Mark Helprin Quotes

Don't lies eventually lead to the truth? And don't all my stories, true or false, tend toward the same conclusion? Don't they all have the same meaning? So what does it matter whether they are true or false if, in both cases, they are significant of what I have been and what I am? Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

I am entering into the truth, into nature.

The truth doesn't hurt. Whatever it is, it doesn't hurt. It's better to know the truth.

Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes; this is partly because it gets unobstructed hold of the hearer’s mind without his being distracted by secondary thoughts, and partly because he feels that here he is not being corrupted or deceived by the arts of rhetoric, but that the whole effect is got from the thing itself.

If a person is to get the meaning of life he must learn to like the facts about himself -- ugly as they may seem to his sentimental vanity -- before he can learn the truth behind the facts. And the truth is never ugly.

The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere.

Truth is the foundation and the reason of the perfection of beauty, for of whatever stature a thing may be, it cannot be beautiful-and perfect, unless it be truly what it should be, and possess truly all that it should have.

What is the Absolute? Something that appears to us in fleeting experiences--say, through the gentle smile of a beautiful woman, or even through the warm caring smile of a person who may otherwise seem ugly and rude. In such miraculous but extremely fragile moments, another dimension transpires through our reality. As such, the Absolute is easily corroded;it slips all too easily through our fingers and must be handled as carefully as a butterfly

All I want is the truth, just give me some truth

Year by year I learn more about myself, and I think that confidence and honesty and just really being true to yourself is probably the most beautiful thing that you can do for yourself and the people around you.

Truth is an all-freeing mechanism.

It is the opposite of ignorance—it is intellectual honesty: to be willing to accept reality and to call things what they are even when it is hard.

I feel you see every crack and bruise with black and white [pictiures] and color distracts usually from the honesty.

Truth possesses within herself a penetrating force, unknown alike to error and falsehood. I say 'truth' and you understand my meaning. For the beautiful words truth and justice need not to be defined in order to be understood in their true sense.

The truth brings the past into the present and prepares us for the future. That's what truth does

Telling the truth is a beautiful act even if the truth itself is ugly.

Being truthful is the new beautiful

Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes.

Love is not blind. Love sees what is most true

The greatest of characters, no doubt, would be he, who, free of all trifling accidental helps, could see objects through one grand immutable medium, always at hand, and proof against illusion and time, reflecting every object in its true shape and colour through all the fluctuation of things.

I feel God when I find myself in a situation which spontaneously opens me to the larger reality that exists all around.

To me dreams are part of nature, which harbors no intention to deceive but expresses something as best it can.

That which is really beautiful has no need of anything; not more than law, not more than truth, not more than benevolence or modesty.

When you blow away the foam, you get down to the real stuff.

Nothing is true, but that which is simple.