Quotes about Expression

Prayer was and is both a spontaneous act and a recitative

A writer strives to express a universal truth in the way that rings the most bells in the shortest amount of time.

I don't think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won't be good at it.

When you're grieving that's not the time to be brave or strong, you need to let it show

A man cannot dress, but his ideas get cloath'd at the same time.

Each time a dancer moves devoutly or a composer faithfully searches the silence for the veiled melodies, eternity is engaged.

Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.

All ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily used by the gardener with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing.

In our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.

I love to hear myself talk, because I get so much instruction and moral upheaval out of it.

Anybody can have ideas—the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.

I know grammar by ear only, not by note, not by the rules.