Quotes about Authenticity

We've all had saints in our lives, by which I mean not plaster saints, not moral exemplars, not people setting for us a kind of suffocating good example, but I mean saints in the sense of life givers. People through knowing whom we become more alive.

Not the least of my problems is that I can hardly even imagine what kind of an experience a genuine, self-authenticating religious experience would be. Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.

Because all peddlers of God's word have that in common, I think: they tell what costs them least to tell and what will gain them most; and to tell the story of who we really are and of the battle between light and dark, between belief and unbelief, between sin and grace that is waged within us all costs plenty and may not gain us anything, we're afraid, but an uneasy silence and a fishy stare.

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence

Humility does not mean a submissiveness, a passiveness, a willingness to be walked on, or a desire to live in the doghouse. Humility is a virtue by which we recognize ourselves as we really are, not as we would like to be in the eyes of the public; not as our press notices say we are, but as we are in the sight of God when we examine our conscience.

Truth never appeals to us unless it is personal.

We hate others, and call it "zeal"; we flatter others because of what they can do for us, and call it "love"; we lie to them, and call it "tact.

To love what we say, it must be true. To want to speak the truth, it must be loved.

If you do not live what you believe, you will end up believing what you live.

Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking.

Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles.

It is true that integrity alone won't make you a leader, but without integrity you will never be one.