Delicate Quotes - Page 8

• That nameless and infinitely delicate aroma of inexpressible tenderness and attentiveness which, in every refined and honorable attachment, is contemporary with the courtship, and precedes the final banns and the rite; but which, like the bouquet of the costliest German wines, too often evaporates upon pouring love out to drink, in the disenchanting glasses of the matrimonial days and nights.

  Herman Melville

  Love, Marriage, Wine

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• I've worked with multiple directors throughout the 'Saw' series with a lot of conversations as they bring their particular installment to the screen. If I've been able to do anything throughout the course of these films, it's been to help shape dialogue and to try to make things as delicate and as intelligent as I can.

  Tobin Bell

  Intelligent, Trying, Shapes

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• Playing games with agreed upon rules helps children learn to live by rules, establish the delicate balance between competition andcooperation, between fair play and justice and exploitation and abuse of these for personal gain. It helps them learn to manage the warmth of winning and the hurt of losing; it helps them to believe that there will be another chance to win the next time.

  James P. Comer

  Hurt, Children, Believe

  James P. Comer (1995). “School Power: Implications of an Intervention Project”

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• Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist, all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Book, Eye, Home

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2014). “The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Illustrated): All 4 Novels and 56 Stories with More Than 480 Illustrations”, p.126, Top Five Books LLC

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• It is a thought as sweet as heaven to know that in the minds of each of us the may by the fence still blooms in an eternal springtime; that the snowdrop has in our hearts a triple birth, and blooms in three separate minds, faultlessly... So that if all the flowers and grasses and hollows and hills of the old house were razed and mutilated - as they are now, I suppose - we keep them intact in three minds, each depending on the other to supply it with the delicate minutiae of remembrance.

  Eve Langley

  Sweet, Art, Women

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• The raillery which is consistent with good-breeding is a gentle animadversion of some foible, which, while it raises the laugh in the rest of the company, doth not put the person rallied out of countenance, or expose him to shame or contempt. On the contrary, the jest should be so delicate that the object of it should be capable of joining in the mirth it occasions.

  Henry Fielding

  Joining In, Laughing, Mirth

  Henry Fielding, Thomas Roscoe (1851). “The Works of Henry Fielding: Complete in One Volume”, p.643

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• the State only aims at instilling those qualities in its public by which its demands are obeyed, and its exchequer is filled. Its highest attainment is the reduction of mankind to clockwork. In its atmosphere all those finer and more delicate liberties, which require treatment and spacious expansion, inevitably dry up and perish. The State requires a taxpaying machine in which there is no hitch, an exchequer in which there is never a deficit, and a public, monotonous, obedient, colorless, spiritless, moving humbly like a flock of sheep along a straight high road between two walls.

  Ouida

  Wall, Moving, Government

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• To see Stephen Spender fumbling with our rich and delicate language is to experience all the horror of seeing a Sevres vase in the hands of a chimpanzee.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Book, Hands, Vases

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• As much as anything, the anglers will clue you in to the midge hatch. You will see them hunched over in concentration like herons. The better ones will be in as close as they can get to the dimpling trout. What you'll notice is the rythmic flicking of casts toward a porpoising trout and the lack of any other motions. The only exception will be the gentle tug that sets a very small hook attached to the leader by a very delicate tippet. The playing of the trout, if it is a good one, will be a cat-and-mouse sort of ecstacy.

  Ed Engle

  Cat, Lakes, Sea

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• You can't teach a young musician to compose any more than you can teach a delicate plant to grow, but you can guide him a little by planting a stick in here and a stick in there.

  Frederick Delius

  Musician, Littles, Sticks

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• Oatcakes are a delicate relish when eaten warm with ale.

  Robert Burns

  Ale, Relish, Warm

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• Brian Turner writes as only a soldier can, of terror and compassion, hurt and horror, sympathy and desire. He takes us into the truth and trauma of the Iraq war in language that is precise, delicate and beautiful, even as it tells of a suicide bomber, a skull shattered by a bullet, a blade in a bloodgroove.

  Andrew Himes

  Beautiful, Suicide, Hurt

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• So quiet and subtle is the beauty of December that escapes the notice of many people their whole lives through. Colour gives way to form: every branch distinct, in a delicate tracery against the sky. New vistas, obscured all Summer by leafage, now open up.

  Flora Thompson

  Summer, Sky, People

  "The Peverel Papers: A Yearbook of the Countryside". Book by Flora Thompson. December Chapter, 1986.

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• I've heard of many people who claim they'd as soon their children were dead as gay. What it took me a long time to believe is that these people are saying no more than the truth. They even speak for others too delicate to use the cruel words.

  Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

  Children, Believe, Gay

  Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1993). “Tendencies”, p.2, Duke University Press

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• There are travelers who fear to own delicate hands more than to meet a lion, and soldiers who would rather lose a limb than gain a beautiful nose by artificial methods.

  Robert Wilson Lynd

  Beautiful, Hands, Soldier

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• If, for example, a conspiratorially minded elite is so powerful, has at its fingertips such multiple and delicate instruments with which to fine-tune accumulation, then how can the periodic headlong slides into crisis be explained?

  David Harvey

  Powerful, Tunes, Example

  "The Limits To Capital". Book by David Harvey, 1982.

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• Necessity has a way of obliterating from our conduct various delicate scruples regarding honor and pride.

  William Faulkner

  Pride, Honor, Way

  William Faulkner (1951). “Absalom, Absalom!”

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• Christianity ... has produced the iniquities of the Inquisition, the egotism and celibacy of the monasteries, the fury of religious wars, the ferocity of the Hussite, of the Catholic, of the Puritan, of the Spaniard, of the Irish Orangeman and of the Irish Papist; it has divided families, alienated friends, lighted the torch of civil war, and borne the virgin and the greybeard to the burning pile, broken delicate limbs upon the wheel and wrung the souls and bodies of innocent creatures on the rack; all this it has done, and done in the name of God.

  Ouida

  Religious, War, Soul And Body

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• I was a poet too; but modern taste
  Is so refined and delicate and chaste,
  That verse, whatever fire the fancy warms,
  Without a creamy smoothness has no charms.
  Thus, all success depending on an ear,
  And thinking I might purchase it too dear,
  If sentiment were sacrific'd to sound,
  And truth cut short to make a period round,
  I judg'd a man of sense could scarce do worse
  Than caper in the morris-dance of verse.

  William Cowper

  Cutting, Men, Thinking

  William Cowper (1830). “Poems ... With a sketch of his life and a vindication of his religious principles and character. Third edition, corrected and enlarged. [With a portrait.]”, p.14

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• ... the most ordinary everyday living is as delicate, as breath-taking, as difficult, takes as terrific physical and mental control and effort, as walking a tightrope.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Effort, Everyday, Ordinary

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• Hair is the most delicate and lasting of our materials, and survives us, like love. It is so light, so gentle; so escaping from the idea of death, that, with a lock of hair belonging to a child or friend, we may almost look up to heaven and compare notes with the angelic nature,--may almost say, "I have a piece of thee here not unworthy of thy being now.

  Leigh Hunt

  Children, Escaping, Like Love

  Leigh Hunt (1870). “Men, Women, and Books: A Selection of Sketches, Essays, and Critical Memoirs from His Uncollected Prose Writings”, p.145

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• If one is the kind of creature I am and wants to do the kind of writing I want to do, an undisturbed bourgeois existence with no distractions seems in order. A single meeting outside the family upsets one's whole inner web, makes one start off on two-days' thinking and weighing, destroys a delicate balance etc. etc. ... I now have enough friends to last me a lifetime and that is enough. I am going to close the doors and hibernate at least for a couple of years. I am frightfully depressed about my work. It seems to me perfectly mediocre.

  May Sarton

  Couple, Writing, Thinking

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• Hunger is never delicate.

  Samuel Johnson

  Food, Cooking, Hunger

  Samuel Johnson (1761). “The Rambler: In Four Volumes”, p.163

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• The imagination is of so delicate a texture that even words wound it.

  William Hazlitt

  Imagination, Texture, Wounds

  William Hazlitt (1871). “The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt”, p.487

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• God does not weigh criminality in our scales. We have one absolute, with the seal of authority upon it; and with us an ounce is an ounce, and a pound a pound. God's measure is the heart of the offender,--a balance which varies with every one of us, a balance so delicate that a tear cast in the other side may make the weight of error kick the beam.

  James Russell Lowell

  Heart, Errors, Balance

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