Quotes About Expression

Thinking cannot be clear until it has had expression-we must write, or speak, or act our thoughts, or they will remain in half torpid form. Our feelings must have expression, or they will be as clouds, which, till they descend in rain, will never bring up fruit or flowers. So it is with all the inward feelings; expression gives them development-thought is the blossom; language is the opening bud; action the fruit behind it.

The more authentic you become, the more genuine in your expression, particularly regarding personal experiences and even self-doubts, the more people can relate to your expression and the safer it makes them feel to express themselves. That expression, in turn, feeds on the other person's spirit, and genuine creative empathy takes place, producing new insights and learnings and a sense of excitement and adventure that keeps the process going.

There ought not be two histories, one of political and moral action and one of political and moral theorizing, because there were not two pasts, one populated only by actions, the other only by theories. Every action is the bearer and expression of more or less theory-laden beliefs and concepts; every piece of theorizing and every expression of belief is a politcal and moral action.

Dancing is surely the most basic and relevant of all forms of expression. Nothing else can so effectively give outward form to an inner experience. Poetry and music exist in time. Painting and architecture are a part of space. But only the dance lives at once in both space and time. In it the creator and the thing created, the artist and the expression, are one. Each participates completely in the other. There could be no better metaphor for an understanding of the mechanics of the cosmos.

The habit of expression leads to the search for something to express. Something remains as a residuum of the commonplace itself, if one strikes out every commonplace in the expression.

As a matter of fact is an expression that precedes many an expression that isn't.

Art is expression; what is expressed is often the vision of a subtle and powerful soul, and also his experience with his vision; and however vivid and skilful he may be in the means of expression, yet it is frequently found that the master-spell in his work is something felt to be indefinable and inexpressible.

It is untrue that fiction is nonutilitarian. The uses of fiction are synonymous with the uses of literature. They include refreshment, clarification of life, self-awareness, expansion of our range of experiences, and enlargement of our sense of understanding and discovery, perception, intensification, expression, beauty , and understanding. Like literature generally, fiction is a form of discovery, perception, intensification, expression, beauty, and understanding. If it is all these things, the question of whether it is a legitimate use of time should not even arise.

Dennis looked at the puppy in the window. We both did. It was the oddest thing. Normally, puppies in pet store windows sleep or pee or roll around on top of other dogs. This one ignored us its window-mates and was instead sitting with its nose pressed against the glass, looking at us with an extremely serious little expression on its face. An expression that seemed to me to be saying, "I am a sacred cow. Get out your wallet.

The good society was, like the good self, a diverse yet harmonious, growing yet unified whole, a fully participatory democracy in which the powers and capacities of the individuals that comprised it were harmonized by their cooperative activities into a community that permitted the full and free expression of individuality.

Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness.

Neither can embellishments of language be found without arrangement and expression of thoughts, nor can thoughts be made to shine without the light of language.

I don't believe that you can possibly separate expression from thought in an imaginative work. The better a thing is expressed, the more completely it is thought.

For instance, I may bring a certain feminist perspective to my songwriting, because that's how I see life. I'm interested in art, poetry, and music. As that kind of artist, I can do anything. I can say anything. It's about self-expression. It knows no package - there's no such thing. That's what being an artist is.

The most effective way to achieve right relations with any living thing is to look for the best in it, and then help that best into the fullest expression.

Man's first expression, like his first dream, was an aesthetic one. Speech was a poetic outcry rather than a demand for communication. Original man, shouting his consonants, did so in yells of awe and anger at his tragic state, at his own self-awareness and at his own helplessness before the void.

I was never young. Whoever I was then is dead. That's more of your quills. I don't want a hide full, thanks. I have always figured that you die each day and and each day is a is a box, you see, all numbered and neat; but never go back and lift the lids, because you have died a couple thousand times in your life, and that's a lot of corpses, each dead a different way, each with a worse expression. Each of those days is a different you, somebody you don't know or understand or want to understand.

When she set Shane’s glass of Coke down in front of him, she did it with probably a little too much emphasis; he glanced up at her with a question-mark expression.[...] ‘‘What?’’ Shane asked her, and took a drink. ‘‘Did I forget to say thanks? Because, thanks. Best Coke ever. Did you make it yourself? Special recipe?

I don't want to lose you.' His voice almost a whisper. Seeing his haggard expression, she took his hand and squeezed it, then reluctantly let it go. She could feel the tears again, and she fought them back. 'But you don't want to keep me, either, do you?' To that, he had no response.

I have made a long enough descent into the void to speak with certainty. There is nothing but beauty--and beauty has only one perfect expression, Poetry. All the rest is a lie.

