#express

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can offer with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation, but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#self-expression #uniqueness #life

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

#expression #feelings #love

Through our intentions, a place no power can influence, we have the power to oppose. ↗

— Bryant McGill

#intentions #motives #oppose #motivational

I believe that most of us, students and artists alike, ought to concern ourselves less with what we think is the right way to draw and more with letting our feelings flow through our hand. In this way, we stretch our dynamic nature. Our larger goal should be to draw in a way that expresses our vision. ↗

— Bert Dodson

#expressing #nature

Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways. ↗

— Sigmund Freud

#expression #freud #repression #self-expression #emotion

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. ↗

— William Arthur Ward

#feeling #giving #gratitude #like #present

These days I just can't seem to say what I mean [...]. I just can't. Every time I try to say something, it misses the point. Either that or I end up saying the opposite of what I mean. The more I try to get it right the more mixed up it gets. Sometimes I can't even remember what I was trying to say in the first place. It's like my body's split in two and one of me is chasing the other me around a big pillar. We're running circles around it. The other me has the right words, but I can never catch her. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#sleep

Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one. ↗

— Salman Rushdie

#ceases #exist #expression #freedom of expression #offend

Each action we take is an act of self-expression. We often think of large-scale or important deeds as being indications of our real selves, but even how we sharpen a pencil can reveal something about our feelings at that moment. Do we sharpen the pencil carefully or nervously so that it doesn’t break? Do we bother to pay attention to what we’re doing? How do we sharpen the same pencil when we’re angry or in a hurry? Is it the same as when we’re calm or unhurried? Even the smallest movement discloses something about the person executing the action because it is the person who’s actually performing the deed. In other words, action doesn’t happen by itself, we make it happen, and in doing so we leave traces of ourselves on the activity. The mind and body are interrelated. ↗

— H.E. Davey

#ki #meditation #mind #mind-and-body-unification #nakamura-tempu

I feel that the essence of dance is the expression of man--the landscape of his soul. I hope that every dance I do reveals something of myself or some wonderful thing a human can be. ↗

— Martha Graham

#enlightenment #self-expression #enlightenment