"Subtle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and don't attempt to use That Subtle Touch which Editors refuse; Better be jocund at two cents a word Than, starving, court ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... has not been told. His criticisms have been ridiculed as shallow; but while his lucubrations on Milton were useful in their day as plain finger-posts, quietly pointing up to the stupendous sublimities of the theme, his essays on Wit are subtle, and his papers on the "Pleasures of Imagination" throw on the beautiful topic a light like that of a red evening west, giving and receiving glory from the ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... his taciturnity of manner had appealed to me by contrast, and that I wished to repay something of what I owed. There was, no doubt, flattery in it as well, for he was more than twice my age, a man of amazingly wide experience, an explorer of all the world's corners where danger lurked, and—most subtle flattery of all—by far the best shot in the whole party, our ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... seem as if they were striking in the air. Here we see the enemy, and can strike directly at him, and one has some satisfaction in getting weary and sick at heart in fighting at great odds against a visible power instead of the more subtle powers "of the air." But I digress! It is such a temptation to let myself out when communicating with one who understands this discouraging, fascinating, and encouraging work. This year's work has given me experience, as well as gray hair, ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 6, June 1896 • Various
... they happen to everybody, can stop one's heart with the very thought of them. But while this is granted, something further may be claimed. It is not merely true that these universal things are strange; it is moreover true that they are subtle. In the last analysis most common things will be found to be highly complicated. Some men of science do indeed get over the difficulty by dealing only with the easy part of it: thus, they will call first love the instinct of sex, and the awe of ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... things, anyway? She didn't know how. She shrank from it, and yet perhaps it would be so pleasant to him to know. No, on the whole, she did not think it would be pleasant. They had not talked of the meetings nor of religious matters at all; but for all that the subtle magnetism that there is about some people had told her that Charlie Flint would not sympathize in her new hopes ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... serpent is an irrational animal. Now wisdom, speech, and punishment are not befitting an irrational animal. Therefore the serpent is unfittingly described (Gen. 3:1) as "more subtle than any of the beasts of the earth," or as "the most prudent of all beasts" according to another version [*The Septuagint]: and likewise is unfittingly stated to have spoken to the woman, and to have been ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... count the maternal instinct as a factor in criminal situations. If we have done so, we find explanations not only of sexual impropriety, but of the more subtle questions of the more or less pure relation between husband and wife. What attitude the woman takes toward her husband and children, what she demands of them, what she sacrifices for them, what makes it possible for her to endure an apparently unendurable ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... left Godfrey to that bitter rumination on his personal circumstances which was now unbroken from day to day save by the excitement of sporting, drinking, card-playing, or the rarer and less oblivious pleasure of seeing Miss Nancy Lammeter. The subtle and varied pains springing from the higher sensibility that accompanies higher culture, are perhaps less pitiable than that dreary absence of impersonal enjoyment and consolation which leaves ruder minds to the perpetual urgent companionship of their own griefs and discontents. The lives of those ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... and lie with Juliet. All these circumstances agreed together to clear the friar from any hand he could be supposed to have in these complicated slaughters, further than as the unintended consequences of his own well-meant, yet too artificial and subtle contrivances. ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... come to her help? Where was Ann Holland, that she should be away just at the very moment when her presence was most desirable and most necessary? How could Captain Scott think of trusting her with poison? How could she do battle with so close and subtle a tempter? So long a battle, too; though all the dreary hours of the storm! Only a little while ago she had made a solemn promise never to fall into this sin, never to enter into temptation. But she had been thrust into temptation unawares, in an instant, with no one to help her, and no ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... fascinating of talkers. These qualities, however, come out most clearly in a little volume of letters ('Bismarck briefe'), chiefly addressed to his wife. (These letters have been excellently translated into English by F. Maxse.) They are characterized throughout by vivid and graphic descriptions, a subtle sense of humor, and real wit; and they have in the highest degree—far more than his State papers or speeches—the literary quality, and that indescribable ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the landscape lay in fullest beauty of leafage and flower, and the air rang musically with the song of birds. What were his thoughts that summer day as he sat there at his work? Writing many years before, he had asked whether the "subtle liquor of the blood" may not "perceive, by properties within itself," when danger is imminent, and so "run cold and dull"? Did any such monitor within, one wonders, warn him at all that the hand of death was uplifted to strike, and that its shadow lay upon him? Judging from the words ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... this message discloses with what subtle ingenuity words, phrases, definitions, ideas, and theories were being invented and plied to broaden and secure every conquest of the pro-slavery reaction. An elaborate argument was made to defend the enormities of ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... an acquiescence, which showed that I had already gained some ground, even in the rough, though undoubtedly subtle and powerful mind of the Jew: as for Mariamne, she was all delight, and until she took her leave of us for the night, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... cramped indeed in a situation which allowed him no opportunity of displaying his most splendid and genuine qualities, while it constantly called on him for the exercise of the very qualities which he had least at hand. Nature had never meant him for a conspirator, or even for a subtle political intriguer; nor, indeed, had Nature ever intended him to be the adherent of a lost cause. All that could have made a position like his tolerable to a man of his peculiar capacity would have been faith in the cause—that faith which would have {117} prevented him from ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... honour doth my mind perplex: For, who is this, I ask, that dares With manhood's wounds, and virtue's wrecks, And tangled creeds, and subtle cares, Affront the look, or speak the name Of one who from ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... hear!" another peer, that mighty man of muscle, Is on his legs, what slender pegs! "ye noble Earl" of Russell; Thus might he speak, did not of speech his shrewd reserve the folly see, And thus unfold the subtle ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... I am not fain to strive in speech Nor set my mouth against thee, who art wise Even as they say and full of sacred words. But one thing I know surely, and cleave to this; That though I be not subtle of wit as thou Nor womanlike to weave sweet words, and melt Mutable minds of wise men as with fire, I too, doing justly and reverencing the gods, Shall not want wit to see what things be right. For whom they love and whom reject, being gods, There is no man but seeth, and in good time ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the abstract idea of subtlety on the same principle that the words "tortuous" and "twisting" have an abstract meaning when we speak of "tortuous policy," {12} or "twisting the meaning of a sentence." Now this subtle entity—this serpent—although presented to Eve in bodily form, was not the less that spirit of evil, the personal