Quotes About Authenticity

t is surprising how well one writes if one thinks no one will read. –

We are all engaged in the task of peeling off the false selves, the programmed selves, the selves created by our families, our cultures, our religions.

No wonder I am rarely natural in life. Natural to what, true to which condition of soul, to which layer? How can I be sincere if each moment I must choose between five or six souls?

I am in a fever of ruthless honesty. Anaïs

She says she is Irish—Nell O'Connor, but she was born in Latvia and talks like a Greek.

You are an "homme complet" That is why he is so intolerant of neurotic art and artists.

Incidentally, this is one of the worst defects in all the journal writing—this tacking on of recently digested syntheses. No syntheses, please! And in the finished work, no slippery escapes, no short, pithy, ambiguous lines or sentences. Full out, or else nothing.

I need your letters, as human assertions of reality.

Don't hesitate to betray your ignorance. It's no crime.

I can write above the melee, as it were, but I don't like the forced effort. It doesn't ring the way I want it to. I get off-key.

I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me. The world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign & re-create myself…

Whore" goes, "Christ" goes, "shit" goes, etc. And yet somehow there is not the same ring behind his dirty words as with mine. Sincere enough, frank, honest, but not so raw. Almost seems justifiable. Mine seems flagrant and wanton.

Cannot or will not accept himself. How can I accept a limited definable self when I feel, in me, all possibilities?

I'm sick of my own romanticism!

Nature forms us for ourselves, not for others; to be, not to seem.

So bewies mir das Wagnis, dass es nicht zerstörerisch ist, wenn wir unser Innerstes aufs Spiel setzen, wenn wir unseren verborgenen und echten Kern anbieten. Wie können nicht zerstört werden.

Anderson Cooper

Women [are] dwarfed not developed by competition. . . . What men did not want to do, they said was women's sphere. If a woman is natural[,] a man does not want her. This makes of woman a liar and a pretender. A woman is an actress who plays to an audience of men. They know what will be applauded and what will be hissed.

Quel che si possiede in se stessi di diverso, è proprio quel che si possiede di rado, quel che attribuisce a ciascuno il suo valore; ed è proprio quello che si cerca di sopprimere. Si imita. E si pretende di amare la vita.

El hombre sencillo no se toma en serio ni trágicamente. Sigue su camino con el corazón ligero y el alma en paz, sin meta, sin nostalgia, sin impaciencia. Su reino es el mundo y le basta. Su eternidad es el presente y lo colma. No tiene nada que demostrar, puesto que no quiere aparentar nada. Ni nada que buscar puesto que todo está ahí.

Mieux vaut une vraie tristesse qu'une fausse joie.

Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself- and thus make yourself indispensable.

I exist only as a whole; my only claim is to be natural, and the pleasure I feel in an action, I take as a sign that I ought to do it.

They establish distinctions and reserves which I cannot apply to myself, for I exist only as a whole; my only claim is to be natural, and the pleasure I feel in an action, I take as a sign that I ought to do it.