Exquisite Quotes
More Exquisite Quotes
Joys too exquisite to last,And yet more exquisite when past.
james montgomery— The Little Cloud.
I have occasionally had the exquisite thrill of putting my finger on a little capsule of truth, and heard it give the faint squeak of mortality under my pressure.
— Letter to Stanley Hart White (January 1929)
Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or bicycle.
Alain de Botton— The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009, pg. 127)
It is characteristic of the design of scientific research that exquisite attention is devoted to methodological problems that can be solved, while the pretense is made that the ones that cannot be solved are really nothing to worryabout.
— 1995 'Sex, Lies, and Social Science', in the NewYork Review of Books, 20 Apr.
The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of description and the sentiment, is denied to me.
— 1826 OnJaneAusten. Journal,14 Mar.
Mr Palliser was one of those politicians in possessing whom England has perhaps more reason to be proud than of any other of her resources, and who, as a body, give to her that exquisite combination of conservatism and progress which is her present strength and best security for the future.
Anthony Trollope— 1864 CanYou Forgive Her?, ch.24.
Her position before was sheltered from the light: now, I had a distinct view of her whole figure and countenance. She was slender, and apparently scarcely past girlhood: an admirable form, and the most exquisite little face that I have ever had the pleasure of beholding: small features, very fair; flaxen ringlets, or rather golden, hanging loose on her delicate neck; and eyes — had they been agreeable in expression, they would have been irresistible.
emily brontë— Mr. Lockwood on Catherine Linton (Ch. II).
Affliction's sons are brothers in distress;A brother to relieve,—how exquisite the bliss!
Robert Burns— A Winter Night.
In viewing the scheme of redemption, I seem like one viewing a vast and complicated machine of exquisite contrivance; what I comprehend of it is wonderful, what I do not, is, perhaps, more so still.
richard cecil— p. 422. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
But just as delicate fare does not stop you from craving for saveloys, so tried and exquisite friendship does not take away your taste for something new and dubious.
colette— Chambre d’Hôtel, "The Rainy Moon" (1940)
Santiago is the today and tomorrow of Latin American Art. His exquisite line and masterful talent are a great asset for his native Colombia.
santiago martínez delgado— Edgar Kaufmann conversation, letter to Edgar Kaufmann Jr, 1932, Wis.
How fading are the joys we dote upon!Like apparitions seen and gone.But those which soonest take their flightAre the most exquisite and strong,—Like angels’ visits, short and bright;Mortality ’s too weak to bear them long.
john norris— The Parting. Compare: "Like those of angels, short and far between", Robert Blair, The Grave, line 588.; "Like angel visits, few and far between", Thomas Campbell, Pleasures of Hope, part ii. line 378.
Emmy's exquisite youth and her virginal air,Eyes and teeth in the flash of a musical smile,Come to me out of the past, and I see her thereAs I saw her once for a while.
arthur symons— Emmy, st. 1
’T is a little thingTo give a cup of water; yet its draughtOf cool refreshment, drained by fevered lips,May give a shock of pleasure to the frameMore exquisite than when nectarean juiceRenews the life of joy in happiest hours.
thomas noon talfourd— Act i. Sc. 2.
The wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright, or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring. These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles. The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.
— Walt Whitman, Miracles (1856) in Leaves of Grass
I envy your peace of mind, your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory. Little girl, a memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment: is it not?
charlotte brontë— Mr. Rochester to Jane (Ch. 14)
Contingency is rich and fascinating; it embodies an exquisite tension between the power of individuals to modify history and the intelligible limits set by laws of nature. The details of individual and species's lives are not mere frills, without power to shape the large-scale course of events, but particulars that can alter entire futures, profoundly and forever.
stephen jay gould— "Eight Little Piggies", p. 77
Japanese affection is not uttered in words; it scarcely appears even in the tone of voice; it is chiefly shown in acts of exquisite courtesy and kindness.
lafcadio hearn— "Of the Eternal Feminine" (1893), cited from Out of the East; and, Kokoro (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922) p. 79.
Really, universally, relations stop nowhere, and the exquisite problem of the artist is eternally but to draw, by a geometry of his own, the circle within which they shall happily appear to do so.
Henry James— Roderick Hudson
[On Monckton Milne's Life of Keats ] An attempt to make us eat dead dog by exquisite currying and cooking [...] The kind of man that Keats was gets ever more horrible to me. Forces of hunger for every pleasure of every kind, and want of all other force -- that is a combination! Such a structure of soul, it would once have been very evident, was a chosen 'Vessel of Hell' [...]
john keats— Thomas Carlyle, in J.A. Froude, Thomas Carlyle: A History of His Life in London, 1834 - 1881 (1884)
When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— Part I, section 1
One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love to serve the loved one without his knowing it is only possible, as regards the love of God , through atheism .
Simone Weil— Last Notebook (1942) p. 84
I would I were a cigarette Between my Lady's lithe sad lips, Where Death like Love, divinely set. With exquisite sighs and sips, Feeds and is fed. * * * * For life is Love and Love is death, It was my hap, a well-a-day! To burn my little hour away.
— H. A. Page, Vers de Société, Madonna Mia.
Joys too exquisite to last, and yet more exquisite when past.
james montgomery— James Montgomery, The Little Cloud.
'Tis a little thing To give a cup of water: yet its draught Of cool refreshment, drain'd by feverish lips, May give a thrill of pleasure to the frame More exquisite than when nectarian juice Renews the life of joy in happiest hours.
thomas noon talfourd— Thomas Noon Talfourd, Sonnet III.
[Pessoa] is the modernist's modernist: an inspired amalgam of Lewis Carroll, Aristophanes , Erasmus , Voltaire (& Co., if you will), whose exquisite mixed praises of human and literary folly create a polyphony unlike any other prose music you've ever heard.
— The Washington Times, as quoted in The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa (2002), edited by Richard Zenith, p. 344
Santiago is the today and tomorrow of Latin American Art. His exquisite line and masterful talent are a great asset for his native Colombia.
— Edgar Kaufmann conversation, letter to Edgar Kaufmann Jr, 1932, Wis.
It does at first appear that an astronomer rapt in abstraction, while he gazes on a star, must feel more exquisite delight than a farmer who is conducting his team.
— Isaac D'Israeli, Literary Character of Men of Genius, On Habituating Ourselves to an Individual Pursuit; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 46.
