Subtle Quotes - Page 30

• Men like women who know how to be subtle.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Men, Know How, Knows

  Nicholas Sparks (2013). “True Believer”, p.141, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• He had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals.

  Oscar Wilde

  Love, Color, Green

  Oscar Wilde (1997). “Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: The Plays, the Poems, the Stories and the Essays Including De Profundis”, p.950, Wordsworth Editions

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• Have you ever happened, reader, to feel that subtle sorrow of parting with an unloved abode? The heart does not break, as it does in parting with dear objects. The humid gaze does not wander around holding back a tear, as if it wished to carry away in it a trembling reflection of the abandoned spot; but in the best corner of our hearts we feel pity for the things which we did not bring to life with our breath, which we hardly noticed and are now leaving forever. This already dead iventory will not be resurrected in one's memory.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Memories, Heart, Reflection

  Vladimir Nabokov, Michael Scammell (1963). “The gift”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume: there was a real joy in that - perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims.

  Oscar Wilde

  Real, Passion, Exercise

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.36, GENERAL PRESS

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The universe danced towards life. Life was a remarkably common commodity. Anything sufficiently complicated seemed to get cut in for some, in the same way that anything massive enough got a generous helping of gravity. The universe had a definite tendency towards awareness. This suggested a certain subtle cruelty woven into the very fabric of space-time.

  Terry Pratchett

  Cutting, Space, Woven

  7 Copy quote

• There was a warmth of fury in his last phrases. He meant she loved him more than he her. Perhaps he could not love her. Perhaps she had not in herself that which he wanted. It was the deepest motive of her soul, this self-mistrust. It was so deep she dared neither realise nor acknowledge. Perhaps she was deficient. Like an infinitely subtle shame, it kept her always back. If it were so, she would do without him. She would never let herself want him. She would merely see.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Self, Soul, Phrases

  D. H. Lawrence (2013). “The Essential D.H. Lawrence”, p.271, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We need to look at the subtle, the hidden, and the unspoken.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Needs, Looks, Unspoken

  9 Copy quote

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

  Albert Einstein

  Lord, Malicious

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• I feel strangely free at such times. To behave properly is to be always courteous, always clever, and subtle and elegant. But now, when I am so alone, I do not have to be any of these things. For this moment, I am wholly myself, unshaped by the needs of others, by their dreams or expectations or sensibilities. But I am also lonely. With no one to shape me, who stands here, watching the moon, or the stars, or the clouds?

  Kij Johnson

  Dream, Lonely, Stars

  Kij Johnson (2001). “The Fox Woman”, p.57, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One should be a painter. As a writer, I feel the beauty, which is almost entirely colour, very subtle, very changeable, running over my pen, as if you poured a large jug of champagne over a hairpin.

  Virginia Woolf

  Running, Jugs, Champagne

  Virginia Woolf, Jan Morris (1993). “Travels with Virginia Woolf”, Random House (UK)

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• ...the Female Once-Over - a process by which one woman creates a detailed profile of another woman based upon about a million subtle details of clothing, jewelry, makeup, and body type, and then decides how much of a social threat she might be. Men have a parallel process, but it's binary: Does he have beer? If yes, will he share with me?

  Jim Butcher

  Beer, Men, Makeup

  "Changes". Book by Jim Butcher, April 6, 2010.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Being easily freaked out comes with its own special skill set: you develop subtle tricks to work around it, make sure people don't notice. Pretty soon, if you're a fast learner, you can get through the day looking almost exactly like a normal human being.

  Tana French

  Skills, People, Special

  Tana French (2008). “The Likeness: Dublin Murder Squad: 2”, p.22, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It seemed as if some subtle current of recognition had passed between them... not as if they had met before... but as if they had come close several times until finally an impatient Fate had forced their paths to intersect.

  Lisa Kleypas

  Fate, Path, Recognition

  Lisa Kleypas (2009). “Secrets of a Summer Night”, p.6, Harper Collins

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Never an illness, nor the absence of grandeur, no, nothing is able to kill the best in us, that kindness, dear sir, we are afflicted with: beautiful is the flower of man, his conduct, and every door opens on the beautiful truth and never hides treacherous whispers. I always gained something from making myself better, better than I am, better than I was, that most subtle citation: to recover some lost petal of the sadness I inherited: to search once more for the light that sings inside of me, the unwavering light.

  Pablo Neruda

  Beautiful, Kindness, Flower

  Pablo Neruda (2002). “The Sea and the Bells”, p.61, Copper Canyon Press

  472 Copy quote

  Show source

• Try to write in a directly emotional way, instead of being too subtle or oblique. Don't be afraid of your material or your past. Be afraid of wasting any more time obsessing about how you look and how people see you. Be afraid of not getting your writing done.

  Anne Lamott

  Writing, Past, Emotional

  15 Copy quote

• The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness.

  H. G. Wells

  Clever, Men, Saws

  H G Wells (2004). “The Time Machine (Sparklesoup Classics)”, p.12, Sparklesoup LLC

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• They can romanticize us so, mirrors, and that is their secret: what a subtle torture it would be to destroy all the mirrors in the world: where then could we look for reassurance of our identities?

  Truman Capote

  Mirrors, Secret, Identity

  Truman Capote (1955). “Other voices, other rooms”, Modern Library

  32 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm an educated man, the prisons I know are subtle ones.

  Roberto Bolano

  Men, Prison, Educated

  8 Copy quote

• Ma petite is not a subtle woman. Unless you say it, she will not understand it.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Petite

  13 Copy quote