Quotes About Authenticity

Il n'est pas difficile de nourrir des pensées admirables lorsque les étoiles sont présentes. Il est plus difficile de les garder intactes dans la petitesse des journées ; il est plus difficile d'être devant les autres ce que nous sommes devant Dieu. (p. 65)

Qualunque cosa si faccia, si ricostruisce sempre il monumento a proprio modo; ma è già molto adoperare pietre autentiche. Memorie di Adriano, Taccuini di appunti

Tous nous serions transformés si nous avions le courage d'être ce que nous sommes.

If young women were not deceived into a belief that affectation pleases, they would scarcely trouble themselves to practise it so much.

What a treasure, to meet with any thing a new heart-- all hearts, nowadays, are secondhand at best.

Talk is cheap, but look at how people behave, not at what they say.

But that's the point, Amy. It's easy to love someone when they're on their best behaviour — you can do that in your sleep. The real test is when they're — to use Neeve's expression — a pain in the hole. That's what love actually means.

It actually felt harder, not easier, to be with people. The toughest challenge was my face; maintaining a 'normal' expression was utterly exhausting.

but I couldn't get through the day wearing clothes belonging to elderly people. I am not Alexa Chung

I was anxious to please, even if I hated the recipient of my pleasing. My pleasee.

I'm going to be me, whether it's good or bad

genuinely is

But to me, butterflies were slightly sneaky; all they were, were moths in embroidered jackets. And, yes, moths were creepy and their flapping wings made a nasty, papery sound – but at least they were honest; they were brown, they were dull, they were stupid (flying into flames at the drop of a hat). All in all, they hadn't much going for them but they didn't pretend to be anything other than what they were.

Never work just for money or for power. They won't save your soul or help you sleep at night.

You were born God's original. Try not to become someone's copy.

Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others.

imaginary gardens with real toads in them ... ... if you demand on one hand, the raw material of poetry in all its rawness and that which is on the other hand genuine, then you are interested in poetry.

Poetry ... ... a place for the genuine, Hands that can grasp, eyes that can dilate, hair that can rise

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle. Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it after all, a place for the genuine.

It makes you wonder. How much you can know about a thing, a person. If you can know anything at all. Maybe no one's who we think they are. No one. Makes you doubt yourself, wonder if you even know yourself or if you've been lyin, too, along with everybody else.

A queen is wise. She has earned her serenity, not having had it bestowed on her but having passer her tests. She has suffered and grown more beautiful because of it. She has proved she can hold her kingdom together. She has become its vision. She cares deeply about something bigger than herself. She rules with authentic power.

When a woman conceives her true self, a miracle occurs and life around her begins again.

People hear you on the level you speak to them from. Speak from your heart, and they will hear with theirs.

Only write from your own passion, your own truth. That's the only thing you really know about, and anything else leads you away from the pulse.