Quotes About Authenticity

A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it.

Let your beauty manifest itself without talking and calculation.? You are silent. It says for you: I am. And comes in meaning thousandfold?, comes at long last over everyone.

I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will, as it goes toward action. And in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times, when something is coming near, I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone... I want to unfold. I don't want to be folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

We discover that we do not know our role; we look for a mirror; we want to remove our make-up and take off what is false and real. But somewhere a piece of disguise that we forgot still sticks to us. A trace of exaggeration remains in our eyebrows; we do not notice that the corners of our mouth are bent. And so we walk around, a mockery and a mere half: neither having achieved being nor actors.

I want to unfold. I don't want to be folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.

The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise...

Think... of the world which you carry within yourself... and set it above everything that you notice about you. Your inmost happening is worth your whole love, that is what you must somehow work at, and not loose too much time and too much courage in explaining your attitude to people.

But to be what I am, to live what I was meant to live, to want to sound like no one else, to yield the blossoms dictated to my heart: this is what I want - and this surely cannot be arrogance. (Letters on Life)

It is necessary - and toward this point our development will move, little by little - that nothing alien happen to us, but only what has long been our own.

Works of art are born of those who confront danger, who go to the limit of an experience, to a point beyond which no human can go. The farther one ventures, the more distinctive, the more personal, the more unique life becomes.

Let your beauty manifest itself without talking and calculation. You are silent. It says for you: I am. And comes in meaning thousandfold, comes at long last over everyone. (Gieb deine Schönheit immer hin ohne Rechnen und Reden. Du schweigst. Sie sagt für dich: Ich bin. Und kommt in tausendfachem Sinn, kommt endlich über jeden.)

Everywhere I am folded, there I am a lie.

Gefährlich und schlecht sind nur jene Traurigkeiten, die man unter die Leute trägt, um sie zu übertönen; wie Krankheiten, die oberflächlich und töricht behandelt werden, treten sie nur zurück und brechen nach einer kleinen Pause um so furchtbarer aus; und sammeln sich an im Innern und sind Leben, sind ungelebtes, verschmähtes, verlorenes Leben, an dem Man sterben kann.

But everything that we encounter is so very much of one piece, and so intimately related to everything else, and has given birth to itself, grows, and is then raised so much to come into its own, that we basically just need to be there, if only unassumingly, if only authentically, the way the earth is there in its affirmation of the seasons, light and dark and wholly in space, longing to be supported by nothing but that web of influences and forces where the stars feel secure.

But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively from his own existence.

It is quite rare to encounter a truly creative and productive person who resides in his own stillness or simply in the midst of his melody, close to the honest beating of his heart!

All feelings that concentrate you and lift you up are pure; only that feeling is impure which grasps just one side of your being and thus distorts you. Everything you can think of as you face your childhood, is good. Everything that makes more of you than you have ever been, even in your best hours, is right.

Így csetlünk-botlunk, félig ember, félig gúnykép mindegyikünk: nem vagyunk mi sem színészek, sem valódiak.

If we allow an encounter with a given thing to be shaped by this expectation that it may last, every such experience will be spoiled and falsified, and ultimately it will be prevented from unfolding its most proper and authentic potential and fertility.

You longed to be yourself.

Ein Kunstwerk ist gut, wenn es aus Notwendigkeit entstand.

A work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity. In this nature of its origin lies the judgment of it: there is no other.

After all, this is one of the most difficult tests for the true artist: he must always remain innocently unaware of his own virtues if he does not wish to rob them of their spontaneity and their unaffectedness.