"Subtlety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Government-stamped knowledge, is inseparable from an utter lack of reverence for women. Neither Antony nor Pericles, but Alcibiades is his classical prototype. And so the fiction with which he will pass the time between labour and sleep will have none of the subtlety of Meredith, none of the delicate artistry of Flaubert, but rather the fluent obviousness of Guy Boothby, stripped as bare ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... many things of which she might have been proud; but it had never been fathomed by the honest minds of Hintock, and she rarely volunteered her experiences. As for her capricious nature, the people on her estates grew accustomed to it, and with that marvellous subtlety of contrivance in steering round odd tempers, that is found in sons of the soil and dependants generally, they managed to get along under her government rather better than they would have done beneath a ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... not seem so much a man as an institution, a symbol of summer and all its joys, a sort of Father Christmas clothed in flannels and sunshine. It did you good merely to look at him. It made you feel happy to see such a huge capacity for enjoyment, such mighty subtlety, such ponderous gaiety. It was as though Jove, or Vulcan, or some other god of antiquity had come down to play games with the mortals. You would not have been much surprised if, when the shadows lengthened across the greensward and the umpire signalled that the day's play was done, ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... loosely plaited, flaxen hair. The new organs, as soon as Maskull had familiarised himself with them, imparted something to her face that was unique and striking. He could not quite define it to himself, but subtlety and inwardness seemed added. The organs did not contradict the love of her eyes or the angelic purity of her features, but nevertheless sounded a deeper note—a note that saved her ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... prairie. To make room for civilization, that forest must go. What were Indians, however deadly,—what starvation, however imminent,—what pestilence, however lurking,—to a solid obstacle like this? No mere courage could cope with it, no mere subtlety, no mere skill, no Yankee ingenuity, no labor-saving machine with head for hands; but only firm, unwearying, bodily muscle to every stroke. Tree by tree, in two centuries, that forest has been felled. What were the Pyramids to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... 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 ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... Be not surprised if the surprising does not surprise. When Jeb walked into meeting the following Sunday no citizen of Happy Valley had the subtlety to note that of them all Pleasant Trouble alone, sitting far in the rear, showed no surprise. Pleasant's face was solemn, but in his eyes was an expectant smile. Women and men glared, and the parson stopped his exhortation to glare, but Jeb had timed his entrance ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... Howards' a set of ancient stones that interested me as much as an Assyrian marble would interest you. They were old, home-made millstones, and they have not been used since the frame house was built. The grist mill at the village put them out of date. And just here, notice the subtlety of the crafty middleman. The farmer takes his grist to the mill, and the miller does not charge him cash for grinding it. He takes toll out of the bags, and the farmer has a vague idea that he gets his grinding for almost nothing. The old way was the best, Renny, my boy. The farmer's son won't ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... wanting in the frankness of his speeches before and after. A harsh reference to Abolitionists serves to disguise the fact that the whole speech is animated by antagonism to slavery. The occasion and the subject are used with rather disagreeable subtlety to insinuate opposition to slavery into the minds of a cautious audience. The speaker himself seems satisfied with the mood of mere compromise which had governed Clay in this matter, or rather perhaps he is twisting Clay's ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... the charms of wit or character of an unusual order. Greatness of character flatters their vanity, promises a great passion, seems to imply a comprehension of the requirements of their hearts. Wit amuses them, responds to the subtlety of their natures, and they think that they are understood. And what do all women wish but to be amused, understood, or adored? It is only after much reflection on the things of life that we understand the consummate coquetry of neglect of dress and reserve at a first interview; ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... ambiguity, and arbitrariness shown by the allegorical interpreters whenever they attempt to exhibit the truth intended to be conveyed; whereas perspicuity is a characteristic essential to an allegory.—The subtlety of the [Pg 15] serpent, pointed out in chap. iii. 1, is a natural attribute of that animal; and the comparison, in this respect, of the serpent with the other beasts, clearly indicates that a real serpent is spoken of. To such an one the denunciation ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... cunning and dexterity, the subtlety and tact required, interested him more in the commission than did the benevolence. He called, sent up his card, and composed his countenance for his part, like ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... theatrical splendour. But for all that, they touched the noblest parts of men. They are alive with an exalted and magnanimous generosity, the one high virtue which can never fail to touch a multitude. Subtlety may miss them, graces may miss them, and reason may fly over their heads, but the words of a generous humanity on the lips of poet or chief have never failed to kindle divine music in their breasts. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... 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 ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... 