Sensitive Quotes - Page 31

• Self-love is a principle of action; but among no class of human beings has nature so profusely distributed this principle of life and action as through the whole sensitive family of genius.

  Isaac D'Israeli

  Love Is, Self, Class

  "The Literary Character, Illustrated by the History of Men of Genius". Book by Isaac D'Israeli, chapter XV, 1795-1822.

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• Life is constantly weighing us in very sensitive scales, and telling every one of us precisely what his real weight is to the last grain of dust.

  James Russell Lowell

  Life, Real, Dust

  James Russell Lowell (1871). “My Study Windows”, p.48

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• Deference often shrinks and withers as much upon the approach of intimacy as the sensitive plant does upon the touch of one's finger.

  William Shenstone

  Doe, Intimacy, Plant

  William Shenstone (1764). “The Works in Verse and Prose, of William Shenstone, Esq;: Essays on men, manners, and things. A description of The Leasowes, the seat of the late William Shenstone, Esq. Verses to Mr. Shenstone”, p.207

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• Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed. They are sensitive plants, which will not bear too familiar approaches.

  William Shenstone

  Essence, Bears, Virtue

  William Shenstone (1804). “Essays on Men and Manners”, p.42

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• Since I am a man, my heart is three or four times less sensitive, because I have three or four times as much power of reason and experience of the world -- a thing which you women call hard-heartedness. As a man, I can take refuge in having mistresses. The more of them I have, and the greater the scandal, the more I acquire reputation and brilliance in society.

  Bill Vaughan

  Heart, Men, Mistress

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• Sensitive people never like the fatigue of justifying their instincts.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  People, Intuition, Instinct

  Harriet Beecher Stowe (1856). “Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp”, p.33

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• The sexual organs are the most sensitive organs of the human being. They are not diplomats. They tell the truth.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Diplomats, Telling The Truth, Organs

  Isaac Bashevis Singer, Grace Farrell (1992). “Isaac Bashevis Singer: Conversations”, p.251, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• There is in every human being, I think, a native country of the mind, where, protected by inaccessible barriers, the sensitive dream life may exist safely.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Country, Dream, Thinking

  Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (1938). “Works”

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• Are you seeing a psychiatrist?' as a conversation opener would nowadays earn you a punch in the nose, but for fifty years it was a compliment. It meant, 'One can plainly see you are sensitive, intense, and interesting, and therefore neurotic.' Only the dullest of clods trudged around without a neurosis.

  Barbara Holland

  Years, Interesting, Noses

  Barbara Holland (1999). “Wasn't the Grass Greener?: A Curmudgeon's Fond Memories”, Harcourt

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• Self-love, so sensitive in its own cause, has rarely any sympathy to spare for others.

  Madame de Stael

  Self, Causes, Insensitivity

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• I find focusing clearly on the problem is the first step to seeing a solution. The problem is (a) the insane amount of time spent raising money from (b) a freakishly tiny proportion of America. Basically .05% are the "relevant funders" of campaigns, meaning candidates can't help but be overly sensitive to the views of that tiny fraction relative to the rest of us. IF that's the problem, THEN the solution is to spread the funders out: to increase the range of us who are the relevant funders of elections, through schemes like vouchers or coupons given to every voter.

  Lawrence Lessig

  America, Views, Insane

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• I don't personally believe in an arrived state of enlightenment. I feel that being human is a constant practice of return. We have moments of clarity, and then we're confused. We have incredibly sensitive periods of being awake, and then we're numb. Being human is a very universal and a very personal practice of learning how to return when we can't get access to what we know.

  Mark Nepo

  Confused, Believe, Practice

  "Journey to the Sacred: An Interview With Mark Nepo". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 13, 2013.

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• for man, woman, and child the tender, irregular, sensitive, living foot, which does not even stand with all its little surface on the ground, and which makes no base to satisfy an architectural eye, is, as it were, the unexpected thing. ... nothing makes a more helpless and unsymmetrical sign than does a naked foot.

  Alice Meynell

  Children, Eye, Men

  Alice Meynell (2013). “The Essential Alice Meynell Collection”, p.452, eBookIt.com

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• Those who have to face persistent political persecution become highly politicized. Our lives take on a rhythm different from those who, on waking up in the morning, do not need to wonder who might have been arrested during the night and what further acts of blatant injustice might be committed against our people later during the day. Our antennae become highly sensitive to vibrations barely noticed by those whose everyday existence is removed from political struggle.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Morning, Struggle, Night

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• Our story opens in the mind of Luther L. (L for LeRoy) Fliegler, who is lying in his bed, not thinking of anything, but just aware of sounds, conscious of his own breathing, and sensitive to his own heartbeats. Lying beside him is his wife, lying on her right side and enjoying her sleep.

  John O'Hara

  Lying, Book, Sleep

  John O'Hara (2013). “Appointment in Samarra: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.15, Penguin

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• As in everything else, I find that age is not good for much, that one becomes deafer and less sensitive. Also, the higher up the mountain you climb, the less of a view you get. A mist closes in and cheats you of the hoped-for and expected opportunity to see far and wide.

  Kathe Kollwitz

  Opportunity, Views, Age

  Käthe Kollwitz, Hans Kollwitz (1988). “The Diary and Letters of Kaethe Kollwitz”, p.164, Northwestern University Press

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• ... the advantages of being a postman seemed more and more dubious. It is not a congenial profession for anyone who is at all sensitive, for people visit upon the postman all their first annoyance at receiving a couple of bills when they looked for a love-letter, and if a packet is insufficiently stamped they hand over the pennies as though to a despicable bandit, too outrageous to be denied, too groveling to be feared.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Couple, Hands, People

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• Fear is the deep motive of abstract art - fear of a repellent civilization which is dominated by the power of things. ... who can be surprised if, more sensitive than the others, the artist is terrified by the power things have acquired over us?

  Storm Jameson

  Art, Civilization, Abstract

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• I did not imagine that pregnant women were 'naturally' any more sensitive or exalted than people in any other condition; only it seemed as if - perhaps because we are in such a twilight state, a melting down and reconstituting of the self - there was more opportunity to hear strains from what must be the other side, the moral music of the sphere.

  Naomi Wolf

  Pregnancy, Twilight, Opportunity

  Naomi Wolf (2011). “Misconceptions”, p.87, Random House

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• Orthodox criticism ... is a murderer of talent. And because the most modest and sensitive people are the most talented, having the most imagination and sympathy, these are the first ones to get killed off.

  Brenda Ueland

  Helping Others, People, Imagination

  Brenda Ueland (2013). “If You Want to Write”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

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• Ancient and oriental civilizations were more sensitive than we are to the cycles of things; to the succession of generations, both divine and human; and to change within stasis. Western man is virtually alone in wanting to make his God into a fortress and personal immortality into a bulwark against time.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Men, Civilization, Generations

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• In the '80s, I thought I'd be a success as a woman if I were the president of a billion dollar company, had a sensitive soul-mate husband, two bilingual children, buns of steels, and a compost heap. In the '90s, I pretty much feel I'm a success if I can get through the afternoon without eating a cheesecake.

  Cathy Guisewite

  Children, Husband, Two

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• Poetry is not an end in itself but in the service of life; of what use are poems, or any other works of art, unless to enable human lives to be lived with insight of a deeper kind, with more sensitive feelings, more intense sense of the beautiful, with deeper understanding?

  Kathleen Raine

  Beautiful, Art, Understanding

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• A two-career couple with children is a complex, sensitive piece of machinery with lots of moving parts. Anything less than total cooperation will throw it out of whack and shut it down. A couple can wind up paying the ultimate price for trying to have it all - losing it all.

  Kathie Lee Gifford

  Children, Couple, Moving

  Kathie Lee Gifford, Jim Jerome (1993). “I Can't Believe I Said That!”, Pocket

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• My left hand is my thinking hand. The right is only a motor hand. This holds the hammer. The left hand, the thinking hand, must be relaxed, sensitive. The rhythms of thought pass through the fingers and grip of this hand into the stone.

  Barbara Hepworth

  Thinking, Hands, Stones

  Dame Barbara Hepworth (1970). “A Pictorial Autobiography”

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