Quotes About Authenticity

Honesty and grace. You can try to find something better beyond that, but you won't.

Whatever else could be said of Eunice Park, she was perfectly true.

LOVE TAKES OFF MASKS THAT WE FEAR WE CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT AND KNOW WE CANNOT LIVE WITHIN.—JAMES BALDWIN

The goal in life is not to attain some imaginary ideal; it is to find and fully use our own gifts.

There are things that a woman sings, and only a woman knows the full meaning. You may sing for men as well as for women, but only a woman knows your full meaning. I am not a feminista. I only think a woman should be true to who she believes herself to be. Or who she wants herself to be. Or who she imagines herself to be. I don't know what I mean, or whether I'm true myself to any of that. I don't think there are many of us who are true to our possibilities.

There is only one truth. Truth is absolute. You can't escape it, no matter how far you run.

If the physical thing you're doing is funny, you don't have to act funny while doing it. . . . Just be real, and it will be funnier.

People don't want other people to be people. They throw names over them and lock them in, but I don't want you to let them lock you in.

You are not a mistake. You are not a problem to be solved. But you won't discover this until you are willing to stop banging your head against the wall of shaming and caging and fearing yourself.

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

The relentless attempts to be thin take you further and further away from what could actually end your suffering:

When you sneak food, you perpetuate the belief that you are too ugly, too needy, too intense to be seen and loved for who you are... You give yourself the message that who you are is not acceptable, and that you must pretend to be someone else to be loved.

I kept becoming larger in her presence, kept returning to who I would have been without the pretense of who I thought I should be.

But staying with the emptiness—entering it, welcoming it, using it to get to know ourselves better, being able to distinguish the stories we tell ourselves about it from the actual feeling itself—that's radical.

For a few minutes it didn't matter what anyone thought of me. I have created something that didn't exist the day before, from a place that didn't belong to anyone but me.

By God, quod he, for pleynly, at a word, Thy drasty rymyng is nat worth a toord!

He who repeats a tale after a man, Is bound to say, as nearly as he can, Each single word, if he remembers it, However rudely spoken or unfit, Or else the tale he tells will be untrue, The things invented and the phrases new.

la nobleza no depende de las posesiones, ya que la gente no siempre se ajusta al modelo

es indispensable que la palabra corresponda a la acción.

Las palabras deben corresponder a la acción».

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.

I can't turn your soul on. Leave me those feelings; and you can take away the voice and the face. They are not you.

We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.

The truth sticks in our throats with all the sauces it is served with: it will never go down until we take it without any sauce at all.