Quotes About Expression

The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise...

And if the world has ceased to hear you, say to the silent earth: I flow. To the rushing water, speak: I am.

Confess to yourself in the deepest hour of the night whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. Dig deep into your heart, where the answer spreads its roots in your being, and ask yourself solemnly, Must I write?

Perhaps creating something is nothing but an act of profound remembrance.

Things are not all so comprehensible and utterable as people would mostly have us believe; most events are unutterable, consummating themselves in a sphere where word has never trod, and more unutterable than them all are works of art, whose life endures by the side of our own that passes away.

If you think your world isn't poetic enough, or exciting enough to tell a story about, that's not because it's a dull world, that's because you're not poet enough to wake its soul up.

Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you.

Ideally a painter (and, generally, an artist) should not become conscious of his insights: without taking the detour through his conscious reflection, his progressive steps, mysterious even to himself, should enter so swiftly into the work that he is unable to recognize them in the moment of transition.

Works of art are born of those who confront danger, who go to the limit of an experience, to a point beyond which no human can go. The farther one ventures, the more distinctive, the more personal, the more unique life becomes.

And if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it.

For the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indiferent place.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Poetry is the past that breaks out in our hearts.

Nothing could be less conducive to reaching an art-work than critical remarks:it's always simply a matter of more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Everything cannot be so easily grasped and conveyed as we are generally led to believe; most events are unconveyable and come to pass in a space that no word has ever penetrated; more unconveyable than all else are art-works, whose mysterious existences, whose lives run alongside ours, which perishes, whereas theirs endure.

But sing, when you must, of great lovers: their fame has a long way to go before it's really immortal. Those you almost envied, the unrequited, whom you found more loving than the gratified, the content— begin again and again the praise you can never fully express.

Things are not as easy to understand or express as we are mostly led to believe; most of what happens cannot be put into words and takes place in a realm which no word has ever entered.

We don't know the contour of feeling; we only know what molds it from without.

For even the best err in words when they are meant to mean most delicate and almost inexpressible things.

If one think he can live without writing, perhaps he should not write at all.

Things are not as easy to understand and say as we might prefer to believe; most events are inexpressible, happening in a space where no word has ever set foot, and most inexpressible of all are works of art, mysterious existences, whose life continues as ours passes away.

Some day there will be girls and women whose name will no longer signify merely an opposite of the masculine, but something in itself, something that makes one think, not of any complement and limit, but only of life and existence: the feminine human being. - Rilke

Não há nada que toque menos uma obra de arte do que palavras de crítica: elas não passam de mal-entendidos mais ou menos afortunados.

I want to utter you. I want to portray you not with lapis or gold, but with colors made of apple bark. There is no image I could invent that your presence would not eclipse.

confess to yourself whether you would have to die if writing were denied you.