"Subtle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the Greek Fathers of the Church, whose acute and subtle minds anticipated not a few of the objections which we have had to encounter in our days. We cannot elaborate the statement here,[2] but it is to the point to observe that the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity removes ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... evil which was afterwards to transform Conciliation Hall into a market for place hunters. "I apprehend," said he, in a remarkable speech delivered in January, '46, "more danger to Repeal from the subtle influence of a Whig administration, than from the coercive measures of the Tories." And he was right. Day by day, the subtle influence which he dreaded did its blighting work; and the success of those who sought the destruction of the Repeal Association through the machinery ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... sermons and discourses of Shin-gon, the subtle points of an argument are seized and elaborated. These are mystical on the one side, and pantheistic on the other. It is easily seen how Buddha, being in Japanese gods as well as men, and no being without Buddha, the ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... valueless and pedantic, I do not think I ever heard. It must have required immense and complicated knowledge. He was tracing the development of a certain kind of dramatic lyric, and what surprised me was that he supplied the subtle intellectual connection, the missing links, so to speak, of which there is no earthly record. Let me give a single instance. He was accounting for a rather sudden change of thought in a well-known poet, and he ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... known. It was saturated with the sense of ancient, stable, sane tradition. It breathed an atmosphere in which nothing violent or strange or abnormal could ever flourish. She felt that, in contrast with their restless modern Cotswold home, its intense normality must surely have some subtle reassuring effect upon her son. Gazing over those yellow fields in the early morning she felt a more settled happiness than she had ever known ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... Sopater was one of those who wore purple, and was related to the king; that he had been lately sent into Africa with four thousand Macedonians and a sum of money to assist Hannibal and the Carthaginians." The Macedonians, on being interrogated on these points, proceeded to answer in a subtle and evasive manner; but without waiting for the conclusion of their reply they were told, "that the king was seeking occasion for war, and that if he persisted he would soon obtain his object. That the treaty had been doubly violated ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... a dangerous business in which the crafty Barolong, who belonged to the country, alone were well versed. A subtle warrior among the Barolong, named Mathakgong, was a regular expert in this business. He led the occasional Barolong dashes into the Boer lines in search of beef and he invariably managed to rush his loot into Mafeking. He did this throughout the seven months' siege with ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... subtle little satire on the vaunted permanence of love and fame. The poet's grave falls to pieces. The words: "love me for ever," appeal to us from a tombstone which records how Spring garlands are severed by the hand of June, and June's fever is ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... courts of justice and by special commissions and inquisitions: First under pretense of tenures, and then of titles in the Crown, for the purpose of the total extirpation of the interests of the natives in their own soil, until the species of subtle ravage kindled the flames of that rebellion which broke out in 1641. By the issue of that war, by the turn which the Earl of Clarendon gave to things at the Restoration, and by the total reduction of the kingdom of Ireland in 1691, the ruin of the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... generous people on Earth. But we have to go back to the insight of Franklin Roosevelt who, when he spoke of what became the welfare program, want that it must not become a narcotic and a subtle destroyer of the spirit. Welfare was never meant to be a life style. It was never meant to be a habit. It was never supposed to be passed on from generation to generation like a legacy. It's time to replace the assumptions of the welfare state and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George H.W. Bush • George H.W. Bush
... I now think that if this simple plan had presented itself to his subtle mind, of stunning, if not disabling me, and thus making it possible for them to obtain his father's will without an open assault, he would not have hesitated to embrace it. But he evidently did not calculate, as I did, the chances of such an act, or perhaps he felt that I was likely to be ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... only words that rose to my lips were, "How very ill you look!" and I wisely concluded not to say them. She was very beautiful, and looked prouder and more imperious than ever. But she was changed. I could not tell what it was. I could find no name for the subtle alteration; ere long I knew only too well what it was. Then, I only knew that she was different from what she had been, and different in a way that aroused tenfold all ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... general police; and I noticed that his presence at headquarters was a great surprise to every one, as he was thought to be in complete disgrace. Those who seek to explain the causes of the smallest events think that his Majesty's idea was to oppose the subtle expedients of the police under M. Fouche to the then all-powerful police of the Baron de Stein, the armed head of all the secret parties which were forming in every direction, and which were regarded, not without reason, as the rulers of popular opinion in Prussia and Germany, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... puts out a shy hand of friendship, and presently soothes and consoles as the strong, silent, storm-tossed man who rode with so soldierly a bearing beside Mr. Pym; suffering no stab of love and longing any more as he looked over her fair bosom, because the shy hand was in his, because there was that subtle sense of understanding in his heart which seemed to tell him that even as he loved ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... writes how he escap't the danger, And subtle treason that the king had plotted, Being crossed by the contention of the windes, He found ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... through the pines of Otsego, the winding river murmuring lovelorn secrets to the flowers that nodded on its margin, the moon rising over Mount Vision and shedding its splendor upon the lake, were subtle influences in secret meetings between men and maidens, in whispered vows beneath the trees, in courtships on the border of the Glimmerglass, in lovemaking along the shores of ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... greatest hopes on his wisdom, since he had devised the whole of such an achievement with the deepest cunning, and accomplished it with the most astonishing contrivance. Many could have been seen marvelling how he had concealed so subtle a plan over so long a space ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... heartily; and Kitty laughed, and so did her mother. Subtle barriers were swept away, and all three of them became what they had not yet been, friends. It ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... political. The two principles upon which the English language rests the burden of its paramount interest, are these:—first, its powers, the range of its endowments; secondly, its apparent destiny. Some subtle judges in this field of criticism are of opinion, and ever had that opinion, that amongst the modern languages which originally had compass enough of strength and opulence in their structure, or had received culture sufficient to qualify them plausibly for entering ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... unconventional school, before the rise of the fixed traditions; it might have been carved in any age and country where good natural work was done. In its unshrinking figuring of age and weakness with a subtle character, it shows a power of dealing with individuality which stands apart from all ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... and far from seizing the subtle delicacy of Fanny's thought—her mind dwelling upon Poetry, and his upon Law,— "ay, and do you know that upon a mere scrap of paper, if I could but find it, may depend my whole fortune, my whole happiness, all that I care ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... would suit her exactly and it was her very own. She need not act for only Madame Imogen and Pere Anselme. But when she thought of this latter a sensation of discomfort came. How could she read in peace with the dear old man, who was so keen and so subtle he would certainly divine that all was not well? And ever his sentence recurred to her: "Remember always, my daughter, that le Bon Dieu settles things for us mortals if we leave it all to Him, ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... reign was to be simultaneously enacted. There was the bishop of Arras, soon to be known throughout Christendom by the more celebrated title of Cardinal Granvelle—the serene and smiling priest, whose subtle influence over the destinies of so many individuals then present, and over the fortunes of the whole land, was to be so extensive and so deadly. There was that flower of Flemish chivalry, the lineal descendant of ancient Frisian ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... ascertain. There is reason to believe that their dominion stretches from west to east, in a narrow line or belt, from the mouth of the Senegal (on the northern side of that river) to the confines of Abyssinia. They are a subtle and treacherous race of people, and take every opportunity of cheating and plundering the credulous and unsuspecting negroes. But their manners and general habits of life will be best explained as incidents occur in the course of ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... remind me that I am quite uninteresting when I am trying to make believe that I am subtle, or 'subtile,' as the Psalmist says of the ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... might assuage her anxiety regarding her husband, she being unable to protect him from the new danger that threatened. Wilhelm was as brave as any man need be, and in a fair fight was content to take whatever odds came, but now he was confronted by a subtle invisible peril, against which ordinary courage was futile. An unaccustomed shiver chilled him as the palace sentinel, in the gathering gloom of the corridor, raised his hand swiftly to his helmet ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... as those controlling the heart-beats, digestive and intestinal movements; the contraction of the pupil of the eye from light, sneezing, swallowing, etc., are reflexes; imitation, fighting, and fear, are instincts, which capacities refer to those more subtle traits by means of which an individual becomes a good linguist, or is tactful, or gains skill in handling tools. However, there is no sharp line of division between these various unlearned tendencies; what one psychologist calls a ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... accurately and really an existence; and to save thee some trouble, my dark friend, I will tell thee, that though thou speakest to an uneducated Varangian, I am not entirely unskilled in the Grecian art of making subtle words pass upon the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... complicated," proceeded Mr. Cupples quite unmoved, "because after Marlowe's suspicions were awakened a second subtle mind came in to interfere with the plans of the first. That sort of duel often happens in business and politics, but less frequently, I imagine, in the world of crime. One disturbing reflection was left on my mind by what ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... magnetism, in chemical affinity; that the varieties of magnetism in different individuals afforded "medium power" to some, and denied it to others; that the magnetic relations necessary to produce phenomena were very subtle, liable to disturbance and singularly susceptible to the influence of the mental emotions. In addition to communications purporting thus to explain the object and something of the modus operandi of the communion, numerous spirit friends of the ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... and color and perfume were one, where you could hear the hues and see the harmonies of heaven. For absolute melody and splendor it were hardly rash to call it the first poem in the language. An exquisite instinct married to a subtle science of verse has made it the supreme model of music in our language, unapproachable except by Shelley.' In all the poems consider: 1. Is his romantic world too remote from reality to be interesting, or has it poetic imagination that makes it true in the deepest sense? 2. Which is more ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... imperative? I trust thee wholly—how else could I speak thus with thee? I have never for a moment doubted thee; yet one might doubt one's own loyalty in this court of Cyprus—where, it is told me, there is a most subtle intriguer who ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... woman. This gentleman is difficult to describe. He seems too languid even for the profession of man-about-town, but his clothes are such that one would think their irreproachability could only be maintained by a life of dedication to them. Did he ever exist? Du Maurier is very subtle here. He fully appreciated the great aim of the public-school-trained man in his own time—the elaborate care with which an officer studied to conceal an enthusiasm for the profession of arms, the great air of indolence with which over-work was ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... shrink into a turret, expand into a hall, coil into a staircase, or spring into a spire, with undegraded grace and unexhausted energy; and whenever it finds occasion for change in its form or purpose, it submits to it without the slightest sense of loss either to its unity or majesty,—subtle and flexible like a fiery serpent, but ever attentive to the voice of the charmer. And it is one of the chief virtues of the Gothic builders, that they never suffered ideas of outside symmetries and consistencies to interfere with the real use and value of what ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Andrew imagined that the corregidor had surely fallen in love with Preciosa; for jealousy is a subtle thing, and enters other bodies without breaking or dividing them. He replied, however, "If she has said that I am her betrothed, it is very true; and, if she has said I am not her betrothed, she has also spoken the truth; for it is not possible that Preciosa ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... invention and collection of the most atrocious, they both employed the energy and patience of the entomologist. A chance word, out of which a racy story might be extracted, was pursued like a rare moth or a butterfly. Dubois's were more subtle, but Mortimer's, being more to the point, ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... organization existing is not positively known (for the black is more subtle and crafty than any thing human), but it is suspected by many of the whites, the more moderate of whom are disposed to ward off the impending blow by some system of gradual emancipation—declaring all black children ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... their representatives set them such lessons? Mr. Everett's whole life has been a sermon from this text. There was, at least, this advantage in duelling, that it set a certain limit on the tongue. When Society laid by the rapier, it buckled on the more subtle blade of etiquette wherewith to keep obtrusive vulgarity at bay.' In this connection, I may be permitted to recall a playful remark of his upon another occasion. The painful divisions in the First Parish, A.D. 1844, occasioned ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... keeps the heart of the world from hardening; the secret knowledge which finds out the objects of Christian compassion and wins their confidence; the enthusiasm which burns like a fire at the heart of religious work. The influence of women is subtle and remote; but it is on this account all the more powerful; for they sit at the very fountains, where the river of human life is springing, and where a touch may determine ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... this supreme sorrow with the same silent fortitude with which she had always met trouble, but a subtle change came over her. While it could not be said that she looked exactly old, yet the youthfulness for which she had been so remarkable seemed suddenly to vanish, and her hair grew rapidly grey. A little child—Frank Norris's daughter—said, with an acuteness beyond her years: ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... square of darkness, and then returned to her who lay upon the bed ... But five days ago a hearty, high-spirited woman, in full health of mind and body ... It could not be that she was to die so soon as that. ... But knowing now the sad inevitableness, every glance found a subtle change, some fresh token that this bed-ridden woman groaning in her blindness was no more the wife and mother they had known ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... numbers of highly indicative drawings and a group of rare canvases, the quality of which painters will at once acclaim, and poets will at once verify the lyric perfection of, paintings and drawings among the loveliest we have in point of purity of conception and feeling for the subtle shades of existence, those rare states of life which, when they arrive, are called perfect moments in the poetic experience ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... insecurity when retained for a client whose cause seemed to him unjust. He differed but little, indeed, from the best of his colleagues; perhaps he had somewhat fewer scruples; and, certainly, he was too fond of good red wine. He had a caustic wit, made an admirable boon companion, and, having a subtle intellect, was fond of paradoxes and skillful hair-splitting. Thanks to the red wine, he fell into the habit of spending much, and so into the necessity of making much also. Vanity and the love of excitement led him to devote the whole energy of ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... yong mayde, that liueth welthelie and idlelie, wise men can iudge, and honest men do pitie. And yet ten Morte Arthures do not the tenth part so much harme, as one of these bookes, made in Italie, and translated in // hand.gif England. They open, not fond and common wayes to vice, but such subtle, cunnyng, new, and diuerse shiftes, to cary yong willes to vanitie, and yong wittes to mischief, to teach old bawdes new schole poyntes, as the simple head of an English man is not hable to inuent, nor neuer was hard of ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... young poet to initiate himself by pastorals, which, not professing to imitate real life, require no experience; and, exhibiting only the simple operation of unmingled passions, admit no subtle reasoning or deep inquiry. Pope's pastorals are not, however, composed but with close thought; they have reference to the times of the day, the seasons of the year, and the periods of human life. ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... later, and the break came during the afternoon of our twenty-seventh day out. The barometer, which for nearly three weeks had been standing well above thirty inches, gave us the first warning of the coming change by an ominously rapid decline of the mercury, which was quickly succeeded by a subtle veiling of the sky, the clear, rich blue of which gradually changed to a uniform tint of dirty white, in the midst of which the sun hung a mere shapeless blotch. The light breeze that during the earlier part of the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... idea on a large scale, he has left us some fine examples of what can be accomplished in this direction. A delightful but theoretically undesirable characteristic of his work is the use of stucco. Upon it he moulded delicate forms in subtle and beautiful proportions. His "compo'' was used so successfully that the patent was infringed: many of his moulds still exist and are in constant use. That most difficult feature, the column, he handled with enthusiasm and perfect mastery; he studied ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... name of Telemaque. Clever (spirituel) "to an alarming extent" (faire peur) in the minutest detail of his writings, rich, copious, harmonious, but not without tendencies to lengthiness, the style of Fenelon is the reflex of his character; sometimes, a little subtle and covert, like the prelate's mind, it hits and penetrates without any flash (eclat) and without dealing heavy blows. "Graces flowed from his lips," said Chancellor d'Aguesseau, "and he seemed to treat the greatest subjects ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... eyes followed him wherever he went. He knew, at all events, that he could hold his own amid these adventurers, many of whom had risen from the ranks; while others, from remote northern States, had birth but no manners at all. He was easy and gay, carrying lightly that subtle air of distinction which is vouchsafed to ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... since his present appointment he has established the most rigid discipline: this is of the utmost consequence in any army; but particularly so in that he commands, as they have to contend with the most subtle and desperate foe on earth, flushed with their late victory over St. Claire.—In a former indian war, an army lay with it's rear and flanks well secured; a river three quarters of a mile broad in its front, and no enemy within fifty miles. A body of Indians, being informed ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... sweep of the outer line; full of force and delicacy combined. See, too, how it is supported by the harmonious inner line, a thought more rigid, and yet full of grace. To become an expert in bows requires years of continual observation, for the slight differences in line are too subtle to be apparent to those who are not constantly looking for and studying them. But I think anyone, even "ye meanest capacitie in ye world"—to quote good old Roger North—will be able to appreciate the contrast between ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... I read the list I saw distinctly, and very nearly as it happened, all that was to follow. Who could but conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of low and unprofitable chicane? Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue their private interests, which they understood ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... is doomed. He has escaped the spears, arrows, and tomahawks of the Tenawa savages to fall a victim to a destroyer, stealthy, subtle, unseen. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... in the subtle quality of charm that the women of the last ten years have fallen away from their elder sisters. They have been carried along by a love of sport, and by the set of fashion's tide, not stopping to ask themselves whither they are floating. They do not realize all the ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... that some allegedly wise ones will scoff at this statement. They may say that an affection that may be influenced by the kind and condition of underwear is not worth having or retaining. But what do these wise ones know! What do they know of the numerous subtle influences which gradually either strengthen or undermine our affections? Follow this advice and ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... my pipe after a frugal lunch, and thinking how hard it would be to find in any quarter of the globe a place more fair and fragrant than this hidden vale among the Alleghany Mountains. The perfume of the flowers of the forest is more sweet and subtle than the heavy scent of tropical blossoms. No lily-field in Bermuda could give a fragrance half so magical as the fairy-like odour of these woodland slopes, soft carpeted with the green of glossy vines above whose tiny leaves, in ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... "You are so much on the 'subtle-souled-psychologist' line, that there's no need of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... ye subtle spirits, why Lift I my eyes to yonder floating sky, Where clouds paint pictures with so clear a hue? A heaven so beautiful ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... most active, but, at the same time, of the least suspected, of these subtle agents, was a certain Basilio Lopez, cloth-merchant in the city of Pampeluna. He was a man past the middle age, well to do in the world, married and with a family, and certainly, to all appearance, the last person to ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... form of rhetoric. Some of the sentences are mental landscapes. The meaning seems to be in motion on the page. It is elusive from its very subtlety. It is more our analyst than her character of Rufus Lyon, who "would fain find language subtle enough to follow the utmost intricacies of the soul's pathways." Mrs. Transome's "lancet-edged epigrams" are dull in comparison with her own. She uses them with startling success in dissecting motive and analyzing feeling. They deserve ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... noticed that for some days afterwards Veronica displayed a tendency to shutting herself up in the schoolroom with a copybook, and that lead pencils had a way of disappearing from my desk. One in particular that had suited me I determined if possible to recover. A subtle instinct guided me to Veronica's sanctum. I found her thoughtfully sucking it. She explained to me that she was writing ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... exclaimed impulsively, taking a step within, the door. Instantly, as though some night-flying bat had flown against it, the candle went out—a breath wafted by him as lightly and as silently as a snowy owl flies home in the twilight. A subtle something, the influence of a presence, remained, which mingled strangely with the odours of the clover in the neuk, and the sour night-smell of the byre. Again there was a perfect silence. Without, a corncrake ground monotonously. A rat scurried along the rafter. Ebie in the silence ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... regarded Cushing's Manual in her rulings, she maintained order and good feeling by the persuasiveness and serenity of her voice and manner. Emerson says: "It is not what the man says, but it is the spirit behind it which makes the impression." It was this subtle magnetism of the true, grand woman, ever faithful to her highest convictions of truth, that made her always respected in every position she occupied. Hers was pure moral power, for in that frail organization there could be but ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the digestion of strong doctrine; that very activity now generated a new style of preaching, which may be termed the metaphysical school. The days of thaumaturgia were passed, and in place of discussing demonology and temptation, an appetite for subtle dogma prevailed. I doubt if Britain and Germany, with their combined universities, could have equaled, during the last century, the New England pulpit in mental acuteness or philosophical discrimination. A reference to Edwards recalls mention among his followers ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... ladies of the present day—that he could engineer himself into a worthwhile conversation with the Lawrences. Since meeting them, he was doubly anxious. There was a thinly veiled hostility about the man which demanded investigation. And about the woman there was a subtle atmosphere of tragedy which appealed to the masculine protectiveness which surged strong ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... at him surprised. Never before had he used any term of endearment to her. There was a hard, still and subtle yet determined light in ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... energy in O'Grady's sentences. It is easy to point to faults due to excess and abundance, but how rare in literature is that heroic energy and power. There is something arcane and elemental in it, a quality that the most careful stylist cannot attain, however he uses the file, however subtle he is. O'Grady has noticed this power in the ancient bards and we find it in his own writing. It ran all through the Bardic History, the Critical and Philosophical History, and through the political books, "The Tory Democracy" and "All Ireland." There is this imaginative ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... Earl of Kildare born over again." Luttrell, on the other hand, declared that "Ormond hated Grey worse than he had hated Kildare." All agreed that Lord Leonard was difficult to work with. He seems to have been a well-intentioned man, a hard worker, and a keen soldier, but neither subtle enough nor conciliatory enough for his place. He was accused of treasonable practices, and a list of formidable charges made against him. At his own request he was summoned to court to answer these. To a good many he pleaded guilty—half in contempt as it would seem—and ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... against it. Causes beyond our apparent knowledge were responsible for the death of Nurse Forrester; but who shall presume to say that was really so? Why imagine anything so irregular? I prefer to think that had the post-mortem been conducted by somebody else, subtle reasons for her death might have appeared. Science is fallible, and even ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... what had occurred to St. Anthony in the Desert of Thebais: after having been the means of freeing others from the attacks of the devil, he was exposed to them himself. The subtle spirit often suggested evil thoughts to him. He placed horrid spectres before him, and he even visibly struck him severe blows. Once in a very narrow path, and on the edge of a deep precipice, he appeared to him in a hideous figure, and threw himself upon him ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... main importance of Socialism in this connection lies in the fact that it does not confine itself to sociology. It has become a complete philosophy of life, and can be seen penetrating with its subtle satire on human nature almost everything about us. We have the cash register to educate our clerks into pure and honest character, and the souls of conductors can be seen being nurtured, mile after ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... had been his upon the last occasion when we had talked at length together upon some of the present social and political phases of our republic—that day of the New Bridge and the advent of Hortense. Only, upon that day, he had by his manner in some subtle fashion conveyed to me a greater security in my discretion than I felt him now to entertain. His many observations about the Replacers, with always the significant and conspicuous omission of Hortense, proved more and more, as I thought it over, that his state ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... dividing years was forgotten. And as her face had cleared, so had his. He had explained her annoyance by calling himself a clod! "She hated not to be thought married—of course!" What a brute he was not to have recognized the subtle loveliness of a sensitiveness like that! He wanted to tell her so, but he could only push the newspaper toward her and slip his hand under it to feel for hers—which he clutched and gripped so hard that her rings cut into the flesh. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... a true eye for beauty or breed, poor dey-vil!" This expression of pity seemed to afford each of them much subtle enjoyment. "Harking back to this—filly," said the big man, checking his merriment, "how if she jibs, and cuts up rough, kicks over the traces—devilish ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... friend stood with his stop-watch in his hand, with a visage lengthened under the influence of these reflections, Sir Bingo, with an instinctive tact, which self-preservation seemed to dictate to a brain neither the most delicate nor subtle in the world, premised his enquiry by some general remark on fishing and field-sports. With all these, he found Tyrrel more than passably acquainted. Of fishing and shooting, particularly, he spoke with something like enthusiasm; so ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... organization of comedians that Europe or America ever saw. I don't suppose there is a comedy scene that he couldn't rehearse and play better than any of the actors who were engaged to play the parts. The subtle touches that he put into 'Lord and Lady Algy' were extraordinary. The same with 'The Counsellor's Wife,' with 'Bohemia,' and again with a play of H. V. Esmond's called 'Imprudence,' which we did. He seemed to love this play, and I never saw a piece grow so in all my life as it did under ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... endure the weight of the sun,'[138] have had all your intellects about you, and have been able always to choose your words?" No, indeed! These letters, if truth is to be expected from them, have to be read with all the subtle distinctions necessary for understanding the frame of mind in which they were written. His anger boils over here, and he is hot. Here tenderness has mastered him, and the love of old days. He is weak in body just now, and worn ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... happiness! explain to you my system!"