1. Being “Real”
“What is Real?” asked the Rabbit one day...,
“Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick - out - handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you...”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful.
“When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once,...” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time.
That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or have to be carefully kept.
Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.
But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand. ~From The Velveteen Rabbit by Marjory Williams
2. Character is not made in a crisis — it is only exhibited. ~Dr. Robert Freeman
3. Every man has three characters – that which he exhibits, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has. ~Karr
4. Follow the grain in your own wood. ~Howard Thurman
5. If you call forth what is in you, it will save you. If you do not call forth what is in you, it will destroy you. ~Gospel of Saint Thomas
6. It is not the facts which guide (our) conduct, but (our) opinions about facts; which may be entirely wrong. We can only make them right by discussion. ~Sir Norman Angell
7. Like an ability or a muscle, hearing your inner wisdom is strengthened by doing it. ~Robbie Glass
8. Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn. ~Charlie Parker
9. Never esteem anything as of advantage to thee that shall make thee break thy work or lose thy self-respect. ~Marcus Aurelius
10. No one man can, for any considerable time, wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which is the true one. ~Hawthorne
11. No one man can, for any considerable time, wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which is the true one. ~Hawthorne
12. 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
13. Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about. ~W. H. Auden
14. The heart of effectiveness is building integrity through the constant observation of one's lack of integrity. ~William Torbert
15. The men who succeed best at public life are those who take the risk of standing by their own convictions. ~James A. Garfield
16. The worst of all deceptions is self-deception. ~Plato
17. 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. 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 Trine
18. There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do. ~Freya Madeline Stark
19. This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Though canst not then be false to any man. ~William Shakespeare, from Hamlet
20. To find yourself, think for yourself. ~Socrates