"Subtile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spirit of all our actions is the resurrection, and a stable apprehension that our ashes shall enjoy the fruit of our pious endeavours; without this, all religion is a fallacy, and those impieties of Lucian, Euripides, and Julian, are no blasphemies, but subtile verities; and atheists ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... meet her, not with weak tremblings and 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
... at this day the Canadian Parliament, 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
... and grace. Miselle devoured her with her eyes, as did Crusoe the human footstep on his desert island. An answering glance, a suppressed smile on either side, and an understanding was established, an alliance completed, a tie more subtile than Freemasonry confessed. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... Hotel of Rambouillet; but that taste was not judiciously refined this Temple of Taste might more properly have been named a Laboratory of Wit, where good sense was put to the torture, in order to extract from it the most subtile essence. There it was that Voiture labored hard and incessantly to create wit. At length, Boileau and Moliere fixed the standard of true taste. In spite of the Scuderys, the Calprenedes, etc., they defeated and put to flight ARTAMENES, JUBA, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... if this be true), then it follows beyond contradiction, that God is the immediate and direct author or cause of sin: an idea that can not be admitted for one moment, by any believer in the Bible. God called it a beast—"more subtile than all the beasts the Lord God had made." As Adam was the federal head of all his posterity, as well as the real head, so was this beast, the negro, the federal head of all beasts and cattle, etc., down to creeping things—to things that go upon the belly and eat dust all the ...
— The Negro: what is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed. • Buckner H. 'Ariel' Payne
... translates the same word. In 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 ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... the purpose not only of confirming their identity (378.), but also of demonstrating certain general principles (366, 377, &c.), and creating an extension of the means of investigating and applying the chemical powers of this wonderful and subtile agent. ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... Etruscan gold-work stands absolutely alone,—the result of an artistic instinct deeper than any rules or any instruction, and therefore not to be improved or repeated. It is characterized by the most subtile and lovely use of decorative masses and lines,—not for representation or imitation, which are not motives to enter into pure ornament, but for the highest effect of beautiful form and rich color, without ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... man's external acts, it will often happen that their true value and significance can best be learned, not from his own personal recital, but from an analytic study of the deeds themselves. Yet into them, too, often enters, not only the subtile working of their author's natural qualities, but also a certain previous history of well-defined opinions, of settled principles firmly held, of trains of thought and reasoning, of intuitions wrought ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... art that once claimed an extensive literature, and canons of criticism, peculiarly its own. From about 250 to 400 years ago, were the high and palmy days of this 'dainty art.' Then, the learned and subtile schoolmen of the age did not disdain to write upon it, with ink scarcely dry upon the pens with which they had been discussing the most abstruse dogmas of theology; then, not unfrequently, the cureless curate, by the concoction ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... veiled quality in its lowest tones, consistently with the same (but much more) ripeness and sweetness, and perfect freedom from the crudeness often called clearness, as they rise. There is the same kind of versatile and subtile talent, too, in Jenny Lind, as appeared later in the equal inspiration and perfection of her various characters and styles of song. Her's is a genuine soprano, reaching the extra high notes with that ease and certainty which make each highest one a triumph of expression purely, and not a physical ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... pour epier le moment favorable. Tu connais comme moi ce prince inexorable. Tu sais combien terrible en ses soudains transports, De nos desseins souvent il rompt tous les ressorts. 520 Mais me tourmenter ma crainte est trop subtile: Mardoche ses yeux est ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... road-way, where the earth showed purple through a thin green veil of mosses, and where irregular shafts of sunlight, here and there, turned purple and green to red and gold. The warm air, woven of garden-fragrances, hung round them palpable, like some infinitely subtile fabric. And of course blackbirds were calling, blackcaps and thrushes singing, in all the leafy galleries overhead. A fine day indeed, mused John, and indeed worthy of the best that they could say. His nervousness, his excitement, had entirely left him, his assurance had ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... attained in its fulness by the devotees who, according to their qualifications, do worship to it by means of works guided by knowledge. 'From the worship of the vibhava-aspect one attains to the vyha, and from the worship of the vyha one attains to the "Subtile" called Vsudeva, i.e. the highest Brahman'—such is their doctrine. By the 'vibhava' we have to understand the aggregate of beings, such as Rama, Krishna, &c., in whom the highest Being becomes manifest; ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... 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, only, as the powers of the soul are then in a trance, ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... across stormy seas, with a dexterity equal to that of the most experienced pilot. [Footnote: Charlevoix.] They carry a penetrating eye for the thoughts and intentions of those with whom they have to deal; and when they mean to deceive, they cover themselves with arts which the most subtile can seldom elude. They harangue in their public councils with a nervous and a figurative elocution; and conduct themselves in the management of their treaties with a perfect discernment ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... silent again. The thicker sand fell entirely; there remained in the air a subtile red dust, something of the nature of pollen, through which the sun shone like a copper plate. But already they could see ahead. Before the caravan stretched level ground at the borders of which the keen eyes of the Arabs again espied a cloud. It ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... further convincing of our opposites, and darting through their most subtile subterfuges with a mortal stroke, we send them away with this final answer,—You should abstain from the ceremonies when scandal riseth out of them, because you confess them to be in themselves indifferent. ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... painful steep, to soar 40 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 ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... 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 ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... would he rashly be entangled in a dispute, whence he could neither retreat nor extricate himself fairly. Even for this I liked him the better. For fairer is the modesty of a candid mind, than the knowledge of those things which I desired; and such I found him, in all the more difficult and subtile questions. ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... descriptions with which his writings are filled, and while, with picture-words, he could reproduce all the tender beauty of a sunset in the Alps, or the soft, singing gurgle of the mountain-brook, no one better than he could also portray every subtile shade and feature of the human mind. He excelled in analyzing character. His mental perception was sympathetic and ready. His mind-eye was so keen and so piercing, that nothing could escape its searching glance. The most ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... readers—a fast increasing number—as have read and enjoyed The Patience of Hope, listening to the gifted nature which, through such deep and subtile thought, and through affection and godliness still deeper and more quick, has charmed and soothed them, will not be surprised to learn that she is not only poetical, but, what is more, a poet, and one as true as George Herbert and Henry Vaughan, or our own ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... sipped her liqueur appreciatively, smiling good-humouredly, and Philip could not help regarding her with a certain admiration. Her small, sharp, subtile face, beneath its mask of smiling indifference, looked positively youthful in the judicious candle-light; only the little, bird-like, withered hands bore the stigmata of age. And he could not conceive her changing; to the last, those tell-tale hands apart, she would be comely and cynical, and would ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... warres among themselues is either by sudden surprising one an other most commonly about the dawning of the day, or moone light,(100) or els by ambushes, or some subtile deuises. Set battles are very rare, except it fall out where there are many trees, where either part may haue some hope of defence, after the deliuery of euery arrow, in ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... Lord war against me.' (Here follow other 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 ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... pleaded. "You remind me that I am quite uninteresting when I am trying to make believe that I am subtle, or 'subtile,' as the Psalmist ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... 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 called ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... my lord, and 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 to conceive! ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... 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 waters ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... have been as remarkable for the pleasantry 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, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... of the public for those manifestations of favor and esteem with which she was pleased to honor him. But whether the affection which she entertained for him best deserved the name of friendship or a still tenderer one, seems after all a question of too subtile and obscure a nature for sober discussion; though in a French "cour d'amour" it might have furnished pleas and counterpleas of exquisite ingenuity, prodigious sentimental interest, and length interminable. What is unfortunately too certain is, that he was a favorite, and ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... in the use of any form of illuminating gas, since all produce asphyxiation. Accordingly, all gas fixtures of the house should be regularly inspected to see that there is no escape of the subtile, destructive fluid. The odor of escaping gas which is so unpleasant is really a blessing, in that it informs the householder of his danger. A cock that turns completely around and, after extinguishing the light, permits the escape of the gas, is more dangerous than a poisonous serpent. Yet ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... speaks no less warmly: "We can hardly give too much appreciation to that subtile alchemy of the brain which has enabled him to produce out of dull, crabbed, and often illegible state papers, the vivid, graphic, and sparkling narrative which he has given ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... successful in the end, the wind and the sea must be the whaleman's allies; for of what present avail to the becalmed or windbound mariner is the skill that assures him he is exactly ninety-three leagues and a quarter from his port? Inferable from these statements, are many collateral subtile matters touching the chase ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... to 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
... 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 ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... faces; neither did he hear the aggregated turmoil of a city of nations, nor the noisy exponents of various desires, appetites and pursuits: each pulsing tremour of the atmosphere was not struck into it by a subtile ineffable something willed forcibly out of a cranium: neither did he see the driver of horses holding a rod of light in his eye and feeling his way, in a world he was rushing through, by the motion of the end of that rod:—he only saw ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... buoyancy. Many of the noblest women, suffering like her, but less fortunate in being relieved at the right moment, die worried out of life by the perpetual teasing of this inflamed, neuralgic conscience. So subtile is the line which separates the true and almost angelic sensibility of a healthy, but exalted nature, from the soreness of a soul which is sympathizing with a morbid state of the body that it is ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... all characterized by a subtile charm, were produced during this happy period; but in 1821 Mlle. Mayer, preyed upon by her false position, committed suicide, and Prud'hon lingered in continual sorrow until February 16, 1823, when he died. The work of Prud'hon ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... feeling. This seems to me a better test to apply to them than the one which Mr. Arnold cited from Milton. The passage containing this must be taken, not alone, but with the context. Milton had been speaking of "Logic" and of "Rhetoric," and spoke of poetry "as being less subtile and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate." This relative statement, it must not be forgotten, is conditioned by what went before. If the terms are used absolutely, and not comparatively, as Milton used them, they must be very elastic ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... characteristic of Browning's poetry is undoubtedly the essential, elemental quality of its humanity—a trait in which it is surpassed by no other English poetry but that of Shakespeare. It can be subtile to a degree almost fantastic (as can Shakespeare's to an extent that familiarity makes us forget); but this is in method. The stuff of it—the texture of the fabric which the swift and intricate shuttle is weaving—is always ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... 