Quotes About Authenticity

This had been real: real in its flaws and uncertainties, real in its small triumphs, real in its compromises and understanding.

If a man truly loves, he gives no heed to what others may think. His heart has no room for that, for it is filled to the brim with the unutterable truth of his feelings.

Why should I be polished and improved like goods for sale? I might not even want to marry! And besides, I have many skills. I can read and write and play the flute and harp. Why should I change to please some man? If he doesn't like me the way I am, then he can get some other girl for his wife.

There's a difference between being afraid and letting people see that you are

We must make language accountable to the truths of our experience.

the motivation behind every sentence is the wish to say something real to somebody real.

Our relationship wasn't the sun, the moon, the stars, but it wasn't bullshit, either.

Nothing else has any efficacy, I might as well be myself. - But your yourself sucks! - It is, lamentably, all I have.

I don't think you can worry about what is going to happen with something after that. I think the only thing that you can do is be honest and let the chips fall where they may.

Clinging to one's outward appearance interferes with living.

love strips the mask from each of us, and we must endeavor for those we love to put the mask on so that it can be taken off again. For if there is no mask to start with, there is no pleasure in removing it, is there?

The essential thing is the truth, not arguments or complaints.

Lo que llamamos amor es en realidad jugar a arrancarnos mutuamente las máscaras; y, con tal fin, es imprescindible esforzarse en llevar tal máscara, por el bien de la persona amada. Se sigue de ahí que si no hay máscara, tampoco existe el placer de arrancarla

No matter how many faces I have, there is no changing the fact that I am me. I was just attempting to fill in a too-long intermission in my life with a trivial "masked play.

Being a clown would be all right, but I did not want to be a clown unaware that he was one.

Even though I might tear the mask off of your hypocrisy, you had a thousand layers of masks, and one after another a new one would appear; but my mask was only a single ply, and under that there remained not even a layer of ordinary face.

my real face, which was merely an incomplete copy of the mask...

A naked body doing something is more completely naked than a simple nude.

Every inch of me had been cut, filed, steamed, exfoliated, polished, painted, or moisturized. I didn't look a thing like Opal Mehta. Opal Mehta didn't own five pairs of shoes so expensive they could have been traded in for a small sailboat. She didn't wear makeup or Manolo Blahniks or Chanel sunglasses or Habitual jeans or La Perla bras. She never owned enough cashmere to make her concerned for the future of the Kazakhstani mountain goat population. I was turning into someone else.

Sie dachte noch an Unkes Maske, als sie einschlief, und im Halbschlaf fragte sie sich, ob nicht jedermann bisweilen eine Maske trug. Eine Maske der Freude, eine Maske der Trauer, eine Maske der Gleichgültigkeit. Eine Maske aus Ihr-seht-mich-nicht.

if they did not interrogate their most fundamental beliefs, they would live superficial, expedient lives, because "the unexamined life is not worth living."7

Don't sell yourself short, young man,' he said sternly. 'These people don't need charisma. They need hard work and the truth- exactly what you've given them. ... Popularity isn't everything. In fact, it isn't anything when you get right down to it. The majority is rarely right.

You can get lost, pretending to be someone you're not.

Margaret," she told me time and again, "you may be anything you wish, so long as you're never boring.