Subtle Quotes - Page 28

• Gaze no more in the bitter glass
  The demons, with their subtle guile,
  Lift up before us when they pass,
  Or only gaze a little while.

  William Butler Yeats

  Reality, Glasses, Mirrors

  William Butler Yeats (2015). “When You Are Old: Early Poems, Plays, and Fairy Tales”, p.139, Penguin

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• In their precise tracings-out and subtle causations, the strongest and fieriest emotions of life defy all analytical insight.

  Herman Melville

  Emotion, Insight, Causation

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• Creative memory is the historian's most subtle opponent.

  Mason Cooley

  Memories, History, Creative

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• As usual, nature's imagination far surpasses our own, as we have seen from the other theories which are subtle and deep.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Nature, Imagination, Usual

  Richard P. Feynman (2015). “The Quotable Feynman”, p.128, Princeton University Press

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• I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counterreformist and has been influenced by the methodical path of the Jesuits.... It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation. DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that all can reach salvation.

  Umberto Eco

  Simple, Icons, Essence

  "Apple's holier-than-thou attitude may be its salvation" by John Naughton, www.theguardian.com. January 24, 2009.

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• Parents have subtle ways of humbling you, of reminding you of your origins, perhaps by showing up at the moment of your greatest glory and reminding you where you came from and demonstrating that you still have some of it between your toes.

  Frank Pittman

  Parent, Way, Showing Up

  "How to Manage Mom & Dad" by Frank Pittman, www.psychologytoday.com. November 1, 1994.

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• This trivializing rhetoric runs the subtle but unmistakable message: pray if you like, worship if you must, but whatever you do, do not on any account take your religion seriously.

  Stephen L. Carter

  Christian, Running, Religious

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• I should say tact was worth much more than wealth as a road to leadership.... I mean that subtle apprehension which teaches a person how to do and say the right thing at the right time. It coexists with very ordinary qualities, and yet many great geniuses are without it. Of all human qualities I consider it the most convenient--not always the highest; yet I would rather have it than many more shining qualities.

  M. E. W. Sherwood

  Leadership, Mean, Shining

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• Rice and peas fit into that category of dishes where two ordinary foods, combined together, ignite a pleasure far beyond the capacity of either of its parts alone. Like rhubarb and strawberries, apple pie and cheese, roast pork and sage, the two tastes and textures meld together into the sort of subtle transcendental oneness that we once fantasized would be our experience when we finally found the ideal mate.

  John Thorne

  Two, Oneness, Apples

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• I know for myself my big, long friendships they don't have the same problems any more, but they also-when you get together you often times just have a drink and watch football together. You're not really talking about everything so much the same way. You just need to be around each other, and yet you can look at each other and so much is said just between those minutiae- it's totally subtle is really what it is. I felt like that, you know, a life that's been so totally dramatic then becomes beauty in the fact that it's just so small.

  Josh Lucas

  Football, Talking, Long

  Source: collider.com

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• Just as thoughts, send out vibrations to which there is a creative and attractive power, gratitude stimulates the field of etheric energy that surrounds you on a subtle level to bring into your life more of what brings you joy.

  Genevieve

  Gratitude, Joy, Creative

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• The saying, "The Magyar is much too lazy to be bored," is worth thinking about. Only the most subtle and active animals are capable of boredom.--A theme for a great poet would be God's boredom on the seventh day of creation.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Animal, Thinking, Boredom

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• I suppose that Italy must always lie like some lovely sunken island at the bottom of all passionate dreams, from which at the flood it may arise; the air of it is charged with subtle essences of romance. One supposes Italy must be organized for the need of lovers.

  Mary Hunter Austin

  Dream, Lying, Islands

  Mary Hunter Austin (1985). “A Woman of Genius”, p.239, Feminist Press at CUNY

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• Censorship is not an occupation that attracts intelligent, subtle minds. Censors can and often have been outwitted. But the game of slipping Aesopian messages past the censor is ultimately a sterile one, diverting writers from their proper task.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Intelligent, Past, Games

  J. M. Coetzee (1997). “Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship”, p.8, University of Chicago Press

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• Henry Kissinger is possessed of a truly superior intelligence, in addition to which he has two qualities which, unfortunately, many great men lack: he is able to listen and he has a very subtle sense of humour.

  Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

  Men, Two, Quality

  "The Shah's Story". Book by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, p. 144, 1980.

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• Choice is born out of opposites, and the duality of the second chakra is forever challenging us to make choices in a world of opposing sides, of positive and negative energy patterns. Every choice we make contributes a subtle current of our energy to our universe, which is responsive to the influence of human consciousness.

  Caroline Myss

  Opposites, Forever, Choices

  Caroline Myss (2013). “Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing”, p.132, Harmony

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• One may guess the why and wherefore of a tear and yet find it too subtle to give any account of. A tear may be the poetical resume of so many simultaneous impressions, the quintessence of so many opposing thoughts! It is like a drop of one of those precious elixirs of the East which contain the life of twenty plants fused into a single aroma.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Giving, Tears, May

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• The man who had died looked nakedly on life, and saw a vast resoluteness everywhere flinging itself up in stormy or subtle wave-crests.... always the man who had died saw not the bird alone, but the short, sharp wave of life of which the bird was the crest.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Life, Nature, Men

  D.H. Lawrence (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)”, p.4361, Delphi Classics

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• The height and value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of its exercise; so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and the innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own; and it is by order and good conduct, and not by force, that it is to be acquired.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Exercise, Boys, Men

  Michel de Montaigne (1850). “Works, Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy: With Notes from All the Commentators, Biographical and Bibliographical Notices &c., &c”, p.94

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• Conducting, I tried it once off the cuff, and quickly realized there were subtle aspects that I was missing. There is a lot more to it that I was able to grasp simply by watching conductors.

  Carter Burwell

  Missing, Cuffs, Able

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• The subtle generational cues that make one thing cool and another uncool aren't always obvious to a parent. My children are my dinner-table sounding board. I've come up with some wonderful ideas that they universally dismissed as 'lame.'

  Nolan Bushnell

  Children, Ideas, Parent

  "The Player" by Ethan Watters, www.wired.com. January 10, 2005.

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• I think that one's art is a growth inside one. I do not think one can explain growth. It is silent and subtle. One does not keep digging up a plant to see how it grows.

  Emily Carr

  Art, Thinking, Growth

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• For kind of sophisticated art I'm interested in, the larger structural rebuke has to be so subtle that it has to be distributed at an almost sub-atomic level. Otherwise, you fall into the kind of preachy, moralistic fable that I don't think makes for good literature.

  Junot Diaz

  Art, Fall, Thinking

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• God may be subtle, but he isn't plain mean.

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Inspirational, Life

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• My dad turned me onto Peter Sellers as a kid. I loved the fact that he was a unique combination of being extremely subtle and over-the-top all at the same time, and that's a hard thing to do. I admire that.

  Will Ferrell

  Dad, Kids, Unique

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