Quotes About Authenticity

transparent evasion exercises.

The pressures on gay teens can be overwhelming--to keep secrets, tell lies, deny who you are, and try to be who you're not. Remember: you are special and worth being cared about, loved, and accepted just as you are. Never, ever let anyone convince you otherwise.

You're going to spend more time with yourself than with anyone else in your life. You want to spend that whole time fighting who you are?

I mean, think about [the phrase 'love the sinner, hate the sin.'] Isn't it like saying, 'I love left-handed people but hate that they're left-handed.' Is that really love? Or is that saying, 'I'm willing to love you as I'd like you to be, not as you are'? Either God's love is unconditional or it's not.

Gay isn't wrong or right. It just is. What's wrong is hating yourself because of it. You're going to spend more time with yourself than with anyone else in your life. You want to spend that whole time fighting who you are?

There is nothing worse than deluding yourself and trying to make yourself out to be somebody you're not--somebody you're not comfortable being.

I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be.

Hard words are very rarely useful. Real firmness is good for every thing. Strut is good for nothing.

What do the Texans say? All hat, no cattle.

It was easy to be moral when that was the way you felt anyway. The hard bit about morality was making yourself feel the opposite of what you really felt.

She felt that she had revealed something to Cat, and with revealing something about oneself there always comes a sense of lightening of the load that we all carry; the load of being ourselves.

You know the best example of sincerity? The absolute gold standard? Who? Angus pointed to the door, outside which Cyril was waiting patiently. A dog. Have you ever met an insincere dog - a dog who hides his true feelings? Domenica looked thoughtful. And cats? Dreadfully insincere, said Angus. Psychopaths- every one of them. Show me a cat, Domenica, and I'll show you a psychopath. Textbook examples.

I'd like to be tidy, said Hen, I try, but I guess you can't be what you aren't.

Truth had a way of coming out on top—and it was just as well for everybody that it did. If there ever came a day when truth was so soundly defeated that it never emerged, but sank, instead, under the sheer volume of untruth that the world produced, then that would be a sad day for Botswana, and for the people who lived in Botswana. It would be a sad day for the whole world, that day.

We should all busy ourselves in being who we are, although many of us do not and spend so much time and energy being something else. We try to be what others want us to be, or what we ourselves want to be. And then we suddenly realise that our lives have shot past and we have not got round to being who we really

It's just that I think people should be…well, a bit more honest. We don't like being told half-truths. Or being lied to…People can tell, you know. They know when they're being lied to. Politicians find that out – eventually.

She had never been able to tolerate dishonesty, which she thought threatened the very heart of relationships between people. If you could not count on other people to mean what they said, or to do what they said they would do, then life could become utterly unpredictable. The fact that we could trust one another made it possible to undertake the simple tasks of life.

The important thing is to carry on doing what you're doing,' she said. 'And not to do what you think other people think you should do. You should do what you do as well as you possibly can.

Be very careful of anything that looks too good to be true. Because if it looks too good to be true, that's probably because that's exactly what it is!

We are not polyester people.

Things I'll never do. You would not feel uncomfortable reading that list, as you will have already admitted that these are things you do not want to do—and will not do.

He had gone through life tiptoeing round Irene's sensitivities, apologising for being who he was, and now it was over. There would be no more apologies. He was free.

There were times when one thought the opposite of what one really felt. That was very common, and this was an example of exactly that.

One did not walk around the town with one's birth certificate stuck on one's back; why then should clothes have their labels on the outside? It was a very vulgar display, she felt