehensible to her that anyone should be amused by such a circumstance, but both Gilly and Gideon plainly thought it excessively funny, so she smiled dutifully, realizing the truth of her mama's dictum, that there was never any knowing what stupidities men would find diverting. — Georgette Heyer

I know your race and mine are never on the best of terms." There was a cold smile in his voice if not on his face. "But I do only what you force me to. You rationalize, Keeton. You defend. You reject unpalatable truths, and if you can't reject them outright you trivialize them. Incremental evidence is never enough for you. You hear rumors of Holocaust; you dismiss them. You see evidence of genocide; you insist it can't be so bad. Temperatures rise, glaciers melt - species die - and you blame sunspots and volcanoes. Everyone is like this, but you most of all. You and your Chinese Room. You turn incomprehension into mathematics, you reject the truth without even knowing what it is. — Peter Watts

Healing is that place where we step into 20 seconds of insane courage because we need to either close that door or hold it open. Regardless of the outcome, the truth is what sets you free never the fear of not knowing. — Shannon L. Alder

I found that most people don't really want to know the truth. There are plenty of people who want to know the truth on their terms or require that the truth be contained within certain boundaries of comfort. But truth can never be known this way. You have to seek truth from a place of not knowing, and that can be a very threatening place because we think we already know the truth or we are afraid of what the truth might be. — Jim Palmer

The all-knowing Self was never born, Nor will it die. Beyond cause and effect, This Self is eternal and immutable. When the body dies, the Self does not die. 19 If the slayer believes that he can kill Or the slain believes that he can be killed, Neither knows the truth. The eternal Self Slays not, nor is ever slain. 20 — Anonymous

Not without deep pain do we admit to ourselves that the artists of all ages have in their highest flights carried to heavenly transfiguration precisely those conceptions that we now recognize as false: they are the glorifiers of the religious and philosophical errors of humanity, and they could not have done this without their belief in the absolute truth of these errors. Now if the belief in such truth generally diminishes, if the rainbow colors at the outermost ends of human knowing and imagining fade: then the species of art that, like the Divina commedia, Raphael's pictures, Michelangelo's frescoes, the Gothic cathedrals, presupposes not only a cosmic, but also a metaphysical significance for art objects can never blossom again. A touching tale will come of this, that there was once such an art, such belief by artists. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It was the kind of promise a father makes easily and sincerely, knowing at the same time that it will be impossible to keep. The truth of some promises is not as important as whether or not you can believe in them, with all your heart. A game of baseball can't really make a summer day last forever. A home run can't really heal all the broken places in our world, or in a single human heart. And there was no way that Mr. Feld could keep his promise never to leave Ethan again. All parents leave their children one day. — Michael Chabon

I love the energy we create between us when we banter like this. It's the most intense sensation of pleasure, knowing he'll always have the perfect response ready. I've never known anyone like him; as addictive to talk to as he is to kiss. "Truth — Sally Thorne

Sometimes knowing is torture. You wish you could hide your secret away in a dark, cobwebby shed, shut the door, and break the key in the lock, so no one can ever get in again. You wish that you could go to sleep and have your last thought be anything but the buttery light of the New Mexico moon sneaking in through the cracks of an old barn's walls. But you can't erase the knowing, and you can never tell your secret. If there is one thing this world as taught me, it's that no matter how bad things get, they can always get worse. Secrets should stay secrets. It keeps them tolerable. Telling secrets turn them into full-on hell. — Tawni Waters

This is my brother we're talking about, Maximus." "You'll take his part before mine?" Oh, he knew it was a mistake even before the words left his lips. Her shoulders squared. "If I must. We shared a womb. We're flesh and blood, tied together forever, both physically and spiritually. I love my brother." "As you don't me?" She stopped, her chemise in her hands before her. For a moment her shoulders slumped and then she raised her head. His goddess. His Diana. "When you've tired of me," she said softly, precisely, "Apollo will still be my brother. Will still be there for me." "I'll never tire of you," he said, knowing with every thread of his soul that he spoke the absolute truth. — Elizabeth Hoyt

If knowing answers to life's questions is absolutely necessary to you, then forget the journey. You will never make it. For this is a journey of unknowables
of unanswered questions, enigmas, incomprehensibles, and most of all, things unfair. — Jeanne Marie Bouvier De La Motte Guyon

We sat looking out at the ocean. There was just so much of it, and it never failed to take my breath away. Looking at the ocean gave me the same sensation I'd get staring at a sky full of stars- that I was small. Like the way a math problem reveals its undeniable truth, I knew when I stared into this sort of endlessness that my life didn't count for much of anything. And knowing that, that I was nothing but a speck, I felt pretty lucky for all that I had. — Dana Reinhardt

Today is filled with anger, fueled with hidden hate.
Scared of being outkast, afraid of common fate.
Today is build on tragedies which no one want's to face.
Nightmares to humanity and morally disgraced.
Tonight is filled with Rage, violence in the air.
Children bred with ruthlessness cause no one at home cares.
Tonight I lay my head down but the pressure never stops,
knowing that my sanity content when I'm droped.
But tomorrow I see change, a chance to build a new,
build on spirit intent of heart and ideas based on truth.
Tomorrow I wake with second wind and strong because of pride.
I know I fought with all my heart to keep the dream alive. — Tupac Shakur

The truth was, neither the Central Intelligence Agency nor any of the other official and unofficial U.S. intelligence organizations have ever been some kind of all-seeing, all-knowing, global illuminati. For starters, we never hand that kind of funding. — Max Brooks

Some people are convinced that they have the truth and are anxious to ensure others have it. These are the fundamentalists.

Some people spend their lives in distractions and activity and are indifferent to the truth.

Some people deny there is any truth and devote their lives to this denial.

Others construct their own truths or at least come to understand the forces that have constructed the truths by which they live.

A few, however, seek the Truth and, knowing that they will never find it in its entirity, stake their lives on trying to live it. — Peter Vardy

Self-respect cannot be hunted. It cannot be purchased. It is never for sale. It cannot be fabricated out of public relations. It comes to us when we are alone, in quiet moments, in quiet places, when we suddenly realize that, knowing the good, we have done it; knowing the beautiful, we have served it; knowing the truth we have spoken it — Alfred Whitney Griswold

A tree's shade is worth more than the knowledge of truth, my sons, for a tree's shade is true while it lasts, and the knowledge of truth is false in its very truth. The leaves' greenness is worth more, for a right understanding, than a great thought, for the leaves, greenness is something you can show others, but you can never show them a great thought. We are born without knowing how to talk and we die without having known how to express ourselves. Our life runs its course between the silence of one who cannot speak and the silence of one who wasn't understood, and around it hovers - like a bee where there are no flowers - a useless, inscrutable destiny. — Fernando Pessoa

How frustrating to think you can be lost to yourself. And yet how often it is that a stranger stares back at you from the mirror. Maybe in truth we never see ourselves as clearly as the thousands of eyes that daily take us in. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Do you see, Harry? Do you see the flaw in my brilliant plan now? I had fallen into the trap I had foreseen, that I had told myself I could avoid, that I must avoid."
"I don't - "
"I cared about you too much," said Dumbledore simply. "I cared more for your happiness than your knowing the truth, more for your peace of mind than my plan, more for your life than the lives that might be lost if the plan failed. In other words, I acted exactly as Voldemort expects we fools who love to act.
"Is there a defense? I defy anyone who has watched you as I have - and I have watched you more closely than you can have imagined - not to want to save you more pain than you had already suffered. What did I care if numbers of nameless and faceless people and creatures were slaughtered in the vague future, if in the here and now you were alive, and well, and happy? I never dreamed that I would have such a person on my hands. — J.K. Rowling

Sometimes you don't need to be told the truth. You just need to understand the nature of fear and how it effects the people that interact with you. It is the fear of loss that tests a person's faith, more than any other trajedy. Never let your heart become blind to people's weaknesses. Because when they lose faith they are capable of anything. — Shannon L. Alder

My mother picked me up in her arms, touching my checks comforting my distress. I stared into her eyes and held her hair in my small hands, for the first time realizing what a moment in time meant. I touched her cheek and then looked away, knowing this was the truth to life, and there was nothing I could do about it. The truth that her death would one day occur made me realize that I never wanted her to leave my side. It was something I could not control, something no one could ever stop no matter how strong they were. — Joseph McGinnis

