Quotes & Sayings About Delicate Balance

Taste, I had yet to learn, was the delicate balance between expensive and unassuming. — Jessica Knoll

The garden reconciles human art and wild nature, hard work and deep pleasure, spiritual practice and the material world. It is a magical place because it is not divided. The many divisions and polarizations that terrorize a disenchanted world find peaceful accord among mossy rock walls, rough stone paths, and trimmed bushes. Maybe a garden sometimes seems fragile, for all its earth and labor, because it achieves such an extraordinary delicate balance of nature and human life, naturalness and artificiality. It has its own liminality, its point of balance between great extremes. — Thomas Moore

While you make pretty speeches I'm being cut to shreds You feed me to the lions A delicate balance — Thom Yorke

I know the evil of my ancestors because I am those people. The balance is delicate in the extreme. I know that few of you who read my words have ever thought about your ancestors this way. It has not occurred to you that your ancestors were survivors and that the survival itself sometimes involved savage decisions, a kind of wanton brutality which civilized humankind works very hard to suppress. What price will you pay for that suppression? Will you accept your own extinction?
-The Stolen Journals — Frank Herbert

In long-term relationships ... we are called upon to navigate that delicate balance between separateness and connectedness ... we confront the challenge of sustaining both
without losing either. — Harriet Lerner

Sella smiled sadly as she laid the scarf on her knees, her fingers tracing over the delicate gold-thread pattern (...) The moon, the sing of calm reflection, from where reason and balance are derived (...) The sun, source of passion, love, anger (...) We exist here, between the two. Grown from the earth, warmed by the sun, cooled by the moonlight night. Your brother's heart had been pulled too far into the sun, fired with anger and regret. Now he has cooled and he looks to the moon for guidance. — Anthony Ryan

Writing of only one small part of the broader problem, namely the single-minded pursuit of individualistic 'rights,' [Don] Feder is not wrong to conclude:

Absent a delicate balance--rights and duties, freedom and order--the social fabric begins to unravel. The rights explosion of the past three decades has taken us on a rapid descent to a culture without civility, decency, or even that degree of discipline necessary to maintain an advanced industrial civilization. Our cities are cesspools, our urban schools terrorist training camps, our legislatures brothels where rights are sold to the highest electoral bidder. — D. A. Carson

If I have not been completely honest with you, it is only because I know a great deal of things that you do not want to know. I am going to ask that you trust me when I tell you I am trying to make things better. It is an extremely delicate balance and there are a great many factors involved. The best we can do right now is take everything as it comes, and not to worry ourselves over things that have happened, or things that are to come. — Erin Morgenstern

We all fuck up when it comes to our women and you will too. The key is to make her love you more than you piss her off," Jason added. "It's a very delicate balance. — R.L. Mathewson

He (Lincoln) recognized the delicate balance between immanence and transcendence, refusing to settle for either of these alone. His was a God who was both in the world and above the world. — Elton Trueblood

The accidental balance on the side of Progress was far slighter and infinitely more complex and delicate in its adjustments than the people of that time suspected; but that did not alter the fact that it was an effective balance. They did not realize that this age of relative good fortune was an age of immense but temporary opportunity for their kind. They complacently assumed a necessary progress towards which they had no moral responsibility. They did not realize that this security of progress was a thing still to be won or lost, and that the time to win it was a time that passed. They went about their affairs energetically enough, and yet with a curious idleness towards those threatening things. No one troubled over the real dangers of mankind. — H.G.Wells

I would say for every successful black woman in America or in the world, really, it's difficult to be the head of the household, financially. It is for the man in your life. It can be very hard for them. And there's a delicate balance. I'm not quite sure I know what that balance is just yet. — Jill Scott

Walking itself is the intentional act closest to the unwilled rhythms of the body, to breathing and the beating of the heart. It strikes a delicate balance between working and idling, being and doing. It is a bodily labor that produces nothing but thoughts, experiences, arrivals. — Rebecca Solnit

