Top 187 Subtlety Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

The difference between stupid and intelligent people - and this is true whether or not they are well-educated - is that intelligent people can handle subtlety.

With the arrival of the new comes the need to overcome fascination with novelty in order to approach substance and sophistication - a sophistication born of subtlety and depth of perception, not complexity and perceived virtuosity.

O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands.

Spirit of place! It is for this we travel, to surprise its subtlety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, its breath, its name.

Prime ministers require the hide of a rhinoceros, the morals of St. Francis, the patience of Job, the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the leadership of Napoleon, the magnetism of a Beatle and the subtlety of Machiavelli.

Johnny Winter doesn't know the word 'subtlety.' But it works, it works.

Sexiness, particularly in movies, is the chess game in the 'Thomas Crown Affair'. It's, it's, I don't know, but Faye Dunaway comes up a lot in that thinking. It's the subtlety of sexiness. The moment you try to be sexy, then it's not.

I think there's a weird stigma in the TV-film world that theater people can't be funny and understand subtlety, and I think that could not be more wrong.

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.

For me, the subtlety of black and white inspires the imagination of the individual viewer to complete the picture in the mind's eye. It doesn't attempt to compete with the outside world. I believe it is calmer and gentler than colour, and persists longer in our visual memory.

It may be that a more subtle person would find for this thing a reason of greater subtlety: but such is the reason that I find, and that liketh me best.

If we do away with semi-colons, parentheses and much else, we will lose all music, nuance and subtlety in communication - and end up shouting at one another in block capitals.

England gave me a chance. It's a very individual country where people have a personal style; they don't all follow a trend. The subtlety and wit of England is incredible, and they are very creative.

Pastries . . . can only be appreciated to the full extent of their subtlety when they are not eaten to assuage our hunger, when the orgy of their sugary sweetness is not destined to full some primary need but to coat our palate with all the benevolence of the world.

The talent for self-justification is surely the finest flower of human evolution, the greatest achievement of the human brain. When it comes to justifying actions, every human being acquires the intelligence of an Einstein, the imagination of a Shakespeare, and the subtlety of a Jesuit.

Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it's been shaped into acceptable expository prose.

It's interesting to marry American musical traditions with the subtlety of English-style storytelling and folk singer-songwriters like Martin Carthy and Bert Jansch - they're two heritages that are distinct but also cross over on so many levels.

If there is a class war - and there is - it is important that it should be handled with subtlety and skill. ... it is not freedom that Conservatives want; what they want is the sort of freedom that will maintain existing inequalities or restore lost ones.

It is not only important how long your breath is. What is more important is how smooth and subtle it is. For length of breath without the accompanying subtlety is fruitless.

Its very variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity makes it possible to say things in English which simply cannot be said in any other language.

I've always adored the filmmaker Sam Fuller. The first time I watched 'Shock Corridor' was such a magnificent discovery. I love his lack of subtlety, the way he tackles serious topics with bold and inappropriate humor.

Life has to be in the moment, spontaneous and venerable. There isn't any winning or losing. Life itself, as it flowers in depth and subtlety, is the reward, and it isn't always an easy or fun process. We must learn to see that the issue of happiness is irrelevant. The relevant quest is the expansion of consciousness.

Jazz is improvisation and syncopation, with resilience and flow, with earthy elegance, nuance and subtlety, with the integrity of individual expression within (usually) a group context, with true democracy in action.

The interior landscape responds to the character and subtlety of the exterior landscape; the shape of the individual mind is affected by the land as it is by genes.

In much of computer science, I can easily 'auto-grade' your work and give you an instant meaningful feedback. I can't do this when it comes to the subtlety of human thought, language, poetry, philosophy.

Subtlety chases the obvious up a never-ending spiral and never quite catches it.

Work/Loaf Ratio”...I have spent fourteen years perfecting... I won't bore you with a long-winded explanation of the “W/LR” save to say that it is an algebraic formula of such complex numeric subtlety that it can be understood only by mathematicians and hobos.

Ayrton Senna was an extraordinary racing driver. His skills, craft, subtlety and courage were of such magnitude that he dwarfed his generation of drivers.

As among all the doctrines of the gospel, there is none opposed with more violence and subtlety than that concerning our regeneration by the immediate, powerful, effectual operation of the Holy Spirit of grace.

In the 1900s, bleaching lotions and skin-lighteners were a female imperative no matter what her colour, often carrying suggestive names like 'Fair-Plex Ointment' and 'Black-No-More.' The tiniest touch of rouge was allowed, but only if applied with great subtlety.

In movies, there are some things the French do that Americans are increasingly incapable of doing. One is honoring the complexities of youth. It's a quiet, difficult undertaking, requiring subtlety in a filmmaker and perception and patience from us.

Symbolism perhaps is a bit in your face, and I've tried my best to control that as best I can as I've grown older and thought that one could approach something with a little more subtlety.

Unfortunately, public debates do not have much room for subtlety. The audience wants a quick thrust at your opponent, not a slow and convoluted series of moves. Whenever Obama uses subtleties in discussing a complex issue, he gets creamed.

When you're in seeing someone like Ellen Page, and you're right then, it's just the two of you. You're locked in. There's this incredible subtlety and control of the actor who's sitting across from you that you're really required to step up your game.

The manager believes soccer is a science and the field a laboratory, but the genius of Einstein and the subtlety of Freud is not enough for the owners and the fans. They want a miracle worker like Our Lady of Lourdes, with the stamina of Gandhi.

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

People lost the capacity of using their brain. It's all about the label. Not about the labels showing but subtlety of the labels.

I had reached the conclusion myself that sex was not a division but a continuum, that almost nobody was altogether of one sex or another, and that the infinite subtlety of the shading from one extreme to the other was one of the most beautiful of nature's phenomena.

There's the conventional wisdom, of which I have none, where you get a record deal, you get a publicist, you get a campaign, and you do the tour, but none of that adds up to things like nuance and subtlety and dynamic.

For each successive class of phenomena, a new calculus or a new geometry, as the case might be, which might prove not wholly inadequate to the subtlety of nature.

Composing on the typewriter, I find that I am sloughing off all my long sentences which I used to dote upon. Short, staccato, like modern French prose. The typewriter makes for lucidity, but I am not sure that it encourages subtlety.

Sometimes men present a swagger that suggests a prowess, whether it's sexual or financial. L.A. seems to be a place where trying too hard is almost a given. Some people are unapologetic about how blatantly they represent who they are through what they wear or drive. Subtlety is in short supply.

In the crowd, herd, or gang, it is a mass-mind that operates-which is to say, a mind without subtlety, a mind without compassion, a mind, finally, uncivilized.

By following this simple path, you become extraordinary, unfathomable, a being of profound cosmic subtlety. You outlive time and space by realizing the subtle truth of the universe.

I have nothing against bombastic music, but when it comes to making albums, I'd prefer to make music that has a sort of vulnerable subtlety to it.

Really, subtlety is what is really important to me and my work.

Naturally, women are drawn to a man who understands the subtlety of emotions, and they know I'm a passionate man. But the reason I try to keep myself in shape is so I can sing better, not to look good.

He took pains to avoid self-depreciation, self-mockery, ambiguity, irony, subtlety, vulnerability, a civilized world-weariness and a tragic sense of history--the very things, he says, that are most natural to him.

The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.

Faces in the everyday impress us as hives of subtlety. That impression must be sharpened in photography, which discloses only a microsecond of the face's behaviour, immersed in a social process.

One can derive the same fun from print-making as from making mud pies and great subtlety can be achieved through the use of transparent inks, half-tone screens and even accidental colour combinations, which is often where the art hides.

I think the worst thing you could ever do is label comedy. I'm a fan of the broadness of Lucille Ball, the subtlety of Peter Sellers and the oddballness of Fred Armisen and the wittiness of Marty Short. I'm a fan of all of it, and I want to do all of it.

Jacqueline Woodson's books are such a gift to parents and children for their poignant subtlety and lyricism and their willingness to let a reader dwell in the pangs of realization that we sometimes try to protect our children from.

I don't really think much about how I would have fared in the Second World War. It's a topic that has to be treated with respect and subtlety, and you can't just go in all guns blazing and make an epic action film.

Subtlety will sometimes give safety, no less than strength; and minuteness has sometimes escaped, where magnitude would have been crushed. The little animal that kills the boa is formidable chiefly from its insignificance, which is incompressible by the folds of its antagonist.

French is, in many ways, more difficult for an English-speaking person to sing. It is so full of complex and trying vowels. It requires the utmost subtlety.

For me, there's a subtlety in focusing on the right shape of T-shirt and pant. I recognise that it's boring, but the idea is to catch people off-guard and reward them in some valuable way.

I've learned a lot about doing accessories and making shoes and handbags. I don't think my perspective has really changed. The subtlety of understanding yarns, what makes a fabric what it is - I've learned technical skills and more about the craft.

Perhaps it's an accident of nationality, but the English treasure subtlety and appreciate not having everything spelled out for them, while Americans want everything made apparent.

Menswear is about subtlety. It's about good style and good taste.