Quotes About Subtlety

The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

If you can't be kind at least be vague.

When a woman dislikes the man who is courting her, she parries him cleverly, like a willow in the wind.

For me, beauty is always retreating from one's grasp: the only thing I consider important is what existed once, or ought to have existed. By its subtle, infinitely varied operation, the steel restored the classical balance that the body had begun to lose, reinstating it in its natural form, the form that it should have had all along.

The romantic personality is pervaded with a subtle mistrust of intellectualism, and this fact is often conducive to that immoral action called daydreaming. Contrary to belief, daydreaming is not an intellectual process but rather an escape from intellectualism...

Beauty is not in complexity but it's in simplicity.

A good manager is best when people barely know that he exists. Not so good when people obey and acclaim him. Worse when they despise him.

A too explicit elucidation in education destroys much of the pleasure of learning. There should be room for sly hinters, masters of suggestion.

Simplicity and subtlety make for the best con. A distraction should lead the mark's attention upward, either toward the sky or to some better vision of himself. Color signals danger. Try to appear to have as many eyes as possible.

As with real reading, the ability to comprehend subtlety and complexity comes only with time and a lot of experience. If you don't adequately acquire those skills, moving out into the real world of real people can actually become quite scary.

Being discreet has never been your strong suit.

L]anguage cannot match music's subtlety and preciseness of expression.

He sighed and smiled and touched my nose. 'Words! You funny thing! Words! Verbigation! You know you will spoil everything if you have to verbalize about it. Words never work properly. Life is difficult, subtle, complex. Life, as Lawrence might say, is a 'winged gift'. Words are always inadequate to express the complexity of a situation.

I brushed some imaginary lint from my shirt, or touched my cleavage to catch his eye, depending on your perspective.

What moved Ted, mashed some delicate glassware in his chest, was the quiet of their interaction, the absence of drama or tears as they gazed at each other, touching gently.

an edgy eagerness to please that his irony couldn't conceal.

something about the curve of his lips was more intimate than any touch.

she offered herself to him with that quiet expression which is peculiar to a good-natured courtesan.

I think that one's art is a growth inside one. I do not think one can explain growth. It is silent and subtle. One does not keep digging up a plant to see how it grows.

A horror so refined

What's not to love' is hardly a reason to love, she says. And the catch of your life is not the same thing as the love of your life. Be careful of that subtle but rather crucial distinction.

youre beautiful', he said without grandiloquence. 'that's the least of it', she replied politely.

It is always the simple that produces the marvelous.

I'd always felt that one could read a woman's discontent in the amount of embroidery in her sitting room. It gave me a crowded and nervous feeling to sit among so much frantic stitchery.