Remy de Gourmont Quotes

I couldn't tell the truth if my life depended on it.

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it.

To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It's irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.

"Thou shalt not bear false witness" Exodus 20:16. When we speak of morality, we imply that a man is true to his word-true to his signature on a contract. The violations of God's laws are evidence that lying and misrepresentation are not absent from us.

A lie keeps growing and growing until it's as plain as the nose on your face.

Nicky looked down at me with a knowledge on his face that he was holding the monster in his arms. I'd have comforted him, but it would have been all lies.

Reality lies far beyond space and time, and I need to know why.

I don't want to believe. I want to know.

Science is the most reliable guide in life.

My own view is simply that there are some very basic rules; very simple rules that apply to all writing in a way, which is: don't lie; if you're wrong, correct; do not misrepresent; and try and keep oneself intellectually honest - which means, as a writer, the very difficult task in public of admitting you were wrong.

The Truth lies not in the Yes and not in the No, but in the knowledge and the beginning from which the Yes and the No arise.

I write about what I know, what I live, what I observe.

Knowledge can only be limited. Ignorance is boundless. In recognizing our ignorance, we will touch that which is boundless.

There is only one calamity: ignorance. And there is only one solution: enlightenment.

He who does not lie does not know what truth is.

Lies are usually attempts to make everything simpler - for the liar - than it really is, or ought to be.

falsehood is not more unjustifiable than unsafe.

Please don't lie to me,unless,you're sure I'll never find out the truth.

Life is filled with secrets. You can't learn them all at once.

As I've gotten older and learned more, I realise that Hollywood has not told the truth.

Titles are marks of honest men, and wise; The fool or knave that wears a title lies.

Knowing can be a curse on a person's life. I'd traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn't know which one was heavier.

Laws just or unjust may govern men's actions. Tyrannies may restrain or regulate their words. The machinery of propaganda may pack their minds with falsehood and deny them truth for many generations of time. But the soul of man thus held in trance or frozen in a long night can be awakened by a spark coming from God knows where and in a moment the whole structure of lies and oppression is on trial for its life.

But there’s a reason we recognize Hamlet as a masterpiece: it’s that Shakespeare told us the truth, and people so rarely tell us the truth in this rise and fall here [indicates blackboard]. The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.