Quotes about expression
page 6

“I come from a family of screamers. If they are trying to express any emotion or idea beyond pass the salt, it comes in shrieks.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

Family, Idea

“He had a feeling this was one of those times when a male should express positive enthusiasm regardless of what he really thought—especially when he didn’t really know what was going on.”

Anne Bishop book Vision in Silver

Source: Vision in Silver

Feeling, Time

“that expression you get in your eyes when you are very tired and everything is like a dream and you are starting to know what things are like underneath what people say they are.”

Jean Rhys book Good Morning, Midnight

Source: Good Morning, Midnight

People, Dreams

“… it's as empty as a merchant's soul. Sorry, Kheldar, it's just an old expression."
"That's all right, Beldin," Silk forgave him grandly. "These little slips of the tongue are common in the very elderly.”

David Eddings (1931–2009) American novelist

Source: Sorceress of Darshiva

Soul

“What it sees there isn't so much a face as the expression of a predicament.”

Christopher Isherwood book A Single Man

Source: A Single Man

“Sometimes doubting is not a lack of faith, but an expression of it. Sometimes to doubt is to merely insist that God be taken seriously not frivolously, to insist that our faith is placed in and upheld by something other than seeming conjuring tricks.”

Mark Buchanan (1961) American physicist

Source: Your God Is Too Safe

God, Faith

“I told you to wait,” he snapped at Alec.
“Don’t you ever do anything I tell you to?”
“Technically you didn’t actually say anything,”
Clary said. “You just gestured.”
“Gesturing counts,” Jace said. “I gesture
very expressively.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Waiting

“Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos — the trees, the clouds, everything.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Touching Peace: Practicing the Art of Mindful Living

Tree, Gratitude

“Do me a favor."

"Don't lick your seat belt?"

Ash's expression was total confusion. "Huh? where did that randomness come from?”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

“My gratitude extends beyond the limits of my capacity to express it”

Iain Banks The Player of Games

Source: The Player of Games

Gratitude

“You don't just decide to have sex because you feel like having sex. You decide to have sex once you realize you're in love with someone and want to express that love physically.”

Sarah Mlynowski (1977) Novelist

Source: Ten Things We Did

Love, Sex, Feeling

“But laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man may present his views without penalty there must be a spirit of tolerance in the entire population.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

"On Freedom" (1940), p. 13 http://books.google.com/books?id=Q1UxYzuI2oQC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA13#v=onepage&q&f=false 1950s, Out of My Later Years (1950) Context: This freedom of communication is indispensable for the development and extension of scientific knowledge, a consideration of much practical import. In the first instance it must be guaranteed by law. But laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man may present his views without penalty there must be a spirit of tolerance in the entire population. Such an ideal of external liberty can never be fully attained but must be sought unremittingly if scientific thought, and philosophical and creative thinking in general, are to be advanced as far as possible.

Law, Penalty, Freedom

“And the truth must finally lie in that which every oppressed individual feels within himself but hasn't the courage to express”

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) Austrian-American psychoanalyst

Source: Beyond Psychology: Letters and Journals, 1934-1939

Truth, Lie, Feeling, Courage

“Difficulties are made to be overcome ~ Miss Felicity Lemon, Agatha Christie's Poirot: The Plymouth Express”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

“No, you’re not going with him.”
I crossed my arms. “Who decided that?”
He put on his “I’m alpha and I’m putting my foot down” expression. “I decided.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

“How little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up. It's sad, really.”

Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian

Source: Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

Sadness, Time

“I gave her a smile that I hoped conveyed something like: Hey, you know I’m on your side. Gods are such jerks! But what can you do?

Probably my expression actually conveyed: It’s not my fault! Please do not kill me!”

Rick Riordan book The Demigod Diaries

Source: The Demigod Diaries

God, Smile, Hope, Jerk

“The baby!’ Nico grinned, which hurt his face muscles. He wasn’t used to making that expression. ‘Mellie and the kid are all right?”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Hurt, Baby

“We sit to express our true nature”

Shunryu Suzuki (1904–1971) Japanese Buddhist missionary

Nature

“To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.”

John Ruskin book The Stones of Venice

Source: The Stones of Venice

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

As quoted in The Life and Work of Martha Graham (1991) by Agnes de Mille, p. 264, 
Context: There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

Life, Time, Motivational, Success

“I myself have never been able to find out what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

"Mr. Chesterton in Hysterics," in The Clarion, (14 November 1913), re-published in The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West, 1911-17 (1982), p. 219.
Variant: I myself have never been able to find out what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.
Source: Young Rebecca: Writings, 1911-1917

People

“Have you ever noticed that when people use the expression 'I have to say', what follows usually needn't be said?”

