Quotes About Authenticity

I looked up at the rack of magazines on the wall. There was a handsome man on the cover of one, smartly dressed in a shiny grey suit, striking a dynamic pose. It was an appealing image, but I didn't want to be like him, I didn't want a change of life. I've never not wanted to be me.

Contentment is created when your behaviour is consistent with your values. When you act in ways that are consistent with the core of who you are, even when your actions aren't approved by others, you increase your overall contentment. Happiness, success, money, relationships, and even the approval of others will come and go in your life, but what is ultimately satisfying is feeling content.

After a while, we've all sort of given up on finding Mr. Right. It's more about are you Mr. In-My-Bed-Right-Now and, whatever you do, please don't stay for breakfast.

Being clear and straightforward about who we are, what we want from others, and our intentions is the cornerstone of integrity.

Imagine that your mouth is a water spout. When you open the valve (speak), whatever comes out is an indicator of what's inside of you.

They don't know what it's like. Inside. For them it's only fun, even though I tell them it isn't. You see I don't delete. Anything. Ever.

In a very real and sobering way, we must actually become the gospel to the people around us—an expression of the real Jesus through the quality of our lives.

there are ways to be dishonest that fall short of actual lying.

Once in a while it really hits people that they don't have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.

Once in a while it really hits people that they don't have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.

Once in a while it really hits people that they don't have to experience the world in the way that they have been told to.

According to "Clement," when the Christians talked about loving your enemies, their neighbors had been interested. But when they found that the Christians didn't do what they said, they dismissed Christianity as "a myth and a delusion." From Clement's perspective, Christians had to embody the message if the churches were to grow.

You wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it.

PREFER DEATH TO a lying word, for the ripple-effect of its plunder is worse. When a man dies, he dies alone— but many are slain with the lie and its curse. —AVRAHAM IBN HASDAI (C. 915–990)

You can act truthfully or you can lie. You can reveal things about yourself or you can hide. Therefore, the audience recognises something about themselves or they don't — You hope they don't leave the theatre thinking, "That was nice...now where's the cab?

All works of nonfiction, or memoir, have to first and foremost be art before they can be true. They have to be artful first before they can be truthful... If you emphasize the truth-telling at the expense of art, nobody is going to be interested in it. And if you sacrifice truth in the name of art, you risk triviality. There's a constant balance between those two.

I'm me and nobody else; and whatever people think I am or say I am, that's what I'm not, because they don't know a bloody thing about me.

Whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not.

Our willingness to write truthfully brings the story to life.

But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.

Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

We love to see a child lost in the dance and not performing for an audience. To be happy and know that you are happy is really the overflowing cup of life. To dance as if there was no audience.

Then I realized that secrecy is actually to the detriment of my own peace of mind and self, and that I could still sustain my belief in privacy and be authentic and transparent at the same time. It was a pretty revelatory moment, and there's been a liberating force that's come from it.