Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult.”
- Source
- Adam Bede
- Date
- 1859
- Local voice
- Narrator voice · Narrator
Meaning of “Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult.”
The narrator warns that invention and distortion can come more easily than an accurate rendering of reality, especially when a writer prefers a pleasing picture.
Where does it come from?
Adam Bede, Book Second, Chapter XVII, “In Which the Story Pauses a Little,” Project Gutenberg #507. “Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult” appears in Eliot’s narrator-level defence of realistic representation and the difficulty of saying the exact truth about people and feelings. It is literary-aesthetic argument inside the novel, not an empirical psychology result.
Why the local voice matters
Narrator-level discussion of realism and truthful storytelling in Adam Bede.
