Quotes About Authenticity

And we need to know what it is to be human, if we are to avoid becoming narcissists.

If being is what life is all about, why are we so afraid of it? Why is it so difficult for us to "let go and just be"?

Once we give up our true self to play a role, we are fated to be rejected because we have already rejected ourselves. Yet we will struggle to make the role more successful, hoping to overcome our fate but finding ourselves more enmeshed in it. We are caught in a vicious cycle that keeps closing in, diminishing our life and being.

Now I design what I want to wear, and it works that way.

I guess maybe I try to make movies that are closer to real life than are many Hollywood movies. But I still try to stay within a commercial narrative, a contemporary American vernacular.

Unlearn'd, he knew no schoolman's subtle art,No language, but the language of the heart.

If a man is worth knowing at all, he is worth knowing well.

As we grow in disciplined, self-sacrificing love, so we will grow in intercessory prayer. Superficially fervent prayers devoid of such love are finally phony, hollow, shallow.5

The expression of vanity and self-love becomes less offensive, when it retains something of simplicity and frankness.

The memoirs that have come out of Africa are sometimes startlingly beautiful, often urgent, and essentially life-affirming, but they are all performances of courage and honesty.

I've learned if there's one gift you can give yourself in life, it's the freedom and courage to say "I don't know". Because I'll let you into a secret – you don't have to know. You don't have to know how you feel, or what you want, or if you're happy or if you're sad.

We're encouraged to be our true, authentic selves, but being told to feel happy when you're just not feeling it, only encourages us to be the exact opposite. Life can be wonderful but it can also be scary and hard. We should be free to feel sad or gloomy or just downright bloody miserable, without feeling like there's something wrong with us

What gives people whose whole life is a lie the right to judge me?

Conformity is not an admirable trait. Conformity is a copout. It threatens self-awareness. It can lead groups to enforce rigid and arbitrary rules.

No student should be encouraged -- by anyone -- to change himself until he's "normal," a term that says everything and means nothing.

Conformity is a mask behind which students can hide their identity or the fact that they haven't yet figured out their identity.

To take what there is, and use it, without waiting forever in vain for the preconceived—to dig deep into the actual and get something out of that—this doubtless is the right way to live. HENRY JAMES T

To thine own self be true. SHAKESPEARE

If you meet life squarely, you are likely to make mistakes, do things you wish you hadn't, say things you wish you could retract or phrase more felicitously, and, in short, fumble your way along. Those "mature" people whose lives are even without a single sour note or a single mistake, who never fumble, manage only at the cost of original thought and original action. They do without the successes as well as the failures.

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.

When unconditional love and genuine enthusiasm are always present, "Good job!" isn't necessary; when they're absent, "Good job!" won't help.

Elegance of language may not be in the power of all of us; but simplicity and straight forwardness are. Write much as you would speak; speak as you think. If with your inferior, speak no coarser than usual; if with your superiors, no finer. Be what you say; and, within the rules of prudence, say what you are.

Show me your garden, provided it be your own, and I will tell you what you are like.

Be grateful that you only see the outward man. Be grateful that you never see the passions, the hatreds, the jealousies, the malice, the sicknesses... Be grateful you rarely see the frightening truth in people.