Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That's the truth!
Give heed to the cause of the holy Roman Church, mother of all churches and teacher of the faith, whom you by the order of God, have consecrated by your blood. Against the Roman Church, you warned, lying teachers are rising, introducing ruinous sects, and drawing upon themselves speedy doom. Their tongues are fire, a restless evil, full of deadly poison. They have bitter zeal, contention in their hearts, and boast and lie against the truth.
The source of each accordant strain Lies deeper than the Poet's brain. First from the people's heart must spring The passions which he learns to sing; They are the wind, the harp is he, To voice their fitful melody,-- The language of their varying fate, Their pride, grief, love, ambition, hate,-- The talisman which holds inwrought The touchstone of the listener's thought; That penetrates each vain disguise, And brings his secret to his eyes.
For, the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought.
Requiescat Tread lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow. All her bright golden hair Tarnished with rust, She that was young and fair Fallen to dust. Lily-like, white as snow, She hardly knew She was a woman, so Sweetly she grew. Coffin-board, heavy stone, Lie on her breast, I vex my heart alone She is at rest. Peace, Peace, she cannot hear Lyre or sonnet, All my life’s buried here, Heap earth upon it.
Suppose whether or not someone tells me a lie depends only on whether he wants to, but he is morally indifferent, he doesn't care much about the truth or about me, and his self interest, which he worships, tells him to lie, and so it comes about that given his psychology, it is a forgone conclusion that he will lie to me. I think in this case he is still blameworthy, and that implies, among other things, that he did something he ought not do.
Up and away for life! be fleet!- The frost-king ties my fumbling feet, Sings in my ears, my hands are stones, Curdles the blood to the marble bones, Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense, And hems in life with narrowing fence. Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,- The punctual stars will vigil keep,- Embalmed by purifying cold; The winds shall sing their dead-march old, The snow is no ignoble shroud, The moon thy mourner, and the cloud.