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Due to fear, so often we pretend to be what we are not

• There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others. Michel de Montaigne
• Camouflage is a game we all like to play, but our secrets are as surely revealed by what we want to seem to be as by what we want to conceal. Russell Lynes
• The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me. H. Auden
• All the discontented people I know are trying to be something they are not, to do something they cannot do. David Grayson
• Just being ourselves is the biggest fear of humans. We have learned to live our life trying to satisfy other people’s demands.  We have learned to live by other people’s points of view because of the fear of not being accepted and of not being good enough for someone else.  Don Miguel Ruiz
• Few are those who see with their own eyes  and feel with their own hearts.  Albert Einstein
• Sometimes we exclude things in ourselves in order to be like everybody else around us–our ethnicity, our social backgrounds, our ideas.  What kind of world is it that will not allow me to be myself, and is it really good for me to be there?  What part of me will die a slow death if I stay? Joan Chittister
• Follow your own path,  Fear

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Be who you are …

• About all you can do in life is be who you are. Rita Mae Brown
• About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won’t like you at all. Rita Mae Brown
• Accept who you are; and revel in it. Mitch Albom
• All men are different. And should do everything possible to continue to be so. Paulo Coelho
• All your life you pretend to be someone else, and it turns out that you were someone else pretending to be you. Robert Brault
• Be sure it’s your real self you’re showing. Because it is your real self that needs to be loved. Daphne Rose Kingma
• Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are. Julius Charles Hare
• Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind. Dr Seuss
• Be your imperfectly perfect self. Marc and Angel Chernoff
• I express who I am by simply being it. Jason Nelson
• I was once afraid of people saying, “Who does she think she is?” Now I have the courage to stand and say, “This is who I am.” Oprah Winfrey
• I’ve finally stopped running away from myself. Who else is there better to be? Golden Hawn
• In the moment of our creation we receive the stamp of our individuality; and much of life is spent in rubbing off or defacing the impression. Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare
• It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not. Andre Gide
• It’s wonderful when you can bring sparkle into people’s lives without fading away from your own true color. Keep the hue in you. Dodinsky
• Just be what you are and speak from your guts and heart – it’s all a man has. Hubert Humphrey
• Know Thyself” was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, “Be Thyself” shall be written. Oscar Wilde
• Learn to… be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not. Henri Frederic Amiel
• Maturity is accepting the responsibility of being oneself, whatsoever the cost. Osho
• Ride the energy of your own unique spirit. Gabrielle Roth
• The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be. Socrates
• The point is not to change ourselves. The point is to make friends with who we already are. Pema Chodron
• The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. Joseph Campbell
• The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are. Carl Jung
• The things that we love tell us what we are. Thomas Aquinas
• We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be. May Sarton
• Learn what you are and be such. Pindar
• All I can do is act according to my deepest instinct, and be whatever I must be–crazy or ribald or sad or compassionate or loving or indifferent.  That is all anybody can do. Katherine Hathaway
• Be yourself.  Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish.  John Jakes
• Uniqueness

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… truly yourself

• So, be yourself. By that, I mean REALLY yourself. Karl Moore
• Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got. Janis Joplin
• The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself. Anna Quindlen
• The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourself! Swami Vivekananda
• Stand out from the crowd, be yourself. Stephen Richards
• You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way. Richard Bach
• You are more powerful, more effective, when you are completely yourself… Just stop adding unnecessary baggage to who you already are. Eckhart Tolle
• No matter what happens, always be yourself. Dale Carnegie
• God has given you one face, and you make yourself another. William Shakespeare
• Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself. Harvey Fierstein
• Best be yourself, imperial, plain and true! Robert Browning
• Make the most of yourself, because that’s all there is of you. Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Be authentic and real

• The authentic self is the soul made visible. Sarah Ban Breathnach
• Authentic: of undisputed origin and not a copy; genuine.  Oxford Dictionary
• Perfection lies in being real. Hrithik Roshan
• In my experience, anger and frustration are the result of you not being authentic somewhere in your life or with someone in your life. Being fake about anything creates a block inside of you. Life can’t work for you if you don’t show up as you. Jason Mraz
• Authenticity breeds more authenticity. Have you ever known such comfort as being yourself in the presence of someone who is also being themselves? That is a heart to heart connection that expands everything. Kristine Carlson
• Live authentically. Why would you continue to compromise something that’s beautiful to create something that is fake. Steve Maraboli

