Truer Quotes & Sayings

[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of failing to understand ourselves and misinterpreting the behaviour of others, of growing unproductively anxious or desirous, and of losing ourselves to vanity and error. Surreptitiously and beguilingly, then, with humour or gravity, works of art
novels, poems, plays, paintings or films
can function as vehicles to explain our condition to us. They may act as guides to a truer, more judicious, more intelligent understanding of the world. — Alain De Botton

It's the same struggle for each of us, and the same path out: the utterly simple, infinitely wise ultimately defiant act of loving one thing and then another, loving our way back to life ... Maybe being perfectly happy is not really the point. Maybe that is only some modern American dream of the point, while the truer measure of humanity is the distance we must travel in our lives, time and again, "twixt two extremes of passion
joy and grief," as Shakespeare put it. However much I've lost, what remains to me is that I can still speak to name the things I love. And I can look for safety in giving myself away to the world's least losable things. — Barbara Kingsolver

How can you trust me, after what your own brother did to you?"
"Because he was false", said Damen, "and you are true. I have never known a truer man. — C.S. Pacat

Certain things not only can't be taught but can be retarded by other stuff that can be taught. — David Foster Wallace

For the nerd in me, I prefer full quality digital files as they give a truer representation of the source mix, the studio in fact. From these files I can quite often tell what kind of set up made the tracks. For the music lover in me, vinyl is more woosey, richer, more alive, more real, more imperfect and somehow becoming more like life itself. But I don't prefer it per se. The mastering engineer in me always loves to hear it as it was made. — Chris McCormack

When love is true there is no truer occupation. — Gordon Lightfoot

I wanted to apprentice myself to the dailiness of the war's beginning phase. It's truer and more frightening that way - when you're afloat on a little dingy in the midst of it all. — Nicholson Baker

The truer the facts the better the fiction. — Virginia Woolf

In the bedroom the truer, unpremeditated behavior of intimacy appears, the way this spouse relates to others on the most personal level, body to body and soul to soul. Is he truly patient in sexuality? So he seemed on long spring evenings. Or does he push forward at his own speed to his own satisfaction? And does he consider his satisfaction the measure of his prowess? As he acts here, uncovered, so does he act - more subtly and covertly - in the rest of the marriage." P35 — Walter Wangerin Jr.

Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon. — H.P. Lovecraft

Some sorts of truth are truer than others. — Jack London

Gender matters everywhere in the world. And I would like today to ask that we begin to dream about and plan for a different world. A fairer world. A world of happier men and happier women who are truer to themselves. And this is how to start: We must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently. We — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Acquisition of [higher] knowledge is not the end, but the means to the end; the end consists of the attainment, thanks to this knowledge of the higher worlds, of greater and truer self-confidence, a higher degree of courage, and a magnanimity and perseverance such as cannot, as a rule, be acquired in the lower world.For every one step that you take in the pursuit of higher knowledge, take three steps in the perfection of your own character. — Rudolf Steiner

A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is. — Bertrand Russell

I have always considered imaginative truth to be more profound, more loaded with significance, than every day reality ... Everything we dream about, and by that I mean everything we desire, is true (the myth of Icarus came before aviation, and if Ader or Bleriot started flying it is because all men have dreamed of flight). There is nothing truer than myth ... Reality does not have to be: it is simply what is. — Eugene Ionesco

Have you ever heard of the expression, ladies first"
"Yes"
"Well, it's truer in bed than it is anywhere else. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

This world is given as the prize for the men in earnest; and that which is true of this world, is truer still of the world to come. — Frederick William Robertson

Our culture says that feelings of love are the basis for actions of love. And of course that can be true. But it is truer to say that actions of love can lead consistently to feelings of love. — Timothy Keller

That your own interpretation of a work of art is flagrantly subjective seems to be regarded as an arrogant attitude. But the truer view is that the interpretative artist can only make his own comment upon the work. — Tyrone Guthrie

His (the writer's) standard of fidelity to the truth should be so high that his invention, out of his experience, should produce a truer account than anything factual can be. — Ernest Hemingway,

God does not refuse to make himself known to man. He only will not do it by the symbolism of matter. He comes to us at once by the most natural course. We are in a transient state; our bodies are accidental, and God comes to us by that which is higher and truer
the intuitions of the soul. — Henry Ward Beecher

No man can do me a truer kindness in this world than to pray for me. — Charles Spurgeon

Indeed in general I hold that there is nothing truer than happiness, and nothing happier and sweeter than truth. — Gottfried Leibniz

Silence is something more than just a pause; it is that enchanted place where space is cleared and time is stayed and the horizon itself expands. In silence, we often say, we can hear ourselves think; but what is truer to say is that in silence we can hear ourselves not think ... In silence, we might better say, we can hear someone else think. — Pico Iyer

Was anything in the world truer than that intuitive leap of the heart? — Richard Russo

The most compelling confirmation of Marx's theory of history is late capitalist society. There is a sense in which this case is becoming truer as time passes. — Terry Eagleton

I am vehemently grateful that, by whatever means, I learned to assume that loneliness should be in part pleasure, sensitizing and clarifying, and that it is even a truer bond among people than any kind of proximity. — Marilynne Robinson

Reality is painful and imperfect ... That's just the way it is, that's how we distinguish it from dreams. When something seems absolutely lovely we think it can only be a dream, and we pinch ourselves just to be sure we're really not dreaming - if it hurts it's because we're not dreaming. Reality can hurt us, even those moments when it may seem to us to be a dream. You can find everything that exists in the world in books - sometimes truer in colors, and without the real pain of everything that really does exist. Given a choice between life and books, my son, you must choose books — Jose Eduardo Agualusa

You see," Bouton wrote, "you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time." Truer words were never written. — John Feinstein

The man who has a certain religious belief and fears to discuss it, lest it may be proved wrong, is not loyal to his belief, he has but a coward's faithfulness to his prejudices. If he were a lover of truth, he would be willing at any moment to surrender his belief for a higher, better, and truer faith. — William George Jordan

The blacker the night around us grew, the brighter and truer and more beautiful burned the word of God. — Corrie Ten Boom

I can't move anymore,
But I wish I could.
And live on a Reservation.
Close to the Mountains
Closer to the sun and moon
To live among this Land's Peoples.
To learn a truer way of life.
For If I did so, I think I might learn the secret
Of how to live forever ...
In people's stories,
And in the stars — Jose N. Harris

The facts tell us that no religious Faith releases - or ever has released at any moment in History - a higher degree of warmth, a more intense dynamism of unification than the Christianity of our own day - and the more Catholic it is, the truer my words. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

A writer's job is to tell the truth. His standard of fidelity to the truth should be so high that his invention, out of his experience, should produce a truer account than anything factual can be. For facts can be observed badly; but when a good writer is creating something, he has time and scope to make an absolute truth.6 — Ernest Hemingway,

Let me tell you I am better acquainted with you for a long absence, as men are with themselves for a long affliction: absence does but hold off a friend, to make one see him the truer. — Ovid

Self-government is our right," [Roger Casement] declared. "A thing born in us at birth; a thing no more to be doled out to us or withheld from us by another people than the right to life itself - than the right to feel the sun or smell the flowers, or to love our kind ... Where men must beg with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land, to think their own thoughts, to sing their own songs, to garner the fruits of their own labours ... then surely it is braver, a saner and a truer thing, to be a rebel ... than tamely to accept it as the natural lot of men. — Adam Hochschild

Having reached the term of his natural life; Mwould it not be truer to say, Having reached the term of his unnatural life? — Henry David Thoreau

True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure - the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature. — Robert McKee

There are no truer choices than those made in crisis, choices made without judgment. — Daniel H. Wilson

Most of the time the ones who dislike the pictures the most confirm to me that the picture has hit home and is probably truer than I know. Nobody minds a boring picture, they mind a picture that has gotten to the soft core. — Irving Penn

There is no truer statement: men are simple. Get this into your head first, and everything you learn about us in this book will begin to fall into place. Once you get that down, you'll have to understand a few essential truths: men are driven by who they are, what they do, and how much they make. No matter if a man is a CEO, a CON, or both, everything he does is filtered through his title (who he is), how he gets that title (what he does), and the reward he gets for the effort (how much he makes). These three things make up the basic DNA of manhood - the three accomplishments every man must achieve before he feels like he's truly fulfilled his destiny as a man. And until he's achieved his goal in those three areas, the man you're dating, committed to, or married to will be too busy to focus on you. — Steve Harvey

The more you say true things, the more you will be respected; the more you will respected, the more you shall feel to be obliged to say even truer things! Every true path at the beginning opens the paths of even greater and stronger truths in the future! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened. — Ernest Hemingway,

You look too pretty to be useful."
"Truer words were never spoken. — Richelle Mead

I'm sorry, he says. No two words were ever truer.
Still, she says nothing. Once a shield, now her taciturnity is brandished like a blade, carving away his sanity. She's the flaw in the paragon of life - the reason angels choose to dive to their downfalls in fiery comets of stardust. — Laura Kreitzer

Persistence may not solve everything - at least in our lifetime - but it is truer to the meaning of life for us to wait for another plowing, another seeding, another harvest, then not. — Joan D. Chittister

And so one may be without connection with any church, and even without connection with any established religion, and yet be in spirit, hence in reality, a much truer Christian than hosts of those who profess to be His most ardent followers, as indeed Jesus Himself so many times says. "By their fruits ye shall know them," said He. "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." — Ralph Waldo Trine

Not only a truer knowledge, but a greater power comes to one in the quietude and silence of a mind that, instead of bubbling on the surface, can go to its own depths and listen. — Sri Aurobindo

You cannot please all of the people all of the time, and that is truer in the arts than anywhere else. — Theodore Bikel

The truer you are to yourself, the greater your gifts will manifest themselves. — Tiffany L. Jackson

There can be no truer faith than the one you might have in yourself. — Ray Torres

It is often said that Leonardo drew so well because he knew about things; it is truer to say that he knew about things because he drew so well. — Kenneth Clark

[ ... ] and the love he felt at that moment, truer than all subsequent loves because it never had to survive. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Not only does silence give us a chance to understand ourselves better, to get a truer and more balanced perspective on our own lives in relation to the lives of others: silence makes us whole if we let it. Silence helps draw together the scattered and dissipated energies of a fragmented existence. — Thomas Merton

Oh, so poignant' said Varys. 'And yet, it is truly said that blood runs truer than oaths — George R R Martin

A man's magic demonstrates what sort of person he is, what is held most deeply inside of him. There is no truer gauge of a man's character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power. I was not a murderer. I was not like Victor Sells. I was Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. I was a wizard. Wizards control their power. They don't let it control them. And wizards don't use magic to kill people. They use it to discover, to protect, to mend, to help. Not to destroy. — Jim Butcher

Fuck, you've been to the sex store."

"Sure have." Josh held up a plastic bag. "Man, that was fun. And by fun, I mean seriously fucking creepy... — Lana McGregor

Oh, I'm fine! People booby-trap DHDs that I'm working on every day!" Rodney paused. "Actually, that's truer than I'd like. — Jo Graham

The fewer moving parts, the better." "Exactly. No truer words were ever spoken in the context of engineering. — Christian Cantrell

Who are we in moments of crisis or despair? Do we become deeper, truer selves, or lift up and away from a self, untethered from regular meanings like moths suddenly drawn toward heat or light? Are we better people when someone might be dying, and if so, why? Are we weaker, or stronger? Are we beautiful, or abject? Serious, or cartoon? Do we secretly long for death to remind us we are alive? — Lidia Yuknavitch

Fiction must stick to facts, and the truer the facts the better the fiction - so we are told. — Virginia Euwer Wolff

I didn't say that wearing a glamorization of the rock artist was any truer from the other thing. — David Bowie

For in marriage a little licence,a little independence there must be between people living together day in and day out in the same house; which Richard gave her, and she him. — Virginia Woolf

Your prowess with a lightsaber is childish vanity. Your physical Force powers are no more than a conjurer's trick, sleight of hand to dazzle the ordinary beings you should be serving. You profane these powers by using them as weapons in war. And you fail to grasp the single, simple, uncompromising duty of the true Jedi. The Jedi is the rock-lion at the gate who says, "I will defend these beings with my life, and that is the sum of me." Etain Tur-Mukan died to save one life, a man she did not even know, but felt compelled to save, and that is what made her stronger in the Force and a truer Jedi than any of you acrobats, tricksters, and specious, empty philosophers. — Karen Traviss

Love of freedom is this:
Once you're tempted there's no escape,
It's a habit that never gets old,
A dream that is truer than reality. — Oktay Rifat

It has been sometimes argued that there is no truer criterion of the vitality of any given art-period than the power of the master-spirits of that time in grotesque; and certainly in the instance of Gothic art there is no disputing the proposition. — Thomas Hardy

What if all the myths and fairy tales were pointing to something that was not only true but also truer than anything we knew in this world, to a realm that was truer and more real? — Eric Metaxas

This is true enough, but success is the next best thing to happiness, and if you can't be happy as a success, it's very unlikely that you would find a deeper, truer happiness in failure. — Michael Korda

It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness. Believing utterly in one's self is a hysterical and superstitious belief like believing in Joanna Southcote: the man who has it has 'Hanwell' written on his face as plain as it is written on that omnibus." And to all this my friend the publisher made this very deep and effective reply, "Well, if a man is not to believe in himself, in what is he to believe?" After a long pause I replied, "I will go home and write a book in answer to that question." This is the book that — G.K. Chesterton

He who, in questions of right, virtue, or duty, sets himself above all ridicule, is truly great, and shall laugh in the end with truer mirth than ever he was laughed at. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

It seems the deeper, truer personality of the artist only emerges in the making of decisions ... in refusing and accepting, changing and revising. — Bridget Riley

There are no roads in British Columbia. There are only corners joined together. And nowhere is this truer than in Vancouver. In this city, pedestrians, even those within clearly marked crosswalks
especially those within clearly marked crosswalks
are viewed not as nuisances to be avoided but as obstacles to be overcome. Rising to the challenge, Vancouver drivers will attempt to weave through these pedestrians without knocking any over
and, here's the fun part, without ever applying the brakes. Swoosh, swoosh: downtown slalom. Pedestrians, in turn, try to keep things interesting by crisscrossing the streets at random, like neutrons in a particle accelerator. They cross the street like this because, being from Vancouver, they naturally have a sense of entitlement. Either that or they're stoned. — Will Ferguson

With all dear Emma's little faults, she is an excellent creature. Where shall we see a better daughter, or a kinder sister, or a truer friend? No, no; she has qualities which may be trusted; she will never lead any one really wrong; she will make no lasting blunder; where Emma errs once, she is in the right a hundred times. — Jane Austen

Yet, over time, the conclusions that science has drawn have become ever truer to reality. — David Deutsch

To me, the grotesque is like a sonic manifestation of reality. I don't know how you could look out onto our world and see only beauty. And I like beautiful things. I like the aesthetically harmonious. But I am much more attracted to something that is off-kilter. It is a truer reflection of not only nature, but the human spirit - the state of the world. I just think everything feels a little off. — Carrie Brownstein

But now the world breaks in on us, the world is shocked, the world looks upon our idyll as madness. The world maintains that no rational man or woman would have chosen this way of life - therefore, it is madness. Alone I confront them and tell them that nothing could be saner or truer! What do people really know about life? We fall in line, follow the pattern established by our mentors. Everything is based on assumptions; even time, space, motion, matter are nothing but supposition. The world has no new knowledge to impart; it merely accepts what is there. — Knut Hamsun

(Speaking of the Cistercian monks) A grim fraternity, passing grim lives in that sweet spot, that God had made so bright! Strange that Nature's voices all around them
the soft singing of the waters, the wisperings of the river grass, the music of the rushing wind
should not have taught them a truer meaning of life than this. They listened there, through the long days, in silence, waiting for a voice from heaven; and all day long and through the solemn night it spoke to them in myriad tones, and they heard it not. — Jerome K. Jerome

If I hadn't decided on cremation and a scattering, I could have used the phrase as an epitaph on a chunk of stone or marble: "Tony Webster - He Never Got It." But that would be too melodramatic, even self-pitying. How about "He's on His Own Now"? That would be better, truer. Or maybe I'll stick with: "Every Day Is Sunday. — Julian Barnes

All this, sadly enough, is truer of the more educated, higher-income, professional families. It is here that the competition is the greatest, the expectations most elevated. If the boy would be happier as a telephone linesman or a forest ranger, he is in a hopeless bind. His goals have been set for him by his milieu, and he cannot be his own man; so he simply refuses to play the game. He does not try. — Sydney J. Harris

We must, on pain of idiocy, deny from the very outset the idea that looking at is, by its own nature, intrinsically truer or better than looking along. — C.S. Lewis

A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skilfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of a work of fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never
any truer, and seldom any more evident, at the last page than at the first. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The critic of the Adepts would form a truer opinion of their attitude if he did not look upon them as guardians of a treasure, grudgingly doling it out to applicants whose rights it was impossible to ignore or defy, but rather as trainers of racehorses, patiently trying beast after beast in the hope that one may ultimately be found that will win the Grand National. The Adept who accepts an unsuitable pupil is guilty of cruelty just as much as the rider who sends a horse at a fence it cannot take. — Dion Fortune

It's fine to feel truer than others.
But it's much truer to fix our fault. — Toba Beta

It is possible that the scrupulously honest man may not grow rich so fast as the unscrupulous and dishonest one; but the success will be of a truer kind, earned without fraud or injustice. And even though a man should for a time be unsuccessful, still he must be honest: better lose all and save character. For character is itself a fortune ... — Samuel Smiles

We all know that a vast proportion of travel is accumulated nuisance; but if boredom or awfulness is handled with skill and concrete detail, it is funnier and truer than the sunniest prose. — Paul Theroux

I do not know at first what it is that harms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to be fairer and truer in to-morrow's memory. — Henry David Thoreau

I think fiction can help us find everything. You know, I think that in fiction you can say things and in a way be truer than you can be in real life and truer than you can be in non-fiction. There's an accuracy to fiction that people don't really talk about - an emotional accuracy. — A.M. Homes

For never was a truer story of love conquering woe than this of Molly Juliet and her Romeo. — Tillie Cole

Do transports of rage make a religion any truer? A man shot in a battle does not lose his temper, but argue with a theologian and he becomes implacable. — Voltaire

He was such an enigma, really - fierce and strong and weak and cruel. An incomparable friend and a son of a bitch. In the end, there wasn't one thing about him that was truer than the rest. It was all true. — Paula McLain

We're (millennials) looking for a truer Christianity, a more authentic Christianity. — Rachel Held Evans

Honoured sir, poverty is not a vice, that's a true saying. Yet I know too that drunkeness is not a virtue, and that's even truer. But beggary, honoured sir, beggary is a vice. In poverty you may still retain your innate nobility of soul, but in beggary
never
no one. For beggary a man is not chased out of human society with a stick, he is swept out with a broom, so as to make it as humiliating as possible; and quite right, too, forasmuch as in beggary as I am ready to be the first to humiliate myself. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy of the interposition of a deity. More humble, and I believe truer, to consider him created from animals. — Charles Darwin

Think about your dreams. Think of every detail of what you want to manifest. Imagine every person included in your plans. Sense all the emotions that you want to happen when your dreams come true. Visualize where will you be when your dreams already happened. Breathe the air where you want to manifest it. Dream. Imagine. Believe. There's no more truer than this. It is what it is. — Diana Rose Morcilla

A town that does not keep its dead out of sight, that leaves people where they died, on highways and byways, in parks and parking lots, is not a town but a hell. The fact that this hell reflects our life experience in a more realistic and essentially truer way is of no consequence. — Karl Ove Knausgard

Water has its own archaeology, not a layering but a leveling, and thus is truer to our sense of the past, because what is memory but near and far events spread and smoothed beneath the present's surface. — Ron Rash

Nothing that is new is ever new twice. While things that are true are still true the next time; truer, in fact, because they have been tested, they have been tasted, and they are always ripe, always ready ... — Orson Scott Card

Of you, you're mine, and that's a gift I'll always treasure. Every one of you is a gift to me, a blend of friends and family that's stronger and truer and brighter than anything I ever imagined having. So, to all of us, together. — Nora Roberts

A wonder tale can be truer than true, I said. I had learned ( ... ) that the deepest kind of truth can be found in the strangest and wildest of stories. One may not meet a fire-breathing dragon on the way to the well. One may not encounter an army of toothed snakes in the woodshed. That does not make the wisdom in those tales any less real. — Juliet Marillier

In commercial fiction especially, everything in the story usually contributes directly to the plot The shorter the story, the truer this is — Nancy Kress