“To tell you the truth, that’s what started me off suspecting you.
— from The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie

He, however, forbade them to return for one; and when one of his companions offered his own great-coat, and urged him to make use of it, he replied, "I thank you very much; but, to tell you the truth, my anxiety keeps me sufficiently warm at present.
— from The Life of Horatio, Lord Nelson by Robert Southey

MOON All that I have to say, is to tell you that the lantern is the moon; I, the man i' the moon; this thorn-bush, my thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog.
— from A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

He attributes the same power to the stars, to the years, to the months, and to the seasons.
— from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth by Marcus Tullius Cicero

The ten years' tribute that remains unpaid.
— from The Jew of Malta by Christopher Marlowe

To tell you the truth, he’s a very poor servant.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of 233 Short Stories of Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

"To tell you the truth," said Altisidora, "I cannot have died outright, for I did not go into hell; had I gone in, it is very certain I should never have come out again, do what I might.
— from Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

For the duty of the legislator is and always will be to teach you the truth of these matters.
— from Laws by Plato

And all this long-winded preamble is to tell you that the case of Arnold Schoenberg, musical anarchist, and an Austrian composer who has at once aroused the ire and admiration of musical Germany, demands just such a confession from a critic about to hold in the balance the music or unmusic (the Germans have such a handy word) of Schoenberg.
— from Ivory, Apes and Peacocks by James Huneker

The older cub told the younger that they would slip out at the top of the den and go out while their mother was yet sleeping.
— from Ethnology of the Ungava District, Hudson Bay Territory Eleventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1889-1890, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1894, pages 159-350 by Lucien M. (Lucien McShan) Turner

To tell you the truth, Professor,” Quest concluded, “it is not of myself I am thinking at all just now.
— from The Black Box by E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

So he seemed to me; but, to tell you the truth, I left him a good deal to the women; he was too young and too fresh for a man like myself.” “You are rather hard on him,” said Cave, laughing; “but you are partly right.
— from Sir Brook Fossbrooke, Volume I. by Charles James Lever

To tell you the truth, I have reasons which make me wish not to go back there till I am quite restored, but I should like to know what is going on there.'
— from The Pennycomequicks, Volume 2 (of 3) by S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

"To tell you the truth, Lindsey," he said, "beyond knowing that he is Sir Gilbert Carstairs—nothing!"
— from Dead Men's Money by J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

We have kept on manufacturing, hoping for better times; and, to tell you the truth, Mildred, I could not reconcile it to my conscience to turn off my old workmen to beggary.
— from Mildred Arkell: A Novel. Vol. 3 (of 3) by Wood, Henry, Mrs.

"To tell you the truth I sometimes wonder to find myself here.
— from Afterwards by Kathlyn Rhodes

"And, to tell you the truth, I don't care for regattas.
— from The Argosy Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 by Various