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.
An injurious truth has no merit over an injurious lie. Neither should ever be uttered. The man who speaks an injurious truth, lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, should reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving.
Oh, how great is the power of truth! which of its own power can easily defend itself against all the ingenuity and cunning and wisdom of men, and against the treacherous plots of all the world.
. . . the mind is desperate to fix the river {of events} in place: Possessed by ideas of the past, preoccupied with images of the future, it overlooks the plain truth of the moment.
For us, with the rule of right and wrong given us by Christ, there is nothing for which we have no standard. And there is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.
Perhaps there is no other knowing than the mere competence of the act. If at the heart of one's being, there is no self to which one ought to be true, then sincerity is simply nerve; it lies in the unabashed vigor of the pretense. But pretense is only pretense when it is assumed that the act is not true to the agent. Find the agent.