[Knowing God] ... call it love, yes, only that can sound too emotional, or call it faith, and that can sound too cerebral. And what is it? Both, and neither ... [its] the decision to be faithful, the patient refusal of easy gratifications ... of Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane and on the cross, that bloody crown of love and faith. That is how I learn finally of a God who will not be fitted into my catergories and expectations ... the living truth too great for me to see, trusting that He will see and judge and yet not turn me away ... That is the mercy which will never give us, or even let us be content with less than itself and less than the truth ... we have seen the truth enacted in our own world as mercy, grace and hope, as Jesus, the only-begotten, full of grace and truth.. — Rowan Williams

You desire to know something of my Religion. It is the first time I have been questioned upon it: But I do not take your Curiosity amiss, and shall endeavour in a few Words to gratify it ... I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his [Jesus'] divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble.
[Letter to Ezra Stiles, March 9, 1790] — Benjamin Franklin

Without reading many different books, you can never leave the port of ignorance and can never obtain the peaceful mind of knowing the truth! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Leaning in he kissed her gently, first on the cheek then on her lips. When he met her eyes, she saw the young man shed loved last summer and the young man she still loved now.
"I never stopped loving you, Ronnie. and I never stopped thinking about you. even if summers do come and end" she smiled knowing he was telling the truth.
"I love you too, Will Blakelee" she wispered, leaning in to kiss him again. — Nicholas Sparks

It's strange, isn't it, how you never know you're living the best time of your life at the moment you're living it? If you could appreciate, at that instant, that this is it, maybe you'd make certain your mind imprinted every detail of the sights, smells, sounds and sensations.
Then again, maybe knowing that life will only get duller, sadder, less hopeful afterward would inject melancholy into that moment. You'd miss life's peak experience by mourning it before it passes.
So perhaps it's best not to know. — Anita Bartholomew

Never mind that I hadn't a clue which path to follow or whether, to echo Robert Frost, the one I took would make all the difference. The truth is, I'd bailed out of the right choice-wrong choice mentality a long time ago. It seemed so clear to me
since I'd wised up to the idea that life is not a straight road with no exit ramps
that life presented opportunities all along the way for a person to change directions. Besides, over the last ten years, I'd grown to like the idea of not knowing where a choice might lead me. — Alice Steinbach

One day Nola came into school wearing a set of incredibly thick glasses, and though they did no favors to her appearance, Nola was ecstatic: she could see all kinds of things now, things she'd never known were even there. She'd had no idea trees were so pretty, she said. She could see every single leaf waving in the wind now. For some reason, this terrified young Mona. It wasn't that Nola's vision had changed: it was that her vision had changed without her even knowing it. There were all kinds of things happening around her that she'd never known about, that she was blind to. Though her experience of the world had seemed whole and certain to her, in truth it had been marred, filled with blind spots, and she'd had no idea. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Roman soldiers girded their waist with something similar to what a weight lifter wears to give him strength and support so he won't hurt the core of his body. It enabled the soldiers to stand stronger against their enemy. We, too, need that kind of support to give us strength in our spiritual core. That means we must tightly surround ourselves with truth and not allow for anything other than the truth to enter into our thinking or situation. It means asking God to keep us undeceived so that we never allow deception to take root. Knowing the truth liberates us from all possibility of deception and illuminates any darkness in our life. — Stormie O'martian

It's not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It's the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our very being is good stuff. — Fred Rogers

All political power, all power as such, is stupid. Don't rush after it, don't be ambitious, because all ambition collects dust and only dust. If you are not disillusioned by dust, you will not be able to know what truth is. A man obsessed with ambition is not capable of knowing truth at all. Eyes full of ambition never see what is; they only see what they want to see. The ambitious mind is the wrong mind; the non-ambitious mind is the right mind. — Rajneesh

Why, a dog, whenever he sees a stranger, is angry; when an acquaintance, he welcomes him, although the one has never done him any harm, nor the other any good. Did this never strike you as curious? The matter never struck me before; but I quite recognise the truth of your remark. And surely this instinct of the dog is very charming; - your dog is a true philosopher. Why? Why, because he distinguishes the face of a friend and of an enemy only by the criterion of knowing and not knowing. And must not an animal be a lover of learning who determines what he likes and dislikes by the test of knowledge and ignorance? Most — Plato

Unlike most people," Fisher said, "questions are what make you tick. Knowing is what gives you a reason to roll out of bed in the morning, because you're not just in search of knowledge. Facts are never enough. You're after something else, something more fundamental. You're after the truth." Fisher — Ted Dekker

