Expression quotes
3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside expression — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Removed from its more restrictive sense, masturbation has become an expression for everything that has proved, for lack of human contact, to be void of meaning. We have communication problems, suffer from egocentrism and narcissism, are frustrated by information glut and loss of environment; we stagnate despite the rising GNP."
"Life, as we all know, is conflict, and man, being part of life, is himself an expression of conflict. If he recognizes the fact and accepts it, he is apt, despite the conflict, to know peace and to enjoy it. But to arrive at this end, which is only a beginning (for we haven’t begun to live yet!), a man has got to learn the doctrine of acceptance, that is, of unconditional surrender, which is love."
"I hate women because they have brought into the currency of our language such expressions as "all righty" and "yes indeedy" and hundreds of others."
"Cows sometimes wear an expression resembling wonderment arrested on its way to becoming a question. In the eye of superior intelligence, on the other hand, lies the nil admirari spread out like the monotony of a cloudless sky."
"If anyone's under a spell, Justina, it's me. Your daughter put one on me five years ago, and I haven't broken free of it yet. Oh, and you'll be delighted to know, we've decided to resume our relationship. Don't bother with congratulations—trust me, your expression is congratulations enough."
"Art is the highest expression of the human spirit."
"The highest thoughts are those which are least dependent on language, and the dignity of any composition and praise to which it is entitled are in exact proportion to its dependency of language or expression."
"As we have seen, the first public expression of disenchantment with nonviolence arose around the question of 'self-defense.' In a sense this is a false issue, for the right to defend one's home and one's person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law."
"To me, true prosperity begins with feeling good about yourself. It is also the freedom to do what you want to do, when you want to do it. It is never an amount of money; it is a state of mind. Prosperity or lack of it is an outer expression of the ideas in your head."
""Study Bible" is the expression used for Bibles that include significant explanatory notes, usually at the bottom of the page, sometimes in the margins. Often a Study Bible will also include some brief articles, photographs of geographical and archaeological sites, fairly extensive maps, and charts that summarize a lot of information."
"The novel is the highest form of human expression so far attained. Why? Because it is so incapable of the absolute."
"I see Donald Trump as a phenomenon of an expression of certain fears, certain resentments, that have been a running thread in American history."
"Iran is the latest expression of a deep, ancient, powerful culture that's different than ours. And we don't know how it's going to play itself out."
"Throughout history humans have inflicted countless violent, cruel, and hurtful acts on each other, and continue to do so. Are they all to be condemned; are they all guilty? Or are those acts simply expressions of unconsciousness, an evolutionary stage that we are now growing out of? Jesus’ words, “Forgive them for they do not know what they do,” also apply to yourself."
"Consciousness is not personal. Human consciousness is just an expression of universal consciousness, which pervades the entire universe."
"I am very present in my work and my work is somehow an expression of my soul, but at the same time I think that a writer cannot write out of nothing."
"Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be 'the expression of the imagination': and poetry is connate with the origin of man."
"Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself."
"Capitalism as a social order and as a creed is the expression of the belief in economic progress as leading toward the freedom and equality of the individual in a free and open society. Marxism expects this society to result from the abolition of private profit. Capitalism expects the free and equal society to result from the enthronement of private profit as supreme ruler of social behavior."
"Keep my word' is such a strange expression. At first glance, it just means 'Be true to what you agreed on. But it could also mean, 'Hold your words back.' Keep them in. Let your actions speak instead."
