Subtlety Quotes

The subtlest lie of all is the full truth.

A confused and weak man hides his weakness and uncertainty with fiery speeches.

That image of a chessboard — an epic contest between two giant players, carefully nudging their pieces around the globe as part of a grand strategy — has indeed become a familiar metaphor for the Cold War. But it is misleading. Many decisions remembered today for their farsighted, tactical brilliance were denounced in their day as weak-willed. And big, public gestures often made less difference than the small, hidden ones.

If you need something from somebody always give that person a way to hand it to you.

Subtlety is the mark of confidence and is thus by far the hardest thing for a writer to achieve.

When it comes to doing something about what is wrong in the world, Jesus is best known for his fondness for the minute, the invisible, the quiet, the slow – yeast, salt, seeds, light. And manure.

The most dangerous ideas are not those that challenge the status quo. The most dangerous ideas are those so embedded in the status quo, so wrapped in a cloud of inevitability, that we forget they are ideas at all.

Bring it down." Veteran leader Han Solo's correction to the overbearing swagger bike which his protégé is attempting to force his will on others.

Truth is not fully explosive, but purely electric. You don't blow the world up with the truth; you shock it into motion.

Transported to a different culture, thought often loses its subtlety and can even rampage like a wild beast.

You maintain hope for humanity as an infinite skeptic of gossip and slander. In all mankind's desires for entertainment and exaggeration and sensationalism, when it comes to gossip, the individual always sounds worse than he really is. This is why adhering to gossip subtly affects the mental state of the listener - he goes on holding shady opinions regardless of where the realities of their lights and darknesses may stand.

It was easy to conclude: The night was young and alive, in its ever so subtle way.