This morning, after breakfast, I began writing an article about the challenge of communicating anything meaningful via words — how to give voice to the ineffable, how to give shape to that which has no form, how to evoke the deepest feeling of wonder beyond the limitation of language.
I know it cannot be done, but I am going to do it, anyway — kind of like John Cage’s definition of poetry: “I have nothing to say; I am saying it, and that is poetry.”
And yet words, at least sometimes, have value. They do. As does music, art, dancing, photography, and a myriad of other forms of self-expression.
They may not be able to describe what we experience perfectly, but they can evoke.
What follows are some inspiring quotes I have found on this fascinating topic. See if there is at least one that speaks to you and, if it does, let it in.
“There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.” — Rumi
“Words have no language that can utter the secrets of love.” — Hafiz
“In spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody.” — Aldous Huxley
“Words are the voice of the heart.” — Confucius
“Silence hides nothing. Words conceal.” — August Strindberg
“Words are the mind’s wings, are they not?” — Helen Keller
“True words seem false.” — Lao Tzu
“The reality we put into words is never the reality itself.” — Werner Heisenberg
“Teach me to go the country beyond words and names.” — Thomas Merton
“Experience is the truer guide than the words of others.” — Leonardo da Vinci
“My words itch at your ears until you understand them.” — Walt Whitman
“Men who have much to say use the fewest words.” — Josh Billings
“It is the stillest words that bring the storm.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
“Enough of words. Come to me without a sound.” — Rumi
“I rarely think in words at all.” — Albert Einstein
“The highest truth cannot be put into words.” — Lao Tzu
“Much wisdom goes with fewest words.” — Sophocles
“It’s only words unless they’re true.” — David Mamet
“Freeing oneself from words is liberation.” — Bodhidharma
“Where words fail, music speaks.” — Hans Christian Andersen
“Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the life within.” — Alfred Lord Tennyson
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein
“When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.” — Ansel Adams
“I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world’s muteness.” — Vladimir Nabokov
“Our self-expression is meant to be a manifestation of the silence of our hearts.” — Matthew Fox
“To the poet fated to be a poet, self-expression is as natural and as involuntary as breathing is to us ordinary mortals.” — Octavio Paz
“Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing.” — Marc Chagall
“Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.” — Rumi
“If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.” — Edward Hopper
“Most words evolved as a description of the outside world, hence their inadequacy to describe what is going on inside me.” — Hugh Prather
“When words are both true and kind they can change the world.” — Buddha
“Those who know do not speak, and those who speak do not know.” — Lao Tzu
“We’ve been given the opportunity to express ourselves — to paint beautiful pictures with the strengths we have inside. Each new morning, we can choose to be the most fantastic version of ourselves. Ignore the numbers. Paint outside the boxes. Paint what’s in your heart. Paint the most dazzling version of who you are.” — Prem Rawat