Inadequate Expression Quotes

Words are cold, muddy toads trying to understand sprites dancing in a field-but they're all we have.

That was when I learned that words are no good; that words dont ever fit even what they are trying to say at. When he was born I knew that motherhood was invented by someone who had to have a word for it because the ones that had the children didn't care whether there was a word for it or not. I knew that fear was invented by someone that had never had the fear; pride, who never had the pride.

Words are an imperfect medium for explaining.

Words can't say this. The one word love means too little for what it is. It means everything and that is still not enough.

As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences everything gets distorted, language is just no damn good—I use it because I have to, but I don’t put any trust in it. We never understand each other.

Bad writers are those who try to express their own feeble ideas in the language of good ones.

As soon as we put something into words, we devalue it in a strange way. We think we have plunged into the depths of the abyss, and when we return to the surface the drop of water on our pale fingertips no longer resembles the sea from which it comes. We delude ourselves that we have discovered a wonderful treasure trove, and when we return to the light of day we find that we have brought back only false stones and shards of glass; and yet the treasure goes on glimmering in the dark, unaltered.

What concerns me is that man, unable to articulate, to express himself adequately, reverts to action. Since the vocabulary of action is limited, as it were, to his body, he is bound to act violently, extending his vocabulary with a weapon where there should have been an adjective.

[T]he truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

I dreamt that I could paint you with words, but there were no colors bright enough, black or white enough, blue or green enough...they didn't mean enough

There are so many ways to go wrong. All we've got are metaphors, and they're never exactly right. You can never just Say. The. Thing.

I hate my verses, every line, every word. Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try One grass-blade's curve, or the throat of one bird That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky. Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch One color, one glinting flash, of the splendor of things.

The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.

bad writing's like bad women: there's just not much you can do about it

Speech is an old torn net, through which the fish escape as one casts it over them.

My gratitude extends beyond the limits of my capacity to express it.

But words - words are not enough!

Words fall short sometimes.

It's embarrassingly plain how inadequate language is.

I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extravagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limit of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced.

Ransack the language as he might, words failed him. He wanted another landscape, and another tongue.

The various languages placed side by side show that with words it is never a question of truth, never a question of adequate expression; otherwise, there would not be so many languages. The 'thing in itself' (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for.

The strange thing about life is that though the nature of it must have been apparent to every one for hundreds of years, no one has left any adequate account of it.

...there's not enough ink and paper to say all I wanted.

The one word love means too little for what it is. It doesn't communicate even a fraction of the feelings involved. Love. The word is not enough for what it is. Love. Love.