Sometimes, surely, truth is closer to imagination or to intelligence, to love than to fact? To be accurate is not to be right.
Interpretation
Truth can be more aligned with ideas and feelings than with cold facts.
In this quote, Shirley Hazzard suggests that the essence of truth may sometimes reside more in the realms of imagination, intelligence, and love rather than strictly adhering to factual accuracy. She emphasizes that being precise or factual does not necessarily equate to being correct, highlighting the complexities and nuances of understanding truth beyond mere verification.
In practice
In a discussion about the nature of truth and reality, this quote can highlight the importance of perspective.
One would always want to think of oneself as being on the side of love, ready to recognize it and wish it well -but, when confronted with it in others, one so often resented it, questioned its true nature, secretly dismissed the particular instance as folly or promiscuity. Was it merely jealousy, or a reluctance to admit so noble and enviable a sentiment in anyone but oneself?
The tragedy is not that love doesn't last. The tragedy is the love that lasts.
Give us, O God, the vision which can see Your love in the world in spite of human failure. Give us the faith to trust Your goodness in spite of our ignorance and weakness. Give us the knowledge that we may continue to pray with understanding hearts. And show us what each one of us can do to set forward the coming of the day of universal peace.
A totalitarian power is mainly busy in keeping itself alive.
Sin contains its own judgement and punishment.
On the question of the world as a whole, science founders. For scientific knowledge the world lies in fragments, the more so the more precise our scientific knowledge becomes.
Henceforth the cosmos, once a swarm of blazing galaxies, each a swarm of stars, was composed wholly of star-corpses. These dark grains drifted through the dark void, like an infinitely tenuous smoke rising from an extinguished fire. Upon these motes, these gigantic worlds, the ultimate populations had created here and there with their artificial lighting a pale glow, invisible even from the innermost ring of lifeless planets.
Detainees were not allowed to talk to each other, but we enjoyed looking at each other. The punishment for talking was hanging the detainee by his hands with the feet barely touching the ground.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.