Top 177 Subtle Quotes

I’m almost sometimes too subtle in my acting.

Wearing a bold print gets harder as you get older. It’s safer to stick to subtle prints or block colours. I have always found prints quite tricky. My daughter Carly, who is on the design team at Stella McCartney, is obsessed with them.

Europe, in legend, has always been the home of subtle philosophical discussion; America was the land of grubby pragmatism.

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.

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.

If you ask me about my chosen colour palette for the clothes I wear myself, I’m usually one for more neutral, subtle shades.

I was tired of everyone saying that when you write about race in America, it has to be nuanced, it has to be subtle, it has to be this and that.

If we make films only for the frontbenchers, we can’t make money. Hence, we have to make it for a majority audience. As my films are mass films, I deal with emotions in raw form – they are not subtle. I don’t mind being branded. That does not mean I like only those kinds of films.

‘What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal’ was thrilling in its light, deceptive tone, its subtle but irresistible momentum.

I’d love to find a lifelong female film editor as Scorsese has with Thelma Schoonmaker. I think women are probably, without generalising, sensitive to subtle things as an editor.

Monopoly may also end in tears, but its tensions are cruder, lacking the infinitely subtle shadings of irritation and acrimony provided by Scrabble.

Everybody, to some extent, manipulates. Even children learn to cry when they want something. There are all kinds of subtle things we do to get others to follow our lead, not bother us, and so on.

This making studies and then taking them home to use them is only half right. You get composition, but you lose freshness; you miss the subtle and, to the artist, the finer characteristics of the scene itself.

The reactions of the human heart are not mechanical and predictable but infinitely subtle and delicate.

I think that one’s art is a growth inside one. I do not think one can explain growth. It is silent and subtle. One does not keep digging up a plant to see how it grows.

I’m here today to warn you: I want you to watch out for the adversary. Guard yourself from any spirit of entitlement. Restrain any and all subtle temptation to gain attention or to find ways to promote yourself.

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

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.

I usually control the environment I’m in, but my control is very quiet and subtle.

How an individual’s reputation is protected online is too important and subtle a policy matter to be legislated by a high court, which is institutionally mismatched to the evolving intricacies of the online world.

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.

My kids speak of both subtle slights and blatant racism. It’s a narrative I never imagined for them.

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

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.

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

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.

My first two records were more energetic; Phantom Moon is subtle, quiet; so these various reactions are just something I expected.

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

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.

With a population of 1.4 billion, China is a lucrative market. But getting into that market isn’t cheap. At best, the price of doing business in China is silence; at worst, it’s reading talking points straight from the Chinese Communist Party. Beijing is not subtle about it.

When punk started, it wasn’t subtle.

I am the most successful unsuccessful actor in New York. And I guess with that, maybe apparent only to myself, there started to be a very subtle but unmistakable whiff of entitlement, bitterness, jealousy. I was not respecting the work.

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

Everything you do, every thought you have, every word you say creates a memory that you will hold in your body. It’s imprinted on you and affects you in subtle ways – ways you are not always aware of. With that in mind, be very conscious and selective.

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 learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

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.

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.

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.

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 want to write such things as compel the admiring acclamation of the world at large, such things as are written but once in years, things subtle but distinctly different from the books written every day.

The desire for money may be an indication of greed, but I want to argue that greed is a much more subtle vice than simply the desire to be rich.

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.

It takes two years on the stage for an actor or an actress to learn how to speak correctly and to manage his voice properly, and it takes about ten years to master the subtle art of being able to hold one’s audience.

I learned that you don’t have to be all over the place, that you can be subtle and you can say what you say. The words that you put together can be just as hilarious as falling all over the place or doing something.

The fragrance that suits me best is Romance by Ralph Lauren. It seems to blend into my chemistry, so it is nice and subtle. I don’t like to be doused in scent. This one is feminine, fresh and a bit musky.

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

Subtle Pride is an improvisational voice band.

Well, I am a Malayali and I know the kind of expectations my fans have about my films. That, for me, is the biggest award. So I try and pick roles that I hope viewers will like. Malayalis want actors to be subtle in their acting and they enjoy realism.

I think that racism has gotten more subtle, and it’s not even racism anymore: it’s placism. Like where you live or whether you went to community college or Harvard, and it exists within the race.

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.

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.