Richard Russo book Bridge of Sighs

Source: Bridge of Sighs

People

“I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, down throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

Angels, Problem, Effort, Victory

“I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.”

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) German theoretical physicist

Das Naturgesetz und die Struktur der Materie (1967), as translated in Natural Law and the Structure of Matter (1981), p. 34

Mathematics, Idea, Thinking, Sense

“A lake is a landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

Beauty, Nature

“Psychopaths [make] the world go around… society [is] an expression of that particular sort of madness… I've always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it isn't? What if it is built on insanity?”

Jon Ronson (1967) British journalist, documentary filmmaker, radio presenter and nonfiction author

Source: The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

World, Madness

“The will of God, to which the law gives expression, is that men should defeat their enemies by loving them.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer book The Cost of Discipleship

Source: Discipleship (1937), The Enemy, the "Extraordinary", p. 147.
Source: The Cost of Discipleship

Love, Men, God, Law

“Studies show that aggressively expressing anger doesn't relieve anger but amplifies it. On the other hand, not expressing anger often allows it to disappear without leaving ugly traces.”

Gretchen Rubin (1966) American writer

Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

Study, Anger

“Gambling is not a vice, it is an expression of our humanness. We gamble. Some do it at the gaming table, some do not. You play, you win, you play, you lose, you play.”

Jeanette Winterson book The Passion

Source: The Passion (1987), p.73

Game

“Her countenance was all expression; her eyes were not dark but impenetrably deep; you seemed to discover space after space in their intellectual glance.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley The Last Man

Source: The Last Man

“… Sadness of not knowing enough words to [express what you mean]…”

Jonathan Safran Foer (1977) Novelist

Sadness

“Words spoken cannot be recalled, and many a man and many a woman who has spoken a word at once regretted, are far too proud to express that regret.”

Anthony Trollope book He Knew He Was Right

Source: He Knew He Was Right

“the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Men

“One challenge of our adventure on earth is to rise above dead systems… wars, nations, destructions… to refuse to be a part of them, and express the highest selves we know how to be.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: One

War, Parting, Dead

“All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Lie, Feeling, Communication

“At first sight, his address is certainly not striking; and his person can hardly be called handsome, till the expression of his eyes, which are uncommonly good, and the general sweetness of his countenance, is perceived.”

Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility

Source: Sense and Sensibility

Personality

“I feel that the essence of dance is the expression of mankind — the landscape of the human soul.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

I Am A Dancer (1952)
Source: Blood Memory
Context: I feel that the essence of dance is the expression of mankind — the landscape of the human soul. I hope that every dance I do reveals something of myself or some wonderful thing a human being can be.

Feeling, Soul, Dance

“Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation to a higher destiny. To a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humanness.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

“Expressing yourself when he takes for granted doesn't work.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

“Intoxicated? The word did not express it by a mile. He was oiled, boiled, fried, plastered, whiffled, sozzled, and blotto.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Source: Meet Mr. Mulliner

“I may not feel significant until someone expresses love to me.”

Gary Chapman

The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate

Love, Feeling

“Feelings are your guide. Trust your feelings and learn to express them, and do not blame anyone for how you feel. Be yourself, observe yourself. Look to understand any crisis you have been in or will be in.”

Barbara Marciniak (1928–2012)

Source: Family of Light: Pleiadian Tales and Lessons in Living

Feeling, Understanding, Learning

“Before you realize this truth, say the Yogis, you will always be in despair, a notion nicely expressed in this exasperated line from the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus: 'You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

God, Truth, Despair

“A poem…begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion finds the thought and the thought finds the words.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Letter to Louis Untermeyer (1 January 1916)
1910s

Sense, Effort

“You are joy, looking for a way to express.
It's not just that your purpose is joy, it is that you are joy. You are love and joy and freedom and clarity expressing. Energy-frolicking and eager.
That's who you are.”

Esther Hicks (1948) American writer

Love, Way, Freedom, Joy

“I've always expressed my thoughts in color but we remain blind.”

Lauren Weisberger book The Devil Wears Prada

Source: The Devil Wears Prada

Color

“A good way to rid one's self of a sense of discomfort is to do something. That uneasy, dissatisfied feeling is actual force vibrating out of order; it may be turned to practical account by giving proper expression to its creative character.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Way, Feeling, Sense

“I've often thought that there isn't any "I" at all; that we are simply the means of expression of something else; that when we think we are ourselves, we are simply the victims of a delusion.”

Aleister Crowley book Diary of a Drug Fiend

Source: Diary of a Drug Fiend

Thinking

“Got no checkbooks, got no banks. Still I'd like to express my thanks - I've got the sun in the mornin' and the moon at night.”

