Quotes about Authenticity

Premature praise is false praise. Praise is our end but not our beginning. We begin our lives crying, not smiling and cooing and thanking our parents for bringing us into this lovely world full of dry diapers and sweet milk and warm flesh. We kick and flail. We yell and weep. We have the popularization of a kind of religion that, instead of training people to the sacrificial life after the pattern of our Lord, seduces them into having fun on weekends.

But if you're content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.

David's isn't an ideal life but an actual life.

We are most ourselves when we love; we are most the People of God when we love.

But we do know that much of what we commonly describe as Christian behavior is not volitional at all—it is enforced. But worship is not forced. Everyone who worships does so because he or she wants to.

You're blessed when you're content with just who you are—no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought.

What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself? What could you ever trade your soul for?

And yet I decide, every day, to set aside what I can do best and attempt what I do very clumsily--open myself to the frustrations and failures of loving, daring to believe that failing in love is better than succeeding in pride.

You don't make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true.

People want something that's relevant to their lives. They want something that means something to them, and they want something where it seems like people have thought about what they're saying.

When I go back to Louisiana, I want to be the same person that my friends remember me as. It's so important to me.

Even the greatest musicians, they only represent themselves. You represent who you are and what your experiences are and what you have in your heart, and it's the same for me. I represent who I am and what I've been through and what I'm bringing to the music.