No Words To Describe You Quotes & Sayings

To demonstrate is to show clearly & deliberately, and to describe is to give a detailed account in words.
That thing called 'Love' is defined when demonstrated, not when described. — Olaotan Fawehinmi

I am so afraid of people's words.They describe so distinctly everything:
And this they call dog and that they call house,
here the start and there the end.
I worry about their mockery with words,
they know everything, what will be, what was;
no mountain is still miraculous;
and their house and yard lead right up to God.
I want to warn and object: Let the things be!
I enjoy listening to the sound they are making.
But you always touch: and they hush and stand still.
That's how you kill. — Rainer Maria Rilke

The truth is always greater than the words we use to describe it. — Matthew Woodring Stover

Music can describe emotions far more accurately than words ever can. As soon as I realised that, I knew music was where I wanted to be. — John Lydon

The words graphic designer, architect, or industrial designer stick in my throat, giving me a sense of limitation, of specialisation within the specialty, of a relationship to society and form itself that is unsatisfactory and incomplete. This inadequate set of terms to describe an active life reveals only partially the still undefined nature of the designer. — Alvin Lustig

Professor Ramachandran believes this synesthetic connection between our hearing and seeing senses was an important first step towards the creation of words in early humans. According to this theory, our ancestors would have begun to talk by using sounds that evoked the object they wanted to describe. For example, words referring to something small often involve making a synesthetic small i sound with the lips and a narrowing of the vocal tracts: Little, teeny, petite, whereas the opposite is true of words denoting something large or enormous. If the theory is right, then language emerged from the vast array of synesthetic connections in the human brain. — Daniel Tammet

My robust lexicon notwithstanding, I struggle to find the right words to describe just how much I despise, hate, abhor, revile, detest and categorically abominate anything to do with home maintenance. While cooking strikes me as an essentially creative act, cleaning seems little more than an exercise in decay management, enough to trigger an existential crisis each time the ring around the toilet bowl reappears. — Rachel Held Evans

she says, her words tinged with sorrow. I stop, go and sit on the edge of her bed. We sit, silent. "I promise, I'm right here and I won't leave you." I let her feel my presence. No one could describe Alzheimer's better than this. She's lost inside her own mind. How cruel. How fucking cruel. — Carol O'Dell

When there is a huge crack in your relationship with someone, you wonder what others do in similar situations. I realize I'm trying as hard as I can to present myself as the most unthreatening being in the world, like a small animal. I hunch into myself, avoiding going back to the same places I frequented with him. Obviously I don't eat the kind of food we ate or made together. But I don't think I'm going to move to a new house, because I have the kitchen and the large fridge that I'd wanted for so long. People say you can't possibly like your lover every single second of your life. But that's not true. I liked and looked to my lover every single second we were together. And I still can't admit that he's gone. True sorrow is when one person desires but the other doesn't. I don't know any better words to describe it, and I can't yet express this feeling through any kind of food. The one thing we know about sorrow is that it's a very personal, individual feeling. — Kyung-ran Jo

When you've lived as long as I have," he said, eyes heavy-lidded but definitely on her, "you learn to appreciate new sensations. They are rare in an immortal's life."
She found she'd moved toward him. He hooked her arm around her waist, pulling her closer until she straddled him as he sat on a ledge below the waterline, her legs wrapped around his waist.
He settled her firmly against him.
Sucking in a breath, she said, "Sex isn't new to you," and rocked her heat over the exquisite hardness of him. Good didn't begin to describe how it felt. How he felt.
"No. But you are."
"Never had a hunter before?" She grinned, nibbling on his lower lip.
But he didn't smile. "I've never had Elena before." The words were husky, his eyes so intent she felt owned. — Nalini Singh

I have no words to describe the way you make me feel. — Dhiren Prajapati

I have used the words and expressions which my experiences from Minsk to Kharkov to the Don suggested to me. But I should have reserved those words and expressions for what came later, even though they are not strong enough. It is a mistake to use intense words without carefully weighing and measuring them, or they will have already been used when one needs them later. It's a mistake, for instance, to used the word frightful to describe a few broken up companions mixed into the ground: but it's a mistake that might be forgiven. — Guy Sajer

I write 1,000 words a day first thing in the morning but I cannot write 240 characters to describe a piece that I spent six weeks working on with a producer. — Daniel Alarcon