Irving Berlin (1888–1989) American composer

Sun, Night

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

"Proclamation 3560 — Thanksgiving Day, 1963" (5 November 1963) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9511 1963 Context: Today we give our thanks, most of all, for the ideals of honor and faith we inherit from our forefathers — for the decency of purpose, steadfastness of resolve and strength of will, for the courage and the humility, which they possessed and which we must seek every day to emulate. As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them. Let us therefore proclaim our gratitude to Providence for manifold blessings — let us be humbly thankful for inherited ideals — and let us resolve to share those blessings and those ideals with our fellow human beings throughout the world.

Forgetting, Gratitude, Inspirational, Positive

“Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and fall into a vortex, as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Peace, Soul, Heart

“I have often said that I wish I had invented blue jeans: the most spectacular, the most practical, the most relaxed and nonchalant. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity - all I hope for in my clothes.”

Yves Saint Laurent (1936–2008) fashion designer

New York Magazine (November 28, 1983), p. 53.

Hope, Sex, Clothes

“Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people's ideas, like listening to music, like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.”

Roberto Bolaño book 2666

Source: 2666

People, Music, Idea, Thinking

“They spoke very little of their mutual feeling; pretty phrases and warm expressions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Variant: They spoke very little of their mutual feelings: pretty phrases and warm attentions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends.
Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

Feeling

“I see by your eagerness, and the wonder and hope which your eyes express, my friend, that you expect to be in formed of the secret with which I am acquainted. That cannot be.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

Secret, Hope

“Kat, who sat beside us, shouted, "Rewind that!" and threw popcorn at the screen. "Mr. Holland's expression was all, like, oh, no, I'm going to need to my balls reattached, and Cole's was all, you're about to lose something else, sucka.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Through the Zombie Glass

“The more important the emotion is, the fewer words required to express it”

J. Michael Straczynski (1954) American writer and television producer

JMSNews (31 January 2008) http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-17708&topic=Spiderman. Context: The more important the emotion is, the fewer words required to express it: Will you go out with me? I think I like you. I care for you. I love you. Marry me. Goodbye.

“In my view, the novelist has no right to express his opinions on the things of this world. In creating, he must imitate God: do his job and then shut up.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

God, World

“Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Love, Joy, Personality

“When I express my opinions it is so as to reveal the measure of my sight not the measure of the thing.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

“If you wake up feeling no pain, you know you're dead. (Russian expression)”

Andrew Solomon book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Pain, Feeling, Dead

“For a woman, language spoken is an expression of what she is feeling. For a man, language spoken is an expression of what he is thinking. A woman says what is on her heart while a man says what is on his mind.”

Myles Munroe (1954–2014) Bahamian Evangelical Christian minister

Source: The Purpose and Power of Love & Marriage

Feeling, Thinking, Heart

“Beauty without expression is boring.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Beauty

“Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition, but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

Love, Angels, Daughters, For Father

“The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance.”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

Truth

“Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Written on the Body

Love

“The whole "weak in the knees" thing, which she always thought was just some idiotic expression back from the golden age of idiotic expressions, was real.
-Suite Scarlett”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: Suite Scarlett

Age

“Sometimes when family members least deserve love, they need it most. Love is not appropriately expressed in threats, accusations, expressions of disappointment, or retaliation. Real love takes time, patience, help, and continuing performances.”

Marvin J. Ashton (1915–1994) Apostle of the LDS Church

Love, Family, Disappointment, Time

“At college, and perhaps for a year afterwards, they had believed in literature, had believed in Beauty and in personal expression as an absolute end. When they lost this belief, they lost everything.”

Nathanael West (1903–1940) American writer

Source: Miss Lonelyhearts and A Cool Million

Beauty, Literature, Personality

“Perfect love is the most beautiful of all frustrations because it is more than one can express.”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

Love, Beauty, Perfection

“I believe that you've created a metaphorical universe in which you can express your darkest fears. In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves, and sometimes we do such a good job, we lose track of reality.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Fear, Reality, Universe

“Why is marijuana against the law? It grows naturally on our planet, serves a thousand different functions, all of them positive. To make marijuana against the law is like saying that God made a mistake. Like on the seventh day God looked down, "There it is. My Creation, perfect and holy in all ways. Now I can rest. [Gives shocked expression] Oh my Me! I left fuckin' pot everywhere. I should never have smoked that joint on the third day. Hehe, that was the day I created the possum. Still gives me a chuckle. But if I leave pot everywhere, that's gonna give people the impression they're supposed to … use it. Now I have to create Republicans."”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

" … and God wept", I believe is the next part of that story.
Chicago '91 (1991)

God, People, Law, Way

“Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man's physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Source: The Painter Of Modern Life And Other Essays

Childhood

“Let every man shovel out his own snow, and the whole city will be passable," said Gamache. Seeing Beauvoir's puzzled expression he added, "Emerson."

