truth is stranger than fiction
English
Alternative forms
Etymology
Attributed to Lord Byron.[1][2]
Proverb
truth is stranger than fiction
- Sometimes actual events are stranger than imagined ones.
- 1989, B. A. Ramsbottom, Stranger Than Fiction: The Life of William Kiffin, Gospel Standard Publications (→ISBN), page 7:
- It has often been said that truth is stranger than fiction. But what writer of the most extravagant fiction could have thought up such a life as that of William Kiffin? A poor orphan becoming one of the wealthiest merchants in the country; […]
- 2003, Nicholas Rescher, Imagining Irreality: A Study of Unreal Possibilities, Open Court Publishing (→ISBN), page 239:
- In the end, truth is stranger than fiction: reality has more complications, more unanticipable twists and turns than fiction could ever imagine.
- 1989, B. A. Ramsbottom, Stranger Than Fiction: The Life of William Kiffin, Gospel Standard Publications (→ISBN), page 7:
References
- ^ Gary Martin (1997–) “Truth is stranger than fiction”, in The Phrase Finder.
- ^ Lord Byron (1824) “Canto the Fourteenth, stanza CI”, in Don Juan: “'T is strange -- but true; for truth is always strange; / Stranger than fiction; if it could be told, / How much would novels gain by the exchange!”