Short Expression Quotes & Sayings

Nothing any man can do will improve that genius; but the genius needs his mind, and he can broaden that mind, fertilize it with knowledge of all kinds, improve its powers of expression; supply the genius, in short, with an orchestra instead of a tin whistle. All our little great men, our one-poem poets, our one-picture painters, have merely failed to perfect themselves as instruments. The Genius who wrote The Ancient Mariner is no less sublime than he who wrote The Tempest; but Coleridge had some incapacity to catch and express the thoughts of his genius - was ever such wooden stuff as his conscious work? - while Shakespeare had the knack of acquiring the knowledge necessary to the expression of every conceivable harmony, and his technique was sufficiently fluent to transcribe with ease. — Aleister Crowley

Are you okay with what we ordered?" Angeline asked him. "You didn't pipe up with any requests."
Neil shook his head, face stoic. He kept his dark hair in a painfully short and efficient haircut. It was the kind of no-nonsense thing the Alchemists would've loved. "I can't waste time quibbling over trivial things like pepperoni and mushrooms. If you'd gone to my school in Devonshire, you'd understand. For one of my sophomore classes, they left us alone on the moors to fend for ourselves and learn survival skills. Spend three days eating twigs and heather, and you'll learn not to argue about any food coming your way."
Angeline and Jill cooed as though that was the most rugged, manly thing they'd ever heard. Eddie wore an expression that reflected what I felt, puzzling over whether this guy was as serious as he seemed or just some genius with swoon-worthy lines. — Richelle Mead

But I return to that terrible statement of Bertrand Russell's: "Better Red than dead." Why did he not say it would be better to be brown than dead? There is no difference. All my life and the life of my generation, the life of those who share my views, we all have had one viewpoint: Better to be dead than to be a scoundrel. In this horrible expression of Bertrand Russell's there is an absence of all moral criteria. Looked at from a short distance, these words allow one to maneuver and to continue to enjoy life. But from a long term point of view it will undoubtedly destroy those people who think like that. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Can you, in short, be prevailed on to quit this scene of public triumph and oblige your friend Eleanor with your company in Gloucestershire? I am almost ashamed to make the request, though its presumption would certainly appear greater to every creature in Bath than yourself. Modesty such as yours - but not for the world would I pain it by open praise. If you can be induced to honour us with a visit, you will make us happy beyond expression. — Jane Austen

Even though you read much Zen literature, you must read each sentence with a fresh mind. You should not say, "I know what Zen is," or "I have attained enlightenment." This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner."
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"When you are sitting in the middle of your own problem, which is more real to you: your problem or you yourself? The awareness that you are here, right now, is the ultimate fact. "
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"Knowing that your life is short, to enjoy it day after day, moment after moment, is the life of "form is form and emptiness is emptiness."
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"You may feel as if you are doing something special, but actually it is only the expression of your true nature; it is the activity which appeases your inmost desire. But as long as you think you are practicing zazen for the sake of something, that is not true practice."
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"The most important thing is to forget all gaining ideas, all dualistic ideas. In other words, just practice zazen in a certain posture. — Shunryu Suzuki

In short, whoever does violence to truth or its expression eventually mutilates justice, even though he thinks he is serving it. From this point of view, we shall deny to the very end that a press is true because it is revolutionary; it will be revolutionary only if it is true, and never otherwise. — Albert Camus

You have heard the expression 'love is blind'"
"I think it's bullshit. Lust dazzles, sure, at least for the short term. But love clears the vision. You see better, sharper, because you feel more that you did before — J.D. Robb

When I find that I am more conscious, it's because I'm in tune with a higher reality. When I'm less conscious, it's because I've cut off that entunement to some extent. Maybe through drinking, through anger, through whatever. And I realized then that God has to be an infinite consciousness, and that I had to be an expression of that consciousness. And that the goal of life then must be to become more and more in tune with that consciousness. And I decided to give my life to God. And around that time, to make a long story short, I found Autobiography of a Yogi. — Goswami Kriyananda