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Live your own life

• There is just one life for each of us: our own.  Euripides

Create according to who you are

• What another would have done as well as you, do not do it.  What another would have said as well as you, do not say it; what another would have written as well, do not write it.  Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself–and thus make yourself indispensable. Andre Gide
• You are something new in this world.  Be glad of it.  Make the most of what nature gave you.  In the last analysis, all art is autobiographical.  You can sing only what you are.  You can paint only what you are.  You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you.  For better or for worse, you must cultivate your own little garden.  For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.  Dale Carnegie
• You have a masterpiece inside you, you know.  One unlike any that has ever been created, or ever will be.  If you go to your grave without painting your masterpiece, it will not get painted.  No one else can paint it.  Only you. Gordon MacKenzie

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Your greatest purpose in life is to be you…

• When you die and go to heaven, our maker is not going to ask, Why didn’t you discover the cure for such and such? The only question we will be asked in that precious moment is, Why didn’t you become you? Elie Wiesel
• Man’s ideal state is realized when he has fulfilled the purpose for which he is born. And what is it that reason demands of him? Something very easy – that he live in accordance with his own nature. Seneca
• You and your purpose in life are the same thing. Your purpose is to be you. George Alexiou
• Make your life an ongoing process of being who you are, at your deepest, most easeful levels of being. Everything other than this process is secondary. David Deida
• Why are you trying so hard to fit in when you were born to stand out? Oprah Winfrey
• If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Purpose

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…and no one can do a better job of it than you can

• Let’s dare to be ourselves, for we do that better than anyone else can. Shirley Briggs
• You will make a lousy anybody else, but you will be the best “you” in existence. Zig Ziglar
• Be yourself, as no one else can. Stephen Richards
• There will never be another now – I’ll make the most of today. There will never be another me – I’ll make the most of myself. Terry Neil
• Be yourself…everyone else is already taken. Oscar Wilde
• If you’re able to be yourself, then you have no competition. All you have to do is get closer and closer to that essence. Barbara Cook
• Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You. Seuss
• I can’t write a book commensurate with Shakespeare, but I can write a book by me. Walter Raleigh

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

• You were born an original. Don’t die a copy. John Mason
• We are all born originals. Why is it so many of us die copies? Edward Young
• Insist on yourself; never imitate. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else. Judy Garland
• Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their life a mimicry, their passions a quotation. Oscar Wilde
• You are the best you. You will always be the second best anyone else. Leo Buscaglia
• If you are trying to imitate someone else’s greatness, you have missed the point of greatness. The secret is to find your own unique style and talents and bring them forth. No one has ever attained mastery by replicating another. The truly great simply replicate themselves. Alan Cohen
• When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. Eric Hoffer

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Only by being yourself can you live an authentic life

• Every decision we make, every stop we take, must be informed by our commitment to living a life that is true and honest and authentic to ourselves and ourselves alone. Robin Sharma
• The most important gift we can give ourselves is the commitment to living our authentic life. Robin Sharma
• I do not want to be folded for where I am folded, there I am a lie. Rilke
• To be authentic is literally to be your own author …, to discover your own native energies and desires, and then to find your own way of acting on them. Warren G. Bennis
• We need to find the courage to say NO to the things and people that are not serving us if we want to rediscover ourselves and live our lives with authenticity. Barbara de Angelis
• Once you accept and rejoice in your authenticity, you begin to see things as YOU are. You begin to see the authentic self is the Soul made visible.  Godspeed on your journey to wholeness.  Sarah Ban Breathnach
• The more authentic you become, the more genuine in your expression, particularly regarding personal experiences and even self- doubts, the more people can relate to your expression and the safer it makes them feel to express themselves. That expression in turn feeds back on the other person’s spirit, and genuine creative empathy takes place, producing new insights and learnings.  Sephen Covey
• Everything will line up perfectly when knowing and living the truth becomes more important than looking good. Alan Cohen
• Living up to an image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you is inauthentic living. Eckhart Tolle
• Integrity

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Be prepared for the fact that not everyone will accept you as you are – and that’s ok

