Letitia Elizabeth Landon Quotes

The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies. The fearful thing about it is that, not knowing what truth may be, we can still recognize lies.

And took for truth the test of ridicule.

Ridicule is the best test of truth.

I know my lies are always wishes.

It's very difficult to lie to yourself about certain things. I'm not necessarily convinced about how information is gathered and I don't think the credence that's given to it is valid.

One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent forms of mendacity. Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because, owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.

Why is it people who want the truth never believe it when they hear it?

Why can you believe the lie, but not the truth?

It is difficult to say what truth is, but sometimes it is so easy to recognize a falsehood.

It is said that ridicule is the test of truth; but it is never applied except when we wish to deceive ourselves - when if we cannot exclude the light, we would fain draw the curtain before it. The sneer springs out of the wish to deny; and wretched must that state of mind be, that wishes to take refuge in doubt.

It is commonly said that ridicule is the best test of truth; for that it will not stick where it is not just. I deny it. A truth learned in a certain light, and attacked in certain words, by men of wit and humor, may, and often doth, become ridiculous, at least so far, that the truth is only remembered and repeated for the sake of the ridicule.

He tells so many lies that he convinces himself after a while that he's telling the truth. He just doesn't recognize truth or falsehood.

You have to learn to read between the lies.

Lying to other people is fine and usually funny, but lying to yourself is tacky.

Having stopped expecting truth, we rarely get it.

Just because things are obvious doesn't mean they're true.

Always scorn appearances and you always may.

As soon as it is held that any belief, no matter what, is important for some other reason than that it is true, a whole host of evils is ready to spring up.

It is a general rule that when the grain of truth cannot be found, men will swallow great helpings of falsehood.

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.

It is easier to deceive yourself, and to do so unperceived, than to deceive another.

But what if...what if you sincerely believed something was true, but you were dead wrong? What if you were so stubbornly sure that you were right, that you wouldn’t even consider the truth? Would the truth be silenced, or would it try to break through?

People would rather be deceived than have the truth cause them anxiety

Even if all parts of a problem seem to fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, one has to remember that the probable need not necessarily be the truth and the truth not always probable.

Whenever a man talks he lies, and so far as he talks to himself - that is to say, so far as he thinks, knowing that he thinks - he lies to himself. The only truth in human life is that which is physiological. Speech - this thing that they call a social product - was made for lying.