Quotes About Expression

Johnson the poet recognizes that there are times when a little scientific precision may be sacrificed in the interests of a memorable formula. Thus 'to hiccough' is 'to sob with convulsion of the stomach', while an 'embryo' is 'the offspring yet unfinished in the womb'. 'Thumb' is defined simply as 'the short strong finger answering to the other four'. A 'puppet' is 'a wooden tragedian'.

But his key label is 'cant'. He defines the word as follows: 1. A corrupt dialect used by beggars and vagabonds 2. A particular form of speaking peculiar to some certain class or body of men 3. A whining pretension to goodness, in formal and affected terms 4. Barbarous jargon 5. Auction When a word is

is possible, too, that OK has its origins in the Wolof waw kay. That said, the expression has also been claimed as Greek, Finnish, Gaelic, Choctaw and French; as an abbreviation of the faintly humorous misspelling Orl Korrect or of Obediah Kelly, the name of a freight agent who initialled documents he'd checked; and as an inversion of the boxing term KO (knock-out), used because a boxer who hadn't been knocked out was considered to be … well, OK.

The nineteenth-century clergyman William Barnes preferred wheelsaddle to bicycle and folkwain to omnibus. By the same token forceps would be nipperlings, and pathology would be painlore. Some of his new words recalled the language of Old English poetry: he proposed glee-mote in place of concert, and the wonderful cellar-thane instead of butler.

I'm glad you like adverbs—I adore them; they are the only qualifications I really much respect.

She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.

I'm glad you like adverbs — I adore them; they are the only qualifications I really much respect.

She is written in a foreign tongue.

We fight it down, and we live it down, or we bear it bravely well, But the best men die of a broken heart for the things they cannot tell.

Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.

A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.

Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted.

It used to be called angor animi – the anguish of the soul – the feeling that some people have, when they are having a heart attack, that they are about to die. Even now, more than thirty years later, I can see very clearly the dying man's despairing expression as he looked at me as I turned away.

The sorrow which has no vent in tears may make other organs weep.

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

Actors die so loud.

I'd rather sit down and write a letter than call someone up. I hate the telephone.

The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts.

Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.

The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe, he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life.

Let me be, was all I wanted. Be what I am, no matter how I am.

Why are we so full of restraint? Why do we not give in all directions? Is it fear of losing ourselves? Until we do lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves.

It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work.

A sculptor is a person who is interested in the shape of things, a poet in words, a musician by sounds.