Oh, Ruth. I wish we had our own words to describe ourselves, to connect us."
Ruth stood up and opened the broiler. "I don't need another label," she sighed. "I just am what I am. I call myself Ruth. My mother is Ruth Anne; my grandmother was Anne. That's who I am. That's where I come from."
I shrugged. "I don't want another label either. I just wish we had words so pretty we'd go out of our way to say them out loud. — Leslie Feinberg

There are no words precise enough to describe how wide and empty the world is when you lose someone that matters to you as much as Penny did to me. — Bill Clegg

Some things should never be said. Not out loud in clear, simple words. You talk around them. You leave gaps and blanks. You use other words and talk in curves and arcs for the worst things because you need to keep them like mist. Words are dangerous. Like a spell, if you name the mist, call out all of the words that describe it sharp and clear, you turn it solid, into something that no one should ever hold in their hands. Better that it stays like water, slipping between your fingers. — Alexia Casale

God created us in his image, male and female, with personhood and sexual passions, so that when he comes to us in this world there would be these powerful words and images to describe the promises and the pleasures of our covenant relationship with him through Christ. — John Piper

You were the poem I never knew how to write because no words could describe the wind you cannot see, but feel. — Shannon L. Alder

I gather you weren't keen on going back to Scotland with your brother at this time of year. I don't say I blame you. Terribly bleak and cutoff in the winter."
"Oh no, Mom," I said, as her words sunk in. "My brother is not going back to Scotland. He and my sister-in-law are going to the Riviera."
The Riviera? I had no idea."
"For my sister-in-law's health. She's feeling rather frail at the moment."
"I don't think that frail would ever be a word to describe your sister-in-law," the Queen said, looking up with a half smile on her lips as a tray of coffee was reeled into the room.
"I managed to have six children without making a fuss. One just got on with it. — Rhys Bowen

I can think of a lot of words to describe Senator Kerry's position on Iraq; 'consistent' is not one of them. — Dick Cheney

'But surely "blind" is just how you would describe men who have no true knowledge of reality, and no clear standard in their mind to refer to, as a painter refers to his model, and which they can study closely before they start laying down rules about what is fair or right or good where they are needed, or maintaining, as Guardians, any rules that already exist.'
'Yes, blind is just about what they are' — Plato

I'm thankful to God for having a family that's been there for me. He's been there from the time I was a child to even now with my family helping with my little boy. It's worth more than words could ever describe. That's one of the ways I've been able to stay grounded is thanks to family and God. — Ashton Shepherd

It's, it's like I'm in the fourth dimension and somebody is asking me to describe it verbally and that's what the fourth dimension is all about, is no words, no symbols, no images, all pure, real energy and vibrations. And, and if I thought about how cruel of a world this is, I would probably just commit suicide after a while, if that was what I spent my energy thinking about. I would definitely not have any strength left to create music. — John Frusciante

[an encounter in space] Some celestial event. No
no words
no words to describe it. Poetry! They should have sent a poet. So beautiful. So beautiful ... I had no idea. I had no idea. — Carl Sagan

All the things I thought I was - simple and plain and sometime funny - are very small words. They do not begin to describe me. They do not begin to express what is inside of me. I have value, and I have worth. I cannot be replaced like old shoes or taken for granted like tap water. — Adriana Trigiani

Many journalists now are no more than channelers and echoers of what George Orwell called the 'official truth'. They simply cipher and transmit lies. It really grieves me that so many of my fellow journalists can be so manipulated that they become really what the French describe as 'functionaires', functionaries, not journalists. Many journalists become very defensive when you suggest to them that they are anything but impartial and objective. The problem with those words 'impartiality' and 'objectivity' is that they have lost their dictionary meaning. They've been taken over ... [they] now mean the establishment point of view ... Journalists don't sit down and think, 'I'm now going to speak for the establishment.' Of course not. But they internalise a whole set of assumptions, and one of the most potent assumptions is that the world should be seen in terms of its usefulness to the West, not humanity. — John Pilger

The feeling that was born that night, how could i describe it?Words like love or lust just don't seem right. I may call it jealousy, or may be anxiety and moreover, need. Even now I'm anxious at times because when I am with Ren, everything around feels like a dream. That was how Ren turned my boring life into an illusion, and that was too much for no matter how hard i tried, it seemed I could never catch him. — Ai Yazawa

When we try to describe the truth with words, we distort it and it's no longer truth
it's our story. The story may be true for us, but that doesn't mean it's true for anyone else. — Miguel Ruiz

It's a two-way street," Emma murmured, her words soft, but fierce at once. "Sometimes you have to take what you need and hope the other person can handle the invasion."
"Invasion?"
"That's what love is, isn't it? Families, friends, lovers. It's an invasion of each other's space, minds, hearts. Someone's always jockeying for control. For it to truly work, there has to be equality. Each side has to be strong enough to handle it."
Invasion. An oddly perfect way to describe it. "Yet again, I ask, who are you, Emma Strickland? — Kate Meader

So when you're talking about lyrics in the context of music, it's not just about what the words mean, and what you were thinking about when you wrote it. It's not cognitive in that same way. It's almost like music turns words into touch, which is hard to describe, like the feeling of your shirt on your back. It's a pretty delicate thing to try to put into words. You just feel it. — Mirah

words themselves are action; they do not simply describe the world but in a very real sense make the world. Therefore it makes sense to pay attention to the worlds people are attempting to create in their words. — John Scalzi

Stories are not just entertainment, not to me. A story records and transmits the experience of being human. It teaches us what it's like to be who we are. Nothing but art can do this. There is no science that can capture the inner life. No words can describe it directly. We can only speak of it in metaphors. We can only say: it's like this - this story, this picture, this song. — Andrew Klavan

We have to pray as the ancients prayed. We are women now, not children, and are expected to pray with maturity. The words most often used to describe urgent, prayerful labor are wrestle, plead, cry, and hunger...In some sense, prayer may be the hardest work we will ever be engaged in, and perhaps it should be. — Patricia T. Holland

There are no words to describe the pain of burying a child, and specifically there is no word to label their new, lifelong status. If you lose a spouse, you are a widow; if you lose a parent, you are an orphan. But what about when you lose a child? How do you name something you cannot comprehend? — Lisa Belkin

It's the Poverty.

I lack imagination you say

No. I lack language.
The language to clarify
my resistance to the literate.
Words are a war to me.
They threaten my family.

To gain the word
to describe the loss
I risk losing everything.
I may create a monster
the word's length and body
swelling up colorful and thrilling
looming over my mother, characterized.
Her voice in the distance
unintelligible illiterate.
These are the monster's words. — Cherrie L. Moraga

There are no words big enough to describe grief. It's an incredibly lonely, empty place, a large hole that swallows your soul and threatens to destroy it. It's a dark place with no light that blinds you, deafens you, and crushes your spirit. It's a place full of memories you're afraid to lose.
I was in that place. No amount of tears washed away the loneliness. No amount of screams chased it away. There were simply memories, an avalanche of memories that I desperately needed to hold onto.
There was so much that death didn't prepare me for. It didn't prepare me for the storm that would break my will. ~Hawthorn — R.K. Ryals

Most immigrants agree that at some point, we become permanent foreigners, belonging neither here nor there. Many tomes have been written trying to describe this feeling of floating between worlds but never fully landing. Artists, using every known medium from words to film to Popsicle sticks, have attempted to encapsulate the struggle of trying to hang on to the solid ground of our mother culture and realizing that we are merely in a pond balancing on a lily pad with a big kid about to belly-flop right in. If and when we fall into this pond, will we be singularly American or will we hyphenate? Can we hold on to anything or does our past just end up at the bottom of the pond, waiting to be discovered by future generations? — Firoozeh Dumas

Celadon, azure, crimson and amber.
They are beautiful, for sure.
But they have nothing on you.

Even the piano and its shades of melodic sounds.
And even, when I have the chance, Chopin in the park in Paris.
These are some of my fondest memories.

But still it is hard to think of the subtle nuances in the gold of the sun when I see you.
In you there is no viridian, cerulean, venetian, or citrine.

This is not to say that there is no color in you, because there is.
I just have not found the right words to describe you, and somehow,
I feel that I never will. — Queenbe Monyei

I have no words for you, Rook Walsh." "Try," I whisper back as I stare hungrily into his eyes. He brings his palms to my face and tilts my chin. "I could describe what you look like, but that's not what I see. You are so much more than a body inside a dress, Rook. You fit me. When I saw you crouching in that stairwell last week I felt like I knew you. You stopped me dead in my tracks, you wiped my mind. And I reached out to touch you that day because I couldn't resist. I needed to do it and I plan on touching you all night, on the way there in the car, through dinner, as we walk around the zoo and do whatever the hell it is they do at a nighttime fundraiser, and all the way home. — J.A. Huss

