truth

"That man is best who sees the truth himself. Good too is he who listens to wise counsel. But who is neither wise himself nor willing to ponder wisdom is not worth a straw."

"The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently."

"Let’s start with this statistic: You are delicious. Be brave, my sweet. I know you can get lonely. I know you can crave companionship and sex and love so badly that it physically hurts. But I truly believe that the only way you can find out that there’s something better out there is to first believe there’s something better out there. What other choice is there?"

"She has been to the compound before. She remembered this hallway. She knows about the initiation process. My mother was Dauntless."

"And just when I though things were starting to get better, everything had gone wrong again."

"Boredom: the desire for desires."

"In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth."

"Could it have been anyone, or was it destiny? When I'm considering this I find it helpful to quote the wisdom of my father, who once told me, "Who knows why the fuck anything happens?"

"Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken."

"An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it."

"Some truths are truths, no matter who says them."

"Please, touch me, I pray."

"Given a choice between life and death, choose life. Given a choice between right and wrong, choose what's right. And given a choice between a terrible truth and a beautiful lie, choose the truth every time."

"Better to illuminate than merely to shine to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate."

"To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it."

"Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy."

"But I know just what it feels like to have a voice in the back of my head, like a face that I hold inside, face that awakes when I close my eyes, face that watches everytime I lie, face that laughs everytime I fall. (It watches EVERYTHING) ... But the face inside is hearing me, right beneath my skin."

"I envy people that know love. That have someone who takes them as they are."

"Do you think you wear a mask?’‘I’m wearing one right now.’ Valentino smiled softly. ‘We both are.’‘It’s a sad thought.’‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But sometimes I wonder about the alternative. Imagine if we had no secrets, no respite from the truth. What if everything was laid bare the moment we introduced ourselves?"

"Whatever demon invented stiletto-heeled boots should roast in hell..."