"Subtlety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... story is unique among tales intended for children, alike for pleasant instruction, quaintness of humor, gentle pathos, and the subtlety with which lessons moral and otherwise are conveyed to children, and perhaps to their seniors as ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... that pied crew of hers knocking at the stars with the knowledge that ever and always their judgment (even though he asked it not) jumped with the Captain's, and that before them lay the gilded cities and the chances of Pizarro. It was of his subtlety that the Captain never used to them fair promises, spake not once a sennight of gold, never bragged to them of what must be. Oh! a subtle captain, whose very strangeness was his best lieutenant upon that eldritch, nine-lived ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... of Austria and Prussia were equally fatal to such a project. The houses of Hapsburg and Hohenzollern were competitors for the prize of German empire; and this, rather than the welfare or union of Germany, engaged their subtlety and energy. An Austrian archduke became vicar of the German unity, and, unless so far as there appeared any probability of his securing the supreme authority for the royal family of Austria, his object was to humour the German parliament at Frankfort, and gradually to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... procure as many as he liked, by writing for so many dozen candlesticks, calling them Nos. 5, 2, or 1, according to the amount of the note required. The vigilance of the English police, however, was too much even for the subtlety of an Italian; he was taken by them, and allowed to turn king's evidence, it being thought very desirable to discover the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... controversialists present us with another subdivision—the habitual intention, which is one that formerly existed, but of the present continuance of which there is no trace. Now really, my dear Mark, you must admit that we've reached a point very near to nonsense if this kind of logical subtlety ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... the Nevilles overshadowed that of the king. Warwick was now all-powerful in the state, but the cessation of the war was the signal for a silent strife between the Earl and his young sovereign. In Edward indeed Warwick was to meet not only a consummate general but a politician whose subtlety and rapidity of conception were far above his own. As a mere boy Edward had shown himself among the ablest and the most pitiless of the warriors of the civil war. He had looked on with cool ruthlessness while grey-haired ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... diplomatic cunning of a hippopotamus he tried to decoy Kedzie into staying at home awhile. His ponderous subtlety aroused Kedzie's suspicions, and at length he confirmed them ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... she seeks to win from it a kind of satisfaction; the admiration of a hundred men she tries to receive without making a sour face. Still further she takes pleasure in the exercise of that feminine subtlety which holds them fast in the web, yet keeps them off; giving them always hope, but indefinitely extending it. Verily that web which she wove is the web of Fate for the Suitors. So much for Penelope at present, whom we ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... to suppress an exclamation. So he had not told her what he was going to do, and yet he had not forbidden me to tell her. Poor Bob was more subtle than I had supposed, but it was a simple subtlety, a strange chord but still in key with his character as ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... it, the important point of seeing how the thing could really be done, of seeing how people, instead of listening to imitations or copies or awkward echoes of Homer, should listen to Homer's voice itself—the timbre, the intimacy, the subtlety, the strength of it—the depth of his heart singing out of it. All this has had to wait to be thought out by ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... matter, and less subtle kinds of matter. There are numerous delicate and difficult affairs of craft that the dramatist need not think about at all. If he attempts to go beyond a certain very mild degree of subtlety, he is merely wasting his time. What passes for subtle on the stage would have a very obvious air in a novel, as some dramatists have unhappily discovered. Thus whole continents of danger may be shunned by the dramatist, ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... infinitum, is never old, never stale, never out-of-date. And as we sometimes seek rest from the brilliant audacities and complex passions of Wagner or Tschaikowsky in the tender simplicity of some ancient English air, so we occasionally turn with relief from the wit and insight and subtlety of our modern novelists to the old uncomplicated tales of faerie or romance, and find them after all more moving, more tender, even more real, than all the laboured realism of these photographic days. And here before us is of all pretty love-stories perhaps ...
— Aucassin and Nicolette - translated from the Old French • Anonymous
... wisdom and skill," answered the other; "for I am not afraid of thee, nor of any of thy servants." The king forthwith loudly bade his servants to seize him, but they answered, "We cannot see any man, although our ears hear him." Then the king and all his princes marvelled at his subtlety; but he said to the king "I will go my way"; so he went forth. And the king went after him; and the princes and servants followed their king until they came to the river-side. Then Alroy took off his mantle and spread it on ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... she had received a leisurely education rare in the United States, seen or read little of the great world (she had visited Paris only twice and briefly), her mind charmingly developed by conscientious tutors. But at the moment he thought that the compelling power lay in some deep subtlety of eye, her little air of lofty aloofness, her classic small features in a small face, and the top-heavy masses of blue black hair which she carried with a certain naive pride as if it were her only vanity; in her general unlikeness to the gray-eyed fair-haired ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... read this tract, and it became exceedingly popular, its clearness appealing particularly to all who