Quotes about expression
page 7

“Is he nuts?"
"I think the expression used to be 'touched by God'."
"So that would be a yes.”

Source: Rot & Ruin

“Hey, check this weirdo out." Hi was inspecting a bust on the mantel. "This face is ninety percent eyebrow. What do you want to bet he owned slaves?"

Scowling to match the carving's expression, Hi spoke in a gravelly voice.”

Kathy Reichs book Code

Source: Code

“There is the solitude of suffering, when you go through darkness that is lonely, intense, and terrible. Words become powerless to express your pain; what others hear from your words is so distant and different from what you are actually suffering.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Pain, Solitude, Suffering, Distant

“Language has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.”

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) German-American theologian and philosopher

Source: The Eternal Now

Pain, Solitude, Loneliness

“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

As quoted in "The right to be downright offensive" by Jonathan Duffy in BBC News Magazine (21 December 2004) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4114497.stm

Freedom

“If you want to bring a fundamental change in people's belief and behavior… you need to create a community around them, where those new beliefs can be practiced and expressed and nurtured.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

People, Behavior, Communication, Change

“Life among academics had taught me that a well-expressed opinion is usually better than a badly expressed fact, so far as professional advancement goes.”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

Life

“The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Beauty, Parting, Beauty

“Art begins when a man, with a purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once experienced, calls it up again within himself and expresses it by certain external signs.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

People, Art, Feeling, Communication

“He'd woken up the next day in the city hospital with Magnus Bane staring down at him with an odd expression--it could have been deep concern or merely curiosity, it was hard to tell with Magnus.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

“I like people who have a sense of individuality. I love expression and anything awkward and imperfect, because that’s natural and that’s real.”

Marc Jacobs (1963) American fashion designer

Love, People, Nature, Sense

“Nature is the direct expression of the divine imagination.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Imagination, Nature

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.”

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

Letter to Morris Raphael Cohen, professor emeritus of philosophy at the College of the City of New York, defending the appointment of Bertrand Russell to a teaching position (19 March 1940).
1940s
Variant: Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thoughts in clear form.

Courage, Understanding

“The art of life is to live in the present moment and to make that moment as perfect as we can by the realization that we are the instruments and expression of God himself.”

Emmet Fox (1886–1951) American New Thought writer

Life, God, Art, Perfection

“He said that black sheeps express everyone else's anger and pain. It's not that they have all the anger and pain-they're just the only ones who let it out. Then the other people don't have to.”

Francesca Lia Block book Dangerous Angels

Source: Dangerous Angels

Pain, People, Anger

“His eyes, I’d long since discovered, could be as eloquent and expressive as his pen. The messages they sent me now hardly seemed decent for a public setting.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus on Top

“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law”

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

Law, Penalty, Communication, Reality

“Can the plural possessive express the feelings in your heart? If you don't learn art now, you will never learn to breathe!”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Art, Feeling, Learning, Heart

“There was love expressed in the places you usually forget to look.”

Ann Brashares book The Last Summer

Source: The Last Summer

Love, Forgetting

“I'm not an abstractionist. I'm not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

1950's <br class="br">Source: Conversations with Artists, Selden Rodman, New York Devin-Adair 1957. p. 93.; reprinted as 'Notes from a conversation with Selden Rodman, 1956', in Writings on Art: Mark Rothko (2006) ed. Miguel López-Remiro p. 119 books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=ZdYLk3m2TN4C&pg=PA119 <br class="br">Context: I am not an abstractionist... I am not interested in the relationships of color or form or anything else... I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on — and the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures show that I communicate those basic human emotions... The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point!

Color

“Dancing Is a Perpendicular Expression of a Horizontal Desire.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

attributed by George Melly in 1962 Source: Quote Investigator - Dancing Is a Perpendicular Expression of a Horizontal Desire http://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/09/11/dancing/

Dance, Funny

“The best use of life is love. The best expression of love is time. The best time to love is now.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Love, Life, Time, Wedding

“I have tried many times to express my feelings, but at each attempt, I find myself tongue-tied.”

Kate Cary book Bloodline

Source: Bloodline

Feeling, Time

“She learned that an act intended to express love could have nothing to do with it. That her heart and her body were different things.”

