#sincerity

At religious instruction classes, I encountered The Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan, and the sincerity of the traveller in that book was overwhelming. ↗

— Lionel Blue

#classes #encountered #i #instruction #john

The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief. ↗

— George Eliot

#belief #does #egoism #enters #into

To practice five things under all circumstances constitutes perfect virtue; these five are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness. ↗

— Confucius

#constitutes #earnestness #five #generosity #gravity

Freeing hostages is like putting up a stage set, which you do with the captors, agreeing on each piece as you slowly put it together; then you leave an exit through which both the captor and the captive can walk with sincerity and dignity. ↗

— Terry Waite

#both #captive #captors #dignity #each

It’s of some interest that the lively arts of the millennial U.S.A. treat anhedonia and internal emptiness as hip and cool. It’s maybe the vestiges of the Romantic Weltschmerz, which means world-weariness or hip ennui. Maybe it’s the fact that most of the arts here are produced by world-weary and sophisticated older people and then consumed by younger people who not only consume art but study it for clues on how to be cool, hip–and keep in mind that, for kids and younger people, to be hip and cool is the same as to be admired and accepted and included and so Unalone. Forget so-called peer-pressure. It’s more like peer-hunger. No? We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great transcendent horror is loneliness, excluded encagement in the self. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#arts #hipness #infinitejest #sincerity #art

Sincerity is impossible, unless it pervade the whole being, and the pretence of it saps the very foundation of character. ↗

— James Russell Lowell

#character #foundation #impossible #pretence #saps

So on May 1, 1987, at Gary's invitation, I agreed to see him one last time - to confront him face-to-face about his sincerity and with the intention of ending our brief relationship. ↗

— Donna Rice

#agreed #brief #confront #ending #face-to-face

We all respect sincerity in our friends and acquaintances, but Hollywood is willing to pay for it. ↗

— Hattie McDaniel

#friends #hollywood #our #pay #respect

You've always lived a life of pretense, not a real life-- a simulated existence, not a genuine existence. Everything about you, everything you are, has always been pretense, never genuine, never real. ↗

— Thomas Bernhard

#artists #artists-life #insincerity #pretention #art

People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely. It's too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#effort #fragile #life #regrets #sincerity