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Subtle   /sˈətəl/   Listen
Subtle

adjective
(compar. subtler; superl. subtlest)
1.
Difficult to detect or grasp by the mind or analyze.  Synonym: elusive.  "A subtle difference" , "That elusive thing the soul"
2.
Able to make fine distinctions.
3.
Working or spreading in a hidden and usually injurious way.  Synonyms: insidious, pernicious.  "A subtle poison"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Subtle" Quotes from Famous Books



... but two equals,—namely, George, the youngest of the Nevile brothers, Archbishop of York; and a boy, whose intellect was not yet fully developed, but in whom was already apparent to the observant the dawn of a restless, fearless, calculating, and subtle genius. That boy, whom the philosophers of Utrecht had taught to reason, whom the lessons of Warwick had trained to arms, was Richard, Duke of Gloucester, famous even now for his skill in the tilt-yard and his ingenuity in the ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to Trent, turning at that moment to relight his cigar, that a look of subtle intelligence was flashed from one to the other of the brothers. He paused with the match in his fingers, puzzled, suspicious, anxious. So there was some scheme hatched already between these precious pair! It was time indeed ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... out from childhood into manhood. This atmosphere, where everything took a religious value, came with a subtle fascination to him. There was something in the air. His own mother was logical. Here there was something different, something he loved, something ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... puzzled her. She seemed to see reflections of beauty, if not beauty itself, in the little colorless face, in the figure, with its too-large joints and utter absence of curves. She sometimes even wondered privately if some subtle resemblance to the handsome Wheelers might not be in the child and yet appear. But she was mistaken. What she saw was pure mimicry of a ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... "with such an air as represented that he was an actor and with such an inferior manner as only acting an actor, as made the others on the stage appear real great persons and not representatives. This was a nicety in acting that none but the most subtle player could so much as conceive." It is conceivable, however, that some of this subtlety existed rather in the fancy of the critic than in the method of the player. This story of Mr. Peer is hardly to be equalled; yet Davies relates of Boheme, the actor, that when, upon his first appearance ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... introduction of new trade risks, and the cutting off of transportation, both internal and foreign, make up a sum of items which cannot be measured, but which may exceed those which can. Last, but not least, is the impairment of that subtle but vital basis of business, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... poetical, and by giving him the patience to be minute, enables him to throw a wonderful reality into his most unreal fancies. A monomania he paints with great power. He loves to dissect one of these cancers of the mind, and to trace all the subtle ramifications of its roots. In raising images of horror, also, he has strange success, conveying to us sometimes by a dusky hint some terrible doubt which is the secret of all horror. He leaves to imagination the task of finishing ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... of that one-time subtle confidant of the deposed king, now the patron of republicanism, Saint-Prosper once ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... believe, from inductive processes of thought, that when Mr. Balfour gets into his room of a night he locks the door—and smiles. Not the urbane smile that fascinates and undoes even Radical journalists—quite another smile. Never could this private smile have been more subtle than on the night of the day when he permitted himself to be elected a member of the British Academy. Further, let it not be said that our Academy excludes novelists and journalists. We novelists are ably represented by Mr. ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... in the Memoir, and from it the reader will see that the scene is laid at a new watering-place,[358] which is being exploited by two of the leading characters. In the twelve chapters which she wrote, the dramatis personae are sketched in with vigour and decision; but there is little of the subtle refinement which we are accustomed to associate with her work, and certainly nothing of the tender sentiment of Persuasion. It is unfair, however, to judge from the first draft of a few introductory ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... of all the grosser forms of hurry we find in ourselves other hurry habits that are finer and more subtle, and gradually our standards of quiet, deliberate ways get higher; we become more sensitive to hurry, and a hurried way of doing things grows more and more disagreeable ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call

... preferred silence. Cameron understood that. He laughed grimly and bent a keener gaze upon the furrowed, shadowy face. Another of those strange desert prospectors in whom there was some relentless driving power besides the lust for gold! Cameron felt that between this man and himself there was a subtle affinity, vague and undefined, perhaps born of the divination that here was a desert wanderer like himself, perhaps born of a deeper, an unintelligible relation having its roots back in the past. A long-forgotten sensation ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... a sympathy not of manners, but of feelings. The personal character may happen to be very opposite: the vivacious may be loved by the melancholic, and the wit by the man of learning. He who is vehement and vigorous will feel himself a double man by the side of the friend who is calm and subtle. When we observe such friendships, we are apt to imagine that they are not real because the characters are dissimilar; but it is their common tastes and pursuits which form a bond of union. POMPONIUS LAETUS, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... a less subtle kind. Neither boys nor masters interested her particularly as yet; but there were a thousand-and-one other ways of livening things up, and she tried them all, sometimes getting off scot free, and sometimes finding herself uncomfortably ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... distinguished from professional malefactors. But when they stopped coaches, extorted ransom from travellers and shot constitutional priests and purchasers of the national property, the distinction became too subtle. There was no longer any room for it in the year VIII and IX when, vigorous measures having almost cleared the country of the bands of "chauffeurs" and other bandits who infested it, the greater number of those who had escaped being shot ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre

... and, gazing on thy face, Hears thee discourse with eloquent lips, And marks thy lovely smile. This, this it is that made my heart So wildly flutter in my breast; Whene'er I look on thee, my voice Falters, and faints, and fails; My tongue's benumbed; a subtle fire Through all my body inly steals; Mine eyes in darkness reel and swim; Strange murmurs drown my ears; With dewy damps my limbs are chilled; An icy shiver shakes my frame; Paler than ashes grows my cheek; And Death seems nigh ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus

... into the magnetic state, and become en rapport with spiritual conditions, to find himself inspired—inflated with the divine magnetic current which flows from the spirit world to the inhabitants of earth. If a player desires to represent a certain character,—let it be the subtle, fiend-like Richard III. or the crafty Richelieu,—the customary mode of studying such characters is to endeavor to imagine one's self to be the person. That is the first step towards mediumship; for it is one degree from the natural, towards the superior state. Usually, through ignorance, ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn

... quivered. The incredible situation paralyzed her. She—the Aunt Caroline's niece, and engaged to Eustace Medlicott, the Bishop's junior chaplain, to be listening to a grotesque- looking foreigner making subtle speeches of an insinuating character, and, far from feeling scandalized and repulsed, to be conscious that she was thrilled and interested—it was hardly to ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn

... a seriousness of impression, a conscientious severity of argument, an habitual fervour and enthusiasm in their mode of handling almost every subject. The debates of the schoolmen were sharp and subtle enough; but they wanted interest and grandeur, and were besides confined to a few: they did not affect the general mass of the community. But the Bible was thrown open to all ranks and conditions "to run ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... entreated Eleonora, in a breathless whisper, and he signed consent, as both felt how those two spirits must have been entwined, since these long years had never broken that subtle link of sympathy which ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the assassin's dagger at 'Lias's feet, or Napoleon walking restlessly up and down the deck of the 'Bellerophon,' 'Lias rated them every one. He was lord of a shadow world, wherein he walked with kings and queens, warriors and poets, putting them one and all superbly to rights. Yet so subtle were the old man's wits, and so bright his fancy, even in derangement, that he preserved through it all a considerable measure of dramatic fitness. He gave his puppets a certain freedom; he let them state their case; and threw almost as much ingenuity into the pleading of it as into the refuting ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... wrongly assumed to be the outcome of harmonious physical and mental health. There is a pathetic exception in the outward lives of so many men of genius, the bloom being, to the instructed eye, only the indication of some subtle nervous derangement, only the forerunner of decay." The overmastering cerebral agitation that obsessed Wagner's life, was as with Chopin a symptom, not a sickness; but in the latter it had not yet assumed a ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... be true, that thoughts are living forces, then it seems to me that the subtle power and influence of a national maxim must be far-reaching and powerful in its effect on the ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt

