Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day, like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894) American poet, essayist, scholar

Article (1859-05), “The Professor at the Breakfast-Table,” Atlantic Monthly
    (Source)

Collected in The Professor at the Breakfast-Table, ch. 5 (1859).