Quotes About Subtlety

There are a few people who will feel her touch—a chill up a spine, a hand in the air, a poem recalled—even if they won't exactly know it.

The neocortex allows for the subtlety and complexity of emotional life, such as the ability to have feelings about our feelings.

Os sentimentos morais derivam da empatia e as reflexões morais implicam tempo e foco. Um dos custos do frenético fluxo das distrações que enfrentamos hoje em dia, receiam alguns, é uma erosão da empatia e da compaixão. Quanto mais distraídos andamos, menos conseguimos cultivar formas mais subtis de empatia e compaixão.

To be a philosopher," said Thoreau, "is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.

I dealt with so recklessly some years ago in my books Philosophy and the Social Problem (1917), The Story of Philosophy (1926), Transition (1927), The Mansions (or Pleasures) of Philosophy (1929), and On the Meaning of Life (1932). I know that life is in its basis a mystery; a river flowing from an unseen source and in its development an infinite subtlety; a "dome of many-colored glass," too complex for thought, much less for utterance.

It is as though you looked down from above at me—not with what they would describe as pride but the same that is in me: a sort of shame that the world should see you as I see you, a somewhat infantile creature— without subtlety— defenseless.

This is without subtlety," he said, as if to himself. His voice was cool and pleasant. His every move was part of a dance, a dance that never ended, even when his body was still, at rest, but for all the power it suggested, there was also a humility, an open simplicity.

A wise person allows herself to be used when it suits her purpose. She pretends weakness, then waits for the right moment to take control.

the most delightful and choicest pleasure is that which is hinted at, but never told.

How to explain... that the warning signs were so slight ? That disaster, when it is quite sure of its own strength, will announce itself by hardly moving its lips?

It was queer the way things crept: the night, and these feelings. One was brought up to scorn the tendency to despair. But it seemed that the darkness knew this, and found a way to reach one nevertheless. It was patient and subtle, gauging the heart's output of light. Her confusion grew, the heart lucent and the mind lucifugous

Through her ingenuity she invented a shorthand Greek script in which a long written narrative could be transcribed with far fewer letters, and which is still used by the Greeks today, a fine invention whose discovery demanded great sublety. She [Minerva/Pallas (Athena)] invented numbers and a means of quickly counting and adding sums.

Southern Lady Code: a technique by which, if you don't have something nice to say, you say something not-so-nice in a nice way.

Now, St. John could have been born into his elegance. It's a dangerous kind of elegance—he doesn't raise his voice, he lowers it.

She thought I hadn't seen her, but she's no good at hiding her intentions. She can't help tiptoeing around with a finger to her lips at key moments.

One may guess the why and wherefore of a tear and yet find it too subtle to give any account of. A tear may be the poetical resume of so many simultaneous impressions, the quintessence of so many opposing thoughts! It is like a drop of one of those precious elixirs of the East which contain the life of twenty plants fused into a single aroma.

We perceive and are affected by changes too subtle to be described.

Distinction without a difference.

Prose is not to be read aloud but to oneself alone at night, and it is not quick as poetry but rather a gathering web of insinuations which go further than names however shared can go. Prose should be a long intimacy between strangers with no direct appeal to what both may have known. It should slowly appeal to feelings unexpressed, it should in the end draw tears out of the stone ...

A novel has a whispering complexity of insinuations.

Observe carefully; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership.40

The word which gives the key to the national vice is waste. And people who are wasteful are not wise, neither can they remain young and vigorous. In order to transmute energy to higher and more subtle levels one must first conserve it.

Managing is about nuance as much as it is about decisiveness.

Method is more important than strength, when you wish to control your enemies. By dropping golden beads near a snake, a crow once managed To have a passer-by kill the snake for the beads.