A dictionary of Proverbs (Oxford Paperback Reference)

TRUTH is stranger than fiction
Similar to FACT is stranger than fiction.
□1823 BYRON Don Juan XIV. ci. Truth is always strange, Stranger than Fiction. 1863 C. READE Hard Cash II. xv. Sampson was greatly struck with the revelation: he.. said truth was stranger than fiction. 1905 G. K. CHESTERTON Club of Queer Trades 133 ‘Do you believe that truth is stranger than fiction?’ ‘Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction,’ said Basil placidly. ‘For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore congenial to it.’ 2001 Washington Post 25 June C2 There are times when truth is indeed stranger than fiction, when the teller of true tales can report things that we would dismiss as preposterous inventions should a novelist try to put them over on us. "reality and illusion
TRUTH lies at the bottom of a well
Cf. Gr. ^|,?(?''^T/!У-■' i;/-¹;'-¹.-:.¹!?. we know nothing certainly, for truth lies in
the deep (attributed to Democritus); LACTANTIUS Institutiones Divinae III. xxviii. in puteo.. veritatem iacere demersam, truth lies sunk in a well.

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  1562 J. WIGAND De Neutralibus G6V The truth lyeth yet still drowned in the depe. 1578 H. WOTTON tr. J. Iver’s Courtly Controversy 90 I shall conduct you.. vnto the Mansion where the truth so long hidden dothe inhabite, the which sage Democritus searched in the bottom of a well. a 1721 M. PRIOR Dialogues of Dead (1907) 225 You know the Antient Philosophers said Truth lay at the bottom of a Well. 1887 J. R. LOWELL Democracy 30 Truth.. is said to lie at the bottom of a well. c 1943 J. CORBETT Murder minus Motive xii. Truth.. is reputed to reside at the bottom of a well. I’ve often conned that old saw over to myself, and.. its originators must have meant that truth is often damned hard to discern. 2001 Times 2 31 Oct. 12 Truth may be found at the bottom of the well, but there was no well in London deep enough for that commodity. ■ concealment; truth