“Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps.”

Letter to Charles Warren Stoddard (21 August 1903)

Who could have the conceit, the self-confidence to believe that that is what we should do throughout all the rest of human history?
Letter to Charles Humboldt (mid-1962), p. 64
The Selected Letters of George Oppen (1990)

Variant: If somebody likes me, I want them to like the real me, not what they think I am.
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

"‘6 bold statements of Nikita Gokhale’" http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/marathi/movies/6-bold-statements-of-Nikita-Gokhale/6-bold-statements-of-Nikita-Gokhale/photostory/45617534.cms.TimesOfIndia.com. December 23, 2014.

Brahminism

Source: The Diary of an Old Soul & the White Page Poems

1880s, The Future of the Colored Race (1886)
Context: Of course this result will not be reached by any hurried or forced processes. It will not arise out of any theory of the wisdom of such blending of the two races. If it comes at all, it will come without shock or noise or violence of any kind, and only in the fullness of time, and it will be so adjusted to surrounding conditions as hardly to be observed. I would not be understood as advocating intermarriage between the two races. I am not a propagandist, but a prophet. I do not say that what I say should come to pass, but what I think is likely to come to pass, and what is inevitable. While I would not be understood as advocating the desirability of such a result, I would not be understood as deprecating it.

Source: Invisible Man (1952), Chapter 17.

Variant: He loves a version of me that is incomplete. I always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I'd like to be known.
Source: The Nightingale