Quotes About Authenticity

The most uninteresting thing for me is when somebody thinks too much about how they put themselves together.

What I thought as a young adult is you act like you have it together whether or not you do because that is what church people do. That is not what God has called us to do.

The only thing I can talk about is just forgiving yourself, because I do not have everything together. And so I tell people: No, you should see my house, it's a mess.

We are aching to come together and I think it has little to do with liberal or conservative discourse. I think it has to do with increasing disconnection with what is real and soul-serving.

Every authentic poem contributes to the labour of poetry... to bring together what life has separated or violence has torn apart.

Only as she heard her own words did she realize how melodramatic, how self-pitying they sounded. And how true.

And the need to dissemble after all these years of doing so just seemed too much of an effort now.

She could never make him happy. She had nothing of her real self to offer him.

You are right, he said, his words slightly slurred. I have been drinking. And drink makes me sentimental. Tomorrow I shall be able to see you as you really are again and I shall despise myself for having detained you here. But for tonight, Elizabeth, I find you infinitely desirable.

It always was well nigh impossible to get any sense out of you, Jack, she said. Have you ever said anything to anyone that you really meant?

When people live in denial of the truth—sometimes large groups of them all together—they lose their . . . I am not sure of the right word. They lose something precious, something good and right and true. Their integrity, perhaps? You forced everyone to confront the truth—even those who did not know it before

And her beauty could be vibrant if she was allowed to be spontaneously herself and if she was secure in the love of those around her.

She was feeling almost happy. She allowed herself the qualifier of almost because she had accepted the fact that self-deception was also self-destructive. She would not deceive herself any more or hide behind any mask in an attempt to shield herself from the reality of her life.

Smiles did not come naturally to him. He must learn how to let out the ones that were sometimes there deep inside him.

Truth is the ultimate power. When the truth comes around, all the lies have to run and hide. —Ice Cube

He was aware of his agnosticism, and patient with it. Rather than deny the existence of something he couldn't perceive himself, he acknowledged the authenticity of his uncertainty and carried on, praying in the face of his doubt.

Its not lying, it's remembering things the way they should have been.

there are still times when the thief I started out to be feels more authentic to me than the priest I've been for decades. To be pulled out of a slum and educated is to be an outsider forever— He stopped talking, deeply embarrassed. Giuliani could never understand the price scholarship boys paid for their education: the inevitable alienation from your uncomprehending family, from roots, from your own first person, from the original I you once were.

I know this will sound glib, but don't pretend you aren't feeling what you feel. That's how things slide into hell. Feelings are facts," she said, her voice a little hard, as she began to walk again. "Look straight at 'em and deal with 'em. Work it through, as honestly as you can. If

don't pretend you aren't feeling what you feel. That's how things slide into hell.

How can you hear your soul if everyone is talking?" He said nothing more that day, but Ha'anala spent hours considering his words. A soul, she decided, was the most real part of a person, and to discover what is real requires privacy.

I'll take honest arrogance over fake humility any day.

True education always fosters humility, although mere accumulation of facts fosters pride. All these things are requisite in the cloister. Above all, authentic education fits a person for a life of solitude. A girl who has learned to cultivate the soil of her own intelligence is already conditioned for an interior life. Her education is thus supremely useful to her in the cloister.

Mary Gaitskill