Untruth

“ Yea, we "go astray in the greatness of our folly," Prov. v. 22. We are "all gone astray," Isa. liii. 6. Psal. cxix. 67-176; so far are we from any knowledge of, or acquaintance with truth, or with the way of truth.
Secondly. It supposeth that we cannot turn into the right way. A spirit of error and untruth leadeth us continually wrong; like the sheep we wander still, and we weary ourselves in our wandering; and so spend all our labour and pains in vain. Being under the power of untruth and error, we cannot walk one step right. ”

“ The Untruth, the Error is loudly exploded, that the workers may not be too many; here and there the real truth will be exploded to let a few bold and stiff-necked errors be on show for a time; there is never a lack of “moral idiosyncrasies,”—formerly called rascalities. ”

“ For untruth being unacceptable to the mind of man, there is no other defence left for absurdity but obscurity. ”

“ Now, of these four modes of misleading others by the tongue, when there is a justa causa (supposing there can be such) ,— (1) a material lie, that is, an untruth which is not a lie, (2) an equivocation, (3) an evasion, and (4) silence,—First, I have no difficulty whatever in recognizing as allowable the method of silence.
Secondly, But, if I allow of silence, why not of the method of material lying, since half of a truth is often a lie? And, again, if all killing be not murder, nor all taking from another stealing, why must all untruths be lies? ”

“ And yet, we fear that this pernicious practice is more common than is generally supposed. Our opinion is that nineteen persons out of every twenty who will tell an untruth will swear to it as a truth—that is to say, looking at the matter from the moral standpoint alone. ”

“ If we were all to take account each night of the untruths we had told in the course of the day, from an exaggerated description designed to make a story more amusing, down to the frequent case of receiving credit for an original remark, which we knew was not our own, I imagine few persons would find themselves altogether clear of having done violence to the pure spirit of truth. ”

“ Against our character.—If our character rebels against the trutlı which we have to say,—as happens very often,— we behave in a way as though we clumsily uttered an untruth, and thus we arouse suspicion. ”

“ That by the lie is meant the intentional deliverance of a conscious untruth for the purpose of deception is as familiar as the variety of opinion concerning the permissibility of so-called necessary lies, of the pious, of the pedagogic, and the conventional. ”

“ Can we lay down any useful rules in the matter, indicating what types of cases require untruthfulness? What exceptions are allowable to the duty of truthfulness? Love undoubtedly sometimes requires, and oftener still excuses, a lie. ”

“ Also, do you think it is right to tell untruths to very little children, as many persons do, or to people who are sick? Also, whether it would be right to tell a falsehood to an insane man in order to manage him? ”

“ Say this as silvery as tongue can troll-- The anger of the man may be endured, The shrug, the disappointed eyes of him Are not so bad to bear--but here's the plague, That all this trouble comes of telling truth, Which truth, by when it reaches him, looks false, Seems to be just the thing it would supplant, Nor recognizable by whom it left; While falsehood would have done the work of truth. But Art,--wherein man nowise speaks to men, Only to mankind,--Art may tell a truth Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought, Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word. ”

“ As long as you believe a lie you are its victim and suffer from it; but once learn the truth you are free from that illusion and its power over you is gone. Now, you would not say that truth created the lie, permitted it, or was in any way responsible for it, or your suffering on account of it? ”

“ And, as I was just now remarking, this ignorance in the soul of him who is deceived may be called the true lie; for the lie in words is only a kind of imitation and shadowy image of a previous affection of the soul, not pure unadulterated falsehood. ”

“ Will he come to the consideration of the question impartially, indifferently, and without any wrong bias, or give the painful and revolting truth the same cordial welcome as the long-cherished and favourite prejudice? To say that the truth or falsehood of a proposition is the only circumstance that gains it admittance into the mind, independently of the pleasure or pain it affords us, is itself an assertion made in pure caprice or desperation. ”

“ I do not mean to diminish the blame of the injurious and malicious sin, of the selfish and deliberate falsity; yet it seems to me, that the shortest way to check the darker forms of deceit is to set watch more scrupulous against those which have mingled, unregarded and unchastised, with the current of our life. Do not let us lie at all. Do not think of one falsity as harmless, and another as slight, and another as unintended. ”

“ When a simple, honest hearted man, sent of God with the truth to the world, shall question the most learned upholders of false theories, the gilding falls off, and falsehood, in all its deformity, stands naked and exposed. ”

“ Thou'lt find That from the senses first hath been create Concept of truth, nor can the senses be Rebutted. For criterion must be found Worthy of greater trust, which shall defeat Through own authority the false by true; What, then, than these our senses must there be Worthy a greater trust? Shall reason, sprung From some false sense, prevail to contradict Those senses, sprung as reason wholly is From out the senses?—For lest these be true, All reason also then is falsified. Or shall the ears have power to blame the eyes, Or yet the touch the ears? ”

“ As for the separation of truth from falsehood, and the resemblance which truth has with falsehood, and for the distinction between what is consistent and what is absurd, on both sides, a balance ought to be formed in which every thing may be weighed. ”

“ There is no lie that is not contrary to truth. For as light and darkness, piety and impiety, justice and injustice, sin and righteousness, health and sickness, life and death, so are truth and a lie contrary the one to the other. ”

“ Now, if any man should come, and without giving the least manner of reason for it (for there is no reason to be given against such assertions) , declare his disbelief of all these authentic, though strange accounts, can he with reason imagine that his incredulity shall pass for a token of wisdom? Shall his obstinacy confute the learned? Shall his want of faith be thought justly to give the lie to so many persons of the highest honour and quality, and of the most undoubted integrity? ”

“ If only man would learn to form judgments, and not to indulge in rash and arbitrary thoughts, and not to make reply to questions that are propounded merely to remain forever unanswered! If only he would learn that every thought is both a lie and a truth!—a lie from the one-sidedness and inability of man to recognize all truth ”

“ To this they all agreed, and search was made; and soon they found Falsehood, whom they instantly tore to pieces, coiled up her bowels into knots, burnt her, and dispersed her ashes to the winds. But even her dust was so malignant that it was carried all over the world; and that is the reason that wherever men exist there Falsehood must be. ”

“ But the question of truth and error is of a less intricate nature. Truth is candid, open and fearless; error is hidden, intolerant and cowardly. The one challenges investigation; the other denounces it; the one opens its breast to the scrutinizing gaze of the world ”

“ For truth or falsehood lying always in some affirmation or negation, mental or verbal, our ideas are not capable, any of them, of being false, till the mind passes some judgment on them; that is, affirms or denies something of them. ”

“ I say that no person is willing in his own mind to receive or to assert a falsehood, to be ignorant, to be in error, to possess that which is not true. This is truly to be called falsehood, this ignorance and error in the mind itself. What is usually called falsehood, or deceit in words, is but a voluntary imitation of what the mind itself suffers in the involuntary possession of that falsehood, an image of later birth, and scarcely, in a strict and complete sense, deserving the name of falsehood.—Lib. ”

“ By the positive denial of a lie we annul the lie; by the positive affirmation of truth we establish truth, or rather our consciousness of truth is established; thus, as we deny error or affirm truth, are we carried forward and upward. These are the 'wonderful words of life' that clothe us with righteousness. ”

“ If we suspect the former of falsehood in any one tittle, we reject it altogether. Our tears refuse to flow at a suspected imposition. But the teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth. ”

“ The lie told from supposed necessity or to serve another is always, even in the most favorable circumstances, a sign either of a wisdom which is lacking in love and truth, or of a love which is lacking in wisdom. ”

“ Must not our own reason finally determine for ourselves whether or not either be true? And if we are in no sense interested in the truth or falsity of those accounts why need we trouble ourselves about them? ”

“ Pure spirit is pure falsehood.... As long as the priest, the professional denier, calumniator and poisoner of life, is considered as the highest kind of man, there can be no answer to the question, what is truth? Truth has already been turned topsy-turvy, when the conscious advocate of nonentity and of denial passes as the representative of “truth.” ”

“ Even if we take for granted that it is both impossible and inadvisable to cure the masses of their delusions, does this justify deceit, does this make it a crime to speak the truth, or an evil that truth should be told? ”

“ But the fetish of factualized truth, fossilized truth, the iron band of so-called unchanging truth, holds one blindly in a closed circle of cold fact. One can be technically right as to fact and everlastingly wrong in the truth. ”

“ his answer was, "Just this, that when they speak the truth they are not believed." ”

“ Far from being a convert to such prudential reasons, I must for ever profess openly, that I think them unworthy of me. To represent as truth a thing I know to be a falsehood, not to avow a truth which I know I ought to declare ”

“ If you want to know what an absolute truth is, and what an absolute falsity, do anything whatever, and then try to undo your deed. You will find that the opinion which should counsel you to regard it as capable of being undone gives you simply and absolutely false coaching as to any game of life whatever. Every effort to undo your deed is a blunder. Every opinion that you can undo is a trivial and absolutely false absurdity. Just such triviality and absurdity belong to the thesis that absolute truth is an unpractical and inaccessible abstraction. ”

“ A true and a false tiding jostled in their way out, and after some jangling for precedency, agreed to fly together. Since which time, no lie is without some truth, and no truth without some falsehood. ”

“ Whether a lie is best contradicted by truth, or by another lie? The author says, that, considering the large extent of the cylindrical surface of the soul, and the great propensity to believe lies in the generality of mankind of late years, he thinks the properest contradiction to a lie, is another lie. ”

“ Every man who recognizes the binding force of intuitions of a primal law of truthfulness, and who gives weight to à priori arguments for the unchanging opposition of truth and falsehood, either admits, in his discussion of this question, that a lie is never justifiable, or he is obviously illogical and inconsistent in his processes of reasoning, and in his conclusions. ”

“ Men lie, women lie, children lie. Have you watched a band of girls playing at the imitation of school? How cunningly the teacher feigns anger, the pupils naughtiness and sad repentance. Have you observed the plausibility in the inventions of toddling babes to escape imminent chastisement? Falsehood is a normal faculty and equipped with its protective armor, plausibility. ”

“ There are some people so naïve in their interpretation of expressed judgments as to suppose that what is told them must be either truth or falsehood, not being able to distinguish a fallacy from a lie. ”

“ Was I to act a lie in order to teach the truth? ”

“ That would be true enough if every traveller were honest, if he only said what he saw and believed, and if truth were not tinged with false colours from his own eyes. What must it be when we have to disentangle the truth from the web of lies and ill-faith? ”

“ Moreover, if the question may be raised: what constitutes justice? may one not equally well ask: what constitutes veracity or its opposite? Where does the silence of indifference shade into purposed concealment, and the latter into what is unequivocally deception? At what point does deception blossom out into the unmistakable lie? One may take advantage of an accidental misunderstanding of what one has said ”

“ A man may say nothing but what is true, and yet intentionally give a wrong impression; "truth in spirit, not truth to the letter, is the true veracity." "A lie may be told by a truth, or a truth conveyed by a lie." "A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator." ”

“ Truth and falsehood as commonly understood belong to those sharply defined ideas which claim a completely fixed nature of their own, one standing in solid isolation on this side, the other on that, without any community between them. ”

“ He places all our judgments of things in our senses; and if they are once led to approve of anything false as if it were true, then he thinks that there is an end to all our power of distinguishing between truth and falsehood. ”

“ Outwardly it's the truth, but inwardly a lie!” ”