There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist.
There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth.[По существующей теории лицемерия, человек не свободен изменить свою жизнь. Человек не свободен в своих поступках, но он свободен в признании или непризнании известной уже ему истины.]
There is nothing as boring as the truth.
There is no other way of guarding one’s self against flattery than by letting men understand that they will not offend you by speaking the truth.[Perchè non ci è altro modo a guardarsi dalle adulazioni, se non che gli uomini intendino che non ti offendono a dirti il vero.]
There is a way of meeting error while on the road of truth.[Il y a une manière de rencontrer l’erreur en allant à la vérité.]
There are very few lovers of truth, for truth’s sake, even amongst those who persuade themselves that they are so.
There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.
There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.
There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.[Es gibt nur zweierlei: Wahrheit und Lüge. Wahrheit ist unteilbar, kann sich also selbst nicht erkennen; wer sie erkennen will, muß Lüge sein.]
There are many kinds of eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes – therefore there must be many kinds of “truths,” and consequently there can be no truth.[Es gibt vielerlei Augen. Auch die Sphinx hat Augen -: und folglich gibt es vielerlei “Wahrheite”, und folglich gibt es keine Wahrheit.]
The world always says the same thing. And in that patient truth which proceeds from star to star is established a freedom that releases us from ourselves and from others, as in that other patient truth which proceeds from death to death.[Le monde ne dit jamais qu’une seule chose. Et dans cette vérité patiente qui va de l’étoile à l’étoile, se fonde une hberté qui nous délie de nous-mêmes et des autres, comme dans cette autre vérité patiente qui va de la mort à la mort.]
The very fact that religions are not content to stand on their own feet, but insist on crippling or warping the flexible minds of children in their favour, forms a sufficient proof that there is no truth in them. If there were any truth in religion, it would be even more acceptable to a mature mind than to an infant mind—yet no mature mind ever accepts religion unless it has been crippled in infancy.
