Genuine Quotes

Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified. To know love we have to invest time and commitment...'dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problems or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in wishful fantasy, undermining the real power of the love -- which is to transform us.' Many people want love to function like a drug, giving them an immediate and sustained high. They want to do nothing, just passively receive the good feeling.

~ Bell Hooks

When you're socially awkward, you're isolated more than usual, and when you're isolated more than usual, your creativity is less compromised by what has already been said and done. All your hope in life starts to depend on your craft, so you try to perfect it. One reason I stay isolated more than the average person is to keep my creativity as fierce as possible. Being the odd one out may have its temporary disadvantages, but more importantly, it has its permanent advantages.

~ Criss Jami

Silk is a fine, delicate, soft, illuminating, beautiful substance. But you can never rip it! If a man takes this tender silk and attempts to tear it, and cannot tear it, is he in his right mind to say This silk is fake! I thought it was soft, I thought it was delicate, but look, I cannot even tear it ? Surely, this man is not in his right mind! The silk is not fake! This silk is 100% real. It's the man who is stupid!

~ C. Joybell C.

Who you are in public is a test of your conviction; who you are in private, integrity.

~ Criss Jami

Flattery does not encourage the perfect flow of love in the vein of your relationship. Be genuine and speak out what you feel for each other without hiding the painful truth.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

A relationship that is truly genuine does not keep changing its colors. Real gold never rusts. If a relationship is really solid and golden, it will be unbreakable. Not even Time can destroy its shine.

~ Suzy Kassem

There is a law of the natural worlds (the spiritual and the physical) and this is something I have understood: that for every genuine existence, for every real manifestation and occurrence, there are are ten thousand falsities. Before you meet what or who is genuine, you will first have met, or known of, what is fake; and ten thousand times so! There is no need to feel disappointments, any number below ten thousand deceptions renders you a lucky person! And you ask why is there a need for this to happen? Well, if you have not known what is false first, there is no way to understand what then comes which is truth. What is lesser is so afraid of what is genuine, that it finds it necessary to imitate and duplicate that imitation ten thousand times over, for fear that you will finally meet what is real. The more important that one existence is, the more imitations there are in the world.

~ C. Joybell C.

Take lightly what you hear about individuals. We need not distort trust for our paltry little political agendas. We tend to trust soulless, carried information more than we trust soulful human beings; but really most people aren't so bad once you sit down and have an honest, one-on-one conversation with them, once, with an open heart, you listen to their explanations as to why they act the way they act, or say what they say, or do what they do.

~ Criss Jami

Some people think they can find satisfaction in good food, fine clothes, lively music, and sexual pleasure. However, when they have all these things, they are not satisfied. They realize happiness is not simply having their material needs met. Thus, society has set up a system of rewards that go beyond material goods. These include titles, social recognition, status, and political power, all wrapped up in a package called self-fulfillment. Attracted by these prizes and goaded on by social pressure, people spend their short lives tiring body and mind to chase after these goals. Perhaps this gives them the feeling that they have achieved something in their lives, but in reality they have sacrificed a lot in life. They can no longer see, hear, act, feel, or think from their hearts. Everything they do is dictated by whether it can get them social gains. In the end, they've spent their lives following other people's demands and never lived a life of their own. How different is this from the life of a slave or a prisoner?

~ Liezi

She's an old soul with young eyes, a vintage heart, and a beautiful mind.

~ Nicole Lyons

Some of the most polished ideas are discovered through healthy, honest debate, so if you don't argue with yourself every once in a while, other people will gladly point out if, in any sense, you missed a spot.

~ Criss Jami

One of the most curious consequences of quantum physics is that a particle like an electron can seemingly be in more than one place at the same time until it is observed, at which point there seems to be a random choice made about where the particle is really located. Scientists currently believe that this randomness is genuine, not just caused by a lack of information. Repeat the experiment under the same conditions and you may get a different answer each time.

~ Marcus Du Sautoy

What excites us the most or likewise scares us the most is when something is exactly what it says it is. And when it comes to Christmas, we’re going to end up finding ourselves on one side of that line or the other.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I do not much trust the man who cares solely to inspire - he does not really inspire me - only the man who cares mostly to tell the truth, whatever that may do. For when the man who cares to tell the truth happens to inspire, I, in addition, find it easier to believe that he in fact does his homework on how and when one should truly inspire.

~ Criss Jami

I was tired of pretending that I was someone else just to get along with people, just for the sake of having friendships.

~ Kurt Cobain

Ten minutes with a genuine friend is better than years spent with anyone less.

~ Crystal Woods

We never actually have serious conversations about anything for more than 20 seconds. So there’s a beautiful superficiality to our relationship which sometimes gets covered up by all the genuine affection flowing back and forth.

~ Kamila Shamsie

I'd rather be befriended as an aimless lost soul than be befriended for adornment, gain or goal.

~ Donna Lynn Hope

His chief form of entertainment was reading. The last moments he was in a cabin were usually spent scanning bookshelves and nightstands. The life inside a book always felt welcoming to Knight. It pressed no demands on him, while the world of actual human interactions was so complex. Conversations between people can move like tennis games, swift and unpredictable. There are constant subtle visual and verbal cues, there's innuendo, sarcasm, body language, tone. Everyone occasionally fumbles an encounter, a victim of social clumsiness. It's part of being human.To Knight, it all felt impossible. His engagement with the written word might have been the closest he could come to genuine human encounters. The stretch of days between thieving raids allowed him to tumble into the pages, and if he felt transported he could float in bookworld, undisturbed, for as long as he pleased.

~ Michael Finkel

Risk is the clue that our dreams are both real and great.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Charm is often despised but I can never see why. No one has it who isn't capable of genuinely liking others, at least at the actual moment of meeting and speaking. Charm is always genuine; it may be superficial but it isn't false.

~ P.d. James

I find comfort in the fact that the longer I'm in politics the less nourishing popularity becomes, that striving for power and rank and fame seems to betray a poverty of ambition, and that I am answerable mainly to the steady gaze of my own conscience.

~ Barack Obama

It’s hard to safeguard a genuine life course, when love tips over from endearing care into tedium, through laziness of imagination or loss of interest, and the storyline becomes barren and desolate, insipidly dull, turning into a threadbare act with the same trite modus operandi. “The same procedure as every year, James!” (Things needing to be changed)

~ Erik Pevernagie

I cannot create greatness as I can only create weak facsimiles. And in sorting through the innumerable facsimiles around me, I will only happen upon true greatness when I happen upon the true God.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

It was such an unexpected and genuine smile that if I only had a soul I'm sure I would have felt quite guilty.

~ Jeff Lindsay

An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity.

~ G.k. Chesterton

Our contempt for any particular poem must be perfect, be total, because only a ruthless reading that allows us to measure the gap between the actual and the virtual will enable to to experience, if not a genuine poem—no such thing—a place for the genuine, whatever that might mean.

~ Ben Lerner

So, how close are love and genius, really? We know that they are both mentioned far more than lived.

~ Criss Jami

No matter how kind you are, always expect a few imbeciles.

~ Criss Jami

It's not the end if you're too shy to say 'I love you.' It's only the beginning, because you're first meant to show it anyway.

~ Criss Jami

We all want to look good, but genuine goodness is in the heart.

~ Gift Gugu Mona

I wouldn't think that God is quite as much concerned with whether or not one actually sins as He is with whether or not in one's heart one genuinely wants to turn from sin; and therefore, continues working passionately with Him in doing so. It is not some pleasure of God's, as some might imagine, to stand around critiquing, arms crossed, holding a whip. I suppose that when someone weeps over their sins, He extends His hands; He wants them to lift their head and embrace Him and the mercy He's willing to show. But when someone is proud of their sins, He delivers His justice swiftly and righteously. Sin does not intimidate God - although He takes it very seriously - it does no real harm to Him whatsoever, only to the sinner and to other people: and He loves people.

~ Criss Jami

To truly motivate others 1) discover what their motives, desires & drivers are 2) genuinely connect with and support them from the heart.

~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

To live a fantasy is to avoid a life.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

The day we decide to drop the flimsy makeshift scenarios in our cluttered mind and eschew the ‘alleluias’ of self-importance, life can become genuine, lucid and graceful, like a flow of wellness in the glow of a new morning. (Words flew away like birds)

~ Erik Pevernagie

The mind is the laboratory where products, both fake and genuine are manufactured. People grow wild weeds, others grow flourishing flowers!

~ Israelmore Ayivor

Want to help others? Be yourself. You’ll inspire others to muster the courage to be themselves as well.

~ Kamand Kojouri

A true prophet would rather be believed false by many but actually true than believed true by many but actually false.

~ Criss Jami

Know yourself. Be authentic. Have courage.

~ Murad S. Shah

In the modern Christian attempt to take a stand as Christ did, and maybe for others, win the approval of the world, the Christian will often think that it consists of targeting and demoralizing fellow Christians and only fellow Christians. It is one thing to stand against religious hypocrisy when one sees it, but it is another to go on snorting at anything or anyone who might seem 'too Christian' to us. The irony is that by doing this we are further advocating hypocrisy and 'half-hearted Christians'.

~ Criss Jami