Quotes About Expression

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,Lest you should think he never could recaptureThe first fine careless rapture!

There is no truer truth obtainable By Man than comes of music.

The C Major of this life.

Attempting to suppress emotions is dysfunctional; it does not work. Emotions are energy: E-motion = energy in motion. It is supposed to be in motion, it was meant to flow.

Perhaps it may turn out a sang,Perhaps turn out a sermon.

Here's freedom to him who would read; Here's freedom to him who would write; None ever feared that the truth should be heard, But them that the truth would indict.

It is most true, stylus virum arguit, - our style betrays us.

Hinc quam sic calamus saevior ense, patet. The pen worse than the sword.

We can say nothing but what hath been said. Our poets steal from Homer…. Our story-dressers do as much; he that comes last is commonly best.

Hence it is clear how much more cruel the pen is than the sword.

Hence it is clear how much more cruel the pen is than the sword. (Hinc Gham Sit Calmus Saevior Ense Patet)

All Poets are mad.

Collecting quotations is an insidious, even embarrassing habit, like ragpicking or hoarding rocks or trying on other people's laundry. I got into it originally while trying to break an addiction to candy. I kicked candy and now seem to be stuck with quotations, which are attacking my brain instead of my teeth.

[W]hen I hear or read a good line I can hardly wait to tell it to somebody else...

No one ever committed suicide while reading a good book, but many have tried while trying to write one.

The proper use of comments is to compensate for our failure to express ourself in code. Note that I used the word failure. I meant it. Comments are always failures.

creative output depends on creative input.

Cuteness in code often appears in the form of colloquialisms or slang. For example, don't use the name whack() to mean kill(). Don't tell little culture-dependent jokes like eatMyShorts() to mean abort(). Say what you mean. Mean what you say.

The name of a variable, function, or class, should answer all the big questions. It should tell you why it exists, what it does, and how it is used. If a name requires a comment, then the name does not reveal its intent.

A long descriptive name is better than a short enigmatic name. A long descriptive name is better than a long descriptive comment.

Every time you write a comment, you should grimace and feel the failure of your ability of expression.

To be listened to is, generally speaking, a nearly unique experience for most people. It is enormously stimulating. It is small wonder that people who have been demanding all their lives to be heard so often fall speechless when confronted with one who gravely agrees to lend an ear. Man clamors for the freedom to express himself and for knowing that he counts. But once offered these conditions, he becomes frigthened.

Hence class struggle, of which the recent emergency measures were an expression, must be seen as a normal phenomenon under the NEP.

Man's nature, he postulated, was to be a "free conscious producer," but so far he had not been able to express himself freely in productive activity. He had been driven to produce by need and greed, by a passion for accumulation which in the modern bourgeois age becomes accumulation of capital. His productive activity had always, therefore, been involuntary; it had been "labour.