we must know the truth, and we must love the truth we know, and we must act according to the measure of our love.
these are difficult matters. to return to our simple sentence: when i say that we must know the truth and love the truth we know, i am not talking primarily about the truth of individual facts and statements but about truth as such. truth is reality itself, considered as the object of the intellect. the truth man needs to know is the transcendent reality, of which particular truths are merely a partial manifestation. since we ourselves are real, this truth si not so far from us as one might imagine.
-thomas merton, the ascent to truth, pgs. 8, 9