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 by ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... and escape bloodshed, for the long tentacles of the lawyer catch you unawares sooner or later, and then, for all are set with double rows of re-curved points, do not endeavour to escape by strife and resistance—it is no use pulling against those pricks—but by subtlety and diplomacy. The more you pull, the worse for your skin and clothes; but with tact you may become free, with naught but neat scratches and regular rows of splinters. The points of the hooks to which you ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... instantly by another which was much more to the immediate purpose. He was hungry: there was a restaurant next door to the bank. Without thinking overmuch of the risk he ran, and perhaps not at all of the audacious subtlety of such an expedient at such a critical moment, he went in, sat down at one of the small marble-topped tables, and ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... Expression counts for a great deal: but ideas perhaps count for more. And in the value of the ideas expressed I cannot see that 'Autumn' comes near to rivalling the 'Nightingale' (for instance) or 'Melancholy.' The thought that Autumn has its songs as well as Spring has neither the rarity nor the subtlety nor the moral value of ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... thou hast reason now, 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 ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... the intellectual finesse with which we have had to contend. We are charged with the undue luxury of supporting a town and country house for a public functionary; and, disproving the fact, our opponents turn upon us, with a pernicious subtlety, and show, to such a condensing point has the effeminate spirit reached among us, that we have compressed the essence of two such establishments into one! Mr. Harris might have carried out his argument, and shown also that to such a pass of self-indulgence ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of power in the few against the many; the Patrician against the Plebeian." On May 31, 1836, the House Committee for the District of Columbia, in reporting on the debtors' imprisonment acts, said: "They are disgraceful evidences of the ingenious subtlety by which they were woven into the legal system we adopted from England, and were obviously intended to increase and confirm the power of a wealthy aristocracy by rendering poverty a crime, and subjecting the liberty of the poor ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... sacrifice to God of himself and all that he possesses, offered with inward humility, prayer, and thankfulness. The question as to a change of the elements, which Melancthon had already denied, Luther passed by as an unnecessary subtlety. Lastly, together with the sacrifice supposed to be offered by the priest, he dismissed also the notion of a peculiar priesthood; for with the real sacrifice offered by Christians, as he understood it, all became priests. Instead of the difference ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... counteract that of the Press 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 flames ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... have doubtless come here with very good motives, but I see no reason why I should accept your statements concerning Mr. Parker and his daughter. You understand? My suggestion is that you are mistaken. Until I have proved them to be other than they represent themselves to be," I added with infinite subtlety, "I shall continue to derive pleasure from ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... it," said Father Payne, "that anything which makes people acquiesce in preventable evil, and see the beautiful effects of death and pain and waste, is the direct influence of the devil. It is the last and most guileful subtlety that he practises, to make us solemnly mournful and patient in the presence of calamities for which we have ourselves to thank. The only prayer worth praying in the time of war is not, 'Help us ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... I wish to be like the thieves and to win it by stratagem—a stratagem of love which will open its gates both to me and to poor sinners. In the Book of Proverbs the Holy Ghost encourages me, for He says: 'Come to me, little one, to learn subtlety!'"[3] ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... 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 character ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... classes and vocational groups is an unworked field. The differentiation of social types, especially in urban life, and the complexity and subtlety of the social distinctions separating social and vocational classes, opens a fruitful prospect for investigation. Scattered through a wide literature, ranging from official inquiries to works of fiction, there are, in ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... is, and standing at this point of our review, that we complain of Mr Finlay's too facile compliance with historians far beneath himself. He has a fine understanding: oftentimes his commentaries on the past are ebullient with subtlety; and his fault strikes us as lying even in the excess of his sagacity applying itself too often to a basis of facts, quite insufficient for supporting the superincumbent weight of his speculations. But in this instance he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... ends of the index and thumb stroking the two sides of the nose from base to point. This means astute, attentive, ready. Sharpness of the nasal organ is popularly associated with subtlety and finesse. The old Romans by homo emunctae naris meant an acute man attentive to his interests. The sign is often used in a bad sense, then signifying too sharp ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... 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. Only ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... calmly trust in Thee, Thou true to me remainest, Of malice and of subtlety The course, with pow'r restrainest. This makes my heart with joy o'erflow, That willingly dost Thou bestow Salvation on ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... cause of the prismatic colours of the rainbow, or of the appearance in heaven of two rival images of the sun, with sundry other phenomena treated in a monumental volume by Archimedes of Syracuse, a man who showed extraordinary and unique subtlety in all branches of geometry, but was perhaps particularly remarkable for his frequent and attentive inspection of mirrors. If you had only read this book, Aemilianus, and, instead of devoting yourself to the study of your fields and their dull clods, had studied the mathematician's ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... character of his mind often hindered and even checked altogether the best founded of his impressions, the more especially when he, as it were, stood still and thought. In reverie, the subtlety of his mind entangled him; in action, he was almost always right. Action prompted his decision. Descending from the hill he now took some refreshment, and then pushed out again in the canoe. So powerful was the current in the narrowest part of the strait that it ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... Pinkney, and great boldness; but no insolence, no exultation of manner. He wants only ambition to make him rival, nay, perhaps even to surpass the accomplished champion of the federal bar. His fault is subtlety, and a provoking minuteness of detail in his argument. He sometimes shows legal and rhetorical artifice where there is not the least occasion for either. These defects, however, have been acquired ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... amplitude of fortune, in weight of authority, in depth of learning, inferior to few of those that hear me. My Lords, it was but the other day that they submitted their necks to the axe; but their honor was unwounded. Their enemies, the persons who sentenced them to death, were lawyers full of subtlety, they were enemies full of malice; yet lawyers full of subtlety, and enemies full of malice, as they were, they did not dare to reproach them with having supported the wealthy, the great, and powerful, and of having oppressed the weak and feeble, in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... in what she accomplished. Jemima, secretly alarmed, had insisted upon having in a doctor after her mother's fainting attack, but he made little of it. He was a bluff, cheerful, young countryman, shrewd but without subtlety, the son and the worthy successor of Jacques Benoix' successful ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... me it's exactly as palpable as the marble of this chimney. Besides, the critic just isn't a plain man: if he were, pray, what would he be doing in his neighbour's garden? You're anything but a plain man yourself, and the very raison d'etre of you all is that you're little demons of subtlety. If my great affair's a secret, that's only because it's a secret in spite of itself—the amazing event has made it one. I not only never took the smallest precaution to do so, but never dreamed of any such accident. If I had I shouldn't in advance have had the heart to go on. As it was I only ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... their various interests, and that faction of the White and Red, into which they have been thenceforth divided, till Panurgus, the eighteenth king from the Conquest, was more by their favor than his right advanced to the crown. This King, through his natural subtlety, reflecting at once upon the greatness of their power, and the inconstancy of their favor, began to find another flaw in this kind of government, which is also noted by Machiavel namely, that a throne supported by ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... many of the original investigators of electrical phenomena are perpetuated in the familiar names of electrical measurements. For, notwithstanding its seeming subtlety, there is no force in use, or that has ever been used by men, capable of being so definitely calculated, measured, determined beforehand, as electricity is. As time passes new measurements are adopted and named, some of them being proposed as lately as 1893. An instance of the value of some ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... from the first was able to annoy them. Demand was made for quarters for the soldiers; the Selectmen and Council replied by referring to the law which forbade such a requisition until the barracks at Castle William should be filled. By neither subtlety nor threats could the town be induced to yield; the troops camped on the Common until, at great expense, the crown officials were forced to hire quarters. It was but the beginning of the discomfort of the troops, openly scorned in a town where three-quarters ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... natural an air she had come out and said that only wind was necessary to make the morning perfect; and how naturally and how unconsciously had he responded to that subtly conveyed suggestion, the very subtlety of which made him believe that he had thought of the plan himself. But outwardly Daisy still was mistress of herself; it was from the inside, not the outside, that her control was beginning to give way. She put up the red ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... book, nor read it through. I will translate the pieces to the authority of which I shall appeal; and, in process of time, by analysis of this fragmentary treatise, show you some characters not usually understood of the simplicity as well as subtlety common to most great workmen of that age. Afterwards we will collect the instructions of other undisputed masters, till we have obtained a code of laws clearly resting on the ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... writer. He resigned an honorable profession, that of medicine, to adopt a very contrary one, that of becoming an author by profession for a party. As a Tory writer he dared every extremity of the law, while he evaded it by every subtlety of artifice; he sent a masked lady with his MSS. to the printer, who was never discovered; and was once saved by a flaw in the indictment, from the simple change of an r for a t, or nor for not, one of those shameful evasions by which the law, to its perpetual disgrace, so ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... their confusion. Thus they endured, and lashed, and struggled, until eventide, and none who saw knew which was the likeliest to win; for though the Knight of the Redlands was a wily and subtle warrior, his subtlety made Sir Beaumains wilier and wiser too. So once again they rested for a little space, and took their ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... 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 be on the way to lunacy. He thought she merely thought him queer, as artists are queer to ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... French manufactory. These colossal plates of glass are cast upon immense 'tables' of metal, and by ascertaining the dimensions of the tables ordered for St.-Gobain the ingenious Belgians hoped to get the measure of the effort it would be necessary for them to outdo. In anticipation of this subtlety the director of St.-Gobain ordered two immense tables, and when these were sent to the manufactory, had them skilfully thrown into one. Upon the gigantic table thus prepared the grand mirror of the Exposition of 1889 was cast at the eleventh hour. This mirror ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... "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 unsuspecting and impetuous nature of Othello, Had Iago undertaken to deceive ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... fanatical semi-religious adoration.[26] But as a rule where an Englishman adores he does not define, and if one asks the common devotee of liberty what he understands by the abstraction before which he prostrates himself, one generally requires but a small portion of the dialectic subtlety of Socrates to involve him in a hopeless tangle of contradictions. He can no more define liberty than he can locate his soul. Mr. D. G. Ritchie truly says: "Many crimes have been done, and a still greater ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... soon. Her departure was followed by that of Edgerton first, and next of Wharton. Mrs. Porterfield had already gone. I was alone at the entrance of our cottage. Not alone! My demon was with me—suggestive of his pangs as ever—full of subtlety, and filling me with the darkest imaginings. The destroyer of my peace was in my dwelling. My wife may or may not be innocent. Happy for her if she is, but how can that be known? It mattered little to me in ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... his discovery, the process of inflation was not only exceedingly expensive, but uncertain. Two, and even three days, have frequently been wasted in futile attempts to procure a sufficiency of hydrogen to fill a balloon, from which it had great tendency to escape, owing to its extreme subtlety, and its affinity for the surrounding atmosphere. In a balloon sufficiently perfect to retain its contents of coal-gas unaltered, in quantity or amount, for six months, an equal quantity of hydrogen could not be maintained in equal ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... during the remainder of his life. It is noteworthy that the scenery of the poem should be so distinctively and realistically Southern. There is in the first part all of Lanier's love of the Southern forest: the shimmering forms in the woods, the leaves, the subtlety of mighty tenderness in the embracing boughs, the long muscadines, the mosses, ferns, and flowers, are all delicately felt and described — with a suggestion of Keats. As he wanders from this forest to the zigzag-cornered fence, his fieldward-faring ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... with this that physical force is one of Satan's chief weapons. But mark there two intensely interesting facts: first, he can use it only as he secures man as his ally, and uses it through him. And, second, in using it he has with great subtlety sought to shift the sphere of action. He knows that in the sphere of spirit force pure and simple he is at a disadvantage: indeed, worse yet, he is defeated. For there is a moral force on the other side greater than any at his command. The forces of purity and righteousness ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... 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 ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... Bunces, and Henry Robinson and Dick Burton, and perhaps others. And I also was of the number, but not in the same degree—for she was above my duller comprehension. I merely knew that she was my superior in fineness of mind, in the delicacy and subtlety of her intellect, but to fully measure her I was not competent. I know her better now; for I have read her private writings and sounded the deeps of her mind; and I know better, now, the treasure that was mine than I knew it when I had it. But I have this consolation: ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... appeal to eternity. He knew "Emaux et Camees" as pious folk their Bible; he felt that naught endured but art. So he became a pagan, and sought for firmness and delicacy in the texture, while aiming to fill his verse with the fire of Swinburne, the subtlety of Rossetti and the great, clear day-flame of Gautier. A well-nigh impossible ideal; yet he cherished it for twice ten years, and at forty had forsworn poetry ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... 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 ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... of words which was inevitably produced in those who had learnt much Shelley or Tennyson by heart. And such people at once heard things in Milton which were absolutely inaudible to the ears of Dr. Johnson's generation. The comparative subtlety, both in imagination and in form, of the poetry of the nineteenth century made it impossible for poets to compete with journalists for the attention of the big public as Pope had done triumphantly; but as a set off against that loss it gave a far {224} richer delight to those who were capable ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden..." I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end. ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... 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 ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... to be found in musical annals such diversity of aptitudes as that displayed by this French baritone. Is there an actor on any stage to-day who can portray both the grossness of Falstaff and the subtlety of Iago? Making allowance for the different art medium that the singing actor must work in, and despite the larger curves of operatic pose and gesture, Maurel kept astonishingly near to the characters he assumed. He was Shakespearian; his Falstaff ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... legal subtlety that he does not appreciate. He has learned his law in the orderly-room, where the qualifications to practise are an irritable temper and a loud voice. However, the practical point is, inspector, that the warrant is irregular. ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... who has said that he would not choose as the battleground of the Christian religion either "the credibility of Judges or the edibility of Jonah," the man who is blest with an unusual sense of humour and intellectual subtlety of a rare order, is here found preaching a theology which is fast being rejected by the students of Barcelona and is being questioned even by the peasants of Ireland. What does it mean? Is it possible to understand such ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... unique inevitable line, the exact touch and quality of stroke, which should present at once a lively transcript from real Nature, and a revelation of the artist's particular way of feeling Nature. In Lionardo it is a line of subtlety and infinite suggestiveness; in Michelangelo it compels attention, and forcibly defines the essence of the object; in Raffaello it carries melody, the charm of an unerring rhythm; in Andrea it seems to call ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... classes of modes: first, that which the Greeks term the enharmonic; second, the chromatic; third, the diatonic. The enharmonic mode is an artistic conception, and therefore execution in it has a specially severe dignity and distinction. The chromatic, with its delicate subtlety and with the "crowding" of its notes, gives a sweeter kind of pleasure. In the diatonic, the distance between the intervals is easier to understand, because it is natural. These three classes differ in ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... The delightful subtlety of this remark roused another side-shaking burst of merriment. Dan shook his head as if the mystery were beyond his comprehension, and looked to Morgan for an explanation. The saloon-keeper approached him, ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... as soon. His comings in are like a taylor's, from the shreds of bread, [the] chippings and remnants of a broken crust; excepting his vails from the barrel, which poor folks buy for their hogs but drink themselves. He divides an halfpenny loaf with more subtlety than Keckerman[33], and sub-divides the a prima ortum so nicely, that a stomach of great capacity can hardly apprehend it. He is a very sober man, considering his manifold temptations of drink and strangers; and if he be overseen, 'tis within his own liberties, and no man ought to take ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... of a merchant—-I would die rather!" The King, however, seized her hand, and said, "I am not a merchant. I am a king, and of no meaner origin than thou art, and if I have carried thee away with subtlety, that has come to pass because of my exceeding great love for thee. The first time that I looked on thy portrait, I fell fainting to the ground." When the princess of the Golden Dwelling heard that, she was comforted, and her heart was inclined unto him, ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... great valour in the limbs whilst it fails in the head. Look attentively at the duels and the hand-to-hand combats, how superior the Italians are in strength, dexterity, and subtlety. But when it comes to armies they do not bear comparison, and this springs entirely from the insufficiency of the leaders, since those who are capable are not obedient, and each one seems to himself to know, there having never been any one so distinguished ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... were marshalled and kept relentlessly to their work until he was satisfied; and woe betide the lubras who had neglected to wash hands, and pail and cow, before sitting down to their milking. The very fowls that laid out-bush gained nothing by their subtlety. At the faintest sound of a cackle, a dosing lubra was roused by the point of Cheon's toe, as he shouted excitedly above her: "Fowl sing out! That way! Catch 'im egg! Go on!" pointing out the direction with much pantomime; ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... not know enough already? Is not his cheek furrowed with the marks of the years during which the whites were masters; and is there any cruelty, any subtlety, in them that he does not understand? Knowing all this, he curses, not them, but the flower which, he says, corrupted them. He keeps from them this power, and believes that all will be well. I shall ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... spirit nearly a hundred years before. It had died with Francis I. The wars of the League were wars of Chicane; Artifice in arms, Subtlety in steel coats. The profligacy of the courts of Louis Quatorze, and his successors, dissolved at once the morals and the mind of France. That great country exhibited, to the eye of Europe, the aspect of the most extravagant license, and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... and vigour which enabled an unprofessional Englishman in the last century to produce such a dissertation. A little further on (chapter forty-seven) the history of the doctrine of the Incarnation, and the controversies that sprang up around it, are discussed with a subtlety worthy of a scientific theologian. It is perhaps the first attempt towards a philosophical history of dogma, less patient and minute than the works of the specialists of modern Germany on the same subject, but for spirit, clearness, and breadth ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... reflexion: that the sensible world is that which we perceive by our several senses; and that nothing is perceived by the senses beside ideas; and that no idea or archetype of an idea can exist otherwise than in a mind. You may now, without any laborious search into the sciences, without any subtlety of reason, or tedious length of discourse, oppose and baffle the most strenuous advocate for Atheism. Those miserable refuges, whether in an eternal succession of unthinking causes and effects, or in a fortuitous concourse of atoms; those ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... it had to meet unexpected opponents and troublesome criticisms for which it was not in the least prepared. Its adherents had therefore to use all their ingenuity and subtlety in support of their own positions, and to discover the defects of the rival schools that attacked them. A system as it was originally formulated in the sutras had probably but few problems to solve, but as it fought its way ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... not speak that word," Mr. Sabin said. Lady Carey shrugged her shoulders. The subtlety of her smile faded away. Her whole face expressed a contemptuous ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and his most worthy followers, Lancret and Pater, in whom touch is more breath than movement. It is a sensitive and gracefully aristocratic creation Marie Laurencin produces for us, one that makes the eye avid of more experience and the mind of more of its subtlety. It is an essentially beautiful and satisfying contribution to modern painting, this ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... action, yet your said orator could never, nor shall never by the order of the common law, there recover again the said stuff and goods, but shall recover no more for them but only the sum wherefor they were priced, which is but 35s. 9d. as is before said; and so hath and shall, by such falsehood, subtlety, and design of the said Walton, and of the said Wilkinson and Curtis which were pricers, lose 11 or 12 pounds or above, and is without remedy therefore for ever, except your gracious Highness be showed to him in this behalf. In consideration whereof ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... was not "her 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 ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... 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, ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... destined to come into the world during a calamitous age. Those endowed with extreme benevolence set the world in order; those possessed of extreme maliciousness turn the world into disorder. Purity, intelligence, spirituality and subtlety constitute the vital spirit of right which pervades heaven and earth, and the persons gifted with benevolence are its natural fruit. Malignity and perversity constitute the spirit of evil, which permeates heaven and earth, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... art, 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. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... speech sends a throb to one's heart—the defiance of it, the subtlety of it, and yet the intense womanliness of it! The people cheered her back to the palace. She went straight to the King's room—he was ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... the translator, but gives no idea of the nature of the book itself, not even a glimpse of the critic's own estimate of the book, save the implication that he himself had understood the original, though many Englishmen even were staggered by its obtuseness and failed to comprehend the subtlety of its allusion. It is criticism in the narrowest, most arrogant sense of the word, destructive instead of informing, blinding instead of illuminating. It is noteworthy that Sterne's name is nowhere mentioned in the ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... order to account to the queen for the fealty of those around him; and Elizabeth, no less than Mary, knew that she could rely on him to uphold her authority in the eastern Counties, His letters to Mary show that notwithstanding his frankness, and his freedom from diplomatic subtlety, his manners did not lack the polish of the courtier. In the fulfilment of his charge he was ever prudent, cautious, and almost timid in the matter of accepting responsibility; in no sense covetous of office, ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... forced accents of Lawrence and his followers, they are alive and alert. The characterization is excellent. The young people were not of so profound or complicated a nature as the Father of his Country, and the faces are not wrought out with the delicate subtlety of the Gibbs-Channing Washington which hangs between them, but they are clear-cut, compelling belief in their truth. The execution, too, has all of Stuart's skill. Others may have attempted higher things, but none did what he attempted with such perfect ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... intrenchments of Paganism, Mohammedism, and Romanism be so easily taken, as not to need men of age, experience and skill, to direct the assault? Can the snares in which the heathen are held; which are laid with all the subtlety of the arch-fiend, be so easily divested of their specious character, and traced into their thousand windings, as not to require the wisdom and experience of age? A minister has age: he has then one great qualification for the work. "Paul the aged" had none too much experience, dignity and wisdom, ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... views of the fate of the human soul, metaphysical subtlety and imaginative vastness, intellect and fancy, slavish tradition and audacious speculation, besotted ritualism and heaven storming spirituality, are mingled together on a scale of grandeur and intensity wholly without a parallel elsewhere in the literature or faith of the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Bagdad and Cordova. The Ghaznevides Mahmoud and Massoud in the first half of the eleventh century, attracted to their Court not only Firdusi and Avicenna, but Albyrouny, whose "Canon" became a text-book of Mohammedan science, and who, for the range of his knowledge and the trained subtlety of his mind, stands without a rival for his time.[14] The Spanish school, as resulting directly in Edrisi, half Moslem, half Christian, like his teachers, is of still more interest. One of its first traces may be found in the Latin translation of the Arab Almanack made by ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... 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 the ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... 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 ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... essentially an artist in words. The modern desire for subtlety of cadence and for the rendering of fine shades of expression is seen in a high degree in all he wrote, and his work has the merits and defects that accompany this extreme preoccupation with style. But he had also great virtues of ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... seem a literal and living faith in many gods, though strongly prepossessed in favor of the ancient divinities of the Gael, now long since in exile. Impressive and striking by a certain spiritual integrity, so to say, "AE" unites gifts and faculties seldom combined. He is a poet of rare subtlety, a painter in whose genius so good a judge as George Moore believed, and a most practical man of affairs, who, as assistant to Sir Horace Plunkett, held up the latter's hands in his labors on behalf of co-operative dairies ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... [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 people, are contrasted with the prosperity of sinners. The recollections ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... spirit rushed into the opposite extreme, wished to make a particular and fragmentary experience the measure of all observation, and to apply without exception to all affairs the rules of its own particular craft. The speculative mind had necessarily to become the prey of a vain subtlety, the state spirit of a narrow pedantry; for the former was placed too high to see the individual, and the latter too low to survey the whole. But the disadvantage of this direction of mind was not confined to knowledge and mental production; it extended to action and feeling. We know that ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... fancy, and presented to the common and passive eye, rather than to the eye of the imagination. Whether supporting or assailing, he makes his way either by argument or by appeals to the affections, unsurpassed even by the schoolmen in subtlety, 415 agility, and logic wit, and unrivalled by the most rhetorical of the fathers in the copiousness and vividness of his expressions and illustrations. Here words that convey feelings, and words that flash images, and words of abstract notion, flow ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... that 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 he ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... hunter, by the actual pursuit of animals; and through the miscellaneous activities of his life, he gains a better balance of physical powers than gymnastics ever give. That skill in tracking enemies and prey which he had reached after long practice, implies a subtlety of perception far exceeding anything produced by artificial training. And similarly in all cases. From the Bushman whose eye, habitually employed in identifying distant objects that are to be pursued or fled from, has acquired a telescopic range, to the accountant whose daily practice enables him ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... name of that Omnipotent Disposer who has given us hearts to feel the blessings of society, or we must acknowledge ourselves unworthy to hold a name among nations. This we must resist—live or die. This system we must meet by system—subtlety by sincerity—intrigue by resolution—treachery by good faith-menace by courage. We must remember that we have been made trustees of the honour of the past, and of the hopes of the future. A great country ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... them inherently to possess, was a 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 to ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... drawn with care and clearness, and its essential characters shown. If it was an oak tree, the acorns were drawn; if a flint pebble, its veins were drawn; if an arm of the sea, its fish were drawn; if a group of figures, their faces and dresses were drawn—to the very last subtlety of expression and end of thread that could be got into the space, far off or near. But now our ingenuity is all "concerning smoke." Nothing is truly drawn but that; all else is vague, slight, imperfect; got with as little pains as possible. ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... that of looking upon the slow torture of a human being on trial for life, except it be an execution; there is no display of human ingenuity, wit and power so fascinating as that made by trained lawyers in the trial of an important case, nowhere else is exhibited such subtlety, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... presumptions brought to 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 weight ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... time sensing the fact that something was wrong, in the goodness of his heart began singing, Dot's How Poor Yacob Found It Oudt, in seeming compliment to the nationality of the professor; but, owing to the subtlety of the reasoning, the professor failed to take it as such. He took mortal umbrage instead, and hurled his card down on the table with a bang, at which Bulliwinkle slipped ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... confirmed. Thither let us bend all our thoughts, to learn What creatures there inhabit, of what mould Or substance, how endued, and what their power And where their weakness: how attempted best, By force of subtlety. Though Heaven be shut, And Heaven's high Arbitrator sit secure In his own strength, this place may lie exposed, The utmost border of his kingdom, left To their defence who hold it: here, perhaps, Some advantageous act may be achieved By sudden onset—either with ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... So little did he understand The desp'rate feats he took in hand. For when h' had got himself a name For fraud and tricks, he spoil'd his game; 390 Had forc'd his neck into a noose, To shew his play at fast and loose; And when he chanc'd t' escape, mistook For art and subtlety, his luck. So right his judgment was cut fit, 395 And made a tally to his wit, And both together most profound At deeds of darkness under-ground; As th' earth is easiest undermin'd By vermin impotent and ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... among his friends, she would offer her opinion with a presumption which was the more trying as she frequently blundered upon a sound conclusion whilst he was reasoning his way to a hollow one with his utmost subtlety and seriousness. On such occasions his disgust did not trouble her in the least; she triumphed in it. She had concluded that marriage was a greater folly, and men greater fools, than she had supposed; but such beliefs rather lightened her sense of responsibility ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... at him, now unknown to himself, she was conscious of what that last word of Lablache's meant. Everyt'ing meant herself. Lablache—who had neither the good qualities of the white man nor the Indian, but who had the brains of the one and the subtlety of the other, and whose only virtue was that he was a successful trader, though he looked like a mere woodsman, with rings in his ears, gayly decorated buckskin coat and moccasins, and a furtive smile always on his lips! Everyt'ing! ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... great deal lighter than black, or than other things about it, assume a given shade, as dark as, with due reference to other things, you can have it, but no darker. Mark that for your extreme dark on the object, and between those limits get as much drawing as you can, by subtlety of gradation. That will tax your powers of drawing indeed; and you will find this, which seems a childish and simple way of going to work, requires verily a thousandfold more power to carry out than all the pseudo-scientific abstractions ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... they cannot make you a wise man, they will certainly let you know you are a fool; which is all my cousin wants, to cease to be so. Thus having taken these two out of the way, I have leisure to look at my third lad. I observe in the young rogue a natural subtlety of mind, which discovers itself rather in forbearing to declare his thoughts on any occasion, than in any visible way of exerting himself in discourse. For which reason I will place him where, if ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... Donskoi, ascended the throne in 1462, nearly two centuries and a half after the Tartar invasion. During all that period Russia had been the vassal of the khans. Only now was its freedom to come. It was by craft, more than by war, that Ivan won. In the field he was a dastard, but in subtlety and perfidy he surpassed all other men of his time, and his insidious but persistent policy ended by making him the autocrat of ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... in 1836. The hero of this tale is the brilliant Scottish gentleman whose handsome person, extraordinary scholarship, great accomplishments, courage, eloquence, subtlety, and achievement gained him the sobriquet of "The Admirable." The chief scenes are laid in Paris at the time of Catherine de' Medici's rule and Henry III.'s reign, when the air was full of intrigue and conspiracy, and when religious quarrels were not more bitter ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... pain. Of the play and its performers Pepys records exactly what he thinks or feels. He usually takes a more lively interest in the acting and in the scenic and musical accessories than in the drama's literary quality. Subtlety is at any rate absent from his criticism. He is either bored or amused. The piece is either the best or the worst that he ever witnessed. His epithets are of the bluntest and are without modulation. Wiser than more professional dramatic ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... colour of five-sixths of his picture; and the expression of every character of objects which depends on tenderness of shape or tint. But he obtains his single truth, and what picturesque and forcible expression is dependent upon it, with magnificent skill and subtlety. ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... humor of the Dutch does not usually make a very strong appeal to us. They are inclined to be ponderous even in their play, and lack in great measure the sarcasm and satire and the lighter subtlety in fun-making. History records a controversy between Holland and Zealand, which was argued pro and con during a period of years with great earnestness. The subject for debate that so fascinated the Dutchmen was: "Does the cod take the hook, or does the hook take ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... his "Twice-Told Tales" and other short stories, the product of his first literary period. Even his college days at Bowdoin did not quite break through his acquired and inherited reserve; but beneath it all, his faculty of divining men and women was exercised with almost uncanny prescience and subtlety. "The Scarlet Letter," which explains as much of this unique imaginative art, as is to be gathered from reading his highest single achievement, yet needs to be ranged with his other writings, early and late, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... masters the convention does not vary. A descriptive black or grey line is used throughout the design, outlining all forms or used as flat spots or patches. The line is not always uniform, but is developed with great subtlety to suggest the character of the form expressed, so that the subsequent flat mass of colour printed within the line appears to be modelled. This treatment of the line is one of the great resources of the work, and is special to this ...
— Wood-Block Printing - A Description of the Craft of Woodcutting and Colour Printing Based on the Japanese Practice • F. Morley Fletcher
... its finest manifestations is the product of a pride, a knowledge, a competence, a confidence staggering to behold. It seems to say of the works of Nature, "I'll show you a trick worth two of that." For the subtlety of Nature's geometry, and for her infinite variety and unexpectedness, Arranged architecture substitutes a Euclidian system of straight lines and (for the most part) circular curves, assembled and arranged according to a definite logic of its own. It is created but not creative; ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... "I admire your subtlety of expression, mademoiselle," said Raoul, making an effort to remain calm. "To leave another in ignorance that you are deceiving him, is loyal; but to deceive him—it seems that would be very wrong, and that ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 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
... ferocity of his soul, than with his real countenance. From the appearance of this bust, which is an authentic remblance of him, his face must have been rather handsome. His features were small, and his countenance must have strongly expressed animation, penetration and subtlety. This bust is a real curiosity. It is very likely that not another is now to be found, Mons. le G—— is permitted to preserve it, without reproach on account of his art. I can safely say, he does not retain it from any emotions of veneration for the original. It is worthy of being placed between ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... survive and thus determine the nature of the social order. The more than two hundred and fifty clans and "kuni," "clan territory," into which the land was divided, kept up perpetual training in the arts of intrigue and subtlety which are ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... of the dull lad, and had made him inventive. When they confronted him with the corpse of the sergeant, he realised that he had committed a murder; and from that moment he felt his head no longer safe on his shoulders. The fear of death lent him a subtlety of which he would never ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... great social union. Like a stout buffer-spring, it receives all shocks, and within it their opposing elements neutralize one another. This is the function of the British Cabinet. It is perhaps the most curious formation in the political world of modern times, not for its dignity, but for its subtlety, its elasticity, and its many-sided diversity of power. It is the complement of the entire system; a system which appears to want nothing but a thorough loyalty in the persons composing its several parts, with a reasonable intelligence, ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... over these centers of fashion and intelligence represent to us the genius of social sovereignty. We fall under the glamour of the luminous but factitious atmosphere that surrounded them. We are dazzled by the subtlety and clearness of their intellect, the brilliancy of their wit. Their faults are veiled by the smoke of the incense we burn before them, or lost in the dim perspective. It is fortunate, perhaps, for ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... lyrics is that they are written by song-writers who have had no education. Mr. MacKaye's college training shows itself in every line of the opera. There is a subtlety of rhyme-scheme, a delicacy of meter, and, above all, an originality of thought and expression which promises much for the school of university-bred lyricists. Here, for instance, is a lyric which Joe McCarthy could never ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... learned channel. In his writings we find little that approaches the sublime, but much that implies analytical depth and complexity of thought. His tone bespeaks a settled and civilized period favourable to art and philosophy, in which subtlety was appreciated, while the old feelings of acerbity had become ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... subtlety nearly capsized us, and completely carried away the step of the mast. No other incident befell us; and we jumped on board the Iris as the church at Christiansand was ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... know what she 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 subject-matter ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... reasoning, they imagine that they can transmit to them in this cheap and ingenious manner—simply by burning these paper effigies at the altars by the tombs! One of the most ingenious and economical of these contrivances, whereby, with a subtlety of argument worthy of the great trafficker in indulgences, Tetzel, who so raised Martin Luther's ire, they manage cheaply to transmit funds to heaven, is the paper dollar, strings of which are sold in the shops, looking exceedingly like goodly bunches of the silvery onion. It is worthy of a people ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... pervades all; both joy and sorrow live only in the memory. And still Meyer loved life's exuberant fullness, and a more finely attuned ear hears through this calm the beat of a heart that felt joy and sorrow deeply. Everywhere there is apparent a love of nature interpreted with all the modern subtlety of feeling. Meyer was a Swiss and his landscape, is that of Switzerland, one might even say that of Zuerich. Nature hardly ever speaks in herself, but only in her human relationship; not the field alone, but the field and the sower (121), the field and the reaper (118); not the lake ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... her! How she kept to Schumann when, like an idiot, I wanted Beethoven. Schumann was right for this evening. Schumann was the thing. Do you know, mother, I shall have our children educated just like Lucy. Bring them up among honest country folks for freshness, send them to Italy for subtlety, and then—not till then—let them come to London. I don't believe in these London educations—" He broke off, remembering that he had had one himself, and concluded, "At all events, not ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... rounds there followed a completely enthralling display. On one side was perfectly trained orthodox, amateur boxing. On the other every clean trick and subterfuge of irreproachable ring-craft. Timing, footwork, feints, guarding and ducking; each subtlety of the art of defence was demonstrated ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... and believe the New Era can be distilled of talk and tricks; and they looked like mean animals compared to that staunch conservative Narayan Singh, who, nevertheless, is not without his own degree of subtlety. ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... rejiciant. So have some thought to escape by this postern, that they use the ceremonies, not for conformity with Papists, but for conformity with the ancient fathers. Ans. 1. When Rainold speaketh of the abolishing of popish ceremonies,(641) he answereth this subtlety: "But if you say, therefore, that we be against the ancient fathers in religion, because we pluck down that which they did set up, take heed lest your speech do touch the Holy Ghost, who saith that Hezekiah ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... absorbed in the interest and the actuality of this dream. His eyes glowed, he walked with his head up, full of the exquisite pleasure of aristocratic subtlety and grace, tormented with the ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence |
