Delicacy Quotes

• Such lovely warmth of thought and delicacy of colour are beyond all praise, and equally beyond all thanks!

  Marie Corelli

  Lovely, Thanks, Praise

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• An appearance of delicacy, and even fragility, is almost essential to beauty.

  Edmund Burke

  Beauty, Essentials, Fragility

  Edmund Burke (1824). “A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful”, p.121

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• True delicacy is not a fragile thing.

  James Broughton

  Strength, Fragile Things, Fragile

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• Delicacy is to the affections what grace is to the beauty.

  Joseph Marie, baron de Gerando

  Grace, Affection

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• A villain must be a thing of power, handled with delicacy and grace. He must be wicked enough to excite our aversion, strong enough to arouse our fear, human enough to awaken some transient gleam of sympathy. We must triumph in his downfall, yet not barbarously nor with contempt, and the close of his career must be in harmony with all its previous development.

  Agnes Repplier

  Strong, Writing, Careers

  Agnes Repplier (1895). “Essays in Miniature”

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• Many things are too delicate to be thought; many more, to be spoken.

  Novalis

  Delicate

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• True delicacy, that most beautiful heart-leaf of humanity, exhibits itself most significantly in little things.

  Mary Howitt

  Beautiful, Heart, Humanity

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• Delicacy in woman is strength.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

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• Too great refinement is false delicacy, and true delicacy is solid refinement.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Refinement, Comparison

  "Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims". No. 131, 1665 - 1678.

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• Femininity is not just lipstick, stylish hairdos, and trendy clothes. It is the divine adornment of humanity. It finds expression in your qualities of your capacity to love, your spirituality, delicacy, radiance, sensitivity, creativity, charm, graciousness, gentleness, dignity, and quiet strength.

  James E. Faust

  Strength, Love You, Creativity

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• If a person has no delicacy, he has you in his power.

  William Hazlitt

  Power, Persons, Ifs

  William Hazlitt, Edward George Earle Lytten Butwer-Lytton Lyton (1st baron), Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd (1836). “Essays: On self-love. On the conduct of life: or, Advice to a school-boy. On the fine arts. The fight. On want of money. On the feeling of immortality in youth. The main-chance. The opera. Of persons one would wish to have seen. My first acquaintance with poets. The shyness of scholors. The Vatican. On the spirit of monarchy”, p.258

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• There is a close relationship between flowers and convicts.

  Jean Genet

  Flower, Fragility, Prison

  "A Thief’s Journal". Book by Jean Genet, 1949.

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• Generosity without delicacy, like wit without judgment, generally gives as much pain as pleasure.

  Fanny Burney

  Pain, Generosity, Giving

  "Evelina: Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World".

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• It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are they the result of previous study?

  Jane Austen

  Inspiring, Attention, May

  Jane Austen (2006). “8 Books in 1: Jane Austen's Complete Novels. Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Lady Susan, and Love an”, p.157, Shoes & Ships & Sealing Wax

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• Man, of all the animals, is probably the only one to regard himself as a great delicacy.

  Jacques Yves Cousteau

  Silly, Men, Animal

  Jacques Yves Cousteau, Philippe Diolé (1973). “Octopus and squid, the soft intelligence”, Doubleday Books

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• ...Nature builds up her refined and invisible architecture, with a delicacy eluding our conception, yet with a symmetry and beauty which we are never weary of admiring.

  John Herschel

  Nature, Architecture, Invisible

  Sir John Frederick William Herschel, William Whewell, George Henry Lewes, Hermann von Helmholz, James Clerk Maxwell (1996). “The Origins of Modern Philosophy of Science, 1830-1914: Preliminary discourse on the study of natural philosophy”

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• Weak men often from the very principle of their weakness derive a certain susceptibility; delicacy and taste which render them, in those particulars, much superior to men of stronger and more consistent minds, who laugh at them.

  Sir Fulke Greville

  Men, Weak Man, Laughing

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• It is a wonderful advantage to a man, in every pursuite or avocation, to secure an adviser in a sensible woman. In woman there is at once a subtle delicacy of tact, and a plain soundness of judgement, which are rarely combined to an equal degree in man. A woman, if she be really your friend, will have a sensitive regard for your character, honor, repute. She will seldom counsel you to do a shabby thing: for a woman friend always desires to be proud of you.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Friendship, Character, Men

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• It takes more time and effort and delicacy to learn the silence of a people than to learn its sounds. Some people have a special gift for this. Perhaps this explains why some missionaries, notwithstanding their efforts, never come to speak properly, to communicate delicately through silences. Although they "speak with the accent of natives" they remain forever thousands of miles away. The learning of the grammar of silence is an art much more difficult to learn than the grammar of sounds.

  Ivan Illich

  Art, Learning, People

  Ivan Illich (1974). “Mission and Midwifery: Essays on Missionary Formation”

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• A fine lady is a squirrel-headed thing, with small airs and small notions; about as applicable to the business of life as a pair of tweezers to the clearing of a forest.

  George Eliot

  Squirrels, Air, Forests

  George Eliot (1866). “Felix Holt: The Radical”, p.33

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• I hope you will no longer accuse me of a lack of delicacy. as I now count on your understanding.

  Gustav Mahler

  Understanding

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• Turkey, unlike chicken, has very elegant characteristics. It has more of a cache than chicken. Turkey is a delicacy, so it should be presented in such a way.

  Todd English

  Turkeys, Cache, Way

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• Congealed fat is pretty much the same, irrespective of the delicacy around which it is concealed.

  Clement Freud

  Fats, Concealed

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• Delicacy - a sad, sad false delicacy - robs literature of the two best things among its belongings: Family-circle narratives & obscene stories.

  Mark Twain

  Circles, Two, Stories

  Mark Twain (2016). “The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain”, p.55, Chartwell

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• The intellectual evolution of the race consists in an increase in the number, delicacy, complexity, permanence and speed of formation of such associations.

  Edward Thorndike

  Race, Numbers, Intellectual

  Edward Lee Thorndike (1924). “The Evolution of the Human Intellect”

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