Quotes About Subtlety

the killing blow is sometimes the softest

The part I enjoy most is not the doing, but the noticing. Noticing the way she smells like oversugared coffee, and the difference between her smile and her photographed smile, and the way she bites her lower lip, and the pale skin of her back. I just want the pleasure of noticing these things at a safe distance-I don't want to have to acknowledge I am noticing.

It was like seeing someone who wore a striped tie or parted his hair on the left — a detail, but not a telling one.

The marvelous intricacy of the rules they'd established, the processes they'd set into motion, the miracles of subtlety and beauty, were enough to make anyone drunk with admiration and awe, and how could God, having given man the ability to reason and understand, not want him to explore all the beautiful marvels with which He'd surrounded him? She

A no ser por la mirada melancólica de sus ojos, cuando pensaba en Oki, nadie habría advertido su tristeza. Y hasta esa ocasional sombra sólo contribuía a acentuar su belleza.

C]haracter occurs with the lightest of brushstrokes. Naturally, it can be destroyed lightly, too.

I admire an actor that can do a lot with doing nothing really, for the most part. I like doing a lot by doing so little.

It's amazing to me how often the answer to making something sound better is to play something less.

Anytime people see an emotion that is not extremely emotional, they call it 'deadpan.'

Mes enfants, you mustn't go at things head-on, you are too weak; take it from me and take it from an angle... Play dead, play the sleeping dog.

Simplicity and charm.

He seeks life where it is to be found: in all that is most delicate, in the folds of things.

Perfection is in the little things

A silver speaks it's own language, does it not?

Oh Satan you're a wily one.

It's good to be clever but cleverness should be muted and buried in the sand. Nobody should be able to detect it but me.

Disturber of the Peace." Miss Buncle's book intrigued Mr. Abbott, and Miss Buncle herself intrigued him. She was such a queer mixture of simplicity and subtlety (at least he thought she was). She spoke bad grammar and wrote good English. She was meticulously truthful in all she said (it was almost as if she were on oath to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth all day long and every day of the week).

The matter of international relations is very subtle and exquisite.

Deceivingly, Miss Neville, the word vodka means 'little water.' The Russians are masters of the understatement." - Lord Nash

There are truths so prosaic, so dense, so dull, that one can hardly state them without suggesting the idea of something subtler or more interesting beyond.

Everybody knew gentlemen could be obtuse, especially when it came to matters of the heart. Everybody knew, as well, that gentlemen needed to believe they were in charge. Therefore, ladies had to learn ways of communicating the obvious without being obvious about it.

It is often very useful for others to think you less intelligent than you are, Benedict said, his tone amused. It works particularly well against those who aren't as intelligent as you in the first place.

They say we wizards are subtle. But believe you me, we've got nothing, nothing at all, on women.

Thank you adult mittens, for allowing me to give people the finger without them knowing it.