Hermann Hesse on truth and lies

Oh, love isn’t there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.

Love does not entreat; or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.

If I know what love is, it is because of you.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.

John Keats1795–1821Ode on a Grecian Urn, Stanza 5. The final lines of this poem have been rendered in various ways in different editions, some placing the entire last two lines within quotation marks, others only the statement “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” …In context

• Beauty

This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

William Shakespeare1564–1616Hamlet (1600–1), Act I, scene iii.In context

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

Winston Churchill1874–1965