Words Cannot Express Quotes & Sayings

How good it would be to know where to look for help in this life and what to expect after it, there, beyond the grave! How happy and calm I'd be, if I could say now: Lord, have mercy on me! ... But to whom shall I say it? Either it is an indefinable, unfathomable power, which I not only cannot address, but which I cannot express in words - the great all or nothing ... or it is that God of whom Princess Marya has sewn in here, in this amulet? Nothing, nothing is certain, except the insignificance of everything I can comprehend and the grandeur of something incomprehensible but most important! — Leo Tolstoy

Words cannot express my disappointment that I must pass on the invitation to once again witness your gelatinous buttocks swaying as you try to climb a greased pole naked in search of athletic glory. Sadly, the last occasion on which I witnessed this event had a deleterious effect on my psyche for which I am still seeking the attention of a therapist.
A.C. Kemp as Lady Arabella Snark — A.C. Kemp

It is not the mouth that is the main thing to be looked at in prayer, but whether the heart is so full of affection and earnestness in prayer with God, that it is impossible to express their sense and desire; for then a man desires indeed, when his desires are so strong, many, and mighty, that all the words, tears, and groans that can come from the heart, cannot utter them. — John Bunyan

Groans that words cannot express are often prayers that God cannot refuse. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

How will you inspire others? Will you even know? Will it be because they see your work? Read your papers? Delight in your products? Or will it be because of that way you listen to them when they speak? How warmly you hug? How you live as you move through your days? Will it be something you say? Or some way that you say it? Or will it be the resounding peace that words cannot express? Although you might not be able to see the impact your life is having, it is there, under the surface, on another plane that we can feel but perhaps not see. — Elle Luna

I saw that all who do not profess an identical faith with themselves are considered by the Orthodox to be heretics, just as the Catholics and others consider the Orthodox to be heretics. And i saw that the Orthodox (though they try to hide this) regard with hostility all who do not express their faith by the same external symbols and words as themselves; and this is naturally so; first, because the assertion that you are in falsehood and I am in truth, is the most cruel thing one man can say to another; and secondly, because a man loving his children and brothers cannot help being hostile to those who wish to pervert his children and brothers to a false belief. And that hostility is increased in proportion to one's greater knowledge of theology. And to me who considered that truth lay in union by love, it became self-evident that theology was itself destroying what it ought to produce. — Leo Tolstoy

No matter how hard we try, words simply cannot express the horror, the shock, and the revulsion we all feel over what took place in this nation on 9/11. My prayer today is that we will feel the loving arms of God wrapped around us, and will know in our hearts that He will never forsake us as we trust in Him. — Billy Graham

Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. and Mrs. Daneeka: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father, or brother was killed, wounded, or reported missing in action. — Joseph Heller

Zen is not some fancy, special art of living. Our teaching is just to live, always in reality, in its exact sense. To make our effort, moment after moment, is our way. In an exact sense, the only thing we actually can study in our life is that on which we are working in each moment. We cannot even study Buddha's words."
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"So we should be concentrated with our full mind and body on what we do; and we should be faithful, subjectively and objectively, to ourselves, and especially to our feelings. Even when you do not feel so well, it is better to express how you feel without any particular attachment or intention. So you may say, "Oh, I am sorry, I do not feel well. — Shunryu Suzuki

My poetry lives in the spaces of time, in between time, in time out. It is not a constant vibe; I catch it like the incoming tide, going out again. It will not let me say what I want to say for words cannot be woven together to express me that way. My words have learned to be patient for nothing. Now is my time out. — Tonny K. Brown

I love classical music and have been playing violin since I was seven. Music helps me to express feelings in a way words often cannot. — Jane Chen

I am fully conscious that, not being a literary man , certain presumptuous persons will think that they may reasonably blame me; alleging that I am not a man of letters. Foolish folks! do they not know that I might retort as Marius did to the Roman Patricians by saying: That they, who deck themselves out in the labours of others will not allow me my own. They will say that I, having no literary skill, cannot properly express that which I desire to treat of, but they do not know that my subjects are to be dealt with by experience rather than by words; and experience has been the mistress of those who wrote well. And so, as mistress, I will cite her in all cases. — Leonardo Da Vinci

