Quotes About Authenticity

Somehow she was becoming the kind of woman she didn't like, somebody who felt one way but smiled it off in a mask of cheerfulness, the kind of woman who got very good at small talk.

Throw away my book: you must understand that it represents only one of a thousand attitudes. You must find your own. If someone else could have done something as well as you, don't do it. If someone else could have said something as well as you, don't say it—or written something as well as you, don't write it. Grow fond only of that which you can find nowhere but in yourself, and create out of yourself, impatiently or patiently, ah! that most irreplaceable of beings.

Fatevi condizionare il meno possibile da una società che finge di darci il massimo della libertà.

Un autentico cretino, difficile a trovarsi in questi tempi in cui i cretini si camuffano da intelligenti.

Dice sul serio?" "Sul lavoro non scherzo mai", replica duro il delegato. E nemmeno fuori dal lavoro, se è per questo.

They don't act like human beings and they're pretty proud of it so there's no point in pretending they are; though you want to - pretend.

Ich erfinde keine Geschichten. Ich schreibe eine andere Sorte Geschichten. Ich schreibe so wahrhaftig wie der Mann mit seinen Fingern, wenn ich nur alles behalten und sagen kann; aber ich bin nicht auf seiner Seite. Ich bin auf einer anderen Seite. Ich sage die Wahrheit, aber aus einer anderen Sicht. Ich bin diejenige, der er es angetan hat. Der Köder spricht, Süßer.

Why are they all trying to make me into a saint? Oh God! Oh God! I want to do things. Stop turning me into a saint.

I am becoming more and more convinced that there is something wrong with the way I live. Something false about everything I do. Even when I want to do something good; I feel that it's only in order to seem a better person.

El artista no tiene ningún derecho moral para dejarse llevar a un abstracto nivel medio, para hacer que su obra sea más comprensible, más accesible. Esto no acarrearía otra cosa que la decadencia del arte, cuando en realidad esperamos su florecimiento, creemos en las posibilidades potenciales y aún no desarrolladas del artista y también en una elevación de las exigencias del público. O al menos queremos creer en todo ello.

If you try to please audiences, uncritically accepting their tastes, it can only mean that you have no respect for them.

What passes for art today is for the most part a demonstration of itself, for it is a fallacy to suppose that method can become the meaning and aim of art. Nonetheless, most modern artists spend their time self-indulgently demonstrating method.

I think in fact that unless there is an organic link between the subjective impressions of the author and his objective representation of reality, he will not achieve even superficial credibility, let alone authenticity and inner truth.

All the good thoughts have already been had. What we're left with is trite redundant nothingness, or shitposting. I choose the latter.

Sooner or later,reality does occor and when it does, all the lies show up, like blood on snow.

The famous injunction, normally attributed to Saint Francis, to 'preach the gospel at all times; use words if necessary', like many timeworn phrases, contains much that is true.

But whatever these were, it was clear that here was part of Alan that was so; that part of his reality was shaped that way.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing. • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays

Life is a whole, and the pious hour of prayer is judged by God from the ordinary frame of the daily life where the hour of prayer is only a small part. Not the feeling I call up but the tone of my life during the day is God's criterion of what I really am and desire.

Our love for God will be found to be an illusion, except where it is proven by the test of daily life with our fellow man.

Here, all this time, Less thought he was merely a bad writer. A bad lover, a bad friend, a bad son. Apparently the condition is worse; he is bad at being himself.

How hollow to have no secrets left; you shake yourself and nothing rattles. You're boneless as an anemone.

And finally: Who are we when we're not ourselves?

We think we know people, and dismiss the scenes as aberrations, as the lightning strikes of madness, but surely we are wrong. Surely these are the truest moments of their lives.