"Self-expression" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... collective element in art is too apt to be forgotten. When an artist claims that expression is the aim of art he is too apt to mean self-expression only—utterance of individual emotion. Utterance of individual emotion is very closely neighboured by, is almost identical with, self-enhancement. What should be a generous, and in part altruistic, exaltation becomes mere megalomania. This egotism is, of course, a danger inherent ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... have a vital interest in the size of the families of those better situated in life. Large families among the rich are immoral not only because they invade the natural right of woman to the control of her own body, to self-development and to self-expression, but because they are oppressive to the poorer elements of society. If the upper and middle classes of society had kept pace with the poorer elements of society in reproduction during the past fifty years, ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... to note the effect of his words and saw that he had scored. Poor Mrs. Barrington, struggling vaguely and darkly in her own feminine way for some form of self-expression, had spent her household allowance many a time on futile odds and ends. She had haunted the bargain counter, and had found herself unable to get over the idea that a thing cheaply purchased was an economic triumph. So in drawers and chests and boxes she had ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... of the 4th of May she sat, night-gowned, on the foot of her white bed, with chestnut hair all fluffy about her neck, eyes bright and cheeks still rosy with sleep, scribbling away and rubbing one bare foot against the other in the ecstasy of self-expression. Now and then, in the middle of a sentence, she would stop and look out of the window, or stretch herself deliciously, as though life were too full of joy for ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... well-nigh impossible to attempt any explanation of the many styles, from the twelfth century to the sixteenth, which are commingled, superimposed even, without any feeling in the mind of the architect, for the time being, except that of the imperious need for self-expression, regardless of the fashions of his predecessor. In the great western facade this mingling of the styles is most observable. The angle towers are absolutely unlike, the arches are broken, the pinnacles are smashed short off, niches are mutilated, and ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... Not that the Englishman lacks heart; he is not cold, as is generally supposed—on the contrary he is warm-hearted and feels very strongly; but just as peasants, for lack of words to express their feelings, become stolid, so it is with the Englishman from sheer lack of the habit of self-expression. Nor is the Englishman deliberately hypocritical; but his tenacity, combined with his powerlessness to express his feelings, often gives him the appearance of a hypocrite. He is inarticulate, has not the clear and fluent cynicism of expansive ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... with his complex personality. Back of the personality is the soul itself, forever seeking utterance through its mask of personality. All genuine impulse to sing is from the soul in its need for expression. Through expression comes growth in soul consciousness and desire for greater and greater self-expression. ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... borne—these things cover the canvases of Millet. All of his deep sincerity, his abiding melancholy, his rugged nobility are there; for every man who works in freedom simply reproduces himself. That is what true work is—self-expression, self-revelation. The style of Millet is so strongly marked, so deeply etched, that no man dare imitate it. It is covered by a perpetual copyright, signed and sealed with the life's blood of the artist. Then comes Corot the joyous, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... a point necessary for survival and social advance, and beyond that point, a diversity—including recognized and organized opposition at the planetary center. At the same time there must be a degree of regional and local diversity that will provide for the utmost independence, self-confidence, self-expression and regional and local self-determination compatible with the basic principle: to each in accordance ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... existence: I am a soul, and I am not a body. But "I have a body": that is, my personality is embodied or incarnate: I have a body which serves as the vehicle or instrument of my life as a man here upon earth: a body which is the organ of my spirit's self-expression and the medium both of my life's experience and of my intercourse with other men. I think, and my thoughts are mediated by movements of the brain. I speak, and the movements of my vocal chords set up vibrations and sound-waves which, impinging upon the nerves of another's ear, affect in turn another's ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... cases. The worst man may have done something absolutely good, the greatest liar may today tell the truth, and the simpleton may today act wisely. We are not concerned with man as such; what is important for us is his immediate self-expression. The rest of his nature is a ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... fuses with the present you awaken to a larger privilege of life than man now knows. You feel yourself encompassed by truth, vital and strong. This art, erstwhile so baffling, stands revealed as the struggle of a superhuman entity for self-expression. The tendency toward God has to begin anew with each round of the life-spiral - that eternal ...
— The Fourth Dimensional Reaches of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition • Cora Lenore Williams
... was planning a new career. The children were seven and nine—very nearly eight and ten. Marcia said she wanted a chance at self-expression. She announced a course in landscape gardening—"landscape architecture" was the ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... Various phases of work in dressmaking, electric power operating, novelty, and millinery are made "centers of interest." Each girl thus finds her art aiding her to be more valuable in her trade. Her enthusiasm is awakened and she is stimulated to self-expression directly along the line of her chosen work. The entering students lack in the technical skill which can be used in their trades. The first step, therefore, is to give the elementary exercises needed in their departments. This is followed by more difficult and ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... temperament. The result is of great and varied interest. The social history of America is being written piecemeal, and written often with a skill and sincerity which merit the highest praise. And not merely has each province found its chronicler, but the immigrants, also, are intent upon self-expression. The little masterpieces of Abraham Cahan are an earnest of what the Ghetto can achieve, and whether the Jews are faithful to Yiddish, or, like Cahan, acquire the language of their adopted country, there is no reason why they should ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... Renaissance Morals" can lie in its corner and rot, whilst I shall concern myself with a far more vital theme—The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne. The rough entries in my diary have been a habit of many futile years; but they have never sufficed for self-expression. I have not needed it till now. But now, with Judith and Carlotta gone from me, my one friend, Pasquale, cut for ever from my life, even the sympathetic Polyphemus driven into eternity by my murderous hand, I feel the irresistible craving to express myself fully and finally for the first and last ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... in talking most of the time overvalues his own thoughts and minimizes the ideas of others. Much talking stifles initiative and independent thinking. Then, too, it gives no opportunity for developing pupils' power of self-expression and provides no means for the teacher to check the reaction going on in the pupils' minds—assuming that one goes on! It is astonishing what erroneous notions members of a class can get from merely hearing a lesson presented. Given a chance to express their ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... breaking a habit that has once been formed. The relative facility with which an advance in the standard is made means that the life process is a process of unfolding activity and that it will readily unfold in a new direction whenever and wherever the resistance to self-expression decreases. But when the habit of expression along such a given line of low resistance has once been formed, the discharge will seek the accustomed outlet even after a change has taken place in the environment ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... know not how to express, "The Life of Robert Schumann", by his pupil, von Wasielewski. This pupil, I am sure, did not fully comprehend his great master. I think the key to Schumann's whole character, with all its labyrinthine and often disappointing peculiarities, is this: That he had no mode of self-expression, or, I should rather say, of self-expansion, besides the musical mode. This may seem a strange remark to make of him who was the founder and prolific editor of a great musical journal, and who perhaps exceeded any musician of his time in general culture. ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... was insatiably interested in the affairs of the world and in every phase of life. He was a poet by nature, and a journalist by profession because he believed the press was destined to become the greatest power in the country, and he craved not only power but the utmost opportunity for self-expression. ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... horizons—but that they might pass some infernal examination or other, ad majorem Smelliae gloriam; they were not to practise the musical art that they might have a soul-developing aesthetic training, a means of solace, delight, and self-expression—but that they might "play their piece" to the casual visitor to the school-room with priggish pride, expectant of praise; they were not to be Christian for any other reason than that it was the recommended ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... Barrett, appearance; Aurora Leigh; on Keats; on the poet's age; content with his own time; democracy; eyes; habitat; health, humanitarianism, inferiority to his creations, inspiration, love, morals, pain, personality, religion, resentment at patronage, self-consciousness, self-expression, sex, usefulness, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... a tumult of sound. YANK is seated in the foreground. He seems broader, fiercer, more truculent, more powerful, more sure of himself than the rest. They respect his superior strength—the grudging respect of fear. Then, too, he represents to them a self-expression, the very last word in what they are, ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... child is the right to express himself. The desire for self-expression is fundamental in the human mind, as the study of archaeology abundantly proves. Since this is true, every school should be a school of expression if the nature of the child is to have full recognition. Without ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... it was a much-delayed book. It was never dismissed from my mind, even when the hope of ever finishing it was very faint. Many things came in its way: daily duties, new impressions, old memories. It was not the outcome of a need—the famous need of self-expression which artists find in their search for motives. The necessity which impelled me was a hidden, obscure necessity, a completely masked and unaccountable phenomenon. Or perhaps some idle and frivolous magician (there must be magicians in London) had cast a spell ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad |
