Nations are not ruined by one act of violence, but gradually and in an almost imperceptible manner by the depreciation of their circulating currency, through its excessive quantity.
— Nicolaus Copernicus
Jaw-dropping Imperceptible quotations
Strive each day to make your life purer, richer, and more luminous.
You will subtly and imperceptibly lead all of creation heavenward.
What knowledge is there of which man is capable that is not founded on the exterior,--the relation that exists between visible and invisible, the perceptible and the imperceptible?
One’s visual language is not something that manifests overnight.
It develops organically over a life-time. The shifts can be so subtle as to be virtually imperceptible and, at times, will come to fruition so rapidly, and with such force, that the profundity is all-consuming. That is life’s work.
Imagination is a tree. It has the integrative virtues of a tree. It is root and boughs. It lives between earth and sky. It lives in the earth and the wind. The imagined tree imperceptibly becomes a cosmological tree, the tree which epitomises a universe, which makes a universe.
Walking on the land or digging in the fine soil I am intensely aware that time quivers slightly, changes occurring in imperceptible and minute ways, accumulating so subtly that they seem not to exist. Yet the tiny shifts in everything--cell replication, the rain of dust motes, lengthening hair, wind-pushed rocks--press inexorably on and on.
There is a kind of elevation which does not depend on fortune;
it is a certain air which distinguishes us, and seems to destine us for great things; it is a price which we imperceptibly set upon ourselves.
I can generate suctional forces, which act indirectly and are entirely undetectable. No current of air can be noticed; only an almost imperceptible cooling, as occurs when air is sucked in strongly with the back of the hand held in front of the mouth. It is therefore incorrect to say that I have copied the cyclones and typhoons of the tropics.
God makes nothing without order, and everything that forms itself develops imperceptibly out of small parts.
The best of life is life lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious life is everything.
One can descend by imperceptible degree from the most perfect creature to the most shapeless matter, from the best-organised animal to the roughest mineral.
One moves swiftly and imperceptibly from a world in which affirmative action can`t be ended because its beneficiaries are too weak to a world in which it can`t be ended because its beneficiaries are too strong.
Privacy is rarely lost in one fell swoop.
It is usually eroded over time, little bits dissolving almost imperceptibly until we finally begin to notice how much is gone.
The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.
The Steps to Folly as well as Sin are gradual, and almost imperceptible, and when we are once on the Decline, we go down without taking notice on't.
Similarly you can make a transition from one set of instruments to another imperceptibly.
The pain of loss, moreover, however agonizing, however haunting in memory, quiets imperceptibly into acceptance as the currents of active living and of fresh emotions flow over it.
I had got to the dawn of the beautiful not caring, but fully aware, stage, which degenerates so imperceptibly into the doing something unpermissible stage.
All the great and beneficent operations of Nature are produced by slow and often imperceptible degrees. The work of destruction and devastation only is violent and rapid.
It showed a kind of obscenity you see only in nature, an obscenity so extreme that it dissolves imperceptibly into beauty.
Every moment and every event of everyman's life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men.
It takes too much imagination to see the sorrows of people we take for happy.
Their real battles take place, like those of the stars, in some realm of light imperceptible to the human eye. It is a feat of the mind to guess another's heart.
That's not how politics works - sometimes things move in a rather imperceptible way. There are no fireworks, and then comes a time when change comes unexpectedly. Sometimes change comes with a lot of fireworks, but not always.
The fame which bids fair to live the longest resembles that which Horace attributes to Marcellus, whose progress he compares to the silent, imperceptible growth of a tree.
Let a man take time enough for the most trivial deed, though it be but the paring of his nails. The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion,--as if the short spring days were an eternity.
Amusement allures and deceives us and leads us down imperceptibly in thoughtlessness to the grave
Vengeance comes not slowly either upon you or any other wicked man, but steals silently and imperceptibly, placing its foot on the bad.
There are many things akin to highest deity that are still obscure.
Some may be too subtle for our powers of comprehension, others imperceptible to us because such exalted majesty conceals itself in the holiest part of its sanctuary, forbidding access to any power save that of the spirit. How many heavenly bodies revolve unseen by human eye!
Shifts within friendships happen in imperceptible increments.
There is distance, then assurance. Misconjecture, caution, gradual convergence. So much depends on the respect accorded to vulnerability.
Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards;
they simply unveil them to the eyes. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or we grow weak, and at last some crisis shows us what we have become.
Imperceptibly, the developed world's manufacturing base was gradually eroding and being replaced by securitized finance that destroyed itself and nearly its economies in 2008.
The affections are the children of ignorance;
when the horizon of our experience expands, and models multiply, love and admiration imperceptibly vanish.
He slipped away slowly, withdrawing from this world by small, imperceptible degrees, and in the end it was as if he were a drop of water evaporating in the sun, shrinking and shrinking until at last he wasn’t there anymore.
The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it.
Man is an imperceptible atom always trying to become one with God.