The transformation which occurs in the cauldron is quintessential and wondrous, subtle and delicate. The mouth cannot express it in words. — Michael Pollan

Words cannot express the joy which a friend imparts. — Saint John Chrysostom

But my gloom did not lessen. I knew that I'd had a bad dream, and I stood in the dark trying to recollect it. The second I closed my eyes, I was with the dead. They did things words cannot express. They spoke madness. ("Hanka") — Isaac Bashevis Singer

Why do you consult [women's] words when it is not their mouths that speak? Consult their eyes, their colour, their breathing, their timid manner, their slight resistance, that is the language nature gave them for your answer. The lips always say 'No,' and rightly so; but the tone is not always the same, and that cannot lie. Has not a woman the same needs as a man, but without the same right to make them known? Her fate would be too cruel if she had no language in which to express her legitimate desires except the words which she dare not utter. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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

Who will consider that no dictionary of a living tongue ever can be perfect, since, while it is hastening to publication, some words are budding, and some falling away; that a whole life cannot be spent upon syntax and etymology, and that even a whole life would not be sufficient; that he, whose design includes whatever language can express, must often speak of what he does not understand. — Samuel Johnson

Words cannot express love. Only thoughts of love born in silence can do that. — Debasish Mridha

It may be that that we can sing what we often cannot say, whether it be from shyness, fear, lack of the right words or the passion or dramatic gift to express them. More souls have rallied to more causes by the strains of music than by straining rhetoric. — Richard Rodgers

She blinked and looked back at me. "Lazarus? He's changed. He was always close to Yeshua, but now they seem to share something words cannot express. At times I think he cannot truly understand what happened to him." "What does he say?" She hesitated. "He has no fear of death now. None. Truly, I believe he longs to be absent of body once again. He saw much but can explain little. But more, Lazarus knows only love for others now. It seems he has become a child once again. — Ted Dekker

Groans that words cannot express" (Rom. 8:26) are often prayers that God cannot refuse. Charles H. Spurgeon — Lettie B. Cowman

I was too abstract. I was not worthy of respect. There ... was a madness ... I was mad. I committed a heinous act, a heinous act ... " His words broke down into avian moans. "What did you do?" Isaac steeled himself to hear of some atrocity. "This language cannot express my crime. In my tongue ... " Yagharek stopped for a moment. "I will try to translate. In my tongue they said ... they were right ... I was guilty of choice-theft ... choice-theft in the second degree ... with utter disrespect. — China Mieville

Words cannot express how pissed off I am. I am going to have to invent a new word to explain how angry I am. Karflagled. I am so karflagled off at you right now!" "See, — C.T. Phipps

I began to paint again, even though I could barely hold the brush, but knowing exactly what I wanted to paint, I began three more large canvases ... of large wheat fields under cloudy skies, and it did not take a great deal to express sadness and loneliness ... I believe these paintings say what words cannot. — Vincent Van Gogh

Children can feel, but they cannot analyse their feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know not how to express the result of the process in words. — Charlotte Bronte

Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house. — George Orwell

There are only two whom we are commanded to love with all our hearts-the Lord our God, and our wives!
"What does it mean to love someone with all our hearts? It means with all our emotional feelings and our devotion. Surely when you love your wife with all your heart, you cannot demean her, criticize her, find fault with her, nor abuse her by words, sullen behavior, or actions.
"What does it mean to 'cleave unto her'? It means to stay close to her, to be loyal to her, to strengthen her, to communicate with her, and to express your love for her — Ezra Taft Benson

Why ask? Why doubt what you cannot help knowing? Why use words when words cannot express what one feels? — Leo Tolstoy

I love you, Francesca," Gabriel told her solemnly. "I cannot express in words what you are to me."
She smiled up at him. "You do a fairly good job expressing yourself."
His eyebrow shot up. "Fairly good?"
"I think your ego is already far too large. I am not about to call you the greatest lover in the world."
His hand cupped her soft breast, his thumb stroking small caresses over her taut nipple. "But you would if it were not for fear of my ego? — Christine Feehan

I prefer to make no new declarations [on southern policy beyond what was in the Letter of Acceptance]. But you may say, if you deem it advisable, that you know that I will stand by the friendly and encouraging words of that Letter, and by all that they imply. You cannot express that too strongly. — Rutherford B. Hayes

Yet because her needs and yearnings are real and pressing, she must find some way to express them: she puts into body what she cannot yet put into words. Her eating disorder serves as her voice, her attempt to express and meet her needs and desires without directly asking for anything. — Sheila M. Reindl

Prayer has a right to the word "ineffable." It is an hour of outpourings which words cannot express,
of that interior speech which we do not articulate, even when we employ it. — Sophie Swetchine

We begin to say something that cannot be said. When you see on the front page a woman in Iraq who's just seen her husband blown up, you see her there, her mouth wide open, you know the sound coming out of her, a howl of grief and pain
that's the beginning of language.
Trying to express that, it's inexpressible, and poetry is really to say what can't be said. And that's why people turn to it in these moments. They don't know how to say this, [but] part of them feels that maybe a poem will say it. It won't say it, but it'll come closer to saying it than anything else will.
I think there are always two sides, and one of them is the unsayable. The utterly singular. Who you are; who you can never tell anybody. And on the other hand, there is what you can express. How do we know about this thing we talk about? Because we talk about it. We're using words. And the words never say it, but the words are all we have to say it. — W.S. Merwin

The reason that we have both good and wicked thoughts together is not, as some suppose, because the Holy Spirit and the devil dwell together in our intellect, but because we have not yet consciously experienced the goodness of the Lord. As I have said before, grace at first conceals its presence in those who have been baptized, waiting to see which way the soul inclines; but when the whole man has turned toward the Lord, it then reveals to the heart its presence there with a feeling words cannot express. — Diadochos Of Photiki

When we see Reality, we are completely beyond the world of words and concepts. We experience what words cannot express, what ideas cannot contain, what speech cannot communicate. — Steve Hagen

What science cannot declare, art can suggest; what art suggests silently, poetry speaks aloud; but what poetry fails to explain in words, music can express.
Whoever knows the mystery of vibrations indeed knows all things. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

A building is not a sentence, which in principle has the ability to match and express a thought closely. It is not linear, like language. Compared to the fluidity of words, a building is atrociously clumsy, but it can be lived and inhabited as books cannot be. — Rowan Moore

I cannot find words to express the depth of my loss or outrage about what's happening to this country. I don't know if I can find the words for it, but if this country ever recovers, it will not be in my lifetime. If I were elected President, the first thing I would do would be to set up a Department of Restoring the Bill of Rights. I would have 10,000 people working there. — Sara Paretsky

Beyond thought I reach a state. I refuse to divide it up into words - and what I cannot and do not want to express ends up being the most secret of my secrets. I know that I'm scared of the moments in which I don't use thought and that's a momentary state that is difficult to reach, and which, entirely secret, no longer uses words with which thoughts are produce. Is not using words to lose your identity? is it getting lost in the harmful essential shadows? — Clarice Lispector

It would be good," thought Prince Andrei, glancing at the little image that his sister had hung around his neck with such reverence and emotion, "It would be good if everything were as clear and simple as it seems to Princess Marya . How good it would be to know where to seek help in this life, and what to expect after it, beyond the grave! How happy and at peace I should be if I could now say:" Lord have mercy on me! ... But to whom should I say this? To some power
indefinable and incomprehensible, to which I not only cannot appeal, but which I cannot express in words
The Great All or Nothing," he said to himself, "or to that God who has been sewn into this amulet by Marya? There is nothing certain, nothing except the nothingness of everything that is comprehensible to me, and the greatness of something incomprehensible but all important! — Leo Tolstoy

I still don't know how to express the really delicate personal stuff. People think that Plastic Ono is very personal, but there are some subtleties of emotions which I cannot seem to express in pop music, and it frustrates me. Maybe that's why I still search for other ways of expressing myself. Song writing is a limiting experience in some ways - writing down words that have to rhyme. — John Lennon

Sister,
Words cannot express the love I have for you, or the hope I have for your future, but they would only fail in comparison to those God has already written for you ... He is faithful. Let Him restore you in His perfect timing and in His perfect way. — Nicole Deese

Perhaps it was only that when you try to put it into words you cannot express it truly, it never sounds as you dream it. — Michael Shaara

Words spoken cannot be recalled, and many a man and many a woman who has spoken a word at once regretted, are far too proud to express that regret. — Anthony Trollope

