"Subtile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of indighting, is in a subtile, pressed, and fyled oracion, meete for causes that be a lytel sharper then are in the comon vse of speakynge. For it is a kynde of oracion that is lette downe euen to the mooste vsed custume of pure and clere speakyng. It ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry
... to entreate hym for the cite, he sware a great othe, that he wolde nat do that that he came to desyre hym fore. Than Anaximenes sayde: sir, I desyre your grace, that this same cite Lampsac may be vtterly distroyed. Through which sage and subtile sayeng the noble auncient citie was ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... Lover and his Lass" is especially taking. His three songs, "When You Become a Nun, Dear," "The Road to Kew," and "Ho, Pretty Page!" written by modern poets in a half-archaic way, display a most delicious fund of subtile and ironic musical humor. "The Hawthorn Wins the Damask Rose" shows how really fine a well conducted English ballad can be. Among his sadder songs, the "Irish Folksong," "I'm Wearing Awa'," and the weird "In a Bower" are heavy with deepest pathos, while "Sweet Is True Love" is as wildly intense ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... in a new language. Here words have a uniform sense. But the nice shades and turns of thought which appear in the happiest and most delicate jets of wit and humor, and which form the great staples of pleasant social intercourse, depend upon those subtile discriminations in the sense of words which are rarely acquired by foreigners. One may have all the words of a language and not be able to understand them in sallies of wit. How nicely adjusted then must be the scales which weigh ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... I had is lost Since I saw you; for wit is like a rest Held up at tennis, which men do the best With the best gamesters. What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtile flame, As if that every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And had resolv'd to live a fool the rest Of ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... interesting lecture on physiognomy, "which politicians, as a rule, do not consider. Of course any man of intelligence who plays long at the game of politics comes to possess a certain kind of shrewdness in judging human nature; but very few of them are able to recognize and define the subtile constitutional influences which predetermine the success or failure of the aspirant for political honors. Such influences, however, exist, and other things being equal, or approximately so, it is entirely possible to select, out of a number of candidates, the ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... camp-fires at twilight, sad with a longing forlorn, Feeling my womb o'er-pregnant with the seed of cities unborn. Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway, And I wait for the men who will win me—and I will not be won in a day; And I will not be won by weaklings, subtile, suave, and mild, But by men with the hearts of vikings, and the simple faith of a child; Desperate, strong, and resistless, unthrottled by fear or defeat, Them will I gild with my treasure, them will ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... studied electrical phenomena, and in 1758 advertised that he could effect marvelous cures, especially of sore throat, by means of electricity. Before publishing the works mentioned by De Morgan he had issued others of similar character, including The Subtile Medium proved (London, 1756) and ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... lower impulses, not inhibited, as they would be in normal human beings, often express themselves in most odious ways. You know also how any higher emotional tendency will quench a lower one. Fear arrests appetite, maternal love annuls fear, respect checks sensuality, and the like; and in the more subtile manifestations of the moral life, whenever an ideal stirring is suddenly quickened into intensity, it is as if the whole scale of values of our motives changed its equilibrium. The force of old temptations vanishes, and what a moment ago was impossible is now not only possible, ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... used, and it was of course as repeatedly washed; yet every time, for a space of one year and seven months, when first unfolded, I distinctly perceived the odour. This appears an astonishing instance of the permanence of some matter, which nevertheless in its nature must be most subtile and volatile. Frequently, when passing at the distance of half a mile to leeward of a herd, I have perceived the whole air tainted with the effluvium. I believe the smell from the buck is most powerful at the period when its horns are perfect, or free from the hairy skin. When in this ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... concurrence of both Miss Mayhew and his wife, he felt as if they were throwing wholly upon him a responsibility whose fearfulness he did not then realize. Even in his wife's "Send it!" he was aware of a subtile reservation on her part. ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... the sky The foliaged head in cloud-like majesty, The shadow-casting race of trees survive: Thus in the train of spring arrive Sweet flowers: what living eye hath viewed Their myriads? endlessly renewed Wherever strikes the sun's glad ray, Where'er the subtile waters stray, Wherever sportive zephyrs bend Their course, or ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... first rise are thick and great; and therefore when near disturb old men, whose eyes are stiff and not easily penetrated; but when they are separated and diffused into the air, the thick obstructing parts are easily removed, and the subtile remainders coming to the eye gently and easily slide into the pores; and so the disturbance being less, the sight is more vigorous and clear. Thus a rose smells most fragrant at a distance; but if you bring ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... mind was in a strange tumult that night; the subtile thrill, which is neither pain nor pride, and yet seems both, with which a young woman hears for the first time that she is loved, stung through all her consciousness of grief at having wounded her old friend. Tears came into her eyes once, and yet she did not know why; ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... really an anode, just as the other is not actually a kathode. As science advances we are compelled, for a time, to use old terms in a new sense until a fresh nomenclature can be invented. But we are now dealing with a form of electric action more subtile in its effects than any at present described in the text-books and the transactions of learned societies. I have not yet even attempted to work out the theory of it. I am ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... advantage of health, put to every quart of ale, or other liquor, 10 or 12 drops of the true spirit of salt, and let them be well mixed together, which they will soon do it by the subtile spirits penetrating into all parts, ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry
... experience, and the best opportunities for observation with regard to this malady, have stated, that probably from one-half to three-fourths of the cases of insanity, in many places, are occasioned in the same way. Ardent spirit is a poison so diffusive and subtile that it is found, by actual experiment, ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... the bodies of several dead rats and mice; she was wondering what had caused their death, when she recognized the famous hash that the cat had refused to eat, and which had been left there by mistake. Two mice were dead in the plate itself, so powerful and subtile was ...
— The Story of a Cat • mile Gigault de La Bdollire
... failed in describing the practical parts: for it is not enough to be able to perceive what is best without it is what can be put in practice. It should also be simple, and easy for all to attain to. But some seek only the most subtile forms of government. Others again, choosing [1289a] rather to treat of what is common, censure those under which they live, and extol the excellence of a particular state, as the Lacedaemonian, or some other: but every legislator ought to establish such ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... remaining indoors. If a sedate or fastidious caller is announced, a beautiful tea-gown, which is at hand, is slipped into, and the young lady is appropriately clad to suit even conventional requirements. The bicycle and lawn tennis costumes now becoming so popular also exercise a subtile but marked influence in favor of rational dress reform, not only giving young ladies the wonderful comfort and health-giving freedom which for ages have been denied her sex, but also by accustoming them to these ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... which reigned in the Eleusinian mysteries, the Christians had flattered themselves that they should render their sacred institutions more respectable in the eyes of the Pagan world. But the event, as it often happens to the operations of subtile policy, deceived their wishes and their expectations. It was concluded, that they only concealed what they would have blushed to disclose. Their mistaken prudence afforded an opportunity for malice to invent, and for suspicious ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... another region of the mind,—declares that the conceivable is not to be revered, and says, before Emerson, that existence is the Fall of Man. But the failure of Coleridge teaches that no single perceptions, however subtile or deep, will solve the broad problem of Nature. These separate thoughts the great hold in new emphasis and relation. Of such sparks they make a flame, of such timbers a house or ship. The parts may be old, the whole is not; and Goethe falls ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... easy to perceive that the old colonel worshipped her and she him. I think the relation between an elderly father and a daughter just blooming into womanhood the most beautiful possible. There is in it a subtile sentiment that cannot exist in the case of mother and daughter, or that of son and mother. But this ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of the great theory of proportion, applicable to commensurable and incommensurable magnitudes alike, which is expounded in Euclid's Book V. Well might Barrow say of this theory that 'there is nothing in the whole body of the elements of a more subtile invention, nothing more solidly established'. The keystone of the structure is the definition of equal ratios (Eucl. V, Def. 5); and twenty-three centuries have not abated a jot from its value, as is plain from the facts ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... power, but often also the secular. If she had wished it, she could have crushed out every form of inquiry, and firmly established herself as the one and only source of all truth. But she did not do it. Never since the world began were such daring inquiries set on foot, such subtile propositions offered, such a vast and varied display of the human intellect in all the departments of theology. The office she claimed was that of arbiter; and surely nothing was more reasonable. A man would work out some original view ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... away the relics of the broken and disordered strata, before those that are now superincumbent had been begun to be deposited. But we cannot suppose two such contrary operations in the same place, as that of carrying away the relics of those broken strata, and the depositing of sand and subtile earth in such a regular order. We are therefore led to conclude, that the bottom of the sea, or surface of those erected strata, had been in very different situations at those two periods, when the relics ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... family of Bridgenorth? Was the real character of Ganlesse known to the master of the house, inflexible as he was in all which concerned morals as well as religion? If not, might not the machinations of a brain so subtile affect the peace and ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... replies of Berthier and Daru. The emperor mildly listened to their observations, but oftener interrupted them by subtile arguments; begging the question, according to his wishes, or shifting it, when it became too pressing. But however disagreeable might be the truths which he was obliged to hear, he listened to them patiently, and replied with equal patience. Throughout this discussion, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... in the matter is found within the domain of the chemist. Chemistry, with its subtile powers of analysis, with its many-sided possibilities of discovering the composition of things, and with its ability to analyze for us even the light of the far distant stars, only complicates the difficulties of the biologist. For, while of old it was assumed that a particular element, nitrogen, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... prevent a fatal breach in the party. Then, to the astonishment of the convention, he named Millard Fillmore for Vice President, and asked a unanimous response to his nomination. This speech, though not pitched in a very exalted key, was so subtile and telling, that it threw the convention into applause. Collier recalled Fillmore's fidelity to his party; his satisfactory record in Congress, especially during the passage of the tariff act of 1842; his splendid, if unsuccessful canvass, as a candidate for governor ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... there is an easy answer, and Mr. Spencer makes it effectively. In some well-written pages at the end of the first volume of his Psychology he shows us that a 'matter' so infinitely subtile, and performing motions as inconceivably quick and fine as those which modern science postulates in her explanations, has no trace of grossness left. He shows that the conception of spirit, as we mortals hitherto have framed it, is itself too gross to cover the exquisite ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... character, notwithstanding these inconsiderable differences, appears to me, in practice, pretty durable and untransmutable. And I find not in this more than in other subjects, that the natural sentiments arising from the general appearances of things are easily destroyed by subtile reflections concerning the minute origin of these appearances. Does not the lively, cheerful colour of a countenance inspire me with complacency and pleasure; even though I learn from philosophy that all ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... More was a thoroughgoing dualist. Mind and matter were the two separate entities. Now, the problem that arose at once was this: How can the souls of witches leave their bodies? "I conceive," he says, "the Divell gets into their body and by his subtile substance more operative and searching than any fire or putrifying liquor, melts the yielding Campages of the body to such a consistency ... and makes it plyable to his imagination: and then it is as easy ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... we could see Capri, visit the Blue Grotto, and return that day; but as we drew near the island, painful doubts began to trouble him, and he feared the sea would be too rough for the Grotto part of the affair. "But there will be an old man," he said, with a subtile air of prophecy, "waiting for us on the beach. This old man is one of the Government guides to the Grotto, and he will say whether it is to be ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... her in the corner there, As, restless, bold, and unafraid, She slips and floats along the air Till all her subtile house ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... to note the subtile change the afternoon had wrought in his personal appearance, yet at the time I did not greatly marvel at it. The stains of battle and exposure, that had so decidedly disfigured him, had disappeared before the magic of new raiment, which had about it the color and ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... intercourse with women; that they were attached for a time to certain spots and certain edifices which they infested. They believed that souls separated from the gross and terrestrial body, preserved after death one more subtile and elastic, having the form of that they had quitted; that these bodies were luminous, and like the stars; that they retained an inclination for those things which they had loved during their life on earth, and that often they ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... Esseintes felt himself intrigued toward this ill-balanced but subtile mind. No fusion had been effected between the skilful psychologist and the pious pedant, and the very jolts and incoherencies constituted the ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... that have crept into art, with the trite, half-truths and circumlocutions, and got back to the physical basis of things. He has abjured tea-table psychology, and the analysis of figures in the carpet and subtile dissections of intellectual impotencies, and the diverting game of words and the whole literature of the nerves. He is big and warm and sometimes brutal, and the strength of the soil comes up to him with very little loss in the ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... against property in its new and simplified form; bringing the various species of crime into one view; assigning to each its plain description, with its punishment; and removing distinctions which had frequently given rise to subtile and embarrassing doubts. It abolished the distinction between grand and petty larceny; defined the true nature of burglary; and removed many subtilties regarding possession, and the conversion of possession in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... "garrulous," "frivolous," "full of curiosity," and "restlessly fond of novelties," we must insist that a love of study, of patient thought and profound research, was congenial to their natural temperament, and that an inquisitive and analytic spirit, as well as a taste for subtile and abstract speculation, were inherent in the national character. The affluence, and fullness, and flexibility, and sculpture-like finish of the language of the Attics, which leaves far behind not only the languages of antiquity, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... People cannot be expected to start on a crusade against ills of which they have but a vague and cloudy conception. The edge does not cut them, and so they think it is not much of a sword after all. But women have, or ought to have, a more subtile and intimate acquaintance with realities. They ought to know what is fact and what is fol-de-rol. They ought to distinguish between the really noble and the simply physical, not to say faulty. If men do not, it is women's duty to help them. I think, if women would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... her liqueur appreciatively, smiling good-humouredly, and Philip could not help regarding her with a certain admiration. Her small, sharp, subtile face, beneath its mask of smiling indifference, looked positively youthful in the judicious candle-light; only the little, bird-like, withered hands bore the stigmata of age. And he could not conceive her changing; to the last, those tell-tale hands apart, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... answered lightly, and with the air of one who appreciates an intended jest so subtile that only cleverness would have comprehended it, "that is one of the advantages I have always found in being one. I think I needn't keep you tied down to that chair any longer to-day. Come here and see how you ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... breathes, which especially appears when under the praetext of visitting they fly to a sick carkcass, especially if it be fat, as ravens does to their prey. Their insteed of confirming and strenthening the poor folk to dy wt the greater alacrity, they besett them wt all the subtile mines imaginable to wring and suck money from them, telling them that they most leive a dozen or 2 of serviets to the poor Cordeliers; as many spoones to the godly Capuchines who are busie praying for your soul, and so something to all ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... youth, beauty, and grace. Miselle devoured her with her eyes, as did Crusoe the human footstep on his desert island. An answering glance, a suppressed smile on either side, and an understanding was established, an alliance completed, a tie more subtile than Freemasonry confessed. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... rondure through the shamefast veil Drawn to her gleaming chin: After this wise, From the enticing smile of earth and skies I dream my unknown Fair's refused gaze; And guessingly her love's close traits devise, Which she with subtile coquetries Through little human glimpses slow displays, Cozening my mateless days By sick, intolerable delays. And so I keep mine uncompanioned ways; And so my touch, to golden poesies Turning love's bread, is bought at hunger's price. So,—in the inextinguishable wars Which roll ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... calling at various places of business and night after night he returned to his cheerless room with a faint heart and declining spirits. It was, after all, a more serious thing than he had imagined, to cut the cable which binds one to the land of one's birth. There a hundred subtile influences, the existence of which no one suspects until the moment they are withdrawn, unite to keep one in the straight path of rectitude, or at least of external respectability; and Ralph's life had ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... there (as I sayd before) and fearing that those English men finding good vent for their commodities in that place, would be resident therin, and so dayly increase, which would be no small losse and hinderance vnto them, did presently inuent all the subtile meanes they could to hinder them: and to that end they went vnto the Captaine of Ormus, as then called Don Gonsalo de Meneses, telling him that there were certaine English men come into Ormus, that were sent onely to spie the countrey; and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... blood this week in a most uncritical fever which attacked me at the beginning of this chapter; so that I have still some hopes remaining, it may be more in the serous or globular parts of the blood, than in the subtile aura of the brain—be it which it will—an Invocation can do no hurt—and I leave the affair entirely to the invoked, to inspire or to inject me according as he ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... qualifications. For there are men whose manifold experience supplies some literary defects. But when a whole body of ministers are illiterate, they are not able to defend the truth of the Gospel against the subtile attacks of enemies. Suppose false teachers were to make a spurious translation of the Scriptures, how could such an illiterate body of ministers detect the forgery? If the knowledge of the original tongues should ever become extinct, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... about matters of inferior station and mesalliance; but I believe that few could have seen little Jessie, as she first appeared to me, and not have felt some secret inclination to give way before those subtile charms of beauty and manner which invested her. Moreover, let it here be mentioned that she was not at all of humble birth or education. Old Barkstead was himself a gentleman by culture and station, and had once been the master of a gallant ship. In that important position he had been ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... flower affected my imagination, though more slightly, yet in very much the same way. The reason must have been that, whether intentionally on her part or not, this favorite ornament was actually a subtile expression of Zenobia's character. ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... keen and subtile speech—as they imagine—when they say that person and office are not one and the same, and that the office remains, and remains good, though the person be evil. From this they conclude, and it ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... of a deity, founded apparently on some dreamy tradition of original truth, are so subtile and divisible, and establish so heterogeneous a connection between spirit and matter of all imaginable forms, that popular belief seems to have wholly confounded the possible with the impossible, the natural with the supernatural. Action, so far as respects cause and effect, takes the ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... more sobered mind. But the effect of these studies is somewhat prejudicially visible in both the romances I have referred to; and the external and dramatic colourings which belong to fiction are too often forsaken for the inward and subtile analysis of motives, characters, and actions. The workman was not sufficiently master of his art to forbear the vanity of parading the wheels of the mechanism, and was too fond of calling attention to the minute and tedious operations by which ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... comprehend the theory of vision, it is not sufficient to know the structure of the eye. We must be familiar with some of the properties of a subtile fluid, which is constantly emanating from ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... the face, but did not answer in words. What strange intelligence was that which passed between them through the diamond eyes and the little beady black ones?—what subtile intercommunication, penetrating so much deeper than articulate speech? This was the nearest approach to sympathetic relations that Elsie ever had: a kind of dumb intercourse of feeling, such as one sees in the eyes of brute mothers looking on their young. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... speech of Philus. [Footnote: Carneades, when on an embassy to Rome, for the entertainment of his Roman hosts, on one day delivered a discourse in behalf of justice as the true policy for the State, and on the next day delivered an equally subtile and eloquent discourse maintaining the opposite thesis. In the third Book of the De Republica Philus is made the "devil's advocate," and has assigned to him the championship of what we are wont to call a Machiavelian policy, and, in general, of the morally wrong as the politically ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... of the Creator, at the close of which, by his thought alone, he caused the egg to divide itself; and from its two divisions he framed the heaven above and the earth beneath; in the midst he placed the subtile ether, the eight regions, and the permanent ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... are to be found who hold that the incoming tide of host-worship with which, as they conceive, our reformed Church is threatened can never be stayed unless some carefully contrived definition inserted in the Prayer Book shall make impossible this subtile and refined species of idolatry. But men no whit less sensible laugh them in the face, pointing to the "black rubric" and its history as evidence that between the admitted doctrine of the real presence and the disallowed tenet of transubstantiation no impervious barrier ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... himself to thee for? &c. Canst thou dance no better? &c. Ransack the old records of all past times and places in thy memory; canst thou not there find out some better way of trampling? Pump thine invention dry; cannot the universal seed-plot of subtile wiles and stratagems spring up one new method of cutting capers? Is this the top of skill and pride, to shuffle feet and brandish knees thus, and to trip like a doe and skip like a squirrel? And wherein differ thy leapings from the hoppings of a frog, or the bouncings of a goat, or friskings of a ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... nevertheless the view I had of them was of a sovereign clearness, and has remained vividly impressed upon my soul. It is one of the most signal of all the graces which the Lord has granted me.... The view was so subtile and delicate that the ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... of nature, that his only attribute is benevolence, though he is capable of a just indignation, and that within the scope of his mental vision are myriads of worlds yet to come. But he is said to have no form, no voice, no odor, no color, no active creative power,—a subtile, fundamental principle of nature, pervading all things, influencing all things. This belief in