Quotes about Expression

Thus, when one takes a sentence of Mr B into the mind it falls plump to the ground— dead; but when one takes a sentence of Coleridge into the mind, it explodes and gives birth to all kinds of other ideas, and that is the only sort of writing of which one can say that it has the secret of perpetual life.

Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women.

Nothing happens here except that I write and write, and curse and burn.

"Our armies swore terribly in Flanders," cried my uncle Toby—"but nothing to this."

"It wasn't the wine," murmured Mr. Snodgrass, in a broken voice. "It was the salmon."

An idea, like a ghost (according to the common notion of ghosts), must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

No varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

You are good enough to say so, as a fashion of speech; but, I don't mean any fashion of speech. Indeed, when I say I wish we might be friends, I scarcely mean quite that, either.

Freedom of opinion! Where is it? I see a press more mean and paltry and silly and disgraceful than any country ever knew, - if that be its standard, here it is. ... I speak of Miss Martineau, and all parties... shower down upon her a perfect cataract of abuse. "But what has she done? Surely she praised America enough!" - "Yes, but she told us of some of our faults, and Americans can't bear to be told of their faults.

As an emotion of the mind will express itself through any covering of the body, so the paleness which his situation engendered came through the brown upon his cheek, showing the soul to be stronger than the sun.

The bird that can sing and won't sing, must be made to sing, they say,' grumbled Tackleton.