Here was a stupendous possibility of achievement. If we could produce electric effects of the required quality, this whole planet and the conditions of existence on it could be transformed. The sun raises the water of the oceans and winds drive it to distant regions where it remains in a state of most delicate balance. If it were in our power to upset it when and wherever desired, this mighty life-sustaining stream could be at will controlled. We could irrigate arid deserts, create lakes and rivers and provide motive power in unlimited amounts. This would be the most efficient way of harnessing the sun to the uses of man. The consummation depended on our ability to develop electric forces of the order of those in nature. — Nikola Tesla

She felt as if there were a glass ball in her chest- something delicate and beautiful that might shatter if she said the wrong word, if she disturbed the balance in any way. — Lauren Oliver

Abraham Lincoln said you cannot deceive everybody all the time. Well, that's wishful thinking. In practice, the power of human cooperation networks depends on a delicate balance between truth and fiction. If you distort reality too much, it will weaken you, and you will not be able to compete against more clear-sighted rivals. On the other hand, you cannot organise masses of people effectively without relying on some fictional myths. So if you stick to unalloyed reality, without mixing any fiction with it, few people will follow you. If — Yuval Noah Harari

Today, of course, there's no need to forage and hunt to survive. Yet our genes are coded for this activity, and our brains are meant to direct it. Take that activity away, and you're disrupting a delicate biological balance that has been fine-tuned over half a million years. Quite simply, we need to engage our endurance metabolism to keep our bodies and brains in optimum condition. The ancient rhythms of activity ingrained in our DNA translate roughly to the varied intensity of walking, jogging, running, and sprinting. In broad strokes, then, I think the best advice is to follow our ancestors' routine: walk or jog every day, run a couple of times a week, and then go for the kill every now and then by sprinting. — John J. Ratey

If one is the kind of creature I am and wants to do the kind of writing I want to do, an undisturbed bourgeois existence with no distractions seems in order. A single meeting outside the family upsets one's whole inner web, makes one start off on two-days' thinking and weighing, destroys a delicate balance etc. etc ... I now have enough friends to last me a lifetime and that is enough. I am going to close the doors and hibernate at least for a couple of years. I am frightfully depressed about my work. It seems to me perfectly mediocre. — May Sarton

Parenting requires a delicate balance of letting your child be your spiritual teacher while you maintain the clarity and boundaries to be her Earthly teacher. — Jennifer Griffin

A revolutionary marriage ... [is] one in which both partners have work at the center of their lives and must find a delicate balance that can support both together and each individually. — Carolyn Heilbrun

It's hard to win in the NFL. You have to maintain a very delicate balance putting together the right team to be able to win and have any amount of success. — Barry Sanders

Every move is a creation,
Maintaining the delicate balance is a creation,
The line is a creation,
Survival is a creation,
Freedom is a creation. — Wojciech Kurtyka

A marriage is a delicate thing, Maggie, a balance of two hearts and two hopes. Sometimes the weight's just too heavy on the one side, and the other can't lift to it. — Nora Roberts

We have the resources the world needs. We can build a path for them to get there. That's that delicate balance that we find. — Christy Clark

Now is not the time to repudiate environmental balance, but rather it is the time for all of us to work together - politician, advocate, rancher, scientist, and citizen. Only by doing this will the United States move forward and be a leader in environmental issues and ensure sustainability to our delicate ecosystem. — Robert Redford

A delicate balance is required to combat violence perpetrated in the name of a religion, an ideology or an economic system, while also safeguarding religious freedom, intellectual freedom and individual freedoms. But there is another temptation which we must especially guard against: the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners. — Pope Francis

You can be fully satisfied with where you are, understanding that you're eternally evolving. When you get into that place of feeling appreciation of where you are and of who you are, and appreciation of what you are, and you accept that you are a never-ending, always unfolding Being, then you can stand in that delicate balance of being optimistic about what is to come, without being unhappy about where you stand. Find a way of eagerly anticipating future changes, while at the same time you are in love and satisfied with who, what, where and how you be. — Esther Hicks

There is a delicate balance that we need to honor as we try to find meaning in any event or state of mind: Many people confuse finding meaning with finding a reason, putting our finger on something or someone for blame. — Stephen Levine

The delicate balance between modesty and conceit is popularity. — Max Beerbohm

I'm scared to disturb the balance, though- that delicate equilibrium. Marshall and I can only exist in the narrow spaces where I'm not me and he is not him. — Brenna Yovanoff

Success is the result of a delicate balance between making things happen and letting things happen. — Robin Sharma

I pretended not to notice, but Dad looked sort of deflated there on the edge of my bed. A lost, even humbled look was wandering around his face (quite surprised to be there). Seeing him like this, so un-Dad, made me feel sorry for him - though I didn't let on. His befuddled expression reminded me of those unflattering photographs of presidents The New York Times and other newspapers adored sticking on their front page in order to show the world how the Great Leader looked between the staged waves, the scripted sound-bites, the rehearsed handshakes - not staunch and stately, not even steady, but frail and foolish. And though these candid photographs were amusing, when you actually thought about it, the underlying implication of such a photograph was scary, for they hinted how delicate the balance of our lives, how tenuous our calm little existences, if this was the man in charge. — Marisha Pessl

The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves. — Steven Spielberg

To the Cold War veterans here, know that your steadfast efforts preserved a delicate balance, and, because of you, the global war that many feared never came to pass. We are thankful for you, as we are for all the veterans here with us. — Michael Mullen

We must imbue our children with principles of the higher-self, principles which see all people as true equals, and above all, which are sensitive to the delicate and fragile balance of life. — Bryant McGill

The scientific way of thinking is at once imaginative and disciplined. This is central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don't conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which best fit the facts. It urges on us a delicate balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything - new ideas and established wisdom. — Carl Sagan

We have to protect the bees. If we kill the insects and the bees disappear, we're doomed. The balance is delicate and the health of the plants and animals and consumers is ... Am I putting you to sleep? — Robyn Carr

The breaking wave and the muscle as it contracts obey the same law. Delicate line gathers the body's total strength in a bold balance. Shall my soul meet so severe a curve, journeying on its way to form? — Dag Hammarskjold

I think we are always right to worry about damaging consequences of new technologies even as we are empowered by them. History suggests we should not panic nor be too sanguine about cool new gizmos. There's a delicate balance. — James Gleick

The delicate balance between these factors helps explain why, for instance, the typical prostitute earns more than the typical architect. It may not seem as though she should. The architect would appear to
be more skilled (as the word is usually defined) and better educated (again, as usually defined). But little girls don't grow up dreaming of becoming prostitutes, so the supply of potential prostitutes is relatively small. Their skills, while not necessarily "specialized," are practiced in a very specialized context. The job is unpleasant and forbidding in at least two significant ways: the likelihood of violence and the lost opportunity of having a stable family life. As for demand? Let's just say that an architect is more likely to hire a prostitute than vice versa. — Levitt And Dubner

Sometimes we forget to, or feel guilty when, we take time to nourish our own souls. It is not selfish to spiritually fill ourselves because we need that time to find the delicate balance in our lives. Only then can we truly be of service to others.
Debra Siegrist — Arin Murphy-Hiscock

I think that as Christians we need to walk the delicate balance between standing in opposition to same-sex marriages and yet showing that we can do that without becoming angry or hateful. — Erwin W. Lutzer

It's my intention to make something stand outside the realm of album art, but it also feels comfortable to me to be in it. It's tricky and definitely a requires striking a delicate balance. — John Dyer Baizley

I was recently asked about the business side of 'Biggest Loser,' but as long as we entertain people, we can keep coming back and making a difference. It's a delicate balance, but one feeds off the other. I feel so good about the show - it's uplifting and inspiring and entertaining at the same time. — Alison Sweeney

The lucid dream, located as it is at a crossroads between worlds and states of consciousness, places the magician in a unique position to influence the delicate balance of consciousness and the interplay it has on matter in the waking state, and is thus an opportunity to test one's ability in the art of adjusting the mutable fabric of Maya. — Zeena Schreck

True hospitality is a delicate balance of warmth and form. — Sheila Ostrander

Get rid of all that is unnecessary. Wabi-sabi means treading lightly on the planet and knowing how to appreciate whatever is encountered, no matter how trifling, whenever it is encountered. [ ... ] In other words, wabi-sabi tells us to stop our preoccupation with success
wealth, status, power, and luxury
and enjoy the unencumbered life. Obviously, leading the simple wabi-sabi life requires some effort and will and also some tough decisions. Wabi-sabi acknowledges that just as it is important to know when to make choices, it is also important to know when not to make choices: to let things be. Even at the most austere level of material existence, we still live in a world of things. Wabi-sabi is exactly about the delicate balance between the pleasure we get from things and the pleasure we get from freedom of things. — Leonard Koren

Or perhaps about acknowledging that life is a delicate balance of great forces, and that good would lose its potency if there was no evil left to fight in the world. — Anne Fortier

The initial journey towards sobriety is a delicate balance between insight into one's desire for escape and abstinence from one's addiction. — Debra L. Kaplan

You can't possibly conduct a proper affair without a lot of deliberating, scheming, speculating, and conniving. It's a delicate balance where the excitement must equal the guilt and sex must be as bright as the future you gamble. — John Dufresne

Today, he'd observed them seize a woman who'd gotten pregnant with an unregistered child. There'd be no chance at lenience. She would be Confined until she gave birth, the child would be placed in the Council's care, and the mother would be executed. The ship could only support a certain number of lives, and allowing anyone to disrupt the delicate balance would jeopardize the entire race. — Kass Morgan

The Balance, my boy, is the war that has been waged since before time was time, the battle within ourselves to do what is good and reject what is bad. It is a delicate line we all walk, a constant struggle of push and pull. — Nikolas Lee

People will go into a relationship, if it's a brand new relationship, it's so exciting because it's something brand new, it's variety, it's different. And you're so excited by the feelings. And what most people try to do because they don't want to lose that, they try to control it to make it certain. And if they make it so certain then you become bored in the relationship. It's a delicate balance. — Tony Robbins

As the House is designed to provide a reflection of the mood of the moment, the Senate is meant to reflect the continuity of the past
to preserve the delicate balance of justice between the majority's whims and the minority's rights. — Lyndon B. Johnson

The Earth would only have to move a few million kilometers sunward-or starward-for the delicate balance of climate to be destroyed. The Antarctic icecap would melt and flood all low-lying land; or the oceans would freeze and the whole world would be locked in eternal winter. Just a nudge in either direction would be enough. — Arthur C. Clarke

Increasingly, the balance between living in the world and not being of the world is becoming more delicate. Publications, radio, television, and the Internet have surrounded us with worldliness ... We are fortunate to have been blessed with a special power to direct us in making important decisions between right and wrong. — L. Tom Perry

I have a career, which is important, but my family is the priority. First family, and then career. It's a delicate balance. — Jimmy Cliff

Economy without ecology means managing the human nature relationship without knowing the delicate balance between humankind and the natural world — Satish Kumar

The balance between freedom and security is a delicate one. — Mark Udall

But even more important," he said, "is the way complex systems seem to strike a balance between the need for order and the imperative to change. Complex systems tend to locate themselves at a place we call 'the edge of chaos.' We imagine the edge of chaos as a place where there is enough innovation to keep a living system vibrant, and enough stability to keep it from collapsing into anarchy. It is a zone of conflict and upheaval, where the old and the new are constantly at war. Finding the balance point must be a delicate matter - if a living system drifts too close, it risks falling over into incoherence and dissolution; but if the system moves too far away from the edge, it becomes rigid, frozen, totalitarian. Both conditions lead to extinction. Too much change is as destructive as too little. Only at the edge of chaos can complex systems flourish." He paused. "And, by implication, extinction is the inevitable result of one or the other strategy - too much change, or too little. — Michael Crichton