Brahma is so closely interwoven with all that is best in the morals and customs of the people, that it would seem as though ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... could be kept together only by force—Czechs, Magyars, Croats, Serbs, Rumanians, Turks, Armenians—the proud states of Bohemia and Hungary, the stout little commonwealths of the Balkans, the indomitable Turks, the subtile peoples of the East. These peoples did not wish to be united. They ardently desired to direct their own affairs, would be satisfied only by undisputed independence. They could be kept quiet only by the ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... suche may boast as by a subtile arte, Canne without labour make excessive gayne, And under name of Misterie imparte, Unto the worlde the Crafie's but of their brayne. How muche more doe their praise become men's themes That bothe by art and labour gett ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... skookums (spirits) in the deep woods. To him, the mere flutter of a leaf had a meaning; the sighing of the wind was intelligible language. So many generations of Indians had crossed that trail, and so few white people, I felt as if some subtile aroma of Indian spirit must linger still about the place, and steal into our thoughts. Occasionally an owl stirred in the thicket beside us, or we caught a glimpse of the mottled beauty of a snake gliding across our path. The great boom and crash of the falling trees ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... saye he is of a tall stature and cleane lymbes, of a sad aspect, rownd fatt visaged, with graie haires, but plaine and thin, hanging upon his broad showlders; some few haires upon his chin, and so on his upper lippe: he hath been a strong and able salvadge, synowye, vigilant, ambitious, subtile to enlarge his dominions:.... cruell he hath been, and quarellous as well with his own wcrowanccs for trifles, and that to strike a terrour and awe into them of his power and condicion, as also with his neighbors in his younger days, though ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Trent, where the doctrines of the Schoolmen have great sway; that the schoolmen were like Astronomers, which did faigne Eccentricks and Epicycles and Engines of Orbs to save the Phenomena; though they know there were no such Things; and in like manner that the Schoolmen had framed a number of subtile and intricate Axioms and Theorems, to save the practice of the Church.' This is true of much else besides scholastic axioms and theorems. Subordinate error was made necessary and invented, by reason of some pro-existent main stock of error, and to save the practice of the Church. Thus we are often ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... lands, Who crossed the wide seas and the desert sands To learn of him the occult significance Of some perplexing omen, or perchance To hear forewhisperings of their destiny And know what things in aftertime should be. "Now surely," thought the Prince, "this subtile seer, To whom the darkest things belike are clear, Could read the riddle of my dream and tell Where lieth that strange land delectable Wherein mine empress hath her dwelling-place. So might I look ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... pure intellectual nature. Its condition is that of perfect rest which nothing disturbs. These fundamental ideas are carried out in the particulars with a subtilness and fantasy unexampled, even in subtile and fantastic India, in a scholarly style, and defended by the syadvada—the doctrine of "It may be so",—a mode of reasoning which makes it possible to assert and deny the existence of one and the same thing. If this be compared with the other Indian ...
— On the Indian Sect of the Jainas • Johann George Buehler
... life, therefore, and spirit of all our actions is the resurrection, and a stable apprehension that our ashes shall enjoy the fruit of our pious endeavours; without this, all religion is a fallacy, and those impieties of Lucian, Euripides, and Julian, are no blasphemies, but subtile verities; and atheists have been ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... Dress has a subtile influence upon our actions: one gown can make a romp, another a princess, another a boor, another a sparkling coquette, out of the same woman. The female mood is susceptibly sympathetic to the fitness or unfitness ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... were in, during our stay at this celebrated city. If, however, it still has a reputation for the cure of a particular disorder, perhaps that may arise from the impurity of the air,—and that the air which is so prone to engender verdigris, may wage war with other subtile poisons; yet, as I found some of my countrymen there, who had taken a longer trial of the air, and more of the physic, than I had occasion for, who neither admired one, nor found benefit from the other, I will not ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... sure he is right! You leave nothing to the imagination. Now a subtile veiled idealism—" He was not allowed ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... (Agatho-daemons) and the bad (Kako-daemons). We know nothing concerning the status of the Jinn amongst the pre-Moslemitic or pagan Arabs: the Moslems made him a supernatural anthropoid being, created of subtile fire (Koran chapts. xv. 27; lv. 14), not of earth like man, propagating his kind, ruled by mighty kings, the last being Jan bin Jan, missionarised by Prophets and subject to death and Judgment. From the same root are ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... and Mr Barr sat on either side of Miss Kingsley, and I glanced from the one to the other, debating with myself whether I preferred the bold strong beauty of the artist, or the subtile and more delicate traits of feature of the philosopher. For though I had begun by regarding Mr. Spence almost as commonplace in appearance, the earnestness of his manner and the serious fervor of his eyes gave him an expression of having a deep and genuine belief in ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... Politiques, had charge in the warres. And Firteus the Poet being also a lame man & halting vpon one legge, was chosen by the Oracle of the gods from the Athenians to be generall of the Lacedemonians armie, not for his Poetrie, but for his wisedome and graue perswasions, and subtile Stratagemes whereby he had the victory ouer his enemies. So as the Poets seemed to haue skill not onely in the subtilties of their arte, but also to be meete for all maner of functions ciuill and martiall, euen as they found fauour of the times they liued in, ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... informed the canvas, was to him the object of an adoration not unmingled with a sentiment of chivalrous devotion. The longings of a sensitive heart, divorced from earth, sought solace in the skies. A subtile element of romance was blended with the fervor of his worship, and hung like an illumined cloud over the harsh and hard realities of his daily lot. Kindled by the smile of his celestial mistress, his gentle and noble nature knew no fear. For her he burned to dare and to suffer, discover new ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... strond, Behold! an huge great vessell to us came, Dauncing upon the waters back to lond, As if it scornd the daunger of the same; Yet was it but a wooden frame and fraile, Glewed togither with some subtile matter. Yet had it armes and wings, and head and taile, And life to move it selfe upon the water. Strange thing! how bold and swift the monster was, That neither car'd for wind, nor haile, nor raine, Nor swelling waves, but thorough them did passe So proudly, that ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... about spiritual physiognomy, nor go about to inquire, I believe, at this time, as Evodius inquired of St. Austin, whether our immaterial part, the soul, does not remain united, when it forsakes this gross terrestrial body, to some ethereal body more subtile and more fine; which was one of the Pythagorean and Platonic whimsies: nor be under any concern to know, if this be not the case of the dead, how souls can be distinguished after their separation—that of Dives, for example, ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... last odds declared; all gallop away to the Warren. A few minutes, only a few minutes, and the event that for twelve months has been the pivot of so much calculation, of such subtile combinations, of such deep conspiracies, round which the thought and passion of the sporting world have hung like eagles, will be recorded in the fleeting tablets of the past. But what minutes! Count them by sensation and ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... These flashes of subtile recognition between youth and youth—these sudden mute greetings and farewells—reached almost the dimension of incidents in that first day's eventless ride. Once Lynde halted at the porch of a hip-roofed, unpainted house ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... beyond to-day. What could the future add to his full heart? what might it not take away? In certain natures the deepest joy has always something of melancholy in it, a presentiment, a fleeting sadness, a feeling without a name. Wentworth was conscious of this subtile shadow, that night, when he rose from the lounge, and thoughtfully held Julie's hand to his lip for a moment before parting. A careless observer would not have thought him, as he was, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... when Liszt was at the piano. "Chopin," Liszt writes, "was the first who introduced into his compositions that peculiarity which gave such a unique color to his impetuosity, and which he called tempo rubato:—an irregularly interrupted movement, subtile, broken, and languishing, at the same time flickering like a flame in the wind, undulating, like the surface of a wheat-field, like the tree-tops moved by a breeze." All his compositions must be played in this peculiarly accented, spasmodic, insinuating ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... Boscovich and Davy, to which we may recur. But he had not as yet conceived the notion of a distinction between matter and energy, which is so fundamental to the physics of a later epoch. He did not speak of heat, light, electricity, as forms of energy or "force"; he conceived them as subtile forms of matter—as highly attenuated yet tangible fluids, subject to gravitation and chemical attraction; though he had learned to measure none of them but heat with accuracy, and this one he could test only within narrow limits until ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... beautiful sentences of Emerson stand out like fragments of carved marble from the rough plaster in which they are imbedded. Nor this alone; but, on drawing near the vestibule of the author's finest thoughts, the critic almost always stops, unable quite to enter their sphere. Subtile beauties puzzle him; the titles of the poems, for instance, giving by delicate allusion the key-note of each,—as "Astraea," "Mithridates," "Hamatreya," and "Etienne de la Boece,"—seem to him the work of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... readers—a fast increasing number—as have read and enjoyed The Patience of Hope, listening to the gifted nature which, through such deep and subtile thought, and through affection and godliness still deeper and more quick, has charmed and soothed them, will not be surprised to learn that she is not only poetical, but, what is more, a poet, and one as true as George Herbert and Henry Vaughan, or our own Cowper; for, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... amongst us the foundation of monarchy itself, much more clearly and much more peculiarly is it the ground of all parliamentary power. Parliament is a security provided for the protection of freedom, and not a subtile fiction, contrived to amuse the people in its place. The authority of both houses can, still less than that of the crown, be supported upon different principles in different places, so as to be, for one part of your subjects, a protector of liberty, and for another a fund of despotism, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... wintry blast will be very likely to scatter in fragments along the terrace. It looks, and is, as evanescent as a dream; and yet, in its rustic network of boughs, it has somehow enclosed a hint of spiritual beauty, and has become a true emblem of the subtile and ethereal mind that planned it. I made Eustace Bright sit down on a snow bank, which had heaped itself over the mossy seat, and gazing through the arched windows opposite, he acknowledged that the ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ragged breaches hong Embossed with massy gold of glorious guifte, And with rich metall loaded every rifte, That heavy ruine they did seeme to threatt; And over them Arachne high did lifte Her cunning web, and spred her subtile nett, Enwrapped in fowle smoke and clouds ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... of its own weight, when raised by these propelling forces above its average level of surface. True, it is all this; but it is also something more. As its white breadth of foam indicates, it is a subtile mixture of water and air, with a powerful upward action,—a consequence of the air struggling to effect its escape; and this upward action must be taken into account in our calculations, as certainly as the other and more generally recognized ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... it originates. The good must ever live, and "walk up and down the earth," like a living spirit guided by the living God, to convey blessings to the children of men, and is more powerful, diffusive, and eternal than the power of evil. It lives in humanity, in some form or other, like the subtile substance of material things, which though ever changing never perishes, but adds to the stability, the beauty, and the grandeur of the universe. The influence of the holy character passes even beyond the stars, giving joy to our angel brothers, ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... is a short plank one in a glen of the White Mountains, which, seen through a vista of woodland, makes out the picture so aptly that it is sketched by every artist who haunts the region. What lines of grace are added to the night view of a great city by the lights on the bridges! what subtile