"Subtile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Yonder barefoot boy, as he drifts silently in his punt beneath the drooping branches of yonder vine-clad bank, has a bliss which no Astor can buy with money, no Seward conquer with votes,—which yet is no monopoly of his, and to which time and experience only add a more subtile and conscious charm. The rich years were given us to increase, not to impair, these cheap felicities. Sad or sinful is the life of that man who finds not the heavens bluer and the waves more musical in maturity than in childhood. Time is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... thought is best expressed by using the possessive pronoun and omitting the derogative adjective altogether. Japanese indirect methods for the expression of the personal relation are thus numberless and subtile. May it not be plausibly argued since the European has only a few blunt pronouns wherewith to state this idea while the Japanese has both numberless pronouns and many other delicate ways of conveying the same idea, that the latter is far in advance of the European in the development ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... work is an autobiography. The thoughts with which it teems are delicate and subtile; the style, somewhat labored and over-refined, is in contrast with that of the Poesies, while it betrays the same struggle for a greater amplitude and independence. In point of art the book appears to us a failure. The theme is not objectionable in itself. It ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... factours continue there (as I sayd before) and fearing that those English men finding good vent for their commodities in that place, would be resident therin, and so dayly increase, which would be no small losse and hinderance vnto them, did presently inuent all the subtile meanes they could to hinder them: and to that end they went vnto the Captaine of Ormus, as then called Don Gonsalo de Meneses, telling him that there were certaine English men come into Ormus, that were sent onely to spie the countrey; and sayd further, that they were heretikes: and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... certain of 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
... divisions he framed the heaven above and the earth beneath; in the midst he placed the subtile ether, the eight regions, and the permanent ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... 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 insignificant attitude ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... 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 been all in ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... single drop of 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 or ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... nod confirms each privilege your own. The cap and switch be sacred to his grace; With staff and pumps the marquis lead the race; From stage to stage the licensed earl may run, Pair'd with his fellow-charioteer the sun; The learned baron butterflies design, Or draw to silk Arachne's subtile line;[446] 590 The judge to dance his brother sergeant call;[447] The senator at cricket urge the ball; The bishop stow (pontific luxury!) An hundred souls of turkeys in a pie; The sturdy squire to Gallic masters ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... love the forest, and are susceptible to nature's subtile appeals. I don't like people who have no feeling for scenery, and are not affected by the sublime and beautiful in nature. Mr. Blennerhassett does not agree with me in applying such a test to judge one's friends by. He thinks I might be deceived, and says that very wicked folks may delight ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... 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 have ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry
... 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... in a previous state; the fig leaves in which Adam and Eve were dressed after their sin were the fleshly bodies they were compelled to assume on being expelled from the Paradise of their previous existence; that in proportion to their sins they are confined in subtile or gross bodies of adjusted grades until by penance and wisdom they slowly ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... penetrating, sharp, clear-sighted, discriminating, penetrative, shrewd, crafty, keen, perspicacious, subtile, cunning, knowing, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... arrant hypocrites, seeking every opportunity to deceive them. In a word, the monster was crippled in its infancy, and has never as yet recovered from the stroke. It is true, that like its ancient sire, that was "more subtile than all the beasts of the field," it has inherited a large portion of his most prominent characteristic—an idiosyncrasy with the animal—that enables him to entwine himself into the greater part of the Church and other institutions of the country, which having once entered ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... majestic sweep of Webster, the weight or heat of that mountain with its base of granite and flame, the fiery eloquence of Clay, the close grip of John Quincy Adams in argument, or the subtile felicity and gleam of primary perception which William Henry Seward brought ...