"Lake and Palmer?"

"Ralph and Waldo.”

Louise Penny book A Fatal Grace

Source: A Fatal Grace

“I would say that music is the easiest means in which to express, but since words are my talent, I must try to express clumsily in words what the pure music would have done better.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Music

“This expression of abandon and surrender, of absolute trust, he reserved for the master alone.”

Jack London Index:London - White Fang, 1906.djvu

Source: White Fang

“That's the most stupid expression in the world. 'I fell in love'—as if you had no choice. There's a moment, there's always a moment; I can do this, I can give in to this or I can resist it. I don't know when your moment was but I bet there was one.”

Patrick Marber Closer

Source: Closer

Love, Stupidity, World

“Let us be honest: most of us rather like our cats to have a streak of wickedness. I should not feel quite easy in the company of any cat that walked around the house with a saintly expression.”

Beverley Nichols (1898–1983) Author, playwright, journalist, composer

Source: Beverley Nichols' Cats' A Z

Feeling, Cats, Housing

“The boy smiled -- mostly at Amy.
"Sorry, her heart belongs to Ian Kabra," Dan said, except that something in her expression made him realize her heart didn't belong at all to Ian
right now.”

Peter Lerangis book The Viper's Nest

Source: The Viper's Nest

Smile, Boy, Heart

“To be yourself requires extraordinary intelligence. You are blessed with that intelligence; nobody need give it to you; nobody can take it away from you. He who lets that express itself in its own way is a "Natural Man."”

U.G. Krishnamurti (1918–2007) Indian philosopher

Part 2: The Mystique of Enlightenment
The Mystique of Enlightenment (1982)
Source: The Mystique of Enlightenment: The Radical Ideas of U.G. Krishnamurti

Way, Intelligence, Nature

“I saw in her expression that old, unshakable mountain of concern. And I realized when you look at your mother, you are looking at the purest love you will ever know”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

Love, Mountain

“I suddenly had a little epiphany: all the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal.”

Nick Hornby book The Polysyllabic Spree

Source: The Polysyllabic Spree

Books, Reading

“People around the world are confusing the therapeutic value of self-expression with permission to manipulate others with their wounds.”

Caroline Myss (1952) author from the United States

People, World

“Someone once wrote that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. I get the same thing spending an hour with you.

Also, here is a green toothbrush tied in a ribbon. It expresses my feelings inadequately.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

Feeling

“Accept this: your mortal is doomed."

"Please, Aric. I'm begging you!"

He whirled around, fury in his expression. "You refused - twice - to beg me for your own life, but you'd beg for his?"

I whispered, "Yes.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Endless Knight

Life

“I hate Dr Phil. Dr Phil told me to express my feelings, so I'm expressing them.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Hate, Feeling

“The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.”

Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American philosopher and educator

Source: How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

Thinking, Personality

“A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."
I really hate this expression. I bet fish would totally want bicycles.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Princess on the Brink

Hate, Fish

“Nykyrian gave him a feral grimace. But when he spoke, his soft, lilting tone belied his fierce expression. “Syn… what can I say? I love you, man. I can’t live without you. are the air I breathe.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Silence

Love

“There are times when the human face and body can express the yearning of the heart so accurately that you can, as they say, read them like a book. Do not abandon me.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

Books, Time, Reading, Heart

“Expressing your feelings constantly is like pleading. It comes across as needy rather than dignified.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl-A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

Feeling

“After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

"The Rest is Silence"
Source: Music at Night and Other Essays (1931)

Music, Silence

“Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Books, Feeling, Idea

“To know and feel all this and not have the words to express it makes a human a grave of his own thoughts.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

Feeling

“Your world is a living expression of how you are using and have used your mind.”

Earl Nightingale (1921–1989) American motivational speaker

World

“Psychologically our thought-apart from its expression in words-is only a shapeless and indistinct mass.”

Ferdinand de Saussure book Course in General Linguistics

Source: Cours de linguistique générale (1916), p. 111-112
Source: Course in General Linguistics
Context: Psychologically our thought-apart from its expression in words-is only a shapeless and indistinct mass. Philosophers and linguists have always agreed in recognizing that without the help of signs we would be unable to make a clear-cut, consistent distinction between two ideas. Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula. here are no pre-existing ideas, and nothing is distinct before the appearance of language.

“Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.”

Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)

Source: Society of the Spectacle (1967), Ch. 8, sct. 207 (confer Comte de Lautréamont, Poésies II, 1870).

Idea, Falseness

“If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good”

Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American playwright and novelist

“Although I was able to maintain a pleasant expression, I was mentally throwing up in her face.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Quotes about expression page 6

Quotes about expression
page 6