Quotes About Authenticity

What you don't see with your eyes, don't invent with your tongue.

We grow neither better nor worse as we get old, but more like ourselves

I'd rather have an inch of dog than miles of pedigree.

Things are seldom what they seem, Skim milk masquerades as cream.

Early in life I had to choose between arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change.

One of the recognizable features of the authentic masterpiece is its capacity to renew itself, to endure the loss of some kinds of immediate relevance while still answering the most important questions men can ask, including new ones they are just learning how to frame.

If I try to be like him, who will be like me?

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seeded refusal of that which others have made of us.

Character is like a tree, and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

Unlike grownups, children have little need to deceive themselves.

Nothing that is not a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconsistency.

There were always in me, two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest.

The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.

No blame should attach to telling the truth.

The elegance of honesty needs no adornment.

If the word frankly or sincerely is not uttered in the first ten minutes-or let us speak openly-then you are not in the presence of a genuine businessman, and he will certainly go bankrupt.

If I ever said in grief or pride, I tired of honest things, I lied.

The hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity to stand on one's convictions-not obstinately or defiantly (these are gestures of defensiveness, not courage) nor as a gesture of retaliation, but simply because these are what one believes.

I wish to say what I think and feel today, with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.

With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. ... Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradicts everything you said today.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.

What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it. What another would have written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself- and thus make yourself indispensable.

I had rather be hissed for a good verse than applauded for a bad one.

I don't want to see the uncut version of anything.