James Russell Lowell Truth Quotations

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.

The greatest homage we can pay to truth, is to use it.

Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed.

Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide, In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight, And the choice goes by forever, ’twixt that darkness and that light.

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,- Yet that scaffold sways the Future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

Who speaks the truth stabs falsehood to the heart.

Get but the truth once uttered, and 'tis like A star new-born that drops into its place And which, once circling in its placid round, Not all the tumult of the earth can shake.

Truth only needs to be for once spoken out; and there's such music in her, such strange rhythm, as makes men's memories her joyous slaves.

Truth always has a bewitching savor of newness in it, and novelty at the first taste recalls that original sweetness to the tongue; but alas for him who would make the one a substitute for the other.

For men in earnest have no time to waste In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth.