Supple Quotes

• Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.

  Edith Wharton

  Substance, Literature, Lilies

  Edith Wharton (2016). “The House of Mirth: Edith Wharton”, p.33, VM eBooks

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• Youth is not a time of life - it is a state of mind.

  Samuel Ullman

  Mind, Vigor, Lips

  "The Silver Treasury, Prose and Verse for Every Mood" by Jane Manner, (p. 323-24), 1934.

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• The hard and stiff will be broken.
  The soft and supple will prevail.

  Laozi

  Broken, Tao Ching, Hard

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  The real American type can never be a ballet dancer. The legs are too long, the body too supple and the spirit too free for this school of affected grace and toe walking.

  Isadora Duncan

  Dance, Real, School

  10 Copy quote

• The cello is like a beautiful woman who has not grown older, but younger with time, more slender, more supple, more graceful.

  Pablo Casals

  Beauty, Beautiful, Women

  "Contemporary Hispanic Quotations" edited by Daniel E. Stanton, Edward F. Stanton, Greenwood Publishing Group, (p. 35), 2003.

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• Reason is a supple nymph, and slippery as a fish by nature. She had as leave give her kiss to an absurdity any day, as to syllogistic truth. The absurdity may turn out truer.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Nature, Kissing, Nymphs

  D. H. Lawrence (1966). “Selected Poems of D.h. Lawrence”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• Whenever we find stiffness in the body, our mind should be especially supple. It is never the stiffness in our bodies that limits our practice, it is always the stiffness of our mind.

  Geeta Iyengar

  Yoga, Practice, Mind

  59 Copy quote

• In the best nonfiction, it seems to me, you're always made aware that you are being engaged with a supple mind at work. The story line or plot in nonfiction consists of the twists and turns of a thought process working itself out.

  Phillip Lopate

  Mind, Twists, Plot

  Phillip Lopate (2013). “To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction”, p.12, Simon and Schuster

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• Physical fitness is the first requisite of happiness. In order to achieve happiness, it is imperative to gain mastery of your body. If at the age of 30 you are stiff and out of shape, you are old. If at 60 you are supple and strong then you are young.

  Joseph Pilates

  Strong, Order, Age

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• Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail.

  Laozi

  Inspirational, Life, Death

  15 Copy quote

• Man at his birth is supple and tender, but in death, he is rigid and hard. Thus, suppleness and tenderness accompany life, but rigidity and hardness accompany death.

  Laozi

  Men, Birth, Rigidity

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• That's what being a front man is all about - the idea of having something supple underneath you, that machine that roars and can turn on a dime.

  Bruce Springsteen

  Men, Ideas, Dimes

  "We Are Alive" by David Remnick, www.newyorker.com. July 30, 2012.

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• You'll never make your mark as a writer unless you develop a respect for words and a curiosity about their shades of meaning that is almost obsessive. The English language is rich in strong and supple words. Take the time to root around and find the ones you want

  William Zinsser

  Strong, Roots, Curiosity

  William Zinsser (2012). “On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction”, p.32, Harper Collins

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• may my heart always be open to little birds who are the secrets of living whatever they sing is better than to know and if men should not hear them men are old may my mind stroll about hungry and fearless and thirsty and supple and even if it's sunday may i be wrong for whenever men are right they are not young and may myself do nothing usefully and love yourself so more than truly there's never been quite such a fool who could fail pulling all the sky over him with one smile

  e. e. cummings

  Love Yourself, Heart, Sunday

  e. e. cummings (2014). “100 Selected Poems”, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• May my mind stroll about hungry and fearless and thirsty and supple and even if its sunday may i be wrong for whenever men are right they are not young

  e. e. cummings

  Sunday, Men, Fearless

  E. E. Cummings (2007). “Selected Poems”, p.26, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The colors of living things begin to fade with the last breath, and the soft, springy skin and supple muscle rot within weeks. But the bones sometimes remain, faithful echoes of the shape, to bear some last faint witness to the glory of what was.

  Diana Gabaldon

  Echoes, Color, Faithful

  Diana Gabaldon (2015). “The Outlander Series 8-Book Bundle: Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, Drums of Autumn, The Fiery Cross, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, An Echo in the Bone, Written in My Own Heart's Blood”, p.277, Dell

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• Justification is a remarkable thing-takes all those solid lines and blurs them, so that honor becomes as supple as a willow, and ethics burst like soap bubbles.

  Jodi Picoult

  Honor, Soap Bubbles, Lines

  Jodi Picoult (2012). “The Jodi Picoult Collection #2: Perfect Match, Second Glance, and My Sister's Keeper”, p.305, Simon and Schuster

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• I remember learning German - so beautiful, so strange - at school in Australia on the other side of the earth. My family was nonplussed about me learning such an odd, ugly language and, though of course too sophisticated to say it, the language of the enemy. But I liked the sticklebrick nature of it, building long supple words by putting short ones together. Things could be brought into being that had no name in English - Weltanschauung, Schadenfreude, sippenhaft, Sonderweg, Scheissfreundlichkeit, Vergangenheitsbewältigung.

  Anna Funder

  Beautiful, School, Names

  Anna Funder (2011). “Stasiland: Stories From Behind The Berlin Wall”, p.10, Granta Books

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• Who among us has not dreamt, in moments of ambition, of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and rhyme, supple and staccato enough to adapt to the lyrical stirrings of the soul, the undulations of dreams, and sudden leaps of consciousness.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Dream, Ambition, Miracle

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• The camera is simply not the supple and powerful instrument of description that the pen is.

  Janet Malcolm

  Powerful, Cameras, Description

  Janet Malcolm (1981). “Diana and Nikon: Essays on the Aesthetic of Photography”

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• The music I desire must be supple enough to adapt itself to the lyrical effusions of the soul and the fantasy of dreams.

  Claude Debussy

  Dream, Soul, Desire

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• Youth is not a time of life - it is a state of mind. It is not a matter of red cheeks, red lips and supple knees. It is a temper of the will; a quality of the imagination; a vigor of the emotions; it is a freshness of the deep springs of life. Youth means a tempermental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over a life of ease. This often exists in a man of fifty, more than in a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow old by deserting their ideals.

  Samuel Ullman

  Spring, Adventure, Mean

  "The Silver Treasury, Prose and Verse for Every Mood" by Jane Manner, (p. 323-24), 1934.

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• Death is a supple suitor, that wins at last. It is a stealthy wooing; conducted first by pallid innuendos and dim approach, but brave at last with bugles.

  Emily Dickinson

  Death, Winning, Brave

  53 Copy quote

• The virtue of obedience makes the will supple... It inspires the courage with which to fulfill the most difficult tasks.

  John Vianney

  Inspire, Tasks, Virtue

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• Our supple tribes repress their patriot throats, And ask no questions but the price of votes.

  Samuel Johnson

  Tribes, Vote, Patriot

  Oliver Goldsmith, Tobias Smollett, Samuel Johnson, William Shenstone (1861). “Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith, Tobias Smollett, Samuel Johnson and William Shenstone”

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