sought information on this subject. And since the questions involved are generally considered the most difficult of all, their complexity is taken as the measure of the subtlety of him who succeeds in answering them. As a result, my rivals became furiously angry, and summoned a council to take action against me, the chief instigators therein being my two intriguing enemies of former days, Alberic and Lotulphe. These two, now that both ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... Edmund is equally base and cruel; but compared with Iago he is a coarse, low, brutal, and rabid animal. In Iago all the craft and venom of which the human soul is capable is united with an intellectual subtlety which seems to reach the limit of imagination or conception. There are some who see in the making the bastard son in "Lear" the monster of ingratitude and villany and the legitimate a model of all the manly and filial ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... attention. There was a book lying near which she was reading. He picked it up, and was just turning away when a scrap of thin paper scribbled over in Bertha's well-known hand arrested his eye. Before he meant to do so he found that he had read a sentence on this paper. There was a sharpness and subtlety in the wording of the sentence which puzzled him for a moment, until he was suddenly startled by the resemblance to the style of the story in the Argonaut which he had just read. He scarcely connected the two yet, but his heart sank lower in his breast. He thought for a moment; ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... prelate portrayed in "Bishop Blougram's Apology," with all his bland subtlety, complex culture, and ripened perceptions, distant as the nineteenth century from the sixteenth, very different at bottom from his Renaissance brother, in respect to his native hankering for the pleasure of estimation above his fellows? Gigadibs is his Gandolf, whom he would craftily overtop. ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... which I had advanced my foot. This is what is meant by luck, and according to the more or less serious mood or habit of our mind, we exclaim, how lucky, or how providential! The copresence of numberless phenomena, which from the complexity or subtlety of their determining causes are called contingencies, and the coexistence of these with any regular or necessary phenomenon (as the clouds with the moon, for instance) occasion coincidences, which, when ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... Another possible subtlety in Black's sequence of developing moves would be to withhold the advance of his KP until White has played P-QKt3, and then to play the QB to Kt5. For, as I have already remarked, the objection to developing Black's Queen's Bishop lies in White's threat to attack ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker
... Marat to hide in holes and corners, had turned him into a bird of night, the bird of Minerva, whose glance pierced the dark recesses where conspirators lurked. Now it is a blue eye, cold and calm, that discovers the enemies of the State and denounces traitors with a subtlety unknown even to the Friend of the People, now asleep for ever in the garden of the Cordeliers. The new saviour of the country, as zealous and more keen-sighted than the first, sees what no man before had seen and with a lifted finger spreads terror ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... behind, Jack," she cried patronizingly, and the bonanza king's sleigh went up the hill with its queer freight: queer, for this was that one of them whose strength was subtlety, whose forte was guile, whose left hand knew not the charitable acts of his right—and neither did the right, for ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... this and strolled out on to the terrace, thinking about him. The little she had seen of him had pleased her; he had earnest eyes and a resolute air, and she liked the men who lived in the open. He was direct, and perhaps a little rudimentary without being awkward, which was in his favor, for subtlety of any kind was distasteful to her. Still, in one respect, she was disappointed—he had in no way amplified Nasmyth's story, and she had expected to hear a little more of the expedition ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... changeableness of her sex, hoped and prayed Mr. Bassett would admit the anonymous letter, and so all her subtlety and ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... herculean performance which gradually led him on to a greater interest in it than in the presupposed patent process. The mountain-weight of material under which the ideas lay in those dusty volumes called the classics piqued him into a dogged, mouselike subtlety of attempt ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... in Ellice's eyes, a glamour of mystery and power—beyond the subtlety of words, and she met him in a spirit of awe and wonder, such as a child might feel to find one of its dream-heroes actually beside the fireside in the full sunlight of the morning. The fear and agony and joy of the night's vision gave a singular ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... speak that word," Mr. Sabin said. Lady Carey shrugged her shoulders. The subtlety of her smile faded away. Her whole face expressed ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... as it was, she tortured herself with dark surmises. Jealousy without love, a passion scarcely intelligible to the ordinary man, is in woman common enough, and more often productive of disaster than the jealousy which originates in nobler feeling. To suspect that she was the plaything of Sibyl's subtlety, and that Redgrave smiled at her simplicity in never having discovered an obvious rival, fired her blood to the fever point. She could no longer balance probabilities; all the considerations which hitherto declared for Sibyl's innocence lost their weight. Her overexcited mind, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... these prisoners were restored, and that if they were not sent back in safety the consequences would be most serious for the Chinese government. But even at this supreme moment of doubt and danger, the subtlety of Chinese diplomacy would have free play. Prince Kung was young in years and experience, but his finesse would have done credit to a gray-haired statesman. Unfortunately for him, the question had got beyond the stage for discussion: the English embassador had stated the one ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... an innocent man, or seeking gain by supplying bad preserved meats to our navy, feel themselves speculatively obliged to inquire why they should not do so, and are inclined to measure their intellectual subtlety by their dissatisfaction with ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... Mishna, or suggested by a literature developed along with the Talmudic literature. These discussions, debates, and investigations are the opinions and arguments of the different schools, holding opposite views, developed with rare acumen and scholastic subtlety, and finally harmonized in the solution reached. The one firm and impregnable rock supporting the gigantic structure of the Talmud is the word of the ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... Sketchley's prosaic muse? The wealth of his limited fancy, and his power of resolving it into well-ordered design, and presenting it with strange economy of means, invested these puppets of his with a vividness which is often startling. With greater force and subtlety, if with less refinement and grace, than Leech—though not, like him, the genial sketcher of the genial side of things—he has recorded, in the five or six thousand designs that make up the sum of his contribution, the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... and the hopes of the consulate to which it destined him. It is a common supposition that military men, habituated to the unscrupulous and summary processes of camps, where things are carried with a strong hand, are deficient in the address and subtlety of genius requisite in civil jurisdiction. Agricola, however, by his natural prudence, was enabled to act with facility and precision even among civilians. He distinguished the hours of business from those of relaxation. ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... history was published in 1876, was, by class, of the missionaries, and by disposition a liberal, and a conscientious liberal. His estimate of Williams is thoroughly well-intentioned, and not wholly inadequate. It lacks subtlety, rather than sympathy. I cannot help hoping that time will bring to light material by which something may be attempted regarding the personality and character of Francis Williams, nearer what one feels instinctively is the truth than the outline at ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... think our methods change with our environments, but that is all. Wasn't it you who propounded a theory about an age when men took what they wanted by force giving way to an age in which they took what they wanted by subtlety? Now, I believe, you want society to restrain the man of clever wits just as it has learned to restrain the man of big biceps. And when that is done will not man discover some other means of taking ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... For I must far above you stand, Since if you are exempt from love 'Tis at least for you to know That where I go you cannot go. 690 When you are a lover, then A discretion more profound And subtlety your mind may fill: The lover's world's beyond your ken, A different world that's to be found In regions further than Brazil. O my world, the only true one, O the right I fight for oft, Sweet ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... Momolo's in the evening, and found the intended husband of my fair Mariuccia there, but not the lady herself. I heard she had sent word to the 'scopatore santissimo' that, as her father had come from Palestrina to be present at her wedding, she could not come to supper. I admired her subtlety. A young girl has no need of being instructed in diplomacy, nature and her own heart are her teachers, and she never blunders. At supper I studied the young man, and found him eminently suitable for Mariuccia; he was handsome, modest, and intelligent, and whatever ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... any appetite or inclination contrary to nature, ever continue in the one path which nature has prescribed for them, as if they were tied and bound. But in brutes the gentleness of mood inspired by reason, the subtlety, the love of freedom, are not qualities found in excess, but they have unreasonable appetites and desires, and act in a roundabout way within certain limits, riding, as it were, at the anchor of nature, and only going straight under bit and bridle. But in man reason, which is absolute master, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... background of things, of which he knew and would not tell me? And—this, I think, was what was chiefly in my thoughts—was Crone playing some game of his own and designing to use me as a puppet in it? For there was a general atmosphere of subtlety and slyness about the man that forced itself upon me, young as I was; and the way he kept eyeing me as we talked made me feel that I had to do with one that would be hard to circumvent if it came to a matter of craftiness. And at last, after ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... there is some subtlety in the texture of these things. (15) Seeds of love are implanted in man by nature. Men have need of one another, feel pity, help each other by united efforts, and in recognition of the fact show mutual gratitude. But there are seeds of ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... Paris injured my soul. The society of the Duc de Verneuil, to which he introduced me, was bitten by that scoffing philosophy about which all France was then enthusiastic because it was wittily professed. The brilliant conversations which charmed my ear were marked by subtlety of perception and by witty contempt for all that was true and spiritual. Men laughed at sentiments, and pictured them all the better because they did not feel them; their satirical epigrams were as fascinating as the light-hearted humor with ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... at in single cuts of later date, and in the Little Passion. If we want to see what Duerer's woodcuts at their finest are for breadth and dignity of composition, for richness and fertility of arabesque and black and white pattern, for vigour and subtlety of form, for boldness and vivacity of workmanship, we must turn to the Samson (1497?) (B. 2), the Man's Bath (14-?), (B. 128), among the earlier blocks published before the Apocalypse, then to those designed in or about the year 1511. The golden period ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... crush the prestige of England—that is not a possibility too remote for the imagination of Romish wirepullers. Are Englishmen acquainted with the history of Papal Rome? Have they adequate knowledge of the subtlety, the craft, the dissimulation, the foresight of this most wonderful religious system? I think not, or they would be more on their guard against her Jesuitical advances. The idea of your Gladstone going to your ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... the investigation of the subject, as upon the actual proofs presented; the state of feeling causing a variation in the force with which a proposition commends itself to the mind at different times. The very subtlety of this influence, which requires careful analysis for its detection, causes it to be overlooked. Accordingly, in a subject like religion, the emotions may secretly insinuate themselves in the preliminary step of determining the ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... is entertaining a young Flying Corps man on leave from the front, the brother of Miss Beverley, who has already helped him. What does that mean?' Then they will put their fingers to their noses and you, too, will probably be watched, Dick. They will congratulate themselves upon possessing the subtlety of the Devil. They will see through my scheme. They will say—'This young man is to drop the documents behind the German lines!' Don't be alarmed, Richard, if you find a secret service man in your bedroom ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of the bar, let his experience and skill have been what they might, was ever opposed to Sir William Follett without feeling, as has been already intimated, the necessity of the greatest possible vigilance and research to encounter his boundless resources; his dangerous subtlety and acuteness in detecting flaws, and raising objections; his matchless art in concealing defects in his own case; and building up, with easy grace, a superstructure equally unsubstantial and imposing, and defeating all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... these men, "John Eglinton" is the one who has thrown his greatest energy into the essay, almost all his energy, and in it, in the chapters of "Two Essays on the Remnant" (1896), "Pebbles from a Brook" (1901), and "Bards and Saints" (1906), he has written with subtlety and illumination. ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... out but a solitary name for the double purpose of preserving brevity and of giving in one embodiment the ideal Afro-American woman of letters. The allusion here can scarcely fail to point to Mrs. S. Harper. This lady's philosophical subtlety of reasoning on grave questions finds effective expression in a prose of singular precision and vigour. But it is as a poet that posterity will hail her in the coming ages of our Race. For pathos, depth of spiritual insight, and magical exercise of a rare power of ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... moves gracefully, raising and displaying its tail at every step." It has so very small a tail to display, however, that I should hardly think the display was worth while. "It is very cunning, and especially noticeable for the subtlety with which it wearies the dog of the sportsman by executing a thousand evolutions with surprising celerity; whence comes the trivial name of 'kill-dog' bestowed upon it in some localities. Pursued to extremity, it casts itself into the water, swims with ease, and dives at the ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... Clarendon, or in Burnet's History of His Own Time, are full of life, vigour, and coherency, and are intensely attractive to read. I cannot agree with those who put either Clarendon or Burnet on a level with the characters in St. Simon or the Cardinal de Retz: there is a subtlety of analysis, a searching penetration, a breadth of moral comprehension, in the Frenchmen, which I do not find, nor, in truth, much desire to find, in our countrymen. A homelier hand does well enough for homelier men. Nevertheless, such characters as those of ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... itself; and even to convert this newly-discovered instrument of human freedom into one which might serve to perpetuate that system of passive obedience which had so long enabled modern Rome to dictate her laws to the universe. It was thought possible in the subtlety of Italian astuzia and Spanish monachism, to place a sentinel on the very thoughts as well as on the persons of authors; and in extreme cases, that books might be condemned to the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... hundred amatory epigrams by this poet. Inferior perhaps in clearness of outline and depth of insight to those of the Alexandrian poet Asclepiades, they are unequalled in the width of range, the profusion of imagination, the subtlety of emotion with which they sound the whole lyre of passion. Meleager was born in a Syrian town and educated at Tyre in the last age of the Seleucid empire; and though he writes Greek with perfect mastery, it becomes ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... aversion to falsity that the blasphemous Landport cobbler had inculcated by strap and tongue from his earliest years. Of one fact about professed atheists I am convinced; they may be—they usually are—fools, void of subtlety, revilers of holy institutions, brutal speakers, and mischievous knaves, but they lie with difficulty. If it were not so, if they had the faintest grasp of the idea of compromise, they would simply be liberal ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Reggie had said something. And then suddenly he discarded subtlety and told me straight out that Reggie had said Jevons was a bit of a bounder, and ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... was fond of the society of literary men; he himself was well, perhaps even deeply, read. Certainly his intellectual acquisitions were more profound than they have been generally esteemed, though with the common subtlety of a ready genius, he could make the quick adaptation of a timely fact, acquired for the occasion, appear the rich overflowing of a copious erudition. He was a man who instantly perceived, and liberally acknowledged, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a finger would have sufficed? Why was any sign necessary to indicate one who was so well known? The supposition that the devil compelled him to superfluous villainy in order that he might be secured with greater certainty and tortured with greater subtlety is one that can hardly be entertained except by theologians. It is equally difficult to understand why Jesus submitted to such an insult, and why Peter should not have smitten down its perpetrator. Peter was able to draw his sword, and it would have been safer and more ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... judgment by which criminal enterprises against the Republic were condemned pronounced in the name of the Emperor who had so evidently destroyed that Republic. This anomaly certainly was not removed by the subtlety, by the aid of which he at first declared himself Emperor of the Republic, as a preliminary to his proclaiming himself Emperor of the French. Setting aside the means, it must be acknowledged that it is impossible not to admire the genius of Bonaparte, his tenacity in ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... active city on the continent, and if any of my professional friends here had gone there in Lincoln's later years, to try or argue a cause, or transact other business, with any idea that Edinburgh or London had a monopoly of legal learning, science, or subtlety, they would certainly have found ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... studies, he received his first public instruction. It is related of him, that he used frequently to steal into one of the book-stores, and for hours together sit buried in some rare and erudite volume. And here the original bent of his genius was early developed; subtlety, profoundness, and intense subjectivity of thought were noticed as the distinguishing characteristics of his mind. In a letter from Neumann to Chamisso, bearing date February 11th, 1806, when, of course, he was only seventeen years ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... estimate of collateral studies or those of complimentary or superior importance. The student finds no attraction or benefit in studies outside of the programme, and, in this programme he finds only official texts, explained by the bill of fare, one by one, with subtlety, and patched together as well as may be by means of distinctions and interpretations, so as to provide the understood solution in ordinary cases and a plausible solution in disputed cases, in other terms, a ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... [87] Mark the subtlety of this gradation in temptation. The profits of the world and pleasures of sin are held out as allurements. The apostasy of others suggested. The difficulties, dangers, and sufferings of the Lord's ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... look-out, at the beginning of all good works, knowing well that a fervent community is capable of effecting much good, sometimes even of arresting the anger of God, armed against sinners, let us fear that this arch-enemy, by his cunning and subtlety, may not seek to destroy our institute. Let us be careful that he does not withdraw from it the spirit of piety, simplicity, poverty, recollection, and mortification, interior and exterior, in order to introduce, under specious pretexts, ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... explain. Perhaps instinctively he felt that her natural subtlety could not be in accord with his natural sincerity, felt that in discussing certain subjects they talked in different languages. She put her ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... a contrast to Iago. Look at "mine Ancient" closely, and see, that, with all his subtle craft, he was a coarse-mannered brute, of gross tastes and grovelling nature, without a spark of gallantry, and as destitute of courtesy as of honor. We overrate his very subtlety; for we measure it by its effects, the woful and agonizing results it brings about; forgetting that these, like all results, or resultants, are the product of at least two forces,—the second, in this instance, being ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... is an oriental subtlety; a man who believes in everything equally and generally may be said to believe in nothing. It is not a simple European view which makes honest Doubt worth a dozen of the Creeds. And it is in direct opposition to the noted writer who holds that the man ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... very certain that Mary Garland was not a person to put up, at any point, with what might be called the princess's leavings. It was Christina's constant practice to remind you of the complexity of her character, of the subtlety of her mind, of her troublous faculty of seeing everything in a dozen different lights. Mary Garland had never pretended not to be simple; but Rowland had a theory that she had really a more multitudinous sense of human things, a ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... "The Gold Bug," for which he was paid a prize of one hundred dollars. It has relation to Captain Kyd's treasure, and is one of the most remarkable illustrations of his ingenuity of construction and apparent subtlety of reasoning. The interest depends upon the solution of an intricate cypher. In the autumn of 1844 Poe removed ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... fashion, clasping her knees to her breast, with her back half turned to her lord, the friend of Caesar, so that he could not see the design that sat behind the mask of her sharp indifference. She rested her chin upon her knees, and let the blankness of her beauty exclaim upon the subtlety of her replies, plainly measuring the power of her provocation against the impoverished quality that camp and grove, court and schools, might leave upon august Roman sensibilities. It was the old, old sophistication, so perfect in its concentration behind the kol-brushed eyes and the brown breasts, ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... the lips, half-hidden by the moustache, thin and tightly pressed together. He was the type of man who emerges victor in any contest, whether of wits or muscle. Plain and direct when it suited his purpose; subtle master of intrigue when subtlety was needed. ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... stamp,—lean-faced, hard as iron—they lacked the elasticity of steel—, rugged in feature; confident in expression, men with firm, level mouths but rather narrow at the forehead, men of resolution and courage, no doubt; but hardly conspicuous for intellect, men without nerves or subtlety, fighting-men of the first-class, but hardly first-class soldiers. Some of their faces, indeed, revealed an actual stupidity. The boy, however, saw none of their defects. To him they were one and ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... Daudet exerts upon us and the conviction we cherish that, whatever ravages time may make among his books, the memory of their writer will not fade from the hearts of men. Many Frenchmen have conquered the world's mind by the power or the subtlety of their genius; few have won its heart through the catholicity, the broad sympathy of their genius. Daudet is one of these few; indeed, he is almost if not quite the only European writer who has of late achieved such a triumph, for Tolstoi has stern critics as well as steadfast devotees, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... which seemed to link them by blood with the French Turcos, and made them really resemble their natural enemies, the Celts, far more than the Anglo-Saxon temperament. To balance this there were great individual resources when alone,—a sort of Indian wiliness and subtlety of resource. Their gregariousness and love of drill made them more easy to keep in hand than white American troops, who rather like to straggle or go in little squads, looking out for themselves, without being bothered with ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... to be comforted. Our eyes rest at last upon one of these fair fields, where Nature, in her abundance, spreads her cloth of gold, spacious and apt for the entertainment of mighty multitudes—or perhaps, from the curious subtlety of its position, like the carpet in the Arabian tale, seeming to contract so as to be covered by a few only, or to dilate so as to receive an innumerable host. Here, under a bright sun, such as shone at ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... worlds. Glorified in the senses He hath given, Yet beyond sense He is; sustaining all, Yet dwells He unattached: of forms and modes Master, yet neither form nor mode hath He; He is within all beings—and without— Motionless, yet still moving; not discerned For subtlety of instant presence; close To all, to each; yet measurelessly far! Not manifold, and yet subsisting still In all which lives; for ever to be known As the Sustainer, yet, at the End of Times, He maketh all to end—and re-creates. The Light of Lights He is, in the heart of the Dark Shining eternally. ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... we, Panthers for subtlety, Wise when in counsel free, We took our stations. Where was the tribe so brave, Whose war craft could them save From being conquered, slave Of ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... of speaking to the poor and of avoiding patronage or condescension or childishness (which is the favourite device, many people deeming it quite a subtlety to talk to them like little spelling books) has put him on good terms ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... small affair, but it'll cost less per sitting than any other chapel in your circuit, and I fancy it'll look less like a box of bricks." Mr Orgreave subtly smiled, and Edwin tried to equal his subtlety. "I must show you the elevation some other time—a bit later. What I've been after in it, is to keep it in character with the street... Hi! Dan, there!" Now, Mr Orgreave was calling across the hollow of the chapel to a fat man in corduroys. "Have you remembered ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... approach the letters of Stevenson or Lamb; for Beethoven, even in his music, always valued substance more than style, or, at any rate, kept style subservient to vitality of utterance. In fact, one modern French musician claims that he had no taste! He was not gifted with the literary charm and subtlety of his great follower, Hector Berlioz, and had no practise as a journalist or a critic. As his deafness increased after the year 1800 and he was therefore forced to live a life of retirement, he committed his thoughts more ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... sovereign pontiff, before the monks could proceed to a new election; and that the choice of the Bishop of Norwich was of course as uncanonical as that of his competitor [f]. Advantage was therefore taken of this subtlety for introducing a precedent, by which the see of Canterbury, the most important dignity in the church after the papal throne, should ever after be at the disposal of the court of Rome. [FN [f] M. Paris, p. 155. Chron. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... in the affairs of No. 29 Werter Road. Priam went on painting, and there was now no need for secrecy about it. But his painting was not made a subject of conversation. Both of them hesitated to touch it, she from tact, and he because her views on the art seemed to him to be lacking in subtlety. In every marriage there is a topic—there are usually several—which the husband will never broach to the wife, out of respect for his respect for her. Priam scarcely guessed that Alice imagined him to ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... merely from its situation right underneath the mountains. I had asked: "What do those little pillars mean? And are those little doors?" I had promised myself to go there, as one promises oneself a bonne bouche to finish a happy banquet. And I had realized the subtlety, essentially feminine, that had placed a temple there. And Menu-Hotep's temple, perhaps you say, was it not there before the queen's? Then he must have possessed a subtlety purely feminine, or have been advised by one of ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... find some one to blame for lost opportunities is always strong in England. We are a strenuous and moral people, and we ask for a very formidable blend of virtues in our leaders. We are proud of the bull-dog breed and the traditions of our navy, but we demand from the bull-dog all the subtlety of the fox. We came through the war with credit not chiefly by intelligence but by character. Perhaps the two are never perfectly combined in one man. We know what it is to entrust our good name and our safety to men of stalwart and upright ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... uncertain as to the true nature of the act. Lothario, terrified and breathless, ran in haste to pluck out the dagger; but when he saw how slight the wound was he was relieved of his fears and once more admired the subtlety, coolness, and ready wit of the fair Camilla; and the better to support the part he had to play he began to utter profuse and doleful lamentations over her body as if she were dead, invoking maledictions not ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... it has been said, "Hardly one among the many Christian controversies has called forth a greater amount of subtlety and power, and not one so long and so persistently maintained its vitality. Within the twenty-five years which followed its first appearance upwards of thirty councils (one of them the General Council of Ephesus) were held ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... multitude of Men are by the Creation of God innocently simple, altogether void of and averse to all manner of Craft, Subtlety and Malice, and most Obedient and Loyal Subjects to their Native Sovereigns; and behave themselves very patiently, sumissively and quietly towards the Spaniards, to whom they are subservient and subject; so that finally they live without the least thirst after ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... ill-proportioned, that his countenance had little of that flexibility which anticipates the tongue, that his eye had scarcely anything of that language which, by preparing the spectator for the coming sentence, enchains the attention, that his voice was neither silvery nor mellifluous. Nevertheless, by a subtlety of discrimination, that seemed almost intuitive, by a force of judgment and a fervency of mind, that were simply exquisite and irresistible, this was the very man who could at any moment, by an inflection of his voice or by the syncope of a chuckle, move his audience at pleasure to tears or ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... of "Pelham" has aptly said that a gentleman's coat should not fit too well. There is great truth and subtlety in this observation. To be fitted too well is to look like a tailor's assistant. This is the great fault which we have to find in the style of even the best bred Frenchmen. They look as if they had just stepped out of a fashion-book, and lack the careless ease which makes an ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... as thee acts uprightly, I wish thee well. But if, out of office, thee disregards justice and conscience and the rights of others, can thee be just and faithful in office? Subtlety will not always avail. The strong man takes the straight course. Subtlety ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Ohnet's novels, or the plays of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, the true critic can, if it be his pleasure so to direct or waste his faculty of contemplation, produce work that will be flawless in beauty and instinct with intellectual subtlety. Why not? Dulness is always an irresistible temptation for brilliancy, and stupidity is the permanent Bestia Trionfans that calls wisdom from its cave. To an artist so creative as the critic, what does subject-matter ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... Thou wealthy! thou at peace! thou wisdom-fraught! Facts best witness if I speak the truth. Athens and Lacedaemon, who of old Enacted laws, for civil arts renown'd, Made little progress in improving life Tow'rds thee, who usest such nice subtlety, That to the middle of November scarce Reaches the thread thou in October weav'st. How many times, within thy memory, Customs, and laws, and coins, and offices Have been by thee renew'd, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... He had the subtlety of the peasant, always on the alert, and his quality for spying made him stop at nothing to get the information he desired. M. Vulfran usually made the same reply when ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... of our national literature," said he, smiling, "you will have a right to criticise the faults that belong to so humble a disciple of it; but you will see that, though I have commenced with the allegorical or the supernatural, I have endeavoured to avoid the subtlety of conceit, and the obscurity of design, which I blame in the wilder of our authors. As to the style, I wished to suit it to the subject; it ought to be, unless I err, rugged and massive,—hewn, as it were, out ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... on the contrary, feeling, the spirit of life, is added to the pure idea, and this new element of individual character introduced into the thought is, in its infinite subtlety, sufficient to produce the immense variety which exists in the poetic and artistic creations of different men, of different ages, and of different nations. And the reason of this is very simple; it is because the heart is the seat of distinctive personality. We never love men ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... South Africa, it was to come into his own—the large, simple, rough, adventurous life. His powerful and determined mind was confined in its scope to the big essential things. It had a rare political adroitness, but it had little intellectual subtlety. It had had no preparation for the situation now upon him, and its accustomed capacity was suddenly paralyzed. Like some huge ship staggered by the sea, it took its punishment with heavy, sullen endurance. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... I have said before, he was universally interested, and he studied the universe from himself. I do not know how one is to study it otherwise; the impersonal has really no existence; but with all his subtlety and depth he was of a make so simple, of a spirit so naive, that he could not practise the feints some use to conceal that interest in self which, after all, every one knows is only concealed. He frankly and joyously made himself the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... are but a few of the considerations you will take into account, a very few of the many which lend the deer countries strange thrills of delight over new knowledge gained, over crafty expedients invented or well utilized, over the satisfactory matching of your reason, your instinct, your subtlety and skill against the reason, instinct, subtlety, and skill of one of the wariest of ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... type." Although strong and active he was not the huge mass of bones and muscles and thews and sinews, ignorant of beauty and devoid of the love of art, which Carey had described as her ideal. There was melancholy and there was subtlety in him. When Lady Holme was a girl this melancholy and subtlety had not appealed to her sufficiently to induce her to become Lady Viola Pierce. Nevertheless, Robin's affection for her, and the peculiar form it took—of idealising her secret nature and wishing her obvious beauty ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... had been long at his studies he learned that his father was dead. His nature was deeply affectionate, and the painful intelligence overwhelmed him for many days. At school he was not distinguished for brilliancy, but his tutors observed that he had solid parts, and much intellectual subtlety. He was not a great favourite among his class-mates generally, because his manners were shy and reserved, and he shrank from, rather than courted, the popularity and leadership which are the darling aims of so many lads in their school-days. Yet he had many friends ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... can watch it in a detached mood. You can pursue your own thoughts while she is "fervoring," and she will not interrupt them. Miss Mannering is emotional in a conventional stage way, and she knows a few tricks. But the subtlety that comes from experience, the quality that nothing but a long and arduous apprenticeship can produce, are leagues beyond her ken. It is a pity, but the "be-stars-quickly" all suffer in this identical way ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... bow around the ankle—such a charming little slipper peeping out from petticoats all bescalloped and belaced! Everything in fact about this dainty old maid, with her trim figure filling out her soft white fichu, still had that subtlety of charm which had played havoc with more than one heart in her day. Only Sallie Horn, who had all the dear woman's secrets, knew where those little feet had stepped and what hopes they had crushed. ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... hunting a red dear," I said with that playful subtlety which would make her take it as a personal compliment, though I was only thinking of that impostor, and longing to get at him, as I ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... elements; like Ulysses, to whom we have before compared him, when, having accepted the mantle offered him by Leucothea, he reached the friendly shore of Pheacia. Like him, too, his toils were to be renewed. He had enemies to cope with and subdue, and who required to be encountered with as much subtlety and resolution as Penelope's suitors. The following is his account ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... just in proportion as people are capable of buying that pleasure at the price of attention, intelligence, and reverent sympathy. For great art is such as is richly endowed, full of variety, subtlety, and suggestiveness; full of delightfulness enough for a lifetime, the lifetime of generations and generations of men; great art is to its true lovers like Cleopatra to Antony—"age cannot wither it, nor custom ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... his eyes off it, when it is within one's range of vision, than he can keep from breathing. It draws one's attention to itself as irresistibly as though its magnetism were a living and breathing force exerted directly to that end. It is the subtlety of its unapproachable loveliness, commanding homage from all beholders, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... was about? had she netted beforehand all the meshes of this web she was throwing over him? the admirable mixture of frankness and subtlety, nature and art—must it not have been planned and calculated beforehand, to bewilder and mislead?—It may well be doubted. No preconceived and elaborated programme can come up to the inspiration of the moment, which is genius. Such felicitous wording of ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... hordes of Teutons it is different. The moment I heard the sepulchral "r" I said, "This man is a German". He told me he had come from the Indian Army and had a message for the artillery brigade. I took him by subtlety, thinking all was fair in war, and I asked him to come with me. I made for the billet of our signallers and told the sentry that the officer wanted a British brigade. At the same time I whispered ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... the last, as extending over the whole field—must be struck with the impossibility of the theory which makes this letter part of the assumed Ignatian forgeries. This hypothesis requires us to believe that a very uncritical age produced a literary fiction, which, for subtlety and naturalness of execution, leaves the most skilful forgeries of ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... twenty-one, and, though sorely tempted to break his resolution in favor of Katie, had restrained himself. He might have spared himself all the trouble; but this he did not know, being unversed in the ways of women, and all unaware of the subtlety and quickness of their intuitions in all matters connected with the heart. Poor, dear, stolid, dim-sighted mankind, how they do see through us and ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... rendering of the Last Judgment of Tintoret, and Mr. Pater's studies on Lionardo, Michaelangelo, and Giorgione. Of these, Mr. Pater's achievement is probably the most memorable; for it is an attempt, and an attempt of surprising power and subtlety, to reproduce not merely the effect of a single poem or picture, but the imaginative atmosphere, the spiritual individuality, of the artist. In a sense still higher than would be true even of the work done by Lamb and Ruskin, it deserves the praise justly given by Carlyle ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... him, making him fairly feel as if he had been tripped up and had a fall. In the very act of arranging with her for his independence he had, under pressure from a particular perception, inconsistently, quite stupidly, committed himself, and, with her subtlety sensitive on the spot to an advantage, she had driven in by a single word a little golden nail, the sharp intention of which he signally felt. He hadn't detached, he had more closely connected himself, and his eyes, as he considered with some intensity this circumstance, met another ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... stipulated, Vergennes was clearly playing a sharp game against us; and it is undeniable that, without departing technically from the obligations of the alliance, Jay and Adams—two men as honourable as ever lived—played a very sharp defensive game against him. The traditional French subtlety was no match for Yankee shrewdness. The treaty with England was not concluded until the consent of France had been obtained, and thus the express stipulation was respected; but a thorough and detailed agreement was reached ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske |
