Subtlety Quotes - Page 3

• He took pains to avoid self-depreciation, self-mockery, ambiguity, irony, subtlety, vulnerability, a civilized world-weariness and a tragic sense of history--the very things, he says, that are most natural to him.

  Don DeLillo

  Pain, Self, World

  Don DeLillo (2011). “White Noise”, p.24, Pan Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Mean, Men, Law

  Thomas Jefferson “Selected letters of Thomas Jefferson”, Lulu.com

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Life has to be in the moment, spontaneous and venerable. There isn't any winning or losing. Life itself, as it flowers in depth and subtlety, is the reward, and it isn't always an easy or fun process. We must learn to see that the issue of happiness is irrelevant. The relevant quest is the expansion of consciousness.

  Richard Moss

  Fun, Flower, Winning

  8 Copy quote

• Above all things I entreat you to preserve your faith in Christ. It is my wealth in poverty, my joy in sorrow, my peace amid tumult. For all the evil I have committed, my gracious pardon; and for every effort, my exceeding great reward. I have found it to be so. I can smile with pity at the infidel whose vanity makes him dream that I should barter such a blessing for the few subtleties from the school of the cold-blooded sophists.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Dream, School, Blessing

  4 Copy quote

• For a good notation has a subtlety and suggestiveness which at times make it seem almost like a live teacher.

  Bertrand Russell

  Teacher, Math, Seems

  "The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell".

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Jazz is improvisation and syncopation, with resilience and flow, with earthy elegance, nuance and subtlety, with the integrity of individual expression within (usually) a group context, with true democracy in action.

  Greg Thomas

  Music, Integrity, Expression

  4 Copy quote

• Faces in the everyday impress us as hives of subtlety. That impression must be sharpened in photography, which discloses only a microsecond of the face's behaviour, immersed in a social process.

  Max Kozloff

  Photography, Everyday, Behaviour

  4 Copy quote

• There are no variations except for those who know a norm, and no subtleties for those who have not grasped the obvious.

  C. S. Lewis

  Variation, Obvious, Norm

  4 Copy quote

• Through imagination, thanks to the subtleties of the irreality function, we re-enter the world of confidence, the world of the confident being, which is the proper world for reverie.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Imagination, World, Thanks

  14 Copy quote

• I like songs with a lot of heart and feeling and subtlety.

  Norah Jones

  Song, Heart, Feelings

  4 Copy quote

• Do not commit spiritual suicide through a passion for discussing metaphysical subtleties.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Suicide, Spiritual, Passion

  Charles Spurgeon (2011). “All of Grace (Authentic Original Classic): An urgent Word with Those Who Are Seeking Salvation by the Lord Jesus Christ”, p.63, Destiny Image Publishers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• For many parts of Nature can neither be invented with sufficient subtlety, nor demonstrated with sufficient perspicuity, nor accommodated unto use with sufficient dexterity, without the aid and intervening of the mathematics, of which sort are perspective, music, astronomy, cosmography, architecture, engineery, and divers others.

  Francis Bacon

  Nature, Science, History

  Francis Bacon (2010). “Bacon's Advancement of Learning and the New Atlantis”, p.107, Lulu.com

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• If he thinks he would harm Mirabelle, he would back away. But he does not yet understand when and how people are hurt. He doesn't understand the subtleties of slights and pains, that it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.

  Steve Martin

  Hurt, Pain, Heart

  "Shopgirl". Book by Steve Martin, October 11, 2000.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Synchronicities, epiphanies, peak, and mystical experiences are all cases in which creativity breaks through the barriers of the self and allows awareness to flood through the whole domain of consciousness. It is the human mind operating, for a moment, in its true order and moving through orders of increasing subtlety, reaching past the source of mind and matter into creativity itself.

  F. David Peat

  Moving, Creativity, Past

  9 Copy quote

• You seem to know a lot about it," she said. "And you do subtleties." "Yeah. Like I've always wanted to destroy the Nine Worlds while committing suicide." "Well, there's no need to be rude," protested Sif.

  Joanne Harris

  Suicide, Rude, Needs

  4 Copy quote

• I think that sexiness should be in the subtleties.

  Rachel Zoe

  Sexy, Thinking, Should

  26 Copy quote

• A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.

  Karl Marx

  Business, Sight, Analysis

  Karl Marx (1988). “Marx Selections”, MacMillan Publishing Company

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• Composing on the typewriter, I find that I am sloughing off all my long sentences which I used to dote upon. Short, staccato, like modern French prose. The typewriter makes for lucidity, but I am not sure that it encourages subtlety.

  T. S. Eliot

  Typewriters, Long, Crafts

  T. S. Eliot (2011). “The Letters of T. S. Eliot Volume 1: 1898-1922”, p.240, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pastries . . . can only be appreciated to the full extent of their subtlety when they are not eaten to assuage our hunger, when the orgy of their sugary sweetness is not destined to full some primary need but to coat our palate with all the benevolence of the world.

  Muriel Barbery

  Needs, World, Coats

  6 Copy quote

• Constitutions are not designed for metaphysical or logical subtleties, for niceties of expression, for critical propriety, for elaborate shades of meaning, or for the exercise of philosophical acuteness or judicial research. They are instruments of a practical nature, founded on the common business of human life, adapted to common wants, designed for common use, and fitted for common understandings.

  Joseph Story

  Philosophical, Exercise, Expression

  Joseph Story (1851). “Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States: With a Preliminary Review of the Constitutional History of the Colonies and States, Before the Adoption of the Constitution”, p.322

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Now, Friends, deal plainly with yourselves, and let the eternal Light search you, and try you, for the good of your souls. For this will deal plainly with you. It will rip you up, and lay you open, and make all manifest which lodges in you; the secret subtlety of the enemy of your souls, this eternal searcher and trier will make manifest. Therefore all to this come, and by this be searched, and judged, and led and guided. For to this you must stand or fall.

  Margaret Fell

  Rip, Fall, Light

  54 Copy quote

• She says that what you did was a cry for help." "It was," I say. "That's why I was yelling 'Heeeelp!' I don't really go in for subtlety.

  Holly Black

  Yelling, Helping, Cry

  Holly Black (2010). “White Cat”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I esteem his understanding and subtlety highly, but I consider that they have been put to ill use in the greater part of his work, where the author studies things of little use or when he builds on the improbable principle of attraction. Writing about Newton's Principia. Huygens had some time earlier indicated he did not believe the theory of universal gravitation, saying it 'appears to me absurd.'

  Christiaan Huygens

  Believe, Writing, Science

  14 Copy quote

• When you're doing lots and lots of episodes and you're playing the same character, it's great because you really get to know the character and it becomes a really fast style and you find subtleties in it.

  Misha Collins

  Character, Style, Episodes

  Interview with Tierney Bricker, www.eonline.com. March 23, 2012.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob on his breast; and his heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music, became drowsy through indifference to the vibrations of a love whose subtleties he could no longer distinguish.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Heart, People, Bored

  4 Copy quote