principles enter into the building of such a bridge as the Britannia, where even the metallic contraction of the enormous tubes is provided for by supporting them on cannon-balls! how venerable seems the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... less warmly: "We can hardly give too much appreciation to that subtile alchemy of the brain which has enabled him to produce out of dull, crabbed, and often illegible state papers, the vivid, graphic, and sparkling narrative which he has given to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Nature intended for a maister peece, And louely as the maide (though a blacke pearle) Painters and women say, an Eben fleece, Doth well beseeme the shoulders of an Earle: Blacke snares they were, that did entrap this girle Each haire like to a subtile serpent taught her, Of the forbidden fruit to taste a peece, Whil'st Eue is stain'd ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... such vast dimensions, we cannot conceive of it as a solid spheroid turning upon its axis, but only as a mass of fluid or vapor, in which a circular motion would generate only vortices or whirlwinds. In such an aggregation of subtile matter, no crust could be solidified on the outer ring, and then detached from the mass within; indeed, any separation of the parts under such circumstances is inconceivable. Even a rotary motion could not be established in it, except by an impulse received from without; for there is every ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... fiery colour, and so very apt to ferment, that, unless it be mingled with a proportion of the water, or pent up very close, it will burst the vessel that holds it, and fly up in a fume and smoke. The water, on the contrary, is of such a subtile, piercing cold, that, unless it be mingled with a proportion of the spirits, it will sink almost through every thing it is put into, and seems to be of the same nature as the water mentioned by Quintus ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... in number ten to ane, Right subtile alang did ryde, With Malcomtosch, and fell Maclean, With all thair power at thair syde; Presumeand on their strenth and pryde, Without all feir or ony aw, Richt bauldie battil did abyde, Hard by the town of ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... word. If man's love can be so great, what can God's love be? That which I said I said, in desperation; in very truth, that peace hangs like an unattainable city in the clouds before my soul's vision, that love like a broad river flowing through the lands, an atmosphere bathing the worlds, the subtile essence and ether of space in which the farthest star pursues its course,—why, then, should it escape me, the mote? Oh, when the world turned from me, I sought to flee thither! I sighed for the rest there! Wretched, alone, I have wept in the dark and in the light ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... from our grateful lips in ready words. But we do not suspect how these manifestations of material Beauty are received by the mysterious alembic of the soul,—how they are worked up there by exquisite and subtile processes of moral chemistry, humanized, spiritualized, and appropriated unconsciously to sweet uses of piety and affection. We do not know how the star, the flower, the dear human face, the movement of a wave, the song of a bird,—we do not know how these things ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... to recover her natural elasticity and buoyancy. Many of the noblest women, suffering like her, but less fortunate in being relieved at the right moment, die worried out of life by the perpetual teasing of this inflamed, neuralgic conscience. So subtile is the line which separates the true and almost angelic sensibility of a healthy, but exalted nature, from the soreness of a soul which is sympathizing with a morbid state of the body that it is no wonder they are often confounded. And thus many good ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of substances the subtile and expansive fluids spread, and, always in motion in the milieu environing it, unceasingly penetrate it and likewise dissipate it, arranging while traversing this mass the internal disposition ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... agony which she would fain have hidden, but which made utterance for itself betwixt speech and a groan—"O Father in Heaven—if Thou art still my Father—what is this being which I have brought into the world?" And Pearl, overhearing the ejaculation, or aware through some more subtile channel, of those throbs of anguish, would turn her vivid and beautiful little face upon her mother, smile with sprite-like intelligence, and resume ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... things in a blundering fashion. It is of no use trying by fear to drive into people's heads things they have no mind to learn. Neither must you "forsake the ship in a tempest, because you cannot rule and keep down the winds." But "you must with a crafty wile and subtile train, study and endeavour yourself, as much as in you lieth, to handle the matter wittily and handsomely for the purpose. And that which you cannot turn to good, so to order it that it be not very bad. For ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... points connected with the physiology of digestion. Fluids introduced into the stomach rapidly disappeared, being taken up by these vessels and carried into the system. We cannot, therefore, be surprised to hear that so subtile and penetrating a fluid as alcohol should very speedily find its way into all the tissues of the body. Its presence may be smelt in the breath of persons addicted to spirituous liquors, as well as in ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... balloon, helium balloon, hydrogen balloon, hot air balloon. convection, thermal draft, thermal. V. be light &c. adj.; float, rise, swim, be buoyed up. render light &c. adj.; lighten, leaven. Adj. light, subtile, airy; imponderous[obs3], imponderable; astatic[obs3], weightless, ethereal, sublimated; gossamery; suberose[obs3], suberous[obs3]; uncompressed, volatile; buoyant, floating &c. v.; portable. light as a feather, light as a thistle, light ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... another of his friends, with longer purses than his own, to the studio of the modest stranger; and now his pieces command their full worth in the market, and he works with orders far ahead of his ability to execute, giving to the canvas the trails of American scenery as appreciated and felt by the subtile delicacy of the French mind,—our rural summer views, our autumn glories, and the dreamy, misty delicacy of our snowy winter landscapes. Whoso would know the truth of the same, let him inquire for the modest ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... purpose, so that this day wee tooke not by estimation aboue one hundreth pound waight of Graines, by meanes of their Captaine, who would suffer no man to sell any thing but through his hands, and at his price: he was so subtile, that for a bason hee would not giue 15. pound waight of Graines, and sometimes would offer vs smal dishfuls whereas before wee had baskets full, and when he saw that wee would not take them