Quotes About Authenticity

I refuse putting from me the best that I am.

Stand up for the Crazy and Stupid

Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting, Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them, And yet they expose me more than all my other poems

I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked;

Dismiss whatever insults your own soul; And your very flesh shall be a great poem…

LET us twain walk aside from the rest; Now we are together privately, do you discard ceremony, Come! vouchsafe to me what has yet been vouchsafed to none—Tell me the whole story, Tell me what you would not tell your brother, wife, husband, or physician.

I do not say these things for a dollar, or to fill up the time while I wait for a boat;

O baffled, baulked, bent to the very earth, Oppressed with myself that I have dared to open my mouth, Aware now that, amid all the blab whose echoes recoil upon me, I have not once had the least idea who or what I am, But that before all my insolent poems, the real ME stands yet untouched, untold, altogether unreached, Withdrawn

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

The boy I love, the same becomes a man not through derived power but in his own right, Wicked, rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear, Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak, Unrequited love or a slight cutting him worse than a wound cuts, First rate to ride, to fight, to hit the bull's eye, to sail a skiff, to sing a song or play on the banjo, Preferring scars and faces pitted with smallpox over all latherers and those that keep out the sun.

I am he who walks the States with a barb'd tongue, questioning every one I meet, Who are you that wanted only to be told what you knew before? Who are you that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense?

What ever satisfies the soul is truth.

Here are the roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves. Here the performance disdaining the trivial unapproached

Re-examine all that you have been told... Dismiss that which insults your soul.

Read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body (Leaves of Grass preface)

The great poets are to be known by the absence in them of tricks, and by the justification of perfect personal candor. All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor.

re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem...

Quédate hoy conmigo, vive conmigo un día y una noche y te mostraré el origen de todos los poemas. Tendrás entonces todo cuanto hay de grande en la Tierra y en el Sol (existen además millones de soles más allá) y nada tomarás ya nunca de segunda ni de tercera mano, ni mirarás más por los ojos de los muertos, ni te nutrirás con el espectro de los libros.

Sétáljunk tova ketten a többitÅ'l; Most együtt vagyunk szemtÅ'l-szembe, hagyd abba a ceremóniát, Jer! tedd meg nekem, amit még nem tettél meg senkinek – Mondd el nekem az egész történetet, Mondd el nekem, amit nem mondanál el fivérednek, feleségednek, férjednek, vagy az orvosodnak.

Listen! I will be honest with you, I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes

Vagyok, ahogy vagyok, elég ennyi, Ha senki más nem vesz észre a világon, békén ülök, És ha mindenki észrevesz, akkor is békén ülök.

Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos, / Disorderly fleshy and sensual....eating drinking and breeding, / No sentimentalist....no stander above men and women or apart / from them....no more modest than immodest.

I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes, We convince by our presence.)

In other words, the unique value of the 'authentic' work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty.