Quotes About Expression

can best be described as one of these orators who, before they get up, do not know what they are going to say, when they are speaking do not know what they are saying, and when they have sat down, do not know what they have said

Art is to beauty what honour is to honesty, an unnatural allotropic form.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and he is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

I must thank the Hon. Gentleman for making me acquainted with the word "outwith," with which I had not previously had the pleasure of making acquaintance. For the benefit of English Members I may say that it is translated "outside the scope of." I thought it was a misprint at first.

Gustavo Solivellas dice: La dictadura, devoción fetichista por un hombre, es una cosa efímera, un estado de la sociedad en el que no puede expresarse los propios pensamientos, en el que los hijos denuncian a sus padres a la policía; un estado semejante no puede durar mucho tiempo (Sir Winston Churchill)

Painting is complete as a distraction. I know of nothing which, without exhausting the body more entirely absorbs the mind.

Old words, he said, were the best of all, and he indulged in them: correctitude, palimpsest, parlementaire, guttersnipe, purblind.

The worst result of an habitual use of strong language is that when a special occasion really does arise, there is no way of marking it.

Woolf wanted to say dangerous things in Orlando but she did not want to say them in the missionary position.

It meant that to create was a fundament, to appreciate, a supplement.

But in the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it.

So poets keep on trying, and sooner or later the consecutive results of their self-dissatisfaction are clipped together with a giant paperclip by literary historians and called their "oeuvres." I

We, too, can divide ourselves, it's true. / But only into flesh and a broken whisper. / Into flesh and poetry.

Even poetry has its prosaic side.

My identifying features are rapture and despair.

Read good poetry and read it well, tracing the countless incarnations of every word. These are after all the same words lying dead in dictionaries or leading a gray life in speech. Then why do they shine like new in poems, as if the poet had just discovered them?

Poetry (whatever we may say) is, was, and will always be a game. And as very child knows, all games have rules. So why do grown-ups forget?

Even boredom must be described with passion.

We leven langer, maar minder nauwkeurig en in kortere zinnen.

De vreugde van het schrijven. De macht van vereeuwiging. De wraak van een sterfelijke hand.

Moje znaki szczególne to zachwyt i rozpacz.

Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page, are letters up to no good, clutches of clauses so subordinate they'll never let her get away. From, The Joy of Writing, Wislawa Szymborska

Lots of people come just to dance and have a good time. Here you can do anything you want to do, be anyone you want to be. It's called freedom. Be careful, it can be contagious.

If he [the Artist] were to take up the pen it would be...to better express his individuality and explain it to others; or else to put his internal affairs in order...to deepen and sharpen his relationship with his fellow men because other souls exert an immense and creative influence on our soul; or to try to fight for a world as he would like it to be, for a world that is indispensable to his life.