"Subtile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... impression produced by the grand facade, we are more and more struck with the subtile art displayed in its adaptations and symbolisms. Never did any structure we have looked upon so fully justify Madame de Stael's definition of architecture, as "frozen music." The outermost towers, their pillars and domes, are all square, their outlines ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... go about to inquire, I believe, at this time, as Evodius inquired of St. Austin, whether our immaterial part, the soul, does not remain united, when it forsakes this gross terrestrial body, to some ethereal body more subtile and more fine; which was one of the Pythagorean and Platonic whimsies: nor be under any concern to know, if this be not the case of the dead, how souls can be distinguished after their separation—that of Dives, for example, from that of Lazarus. ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... these reptiles have long infested our settlements, to the misery and destruction of many of our fellow citizens. I have, therefore, had frequent opportunities of being the melancholy spectator of the effects produced by the subtile poison which this ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... her dark eyes far away in thought,—sad thought, judging from their expression,—the wind playing in her light, wavy hair, her full red lips parted slightly, showing the interest which her theme awakened, and the fresh bloom upon her cheeks now going, now coming, following in some subtile way the quick movements of her mind. An hour slid by, and then she started from her revery with a sudden thought. The sadness in her eyes gave way to mirth and a twinkle of fun; the color came faster, the lips broke into ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... with spite is best repaid. So saying, through each thicket dank or dry, Like a black mist low-creeping, he held on His midnight-search, where soonest he might find The serpent; him fast-sleeping soon he found In labyrinth of many a round self-rolled, His head the midst, well stored with subtile wiles: Not yet in horrid shade or dismal den, Nor nocent yet; but, on the grassy herb, Fearless unfeared he slept: in at his mouth The Devil entered; and his brutal sense, In heart or head, possessing, soon inspired With act intelligential; but his sleep Disturbed not, waiting close the approach ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... Individui," the most extraordinary performance ever achieved by a youth of that age,— remarkable for its erudition, especially its intimate knowledge of the writings of the Schoolmen, and equally remarkable for its vigorous grasp of thought and its subtile analysis. In this essay Leibnitz discovered the bent of his mind and prefigured his future philosophy, in the choice of his theme, and in his vivid appreciation and strenuous positing of the individual as the fundamental principle of ontology. He takes Nominalistic ground in relation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... back'd With circumstances of a stronger nature. It now appears, his secretary, Cuff, With Blunt and Lee, were deep concern'd in this Destructive scheme contrived to raise this lord, And ruin Cecil. Oh, it is a subtile, A deep-laid mischief, by the earl contrived In hour malignant, to o'erturn the state, And, horror ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... retains the more fixt part of the arsenick and the sulphurs that come forth are so much the more subtile, as they are separated from what did fix them before, and this appears to be so, because the sulphurs must of necessity pass through all the book to make a writing of a clear and invisible liquor appear black and visible: and to facilitate this penetration the book is ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... rounding form of Hulda stepped on the footstool of his mind, touched his knee, and exhaled the aroma of her youth like a subtile musk, till he leaned back languidly, as if he smoked a pipe and on its bowl her bust was painted, and all her modesties dissolved into the intoxication. Brutality itself grew natural to this vision, as a fiercer joy and substitute for the deceit he could no longer practice. The ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... said he, struck much with a very subtile observation upon the causes why the Italian masters admit of copyists with greater facility than the Flemish,—"surely, sir, you yourself must have practised the art ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not then be surprised at those subtile hypotheses, as ingenious as they are unsatisfactory, to which theological prejudice has obliged the most profound modern speculators to recur; when they have undertaken to reconcile the spirituality ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... is above written, and who was present at the dispute, as he himself informs us, in his book of Travels, gives us no account of the answers which were made by Xavier. "I have neither knowledge nor presumption enough," says he, "to relate those subtile and solid reasons, with which he confuted the mad imaginations of the Bonza." We only have learnt from this Portuguese, that Fucarandono was put to silence upon the point in question, and that, a little to save his reputation, he changed ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... and Middleton and Alice are left to administer on the remains of the story; perhaps, the Mayor being his friend, he may be brought into play here. The foreign ecclesiastic shall likewise come forward, and he shall prove to be a man of subtile policy perhaps, yet a man of religion and honor; with a Jesuit's principles, but a Jesuit's devotion and self-sacrifice. The old Hospitaller must die in his bed, or some other how; or perhaps not—we shall see. He may just ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... regard to this malady, have stated, that probably from one-half to three-fourths of the cases of insanity, in many places, are occasioned in the same way. Ardent spirit is a poison so diffusive and subtile that it is found, by actual experiment, to penetrate ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... inapplicable to human affairs. The theorist railed at the folly of the world, instead of confessing his own; and the men of practice unjustly blamed philosophy, instead of condemning the sophist. The causes which the politician has to consider are, above all others, multiplied, mutable, minute, subtile, and, if I may so speak, evanescent; perpetually changing their form, and varying their combinations; losing their nature, while they keep their name; exhibiting the most different consequences in the endless variety of men and nations on whom they operate; in one degree of strength producing ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... twenty-five miles an hour, seems already destined to give way to the turbine form of engine which, applied thus far to torpedo-boats only, has made a record of forty-four miles an hour. Iron, which stood for a revolution in 1842, has itself given way to steel. And a new force, subtile, swift, and powerful, has found endless application in the body of the great ships, so that from stem to stern-post they are a network of electric wires, bearing messages, controlling the independent engines that swing the rudder, closing ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... physical facts used as symbols by the Creator to convey ethical, also instinctively uses them to express the facts of the moral world; and thus is born the human Word which, invisibly ploughing the waves of the unseen air, can convey the most subtile thought, the most evanescent shade of feeling, the wildest, darkest, and deepest emotion. Language is man's expression of the finite, with its infinite meanings modified by the extent of his intelligence and his power of expression. It is truly a universal possession, but every man gifts it with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... until they reach the world Aziath, falling by their own weight. This is a pure Platonism, clothed with the images and words peculiar to the Kabalists. It was the doctrine of the Essenes, who, says Porphyry, "believe that souls descend from the most subtile ether, attracted to bodies by the seductions of matter." It was in substance the doctrine of Origen; and it came from the Chaldæans, who largely studied the theory of the Heavens, the spheres, and the influences of ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... this short lesson from the god of bays, And let my friend apply it as he please: Beat not the dirty paths where vulgar feet have trod, But give the vigorous fancy room. For when, like stupid alchymists, you try To fix this nimble god, This volatile mercury, The subtile spirit all flies up in fume; Nor shall the bubbled virtuoso find More than fade insipid mixture left behind.[6] While thus I write, vast shoals of critics come, And on my verse pronounce their ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... finally, when the German legislator concluded to make no distinction between incompleted and attempted crime and to recognize only the completed crime in his code of 1871, we witnessed the spectacle of Carrara praising that legislator for leaving that subtile distinction out of his code. A strange conclusion on the part of a science, which cudgels its brains for a century to find the marks of distinction between attempted and incompleted crime, and then praises the legislator ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... suspicion so abominable. Besides, of what avail would be a denial without evidence to disprove a suspicion which had arisen without evidence? It was a thing too impalpable to contend with. As well fight a fog as seek to destroy by mere denial suspicion so vague, unsubstantial, and subtile, as that which enveloped him. Silas would, of course, eagerly accept his denial; he well knew how he would spring to his side, how warm and firm would be his hand-clasp, and how great, perhaps, his momentary relief. But he was, after all, but human, and ...
— Two Days' Solitary Imprisonment - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... thy pale cheek floods with sudden crimson, and, tossing back thy golden curls, thou gazest sadly into the depths of the sky—tell me, infant, what seest thou there, and with whom holdest thou communion? For then the light and subtile wrinkles weave their living mesh across thy spotless brow, like silken threads untwining by an unseen power from viewless coils, and thine eyes sparkle, freighted with mystic meanings, which none are able to interpret! Then thy grandam calls in vain, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... their father been so sick or irritable but that he reached out his arms to his little ones and gave them a warm embrace, that did him more good than he realized. The influence of trusting children is sometimes the most subtile oil that can be thrown on the troubled ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... astonished at finding the bodies of several dead rats and mice; she was wondering what had caused their death, when she recognized the famous hash that the cat had refused to eat, and which had been left there by mistake. Two mice were dead in the plate itself, so powerful and subtile was the poison! ...
— The Story of a Cat • mile Gigault de La Bdollire
... evening, she was bidding her hostess goodnight. Then she encountered such an eager, questioning, friendly look, that she smiled involuntarily, and slightly bowed as she turned away. Mrs. Robertson was so preoccupied at the moment that she did not witness this brief, subtile exchange of—what? Ella did not know, herself, but her heart was wonderfully light, and there was a delicious sense of exhilaration in all ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... candidates and prevent a fatal breach in the party. Then, to the astonishment of the convention, he named Millard Fillmore for Vice President, and asked a unanimous response to his nomination. This speech, though not pitched in a very exalted key, was so subtile and telling, that it threw the convention into applause. Collier recalled Fillmore's fidelity to his party; his satisfactory record in Congress, especially during the passage of the tariff act of 1842; his splendid, if unsuccessful canvass, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... home, even so late as in 1662; and the following observations by Fuller are curious, respecting the paper of his times:—"Paper participates in some sort of the characters of the country which makes it; the Venetian, being neat, subtile, and court-like; the French, light, slight, and slender; the Dutch, thick, corpulent, and gross, sucking up the ink with the sponginess thereof." He complains that the paper-manufactories were not then sufficiently encouraged, "considering the vast sums of money ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... kissed. When the next morning she knew that it was Mercy Philbrick, the poet, in whose lifeless presence she had stood, she exclaimed with a burst of tears, "Oh, I might have known that there was some subtile bond which made me kiss her! I have always loved ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... will be very likely to scatter in fragments along the terrace. It looks, and is, as evanescent as a dream; and yet, in its rustic network of boughs, it has somehow enclosed a hint of spiritual beauty, and has become a true emblem of the subtile and ethereal mind that planned it. I made Eustace Bright sit down on a snow bank, which had heaped itself over the mossy seat, and gazing through the arched windows opposite, he acknowledged that the scene at ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the majestic sweep of Webster, the weight or heat of that mountain with its base of granite and flame, the fiery eloquence of Clay, the close grip of John Quincy Adams in argument, or the subtile felicity and gleam of primary perception which William Henry Seward brought ...
— Senatorial Character - A Sermon in West Church, Boston, Sunday, 15th of March, - After the Decease of Charles Sumner. • C. A. Bartol
... agony which she would fain have hidden, but which made utterance for itself betwixt speech and a groan—"O Father in Heaven—if Thou art still my Father—what is this being which I have brought into the world?" And Pearl, overhearing the ejaculation, or aware through some more subtile channel, of those throbs of anguish, would turn her vivid and beautiful little face upon her mother, smile with sprite-like intelligence, and resume ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... doubted not that a similar was reserved for him. He shuddered at the approaching Auto da Fe, at the idea of perishing in flames, and only escaping from indurable torments to pass into others more subtile and ever-lasting! With affright did He bend his mind's eye on the space beyond the grave; nor could hide from himself how justly he ought to dread Heaven's vengeance. In this Labyrinth of terrors, fain would He have taken his refuge in the gloom ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... them that a subtile power lay dormant in the atoms and molecules of matter, which could be released and utilized, and that we in our world ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... be no more valuable lesson in Art given than that series of Turner drawings in the British collection, both as concerns its progression in the individual and those subtile analogies between painting (color) and music,—analogies often hinted at, but never, that we are aware, fully followed out. Color bears the same relation to form that sound does to language. If a painter sit down before Nature and accurately match all her tints, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... quotations from the book of Job.) Sometimes these pains penetrate into the remotest and most secret chambers of the soul. The faculties are in such an intensive purgation that from the excessive pain which this subtile and purifying fire causes they are suspended from their ordinary activity, and the soul, incapable of receiving any relief or escaping from its suffering, has nothing left but to resign itself to the will and good pleasure of God. Though enveloped with an unseen but no less real fire, suffering in ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... tooke that miscreated faire, And that false other Spright, on whom he spred 20 A seeming body of the subtile aire, Like a young Squire, in loves and lustybed His wanton dayes that ever loosely led, Without regard of armes and dreaded fight: Those two he tooke, and in a secret bed, 25 Coverd with darknesse and misdeeming night, Them both together laid, to ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... him now where he comes! Not the Christ of our subtile creeds, But the light of our hearts, of our homes, Of our hopes, our prayers, our needs, The brother of want and blame, The ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... suggestion, and stood looking the least bit in the world like a nun, bound about with my white vestments, and had obtained only one very unsatisfactory glimpse of the effect produced upon the sensitive heart of quicksilver, when I found that that subtile heart responded to influences other than mine. What I discovered was another face, not in the most remote degree like mine,—as different as it could possibly be,—a face belonging to the carboniferous strata of the human ages. Had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... is an autobiography. The thoughts with which it teems are delicate and subtile; the style, somewhat labored and over-refined, is in contrast with that of the Poesies, while it betrays the same struggle for a greater amplitude and independence. In point of art the book appears to us a failure. The theme is not objectionable in itself. It is similar to that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... destitute of boat, barke, and all company, had scarsely sufficient number to conduct back his barke againe. He could not now convey himselfe ashore to rescue his men—if he had been able—for want of a boat; and againe the subtile traitours were so wary, as they would after that never come within ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... not easy to realize how many waiting souls there are in this world. The greater number of men pass through life with souls asleep. They are like virgins of the sanctuary who sometimes feel a vague agitation; their hearts throb with an infinitely sweet and subtile thrill, but their eyelids droop; again they feel the damp cold of the cloister creeping over them; the delicious but baneful dream vanishes; and this is all they ever know of that love which is stronger ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... especially appears when under the praetext of visitting they fly to a sick carkcass, especially if it be fat, as ravens does to their prey. Their insteed of confirming and strenthening the poor folk to dy wt the greater alacrity, they besett them wt all the subtile mines imaginable to wring and suck money from them, telling them that they most leive a dozen or 2 of serviets to the poor Cordeliers; as many spoones to the godly Capuchines who are busie praying ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... hundreds of sheets with designs before he had succeeded in getting embodied the ideas that haunted him. When he had pleased himself at last, he set to work to transfer his imaginations to the clay in color in the subtile luminous metallic enamel that ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... prejudice declares, "Without language, no understanding"! Subtile distinctions between understanding and reason have limited the statement to the latter term. But even in the restricted form, "Without verbal language, no reason," ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... a man had nothing else to do except this second work of this Commandment, he would yet have to work all his life-time in order to fight this vice and drive it out, so common, so subtile, so quick and insidious is it. Now we all pass by this good work and exercise ourselves in many other lesser good works, nay, through other good works we overthrow this and forget it entirely. So the holy Name of God, which alone should be honored, is taken in vain and ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... lost some fourscore ounces of blood this week in a most uncritical fever which attacked me at the beginning of this chapter; so that I have still some hopes remaining, it may be more in the serous or globular parts of the blood, than in the subtile aura of the brain—be it which it will—an Invocation can do no hurt—and I leave the affair entirely to the invoked, to inspire or to inject me ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... infinite! An image of the Deity! A pure substantial light! That being greatest which doth nothing seem! . . . . . O wondrous Self! O sphere of light, O sphere of joy most fair; O act, O power infinite; O subtile and unbounded air! O living orb of sight! Thou which within me art, yet me! Thou eye And temple ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... was troubled with a subtile anguish Such as but women know That wait, and lest love speak or speak not languish, And what they would, would rather they would ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... from Spiritism in this, that their disciples account for the phenomena naturally and lay no claim to supernatural intervention. They produce a sleep in the subject, either as they claim, by the emanation of a subtile fluid from the operator's body, or by the influence of his mind over the mind of the subject They are agreed on this point, that natural laws could explain the phenomenon, if these laws were ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... tomb," Fenton said, dreamily. He was beginning to look like a man hypnotized. Perhaps it was the close air, with its lingering perfume of two thousand years ago. Perhaps it was something else, more subtile; something else that we could all feel, as one feels the touch of a living hand ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Portcullis, chain, nor bolt, nor grate, And yet men durance there abide, In dungeon scarce three inches wide; With roof so low, that under it 1140 They never stand, but lie or sit; And yet so foul, that whoso is in, Is to the middle-leg in prison; In circle magical conflu'd, With walls of subtile air and wind, 1145 Which none are able to break thorough, Until they're freed by head of borough. Thither arriv'd, th' advent'rous Knight And bold Squire from their steeds alight At th' outward wall, near which there stands 1150 A bastile, built to imprison hands; ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Much disputacyons of fierce wits amongst themselves, in logomachies, subtile controversies, many dry blows given on either side, contentions of learned men, or such as would be so thought, as Bodinus de Periodis saith of such an one, arrident amici ridet mundus, in English, this man his cronies they cocker him up, they flatter him, he would fayne appear somebody, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... shouted at its windows, in defamation and in glorification. Ready now for their admission, she lets the eager public in; but what they were most intent to find still eludes them. In the "Histoire de ma Vie" are the records of her parentage, birth, education. Here are detailed the subtile influences that aided or hindered Nature in one of her most lavish pieces of work; here are study, religion, marriage, maternity, authorship, friendship, travel, litigation: but the passionate loving woman, and whom she loved, are not here. To the world's triumph they belong not, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... wonder that this supernatural morality should be so contrary to the nature and the mind of man? It is in vain that it aims at the annihilation of human nature, which is so much stronger, so much more powerful, than imagination. In despite of all the subtile and marvellous speculations of the priests, man continues always to love himself, to desire his well being, and to flee misfortune and sorrow. He has then always been actuated by the same passions. When these passions have ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... for science to grow more complex. As he says: "And Newton's law itself? Its simplicity, so long undetected, is perhaps only apparent. Who knows whether it is not due to some complicated mechanism, to the impact of some subtile matter animated by irregular movements, and whether it has not become simple only through the action of averages and of great numbers? In any case it is difficult not to suppose that the true law contains complementary terms, which would become sensible ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... Letty." Mr. Norris has dispensed with the conventional symbols that have crept into art, with the trite, half-truths and circumlocutions, and got back to the physical basis of things. He has abjured tea-table psychology, and the analysis of figures in the carpet and subtile dissections of intellectual impotencies, and the diverting game of words and the whole literature of the nerves. He is big and warm and sometimes brutal, and the strength of the soil comes up to him with very ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... is not long since that a subtile deluder, verie craftely having upon set purpose his brokers or espials abroade, using sundry secret drifts to allure many, as did the syrens by their sweet sonets and melody seduce mariners to make them their pray, so did his brokers or espials deceive many, in proclayming ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... pain, Which transient virtue seeks to cure in vain. Whilst thus engaged, high views enlarge the soul, New interests draw, new principles control: Nor thus the soul alone resigns her grief, But here the tortured body finds relief; For see where yonder sage Arachne shapes Her subtile gin, that not a fly escapes! There PHYSIC fills the space, and far around, Pile above pile her learned works abound: Glorious their aim- to ease the labouring heart; To war with death, and stop his flying dart; To ...
— The Library • George Crabbe
... postpone to a riper age and a more sobered mind. But the effect of these studies is somewhat prejudicially visible in both the romances I have referred to; and the external and dramatic colourings which belong to fiction are too often forsaken for the inward and subtile analysis of motives, characters, and actions. The workman was not sufficiently master of his art to forbear the vanity of parading the wheels of the mechanism, and was too fond of calling attention to the minute and tedious operations by which the movements were to ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... critically adapted to his main design, is of far more intrinsic value, and indeed displays a vast fund of historical erudition. On the whole, though this father of the English learning seems to have been but a genius of the middle class, neither elevated nor subtile, and one who wrote in a low style, simple, but not elegant, yet, when we reflect upon the time in which he lived, the place in which he spent his whole life, within the walls of a monastery, in so remote and wild a country, it is impossible to refuse him the praise of an incredible ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... both rose again slowly, and retired. When they returned again, and sat down, Seventy-Five, who by this time, through some subtile magnetism, Mrs. Rightbody began to recognize as the superior power, ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... extraordinarily handsome face. "She would not dare take the risk and drive out with you, great as the temptation would no doubt be, did she dream that he would learn of the escapade, and follow. Indeed, your Royal Highness must have found subtile weapons ready to your hand, that you so soon broke through the armor of her prudence. I expected much from your magnetism and resourceful wit, yet I hardly dared hope for such speedy, such unqualified success as this which now ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... to ride the great horse, rather than in any other exercise, because his horse being no flatterer, will shew him he makes no difference between him and another man, and unlesse he keepe his seate well, will lay him on the ground. This is plaine dealing. Men are more subtile, more double-hearted, they have a heart and a heart neither is their tongue their hearts true interpreter. Counsell in the heart of man is like deepe waters; but a man of understanding will draw it out. Prov. 20. 5. This understanding ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... called James Fitz-Maurice, cousin-germain to the imprisoned noblemen, was chosen leader of the insurrection. He was, according to the testimony of an enemy, Hooker, member for Athenry, "a deep dissembler, passing subtile, and able to compass any matter he took in hand; courteous, valiant, expert in martial affairs." To this we may add that he had already reached a mature age; was deeply and sincerely devoted to his religion; and, according ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... of these writers, that if they are upon common subjects often unnecessarily and unpoetically subtile; yet, where scholastick speculation can be properly admitted, their copiousness and acuteness may justly be admired. What Cowley has written upon hope shows an unequalled fertility ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... happen that this common stock is worked up in such different ways? Why is a lily woven out of it in one place and a dahlia in another, a grapevine here, and a honeysuckle there—the orange in Italy, the palm in Egypt, the olive in Greece and the pine in Maine? Simply because a subtile force of a peculiar kind is at work wherever any vegetable structure adorns the ground, and takes to itself its favorite robe. We have outgrown the charming fancy of the Greeks that every tree has its Dryad that lives in it, animates it, and dies when the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... demonologists. More was a thoroughgoing dualist. Mind and matter were the two separate entities. Now, the problem that arose at once was this: How can the souls of witches leave their bodies? "I conceive," he says, "the Divell gets into their body and by his subtile substance more operative and searching than any fire or putrifying liquor, melts the yielding Campages of the body to such a consistency ... and makes it plyable to his imagination: and then it is as easy for him to work it into what shape he pleaseth."[37] ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... stated afford more decisive information regarding the nature of heat than columns of theory or speculation. Yet it is rather strange that when so many learned and reliable men have, experimented so much and commented with such persuasiveness upon the subtile agency of heat and the vast amount of waste that must accrue by injudicious management, comparatively few have availed themselves of the united labors of these indefatigable pyrologists; manufacturing owners and corporations still persisting in having their ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... The Fates are subtile girls! They give us chaff for grain. And Time, the Thunderer, hurls, Like bolted death, disdain At all that heart and brain Conceive, or great or small, Upon this earthly ball. Would you be knight and dame? Or ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... restrained feelings—flowers drowning in bitter waters. The eyes, of a green tinge flecked with brown, were always wan; but if her children were in question, or if some keen condition of joy or suffering (rare in the lives of all resigned women) seized her, those eyes sent forth a subtile gleam as if from fires that were consuming her,—the gleam that wrung the tears from mine when she covered me with her contempt, and which sufficed to lower the boldest eyelid. A Grecian nose, designed it might be by Phidias, and united ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... a high-sounding, keen and subtile speech—as they imagine—when they say that person and office are not one and the same, and that the office remains, and remains good, though the person be evil. From this they conclude, and it must, indeed, follow, that ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... itching fingers; and to set this by, turn a deaf ear upon the siren present, and condescend once more, naked, into the ring with fortune—Macaire, how few would do it! But you, Macaire, you are compacted of more subtile clay. No cheap immediate pilfering: no retail trade of petty larceny; but swoop at the heart of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... property in its new and simplified form; bringing the various species of crime into one view; assigning to each its plain description, with its punishment; and removing distinctions which had frequently given rise to subtile and embarrassing doubts. It abolished the distinction between grand and petty larceny; defined the true nature of burglary; and removed many subtilties regarding possession, and the conversion of possession in the law of embezzlement, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... through a benevolent law, sanctioned by the Sovereign, entirely prohibit the sale of spirits to the Indians, and thus save from extinction the remnants of the tribes that live under our protection. Those subtile and powerful material agents which create abnormal appetites and influence the moral habits of a whole people, afford ample room for gravest thought both to Christians ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... useful men in the ministry who do not possess all those qualifications. For there are men whose manifold experience supplies some literary defects. But when a whole body of ministers are illiterate, they are not able to defend the truth of the Gospel against the subtile attacks of enemies. Suppose false teachers were to make a spurious translation of the Scriptures, how could such an illiterate body of ministers detect the forgery? If the knowledge of the original tongues should ever become extinct, the Gospel might soon become forged and corrupted. It is to ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... to deprive matter of its qualities in order to draw out its soul.... Copper is like a man; it has a soul and a body ... the soul is the most subtile part ... that is to say, the tinctorial spirit. The body is the ponderable, material, terrestrial thing, endowed with a shadow.... After a series of suitable treatments copper becomes without shadow and better than gold.... The elements ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... election. Well canst thou perceive it by their looks, and also by their childish voices, if thou lookest well upon them and if thou listenest to them. Now thou art perplexed, and in perplexity art silent; but I will loose for thee the strong bond in which thy subtile thoughts fetter thee.[6] Within the amplitude of this realm a casual point can have no place,[7] any more than sadness, or thirst, or hunger; for whatever thou seest is established by eternal law, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... of his conversation, as for his learning, virtues, and piety. Wood[BA] tells us that "his younger years were adorned with oratory, poetry, and witty fancies, his elder with quaint preaching and subtile disputes." The only specimens of his poetry which can be recovered at this time, are three funeral tributes, which will be found in the Appendix, and of which two are now printed, I believe, for ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... he might accompany Bridge upon the road, pleading that his mother was dead and that he could not return home after his escapade. And Bridge could not find it in his heart to refuse him, for the man realized that the boyish waif possessed a subtile attraction, as forceful as it was inexplicable. Not since he had followed the open road in company with Billy Byrne had Bridge met one with whom he might care to 'Pal' before The Kid crossed his path on the dark and storm swept pike south ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... manifestlye, that he came to entreate hym for the cite, he sware a great othe, that he wolde nat do that that he came to desyre hym fore. Than Anaximenes sayde: sir, I desyre your grace, that this same cite Lampsac may be vtterly distroyed. Through which sage and subtile sayeng the noble auncient citie was saued ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit: and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know, that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend. Abeunt studia in mores. Nay, there is no stond or impediment in the wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies; like as diseases of the body, may have appropriate exercises. Bowling is good for the stone and reins; shooting ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... shall be scattered abroad in its original atoms. In good faith, however, he is not sufficiently imaginative to flatter himself with the slightest hope of this kind. When romances do really teach anything, or produce any effective operation, it is usually through a far more subtile process than the ostensible one. The author has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral as with an iron rod,—or, rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly,—thus at once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... louely as the maide (though a blacke pearle) Painters and women say, an Eben fleece, Doth well beseeme the shoulders of an Earle: Blacke snares they were, that did entrap this girle Each haire like to a subtile serpent taught her, Of the forbidden fruit to taste a peece, Whil'st Eue is stain'd againe here in ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... their philosophy, from the earth, as the principle of Nature, they ascended through the more subtile elements of water, air, and fire, to a spiritual conception of the universe; so, as regards their faith, its highest incarnation was through the symbolism of fire, as representative of that central Power under whose influence all things arose through ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... be an l, as in jingle, tingle, tinkle, mingle, sprinkle, twinkle, there is implied a frequency, or iteration of small acts. And the same frequency of acts, but less subtile by reason of the clearer vowel a, is indicated in jangle, tangle, spangle, mangle, wrangle, brangle, dangle; as also in mumble, grumble, jumble. But at the same time the close u implies something obscure or obtunded; ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... veil Drawn to her gleaming chin: After this wise, From the enticing smile of earth and skies I dream my unknown Fair's refused gaze; And guessingly her love's close traits devise, Which she with subtile coquetries Through little human glimpses slow displays, Cozening my mateless days By sick, intolerable delays. And so I keep mine uncompanioned ways; And so my touch, to golden poesies Turning love's ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... in the corner there, As, restless, bold, and unafraid, She slips and floats along the air Till all her subtile house is made. ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... manner of more importance to a pantomime actor than to a tragedian, not because his gesture is more refined, but because he has no tongue. And the proportions of our common Greek work are important to it undoubtedly, but not because they are or even can be more subtile than Gothic proportion, but because that work has no sculpture, nor color, nor imagination, nor sacredness, nor any other quality whatsoever in it, but ratios of measures. And it is difficult to express with sufficient force the ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... Second). In fact, we have so many instances of the possibility of reciprocally transferring the finest qualities of English and German poetry, that there is no sufficient excuse for an unmetrical translation of Faust. I refer especially to such subtile and melodious lyrics as "The Castle by the Sea," of Uhland, and the "Silent Land" of Salis, translated by Mr. Longfellow; Goethe's "Minstrel" and "Coptic Song," by Dr. Hedge; Heine's "Two Grenadiers," by Dr. Furness ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... controuersie betwene a maister and a scholler, so subtile that the iudges coulde not ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... A subtile perfume filled the illuminated air of these festal halls; amidst the flirting of light fans, laughter, gay conversation, and slander reigned supreme. In an adjoining room golden zechins fell rattling and ringing ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... with the doctrine of atoms; but I find it difficult to understand a vacuum, and I much prefer subtile matter. ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... followed, and found the noble creature in his last agonies, his strength paralysed, and his eyes closed. One or two of the small arrows of the Bushmen were still sticking in his hide, and did not appear to have entered more than half an inch; but the poison was so subtile, that it had rapidly circulated through his whole frame; and while they were looking down upon the noble beast, it dropped its jaws ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... once, and rid of her haughty lords, is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself, without the meddling of the gods.' [Footnote: Monro's translation. In his criticism of this work ('Contemporary Review' 1867) Dr. Hayman does not appear to be aware of the really sound and subtile observations on which the reasoning of Lucretius, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... them as a punishment for sins committed in a previous state; the fig leaves in which Adam and Eve were dressed after their sin were the fleshly bodies they were compelled to assume on being expelled from the Paradise of their previous existence; that in proportion to their sins they are confined in subtile or gross bodies of adjusted grades until by penance and wisdom ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... had you seen the beast, you would have said The light and subtile wind his father was; For if his course upon the sands he made No sign was left what way the beast did pass; Or if he menaged were, or if he played, He scantly bended down the tender grass: Thus mounted rode the Earl, and as he went, Thus prayed, to ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... my throne: This nod confirms each privilege your own. The cap and switch be sacred to his grace; With staff and pumps the marquis lead the race; From stage to stage the licensed earl may run, Pair'd with his fellow-charioteer the sun; The learned baron butterflies design, Or draw to silk Arachne's subtile line;[446] 590 The judge to dance his brother sergeant call;[447] The senator at cricket urge the ball; The bishop stow (pontific luxury!) An hundred souls of turkeys in a pie; The sturdy squire to Gallic masters stoop, And drown his lands ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... with for the sake of a subject that did not in the least interest him. Beside, he meant to come in; so he opened the gate for her, and followed in a well-bred, gentlemanly way, that had nothing obtrusive in it. Miss Barry welcomed him with the quaint formality, the subtile air of education, refinement, and morality, so much a part of herself. It pleased him extremely, and settled him ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... such cases the Japanese thought is best expressed by using the possessive pronoun and omitting the derogative adjective altogether. Japanese indirect methods for the expression of the personal relation are thus numberless and subtile. May it not be plausibly argued since the European has only a few blunt pronouns wherewith to state this idea while the Japanese has both numberless pronouns and many other delicate ways of conveying the same idea, that the latter is far in advance of the European in the development of ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... tolerably content. They are not very much to blame. People cannot be expected to start on a crusade against ills of which they have but a vague and cloudy conception. The edge does not cut them, and so they think it is not much of a sword after all. But women have, or ought to have, a more subtile and intimate acquaintance with realities. They ought to know what is fact and what is fol-de-rol. They ought to distinguish between the really noble and the simply physical, not to say faulty. If men do not, it is women's duty to help them. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... Notwithstanding the subtile reasonings I have met with in the books of the Peripateticks, and the pretty experiments that have been shew'd me in the Laboratories of Chymists, I am of so diffident, or dull a Nature, as to think that if neither of them can bring more cogent arguments ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... own reveries. As he forcibly expressed himself on one of his adversaries, Dr. STEBBING, "Thus it is to have to do with a head whose sense is all run to system." "His Academic Wit" now sported amid whimsical theories, pursued bold but inconclusive arguments, marked out subtile distinctions, and discovered incongruous resemblances; but they were maintained by an imposing air of conviction, furnished with the most prodigal erudition, and they struck out many ingenious combinations. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... perceiuing, whose factours continue there (as I sayd before) and fearing that those English men finding good vent for their commodities in that place, would be resident therin, and so dayly increase, which would be no small losse and hinderance vnto them, did presently inuent all the subtile meanes they could to hinder them: and to that end they went vnto the Captaine of Ormus, as then called Don Gonsalo de Meneses, telling him that there were certaine English men come into Ormus, that were sent onely to spie the countrey; ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... of detail that accomplishes this in one case and the other. In either, the point of view alone is fixed. The rest is variable, and depends, it may be, on the nature of that subtile and volatile ether through which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... qualities and faculties of man are not the fruit of subtile reasonings. They bear not the impress of the age in which they originate, and will not wear out with it. They are the result of numberless observations, and will be immutable and eternal like the facts ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... the advantage of health, put to every quart of ale, or other liquor, 10 or 12 drops of the true spirit of salt, and let them be well mixed together, which they will soon do it by the subtile spirits penetrating into all parts, and ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry
... easy to perceive that the old colonel worshipped her and she him. I think the relation between an elderly father and a daughter just blooming into womanhood the most beautiful possible. There is in it a subtile sentiment that cannot exist in the case of mother and daughter, or that of son and mother. But this is getting into ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... High as the summit; there to breathe at large AEthereal air, with bards and sages old, Immortal sons of praise. These flattering scenes, To this neglected labour court my song; Yet not unconscious what a doubtful task To paint the finest features of the mind, And to most subtile and mysterious things Give colour, strength, and motion. But the love Of Nature and the Muses bids explore, Through secret paths erewhile untrod by man, 50 The fair poetic region, to detect Untasted springs, to drink inspiring draughts, And shade my temples with unfading flowers Cull'd from the ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... make a salve of volatile salt and chrism as much as he might suffice. And he said now that he should go in to that castle for to make merry with them that were there. And the traveller Leopold said that he should go otherwhither for he was a man of cautels and a subtile. Also the lady was of his avis and repreved the learningknight though she trowed well that the traveller had said thing that was false for his subtility. But the learningknight would not hear say nay nor do her mandement ne have him in aught contrarious to his list and ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... grown monstrous: certain Jews Wore such a haughty air, had so refined, With super-subtile arts, strict, monkish lives, And studious habit, the coarse Hebrew type, One might have elbowed in the public mart Iscariot,—nor suspected one's soul-peril. Christ's blood! it sets my flesh a-creep to think! We may breathe freely now, not fearing taint, Praise be our good Lord Bishop! ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... Him, we should have neither the heart nor the daring to do so. I had the vision, I repeat it, but I cannot say that I saw anything; however, I must have seen something, seeing that I explain it by an illustration, only it must have been in a way so subtile and delicate that the understanding is unable to reach it, or I am so ignorant in all that relates to these visions, which seem to be not imaginary. In some of these visions there must be something imaginary, ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... Barbarossa," and two or three other ballads, the amatory poems of Rueckert have attained the widest popularity among his countrymen. Many of the love-songs have been set to music by Mendelssohn and other composers. Their melody is of that subtile, delicate quality which excites a musician's fancy, suggesting the tones to which the words should be wedded. Precisely for this reason they are most difficult to translate. The first stanza may, in most cases, be tolerably reproduced; but as it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... more? Yonder barefoot boy, as he drifts silently in his punt beneath the drooping branches of yonder vine-clad bank, has a bliss which no Astor can buy with money, no Seward conquer with votes,—which yet is no monopoly of his, and to which time and experience only add a more subtile and conscious charm. The rich years were given us to increase, not to impair, these cheap felicities. Sad or sinful is the life of that man who finds not the heavens bluer and the waves more musical in maturity than in childhood. Time is a severe ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... passionate fears, but calm as Fate, inexorable as the Judgment-Day. He must hear her confession, not as man, but as God; he must pronounce his judgments with a divine dispassionateness. He must dive into the recesses of her secret heart, and, following with subtile analysis all the fine courses of those fibres which were feeling their blind way towards an earthly love, must tear them remorselessly away. Well could he warn her of the insidiousness of earthly affections; better than any one else he could show her how a name that was blended with her prayers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... been felled to the earth and is striving to get to his feet againe, but is pinned down by an horse's hoof pressing on his chops, and another that looketh piteously about him for that his pennon hath been shorn from him and his hand with it,—so is it of right subtile and so to say heavenly art to exhibit prettie blandishments, caresses, frolickings, beauties and delights, and the loves of the Nymphs and Fauns in the woods. And he would have it there was none offence in these naked bodies, clothed ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France |
