"Subtilty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... am confident, nine tenths are opposed to it. And yet, strange as it may seem, the numbers in convention appear equal on both sides: so that the majority, which way soever it goes, will be small. The friends and seekers of power have, with their usual subtilty, wriggled themselves into the choice of the people, by assuming shapes as various as the faces of the men ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... of the body. Instead of sharpening his wits to escape an irksome subjection, you will observe him wholly occupied in finding out in everything around him that part best adapted to his present well-being. You will be amazed at the subtilty of his contrivances for appropriating to himself all the objects within the reach of his understanding, and for enjoying everything without ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... he is jealous, as being a friend of the Bridegroom; for Him he is jealous, not for himself; because in the voice of Thy water-spouts, not in his own voice, doth he call to that other depth, over whom being jealous he feareth, lest as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so their minds should be corrupted from the purity that is in our Bridegroom Thy only Son. O what a light of beauty will that be, when we shall see Him as He is, and those tears be passed away, which have been ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... to be managed in this matter. "Thy brother came with subtilty, and hath taken away thy blessing." The blessing belonged to Esau, but Jacob by his diligence made it his own; Gen. xxvii. 33. The offer is to the biggest sinner, to the biggest sinner first; but if he forbear to cry, the sinner that is a sinner less ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... admit the force of his reasoning; for, though I cannot from memory repeat his words, his eloquence was of that overpowering nature that the subtilty of other men sunk before it; and there is also little doubt that the assurance I had that these words were spoken by a great potentate who could raise me to the highest eminence (provided that I entered into his extensive and decisive measures) assisted mightily ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... the subtilty of one of these wildmen that was in the same boat with me. We see a castor along the watter side, that puts his head out of the watter. That wildman no sooner saw him but throwes himself out into the watter and downe to the bottom, without so much time as to give ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... on which the effect depends, is frequently involved in other circumstances, which are foreign and extrinsic. The separation of it often requires great attention, accuracy, and subtilty. ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.'—2 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... collected together in the Academy, diligently maintained those doctrines which they had received from their predecessors. Zeno and Arcesilas had been diligent attenders on Polemo; but Zeno, who preceded Arcesilas in point of time, and argued with more subtilty, and was a man of the greatest acuteness, attempted to correct the system of that school. And, if you like, I will explain to you the way in which he set about that correction, as Antiochus used to explain it. Indeed, said I, I shall be very glad to hear you do so; and ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... man pass that bridge, nor have hardiness to go over, but if he were a passing good man and a good knight without treachery or villainy. Also the scabbard of Balin's sword Merlin left it on this side the island, that Galahad should find it. Also Merlin let make by his subtilty that Balin's sword was put in a marble stone standing upright as great as a mill stone, and the stone hoved always above the water and did many years, and so by adventure it swam down the stream to the City of Camelot, that is in English Winchester. And that same day Galahad ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... conscious strength, and no doubt participating in the common error of modern times as to the value of artificial logic, he has taken for granted that the Aristotelian forms and the exquisite science of distinctions matured by the subtilty of the schoolmen can achieve nothing in substance which is beyond the power of mere sound good sense and robust faculties of reasoning; or at most can only attain the same end with a little more speed and adroitness. But this is a great error: and it was an ill day for ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... The lawyer's subtilty in running a distinction upon the word neighbour, in the precept, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," was no less natural than our Saviour's answer was decisive and satisfactory. (Luke x. 20.) The lawyer of the New Testament, it must be observed, ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... with his life-long vengeance. Leagued with a professional agitator named Razzaro, he commenced to undermine my authority with great subtilty, till in the end my simple people who once had loved me and my family grew to hate me, and to look upon Waldemar, even the Royalists, as a ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... grant him armed with subtilty and hate; But why should we suspect our happy state? Is our perfection of so frail a make, As every plot can undermine or shake? Think better both of heaven, thyself, and me: Who always fears, at ease can never be. Poor state of bliss, where so ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... science of "words" but none of "things,"' says the reporter. 'What do you read, my lord?' 'Words, words, words,' echoes the Prince of Denmark. 'I find in these antique books, in these Philosophies and Poems, a certain resplendent or lustrous mass of matter chosen to give glory either to the subtilty of disputations, or to the eloquence of discourses,' says the other and graver reporter; 'but as to the ordinary and common matter of which life consisteth, I do not find it erected into an art or science, or reduced ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... Either for benefit, or hope, or fear; And that himself hath lost much of his own, By parting unto him; and, by th' increase Of his rank lusts and rages, quite disarm'd Himself of love, or other public means, To dare an open contestation; His subtilty hath chose this doubling line, To hold him even in: not so to fear him, As wholly put him out, and yet give check Unto his farther boldness. In mean time, By his employments, makes him odious Unto the staggering rout, whose aid, in fine, He hopes to use, as sure, who, when ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... the children of Dorothy Dunent, (one of the indictments against the prisoners being for their bewitchment;) for he conceived that these swooning fits were natural, and nothing else but that they call the mother, but only heightened to a great excess by the subtilty of the devil co-operating with the malice of these, which we term witches, at whose instance he doth ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... serious inquietude the importance of which was afterwards confirmed, and by the vague fears of a sickly old man. He was offended by the contemptuous terms which the foreign ambassadors applied to the condescension of him whom they called the "French emperor's chaplain." His Italian subtilty was disturbed, and his natural kindness chafed by the dryness of the emperor's message. "This is poison which you have brought to me," said he to General Caffarelli, after reading Napoleon's letter. He set ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... their heirs, of us and our heirs, in all things and places, forever, as is aforesaid. It is also sworn, as well on our part as on the part of the barons, that all the things aforesaid shall be observed in good faith, and without evil subtilty. Given under our hand, in the presence of the witnesses above named, and many others, in the meadow called Runingmede, between Windsor and Staines, the 15th day of June, in the ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... doctors, and with various illustrations of the character of the principal writers in oriental science and fiction, both Arabic and Persian. For the Daghestan teachers of theology, called ulemas or murschids, are not without repute for both subtilty and erudition; and Dschelal Eddin was one of ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... philosophers and rhetoricians from Rome. Seven years later took place the embassy of the three leaders of the most celebrated schools of thought, Diogenes the Stoic, Critolaus the Peripatetic, and Carneades the New Academician. The subtilty and eloquence of these disputants rekindled the interest in philosophy which had been smothered, not quenched, by the vigorous measures of the senate. There were two reasons why an interest in these studies was dreaded. First, they tended to spread disbelief in the state ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... successful lying. Some of the ruses and stratagems thought out by Natives fleeing from the king's wrath or the witch doctor's doom, of which I have heard from the Natives themselves, have seemed to me to be in subtilty of design and in daring of execution as admirable as any that may be found in contemporary detective fiction, while the fortitude with which defeat and death has been accepted by some of the unfortunate ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... men, I call; And my voice is to the sons of men. O ye simple, understand subtilty; And ye fools, be ye of an understanding heart. Hear, for I will speak excellent things; And the opening of my lips shall be right things. For my mouth shall utter truth; And wickedness is an abomination ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... Generosity wins them effectually: The Temper of the ENGLISH is happily suited to this; and the additional Qualifications of Integrity and Prudence must in Time pave the Way to an Ascendency in their Councils, and by this Means the Subtilty of the FRENCH ...
— The Treaty Held with the Indians of the Six Nations at Philadelphia, in July 1742 • Various
... their power to extirpate. They have gone farther in these later ages; what was practised formerly has been taught since. Persecution has been reduced into system, and the disciples of the meek and humble Jesus have avowed a tyranny which the most barbarous conquerors never claimed. The wicked subtilty of casuists has established breach of faith with those who differ from us as a duty in opposition to faith, and murder itself has been made one of the means of salvation. I know very well that the Reformed Churches ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... that gallop about, eating up sugar preserves, cakes, anything nice they can gain access to; these insects are three times the size of the black ants of Britain, and have a most voracious appetite: when they find no better prey they kill each other, and that with the fierceness and subtilty of the spider. They appear less sociable in their habits than other ants; though, from the numbers that invade your dwellings, I should think they formed a community like the rest of ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... me also with not a little subtilty (and double-dealing too, I fancied,) regarding my own country, and of things present, and things real. In fact nothing, I think, so much flattered his vanity—unless it was my wonder at Dame Partlett's clucking on his viol-strings—as to learn himself was famous even so far as to ages yet ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... ingeniously the faults, or alleged faults, of my temper and character. If it was a question of Madame de Maintenon, she was of a birth equal and almost superior to the rest of the Court. He forgot himself so far as to quote before me the subtilty of her answers or the delight of her most intimate conversation. Did he wish to describe a noble carriage, an attitude at once easy and distinguished, it was Madame de Maintenon's. She possessed this, she ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the things he has seen, he has heard, he has known? In a word, it is manifest that man is a god in comparison with the other living species, considering the advantages he naturally has over them, both of body and soul. For, if man had a body like to that of an ox the subtilty of his understanding would avail him nothing, because he would not be able to execute what he should project. On the other hand, if that animal had a body like ours, yet, being devoid of understanding, he would be no better than the rest of the brute species. Thus the gods have at ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... Fathers once formed the studies of the learned. These labours abound with that subtilty of argument which will repay the industry of the inquisitive, and the antiquary may turn them over for pictures of the manners of the age. A favourite subject with Saint Ambrose was that of Virginity, on which he has several works; and perhaps he wished to revive the order of the vestals of ancient ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... interpretation) withstood them, seeking to turn away the deputy from the faith. 9. Then Saul, (who also is called Paul,) filled with the Holy Ghost, set his eyes on him, 10. And said, O full of all subtilty and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord? 11. And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a season. And immediately there fell on ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... to this writer a rare inventive skill, an astonishing subtilty in the delineation of character, and a style perhaps unequalled among contemporaries in a certain Keats-like affluence. Yet her plots have usually been melodramatic, her characters morbid, and her descriptions overdone. These ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Knees, devouring her tender Hand, sighing out his Passion, begging her to Crown it with her Love, making Ten thousand Vows and Protestations of his Secrecy and Constancy, urging all the Arguments that the Subtilty of the Devil or Man could suggest. She held out against all his Assaults above two Hours, and often endeavoured to Struggle from him, but durst make no great Disturbance, thro' fear of Alarming the Company ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... have produced a literature which may boast of works not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us, have discovered the laws which regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies, have speculated with exquisite subtilty on the operations of the human mind, have been the acknowledged leaders of the human race in the career of political improvement. The history of England is the history of this great change in the moral, intellectual, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... contradictions of the Gospel narratives. They sapped them with syllogisms. It is easy to understand that these exercises in logic should have at once attracted the youthful Augustin. With his extraordinary dialectical subtilty, he soon became very good at it himself—much better even than his masters. He made speeches in their assemblies, fenced against a text, peremptorily refuted it, and reduced his adversaries to silence. He was applauded, covered with praise. ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... struck me at first sight by his penetrating physiognomy, and who was even then suspected of being the author of that most brilliant of all libels, Junius; W——, then in the flower of life, and whose subtilty and whim might be seen in his fine forehead and volatile eyes; some others, whose names I did not know, and among them one of low stature, but of singularly animated features. He was evidently a military man, and of the Sister Isle, a prime favourite with the prince and every body; and I think a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... act, it would cease to be; and that cessation of thought is but another name for extinction of mind. This argument is subtle, but not conclusive; because it supposes what cannot be proved, that the nature of mind is properly defined. Others affect to disdain subtilty, when subtilty will not serve their purpose, and appeal to daily experience. We spend many hours, they say, in sleep, without the least remembrance of any thoughts which then passed in our minds; and since we can ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... perplex a plain matter of science by introducing into its discussion a metaphysical subtilty. The principle here contended for is one of the first dictates of the inductive philosophy, and as such it has been frankly acknowledged and acted upon by all the great improvers of science in modern days. When Newton discovered that the planets ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... ever painted. Some competent critics consider it the greatest. It is so real, so human, that we might be well content, if one in twenty of the actual men we meet were half as real and human; and it expresses, with equal strength and subtilty, the large and noble nature of the man. Holbein was a great colorist, and imitated all the rich and tender hues of Nature, in their delicate and almost imperceptible gradations, with a minute truthfulness which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... is rather a bad sign, I am afraid; notwithstanding the subtilty of your consolations; but I stroke down my philosophy, to make it shine, like a cat's back in the dark. The argument from more deserving poets who prosper less is not very comforting, is it? I ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... did not let him consider whether this was the happiest moment for its display. Those learned in the lore of such matters would probably have advised him to let her alone for a few days, or weeks, or months, according to the subtilty of their knowledge or their views. Bob ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... touches life at every point. It especially affects those of us who are called to be fishers of men. It is a great art, this human angling, and needs infinite tact, and infinite subtilty, and infinite patience. And, above all, it needs a resolute determination never on any account whatever to be soured by disappointment. When I am tempted to wind up my line, and give the whole thing up in despair, I revive my flagging enthusiasm by recalling ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... assent, but afterwards brought upon its author the charge of Atheism. He concealed the poison most carefully; for apparently he defended the belief in the Divine Providence and in the immortality of the soul, but with consummate skill and subtilty he taught that which he pretended to refute, and led his readers to see the force of the arguments against the Faith of which he posed as a champion. By a weak and feeble defence, by foolish arguments and ridiculous ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... tooke from him 5. fathume of wampam, and 3. coats of cloath, and wente their way, leaving him for dead. But he scrabled away, when they were gone, and made shift to gett home, (but dyed within a few days after,) by which means they were discovered; and by subtilty the Indeans tooke them. For they desiring a canow to sett them over a water, (not thinking their facte had been known,) by y^e sachems command they were carried to Aquidnett Iland, & ther accused of y^e murder, and were examend & comitted upon it by y^e English ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... urged it to the Prince, with as much obstinacy, as perfidiousness towards God. The great Judge commanded a pair of scales to be brought, threatening the Jew with death if he cut either more or less: And this was to give a sharp decision to a malicious process, and to the world a miracle of subtilty."—The Hero, ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... short, as though he expected his friend's subtilty to come to his assistance; with admissions or recriminations. But the other was still silent, absent: his face wore a look of annoyed indifference. After a while, as Tregellan ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... strength within them afresh; and also because, though they had by many petitions made suit to the Prince Emmanuel, and to his Father Shaddai by him, for their pardon and favour, yet hitherto obtained they not one smile; but contrariwise, through the craft and subtilty of the domestic Diabolonians, their cloud was made to grow blacker and blacker, and their Emmanuel ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... well adapted to the talent of Miss Cushman. It was remarkable how perfectly the genius which had, the evening before, adequately represented Phedre, could impersonate the ablest finesse of Italian subtilty. The old Italian romances were made real in a moment. The dim chambers, the dusky passages, the sliding doors, the vivid contrast of gayety and gloom, the dance in the palace and the duel in the garden, the smile on the lip and the stab at the heart, the capricious feeling, the impetuous ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... he had not put the important question long before, so vital and inevitable had it become; and he scarcely considered, in his curious egoism, his scant acquaintance with the subtilty of a woman's mind, how much Mary herself might have contributed to the delay by her careful avoidance of intimate topics, by the cloak of elaborate indifference in which she had wrapped herself whenever she had not been able to avoid being alone with him; so ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... that should not be interfered with or babbled about, and he could come and go without questioning. He had occasionally thought: "If she were such a woman as I have read of and imagined,—if she could supplement my reason with the subtilty of intuition and the reticence which some of her sex have manifested,—she would double my power and share my inner life, for there are few whom I can trust. The thing is impossible, however, and so I ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... bond of iniquity. As St. Paul to Elymas the sorcerer, when he withstood him, and desired to turn away the Deputy Sergius from the faith; "O," said he, stirred with a holy zeal and indignation, "thou full of all subtilty and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?" The same spirit which enabled him to inflict a sore punishment on that wicked wretch, ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... these things could be To her a Virgin, that on her should come The Holy Ghost, and the power of the highest O're-shadow her: this man born and now up-grown, 140 To shew him worthy of his birth divine And high prediction, henceforth I expose To Satan; let him tempt and now assay His utmost subtilty, because he boasts And vaunts of his great cunning to the throng Of his Apostasie; he might have learnt Less over-weening, since he fail'd in Job, Whose constant perseverance overcame Whate're his cruel malice could invent. He now shall know I can produce a man 150 Of female Seed, far abler to resist ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... such a legislator will be self-maintained, and lasting. Upon him, the grateful french will confer those unforced, unpurchased suffrages, which will prevent that fate, which, in their absence, the subtilty of policy, the fascinations of address, the charm of corruption, and even the terror of the bayonet can only postpone.—Yes, Bonaparte! millions of suffering beings, raising themselves from the dust, in which a barbarous ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... estimated by its use; it is not enough that a dictionary delights the critick, unless, at the same time, it instructs the learner; as it is to little purpose that an engine amuses the philosopher by the subtilty of its mechanism, if it requires so much knowledge in its application as to be of no advantage to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... asserted, on a priori grounds, the existence of "the One." Zeno would prove by his dialectic the non-existence of "the many." His grand position was that all phenomena, all that appears to sense, is but a modification of the absolute One. And he displays a vast amount of dialectic subtilty in the effort to prove that all "appearances" are unreal, and that all movement and change is a mere "seeming"—not a reality. What men call motion is only a name given to a series of conditions, each ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... controversy and dispute. And therefore the providence of God wisely suffered men of deep genius and learning then to arise, who should search into the truth of the Gospel now made known, and canvass its doctrines with all the subtilty and knowledge they were masters of, and in the end freely acknowledge that to be the true wisdom only "which cometh ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... the light from the darkness frankly at first: all over the subject let there be no doubt which is which. Separate them one from the other as they are separated in the moon, or on the world itself, in day and night. Then gradate your lights with the utmost subtilty possible to you; but let your shadows alone, until near the termination of the drawing: then put quickly into them what farther energy they need, thus gaining the reflected lights out of their original flat gloom; but generally ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... Christ's coat indeed had no seam, but the church's vesture was of divers colors; whereupon he saith, In veste varietas sit, scissura non sit; they be two things, unity and uniformity. The other is, when the matter of the point controverted, is great, but it is driven to an over-great subtilty, and obscurity; so that it becometh a thing rather ingenious, than substantial. A man that is of judgment and understanding, shall sometimes hear ignorant men differ, and know well within himself, that those which so ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... be a God. Were the soul a demonstrable object like any other object, it would cease to be the transcendental aspect of ourselves. Kant makes short work of the so-called proofs for the existence of God which had done duty in the scholastic theology. With subtilty, sometimes also with bitter irony, he shows that they one and all assume that which they set out to prove. They are theoretically insufficient and practically unnecessary. They have such high-sounding ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... Tongue! dost thou return My feign'd Contempt with so much subtilty? [Aside. Thou'st found the easiest way into my Heart, Tho I yet know that all thou say'st is false. [Turning from ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... successful, we were asked to do the same. Not without a feeling of shame we complied; and, taking hold of the patient's hands, we mentally asked her the question—"Are you single or married?" which question did not appear to us to involve any metaphysical subtilty. However, after struggling and frowning for some time, she said, with a sort of hysteric gasp, "He's a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... pantheists, their rationalists, their mystics, and their sceptics, not very clear or refined in their notions, but such as lacked neither profundity in their general view of the questions, nor ingenious subtilty in their argumentative process. We do not care to give in this place any exposition or estimate of their doctrines; we shall simply point out what there was original and characteristic in their fashion of philosophizing, and wherein their mental condition differed essentially from ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Parliament in October, 1650, declaring that since the colony had been settled by the English at great cost to the nation, it should rightly be under the authority of the present government; that divers persons in Virginia had committed open treason, "traytorously by force and Subtilty" usurping the government and defying the Commonwealth; and in order to repress speedily the rebellious colonists and to inflict upon them a merited punishment, they were to be forbidden all "Commerce or Traffique with any people Whatsoever". The full force of the ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... upturned eyes, standing on the pulpit stairs and trying to pull down old Mr. Crewe. Groans, yells, and hisses—hisses, yells, and groans—only stemmed by the appearance of another caricature representing Mr. Tryan being pitched head-foremost from the pulpit stairs by a hand which the artist, either from subtilty of intention or want of space, had left unindicated. In the midst of the tremendous cheering that saluted this piece of symbolical art, the chaise had reached the door of the Red Lion, and loud cries of 'Dempster for ever!' with a feebler cheer now and then for Tomlinson ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... passions to their sources, to unfold the seminal principles of vice and virtue, or sound the depths of the heart for the motives of action. All those enquiries, which from that time that human nature became the fashionable study, have been made sometimes with nice discernment, but often with idle subtilty, were yet unattempted. The tales, with which the infancy of learning was satisfied, exhibited only the superficial appearances of action, related the events but omitted the causes, and were formed for such as delighted in wonders rather ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... to pluck the flower and reap the harvest from the cultivated surface, instead of delving in the unwholesome quicksilver mines of metaphysic lore. And if in after time I have sought a refuge from bodily pain and mismanaged sensibility in abstruse researches, which exercised the strength and subtilty of the understanding without awakening the feelings of the heart; still there was a long and blessed interval, during which my natural faculties were allowed to expand, and my original tendencies to develop themselves;—my fancy, and the ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the best of them, are the chief examples in English of dashing verse romances of adventure and love. They are hastily done, as we have said, and there is no attempt at subtilty of characterization or at any moral or philosophical meaning; nevertheless the reader's interest in the vigorous and picturesque action is maintained throughout at the highest pitch. Furthermore, they contain much finely sympathetic description of Scottish scenery, impressionistic, but poured ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... scholastics of the Middle Ages merely reproduced Greek ideas; and even the profound and patient Germans have gone round in the same circles that Plato and Aristotle marked out more than two thousand years ago. Only the Brahmans of India have equalled them in intellectual subtilty and acumen. It was Greek philosophy in which noble Roman youths were educated; and hence, as it was expounded by a Cicero, a Marcus Aurelius, and an Epictetus, it was as much the inheritance of the Romans as it was of the Greeks themselves, after Grecian liberties were swept ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... still farther this account of the second species of probability, where we reason with knowledge and reflection from a contrariety of past experiments, I shall propose the following considerations, without fearing to give offence by that air of subtilty, which attends them. Just reasoning ought still, perhaps, to retain its force, however subtile; in the same manner as matter preserves its solidity in the air, and fire, and animal spirits, as well as in the grosser and ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... stored with its fruits.' Then to Lord Hailes he writes: 'Entre nous of Dempster,—Johnson had seen a pupil of Hume and Rousseau totally unsettled as to principles. I had infinite satisfaction in hearing solid truth confuting vain subtilty. I thank God that I have got acquainted with Mr Johnson. He has done me infinite service. He has assisted me to obtain peace of mind; he has assisted me to become a rational Christian; I hope I shall ever remain so.' Pleasantly all this would sound at home. ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... of the Litany which talks of the evils which the craft and subtilty of the devil or men work against us, that they may be brought to nought, and by the providence of God's goodness be dispersed, that we may be hurt by no persecutions—which calls on Christ to arise and deliver us, for His name's sake and His ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... she loves the knight of Tyre! 'Tis the king's subtilty to have my life. O, seek not to entrap me, gracious lord, A stranger and distressed gentleman, That never aim'd so high to love your daughter, But bent all ...
— Pericles Prince of Tyre • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... 'the higher knowledge is that by which the Indestructible is apprehended, &c.' (Mu. Up. I, 1, 5) first denies of Brahman all the evil qualities connected with Prakriti, and then teaches that to it there belong eternity, all-pervadingness, subtilty, omnipresence, omniscience, imperishableness, creativeness with regard to all beings, and other auspicious qualities. Now we maintain that also the text 'True, knowledge, infinite is Brahman', does not prove a substance devoid of all difference, for the reason that the co-ordination of the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... pursuing such courses, as it is a hard and measuring cost whether they were more unwise, more unjust, or more unfortunate, and which had infallibly been our destruction if by the grace of God their share had not been a small in the subtilty of serpents as ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... lad in the University of Oxford who was by his poverty forced to leave his studies there and at last to join himself to a company of vagabond gipsies. Among these extravagant people, by the insinuating subtilty of his carriage, he quickly got so much of their love and esteem that they discovered to him their mystery. After he had been a pretty while exercised in the trade, there chanced to ride by a couple ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... to those with whom you converse; and sometimes affect ignorance: lay aside power and subtilty in common conversation; to preserve decorum and order 'tis enough-nay, crawl on the earth, if they ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... mouse's wit not worth a leek, That hath but one hole for to starte* to, *escape And if that faile, then is all y-do.* *done [*I bare him on hand* he had enchanted me *falsely assured him* (My dame taughte me that subtilty); And eke I said, I mette* of him all night, *dreamed He would have slain me, as I lay upright, And all my bed was full of very blood; But yet I hop'd that he should do me good; For blood betoken'd gold, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... and judges are the Pundits. This law is comprehensive, extending to all the concerns of life, affording principles and maxims and legal theories applicable to all cases, drawn from the sources of natural equity, modified by their institutions, full of refinement and subtilty of distinction equal to that of any other law, and has the grand test of all law, that, wherever it has prevailed, the country has been populous, ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of their owners, it appears that he also received liberal fees from the relatives of young heirs, to protect them from the rapacity of some great persons, but who could not certainly exceed Audley in subtilty. He was an admirable lawyer, for he was not satisfied with hearing, but examining his clients; which he called "pinching the cause where he perceived it was foundered." He made two observations on clients and lawyers, which have not lost their poignancy. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... children of the devil, hypocrites, blind dolts, liars, and so on. He did not curse them to perpetuate their evils; rather he desired the evils removed. Paul does similarly. He says of the sorcerer that he is a child of the devil and full of subtilty. Acts 13, 10. Again, the Spirit reproves the world of ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... enter into the spontaneous thought of another, or even of himself in another mood. How much more when that other is distinguished from his fellows by the greatness and singularity of his thoughts, and by the extreme subtilty of their connecting links. Obscurity is not a blemish but an excellence, if the pains of seeking are more than compensated by the pleasures of finding, the luxury of [Greek: mathesis], where the concentrated energy of a passage, when once understood, gives it a hold on the imagination and memory ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... double. I can hardly explain what I mean. They had never before been so braved by Indians. They had, all their lives, been accustomed, partly out of bravado and partly from actual experience, to consider the red men their inferiors in subtilty and courage; and to be thus bearded by them, filled the hunters, as I have said, with a double indignation. It was like the bitter anger which the superior feels towards his resisting inferior, the lord to his rebellious serf, the master to his lashed ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... material actions? I have, in person, seen more, both of her and of you, than you could be aware of; and when absent in the body, I had the means of maintaining the same superintendence. Young man, they say that such love as you entertain for my daughter teaches much subtilty; but believe not that it can overreach the affection which a widowed father bears to an ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... gifts were given to the Church, for no longer a time, than men trusted wholly to Christ, and looked for their felicity onely in his Kingdome to come; and consequently, that when they sought Authority, and Riches, and trusted to their own Subtilty for a Kingdome of this world, these supernaturall gifts of God were again ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... Oratore, nor Aristotle, nor Longinus among the ancients, nor Vossius, nor Skioppius, nor Ramus, nor Farnaby among the moderns: and what is more astonishing he had never in his whole life the least light or spark of subtilty struck into his mind by one single lecture upon Crackenthorpe or Burgersdicius or any Dutch commentator: he knew not so much as in what the difference of an argument ad ignorantiam and an argument ad hominem consisted; and when he went up ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... by the consent and connivance of mankind, leveled against those who have the misfortune to come under the denomination of old maids; and these last retorted their hostilities in the private machinations of slander, supported by experience and subtilty of invention. Not one day passed in which some new story did not circulate, to the prejudice of one or other of ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... the money; he fought it off; he stood upon the defensive, and used all the means in his power to prevent the inquiry. That was the first era of his corruption,—a bold, ferocious, plain, downright use of power. In the second, he is grown a little more careful and guarded,—the effect of subtilty. He appears no longer as a defendant; he holds himself up with a firm, dignified, and erect countenance, and says, "I am not here any longer as a delinquent, a receiver of bribes, to be punished for what I have done wrong, or at least to suffer in my character for it. No: I am a great inventive ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Breast; While Gemini smiling and twining of Arms, Shews Love's soft Indearments and Charms; And Cancer's slow Motion the degrees do express, Respectful Love arrives to Happiness. Leo his strength and Majesty, Virgo her blushing Modesty, And Libra all his Equity. His Subtilty does Scorpio show, And Sagittarius all his loose desire, By Capricorn his forward Humour know, And Aqua, Lovers Tears that raise his Fire, While Pisces, which intwin'd do move, Shew the soft Play, and wanton ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... full blown. What temper at the prospect did not wake To happiness unthought of? The inert Were roused, and lively natures rapt away! 20 They who had fed their childhood upon dreams, The playfellows of fancy, who had made All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength Their ministers,—who in lordly wise had stirred [5] Among the grandest objects of the sense, 25 And dealt [6] with whatsoever they found there As if they had within some lurking right To wield ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... if at any time I do not understand the expression, it is yet just. Such was the wealth of his truth that it was not worth his while to use words in vain. His poem entitled "Sympathy" reveals the tenderness under that triple steel of stoicism, and the intellectual subtilty it could animate. His classic poem on "Smoke" suggests Simonides, but is better than any poem of Simonides. His biography is in his verses. His habitual thought makes all his poetry a hymn to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... sulky obstinacy, unable to comprehend the delicate subtilty of Beth's perception,—"But I ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... at its best. They tried for strong colour and got it, strong and bad— like a conqueror. But all this while they missed the very essence of the rose's being; they thought there was nothing in it but redundance and luxury; they exaggerated these into coarseness, while they threw away the exquisite subtilty of form, delicacy of texture, and sweetness of colour, which, blent with the richness which the true garden rose shares with many other flowers, yet makes it the queen of them all—the flower of flowers. Indeed, the worst of this is that these sham roses are driving the real ones out of existence. ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... appearing to understand it, or ever thinking to alter those passages which we suggested."—This extract is to be valued, for the information is authentic; and it assists us in throwing some light on the subtilty ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Oh utter corruption of the flesh!—oh subtilty of Satan! The Lord forgive thee, as I do, my poor child; henceforth thou goest not beyond ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... not fail. It is sorrow. Sorrow can bring the truth home to you as no other thing will. The relentless pressure of grief will force you to seek for light. It will admit of no evasion; it will receive no subtilty; it will bring you face to face with the eternal verities; it will save your soul. And what sorrow, Helen, can come to you such as making me suffer? And is there a pang which can tear my soul in this world like ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... this move into account when playing 2. ... Kt-KB3. His idea was to provoke the advance of the KP. The pawn at K5 is weaker than at K4, particularly as Black's QBP prevents its natural support by P-Q4. Moreover Black's Q4 is free from interference by White. White refutes this ultra subtilty by simple and straight-forward play, and he gets such an advantage in development that his attack succeeds before Black is able to demonstrate ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker
... neighboring Timbuez Indians (with whom Lara had contrived to establish a friendship), cast his eyes on this fair creature, and no sooner saw than he coveted; no sooner coveted than he plotted, with the devilish subtilty of a savage, to seize by force what he knew he could never gain by right. She soon found out his passion (she was wise enough—what every woman is not—to know when she is loved), and telling her husband, kept as ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... captive—ay, minstrelsy is the right solace for a captive,' said Patrick; 'at least, so they say and sing. Our king will have better work when he gains his freedom. Only there will come before me a subtilty I once saw in jelly and blanc-mange, at a banquet in France, where a lion fell in love with a hunter's daughter, and let her, for love's sake, draw his teeth and clip his claws, whereupon he found himself made a ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... language has been increased by continual transfusions from the French. To these have been added, from time to time, similar accessions from other languages, both ancient and modern. Thus a copiousness and a flexibility, which in the instance of the Greek seem to have arisen out of that subtilty of intellect which gave birth to endless subdivision and distinction, have been in some measure compensated in our own by the influxes which it has received from the languages of many other people; and have been yet further improved by ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... not eloquence, is to be sought for in Holy Scripture. We should rather search after our profit in the Scriptures, than subtilty of speech..... Search not who spoke this or that, but mark ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton |
