59 Quotes About Subtlety

Lee assess a subordinate commander as "all lion; no fox.

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.

What what. Hush hush.

She’d make Nuryevet a strong country, unified again under one ruler, a country where the men were beautiful and the women were powerful and the children were healthy and bright-eyed(comment: I love how the author switches gender norms and normalizes it off-handedly throughout the book)

When something cement does not fit into the current context of activated ideas, the system detects an abnormality, as you just experienced. You had no particular idea of what was coming after something, but you knew when the word cement came that it was abnormal in that sentence. Studies of brain responses have shown that violations of normality are detected with astonishing speed and subtlety.

Like acting, sales works best when hidden.

Under (Lyndon) Johnson, the Senate functions like a Greek tragedy. All the action takes place offstage, before the play begins. Nothing is left for the participants but the enactment of their prescribed roles.

The anthology was not a best-seller; art as a weapon seldom is.

People here notice when you have gunfights in train stations!