Quotes About Authenticity

Remain true to yourself, child. If you know your own heart, you will always have one friend who does not lie.

Nowadays, I want to be smart, but back then, I'm afraid I wanted to seem smart, too.

In the sense of worldly advantage, it no longer signified whether people thought of him as having been an authentic man of virtue. There was no more political power or influence to be gained from maintaining that identity. But to him it still mattered.

Rather, I'm the kind of person who makes watercolors of sunsets in the summer while drinking cocktails on my roof, who reads a book a week and goes to French movies. My friends often cite my life as being an inspiration to them, and I have quite rigorously assembled something that looks really good from the outside. But that performance has always been a stark contrast to how I feel about myself.

My friends often cite my life as being an inspiration to them, and I have quite rigorously assembled something that looks really good from the outside. But that performance has always been a stark contrast to how I feel about myself. I had a gut feeling that Jean Nidetch knew all about that soul-killing mismatch.

In online dating, I wonder if I have a nice enough face to get my foot in the door, but when they see my stomach and my thighs they'll be disappointed. Including a full-body shot feels like selling an old couch online and having to include all the scrapes and tiny stains.

Tell me how you are." "I'm fine, Mother." "No one is fine. Fine is a placeholder.

It's easy to be yourself in the dark.

It's a life's journey of finding ourselves, finding our power, and living for yourself, not for everyone else.

I finally understood what my grandmother meant. If I wasn't comfortable with myself, I would never be comfortable.

Words are reflections. What we speak comes back to us. I prefer being told the truth, so I tell the truth. Within reason.

We women have a lot to learn about simplifying our lives. We have to decide what is important and then move along at a pace that is comfortable for us. We have to develop the maturity to stop trying to prove something. We have to learn to be content with what we are.

she only showed her silly side to those she thought worthy.

my favorite kind of people are the ones who let me be as crazy as i am.

Live your life in a way that is worth telling stories about.

Don't just go out and do what Dick Eastman or your spiritual hero did. That's a spiritual cop-out. Copycat spirituality is short lived.

Not many people sell their souls to the devil, but many of us sell our souls to the culture. Instead of defining success for ourselves, we let the culture define it for us. Instead of daring to be different, we conform to the pattern of this world. Why? We let our culture have the loudest voice.

You will notice that I have not written about the horrors of prison life, or the conditions, hardships, treatment and so forth, because men reading this book who have been to jail will be bored to tears and people who haven't been to jail can bloody well come in here and find out for themselves.

Isn't that it, to be yourself and somehow, to belong?

It makes you crazy, for something you know to be true, know from the very core or root of you, to remain unspeakable.

Where does passionate interest come from? My personal view is that it comes from the deepest level of our being—at the level of our true identity. It comes from the part of us that exists beyond the characteristics and personality traits we acquire as a result of our social upbringing.

If you're going to play it out of tune, then play it out of tune properly.

He has done the best he could in a difficult situation, and his conscience is clean. It is far more important to be trustworthy than to seem trustworthy, a lesson he learnt from a lanky man named Strider long ago

The best beginning reads is often the one with the wherewithal to admit that, living in the midst of what appears to be a confident, energetic culture, he among all the rest is lost.