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. The importance or the curiosity of the topics awed or delighted ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... the basons they would haue giuen vs some graines, but to no purpose, so that this day wee tooke not by estimation aboue one hundreth pound waight of Graines, by meanes of their Captaine, who would suffer no man to sell any thing but through his hands, and at his price: he was so subtile, that for a bason hee would not giue 15. pound waight of Graines, and sometimes would offer vs smal dishfuls whereas before wee had baskets full, and when he saw that wee would not take them in contentment, the Captaine departed, and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... at that place they shall establish a point or mark to show what pertains to each side. But as this manner of measuring degrees may be difficult from east to west, although easy from north to south, recourse must be had to certain fine and subtile methods, of which, although everybody is well informed concerning them, I shall not hesitate to state a few facts I have been able to acquire, in order to give these other deputies an opportunity to explain those facts of which I ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... fleeting fantasies we have, a tender, heartfelt, heart-reaching pathos, laughter that might at any moment tremble into tears, eternal truths, draped in the garb of quaint and simple story, solemn fervors, subtile sympathies, and the winsomeness of little children at their play,—sometimes glowing with the deepest color, often just tinged to the pale and changing hues of a dream, but touched with such coy grace, modulated to such free, wild rhythm, suffused with such a delicate, evanishing loveliness, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... Carlyle's fault that we talked on that topic, for he had the natural disinclination of every nimble spirit to bruise itself against walls, and did not like to place himself where no step can be taken. But he was honest and true, and cognizant of the subtile links that bind ages together, and saw how every event affects all the future. 'Christ died on the tree: that built Dunscore kirk yonder: that brought you and me together. Time has only ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... were called Questiones Quodlibeticae; and they were generally so ridiculous that we have retained the word Quodlibet in our vernacular style, to express anything ridiculously subtile; something which comes at length to be distinguished ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Esseintes felt himself intrigued toward this ill-balanced but subtile mind. No fusion had been effected between the skilful psychologist and the pious pedant, and the very jolts and incoherencies constituted the personality ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... usual artistic circle of Ye Hutte is often added a not uncongenial element from the outside world, sometimes even from within the borders of Philistia. Story-tellers, moved by the subtile magnetism of the artistic creative faculty, whether of brush, chisel, or pen, come up sometimes from London, bringing with them an atmosphere of publishers' offices, of romance in high and low life, of professional gossip and criticism. Often a stalwart bicyclist rolls ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... Hurry! little Jack—quick!" She wanted flowers, a bouquet, a dozen forgotten trifles: and the child, whose life had always been made up of just such trifles, and who felt as much as his mother the subtile charm of these elegances, followed her in high glee, delighted by the idea of the fete that he was not to see. The toilette of his mother always interested him, and he fully appreciated the admiration her beauty excited as they went ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... to an external influence from which he cannot escape—the influence of the spirit of the age which embraces all heads, all hearts, and all actions. Had the enlightened humane freethinker of to-day been born three centuries ago, he would have persecuted those who differed from him upon the most subtile, and, as he now thinks, ridiculous points of belief, with the same savage hatred as did all others who were then living. And had he seen the light yet a few centuries earlier—say, among the pagan Saxons of the days of Charlemagne—human sacrifices would have shocked him as little as they ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... more subtile than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... curiosity," and "restlessly fond of novelties," we must insist that a love of study, of patient thought and profound research, was congenial to their natural temperament, and that an inquisitive and analytic spirit, as well as a taste for subtile and abstract speculation, were inherent in the national character. The affluence, and fullness, and flexibility, and sculpture-like finish of the language of the Attics, which leaves far behind not only the languages of antiquity, but also the ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... watery dell of harts-tongue, around the root of a swelling fungus, a lovely company floated of an insubstantiality subtile as taper-smoke, and of a beauty as remote as the ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... clifte, From whose rough vaut the ragged breaches hong Embossed with massy gold of glorious guifte, And with rich metall loaded every rifte, That heavy ruine they did seeme to threatt; And over them Arachne high did lifte Her cunning web, and spred her subtile nett, Enwrapped in fowle smoke and clouds more ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... 