— Senatorial Character - A Sermon in West Church, Boston, Sunday, 15th of March, - After the Decease of Charles Sumner. • C. A. Bartol
... appears when under the praetext of visitting they fly to a sick carkcass, especially if it be fat, as ravens does to their prey. Their insteed of confirming and strenthening the poor folk to dy wt the greater alacrity, they besett them wt all the subtile mines imaginable to wring and suck money from them, telling them that they most leive a dozen or 2 of serviets to the poor Cordeliers; as many spoones to the godly Capuchines who are busie praying for your soul, and so something to all the rest; but to us to whom ye are so much beholden a goodly ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... inconsiderable differences, appears to me, in practice, pretty durable and untransmutable. And I find not in this more than in other subjects, that the natural sentiments arising from the general appearances of things are easily destroyed by subtile reflections concerning the minute origin of these appearances. Does not the lively, cheerful colour of a countenance inspire me with complacency and pleasure; even though I learn from philosophy that all difference of complexion ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... disappeared, possibly I did not write any. I remember that there was so much to see in the morning; and the change of colour in the water, the absinthe colour of the Nile with pale blue reflections winding in currents in distinct streams into the sea, would, with the blue ocean, need very subtile painting. I remember the fearful jabber, which I suppose has gone on and always will, since Port Said was invented. I got a glimpse of Lesseps's statue at lunch through the port-hole; he points with right ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... appeal in the matter is found within the domain of the chemist. Chemistry, with its subtile powers of analysis, with its many-sided possibilities of discovering the composition of things, and with its ability to analyze for us even the light of the far distant stars, only complicates the difficulties of the biologist. For, while of old ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... overcoat of coarse, dry stable manure, and the precious pile was left in silence and darkness till spring. How the earth tempers and flavors the apples! It draws out all the acrid, unripe qualities, and infuses into them a subtile, refreshing ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... since that a subtile deluder, verie craftely having upon set purpose his brokers or espials abroade, using sundry secret drifts to allure many, as did the syrens by their sweet sonets and melody seduce mariners to make them their pray, so did his brokers or espials deceive many, in proclayming and sounding ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... which reigned in the Eleusinian 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 which described the Christians ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... children. And in all ways time has marred, and living has defaced, and prudence has maimed, until I grieve to entrust that which I bring to what remains of that which yesterday I brought. In the old days children were sacrificed to a brazen burning god, but time affects more subtile hecatombs: for Moloch slew outright. Yes, Moloch, being divine, killed as the dog kills, furiously, but time is that transfigured cat, an ironist. So living mars and defaces and maims, and living appears wantonly to soil and to degrade its prey ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... to say of these volumes that they are bright, piquant, genial, affectionate; nor is it enough to speak of their artistic worth, the subtile appreciation of painting in the first series, and of music in the second; it is not enough to refer to the glimpses which they give of eminent artists,—Chopin, Rossini, Donizetti, Hiller, and Moscheles,—nor the side-glances at Thorwaldsen, Bunsen, the late scholarly and art-loving ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... gates from the hinges, the church ruined and unfrequented.... Only the block house ... was the safetie of the remainder that lived: which yet could not have preserved them now many days longer from the watching, subtile, ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... 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 the ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... his strength paralysed, and his eyes closed. One or two of the small arrows of the Bushmen were still sticking in his hide, and did not appear to have entered more than half an inch; but the poison was so subtile, that it had rapidly circulated through his whole frame; and while they were looking down upon the noble beast, it dropped its jaws ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... retained in vessels, under a visible form. Chemists have often observed, in their distillations, that part of a body has vanished from their senses, notwithstanding the utmost care to retain it; and they have always found, upon further inquiry, that subtile part to be air, which having been imprisoned in the body, under a solid form, was set free and rendered fluid and elastic by the fire. We may therefore safely conclude, that the volatile matter, lost in ...
— Experiments upon magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other Alcaline Substances • Joseph Black
... You haue your wish: my will is euen this, That presently you hie you home to bed: Thou subtile, periur'd, false, disloyall man: Think'st thou I am so shallow, so conceitlesse, To be seduced by thy flattery, That has't deceiu'd so many with thy vowes? Returne, returne, and make thy loue amends: For me (by this pale queene of night I sweare) I am so farre ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... two ideas necessarily implies a previous state of mind in which they were brought together; and endeavours to explain various cases (as, for example, association by 'contrast' as well as by 'likeness' or 'continuity') by a more 'subtile' analysis.[491] He then works out an elaborate theory of 'simple' and 'relative' suggestion. Simple 'suggestion'[492] corresponds mainly to ordinary association, as when a friend's name or his book calls up the thought of the man himself. 'Relative suggestion' arises when two ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... 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 thy poor, naked, fenceless child the Bard! No Horns but those by ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Rishi Dwaipayana, and which after having been heard both by the gods and the Brahmarshis was highly esteemed, being the most eminent narrative that exists, diversified both in diction and division, possessing subtile meanings logically combined, and gleaned from the Vedas, is a sacred work. Composed in elegant language, it includeth the subjects of other books. It is elucidated by other Shastras, and comprehendeth the sense of the four Vedas. We are desirous of hearing that history ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Yes, 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 ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... is generally true of great poets, was founded on a solid basis of good-sense. I do not 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, and did not lack the sound judgment ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... leaves and bear in perfume on its wings. Sweet, fragrance-laden airs tripped stirringly to and fro about the study-table, making gentle confusions, fluttering papers on moral ability, agitating treatises on the great end of creation, mixing up subtile distinctions between amiable instincts and true holiness, and, in short, conducting themselves like very unappreciative and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... all the universe men purify and sanctify their hearts, and clothe themselves in their holiday garments to offer sacrifices and oblations to their ancestors. It is an ocean of subtile intelligences. They are everywhere, above us, on our left, on our right; they environ us on ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... one of the gentlemen present could write a symphony. I think, too, that you can all improve on the music of the past—even that of Beethoven. But this afternoon we are playing Beethoven's music—will you oblige me?" And every man awoke to the necessity of putting the sweet, subtile, strong quality of the master into the work, instead of absent-mindedly sounding the note, fighting bluebottles, and taking care merely not to get off ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... 