95 Inspiring Expression Quotes

In our journey through life, words have the power to uplift, inspire, and resonate deeply within us. Whether we seek motivation for personal growth, creativity for artistic endeavors, or simply a fresh perspective on everyday challenges, a well-chosen quote can be profoundly impactful. Our thoughtfully curated collection of the top 95 inspiring expression quotes offers a diverse tapestry of wisdom from some of the most insightful minds across history. Each quote encapsulates a unique blend of emotion and intellect, inviting you to explore the boundless potential of human expression. Dive in and find the words that speak directly to your soul, sparking inspiration and prompting reflection on your own journey.

1. “My dear friend, clear your mind of cant [excessive thought]. You may talk as other people do: you may say to a man, "Sir, I am your most humble servant." You are not his most humble servant. You may say, "These are bad times; it is a melancholy thing to be reserved to such times." You don't mind the times ... You may talk in this manner; it is a mode of talking in Society; but don't think foolishly.” - Samuel Johnson

2. “Poetry: the best words in the best order.” - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

3. “A recurrent question about photography is how much self expression it allows the photographer. There are two standard positions, each corresponding to a different location oh photographic skill. The opposition is neatly summed up in Bioy Casares’s novel The Adventures of a Photographer in La Plata (1989). The hero Nicolasito Almanza declares: ‘I am convinced that all of photography depends on the moment we press the release […] I believe that you’re a photographer if you know exactly when to press the release.’ In making this declaration he is responding to the opinion expressed by Mr Gruter, owner of a photographic laboratory: ‘[…] sometimes I wonder if the true work of the photographer doesn’t begin in the dark room, amid the trays and the enlarger.” - Clive Scott

4. “All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up.” - James Baldwin

5. “I like contradictions. We have never attained the infinite variety and contradictions that exist in nature. Tomorrow I shall contradict myself. That is the one way I have of asserting my liberty, the real liberty one does not find as a member of society.” - Man Ray

6. “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.” - Martha Graham

7. “[S]he stood for some moments gazing at the sisters, with affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other.” - Charles Dickens

8. “I feel very strongly indeed that a Cambridge education for our scientists should include some contact with the humanistic side. The gift of expression is important to them as scientists; the best research is wasted when it is extremely difficult to discover what it is all about ... It is even more important when scientists are called upon to play their part in the world of affairs, as is happening to an increasing extent.” - Sir William Bragg

9. “In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness."(On the Bravery of the English Common Soldiers)” - Samuel Johnson

10. “If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.” - Noam Chomsky

11. “I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.” - Jane Austen

12. “No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.” - Ansel Adams

13. “It's so hard to express yourself.' I understand this.'I want to express myself.'The same is true for me.' I'm looking for my voice.' It's in your mouth.' I want to do something I'm not ashamed of.'Something you are proud of, yes?' Not even. I just don't want to be ashamed.” - Jonathan Safran Foer

14. “He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom.” - P.G. Wodehouse

15. “I'm not an abstractionist. I'm not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.” - Mark Rothko

16. “By being natural and sincere, one often can create revolutions without having sought them.” - Christian Dior

17. “Music is an outburst of the soul.” - Frederick Delius

18. “Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends.” - Alphonse de Lamartine

19. “Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper.” - Isaac Bashevis Singer

20. “Being an American is about having the right to be who you are. Sometimes that doesn't happen.” - Herb Ritts

21. “When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.” - Ansel Adams

22. “Innovation is an evolutionary process, so it's not necessary to be radical all the time.” - Marc Jacobs

23. “What a gulf between impression and expression! That’s our ironic fate—to have Shakespearean feelings and (unless by some billion-to-one chance we happen to be Shakespeare) to talk about them like automobile salesmen or teen-agers or college professors. We practice alchemy in reverse—touch gold and it turns into lead; touch the pure lyrics of experience, and they turn into the verbal equivalents of tripe and hogwash.” - Aldous Huxley

24. “People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish... but that's only if it's done properly.” - Banksy

25. “Against the censurers of brevity. - Something said briefly can be the fruit of much long thought: but the reader who is a novice in this field, and has as yet reflected on it not at all, sees in everything said briefly something embryonic, not without censuring the author for having served him up such immature and unripened fare.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

26. “Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.” - Edward Hopper

27. “More of me comes out when I improvise.” - Edward Hopper

28. “It is because they are so strong that she hides her feelings.” - John Christopher

29. “What things there are to write, if one could only write them! My mind is full of gleaming thoughts; gay moods and mysterious, moth-like meditations hover in my imagination, fanning their painted wings. They would make my fortune if I could catch them; but always the rarest, those freaked with azure and the deepest crimson, flutter away beyond my reach.” - Logan Pearsall Smith

30. “Happiness is part of who we are. Joy is the feeling” - Tony DeLiso

31. “Keep your best wishes, close to your heart and watch what happens” - Tony DeLiso

32. “There are only two styles of portrait painting: the serious and the smirk.” - Charles Dickens

33. “Now,young lady,I suppose you're here for a work assignment."Work?" Tally said.They both looked down at her puzzled expression, and Shay burst into laughter.” - Scott Westerfeld

34. “She was not one for emptying her face of expression. ” - J.D. Salinger

35. “There are many things which can not be expressed by words. There are many words which can not be spelled by human tongue. There are many tongues which utter one single truth.” - Toba Beta

36. “There are things which couldn't be expressed by the words,when you've mastered certain lesson for more than 30 years.” - Toba Beta

37. “There is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.” - Martha Graham

38. “From space this Earth is incandescent with abominations - the gods write their signature in our entrails” - steve aylett

39. “Speech is a rolling-mill that always thins out the sentiment.” - Gustave Flaubert

40. “Son of Krypton!” - Kirstin van Dyke

41. “A lonely impulse of delight” - W.B. Yeats

42. “If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.” - Seamus Heaney

43. “Isn't language loss a good thing, because fewer languages mean easier communication among the world's people? Perhaps, but it's a bad thing in other respects. Languages differ in structure and vocabulary, in how they express causation and feelings and personal responsibility, hence in how they shape our thoughts. There's no single purpose "best" language; instead, different languages are better suited for different purposes. For instance, it may not have been an accident that Plato and Aristotle wrote in Greek, while Kant wrote in German. The grammatical particles of those two languages, plus their ease in forming compound words, may have helped make them the preeminent languages of western philosophy. Another example, familiar to all of us who studied Latin, is that highly inflected languages (ones in which word endings suffice to indicate sentence structure) can use variations of word order to convey nuances impossible with English. Our English word order is severely constrained by having to serve as the main clue to sentence structure. If English becomes a world language, that won't be because English was necessarily the best language for diplomacy.” - Jared Diamond

44. “We have a language that is full of ambiguities; we have a way of expressing ourselves that is often complex and elusive, poetic and modulated; all our thoughts can be rendered with absolute clarity if we bother to put the right dots and squiggles between the words in the right places. Proper punctuation is both the sign and the cause of clear thinking. If it goes, the degree of intellectual impoverishment we face is unimaginable.” - Lynne Truss

45. “But if you have big ideas you have to use big words to express them, haven't you?” - L.M. Montgomery

46. “It is love’s nature to be expressed.” - Steve Maraboli

47. “The world is not ready for some people when they show up, but that shouldn't stop anyone.” - Ashly Lorenzana

48. “Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.” - Brenda Ueland

49. “Expression is never helped by suppression.” - DENG MING-DAO

50. “In his face there came to be a brooding peace that is seen most often in the faces of the very sorrowful or the very wise. But still he wandered through the streets of the town, always silent and alone.” - Carson McCullers

51. “Because there are hundreds of different ways to say one thing, I, being a writer, songwriter, and poet, speak childishly and incoherently. In speech there is so much to decide in so little time.” - Criss Jami

52. “There is a master way with words which is not learned but is instead developed: a deaf man develops exceptional vision, a blind man exceptional hearing, a silent man, when given a piece of paper...” - Criss Jami

53. “Songwriting and poetry are so commonly birthed from underdogs because one can make even the ugliest situations admirable, or more beautiful than the beautiful situations - they are the most graceful media in which the lines of society are distorted.” - Criss Jami

54. “Everyone has their own ways of expression. I believe we all have a lot to say, but finding ways to say it is more than half the battle.” - Criss Jami

55. “The best ideas will eat at you for days, maybe even weeks, until something, some incident, some impulse, triggers you to finally express them.” - Criss Jami

56. “She looked like something that might have occured to Ibsen in one of his less frivolous moments.” - P.G. Wodehouse

57. “Time's a goon right? Isn't that the expression?” - Jennifer Egan

58. “To me, clothing is a form of self-expression - there are hints about who you are in what you wear.” - Mark Jacobs

59. “When someone comes along and expresses him or herself as freely as they think, people flock to it. They enjoy it.” - Joe Rogan

60. “A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense and is thereby a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety.” - Ansel Adams

61. “What is meant to be heard is necessarily more direct in expression, and perhaps more boldly coloured, than what is meant for the reader.” - Robertson Davies

62. “My heart always timidly hides itself behind my mind. I set out to bring down stars from the sky, then, for fear of ridicule, I stop and pick little flowers of eloquence.” - Edmond Rostand

63. “It's okay to disagree with the thoughts or opinions expressed by other people. That doesn't give you the right to deny any sense they might make. Nor does it give you a right to accuse someone of poorly expressing their beliefs just because you don't like what they are saying. Learn to recognize good writing when you read it, even if it means overcoming your pride and opening your mind beyond what is comfortable.” - Ashly Lorenzana

64. “She sang, as requested. There was much about love in the ballad: faithful love that refused to abandon its object; love that disaster could not shake; love that, in calamity, waxed fonder, in poverty clung closer. The words were set to a fine old air -- in themselves they were simple and sweet: perhaps, when read, they wanted force; when well sung, they wanted nothing. Shirley sang them well: she breathed into the feeling, softness, she poured round the passion, force: her voice was fine that evening; its expression dramatic: she impressed all, and charmed one.On leaving the instrument, she went to the fire, and sat down on a seat -- semi-stool, semi-cushion: the ladies were round her -- none of them spoke. The Misses Sympson and the Misses Nunnely looked upon her, as quiet poultry might look on an egret, an ibis, or any other strange fowl. What made her sing so? They never sang so. Was it proper to sing with such expression, with such originality -- so unlike a school girl? Decidedly not: it was strange, it was unusual. What was strange must be wrong; what was unusual must be improper. Shirley was judged.” - Charlotte Brontë

65. “Prose: words in their best order; poetry: the best words in the best order.” - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

66. “And the strange thing was he had never loved her more than in that moment, because at that moment she had become himself.But thats not love, he thought, thats not what she wants, not what any of them want, they do not want you to find yourself in them, they want instead that you should lose yourself in them. And yet, he thought, they are always trying to find themselves in you. [...]And it seemed to him then that every human was always looking for himself, in bars, in railway trains, in offices, in mirrors, in love, especially in love, for the self of him that is there, someplace, in every other human. Love was not to give oneself, but find oneself, describe oneself. And that the whole conception had been written wrong. Because the only part of any man that he can ever touch or understand is that part of himself he recognises in him. And that he is always looking for the way in which he can expose his sealed bee cell and reach the other airtight cells with which he is connected in the waxy comb.And the only way he had ever found, the only code, the only language by which he could speak and be heard by other men, could communicate himself, was with a bugle. If you had a bugle here, he told himself, you could speak to her and be understood, you could play Fatigue Call for her, with its tiredness, its heavy belly going out to sweep somebody else's streets when it would rather stay home and sleep, she would understand it then.But you havent got a bugle, himself said, not here nor any other place. Your tongue has been ripped out. All you got is two bottles, one nearly full, one nearly empty.” - James Jones

67. “He understood privacy and freedom of expression were paramount to liberty, as incompatible as they may appear. One promoted yelling and screaming, while the other encouraged people to retreat and pull within. Yet, cornerstones to American democracy, people needed them both for the lives they took for granted.” - Shelter Somerset

68. “A writer is one who communicates ideas and emotions people want to communicate but aren't quite sure how, or even if, they should communicate them.” - Criss Jami

69. “Man's first expression, like his first dream, was an aesthetic one. Speech was a poetic outcry rather than a demand for communication. Original man, shouting his consonants, did so in yells of awe and anger at his tragic state, at his own self-awareness and at his own helplessness before the void.” - Barnett Newman

70. “..her smile, which was her pretty feature, was never so pretty as when her sprightly phrase had a scratch lurking in it.” - Henry James

71. “Inside of all of us there is the need and the desire to be heard, to have our innermost thoughts, feelings and desires expressed for others to hear, to see and to understand. We all want to matter to someone, to leave a mark. Writers just take those thoughts, feelings and desires and express them in such a way that the reader not only reads them but feels them as well.” - V. Vee

72. “Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression.” - Yann Martel

73. “His (Grant's) face has three expressions: deep thought, extreme determination, and great simplicity and calmness.” - Amanda Foreman

74. “You break through the veil whenever you strap on a sword or chant the ancient verses. You escape when you write a poem or a tale that brings beauty into the world. You are set free whenever you love—even those who believe you’re crazy.” - Jef Murray

75. “The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.” - T. S. Eliot

76. “Artistry exists in everyone. What makes it blossom is a soul's personal desire to find an outlet for expression.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

77. “On my fifteenth birthday, I came to realize that the expression spoiled rotten meant exactly that. We kids were the apples of our parents' eyes, and I, for one, was rotting from inside out.” - Neal Shusterman

78. “It is beautiful to express love and even more beautiful to feel it.” - Dejan Stojanovic

79. “YOLO means You Only Live Once, so instead of using it as an expression to do whatever you want, use it as an expression to live life right, because you only get one chance at life.” - Kaley Ali

80. “Without the freedom to criticize, there is no true praise.” - Beaumarchais Pierre Augustin Caron De

81. “I like you; your eyes are full of language."[Letter to Anne Clarke, July 3, 1964.]” - Anne Sexton

82. “Each moment is a poetic expression of the undefined. As long as it remains undefined, it has all the beauty of the world and it steps inside to nurture your dreams.” - Grigoris Deoudis

83. “If it’s a pure expression of yourself no matter what it is or what medium, it’s going to shine. It’s going to resonate. You could look inside of yourself and you could have a canvas and you could paint a dot in it, but if that is where your creative purpose is taking you then it needs to be that dot.” - Rainn Wilson

84. “I don't want to express alienation. It isn't what I feel. I'm interested in various kinds of passionate engagement. All my work says be serious, be passionate, wake up.” - Susan Sontag

85. “Do you ever think that people who find it tougher to say what they're feeling are the ones who feel things more intensely? As if they're the ones who really understand what it means to love someone? As if they have to keep their defenses high, because they care too much and have too much to lose?” - Claire Cross

86. “We are the wilderness withinScreaming out for true expression.Even when we’re sleeping,There’s no escape from this obsession.” - jay woodman

87. “Change is happening and old structures are falling in the form of a "Death of a Thousand Cuts." In other words one grand act is not occuring but a multitude of small expressions on the part of individuals, both slowly and swiftly taking the place of heirarchy and history.” - William Gibson, Spook Country

88. “It sometimes seems to me that a pestilence has struck the human race in its most distinctive faculty - that is, the use of words. It is a plague afflicting language, revealing itself as a loss of cognition and immediacy, an automatism that tends to level out all expression into the most generic, anonymous, and abstract formulas, to dilute meaning, to blunt the edge of expressiveness, extinguishing the sparks that shoots out from the collision of words and new circumstances.” - Italo Calvino

89. “One obvious palliative of the evils of democracy in its present form would be to encourage much more publicity and initiative on the part of civil servants. They ought to have the right, and, on occasion, the duty, to frame Bills in their own names, and set forth publicly the arguments in their favor.” - Bertrand Russell

90. “Poetry is the wailing of a broken heart―the etched sorrows of despairing souls.  These artful words are an exclamation in rare colors expressed noiselessly on parchment.  Poetry is the unheard cry of a flower, wilting.  It is a humble, lucent tear shed with meaning.  It is the lovely portrayal of ugliness and the bitter edge of sweet.  Poetry speaks to the spirit by piercing understanding. It interprets all senseless truths―beauty, love, emotion―into sensible scrawl.  Poetry is vague affirmation and bewildering clarification. Like the most poignant of emotions, we understand the essence but cannot adequately do it verbal justice, crippled by inherently weak tongues.  A spiritual soothsayer, poetry is the closest thing to expression of feelings unutterable.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

91. “We sing because we can't speak anymore.” - Kristen Chenoweth

92. “So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning.” - Aaron Copland

93. “Expression is a function of intention and intention emanates from your thought faculty.” - Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

94. “Life is complex in its expression, involving more than percipience, namely desire, emotion, will, and feeling.” - Alfred North Whitehead

95. “I have this rage that I can't explain. It's sad.” - Peter Davis