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Subtle Quotes

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Subtle Quotes

“I think of moral beauty as what is the good and the just - terms perhaps best defined by their opposite: evil. Evil is the willingness to do damage to the other; its maximal expression is murder, but it includes a great deal of subtle and not-so-subtle injuries as it advances to that extreme. Evil acts reduce the other to an object, a being to its component parts, and obliterate subjectivity. Evil's breeding ground is a lack of empathy.”

ThinkingEvilTermDealsMoralObjectsExpressionEmpathyOppositesMurderExtremesDefinedDamageInjurySubtleWillingnessComponentsBreedingSubjectivityLack Of Empathy
Author:C.E. Morgan
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“You see so many beautiful things happening in this world, and you see so many things that make you want to cry and crawl under a rock. But there's an underlying feeling of magic and mystery in everything that I live for. I feel like all of my art is trying to get people to see that underlying, subtle energy that lives within everything that we see and what we don't see in this world.”

PeopleWorldWantFeelsTryingArtFeelingsBeautifulEnergyMagicMysteryRocksCryThis WorldHappeningsArt IsThings HappenSubtleBeautiful Things
Author:Willow Smith
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“The recent past is full of diverse examples of writers - Mahfouz in Egypt, Pamuk in Turkey, and more interestingly, Pasternak in the Soviet Union - who have conducted their arguments with their societies and its political arrangements through their art in subtle, oblique ways. They didn't always have the license to make bold pronouncements about freedom, democracy, Islam, and liberalism, but they exerted another kind of moral authority through their work.”

WayKindArtPastPoliticalMoralDemocracyExampleAuthorityArgumentUnionsIslamLiberalismSubtleSovietDiverseArrangementsEgyptSoviet UnionLicenseTurkeysMoral AuthorityRecent Past
Author:Pankaj Mishra
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“It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.”

MenHeartSpiritNatureQualityAirTreeWindClaimsCloudsForestsSubtleWearyTree Of LifeForests And TreesNature's BeautyOld TreesInspirational TreeOlive TreesWind In The TreesWeary Heart
Book:The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays (Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer, containing Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, Catriona and A Child's Garden of Verses
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“The method of political science is the interpretation of life; its instrument is insight, a nice understanding of subtle, unformulated conditions.”

LifePoliticalUnderstandingNiceConditionsInspireMethodInstrumentsInsightSubtleInterpretationPolitical Science
Book:The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson: College and state, educational, literary and political papers (1875-1913)
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“Art is expression; what is expressed is often the vision of a subtle and powerful soul, and also his experience with his vision; and however vivid and skilful he may be in the means of expression, yet it is frequently found that the master-spell in his work is something felt to be indefinable and inexpressible.”

MayMeanArtSoulFoundFeltPowerfulVisionExpressionMastersArt IsSubtleSpellsVividIndefinable
Book:Two Phases of Criticism, Historical and Aesthetic: Lectures Delivered on the Larwill Foundation of Kenyon College, May Seventh and Eighth, 1913
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“It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable; it is precisely thereby that it attracts the more subtle minds. It seems that the hundred-times-refuted theory of the "free will" owes its persistence to this charm alone; some one is always appearing who feels himself strong enough to refute it.”

FeelsMindEnoughSeemsStrongTheoryHundredPersistenceCharmSubtleFree WillStrong EnoughAppearing
Book:Writings of Nietzsche: Volume 1
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“Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?”

GivingWritingRealAbleFormCreativityClearMagicSweetTerribleMereSubtlePlasticVivid
Book:The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts
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“I was trying to come round to the idea that there might be an invisible reality capable of interfering in our lives, but the only reason I did so was because of a love I didn't want to believe I felt but which was continuing to grow in a subtle, devastating way. I was content in my universe and didn't want to change it at all, even though I was being propelled in that direction.”

WayWantTryingBelieveIdeasReasonRealityMightUniverseGrowsFeltOur LivesCapableRoundsInvisibleSubtleContinuingInterfereContinuing To Grow
Author:Paulo Coelho
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“You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!), in order to discern at once, by ineffable signs―the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limbs, and other indices which despair and shame and tears of tenderness forbid me to tabulate―the little deadly demon among the wholesome children; she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power.”

ChildrenLittlesArtistOrderTearsCreaturesDespairInfiniteHotShameFantasticFlamesPoisonDemonUnconsciousSubtleMelancholyBubblesTendernessLimbsOutlinesSpineMadmenIneffableCringeFelineVoluptuousCheekbones
Book:The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated
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“Of course it’s the apparently tranquil periods that deceive us. Though our instruments or our senses or our wits may not be able to see the processes that are leading toward these clusters of events, they’re happening. The star, the wheel, the butterfly—all are in a subtle state of unrest, waiting for the moment when some invisible mechanism signals that the time has come. Then the star explodes; the wheel makes poor men rich; the butterfly mates and dies.”

MenMayStatesMomentsAbleDiesCoursesStarsWaitingProcessPoorRichEventsPeriodsHappeningsInstrumentsWitSensesInvisibleWheelsSubtleMatesMechanismButterflyDeceivingSignalsPoor ManTranquilUnrestClusters
Author:Clive Barker
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“What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright...Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?”

BookIdeasFeelingsSeemsHappenedHavensWindReturnWindowNotionEveningBurningSubtleOccupationVagueObscureLampsAfarBurning Bright
Author:Gustave Flaubert
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“It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream - making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams.”

TryingDreamSeemsGivenExistenceStruggleImpossibleEssenceRelationSurpriseNotionIncrediblesVainSubtleSensationsAbsurdityCapturedRevoltEpochBewildermentHeart Of Darkness
Author:Joseph Conrad
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“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.”

WayWantLittlesSaidGodMightAbleScienceReligionUniverseModernMajorsDrawsBiggerProphetAweSubtleReverenceConventionalReservesElegantStressedCosmologyWant HimModern ScienceOrganized ReligionMagnificencePale Blue DotSubtle AtheistAstronomy And Universe
Author:Carl Sagan
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