Do not waste your life in vain, or take life in vain. Where there is faith, there is also kindness and forgiveness, and where there is forgiveness, there you will find true balance - the most coveted prize of all. It is easy to stray, misled by one's own greed, or by easy pleasure. Men are weak, and many step off the path never knowing it. It is nothing but a gentle lie to say that most will find heaven when they die. Traveler, by your faith, forgive those who stand in your way. Yet, if they should seek to betray truth, then wield justice to bring their journey to its rightful end. — Miyuki Miyabe

We know in Life have always people that can do or knowing things better but the Truth is never better or worse, but a Fact of the True. — Jan Jansen

I learned that I never really know the true story of my guests' lives, that I have to content myself with knowing that when I'm interviewing somebody, I'm getting a combination of fact and truth and self-mythology and self-delusion and selective memory and faulty memory. — Terry Gross

Remember, never give up on love. It is easier to give up in search of a better prize, because the brain always keeps craving for new stimulants, but this way you only keep on searching, never to find peace in love. Let me tell you a story. There was a student who asked his teacher, what is love. The teacher said go into the field and bring me the most beautiful flower. The student returned with no flower at hand and
said, I found the most beautiful flower in the field but I didn't pick it up for I might find a better one, but when I returned to the place, it was gone.
We always look for the best in life. When we finally see it, we take it for granted and after some time start expecting a better one, not knowing that it's the best. Seek for your love, and once you have it never ever give up on it, no matter the situations. — Abhijit Naskar

But the truth is that we can never avoid uncertainty. This not knowing is part of the adventure, and it's also what makes us afraid. Bodhichitta — Pema Chodron

Reincarnation isn't something in which I choose to believe but rather a truth I accept. Most people will never know the meaning of their friendships, passions, choices and even challenges. I embrace them, knowing that there's always a perfect correlation between everything, including between us and the ones that love us and betray us at the end. That's how I know I'm almost never traveling somewhere but returning, or not meeting someone but fixing the past, or facing a challenge but ending a karmic cycle. If I was a Buddhist Monk, a Scottish Doctor, a French Monarch, or a Spanish Templar, none of that really matters, not as much as what I experienced and believed during that time, not as much as what I did ten years ago or what I believed during my childhood, not as much as who I am now and what I can do with my life at present time. — Robin Sacredfire

But to tell the truth (to tell the truth!) I have never been particularly resolute, I mean given to resolutions, but rather inclined to plunge headlong into the shit, without knowing who was shitting against whom or on which side I had the better chance of skulking with success. — Samuel Beckett

But "knowing the truth" does not come with redemption as a guarantee, nor does a feeling of redemption guarantee an end to a cycle of wrongdoing. Some would even say it is key to maintaining it, insofar as it can work as a reset button - a purge that cleans the slate, without any guarantee of change at the root. Placing all one's eggs in "the logic of exposure," as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has put it (in Touching Feeling), may also simply further the logic of paranoia. "Paranoia places its faith in exposure," Sedgwick observes - which is to say that the exposure of a disturbing fact or situation does not necessarily alter it, but in fact may further the circular conviction that one can never be paranoid enough. — Maggie Nelson

Nin knew how much humans loved money, riches, and material things - though he never really could understand why. The more technologically advanced the human species got, the more isolated they seemed to become, at the same time. It was alarming, how humans could spend entire lifetimes engaged in all kinds of activities, without getting any closer to knowing who they really were, inside. — Jess C. Scott

Here the contention is not just that the new Darwinian paradigm can help us realize whichever moral values we happen to choose. The claim is that the new paradigm can actually influence - legitimately - our choice of basic values in the first place. Some Darwinians insist that such influence can never be legitimate. What they have in mind is the naturalistic fallacy, whose past violation has so tainted their line of work. But what we're doing here doesn't violate the naturalistic fallacy. Quite the opposite. By studying nature - by seeing the origins of the retributive impulse - we see how we have been conned into committing the naturalistic fallacy without knowing it; we discover that the aura of divine truth surrounding retribution is nothing more than a tool with which nature - natural selection - gets us to uncritically accept its "values." Once this revelation hits norm, we are less likely to obey this aura, and thus less likely to commit the fallacy. — Robert Wright