Quotes About Authenticity

Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you're a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.

A world of made is not a world of born

down with hell and heaven and all the religious fuss infinity pleased our parents one inch looks good to us

Anybody can learn to think, or believe, or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel... the moment you feel, you're nobody ? but-yourself ? in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else ? means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.

may I be I is the only prayer--not may I be great or good or beautiful or wise or strong.

feeling is first

the poems to come are for you and for me and are not for mostpeople... you and i are human beings; mostpeople are snobs.

The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be somebody else.

something genuine like a mark in a toilet, graced with guts and gutted with grace

It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.

Because only the truest things always are true because they can't be true

It was hard enough to get to this point, to figure out what my true purpose is and who I am, and then when I found the courage to start living it, I thought the hard work was done!

As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn't a poet can possibly imagine. Why? Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time — and whenever we do it, we're not poets.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

I knew he was the real thing because when he laughed other men at the table laughed with him.

just because I don't have on a silly black costume and carry a silly broom and wear a silly black hat, doesn't mean that I'm not a witch. I'm a witch all the time and not just on Halloween.

Some people spend all their time on a vacation taking pictures so that when they get home they can show their friends evidence that they had a good time. They don't pause to let the vacation enter inside of them and take that home.

should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything. And you can feel it inside you. If you never take time out to let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you. You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything with them. It's hollow.

After all, is not a real Hell better than a manufactured Heaven?

No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in. ... I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things

Only the truth of who you are, if realized, will set you free.

Authentic human interactions become impossible when you lose yourself in a role.

You become most powerful in whatever you do if the action is performed for its own sake rather than as a means to protect, enhance, or conform to your role identity.

You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge.