Truth When Not Sought Quotes & Sayings

Truth is the first thing to be sought for, and Beauty and Goodness will then be added unto you. — Mahatma Gandhi

Life and the Universe show spontaneity;Down with ridiculous notions of Deity!Churches and creeds are lost in the mists;Truth must be sought with the Positivists. — Mortimer Collins

We are always hearing of people who are around seeking after the Truth. I have never seen a (permanent) specimen. I think he has never lived. But I have seen several entirely sincere people who thought they were (permanent) Seekers after the Truth. They sought diligently, persistently, carefully, cautiously, profoundly, with perfect honesty and nicely adjusted judgment- until they believed that without doubt or question they had found the Truth. That was the end of the search. The man spent the rest of his hunting up shingles wherewith to protect his Truth from the weather. — Mark Twain

Machinations are divined. Response is by nature, nurture, experience and if sought peer pressure. You are the owner of free will. Choose. — Truth Devour

In the moral realm, there is very little consensus left in Western countries over the proper basis of moral behavior. And because of the power of the media, for millions of men and women the only venue where moral questions are discussed and weighed is the talk show, where more often than not the primary aim is to entertain, even shock, not to think. When Geraldo and Oprah become the arbiters of public morality, when the opinion of the latest media personality is sought on everything from abortion to transvestites, when banality is mistaken for profundity because [it's] uttered by a movie star or a basketball player, it is not surprising that there is less thought than hype. Oprah shapes more of the nation's grasp of right and wrong than most of the pulpits in the land. Personal and social ethics have been removed from the realms of truth and structures of thoughts; they have not only been relativized, but they have been democratized and trivialized. — D. A. Carson

The element of truth in the concept of genius is to be sought in the object, in what is open, not confined by repetition. — Theodor W. Adorno

Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

How did you come to be a Christian? I sought the Lord. But how did you come to seek the Lord? The truth flashed across my mind in a moment - I should not have sought Him unless there had been some previous influence in my mind to make me seek Him. I prayed, thought I, but then I asked myself, How came I to pray? I was induced to pray by reading the Scriptures. How came I to read the Scriptures? I did read them, but what led me to do so? Then, in a moment, I saw that God was at the bottom of it all, and that He was the Author of my faith, — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

There were three things sought by invaders who crossed
oceans to discover America. Those were gold, gospel, glory.
There are four things sought by aliens who crossed heavens
to discover planet earth. Those are gold, gospel, glory, gene. — Toba Beta

-I laugh when I think how I once sought paradise as a realm outside of the world of birth and death. It is right in the world of birth and death that the miraculous truth is revealed.
-But this is not the laughter of someone who suddenly acquires a great fortune; neither is it the laughter of one who has won a victory. It is, rather, the laughter of one who; after having painfully searched for something for a long time, finds it one morning in the pocket of his coat. -Thich Nhat Hanh — Thich Nhat Hanh

Our family, from day one, has only sought the simple truth in this matter. — Sam Sheppard

In the knowledge of truth, what really matters is the possession of it, not the impulse under which it was sought. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Anecdote: In a controversial way, Comedian and actor Bill Cosby sought to teach his son the pain of being lied to. Convinced his son had been dishonest regarding an issue, Cosby promised that if he told him the truth, he would not hit him. When his son did confess, Cosby did hit him. Seeing his son's shock and hurt, Cosby said he hoped this lesson had deepened his understanding of the anguish generated by a sense betrayal. — Bill Cosby

The founders of the United Nations sought to replace a world at war with a world of civilized order. They hoped that a world of relentless conflict would give way to a new era, one where freedom from violence prevailed ... But the awful truth is that the use of violence for political gain has become more, not less, widespread in the last decade. — Ronald Reagan

Man lowers his head and lunges into civilization, forgetting the days of his infancy when he sought truth in a snowflake or a stick. Man forgets the wisdom of the child. — Jack Kerouac

I do not know what infinite yearning possesses you, so that you are driven to a perilous, lonely search for some goal where you expect to find a final release from the spirit that torments you. I see you as the eternal pilgrim to some shrine that perhaps does not exist. I do not know to what inscrutable Nirvana you aim. Do you know yourself? Perhaps it is Truth and Freedom that you seek, and for a moment you thought that you might find release in Love. I think your tired soul sought rest in a woman's arms, and when you found no rest there you hated her. You had no pity for her, because you have no pity for yourself. And you killed her out of fear, because you trembled still at the danger you had barely escaped. — W. Somerset Maugham

Truth is sought not because it is truth but because it is good. — Simone Weil

As the soul seeks, then, for that which is the sustenance of the body - as what the food is to a developing, a growing body, so are the words of truth (which are life, which are love, which are God) sought that make for growth, even as the digesting of the material things in a body make for a growth. This growth may not be felt in the consciousness of materialization. It is experienced by the consciousness of the soul ... Feed, then, upon the fruits of the spirit. Love, hope, joy, mercy, long-suffering, brotherly love, and the contact, the growth, will be seen; and within the consciousness of the soul will the awareness come of the personality of the God in thee! — Edgar Cayce

Truth is to be sought with a mind purified from the passions of the body. Having overcome evil things, thou shalt experience the union of the union mortal divinity with the mortal man. — Pythagoras

Truth is power, but only when one has patience and requires of it no immediate effect. And one must have no specific aims. Somehow, lack of an agenda is the greatest power. Sometimes it is better not to think in terms of plans; here months may mean nothing, and also years. Truth must be sought for its own sake, its holy, divine greatness. — Romano Guardini

People have sought to adjust the truth to the hour instead of adjusting the hour to the truth, and in diplomacy they have endeavoured to bring about as much of the reality as they deem wise. — Alice Bailey

While I wanted to think everything false, it must necessarily be that I who thought was something; and remarking that this truth, I think, therefore I am, was so solid and so certain that all the most extravagant suppositions of the sceptics were incapable of upsetting it, I judged that I could receive it without scruple as the first principle of the philosophy that I sought. — Bertrand Russell

Truth must be sought at all costs, but separate isolated truths will not do. Truth is like life; it has to be taken on its entirety or not at all ... We must welcome truth even if it reproaches and inconveniences us
even if it appears in the place where we thought it could not be found. — Fulton J. Sheen

The first words that are read by seekers of enlightenment in the secret, gong-banging, yeti-haunted valleys near the hub of the world, are when they look into The Life of Wen the Eternally Surprised.
The first question they ask is: 'Why was he eternally surprised?'
And they are told: 'Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.'
The first words read by the young Lu-Tze when he sought perplexity in the dark, teeming, rain-soaked city of Ankh-Morpork were: 'Rooms For Rent, Very Reasonable.' And he was glad of it. — Terry Pratchett

They usually spent the night apart, though in the morning they woke twined more often than not, as though in sleep in their bodies sought each other. In wine and dream comes truth: the old proverb slipped through his mind unbidden. — Melissa Scott

In the end the great truth will have been learned that the quest is greater than what is sought, the effort finer that the prize (or rather, that the effort is the prize), the victory cheap and hollow were it not for the rigor of the game. — Benjamin Cardozo

A few nights after his conversion he asked how long this Gospel had been known in England. He was told that we had known it for some hundreds of years.
"What!" said he, amazed; "is it possible that for hundreds of years you have had the knowledge of those glad tidings in your possession, and yet have only now come to preach it to us? My father sought after the Truth for more than twenty years, and died without finding it. Oh, why did you not come sooner? — Hudson Taylor

It was a something found that had long been sought for by a thousand restless yearnings and vague desires, less of the heart than mind; not as when youth discovers the one to be beloved, but rather as when the student, long wandering after the clew to some truth in science, sees it glimmer dimly before him, to beckon, to recede, to allure, and to wane again. She fell at last into unquiet slumber, vexed by deformed, fleeting, shapeless phantoms; and, waking, as the sun, through a veil of hazy cloud, glinted with a sickly ray across the casement, she heard her father settled back betimes to his one pursuit, and calling forth from his Familiar a low mournful strain, like a dirge over the dead. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Tho' the world could turn from you, This, at least, I learn from you: Beauty and Truth, tho' never found, are worthy to be sought, The singer, upward-springing, Is grander than his singing, And tranquil self-sufficing joy illumes the dark of thought. This, at least, you teach me, In a revelation: That gods still snatch, as worthy death, the soul in its aspiration. — Robert Williams Buchanan

That the Party did not seek power for its own ends, but only for the good of the majority. That it sought power because men in the mass were frail cowardly creatures who could not endure liberty or face the truth, and must be ruled over and systematically deceived by others who were stronger than themselves. That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better. — George Orwell

Stigmata of Love
A light which lives on what the flames devour,
a grey landscape surrounding me with scorch,
a crucifixion by a single wound,
a sky and earth that darken by each hour,
a sob of blood whose red ribbon adorns
a lyre without a pulse, and oils the torch,
a tide which stuns and strands me on the reef,
a scorpion scrambling, stinging in my chest
this is the wreath of love, this bed of thorns
is where I dream of you stealing my rest,
haunting these sunken ribs cargoed with grief.
I sought the peak of prudence, but I found
the hemlock-brimming valley of your heart,
and my own thirst for bitter truth and art. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The commandments for peace given by Jesus, - those simple and clear commandments, foreseeing all possibilities of discussion, and anticipating all objections, - these commandments proclaimed the kingdom of God upon earth. Jesus, then, was, in truth, the Messiah. He fulfilled what had been promised. But we have not fulfilled the commands we must fulfil if the kingdom of God is to be established upon earth, - that kingdom which men in all ages have earnestly desired, and have sought for continually, all their days. — Leo Tolstoy

The Law was given by Moses; the moral law, to discover the extent and abounding sin; the ceremonial law, to point out, by typical sacrifices and ablutions, the way in which forgiveness was to be sought and obtained. But grace, to relieve us from the condemnation of the one, and truth answerable to the types and shadows of the other, came by Jesus Christ. — John Newton

The faithful believe that certain truths have been 'revealed.' The skeptics and secularists believe that truth is only to be sought by free inquiry and trial and error. Only one of those positions is dogmatic. — Christopher Hitchens

Thus the truth - that his life should be directed by the spiritual element which is its basis, which manifests itself as love, and which is so natural to man - this truth, in order to force a way to man's consciousness, had to struggle not merely against the obscurity with which it was expressed and the intentional and unintentional distortions surrounding it, but also against deliberate violence, which by means of persecutions and punishments sought to compel men to accept religious laws authorized by the rulers and conflicting with the truth. — Leo Tolstoy

[from Some words about 'War and Peace']

In those days also people loved, envied, sought truth and virtue, and where carried away by passions; and there was the same complex mental and moral life among the upper classes, where were in some instances even more refined than now. If we have come to believe in the perversity and coarse violence of that period, that is only because the traditions, memoirs, stories, and novels that have been handed to us, record for the most part exceptional cases of violence and brutality. To suppose that the predominant characteristic of that period was turbulence, is as unjust as it would before a man, seeing nothing but the tops of trees beyond a hill, to conclude that there was nothing to be found in that locality but trees. — Leo Tolstoy

The law of empathy, by which he could, by his will, transfer himself into an object or a work of art, and thus inflence the outer world. He did not feel redeemed by the work he did. He did not seek redemption. He sought to see what others did not, the projection of his imagination. — Patti Smith

What is sin? It is the glory of God not honored. The holiness of God not reverenced. The greatness of God not admired. The power of God not praised. The truth of God not sought. The wisdom of God not esteemed. The beauty of God not treasured. The goodness of God not savored. The faithfulness of God not trusted. The commandments of God not obeyed. The justice of God not respected. The wrath of God not feared. The grace of God not cherished. The presence of God not prized. The person of God not loved. That is sin. — John Piper

The world can absorb only doses of truth," he said; "too much would kill it." One sought education in order to adjust the dose. — Henry Adams

We are here speaking in open disapproval of that false system of philosophy, not so long ago introduced, by which, because of an extended and unbridled desire of novelty, truth is not sought where it truly resides, and, with a disregard for the holy and apostolic traditions, other vain, futile, uncertain doctrines, not approved by the Church are accepted as true, on which very vain men mistakenly think that truth itself is supported and sustained. — Pope Gregory XVI

Protestants, on the contrary, rejected the Church as a vehicle of revelation; truth was to be sought only in the Bible, which each man could interpret for himself. If men differed in their interpretation, there was no divinely appointed authority to decide the dispute. In practice, the State claimed the right that had formerly belonged to the Church, but this was a usurpation. In Protestant theory, there should be no earthly intermediary between the soul and God. — Bertrand Russell

No one has rightly sought the truth who has not encountered at the end of this search - whether to accept or reject Him - our Lord, Jesus Christ, "the Way, the Truth, and the Life," Truth that stands against the world and is a reproach to all worldliness. - Eugene Rose — Damascene Christensen

It is not the truth which has to be sought, it is you who have to be brought home. — Osho

The truth, the hope of any time, must always be sought in minorities. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Can you make a house of cards?" she asked.
"Yes," Violet said, and went on looking. This way Violet had of seizing first not the most obvious sense of what people said to her but some other, interior echo or reverse side of it was a thing that baffled and frustrated her husband, who sought in her sybilline responses to ordinary questions some truth he was sure Violet knew but couldn't quite enunciate. With his father-in-law's help, he had filled volumes with his searchings. Her children, though, hardly noticed it. Nora shifted from foot to foot for a moment waiting for the promised structure, and when it didn't appear forgot it. The clock on the mantelpiece chimed. — John Crowley

To be made evident, truth must be sought for; for of itself it is slow to appear, and between ourselves and God the obstacles are so many! — George Sand

I had thought the second sight was a dream, or a vision, a sudden rush of breath. I had thought that the truth might step into my hut, like a ghost, and say its name
that I might find it, if I sought it. But, I was wrong.
You will know it, in time ...
I knew it, now. And I knew it was a feeling
deep, in the chest, or in more than the chest. It was a feeling in the bones, in the womb, in the soul. — Susan Fletcher

Truth, such as is necessary to the reputation of life, is always found where it is honestly sought. — Samuel Johnson