Truth Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“The world thus exists to the soul to satisfy the desire of beauty. This element I call an ultimate end. No reason can be asked or given why the soul seeks beauty. Beauty, in its largest and profoundest sense, is one expression for the universe. God is the all-fair. Truth, and goodness, and beauty, are but different faces of the same All. But beauty in nature is not ultimate. It is the herald of inward and eternal beauty, and is not alone a solid and satisfactory good. It must stand as a part, and not as yet the last or highest expression of the final cause of Nature.”

“It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem.”

“All that we call sacred history attests that the birth of a poet is the principal event in chronology.”

“Religion is the perception of that power which constructs the greatness of the centuries out of the paltriness of the hours.”

“Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.”

“Like all who search for truth out of fear, I desperately wanted someone else to tell me exactly what to do.”

“Brilliance is impossible without a touch of insanity.”

“Earthlings, full of diversity, generally weren't hostile toward each other. The Earth was like a big insect jar. Insects put into a jar together tended not to fight unless the jar was agitated enough. If the jar owners put different types of ants in the same jar without agitating their habitat enough, they might just work together to overthrow the jar owners and build a happy society where everyone was equal and free. And we can't have that. Gotta keep shakin' that jar.”

“But I do know which is the least popular. The truth.”

“And yet, sometimes facts are no more than pitiful consequences, because guilt does not reside in our acts but in the intentions that give rise to our act. Everything turns on our intentions.”

“Antonin Artaud wrote on one of his drawings, "Never real and always true," and that is how depression feels. You know that it is not real, that you are someone else, and yet you know that it is absolutely true.”