Well, Espen, you're no drug addict, so why do you beg?"
"Because it's my mission to be mirror for mankind so that they can see which actions are great and which are small."
"And which are great?"
Espen sighed in despair, as though weary of repeating the obvious. "Charity. Sharing and helping your neighbor. The Bible deals with nothing else. In fact, you have to search extremely hard to find anything about sex before marriage, abortion, homosexuality, or a woman's right to speak in public. But, of course, it is easier for Pharisees to talk aloud about subordinate clauses than to describe and perform the great actions the Bible leaves us in no doubt about: You have to give half of what you own to someone who has nothing. Thousands of people are dying every day without hearing the words of God because these Christians will not let go of their earthly goods. I'm giving them a chance to reflect. — Jo Nesbo

I know after all the awful places you've had to go, it's hard to imagine how good heaven can be, but I've seen it, and no words can describe it ... It's worth it all. We've both lost a parent, we've been beaten and bruised, and we've done through hell together. I even died. And I can tell you ... giving up everything to serve God is worth it all. — Bryan Davis

I was a prisoner inside my own body. I felt desperate, angry, stupid, confused, ashamed, hopeless and absolutely alone... and that this was of my own making. I could speak at home, how come I couldn't outside it? I have never been able to find the right words to describe what it was like. Imagine that for one day you are unable to speak to anyone you meet outside your own family, particularly at school/college, or out shopping, etc., have no sign language, no gestures, no facial expression. Then imagine that for eight years, but no one really understands. It was like torture, and I was the only person that knew it was happening. My body and face were frozen most of the time. I became hyperconscious of myself when outside the home and it was a relief to get back as I was always exhausted. I attempted to hide it (an impossible task) because I felt so ashamed that I couldn't do what other people seemed to find so natural and easy - to speak. At times I felt suicidal. — Carl Sutton

You have no choice but to look at your decisions and accomplishments - or lack of them - and decide for yourself if you did all that you could do. And you panic just a little, wishing for one more chance at all the beautiful moments you didn't appreciate, or for one more day with the person you didn't love quite enough. You also wonder in those frantic, fleeting seconds, as your spirit shoots through a dark tunnel, if heaven exists on the other side, and if so, what you will find there. What will it look like? What color will it be? Then you see a light - a brilliant, dazzling light - more calming and loving than any words can possibly describe, and everything finally — Julianne MacLean

I know already that I will return to this day whenever I want to. I can bid it alive. Preserve it. There is a still point where the present, the now, winds around itself, and nothing is tangled. The river is not where it begins or ends, but right in the middle point, anchored by what has happened and what is to arrive. You can close your eyes and there will be a light snow falling in New York, and seconds later you are sunning upon a rock in Zacapa, and seconds later still you are surfing through the Bronx on the strength of your own desire. There is no way to find a word to fit around this feeling. Words resist it. Words give it a pattern it does not own. Words put it in time. They freeze what cannot be stopped. Try to describe the taste of a peach. Try to describe it. Feel the rush of sweetness: we make love. — Colum McCann

There is no man on this earth that has the right to tell you how beautiful you are, for no words we use has enough power to tell that truth. Your beauty can only be describe by the heavens above in a language none of us know. — Vincent Edwards

Nobody wants to see the truth. Everybody wants to have the fantasy. When I look back at the books I was reading in my childhood were selling some sort of fantasy as well. Most stories are not going to tell the deep suffering of every day. No book prepared me for the suffering I would experience in life because the word "suffering" does not even describe what the suffering is. No story is going to tell you that, and no words can tell you that. — Signe Baumane

Elizabeth, what this man has done is terrible. There aren't any words that are strong enough to describe how wicked and evil he is! He has taken nine months of your life that you will never get back again. But the best punishment you could ever give him is to be happy. To move forward with your life. To do exactly what you want. Because, yes, this will probably go to trial and some kind of sentencing will be given to him and that wicked woman. But even if that's true, you may never feel like justice has been served or that true restitution has been made ...
You be happy, Elizabeth. Just be happy. If you go and feel sorry for yourself, or if you dwell on what has happened, if you hold on to your pain, that is allowing him to steal more of your life away. So don't you do that! Don't you let him! There is no way that he deserves that. Not one more second of your life. You keep every second for yourself. You keep them and be happy ... — Elizabeth Smart

The word 'funny' is a bit like the word 'love' - we don't have enough words to describe the many varieties. — George Saunders

I don't believe in the god of the Christians who gave his son in order to save mankind. That's a myth. But why should it have arisen if it didn't express some deep-seated intuition in men? I don't know what I believe, because it's instinctive, and how can you describe instinct with words? I have an instinct that the power that rules us, human beings, animals and things, is a dark and cruel power and that everything has to be paid for, a power that demands an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and that though we may writhe and squirm we have to submit, for the power is ourselves. — W. Somerset Maugham

It is possible to experience true divine wonders in your conversion but never to be taught a true description of what your experience is. Then someone starts to describe your experience in words you have never heard, and in ways you have never understood, and suddenly the strange words all sound exactly right. — John Piper

I don't think you're weak," Jared said. "I want to guard you because you are important to me. Because you are - God, this is going to sound so stupid, I can never think of a way to say it - you are precious. I can never think of how to describe the value you have to me, because all the words for value suggest that you belong to me, and you don't. — Sarah Rees Brennan

Eyes whose color I would never be able to fully describe, even if I someday learn the words. The best I can do is compare it to things I do know: the heavy thickness of red gold, the smell of brass on a hot day, desire and pride. — N.K. Jemisin

Once someone asked me three words that best describe me and I said 'Loud, Louder, and Loudest'! — Anastacia

On the other hand, she never looked as -big- as she did at that moment.
"What?" Rose demanded, glaring up at him.
The warning signal flashed bright red in Kane's head. Telling a woman she was as big as a beach ball wouldn't win any points. How did one describe how she looked? A basketball? Volleyball? He studied her furious little face. Yeah. He was in big trouble no matter what he said. Description was out of the question. He needed diplomacy, something that flew out of the window when he was near her and she said the words like contractions. — Christine Feehan

And for me to have my name mentioned among some of the Super Bowl MVPs that played in the Super Bowl, words can't describe it. It's totally a dream come true. — Hines Ward

For me, language is a freedom. As soon as you have found the words with which to express something, you are no longer incoherent, you are no longer trapped by your own emotions, by your own experiences; you can describe them, you can tell them, you can bring them out of yourself and give them to somebody else. That is an enormously liberating experience ... — Jeanette Winterson

She was never able to talk about her secret with anyone around her. She has never found the proper words to describe it to others.. and even when she thought she did, the ones she used were never understood . But how could she blame anyone around her for not understanding something that confused her and kept her perplexed even though she lived it ? — Sahar Ayachi

There are words to describe her, my dear, but one does not repeat them in polite company. — Gail Carriger

Thirst will parch your tongue and your body will waste through lack of sleep ere you can describe in words that which painting instantly sets before the eye. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Listen- all that she was then, all that she is now, those gestures, everything I remember but won't or can't articulate anymore, the perfect words that are somehow made imperfect when used to describe her and all that should remain unsaid about her- it is all unsupported by reason. I know that. But that enigmatic calm that attaches itself to people in the presence of reason- it's something from which I haven't been able to take comfort, not reliably, not since her. — Elliot Perlman

I ran my fingers along his jaw and he stroked my hip. We didn't talk because there were no words to say, nothing to describe the moment where we grew from boys who were best friends to men who were lovers. — Megan Erickson

I feel ugly I said and you looked at me as if I spoke a different language. There are things you will never understand and if there were words to describe the rapture that takes place in my head from time to time I would put my hand in front of your eyes to protect you from all the ugliness in the world.
I kept my eyes on the streetlights outside the window and you kissed every inch of my body as if you could kiss the pain away. — Charlotte Eriksson

Words can be honed to crafted perfection by the finest wordsmiths. Yet, if we trust solely in the expanse of them to explain this God of ours or articulate our experience of Him, we will have brutally destroyed the very things we are attempting to explain. And if I should do that, no words can describe how badly I wish I had no words. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Ma'am is yet another horrible-sounding word in the lexicon of words that women are stuck with to describe various aspects of their body/life/mental state/hair. Vagina. Moist. Fallopian tubes. Yeast infection. Clitoris. Frizz. These are all terrible words, and yet they are our assigned descriptors. Who made up these words? Women certainly didn't. If, at the beginning of time, right after making vaginas, God had asked me, 'What would you like your most intimate and enjoyable part of yourself to be called?',' I most certainly wouldn't have said, 'Vagina.' No woman would, because vagina sounds like a First World War term that was invented to describe a trench that has been mostly blown apart but is still in use. Even off the very top of my head I feel like I could have come up with something better, like for instance the word papoose, which actually as I'm typing it feels like an incredibly brilliant word for vagina. — Jessi Klein