existence of which, on the hypothesis that the Scriptures are true, as well as its influence on human minds, must be admitted. Accordingly our first parents were tempted ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... of a certain besetting sin, and her first letter was the very utterance of despair. She had struggled and wrestled and prayed, and tried to overcome the sin that had been reigning over her. Now and then she would get the victory, and then down she went again, and she said, "It is such a subtle thing, connected with my thoughts and imagination, so that I do not think I ever can be saved." I answered the letter, and tried to encourage her faith and hope in Jesus Christ. I showed her how dishonoring this unbelief was, and that, if she would only trust Him to come in ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... than its height is its purity and serenity. The subtle tints of colour and the brilliant sunlight dispel any coldness we might feel, while the purity is still maintained. And the serenity is accentuated by the ceaseless movements of the eddying clouds through which the vision is seen. There is about Kinchinjunga ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... on his side only a subtle theory, mere words; M. Daburon possessed palpable testimony, facts. And such was the peculiarity of the case, that all the reasons brought forward by the old man to justify Albert simply reacted against him, and ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... shaken off a worship he had felt for Pippin —"King" Pippin he was always called, when they had been boys at the Camborne Grammar-school. "King" Pippin! the boy with the bright colour, very bright hair, bright, subtle, elusive eyes, broad shoulders, little stoop in the neck, and a way of moving it quickly like a bird; the boy who was always at the top of everything, and held his head as if looking for something further to be the top of. He remembered how one day "King" Pippin had said to him in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... about him. The trees were full now of strange shadows. All the things about him became strange and unfamiliar with that subtle queerness one feels oftenest in dreams. "O God! I carn' stand this," he said, and crept back from the rocks to the grass and crouched down, and suddenly wild sorrow for the death of Kurt, Kurt the brave, Kurt the kindly, came to ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... Dr. Veiga held up a pared and finished finger and wagged it to and fro with solemnity—"you can't do this without moving your finger ... You were aware of this great truth? Then why are you upset because you can't wag your finger without moving it?... Perhaps I'm being too subtle for you. Let me put the affair in another way. You've lost sight of the supreme earthly fact that everything has not merely a consequence, but innumerable consequences. You knew when you married that ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... reputations; and the white flower of a blameless life was much too inartistic to have any attraction for him. He believed that Art showed the way to Nature, and worshipped the abnormal with all the passion of his impure and subtle youth. ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... a strange world into which he had been permitted to see, unscrupulous, pleasure seeking, energetic, subtle, a world too of dire economic struggle; there were allusions he did not understand, incidents that conveyed strange suggestions of altered moral ideals, flashes of dubious enlightenment. The blue canvas ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... for I have no head for a subtle distinction. I only meant to say it is not so easy to be in love without mistakes. You mistake realities and traits for something not a bit like them, and you mistake yourself by imagining ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... riddle of the Sphinx, he solved it not—only delighted with pure pleasure of poetry and of subtle thought as he led one along the pathways of his Enchanted Garden, where I shall ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... jocund fireflies. She was making two hooks for her kitchen wall, for she was clever at the forge, and could shoe a horse if she were let to do so. She was but half-turned to Valmond, but he caught the pure outlines of her face and neck, her extreme delicacy of expression, which had a pathetic, subtle refinement, in acute contrast to the quick, abundant health, the warm energy, the half defiant look of Elise. It was a picture ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... emotion: the emotion of being interrupted in the midst of a direful and pregnant revelation, and saw—but, no, here description fails me! Eleanore Leavenworth must be painted by other hands than mine. I could sit half the day and dilate upon the subtle grace, the pale magnificence, the perfection of form and feature which make Mary Leavenworth the wonder of all who behold her; but Eleanore—I could as soon paint the beatings of my own heart. Beguiling, terrible, grand, pathetic, that face of faces flashed upon my gaze, ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... is that of a giant; his strength of will, that of a child. He has, so to speak, no executive talent. He is the doubting philosopher, the subtle metaphysician, the self-analyzer, always 'thinking too precisely upon the event.' He sees so far into the consequences of human action that he is fearful of taking decided steps. He has the nerve to kill ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... also a consonant, or at least one of a softer sound, or even a whole syllable, rotundus, round; fragilis, frail; securus, sure; regula, rule; tegula, tile; subtilis, subtle; nomen, noun; decanus, dean; computo, count; subitaneus, sudden, soon; superare, to soar; periculum, peril; mirabile, marvel; as magnus, main; dignor, deign; tingo, stain; tinctum, taint; pingo, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... and what isn't to be happens sometimes. And it is precisely such unchancy happenings that make the scheme of things go wrong. I dare say you think me an old fogy, Eric; but I know something more of the world than you do, and I believe, with Tennyson's Arthur, that 'there's no more subtle master under heaven than is the maiden passion for a maid.' I want to see you safely anchored to the love of some good woman as soon as may be, that's all. I'm rather sorry Miss Campion isn't your lady of the future. I ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... rather than man, once in many ages, calls together the prudent and religious counsels of men deputed to repress the encroachments, and to work off the inveterate blots and obscurities wrought upon our minds by the subtle insinuating of Error and Custom: who, with the numerous and vulgar train of their followers, make it their chief design to envy and cry down the industry of free reasoning, under the terms of "humour" and "innovation"; as if the womb of teeming Truth were to be closed up ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... Nathan, Bixiou, La Palferine, and Lousteau, "but the king of the ground is a certain Count, now busy ranging himself. In his time, he was supposed to be the cleverest, adroitest, canniest, boldest, stoutest, most subtle and experienced of all the pirates, who, equipped with fine manners, yellow kid gloves, and cabs, have ever sailed or ever will sail upon the stormy seas of Paris. He fears neither God nor man. He applies in private life the principles that guide the English ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... escaping the man-dealer, and sharing his earnings in the support of old mas'r. Franconia is differently situated; yet she can only take advantage of circumstances which yet depend upon the caprice of a subtle-minded husband. Over both these friends of the unfortunate, slavery has stretched its giant arms, confusing the social system, uprooting the integrity of men, weakening respect for law, violating the best precepts of nature, substituting passion for principle, confounding ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... being separated into various simple bodies. Instead of four, chemists now reckon upwards of forty elementary substances. The existence of most of these is established by the clearest experiments; but, in regard to a few of them, particularly the most subtle agents of nature, heat, light, and electricity, there is yet much uncertainty, and I can only give you the opinion which seems most probably deduced from the latest discoveries. After I have given you a list of the elementary bodies, classed according ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... others. It gave to a naturally trustful disposition the vim and vigor of an apostolate for a cheerful view of human nature. It was a characteristic trait of his to expect good results from reliance on human virtue, and his whole success as a persuades of men was largely to be explained by the subtle flattery of this trustful attitude towards them. At Brook Farm the mind of Isaac Hecker was eagerly looking for instruction. It failed to get even a little clear light on the more perplexing problems of life, but ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... the Defendants, unlawfully contriving, &c. for their own lucre and gain, to injure and aggrieve divers of the liege subjects of our said Lord the King, on the said 19th February, unlawfully, &c. did conspire, &c. by divers false and subtle arts, devices, contrivances, representations, reports, and rumours, to occasion without just and true cause, a rise and increase in the prices of the public Government Funds, &c. and thereby to injure and aggrieve all his Majesty's liege subjects ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... the rage provoked by Raoul's outspoken criticism had recoiled on the innocent cause. She, not Saint Hubert, had felt the brunt of his anger. In the innate cruelty of his nature it had given him a subtle pleasure to watch the bewilderment, alternating with flickering fear, that had come back into the deep blue eyes that for two months had looked into his with frank confidence. He had made her acutely conscious of his displeasure. Only last night, when his lack of consideration and his ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... Therefore it very naturally happened that Mildred had become acquainted with all the other families before she had even spoken to Mr. or Mrs. Ulph. On the other inmates of the mansion her influence soon began to be felt; for almost unconsciously she exercised her rare and subtle power of introducing a finer element into the lives of those who were growing sordid and material. She had presented several families with a small house-plant, and suggested that they try to develop slips from others that she sedulously tended in her own window. In two or three instances ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... ambiguous questions and doubts of conscience: a lord who had two suzerains, and who, rightly or wrongly, believed that he had cause of complaint against one of them, was justified in serving that one who could and would protect him. Personal interest and subtle disputes soon make traitors; and Edward had the ability to discover them and win them over. The alternate outbursts and weaknesses of John in the case of those whom he suspected; the snares he laid for them; the precipitancy and cruel violence ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... eyes of learned and unlearned, out of the range of nature, is its apparently irregular and wayward character. How different the manifestations in different beings! how unstable in all!—at one time so calm, at another so wild and impulsive! It seemed impossible that anything so subtle and aberrant could be part of a system, the main features of which are regularity and precision. But the irregularity of mental phenomena is only in appearance. When we give up the individual, and take the mass, we find ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... among those piles was historical; within that clouded circumference, like the circle of a necromancer, had been raised all the dazzling and all the disturbing spirits of the world. There was the grand display of statesmanship, pomp, ambition, pleasure, and each the most subtle, splendid, daring, and prodigal ever seen among men. And, was it not now to assume even a more powerful influence on the fates of mankind? Was not the falling of the monarchical forest of so many centuries, about to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... in the south wing with a message that must go post-haste—a missive sanded, scented, and sealed by a trembling hand and to be opened by one no steadier? or is it perhaps from some bewigged councillor with knee-buckles glinting in the firelight as he waits for the subtle heart-warming of an ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... subtle, if not crafty, and the ordinary observer, even if he were as intelligent and quick as John Berwick, undoubtedly would have been entirely at sea in following the trail. Jim's keen senses, however, trained ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... to swell. The poor animal proceeded with the greatest difficulty. What remedies to apply we neither of us knew, but we had heard of the existence of a small snake called the aranas, the poison from whose fangs is so subtle that animals bitten often die within an hour; and even when remedies are applied, ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... next ten minutes she dragged and tugged at the piled-up furniture, making order out of confusion, and carrying the lighter drawing-room articles into the hall, in readiness to be put into their proper places. Then Maud reappeared, smartened up by those subtle touches which every woman knows how to bestow, and no man is able to understand, though the result is patent to his eyes; and after a second consultation on the subject of dinner, a return was made to the drawing-room, to see how the carpet-laying was progressing. Ned Talbot was ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... those who were lame and those who were sick. Simply and with uninquiring minds, they knelt or stood in the roadway, content to watch the banners as they swung gaily to the rhythmic movements of the bearers, content to see the holy relics in the Pater's hand, content to feel that subtle wave of religious sentiment pass over them which made them at peace with their little world and brought the existence of God ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... dawned, and grew. He was certainly not physically attractive, although the Syrian Arab costume made him picturesque. The first thing I noticed was the fatness of his hands—those of a giver of dishonest gifts. When he shook hands you felt in some subtle way that he was sure your conscience was for sale, that he would purchase it for any reasonable figure, and that he believed he had plenty of money with which to buy you ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... a stately, a good, and a subtle fish, a fish that hath not (as it is said) been long in England, but said to be by one Mr. Mascall (a Gentleman then living at Plumsted in Sussex) brought into this Nation: and for the better confirmation of this, you are to remember I told you that Gesner ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... his face flushed, he walked rapidly about, like a man under a keener sense of life. Lovers see miracles, and believe in them. Allan thought it nothing extraordinary that Maggie's soul should speak to his soul. And why should we doubt the greeting? Do we any of us know what subtle lines are between spirit and spirit? A few years since, who dreamed of sending a message through the air? Is it not more incredible that flesh and blood in New York should speak with flesh and blood in Washington, than that spirits, rare, rapid and vivid as thought, should communicate ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... good behaviour joined with her excellent person, and shall perceive his eyes with a kind of greediness to pull unto them this image of beauty, and carry it to the heart: shall observe himself to be somewhat incensed with this influence, which moveth within: when he shall discern those subtle spirits sparkling in her eyes, to administer more fuel to the fire, he must wisely withstand the beginnings, rouse up reason, stupefied almost, fortify his heart by all means, and shut up all those passages, by ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... persistent, there was yet in his manner a beautiful simplicity, a gentleness and interest that rarely failed to disarm and win admission where he desired to enter. Added to this equipment were a fine sense of humour, a subtle sympathy, and a passionate tenderness for anyone or anything lonely or neglected or in trouble. So, as only the few ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... She had not expected such an admission from her husband, though she agreed with him. Harry was not, as a rule, susceptible to new impressions, but there was a subtle influence in the simple life on the prairies which altered one's point of view and led to one's forming a new estimate of values. She had felt this. Things which had seemed essential in England somehow lost their ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... baron did not like his friend's allusions, though they were much too subtle for his ready comprehension, for the intellect of the Swiss was a little frosted by constant residence among snows and in full view of glaciers, and it wanted the volatile play of the Genoese's fancy, which was ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... crude at first. The child sees only the most obvious distinctions, and prefers the strongest stimulation. But perception soon becomes refined by exercise, and, when a child tries to imitate the subtle colors of nature with paints, he begins to realize that the strongest colors are not the most beautiful,—rather the tempered ones, which may be compared to the moderate sounds in music. To describe these ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... my shadow, which he could not mistake, attached to the figure of the extraordinary, grey, unknown one, and he endeavoured by force to put me in possession of my property; but not being able to lay firm hold on this subtle thing, he ordered the old man, in a peremptory tone, to abandon what did not belong to him. He, for a reply, turned his back upon my well-meaning servant, and marched away. Bendel followed him closely, and lifting up the stout black-thorn cudgel which he carried, ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... along he gradually grew calmer. Things seemed to become simpler, more easy to bear, and to understand. He saw Lalage now in a different light, and he felt that, as her character was partially cleared, so, in some subtle way, his own sin became less, and he need no longer have any compunction about asking Vera Farlow to be ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... of Ferdinand, who was ever on the alert, wrote a letter from Granada apprising the king of Boabdil's intention, and that he was making preparations for the journey. He received a letter in reply, charging him by subtle management to prevent, or at least delay, the coming of Boabdil to court.* The crafty monarch trusted to effect through Aben Comixa as vizier and agent of Boabdil an arrangement which it might be ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... however, with more subtle and serious attacks. This great Leviathan, as Hobbes called it, was not at first a popular institution; and it frightened many people. The American colonists, for instance, thought that its absolute sovereignty was too dangerous a thing to be left loose, and they put ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... had looked up Hanka and invited her. He wondered a little over Tidemand's remark about boat-rides being dangerous; Tidemand had given the remark a subtle meaning, and Ole had looked ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... subordinate spirits, or the spirits of deceased persons, the matters to which she testified, or ever believed that she had, she would have said so. On the contrary, she declares that she had no foundation whatever, from any source, for what she said, but was under the subtle and mysterious influence of the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... literature. In this sense, too, it was no doubt once possible, with no small measure of justification, to deny the existence of an American, as distinguished from an English, literature. Yet, despite the subtle psychic bonds that link identity of speech to similarity of thought, the environment (which helps to shape pronunciation as well as vocabulary and the language itself) is, from the standpoint of literature, little removed from language as a determining factor. Looking ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... brilliantly ingenious, of Mr. Macrae. 'This,' he exclaimed rather superfluously, 'accounts for the fiendish skill with which these miscreants took cover when pursued by the Marine Police. This explains the subtle art with which they dodged observation. Doubtless they had always, somewhere, a well-found normal yacht containing their supplies. Do you not ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... disciples of Jesus, greater is He that is for you than all that are against you; the word of life which has been hidden in the world, hidden in believing hearts, is a leaven too. The unction of the Holy One is more subtle and penetrating and subduing than sin and Satan. Where sin abounded ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... stood face to face with the man who had stolen the body of Sir Charles Darryll. For a moment Beatrice fought hard with the feeling that she was going to faint. Her eyes dilated and she looked across at the man opposite. He was lying back in his chair feasting his eyes upon her beauty, so that the subtle change in the girl's face was ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust With spirit, thought, and love, on Man alone, Partial in causeless malice, wantonly Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery? Nature?—no! Kings, priests, and statesmen blast the human flower Even in its tender bud; their influence darts Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... hardly agree with him when he tells us that smells do not admit of kinds. He seems to think that no definite qualities can attach to bodies which are in a state of transition or evaporation; he also makes the subtle observation that smells must be denser than air, though thinner than water, because when there is an obstruction to the breathing, air can penetrate, but ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... push us over the wall? But instantly logic came to my rescue. Fraser had brought us here, and he could have brought us for but one thing: to question us. Would he be apt to do us harm before those questions were asked? And besides, would Fraser's brilliantly subtle mind stoop so low as to destroy enemies by pushing them over ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... hour to hour, trusting so devoutly for success to momentary inspiration, that he felt his suit dignified by a certain flattering faux air of genuine passion. He occasionally reminded himself, however, that he might really be owing more to the subtle force of accidental contrast than Gertrude's lifelong reserve—for it was certain she would not depart from it—would ever allow him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... The universal importance of her position is faithfully reflected in the diplomatic documents contained in her archives. The Republic maintained ambassadors and residents at every Court. These men were among the most subtle and accomplished diplomatists of their time, and the government they served was exacting and critical to the highest degree. The result is that the dispatches, newsletters and reports of the Venetian diplomatic agents, form the most varied, brilliant, and ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... of her strange attack clearly had been to break up his prospecting trip by the death of the burro and to test whether he could and would fight. No less clear, now, was the subtle manner in which she had both spurred his daring with her derision and appealed to his chivalry for protection against the murderous bronchos. All the time Cochise and his band were over in the Basin, waiting for her to lure a victim within ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... unfit to sell your own writings, get a competent literary agent to do the job for you. But don't too quickly despair, for after all, there is nothing particularly subtle about salesmanship. Sincerity, however crude, usually carries conviction. If you know a "story" when you see it, if you write it right and type it in professional form and give it the needed illustrations; then if you offer it in a common sense manner ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... up a separate standard of revolt, to which all the disaffected and all the worst characters of the district flocked, to gratify their lust for revenge of real or fancied wrongs, or their baser passions for plunder and unmeaning cruelty. The malignity of a subtle, acute, semi-civilized race, unrestrained by law or by moral feeling, broke out in its most frightful forms. Cowardice possessed of strength never wreaked more horrible sufferings upon its victims, and the bloody and barbarous annals ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... of the unit and studied the maze of transistors, resistors, and capacitators. If there was something wrong it was subtle, like a burned out resistor or a shorted condenser. Whatever it was, it was beyond emergency repair. He dropped the tele-talkie behind the seat and examined the gauge on his oxygen tank. There was enough to last the night but not ...
— The Quantum Jump • Robert Wicks
... would be interesting about the proceedings and the evidence given against and for the Companies; how reckless were many of the charges brought against them, how easily they were disproved; how subtle and disingenuous other charges were and what skill was required to refute them; how some of the witnesses were up in the clouds and had to be brought down to common earth; how conclusively the Companies proved ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... calyxes was carried to her on mingled currents of fragrance. Every leaf and bud and blade seemed to contribute its exhalation to the pervading sweetness in which the pungency of pine-sap prevailed over the spice of thyme and the subtle perfume of fern, and all were merged in a moist earth-smell that was like the breath of some huge ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... subtle something inherent in each individual, not to be entirely done away with in any case, but to be improved by a careful study of good models, such, for example, as the letters of the above mentioned authors. To read the best prose writers also cannot fail to work an improvement. For instance, ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... he spoke endeavoring to read in that subtle countenance the cardinal's motive. "Once upon a time there lived a queen—a powerful monarch—who reigned over one of the greatest kingdoms of the universe; and a minister; and this minister wished much ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and wonder what she will do next, though everything in his eyes was perfect that she did—such as may still be seen in the eyes of many a world-worn husband looking on at the movements of that directer, more simple, yet more subtle being, and the quick absolutism and certainty of the bright spirit at his side. The grey-bearded old soldier, leader of many a raid and victor in many a struggle, with this new revelation of beauty and purity bursting upon his later ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... her head beside his on the pillow, and through that prayer and the strange stillness of her lover she received a subtle shock. Sweet it was to touch him as she bent with eyes hidden. Terrible it would be to look—to see how the war had wrecked him. She tried to linger there, all tremulous, all gratitude, all woman and mother. But an incalculable force lifted her ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... abyss. "And somewhat strange," Thus to myself I spake, "signal so strange Betokens, which my guide with earnest eye Thus follows." Ah! what caution must men use With those who look not at the deed alone, But spy into the thoughts with subtle skill! "Quickly shall come," he said, "what I expect, Thine eye discover quickly, that whereof Thy thought is dreaming." Ever to that truth, Which but the semblance of a falsehood wears, A man, if possible, should bar his lip; Since, although ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... I had loitered in the neighborhood for half an hour or more, it was noon, and it occurred to me that I might go and lunch at Miss Van Buren's hotel. But this would look like dogging the girl's footsteps, and eventually I decided upon a more subtle ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... led to think that he has got The very virtues I have not; Her every phrase is subtle praise And oh! how ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... nigh to me, as though inviting me to enter therein as its lord? Undoubtedly she must have known it, for her soul was too sympathetically united with mine not to have felt its least emotional thrill, and that subtle sympathy it must have been which prompted her to climb—although clad only in her nightdress—to the summit of the terrace, amid the icy dews ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... fur robe she was soft and white, and the subtle scent of her hair seemed a deeper entrapment than any. Frail as she seemed, her arms had the strength of steel, and pain blazed down my wrenched shoulders, seared through the twisted wrists. Then ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... A class of subtle programming errors that can arise in code that does dynamic allocation, esp. via 'malloc(3)' or equivalent. If several pointers address ('aliases for') a given hunk of storage, it may happen that the storage is freed or reallocated (and thus moved) through one alias and then referenced through ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... dolce far niente, with a flavour of the flesh. And every one will say, As you lounge your upward way, "If he's content with a do-nothing life, which would certainly not suit me. What a most particularly subtle young man this subtle young ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... her afterthought, she should be able chemically to analyse it. There were moments, positively, still beyond this, when, with the meeting of their eyes, something as yet unnamable came out for her in his look, when something strange and subtle and at variance with his words, something that GAVE THEM AWAY, glimmered deep down, as an appeal, almost an incredible one, to her finer comprehension. What, inconceivably, was it like? Wasn't it, however gross, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... 30,000 pounds or 13.5 tons. An inch fall or rise in the barometer shows that this load is lightened or increased, sometimes in a few hours, by nearly 1,000 pounds; and no notice is taken of it, except by the meteorologist, or by the speculative physician, seeking the subtle causes of epidemic and endemic complaints. At Dorjiling (7,400 feet), this load is reduced to less than 2,500 pounds, with no appreciable result whatever on the frame, however suddenly it be transported to that elevation. And the observation of my own habits ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... secondary proof of this in the fewness of those fine descriptive strokes and subtle indirect touches of colour or sound which arise with incessant spontaneity, where a mastering passion for nature steeps the mind in vigilant, accurate, yet half-unconscious, observation. It is amazing through how long a catalogue of natural objects Byron sometimes takes us, without ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... is a satirical chronicler. His style is not less lively than severe—not subtle enough for irony, but caustic, free, and full of earnest meaning. This volume is also an admirable manual, skilfully adapted to the purpose of diffusing a general knowledge of history and the ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... awe in which Forsytes in general held old Jolyon, due to his philosophic twist, or perhaps—as Hemmings would doubtless have said—to his chin, there was, and always had been, a subtle antagonism between the younger man and the old. It had lurked under their dry manner of greeting, under their non-committal allusions to each other, and arose perhaps from old Jolyon's perception of the quiet tenacity ('obstinacy,' he rather naturally called it) ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Augustus for a free constitution which he had destroyed, can only be explained by an attentive consideration of the character of that subtle tyrant. A cool head, an unfeeling heart, and a cowardly disposition, prompted him at the age of nineteen to assume the mask of hypocrisy, which he never afterwards laid aside. With the same hand, and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... aside. "Your distinctions are too subtle," she said. Her eye fell on the Bambino, resting disgracefully on its wooden head. "Poor little figurine," she murmured, reaching a slender hand to draw it up. She straightened the tumbled finery absently. It slipped to her lap, and lay there. Her hands ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... we won't be quite so subtle this time. Present Mr. Knowle's compliments, and say that I shall be very much honoured if he will drink a glass of whiskey with me before proceeding on ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... had not forgotten her fondness for her pretty little Flossy: nor forgotten that,—softly-innocent little creature though she was, she possessed a wisdom far above those who are credited with having keen insight; even a wisdom so subtle, and withal so tender, that its source could only be Infinite Wisdom. So she, in company with many others, was learning to turn to the friend so much younger than herself, as one in whom ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... flowers, and blooming women. Strange scarlet and mulberry threads form the woof of these tapestries, threads pulled with great labour from all the art of the past. There is, in much of his work, an undercurrent of subtle sensuous erotic poison; in one of her stories Edna Kenton tells us that chartreuse jaune and bananas form such a poison. There is a suggestion of chartreuse jaune and bananas in much of the ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... invested him in a halo of glory. He became her god thenceforth to worship and to serve. Her infidelity meant no diminution of this passion. Withdrawn from her husband's influence, left without any sign of his existence for two years or more, subjected to the machinations of the subtle and unscrupulous Rosenblatt, the soul in her had died, the animal had lived and triumphed. The sound of her husband's voice last night had summoned into vivid life her dead soul. Her god had moved into the range of her vision, and immediately she was his again, soul and body. Hence her sudden ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... the seventeen-year-old ladies of the present day—that he could engineer himself into a worthwhile conversation with the Lawrences. Since meeting them, he was doubly anxious. There was a thinly veiled hostility about the man which demanded investigation. And about the woman there was a subtle atmosphere of tragedy which appealed to the masculine protectiveness which surged strong in ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... Percy,' faintly cried Bella, letting the book fall to the ground in her confusion; 'traitorous wiles, indeed, encompassed us, and the arts of a Mundus were too subtle for my girlish brain. I sometimes fear that my poor frame will sink ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... imagination and his daring remind us of Marlowe; the leave-taking of Petronius is certainly worthy of Marlowe. He is like Marlowe, too, in another way,—he has no comic power and (wiser, in this respect, than Ford) is aware of his deficiency. We find in Nero none of those touches of swift subtle pathos that dazzle us in the Duchess of Malfy; but we find strokes of sarcasm no less keen and trenchant. Sometimes in the ring of the verse and in turns of expression, we seem to catch ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... always with precision. To predict what we will do in a given case is not easy for a foreigner. It is not easy even for ourselves. We have few abstract principles, and reliable induction from our past is not easy. We are often guided by what Mr. Justice Wendell Holmes has called "the intuition more subtle than any particular major premise." Nor is help to be derived from any study of our general outlook on life, for that outlook is hard to formulate even ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... measures against the Duc de Guise. Since that period he had negotiated with the ministers of Spain and Savoy, and by these means he had contracted a great intimacy with the Duc de Biron, to whom he affected to be distantly related, and over whom he acquired such extraordinary ascendancy by his subtle and unceasing flattery that the weak Marechal became a mere puppet in his hands, and, misled by his vanity, suffered himself to be persuaded that his merit had been overlooked and his services comparatively ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... the act rewarded, Since it is good; howe'er you must put on An amorous carriage towards me, to delude Your subtle father. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... hope to save Even this ethereal essence from the grave? What ever 'scaped Oblivion's subtle wrong Save a few clarion names, or golden threads of song 275 Before my musing eye The mighty ones of old sweep by, Disvoiced now and insubstantial things, As noisy once as we; poor ghosts of kings, Shadows ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... the lines of those short paragraphs [he is writing of the newspaper accounts of various native risings in the Eastern Archipelago]—sunshine and the glitter of the sea. A strange name wakes up memories; the printed words scent the smoky atmosphere of to-day faintly, with the subtle and penetrating perfume as of land-breezes breathing through the starlight of bygone nights; a signal-fire gleams like a jewel on the high brow of a sombre cliff; great trees, the advanced sentries of immense ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... sedulously cloaked, was lost on Sim Roxby; and he was aware, too, in some subtle way, of the relief his guest experienced when they plunged into the darkening forest and left the forlorn place behind them. The clearing in which it was situated seemed an oasis of light in the desert of night in which the rest of the world lay. From the obscurity of the forest Dundas ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... appearance, Walt Wilder is doomed. He has escaped the spears, arrows, and tomahawks of the Tenawa savages to fall a victim to a destroyer, stealthy, subtle, unseen. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... very short, but the few words it contained were exceedingly disquieting. It was accompanied by a card on which Matilde read 'Giuditta Astarita, Sonnambula,' and the address was below, in one corner. The few words of the letter, written in a subtle, sloping, feminine handwriting, correctly spelt and grammatically well expressed, ran ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... and any change of focus and altered outlook in these people, that may serve to suggest discontinuity with their past, must be explained by the passage of ten years. Such a period had renewed all physically—a fact full of subtle connotations. It had sharpened the youthful and matured the adult mind; it had dimmed the senses sinking upon nature's night time and strengthened the dawning will and opening intellect. For as a ship furls her spread of sail on entering ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... perceptible— Water, of all creation's works the first; The Fire that bears on high the sacrifice Presented with solemnity to heaven; The Priest, the holy offerer of gifts; The Sun and Moon, those two majestic orbs, Eternal marshallers of day and night; The subtle Ether, vehicle of sound, Diffused throughout the boundless universe; The Earth, by sages called 'The place of birth Of all material essences and things'; And Air, which giveth life to ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... wise, poets witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep, moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... there are even more subtle assumptions we make unconsciously. For one, we assume that a thinking creature must think in the same way we do. We might not even be able to recognize thinking when we meet it, on another planet. No—" he held up ...
— The Unthinking Destroyer • Roger Phillips
... its importance, for it is attention to detail which characterises modern Germany. It is the subtle things which are difficult to detect. The Government neglects nothing which will aid in the ownership of public opinion at home and the influencing ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... smallest West End restaurants, where they spent what Marie called a dream of an evening. Her languors evaporated in that subtle air, her eyes brightened, her cheeks glowed; she could face right into the teeth of the coming storm, and do no more than laugh at it. How good it was to be alive, and how alive she was! She had two lives. She was that most vital of all creatures, the expectant ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... for the hour is come that weighs Our fates in the same balance. Thus then briefly, Thou art most fair, in wit most choice and subtle, In all rare talents still surpassing all, And for these gifts, and thy long tried affection, I feel I owe thee much, owe thee firm friendship, Eternal gratitude, faith, favour, love, And all things save my hand. Except but this, Which now I must not give, nor couldst thou take, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... original poems, which, before the twelfth century, expressed thoughts that were scarcely known to the literature of Europe before the eighteenth, are, besides, clothed in the rich garb of a subtle harmony, what admiration, what respect, and what love ought we not to show to that ancient Ireland which, in the darkest ages of western civilization, not only became the depositary of Latin knowledge and spread it over the ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... on each side of his fireplace: one of these had no shelves, and served for storing firewood and bottles of various kinds. From this he removed the contents, and lifting the statue, which, possibly because its substance had been affected in some subtle and inexplicable manner by the vital principle that had so lately permeated it, proved less ponderous than might have been reasonably expected, he pushed it well into the recess, and turned the key ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... English cookery and food. The basic aim in genuine English cookery is the conservation of the natural flavours and essences of the food cooked. And, since sound English meats and vegetables are by long odds the finest in the world, there could be no better purpose in cooking than this. Subtle methods and provocative sauces, which give their own distinctive flavour to the dishes in which they are used, are well enough for less favoured lands than England, and a much-needed boon, no doubt. They are a wasteful mistake in England, ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... dress and able to indulge her taste; but, even so, good feeling and the standard of propriety of the English country town of Market Dalling where she had spent most of her life, perhaps also a subtle instinct that nothing else would ever suit her so well, made her remain rigidly faithful to white and black, pale grey, and lavender. She also wore only one ornament, but it was a very becoming and an exceedingly costly ornament, ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... assure you he doesn't. All the same of course, from her point of view, you know, she has a dread of my brother's influence on the child on the formation of his character, his 'ideals,' poor little brat, his principles. It's as if it were a subtle poison or a contagion—something that would rub off on his tender sensibility when his father kisses him or holds him on his knee. If she could she'd prevent Mark from even so much as touching him. Every one knows it—visitors see it for themselves; so there's no harm in my telling ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... bought off by large concessions of French territory elsewhere—provided that Britain was not allowed to have anything to say: provided, that is, that the agreement of 1904 was scrapped. This was a not too subtle way of trying to drive a wedge between two friendly powers. It did not succeed. Britain insisted upon being consulted. There was for a time a real danger of war. In the end peace was maintained by the cession by France of considerable ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... turned him round about, And went into his den, For well he knew the silly fly Would soon be back again; So he wove a subtle thread In a little corner sly, And set his table ready To dine upon the fly. He went out to his door again, And merrily did sing, "Come hither, hither, pretty fly, With the pearl and silver wing; Your robes are green ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... But what subtle power is this, residing in but a bit of steel, which might have made a tenpenny nail, that so enters, without knocking, into our inmost beings, and shows us ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... Lola, when defending the existence of the soul against an atheist, to tumble over a great trunk of books of the most varied kind, till she came to an old vellum-bound copy of Apuleius, and proceed to establish her views according to his subtle neo-Platonism. But she romanced and embroidered so much in conversation that she did not get credit ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... 450 Which in a fair proportion to deny Allegiance dares not; which to hold too high, No good can wish, no coward king can dare, And, held too high, no English subject bear; Besieged by men of deep and subtle arts, Men void of principle, and damn'd with parts, Who saw his weakness, made their king their tool, Then most a slave, when most he seem'd to rule; Taking all public steps for private ends, Deceived by favourites, whom he called friends, 460 He had not strength enough ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... manners and honest purpose, but, contrary to their estimate, of very moderate ability. He must of course have a previous understanding with Bonaparte, and to that end he had journeyed by way of Italy. Being kindly welcomed, he was entirely befooled by his subtle host, who detained him with idle suggestions until after the fall of Mantua, when to his amazement he received the instructions from Paris already stated: to make no proposition of any kind without Bonaparte's consent. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... and again at this splendor that was neither night nor day. The girl in her pink evening dress looked very light and pretty to me—pretty enough to enrage me,—she had well shaped arms and white, well-modeled shoulders, and the turn of her cheek and the fair hair about her ears was full of subtle delights; but she was not Nettie, and the happy man with her was that odd degenerate type our old aristocracy produced with such odd frequency, chinless, large bony nose, small fair head, languid expression, and a neck that had demanded and received a ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... quick, cynical approval and, with a sudden turn, executed a deep bow to the Pearl, one hand on the heart, expressing gallantry, fealty, the humblest admiration; all these sincere and yet permeated with a subtle and volatile mockery. ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... world. Nonsense when recognized and enjoyed as such is more than legitimate; it is a part of every one's heritage. But nonsense which is confused with reality is vicious,—the more so because its insinuations are subtle. So far as their content is concerned, it is chiefly as a protest against this confusing presentation of unreality, this substitution of excitement for legitimate interest, that these stories have been written. ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... Well, there, it boots not to argue with you. Your bucolic mind would never rise to the subtle import which may lie in such matters—the rest of mind which it is to have them right, and the plaguey uneasiness when aught is wrong. It comes, doubtless, from training, and it may be that I have it more than others of my class. I feel as a cat who would ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... A subtle task confronted Mr. Donovan,—that of supplanting the unfortunate Count in the heart of Miss Conway. This his admiration for her determined him to do. But the magnitude or the undertaking did not seem ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... been no more than an instantaneous, mass impression of all the elements of the dream upon the brain,[7] and that the dream itself has been produced by the imaginative action of the soul in the astral body, an extremely subtle one, whose vibratory power is such as to transform altogether our ordinary ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... thrown by the trees upon the snow are blue and soft, sharply defined, and so contrasted with the gleaming white as to appear narrower than the boughs which cast them. There is something subtle and fantastic about these shadows. Here is a leafless larch-sapling, eight feet high. The image of the lower boughs is traced upon the snow, distinct and firm as cordage, while the higher ones grow dimmer by fine gradations, until the slender topmost twig is blurred and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... And what is, in this case, the distinction between the comic and the ugly? Thus stated, the question could scarcely be answered in any other than an arbitrary fashion. Simple though it may appear, it is, even now, too subtle to allow of a direct attack. We should have to begin with a definition of ugliness, and then discover what addition the comic makes to it; now, ugliness is not much easier to analyse than is beauty. However, we will employ an artifice which will often stand us in good stead. ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... long accustomed to coalesce, and here they form a single section. No matter how subtle a natural phenomenon may be, whether we observe it in the region of sense, or follow it into that of imagination, it is in the long run reducible to mechanical laws. But the mechanical data once guessed or ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... annually flying still farther northward, just as the sailors and explorers record in their log-books. No scientist has yet been audacious enough to attempt to explain, even to his own satisfaction, toward what lands these winged fowls are guided by their subtle instinct. However, Olaf Jansen has given us a most ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... leaf stirred. A cold dew that was scarcely a frost glittered on the moss at my feet, No bird's voice broke the impressive hush of the wood-lands morning dream. No bright-hued flower unbuttoned its fairy cloak to the breeze; yet there was a subtle perfume everywhere—the fragrance of unseen violets whose purple eyes ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... vague feelings back to a subtle shock he had sustained in a last look at Creech's dark, somber face. It had been the face of a Nemesis. All about Creech breathed silent, revengeful force. Slone worked out in his plodding thought why that fact should oppress him; and it ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... scholar, or powerful lord touched with "the new learning," chanced to be on hand to save it from destruction. Yes! even at that time when beauty was being victoriously born again, the mad fear of her raged with such panic in certain minds that, when Savonarola lit his great bonfire so subtle a servant of beauty as Botticelli, fallen into a sort of religious dotage, cast his own paintings into the flames—to the lugubrious rejoicings of the sanctimonious Piagnoni—as Savonarola's followers were called; predecessors of those still gloomier ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... own placidity. He did not know when his mother left the room. He wondered continuously when it would happen, when the bolt would fall, what she would do. Howat was hot and cold, and possessed by a subtle sense of improbity, a feeling resembling that of a doubtful advance through the dark, for a questionable end. This was the least part of him, insignificant; his passion grew constantly stronger, more brutal. In a ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... child of God. When I was a boy, who had dreamed 'how' men in London might speak with men in Edinburgh through the air, invisible and unheard? That is a matter of trade now. Can thou imagine what subtle secret lines there may be between the ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... events of the past with a view to obtaining light on the development of the present, it is needful, and indeed just, to inquire into the character of the Boers as a race. It is a complex character, with multitudinous lights and shades, so subtle and yet so marked, that they are difficult to define accurately. It is therefore necessary that the opinions of many writers on the subject of the Boer temperament should be taken—of writers who have made ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... was so furious a Jacobin that he had dared to say it would be a good thing for France if the King's days were shortened. His duty was confined to making the pastry; he was closely watched by the head officers of the kitchen, who were devoted to his Majesty; but it is so easy to introduce a subtle poison into made dishes that it was determined the King and Queen should eat only plain roast meat in future; that their bread should be brought to them by M. Thierry de Ville-d'Avray, intendant of the smaller apartments, and that he should likewise take upon himself to supply the wine. ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... morning is my business," returned Calumet gruffly. Betty's voice had been quietly conversational, but it had carried a subtle sting with its direct mockery, and Calumet felt again as he had felt the night before, like an unruly scholar being rebuked by his teacher. Last night, though, the situation had been a novel one; now the thought that ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the old materials as to construct a harmonious and internally consistent tale, observing throughout a sense of proportion and a due relation of the parts. Such a clipping and alteration of the authorities would have seemed sacrilege to earlier bards. In mediaeval Ireland there was, indeed, a subtle spirit of criticism; but under its influence, being as it was of scholastic origin, no great singing men appeared, re-fashioning the old rude epics; and yet, the very shortcomings of the Irish tales, from a literary ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... it is really the same; but as development takes place, it receives the different names. Together we call them the Mystery. Where the Mystery is the deepest is the gate of all that is subtle and wonderful. ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... single sentence, like 435 those meek deliverances to God's mercy, with which Laud accompanied his votes for the mutilations and loathsome dungeoning of Leighton and others!—nowhere such a pious prayer as we find in Bishop Hall's memoranda of his own life, concerning the subtle and witty atheist that so grievously perplexed 440 and gravelled him at Sir Robert Drury's till he prayed to the Lord to remove him, and behold! his prayers were heard: for shortly afterward this Philistine-combatant went ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... machine supports. The slightest frailties of conscience are perceptible to him. From the portress Cibot to the Marquise d'Espard, not one of his women has an evil thought that he does not fathom. With what art, comparable to that of Stendhal, or Laclos, or the most subtle analysts, does he note —in The Secrets of a Princess—the transition from comedy to sincerity! He knows when a sentiment is simple and when it is complex, when the heart is a dupe of the mind and when of the senses. And through ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... strange feeling of unwilling fascination, from "Horresco referens" to "Bis medium amplexi," and flung the book from him, as if its leaves had been steeped in the subtle poisons that princes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... knowledge were responsible for the death of Nurse Forrester; but who shall presume to say that was really so? Why imagine anything so irregular? I prefer to think that had the post-mortem been conducted by somebody else, subtle reasons for her death might have appeared. Science is fallible, and even specialists make ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... knoweth the necessities of your kingdom and your weakness of body, will gladly grant unto you a dispensation. Lo! we have the puissance of the schismatic Emperor Frederick, the snares of the wealthy King of the English, the treasons but lately stopped of the Poitevines, and the subtle wranglings of the Albigensians to fear; Germany is disturbed; Italy hath no rest; the Holy Land is hard of access; you will not easily penetrate thither, and behind you will be left the implacable hatred between the pope and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... emotion—he was forced to acknowledge—the thought of her aroused, from the problems themselves. Who was she? At moments he seemed to see her shining, accusing, as Truth herself, and again as a Circe who had drawn him by subtle arts from his wanderings, luring him to his death; or, at other times, as the mutinous daughter of revolt. But when he felt, in memory, the warm touch of her hand, the old wildness of his nature responded, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the apprehension of losing his connection with two or three of the workmen whom he had so lately begun to know as men,—of having a plan or two, which were experiments lying very close to his heart, roughly nipped off without trial,—gave a new poignancy to the subtle fear that came over him from time to time; until now, he had never recognised how much and how deep was the interest he had grown of late to feel in his position as manufacturer, simply because it led him into such ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... two distinct forms; first, as a Religious doctrine, and, secondly, as a Philosophical system. It had its birthplace in the East, where the gorgeous magnificence of Nature was fitted to arrest the attention and to stimulate the imagination of a subtle, dreamy, and speculative people. The primitive doctrine of Creation was soon supplanted by the pagan theory of Emanation. The Indian Brahm is the first and only Substance, infinite, absolute, indeterminate Being, from which all is evolved, manifested, ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... all the methods of inflexion, derivation, and composition that give being to the most subtle kind of Sophistry; all the species and forms of Nouns, Verbs, and particles that make up the oeconomy of a Language, together withall diversity of Numbers, Genders, Cases, tenses, Modes, and Persons which have more of Art than at first sight is ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier |
