Hunger is never delicate. [ Dr. John ]
In form so delicate, so soft his skin.
So fair in feature, and so smooth his chin.
Quite to unman him nothing wants but this;
Put him in coats, and he's a very miss. [ Horace ]
A delicate thought is a flower of the mind. [ Rollin ]
A six-foot suckling, mincing in its gait.
Affected, peevish, prim and delicate;
Fearful it seemed, tho' of athletic make,
Lest brutal breezes should so roughly shake
Its tender form, and savage motion spread
O'er its pale cheeks, the horrid manly red. [ Churchill ]
His delicate ears are delighted with a title. [ Horace ]
A brute always imposes silence on the delicate. [ A. de Gasparin ]
Refinement is the delicate aroma of Christianity. [ Charlotte M. Yonge ]
Birds, the free tenants of earth, air, and ocean,
Their forms all symmetry, their motion grace,
In plumage delicate and beautiful,
Thick without burthen, close as fish's scales.
Or loose as full blown poppies on the gale;
With wings that seem as they'd a soul within them.
They bear their owners with such sweet enchantment. [ James Montgomery ]
Love is an exotic of the most delicate constitution. [ Goldsmith ]
'Twas a hand
White, delicate, dimpled, warm, languid, and bland
The hand of a woman is often, in youth.
Somewhat rough, somewhat red, somewhat graceless, in truth;
Does its beauty refine, as its pulses grow calm,
Or as sorrow has crossed the life line in the palm? [ Lord Lytton ]
A woman's character is as delicate as her eye; it can bear no flaw. [ G. A. Sala ]
The imagination is of so delicate a texture that even words wound it. [ Hazlitt ]
The craving for a delicate fruit is pleasanter than the fruit itself. [ Herder ]
Politeness is as natural to delicate natures as perfume is to flowers. [ De Finod ]
In delicate souls, love never presents itself but under the veil of esteem. [ Mme. Roland ]
We deceive and flatter no one by such delicate artifices as we do ourselves. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]
We deceive and flatter no one by such delicate artifices as we do our own selves. [ Schopenhauer ]
To a woman of delicate feeling, the most persuasive declaration of love is the embarrassment of an intellectual man. [ Latena ]
Modesty secretly awakes desire: it is the most chaste, the most delicate, and the most attractive of all provocations. [ Poincelot ]
Friends should be very delicate and careful in administering pity as medicine, when enemies use the same article as poison. [ J. F. Boyes ]
Only the refined and delicate pleasures that spring from research and education can build up barriers between different ranks. [ Mme. de Stael ]
We should remember that it is quite as much a part of friendship to be delicate in its demands as to be ample in its performances. [ J. F. Boyes ]
The rain is playing its soft pleasant tune fitfully on the skylight, and the shade of the fast-flying clouds across my book passed with delicate change. [ N. P. Willis ]
Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. Fortunately, in England at any rate, Education produces no effect whatsoever. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]
The poet's delicate ear hears the far-off whispers of eternity, which coarser souls must travel towards for scores of years before their dull sense is touched by them. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]
The commonest man, who has his ounce of sense and feeling, is conscious of the difference between a lovely, delicate woman and a coarse one. Even a dog feels a difference in her presence. [ George Eliot ]
Grief is a flower as delicate and prompt to fade as happiness. Still, it does not wholly die. Like the magic rose, dried and unrecognizable, a warm air breathed on it will suffice to renew its bloom. [ Mme. de Gasparin ]
A fair reputation is a plant, delicate in its nature, and by no means rapid in its growth. It will not shoot up in a night like the gourd of the prophet; but, like that gourd, it may perish in a night. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
A man may kill a tender and delicate wife by cold neglect, and ruin himself and her too by debauchery; but if he keeps within his own dwellings and does not disturb his neighbors, the law would be slow to move against him. [ A. S. Roe ]
Some men find happiness in gluttony and in drunkenness, but no delicate viands can touch their taste with the thrill of pleasure, and what generosity there is in wine steadily refuses to impart its glow to their shriveled hearts. [ Whipple ]
At present, the novels which we owe to English ladies form no small part of the literary glory of our country. No class of works is more honorably distinguished for fine observation, by grace, by delicate wit, by pure moral feeling. [ Macaulay ]
Fine declamation does not consist in flowery periods, delicate allusions of musical cadences, but in a plain, open, loose style, where the periods are long and obvious, where the same thought is often exhibited in several points of view. [ Goldsmith ]
The instinctive and universal taste of mankind selects flowers for the expression of its finest sympathies, their beauty and their fleetingness serving to make them the most fitting symbols of those delicate sentiments for which language itself seems almost too gross a medium. [ G. S. Hillard ]
There are two distinct sorts of what we call bashfulness; this, the awkwardness of a booby, which a few steps into the world will convert into the pertness of a coxcomb; that, a consciousness, which the most delicate feelings produce, and the most extensive knowledge cannot always remove. [ Mackenzie ]
The style of writing required in the great world is distinguished by a free and daring grace, a careless security, a fine and sharp polish, a delicate and perfect taste; while that fitted for the people is characterized by a vigorous natural fulness, a profound depth of feeling, and an engaging naivete. [ Goethe ]
The style of writing required in the great world is distinguished by a free and daring grace, a careless security, a fine and sharp polish, a delicate and perfect taste; while that fitted for the people is characterised by a vigorous natural fulness, a profound depth of feeling, and an engaging naïveté. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
We are not fond of praising, and never praise any one except from interested motives. Praise is a clever, concealed, and delicate flattery, which gratifies in different ways the giver and the receiver. The one takes it as a recompense of his merit, and the other bestows it to display his equity and discernment. [ Rochefoucauld ]
From numberless books the fluttering reader, idle and inconstant, bears away the bloom that only clings to the outer leaf; but genius has its nectaries, delicate glands, and secrecies of sweetness, and upon these the thoughtful mind must settle in its labor, before the choice perfume of fancy and wisdom is drawn forth. [ Willmott ]
In some exquisite critical hints on Eurythmy.
Goethe remarks, that the best composition in pictures is that which, observing the most delicate laws of harmony, so arranges the objects that they by their position tell their own story.
And the rule thus applied to composition in painting applies no less to composition in literature. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
Hair is the most delicate and lasting of our materials, and survives us, like love. It is so light, so gentle, so escaping from the idea of death, that, with a lock of hair belonging to a child or friend, we may almost look up to heaven and compare notes with the angelic nature, - may almost say, I have a piece of thee here not unworthy of thy being now.
[ Leigh Hunt ]
Maggie and Stephen were in that stage of courtship which makes the most exquisite moment of youth, the freshest blossom-time of passion, - when each is sure of the other's love, but no formal declaration has been made, and all is mutual divination, exalting the most trivial words, the lightest gestures, into thrills delicate and delicious as wafted jasmine scent. [ George Eliot ]
The little flower which sprung up through the hard pavement of poor Picciola's prison was beautiful from contrast with the dreary sterility which surrounded it. So here amid rough walls, are there fresh tokens of nature. And O, the beautiful lessons which flowers teach to children, especially in the city! The child's mind can grasp with ease the delicate suggestions of flowers. [ Chapin ]
The little flower which sprung up through the hard payment of poor Picciola's prison, was beautiful from contrast with the dreary sterility which surrounded it. So here, amid the rough walls, are there fresh tokens of nature; and oh, the beautiful lessons which flowers teach to children, especially in the city! The child's mind can grasp with ease the delicate suggestions of flowers. [ E. H. Chapin ]
This is my seventieth birthday, and I wonder if you all rise to the size of that proposition, realizing all the significance of that phrase, seventieth birthday. The seventieth birthday! It is the time of life when you arrive at a new and awful dignity; when you may throw aside the decent reserves which have oppressed you for a generation and stand unafraid and unabashed upon your seven-terraced summit and look down and teach--unrebuked. You can tell the world how you got there. It is what they all do. You shall never get tired of telling by what delicate arts and deep moralities you climbed up to that great place. You will explain the process and dwell on the particulars with senile rapture. I have been anxious to explain my own system this long time, and now at last I have the right. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]