Authentic Living Quotes

“If the family you chose before your birth no longer supports your path towards fulfilling your true destiny, it is never too late to find a new tribe.”
― Anthon St. Maarten

“There are only three options for black sheep: live authentically and get kicked out of the community, have the courage to move out on your own and rebuild from scratch, or hide your true self and desperately try to fit in (which you never will).”
― Ben Crawford, 2,000 Miles Together: The Story of the Largest Family to Hike the Appalachian Trail

“Getting into the habit of changing who you are to please others, is setting a lifetime marathon of running away from yourself.”
― Dr. Jacinta Mpalyenkana, Ph.D, MBA

“Writing is mental exercise and the preeminent method to train the mind to achieve a desirable state of mental quietude. Meditative writing, a single pointed concentration of mental activity, induces an altered state of consciousness. Writing is studious rumination, a means to converse with our personal muse. Writing entails a period of forced solitude that enables us to meet and conduct a searching conversation with our authentic self. This contemplative dialogue with our true self is transformational. Writing is not a mere act but a journey of the mind into heretofore-unknown frontiers of the self.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Authenticity is the sine qua non of everything that matters. When you encounter someone unguarded, without artifice or pretense--Mon Dieu!--you know it. I compare it to being at the top of the mountain: the air is clearer, there's nothing to muddy the senses. It's bracingly refreshing.”
― Ellen Lubin-Sherman, The Essentials Of Fabulous

“A liberated person abdicates from society’s expectations and embraces living an authentic life undeterred by external determinates.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“To understand another person's thoughts and feelings thoroughly, with the meanings they have for him, and to be thoroughly understood by this other person in return -- this is one of the most rewarding of human experiences, and all too rare.”
― Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy

“Self-love can only be achieved by living an authentic life. It’s not possible to truly love and accept yourself when you are not being true to yourself.”
― Anthon St. Maarten

“Beware! Authentic communication is not to be confused with Grandma's unfiltered comments!”
― Vindy Teja

“Being yourself is the greatest gift you can give yourself and the world because the world needs more authentic and real souls.”
― Hiral Nagda

“Let us all stop being controlled by the fear of disappointing others and let us all learn how to stop perpetuating the cycle of manipulating our children through their fear of disappointing us. The people we love are allowed to be disappointed in us and we are allowed to be disappointed in the people we love. Everyone is allowed to experience life as it may flow. Nobody is born as a safeguard to other people's life experiences. Live AUTHENTICALLY; do not live out of the fear of dissapointing others nor out of the fear of being disappointed. And above all: change the narrative for the next generation. Your kids were not born *for* you. People are born for themselves.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Feel your truth, as an echo in the wind. What you feel holds the secrets waiting to be revealed. It is a key, an opening and a possibility. Magic awaits when we embrace our truth.”
― Ulonda Faye, Sutras of the Heart: Spiritual Poetry to Nourish the Soul

“An authentic life facing reality without mental equivocation is the simplest type of life.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“When you haven't figured out who you are and what you offer the world, it's awfully easy to get hoodwinked into thinking you're not as good as everyone else. It's even easier to start taking on the arts and pretensions of someone you're not. Don't bother. There's nothing fabulous about a generic. We always pay more for the original.”
― Ellen Lubin-Sherman, The Essentials Of Fabulous

“We tend to overpack. If it does not add value to your life journey, don’t bring it along for the ride.”
― Anthon St. Maarten

“That world had failed them, because it told them material things were all they’d ever need. It had laid out a life for them instead of letting them choose one for themselves.”
― Vincent H. O'Neil, A Pause in the Perpetual Rotation

“A person employs human reason and intellect to guide our earthly expedition. We can stumble through life satisfying the unconscious dictates of the mind or take control of our life by increasing our level of conscious awareness. Philosophy always commences with an act of consciousness. We must follow our moral passions. We create our reality by what we perceive as truth. We imagine a life that we wish to experience. Live the life that you envision. Do not allow other people or external determinates to control your conception of the self, because otherwise you are living someone else’s life.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“A person desires to lead a self-constructed life rather than live a life duplicating other people’s footsteps.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“When you choose to be authentic, you dare to be powerful.⁠”
― Anthon St. Maarten

“Learn to be your own Question Authority. It may drive your friends and family crazy, but it will definitely highlight the Possibility of More.”
― Kelly Corbet, BIG: the practice of joy

“Let others do as they wished, but she would live the life she began and would not run from corner to corner in a frenzy. She would wait for her own happiness, not someone else's.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“Some people are really out here trying to win at everything. I just want to live authentically through tenderness. Imagine seeing life as a performance you have to win at; rather than an authentic daily experience. Imagine thinking that it's either victory or shame, either or. I just can't fathom it.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Authenticity is the new sexy.”
― Kierra C.T. Banks

“If you can’t be yourself around others, who are you?”
― Frank Sonnenberg, The Path to a Meaningful Life

“It is delusional to seek peace and prosperity by settling for a safe life devoted to appeasing other people. We live only once. A person whom pursues outward applause for their life by gaining a sense of status in other people’s eyes surrenders their own values. A princely life demands more than appeasing a phantom audience. I aspire to live an authentic life by following my passion no matter where it leads.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Authenticity is a gift you share with others. It's kinda like your gourmet cheeseball contribution to the party.”
― Vindy Teja

“I began to delight in surprising adults with my refined palate and disgusting my inexperienced peers with what I would discover to be some of nature's greatest gifts. By the age of ten I had learned to break down a full lobster with my bare hands and a nutcracker. I devoured steak tartare, pâtés, sardines, snails baked in butter and smothered with roasted garlic. I tried raw sea cucumber, abalone, and oysters on the half shell. At night my mother would roast dried cuttlefish on a camp stove in the garage and serve it with a bowl of peanuts and a sauce of red pepper paste mixed with Japanese mayonnaise. My father would tear it into strips and we'd eat it watching television together until our jaws were sore, and I'd wash it all down with small sips from one of my mother's Coronas.
Neither one of my parents graduated from college. I was not raised in a household with many books or records. I was not exposed to fine art at a young age or taken to any museums or plays at established cultural institutions. My parents wouldn't have known the names of authors I should read or foreign directors I should watch. I was not given an old edition of Catcher in the Rye as a preteen, copies of Rolling Stones records on vinyl, or any kind of instructional material from the past that might help give me a leg up to cultural maturity. But my parents were worldly in their own ways. They had seen much of the world and had tasted what it had to offer. What they lacked in high culture, they made up for by spending their hard-earned money on the finest of delicacies. My childhood was rich with flavor---blood sausage, fish intestines, caviar. They loved good food, to make it, to seek it, to share it, and I was an honorary guest at their table.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“Authenticity: What speaks to you? Who speaks to you? What do they say? And what is the music in the background?”
― Garry Fitchett

“Being seen is about simply existing in your truth and allowing others to witness that without attempting to hide, diminish, or justify yourself. When we allow someone to truly see us, we invite a deeper, more authentic connection.”
― Celeste Larsen, Heal the Witch Wound: Reclaim Your Magic and Step Into Your Power

“Listen, go within. The heart knows the way. Take heed, look around, everywhere is love. Open to change and reveal your heart to the world. You shall be received.”
― Ulonda Faye, Sutras of the Heart: Spiritual Poetry to Nourish the Soul