QuoteProject
Falsehood is never in words; it is in things.
Italo Calvino
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Truth is found in reality, not just in our words or descriptions.

Italo Calvino's quote emphasizes that falsehood is not merely a matter of language but is rooted in the essence of reality itself. Words can deceive, but the true nature of things reveals whether they are genuine or false, highlighting the importance of understanding reality beyond mere verbal expressions.

Themes

TruthFalsehoodRealityWordsPerception

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be used in a philosophical discussion about the nature of truth.

More from Italo Calvino

The novels that attract me most are those that create an illusion of transparency around a knot of human relationships as obscure, cruel, and perverse as possible.
Italo CalvinoRead
Your first book is the only one that matters. Perhaps a writer should write only that one. That is the one moment when you make the big leap; the opportunity to express yourself is offered that once, and you untie the knot within you then or never again.
Italo CalvinoRead
...and every Wednesday the perfumed young lady slips me a hundred-crown note to leave her alone with the convict. And by Thursday the hundred crowns are already gone in so much beer. And when the visiting hour is over, the young lady comes out with the stink of jail in her elegant clothes; and the prisoner goes back to his cell with the lady's perfume in his jailbird's suit. And I'm left with the smell of beer. Life is nothing but trading smells.
Italo CalvinoRead
Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do.
Italo CalvinoRead
The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.
Italo CalvinoRead
Fantasy is like jam. . . . You have to spread it on a solid piece of bread. If not, it remains a shapeless thing . . . out of which you can’t make anything.
Italo CalvinoRead

Similar quotes

Is a person's public and private opinion the same? It is thought there have been instances.
Mark TwainRead
The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who, by profession or culture, are identified as ‘Christians’ will become disciples – students, apprentices, practitioners – of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of the Heavens into every corner of human existence.
Dallas WillardRead
One individual may die for an idea, but that idea will, after his death, incarnate itself in a thousand lives.
Subhas Chandra BoseRead
We can at least try to understand our own motives, passions, and prejudices, so as to be conscious of what we are doing when we apeal to those of others. This is very difficult, because our own prejudice and emotional bias always seems to us so rational.
T. S. EliotRead
Our destiny is frequently met in the very paths we take to avoid it.
Jean De La FontaineRead
I’m losing my taste for everything, including even my taste for finding everything tasteless.
Fernando PessoaRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.