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More "Subtle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sopater was one of those who wore purple, and was related to the king; that he had been lately sent into Africa with four thousand Macedonians and a sum of money to assist Hannibal and the Carthaginians." The Macedonians, on being interrogated on these points, proceeded to answer in a subtle and evasive manner; but without waiting for the conclusion of their reply they were told, "that the king was seeking occasion for war, and that if he persisted he would soon obtain his object. That the treaty had been doubly violated ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... a dangerous business in which the crafty Barolong, who belonged to the country, alone were well versed. A subtle warrior among the Barolong, named Mathakgong, was a regular expert in this business. He led the occasional Barolong dashes into the Boer lines in search of beef and he invariably managed to rush his loot into Mafeking. He did this throughout the seven months' siege with ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... subtle little satire on the vaunted permanence of love and fame. The poet's grave falls to pieces. The words: "love me for ever," appeal to us from a tombstone which records how Spring garlands are severed by the hand of June, and June's fever is ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... courts of justice and by special commissions and inquisitions: First under pretense of tenures, and then of titles in the Crown, for the purpose of the total extirpation of the interests of the natives in their own soil, until the species of subtle ravage kindled the flames of that rebellion which broke out in 1641. By the issue of that war, by the turn which the Earl of Clarendon gave to things at the Restoration, and by the total reduction of the kingdom of Ireland in 1691, the ruin of the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... generous people on Earth. But we have to go back to the insight of Franklin Roosevelt who, when he spoke of what became the welfare program, want that it must not become a narcotic and a subtle destroyer of the spirit. Welfare was never meant to be a life style. It was never meant to be a habit. It was never supposed to be passed on from generation to generation like a legacy. It's time to replace the assumptions of the welfare state and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George H.W. Bush • George H.W. Bush
... I now think that if this simple plan had presented itself to his subtle mind, of stunning, if not disabling me, and thus making it possible for them to obtain his father's will without an open assault, he would not have hesitated to embrace it. But he evidently did not calculate, as I did, the chances of such an act, or perhaps he felt that I was likely to be ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... only words that rose to my lips were, "How very ill you look!" and I wisely concluded not to say them. She was very beautiful, and looked prouder and more imperious than ever. But she was changed. I could not tell what it was. I could find no name for the subtle alteration; ere long I knew only too well what it was. Then, I only knew that she was different from what she had been, and different in a way that aroused tenfold all ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... general police; and I noticed that his presence at headquarters was a great surprise to every one, as he was thought to be in complete disgrace. Those who seek to explain the causes of the smallest events think that his Majesty's idea was to oppose the subtle expedients of the police under M. Fouche to the then all-powerful police of the Baron de Stein, the armed head of all the secret parties which were forming in every direction, and which were regarded, not without reason, as the rulers of popular opinion in Prussia and Germany, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... puts out a shy hand of friendship, and presently soothes and consoles as the strong, silent, storm-tossed man who rode with so soldierly a bearing beside Mr. Pym; suffering no stab of love and longing any more as he looked over her fair bosom, because the shy hand was in his, because there was that subtle sense of understanding in his heart which seemed to tell him that even as he loved ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... writes how he escap't the danger, And subtle treason that the king had plotted, Being crossed by the contention of the windes, He found ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... through the pines of Otsego, the winding river murmuring lovelorn secrets to the flowers that nodded on its margin, the moon rising over Mount Vision and shedding its splendor upon the lake, were subtle influences in secret meetings between men and maidens, in whispered vows beneath the trees, in courtships on the border of the Glimmerglass, in lovemaking along the shores of ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... greatest hopes on his wisdom, since he had devised the whole of such an achievement with the deepest cunning, and accomplished it with the most astonishing contrivance. Many could have been seen marvelling how he had concealed so subtle a plan over so long a space ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... heartily; and Kitty laughed, and so did her mother. Subtle barriers were swept away, and all three of them became what they had not yet been, friends. It ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... political. The two principles upon which the English language rests the burden of its paramount interest, are these:—first, its powers, the range of its endowments; secondly, its apparent destiny. Some subtle judges in this field of criticism are of opinion, and ever had that opinion, that amongst the modern languages which originally had compass enough of strength and opulence in their structure, or had received culture sufficient to qualify them plausibly for entering ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... unconventional school, before the rise of the fixed traditions; it might have been carved in any age and country where good natural work was done. In its unshrinking figuring of age and weakness with a subtle character, it shows a power of dealing with individuality which stands apart from all ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... and far from seizing the subtle delicacy of Fanny's thought—her mind dwelling upon Poetry, and his upon Law,— "ay, and do you know that upon a mere scrap of paper, if I could but find it, may depend my whole fortune, my whole happiness, all that I care ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... would suit her exactly and it was her very own. She need not act for only Madame Imogen and Pere Anselme. But when she thought of this latter a sensation of discomfort came. How could she read in peace with the dear old man, who was so keen and so subtle he would certainly divine that all was not well? And ever his sentence recurred to her: "Remember always, my daughter, that le Bon Dieu settles things for us mortals if we leave it all to Him, ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... reign was to be simultaneously enacted. There was the bishop of Arras, soon to be known throughout Christendom by the more celebrated title of Cardinal Granvelle—the serene and smiling priest, whose subtle influence over the destinies of so many individuals then present, and over the fortunes of the whole land, was to be so extensive and so deadly. There was that flower of Flemish chivalry, the lineal descendant of ancient Frisian ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... ascertain. There is reason to believe that their dominion stretches from west to east, in a narrow line or belt, from the mouth of the Senegal (on the northern side of that river) to the confines of Abyssinia. They are a subtle and treacherous race of people, and take every opportunity of cheating and plundering the credulous and unsuspecting negroes. But their manners and general habits of life will be best explained as incidents occur in the course of ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... remind me that I am quite uninteresting when I am trying to make believe that I am subtle, or 'subtile,' as the Psalmist says of the ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... might assuage her anxiety regarding her husband, she being unable to protect him from the new danger that threatened. Wilhelm was as brave as any man need be, and in a fair fight was content to take whatever odds came, but now he was confronted by a subtle invisible peril, against which ordinary courage was futile. An unaccustomed shiver chilled him as the palace sentinel, in the gathering gloom of the corridor, raised his hand swiftly to his helmet ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... as those controlling the heart-beats, digestive and intestinal movements; the contraction of the pupil of the eye from light, sneezing, swallowing, etc., are reflexes; imitation, fighting, and fear, are instincts, which capacities refer to those more subtle traits by means of which an individual becomes a good linguist, or is tactful, or gains skill in handling tools. However, there is no sharp line of division between these various unlearned tendencies; what one psychologist calls a ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... accurately and really an existence; and to save thee some trouble, my dark friend, I will tell thee, that though thou speakest to an uneducated Varangian, I am not entirely unskilled in the Grecian art of making subtle words pass upon the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... complicated," proceeded Mr. Cupples quite unmoved, "because after Marlowe's suspicions were awakened a second subtle mind came in to interfere with the plans of the first. That sort of duel often happens in business and politics, but less frequently, I imagine, in the world of crime. One disturbing reflection was left on my mind by what ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... magnetism, in chemical affinity; that the varieties of magnetism in different individuals afforded "medium power" to some, and denied it to others; that the magnetic relations necessary to produce phenomena were very subtle, liable to disturbance and singularly susceptible to the influence of the mental emotions. In addition to communications purporting thus to explain the object and something of the modus operandi of the communion, numerous spirit friends of the ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... and color and perfume were one, where you could hear the hues and see the harmonies of heaven. For absolute melody and splendor it were hardly rash to call it the first poem in the language. An exquisite instinct married to a subtle science of verse has made it the supreme model of music in our language, unapproachable except by Shelley.' In all the poems consider: 1. Is his romantic world too remote from reality to be interesting, or has it poetic imagination that makes it true in the deepest sense? 2. Which is more ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... imperative? I trust thee wholly—how else could I speak thus with thee? I have never for a moment doubted thee; yet one might doubt one's own loyalty in this court of Cyprus—where, it is told me, there is a most subtle intriguer who ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... woman. This gentleman is difficult to describe. He seems too languid even for the profession of man-about-town, but his clothes are such that one would think their irreproachability could only be maintained by a life of dedication to them. Did he ever exist? Du Maurier is very subtle here. He fully appreciated the great aim of the public-school-trained man in his own time—the elaborate care with which an officer studied to conceal an enthusiasm for the profession of arms, the great air of indolence with which over-work was ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... shrink into a turret, expand into a hall, coil into a staircase, or spring into a spire, with undegraded grace and unexhausted energy; and whenever it finds occasion for change in its form or purpose, it submits to it without the slightest sense of loss either to its unity or majesty,—subtle and flexible like a fiery serpent, but ever attentive to the voice of the charmer. And it is one of the chief virtues of the Gothic builders, that they never suffered ideas of outside symmetries and consistencies to interfere with the real use and value of what ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Andrew imagined that the corregidor had surely fallen in love with Preciosa; for jealousy is a subtle thing, and enters other bodies without breaking or dividing them. He replied, however, "If she has said that I am her betrothed, it is very true; and, if she has said I am not her betrothed, she has also spoken the truth; for it is not possible that Preciosa ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... invention and collection of the most atrocious, they both employed the energy and patience of the entomologist. A chance word, out of which a racy story might be extracted, was pursued like a rare moth or a butterfly. Dubois's were more subtle, but Mortimer's, being more to the point, ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... organization existing is not positively known (for the black is more subtle and crafty than any thing human), but it is suspected by many of the whites, the more moderate of whom are disposed to ward off the impending blow by some system of gradual emancipation—declaring all black children ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... their representatives set them such lessons? Mr. Everett's whole life has been a sermon from this text. There was, at least, this advantage in duelling, that it set a certain limit on the tongue. When Society laid by the rapier, it buckled on the more subtle blade of etiquette wherewith to keep obtrusive vulgarity at bay.' In this connection, I may be permitted to recall a playful remark of his upon another occasion. The painful divisions in the First Parish, A.D. 1844, occasioned ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... keeps the heart of the world from hardening; the secret knowledge which finds out the objects of Christian compassion and wins their confidence; the enthusiasm which burns like a fire at the heart of religious work. The influence of women is subtle and remote; but it is on this account all the more powerful; for they sit at the very fountains, where the river of human life is springing, and where a touch may determine ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... this supreme sorrow with the same silent fortitude with which she had always met trouble, but a subtle change came over her. While it could not be said that she looked exactly old, yet the youthfulness for which she had been so remarkable seemed suddenly to vanish, and her hair grew rapidly grey. A little child—Frank Norris's daughter—said, with an acuteness beyond her years: ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... square of darkness, and then returned to her who lay upon the bed ... But five days ago a hearty, high-spirited woman, in full health of mind and body ... It could not be that she was to die so soon as that. ... But knowing now the sad inevitableness, every glance found a subtle change, some fresh token that this bed-ridden woman groaning in her blindness was no more the wife and mother they had known ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... numbers of highly indicative drawings and a group of rare canvases, the quality of which painters will at once acclaim, and poets will at once verify the lyric perfection of, paintings and drawings among the loveliest we have in point of purity of conception and feeling for the subtle shades of existence, those rare states of life which, when they arrive, are called perfect moments in the poetic experience ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... insecurity when retained for a client whose cause seemed to him unjust. He differed but little, indeed, from the best of his colleagues; perhaps he had somewhat fewer scruples; and, certainly, he was too fond of good red wine. He had a caustic wit, made an admirable boon companion, and, having a subtle intellect, was fond of paradoxes and skillful hair-splitting. Thanks to the red wine, he fell into the habit of spending much, and so into the necessity of making much also. Vanity and the love of excitement led him to devote the whole energy of ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... yong mayde, that liueth welthelie and idlelie, wise men can iudge, and honest men do pitie. And yet ten Morte Arthures do not the tenth part so much harme, as one of these bookes, made in Italie, and translated in // hand.gif England. They open, not fond and common wayes to vice, but such subtle, cunnyng, new, and diuerse shiftes, to cary yong willes to vanitie, and yong wittes to mischief, to teach old bawdes new schole poyntes, as the simple head of an English man is not hable to inuent, nor neuer was hard of ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... young poet to initiate himself by pastorals, which, not professing to imitate real life, require no experience; and, exhibiting only the simple operation of unmingled passions, admit no subtle reasoning or deep inquiry. Pope's pastorals are not, however, composed but with close thought; they have reference to the times of the day, the seasons of the year, and the periods of human life. ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... later, and the break came during the afternoon of our twenty-seventh day out. The barometer, which for nearly three weeks had been standing well above thirty inches, gave us the first warning of the coming change by an ominously rapid decline of the mercury, which was quickly succeeded by a subtle veiling of the sky, the clear, rich blue of which gradually changed to a uniform tint of dirty white, in the midst of which the sun hung a mere shapeless blotch. The light breeze that during the earlier part of the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... idea on a large scale, he has left us some fine examples of what can be accomplished in this direction. A delightful but theoretically undesirable characteristic of his work is the use of stucco. Upon it he moulded delicate forms in subtle and beautiful proportions. His "compo'' was used so successfully that the patent was infringed: many of his moulds still exist and are in constant use. That most difficult feature, the column, he handled with enthusiasm and perfect mastery; he studied ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... name of Telemaque. Clever (spirituel) "to an alarming extent" (faire peur) in the minutest detail of his writings, rich, copious, harmonious, but not without tendencies to lengthiness, the style of Fenelon is the reflex of his character; sometimes, a little subtle and covert, like the prelate's mind, it hits and penetrates without any flash (eclat) and without dealing heavy blows. "Graces flowed from his lips," said Chancellor d'Aguesseau, "and he seemed to treat the greatest subjects ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... eyes followed him wherever he went. He knew, at all events, that he could hold his own amid these adventurers, many of whom had risen from the ranks; while others, from remote northern States, had birth but no manners at all. He was easy and gay, carrying lightly that subtle air of distinction which is vouchsafed to ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... since his present appointment he has established the most rigid discipline: this is of the utmost consequence in any army; but particularly so in that he commands, as they have to contend with the most subtle and desperate foe on earth, flushed with their late victory over St. Claire.—In a former indian war, an army lay with it's rear and flanks well secured; a river three quarters of a mile broad in its front, and no enemy within fifty miles. A body of Indians, being informed ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... sweep of the outer line; full of force and delicacy combined. See, too, how it is supported by the harmonious inner line, a thought more rigid, and yet full of grace. To become an expert in bows requires years of continual observation, for the slight differences in line are too subtle to be apparent to those who are not constantly looking for and studying them. But I think anyone, even "ye meanest capacitie in ye world"—to quote good old Roger North—will be able to appreciate the contrast between ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... I read the list I saw distinctly, and very nearly as it happened, all that was to follow. Who could but conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of low and unprofitable chicane? Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which they understood ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... is doomed. He has escaped the spears, arrows, and tomahawks of the Tenawa savages to fall a victim to a destroyer, stealthy, subtle, unseen. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... in the subtle quality of charm that the women of the last ten years have fallen away from their elder sisters. They have been carried along by a love of sport, and by the set of fashion's tide, not stopping to ask themselves whither they are floating. They do not realize all the ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... that some allegedly wise ones will scoff at this statement. They may say that an affection that may be influenced by the kind and condition of underwear is not worth having or retaining. But what do these wise ones know! What do they know of the numerous subtle influences which gradually either strengthen or undermine our affections? Follow this advice and ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... my pipe after a frugal lunch, and thinking how hard it would be to find in any quarter of the globe a place more fair and fragrant than this hidden vale among the Alleghany Mountains. The perfume of the flowers of the forest is more sweet and subtle than the heavy scent of tropical blossoms. No lily-field in Bermuda could give a fragrance half so magical as the fairy-like odour of these woodland slopes, soft carpeted with the green of glossy vines above whose tiny leaves, in ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... "You are so much on the 'subtle-souled-psychologist' line, that there's no need of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... ye subtle spirits, why Lift I my eyes to yonder floating sky, Where clouds paint pictures with so clear a hue? A heaven so beautiful ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... most active, but, at the same time, of the least suspected, of these subtle agents, was a certain Basilio Lopez, cloth-merchant in the city of Pampeluna. He was a man past the middle age, well to do in the world, married and with a family, and certainly, to all appearance, the last person to ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... form of rhetoric. Some of the sentences are mental landscapes. The meaning seems to be in motion on the page. It is elusive from its very subtlety. It is more our analyst than her character of Rufus Lyon, who "would fain find language subtle enough to follow the utmost intricacies of the soul's pathways." Mrs. Transome's "lancet-edged epigrams" are dull in comparison with her own. She uses them with startling success in dissecting motive and analyzing feeling. They deserve ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... noticed that for some days afterwards Veronica displayed a tendency to shutting herself up in the schoolroom with a copybook, and that lead pencils had a way of disappearing from my desk. One in particular that had suited me I determined if possible to recover. A subtle instinct guided me to Veronica's sanctum. I found her thoughtfully sucking it. She explained to me that she was writing ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... exclaimed impulsively, taking a step within, the door. Instantly, as though some night-flying bat had flown against it, the candle went out—a breath wafted by him as lightly and as silently as a snowy owl flies home in the twilight. A subtle something, the influence of a presence, remained, which mingled strangely with the odours of the clover in the neuk, and the sour night-smell of the byre. Again there was a perfect silence. Without, a corncrake ground monotonously. A rat scurried along the rafter. Ebie in the silence ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... regarded Cushing's Manual in her rulings, she maintained order and good feeling by the persuasiveness and serenity of her voice and manner. Emerson says: "It is not what the man says, but it is the spirit behind it which makes the impression." It was this subtle magnetism of the true, grand woman, ever faithful to her highest convictions of truth, that made her always respected in every position she occupied. Hers was pure moral power, for in that frail organization there could be but ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the digestion of strong doctrine; that very activity now generated a new style of preaching, which may be termed the metaphysical school. The days of thaumaturgia were passed, and in place of discussing demonology and temptation, an appetite for subtle dogma prevailed. I doubt if Britain and Germany, with their combined universities, could have equaled, during the last century, the New England pulpit in mental acuteness or philosophical discrimination. A reference to Edwards recalls mention among his followers ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... ladies of the present day—that he could engineer himself into a worthwhile conversation with the Lawrences. Since meeting them, he was doubly anxious. There was a thinly veiled hostility about the man which demanded investigation. And about the woman there was a subtle atmosphere of tragedy which appealed to the masculine protectiveness which surged strong ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... at him surprised. Never before had he used any term of endearment to her. There was a hard, still and subtle yet determined light in ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... energy in O'Grady's sentences. It is easy to point to faults due to excess and abundance, but how rare in literature is that heroic energy and power. There is something arcane and elemental in it, a quality that the most careful stylist cannot attain, however he uses the file, however subtle he is. O'Grady has noticed this power in the ancient bards and we find it in his own writing. It ran all through the Bardic History, the Critical and Philosophical History, and through the political books, "The Tory Democracy" and "All Ireland." There is this imaginative ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... Earl of Kildare born over again." Luttrell, on the other hand, declared that "Ormond hated Grey worse than he had hated Kildare." All agreed that Lord Leonard was difficult to work with. He seems to have been a well-intentioned man, a hard worker, and a keen soldier, but neither subtle enough nor conciliatory enough for his place. He was accused of treasonable practices, and a list of formidable charges made against him. At his own request he was summoned to court to answer these. To a good many he pleaded guilty—half in contempt as it would seem—and ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... against it. Causes beyond our apparent knowledge were responsible for the death of Nurse Forrester; but who shall presume to say that was really so? Why imagine anything so irregular? I prefer to think that had the post-mortem been conducted by somebody else, subtle reasons for her death might have appeared. Science is fallible, and even ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... what had occurred to St. Anthony in the Desert of Thebais: after having been the means of freeing others from the attacks of the devil, he was exposed to them himself. The subtle spirit often suggested evil thoughts to him. He placed horrid spectres before him, and he even visibly struck him severe blows. Once in a very narrow path, and on the edge of a deep precipice, he appeared to him in a hideous figure, and threw himself upon him ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... main importance of Socialism in this connection lies in the fact that it does not confine itself to sociology. It has become a complete philosophy of life, and can be seen penetrating with its subtle satire on human nature almost everything about us. We have the cash register to educate our clerks into pure and honest character, and the souls of conductors can be seen being nurtured, mile after ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... had been his upon the last occasion when we had talked at length together upon some of the present social and political phases of our republic—that day of the New Bridge and the advent of Hortense. Only, upon that day, he had by his manner in some subtle fashion conveyed to me a greater security in my discretion than I felt him now to entertain. His many observations about the Replacers, with always the significant and conspicuous omission of Hortense, proved more and more, as I thought it over, that his state ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... dividing years was forgotten. And as her face had cleared, so had his. He had explained her annoyance by calling himself a clod! "She hated not to be thought married—of course!" What a brute he was not to have recognized the subtle loveliness of a sensitiveness like that! He wanted to tell her so, but he could only push the newspaper toward her and slip his hand under it to feel for hers—which he clutched and gripped so hard that her rings cut into the flesh. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... a true eye for beauty or breed, poor dey-vil!" This expression of pity seemed to afford each of them much subtle enjoyment. "Harking back to this—filly," said the big man, checking his merriment, "how if she jibs, and cuts up rough, kicks over the traces—devilish ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... friend stood with his stop-watch in his hand, with a visage lengthened under the influence of these reflections, Sir Bingo, with an instinctive tact, which self-preservation seemed to dictate to a brain neither the most delicate nor subtle in the world, premised his enquiry by some general remark on fishing and field-sports. With all these, he found Tyrrel more than passably acquainted. Of fishing and shooting, particularly, he spoke with something like enthusiasm; so ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... organization of comedians that Europe or America ever saw. I don't suppose there is a comedy scene that he couldn't rehearse and play better than any of the actors who were engaged to play the parts. The subtle touches that he put into 'Lord and Lady Algy' were extraordinary. The same with 'The Counsellor's Wife,' with 'Bohemia,' and again with a play of H. V. Esmond's called 'Imprudence,' which we did. He seemed to love this play, and I never saw a piece grow so in all my life as it did under ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... endure the weight of the sun,'[138] have had all your intellects about you, and have been able always to choose your words?" No, indeed! These letters, if truth is to be expected from them, have to be read with all the subtle distinctions necessary for understanding the frame of mind in which they were written. His anger boils over here, and he is hot. Here tenderness has mastered him, and the love of old days. He is weak in body just now, and worn ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... happiness! explain to you my system!"—My system! But I have no system: that is the very difference between us. My notions of happiness cannot be resolved into simple, fixed principles. Nor dare I even attempt to analyze them; the subtle essence would escape in the process: just punishment to the ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... Occasional neighbors greeted them, strolling past; the newly watered lawns all along the street sent up a fresh turfy odor; now and then a bird chirped drowsily. He felt deliriously intimate, peacefully at home. A fine, subtle sense of bien-etre ...
— The Courting Of Lady Jane • Josephine Daskam
... their records we see the clash of barbarism with advancement, the bizarre tints of a semi-civilization unequalled in rude magnificence. Giant shadows of forgotten kings stalk across the canvas, their royal purple intermingling with the shaggy fell of the bear and wolf. One, Chilperic, a subtle grammarian and the inventor of new alphabetic symbols, is yet the most implacable of his race, the murderer of his wife, the heartless slayer of hundreds, to whom human life is as that of cattle skilled in ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... chair and exchanged a few words with Claire as she gathered together her possessions, but the subtle change persisted. Claire felt vaguely disturbed, but the next half-hour passed so pleasantly that she had no time to puzzle over the explanation. Captain Fanshawe never left her side; they sat together ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... determined. He had already enriched his songs with certain tender allusions to their present frame of mind and their future state of happiness. "Where was Moses when the light went out!" and "Little Annie Rooney" had undergone so subtle a change when sung at the top of Mr. James Finnegan's voice that while the original warp and woof of those very popular melodies were entirely unrecognizable to any but the persons interested, to them they were as gall and wormwood. This was Cully's ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... that my Flamand's wound looked much worse than it was, I felt hurt, as if this beloved person had been slighted; also as if there was some subtle disparagement to ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... face with a tall, keen-featured man in Police uniform, and a girl. Even though Rutter had declared she would be at Walsh, I wasn't prepared to believe it was Lyn Rowan. Sometimes five years will work a wonderful change in a woman; or is it that time and distance work some subtle transition in one's recollection? She didn't give me much time to indulge in guesswork, though. While I wondered, for an instant, if there could by any possibility be another woman on God's footstool with ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... generator room, their flying fingers making sharp contrast to their slow, idle conversation. They gave the room extra care this time because there had been some quick-fingered students around who just might have got it into their heads to improve the machinery. Satisfied at last that there had been no subtle meddling, they snapped the cowl of the generator back into position. They took one more sharp look around, then walked, single file, up the narrow passage to the control room. Louie LeBeau was sitting in the astronavigator's ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... that our economy is a highly complex and sensitive mechanism. Hasty and ill-considered action of any kind could seriously upset the subtle equation that encompasses debts, obligations, expenditures, defense demands, deficits, taxes, and the general economic health of the Nation. Our goals can be clear, our start toward them can be ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... feels; but every attempt to make him accept her instead he resists. Her desperate declamation is splendid. Her heartrending sense of misery and piteous prayer for salvation, her belief that before her is her savior could she but win him to her will, the choking fury of baffled passion, the steady and subtle encroachments made while Parsifal is lost in a meditative dream, the burning kiss which recalls him to himself, the fine touch by which this kiss, while arousing in him the stormiest feelings, causes a sharp pain, as of Amfortas's ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... Crafty and subtle the means they employ. Protestants fight, but uncertain their action— Party dissensions their ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... roof in perfect amity. Nay, more, they often formed powerful and unscrupulous leagues against him. But whenever Nellie was disturbed, by no matter what, she would say "your mother" instead of merely "mother!" It was an extraordinary subtle, silly and effective way of putting him ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... only bring to light those Beings who, to a certain extent at least, possess a material form, though of a consistency as subtle as electricity. But the instrument does not possess the power of rendering visible those Superior Beings, whom no man in his ordinary state is permitted to see through a material medium. He only can see them even in visions who is blessed ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... doubts, which took possession of Vincent himself. The trial was long and painful. For several years this humble and fervent soul endured the agony of an incessant temptation to unbelief. But Vincent knew how to resist this most subtle snare of the Evil One, and, although the anguish was continual, his ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... him forward unduly; indeed, there was no need of it; for the boy manifested a remarkable docility for instruction, and a singular quickness in mastering the preliminary steps which lead to science: a subtle instinct, indeed, which it seemed wonderful a child should possess for anything as artificial as systems of grammar and arithmetic. A remarkable boy, in truth, he was, to have been found by chance in an almshouse; except that, such being his origin, we are at liberty to suppose for him whatever ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... CHILTERN. No; he was a man of a most subtle and refined intellect. A man of culture, charm, and distinction. One of the most ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... might be. She was strung to a great pitch of nervous excitement through the exhilaration of her tearing ride; she was stubbornly determined to prevent the finger of scorn from pointing in her direction; but she was finding a subtle salve to the smart of the wound to her pride in the romantic setting of the wonderful picture made by ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... these, the editor's secretary, at heart an honest patriot, but in fact eating the bread of shame, was perhaps not altogether of the right sort. Still he did get off his chest at last the pent-up passion of years, and very well he did it, with the help of Mr. RANDLE AYRTON, whose subtle little touches, building up a picture of a disheartened hack, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various
... open, caught her uncle's last words, and came in, expectantly—I think she, like most of us, wondered what sort of being we were about to see. And possibly there was a shade of disappointment on her face when the police-inspector walked in followed, not by the secret, subtle, sleuth-hound-like person she had perhaps expected, but by a little, rotund, rather merry-faced man who looked more like a prosperous cheesemonger or successful draper than an emissary of justice: he was just the sort of person you would naturally expect to see with an apron round his comfortable ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... though big ideas. His style is marvellously musical but overweighted by his classical long-windedness and difficult syntax. Such a contrast to Tennyson where the idea shines out of the language which is so simple as to seem inevitable, and yet wonderfully subtle as well ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... the ancient world at the time when the general movement of the Northern nations began. The battle with heathenism was virtually over, Christianity being the unquestioned conqueror; but the question, which of the many modifications of Christianity devised by the subtle Hellenic and Oriental intellects should be the victor, was a question still unsettled, and debated with the keenest interest on all the shores of the Mediterranean. So keen indeed was the interest that it sometimes seems almost to have ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... weeks flew by, And Anna plied her powers to charm, but still Not all the subtle glamour of her presence Could bind in sleep my pleading monitor. And so at last I said: 'We both are young: Let us, as earnest of a mutual wish To share a perfect love, or none at all, Absolve each other here, without condition, From this engagement; and, if three years hence We both are of one ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... enough to meet in real life a character so strong and vivid, so full of subtle characteristics, that his appearance in a novel would make the author's name. Such a character ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... movement, like the curving of a vine, Seems an unerring accident of grace, And like a flower's the subtle change and shine And meaning of her brightly ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... 'subtle spider, which doth sit In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide; If aught do touch the utmost thread of it, She feels it ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... was now encouraged, nay, enjoined, to marry. For here was an hereditary landed estate equal to the liberal maintenance of a family. And thus did a simple people, obeying its instinct of conquest, not only discover, in its earliest days, the subtle principle of Machiavel—Let war support war; but (which is far more than Machiavel's view) they made each present war support many future wars—by making it support a new offset from the population, bound to ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... if she carried out her threat, begged forgiveness for his wicked plans, pretended deep repentance, and spoke of his brother-in-law in terms of the warmest affection. His acting was so consummate that even Chainitza, who well knew her brother's subtle character, was deceived by it. When he saw that she was his dupe, knowing that he had nothing more either to fear or to hope for from that side, he directed his attention ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the strange sights of the evening. She had seen tickets marked complimentary, she remembered, but she could not for the life of her understand why our party should be particularly favored at a celestial exhibition like this. On the whole, she questioned inwardly whether it might not be some subtle pleasantry, and smiled, experimentally, with a note of interrogation in the smile, but, finding no encouragement, allowed her features to subside gradually as if nothing had happened. I saw all this as plainly as if it had all been printed in great-primer type, instead of working itself out ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... certain foundation of humour seems to be the common inheritance of mankind, but on it different periods build differently. The structure of a Greek joke is generally very simple; more obvious and less highly elliptical in thought than the modern type, but, on the other hand, considerably more subtle than the wit of the middle ages. There was a store of traditional jests on the learned professions, law, astrology, medicine —the last especially; and the schools of rhetoric and philosophy were, from their first beginning, the subject of much pleasantry. ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... exquisite at breakfast, a fresh and tender graciousness radiated in her every glance; she was subtle and captivating, teasing him that he had been so silent in the night. "Why wouldn't you talk to me, John? But it was all divine, I did not mind." Then she became full of winsome ways and caresses, which she ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... said, subtle Jack; put me in mind, when I return again, that I may make my lady mother laugh at the scholar. I'll to my game; for you, Jack, I would have you employ your time, till my coming, in watching what hour of the day my ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... "degenerated almost to the lowest state compatible with the retention of rational endowments." On the contrary, the old Greenland missionary, Hans Egede, writes: "I have found some of them witty enough and of good capacity;" Sir Martin Frobisher says they are "in nature very subtle and sharp-witted;" Sir Edward Parry, while extolling their honesty and good nature, adds, "Indeed, it required no long acquaintance to convince us that art and education might easily have made them equal or superior to ourselves;" Sauer tells of a woman who learned to speak Russian fluently in rather ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... in need of the patronage of error, than does a natural good complexion of paint. And it is certain, that the opinion which has been prevalent for many ages, of the power granted to devils, of torturing human bodies and minds, has been several ways made subservient to the subtle designs of crafty men, to the very great detriment and shame ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... past," he explained most unnaturally, for he and his friend had a horror of looking at the long, long past, which could not fail to remind them of—what no one cares to contemplate out of church. Making an effort toward some determination which a subtle observer might have noticed weighing upon him all the evening, he added: ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... may contract a bit. This remains entirely unnoticed by any one in the audience, but the professional mind-reader has heightened his sensibility so much that none of these involuntary signs escapes him. Yet from the standpoint of science his seeing these subtle signs is on principle no different from our ordinary seeing when a man points his ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... Juliet. All these circumstances agreed together to clear the friar from any hand he could be supposed to have in these complicated slaughters, further than as the unintended consequences of his own well-meant, yet too artificial and subtle contrivances. ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... white light below grew larger. Finally I saw Ray swing off and stand on his feet in a flood of white radiance below me. The air was warm, moist, laden with a subtle unfamiliar fragrance that suggested growing things. Then ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... painful expectation of the coming sentence. The saints and martyrs who surround Christ and His Mother, while forming one of the chief planes in the composition, are arranged in four unequal groups of subtle and surprising intricacy. All bear the emblems of their cruel deaths, and shake them in the sight of Christ as though appealing to His judgment-seat. It has been charitably suggested that they ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... respect—in egotism. He was not so learned as Voltaire, did not write so much, was not so highly honored or esteemed. But he had more genius, and exercised a greater influence on posterity. His influence was more subtle and more dangerous, for he led astray people of generous impulses and enthusiastic dispositions, with but little intelligence or experience. He abounded in extravagant admiration of unsophisticated nature, professed to love the simple and earnest, affected extraordinary friendship and sympathy, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... together one afternoon to a hill where they sat with a vista of green country spread before them, just beginning to kindle under the splendid torch of an incendiary autumn. Off beyond was the sea, gorgeously blue in its main scheme, yet varying into subtle transitions of mood from rich purple to a pale and tender green. The sky was cloudless but there was that smoky, misty, impalpable thing like a dust of dreams on the distance. The girl stood with ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... going to a different church. After enduring this for six months he generated a longing for a more convenient meeting-place, and finally allied himself with the Baptist Church of Eustis. Here his anchor might possibly have remained fast had it not been that subtle broodings over his wrongs, a calm faith in the righteousness of his own attitude, and disgust with those whom he saw calmly expatiating upon the doctrines and dogmas of religion in his own town finally caused him to suspect a universal misreading of the Bible. This doubt, together with his own ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... time in his life he had begun to sleep indifferently; when he had resolutely put from his mind thought of Alice and 'Arry, and seemed ready for repose, there crept out of less obvious lurking-places subtle temptations and suggestions which fevered his blood and only allured the more, the more they disquieted him. This Sunday night was the worst he had yet known. When he left the Walthams, he occupied himself for an hour or ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... political principles. It was a rule with Stapylton Toad never to commit himself. Once, indeed, he wrote an able pamphlet on the Corn Laws, which excited the dire indignation of the Political Economy Club. But Stapylton cared little for their subtle confutations and their loudly expressed contempt. He had obliged the country gentlemen of England, and ensured the return, at the next election, of Lord Mounteney's brother for the county. At this ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... propria persona, I should have been tempted to try Hiawatha's remarkable feat with his grandmother, and throw her up against the moon. But as I could not revenge myself upon her personally, I began to lay deep and subtle plans for inducing Charlie to leave her ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... the man he made use of as his preceptor in eloquence, though Isocrates then taught it; whether it was that the loss of his father incapacitated him to pay the sum of ten minae, which was that rhetorician's usual price, or whether he preferred the keen and subtle manner of Isaeus as more ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... of French to respond to a question couched in English, the suggestion of a subtle correction? From employe to employer? If not, why must Duchemin have thought so? If so, why did Monk, without betraying a sign of feeling ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... done away with altogether. There is, in this particular, no greater contrast than Haydn and Sebastian Bach. Haydn generalizes the rhythms in order to attain the most telling and universally comprehensible effect possible; Bach individualizes them in order to get the most subtle result possible. Haydn and his age were satisfied, in the main, with the four-fourths and two-fourths, three-fourths and six-eighths rhythm; he simplified all conceivable rhythmic forms in such a manner that it was possible to express ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... old or young? The most subtle observer would have hesitated to say on seeing this pallid and emaciated face, cut in two by an immense nose—a real eagle's beak—as thin as the edge ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... A subtle sense of power stole over her. Every part of her being seemed to expand In the congenial atmosphere. A brilliant future seemed opening before her enraptured gaze. The world should be the better for her life. God had endowed her with gifts. She would lay them at His feet. She would devote ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... appearance they were a romantic pair of travelling companions. Every one stared at them when they were together, for he was very tall and dark, more like an Italian or a Spaniard than an Englishman, and she was gracefully slender and fair, dressing with a subtle appreciation of herself and all her points. Aline West's and Basil Norman's photographs, taken together or apart, for newspapers and magazines, were extremely effective, and were considered by publishers to help the sale of their books. Norman might have sat for Titian's Portrait of a Gentleman: ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a subtle wryness in the smile. "Genius is the word, I suppose. Now that the contracts with the Navy have been signed, I can give you the straight story. But you're wrong in saying that the thing didn't exist three months ...
— With No Strings Attached • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA David Gordon)
... contemplation; the forehead broad, the nose long and formidable, the lips clean-shaven and at once dogged and sensitive, the cheeks lean, with a deeply running tide of red blood in them. His eyes, expressive now of the usual masculine impersonality and authority, might reveal more subtle emotions under favorable circumstances, for they were large, and of a clear, brown color; they seemed unexpectedly to hesitate and speculate; but Katharine only looked at him to wonder whether his face would not have come nearer the standard of her dead heroes ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... as the greatest reality. This change of philosophical position seems to me to be a matter of great interest. This change of the mind from the objective to the subjective does not carry with it in the Upani@sads any elaborate philosophical discussions, or subtle analysis of mind. It comes there as a matter of direct perception, and the conviction with which the truth has been grasped cannot fail to impress the readers. That out of the apparently meaningless speculations of the Brahma@nas this doctrine could have developed, might indeed appear ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... patience to be minute, enables him to throw a wonderful reality into his most unreal fancies. A monomania he paints with great power. He loves to dissect one of these cancers of the mind, and to trace all the subtle ramifications of its roots. In raising images of horror, also, he has strange success, conveying to us sometimes by a dusky hint some terrible doubt which is the secret of all horror. He leaves ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... on a passage in Skelton's 'Deism Revealed', [11] I have detected the subtle sophism that lurks in this argument, as applied by later divines in vindication of proof by testimony, in relation to the miracles of the Old and New Testament. As thus applied, it is a [Greek: metabasis eis allo genos], though so unobvious, that a very ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... fascinated small Robert Stonehouse—the line of her neck, the brown mole at the corner of her eye which people were always trying to rub off, the way her hair curled up from her temples in two unmistakable horns. He had teased her about them in his shy, clumsy way. A very subtle and sweet warmth emanated from her like a breath. It took him back to the day when he had huddled close to her, hiccoughing with grief and anger, and yet deeply, deliriously happy because she was sorry for him. It made him giddy ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... variety within the bonds of so great regularity lends a subtle charm to natural objects, that is wholly absent in man's perfected machine-work. Man aims at uniformity, two and two alike; nature aims at endless difference, every object or even every member of an object having its own character. Much of man's energy is expended in trying to overcome ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... proportion of soluble to insoluble matters; and thirdly, the aroma, which, indeed, is no inconsiderable element therein. This latter quality—the aroma, fragrance, or perfume of fruit—is due to the existence of delicate and exquisite ethers. These subtle ethers Are often accompanied by essential oils, which may render the aroma more penetrating and continued. Those fruits like the peach, greengage, and mulberry, which almost melt in the mouth, contain a very large amount of soluble substances. Some fruits, ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... immediate action, Bismarck stated to Govone that the question of Schleswig-Holstein was insufficient to justify a great war in the eyes of Europe, and that a better cause must be put forward, namely, the reform of the Federal system of Germany. Once more the subtle Italians believed that Bismarck's anxiety for a war with Austria was feigned, and that he sought their friendship only as a means of extorting from the Court of Vienna its consent to Prussia's annexation of the Danish Duchies. There was an apparent effort ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... others joined in the laugh, remembering the lengthy line of patients operated on in a single mid-week morning at St. Stephen's. And yet his steady hand shook a little, and a curious soft, subtle dulness of sensation was stealing over him. He had gone to bed sober, had risen after three hours of blessed, unexpected, helpful sleep, to battle with his desperate craving until morning. When the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... no idea to me, although his broad grin convinced me that in his own opinion it was a subtle witticism. At length, however, it burst upon Dolly, who went off into irrepressible ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... by his reasoning the sheep business into the romantic and heroic class. Here were allurements of which he had not dreamed, to be equaled only by the calling of the sea, and not by any other pursuit on land at all. A man who appreciated the subtle shadings of life could draw a great deal of enjoyment and self-pride out of the business of flockmaster. It was one of the most ancient pursuits of man. Abraham ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... "cryptic smile." In the case of aesthetic refinement, the secret discloses itself as at bottom delicacy, the delicacy which prevents intrusion on the personality of others; which abhors a prying curiosity; which finds subtle ways of conveying esteem and delicate modes of rendering service. But the secret of moral refinement is of a far higher order, transcending aesthetic refinement by as much as goodness is superior to mere charm. The secret in this case consists in the insight vouchsafed to the spiritually-minded ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... rendered 'dwelt' in these three passages, is a peculiar one. It is only found in the New Testament—in this Gospel and in the Book of Revelation. That fact constitutes one of the many subtle threads of connection between these two books, which at first sight seem so extremely unlike each other; and it is a morsel of evidence in favour of the common authorship of the Gospel and of the Apocalypse, which has often, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... been already aware of her success with Paddington, as the scene in the park an evening or two previously denoted, he would have been instantly apprised by her manner that something of vital import had occurred. There was an indefinable change, a subtle metamorphosis, which was conveyed even in her appearance. Her delicate, Madonna-like face had lost its wax-like pallor and was flushed with a faint, exquisite rose; the wooden, slightly vacant expression was gone; ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... pleasure. Ida Stirling was an unusually fortunate young woman, in so far, at least, as that she had only to mention any desire that it was in her father's power to gratify. He was a strenuous man, whose work was his life; subtle where that work was concerned when force, which he preferred, was not advisable, but crudely direct and simple as regards almost ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... or Denis of Thrace. Denis was a Greek of the first century B. C., who made or carried out the remarkable discovery that there was such a thing as a science of grammar, i. e. that men in their daily speech were unconsciously obeying an extraordinarily subtle and intricate body of laws, which were capable of being studied and reduced to order. Denis did not make the whole discovery himself; he was led to it by his master Aristarchus and others. And his book had been re-edited several times in the nineteen-hundred ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... his foreign policy.... Van Buren has been pronounced the cleverest political manager in American history, and no other man has held so many high political offices. He was small of stature, had a round, red face and quick, searching eyes. He was subtle, courteous ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... elevator to the clash and thunder on the eighth floor. And they felt more and more strange, double, as it were—the old Myra and the old Joe walking with the new Myra and the new Joe. Myra felt a queerness about her heart, a subtle sense of impending events; of great dramatic issues. Something that made her want ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... He felt just as he had felt when he talked to Margaret Ellison and when he had faced Roscoe Bent's father. These uniformed officials were as beings from another world to poor Tom, and the Secret Service man seemed a marvel of sagacity and subtle power. ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... Royal Northwest Mounted Police, and Keith, the outlaw, there was a striking physical and facial resemblance. Both had observed it, of course. It gave them a sort of confidence in each other. Between them it hovered in a subtle and unanalyzed presence that was constantly suggesting to Conniston a line of action that would have made him a traitor to his oath of duty. For nearly a month he had crushed down the whispered temptings of this thing between them. He represented the law. ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... from me. Their intelligence division also failed to pick up the fact that I was myself the product of the Twentieth Century and not the Twenty-fifth. Had they done so, it might have made a difference. I have no doubt that some of their most subtle mental assaults missed fire because of my own Twentieth Century "denseness." Their hypnotists inflicted many horrifying nightmares on me, and made me do and say many things that I would not have done in my right senses. But ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... heart, that eagerly Stored the subtle melody, Like the honey in the bee; Never spake, but ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... harsh, unpalatable, uncharitable as that religion was. He believed those whom he wished to get under his hoof, the Grantlys and Gwynnes of the church, to be the enemies of that religion. He believed himself to be the pillar of strength, destined to do great things; and with that subtle, selfish, ambiguous sophistry to which the minds of all men are so subject, he had taught himself to think that in doing much for the promotion of his own interests he was doing much also for the promotion of religion. Mr Slope had never been ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... and anxious night, pondering over this strange recital that seemed to me to corroborate Max's account. I had no doubt in my own mind as to the treachery that had alienated these two hearts. I knew too well the subtle power of the smooth false tongue that had done this mischief; but the motive for all this evil-doing baffled me. 'What is her reason for trying to separate them?' I asked myself, but always fruitlessly. 'Why does she ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... may in the main conform to all our accepted criteria of business honesty, but their influence is none the less insidious and deadly. It is felt in many private institutions of learning; it is clearly seen in the attitude of a large part of our daily press, and even in the church itself. This subtle influence which a wealthy class is able to exert by owning or controlling the agencies for molding public opinion is doing far more to poison the sources of our national life than all the more direct and obvious forms of corruption combined. The general public may not see all this or ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... the artist. "I have passed weeks trying to catch it. The thing is too subtle, and it is not a grand type, like what we are used to in the academies. But besides the riddle, I like Miss Dudley for herself. The way she takes my brutal criticisms of her painting makes my heart bleed. I mean ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... Nothing met her eyes but dingy weather, muddy streets, long rows of ordinary brick or stone houses. It might very well have been New York or Boston on a foggy day, yet to her eyes all things had a subtle difference which made them unlike ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... craftily drawn from the grave and main object of the meeting—the flight of the Persians—and a lighter and livelier curiosity had supplanted the eager and dark resentment which had hitherto animated the circle. Pausanias, with the subtle genius that belonged to him, hastened to seize advantage of this momentary diversion in his favour, and before the Chian could recover his consternation, both at the charge and the evident effect it had produced ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... remarked upon the subtle sympathy produced by marked passages. "The method is so easy and so unsuspect. You have only to put faint pencil marks against the tenderest passages in your favourite new poet, and lend the volume to Her, and She has only to leave here and there ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... you have spoken at all about the scheme in any detail—especially in so far as to its legality or otherwise. Let us forget, sir "—Mr. White thrust his hand into the bosom of his coat, an attitude he associated with the subtle rhetoric of statesmanship. "Let us forget all, save this, that you invite me to subscribe L40,000 to a syndicate for—ah—let us say model dwellings for the working classes, and that I am willing to subscribe, and in proof of my willingness ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... indeed, a great deal on the surface of religious matters; and on some questions I was overpowered and received a temporary bias from his superior knowledge; but as time went on, and my own intellect ripened, I distinctly felt that his arguments were too fine-drawn and subtle, often elaborately missing the moral points and the main points, to rest on some ecclesiastical fiction; and his conclusions were to me so marvellous and painful, that I constantly thought I had mistaken him. In short, he was my senior by a very few years: nor was there any elder ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... you, if your sister made the copy of Landor's verses for me as well as for you, thank her from me for another kindness, ... not the second nor the third? For my own part, be sure that if I did not fall on the right subtle interpretation about the letters, at least I did not 'think it vain' of you! vain: when, supposing you really to have been over-gratified by such letters, it could have proved only an excess of humility!—But ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... most alarming size and tumorous discoloration, the inflammation extending right up my arm, even to my shoulder. Then it was agreed on all sides that the blade of the Tommyhawk with which I had been stricken must have been anointed with some subtle and deadly Poison, of the which not only the Maroons but the common Household and Town Negroes have many, preparing them themselves, and obstinately refusing, whether by hope of Reward or fear of punishment, to reveal the secret ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... intention, a threat, a boast, an advertisement. It has no value except when there is some one to be frightened. But it is a very dangerous doctrine when it becomes the creed of a stupid people, for it flatters their self-sufficiency, and distracts their attention from the difficult, subtle, frail, and wavering conditions of human power. The tragic question for Germany to-day is what she can do, not whether it is right for her to do it. The buffaloes, it must be allowed, had a perfect right to dominate the prairie of America, till the hunters came. They moved in herds, they practised ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... comprehension of every creature. But Holy Scripture, nature, and all the creatures show us that He is. We shall believe the articles of faith without trying to penetrate them, for that is impossible while we are here: this is sobriety. The difficult and subtle teachings of the inspired writings we shall only explain in accordance with the life of Christ and His saints. Man will study nature and the Scriptures, and every creature; and will seek to learn from ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... Then there was that subtle change in Anne. He thought of it now, most unwillingly. He did not want to think of her. He was certain that he had put her out of his thoughts. Now he realised that she had merely lain dormant in his mind while it was filled with the intensities of the past few days. She had not been ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... methods of inflexion, derivation, and composition that give being to the most subtle kind of Sophistry; all the species and forms of Nouns, Verbs, and particles that make up the oeconomy of a Language, together withall diversity of Numbers, Genders, Cases, tenses, Modes, and Persons which have ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier
... and any change of focus and altered outlook in these people, that may serve to suggest discontinuity with their past, must be explained by the passage of ten years. Such a period had renewed all physically—a fact full of subtle connotations. It had sharpened the youthful and matured the adult mind; it had dimmed the senses sinking upon nature's night time and strengthened the dawning will and opening intellect. For as a ship furls her spread of sail on entering harbour, so age reduces the scope ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... death's door. Sainte-Croix was unwell, and could not even go out, though he did not know what was the matter. He had a furnace brought round to his house from Glazer's, and ill as he was, went on with the experiments. Sainte-Croix was then seeking to make a poison so subtle that the very effluvia might be fatal. He had heard of the poisoned napkin given to the young dauphin, elder brother of Charles VII, to wipe his hands on during a game of tennis, and knew that the contact had caused his death; and the still discussed tradition had informed ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... nobler lives. All of our plots are conceived with far more thought than you may suppose. Underlying many of our romances and tragedies are moral injunctions which are involuntarily absorbed by the observers, yet of so subtle a nature that they are not suspected. We cannot preach except by suggestion, for people go to our picture shows to be amused. If we hurled righteousness at them they would soon desert us, and we would be ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... so unusual, made them wakeful, and though tired, they sat long in the doorway, smoking, thinking. Small talk seemed to them profanation, and of that which was uppermost in each man's mind, none cared first to speak. A subtle understanding, called telepathy, was making of their several minds a ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... overtaking the unfortunate man who had evidently been hurled from the bluff into the stream; but no trace could be found. Below the sound of rapids was borne to his ear. The smooth water began to break and start as if suddenly impelled forward by some subtle influence that meant to tear the rocks from the bed and crush every obstacle in its course. With all his care in steering through that rapid, he was thrown against a rock with considerable force, but caught hold of it and stood up to determine the course of the channel. Seeing ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... impression of having acquired with difficulty the control of their inflexible material. But the intimate study of the noble language in which they wrote compels us to admit that it was fully equal to the clear exposition of the severest thought and the most subtle diplomatic reasoning. But its prime was already passing. Even men of the noblest family could not without long discipline attain the lofty standard of the best conversational requirements. Sextus Pompeius is said to have been sermone barbarus. [31] On this Niebuhr well remarks: "It ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... lives, posterity shall know One, though in Britain born, with courtiers bred, Who thought e'en gold might come a day too late; Nor on his subtle deathbed plann'd his scheme For future vacancies in ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... thunderbolt, bring about the appointed deluges. And dividing thyself into twelve parts and becoming as many suns, thou drinkest up the ocean once more with thy rays. Thou art called Indra, thou art Vishnu, thou art Brahma, thou art Prajapati. Thou art fire and thou art the subtle mind. And thou art lord and the eternal Brahma. Thou art Hansa, thou art Savitri, thou art Bhanu, Ansumalin, and Vrishakapi. Thou art Vivaswan, Mihira, Pusha, Mitra, and Dharma. Thou art thousand-rayed, thou art Aditya, and Tapana, and the lord of rays. Thou art Martanda, ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... whether to plaintiffs, or defendants, advocates or magistrates; so that there was not a single person who did not tremble to have to do with him. Besides this, sustained in all by the Court (of which he was the slave, and the very humble servant of those who were really in favour), a subtle courtier, a singularly crafty politician, he used all those talents solely to further his ambition, his desire of domination and his thirst of the reputation of a great man. He was without real honour, secretly of corrupt manners, with only outside probity, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... writhed and swelled, and two or three undulatory movements of his glistening body finished the work. Then he cautiously raised himself up, his tongue flaming from his mouth the while, curved over the nest, and with wavy subtle motions, explored the interior. I can conceive of nothing more overpoweringly terrible to an unsuspecting family of birds than the sudden appearance above their domicile of the head and neck of this arch-enemy. It is enough to petrify the ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... assertions overthrown, pursued like a fallow deer by the in exorable judge, tracked from hypothesis to hypothesis,—he makes a statement, he corrects it, retracts it, contradicts it, he exhausts all the tricks of dialectics, more subtle, more ingenious a thousand times than he who invented the seventy-two forms of the syllogism. So acts the proprietor when called upon to defend his right. At first he refuses to reply, he exclaims, he threatens, he defies; then, forced to ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... to stab her to the heart with a keen, subtle pain which she could neither understand nor clearly define, even ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... (HEINEMANN) is an unusual and very subtle analysis of a single character. The author, E.M. DELAFIELD, has made an almost uncannily penetrating study of the development of a poseuse. Zella posed instinctively, from the days when as a child ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... more subtle. Performing his accustomed work for Breede that day, he began to study his employer from the kingly, or Ram-tah, point of view. He conceived that Breede in the time of Ram-tah would have been a steward, a keeper of the royal granaries, a dependable accountant; a good enough man in ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... contains[26] a highly meritorious analysis of the Plautine characters, discussed largely as a reflection of the times and people, both of New Comedy and of Plautus, without imputing to our poet too serious motives of subtle portrayal. But he too ascribes to Plautus a latent moral purpose: "En faisant rire, il ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... shrank from it, and yet perhaps it would be so pleasant to him to know. No, on the whole, she did not think it would be pleasant. They had not talked of the meetings nor of religious matters at all; but for all that the subtle magnetism that there is about some people had told her that Charlie Flint would not sympathize in her ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... contemplative Oriental mind, with its tendency towards the supernatural and miraculous, with its mysticism and religion, and Greece with her subtle scrutinising and investigating spirit, which gave rise to the peculiar phase of thought prevalent in Alexandria during the first centuries of our era. It was tinctured with idealistic, mystic, and yet speculative and scientific ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... whom? Nathaniel Hawthorne never appealed in the highest degree to me. The fault, I am sure, is my own, but I always seemed to crave stronger fare than he gave me. It was too subtle, too elusive, for effect. Indeed, I have been more affected by some of the short work of his son Julian, though I can quite understand the high artistic claims which the senior writer has, and the delicate charm of his ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and wholesome criticism—without pedantry! Ideas are plentiful in this by turns incisive, brilliant, reflected, and spontaneous style, in which learning comes in to enhance and steady the flow of a lively and luxuriant imagination. To all the refinement and subtle divination common to Slavic genius, you ally the patient research and learned scruples which characterize the German explorer. You assume alternately the gait of the mole and of the eagle—and everything you do succeeds wonderfully, because ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... of a vanguard or a rear-guard, is to speak of troops which manoeuvre. The Russians considered a regiment of Cossacks who had been trained worth three regiments untrained. Every thing about these troops is despicable, except the Cossack himself, who is a man of fine person, powerful, adroit, subtle, a good horseman, and indefatigable; he is born on horseback, and bred among civil wars; he is in the field, what the Bedouin is in the desert, or the Barbet in the Alps; he never enters a house, never lies in a bed; and he always changes his bivouac at sunset, that he may not pass a night in a ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... sunshine falling upon them from out the bosom of a murky and storm-laden sky; and as she flitted fearlessly to and fro among them, they felt for the moment as though a part of their load of guilt had been taken from them; that in some subtle way her proximity had exercised a purifying and refining influence upon them, and that they were no longer the utterly vile, God-forsaken wretches they had been. Fierce, crime-scarred faces lighted up with unwonted smiles as she approached them; and hands that had ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... Father, open the heart of Thine erring child to see that it was the craft and subtlety of the devil that devised for him a temptation he could not resist,—none other but the devil could have been so subtle; and show him that this same devil, clothed as an angel of light, has feigned Thy voice and whispered in his ear, and that until he returns to the simple faith as it is in the gospel Thou canst not help him ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... that the air is poisoned at midsummer we may compare the popular belief that it is similarly infected at an eclipse. Thus among the Esquimaux on the Lower Yukon river in Alaska "it is believed that a subtle essence or unclean influence descends to the earth during an eclipse, and if any of it is caught in utensils of any kind it will produce sickness. As a result, immediately on the commencement of an eclipse, every woman turns bottom side up all her pots, wooden buckets, and dishes" (E.W. Nelson, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... certain states of ecstatic feeling a faculty is released which takes cognisance of things beyond the ken of our beclouded intellects, and although in the language of mind he did not know, it may be that from the region of pure spirit there had come to him a subtle perception, not to be defined, which made it more desirable to be there on that spot alone than anywhere else in the world ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... than any one could believe who reads your articles," said she, with a subtle smile.—"I have not such a sum as you need, but come to-morrow at eight; the bailiff will surely wait till nine, especially if you bring him away to ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... fierce appetite of the spirit which has created all the higher religions. Ireland agrees with Ecclesiastes. Perceiving that there is in matter no integral and permanent reality she cannot be content with material victories; her poets are subtle in what a French writer styles the innuendoes by which the soul makes its enormous claims. The formula of her aspiration has been admirably rendered by the late ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... was a woman as well. But he did note that if he could have learned only from Judith, he would never have known that he even had wrists or eyes until that day; and yet he was curiously unstirred by the subtle change in her. He was busied with ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... or other, she got him out day after day into the Grove, and, to make him believe in her candor and impartiality, would give him feeble reasons for thinking his wife loved him still; taking care to overpower these reasons with some little piece of strong good-sense and subtle observation. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... the corners of her mouth, and the wisps of gray hair which had blown about her face, indicated that she had passed the meridian of life. At first glance there was nothing striking about her appearance; but there was a subtle expression about the mouth, a twinkle about the large gray eyes behind the glasses she wore, that indicated a sense of humor which had probably been a God-send to her. She was strong and well, and carried with her an air of indomitable conviction that things worked themselves out all right in ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... watched him. He danced well, as if it were natural and joyous in him to dance. His grandfather was a French refugee who had married an English barmaid—if it had been a marriage. Gertrude Coppard watched the young miner as he danced, a certain subtle exultation like glamour in his movement, and his face the flower of his body, ruddy, with tumbled black hair, and laughing alike whatever partner he bowed above. She thought him rather wonderful, never having met anyone like him. Her father was to her the type of all men. And George Coppard, proud ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... fabulists was the French poet Jean de la Fontaine (1621-1695). A famous critic has said that his fables delight the child with their freshness and vividness, the student of literature with their consummate art, and the experienced man with their subtle reflections on life and character. He drew most of his stories from AEsop and other sources. While he dressed the old fables in the brilliant style of his own day, he still succeeded in being essentially ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... house was well fortified, but when they arrived at the back premises Major Malcolm pointed out more than one place through which a subtle enemy might easily find an entrance ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... the fire to die now, but the coals would glow for a long time, and Robert looked at them sleepily. His feeling of coziness and content increased, and presently he slept. The hunter soon followed him, but Tayoga slept not at all. His subtle Indian instinct warned him not to do so. For the Onondaga the forest was not free now from danger, and he would watch while ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... the kindness to answer the following question: A judge being irremovable, and consequently debarred from being, according to your subtle distinction, a functionary, and receiving a salary which is not the equivalent of the work he does, is he to be included in ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... Carlo Zeno, 8th May, 1418; the visible commencement from that of another of her noblest and wisest children, the Doge Tomaso Mocenigo, who expired five years later. The reign of Foscari followed, gloomy with pestilence and war; a war in which large acquisitions of territory were made by subtle or fortunate policy in Lombardy, and disgrace, significant as irreparable, sustained in the battles on the Po at Cremona, and in the marshes of Caravaggio. In 1454, Venice, the first of the states of Christendom, humiliated herself to the Turk; in the same year was established the Inquisition of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... her wet gown, seated familiarly, at her ease, before his fire, in his kitchen, with that colour in her cheeks, that brightness in her eyes, and her hair in that disarray—it was unspeakable; his heart closed in a kind of delicious spasm. And the fragrance, subtle, secret, evasive, that hovered in the air near her, did not ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... know exactly how we came to do a thing, and appreciate keenly how good it was of us to do it; and think how very much obliged the other person ought to be to us for doing it, we may be pretty sure that it was not love, but some more or less subtle form of selfishness that prompted it. Love and selfishness may do precisely the same things. Under the influence of either love or selfishness I may "bestow all my goods to feed the poor and give my body to be burned," but love alone profiteth; while all the ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... highly in the great subtlety of his malice, that he should overcome us with his sophistical reasons. Therefore a soul should never make questions, nor answer to the questions of the fiend, but rather turn her to devout prayer, and commend her to our Lord that she consent not to his subtle demands; for by virtue of devout prayer, and steadfast faith, we may overcome all the ...
— The Cell of Self-Knowledge - Seven Early English Mystical Treaties • Various
... trees of it. We learn the poisons by experiment, and we let others learn. This is Love the Fiction. But some day when we awake we shall know what we now dream, and Love will be always the most precious flower that grows in the garden of the soul. It has the subtle fragrance of the heaven that is our own if we walk bravely in the world, desiring truth. Under its influence we discover ourselves. We build ships for new voyages, and burst into unknown waters with our Viking ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... there hope to save Even this ethereal essence from the grave? What ever 'scaped Oblivion's subtle wrong Save a few clarion names, or golden threads of song 275 Before my musing eye The mighty ones of old sweep by, Disvoiced now and insubstantial things, As noisy once as we; poor ghosts of kings, ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... these West End regions appears to be entirely under French legislation, conducted by Parisian artists, skilled in all subtle and metaphysical combinations of ethereal possibilities, quite inscrutable to the eye of sense. Her grace's chef, I have heard it said elsewhere, bears the reputation of being the first artist of his class in England. The ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... continent it is difficult to ascertain; There is reason to believe, that their dominion stretches from west to east, in a narrow line or belt, from the mouth of the Senegal (on the northern side of that river) to the confines of Abyssinia. They are a subtle and treacherous race of people; and take every opportunity of cheating and plundering the credulous and unsuspecting Negroes. But their manners and general habits of life will be best explained, as incidents occur, in the course of ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... having it in his possession, is cautiously shunned by his neighbours. Those especially who are on doubtful terms with him, suspect their servants lest they should be suborned to mix kabara-tel in the curry. So subtle is the virus supposed to be, that one method of administering it, is to introduce it within the midrib of a leaf of betel, and close the orifice with chunam; and, as it is an habitual act of courtesy for one Singhalese ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... one company, I think he would have produced the greatest organization of comedians that Europe or America ever saw. I don't suppose there is a comedy scene that he couldn't rehearse and play better than any of the actors who were engaged to play the parts. The subtle touches that he put into 'Lord and Lady Algy' were extraordinary. The same with 'The Counsellor's Wife,' with 'Bohemia,' and again with a play of H. V. Esmond's called 'Imprudence,' which we did. He seemed to love this play, and I never saw a piece grow so in all my life as it did under ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... other hand, her strong common sense urged her to decide nothing until Windebank came back. Windebank she was sure of, whereas she was not so confident of Perigal; but she was forced to admit that the elusive and more subtle personality of the latter appealed more to her imagination than the other's stability. Presently, she left her lodgings and walked slowly towards the canal, which was in a contrary direction to that in which lay the Avon. The calm of the still water inclined her to sadness. She idled along ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... two charming women, evidently as clever as they were beautiful. Suddenly remembered that we "lose the subtle and fine flavours of our best dishes, because we consider ourselves obliged to converse with somebody," and after that did not speak a word. Charming women stared, and then each turned towards me a beautiful shoulder, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... through the agency of a secret trouble, making themselves felt on a character that had heretofore breathed only an atmosphere of joy. The effect of this hard lesson, upon Donatello's intellect and disposition, was very striking. It was perceptible that he had already had glimpses of strange and subtle matters in those dark caverns, into which all men must descend, if they would know anything beneath the surface and illusive pleasures of existence. And when they emerge, though dazzled and blinded by the first glare of daylight, they take truer and ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Burke had never seen Lacordaire; but the Dean of the Catholic University, who had been listening to Lacordaire for years, was greatly struck by Father Burke's resemblance, as a preacher, to his great brother Dominican in France. The likenesses between preachers, as between faces, are sometimes subtle things! Bishop Moriarty, returning from Rome, paused in Paris, where he heard yet another Dominican orator, Pere Monsabre, preaching at Notre Dame. When next he saw Father Tom, he said to him—'Do you know Monsabre reminded me very much of you?' 'Now,' said Father Tom—telling the story to ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... street, more than a block away, coming toward me, whose gait arrested my attention as something I had known long before. Who could it be? I thought, and began to ransack my memory for a clew. I had seen that gait before. As the man came opposite me I saw he was Jay Gould. That walk in some subtle way differed from the walk of any other man I had known. It is a curious psychological fact that the two men outside my own family of whom I have oftenest dreamed in my sleep are Emerson and Jay Gould; one to whom I owe so much, the other to whom I owe nothing; one whose name ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... friendly sympathy was in his possession. Ought not a lucky sixpence to have a hole bored in it? He could wear it in secret, even if she might not care to see it hanging at his watch-chain? and who could tell what subtle influence it might not bring to bear on his fortunes, wholly apart from the stalking of stags? He grew quite cheerful; he forgot his nervousness; he was talking gayly to the somewhat taciturn Roderick, who, nevertheless, ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... their programmes, either in their own work or by the employment of a "Fire Artist." Although seldom presenting it in his recent performances, Ching Ling Foo is a fire-eater of the highest type, refining the effect with the same subtle artistry that marks all the ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... affinity find a foothold between natures which present an obvious, a violent contrast to each other? Why do the obvious and the subtle forget their life-long feud at intervals and suddenly appear for a moment ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... slight laugh, stooped to pick up the fallen gittern. "She kept knighthood and me apart for a year, Henry. 'Tis a powerful dame, a most subtle and womanish foe, who knoweth not or esteemeth not the rules of chivalry. Having yielded to plain Truth, she yet, as to-day, raiseth unawares an arm to strike." He hung the gittern upon its peg, then went across to the Admiral and put both hands upon his shoulders. The smile was yet ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... whatever throughout the whole gamut of the Native's conscious life and soul to differentiate him from other human beings in other parts of the world. In his sense of sorrow and of humour, in his moral intuitions, in his percipience of proportion and in all the subtle elements that go to make up the mental constitution of modern man, I see no difference in him from the European variety which to-day stands at the highest point of human achievement, but I freely confess that the African Native has so far shown a lack of that will to ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... the sparkling configuration of the most abhorred of all fish. I could have sworn that hours elapsed before they lowered a boat from the ship, that seemed to grow fainter and fainter every time I looked at her, so swallowing is the character of ocean darkness, and so subtle apparently, so fleet in fact, the settling away of a fabric under canvas from an object stationary on the water. I could distinctly hear the rattle of the oars in the rowlocks, and the splash of the dipped blades, but could not discern the ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... observe the confusion or identification of the individual and the State, of ethics and politics, which pervades early Greek speculation, and even in modern times retains a certain degree of influence. The subtle difference between the collective and individual action of mankind seems to have escaped early thinkers, and we too are sometimes in danger of forgetting the conditions of united human action, whenever we either elevate politics into ...
— The Republic • Plato
... calmly reassured me. She told me in her supremely magical way that all was well with her. She taught me once more a lesson I had not quite forgotten, but that I was glad to learn again—the lesson that Egypt owes her most subtle, most inner beauty to Kheper, although she owes her marvels to men; that when he created the sun which shines upon her, he gave her the lustre of her life, and that those who come to her must be sun-worshippers if they would truly and intimately understand the treasure ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... thought that she probably would have," said he, laughing, as he struck a match. Then he leant back, smoking, with that slow, subtle smile about nothing in particular that had a peculiar, hypnotic ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... religion of our holy Church they are ower sibb thegither. But I expect nothing but that both will become heretics as well as disobedient reprobates;'that was her addition to that argument. And then, as the fiend is ever ower busy wi' brains like mine, that are subtle beyond their use and station, I was unhappily permitted to addBut they might be brought to think themselves sae sibb as no Christian law will ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... pregnant with hope for a new impetus to civilization, for others with a misfortune only to be compared to that which happened in Greece when Ino boiled the seed corn of a whole kingdom, and thus not only lost the crop of that year, but, by the subtle interplay of the laws by which evolution proceeds, set back humanity for a period not to be reckoned in years. Mrs. H. S. Mendenhall of Georgetown wrote to Dr. Avery on ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... necessary to supply the matter or to give the form to a rule of law. Much learning has been employed on the doctrine of indications and presumptions in their books,—far more than is to be found in our law. Very subtle disquisitions were made on all matters of jurisprudence in the times of the classical Civil Law, by the followers of the Stoic school.[42] In the modern school of the same law, the same course was taken ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Alexandria, where he was informed of his murder, he presently found himself also engaged, under all the disadvantages of time and place, in a very dangerous war, with king Ptolemy, who, he saw, had treacherous designs upon his life. It was winter, and he, within the walls of a well-provided and subtle enemy, was destitute of every thing, and wholly unprepared (24) for such a conflict. He succeeded, however, in his enterprise, and put the kingdom of Egypt into the hands of Cleopatra and her younger ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... was the Love-Song, The most subtle of all medicines, The most potent spell of magic, Dangerous more than war or hunting! Thus the Love-Song ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... drowsy guide, bent the rein to his pony's neck and moved off toward the north. Still sat Korak, The Killer, alone among the trees. Now his hands hung idly at his sides. His weapons and what he had intended were forgotten for the moment. Korak was thinking. He had noted that subtle change in Meriem. When last he had seen her she had been his little, half-naked Mangani—wild, savage, and uncouth. She had not seemed uncouth to him then; but now, in the change that had come over her, he knew that such she had been; yet no more uncouth than ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... just a raw young man as regards women. He might flatter himself that he knew her sex, and that he could maintain a pose of writing her into his notebooks, but she knew. She had seen stunned and helpless youth as she brought into play those subtle arts which had wrenched from his reluctant and fearful soul the kiss which he thought he had asked for, and the phrase of the river goddess, which he thought he had invented. She laughed, for she had realized, as she acted, that he would put into words ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... our tree is there!— Ah, vain! These English fields, this upland dim, These brambles pale with mist engarlanded, That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him; To a boon southern country he is fled, And now in happier air, Wandering with the great Mother's train divine (And purer or more subtle soul than thee, I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see) Within a folding of ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... all thought and action in England—a process which I am sure was strengthened by the remarkable growth of Colonial sentiment throughout the country at this time. The tide of emigration seemed to have been reversed by some subtle process of nature: the strong ebb of previous years had become a flow of immigration. Everywhere one met Canadians, Australians, South Africans, and an ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... had said, there were no rules; that is, the girls were never told that they must not do this, or that they must do the other thing. A spirit of courtesy dominated everything, and a subtle influence pervaded the entire school, bringing about desired results without words. The girls understood that all possible liberty would be granted them, and that their outgoings and incomings would be exactly such as would be allowed ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... strings is hid a music that no hand hath ere let fall, In your soul is sealed a pleasure that you have not known at all; Pleasure subtle as your spirit, strange and slender as your frame, Fiercer than the pain that folds you, ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... management on the part of the government, by dividing its enemies and counterworking their plans; and of all those arts Henry was a past master. But such expedients cannot prevail in the end; in 1553 the Duke of Northumberland had a subtle intellect and all the machinery of Tudor government at his disposal; Queen Mary had not a man, nor a shilling. Yet Mary, by popular favour, prevailed without shedding a drop of blood. Henry himself was often compelled to yield to his people. Abject self-abasement ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... hungry hounds of subtle ken, And thundering steeds, and hard-eyed men, Are fast on Pussy's trail ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... unnoticed by any one in the audience, but the professional mind-reader has heightened his sensibility so much that none of these involuntary signs escapes him. Yet from the standpoint of science his seeing these subtle signs is on principle no different from our ordinary seeing when a man points ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... from floor to ceiling with great mirrors that reflect lovely women and distinguished men. Then in the theater where the rich carpet deadens every footfall and you feel rather than hear the murmur of many voices speaking softly—the subtle rustle of a crowded place—the lights—the music—oh, girls, it was wonderful, wonderful! I ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... important space there were advertisements of the programme, the substance of which I have already given. But hardly, if at all less noticeable, were two others which rose up irrepressible upon every prominent space, searching all places with a subtle penetrative power against which precautions were powerless. These advertisements were not in Italian but in English, nevertheless they were neither of them English—but both, I believe, American. The one was that of the Richmond Gem cigarette, with the large ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... his breath lasted nine nights and nine days under water, and he could exist nine nights and nine days without sleep. A wound from Kay's sword no physician could heal. Very subtle was Kay. When it pleased him he could render himself as tall as the highest tree in the forest. And he had another peculiarity—so great was the heat of his nature, that, when it rained hardest, whatever he carried remained dry for a handbreadth above and a handbreadth below ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... to such phaenomena, at once rare and conspicuous, as those exhibited by the leaflets of the sensitive plants, or the stamens of the barberry, but to much more widely spread, and at the same time, more subtle and hidden, manifestations of vegetable contractility. You are doubtless aware that the common nettle owes its stinging property to the innumerable stiff and needle-like, though exquisitely delicate, hairs which cover its ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... advancing achievements. She has studied, and read, and thought; she has travelled, and "sipped the foam of many lives;" and a polished and many-sided culture has added its charm to a woman singularly charming by nature and possessed of the subtle gift of fascination. When very young she studied music and modern languages abroad in Florence, and in London. To music she especially devoted herself studying under Garcia and under William Shakespeare, the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... which he awakens owes nothing to rhythmical language nor to subtle interpretations of sensuous emotion; it proceeds from a perception of eternal truth, the truth that has love, faith, courage, and self-sacrifice for the cornerstones of ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... seen, and not to be described at all. At such times the mere physical beauty of other women went out in her immediate neighbourhood, and was no more thought of. It was not until she was quite mature, however, that her manner permanently acquired that subtle indefinable quality called charm, which is the outcome of a large tolerant nature and kindness of heart. It was as if she did not come into full possession of her true self until she had experienced numberless other phases of being common to the race. Hence the apparently ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... set purpose? Had he observed anything—any little subtle thing—which had told him how the land lay? Was he conceivably speaking as the husbands friend? Was his speech accidental or designed? Whatever it might be, and it was certainly enough to discomfit the listener greatly, it was not enough to shake his ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... evident restraint, almost severity, to be felt in studying the exquisite proportions of its parts. It does not exhibit the massive force and strength of Durham; but the rigid power in the square piers of the arcades is stern compared with the more subtle variations of light and shade produced by the curved surfaces of the circular piers either at Ely ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... view things as they really are, we must bear in mind that, true as it is, that only a supernatural grace can raise man towards the perfection of his nature, yet it is possible,—without the cultivation of its spiritual part, which contemplates objects subtle, distant, delicate of apprehension, and slow of operation, nay, even with an actual contempt of faith and devotion, in comparison of objects tangible and present,—possible it is, I say, to combine in some sort the other faculties ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... without ornaments, and with hair and beard uncombed and sprinkled lightly with ashes. Marcia stared in wonder. Surely this could not be the Carthaginian method of announcing judgment or execution! She caught a flash of subtle lightning from the eyes of Iddilcar, though these had not seemed to neglect for a moment their close scrutiny of the pavement. Then Hannibal stood before her, bowing low and ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... marble remained on it. His eyes had grown larger and more pensive. His body had retained its former powerful outlines, as if created for armor; but above the body of a legionary was seen the head of a Grecian god, or at least of a refined patrician, at once subtle and splendid. Petronius, in saying that none of the ladies of Caesar's court would be able or willing to resist Vinicius, spoke like a man of experience. All gazed at him now, not excepting Poppaea, or the vestal virgin Rubria, whom Caesar wished to ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... is this charm made, but of numberless subtle sensations and ideas interwoven and inter-blended: the sweet sharp scents of grove and sea; the blood-brightening, vivifying touch of the free wind; the dumb appeal of ancient mystic mossy things; vague reverence ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... and slovenliness. Nothing, not even the face, or the thin and meagre hands he extended to his servants, was neat and cleanly; nothing about him shone but his eyes, those gray, piercing eyes with their fiery side-glances and their now kind and now sly and subtle expression. This ragged and untidy old man might have been taken for a beggar, had not his dirty fingers and his faded neck-tie, whose original color was hardly discoverable, flashed with brilliants ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... recorded act of worship occasions the first murder. Is not that only too correct a forecast of the oceans of blood which have been shed in the name of religion, and a striking proof of the subtle power of sin to corrupt even the best, and out of it to make the worst? What a lesson against the bitter hatred which has too often sprung up on so-called religious grounds! No malice is so venomous, no hate so fierce, no cruelty so fiendish, as those which are fed and fanned by religion. Here ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... the brightly-lighted "diwankhana," like some delicate flower cradled on a crystal lake. We had seen her once before at the house of an Indian friend, who had hospitably invited a company to witness her songs and dances; we had heard her chant the subtle melodies of Hindustan and even old English roundelays for the special delectation of the English guests; we had remarked her delicate hands, the great dark eyes, the dainty profile, the little ivory feet, and above all the gentle voice and courteous ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... is the main principle of all Hindu metaphysics, the foundation of all their philosophy, and inwrought with the intellectual texture of their inspired books. It is upheld by the venerable authority of ages, by an intense general conviction of it, and by multitudes of subtle conceits and apparent arguments. It was also impressed upon the initiates in the old Mysteries, by being there dramatically shadowed forth through masks, and quaint symbolic ceremonies enacted at the time ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... tears in her eyes, and in the eyes of the boy as they spoke about the one who was gone, and the kind dusk hid the sight so that neither knew, but each felt a subtle sympathy with the other, and before Hanford started upon his desolate way home under the burden of his first sorrow he took Mary Ann's slim bony hand in his and said quite stiffly: "Well, good night, Miss Mary Ann. I'm glad you told me," and Mary Ann responded, ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... one knows, are sensitive to colours, long before they show the faintest sensitiveness for shapes. And the timbre of a perfect voice in a single long note or shake used to bring the house down in the days of our grandparents, just as the subtle orchestral blendings of Wagner entrance hearers incapable of distinguishing the notes of a chord and sometimes even incapable of following ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... guileful speech and subtle flattery did Thorir Klakka seek to entice Olaf over to Norway, to the end that Earl Hakon might secretly waylay him and bring him to his death, and so clear his own path of a rival whom he feared. And Olaf, listening, received it all as the very truth, nor doubted for an instant that the people ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
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