Home > Topic > Self-expression
1 " The truest kindness to any woman is to provide her with an opportunity for self-expression in some constructive field: to work, not at home with cook-stove and scrubbing brush, but outside, independently, in the world of men and affairs. "
― William Moulton Marston
2 " I see, in place of that empty figment of one linear history which can be kept up only by shutting one’s eyes to the overwhelming multitude of facts, the drama of a number of mighty Cultures, each springing with primitive strength from the soil of a mother-region to which it remains firmly bound throughout it’s whole life-cycle; each stamping its material, its mankind, in its own image; each having its own idea, its own passions, its own life, will and feelings, its own death. Here indeed are colours, lights, movements, that no intellectual eye has yet discovered.Here the Cultures, peoples, languages, truths, gods, landscapes bloom and age as the oaks and the pines, the blossoms, twigs and leaves - but there is no ageing “Mankind.” Each Culture has its own new possibilities of self-expression which arise, ripen, decay and never return. There is not one sculpture, one painting, one mathematics, one physics, but many, each in the deepest essence different from the others, each limited in duration and self-contained, just as each species of plant has its peculiar blossom or fruit, its special type of growth and decline. "
― Oswald Spengler , The Decline of the West
3 " The fear of judgment is the ultimate robber of self-expression and authenticity "
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4 " The first prerequisite for fine literature is that the writer must see the language not as a transparent medium for self-expression or the representation of reality, but as a medium one must struggle with to make it do one's bidding. "
― Minae Mizumura , The Fall of Language in the Age of English
5 " It sounded, I told him, as if he had never learned to balance projecting goals into the future with appreciating and living in the present....To the extent that our goal is to " prove" ourselves or ward off the fear of failure, this balance is difficult to achieve. We are too driven. Not joy but anxiety is our motor.But if our aim is self-expression rather than self-justification, the balance tends to come more naturally. We will still need to think about its daily implementation, but the anxiety of wounded self-esteem will not make the task nearly impossible. "
6 " I personally find that having a couple of projects going at once can be an aid to focus, refreshing my brain as I go back and forth between them – a book review and a novel at the same time, for example. But I’ve seen that writers who are starting out sometimes throw their energy in so many different directions that they can never finish any of the projects, much less all of them.To me a good test is this: what do you like to read? What kind of book moves and affects you the most? Is it the memoir, the novel, the long poem-collection? Personally, I find myself most immersed in the novel, and that’s why I write them – they have the most magic for me. The joy of self-expression is exhilarating, but ultimately choosing one venue for it can make your work much better – and same for your chances of actually finishing something. "
― Charles Finch
7 " I often think with regret of that fresh, beautiful feeling of boundless, disinterested love which came to an end without having ever found self-expression or return. It is strange how, when a child, I always longed to be like grown-up people, and yet how I have often longed, since childhood's days, for those days to come back to me! "
― Leo Tolstoy , Childhood
8 " To me, clothing is a form of self-expression - there are hints about who you are in what you wear. "
9 " Pinned shoulder to shoulder, t-shirts extended in lines,The power of expression, is what " THE CLOTHESLINE" defines.Although each color symbolic, the threads weave the same,Each shirt a picture of violence, each shirt a witness to pain.The color white a memorial, for a victim who died,Simply, because of her gender, precious life was denied.Yellow signifies a victim, embraced by batter and assault,When intimacy turned into violence, as if loving was a fault.Shades of pink, red, and orange - when passion turned into rape,Denied the right to say " NO" , by either stranger, or date.The blue and green bear nightmares, when a child of incest and misuseWas forced not to tell the " SECRETS" , endured from physical and sexual abuse.See the beautiful shades of lavender, to the one not afraid to voice,A different sexual orientation, condemned, when in public made the choice.In the beginning they first choose the color, then allowing pain to flow from inside,Using buttons, bows, paints, and prose, self-expression no longer denied.As you walk through the line of color, emotional pain may fill your heart,But to the victim this personal creation, permits an inner healing to start.Pinned shoulder to shoulder, t-shirts extended in lines,The power of expression, is what " THE CLOTHESLINE" defines. "
10 " I actually chafe at describing myself as masculine. For one thing, masculinity itself is such an expansive territory, encompassing boundaries of nationality, race, and class. Most importantly, individuals blaze their own trails across this landscape. And it’s hard for me to label the intricate matrix of my gender as simply masculine. To me, branding individual self-expression as simply feminine or masculine is like asking poets: Do you write in English or Spanish? The question leaves out the possibilities that the poetry is woven in Cantonese or Ladino, Swahili or Arabic. The question deals only with the system of language that the poet has been taught. It ignores the words each writer hauls up, hand over hand, from a common well. The music words make when finding themselves next to each other for the first time. The silences echoing in the space between ideas. The powerful winds of passion and belief that move the poet to write. "
― Leslie Feinberg
11 " A person without self-expression is a person without personal freedom. "
― Robin S. Sharma , The Saint, the Surfer, and the CEO: A Remarkable Story about Living Your Heart's Desires
12 " Although it might seem as though anonymity, invisibility, and other such distancing factors grant us the freedom to engage in more authentic forms of self-expression than we're usually permitted, [John] Suler warns against the temptation to regard disinhibition as " revealing of an underlying 'rue self." He suggests instead that the inhibited self and disinhibited self are simply different *sides* of the *same* person. So Suler challenges the intuitive notion that whatever inhibits us thereby diminishes the authenticity of our self-expression. "
13 " Guitar is the best form of self-expression I know. Everything else, and I'm just sort of tripping around, trying to figure my way through life. "
14 " He who seeks truth shall find beauty. He who seeks beauty shall find vanity. He who seeks order shall find gratification. He who seeks gratification shall be disappointed. He who considers himself the servant of his fellow beings shall find the joy of self-expression. He who seeks self-expression shall fall into the pit of arrogance. "
15 " Every mind which has given itself to self-expression in art is aware of a directing agency outside its conscious control which it has agreed to label 'inspiration'. "
16 " No matter how old and glorious the models, sad indeed is the woman who sees fashion as a means of self-expression rather than an agent of social control. "
