Quotes about Authenticity

Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but Do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test. Do you love me stripped of everything that might be lost, for only the things I will have for ever?

Wanting to sound like other people has its temptations. There are inherited habits of speech guaranteed to make us sound authoritative, intelligent, worldly, appropriately grateful, or deeply moved.

If we are not regularly deeply embarrassed by who we are, the journey to self-knowledge hasn't begun.

There is nothing more difficult than waking someone who is only pretending to be asleep.

God loves human beings. God loves the world. Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are; not an ideal world, but the real world. What we find repulsive in their opposition to God, what we shrink back from with pain and hostility, namely, real human beings, the real world, this is for God the ground of unfathomable love.

God does not love some ideal person, but rather human beings just as we are, not some ideal world, but rather the real world.

Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of the church.

The desire we so often hear expressed today for "episcopal figures," "priestly men," "authoritative personalities" springs frequently enough from a spiritually sick need for the admiration of men, for the establishment of visible human authority, because the genuine authority of service appears to be so unimpressive.

In particular, our church will have to confront the vices of hubris, the worship of power, envy, and illusionism as the roots of all evil. It will have to speak of moderation, authenticity, trust, faithfulness, steadfastness, patience, discipline, humility, modesty, contentment.

Genuine love is always self-forgetful in the true sense of the word.

I think that even in this place we ought to live as if we had no wishes and no future, and just be our true selves.

There is no truth towards Jesus without truth towards man. Untruthfulness destroys fellowship, but truth cuts false fellowship to pieces and establishes genuine brotherhood.