Subtle Quotes

“I woke to the sound of rain.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!”
― John Milton

“Emotional illiterates, who don’t recognize the sound of a broken heart, will never be able to hear the subtle vibrations of love reverberating through the rustling flora of life. ("Love as dizzy as a cathedral”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.”
― Francis Bacon, The Collected Works of Sir Francis Bacon (Unexpurgated Edition)

“Seemingly minor yet persistent things penetrate the mind over time making it difficult to ever realize the impact; hence, though quite unfortunate, the most dangerous forms of corruption are those that are subtle and below the radar.”
― Criss Jami, Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile

“The true genius of a Woman is her subtle flair in creating the illusion that you are the smart one”
― Josh Stern, And That’s Why I’m Single

“The fruition of the year had come and the night should have been fine with a moon in the sky and the crisp sharp promise of frost in the air, but it wasn't that way. It rained and little puddles of water shone under the street lamps on Main Street. In the woods in the darkness beyond the Fair Ground water dripped from the black trees.”
― Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio

“And then the sly arch-lover that he was, he said the subtlest thing of all: that the lover was nearer the divine than the beloved; for the god was in the one but not in the other - perhaps the tenderest, most mocking thought that ever was thought, and source of all the guile and secret bliss the lover knows.”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Tales

“His chief form of entertainment was reading. The last moments he was in a cabin were usually spent scanning bookshelves and nightstands. The life inside a book always felt welcoming to Knight. It pressed no demands on him, while the world of actual human interactions was so complex. Conversations between people can move like tennis games, swift and unpredictable. There are constant subtle visual and verbal cues, there's innuendo, sarcasm, body language, tone. Everyone occasionally fumbles an encounter, a victim of social clumsiness. It's part of being human.
To Knight, it all felt impossible. His engagement with the written word might have been the closest he could come to genuine human encounters. The stretch of days between thieving raids allowed him to tumble into the pages, and if he felt transported he could float in bookworld, undisturbed, for as long as he pleased.”
― Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit

“It is the subtle things in life that you have to look for because the deepest love speaks at a whisper that only two people can hear.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Yes, Jeeves?"
The man had materialized on the carpet. Absolutely noiseless, as usual.
"A note for you, sir."
"A note for me, Jeeves?"
"A note for you, sir."
"From whom, Jeeves?"
"From Miss Bassett, sir."
"From whom, Jeeves?"
"From Miss Bassett, sir."
"From Miss Bassett, Jeeves?"
"From Miss Bassett, sir."
At this point, Aunt Dahlia begged us for heaven's sake to cut out the cross-talk vaudeville stuff. Always willing to oblige, I dismissed Jeeves with a nod, and he flickered for a moment and was gone.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves

“You cannot capture happiness and put it inside a bottle. It is an emotion that lasts for a temporary period of time. And after you have felt it, it goes away subtly and sublimely. You will never realize the exact moment when it passed through your being and bid you goodbye! But you can wait for the next one!”
― Avijeet Das

“We cannot see how divine the hills and the mountains are, so we want an angel with wings on top of them.”
― Francis Lucille, The Perfume of Silence

“The man looks the world full in the face, as if it were made for his uses and fashioned to his liking. The woman takes a sidelong glance at it, full of subtlety, even of suspicion.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“On all occasions there are better solutions waiting us to be found if we do subtle analysis with sharp- witted minds.”
― Prof.Salam Al Shereida

“Some hearts weren't meant to grow wings and fly to another to find nest. Some hearts are made to be kept within the ribbed cage it came, glowing as a bright candle in the curve, radiantly wholesome of oneself.”
― Anthony Liccione

“Too often we allow the lyrics to sneak in under the melody.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“There is a time for diplomacy and a time for the battering ram.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Subtle voices’ are those positive or negative words that are subtly spoken into our lives. These ‘subtle voices’, although subtle, are too powerful because they tend to shape our thoughts and inform our actions. That is why it is essential that we be selective of what we allow into our thoughts.”
― D.S. Mashego

“Subtle! Subtlety is bourgeois. Brecht us that when he popped drama’s cherry. He fucked drama until it stopped being subtle, like a lady, and started being useful, like a whore.”
― David Burr Gerrard, Short Century

“What a lovely bit of light to change an entire perspective of an experience. So powerful, so subtle and so pure in nature that I can’t argue it away.”
― Lannah Marshall, Shoal: A Thanet Writers Anthology

“They’re surrounding us,” he grunted against my neck. “But they won’t go near your fire. Thanks for that, by the way. You’re not the most subtle when it comes to magic, so I knew it had to be you.”
― Jane Washington, A City of Whispers

“There is a subtle magic in the way a tree lives. It joyfully embraces its life growing from the Earth and gracefully falls to mingle back with the Earth.”
― Avijeet Das

“All the mothers-in-law I have ever had were admirable. Yet the legend of the comic papers is profoundly true. It draws attention to the fact that it is much harder to be a nice mother-in-law than to be nice in any other conceivable relation of life. The caricatures have drawn the worst mother-in-law a monster, by way of expressing the fact that the best mother-in-law is a problem. The same is true of the perpetual jokes in comic papers about shrewish wives and henpecked husbands. It is all a frantic exaggeration, but it is an exaggeration of a truth; whereas all the modern mouthings about oppressed women are the exaggerations of a falsehood. If you read even the best of the intellectuals of to-day you will find them saying that in the mass of the democracy the woman is the chattel of her lord, like his bath or his bed. But if you read the comic literature of the democracy you will find that the lord hides under the bed to escape from the wrath of his chattel. This is not the fact, but it is much nearer the truth. Every man who is married knows quite well, not only that he does not regard his wife as a chattel, but that no man can conceivably ever have done so. The joke stands for an ultimate truth, and that is a subtle truth.”
― G.K. Chesterton, All Things Considered

“More often than not, DID is dissimulated and camouflaged, so it is important to understand that, although its processes and structures may be active and powerful, its manifestations may be subtle.”
― Richard P. Kluft

“I am at your mercy.”

Matthias cracked one of his whips. “Get up and get in the house.”

“As you wish.” Rose wrinkled his nose, picked a banana peel off his lap, and stood in the last faint beams of sunset.

“Whoa!”
“Is he wearing a leather cat suit?”
“Holy Mother!"
“Dude!”

The guys all quickly averted their eyes and raised their hands to further block any chance of catching a view. Anything to not see Rose in his painted-on leather one-piece that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. Their reactions were pure entertainment.

“Stunning, right?” Rose spread his palms as far as the cuffs would allow.

“Oh, I’m stunned.” Ayden looked ill. Rose looked down at himself with admiration. “Not many males can pull off this look.” “No male can pull off that look.”

“Actually, his finely sculptured physique would be considered the perfect complement for this type of anatomically revealing attire which accentuates his—”

“Bloody hell, Jayden, shut it!”
“Dude, this is so not right.”
“I feel like it’s looking at me.”
“Feel like what’s looking at—? Oh. Oh! Ugh, now I feel like it’s looking at me too.”
“How can it be looking at both of us?”
“Are you serious?”
“I’m gonna be sick.”
“Someone please gouge out my eyes.”
“He might as well be naked.”

“Already did that,” Rose said dryly and gave me a suggestive wink. “Ask Aurora.”

“What!” Now the crowd had eyes on me. I frantically shook my head.

“No, no, no. It’s not what you think. He was in the water with most,” my hands circled over my abdomen, “stuff covered.”

“Most?” Ayden almost shrieked. The orange-red flames on his arms flashed blue-white.”
― A. Kirk, Drop Dead Demons

“Oh, thank God.”

“Please,” Matthias said. “I told you she’s too hard to kill.”

“Aww,” I said. “Thank you.”

Matthias offered me a sweet smile. “Just like a cockroach.”
― A. Kirk, Demons in Disguise

“If I win, you’re to be at my beck and call for the semester. If I need a favor, you have to drop what you’re doing. Within reason, of course. If I want someone to go shopping with, you have to come. If I want a gym buddy or want to go get mani-pedis, you’re who I’m calling to come with me.”

Creed didn’t hide his irritation. “You want a boyfriend.”
― Ashley N. Rostek, Find Me

“Awe Spectrum -
Subtle. Expansive. Awegasmic.”
― Jake Eagle LPC, The Power of Awe: Overcome Burnout & Anxiety, Ease Chronic Pain, Find Clarity & Purpose―In Less Than 1 Minute Per Day

“Take time during your practice to move through each posture with increased awareness of the subtlety of each moment. Notice any shifts in the breath, in sensation, in the mind.”
― Raegan Robinson