Philosophy on authenticity

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”

“Become who you are.”

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

“A man is more a man through the things he keeps to himself than through those he says.”

“The secret is that only that which can destroy itself is truly alive.”

“The rights a man arrogates to himself are related to the duties he imposes on himself, to the tasks to which he feels equal. The great majority of men have no right to existence, but are a misfortune to higher men.”

“Let's go dance under the elms: / Step lively, young lassies. / Let's go dance under the elms: / Gallants, take up your pipes.”

“As a general rule—never substitute the symbol for the thing signified, unless it is impossible to show the thing itself; for the child's attention is so taken up with the symbol that he will forget what it signifies.”

“I have entered on an enterprise which is without precedent, and will have no imitator. I propose to show my fellows a man as nature made him, and this man shall be myself.”

“It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.”

“I remembered the way out suggested by a great princess when told that the peasants had no bread: Well, let them eat cake.”

“He thinks like a philosopher, but governs like a king.”

“Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. Thus no Body has any Right to but himself.”

“The lot assigned to every man is suited to him, and suits him to itself.”

“Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.”

“I fancy I need more than another to speak (rather than write), with such a formidable tendency to the lapidary style. I build my house of boulders.”

“Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.”

“Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever.”

“Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity.”

“The cup of life is not so shallow That we have drained the best That all the wine at once we swallow And lees make all the rest.”

“A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.”

“No man can have society upon his own terms. If he seeks it, he must serve it too.”

“We are always getting ready to live, but never living.”

“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.”

“Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the state.”

“Poetry must be new as foam, and as old as the rock.”

“The book written against fame and learning has the author's name on the title-page.”

“You can take better care of your secret than another can.”

“Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments.”

“He that owns himself has lost nothing. But how few men are blessed with ownership of self!”

“It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.”

“Socrates did not stop with a philosophical consideration of mankind; he addressed himself to each one individually, wrested everything from him, and sent him away empty-handed.”

“The world is rejuvenated, but as Heine so wittily remarked, it was rejuvenated by romanticism to such a degree that it became a baby again.”

“Irony is a qualification of subjectivity.”

“Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.”

“Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.”

“If the ethical – that is, social morality – is the highest ... then no categories are needed other than the Greek philosophical categories.”

“A Covenant not to defend my selfe from force, by force, is always voyd.”

“No man is bound by the words themselves, either to kill himselfe, or any other man.”

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”