The most important thing in love is the sense for one another, and the highest thing the faith in one another. Devotion is the expression of that faith, and pleasure can revive and enhance that sense, even if not create it, as is commonly thought. Therefore, sensuality can delude bad persons for a short time into thinking they could love each other. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Our souls, that is our selves, are like a jumbled heap of pins: interests, thoughts, emotions, volitions, and feelings -- our life at work, our life of play, our domestic and social life, our life in the limelight, and our life alone -- all a heap of pins pointing in all directions and getting in one another's way. But the slow approach of a magnet sorts the jumble out in a remarkable way, confusion becomes a pattern, each pin points in the same direction, and all is achieved by the focus of magnetic power. It is superfluous to add that the only magnet which can sort out all the intricacies of the human soul is God. In short the state of perfect recollection is that most characteristic expression of the work of the Holy Ghost; the creation of order out of chaos. — Martin Thornton

Saying that "life is short" is such a cliche. And it's true.
In fact, we only have five minutes to be here. In the really big scheme of things, not even that long. We humans don't even have the lifespan of fruit flies if you look at the bigger picture.
In other words, we don't have a second - not even a second - to waste on petty drama, on living fake, shallow lives, on swallowing our truth, or on hiding our light.
We only dance around the flame of this gorgeous human existence for moments and the one thing important at all is loving beautifully. — Jacob Nordby

Photoghraphic projects can be as short as an afternoon or as long as a lifetime. — George Barr

My short answer would be that there is no greatest jazz musician of the century. Jazz, like any valid art form, finds its greatness in its expression of the human spirit, and, to me, this can't be reduced to a contest. — Bennie Wallace

There is no such thing as "natural law": this expression is nothing but old nonsense ... Prior to laws, what is natural is only the strength of the lion, or the need of the creature suffering from hunger or cold; in short, need. — Stendhal

It's not as if he's good-looking, because he's not. Sometimes he's so plain that he looks bland. But it's his voice and his mannerisms that fill him with some kind of color. I listen to his voice and its resonance hooks me in. The worry lines on his forehead, his expression when he twists his face into a smile, and the way his whole face lights up when he laughs those short bursts of laughter. — Melina Marchetta

Ridicule, nominally amusing but really an expression of hostility, was the favourite weapon - the worst possible, short of actual cruelty, in dealing with young people. — Bertrand Russell

to have a physical body and to work with it and to work with the forces of nature to mold it into the highest expression of joy, and to keep it always by using it to learn how to overcome disease, impairment and as today's cutting edge, non-funded, objective, purposeful science says, one day, even death? What if short-term excitement and intensity created by the overblown desire to win at all cost could be replaced by a more durable excitement in an intensity springing from the heart of the physical athletic experience itself? It would soon be discovered that sports and physical activities reformed and refurbished with integrity, not buy-offs are the best possible path to personal enlightenment and social transformation for this new millennium. — Don Tolman

Communist regimes were not some unfortunate aberration, some historical deviation from a socialist ideal. They were the ultimate expression, unconstrained by democratic and electoral pressures, of what socialism is all about ... In short, the state [is] everything and the individual nothing. — Margaret Thatcher

I don't believe in fashion. I believe in costume. Life is too short to be same person every day. — Stephanie Perkins

Perhaps the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in a few words.
We frequently fall into error and folly, not because the true principles of action are not known, but because, for a time, they are not remembered; and he may therefore be justly numbered among the benefactors of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to recur habitually to the mind. — Samuel Johnson

Casting my eyes on Mr. Wemmick as we went along, to see what he was like in the light of day, I found him to be a dry man, rather short in stature, with a square wooden face, whose expression seemed to have been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel. There were some marks in it that might have been dimples, if the material had been softer and the instrument finer, but which, as it was, were only dints. The chisel had made three or four of these attempts at embellishment over his nose, but had given them up without an effort to smooth them off. — Charles Dickens

Law is never so necessary as when it has no ethical significance whatever, and is pure law for the sake of law. The law that compels me to keep to the left when driving along Oxford Street is ethically senseless, as is shewn by the fact that keeping to the right answers equally well in Paris; and it certainly destroys my freedom to choose my side; but by enabling me to count on everyone else keeping to the left also, thus making traffic possible and safe, it enlarges my life and sets my mind free for nobler issues. Most laws, in short, are not the expression of the ethical verdicts of the community, but pure etiquette and nothing else. What they express is the fact that over most of the field of social life there are wide limits within which it does not matter what people do, though it matters enormously whether under given circumstances you can depend on their all doing the same thing. — George Bernard Shaw

Have you lost your mind?" I yelled. "Did you have to humiliate him in front of his comrades? Isn't it enough that he already hates you with the fire of a thousand suns?" Her expression was grim. Unfeeling. She was in no hurry to answer, but when she did, her tone held no emotion. "Malich laughed the night he told me that he had killed Greta. He reveled in her death. He said it was easy. Her death cost him nothing. It will now. Every day that I breathe, I will make it cost him something. Every time I see that same smug grin on his face, I will make him pay for it." She dumped her winnings on the bed and looked back at me. "So the short answer to your question, Kaden, is no. It's not enough. It will never be enough. — Mary E. Pearson

Sensing an ally, Priss took two steps toward her, but Trace pulled her up short by grabbing her arm.
"No, you don't," he told her, and no matter how Priss yanked and pulled, she couldn't free herself.
"Settle down, will you?" Trace said near her ear. "You're not helping things."
The woman's expression pinched even more.
Dare started toward her in a ground-eating stride. "Back inside, Molly," he said, sounding more cajoling than commanding. "I'll explain in private."
Like hell! Priss didn't want to lose whatever opportunities this might be, so she shouted, "Molly, help me. Trace drugged me to bring me here, and Dare manhandled me when I tried to escape." And before Trace could muzzle her, if indeed that was his intent, she added, "Some other guy stole my cat!"
The woman's mouth dropped open, then firmed shut again. With one raised hand, she halted Dare's progress. Dare dropped his head and groaned. — Lori Foster

And the effect on yourself?' Guthrie said.

For a short time, Lymond was silent. Then he said, 'I had some strengths, which have grown. I had some weaknesses, which have gone.'

'That is true,' Adam Blacklock said. Slumped between floor and wall, he had leaned his tired head on the panelling; his face, with its thin scar, was turned without expression to Lymond. 'You have become a machine.'

'No,' said Philippa. 'That is not so.'

'But that is so,' said Lymond. 'How could I do my work otherwise? — Dorothy Dunnett

Let me introduce you. These are my friends: Ronan, Adam Parrish, and Jane."
Adam's expression focused. Became Adam-like. He blinked over to Gansey.
"Blue," Blue corrected.
"Oh, yes, you are blue," Malory agreed. "How perceptive you are. What was the name? Jane? This is the lady I spoke to on the phone all those months ago, right? How small she is. Are you done growing?"
"What!" Blue said. — Maggie Stiefvater

You must realize that the true desire to express affection can be motivated by things other than true love ... In short, one might simply say: save your kisses
you might need them someday. And when anyof you
men and women
are given entrance to the heart of a trusting young friend, you stand on holy ground. In such a place you must be honest with yourself
and with your friend
about love and the expression of it's symbols. — Bruce C. Hafen

You're so kind, Kazuhiko. That's what I like about you."
I like you, too. I love you so much."
If he weren't so inarticulate, Kazuhiko could have said so much more. How much her expression, her gentle manner, her pure untainted soul meant to him. How important, in short, her existence was to him. But he wasn't able to put into words. He was only a third-year student in junior high, and worst yet, composition was one of his worst subjects. — Koushun Takami

This is the arena in which a spiritualized disobedience means most. It doesn't mean a second New Deal, another massive bureaucratic attack on our problems. It doesn't mean taking to the streets, throwing bricks through the window at the Bank of America, or driving a tractor through the local McDonald's. It means living differently. It means taking responsibility for the character of the human world. That's a real confrontation with the problem of value. In short, refusal of the present is a return to what Thoreau and Ruskin called "human fundamentals, valuable things," and it is a movement into the future. This movement into the future is also a powerful expression of that most human spiritual emotion, Hope.
p.124 — Curtis White

At home in Moscow everything was in its winter routine; the stoves were heated, and in the morning it was still dark when the children were having breakfast and getting ready for school, and the nurse would light the lamp for a short time. The frosts had begun already. When the first snow has fallen, on the first day of sledge-driving it is pleasant to see the white earth, the white roofs, to draw soft, delicious breath, and the season brings back the days of one's youth. The old limes and birches, white with hoar-frost, have a good-natured expression; they are nearer to one's heart than cypresses and palms, and near them one doesn't want to be thinking of the sea and the mountains. — Anton Chekhov

Good that you are here, as Peter and I couldn't find our asses with both hands."
Pico had never heard such an expression, and stopped just short of offering assistance. — Joseph Nolan

Belief in Providence is belief in a power to which all things stand at command to be used according to its pleasure, in opposition to which all the power of reality is nothing. Providence cancels the laws of Nature; it interrupts the course of necessity, the iron bond which inevitably binds effects to causes; in short, it is the same unlimited, all-powerful will, that called the world into existence out of nothing. Miracle is a creatio ex nihilo. He who turns water into wine, makes wine out of nothing, for the constituents of wine are not found in water; otherwise, the production of wine would not be a miraculous, but a natural act. The only attestation, the only proof of Providence is miracle. Thus Providence is an expression of the same idea as creation out of nothing. — Ludwig Feuerbach

You were created as a masterpiece and you are one of God's expressions of beauty. Short, tall, thin, thick, freckles, big eyes, small ones ... it doesn't matter. — Dannah Gresh

The cold edge to his voice sent a shiver down Shiara's spine. She looked over at Dev, certain he would laugh off Andrei's accusations, but his expression did nothing to reassure her. — J.C. Morrows

He said he loved me," she whispered.
Daniel swallowed, and he had the strangest sensation, almost a premonition of what it must like to be a parent.
Someday, God willing, he'd have a daughter, and that daughter would look like the woman standing in front of him, and if ever she looked at him with that bewildered expression, whispering, "He said he loved me ... "
Nothing short of murder would be an acceptable response. — Julia Quinn

Our time has produced a need for contrast. This has been achieved not only in the external appearance of plastic expressions of coulor and matter, but also, and chiefly, in the tempo of life and in the techniques related to the daily, mechanical functions of life; namely standing, walking, driving, to lying and sitting - in short, every action which determines the content of architecture. — Theo Van Doesburg

The old expression goes, a good speech is like a woman's skirt: short enough to hold your attention, long enough to cover the subject. — Jonathan Tropper

My mind leaps to my theory about presidents - that there are two kinds, ones who have a lot of sex and the others who start wars. In short - and don't quote me, because this is an incomplete expression of a more complex premise - I believe blow jobs prevent war. — A.M. Homes

Are you scared?" He taunted, an amused smirk lifting the corner of his mouth.
I raised my chin a fraction. "No. I ... just ... I haven't ridden a horse before."
He leaned forward and patted the horse's neck. "Prism is gentle. You have my word."
I wasn't worried about the horse. "And you?"
Ry shrugged, his facial expression remained shuttered. "I'd never make that a personal promise, but I will get you to a phone. — Beth Mikell

Writing for me is a dragnet that carries everything away with it: expressions and figures of speech, postures, feelings, thoughts, troubles. In short, the lives of others. — Elena Ferrante

In short, Beauty is everywhere. It is not that she is lacking to our eye, but our eyes which fail to perceive her. Beauty is character and expression. Well, there is nothing in nature which has more character than the human body. In its strength and its grace it evokes the most varied images. One moment it resembles a flower: the bending torso is the stalk; the breasts, the head, and the splendor of the hair answer to the blossoming of the corolla. The next moment it recalls the pliant creeper, or the proud and upright sapling. — Auguste Rodin

In short, not only was it surprising to be greeted in person with such enthusiastic words, but it was doubly surprising when the person reciting these words displayed the same kind of disengagement as, say, the checkout clerk who utters the words 'Have a nice day' while her expression indicates that it's really a matter of total indifference to her whether you drop dead in the parking lot outside ten seconds from now. — David Foster Wallace

The human erotic imagination is a vast wilderness of sexual possibilities. We are each capable of enjoying a pleasurable, satisfying and potentially ecstatic sex life. Yet our culture encourages us to keep the window of possibility very narrow, limiting our erotic expression to a short list of approved activities and energies. To truly experience sexual freedom, you must reclaim your erotic imagination and allow yourself to make your sex life a work of art, your very own creation designed to fulfill your unique needs and desires. — Chris Maxwell Rose

Oh, Jesus," he said, wheezing with the effort it took to control
himself. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "You little
innocent. I'm fluent in French, but it isn't my first language." It
was plain by the mortified expression in those green eyes that she
didn't understand, so he explained. "Baby , if I can still think
clearly enough to speak French, then I'm not totally involved in
what I'm doing. It may sound pretty , but it doesn't mean
any thing. Men are different from women; the more excited we are,
the more like cavemen we sound. I could barely speak English with
you, much less French. As I remember, my vocabulary
deteriorated to a few short, explicit words, 'fuck' being the most
prominent."
To his amazement, she blushed, and he smiled at this further
evidence of her charming prudery. "Go to sleep," he said gently.
"Lindsey didn't even rate a replay. — Linda Howard

As a rule, however fine and deep a phrase may be, it only affects the indifferent, and cannot fully satisfy those who are happy or unhappy; that is why dumbness is most often the highest expression of happiness or unhappiness; lovers understand each other better when they are silent, and a fervent, passionate speech delivered by the grave only touches outsiders, while to the widow and children of the dead man it seems cold and trivial. — Anton Chekhov

Nor does this energy for God stop short with public gestures. Indeed, it does not start there. People who know their God are before anything else people who pray, and the first point where their zeal and energy for God's glory come to expression is in their prayers. — J.I. Packer

I have heard people say that the short story was one of the most difficult literary forms, and I've always tried to decide why people feel this way about what seems to me to be one of the most natural and fundamental ways of human expression. After all, you begin to hear and tell stories when you're a child, and there doesn't seem to be anything very complicated about it. I suspect that most of you have been telling stories all your lives, and yet here you sit - come to find out how to do it.
Then last week, after I had written down some of these serene thoughts to use here today, my calm was shattered when I was sent seven of your manuscripts to read.
After this experience, I found myself ready to admit, if not that the short story is one of the most difficult literary forms, at least that it is more difficult for some than for others. — Flannery O'Connor

My Barbies were usually naked. Once, I took their heads off, cut their hair, drew on their short, spiky hair with some markers, then stuck the heads on Christmas lights. Every year, we'd string our tree with those Barbie heads. It looked demonic. My parents were so cool - they saw it as a form of self-expression. — Jessica Biel

Expression on his face. He's in his early thirties, tall and broad-shouldered, dressed in jeans, a black polo shirt, and black flip-flops. With his short brown hair, reddish goatee, and sideburns, McHugh looks like a typical Gen Xer, but he speaks in the soothing, considered tones of a college professor. McHugh doesn't preach or worship at Saddleback, but we've chosen to meet here because it's such an important symbol of evangelical culture. Since services are just about to start, there's little time to chat. Saddleback offers six different "worship venues," each housed in its own building or tent and set to its own beat: Worship Center, — Susan Cain

In comparing these two writers, he [Samuel Johnson] used this expression: "that there was as great a difference between them as between a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate." This was a short and a figurative statement of his distinction between drawing characters of nature and characters only of manners, but I cannot help being of opinion, that the neat watches of Fielding are as well constructed as the large clocks of Richardson, and that his dial plates are brighter. — James Boswell

Abuse manipulates and twists a child's natural sense of trust and love. Her innocent feelings are belittled or mocked and she learns to ignore her feelings. She can't afford to feel the full range of feelings in her body while she's being abused - pain, outrage, hate, vengeance, confusion, arousal. So she short-circuits them and goes numb. For many children, any expression of feelings, even a single tear, is cause for more severe abuse. Again, the only recourse is to shut down. Feelings go underground. — Laura Davis

-and nobody's getting laid!" I practically shouted.
"You think I don't know that?" He shifted his body beneath me, making me painfully aware of something. Two somethings, in fact, one of which was how far up my short skirt was. The other wasn't my problem. I wriggled, to shimmy my hem down, but his expression perished the thought. When Barrons looks at me like that, it rattles me. Lust, in those ancient, obsidian eyes, offers no trace of humanity. Doesn't even bother trying. — Karen Marie Moning

Fear is a hurdle that stops the expression — Andy Lindley

There are three motives for which we live; we live for the body, we live for the mind, we live for the soul. No one of these is better or holier than the other; all are alike desirable, and no one of the three - body, mind, or soul - can live fully if either of the others is cut short of full life and expression. — Wallace D. Wattles

The First Amendment guarantees liberty of human expression in order to preserve in our Nation what Mr. Justice Holmes called a "free trade in ideas." To that end, the Constitution protects more than just a man's freedom to say or write or publish what he wants. It secures as well the liberty of each man to decide for himself what he will read and to what he will listen. The Constitution guarantees, in short, a society of free choice. — Potter Stewart

Stress can alter the expression of genes, which can affect the response to stress and so on. Human behavior is therefore unpredictable in the short term, but broadly predictable in the long term. — Matt Ridley