I hear some making excuses for not being able to express themselves, and pretending to have their heads full of many fine things, but to be unable to express them for lack of eloquence. That is all bluff. Do you know what I think those things are? They are shadows that come to them of some shapeless conceptions, which they cannot untangle and clear up within, nor consequently set forth without: they do not understand themselves yet. And just watch them stammer on the point of giving birth; you will conclude that they are not laboring for delivery, but for conception, and that they are only trying to lick into shape this unfinished matter. For my part I hold, and Socrates makes it a rule, that whoever has a vivid and clear idea in his mind will express it, if necessary in Bergamask dialect, or, if he is dumb, by signs:

Master the stuff, and words will freely follow.

[Horace]

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— Montaigne, from “Of the Education of Children”
(Tr. Frame)