Expressive Quotes

• Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.

  Henri Matisse

  Funny, Art, Expression

  "The Christian Science Monitor", quoted in the review of "The Drawings of Henri Matisse" exhibit at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art by Theodore F. Wolff, March 25, 1985.

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• A lake is a landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beautiful, Nature, Eye

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Thoreau on Nature: Sage Words on Finding Harmony with the Natural World”, p.35, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressive creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and opens ways for better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it and shows there are still more pages possible.

  Robert Henri

  Life, Book, Artist

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• I don't know how much more expressive you can get than being a rock and roll singer.

  Robert Plant

  Rocks, Rock And Roll, Singers

  "Robert Plant: Whole lotta luck I found rock and roll". Interview with Becky Anderson, www.cnn.com. September 16, 2010.

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• Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.

  Victor Hugo

  Music, Wisdom, Art

  Victor Hugo (2016). “William Shakespeare”, p.62, Library of Alexandria

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• Nothing at times is more expressive than silence.

  George Eliot

  Silence

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• After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

  Aldous Huxley

  Motivational, Music, Wisdom

  Music at Night (1931) p. 17

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• It seems to me opera is just as relevant as an expressive art as anything else.

  Carlisle Floyd

  Art, Opera, Relevant

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• Every time a student walks past a really urgent, expressive piece of architecture that belongs to his college, it can help reassure him that he does have that mind, does have that soul.

  Louis Kahn

  Art, Past, College

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• No writer, no matter how gifted, immortalizes himself unless he has crystallized into expressive and original phrase the eternal sentiments and yearnings of the human heart.

  Alfred de Vigny

  Heart, Phrases, Matter

  Alfred de Vigny (1905). “Cinq Mars ...”

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• My films are expressive of a culture that has had the possibility of attaining material fulfillment while at the same time finding itself unable to accomplish the simple business of conducting human lives. We have been sold a bill of goods as a substitute for life. What is needed is reassurance in human emotions; a re-evaluation of our emotional capacities.

  John Cassavetes

  Simple, Emotional, Culture

  "Savages: Silence Yourself" by Lindsay Zoladz, pitchfork.com. May 6, 2013.

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• Everyone pretends to be 'free thinkers', but few individuals pass the line into expressive territories that may be detrimental to their own social well-being.

  Criss Jami

  Lines, May, Territory

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.126, Criss Jami

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• No other acoustic instrument can match the piano's expressive range, and no electric instrument can match its mystery.

  Kenneth R. Miller

  Music, Piano, Acoustics

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• Perl was designed to work more like a natural language. It's a little more complicated but there are more shortcuts, and once you learned the language, it's more expressive.

  Larry Wall

  Keys, Littles, Shortcuts

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• He was a horse of goodly countenance, rather expressive of vigilance than fire; though an unnatural appearance of fierceness was thrown into it by the loss of his ears, which had been cropped pretty close to his head.

  Augustus Baldwin Longstreet

  Horse, Loss, Fire

  Augustus Baldwin Longstreet (1840). “Georgia scenes: characters, incidents, in the first half century of the republic”, p.24

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• But I tend to think of the expressive part of me as rather tedious - never curious or responsive, but blind and self-serving.

  Mark Strand

  Thinking, Self, Expression

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• American audiences tend to be more expressive than British ones.

  Simon Pegg

  British, Audience

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Emptying the ashtrays was very expressive of myself. i just lump everything in a great heap which i have labeled ‘the past,’ and having thus emptied this deep reservoir that was once myself, i am ready to continue.

  Zelda Fitzgerald

  Time, Past, Ready

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• A box of crayons and a big sheet of paper provides a more expressive medium for kids than computerized paint programs.

  Clifford Stoll

  Kids, Paper, Crayon

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• Both the grand and the intimate aspects of nature can be revealed in the expressive photograph. Both can stir enduring affirmations and discoveries, and can surely help the spectator in his search for identification with the vast world of natural beauty and wonder surrounding him.

  Ansel Adams

  Discovery, World, Helping

  Ansel Adams (1995). “Ansel Adams: photographs”

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• I don't think anything can touch the expressive range of the guitar.

  Gary Clark, Jr.

  Thinking, Guitar, Range

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• You can't quantify love, and if you try, you can end up focusing on misleading factors. Stuff that really has more to do with personality-the fact that some people are simply more expressive or emotional or needy in a relationship. But beyond such smokescreens, the answer is there. Love is seldom-almost never-an even proposition.

  Emily Giffin

  Love Is, Emotional, People

  Emily Giffin (2006). “Baby Proof”

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• Modernism, rebelling against the ornament of the 19th century, limited the vocabulary of the designer. Modernism emphasized straight lines, eliminating the expressive S curve. This made it harder to communicate emotions through design.

  Eva Zeisel

  Vocabulary, Curves, Design

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• But I never looked like that!’ - How do you know? What is the ‘you’ you might or might not look like? Where do you find it - by which morphological or expressive calibration? Where is your authentic body? You are the only one who can never see yourself except as an image; you never see your eyes unless they are dulled by the gaze they rest upon the mirror or the lens (I am interested in seeing my eyes only when they look at you): even and especially for your own body, you are condemned to the repertoire of its images.

  Roland Barthes

  Eye, Mirrors, Lenses

  Roland Barthes (1994). “Roland Barthes”

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• Every single moment is expressive of the truth of our lives when we know how to look.

  Sharon Salzberg

  Single Mom, Looks, Moments

  FaceBook post by Sharon Salzberg from May 06, 2013

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