A Quote by A. N. Wilson

Of all liars the most arrogant are biographers: those who would have us believe, having surveyed a few boxes full of letters, diaries, bank statements and photographs, that they can play at the recording angel and tell the whole truth about another human life.

A. N. Wilson

Quote Topics

About Angel Another Arrogant Bank Believe Biographers Boxes Diaries Few Full Having Human Human Life Letters Liars Life Most Most Arrogant Photographs Play Recording Statements Tell Those Truth Us Whole Whole Truth Would

Quote Author

A. N. Wilson
English - Writer
Born: October 27, 1950

Biographers search for traces, for evidence of activity, for signs of movement, for letters, for diaries, for photographs.

Claire Tomalin

I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about someone who lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself. --From the Introduction

Orson Scott Card

If an angel were to tell us about his philosophy, I believe many of his statements might well sound like '2 x 2= 13'.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

I believe in the resonance and staying power of quiet photographs. These photographs required a certain seeing, but few special techniques, and no tricks. Something though was hard. It was hard being between photographs and not knowing when or how another image would reveal itself.

William Albert Allard

The best liars are those who tell the truth most of the time.

Brandon Sanderson

Photography seduces us into thinking we can believe photographs, whereas we can't really believe that a picture can tell us any kind of truth at all.

Alison Jackson

The idea of passing one's whole life in moral idleness, and having one's hardest work and duty done by another-whether God or man-is most revolting to us, as it is most degrading to human dignity.

H. P. Blavatsky

But my motivation was more a matter of wanting to create order - to keep track of things. All those boxes full of photographs and sketches weigh you down, because they have something unfinished, incomplete, about them. So it's better to present the usable material in an orderly fashion and throw the other stuff away. That's how the Atlas came to be, and I exhibited it a few times.

Gerhard Richter

Anyone who owns a few houses, put their own cold cash in them, and has money in the bank will tell you going through a divorce can be a full-time job of trying to hang on to what you worked your whole life for.

Sonja Morgan

I think that one of the visions that is closest to reality is the cardboard city in the subway station in Tokyo, which is based very closely on a series of documentary photographs of people living like that and of the contents of the boxes. Those are quite haunting because Tokyo homeless people reiterate the whole nature of living in Tokyo in these cardboard boxes, they're only slightly smaller than Tokyo apartments, and they have almost as many consumer goods. It's a nightmare of boxes within boxes.

William Gibson

What would you think if I told you that I wasn’t an Allomancer?” Sazed asked. “I’d think that you were lying,” Vin said. “Have you known me to lie before?” “The best liars are those who tell the truth most of the time.

Brandon Sanderson

The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.

H. L. Mencken

Either [Jesus] was what he said he was or he was the world's greatest liar. It is impossible for me to believe a liar or charlatan could have had the effect on mankind that he has had for 2000 years. We could ask, would even the greatest of liars carry his lie through the crucifixion, when a simple confession would have saved him? ... Did he allow us the choice... to believe in his teaching but reject his statements about his own identity?

Ronald Reagan

Start telling the truth now and never stop. Begin by telling the truth to yourself about yourself. Then tell the truth to yourself about someone else. Then tell the truth about yourself to another. Then tell the truth about another to that other. Finally, tell the truth to everyone about everything. These are the Five Levels Of Truth Telling. This is the five-fold path to freedom.

Neale Donald Walsch

Choicelessness brings you to the whole. Choice is always of the part, necessarily so. And then one person goes from one choice to another, becomes a driftwood - from this bank to another bank, from that bank to this bank. This is how you have been moving, down the ages, for so many lives