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 been moderate, and have tended to the public good, ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... the Spanish people is exquisitely subtile, without being at all acute: hence there is so much humor and so little wit in their literature. The genius of the Italians, on the contrary, is acute, profound, and sensual, but not subtile; hence what they think to be ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... well, my love! Suppose me come from the Phlegraean plains, Where gasping giants lay, cleft by my sword, And mountain tops pared off each other blow, To bury those I slew. Receive me, goddess! Let Caesar spread his subtile nets; like Vulcan, In thy embraces I would be beheld By heaven and earth at once; And make their envy what they meant their sport. Let those, who took us, blush; I would love on, With awful state, regardless of ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... and left a fresh bloom there. No ailment could entirely resist its vigorous cure; for every wind brought healing on its wings, endowing many a meagre life with another year of health. No gloomy spirit could refuse to listen to its lullaby, and the spray baptized it with the subtile benediction of a cheerier mood. No rank held place there; for the democratic sea toppled down the greatest statesman in the land, and dashed over the bald pate of a millionnaire with the same white-crested ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... or, at a second glance, he might be fifteen to twenty-five years older. His face retains the form of youth, yet wears a subtile shadow which we feel might be consistent even with extreme old age. The forehead is wide and low, supported by regular eyebrows; the face beneath long and narrow, of a dark and dry complexion. In sleep, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... 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.[52] 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 ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... 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 ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... good-natured, and generous to extravagance. Her manner toward Mary Anne never ceased to arouse Miss Belinda to interest. There was not any condescension whatever in it, and yet it could not be called a vulgarly familiar manner: it was rather an astonishingly simple manner, somehow suggestive of a subtile recognition of Mary Anne's youth, and ill-luck in not having before her more lively prospects. She gave Mary Anne presents in the shape of articles of clothing at which Slowbridge would have exclaimed in horror if the recipient had ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... exhalation over the whole of the building. There must be no fluid oozing through the walls or the floor of the kennel, and producing damp and unhealthy vapours. When we have not a deep supersoil of clay, one or two layers of bricks or of stone may line the floor, and then, not even the most subtile vapour can penetrate through the floor. A clean bed of straw should be allowed every second day, or oftener when the weather is wet. The lodging-houses should be ceiled, and there should be shutters to the windows. A thatched roof is preferable to tiles, being ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... 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 ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... cleare and fine. Indigente, good clear witts, subtile, and the most litigious of England: they carry Littleton's Tenures at the plough taile. Sir Thorn. Browne, M. D., of Norwich, told me that their eies in that countrey doe quickly decay; which he imputes to the clearness and driness (subtileness) of the aire. ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... 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 trace the source whence the fierce contest ...
— The Library • George Crabbe
... knowledge of the world—all combined to render this attempt hopeless. Maxwell, however, was not easily discouraged. The most perfect being, he believed, must owe his exemption from vice to the absence of temptation. The impulses of love are so subtile, and the influence of false reasoning, when enforced by eloquence and passion, so unbounded, that no human virtue is secure from degeneracy. All arts being tried, every temptation being summoned ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... it a little unhospitable, and others may call it a subtile piece of malice, that, because there may be a dozen families in this Town, able to entertain their English friends in a generous manner at their tables, their guests upon their return to England, shall report that we ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... this earth. Their relations of spirit were sensitive and organic, far beneath the reach of intellectual consciousness. They seemed able to communicate tidings through the ethereal medium by some subtile telegraphy of feeling, which transcends understanding, and belongs to a miraculous region of life. For, when Fanny died in her German home, Felix, amidst a happy company in England, suddenly aware of some terrible calamity, from the disturbance of equilibrium and dread sinking of his soul, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... succeeded in producing a series of criticisms in relation to creative literature which are satisfactory as well as subtile—which are not only ingenious, but which possess the rarer recommendation of ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare
... 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 is most requisite in a Prince, ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... then, from some occult connection of ideas too subtile for searching out, that he imagined, first, a history of the Stockade Prison. He secured a number of long, thin boards, and planed them smooth, for foolscap, pointed bits of wood for pens, manufactured ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... from one unto another body. That which is called death is only the dissolution of the body. It is thus that the Soul, wrapped in diverse forms, migrates from form to form, unseen and unnoticed by others. Persons possessed of true Knowledge behold the Soul by their keen and subtile intelligence. The man of wisdom, living on frugal fare, and with heart cleansed of all sins, devoting himself to yoga meditation, succeeds every night, before sleep and after sleep, in beholding his Soul by the aid of his Soul.[561] In consequence of a contented heart, and by ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... strata, before those that are now superincumbent had been begun to be deposited. But we cannot suppose two such contrary operations in the same place, as that of carrying away the relics of those broken strata, and the depositing of sand and subtile earth in such a regular order. We are therefore led to conclude, that the bottom of the sea, or surface of those erected strata, had been in very different situations at those two periods, when the relics of the disordered strata had been carried away, and when the new materials ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... can draw subtile spirits, that will work upon one another at some distance, viz. spirits of alkalies and acids, e.g. spirits coelestial (sal armoniac and spirits of C. C. will work on each other at half a yard distance, and smoke;) but the ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... Dress has a subtile influence upon our actions: one gown can make a romp, another a princess, another a boor, another a sparkling coquette, out of the same woman. The female mood is susceptibly sympathetic to the fitness or unfitness of dress. Now, ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... of indighting, is in a subtile, pressed, and fyled oracion, meete for causes that be a lytel sharper then are in the comon vse of speakynge. For it is a kynde of oracion that is lette downe euen to the mooste vsed custume of pure and clere speakyng. It hathe fyne sentences, subtile, sharpe, teachyng all ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry
... are sweet and subtile, wild and sleepy, by turns; oftentimes rising to the clouds, oftentimes challenging the heavens. She wears a diadem round her head. And I knew by childish memories that she could go abroad upon the winds, when she heard that sobbing of litanies, or the thundering of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... will receive from them, not what they have, but what they are. They shall give me that which properly they cannot give, but which emanates from them. But they shall not hold me by any relations less subtile and pure. We will meet as though we met not, and part as though we ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and Statesman subtile wiles ensure, The Cit, and Polecat stink and are secure; Toads with their venom, doctors with their drug, The Priest, and Hedgehog, in their robes are snug! Oh, Nature! cruel step-mother, and hard, 5 To ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... There are instances on record where this knowing creature has sprung the trap by dropping a stick upon the pan, afterwards removing the suspended bait to enjoy it at his leisure. His movements are as lithe and subtile as those of a snake, and when "cornered" there is no telling what caper that cunning instinct and subtlety of body will not lead him to perform. When pursued by hounds he has been known to lead them a long chase at full speed up to the crest of a hill: here he leaps a shrub, swiftly ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... mysteries, the Christians had flattered themselves that they should render their sacred institutions more respectable in the eyes of the Pagan world. But the event, as it often happens to the operations of subtile policy, deceived their wishes and their expectations. It was concluded, that they only concealed what they would have blushed to disclose. Their mistaken prudence afforded an opportunity for malice to invent, and for suspicious credulity to believe, the horrid tales ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... a southern sun.[210] On the other hand, intensity of heat is aggravated by the neighborhood of arid and sandy deserts, or rocky tracts. The action of long-continued heat creates a more permanent effect than the mere darkening of the outer skin: it alters the character of those subtile juices that display their color through the almost transparent covering.[211] We see that, from a constitutional peculiarity in individuals, the painful variety of the albino is sometimes produced in the hottest countries. Certain internal diseases, and ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... character. Nature is thoroughly mediate. It is made to serve. It receives the dominion of man as meekly as the ass on which the Saviour rode. It offers all its kingdoms to man as the raw material which he may mould into what is useful. Man is never weary of working it up. He forges the subtile and delicate air into wise and melodious words, and gives them wing as angels of persuasion and command. One after another, his victorious thought comes up with and reduces all things, until the world becomes, at last, only a realized will,—the ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 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 lover of ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... requisite to support the fervor of the soul. He was known to strangers by the joy of his countenance. By humility he ranked himself among the goats, unworthy to be numbered among the sheep. He made it his constant and earnest petition to God, that he might know himself, and be preserved from the subtile snares and illusions of pride. It is said that the devil left a possessed person at his command, crying out that he was not able to withstand his humility. The saint received a visit from St. Petronius, afterwards bishop of ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Byron, the real was never forgotten in the fanciful. However Imagination had placed her whole realm at his disposal, he was no less a man of this world than a ruler of hers; and, accordingly, through the airiest and most subtile creations of his brain still the life-blood of truth and reality circulates. With Shelley it was far otherwise;—his fancy (and he had sufficient for a whole generation of poets) was the medium through which he saw all things, his facts as well ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... choosing of Princes, and finally about peace and war. For they judge, that at no season is the soul more open to thoughts that are artless and upright, or more fired with such as are great and bold. This people, of themselves nowise subtile or politic, from the freedom of the place and occasion acquire still more frankness to disclose the most secret motions and purposes of their hearts. When therefore the minds of all have been once laid open and declared, ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... It was the subtile policy of Senator Hanway, in his move towards a Presidency, to seem to be standing still. His attitude was feminine; the nomination must abduct him; he must be dragged to the altar and wedded into the White House by force. In short, Senator Hanway ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of proportion, applicable to commensurable and incommensurable magnitudes alike, which is expounded in Euclid's Book V. Well might Barrow say of this theory that 'there is nothing in the whole body of the elements of a more subtile invention, nothing more solidly established'. The keystone of the structure is the definition of equal ratios (Eucl. V, Def. 5); and twenty-three centuries have not abated a jot from its value, as is ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... genius," he said. "He is an artist, he is a poet, he is also a writer of subtile prose. His sonnets to Euphrasie—in the day of Euphrasie—awakened the admiration of the sternest critics: they were so tender, so full of purest fire! Some of the same critics also could scarcely choose between these and his songs to Aglae in her day, or Camille ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Broadway, calling at various places of business, and night after night he returned to his cheerless room with a faint heart and declining spirits. It was, after all, a more serious thing than he had imagined, to cut the cable which binds one to the land of one's birth. There a hundred subtile influences, the existence of which no one suspects until the moment they are withdrawn, unite to keep one in the straight path of rectitude, or at least of external respectability; and Ralph's life had ...
— A Good-For-Nothing - 1876 • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... work, for, as Pike the manager would have told you, "three dollars a week,—good wages these tight times." For nothing more? Some other meaning may have fallen from their faces into this girl's subtile intuition in the instant's glance,—cheerfuller, remoter aims, hidden in the most sensual face,—homeliest home-scenes, low climbing ambitions, some delirium of pleasure to come,—whiskey, if nothing better: aims in life like yours differing in degree. Needing only to make them the same——did ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... know where to look for a more cogent and at the same time picturesque confutation of Socialism than in the Second Canto of the Fifth Book. If I apprehend rightly his words and images, there is not only subtile but profound thinking here. The French Revolution is prefigured in the well-meaning but too theoretic giant, and Rousseau's fallacies exposed two centuries in advance. Spenser was a conscious Englishman to his inmost fibre, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... parts of it, have failed in describing the practical parts: for it is not enough to be able to perceive what is best without it is what can be put in practice. It should also be simple, and easy for all to attain to. But some seek only the most subtile forms of government. Others again, choosing [1289a] rather to treat of what is common, censure those under which they live, and extol the excellence of a particular state, as the Lacedaemonian, or some other: but every ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... prevailed that I went through a course of the fathers, pored over the canonists, and made many resolute attacks upon the schoolmen. Not only Aristotle but his doctors, the irrefragable, the angelic or eagle-eyed, the subtile, the illuminated, and many more had their peaceful folios vainly disturbed by my researches, and my determination to understand what, alas, in its ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... and Lord of those that bare rule, coming from his Bridal Throne of the Glassy Sepulchre, into this Mundane Scene, in his glorified body, viz, regenerate, and more then perfect: namely, a shining Carbuncle, a most temperate Splendour; and of which, tire most Subtile, and Depurated parts, are by the concordant peace of Mixtion, inseparably united into One, and perfectly equallized, clear as Crystal, compact, and most ponderous, as fluid in fire, as Rosin, and before the flight of Mercury, as Wax flowing, yet without fume, entring and penetrating, ...
— The Golden Calf, Which the World Adores, and Desires • John Frederick Helvetius
... 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
... he is the very Christ of God, which was before the world was, by whom the world was made, who was made manifest from Mary's womb, and was persecuted to death by the Scribes and Pharisees, in whose steps thou treadest in asking subtile questions to ensnare the innocent, as they did. Read thy example (sayest thou) and thyself to be an enemy ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was honest and earnest, and gifted too; that his drawing is firm and truer to nature than that of most contemporary artists; that his portraits possess character; that they are well-bred and important, as the people they represent were; that his mountains are like mountains even in some of their subtile lines; that his rivers wind; that his masses of architecture are in good perspective and proportion; and then you will excuse his faults, though it is right to notice and feel them. We must see many in the work of every artist until we come to the great painters of the High Renaissance. ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... 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 subject, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... a toiler is writing, The boyish Old Man whom no fate ever floored; Karl's in New York with his briefs and his logic, That subtile ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... with Mortar of strong Lime, and Sand, and Pebbles, all well beaten together. They made several Conservatories, and the Water passed from one to another, to the end it might leave all the Dirt in the first and second; They likewise put Salt in their Cistern-Water to make it more subtile. ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius
... some species that come from the object to the eye, which at their first rise are thick and great; and therefore when near disturb old men, whose eyes are stiff and not easily penetrated; but when they are separated and diffused into the air, the thick obstructing parts are easily removed, and the subtile remainders coming to the eye gently and easily slide into the pores; and so the disturbance being less, the sight is more vigorous and clear. Thus a rose smells most fragrant at a distance; but if you bring it near the nose, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... grand simplicity to be without a rival. If there is any American poem which sings itself like "All's well," it is Longfellow's ballad of "Mary Garvin." "The Plover" has a pensive grace which is as rare as its subtile and elevated thought. They are however few in number and he did not think there was enough of them to publish in a volume. They were finally published post mortem in what was, if the truth be told, a rather unfortunate manner. Two of his finest sonnets, on "Silence" and ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... confidence in himself, nor baffled any of his natural endowments. On the contrary, it left his talents free to their natural direction. These, it is probable, were never of a kind to derive, or to need, many advantages from a very superior or scientific education. His mind was rather practical than subtile—his genius prompted him to action, rather than to study,—and the condition and necessities of the country, calling for the former rather than the latter character, readily reconciled him to a deficiency the importance of ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... * 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 ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... lecture on physiognomy, "which politicians, as a rule, do not consider. Of course any man of intelligence who plays long at the game of politics comes to possess a certain kind of shrewdness in judging human nature; but very few of them are able to recognize and define the subtile constitutional influences which predetermine the success or failure of the aspirant for political honors. Such influences, however, exist, and other things being equal, or approximately so, it is entirely possible to select, ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... sharp, clear-sighted, discriminating, penetrative, shrewd, crafty, keen, perspicacious, subtile, cunning, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... the last odds declared; all gallop away to the Warren. A few minutes, only a few minutes, and the event that for twelve months has been the pivot of so much calculation, of such subtile combinations, of such deep conspiracies, round which the thought and passion of the sporting world have hung like eagles, will be recorded in the fleeting tablets of the past. But what minutes! Count them by sensation and not by calendars, and each moment is a day and the race a life. ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... the 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 thus passing without too sudden transitions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... 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 of many works ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... family which separated, like the Jinn and the Genius, into two categories, the good (Agatho-daemons) and the bad (Kako-daemons). We know nothing concerning the status of the Jinn amongst the pre-Moslemitic or pagan Arabs: the Moslems made him a supernatural anthropoid being, created of subtile fire (Koran chapts. xv. 27; lv. 14), not of earth like man, propagating his kind, ruled by mighty kings, the last being Jan bin Jan, missionarised by Prophets and subject to death and Judgment. From the same root are "Junun" madness (i.e., possession or obsession by the Jinn) and "Majnun"a ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... for the fortunate soul Which Music's wings infold, Stealing away the memory Of sorrows new and old! Yet happier he whose inward sight, Stayed on his subtile thought, Shuts his sense on toys of time, To vacant bosoms brought. But best befriended of the God He who, in evil times, Warned by an inward voice, Heeds not the darkness and the dread, Biding by his rule and choice, Feeling only ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Virginians would assert that even the greatest straits might be passed without having recourse to so dangerous a medium; how all the facts in the history of paper-money would be brought forward to prove both sides of the question, but how the underlying principle, subtile, impalpable, might still elude them all, as for thirty-five years longer it still continued to elude wise statesmen and thoughtful economists; how, at last, some impatient spirit, breaking through the untimely delay, sternly asked them what else they proposed to do. By what alchemy would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... overlooked Mr. Trelawny in some painful or preoccupied moment, or offended the robust man of the world by the mere delicate shyness of his look; he might also have puzzled and bewildered Mr. Hogg, being, perhaps, puzzled and bewildered himself, by some subtile mental speculation,—unconscious that for these things he was yet to be brought to judgment and turned into ridicule, for the coming generation, by these familiar men,—these drilled and pipe-clayed familiar men. He might ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... the blood Burgundian sunshine makes; A fine old feudal knight Of bluff and boisterous might, Whose casque feels—ah, so heavy when one wakes!" "And I, the dainty Bordeaux, violets' Perfume, and whose rare rubies gourmets prize. My subtile savour gets In partridge ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... dry heat of boiling water. In regard to these last, he might surely have ventured to fix the standard of safety at a greatly lower temperature; for if the grosser vaccine matter could be rendered inert at 140 deg., there can be little doubt of the subtile gaseous emanations, which constitute the aerial contagions, being dissipated by the same agent, at an inferior degree. In the absence of direct experiment, we may venture to infer, that 120 deg. would suffice, to nullify these last. Such, at least, ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... the brain. The brain continually develops both through constant exercise and through natural selection. Through the higher and more delicate sense-organs it perceives a continually wider range of more subtile elements in its environment. And the higher the sense-organ the more directly and purely does it minister to consciousness. The eye, when capable of forming an image, is almost never concerned in a purely ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... satirical, the bucolic, the romantic, the reflective, the epic. The latter has to do with those towering creatures of action—Othello, Coriolanus, Virginius, Macbeth—somewhat deficient, whether good or evil, in the casuistry of more subtile dispositions, but giants in emotion, and kingly in repose. They are essentially masculine, and we connect their ideals with the stately figure, the deep chest-utterance, the slow, enduring majesty of mien. The genius of Mr. Booth has that feminine quality which, though ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 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
... words have a uniform sense. But the nice shades and turns of thought which appear in the happiest and most delicate jets of wit and humor, and which form the great staples of pleasant social intercourse, depend upon those subtile discriminations in the sense of words which are rarely acquired by foreigners. One may have all the words of a language and not be able to understand them in sallies of wit. How nicely adjusted then must be ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... that deep under-current of consciousness which lurks beneath our surface sensations and impressions, there was always present the image of Foster, with his pale, cynical face, and pitiless eyes. With this, was the perpetual remembrance that a subtile malady, beyond the reach of our skill, was slowly eating away his life. The man I abhorred; but the sufferer, mysteriously linked with the memories which clung about my mother, aroused her most urgent, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... prussic acid, or, with what comes still nearer, the poisonous influence of an atmosphere impregnated with invisible malaria, we should find in each of these examples an evidence of the degree to which nature, in some few instances, concentrates powerful qualities in minute or subtile forms of matter. But if a man comes to me with a pestle and mortar in his hand, and tells me that he will take a little speck of some substance which nobody ever thought to have any smell at all, as, for instance, a grain of chalk ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 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, so that here the ring answers exactly to the finger. And therefore this folk,[8] hastened to true life, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... the title," said he, "but he was a gentleman of family: and the Lord deliver you, Mackellar, from an enemy so subtile!" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Fairy Queen prate not of their "whereabout." But in their inner nature, and the law of their speech and actions, we are at home and upon acquainted ground. The one turns life into a dream; the other to the wildest dreams gives the sobrieties of every day occurrences. By what subtile art of tracing the mental processes it is effected, we are not philosophers enough to explain, but in that wonderful episode of the cave of Mammon, in which the Money God appears first in the lowest form of a miser, is then ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will walk? I believe that there is a subtile magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... upon their hinder paws, and fawned upon Eurylochus and his men, who dreaded the effects of such monstrous kindness; and staying at the gate they heard the enchantress within, sitting at her loom, singing such strains as suspended all mortal faculties, while she wove a web, subtile and glorious, and of texture inimitable on earth, as all the housewiferies of the deities are. Strains so ravishingly sweet provoked even the sagest and prudentest heads among the party to knock and call at the gate. The shining ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... 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
... up to the bed, and I followed him. The woman who lay there was still young in years, she could not have been more than three- or four-and-thirty, but every semblance of youth was crushed out of her by some subtile and mysterious suffering; it might have been the face of a dead woman, only for the living eyes ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... 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
... by the aid of his own knowledge the Uncreate, Ancient, Undeteriorating, and Eternal Brahma,—That, viz., which can not be attained to except by fixed senses,—That which is subtiler than the most subtile, and grosser than the most gross, and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... thing, indeed, to moralize about matters of inferior station and mesalliance; but I believe that few could have seen little Jessie, as she first appeared to me, and not have felt some secret inclination to give way before those subtile charms of beauty and manner which invested her. Moreover, let it here be mentioned that she was not at all of humble birth or education. Old Barkstead was himself a gentleman by culture and station, and had once been the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... things in a blundering fashion. It is of no use trying by fear to drive into people's heads things they have no mind to learn. Neither must you "forsake the ship in a tempest, because you cannot rule and keep down the winds." But "you must with a crafty wile and subtile train, study and endeavour yourself, as much as in you lieth, to handle the matter wittily and handsomely for the purpose. And that which you cannot turn to good, so to order it that it be not ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... 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 no man can control his doubts. Silas would ...
— Two Days' Solitary Imprisonment - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... Boscovich and Davy, to which we may recur. But he had not as yet conceived the notion of a distinction between matter and energy, which is so fundamental to the physics of a later epoch. He did not speak of heat, light, electricity, as forms of energy or "force"; he conceived them as subtile forms of matter—as highly attenuated yet tangible fluids, subject to gravitation and chemical attraction; though he had learned to measure none of them but heat with accuracy, and this one he could test only within narrow limits until late in the century, when Josiah ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... a menace shone the arms of the great emperor. Vividly he recalled his own humiliation, his long captivity, and mistrusted the power of his subtile, amiable friend-enemy. Friendship? Sweeter was hatred. But the promptings of wisdom had suggested the policy of peace; the reins of expediency drove him, autocrat or slave, to the doctrines of loving brotherhood. He turned his gloomy eyes upon ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... constructing machinery, or of transforming raw materials into finished fabrics. This ability to make exact and skillful applications of science to an unlimited variety of materials, and especially to the subtile but most energetic agencies of nature, is one of the latest attainments of the human mind. It is remarkable that astronomy, sculpture, painting, poetry, oratory, and even ethical philosophy, had made great progress thousands of years before the era of the manufacturing and mechanic arts. This era, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... an intention can never be widely understood. The meaning is too subtile for the casual observer. An outgrowth of mediaeval pietism, it was superseded by more popular subjects, and has never since been revived. The subject had its origin as an idealized nativity, set in pastoral ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... 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; By strange enchantment made to ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... the corner there, As, restless, bold, and unafraid, She slips and floats along the air Till all her subtile ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... with certainty conclude, that there has been a great consumption of the most hard and solid parts of the land; and therefore that there must necessarily have been a still much greater destruction of the more soft and tender substances, and the more light and subtile parts which, during those operations of water, had been floated away into the sea. This appears from the enormous quantities of stones and gravel which have been transported at distances that seem incredible, and deposited at heights above the present rivers, which renders the conveyance of those ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton |
