Quotes About Authenticity

Do not wish to be anything but what you are.

Our entire life ... consists ultimately in accepting ourselves as we are.

To find the good life you must become yourself.

Change occurs when one becomes what she is, not when she tries to become what she is not.

I've finally stopped running away from myself. Who else is there better to be?

Learn to ... be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.

We would have to settle for the elegant goal of becoming ourselves.

When one is pretending the entire body revolts.

It is not easy to be sure that being yourself is worth the trouble, but [we do know] it is our sacred duty.

Once you get rid of the idea that you must please other people before you please yourself, and you begin to follow your own instincts-only then can you be successful. You become more satisfied, and when you are other people tend to be satisfied by what you do.

Long ago I understood that it wasn't merely my being a woman that was preventing my being welcomed into the world of what I long thought of as my peers. It was that I had succeeded in an undertaking few men have even attempted: I have become myself.

Learn what you are, and be such.

Somehow we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.

We need to find the courage to say no to the things and people that are not serving us if we want to rediscover ourselves and live our lives with authenticity.

It is easier to live life through someone else than to become complete yourself.

I never really address myself to any image anybody has of me. That's like fighting with ghosts.

What pulls the strings is the force hidden within; there lies ... the real man.

It is what you are inside that matters. You, yourself, are your only real capital.

You need to claim the events in your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality.

Be yourself and think for yourself; and while your conclusions may not be infallible, they will be nearer right than the conclusions forced upon you.

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

We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinion, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.

Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.

Love, and do what you like.