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Subtle Quotes

Browse 1071 quotes about Subtle.

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Subtle Quotes

“Several times a day, stop and just listen. Open your hearing 360 degrees, as if your ears were giant radar dishes. Listen to the obvious sounds, and the subtle sounds—in your body, in the room, in the building, and outside. Listen as if you had just landed from a foreign planet and didn’t know what was making these sounds. See if you can hear all sounds as music being played just for you. Even in what is called silence there is sound. To hear such subtle sound, the mind must be very quiet.”

IfsKnowsMindBodySoundRoomsSilenceBuildingPlanetsListeningQuietDegreesMusic IsEarsObviousHearingYour BodyGiantsSubtleDishesJust ListenRadarBeing Played
Author:Jan Chozen Bays
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“Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country.... I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this.... It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me.”

WayYearsFirstsCountryBeautifulFoundInspiringClassDesignCollegeTenComputerDecidedHistoricalPracticalsSubtleFascinatingCaptureApplicationInstructionReedsMacintoshStanford UniversityCalligraphyMacintosh Computers
Author:Steve Jobs
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“A workable and effective way to meet and overcome difficulties is to take on someone else's problems. It is a strange fact but you can often handle two difficulties-your own and somebody else's-better than you can handle your own alone. That truth is based on a subtle law of self-giving or outgoingness whereby you develop a self-strengthening in the process.”

WayGivingTwoSelfFactsProblemLawProcessFriendshipStrangeTruth IsOvercomingDifficultyHandleSubtleBetter Than YouStrengtheningSelf Giving
Book:The positive principle today: how to renew and sustain the power of positive thinking
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“As you begin to live in the present moment, you will experience a subtle but profound change. Worrying about the future will cease. A deep peace will enfold you, a peace that says, 'all is well. There is nothing to fear. Everything is unfolding according to plan, and you are being guided each step along the way.”

WayWellsMomentsStepsWorryPlansProfoundCeaseSubtlePresent MomentUnfoldingLive In The PresentAccording To Plan
Book:Words That Heal: Affirmations and Meditations for Daily Living
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“Harriet Levin [is] a shining poet in her generation.... The dynamics of her language and her vigorous voice distinguish all her poems. Levin's fearless willingness to tackle any subject combines with her subtle intelligence to produce a rare reading experience, the moving, psychologically sophisticated and intriguing work of a poet with both guts and craft”

MovingReadingLanguageVoiceGenerationsSubjectsProducePoetShiningCraftsFearlessGutsSubtleWillingnessSophisticatedVigorousIntriguingDynamicsReading Experience
Author:Molly Peacock
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“Disgrace is a subtle, multi-layered story, as much concerned with politics as it is with the itch of male flesh. Coetzee's prose is chaste and lyrical without being self- conscious: it is a relief to encounter writing as quietly stylish as this. I was not totally convinced by Lurie's musical abilities, with regard to his proposed opera, but that is my sole complaint.”

WritingSelfStoriesAbilityConsciousConcernedRegardMalesMusicalConvincedFleshEncountersProseReliefSubtleOperaSoleComplaintsDisgraceSelf ConsciousLyricalChasteStylishMusical AbilityCoetzee
Author:Paul Bailey
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“What is enthralling and illuminating about The Metaphysical Club is its portraits of individuals and their milieus. Menand is wonderfully deft at evoking a climate of ideas or a cultural sensibility, embodying it in a character, and moving his characters into and out of one another's lives. What might have been a jumble of intellectual movements and colorful minor figures (...) is instead a subtle weave of entertaining narrative and astute interpretation.”

Has BeensIdeasCharacterMightMovingIndividualFiguresMovementIntellectualClimateClubsNarrativeSubtleInterpretationEntertainingMinorsSensibilityPortraitsMetaphysicalMight Have BeenColorfulIlluminatingMilieuAstute
Author:George Scialabba
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“I am very subtle; but Man is deeper in his thought than I am. The woman knows that there is no such thing as nothing: the man knows that there is no such day as tomorrow. I do well to worship them.”

KnowsMenWellsHe ManTomorrowWorshipDeeperSubtle
Book:The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more
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“The British often shy away from any cinematic interpretation of real sex. They sometimes have what I call "subtle sex," which is really introspective and has soft music in the background. Either that or it's played for comedy. The British are kind of hung up about sex. They find it kind of titillating and they make jokes about it because they're nervous.”

KindRealSometimesSexComedyJokesBritishBackgroundsNervousSubtleShyInterpretationHungIntrospectiveCinematic
Author:Steve Coogan
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“The cause which is blocking all progress today is the subtle scepticism which whispers in a million ears that things are not good enough to be worth improving. If the world is good we are revolutionaries, if the world is evil we must be conservatives. These essays, futile as they are considered as serious literature, are yet ethically sincere, since they seek to remind men that things must be loved first and improved afterwards.”

IfsMenWorldFirstsEnoughTodayEvilLiteratureCausesMillionsProgressSeriousEarsBlockRevolutionarySubtleGood EnoughSincereImprovingEssaysNot Good EnoughScepticism
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“The edge of a painting is its frontier... where the artist negotiates his boundaries with the real world... where art begins and ends and where the eye enters and leaves the image. It determines, in an infinitely subtle number of ways, how you read a painting - which, unlike a book or a piece of music, has no pre-determined beginning or end.”

WorldWayArtBookRealEndsEyeArtistNumbersPiecesPaintingArt IsEdgesDetermineDeterminedBoundariesSubtleReal WorldFrontiers
Author:Andrew Graham-Dixon
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“Young love-making--that gossamer web! Even the points it clings to--the things whence its subtle interlacings are swung--are scarcely perceptible: momentary touches of finger-tips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and lip, faintest tremors. The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust.”

LoveMadeYoungJoyBeliefDarkVisionBlueMeetingsFingersLipsPhrasesSubtleRaysYearningCheeksSpontaneousYoung LoveUnfinishedMomentaryLove MakingCompletenessIndefinableOrbs
Book:Middlemarch: Easyread Edition
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“The first principle, when you don't know anything about the subject of a thesis, is to let the candidate talk, nodding now and then with an ambiguous smile. He thinks you know, and are counting his mistakes, and it unnerves him... the second principle of conducting an oral, ... is to pretend ignorance, and ask for explanations of very simple points. Of course your ignorance is real, but the examinee thinks you are being subtle, and that he is making an ass of himself, and this rattles him.”

ThinkingKnowsFirstsRealCoursesAsksSimpleMistakePrinciplesSubjectsIgnoranceAssExplanationCandidatesSubtleNow And ThenCountingAmbiguousConductingThesisNodding
Author:Robertson Davies
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“Dwellers by the sea cannot fail to be impressed by the sight of its ceaseless ebb and flow, and are apt, on the principles of that rude philosophy of sympathy and resemblance... to trace a subtle relation, a secret harmony, between its tides and the life of man... The belief that most deaths happen at ebb tide is said to be held along the east coast of England from Northumberland to Kent.”

MenSaidPhilosophyHappensBeliefSecretPrinciplesFailingSeaFlowSightEnglandRelationHarmonyEastSubtleTidesImpressedRudeCoastResemblanceEast CoastEbb And FlowDwellersKent
Author:James G. Frazer
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“Human beings today are surrounded by huge institutions we can never penetrate: the City, the banking system, political and advertising conglomerates, vast entertainment enterprises. They've made themselves user friendly, but they define the tastes to which we conform. They're rather subtle, subservient tyrants, but no less sinister for that.”

HumansMadeTodayPoliticalHuman BeingsCitiesStreetsHugeWallTasteInstitutionsEntertainmentLondonAdvertisingEnterpriseSubtleFriendlyTyrantsUsersConformBankingPenetrateSinisterSubservientBanking SystemUser Friendly
Author:J. G. Ballard
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“In fact, the influence of Schoenberg may be overwhelming on his followers, but the significance of his art is to be identified with influences of a more subtle kind - not the system, but the aesthetic, of his art. I am quite conscious of the fact that my Chansons madécasses are in no way Schoenbergian, but I do not know whether I ever should have been able to write them had Schoenberg never written.”

KnowsWayShouldWritingKindMayHas BeensArtFactsAbleWrittenInfluenceConsciousArt IsShould HaveMadSubtleSignificanceFollowersOverwhelmingAestheticShould Have BeenSchoenberg
Author:Maurice Ravel
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