Subtle Heartbreak Quotes

Music is storming, driving, relentless, devotional, slinky, subtle, heartbreakingly-beautiful sounds that, lyrically, switch from the cynical to the sanguine, the defeated to the defiant, dealing in love, war, beauty, children, romance, rejection, Pethedine, poetry, panties, God, Auden, Johnny Cash, cold potatoes, too-much-money, not enough money, writer’s block, flowers, animals and more flowers. But maybe I’m projecting here.

The first language humans had was gestures. There was nothing primitive about this language that flowed from people’s hands, nothing we say now that could not be said in the endless array of movements possible with the fine bones of the fingers and wrists. The gestures were complex and subtle, involving a delicacy of motion that has since been lost completely. During the Age of Silence, people communicated more, not less. Basic survival demanded that the hands were almost never still, and so it was only during sleep (and sometimes not even then) that people were not saying something or other. No distinction was made between the gestures of language and the gestures of life. The labor of building a house, say, or preparing a meal was no less an expression than making the sign for I love you or I feel serious. When a hand was used to shield one’s face when frightened by a loud noise something was being said, and when fingers were used to pick up what someone else had dropped something was being said; and even when the hands were at rest, that, too, was saying something. Naturally, there were misunderstandings. There were times when a finger might have been lifted to scratch a nose, and if casual eye contact was made with one’s lover just then, the lover might accidentally take it to be the gesture, not at all dissimilar, for Now I realize I was wrong to love you. These mistakes were heartbreaking. And yet, because people knew how easily they could happen, because they didn’t go round with the illusion that they understood perfectly the things other people said, they were used to interrupting each other to ask if they’d understood correctly. Sometimes these misunderstandings were even desirable, since they gave people a reason to say, Forgive me, I was only scratching my nose. Of course I know I’ve always been right to love you. Because of the frequency of these mistakes, over time the gesture for asking forgiveness evolved into the simplest form. Just to open your palm was to say: Forgive me." "If at large gatherings or parties, or around people with whom you feel distant, your hands sometimes hang awkwardly at the ends of your arms – if you find yourself at a loss for what to do with them, overcome with sadness that comes when you recognize the foreignness of your own body – it’s because your hands remember a time when the division between mind and body, brain and heart, what’s inside and what’s outside, was so much less. It’s not that we’ve forgotten the language of gestures entirely. The habit of moving our hands while we speak is left over from it. Clapping, pointing, giving the thumbs-up, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together. And at night, when it’s too dark to see, we find it necessary to gesture on each other’s bodies to make ourselves understood.

If you looked round the rooms, you wouldn't think there was anything missing. But it's like one of those Spot the difference cartoons in a puzzle book. The changes are so subtle, yet glaringly obvious once you've seen them. A photo missing here, a cup there. A heart a bit more broken than it was before.

It’s like returning to a familiar room and noticing objects had been moved while you were gone—a chair here, a picture frame there. Items that were once brand new were suddenly broken in and worn from age. It was all very subtle, but enough to suspect paranormal activity or a cruel practical joke. When no one else saw what you saw, the freak factor really kicked in, because you were singled out and left questioning reality." ~Ellia

Write about patriotism, about victory and defeat. Write about revolutions and rebels and prisoners and wars. About emotions, of love and hatred and disappointment and regret. Intangible love and uncolored hatred and heartbreaking disappointments and abysmal regrets. Write about the seven deadly sins, about stealth and murder and gluttony and greed. Don’t forget to write about saints and sinners all the same. Write the poor and the rich using the same words, make them equal for once. Write about mothers who lost their children, about those who never had to lose; I challenge you to tell me which hurts more. Write about darkness and light, about light in the dark and darkness in the light. Remember to write about lost friendships, about those who never found a shoulder when life shut its lights dim, or those who kept the secret to their sadness within. Be fair to them too. Remind the world of those who always had someone to love but not someone to love them back, craft their nights and dreams carefully. Don’t forget the writers, who keep promises with words and silence. Be subtle. Be warm. Remember heartbeats and heartbreaks. Remember everything, remember all, equally. And then let the world remind you: Words will never be fair to whatever you write.

Life Is an Ambiguous Stimulus In a very real sense, life is an ambiguous stimulus. Does survival of a heart attack indicate that death is imminent or that one has been given a new lease on life? Is falling in love an assurance of a lifelong partnership or the first sign of an inevitable heartbreak? Many human situations are complex and their meanings subtle. Thus, to make sense of and gain agency over our experiences, we engage in the process of self-reflection. Through self-reflection, people come to realize that their lives are filled with uncertainty about their own identities, their relationships with others, and their environmental circumstances. Because living involves adaptation to irregular changes and perturbations from the environment, the process of self-reflection reveals the indefinite nature of life. The uncertainty stemming from threatening stimuli whose nature is unknown or unpredictable evokes stress and a sense of loss of control. In response to uncertainty, we are driven to make meaning of our experiences and in so doing to reduce uncertainty. Indeed, a series of cunning experiments demonstrated that the sense of lacking control promotes illusory pattern perception in ambiguous situations. Hence, people consciously or unconsciously attempt to regain a sense of control by projecting patterns onto the chaos of their lives. This meaning-making process hinged on the appraisal of stressors and their meaningful integration into our autobiographical narratives.

Alone onstage, I lifted my head up to the light and released my voice, not knowing what would come out. And what flowed out was a voice I'd never heard before: not the tilted croak of nervousness, nor the menagerie of beauty formed in Mr. Matthewman's music room. This was something altogether different: passionately raw, wrenchingly incandescent. As I sang, I traveled to places I never wanted to go. Where a heart broke with the grief of unrequited love. Where hollowed-out eyes turned upwards to empty skies above. To the widest, most open expanse of a land of utter emptiness and loneliness. My voice rose up to the upper banners and spread from row to row, passing from person to person like a pale chiffon ribbon billowing across every cheek. A subtle caress.

It still hurts. Losing him and missing him still hurts, but in a different way than it did the other times. It doesn’t feel like an earth-shattering heartbreak, but a more subtle lingering pain. I stay up most of the night replaying our relationship over in my head from the moment we met all the way up to tonight.

In the midst of this desolate landscape, I am reminded of the fragility of love. The echoes of our laughter may have faded, but the memories still linger, reminding me of the joy we once shared. I yearn for the warmth of your touch, the comfort of your embrace, but I understand that those moments are now distant memories. The colors that once painted our love story have dulled, reflecting the fading flame within us. Each passing day brings a subtle ache, a constant reminder of what could have been. The changing seasons serve as a cruel reminder of the missed opportunities, the moments we let slip away. It is a deep ache, a throbbing void in my heart, as I desperately try to hold onto the fragments of our once beautiful connection. But deep down, I know the truth. Our love has cooled, replaced by an insurmountable distance. The vibrant hues of summer have transformed into the earthy tones of autumn, mirroring the gradual demise of our relationship. As the leaves fall, so does our passion. And with each falling leaf, I am reminded of the inevitable end. Yet, amidst the ache and heartbreak, I find solace in the knowledge that this season too shall pass. The earthy hues of autumn will make way for the stark beauty of winter, and with it, the hope of new beginnings. In the meantime, I will cherish the memories we did create, however fleeting they may have been. As the seasons change, I will strive to heal the void within my heart, knowing that love, in all its forms, has the power to transform and bloom anew. I will embrace the fading love, the changing seasons, and the lessons learned. And as I watch the leaves dance their way to the ground, I will find strength in knowing that, just as nature finds a way to renew itself, so too shall I find the courage to let go and embrace the possibility of a brighter tomorrow.

It still hurts. Losing him and missing him still hurts, but in a different way than it did the other times. It doesn't feel like an earth-shattering heartbreak, but a more subtle lingering pain.

And second, it may seem like I’m nice, but really, it’s scathing sarcastic subtext. It’s a subtle art of insulting but doing it in such a way that the person doesn’t know if you’re joking or not.

The subtle art of being the perfect imperfection is smiling through tears.

Modern technological society has forgotten what it feels like to be embedded in a living culture, one rich with stories and traditions, rituals and patterns of instruction that help us become true human beings. We live in a society with little regard for matters of soul. As a consequence, we need books and workshops on grief, on relationships and sexuality, on play and creativity. These are symptoms of a great loss. We have forgotten the commons of the soul – the primary satisfactions that sustained and nourished and community and the individual for tens of thousands of years. We have substituted a strange, frenzied obsession with ‘earning a living’ – one of the most obscene phrases in our world – for the vital and fragrant life of the soul. We have sadly turned the ritual of life into the routine of existence. This forgetting has reduced the arc of our experience down to its tiniest hub. The wider reach of our beings has faded, and the subtle and nuanced gravity of contact with the world has been diminished. This is heartbreaking!

Modern technological society has forgotten what it feels like to be embedded in a living culture, one rich with stories and traditions, rituals and patterns of instruction that help us become true human beings. We live in a society with little regard for matters of soul. As a consequence, we need books and workshops on grief, on relationships and sexuality, on play and creativity. These are symptoms of a great loss. We have forgotten the commons of the soul – the primary satisfactions that sustained and nourished the community and the individual for tens of thousands of years. We have substituted a strange, frenzied obsession with “earning a living” – one of the most obscene phrases in our world – for the vital and fragrant life of the soul. We have sadly turned the ritual of life into the routine of existence. This forgetting has reduced the arc of our experience down to its tiniest hub. The wider reach of our beings has faded, and the subtle and nuanced gravity of contact with the world has been diminished. This is heartbreaking!