That's all books are. Escapism borne of wonderfully crafted words that describe far off lands. Sentences that ask and answer within seconds. Paragraphs that slay dragons and ride horses into the midnight sky. Chapters that describe the sensation of pounding hearts and consuming desire, each feeling chronicling the incredible sensation of falling in love. — Emma Hart

Jesus doesn't participate in the rat race. He's into the slower rhythms of life, like abiding, delighting, and dwelling - all words that require us to trust Him with our place and our pace. Words used to describe us being with Him. — Lysa TerKeurst

It is also difficult to articulate the subtleties in cinema, because there aren't words or metaphors which describe many of the emotions you are attempting to evoke. — Conrad Hall

To describe what I feel for you would lack the words, I love you more than I can explain. — Auliq Ice

It was an old Herrani flag, stitched with the royal crest.
Arin said, "But the royal line is gone."
"They're looking for something to call you, Kestrel said, nudging Javelin forward.
"Not this. It's not right."
"Don't worry. They'll find the right words to describe you."
"And you."
"Oh, that's easy."
"It is?" It seemed impossible to name every thing she was to him.
Kestrel's expression was serious, luminous. He loved to see her like this. "They'll say that I'm yours," she told him, "just as you are mine. — Marie Rutkoski

I'm not sure I have the words to describe that moment but if there's a word that means the exact opposite of "ladylike", that would be a good start. — Jenny Lawson

Words are never insufficient to describe any situation. It is the talent to use the words which is the insufficient one! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The world didn't have words to measure hate. There were tons, yards, years. Volts, knots, watts. Ronan could explain how fast his car was going. He could describe exactly how warm the day was. He could specifically convey his heart rate. But there was no way for him to tell anyone else exactly how much he hated Aglionby Academy.
Any unit of measurement would have to include both the volume and the weight of the hate. And it would also have to include a component of time. The days logged in class, wasted, useless, learning skills for a life he didn't want. No single word existed, probably, to contain the concept. All, perhaps. He had all the hate for Aglionby Academy.
Thief? Aglionby was the thief. Ronan's life was the dream, pillaged. — Maggie Stiefvater

There are words like 'orphan', 'widow' and 'widower' in all languages. But there is no word in any language to describe a parent who loses a child. How does one describe the pain of 'ultimate bereavement'! (Page 50) — Neena Verma

Only two percent of the world's population have green eyes."
Kell said it so Gethin would turn and look at him full on. He did. Moss green. Lagoon green. A tiger's eyes. He wished he had the perfect words to describe the colour. Exotic. Exciting. Sexy. — Barbara Elsborg

There was a time when you were not a slave, remember that. You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed bare-bellied. You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember ... You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent. — Monique Wittig

If we who self-designate ourselves with terms like "Catholic," "Orthodox," "Protestant," "Evangelical," "Charismatic," "Pentecostal" and others would fully surrender ourselves to The Holy Spirit, we could stop focusing on the secondary words we use to describe the primary experience of The Holy Spirit. — John David Geib

Textbook science is beautiful! Textbook science is comprehensible, unlike mere fascinating words that can never be truly beautiful. Elementary science textbooks describe simple theories, and simplicity is the core of scientific beauty. Fascinating words have no power, nor yet any meaning, without the math. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

I can only feel the 'I.'
I can know who I am not.
I can know what I am not.
But, who I am,
I cannot express;
I cannot describe it in words. — Santosh Lamichhane

Finally, to hinder the description of illness in literature, there is the poverty of the language. English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache. It has all grown one way. The merest schoolgirl, when she falls in love, has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry. There is nothing ready made for him. He is forced to coin words himself, and, taking his pain in one hand, and a lump of pure sound in the other (as perhaps the people of Babel did in the beginning), so to crush them together that a brand new word in the end drops out. Probably it will be something laughable. — Virginia Woolf

Things are set up as contraries that are not even in the same category. Listen to me: the opposite of radical is superficial; the opposite of liberal is stingy; the opposite of conservative is destructive. Thus I will describe myself as a radical conservative liberal; but certain of the tainted red fish will swear that there can be no such fish as that. Beware of those who use words to mean their opposites. At the same time have pity on them, for usually this trick is their only stock in trade. But do not pity them overly, it is your own death and your soul's death that they work by their deception. — R.A. Lafferty