Authenticity

“ Here is a man whose life-long study and researches make him preeminently qualified to judge of one book’s authenticity and credibility. This book he rejects. The books he accepts are those concerning which he is not specially qualified to judge. ”

“ To attain the highest possible level of authenticity with the self requires later recollection of ongoing perceptions of the other and reciprocal responses, selected communications, and actions by the self. ”

“ They are still faintly scented, doubtless, with something of that authenticity, and a living work of art, however limited, pretends always, as for part of its grace, to some good faith of community, however indirect, with its period and place. ”

“ It will be a very tedious and irksome task to copy the various traditions bearing on the above subjects and to discuss their authenticity, and criticise their genuineness, on the principles of the technicalities peculiar to the Science of Traditions, as well as on the basis of scientific and rational criticism. ”

“ Those who read seriously, and with unbiased mind, will need no external guarantees of authenticity, however; for the style is of that spontaneous quality which no imitation could attain, and which attempted improvement could only mar. ”

“ One would imagine that all originality was felony, and that to catch the same key-note of voice, to move with the exact motion, and tread in the precise footprints in which every one else speaks, moves, walks, was the only evidence of honesty. ”

“ Our human speech is naught, Our human testimony false, our fame And human estimation words and wind. Why take the artistic way to prove so much? Because, it is the glory and good of Art, That Art remains the one way possible Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine, at least. ”

“ This is emphatically a work of our age. Its life is its TRUTH. Its breath its FACT. It is history in the guise of fiction, history whose accuracy is attested by public records and State documents. Each character is a living reality. ”

“ The little stone of truth, rolling through the many ages of the world, has gathered and grown grey with the thick mosses of romance and superstition. But tradition must always have that little stone of truth as its kernel; and perhaps he who rejects all, is likelier to be wrong than even foolish folk like myself who love to believe all, and who tread the new paths, thinking ever of the ancient stories. ”

“ Allegories I need not mention, because they are not so much any Ornament of Style, as an artful Way of recommending Truth to the World in a borrowed Shape, and a Dress more agreeable to the Fancy, than naked Truth herself can be. Truth is ever most beautiful and evident in her Native Dress; And the Arts, that are used to convey her to our Minds, are no Argument that she is deficient, but so many Testimonies of the Corruption of our Nature, when Truth, of all Things the plainest and sincerest, is forced to gain Admittance to us in Disguise, and court us in Masquerade. ”

“ I am surrounded by images, [Pg 96] my present state of being is a shadow, but I crave reality. The symbol is fair, but Truth is fairer. To that verity all types must yield, how beautiful soever they be, or meet to express their burden. ”

“ Besides the merits of this Piece for its curiosity, another point of no less esteem, is the truth and sincerity wherewith everything seemeth to be penned. No greater ornament or dignity can be added unto History, either humane or natural, than truth. ”

“ For if a fine spun story, consisting merely of fictions told of things done among the spirits below, tends much to the promoting of piety and justice, how much more then may we conclude that history, the most noble assertrix of truth, and very metropolis (as it were) of all philosophy, may adorn the manners of men which principles of justice and honesty? ”

“ In the name of truth and justice we ask, "Why should the writing of history be made satisfactory, pleasant, to those who aid in the making of it?" We want the truth about the near, as well as the far, past. Let us do unto our descendants as we would that our ancestors had done by us, and tell them the truth about ourselves. ”

“ Constantly to distinguish the great through the true, and the true through the great—such, is, therefore, according to the author of this drama, the proper end of the poet on the stage,—always, be it said, upholding such other ideas as he may have developed elsewhere touching these matters. And those two words, great and true, contain everything. Truth contains morality, the great contains the beautiful. ”

“ Truth! there can be no merit, no craft at all, without that. And further, all beauty is in the long run only fineness of truth, or what we call expression, the finer accommodation of speech to that vision within. ”

“ The admonition of all of which possibly is—I confess I but grope for it—that when there has been in such cases a certain other happy combination, an original sincerity of intention, an original propriety of site, and above all an original high value of name and fame, something in this line really supreme, publicity, familiarity, immediacy, as I have called them, carried far enough, may stalk in and out of the shrine with their hands in their pockets and their hats on their heads, and yet not dispel the Presence. ”

“ You will hear, that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. 'What is this Truth you seek? what is this Beauty?' men will ask, with derision. If, nevertheless, God have called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true. ”

“ The 'truth embodied in a tale' has more emotional power than the unembodied truth, and the visual realisation of the central figure of the tale more power than the tale itself. The sound-image of a sacred name at which 'every knee shall bow,' or even of one which may be formed in the mind but may not be uttered by the lips, has more power at the moment of intensest feeling than the realisation of its meaning. ”

“ Yet even they give us truth, not truth in the sense of fact, but in the sense of a world which arouses the same elementary emotions, intensified though they be through amazement, as are aroused by fact. ”

“ If so, where will the truth be found? Think, Brothers of the Craft, think deeply; for if truth exists, you have it, and if truth be within the reach of living creature, what other goal is worth the struggle? ”

“ They track every subtle declension of lofty and bright-souled truth into the shadowy circumference of hostile error; and thus, establishing their minds on the deepest foundations of history, they continually build up superstructures of all that is precious in literature or elegant in art. ”

“ It is this notion that every nature must express its own truth which underlies a poem like “Fifine at the Fair.” Through expressing the truth of itself, and so grasping at half truths, even at the false, it finally reaches a higher truth. ”

“ He longs not merely to know in what undifferentiated oneness his roots are fixed, but to discover it beautiful. Not even yet is it sufficient to have a premonition of the truth; the truth must wear a familiar colour. ”

“ In the fine art of literature, the identity sought between words and meaning is an identity between words and the thing they represent in its private atmosphere, with its particular meaning to the particular mind that thinks it. ”

“ This identity between truth and goodness on the one hand and beauty on the other cannot be regarded as an absolute identity. The idea of truth continues to represent one facet of the universe, the idea of goodness another, and the idea of beauty another or a third. ”

“ But besides real, there is also apparent truth, or opinion, or prejudice. With regard to real truth, when it is known, the taste which conforms to it is, and must be, uniform. With regard to the second sort of truth, which may be called truth upon sufferance, or truth by courtesy, it is not fixed, but variable. However, whilst these opinions and prejudices on which it is founded continue, they operate as truth; and the art, whose office it is to please the mind, as well as instruct it, must direct itself according to opinion, or it will not attain its end. ”

“ But how do we human beings get at what we call natural truth? By observation—so men say—and by experience. But by whose experience? By the united, by the synthesized, by the revised, corrected, rationally criticized, above all by the common, experience of many individuals. ”

“ Here we find ourselves suddenly not in a critical speculation but in a holy place, and should go very warily and reverently. We stand before the secret of the world, there where Being passes into Appearance and Unity into Variety. ”

“ By Tradition I mean the entire circle of thought and practice, custom as well as belief, ceremonies, tales, music, songs, dances and other amusements, the philosophy and the superstitions and the institutions, delivered by word of mouth and by example from generation to generation through unremembered ages: in a word, the sum total of the psychological phenomena of uncivilized man. Every people has its own body of Tradition, its own Folk-lore, which comprises a slowly diminishing part, or the whole, of its mental furniture, according as the art of writing is, or is not, known. ”

“ To drop the figure, the innumerable items of acquired knowledge are brought into relations with one another, compared, combined, and organized into conceptions of varying degrees of generality. Truth is the recognition of identity under varying aspects. The mind devotes itself to the discovery of truth amidst all the manifold elements of its stored materials. ”

“ Among these teachings was the independent investigation of reality so that the world of humanity may be saved from the darkness of imitation and attain to the truth; may tear off and cast away this ragged and outgrown garment of a thousand years ago and may put on the robe woven in the utmost purity and holiness in the loom of reality. ”

“ Such is the right form, such the normal process, of what may be called intellectual and artistic righteousness. A soul of perfect veracity lies at the bottom of the thing, and is the source and the life of all that is good and beautiful in it. ”

“ There is nothing which all mankind venerate and admire so much as simple truth, exempt from artifice, duplicity, and design. It exhibits at once a strength of character and integrity of purpose in which all are willing to confide. ”

“ The modest assurance, the happy boldness, the extemporaneous logic, all that 'led but to the grave,' exist, like the images of departed actors, only in the recollection of those who witnessed them, till memory shall fade into tradition, and tradition dwindle down to a name. ”

“ It promised originality, which to her seemed a condition of truth itself. She has said in this very paper : "No man can be absolutely true to him- self, eschewing cant, compromise, servile imitation, and complaisance, without becoming original." ”

“ There thus emerges a distinction of vast importance, that of truth and falsehood, of reality and unreality, or between representation and reality. There arise two worlds, the world of ideas, and the world of reality which it is supposed to represent, and, in many cases, to represent badly. ”

“ In all I have written I have sought carefully to work into my dialogue each word and sentence recorded of the individual, every available trait or peculiarity of character to be found in contemporary memoirs, every tradition that has come down to us.
To be true to life has been my object. ”

“ The truth to be pictured may be the truth of people, places, and actions—external things; it may be the truth of character and of inner life—the things that are unseen, which we could never see at all except by the aid of real things or pictures of real things ”

“ To great powers of argument and illustration, and delightful transparency of diction and style, he adds a higher quality still—and a very rare quality it is—an evident and intense honesty of purpose, an absorbing desire to arrive at the exact truth, and to state it with perfect fairness and with the just limitations. ”

“ For when the question no longer involves a purely material or simply subjective verity, but that which is more exalted and heavenly, then beauty (that, namely, about which art is conversant, and which, far surpassing all that is merely human, pretends and really ought to be divine and supernatural) forms the other and symbolical aspect of one and the same eternal truth. ”

“ The truth of the document, the precision of detail, the condensed, nervous language of realism must be kept, but it must be clarified with soul, and mystery must no longer be explained by maladies of the senses. ”

“ To which we answer that truth, to deserve the name, must authenticate its own truth: which authentication, here within the sphere of logic, is given, when the notion demonstrates itself to be what is mediated by and with itself, and thus at the same time to be truly immediate. ”

“ So with man. I believe in the strength and truth of tradition. A learned man said to me a few weeks ago: "When I have to choose between the evidence of tradition and the evidence of a document, I always believe the evidence of tradition. ”