Jhumpa Lahiri book The Lowland

Source: The Lowland

Love, Learning, Heart

“The world is your exercise book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, though you may express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write lies, or nonsense, or to tear the pages.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Books, World, Exercises, Reality

“A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language.”

Frantz Fanon book Black Skin, White Masks

Source: Black Skin, White Masks

World

“The body is the servant of the mind. It obeys the operations of the mind, whether they be deliberately chosen or automatically expressed.”

James Allen book As a Man Thinketh

Source: As a Man Thinketh

“You're always the* person you were when you were born," she says impatiently. "You just keep finding new ways to express it.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

My Life on The Road
Source: My Life on the Road

Way, Personality

“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Personality

“Emptying the ashtrays was very expressive of myself. I just lump everything in a great heap which I have labeled ‘the past,’ and having thus emptied this deep reservoir that was once myself, I am ready to continue.”

Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948) Novelist, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Past

“Too unconcerned to love and too passionless to hate, too detached to be selfish and too lifeless to be unselfish, too indifferent to experience joy and too cold to express sorrow, they are neither dead nor alive; they merely exist.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. book Strength to Love

Source: Strength to Love

Love, Hate, Joy, Selfishness

“Life demands honesty, the ability to face, admit, and express oneself.”

Starhawk (1951) American author, activist and Neopagan

Life

“All the greatest things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: Freedom; Justice; Honour; Duty; Mercy; Hope.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

United Europe Meeting, Albert Hall, London (May 14, 1947). Cited in Churchill by Himself, ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs (2008), p. 26 ISBN 1586486381
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Justice, Hope, Freedom

“Have you ever heard of the expression, ladies first"
"Yes"
"Well, it's truer in bed than it is anywhere else.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Fire

“… when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Truth, Lie

“Every form of happiness if one, every desire is driven by the same motor--by our love for a single value, for the highest potentiality of our own existence--and every achievement is an expression of it.”

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

Love, Happiness

“As the expression goes, we spend our youth attaining wealth, and our wealth attaining youth.”

Douglas Coupland book Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

Source: Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

Youth, Wealth

“Real love changes and grows with time and discovers new ways of expressing itself.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

Love, Way, Change, Time

“When we only name the problem, when we state complaint without a constructive focus or resolution, we take hope away. In this way critique can become merely an expression of profound cynicism, which then works to sustain dominator culture.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope

Hope, Way, Problem

“I tried to look confused, which is one of my most convincing expressions.”

Rick Riordan book The Crown of Ptolemy

Source: The Crown of Ptolemy

“My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them──by which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Idea, Time

“[He] saw that a peculiar expression had come into his nephew's face; an expression a little like that of a young hindu fakir who having settled himself on his first bed of spikes is beginning to wish that he had chosen one of the easier religions.”

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

Religion

“The more one knows fairy tales the less fantastical they appear; they can be vehicles of the grimmest realism, expressing hope against all the odds with gritted teeth.”

Marina Warner (1946) writer and mythographer

Source: From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers

Hope, Appearance

“Today, I demand that a film express either theor the. I am not at all interested in anything in between; I am not interested in all those films that do not pulse.”

Francois Truffaut (1932–1984) film director

Source: The Films in My Life

“The Net’s interactivity gives us powerful new tools for finding information, expressing ourselves, and conversing with others. It also turns us into lab rats constantly pressing levers to get tiny pellets of social or intellectual nourishment.”

Nicholas Carr (1959) American writer

Source: The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

“A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense, and is, thereby, a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety.”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

"A Personal Credo" (1943), published in American Annual of Photography (1944), reprinted in Nathan Lyons, editor, Photographers on Photography (1966), reprinted in Vicki Goldberg, editor, Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present (1988)

Life, Feeling, Sense

“Creation which cannot express itself becomes madness.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

October 18, 1936 Fire
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Madness

“He was having an odd paternal rush, a blood surge that was alsoblood and was presently hunting through Howard's expansive intelligence to find words that would more effectively express something like”

Zadie Smith On Beauty

Source: On Beauty

Intelligence

“It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

Business

“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”

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

Art, Knowledge, Teachers, Joy

“In the deepest sense, the being in a state of sin is the sin, the particular sins are not the continuation of sin, they are expressions of its continuation.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening

Sense

“Somehow freedom for religious expression has become freedom from religious expression.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, What's So Great about Christianity (2007), Ch. 3
Source: What's So Great About Christianity
Context: Today courts wrongly interpret separation of church and state to mean that religion has no place in the public arena, or that morality derived from religion should not be permitted to shape our laws. Somehow freedom for religious expression has become freedom from religious expression. Secularists want to empty the public square of religion and religious-based morality so they can monopolize the shared space of society with their own views.