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 ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... have lost its effects upon the conduct of mankind; for secrets are so seldom kept, that it may with some reason be doubted, whether the ancients were not mistaken in their first postulate, whether the quality of retention be so generally bestowed, and whether a secret has not some subtile volatility, by which it escapes almost imperceptibly at the smallest vent; or some power of fermentation, by which it expands itself so as to burst the heart that will ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... forcibly expressed himself on one of his adversaries, Dr. STEBBING, "Thus it is to have to do with a head whose sense is all run to system." "His Academic Wit" now sported amid whimsical theories, pursued bold but inconclusive arguments, marked out subtile distinctions, and discovered incongruous resemblances; but they were maintained by an imposing air of conviction, furnished with the most prodigal erudition, and they struck out many ingenious combinations. The importance or ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... senses, we know nothing. Many hypotheses have been offered to explain this: none of them however are the result of experiment and observation. Many philosophers have supposed the universe to be filled with an extremely subtile fluid, which they have termed ethereal; and this hypothesis has been sanctioned by the illustrious authority of Newton. He however merely offered it in the modest form of a query, for the attention of other philosophers; ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... that body should impede the Rays more, others less: as why Water should transmit the Rays more easily, though more weakly than air. Onely thus much in general I shall hint, that I suppose the medium MMM to have less of the transparent undulating subtile matter, and that matter to be less implicated by it, whereas LLL I suppose to contain a greater quantity of the fluid undulating substance, and this to be more implicated with the particles of ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... subtile diplomatist," thought Vivian, as he recalled to mind his own introduction, "would be puzzled to decide to which interest his ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... by this sign we choose companions and books. Not that they are the best persons or the best thoughts; but some subtile affinity attracts and invites as to another self. In the choosing of companions there seems to be no choice at all. "We meet, we know not how or when; and though we should remember the history, yet friendship has an anterior history ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... saint is sublime, good sir!" cried the young man in a loud voice, waking from a deep reverie. "These figures, the saint and the boatman, have a subtile meaning which the Italian painters cannot give. I do not know one of them who could have invented that ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... who said the suicidal belladonna lent its aid—but from great, dark irids as well—nay, from eyeballs, eyelashes, and eyelids, as from spiritual catapult or culverin, would she dart the lightnings of her present soul, invading with influence as irresistible as subtile the soul of the man she chose to assail, who, thenceforward, for a season, if he were such as she took him for, scarce had choice but be her slave. She seldom exerted their full force, however, without some further motive than mere desire to captivate. ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... same 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
... verbiage. The third act contained the law of offences against property in its new and simplified form; bringing the various species of crime into one view; assigning to each its plain description, with its punishment; and removing distinctions which had frequently given rise to subtile and embarrassing doubts. It abolished the distinction between grand and petty larceny; defined the true nature of burglary; and removed many subtilties regarding possession, and the conversion of possession in the law of embezzlement, as well as in the distinctions of larceny and fraud. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Mr Barr sat on either side of Miss Kingsley, and I glanced from the one to the other, debating with myself whether I preferred the bold strong beauty of the artist, or the subtile and more delicate traits of feature of the philosopher. For though I had begun by regarding Mr. Spence almost as commonplace in appearance, the earnestness of his manner and the serious fervor of his eyes gave him an expression of having a deep and genuine ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... 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
... and restrained, are comprehended under things animated: as flocks and herds. Those that are yet more gentle and curious, their admiration is commonly confined to reasonable creatures only; not in general as they are reasonable, but as they are capable of art, or of some craft and subtile invention: or perchance barely to reasonable creatures; as they that delight in the possession of many slaves. But he that honours a reasonable soul in general, as it is reasonable and naturally sociable, doth little regard anything else: and above all things is careful ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... washed away the relics of the broken and disordered 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 ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... 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 ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... 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 ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... creed taught him to pray for all the world, and already a subtile, unrecognized impulse of his heart led him to plead before the Divine Father for one who seemed, in outward grace, ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... section 4) applies, however, not to guilds, but to "Scolers of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge that go about begging not being authorized under the seal of the said Universities" as well as to other beggars or vagabonds playing "subtile, crafty and unlawful games such as physnomye or palmestrye." The same year is an Interesting statute against foreign artificers exercising handicrafts in England, not without example in the labor legislation of our modern States; but exempting beggars, brewers, ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... taught the world to read a volume for the pleasure of seeing the lights of his burning-glass turned on alternate sides of the same figure. Psychological study was still simple, and at worst — or at best — English character was never subtile. Surely no one would believe that complexity was the trait that confused the student of Palmerston, Russell, and Gladstone. Under a very strong light human nature will always appear complex and full of contradictions, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... recognized, and as soon in deep gossip with her friends. But who is that gentlemanly man leaning over the chamber-organ? That is Sir Roger L'Estrange, an admirable performer on the violoncello, and a great lover of music. He is watching the subtile fingering of Mr. Handel, as his dimpled hands drift leisurely and marvelously over the ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... si Iudicium subtile, videndis artibus illud Ad libros & ad haec Musarum dona vocares: Boeotum in crasso jurares ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... suspicion so abominable. Besides, of what avail would be a denial without evidence to disprove a suspicion which had arisen without evidence? It was a thing too impalpable to contend with. As well fight a fog as seek to destroy by mere denial suspicion so vague, unsubstantial, and subtile, as that which enveloped him. Silas would, of course, eagerly accept his denial; he well knew how he would spring to his side, how warm and firm would be his hand-clasp, and how great, perhaps, his momentary relief. ...
— Two Days' Solitary Imprisonment - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... who thinks "his soul is no more than a subtile vapor, which in death is to be breathed out in the air," he holds that such a person should "conceal his horrid belief with more secrecy than the Druids concealed their mysteries. * * In doing otherwise, the infidel only brings disgrace on himself; for the notion of religion ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... detail The moon's young rondure through the shamefast veil Drawn to her gleaming chin: After this wise, From the enticing smile of earth and skies I dream my unknown Fair's refused gaze; And guessingly her love's close traits devise, Which she with subtile coquetries Through little human glimpses slow displays, Cozening my mateless days By sick, intolerable delays. And so I keep mine uncompanioned ways; And so my touch, to golden poesies Turning love's bread, is bought at hunger's price. ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... affect each other in their orbits; that they cause and direct in our earth a flux and reflux not only in the sea, but in the atmosphere, and affect in a similar manner all organised bodies through the medium of a subtile and mobile fluid, which pervades the universe, and associates all things together in mutual intercourse and harmony." This influence, he said, was particularly exercised on the nervous system, and produced two states, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... The rays of the sun drying the rocks frequently produce on their surface a dust so subtile and slippery, that the wretched chamois-chasers are obliged to bleed themselves in the legs and feet in order ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... confidently 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... principles throughout the whole processes, either of 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 ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... Notwithstanding the subtile reasonings I have met with in the books of the Peripateticks, and the pretty experiments that have been shew'd me in the Laboratories of Chymists, I am of so diffident, or dull a Nature, as to think that if neither of them can bring more cogent arguments to evince the truth ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... fermentable, or saccharine matter, consists of about twenty-eight pounds of carbon, eight pounds of hydrogen, and sixty-four pounds of oxygen, reducible into fixed, inflammable, and vital air, weighing one hundred subtile pounds in toto, or that every one hundred subtile pounds of saccharine matter consists of such proportions of these airs ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... "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 ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... could not help doing it. His wit was, in its essential properties, of the same kind with that of Cowley and Donne. Like theirs, it consisted in an exquisite perception of points of analogy and points of contrast too subtile for common observation. Like them, Walpole perpetually startles us by the ease with which he yokes together ideas between which there would seem, at first sight, to be no connection. But he did not, like them, affect the gravity of a lecture, and draw his illustrations from the laboratory ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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
... us the foundation of monarchy itself, much more clearly and much more peculiarly is it the ground of all parliamentary power. Parliament is a security provided for the protection of freedom, and not a subtile fiction, contrived to amuse the people in its place. The authority of both houses can, still less than that of the crown, be supported upon different principles in different places, so as to be, for one part of your subjects, a protector of liberty, and for another a fund of despotism, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... 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, it is not so pure and ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... sacred mystery! My soul a spirit 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
... patriarch of Constantinople.[5] This prelate, having suffered for the faith under Justinian, fell at length into an error, importing, that after the general resurrection the glorified bodies of the elect will be no longer palpable, but of a more subtile texture than air. This error he couched in a certain book which he wrote. St. Gregory was alarmed, and held several conferences with the patriarch upon that subject, both in private and before the emperor, and clearly demonstrated from the scriptures, that the glorified bodies ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... conceiving in what mode the recognition, the hearkening to our cry, can come. Some are gross and idolatrous; some are the most sustained efforts man's intellect has ever made to keep still living on that subtile edge of things where speech and thought expire. But, with all these differences, the essence remains unchanged. In whatever other respects the divine personality may differ from ours or may resemble ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... kicking up the snow. The cows came briskly from their stalls to the space cleared for them, and were soon ruminating in placid content. What though the snow covered the ground deeper than at any time during the winter, the subtile spirit of spring was recognized and welcomed not only by man, but also by ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... 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 ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... godlike; we do not claim that he opened up the deeps of passion, or brought down transcendent truths from the higher spheres of mind; we claim for him no praise for science or for scholarship: we merely maintain, that he was a man of rare humanity, of close, subtile, and various observation, of good sense and common sense, of intuitive insight into character, of catholic sympathy with his kind that towards the lowest was the most loving, of extraordinary social and miscellaneous knowledge that was always at his command, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... certainly dissipated and destroyed, at the 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, has been the belief ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... sheets with designs before he had succeeded in getting embodied the ideas that haunted him. When he had pleased himself at last, he set to work to transfer his imaginations to the clay in color in the subtile luminous metallic enamel that ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... 