truth

Opinion is a denial of truth. For if each man is entitled to his own opinion then there can be nothing which is false, consequently there can be nothing which is true

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.

There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination.  Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.

TRUTH, n. An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance. Discovery of truth is the sole purpose of philosophy, which is the most ancient occupation of the human mind and has a fair prospect of existing . . . to the end of time.

STORY, n. A narrative, commonly untrue. The truth of the stories here following has, however, not been successfully impeached.

REVIEW, v.t. To set your wisdom (holding not a doubt of it./ Although in truth there's neither bone nor skin to it)/ At work upon a book, and so read out of it/ The qualities that you have first read into it.

REPORTER, n. A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.

RACK, n. An argumentative implement formerly much used in persuading devotees of a false faith to embrace the living truth. As a call to the unconverted the rack never had any particular efficacy, and is now held in light popular esteem.

PLATITUDE, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. A desiccated epigram.

OBSTINATE, adj. Inaccessible to the truth as it is manifest in the splendor and stress of our advocacy.