Student: Explain this: why do we speak of the truth of this or that particular thing as if we were distinguishing different truths, when in fact there aren't different truths for different things? Many people will hardly grant that there is no difference between the truth of the will and what is called the truth of action, or of one of the others.
Teacher: Truth is said improperly to be of this or that thing, since truth does not have its being in or from or through the things in which it is said to be. But when things themselves are in accordance with truth, which is always present to those things that are as they ought to be, we speak of the truth of the truth of this or that thing—for example, the truth of the will or action—in the same way in which we speak of timethe time of this or that thing despite the fact that there is one and the same time for all things that are temporally simultaneous, and that if this or that thing did not exist, there would still be time. For we do not speak of the time of this or that thing because time is in things, but because they are in time. And just as the same time regarded in itself is not called the time of some particular thing, but we speak of the the time of this or that thing when we consider things that are in time, so also the supreme Truth as it subsists is not the truth of some particular thing, but when something is in accordance with it, then it is called the truth or rectitude of that thing.
—De Veritate, XIII, Williams tr.
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