The fine arts once divorcing themselves from truth are quite certain to fall mad, if they do not die, and get flown away with by the Devil, which latter is only the second-worst result for us. Truth, fact, is the life of all things; falsity, “fiction” or whatever it may call itself, is certain to be death, and is already insanity, to whatever thing takes up with it.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian

Essay (1850-08-01), “Jesuitism,” Latter-Day Pamphlets, No. 8
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