Martin Farquhar Tupper Quotes

You don't ask about what can be seen.

It is much easier to meet with error than to find truth; error is on the surface, and can be more easily met with; truth is hid in great depths, the way to seek does not appear to all the world.

Maybe a mother wasn't what she seemed to be on the surface.

The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth.

Sometimes you have to shove all the surface stuff to the side in order to see what's underneath.

Reality of things is hidden in the realm of the unseen

You know, people seldom go to the trouble of scratching the surface of things to find the inner truth.

It's always wise to seek the truth in our opponents' error, and the error in our own truth.

I learned as a really young kid, when my dad was telling me one story and my mom was telling me another that, even as a 5-year-old boy, there was no way that both of these stories are true. Something in the middle is true, and I have to figure out what it is, what the truth is, and I never did quite figure that out.

To the scientists of the Renaissance, your critic was really your ally, helping you advance upon reality. Critics in science are not like drama critics, determining flops and successes. Criticism to scientists is just another means of finding out whether they're wrong, like running another experiment to see if it confirms or refutes a theory. Along with the advocacy principle of the courtroom, It is one of the best ways human beings have evolved to get closer to the truth.

Do not allow yourself to be misled by the surfaces of things

The justification and the purpose of freedom of speech is not to indulge those who want to speak their minds. It is to prevent error and discover truth. There may be other ways of detecting error and discovering truth than that of free discussion, but so far we have not found them.

I still can't believe it . . . him comin' here everyday, nobody realizin'. Still, that's life: lotta stuff happens under the waterline.

It is always about discovering what, hidden, does not lie on the paper.

That an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.

An item that looks perfectly normal on the surface might only be disguised.

We all have that possibility, that potential and that promise of seeing beyond the seeming.

If you want to assert a truth, first make sure it's not just an opinion that you desperately want to be true.

Perhaps there's another, much larger story behind the printed one, a story that changes just as our own world does. And the letters on the page tell us only as much as we'd see peering through a keyhole. Perhaps the story in the book is just the lid on a pan: It always stays the same, but underneath there's a whole world that goes on - developing and changing like our own world.

The less time you spend with Truth, the easier it is to believe lies.

It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it.

On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth.

We live merely on the crust or rind of things.

science progresses by trial and error, and when it is forbidden to admit error there can be no progress.

Do not imagine that I would disregard that thing that lies beneath the mask... but be sure that when the outside is rightly seen, the thing that lies under the surface will be found upon your canvas.