Quotes About Authenticity

Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today. Let us treat men and women well; treat them as if they were real; perhaps they are.

Else if you would be a man speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon balls, and to-morrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.

The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.

Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

Insist upon yourself. Be original.

My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding

We pass for what we are.

The life of truth is cold.

Who you are is speaking so loudly that I can't hear what you're saying

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlour. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs.

Imitation cannot go above its model.

Sincerity is the highest complement you can pay

I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with the roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work, but the solidest thing we know.

I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier.

My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.

Insist on yourself; never imitate.

People go out to look at sunrises and sunsets who do not recognize their own, quietly and happily, but know that it is foreign to them. As they do by books, so they quote the sunset and the star, and do not make them theirs. Worse yet, they live as foreigners in a world of truth, and quote thoughts, and thus disown them. Quotation confesses inferiority

Do not say things. Who you are thunders over you all the while so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not?

I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances.

I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding.

I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life.

My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also. We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills.

My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine.