I need quotes that are also rhetorical devices that support the theme of truth!

In Chapter 7 Hawthorne uses irony to explain the much too complicated way the governor and the other distinguished men go about deciding the fate of the demon child, Pearl:

At that epoch of pristine simplicity, however, matters of even slighter public interest, and of far less intrinsic weight that the welfare of Hester and her child, were strangely mixed up with the deliberation of legislators and acts of state.