A symbol is indeed the only possible expression of some invisible essence, a transparent lamp about a spiritual flame; while allegory is one of many possible representations of an embodied thing, or familiar principle, and belongs to fancy and not to imagination: the one is a revelation, the other an amusement.

A theatre, a literature, an artistic expression that does not speak for its own time has no relevance.

The thing that I love about acting is the fact that I can help people feel things, know themselves or feel less alone. It's my form of expression, in the same way that someone might paint a picture or sing a song in that you're hoping that it moves somebody outside of their own way of thinking.

Socialism may be worthless as a scheme, but it is not meaningless as a symptom. Rousseau's theory of the origin of society, of the social contract, and of a cure for all the social evils by a return to a state of nature, had, as we all know now, no more relation to fact than the dreams of an illiterate drunkard; but they were not without value as a vague and symbolical expression of certain evils from which the France of his day was suffering.

There are infinite modes of expression in the world of art, and to insist that only by one road can the artist attain his ends is to limit him.

If you're writing anything decent, it's in you, it's your spirit coming out. If it's not an expression of how a person genuinely feels, then it's not a good song done with any conviction.

"Simon,” said a voice at his shoulder, and he turned to see Izzy, her face a pale smudge between dark hair and dark cloak, looking at him, her expression half-angry, half-sad. “I guess this is the part where we say good-bye?

Neither idealists nor materialists are right; we must take both idea and expression.

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

Coolidge expressed his "sympathy with the deep and intense longing which finds such fine expression in the Jewish National Homeland in Palestine."

Poetry is an investigation, not an expression, of what you know.

Boredom is the most sublime of all human emotions because it expresses the fact that the human spirit, in a certain sense, is greater than the entire universe. Boredom is an expression of a profound despair at not finding anything that can satisfy the soul's boundless needs.

Art is not in some far-off place. A work of Art is the expression of a man's whole personality, sensibility and ability

Love is the expression of the one who loves, not of the one who is loved. Those who think they can love only the people they prefer do not love at all. Love discovers truths about individuals that others cannot see

The use of "religion" as an excuse to repress the freedom of expression and to deny human rights is not confined to any country or time.

You still love me - even if there's one expression of it that you will always feel and want, but will not give me no longer. I'm still what I was, and you'll always see it, and you'll always grant me the same response, even if there's a greater one that you grant another man. No matter what you feel for him, it will not change what you feel for me, and it won't treason to either, because it comes from the same root, it's the same payment in answer to the same values.

Dance is the purest expression of every emotion, earthly and spiritual

There is no creative expression of artistic value that has ever been produced by ex-drunkards and ex-drug-addicts. Who the hell would bother with a Rolling Stones without booze or with a Jimi Hendrix without heroin?

When I write songs I write for myself...I'm writing it as a form of expression, and hoping to find an audience, an audience that responds to music that is honest and lyrical and tells stories.

Most of us dont live lives that lend themselves to novelistic expression, because our lives are so fragmented.

A civilization that only looks inward will stagnate. We have to keep looking outward; we have to keep finding new avenues for human endeavor and human expression.

Not exactly. You see, Portia and I think that the coal miner thing's very overdone. No one will remember you in that. And we both see it has our job to make District 12 tributes unforgettable,' says Cinna. I'll be naked for sure, I think. 'So rather than focus on the coal mining itself, we're going to focus on the coal,' says Cinna. Naked and covered in black dust, i think. 'And what do we do with coal? We burn it,' says Cinna. 'You're not afraid of fire, are you, Katniss?' He sees my expression and grins.

PERSONAL IMPORTANCE or taking things personally, is an expression of SELFISHNESS because we make the assumption that everything is about ME!! NOTHING PEOPLE DO IS BECAUSE OF YOU!! IT'S BECAUSE OF THEMSELVES!!

For artists and intellectuals today, what is most needed is to be clear about social responsibility, because that is what most people automatically give up. Just to protect yourself as an individual is very political. You don't have to march on Tiananmen, but you do have to be clear-minded, to find your own means of expression.

When I paint, I liberate monsters They are the manifestations of all the doubts, searches and groping for meaning and expression which all artists experience One does not choose the content, one submits to it.

Do me a favor." "Don't lick your seat belt?" Ash's expression was total confusion. "Huh? where did that randomness come from?

With a painter's temperament, all that's needed are the means of expression sufficient to be intelligible to the wide public.

Students throughout the totalitarian world risk life and limb for freedom of expression, many American college students are demanding that big brother restrict their freedom of speech on campus. This demand for enhanced censorship is not emanating only from the usual corner - the know-nothing fundamentalist right - it is coming from the radical, and increasingly not-so-radical left as well.