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, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... guest,—my guest, remember; introduced to me by one of the first men in New York; received everywhere. You are both strangers to me. This is a matter of purely individual testimony," Mr. Brown went on, feeling that he was growing exquisitely subtile, and clothing himself in imaginary ermine as he spoke. "He may tell me that you are a rascal. In that event, how am I to know who is the honest man and who the villain? Shall I believe you, or shall I believe him, in the absence of documentary ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... that our dearest friends will accredit us with our deepest feelings; and Gertrude had constituted Edmund Severn her dearest friend. She had not, indeed, asked his assent to this arrangement, but she had borne it out by a subtile devotion which she felt that she had a right to exact of him that he should repay,—repay by letting her know that, whether it was lost on his heart or not, it was at least not lost to his senses,—that, if he could not return ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... of these writers, that if they are upon common subjects often unnecessarily and unpoetically subtile; yet, where scholastick speculation can be properly admitted, their copiousness and acuteness may justly be admired. What Cowley has written upon hope shows an unequalled fertility ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... the wise call it in divers manners. Wise poets, by words, make the beautiful-winged manifold, though he is One" ("Rig-Veda," B.C. 1500, from "Anthology," p.76). "The Divine Mind alone is the whole assemblage of the gods.... He (the Brahmin) may contemplate castle, air, fire, water, the subtile ether, in his own body and organs; in his heart, the Star; in his motion, Vishnu; in his vigour, Hara; in his speech, Agni; in digestion, Mitra; in production, Brahma; but he must consider the supreme Omnipresent Reason as sovereign of them all" ("Manu," about B.C. 1200; his code ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... or 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 have tossed up a paradox or two to keep the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... Omar was the greatest mathematician of his day. The exactness of his fine and analytic mind is reflected in the exquisite finish, the subtile wit, the delicate descriptive touches, that abound in his Quatrains. His verses hang together like gems of the purest water exquisitely cut and clasped by "jacinth work of subtlest jewelry." But apart from their masterly technique, these Quatrains exhibit in their general ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... lays to him, and left a quivering echo. Fine, 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... description which was designed for the followers of Artemon, may, with equal propriety, be applied to the various sects that resisted the successors of the apostles. "They presume to alter the Holy Scriptures, to abandon the ancient rule of faith, and to form their opinions according to the subtile precepts of logic. The science of the church is neglected for the study of geometry, and they lose sight of heaven while they are employed in measuring the earth. Euclid is perpetually in their hands. Aristotle and Theophrastus ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... return to 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... 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 vyuha, and from the worship of the vyuha one attains to the "Subtile" called Vasudeva, 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; by the 'vyuha' the fourfold arrangement or division of the highest ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... hypotheses and systems in natural philosophy, and will hearken to no arguments but those which are derived from experience. It is full time they should attempt a like reformation in all moral disquisitions; and reject every system of ethics, however subtile or ingenious, which is not founded on ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... 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 through the streets ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... is more subtile than satisfactory. A fair consideration of the subject leaves little room for doubt that the framers of the Constitution had in view and intended to prohibit everything which under the old English common law followed upon 'attainder of treason'—to prohibit ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... dropping out of detail that accomplishes this in one case and the other. In either, the point of view alone is fixed. The rest is variable, and depends, it may be, on the nature of that subtile and volatile ether through which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... 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
... wished it, she could have crushed out every form of inquiry, and firmly established herself as the one and only source of all truth. But she did not do it. Never since the world began were such daring inquiries set on foot, such subtile propositions offered, such a vast and varied display of the human intellect in all the departments of theology. The office she claimed was that of arbiter; and surely nothing was more reasonable. A man would work out some original view or deduction; he hoped ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... compositions only as private tracts, or in letters to such far-from-reverberant organs of publicity as the Gazette or the Recorder of his native Amsterdam, or the Utica Herald or the Albany Times. Odd places for such subtile efforts to appear in, but creditable to American editors in these degenerate days! Once, indeed, the lamented W. T. Harris of the old "Journal of Speculative Philosophy" got wind of these epistles, and the result was a revision of some of them for that ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... jarred with the thoughts of his mind. They had been altogether of war and rumors of war. Every hour that subtile consciousness of coming events, which makes whole communities at times prescient, was becoming stronger. "If the powers of the air have anything to do with the destinies of men," he muttered, "there must be unseen battalions around me. ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... questions 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 ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... to vibrate in a way especially its own. Whether it be that under certain conditions of the vocal organs harmonic sounds are produced as they may be upon a stringed instrument or upon an organ pipe; or whether, again, the secret lies deeper, depending on the subtile folding and unfolding of new-shaped waves of sound to which our ordinary ears are not used—who can tell? And yet there are voices that from the first produce upon us a strange impression unlike anything else in the world. Not that we necessarily become interested in the ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... into this medium, were to utter something like a figment. And if the arteries in their systole expel fuliginous vapours from their cavities through the pores of the flesh and skin, why not the spirits, which are said to be contained in those vessels, at the same time, since spirits are much more subtile than fuliginous vapours or smoke? And if the arteries take in and cast out air in the systole and diastole, like the lungs in the process of respiration, why do they not do the same thing when a wound is made in one of them, as in the operation of arteriotomy? When the windpipe is divided, ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... a certain pedantry which is pleasing to women. The coquette and the pedant are neighbours. Their kinship is visible in the fop. The subtile is derived from the sensual. Gluttony affects delicacy, a grimace of disgust conceals cupidity. And then woman feels her weak point guarded by all that casuistry of gallantry which takes the place of scruples in prudes. It is a line of circumvallation with a ditch. Every prude ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... on a crusade against ills of which they have but a vague and cloudy conception. The edge does not cut them, and so they think it is not much of a sword after all. But women have, or ought to have, a more subtile and intimate acquaintance with realities. They ought to know what is fact and what is fol-de-rol. They ought to distinguish between the really noble and the simply physical, not to say faulty. If men do not, it is women's duty to help them. I think, if women would only not be quite so afraid ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... fastidious caller is announced, a beautiful tea-gown, which is at hand, is slipped into, and the young lady is appropriately clad to suit even conventional requirements. The bicycle and lawn tennis costumes now becoming so popular also exercise a subtile but marked influence in favor of rational dress reform, not only giving young ladies the wonderful comfort and health-giving freedom which for ages have been denied her sex, but also by accustoming them to these radically ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... striving to get to his feet againe, but is pinned down by an horse's hoof pressing on his chops, and another that looketh piteously about him for that his pennon hath been shorn from him and his hand with it,—so is it of right subtile and so to say heavenly art to exhibit prettie blandishments, caresses, frolickings, beauties and delights, and the loves of the Nymphs and Fauns in the woods. And he would have it there was none offence in these naked bodies, clothed upon enow with ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... 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 thynges, and makynge ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry
... in whom it originates. The good must ever live, and "walk up and down the earth," like a living spirit guided by the living God, to convey blessings to the children of men, and is more powerful, diffusive, and eternal than the power of evil. It lives in humanity, in some form or other, like the subtile substance of material things, which though ever changing never perishes, but adds to the stability, the beauty, and the grandeur of the universe. The influence of the holy character passes even beyond the stars, giving joy to our angel brothers, and to our elder ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... reason, dislike so important an assumption on such inconclusive evidence. But with our present means, it appears to me probable that no evidence to demonstration can be looked for, and for this reason, that the contents of these peculiar cells are so subtile as to escape definition even while in their cells, (or under the most favourable circumstance for a concentration of attention.) How much more so will this be the case, when we attempt to examine the steps of the application of the fecundatory matter, applied over a surface ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... we call "feeling," the eye would better be trained still further, for herein lies the secret of success in difficult places, and not only that, but if he have not this sense he is deprived of one of the most subtile thrills that the arts ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... or the formal details of business in a new language. Here 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 the scales which weigh out the innumerable ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... sekva. Subside mallevi. Subsidy helpa mono. Substance substanco. Substantial fortika. Substantiate pruvi. Substantive substantivo. Substitute anstatauxi. Subterfuge artifiko. Subterranean subtera. Subterraneous subtera. Subtile maldika. Subtle ruza. Subtract elpreni. Subtraction elpreno. Suburbs cxirkauxurbo. Subvention helpa mono. Subversive detruanta. Succeed (order) postveni, sekvi. Succeed sukcesi. Success sukceso. Successful sukcesa. Succession, in vice. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... that two vastly different strains of blood ran through their veins. Apart, he would not have perceived this marked difference in them. Hetty represented the violet, Sara the pansy. The distinction may be subtile. However, it was the estimate he formed ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... So subtile and so infectious is this grand passion that one is hardly aware of its presence before it has complete possession of him; and I have known instances of men who, after having associated one evening with Judge Methuen and me, have waked up the next morning filled with the incurable ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... the 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... had called him to an exceptional and brilliant destiny. The total renouncement of what once glowed as a mission requires a sturdy nature and plenty of active work. Clifton possessed an exceeding susceptibility of nervous organization; he was full of subtile intimations of what was passing in the minds of other men, and at times seemed to have a strange power of controlling them. The deep passion for metaphysical knowledge, which in his youth had been kindled, was stilled, but never overcome. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Was a Lover and his Lass" is especially taking. His three songs, "When You Become a Nun, Dear," "The Road to Kew," and "Ho, Pretty Page!" written by modern poets in a half-archaic way, display a most delicious fund of subtile and ironic musical humor. "The Hawthorn Wins the Damask Rose" shows how really fine a well conducted English ballad can be. Among his sadder songs, the "Irish Folksong," "I'm Wearing Awa'," and the weird "In a Bower" are heavy with ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... is necessary to deprive matter of its qualities in order to draw out its soul.... Copper is like a man; it has a soul and a body ... the soul is the most subtile part ... that is to say, the tinctorial spirit. The body is the ponderable, material, terrestrial thing, endowed with a shadow.... After a series of suitable treatments copper becomes without shadow and better than gold.... The elements grow and are transmuted, because it is ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... as a still which stays A semibrief 'twixt each drop, he niggardly As loth to enrich me, so tells many a lie, More than ten Hollensheads, or Halls, or Stows, Of trivial household trash he knows. He knows When the queen frown'd or smil'd; and he knows what A subtile statesman may gather of that: He knows who loves whom, and who by poison Hastes to an office's reversion; He knows who hath sold his land, and now doth beg A license old iron, boots, shoes, and egg- Shells to transport. Shortly boys shall not play At span-counter, ...
— English Satires • Various
... difficulty presents itself. The comet's tail is believed by most of the illustrious astronomers of the day, to be the body converted into vapour by solar influence. If it be so, the vaporising process must be a much more subtile one than any that could be performed in our alembics, for the comet's substance is already all vapour before the distillation commences. The faintest stars have been seen shining through the densest parts of comets without the slightest loss of light, although they would have been ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... been a blither setting off from the Giant's Cairn. All the remaining guests were gathered to see them go. There was not a mote in the blue air between Outledge and the crest of Washington. All the subtile strength of the hills—ores and sweet waters and resinous perfumes and breath of healing leaf and root distilled to absolute purity in the clear ether that only sweeps from such bare, thunder-scoured summits—made ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... religion; I say, we are to regard their testimony in the same light as if they had mentioned that Mahometan miracle, and had in express terms contradicted it, with the same certainty as they have for the miracle they relate. This argument may appear over subtile and refined; but is not in reality different from the reasoning of a judge, who supposes, that the credit of two witnesses, maintaining a crime against any one, is destroyed by the testimony of two others, who affirm him to have been two hundred ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... active; it can be directed and made to perform its full equivalent duty (867. &c.). Is there not, then, great reason to hope and believe that, by a closer experimental investigation of the principles which govern the development and action of this subtile agent, we shall be able to increase the power of our batteries, or invent new instruments which shall a thousandfold surpass in energy those ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... 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 ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... The Leaves.—They have a subtile subacrid taste, and are recommended as vulneraries, and in asthmas and hectic fevers, and such disorders as are occasioned by drinking cold liquors when the body has been ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... 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
... before him and did him homage. So the city people rejoiced in him and said, "Indeed, this be none other than a King of the greatest of the kings." And presently he assembled the sages and the theologians and the sons of the Sovrans and conversed with them and asked them subtile questions and casuistical problems and talked over with them things manifold of all fashions that might direct him to rectitude in the kingship; and he questioned them also of mysteries and religious obligations and of the laws of the land and the regulations ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the Nature of these Vapours, and the Circumstance attending their Passage, they appear to us differently below. For if they be extremely subtile they mount very high, and there, according to the Sentiment of Sir Isaac Newton, form by Refraction the Azure, or blue Colour, that over-spreads the Sky in serene Weather. Clouds, while they remain visible, do not rise above the Height of a Mile; ...
— The Shepherd of Banbury's Rules to Judge of the Changes of the Weather, Grounded on Forty Years' Experience • John Claridge
... 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 ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... and mystery. Our scientific knowledge at the present day reaches this grand result—it clears up the deception that the system of nature is mere flat, dead materiality, a few mechanical laws, a few rigid forms. It shows that these are only the husks, the outer garments of mighty forces of subtile, far-reaching agencies; and the most common, every-day truths, that seemed stale and exhausted, become illuminated with infinite meaning, and are the ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... was troubled with a subtile anguish Such as but women know That wait, and lest love speak or speak not languish, And what they would, would rather ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... 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 plain from the facts that Weierstrass repeats it word for word as his ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... it had been up to this moment. It often happens that certain actions of human life seem, literally speaking, improbable, though actual. Is not this because we constantly omit to turn the stream of psychological light upon our impulsive determinations, and fail to explain the subtile reasons, mysteriously conceived in our minds, which impelled them? Perhaps Eugenie's deep passion should be analyzed in its most delicate fibres; for it became, scoffers might say, a malady which influenced her whole existence. Many people prefer to deny ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... 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 master of a gallant ship. In that ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... however, it still has a reputation for the cure of a particular disorder, perhaps that may arise from the impurity of the air,—and that the air which is so prone to engender verdigris, may wage war with other subtile poisons; yet, as I found some of my countrymen there, who had taken a longer trial of the air, and more of the physic, than I had occasion for, who neither admired one, nor found benefit from the other, I will not recommend Montpellier as having ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... inspires a greater plenty of witty sallies. For "Bacchus had not the name of Lysian, or Opener, if I may use the term, bestowed upon him for nothing but purely because he opens the mind, by putting it into an agreeable humour, and renders it more subtile and judicious[3]." For this reason it is grown into a proverb, That water-drinkers are not near so knowing as ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... can obtain no proof of God. They can neither see Spirit through the eye nor hear it through the ear, nor can they feel, taste, or smell Spirit. 284:24 Even the more subtile and misnamed ma- terial elements are beyond the cognizance of these senses, and are known only by the effects com- 284:27 monly ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... finding the bodies of several dead rats and mice; she was wondering what had caused their death, when she recognized the famous hash that the cat had refused to eat, and which had been left there by mistake. Two mice were dead in the plate itself, so powerful and subtile was ...
— The Story of a Cat • mile Gigault de La Bdollire
... of champagne. It was not, however, an effervescing wine, although its delicate piquancy produced a somewhat similar effect upon the palate. Sipping, the guest longed to sip again; but the wine demanded so deliberate a pause, in order to detect the hidden peculiarities and subtile exquisiteness of its flavor, that to drink it was really more a moral than a physical enjoyment. There was a deliciousness in it that eluded analysis, and—like whatever else is superlatively good—was perhaps better appreciated in the ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... outer room we met Mrs. B—— en deshabille, and scarcely so pretty as at our first meeting, but for her smile, remarkable for its subtile, evanescent sweetness. At breakfast our host joined us, and, after laughing at our late predicament and fright, assured me of that which I have since experienced,—the genuine goodness of the Prince Krom Lhuang Wongse. Every foreign resident ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... with the shades that arose from their branches, and leaves that hung down from them. Those trees anti plants covered the stone that was beneath them, and their leaves were wrought so prodigious thin and subtile, that you would think they were in motion; but the other part up to the roof, was plastered over, and, as it were, embroidered with colors and pictures. He, moreover, built other edifices for pleasure; as also very ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... 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 ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... serious 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 surroundings which suggest the Bethlehem manger. Theologically ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... appeal of Lear to the elements of nature, only to be matched, if matched at all, in the "Prometheus," is a wide one, and Shakespeare is as truly simple in the one as in the other. The simplicity of poetry is not that of prose, nor its clearness that of ready apprehension merely. To a subtile sense, a sense heightened by sympathy, those sudden fervors of phrase, gone ere one can say it lightens, that show us Macbeth groping among the complexities of thought in his conscience-clouded mind, and reveal the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... 'tis of a nature so subtile, That, if it's not luted with care, The spirit will work through the bottle, And vanish ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... was the evening paper. . . .) Eric settled himself with a comfortable sense of home-coming, his eyes on Barbara's bedroom door, wondering how she would greet him. Their last dinner together demanded recognition and a subtile modification of manner. ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... nation in their grasp,—hands, like herself, going through the slow, heavy 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 ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... thus engaged, high views enlarge the soul, New interests draw, new principles control: Nor thus the soul alone resigns her grief, But here the tortured body finds relief; For see where yonder sage Arachne shapes Her subtile gin, that not a fly escapes! There PHYSIC fills the space, and far around, Pile above pile her learned works abound: Glorious their aim- to ease the labouring heart; To war with death, and stop his flying ...
— The Library • George Crabbe
... no idea of God, knowing nothing of the distinction between right and wrong, and never feeling the pains of an accusing conscience? Will he maintain that the populations of India, in the midst of whom one of the most subtile and ingenious systems of pantheism has sprung up with the luxuriance and involutions of one of their own jungles, and has enervated the whole religious sentiment of the Hindoo race as opium has enervated their physical frame,—will he maintain that such an ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... chance to recover her natural elasticity and 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 no wonder they are often confounded. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... watching the young man's extraordinarily handsome face. "She would not dare take the risk and drive out with you, great as the temptation would no doubt be, did she dream that he would learn of the escapade, and follow. Indeed, your Royal Highness must have found subtile weapons ready to your hand, that you so soon broke through the armor of her prudence. I expected much from your magnetism and resourceful wit, yet I hardly dared hope for such speedy, such unqualified success as this which now seems ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... be inquisitive about spiritual physiognomy, nor go about to inquire, I believe, at this time, as Evodius inquired of St. Austin, whether our immaterial part, the soul, does not remain united, when it forsakes this gross terrestrial body, to some ethereal body more subtile and more fine; which was one of the Pythagorean and Platonic whimsies: nor be under any concern to know, if this be not the case of the dead, how souls can be distinguished after their separation—that of Dives, for example, from that of Lazarus. The second—that is, ontology— ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... 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 into rational convictions, all of which betray both temperament ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... 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 stone and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... sweetness of demeanor, which attracted them to him, and while his name may not be sounded in the trump of fame, yet the subtile power of his gentleness and goodness has permeated many lives, will shape many destinies, and will have a force in the history of the world greater than that which will be exerted by many who will succeed him ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... 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 ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... inevitably bring the practical laws into ambiguity; and philosophy, which in employing them becomes aware of the different meanings in the same word, but can find no special expressions for them, is driven to subtile distinctions about which there is subsequently no unanimity, because the distinction could not be directly marked by any suitable ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... expenditure of force to maintain their vitality; on the contrary, their mechanisms are, for a beneficent purpose, constructed for the accumulation of force. The growing plant absorbs, together with carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, a proportionate amount of light, heat, and the various other subtile forces which have their abiding place in ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... Byshops; who by direction, sent to the poore man two Gray Friers to instructe hym, wyth whom he woulde enter into no commoning. Soone after that was sent in two blacke Friers, an Englishe Frier & an other subtile sophister called Arbircromy, with the which Englishe Frier he would haue reasoned and declared hys fayth by the scriptures. Who aunswered, he had no commission to enter in disputation with hym, and so ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... manifestlye, that he came to entreate hym for the cite, he sware a great othe, that he wolde nat do that that he came to desyre hym fore. Than Anaximenes sayde: sir, I desyre your grace, that this same cite Lampsac may be vtterly distroyed. Through which sage and subtile sayeng the noble auncient citie was ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... then be surprised at those subtile hypotheses, as ingenious as they are unsatisfactory, to which theological prejudice has obliged the most profound modern speculators to recur; when they have undertaken to reconcile the spirituality of the soul, with the physical action of material beings, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... by their subtile fusion of exquisite simplicity with cynicism in a perverse form, won him immediate recognition outside of Germany. This in itself has never been forgiven by the Germans. Such prejudice did not deter German song composers from ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson |
