Top 180 Subtle Quotes

I love Indian food – it’s my favourite cuisine. I love the mixture of spices and the subtle flavours. It’s really erotic; the spices are so sensuous.

Dragon fruit is very subtle, very delicate. So you want to be careful not to kill it with things that have very strong flavor.

In Rio Bravo when Duke makes love to Feathers, the scene dissolves to the next morning where we see him putting on his vest and almost humming. It was subtle, but you knew what happened. Give me a towel and some blankets any day!

What I do when I act and direct is I do a small version, go a little bigger, do a medium one, an over-the-top one, and then even bigger than that. I’ll do six readings of the line. And they’re not all the same. Just so I know if I was wrong about what I should have done, I luckily have this more subtle version.

If my cuisine were to be defined by just one taste, it would be that of subtle, aromatic, extra-virgin olive oil.

Success on the front of women’s rights will look like a world not only with obvious advances – where no girl is denied access to education, for instance – but also one with more subtle changes in how we regard gender and gender stereotypes.

I think jewelry is beautiful on all women and I think it’s sentimental – and Disney is sentimental. It’s subtle and it’s low-key and it’s just a sweet reminder of sweetness.

Homophobia obviously still exists, but it is a lot more subtle, and it is a lot more in the background.

Think about what would happen if Indiana Jones and Google Earth had a love child. I use high-resolution and NASA satellites and look for subtle differences on the surface of the earth that locate buried ancient pyramids and towns and ancient tombs, which we then go and excavate.

In literature as in ethics, there is danger, as well as glory, in being subtle. Aristocracy isolates us.

On stage you look much larger than you are. You can have subtle changes of timing; how you place a punch line in a joke or movement or emotion according to an audience.

I’ve never been a big fan of subtle art. I like art that gets deep into my head and starts my brain spinning with new ideas and inspiration and my whole body is full of energy.

Music that is considered minimalism – or post-minimalism music in general – things of that nature or that come from that tradition, or even drone, or non-western music, have a more subtle and more open-ended verticality to them that allows for your own mind and body to be involved.

However, some of my work is very subtle, and one should expect very subtle reactions to it.

Being a parent is weird. It changes people in subtle and unsubtle ways. In my case, it awoke a kind of manic sentinel in my brain. Anything in the house that might be a threat to the kids or to my wife gets terminated – food, sharp edges, poor wiring.

As in many British organisations, subtle institutionalised discrimination may well prevail. But in all my time in the army I’ve never experienced overt racism.

Racism comes in many different forms. Sometimes it’s subtle, and sometimes it’s overt. Sometimes it’s violent, and sometimes it’s harmless, but it’s definitely here. It’s something that I think we’re all guilty of, and we just have to make sure that we deal with our own personal racism in the right way.

In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.

Hanging out with politicians and corporations is very unhip work. But I think that the U2 audience have turned out to be incredibly subtle in their understanding.

I feel, in a way, on a record, you can be more subtle. In the live setting, everything gets amplified. The dynamics are more extreme in concert.

In Hitchcock’s eyes the movement was dramatic, not the acting. When he wanted the audience to be moved, he moved the camera. He was a subtle human being, and he was also the best director I have ever worked with.

It can be difficult to be subtle and not cartoony in prosthetics. But when you see characters like Bubbles and Desiree from ‘Little Britain’ on screen, it makes all the hard work worth it. It’s such fun watching those transformations.

I’ll see a photograph of a character and try to copy them on to my face. I think I’m really observant, and thinking how a person is put together, seeing them on the street and noticing subtle things about them that make them who they are.

Every glass thermometer has subtle variations in the size and shape of the bulb at the bottom and the capillary tube inside, as well as variations in the width of gradations on the side. The compounded effect of these uncertainties is that each thermometer reads temperature slightly differently.

These days, we are scrutinised by everybody. Girls in the industry put a lot of effort into it. You can’t be overdressed or underdressed, your make up has to be subtle and there’s a lot of brainstorming that goes into it.

It’s a good note for any young hopeful in this business to take: study up and make sure you are informed at all times because knowing how to anticipate someone’s subtle nuances in a performance will only elevate your own art!

Anything seen on TV is, in a subtle and sinister sense, thereby endorsed.

One of the most subtle but aggressive ways racism exists is through our education system.

My dad turned me onto Peter Sellers as a kid. I loved the fact that he was a unique combination of being extremely subtle and over-the-top all at the same time, and that’s a hard thing to do. I admire that.

I started many years ago using the Boss DS-1 and then graduated to the Satchurator and putting that right into that clean channel, and that sounds great. I’ve done many tours with that setup. Then we took the next two channels that were part of the JVM sound in channel 1 and made them a little more subtle.

I remember tearing up the first time I read Nabokov’s description, in ‘Speak, Memory,’ of his father being tossed on a blanket by cheering muzhiks, with its astonishingly subtle foreshadowing of grief and mourning.

I have been aware since my youth that I am a Hebrew through my mother, and that is something that has played a subtle but important role in my development.

Words can hurt you. In the larger world, it frames how people think about you, and it can hurt you in lots of little, subtle ways.

I spend a lot of my time trying to draw the attention of actors to the minute and subtle details of human behavior, which was the sort of thing I was looking at when I was a neurologist.

The subtle generational cues that make one thing cool and another uncool aren’t always obvious to a parent. My children are my dinner-table sounding board. I’ve come up with some wonderful ideas that they universally dismissed as ‘lame.’

Honestly, I don’t aspire to be a huge movie star. I really just fell in love with acting… Everything I do on-screen is very subtle.

For me, a great fantasy is real people, a world I recognise, human struggle and magic. You’ve got to have magic to make a fantasy work. But I like my magic to be subtle. I don’t want magic coming out of the hands of wizards. I want it to be pervading, sinister somehow.

I like things that are over the top and subtle at the same time.

Look, I’m very much in favor of tax cuts, but not with borrowed money. And the problem that we’ve gotten into in recent years is spending programs with borrowed money, tax cuts with borrowed money, and at the end of the day that proves disastrous. And my view is I don’t think we can play subtle policy here.

When I was a little kid, no matter what my parents told me, I would always argue – even if I agreed with them. And I’ve always been a show-off. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found ways to be more subtle about it, but that’s the way I am. I suppose that has something to do with why I write and direct.

It’s always obvious to me when someone is looking at me with an idea of who I am and hoping that that’s the person I’m going to be. No matter how subtle it is, it’s there, and you want to give them who they really want. But it ain’t me.

Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and entranced, present reader.

I was the most subtle person in the world.

When girls bully, it’s very subtle, and you can’t define it. At least with boys, the bullying is usually explicit, and you can deal with it. It’s psychological with girls.

Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.

I had panic attacks as a little girl, and they were not subtle.

Leeks, like other oniony things, reach a certain peak when fried. It’s the subtle sweetness that suddenly becomes evident and works so well with their creamy texture.

If you’re living with a scientist, you see the world differently than you do with a humanist. It’s in some ways very subtle, the differences in perceiving reality.

God may be subtle, but he isn’t plain mean.

In the course of our daily lives, we’re bombarded with a barrage of visual messages, some blatantly aggressive, some subtle. The trick is to find a way to break through without adding to the clutter and the ugliness. We have to be responsible about that.

Over the time that I followed Warren Buffett, one CFO told me, it’s very important to pay attention not only to what Warren Buffett says and what he actually does – often there are subtle differences between the two.

I think it’s really easy to approach a touchy subject head-on, but ‘Sharp Objects’ does it in a way that’s subtle and it presents mental illness as something quite common and normalized. It’s so common and shouldn’t be a conversation we’re afraid to talk about.

I find I can write for two lines, and then I have nothing else to say. For me, the only way to find something comes through the sentence level and sticking with the sentences that give a subtle feeling that there’s something more to say.

Conducting, I tried it once off the cuff, and quickly realized there were subtle aspects that I was missing. There is a lot more to it that I was able to grasp simply by watching conductors.

‘Scream Queens’ was a big, sensational show. There’s nothing subtle about a Ryan Murphy show, and I love that.

I think it’s important to be subtle, sweet, and powerful.

A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.

Tai Chi is not super masculine. It’s not super pushing and strong, but it’s has so much power in its movements. It’s so smooth and it’s so subtle.

Soccer can be very subtle; it’s a very nuanced sport. If I happen to make things easy and people don’t see it, that could be a reason why someone might stand out more than I do. But that’s just the way I’ve grown up playing the game.

By learning about my body and making small, subtle changes, I find out what I enjoy and what is effective. I’m always finessing: adjusting my diet and my workouts. You have to figure out which exercises are fun and interesting and stimulate your brain – or else you’ll never keep at them.

It’s very easy to get caught up in everything that’s going on and just daily stuff being a distraction. When you have all that taken away from you, your daily activity becomes a lot more subtle, and you appreciate it all a lot more.

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.

Strangely enough, I wasn’t into fast guitarists. I preferred Peter Green’s subtle touch. I saw him with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers at the Marquee Club in London and was very impressed. He was the only guitarist I’ve ever seen to turn the volume control on his guitar down during a solo.

I think you can say so much about a character in lots of subtle ways.

The Christianity of the St Stephen’s College I remember was atmospheric (how we loved the chapel, the choir and the Cross), cultural and entirely subtle.

Cervantes is the most important Spanish writer. But he is not the most representative of the Spanish. His irony, his sense of humor – they are too subtle to seem Spanish.

Stand-up comedy is a lot about amplifying emotions and situations; movie acting has a lot to do with mellowing things down and making them subtle. The transition was almost terrifying because of the magnitude of change.

When punk started, it wasn’t subtle.

I hate the term black sheep, but I just felt like I wasn’t keeping up. It was a subtle pressure I put on myself.

What we did is we used NASA topography data to map out the landscape, very subtle changes. We started to be able to see where the Nile used to flow.

There’s no need to go the full hog – a touch of subtle sequins will lift any outfit.

Being a Kathak dancer, learning Bharathanatyam was a challenge as it was not that subtle, when compared to my natural form of dance.

When you do television, you have this opportunity to drop these subtle hints everywhere. The way you say things, for example, sometimes those seeds turn into trees.

I’ve never set out to do anything other than get better at guitar and record and have fun. I feel like the Jazzmaster’s just your comrade on that journey. It can be really subtle, it can be angry, it can be chill. It can be anything.

If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.

Race was thick in the O.J. Simpson case from the very beginning, but it wasn’t evident. And I think the O.J. Simpson case revealed that there is subtle race, and there is sophisticated race, and there’s evident and observable race.

The power of ads rests more in the repetition of obvious exhortations than in the subtle transmission of values.

It’s a misconception that you don’t have seasons in southern California. They are just very subtle. The vegetation is very different. Plants react differently. You just have to be a little more observant.

Yeah, you know, you like it to come on like gangbusters, but you get into passages that are very interesting and subtle, and sometimes your original intent changes quite a bit.

Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin. Now, they are so subtle, they can milk you with two notes. They can make you feel like they told you the whole universe. But I don’t know that yet. All I got now is strength. Maybe if I keep singing, maybe I’ll get it.

When I was 17 or 18 I wanted to become a wine expert, and my parents wouldn’t let me drink. So I was devastated. All I could do was read, and I read and I read. And I’d read something like, you know, ‘Subtle hints of cassis.’

My mother wanted me to be a writer. But she was a child of the Depression and never understood that she wasn’t poor. So, you know, the idea of not having a job, it would creep through. But she tried very hard to be subtle about it.

We have spent so much time worrying about a ‘cyber Pearl Harbor,” the attack that takes out the power grid, that we have focused far too little on the subtle manipulation of data that can mean that no election, medical record, or self-driving car can be truly trusted.

Initially, I was like, ‘I can handle anything. What’s the big deal about being a mother?’ I was not prepared for the changes which are so subtle that they creep up on you.

When a black man is stopped by a cop for no apparent reason, that is covert racism. When a black woman shops in a fancy store and is followed by security guards, that is covert racism. It is more subtle than 1960s racism, but it is still racism.

The Patriot Act is ludicrous. Terrorists have proved that they are interested in total genocide, not subtle little hacks of the U.S. infrastructure, yet the government wants a blank search warrant to spy and snoop on everyone’s communications.

I do believe babies are born potty-trained. They’re born knowing and are able to give subtle signals that become very prominent if you reinforce them.

WorldView-3 goes into the mid-infrared wavelength, allowing you to see very subtle geological differences on the sites at a 0.4-metre resolution.

My approach to parenting is that everything is open – everything. I’m not very good at covert, or subtle, and I’ve had to learn timing. I do blunder in a bit.

Tracking action without cutting is the least jarring method of placing the audience into a real-time experience where they are the ones making the subtle choices of where and when to look.

For kind of sophisticated art I’m interested in, the larger structural rebuke has to be so subtle that it has to be distributed at an almost sub-atomic level. Otherwise, you fall into the kind of preachy, moralistic fable that I don’t think makes for good literature.

I’m kind of a subtle person.

Joy is a subtle elf; I think one’s happiest when he forgets himself.

I always felt the ‘X-Men,’ in a subtle way, often touched upon the subject of racism and inequality, and I believe that subject has come up in other titles, too. But we would never pound hard on the subject, which must be handled with care and intelligence.

A text may be superbly written, exquisitely subtle, deeply meaningful, but still seem like a luxury extra, something we add to the already well-stocked store of our reading experience.

I think the success around any product is really about subtle insights. You need a great product and a bigger vision to execute against, but it’s really those small things that make the big difference.

Myself, I happen to be married to an African-American woman, and we’re together 17 years. We took a few trips to the South 15 years ago, and we were sobered by some of the reactions people had – how subtle or not-so-subtle their reactions were.

Underlings look up to the boss for behavioral cues, subtle signs, hints and gestures.

It’s a really subtle kind of thing. It makes me feel like Randy Harrison is not a human being to them.

In America, to be ID’d – sorted, tagged, and permanently filed – is to lose a bit of one’s soul. To die a little. This sounds like a subtle, poetic notion. It’s not. In American legal and cultural tradition, one essential privilege of citizenship is not having to prove it on demand.

Decent cycling clothing today is designed with reflective strips or subtle detailing that is visible under streetlights or in car headlights. You’ll find that you can be seen just as well as you would in a builder’s fluorescent vest.

Someone said that the good thing about my TV programme was that it had so many tics, which I think are the subtle little touches of originality that Paul brings to it.

Encountering a real place enhances the performances of actors in subtle ways and changes the spiritual texture of the film.

It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person. So violence isn’t merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper.

Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings.

William Trevor is an author I admire; his stories are subtle and powerful, and beautifully written.

Usually, you lose interest in a story beyond a certain point. But with ‘Highway,’ there was something very subtle, yet something very influential. I intended ‘Highway’ to be the first film that I ever made. Didn’t happen.

It doesn’t annoy me but I think of myself as a presenter who is gay, rather than a gay presenter. It’s a subtle distinction, but that’s how I view it.

Delhi is fresh, brazen and more glamorous as compared to subtle Mumbai.

The Cyrillic and Greek scripts in particular have an alien beauty in their unfamiliar letterforms. Five weights of stroke thickness create subtle variations in light and dark that reflect the emerging and fading of the stars.

I think humor and protest can be subtle, instead of loud and going to the level of violence.

Can I be a leading man? I don’t believe myself to be; I don’t think that I am, but I’m in this place as a performer where I think about how to make things smaller, more subtle.

I like very masculine smells. I like wood scents on men. I just like a man to smell great, but I don’t like very strong cologne. I don’t like when a man is overpowered by cologne. I think subtle and sexy is always best.

Through the miracle of natural genetic recombination, each child, with the sole exception of an identical twin, is conceived as a unique being. Even the atmosphere of the womb works its subtle changes, and by the time we emerge into the light, we are our own persons.

A lot of my music is slow and subtle. The subtly is what I enjoy about making music.

I love the simplicity of Kevin Spacey’s work. He really does a subtle interpretation of every character, and that’s kind of my style of acting when it comes to dramatic roles.

I like to use the stage and there’s nothing subtle about me.

The matter of international relations is very subtle and exquisite.

In the modern workplace, sexism has adopted a more subtle persona; therefore, people can be accused of sexism where it’s far harder to determine whether they’re actually committing sexism or thinking in a sexist way.

These are very subtle things, of course, and I don’t expect everyone to pick them up consciously, but I think that there is something there that you must be able to feel, there is an energy at work that I must trust my audience will be able to pick up at some level.

With the work that I do as a director, I’ve got dialogue, camera movement, and character blocking to help create a tone to the piece. In photography, those elements are somewhat void so that tone becomes a bit more subtle but still equally important.

No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will cramp his style.

I learnt to keep my acting subtle.

There are two different kinds of spectacular fighters. One is a subtle counter puncher who shows the work like chess. It’s kind of an art, sports art. The other kind is when a guy has blood on all his body. That’s a second kind of spectacular fighter, and people enjoy both. Both kind of fighters need to be respected.

Bengali and Malayalam industries are driven by sensible and subtle stories that people can relate to due to the states’ literary and cultural heritage.

Verbal slip-ups often occur because we say things without knowledge of the subtle implications they carry. Understanding these implications requires social awareness – the ability to pick up on the emotions and experiences of other people.

The Marx Brothers isn’t subtle, and that’s hilarious.

Comedy is a man’s art form. It pretty much came from a time, post-World War II really – the 1950s are not really known for the subtle expressions of feminine life.

Broadway has the most savvy audience anywhere. They see everything and they know their theater. As sophisticated and subtle as you think you can be, the houses you get here will want something finer.

Even before string theory, especially as physics developed in the 20th century, it turned out that the equations that really work in describing nature with the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very elegant and subtle.

If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack.

I would play hooky from school and spend all day in the movie theaters. Consequently, I learned satire in all its subtle forms.

Washington, D.C., is not a subtle city. Unlike the capitals of other once-great powers which, many hundreds of years old, present a more seamless meshing of monumental memory and daily life, D.C. is constructed to shout, ‘Here I am! I am powerful!’ to the world.

Forgiveness is that subtle thread that binds both love and friendship. Without forgiveness, you may not even have a child one day.

I’m almost sometimes too subtle in my acting.

We didn’t care if we were well-liked as long as the movies were good. We served the movie – that was our master at Miramax. In our second incarnation, the movie is still the master but we’re getting the same results in more subtle ways.

Often, the disparities in the ways men and women are treated are subtle; there are not these clear barriers that you have to break down.

I am grateful to Allan Donald for his guidance and subtle nuances that he taught me.

I’ve always been very progressive and as much as I play Old World music, I have this progressive tenacity to keep adding futuristic elements in subtle ways where you won’t notice.

The bottom line is that the human body is complex and subtle, and oversimplifying – as common sense sometimes impels us to do – can be hazardous to your health.

Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.

I think my signature dance move might be some sort of ’80s new wave pogo, which I only break out on very special occasions. It will only last for about three seconds. Then I go back to a very subtle, less-is-more approach.

I’ve been subtle in my taste. It’s all about solid colours – mostly blue, white, and black. Also, I believe one should always feel comfortable in what they wear. Because when they’re not, their body language is always a big give-away.

Theatre is more metaphorical where you have to be louder and larger than life, whereas film is more subtle and more real.

Ariana is anything but subtle.

Making movies is about creating illusions, and they can be subtle illusions, but it’s all a cumulative effect as you make these little tweaks. It kinda adds up to something, hopefully.

The amount of subtle and beautiful physics that’s necessary to make a smartphone work is enormous.

Combine leather pants or leggings with an oversized sweater or turtleneck and sneakers for a super-chic look. However, remember to keep the colors subtle.

I get really excited when I see filmmakers make something that is subtle and feels real. It is really tough to do right.

I’ve come to love ‘This Country’ on BBC Three. It takes a while to get into the swing of it because the humour is very subtle, but it’s very beautifully done and there are quite a few guffaws to be had.

I’ll put ‘Stranger Things’ up there with the best of it. I think it’s such a profound show – it’s very subtle in the way that it tells its story, but it’s very effective. Every time I watch it, I feel something, which is very rare for me.

My character Lena is somebody who responds to people in a very simple way. I didn’t have to take myself off to a darkened room to concentrate, I just had to try and be open. It’s an interesting, subtle relationship.

Somebody must be up and somebody must be down. Trouble is, campaigns are messy, subtle creatures that don’t follow convenient narratives.

That’s my job as an actor – to go on and try to do the work so subtle and so fine and specific that the memories will linger for a long time.

The people’s love of pumpkin spice and snobbish elites’ derision of it suggest a subtle political reality: the pumpkin spice latte is America’s most conservative drink.

Sometimes we wait for thunderclaps, drumrolls, and clarion calls to alert us to what’s important when, actually, it’s most often the subtle and persistent signals around us that make the most difference.

While problems in a film are fairly easy to identify, the sources of those problems are often extraordinarily difficult to assess. A mystifying plot twist or a less-than-credible change of heart in our main character is often caused by subtle underlying issues elsewhere in the story.

I don’t sing to people. I sing for them. I told that once to Elvis Presley. He bought it. After that Elvis sang not to but for the audience. A subtle difference.

The more refined and subtle our minds, the more vulnerable they are.

Canada is the essence of not being. Not English, not American, it is the mathematic of not being. And a subtle flavour – we’re more like celery as a flavour.

Managerial discretion can take many forms, some very subtle. Individual managers may run slack operations; they may pursue subgoals that are at variance with corporate purposes; they can engage in self-dealing.

Americans must place greater emphasis on the more subtle dimensions of national power, such as innovation, education, the balance of force and diplomacy, and the quality of political leadership.

The king is so subtle with his words that he would confound the apostolic religion itself. He will find the weak points of the pope’s character and will trip him up to his destruction.

I think we are reluctant to move people out of an organization when there is not a good fit. It is typically not because someone is stupid or lazy or incompetent; it is a lot more subtle than that.

Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.

I don’t think a lot of people gave ‘Beavis & Butt-Head’ credit for how subtle it could be.

We would go back and maybe not say that thing to our dad that we said, or maybe be a little nicer to someone who we cared about and had a relationship with when we were young. You know, they’re subtle things, but we carry those with us forever. And I think that regret and time travel are intrinsically linked to me.

Keep in mind, lucha libre hasn’t been displayed in the U.S. in abundance. It’s been subtle. The pioneer was Mil Mascaras. Then that died down, and new talent was rising. Eddie Guerrero was the next one, then Konnan. Konnan had big success.

I can zero in on subtle things because I’m holding the camera.

One of the things that women really excel at is reading and reacting to subtle cues. We’ve always had to do that because men don’t have to.

The ‘that’s right’ breakthrough usually doesn’t come at the beginning of a negotiation. It’s invisible to the counterpart when it occurs, and they embrace what you’ve said. To them, it’s a subtle epiphany.

When you want some subtle emotions, you need some subtle vehicles for emotion.

My mom has a very subtle way of encouraging.

Manouri is a Greek ewes’ milk cheese that’s light in colour and texture. It’s fresh and milky, and goes well with other subtle flavours.

There were a couple times with close-ups where I tended to overact. I would use more of my face than I needed to. I learned how to be more subtle.

I like a naturalism to my dialogue and my comedy. I would rather have a few jokes sail by that might be more subtle than have every single joke hit hard. I would rather the comedy come out of character as opposed to feeling forced. Even if you’re giving some laughs up for it.

A very subtle difference can make the picture or not.

I think that for a lot of women there’s a subtle but unfortunately effective discouragement of women pursuing the STEM fields.

The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtle, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humour and so little wit in their literature.

My writing partner, Joni Lefkowitz, and I love studying girl friendships in particular because they seem defined by a combination of codependent intimacy and subtle, constant passive-aggressiveness.