The search for truth is more precious than its possession.
Interpretation
The pursuit of truth is more valuable than actually obtaining it.
In this quote, Lessing emphasizes the importance of the journey toward understanding and discovering truth. He suggests that the ongoing quest for knowledge and truth enriches our lives and shapes our character, making it more significant than simply having the truth in hand, which may lead to complacency or a lack of growth.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a philosophical discussion about the nature of truth.
Why should not every individual man have existed more than once upon this world? Why should I not come back as often as I am capable of acquiring fresh knowledge? Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest? Because the human understanding, before the sophistries of the schools had dissipated and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once?
A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes
Absolute truth belongs to Thee alone.
Pleasures, riches, honor and joy are sure to have care, disgrace, adversity and affliction in their train. There is no pleasure without pain, no joy without sorrow. O the folly of expecting lasting felicity in a vale of tears, or a paradise in a ruined world.
Would that we could at once paint with the eyes! In the long way from the eye through the arm to the pencil, how much is lost!
It is not the truth that a man possesses, or believes that he possesses, but the earnest effort which he puts forward to reach the truth, which constitutes the worth of a man
The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this "nerdification," to put it bluntly - is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally.
Complaining begets more complaints. Anger begets more anger. And optimism begets more optimism.
Do not be jealous of others' good qualities, but out of admiration adopt them yourself.
Women are real. Our reality covers the whole human megillah, from feeble to fierce, from bad to good, from endangered to dangerous. We don't just deserve power, we have it. And power in this and every other society is not just the capacity to benefit those around us.
The rule of the universe is that others can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, and one can paddle every canoe except one's own.
If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams - the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.
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