Delicate Quotes - Page 17

• I read the newspapers with lively interest. It is seldom that they are absolutely, point-blank wrong. That is the popular belief, but those who are in the know can usually discern an embryo of truth, a little grit of fact, like the core of a pearl, round which have been deposited the delicate layers of ornament.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Facts, Ornaments, Grit

  Evelyn Waugh (1964). “Scoop: a novel”

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• It is a very true and expressive phrase, "He looked daggers at me," for the first pattern and prototype of all daggers must have been a glance of the eye.... It is wonderful how we get about the streets without being wounded by these delicate and glancing weapons, a man can so nimbly whip out his rapier, or without being noticed carry it unsheathed. Yet it is rare that one gets seriously looked at.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Eye, Men, Society

  Henry David Thoreau (1906). “The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: A week on the Concord and Merrimack rivers”

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• I am a great foe of favoritism in public life, in private life, and even in the delicate relationship of an author to his works.

  Joseph Conrad

  Favoritism, Foe, Private Life

  Joseph Conrad (1937). “Conrad's Prefaces to His Works”, p.66, Ardent Media

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• I often wonder: suppose we could begin life over again, knowing what we were doing? Suppose we could use one life, already ended, as a sort of rough draft for another? I think that every one of us would try, more than anything else, not to repeat himself, at the very least he would rearrange his manner of life, he would make sure of rooms like these, with flowers and light ... I have a wife and two daughters, my wife's health is delicate and so on and so on, and if I had to begin life all over again I would not marry. ... No, no!

  Anton Chekhov

  Daughter, Flower, Thinking

  Anton Chekhov (2012). “The Three Sisters”, p.11, Courier Corporation

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• Fine and delicate taste is the fruit of education and experience.

  Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

  Art, Taste, Fruit

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• The truth is not delicate and it does not suffer from denial—the truth only dies when true stories are untold.

  Ken Liu

  Suffering, Doe, Stories

  Ken Liu (2016). “The Paper Menagerie”, p.382, Head of Zeus

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• When I design a collection I strive to make a woman feel as special as the delicate creation she is wearing; take her to an enchanted time and place where women are princesses and magnificent goddesses. In today's modern world we need to pause and indulge in beauty.

  Claire Pettibone

  Princess, Indulge In, Design

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• As we got further and further away, it [the Earth] dimished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man.

  James Irwin

  Beautiful, Fall, Men

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• ... he preferred his own madness, to the regular sanity. He rejoiced in his own madness, he was free. He did not want that old sanity of the world, which was become so repulsive. He rejoiced in the new-found world of his madness. It was so fresh and delicate and so satisfying.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Depression, World, Want

  D.H. Lawrence (2013). “Delphi Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)”, p.1405, Delphi Classics

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• Pride is seldom delicate, it will please itself with very mean advantages; and envy feels not its own happiness, but when it may be compared with the misery of others

  Samuel Johnson

  Mean, Pride, Envy

  Samuel Johnson, Hester Lynch Piozzi, James Boswell (1787). “The Beauties of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Consisting of Maxims and Observations, Moral, Critical, and Miscellaneous, to which are Now Added, Biographical Anecdotes of the Doctor, Selected from the Late Productions of Mrs. Piozzi, Mr. Boswell, ...”, p.209

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• In this world we are in precarious position, balanced midway between material and spiritual hungers. We find heaven to be a delicate state of consciousness that can be lost in a single moment of forgetfulness.

  Harold Klemp

  Life, Spiritual, Single Mom

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• Snow always inspires such awe in me. Just consider one tiny snowflake alone, so delicate, so fragile, so ethereal. And yet, let a billion of them come together through the majestic force of nature, they can screw up a whole city.

  Betty White

  Cities, Snow, Inspire

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• Peter Sellers was great to work with. A lovely man. A little bit crazy in that he - you know, as I say, it was hard. It was sort of balancing a very delicate spirit on a needle. You know, because you never know where he was going

  Goldie Hawn

  Crazy, Men, Lovely

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• The more you worry, the more you throw off the delicate balance of hormones required for health.

  Andrew Bernstein

  Worry, Balance, Hormones

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• He gave me a look of great contempt; as I supposed, for venturing, even by implication, to draw a parallel between a lack of affluence that might, literally, affect my purchase of rare vintages, and a figure of speech intended delicately to convey his own dire want for the bare necessities of life. He remained silent for several seconds, as if trying to make up his mind whether he could ever bring himself to speak to me again; and then said gruffly: 'I've got to go now.'

  Anthony Powell

  Delicate Life, Vintage, Mind

  Anthony Powell (2010). “A Question of Upbringing: Book 1 of A Dance to the Music of Time”, p.188, University of Chicago Press

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• The being who, for most men, is the source of the most lively, and even, be it said, to the shame of philosophical delights, the most lasting joys; the being towards or for whom all their efforts tend for whom and by whom fortunes are made and lost; for whom, but especially by whom, artists and poets compose their most delicate jewels; from whom flow the most enervating pleasures and the most enriching sufferings - woman, in a word, is not, for the artist in general... only the female of the human species. She is rather a divinity, a star.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Stars, Women, Philosophical

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• I've long said that if I were about to be executed and were given a choice of my last meal, it would be bacon and eggs. There are few sights that appeal to me more than the streaks of lean and fat in a good side of bacon, or the lovely round of pinkish meat framed in delicate white fat that is Canadian bacon. Nothing is quite as intoxicating as the smell of bacon frying in the morning, save perhaps the smell of coffee brewing.

  James Beard

  Morning, Coffee, Food

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• People from the past always seem to have much more time to create beautiful, intricate, delicate things that often reach the future in a kind of curled-up, capsized state.

  Robyn Hitchcock

  Beautiful, Past, Delicate Things

  Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 13, 2007.

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• So, it's a delicate thing, but at the same time our producers and writers are very much aware of the potential downfall that could ensue so I think they're going to be very careful about how they do that. At the same time I don't think they want to leave the characters in the same holding pattern that they've been in for a while. I think that they're all trying to put the characters in a different situation.

  Emily Deschanel

  Character, Thinking, Delicate Things

  "Emily Deschanel Talks Bones: Season 2". Interview with Evan Jacobs, movieweb.com. September 26, 2007.

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• Sometimes something becomes a lot better. It's like a puzzle . You can't force a round brick into a square. It's a delicate thing. You need to let the song decide.

  Oh Land

  Song, Delicate Things, Squares

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• Amending the U.S. Constitution, the document most sacred to those who love freedom and liberty, is a delicate endeavor and should be done only on the basis of the most clear and convincing evidence that a proposed amendment is necessary.

  Ben Nelson

  Convincing Evidence, Liberty, Done

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• Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed
  The speculating rooks at their nests cawed
  And saw from elm tops, delicate as flower of grass,
  What we below could not see, Winter pass.

  Edward Thomas

  Flower, Winter, Land

  Edward Thomas (1997). “Poems”, p.16, Imperial War Museum

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• It is a mass language only in the same sense that its baseball slang is born of baseball players. That is, it is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be within the grasp of superficially educated people. It is not a natural growth, much as its proletarian writers would like to think so. But compared with it at its best, English has reached the Alexandrian stage of formalism and decay.

  Raymond Chandler

  Baseball, Communication, Player

  Raymond Chandler (1995). “Later Novels & Other Writings”

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• It is all a question of sensitiveness. Brute force and overbearing may make a terrific effect. But in the end, that which lives by delicate sensitiveness. If it were a question of brute force, not a single human baby would survive for a fortnight. It is the grass of the field, most frail of all things, that supports all life all the time. But for the green grass, no empire would rise, no man would eat bread: for grain is grass; and Hercules or Napoleon or Henry Ford would alike be denied existence.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Baby, Men, Support

  D. H. Lawrence (2013). “Etruscan Places”, p.31, Read Books Ltd

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• Civilization...is a matter of imponderables, of delight in the thins of the mind, of love of beauty, of honor, grace, courtesy, delicate feeling. Where imponderables, are things of first importance, there is the height of civilization, and, if at the same time, the power of art exists unimpaired, human life has reached a level seldom attained and very seldom surpassed.

  Edith Hamilton

  Love, Art, Civilization

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