Quotes About Authenticity

There is always a certain peace in being what one is, in being that completely. The condemned man has that joy.

The possibilities are unlimited as long as you are true to your life's purpose.

Nobody is so miserable as he who longs to be somebody other than the person he is.

To aim at the best and to remain essentially ourselves is one and the same thing.

We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.

Misfortunes occur only when a man is false.... Events, circumstances, etc., have their origin in ourselves. They spring from seeds which we have sown.

Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be one's own self

To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying "Amen" to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to keep your soul alive.

We live counterfeit lives in order to resemble the idea we first had of ourselves.

All is disgust when one leaves his own nature and does things that misfit it.

With begging and scrambling we find very little, but with being true to ourselves we find a great deal more.

We are betrayed by what is false within.

If I trim myself to suit others I will soon whittle myself away.

In the world to come they will not ask me, "Why were you not Moses?" They will ask me, "Why were you not Zusya?"

What's a man's first duty? The answer is brief: To be himself.

I will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.

The crow that mimics a cormorant gets drowned.

I was raised to sense what someone wanted me to be and be that kind of person. It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else's eyes.

Follow what you love! Don't deign to ask what "they" are looking for out there. Ask what you have inside. Follow not your interests, which change, but what you are and what you love, which will and should not change.

Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators.

Our concern must be to live while we're alive ... to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.

Power is strength and the ability to see yourself through your own eyes and not through the eyes of another.