• Always choose to be true to yourself, even at the risk of incurring ridicule from others, rather than being fake and incurring the pain and confusion of trying to be someone you’re not. When you are comfortable in your skin, not everyone in this world will like you, and that’s okay.  You could be the ripest, juiciest apple in the world, and there’s going to be someone out there who hates apples.  Marc and Angel Chernoff
• Expect to offend some people. If you’re not having some polarizing effects, then you’re not fully showing up. Danielle LaPorte
• You will always be too much of something for someone: too big, too loud, too soft, too edgy. If you round out your edges, you lose your edge. Danielle LaPorte
• Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind. Seuss
• Criticism

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What it means to be completely yourself

• I am completely and authentically, all that I choose to be, in this moment. I am aware of what I am choosing to be, I am honest about it, and I accept responsibility for it. Neale Donald Walsch
• Start building the confidence to express your true self at all times, to embrace what makes you different from the norm. By loving yourself completely, you will reach a new height of health that no food could ever give you. And by expressing your authentic self, your life force will soar, your heart will open, and the world will never look the same. Joshua Rosenthal
• As soon as you can say what you think, and not what some other person has thought for you, you are on your way to being a remarkable man. James Matthew Barrie
• Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn. Gore Vidal
• Quit putting yourself in a little box by trying to live consistently with your past and explaining every little action you take. BE YOU. Fully. In this moment. Independent of what others may or may not ‘expect’ from you. Brian Johnson
• The ultimate goal of being ourselves in an authentic way is actually about loving ourselves in a generous way. Mike Robbins
• Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself. Be true to the highest within your soul and then allow yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionalities or arbitrary man- made rules that are not founded on principle. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, ‘This is the real me,’ and when you have found that attitude, follow it. William James
• The genuinely spiritual person is one who has lost all desire to be anyone but exactly who he is, without labels and without apologies. He is what he is and that’s all there is to it. Such a man is undivided, uncomplicated and contented. Vernon Howard
• Being authentic means being true to your values, and beliefs regardless of what other people think, having the courage to be honest and real with yourself, choosing what you feel comfortable disclosing, and taking 100% responsibility for your thoughts and actions. Lorraine Cohen

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Being yourself requires you to get to know who you are

• To be yourself you need to find yourself.
• Self-knowledge is the great power by which we comprehend and control our lives. Vernon Howard
• Know thyself. Plato
• Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. Aristotle
• To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying “Amen” to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to keep your soul alive. Robert Louis Stevenson
• Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, ‘This is the real me,’ and when you have found that attitude, follow it. William James
• Self-knowledge

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Being you requires accepting yourself as you are

• Accept everything about yourself–I mean everything. You are you and that is the beginning and the end–no apologies, no regrets.  Clark Moustakas
• Every one of us must at last accept ourselves for our portion, and learn to do our work with the tools and talents with which we have been endowed. Charles A. Hawley
• Our entire life consists ultimately in accepting ourselves as we are.  Jean Anouilh
• Self-acceptance

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Being yourself requires courage and determination

• Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive – the risk to be alive and express what we really are. Miguel Angel Ruiz
• Live dangerously, and when I say ‘Live dangerously,’ I mean live according to your own self, whatever the cost. Whatever is at stake, live according to your own consciousness, according to your own heart and feeling. Anthony de Mello
• The highest courage is to dare to appear to be what one is. John Lancaster Spalding
• To be nobody but myself-in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make me somebody else – means to fight the hardest battle any human can fight, and never stop fighting. E. E. Cummings
• To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you somebody else.
• Being true to yourself is not always easy. Maybe that’s why they call it the road less travelled. Maybe that’s why Sinatra belted out “My Way” with such badass pride. Danielle LaPorte
• It takes more courage to reveal insecurities than to hide them. Alex Karras
• Defining myself, as opposed to being defined by others, is one of the most difficult challenges I face.  Carol Mosely-Braun
• I was once afraid of people saying, Who does she think she is?  Now I have the courage to stand and say, This is who I am.  Oprah Winfrey
• Courage,  Determination

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Being yourself requires self-love, forgiveness and compassion

• Building a strong foundation of self-love, forgiveness, compassion…. and connecting with your soul Essence infuses confidence, courage, inner strength… to be true to who you are mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Lorraine Cohen
• The ultimate goal of being ourselves in an authentic way is actually about loving ourselves in a generous way. Mike Robbins
• I believe one of our souls’ major purposes is to know, love, and express our authentic selves. To live the life and be the person we were created to be.  However, our true selves only emerge when it’s safe to do so. Self-     condemnation, shame, and guilt send your true nature into hiding.  It’s only in the safety of gentle curiosity, encouragement, and self- love that your soul can bloom as it was created to do.  Sue Patton Thoele
• Self-love,  Self-forgiveness,  Compassion

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Being yourself requires accepting your imperfections

• Becoming whole is becoming authentic, becoming yourself – whosoever you are, whatsoever you are. Accept your limitations, accept your imperfections. That’s what it means to be a human being. Osho
• The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself. Anna Quindlen

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Being yourself requires doing what you love

• Being in your element is not only about aptitude, it’s about passion: it is about loving what you do…tapping into your natural energy and your most authentic self. Sir Ken Robinson
• When we are enthusiastic we are intoxicated with passion rooted in our true selves and it flows into all we do. Linda Saccoccio
• We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything than when we are playing. Charles Schaefer
• Do what you love

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Being yourself creates happiness and inner peace

• It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is. Desiderius Erasmus
• How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone. Coco Chanel
• When you’re truly happy, you are being yourself. Robert Holden
• My whole teaching is: Just be what you are and don’t care a bit about the world. Then you will feel a tremendous relaxation and a deep peace within your heart. That is your original face, relaxed, without tensions, without pretensions, without hypocrisies, without the so- called disciplines of how you should behave. Osho
• Only the truth of who you are, if realized, will set you free. Eckhart Tolle
• The closer you come to your core, the greater is your joy. Torkom Saraydarin
• The summit of happiness is reached when a person is ready to be what he is. Desiderius Erasmus
• Happiness,  Inner peace

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Being yourself requires far less tension and effort …

• Self-confidence is so relaxing. There is no strain or stress when one is self-confident. Our lack of self- confidence comes from trying to be someone we aren’t. Anne Wilson Schaef
• The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere. Anne Morrow Lindbergh
• It is not only possible to be the person you pretend to be, but there is less effort involved. Robert Brault
• Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.  Chinese Proverb
• If you don’t embrace your uniqueness, you will spend your entire life striving to conform to the impossibility of being someone else. Marc and Angel Chernoff
• A true man never frets about his place in the world, but just slides into it by the gravitation of his nature, and swings there as easily as a star. Edwin H. Chapin
• Just be yourself and remember you cannot be anything else, whatsoever you do. All effort is futile. You have to be just yourself. Osho
• Effort,  Effortlessness

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…for it’s easier to be yourself, hard to be someone else

• You can only be ‘real’ on your path. The hardest thing in the world is to be something you’re not. Leo Buscaglia
• We need not be afraid to touch, to feel, to show emotion. The easiest thing in the world is to be what you are, what you feel. The hardest thing to be is what other people want you to be. Leo Buscaglia
• The easiest thing in the world to be is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don’t let anyone put you in that position. Leo Buscaglia
• Why try to be someone you’re not? Life is hard enough without adding impersonation to the skills required. Robert Brault
• Be yourself, be natural. It is far easier than pretending to be someone else.
• How much simpler life becomes when you cease trying to become something you are not. Eileen Caddy
• One has just to be oneself. That’s my basic message. The moment you accept yourself as you are, all burdens, all mountainous burdens, simply disappear. Then life is a sheer joy, a festival of lights. Osho Rajneesh
• There is a limit to how much you can change to be liked for who you really are. Robert Brault
• If you think it’s hard being who “you” are, it’s a hellava lot harder trying to be someone you’re not. Spike Humer

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Being yourself brings strength

• Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you. George R.R. Martin
• Strength

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Being yourself brings freedom

• When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free. Charles Evans Hughes
• There’s something liberating about not pretending. Dare to embarrass yourself. Risk. Drew Barrymore
• You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way. Richard Bach
• Freedom

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Being yourself creates success

• Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing. Sydney Smith
• One of life’s greatest successes is when you allow the world to see you as you see yourself. Eric Walton
• Success

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Being yourself unleashes your natural potential …

• Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• The strongest force in the universe is a human being living consistently with his identity. Tony Robbins
• We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or other peoples’ models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open. Shakti Gawain
• When you know that you are the beloved of the universe, then all of the energy that you have been using to convince the external world of who you are will now be yours to use for the beauty of simply being yourself just as you are. Michael Bernard Beckwith
• The strongest force in the universe is a human being living consistently with his identity. Tony Robbins
• There are many who are living far below their possibilities because they are continually handing over their individualities to others.  Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself.  Ralph Waldo Trine
• To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.  Baruch Spinoza
• Potential

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…and brings other great rewards

• The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. Jim Morrison
• The only thing more important than being good is being real. Authenticity is kinder than resignation without conviction. Truth leads to good faster than good leads to truth. Ultimately truth is good, but you have to live it from the inside out. Alan Cohen
• When I’m trusting and being myself as fully as possible, everything in my life reflects this by falling into place easily, often miraculously. Shakti Gawain
• You being yourself, help others be themselves. Jane Roberts
• When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you. Lao Tzu
• The more in vibrational sync you are with who you really are, then the more you are allowing only those things that you’re wanting, and the less resistance there is. And the less resistance there is, then the less delay between the idea of the thought and the receiving of it. Abraham-Hicks
• There’s room for everybody on the planet to be creative and conscious if you are your own person. If you’re trying to be like somebody else, then there isn’t. Tori Amos
• How can anyone ever love you for who you are if you become someone else to be with them? Stephan C. Paul
• By being yourself, you put something wonderful in the world that was not there before.  Edwin Elliot
• If you’re able to be yourself, then you have no competition.  All you have to do is get closer and closer to that essence.  Barbara Cook
• People who have the courage to be individuals can usually think things through on their own and make sound decisions.  They don’t say, “What will people think?”  They say, “What’s the best way to handle this?”  The amazing fact is that God created each one of us as a separate, unique person amid billions of other separate, unique individuals.  So the best way to achieve real fulfillment is to be yourself. Norman Vincent Peale

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You pay a high price for not being yourself

• When one is pretending the entire body revolts. Anaïs Nin
• To wish you were someone else is to waste the person you are.
• We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld
• He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away. Raymond Hull
• Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess, and to gain applause which he cannot keep. Samuel Johnson
• We are betrayed by what is false within. George Meredith
• The most common form of despair is not being who you are. Soren Kierkegaard
• Nobody is so miserable as he who longs to be somebody other than the person he is. Angelo Patri
• When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time. Laurie Halse Anderson
• 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. Nathaniel Hawthorne
• How hurtful it can be to deny one’s true self and live a life of lies just to appease others. June Ahern
• It is a pathetic moment in the history of the human condition when the outside world tells us who and what we are – and we start to believe it ourselves. Then, bent over from the weight of the negativity, we start to wither on the outside.  Joan Chittister
• Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld
• We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin. André Berthiaume
• We get so much in the habit of wearing a disguise before others that we eventually appear disguised before ourselves. Jim Bishop
• Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you? Fanny Brice
• The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere. Anne Morrow Lindbergh
• Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble. Samuel Johnson
• Of what use to get what you want if you must become someone else to get it. Robert Brault
• People who are one way on the inside and believe that they need to be another way outside to please others become conflicted and often lose touch with what they really think and feel. It’s difficult for them to be happy and almost impossible for them to be at their best. Ray Dalio

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So be yourself and live your own life, not someone else’s

• You have the right to do whatever you choose, so long as it does not harm another human being. Libertarian axiom
• There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way. Christopher Morley
• Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Steve Jobs
• Live your life from your heart. Share from your heart. And your story will touch and heal people’s souls. Melody Beattie
• I found out that there weren’t too many limitations, if I did it my way. Johnny Cash
• Tis’ better to live your own life imperfectly than to imitate someone else’s perfectly. Elizabeth Gilbert
• Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• They will say you are on the wrong road if it is your own. Antonio Porchia
• Champion the right to be yourself; dare to be different and to set your own pattern, live your own life, and follow your own star. Wilfred Peterson
• My whole teaching is: Just be what you are and don’t care a bit about the world. Then you will feel a tremendous relaxation and a deep peace within your heart. Osho
• We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. Kurt Vonnegut
• Is life not a hundred times too short for us to stifle ourselves. Friedrich Nietzsche
• Follow your own path

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Be true to yourself no matter what

• I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. Oriah Mountain Dreamer
• Integrity,  Honesty

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Find and sing your own unique song and listen to your own tune

• Those who wish to sing, always find a song. Swedish Proverb
• Most people live and die with their music still unplayed. They never dare to try. Mary Kay Ash
• I celebrate myself, and sing myself. Walt Whitman
• The world is at your fingertips, play your favourite tune and sing it in your own voice. Trent Woodard
• Being is so significant that it is irreplaceable. You are just yourself. Do something that comes out of you—not to assert, but to express! Sing your song, dance your dance, rejoice in being whatever nature has chosen you to be. Osho
• How do I find my tune, my song, my personal harmony that’s healing because it’s me? Terri Guillemets
• You can sing only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life. Dale Carnegie
• Find what makes your heart sing and create your own music. Mac Anderson
• There is a need to find and sing our own song, to stretch our limbs and shake them in a dance so wild that nothing can roost there, that stirs the yearning for solitary wings. Barbara Lazear Ascher
• When you dance to your own rhythm, life taps its toes to your beat. Terri Guillemets
• Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them. Oliver Wendell Holmes
• Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out. Oliver Wendell Holmes
• Your heart knows your song, but you have to be willing to listen to the words. Sue Rock
• A bird does not sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song. Lou Holtz
• Music in the soul can be heard by the universe. Lao Tzu
• Don’t die with your music (stories/talents) still inside you. Listen to your intuitive inner voice and find what passion stirs your soul. Wayne Dyer
• I want to sing like birds sing, not worrying who listens or what they think. Rumi
• Some days there won’t be a song in your heart. Sing anyway. Emory Austin
• Use what talent you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best. Henry Van Dyke
• Love so much that the song arises in your being — the song of gratitude. Be grateful and sing the song of gratitude so that you can become more and more capable of love. Osho
• Each soul has its own note to sing in the divine chorus and no voice is more important than another. Prem Prakash
• You don’t get harmony when everybody sings the same note. Doug Floyd
• Everything I do, I do to make my heart sing. Fortune Cookie
• You must pass your days in song. Let your whole life be a song. Sai Baba
• A nice definition of an awakened person: a person who no longer marches to the drums of society, a person who dances to the tune of the music that springs up from within. Anthony de Mello
• You have a unique message to deliver, a unique song to sing, a unique act of love to bestow. This message, this song, and this act of love have been entrusted exclusively to the one and only you. John Powell
• If a man does not keep pace with his companion, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Henry David Thoreau
• Every single one of us can do things that no one else can do – can love things that on one else can love. We are like violins. We can be used for doorstops, or we can make music. You know what to do. Barbara Sher
• Life is a song

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If you can’t be a pine on the top of the hill, Be a scrub in the valley–but be The best little scrub by the side of the rill; Be a bush, if you can’t be a tree.

If you can’t be a bush, be a bit of the grass, And some highway happier make; If you can’t be a muskie, then just be a bass– But the liveliest bass in the lake!

We can’t all be captains, we’ve got to be crew, There’s something for all of us here, There’s big work to do and there’s lesser to do And the task we must do is the near.

If you can’t be a highway, then just be a trail, If you can’t be the sun, be a star; It isn’t by size that you win or you fail– Be the best of whatever you are!

Douglas Malloch

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• I give myself permission to be myself. I’m authentic. I live life in my own way. Marelisa Fabrega
• I do not need anyone’s permission to be my true self. Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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• Remember to always be yourself. Unless you suck. Joss Whedon
• Be yourself, don’t take anyone’s shit, and never let them take you alive. Gerard Way
• Having perfected our disguise, we spend our lives searching for someone we don’t fool. Robert Brault
• There is a public me and a private me, who, if they were separate people, probably wouldn’t exchange Christmas cards. Robert Brault
• When I was a child, my mother said to me, “If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general.  If you become a monk you’ll end up as the pope.”  Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.  Pablo Picasso
• Why not be oneself?  That is the whole secret of a successful appearance.  If one is a greyhound why try to look like a Pekinese? Edith Sitwell

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