As a new mom, your life changes overnight. Your priorities change, you forget to brush your teeth, you aren't sure how you're ever going to balance all your new responsibilities, and it's overwhelming. Not to mention that your body that used to be almost purely recreational has become much like a dairy cow but not as delicate and petite. — Melanie Shankle

When you examine societies just as self-confident as ours that unraveled and were eventually swallowed by the jungle...you see that the balance between ecology and society is exquisitely delicate. If something throws that off, it all can end.

...Two thousand years later, someone will be squinting over the fragments, trying to find our what went wrong. — Arthur Demarest

Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people's stuff. — George Carlin

The natural world had gone badly wrong. Everything that mankind is doing on the planet had upset the delicate balance of nature. The pollution, the rampant industrialization, the loss of habitat-when animals were squeezed and cornered, they behave viciously, in a desperate effort to survive. — Michael Crichton

I never wanted to do just comedy or just drama; sometimes, going back and forth you can get yourself in trouble which happened to me on other things so you're always trying for a delicate balance - I also think that they compliment each other so well. — Mike Binder

God maintains a delicate balance between keeping his existence sufficiently evident so people will know he's there and yet hiding his presence enough so that people who want to choose to ignore him can do it. This way, their choice of destiny is really free. — J.P. Moreland

What is the essence of America? Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom 'to' and freedom 'from.' — Marilyn Vos Savant

Television news is a delicate balance of serving public good and private gain. — Jessica Savitch

Is this true on smaller scales too? Apart from a visible fragment is everybody largely invisible - invisible like the magic part of magic mushrooms and the song part of songbirds? Maybe the balance between one's visibility and invisibility is like the balance between the salt and the water in the blood, delicate and critical, as becomes obvious when the balance deteriorates: people with an invisibility deficiency seem like paper dolls, subject to crumple. Other people have the opposite problem: they cannot be seen building a bicycle, nor making lentil soup, nor knitting a green wool sweater by candlelight; neither can you look down from your second-story window in the morning and see them tromping off through the snow — Amy Leach

Children seem to need, then, a delicate balance between the realistic and the fantastic in their art; enough of the realistic to know that the story matters, enough of the fantastic to make what matters wonderful — Eric S. Rabkin

Although the natural rights inherent in our( Constitutional) regime are adequate to the solution of this ( minority) problem ... the equal protection of the law did not protect a man from contempt and hatred as a Jew, an Italian or a Black" ... " 'Openness' was designed to provide a respectable place for those groups or minorities
to wrest respect from those who were disposed to give it
This breaks the delicate balance between majority and minority in Constitutional thought. In such a perspective where there is no common good, minorities are no longer problematic and the protection of them emerges as THE central function of government. — Allan Bloom

The bigger question is how does a rogue species called humans - whose population just blew through the seven billion mark on it's way to nine billion members - manage to survive the next century on a planet with finite resources, without destroying its delicate balance in the process. — Edward Burtynsky

Past conference topics have included strengthening the role of fathers in children's lives, the impact of the media culture on children, the delicate balance between work and family, and family involvement in education. — Tipper Gore

For society to function some kind of reasonable balance has to be stuck between the competing interests of creditors and debtors. Although the mandate of the Bank of Canada was to maintain a delicate balance between encouraging growth and fighting inflation, the Bank opted to focus exclusively on fighting inflation. In doing so it came down heavily in favour of those with financial assets to protect, and against those whose primary need was employment. — Linda McQuaig

God does not weigh criminality in our scales. We have one absolute, with the seal of authority upon it; and with us an ounce is an ounce, and a pound a pound. God's measure is the heart of the offender,
a balance which varies with every one of us, a balance so delicate that a tear cast in the other side may make the weight of error kick the beam. — James Russell Lowell

The more you worry, the more you throw off the delicate balance of hormones required for health. — Andrew J. Bernstein

Being happy and being able to look yourself in the mirror while doing it is a delicate balance. — Jessica Ingro

A delicate balance is required: keep the penitent tautly close to the point of recognizing sin, and then allow the relief of that pressure to flow through forgiveness. Confession increases this tautness, only to clear the path for release. — Thomas C. Oden

Playing games with agreed upon rules helps children learn to live by rules, establish the delicate balance between competition andcooperation, between fair play and justice and exploitation and abuse of these for personal gain. It helps them learn to manage the warmth of winning and the hurt of losing; it helps them to believe that there will be another chance to win the next time. — James P. Comer

The greatest mania of all is passion: and I am a natural slave to passion: the balance between my brain and my soul and my body is as wild and delicate as the skin of a Ming vase. — Hunter S. Thompson

Tachyon OPC+ is a natural extension of our market-winning Tachyon platform, giving customers a clear path to minimizing the OPC error budget and producing better-performing circuits sooner and faster. Until now, customers have had to deal with a delicate balance of compromises when producing advanced OPC-enabled circuits, including trading accuracy for speed. Tachyon OPC+ breaks free from these compromises. — Bill Vaughan

Although the patriarchal ego prides itself on being reasonable, the twentieth century has been anything but the Age of Reason. In our collective neurosis, we have raped the earth, disrupted the delicate balance of nature, and created phallic missiles of mass destruction. — Marion Woodman

It was always a delicate balance, life and death, comedy and tragedy. — Chris Kyle

When I was younger I used to see the earth as a fundamentally stable and serene place, possessed of a delicate, nearly divine balance, which humans had somehow managed to upset. But as I studied trails more closely, this fantasy gradually evaporated. I now see the earth as the collaborative artwork of trillions of sculptors, large and small. Sheep, humans, elephants, ants: each of us alters the world in our passage. When we build hives or nests, mud huts or concrete towers, we re-sculpt the contours of the planet. When we eat, we convert living matter into waste. And when we walk, we create trails. The question we must ask ourselves is not whether we should shape the earth, but how. — Robert Moor

A dragon is a confusion at the heart of things, a law unto himself. He embraces good, evil, and indifference; in his own nature he makes them indivisible and absolute. He knows who he is. Surely you see that... Put it this way. Dragons all love life's finer things- music, art, treasure- the works of the spirit; yet in their personal habits they're foul and bestial- they burn down cathedrals, for instance, and eat maidens- and they see in their whimsical activities no faintest contradiction... Dragons never grow, never change... Believe me, nothing in this world is more despicable than a dragon. They're a walking- or flying- condemnation of all we stand for, all we pray for our children, nay, for ourselves. We struggle to improve ourselves, we tortuously balance on the delicate line between our duties to society and our duties within- our duties to God and our own nature. — John Gardner

The pursuit of art is a delicate balance between influence and self-assertiveness. As self-realized artists, we all have different levels of tolerance for this mystery. Influence is like Scotch; it's good to know your personal limit. — Robert Genn

Some recent occurrences such as the BSE disaster and even perhaps - dare I mention it - the present severe weather conditions in our country are, I have no doubt, the consequences of mankind's arrogant disregard of the delicate balance of nature. We have to find a way of ensuring that our remarkable and seemingly beneficial advances in technology do not just become the agents of our own destruction. — Prince Charles

A redwood tree doesn't take all of the soil's nutrients; it just takes what it needs to grow. A lion doesn't kill every gazelle, it just kills one. In fact, when the lion has fed, gazelles will go on grazing right in the lion's midst. Why? Certainly, the lion could pounce again, but it doesn't. Somehow, the lion naturally obeys this life-giving law of limits, a law that keeps nature in balance and keeps the delicate cycle upon which all of life depends intact. — Tom Shadyac