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

They will say that I, having no literary skill, cannot properly express that which I desire to treat of, but they do not know that my subjects are to be dealt with by experience rather than by words. And [experience] has been the mistress of those who wrote well. And so, as mistress, I will cite her in all cases. Though I may not, like them, be able to quote other authors, I shall rely on that which is much greater and more worthy: on experience, the mistress of their masters. — Leonardo Da Vinci

But we never tell the truth. We cannot properly 'tell' the truth, because our words are crude tools to express something, 'the truth', which may well exist, but which we cannot define. — Declan Donnellan

Thoughts cannot form themselves in words so horrid As can express my guilt. — John Dryden

There are ideas in our hearts, there are wishes, there are aspirations, there are groanings, there are sighings that the world knows nothing about; but God knows them. So words are not always necessary. When we cannot express our feelings except in wordless groanings, God knows exactly what is happening. — David Lloyd-Jones

Am unhappy, - very unhappy, for other things." "What other things? Can you tell me some of them?" How much I wished to reply fully to this question! How difficult it was to frame any answer! Children can feel, but they cannot analyse their feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know not how to express the result of the process in words. Fearful, however, of losing this first and only opportunity of relieving my grief by imparting it, I, after a disturbed pause, contrived to frame a meagre, though, as far as it went, true response. — Charlotte Bronte

Words cannot express quite a lot of feelings, whereas a noise or tone or drone or sound, an accordion falling down a staircase, can somehow capture an emotion much better. — John Lydon

J..You are the love of my life..of my forever. Words cannot express what you mean to me, but i'll tell you a hundred times a day for the rest of my life. I love you. R — Kahlen Aymes

Rituals, ceremonies, prayers, and special outfits are inevitable, but they do not - they cannot - express the heart of what the Buddha taught. In fact, all too often, such things get in the way. They veil the simple wisdom of the Buddha's words, and distract us from it. — Steve Hagen

All of that pile on you so that, sooner or later, you cannot bear it anymore. And in that situation I started to write, because there was no other ways for me to express, except through the vicious cycle of words. — Herta Muller

Human language is too poor to express the real nature of the Absolute Truth or Ultimate Reality which is Nirvana. Language is created and used by masses of human beings to express things and ideas experienced by their sense organs and their mind. A supramundane experience like that of the Absolute Truth is not of such a category. Therefore there cannot be words to express that experience, just as the fish had no words in his vocabulary to express the nature of the solid land. — Walpola Rahula

Tears are words the heart cannot express — Gerard Way

Vincent did not know how to express his feelings in words. He knew how to paint them.
However, one cannot paint the farewell. — Irving Stone

Words cannot fully express the devastation and horror caused by NTDs. Until now, these diseases have been hidden in the shadows, but working with the Global Network, I am focused on bringing this tragedy to the public eye. — Alyssa Milano

Spotted Park Bench
I am a park bench.
Ordinary words cannot
express my thoughts on birds. — J. Patrick Lewis

Words cannot express as music does, that unsayable grace which cannot be defined. It leaps like light from mind to mind. — Gwen Harwood

Such is friendship, that through it we love places and seasons; for as bright bodies emit rays to a distance, and flowers drop their sweet leaves on the ground around them, so friends impart favor even to the places where they dwell. With friends even poverty is pleasant. Words cannot express the joy which a friend imparts; they only can know who have experienced. A friend is dearer than the light of heaven, for it would be better for us that the sun were exhausted than that we should be without friends. — Saint John Chrysostom

Writing cannot express all words, words cannot encompass all ideas. — Confucius

You cannot throw words like heroism and sacrifice and nobility and honor away without abandoning the qualities they express. — Marya Mannes

Music allows a person to express their deepest thoughts, thoughts that cannot be expressed with just words. I am often asked how I begin a song or develop a melody from nothing. That is the spiritual aspect of creating. Finding something deep within yourself that can only be created by you. — Bradley Joseph

How could I write this when I don't even dare think about it? I am terribly anguished, yet I cannot continue living alone with such a memory ... I know that once this has been written down, I shall be delivered. You must know, otherwise I shall be persecuted to the end of my living days. But shall I be able to express with mere words the horror of that day? — Leonora Carrington