Pretty conceptions, fine metaphors, glittering expressions, and something of a neat cast of verse are properly the dress, gems, or loose ornaments of poetry.
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.
I don't believe that you can possibly separate expression from thought in an imaginative work. The better a thing is expressed, the more completely it is thought.
One Zen master said, The whole universe is my true personality. This is a very wonderful saying... If you want to see what you truly are, open the window, and everything you see is in fact the expression of your inner reality. Can you embrace all of it?
It is, indeed, only in old age that intellectual men attain their sublime expression, whilst portraits of them in their youth show only the first traces of it.
Truth is transcendent. There are many expressions of it and ways to glimpse it. We cannot hold it in our clenched fist, but must hold it in our open palm and invite others to see it for themselves.
Society is infested by persons who, seeing that the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists - talkers who mistake the description for the thing, saying for having.