One’s real life is often the life that one does not lead

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

There is in a man an upwelling spring of life, energy, love, whatever you like to call it. If a course is not cut for it, it turns the ground round it into a swamp.

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not.

You were born an original. Don’t die a copy.

Is life not a hundred times too short for us to stifle ourselves

There lurks, perhaps, in every human heart a desire of distinction, which inclines every man first to hope, and then to believe, that Nature has given him something peculiar to himself.

He who travels in search of something which he has not got, travels away from himself and grows old even in youth among old things.

Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are.

All the mistakes I make arise from forsaking my own station and trying to see the object from another person’s point of view.

It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is

Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do.

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.

No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

It is not only possible to be the person you pretend to be, but there is less effort involved.