Subtle Quotes - Page 29

• Subtle is the Lord. Malicious, He is not.

  Albert Einstein

  Lord, Malicious

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• What? she said once to herself, and then once aloud, What? She felt a total displacement, like a spinning globe brought to a sudden halt by the light touch of a finger. How did she end up here, like this? How could there have been so much - so many moments, so many people and things, so many razors and pillows, timepieces and subtle coffins - without her being aware? How did her life live itself without her?

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Light, People, Coffins

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.132, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The one test of the really weird (story) is simply this--whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe's utmost rim.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Attitude, Wings, Profound

  H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard (2011). “Mythos: The Myths and Tales of H.P. Lovecraft & Robert E. Howard”, p.14, Manticore Press

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• We learn words by rote, but not their meaning; that must be paid for with our life-blood, and printed in the subtle fibres of our nerves.

  George Eliot

  Blood, Nerves, Printed

  George Eliot (2016). “The Lifted Veil: Top Novelist Focus”, p.28, 谷月社

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• The more I think about it, the more I believe there has to be a subtle yet satisfying method of revenge.

  Ellen Hopkins

  Revenge, Believe, Thinking

  Ellen Hopkins (2008). “Identical”, p.127, Simon and Schuster

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• All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.

  Herman Melville

  Heart, Men, Your Side

  Herman Melville (2015). “Moby-Dick: World Classics”, p.327, World Classic

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• What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie? I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky. The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing; Rush in and die, dogs—I was a man before I was a king.

  Robert E. Howard

  Dog, Kings, Lying

  Robert E. Howard (2015). “The Start Conan the Barbarian Super Pack”, p.43, Simon and Schuster

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• The recent past is full of diverse examples of writers - Mahfouz in Egypt, Pamuk in Turkey, and more interestingly, Pasternak in the Soviet Union - who have conducted their arguments with their societies and its political arrangements through their art in subtle, oblique ways. They didn't always have the license to make bold pronouncements about freedom, democracy, Islam, and liberalism, but they exerted another kind of moral authority through their work.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Art, Past, Egypt

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity. The relationship between the soundness of the body and the activities of the mind is subtle and complex. Much is not yet understood. But we do know what the Greeks knew: that intelligence and skill can only function at the peak of their capacity when the body is healthy and strong; that hardy spirits and tough minds usually inhabit sound gods.

  John F. Kennedy

  Sports, Strong, Hockey

  "Sport at the New Frontier: The Soft American". Sports Illustrated, Volume 13, Issue 26, pp. 14-17, December 26, 1960.

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• The Bauls say, "Don't try to force anything." Let life be a deep let-go. See God opening millions of flowers every day without forcing the buds, waiting, never in a hurry, giving their time to them. The Bauls say, "Everything happens at its right time, everything happens in its own season. Wait, don't be impatient, don't be in a hurry. All hurry is greed, and all hurry is a subtle fight." That which is going to happen will happen. Whenever it is going to happen it will happen; you need not fight existence. You can surrender, you can trust.

  Rajneesh

  Letting Go, Flower, Fighting

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• The ego is a subtle wall around you. It does not allow anybody to enter into you. You feel protected, secure, but this security is deathlike. It is the security of the plant inside the seed. The plant is afraid to sprout because - who knows? The world is so hazardous and the plant will be so soft, so fragile. Behind the wall of the seed, hiding inside the cell, everything is protected.

  Rajneesh

  Wall, Cells, Ego

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• Remember, character is not of much value. What is valuable is consciousness - not conscience but consciousness. Conscience is created by the society. The more foolish you are, the more the society is able to create a conscience in you. It gives you an idea how to live your life. It manipulates you in a very subtle way. It hypnotizes you and conditions you. And the conditioning is so long that you forget completely that these are not your ideas.

  Rajneesh

  Character, Ideas, Long

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• As you become more conscious of your cruelty, of your violence, gross and subtle, you start becoming more and more compassionate. Not that you cultivate compassion. Just by becoming aware of your cruelty, violence, ugliness... the very awareness brings new changes in you. And the energy that was involved in cruelty, in violence, starts changing. The same energy becomes purified, the same energy becomes compassion.

  Rajneesh

  Compassion, Energy, Violence

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• My sister and I, you will recollect, were twins, and you know how subtle are the links which bind two souls which are so closely allied.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Two, Soul, Links

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2015). “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”, p.130, Zillmann Publishing

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• Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Love, Life, Country

  Jiddu Krishnamurti, Raymond Martin (1997). “Krishnamurti: Reflections on the Self”, p.94, Open Court Publishing

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• There is no violent surface indication of the ecstasy which great thinkers alone enjoy. There is nothing dramatic about it, but there is some subtle light in the eye of the inspired one, or some even more subtle quiet emanation which surrounds the inspired thinker, which tells you that you are in the presence of one who has bridged the gap which separates the mundane world from the world of spirit.

  Walter Russell

  Eye, Light, Secret

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• The contradictory experiments of chemists leave us at liberty to conclude what we please. My conclusion is, that art has not yet invented sufficient aids to enable such subtle bodies [air, light, &c.] to make a well-defined impression on organs as blunt as ours; that it is laudable to encourage investigation but to hold back conclusion.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Art, Science, Light

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• Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

  Francis Bacon

  Wise, Witty, Philosophy

  'Essays' (1625) 'Of Studies'

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• I believe that even a smattering of such findings in modern science and mathematics is far more compelling and exciting than most of the doctrines of pseudoscience, whose practitioners were condemned as early as the fifth century B.C. by the Ionian philosopher Heraclitus as “nigh -walkers, magicians, priests of Bacchus, priestesses of the wine-vat, mystery-mongers.” But science is more intricate and subtle, reveals a much richer imiverse, and powerfully evokes our sense of wonder.

  Carl Sagan

  Wine, Science, Night

  "Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science".

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• A discovery is like falling in love and reaching the top of a mountain after a hard climb all in one, an ecstasy not induced by drugs but by the revelation of a face of nature that no one has seen before and that often turns out to be more subtle and wonderful than anyone had imagined.

  Max Perutz

  Falling In Love, Nature, Science

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• Perspective is a most subtle discovery in mathematical studies, for by means of lines it causes to appear distant that which is near, and large that which is small.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Mean, Science, Discovery

  Leonardo (da Vinci) (1965). “Leonardo Da Vinci on Painting: A Lost Book (Libro A)”, p.39, Univ of California Press

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• Devote the mind to confusion and we know only too well, if we´re honest, that it will become a dark master of confusion, adept in its addictions, subtle and perversely supple in its slaveries. Devote it in meditation to the task of freeing itself from illusion, and we will find that, with time, patience, discipline, and the right training, our mind will begin to unknot itself and know its essential bliss and clarity.

  Sogyal Rinpoche

  Dark, Meditation Practice, Discipline

  Sogyal Rinpoche (2009). “Glimpse After Glimpse: Daily Reflections on Living and Dying”, p.11, Harper Collins

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• Mind is elusive, you cannot hold it in your hand. You cannot force it into a test-tube. The only way to know it is to know it from within, from your witnessing self. The more you become aware, the more you can watch your mind - its subtle functioning. The functioning is tremendously complex and beautiful. Mind is the most complex phenomenon on the earth, the most subtle flowering of consciousness. If you want to really understand what the mind is, then you will have to detach yourself from your mind, and you will have to learn how to be just a witness. That's what meditation is all about.

  Rajneesh

  Beautiful, Self, Hands

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• Each child is poisoned by the society through teaching him ambition. Ambition is a poison far more dangerous than any alcohol can ever be, far more dangerous than marijuana or LSD, because ambition destroys your whole life. It keeps you moving in a false direction. It keeps you imagining, desiring, dreaming, it keeps you wasting your life. Ambition means a subtle creation of the ego, and once the ego is created you are in the grip of darkness. And the whole social structure depends on ambition.

  Rajneesh

  Dream, Children, Moving

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• Will power is nothing but another name of ego power. A man of wisdom has no will, just as he has no mind - because to will means to keep yourself separate from existence. It is a little subtle, but try to feel it. The moment you will it means you are always willing against things as they are. You want them to be some other way.

  Rajneesh

  Mean, Men, Names

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