—My system! But I have no system: that is the very difference between us. My notions of happiness cannot be resolved into simple, fixed principles. Nor dare I even attempt to analyze them; the subtle essence would escape in the process: just punishment to the ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... Occasional neighbors greeted them, strolling past; the newly watered lawns all along the street sent up a fresh turfy odor; now and then a bird chirped drowsily. He felt deliriously intimate, peacefully at home. A fine, subtle sense of bien-etre ...
— The Courting Of Lady Jane • Josephine Daskam
... their records we see the clash of barbarism with advancement, the bizarre tints of a semi-civilization unequalled in rude magnificence. Giant shadows of forgotten kings stalk across the canvas, their royal purple intermingling with the shaggy fell of the bear and wolf. One, Chilperic, a subtle grammarian and the inventor of new alphabetic symbols, is yet the most implacable of his race, the murderer of his wife, the heartless slayer of hundreds, to whom human life is as that of cattle skilled in ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... chair and exchanged a few words with Claire as she gathered together her possessions, but the subtle change persisted. Claire felt vaguely disturbed, but the next half-hour passed so pleasantly that she had no time to puzzle over the explanation. Captain Fanshawe never left her side; they sat together ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... determined. He had already enriched his songs with certain tender allusions to their present frame of mind and their future state of happiness. "Where was Moses when the light went out!" and "Little Annie Rooney" had undergone so subtle a change when sung at the top of Mr. James Finnegan's voice that while the original warp and woof of those very popular melodies were entirely unrecognizable to any but the persons interested, to them they were as gall and wormwood. This was Cully's ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... that my Flamand's wound looked much worse than it was, I felt hurt, as if this beloved person had been slighted; also as if there was some subtle disparagement to ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... face with a tall, keen-featured man in Police uniform, and a girl. Even though Rutter had declared she would be at Walsh, I wasn't prepared to believe it was Lyn Rowan. Sometimes five years will work a wonderful change in a woman; or is it that time and distance work some subtle transition in one's recollection? She didn't give me much time to indulge in guesswork, though. While I wondered, for an instant, if there could by any possibility be another woman on God's footstool with ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... generator room, their flying fingers making sharp contrast to their slow, idle conversation. They gave the room extra care this time because there had been some quick-fingered students around who just might have got it into their heads to improve the machinery. Satisfied at last that there had been no subtle meddling, they snapped the cowl of the generator back into position. They took one more sharp look around, then walked, single file, up the narrow passage to the control room. Louie LeBeau was sitting in the astronavigator's ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... that our economy is a highly complex and sensitive mechanism. Hasty and ill-considered action of any kind could seriously upset the subtle equation that encompasses debts, obligations, expenditures, defense demands, deficits, taxes, and the general economic health of the Nation. Our goals can be clear, our start toward them can be ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... feels; but every attempt to make him accept her instead he resists. Her desperate declamation is splendid. Her heartrending sense of misery and piteous prayer for salvation, her belief that before her is her savior could she but win him to her will, the choking fury of baffled passion, the steady and subtle encroachments made while Parsifal is lost in a meditative dream, the burning kiss which recalls him to himself, the fine touch by which this kiss, while arousing in him the stormiest feelings, causes a sharp pain, as of Amfortas's ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... Crafty and subtle the means they employ. Protestants fight, but uncertain their action— Party dissensions their ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... roof in perfect amity. Nay, more, they often formed powerful and unscrupulous leagues against him. But whenever Nellie was disturbed, by no matter what, she would say "your mother" instead of merely "mother!" It was an extraordinary subtle, silly and effective way of putting him ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... only bring to light those Beings who, to a certain extent at least, possess a material form, though of a consistency as subtle as electricity. But the instrument does not possess the power of rendering visible those Superior Beings, whom no man in his ordinary state is permitted to see through a material medium. He only can see them even in visions who is blessed ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... doubts, which took possession of Vincent himself. The trial was long and painful. For several years this humble and fervent soul endured the agony of an incessant temptation to unbelief. But Vincent knew how to resist this most subtle snare of the Evil One, and, although the anguish was continual, his ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... him forward unduly; indeed, there was no need of it; for the boy manifested a remarkable docility for instruction, and a singular quickness in mastering the preliminary steps which lead to science: a subtle instinct, indeed, which it seemed wonderful a child should possess for anything as artificial as systems of grammar and arithmetic. A remarkable boy, in truth, he was, to have been found by chance in an almshouse; except that, such being his origin, we are at liberty to suppose for him whatever ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... CHILTERN. No; he was a man of a most subtle and refined intellect. A man of culture, charm, and distinction. One of the most ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... might be. She was strung to a great pitch of nervous excitement through the exhilaration of her tearing ride; she was stubbornly determined to prevent the finger of scorn from pointing in her direction; but she was finding a subtle salve to the smart of the wound to her pride in the romantic setting of the wonderful picture made by ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... these, the editor's secretary, at heart an honest patriot, but in fact eating the bread of shame, was perhaps not altogether of the right sort. Still he did get off his chest at last the pent-up passion of years, and very well he did it, with the help of Mr. RANDLE AYRTON, whose subtle little touches, building up a picture of a disheartened hack, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various
... open, caught her uncle's last words, and came in, expectantly—I think she, like most of us, wondered what sort of being we were about to see. And possibly there was a shade of disappointment on her face when the police-inspector walked in followed, not by the secret, subtle, sleuth-hound-like person she had perhaps expected, but by a little, rotund, rather merry-faced man who looked more like a prosperous cheesemonger or successful draper than an emissary of justice: he was just the sort of person you would naturally expect to see with an apron round his comfortable ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... though big ideas. His style is marvellously musical but overweighted by his classical long-windedness and difficult syntax. Such a contrast to Tennyson where the idea shines out of the language which is so simple as to seem inevitable, and yet wonderfully subtle as well ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... the ancient world at the time when the general movement of the Northern nations began. The battle with heathenism was virtually over, Christianity being the unquestioned conqueror; but the question, which of the many modifications of Christianity devised by the subtle Hellenic and Oriental intellects should be the victor, was a question still unsettled, and debated with the keenest interest on all the shores of the Mediterranean. So keen indeed was the interest that it sometimes seems almost to have ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... weeks flew by, And Anna plied her powers to charm, but still Not all the subtle glamour of her presence Could bind in sleep my pleading monitor. And so at last I said: 'We both are young: Let us, as earnest of a mutual wish To share a perfect love, or none at all, Absolve each other here, without condition, From this engagement; and, if three years hence We both are of one ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... enough to meet in real life a character so strong and vivid, so full of subtle characteristics, that his appearance in a novel would make the author's name. Such a character ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... movement, like the curving of a vine, Seems an unerring accident of grace, And like a flower's the subtle change and shine And meaning of her brightly ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... 'subtle spider, which doth sit In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide; If aught do touch the utmost thread of it, She feels it ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... was now encouraged, nay, enjoined, to marry. For here was an hereditary landed estate equal to the liberal maintenance of a family. And thus did a simple people, obeying its instinct of conquest, not only discover, in its earliest days, the subtle principle of Machiavel—Let war support war; but (which is far more than Machiavel's view) they made each present war support many future wars—by making it support a new offset from the population, bound to ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... if she carried out her threat, begged forgiveness for his wicked plans, pretended deep repentance, and spoke of his brother-in-law in terms of the warmest affection. His acting was so consummate that even Chainitza, who well knew her brother's subtle character, was deceived by it. When he saw that she was his dupe, knowing that he had nothing more either to fear or to hope for from that side, he directed his attention ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the strange sights of the evening. She had seen tickets marked complimentary, she remembered, but she could not for the life of her understand why our party should be particularly favored at a celestial exhibition like this. On the whole, she questioned inwardly whether it might not be some subtle pleasantry, and smiled, experimentally, with a note of interrogation in the smile, but, finding no encouragement, allowed her features to subside gradually as if nothing had happened. I saw all this as plainly as if it had all been printed in great-primer type, instead of working itself out ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... certain foundation of humour seems to be the common inheritance of mankind, but on it different periods build differently. The structure of a Greek joke is generally very simple; more obvious and less highly elliptical in thought than the modern type, but, on the other hand, considerably more subtle than the wit of the middle ages. There was a store of traditional jests on the learned professions, law, astrology, medicine —the last especially; and the schools of rhetoric and philosophy were, from their first beginning, the subject of much pleasantry. ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... exquisite at breakfast, a fresh and tender graciousness radiated in her every glance; she was subtle and captivating, teasing him that he had been so silent in the night. "Why wouldn't you talk to me, John? But it was all divine, I did not mind." Then she became full of winsome ways and caresses, which she ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... said, subtle Jack; put me in mind, when I return again, that I may make my lady mother laugh at the scholar. I'll to my game; for you, Jack, I would have you employ your time, till my coming, in watching what hour of the day my ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... "degenerated almost to the lowest state compatible with the retention of rational endowments." On the contrary, the old Greenland missionary, Hans Egede, writes: "I have found some of them witty enough and of good capacity;" Sir Martin Frobisher says they are "in nature very subtle and sharp-witted;" Sir Edward Parry, while extolling their honesty and good nature, adds, "Indeed, it required no long acquaintance to convince us that art and education might easily have made them equal or superior to ourselves;" Sauer tells of a woman who learned to speak Russian fluently in rather ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... in need of the patronage of error, than does a natural good complexion of paint. And it is certain, that the opinion which has been prevalent for many ages, of the power granted to devils, of torturing human bodies and minds, has been several ways made subservient to the subtle designs of crafty men, to the very great detriment and shame ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... past," he explained most unnaturally, for he and his friend had a horror of looking at the long, long past, which could not fail to remind them of—what no one cares to contemplate out of church. Making an effort toward some determination which a subtle observer might have noticed weighing upon him all the evening, he added: ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... may contract a bit. This remains entirely unnoticed by any one in the audience, but the professional mind-reader has heightened his sensibility so much that none of these involuntary signs escapes him. Yet from the standpoint of science his seeing these subtle signs is on principle no different from our ordinary seeing when a man points his ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... Juliet. All these circumstances agreed together to clear the friar from any hand he could be supposed to have in these complicated slaughters, further than as the unintended consequences of his own well-meant, yet too artificial and subtle contrivances. ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... white light below grew larger. Finally I saw Ray swing off and stand on his feet in a flood of white radiance below me. The air was warm, moist, laden with a subtle unfamiliar fragrance that suggested growing things. Then ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... painful expectation of the coming sentence. The saints and martyrs who surround Christ and His Mother, while forming one of the chief planes in the composition, are arranged in four unequal groups of subtle and surprising intricacy. All bear the emblems of their cruel deaths, and shake them in the sight of Christ as though appealing to His judgment-seat. It has been charitably suggested that they ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... respect—in egotism. He was not so learned as Voltaire, did not write so much, was not so highly honored or esteemed. But he had more genius, and exercised a greater influence on posterity. His influence was more subtle and more dangerous, for he led astray people of generous impulses and enthusiastic dispositions, with but little intelligence or experience. He abounded in extravagant admiration of unsophisticated nature, professed to love the simple and earnest, affected extraordinary friendship and sympathy, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... together one afternoon to a hill where they sat with a vista of green country spread before them, just beginning to kindle under the splendid torch of an incendiary autumn. Off beyond was the sea, gorgeously blue in its main scheme, yet varying into subtle transitions of mood from rich purple to a pale and tender green. The sky was cloudless but there was that smoky, misty, impalpable thing like a dust of dreams on the distance. The girl stood with ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... going to a different church. After enduring this for six months he generated a longing for a more convenient meeting-place, and finally allied himself with the Baptist Church of Eustis. Here his anchor might possibly have remained fast had it not been that subtle broodings over his wrongs, a calm faith in the righteousness of his own attitude, and disgust with those whom he saw calmly expatiating upon the doctrines and dogmas of religion in his own town finally caused him to suspect a universal misreading of the Bible. This doubt, together with his own ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... time in his life he had begun to sleep indifferently; when he had resolutely put from his mind thought of Alice and 'Arry, and seemed ready for repose, there crept out of less obvious lurking-places subtle temptations and suggestions which fevered his blood and only allured the more, the more they disquieted him. This Sunday night was the worst he had yet known. When he left the Walthams, he occupied himself for an hour or ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... political principles. It was a rule with Stapylton Toad never to commit himself. Once, indeed, he wrote an able pamphlet on the Corn Laws, which excited the dire indignation of the Political Economy Club. But Stapylton cared little for their subtle confutations and their loudly expressed contempt. He had obliged the country gentlemen of England, and ensured the return, at the next election, of Lord Mounteney's brother for the county. At this ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... propria persona, I should have been tempted to try Hiawatha's remarkable feat with his grandmother, and throw her up against the moon. But as I could not revenge myself upon her personally, I began to lay deep and subtle plans for inducing Charlie to leave her ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... the man he made use of as his preceptor in eloquence, though Isocrates then taught it; whether it was that the loss of his father incapacitated him to pay the sum of ten minae, which was that rhetorician's usual price, or whether he preferred the keen and subtle manner of Isaeus as more ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... of French to respond to a question couched in English, the suggestion of a subtle correction? From employe to employer? If not, why must Duchemin have thought so? If so, why did Monk, without betraying a sign of feeling ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance |
