Subtle Quotes - Page 20

• Art is expression; what is expressed is often the vision of a subtle and powerful soul, and also his experience with his vision; and however vivid and skilful he may be in the means of expression, yet it is frequently found that the master-spell in his work is something felt to be indefinable and inexpressible.

  George Edward Woodberry

  Art, Powerful, Mean

  George Edward Woodberry (1914). “Two Phases of Criticism, Historical and Aesthetic: Lectures Delivered on the Larwill Foundation of Kenyon College, May Seventh and Eighth, 1913”

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• Often as we teach and testify about the law of tithing, we emphasize the immediate, dramatic and readily recognizable temporal blessings that we receive. And surely such blessings do occur. Yet some of the diverse blessings we obtain as we are obedient to this commandment are significant but subtle.

  David A. Bednar

  Blessing, Law, Dramatic

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• It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable; it is precisely thereby that it attracts the more subtle minds. It seems that the hundred-times-refuted theory of the "free will" owes its persistence to this charm alone; some one is always appearing who feels himself strong enough to refute it.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Strong, Persistence, Mind

  Friedrich Nietzsche “Writings of Nietzsche: Volume 1”, Lulu.com

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• It was a subtle refinement of God to learn Greek when he wished to write a book – and that he did not learn it better.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Book, Writing, Greek

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• Ordinary parties, he thought, were subtle games of sexual and social badminton.

  Annie Proulx

  Party, Games, Ordinary

  Annie Proulx (1994). “The Shipping News”, p.254, Simon and Schuster

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• Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?

  Oscar Wilde

  Sweet, Real, Writing

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.22, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever, And do not listen to those critics ever Whose crude provincial gullets crave in books Plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks.

  W. H. Auden

  Clever, Book, Cooking

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• I was trying to come round to the idea that there might be an invisible reality capable of interfering in our lives, but the only reason I did so was because of a love I didn't want to believe I felt but which was continuing to grow in a subtle, devastating way. I was content in my universe and didn't want to change it at all, even though I was being propelled in that direction.

  Paulo Coelho

  Believe, Reality, Ideas

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• Author's Notes: This story starts with section 6. This is not a mistake. I have my own subtle reasoning. So, just read, and enjoy.

  Isaac Asimov

  Mistake, Stories, Notes

  Isaac Asimov (2011). “The Gods Themselves”, p.3, Spectra

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• You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!), in order to discern at once, by ineffable signs―the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limbs, and other indices which despair and shame and tears of tenderness forbid me to tabulate―the little deadly demon among the wholesome children; she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Children, Artist, Flames

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated”, p.72, Vintage

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• Of course it’s the apparently tranquil periods that deceive us. Though our instruments or our senses or our wits may not be able to see the processes that are leading toward these clusters of events, they’re happening. The star, the wheel, the butterfly—all are in a subtle state of unrest, waiting for the moment when some invisible mechanism signals that the time has come. Then the star explodes; the wheel makes poor men rich; the butterfly mates and dies.

  Clive Barker

  Stars, Butterfly, Men

  "Galilee". Book by Clive Barker, February 3, 1999.

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• What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright...Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?

  Gustave Flaubert

  Book, Wind, Ideas

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• No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream--alone.

  Joseph Conrad

  Life, Dream, Essence

  Heart of Darkness ch. 1 (1902)

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• It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream - making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams.

  Joseph Conrad

  Dream, Struggle, Essence

  "Heart of Darkness". Book by Joseph Conrad, 1902.

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• How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.

  Carl Sagan

  God, Science, Religion

  "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space". Book by Carl Sagan, 1994.

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• This nice and subtle happiness of reading, this joy not chilled by age, this polite and unpunished vice, this selfish, serene life-long intoxication.

  Logan Pearsall Smith

  Selfish, Nice, Reading

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• For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You'll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you'll realize it's always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won't understand why or how.

  Mark Z. Danielewski

  Dark, Rooms, Shifting

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• On the earth, even in the darkest night, the light never wholly abandons his rule. It is diffused and subtle, but little as may remain, the retina of the eye is sensible of it.

  Jules Verne

  Eye, Night, Light

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• I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Believe, Yield

  Henry David Thoreau (2006). “Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles”, p.59, Heron Dance Press

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• The word 'God' is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, and religious scripture a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change this.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Religious

  "Childish superstition: Einstein's letter makes view of religion relatively clear" by James Randerson, www.theguardian.com. May 13, 2008.

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• I do think that women could make politics irrelevant; by a kind of spontaneous cooperative action the like of which we have never seen; which is so far from people’s ideas of state structure or viable social structure that it seems to them like total anarchy — when what it really is, is very subtle forms of interrelation that do not follow some heirarchal pattern which is fundamentally patriarchal. The opposite to patriarchy is not matriarchy but fraternity, yet I think it’s women who are going to have to break this spiral of power and find the trick of cooperation.

  Germaine Greer

  Thinking, Opposites, Ideas

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• The kiss originated when the first male reptile licked the first female reptile, implying in a subtle way that she was as succulent as the small reptile he had for dinner the night before.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Love, Kissing, Night

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• None of our prayers should ever be petitions for our own needs: for this is only another subtle way of trying to put ourselves on the same plane as God — acting as if we had no needs, as if we were not creatures, not dependent on Him.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Prayer, Pride

  "The seven storey mountain".

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• Music is storming, driving, relentless, devotional, slinky, subtle, heartbreakingly-beautiful sounds that, lyrically, switch from the cynical to the sanguine, the defeated to the defiant, dealing in love, war, beauty, children, romance, rejection, Pethedine, poetry, panties, God, Auden, Johnny Cash, cold potatoes, too-much-money, not enough money, writer’s block, flowers, animals and more flowers. But maybe I’m projecting here.

  Nick Cave

  Beautiful, Children, Block

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• The conversation of kisses. Subtle, engrossing, fearless, transforming.

  Alice Munro

  Kissing, Fearless, Conversation

  Alice Munro (2013). “Runaway”, p.252, Random House

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