Freedom

“Annabeth jogged towards us, giving me one of those annoyed expressions like, If you get yourself killed, I’m going to murder you.”

Rick Riordan book The Crown of Ptolemy

Source: The Crown of Ptolemy

“Silence is the perfect expression of scorn.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Pt. V http://books.google.com/books?id=sUKiG0ghhb4C&q=%22Silence+is+the+most+perfect+expression+of+scorn%22&pg=PA255#v=onepage <br class="br">1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

Silence, Perfection

“The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Art, Light

“Vampires bore a grudge longer than any technically living creatures, and whenever they were in a bad temper, they expressed themselves through murder.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale

“This race and this country and this life produced me, he said. I shall express myself as I am.”

James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Life, Country

“The idealists and visionaries, foolish enough to throw caution to the winds and express their ardor and faith in some supreme deed, have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

World, Faith

“There is no such thing as a perfect, ideal, or 'correct' translation. A translator is always trying to extend his knowledge and improve his means of expression; he is always pursuing facts and words.”

Peter Newmark (1916–2011) English translation scholar

Source: Manual De Traduccion / A Textbook of Translation

Knowledge, Perfection

“Laughter is man's most distinctive emotional expression.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Man shares the capacity for love and hate, anger and fear, loyalty and grief, with other living creatures. But humour, which has an intellectual as well as an emotional element belongs to man.
Source: 1970s, Margaret Mead: Some Personal Views (1979), p. 121

Laughter

“people's emotions are rarely put into words, far more often they are expressed through other cues.
the key to intuiting another's feelings is in the ability to read nonverbal channels, tone of voice, gesture, facial expression and the like”

Daniel Goleman (1946) American psychologist & journalist

Source: Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ

People, Feeling, Reading

“We've come from the same history - 2000 years of persecution - we've just expressed our sufferings differently. Blacks developed the blues. Jews complained, we just never thought of putting it to music.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Music, History, Suffering

“The god’s expression was calm and content, as if he’d just come home from a lovely evening strolling through the Fields of Punishment, enjoying the screams of the damned.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Love, God, Home

“Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world... The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

1941 - 1967
Source: 'Statements by Four artists', Edward Hopper, in 'Reality' 1., Spring 1953, p. 8

Life, World, Art, Personality

“It's imprecise and insufficient, defining the homosexual as a person whose gender expression is at odds with his or her sex.”

Alison Bechdel (1960) American cartoonist, author

Source: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Sex, Personality

“Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Music, Feeling

“When you have a strongly held belief, don't you think it's important to express that belief accurately?”

Michael Crichton book State of Fear

Source: State of Fear

Thinking

“People call me a feminist whenever I express statements that distinguish me from a doormat.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

People

“A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

Feeling, Sense

“Now, young lady, I suppose you're here for a work assignment."
Work?" Tally said.
They both looked down at her puzzled expression, and Shay burst into laughter.”

Scott Westerfeld book Uglies

Source: Uglies

Laughter

“She took a deep breath, "Last chance. Are you in need of rescuing?"
His expression turned very strange, almost as if she'd struck him, "Yes," he said finally.”

Holly Black book The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Source: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Chance

“I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take to pen and paper in the first place”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Thinking

“It's easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. 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

“He lost himself in a maze of thoughts that were rendered vague by his lack of words to express them. Frowning, he tried again.”

William Golding book Lord of the Flies

Source: Lord of the Flies

“We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

As quoted in Michel Foucault (1991) by Didier Eribon, as translated by Betsy Wind, Harvard University Press, p. 282
Context: There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than "politicians" think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas (and because it constantly produces them) that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.

Books, Idea, Birth