Quotes About Authenticity

Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.

Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, 'I will simply be.

If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.

We are constantly invited to be what we are.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

Be resolutely and faithfully what you are; be humbly what you aspire to be.

If I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?

Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.

As to conforming outwardly and living your own life inwardly, I do not think much of that.

Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel the cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, an obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. The hospitality was as cold as the ices.

We know but few man, a great many coats and breeches.

My life has been the poem I could have writ But I could not both live and utter it.

Be it life or death, we crave only reality.

The only way to speak the truth is to speak lovingly.

If I should sell my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for.

The forcible writer stands bodily behind his words with his experiences. He does not make books out of books, but he has been there in person.

He was so genuine and unsophisticated that no introduction would serve to introduce him, more than if you introduced a woodchuck to your neighbor.

I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear.

Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. As if one were to wear any sort of coat which the tailor might cut out for him, or gradually leaving off palm-leaf hat or cap of woodchuck skin, complain of hard times because he could not afford to buy him a crown!

I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again; and then there would be some one in the company with a maggot in his head, hatched from an egg deposited there nobody knows when, for not even fire kills these things, and you would have lost your labor.

I don't want to feel as if my life were a sojourn any longer. That philosophy cannot be true which so paints it. It is time now that I begin to live.

Society is commonly too cheap.

Lieber als Liebe, als Geld, als Ruhm gebt mir Wahrheit. Ich saß an einem Tische, wo feine Weine und Speisen im Überfluss vorhanden waren, wo man mich sorgsam bediente, wo es aber keine Aufrichtigkeit und Wahrheit gab. Hungrig verließ ich ihren ungastlichen Tisch. Die Gastfreundschaft war so kalt wie das Gefrorene.