in contentment, the Captaine departed, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... a certain pedantry which is pleasing to women. The coquette and the pedant are neighbours. Their kinship is visible in the fop. The subtile is derived from the sensual. Gluttony affects delicacy, a grimace of disgust conceals cupidity. And then woman feels her weak point guarded by all that casuistry of gallantry which takes the place of scruples in prudes. It is a line of circumvallation ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... * * * * Neri rustica semilauta crura, Subtile et leve peditum Libonis. * * * * Si non omnia displicere vellem Tibi et Fuficio ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... single drop of prussic acid, or, with what comes still nearer, the poisonous influence of an atmosphere impregnated with invisible malaria, we should find in each of these examples an evidence of the degree to which nature, in some few instances, concentrates powerful qualities in minute or subtile forms of matter. But if a man comes to me with a pestle and mortar in his hand, and tells me that he will take a little speck of some substance which nobody ever thought to have any smell at all, as, for instance, a grain of chalk or of charcoal, and that he ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... with the doctrine of atoms: but I find it difficult to understand a vacuum, and I much prefer subtile matter. ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... any language, and the one called "Pride" seems to me in its grand simplicity to be without a rival. If there is any American poem which sings itself like "All's well," it is Longfellow's ballad of "Mary Garvin." "The Plover" has a pensive grace which is as rare as its subtile and elevated thought. They are however few in number and he did not think there was enough of them to publish in a volume. They were finally published post mortem in what was, if the truth be told, a rather unfortunate manner. Two of his finest sonnets, on ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... they reach the world Aziath, falling by their own weight. This is a pure Platonism, clothed with the images and words peculiar to the Kabalists. It was the doctrine of the Essenes, who, says Porphyry, "believe that souls descend from the most subtile ether, attracted to bodies by the seductions of matter." It was in substance the doctrine of Origen; and it came from the Chaldæans, who largely studied the theory of the Heavens, the spheres, and the influences of the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... subtile than satisfactory. A fair consideration of the subject leaves little room for doubt that the framers of the Constitution had in view and intended to prohibit everything which under the old English common ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... paper. . . .) Eric settled himself with a comfortable sense of home-coming, his eyes on Barbara's bedroom door, wondering how she would greet him. Their last dinner together demanded recognition and a subtile modification of manner. ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... eyes of the public for those manifestations of favor and esteem with which she was pleased to honor him. But whether the affection which she entertained for him best deserved the name of friendship or a still tenderer one, seems after all a question of too subtile and obscure a nature for sober discussion; though in a French "cour d'amour" it might have furnished pleas and counterpleas of exquisite ingenuity, prodigious sentimental interest, and length interminable. What is unfortunately too certain is, that he was a favorite, and in the common ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... been so sick or irritable but that he reached out his arms to his little ones and gave them a warm embrace, that did him more good than he realized. The influence of trusting children is sometimes the most subtile oil that can be thrown on the ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... be quite forgot, I must lye close. Here comes young Perigot With subtile Amaryllis in the shape Of Amoret. Pray Love he ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... written, and who was present at the dispute, as he himself informs us, in his book of Travels, gives us no account of the answers which were made by Xavier. "I have neither knowledge nor presumption enough," says he, "to relate those subtile and solid reasons, with which he confuted the mad imaginations of the Bonza." We only have learnt from this Portuguese, that Fucarandono was put to silence upon the point in question, and that, a little to save his reputation, he changed the subject, but to no purpose, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... midnight, having swayed us to a mood of pensiveness which found a reflex in our conversation. From the warning glare of sunlight the heart shuts close its secrets; but hours like these beguile from its inmost depths those subtile emotions, and vague, dreamy, delicious thoughts, which, like plants, waken to life only beneath the protecting shadows of darkness. "Why is it," says Richter, "that the night puts warmer love in our hearts? Is it the nightly pressure of helplessness, or is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... which was designed for the followers of Artemon, may, with equal propriety, be applied to the various sects that resisted the successors of the apostles. "They presume to alter the Holy Scriptures, to abandon the ancient rule of faith, and to form their opinions according to the subtile precepts of logic. The science of the church is neglected for the study of geometry, and they lose sight of heaven while they are employed in measuring the earth. Euclid is perpetually in their hands. Aristotle and Theophrastus ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... mystery! My soul a spirit infinite! An image of the Deity! A pure substantial light! That being greatest which doth nothing seem! . . . . . O wondrous Self! O sphere of light, O sphere of joy most fair; O act, O power infinite; O subtile and unbounded air! O living orb of sight! Thou which within me art, yet me! Thou eye And temple of ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... reproductions of their own selves, invented to give them their cue; where sentiments are examined closely, with an attentive mind, friendly to experimental psychology; and where, nevertheless, far from holding always to subtile dissertations, all that is material fact is clearly exposed to view, in a good light, and not merely talked about. The vital parts of the drama are all exhibited before our eyes and not concealed behind the scenes; heroes are not all spirit, neither are they mere ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... The beautiful duchess is soon recognized, and as soon in deep gossip with her friends. But who is that gentlemanly man leaning over the chamber-organ? That is Sir Roger L'Estrange, an admirable performer on the violoncello, and a great lover of music. He is watching the subtile fingering of Mr. Handel, as his dimpled hands drift leisurely and marvelously over the ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris |
