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Self-expression   /sɛlf-ɪksprˈɛʃən/   Listen
Self-expression

noun
1.
The expression of one's individuality (usually through creative activities).






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Self-expression" Quotes from Famous Books



... beels "dumb waters"—they have no language, no self-expression. The river ceaselessly babbles; so the words of the poem sing, they are not "dumb words." Thus bondage creates beauty of form, motion, and music; bounds make not ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore

... the cultivation of this human soil into which the seed has been dropped must know what that seed needs as it develops—urging forward here, that through self-expression it may grow strong, restraining there, that it may not spread itself out and through over-expression become weak. Only loving personal knowledge of each individual life will make possible this guidance and restraint. ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery

... principle of his life, if such a thing could be stated in a phrase, was self-expression through self-discipline. Well, his discovery was (it didn't come to much more than a surmise, it is true, but it was a beginning) that in his relations to Rose he'd never disciplined himself at all. The network ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... his substance from another finite being—but there are times, when he feels that his self-expression needs some liberation from at least a part of his own soul. At such times, shall he not better turn to those greater souls, rather than to the external, the ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... part is composed of atmosphere, example, and ideals. All these are provided for the growing child by others. He has little or no voice in saying what they shall be. And environment has more to do with the progress of the soul toward full and free self-expression even than what is called education. Education is more by atmosphere, example, and mental suggestion than by teachers and text-books. When we speak of nurture we usually think of the period of discipline in school and church; but we often make the ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford

... some new impression of the writer; so that after a perusal of his works we know him in all his strength and weakness, as we can know only an amiable and communicative egotist; moreover, besides losing no opportunity for self-expression, both in and out of season, Heine published a good deal of frankly autobiographical matter, and wrote memoirs, only fragments of which have come down to us, but of which more than has yet appeared will perhaps ultimately be made accessible. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... centralizing of political power in the hands of Louis XIV. of France and his successors had been accompanied by a "standardizing" of human affairs which favored practical efficiency and the easier running of the social machine, but which was far from helpful to the self-expression ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... 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 natures wherewith to confess exactly how ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... laws which govern literary development, and so with an unexpurgated volume of Taine, a set of Chambers' Encyclopaedia of English Literature, and a volume of Greene's History of the English People, I set to work to base myself profoundly in the principles which govern a nation's self-expression. I still believed that in order to properly teach an appreciation of poetry, a man should have the power of dramatic expression, that he should be able to read so as to make the printed page live in the ears ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... fertility of the Spanish mind and its intense individualism, a constant slipping over into the grotesque is inevitable. And so it comes to be that the conscious or unconscious aim of their art is rather self-expression than beauty. Their image of reality is sharp and clear, but distorted. Burlesque and satire are never far away in their most serious moments. Not even the calmest and best ordered of Spanish minds ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... again. We all have our particular mode of self-expression in moments of elation. Fillmore's took the shape of buying a new waistcoat and a hundred half-dollar cigars and being very fussy about what he had for lunch. It may have been an optical illusion, but he appeared to Sally to put on at least six pounds in weight on the first ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... form of self-expression, and as she yielded to it her cheeks burned suddenly and her eyes shone between their ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... you, that had the opportunity presented itself of dropping a wet sponge on Tuppy from some high spot or of putting an eel in his bed or finding some other form of self-expression of a like nature, I would not have embraced it eagerly; but that let me out. I mean to say, grievously injured though I had been, it gave me no pleasure to feel that the fellow's bally life was being ruined by the loss of a girl whom, despite ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... teacher is a leader he will either be able, himself, to arrange a musical entertainment, or he will secure some one who can and will do so. All, it is contended, can learn to sing if they begin early enough; and there is probably no better mode of self-expression and no better way of waking up people emotionally and socially than to engage them in singing. The importance of singing, to secure good and right emotional attitudes toward life and mankind, is indicated in the saying, "Let me ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy

... I have purposely avoided the usual anachronism of going to Caesar's books, and concluding that the style is the man. That is only true of authors who have the specific literary genius, and have practised long enough to attain complete self-expression in letters. It is not true even on these conditions in an age when literature is conceived as a game of style, and not as a vehicle of self-expression by the author. Now Caesar was an amateur stylist writing books of travel and ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw

... form of prophecy. As it is the special vocation of the mystical consciousness to mediate between two orders, going out in loving adoration towards God and coming home to tell the secrets of Eternity to other men; so the artistic self-expression of this consciousness has also a double character. It is love- poetry, but love-poetry which is often written with ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)

... her recollections, heeded not my inquiry. All her mental energy was concentrated on the nature of that memorable glance. The general tradition of mankind teaches us that glances occupy a considerable place in the self-expression of women. Mrs Fyne was trying honestly to give me some idea, as much perhaps to satisfy her own uneasiness as my curiosity. She was frowning in the effort as you see sometimes a child do (what is ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad



Words linked to "Self-expression" :   style, expressive style



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