The search for truth is more precious than its possession.
Interpretation
The pursuit of truth is more valuable than actually obtaining it.
In this quote, Lessing emphasizes the importance of the journey toward understanding and discovering truth. He suggests that the ongoing quest for knowledge and truth enriches our lives and shapes our character, making it more significant than simply having the truth in hand, which may lead to complacency or a lack of growth.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a philosophical discussion about the nature of truth.
Why should not every individual man have existed more than once upon this world? Why should I not come back as often as I am capable of acquiring fresh knowledge? Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest? Because the human understanding, before the sophistries of the schools had dissipated and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once?
A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes
Absolute truth belongs to Thee alone.
Pleasures, riches, honor and joy are sure to have care, disgrace, adversity and affliction in their train. There is no pleasure without pain, no joy without sorrow. O the folly of expecting lasting felicity in a vale of tears, or a paradise in a ruined world.
Would that we could at once paint with the eyes! In the long way from the eye through the arm to the pencil, how much is lost!
It is not the truth that a man possesses, or believes that he possesses, but the earnest effort which he puts forward to reach the truth, which constitutes the worth of a man
Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.
Gratitude develops faith. The surest path out of a slump is marked by the road sign "thank you, God."
The intellectual who wants to do her work properly must today go back to the starting point: the woman whom she knows, and first of all to herself. It is at that level, and at no other, that she ought to begin to think about the world situation.
The more you are focused on time-past and future-the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.
Being smarter gives you a tailwind throughout life. People who are more intelligent earn more, live longer, get divorced less, are less likely to get addicted to alcohol and tobacco, and their children live longer.
If honest of heart and uprightness before God were lacking or if I did not patiently wait on God for instruction, or if I preferred the counsel of my fellow-men to the declarations of the Word of God, I made great mistakes.
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