Be Yourself

Oscar Wilde beams me on. Always.

I'm so happy to have rediscovered a quote today via my buddy Todd's And I Quote Blog:

Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.
~ Oscar Wilde

That's as pithy as you get, but consider it within its trinity. Hold that counterpoise!

To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.
~ Oscar Wilde

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
~ Oscar Wilde

Nobody does it better than Wilde.

On the general theme, here are a few variations:

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
~ Kurt Vonnegut

We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.
~ François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not.
~ Andre Gide

If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.
~ Johann von Goethe

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.
~ Judy Garland

Every time you don't follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness.
~ Shakti Gawain

At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
~ e.e. cummings

Rabbi Zusya said that on the Day of Judgment, God would ask him, not why he had not been Moses, but why he had not been Zusya.
~ Walter Kaufmann