... is to reconcile Humanity and Nature. I propose to show (on an immense scale) how Nature (in her grandest aspects) can adapt herself to the spiritual wants of mankind. In your joy or your sorrow, Nature has subtle sympathies with you, if you only know where to look for them. My pictures—no! my poems in color—will show you. Multiply my works, as they certainly will be multiplied, by means of prints—and what does Art become ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... and the fourth dimension of space was quite obvious. Men of science would have only two alternatives before them. Either the terrestrial and the nebular facts must be brought into harmony by such feats of subtle sophistry as the human mind is always capable of performing when driven into a corner; or science must throw down its arms in despair, and commit suicide, either by the admission that the universe is, after ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... carry him where it listed. "Ah! the crowd must have emphatic warrant," as Browning sang. Its suffrages are not for the cool, collected observer, whose eyes no glitter can dazzle, no mist suffuse. The many cannot but resent that air of lofty intelligence, that pale and subtle smile. But he will hold a place forever among that limited number, who, like Lucretius and Epicurus—without range or defiance, even without unbecoming mirth, look deep into the tangled mysteries of things; refuse credence to the absurd, and allegiance to arrogant authority; sufficiently ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... made them wakeful, and though tired, they sat long in the doorway, smoking, thinking. Small talk seemed to them profanation, and of that which was uppermost in each man's mind, none cared first to speak. A subtle understanding, called telepathy, was making of their several ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... had her there. As much as he wanted. And there would be Ethel Reeves, in a new blouse, looking on from a back seat, subtle and sullen, or handing round cups and plates without speaking to anybody, like a servant. I used to think she spied on them for Lena. They were always mouching about the garden together or sitting ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... on. Drayton's bounden civility to his wife, and to the other woman, must make him present himself as a target. He knew it, his wife knew it; as yet the other woman but dimly suspected it—not being over subtle—and it smote me in the face continuously. The puppet always feels the most cut up at times like these. In a way, it is because his vanity is being seared. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... "in him the genius of an artist struggled with that of a philosopher, and not unfrequently the latter got the worst of the contest." He speaks too of his "minute accuracy in observation and boundless memory for details and imagination which absolutely rioted in the scenting out of subtle and often far-fetched analogies.") Parker was hard at work on Birds, a subject in which his friend and leader also was deeply interested, and was indeed preparing an important book ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... unconventional. I remembered that the last time I had seen him at repast, just about forty-eight hours past, he had speared a croquette of chicken with disdain, and I decided not to apologize for the meal even in the most subtle way. Also the spectacle of father polishing off the small bones, when I remembered the efforts of devoted Henri to tempt his appetite with sophisticated food, filled me with a queer primitive feeling that made it possible for me to fall upon my series of the ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... universal gravitation. Scarcely one Rule is there that does not involve self-restraint, modesty, habitual consideration of others, and, to a large extent, living for others. Yet other Rules draw on the profounder deeps of wisdom and virtue, under a subtle guise of handsome behaviour. If youth can be won to excellence by love of beauty, ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway

... wish to draw subtle inferences say that all the terms of the Romans connected with agriculture may be referred to a Greek source, while the terms expressive of war and hunting are non-Hellenic. The induction fails completely in both ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various

... The second wife of the Protector Somerset, Ann Stanhope, is described in no flattering terms, one biographer attributing some of the Duke's later troubles to 'the pride, the haughty hate, the unquiet vanity of a mannish, or rather of a divellish, woman.' Haywood says she was 'subtle and violent in accomplishing her ends, and for pride, monstrous.' It can easily be imagined, therefore, that she persuaded the Duke to set aside her stepson in favour of her own eldest son; but all the honours that should have passed to him were forfeited by the attainder of the Duke. ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... was John Joachin; he was kept as secret as might be, that no man had intelligence of his repair; for he was no Frenchman, but an Italian born, a man before of no estimation in France, or known to be in favour with his master, but to be a merchant; and for his subtle wit, elected to entreat of such affairs as the king had commanded him by embassy. This Joachin, after his arrival here in England, was secretly conveyed unto the king's manor of Richmond, and there remained ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 48, Saturday, September 28, 1850 • Various

... that the unnatural engagement with Ed Caspian was "off." There I was disappointed. Not a word was said either by the girl or the man; yet something happened during that walk in the rain, I was still sure. Both were different afterward, in a way too subtle to define. But nothing is too ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... thought are limited. At least, in real life they are so. As regards a ballet, it is difficult to say what is not explainable by pantomime. I have seen the bad man in a ballet convey to the premiere danseuse by a subtle movement of the left leg, together with some slight assistance from the drum, the heartrending intelligence that the lady she had been brought up to believe was her mother was in reality only her aunt by marriage. But then it must be borne in mind that the premiere danseuse is a lady whose quickness ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome

... And stifle, dark, the feebly-bursting cry: Mark Ruffian Violence, distained with crimes, Rousing elate in these degenerate times, View unsuspecting Innocence a prey, As guileful Fraud points out the erring way: While subtle Litigation's pliant tongue The life-blood equal sucks of Right and Wrong: Hark, injur'd Want recounts th' unlisten'd tale, And much-wrong'd Mis'ry pours ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... contending also for principles which would affect for the future the whole groundwork of religious conviction. They were not yet in a position to see that henceforward authority could take only a secondary place, and that they were installing in its room either reason or a more subtle spiritual faculty superior even to reason in the perception of spiritual things. It was not until near the end of the seventeenth century that the mind began to awaken to a full perception of the freedom it had won—a freedom far more complete ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... hope so. I have no doubt that the Sprouts and the Sprugeons have been given to understand by the Lococks and the Pritchards what are the Duchess's wishes, and that it has also been intimated in some subtle way that the Duke is willing to oblige the Duchess. There are ever so many ways, you know, of ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... lusts! You deprive yourself of meat, of wine, of stoves, of slaves, and of honours; but how you let your imagination offer you banquets, perfumes, naked women, and applauding crowds! Your chastity is but a more subtle kind of corruption, and your contempt for the world is but the impotence of your hatred against it! This is the reason that persons like you are so lugubrious, or perhaps it is because they lack faith. The possession of the truth gives joy. Was Jesus sad? He used to go about surrounded by friends; ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... perceive his eyes with a kind of greediness to pull unto them this image of beauty, and carry it to the heart: shall observe himself to be somewhat incensed with this influence, which moveth within: when he shall discern those subtle spirits sparkling in her eyes, to administer more fuel to the fire, he must wisely withstand the beginnings, rouse up reason, stupefied almost, fortify his heart by all means, and shut up all those passages, by which it may ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... flashing flame, and then holding the fire in its glowing heart all through the night. Its bark is the most serviceable of all the products of the wilderness. In Russia, they say, it is used in tanning, and gives its subtle, sacerdotal fragrance to Russia leather. But here, in the woods, it serves more primitive ends. It can be peeled off in a huge roll from some giant tree and fashioned into a swift canoe to carry man over the waters. It can be cut into square sheets to roof ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... attacking the Coalition Government. In a subtle speech he supported the idea of splitting Russia up into a large number of petty states, insisting that the formula, "self-determination of peoples," applied to the separatist movement in the Ukraine. He insisted that ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... unsteady with its tremor of delight and young eagerness upon the vitta and it slipped off her hair. As it dropped, the subtle warm fragrance of the heavy locks, now braided in maidenly style, reached him; the liveliness of her relaxed young figure communicated itself to him without his touch; all the invitation of her helplessness ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller

... that he was by nature a marvelously clever, cunning man, though without education; and understood human nature to a kink, and well knew whom he had to deal with; and then, one glance of his squinting eye, was as good as a knock-down, for it was the most deep, subtle, infernal looking eye, that I ever saw lodged in a human head. I believe, that by good rights it must have belonged to a wolf, or starved tiger; at any rate, I would defy any oculist, to turn out a glass eye, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... peculiar temptations.' And in boldly prophetic words, which time has partly justified, he added, 'I venture to think that the greatest scientific problems of the future will find their solution in this Borderland, and even beyond; here, it seems to me, lie Ultimate Realities, subtle, far-reaching, wonderful.' ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... eyes would have detected any change in him. But, as the minutes of the new morning wore away, the swiftly-subtle progress of the influence began to show itself more plainly. The sublime intoxication of opium gleamed in his eyes; the dew of a stealthy perspiration began to glisten on his face. In five minutes more, the talk which ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... rag-tags and bob-tails of the world who presumed to snub him—these restaurant-haunting outsiders, among whom he condescended to sit, feeling always the subtle flattery they ought to accord him by virtue of a social position hopeless of attainment by any ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... of attendance or enthusiasm, I am sure; for it is a very different thing to speak under the bushel of a private club on the one hand, and, on the other, in a public place, where a happy period or a subtle argument may do the speaker permanent service in after life. Such a club might end, perhaps, by rivalling the 'Union' at Cambridge or the 'Union' ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... have been! The elder woman's eyes would have crackled brightly among her wrinkles and she would have looked at her daughter with the air of genial treachery which old women wear when they contrive a young girl's marriage, and she would have dropped some subtle hint at the next convenient assignation; and the girl herself would have stood by like a dark living scythe in the Latin attitude of modesty, very straight from the waist to the feet, but the shoulders bent as if to hide the bosom and the head bowed, mysteriously intimating ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... is a fiend for subtle craftiness, evolved a plan whereby we might worm the information from him. And so I caused Hor Vastus to be harnessed in the metal of a Zodangan soldier and chained in Parthak's cell beside him. For fifteen days the noble Hor Vastus has languished in the darkness of the pits, but not ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... her father's care. Competent teachers of high character were employed for so important work. The mental culture, social training, and refined accomplishments of Esther Randolph to such a father were matters of import. Nor were the subtle interwoven relations of the intellectual and ethical with bodily conditions, disregarded. She learned much by study wisely directed; became proficient in the languages, vocal and instrumental music; absorbed valuable general information from frequent talks with her father; ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee

... motion." A tall woman, with the magisterial sweep of shawl and wave of the arm of a cheap boarding-house keeper, rose. "I detect a subtle purpose in that offer. There is a rat behind that arras. There is a prejudice against us in the legislature, and the car company wish no mention of Woman Suffrage to be made in Berrytown until their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... to demand general ideas from Balzac himself, because he is so liberal of general imagery, and what is more, general prosopopoeia. Be the Balzacian world real, as some would have it to be, or be it removed from our mundane reality by the subtle "other-planetary" influence which is apparent to others, its complexity, its fullness, its variety, its busy and by no means unsystematic life and motion, cannot be denied. Why on earth cannot people be content with asking Platonism from Plato and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... not let him read it to the end." Fielding attacked Cibber's style and language more than once in Joseph Andrews and elsewhere. Nevertheless, Cibber possessed wit, unusual good sense and tact; and in the Apology he showed himself the most delicate and subtle critic of acting of his time. He was frequently accused of plagiarism, and did not scruple to make use of old plays, but he is said to have been ashamed of his Shakespearian adaptations, one of which, however, Richard ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... it, "and Tom twigg'd it, and Dick twigg'd it, and Harry twigg'd it, and so they all twigg'd it." In the mean time the chat went round very briskly, and dram after dram, the brandy, until the tickler was drained to the bottom. And then the subtle spirit of the brandy, ascending into their noddles, worked such wonders, that they all began to feel themselves as big as field officers. Macdonald, for his part, with a face as red as a comet, reined up Selim, and drawing his claymore, began to pitch and prance about, cutting and slashing ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... love, my love," he said, "it is in the subtle poison of such abuses to breed such diseases. His blood is infected, and objects lose their natural aspects in his sight. It is not ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... the Graevenitz, seeing she herself refused to deny her magic practices, and there is little doubt that she possessed that magnetic or hypnotic power, the use whereof our ancestors called witchcraft. It is curious to speculate how much of this power, in wonderfully subtle and varied forms, exists in every human being of whom we say: 'They have ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... was deep in the tumult of Chicago," runs the entry, "to-day, I am hoeing in my sun-lit garden, hearing the mourning-dove coo and the cat-birds cry. Last night as the sun went down the hill-tops to the west became vividly purple with a subtle illusive deep-crimson glow beneath, while the sky above their tops, a saffron dome rose almost to the zenith. These mystical things are here joined: The trill of black-birds near at hand, the cackle of barn-yard fowls, the sound ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... with the other circumstances, they knew that I was no other than Julian West. Even had there been no thought, as at first there was not, of my resuscitation, Mrs. Leete said she believed that this event would have affected her daughter in a critical and life-long manner. The presumption of some subtle ordering of destiny, involving her fate with mine, would under all circumstances have possessed an irresistible fascination ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... mysterious power Who speaketh not? Who hath not felt Its subtle influence? Yet, when one is by feeling deep impelled Its secret joys and sorrows to unfold, The theme seems ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi

... of the procession that once more issued from the Lone Star cabin did not fail to show itself in each individual partner according to his temperament. The subtle tact of Union Mills, however, in expressing an awakened respect for their fortunate partner by addressing him, as if unconsciously, as "Mr. Ford" was at first discomposing, but even this was forgotten in their ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... of a storm—my dinner is not a very cheerful one. Not that I am necessarily unhappy when I take a solitary meal. In this matter all depends upon the mood, and the mood frequently depends upon influences too subtle to be analyzed. The dinner was as good as I had a right to expect it to be. A dish on which the hostess had evidently striven to use her best art was of orange mushrooms in a sauce of verjuice; but the substantial one was a roast fowl—an unfortunate bird that was just going to ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... travel to watch the surprising judgment which is about to overtake the wicked city of Edinburgh. An angel hath revealed it to me in a dream. Fire and brimstone will descend upon it as on Sodom and Gomorrah, and it will be consumed and wither away, with its cruel Ahabs and its painted Jezebels, its subtle Doegs and its lying Balaams, its priests and its judges, and its proud men of blood, its Bible-idolaters and its false prophets, its purple and damask, its gold and its fine linen, and it shall be as Tyre and Sidon, so that none shall know the site thereof. But ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... researches of the sages are not confined to such subtle or elegant studies. They comprise various others more important, and especially the properties of vril, to the perception of which their finer nervous organisation renders the female Professors eminently ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... evening, a dreamy vapor exhaled from the garden and enveloped it; a shroud of mist, a calm and celestial sadness covered it; the intoxicating perfume of the honeysuckles and convolvulus poured out from every part of it, like an exquisite and subtle poison; the last appeals of the woodpeckers and the wagtails were audible as they dozed among the branches; one felt the sacred intimacy of the birds and the trees; by day the wings rejoice the leaves, by night the leaves ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... he understood that a flood of fortune had carried him for the time being away from them, and that his desire must be to help but not to regret them. Indeed, he could not resist, nor did he wish to resist a great content in this well-being, which overtook him in so subtle a manner. The sermons of the old days, preached by many a mad fanatic of Union Street, declared that any alliance between the rich and the poor must be false and impossible. Alban believed it to ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... ondertuck fer ter run de hull shebang an' Miss Peggy inter de bargain, what is never been run by nobody," had circulated throughout the whole community, and met with a resolute, though carefully concealed opposition—subtle, intangible, but sure to prove overwhelming in the end—the undertow, so hidden but so irresistible. All this had stolen from one pair of lips to another and, of course, been related with indignant emphasis to Jim Bolivar, ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... mortal wisdom teaches men presumption, and presumption doubt.' 'Pardon me,' I answered; 'it is not Wisdom, but Ignorance, which teaches men presumption: Genius may be sometimes arrogant, but nothing is so diffident as Knowledge.' 'But,' resumed the Zealot, 'those accustomed to subtle inquiries may dwell only on the minutiae of faith,—inexplicable, because useless to explain, and argue from those minutiae against the grand and universal truth.' Pardon me again: it is the petty not the enlarged mind which prefers casuistry to conviction; it is the confined ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... 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, but if we take the helm in the direction of our own affairs, it may ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn

... I found myself shut into a narrow box, like one of those which considerate pawnbrokers provide for their more diffident clients, and in a similar, but more intense, degree, pervaded by a subtle odour of uncleanness. The woodwork was polished to an unctuous smoothness by the friction of numberless dirty hands and soiled garments, and the general appearance—taken in at a glance as I entered—was such as to cause me to thrust my hands into my pockets and studiously ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... so absolutely undeviating and uncompromising that it admits of no complexity, no turning, no qualification. Self is ingenious, crooked, and, governed by subtle and snaky desire, admits of endless turnings and qualifications, and the deluded worshipers of self vainly imagine that they can gratify every worldly desire, and at the same time possess the Truth. But the lovers of Truth worship Truth with the sacrifice of self, ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen

... virtue of the supernatural power acquired in that mighty meditation, it was given the holy missionary to know the secret of that newly created plant,—the subtle virtue of its leaves. And he named it, in the language of the nation to whom he brought the Lotos of the Good Law, "TE"; and ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn

... besides sundry of the chief of the Moors of Cochin, who had endeavoured to impress on his mind that the Portuguese were willing to assume the command in his dominions[8]. Henceforwards Pacheco had such good intelligence, that all the subtle devices of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... her singing was done at night. One of her songs was the Nightingale's Trill or Queen of the Night. The memory of her singing ever lingers with me like the sweet perfume wafted from the distant isle, its subtle influence sinking upon the senses, calming the tired child as upon the mother's breast it rests in perfect peace and confidence. Its message accomplished, it floated away into space to travel on, and, forever until it reached the Giver of every perfect gift and ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... shrugged his shoulders. "Destiny!" he said. "Besides, the best people do not run away easily from the homes they love. Perhaps they have the feeling that, in a home which has always meant peace, nothing terrible can happen. Yet there's more in it than that—something more subtle which keeps them in the place where they have always lived: something, I think, that binds the spirits of us Frenchmen and women to the spirit of their own hearths—their own soil. Haven't you found that already, in other places you have visited ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... Spring had bustled into town from the prairies, insinuating itself into the dirty, cavernous streets, sailing in boisterously over the gleaming lake, eddying in steam wreaths about the lofty buildings. The subtle monitions of the air permeated the atmosphere of antiseptics in the office, and whipped the turbulent spirits of Sommers until, at the lunch hour, he deserted the Athenian Building and telephoned for ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... the changes in human life, went changes even more subtle and enduring in the Cumbria county itself. Those were times of crisis for English agriculture. Wheat-lands went back to pasture; and a surplus population, that has found its way for generations to the factory towns, began now to turn toward the great Canadian spaces ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Time, the subtle thief of youth, Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year: My hasting days fly on with full career, But my late Spring no bud or blossom show'th. Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth, That I to manhood am arriv'd so near, And inward ripeness ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... having lost the corporeal form given to Him by religion, and as divulged in the history of the creation, lost at once all His attributes, and being magnified to fill the infinite and being absorbed into it, became so impalpable and subtle to the intellect as ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... when Ferdinand And Isabella ruled the Spanish land, And Torquemada, with his subtle brain, Ruled them, as Grand Inquisitor of Spain, In a great castle near Valladolid, Moated and high and by fair woodlands hid, There dwelt, as from the chronicles we learn, An old Hidalgo proud and taciturn, Whose name has perished, with his towers ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... over Mademoiselle Mariposa. She was no longer the Dreaming Gipsy, but a grande dame, a lady with some subtle, exotic touch of foreign distinction, who greeted the older woman with a charming and ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... this sudden emotion. His own heart was just in the vein to sympathize with it; so, in a moment the subtle freemasonry of kindred spirits was established ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh

... would seem that contemplation or meditation is not the cause of devotion. No cause hinders its effect. But subtle considerations about abstract matters are often a hindrance to devotion. Therefore contemplation or meditation is not the cause ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... fellow countrymen, to speak a solemn word of warning to you against that deepest, most subtle, most essential breach of neutrality which may spring out of partisanship, out of passionately taking sides. The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name during these days that are to try men's souls. We must be impartial in thought ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson

... I reach my feeble hands to join In sweet embraces—ah! no longer thine! She said, and from his eyes the fleeting fair Retired, like subtle ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... of the position, and be so far responsible for what he might do, that she would not dare to let her heart be rebellious toward him subsequently. If he himself went to her it would look too much like pleading for her intercession. The subtle directness of the woman's spirit had to be ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... said, 'There is an insoluble difficulty.' Such a course is far less dangerous to the moral sense than that pernicious ingenuity which, assuming that there can be no literal errors in Scripture, resorts to subtle arts of criticism, improbabilities of statement, and violence of construction, such as, if made use of in the intercourse of men in daily life, would break up society and destroy all faith of ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... commenced. All these Indian associations have a tutelary spirit. That of the Strong Hearts is embodied in the fox, an animal which a white man would hardly have selected for a similar purpose, though his subtle and cautious character agrees well enough with an Indian's notions of what is honorable in warfare. The dancers were circling round and round the fire, each figure brightly illumined at one moment by the yellow light, and at the next drawn in blackest shadow as it passed between the flame and ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... passed as a treasure from one member of the aristocracy to another, and received high stipends, and presents of at least equal value. Being a German, she put by money, and let her husband know it. But in the seventh year of her enforced widowhood her letters began to undergo subtle ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... fond of making proselytes, and Juliet was not aware that she was treading upon dangerous ground, with a very subtle companion. Untouched by the sacred truths she sought to impress upon his mind, and which indeed were very distasteful to him, Godfrey, in order to insinuate himself into the good graces of his fair instructress, seemingly ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... much that would be interesting about the proceedings and the evidence given against and for the Companies; how reckless were many of the charges brought against them, how easily they were disproved; how subtle and disingenuous other charges were and what skill was required to refute them; how some of the witnesses were up in the clouds and had to be brought down to common earth; how conclusively the Companies proved that the railways had done their best to encourage and help every industry and that ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow

... that the Doctor pressed 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 ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the same abruptness she had shown at their last parting, she caught Lucy by the arm and darted away in a romping race to her dwelling. Jarman started after her. He had not wanted to go to her father's house particularly, but why was SHE evidently as averse to it? With the subtle pleasure that this admission gave him there was a ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... will have its hour of empire; the most torpid heiress will easily get herself married; but the wife whose sweet nature can kindle worthy delights is she that brings to her hearth a joyous, hopeful, ardent spirit, and that subtle power whose sources we can hardly trace, but which yet so irradiates a home that all who come near are filled and inspired by a deep sense of womanly presence. We best learn the unsuspected might of a being like this when we ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell

... the fields of corn, the craggy mountain, the blossomy lane, or the rush of water through the greenwood. But for your good Cockney the shoals of gloom, the dusky tracery of chimney-stack and gaswork, the torn waste of tiles, and the subtle tones of dawn and dark in lurking court and alley. Was there ever a lovelier piece of colour than Cannon Street Station at night? Entering by train, you see it as a huge vault of lilac shadow, pierced by innumerable pallid arclights. The roof flings itself against the sky, a mountain ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... hour of uncertainty his imagination traveled far, but again and again it was captured by the remembrance of his days with the bishop. This had nothing to do with works, and yet in a way they were intimately connected. The bishop had demonstrated the operation of high and subtle forces to which he himself had not given much thought. The bishop had saved his life, just as Belding had saved it, and he still seemed to feel the working of big muscles under his twitching palms. There flashed back what the prelate had said ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... grows, the more one thinks of it! I believe it grew under his hands in just the same way. I don't doubt that it would have come, at last, to Miss Holladay's death by some subtle means; to the substitution of her sister for her—after a year or two abroad, who could have detected it? And then—oh, then, she would have married Fajolle again, and they would have settled down to the enjoyment ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson

... with these remarkable figures before her, no longer wondered at the slight esteem in which the Marquise held Lucien's good looks. And when conversation began, when intellects so keen, so subtle, were revealed in two-edged words with more meaning and depth in them than Anais de Bargeton heard in a month of talk at Angouleme; and, most of all, when Canalis uttered a sonorous phrase, summing up a materialistic epoch, and gilding it with ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... in all others they are exact duplicates of them. They differ from them and from each other, in every particular: in form, in size, in colour; in the structure of internal as well as of external organs; in those subtle peculiarities which produce differences of constitution, as well as in those still more subtle ones which lead to modifications of mind and character. In other words, in every possible way, in every organ and in every function, individuals ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... exactly what I am unable to do," she answered, and I could see she was speaking truly. "This fear has grown up in some degree, I think, from a subtle sort of consciousness that the person in question has it in his power to exert a curious influence over me. I seem to be drawn against my will into an attitude towards him which is not only against my judgment, but also against ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster

... shown by suspending the cube on a string, by which it may be twisted rapidly and caused to revolve; in this motion a cylinder being readily seen. When the cylinder is spun in like manner a sphere suddenly appears, and so the wonderful and subtle bond of union ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... person: "Duns Scotus," a subtle philosopher of the 13th century. His method of reasoning was very popular in the schools during the Middle Ages, and a very skillful hair-splitter was called a Dunse; but at last, through the influence of the ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton

... others to serve as background for our joys—just as sin is essential as the background for any appreciation of virtue, even any knowledge of its existence.... So now, on the day of Mary Turner's trial, there was a subtle gaiety of gossipings to and fro through the store. The girl's plight was like a shuttlecock driven hither and yon by the battledores of many tongues. It was the first time in many years that one of the employees had been thus accused of theft. Shoplifters were so common ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana

... With subtle flattery he recognized in me a powerful arm of a corrupt Empire, which Empire he likened to the old man who rode Sindbad the Sailor. He admitted my noble loyalty to France, pointing out, however, that ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... good and bad, and that they are under the power of the D—l, he being prince of the air." "The less perfectly good" hang out, if we may say so, "in the space between earth and the clouds," all which is subtle, and creditable to Mr. Dodwell's invention, but not susceptible of exact demonstration. The whole controversy is an interesting specimen of Queen Anne philosophy, which, with all respect for the taste of the period, ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang

... an opposite window. As if touched by a gleam from the lamp, or as if by some subtle interior illumination, the spectre became faintly luminous, and a thin smile seemed to quiver over its features. At the same moment, a strong, energetic figure—Dr. Renton, himself—came in sight, striding down the slope of the pavement to his own door, his over-coat thrown back, as if the ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor

... to try his hand once more at his long-neglected art, and, armed with brushes and palette, passed many of his leisure hours in his friend's society. We cannot accredit M. Linders with any profound penetration, or with any subtle perception of what was working in his little daughter's mind, but with the most far-reaching wisdom he could hardly have devised better means, at this crisis in her life, for maintaining his old hold upon her, and keeping up the sense of sympathy between them, which had in one ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... but it admits of a brilliancy and finish in the matter of style that are impossible on the old-fashioned wicket. Whilst the modern bowler has learnt extraordinary accuracy of pitch, the batsman has perfected the art of "timing" the ball. And what a subtle, delicate art is correct "timing"!—the skilful embodiment of thought in action, depending for success on that absolute sympathy of hand and eye which only assiduous practice, confidence, and a good digestion can give. And on uncertain, treacherous ground confident play is never ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... in London. I had often heard of the beauty of the youngest daughter of the Duke of Belminster, but no description of it, and no contemplation of colourless photographs, had prepared me for the subtle, delicate charm and the beautiful colouring of that exquisite head. And yet as we saw it that autumn morning, it was not its beauty which would be the first thing to impress the observer. The cheek was lovely, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... She felt love's subtle, potent charm Binding her on that strong right arm; 'T was softer than the cold gray stone, 'T was sweeter thus than ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey

... grew up and became the wonder of the world. She was married to a powerful King, and they lived in peace and plenty until the Goddess of Envy once more troubled the child's life. For owing to her subtle planning a Prince was promised for wife the fairest woman in the world, and he took the wife of the powerful King and carried her away to Asia to the six-gated city. The King prepared a host of ships ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring

... extreme point. After exerting himself for a long time, he will suddenly find himself possessed of a wide and far-reaching penetration. Then, the qualities of all things, whether external or internal, the subtle or the coarse, will be apprehended, and the mind, in its entire substance and its relations to things, will be perfectly intelligent. This is called the investigation of things. This is called the perfection of knowledge [3].' And knowledge must be thus perfected ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge

... character to the Lord of Misrule in England. "This pageant potentate," as Stowe calls him, "was annually elected, and his rule extended through the greater part of the holydays conected with the festival days of Christmas." But these "fine and subtle disguisings, masks, and mummeries," too often degenerated into abuse, as indeed was to be expected, when such pastimes had for their object to turn all lawful authority into ridicule, and more particularly to burlesque the services of the Church. On such occasions, "the rude vulgar occupied the ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... "What is more subtle than arithmetical conclusions; what more agreeable than musical harmonies; what more divine than astronomical, what more certain than ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... proceed all the methods of inflexion, derivation, and composition that give being to the most subtle kind of Sophistry; all the species and forms of Nouns, Verbs, and particles that make up the oeconomy of a Language, together withall diversity of Numbers, Genders, Cases, tenses, Modes, and Persons which ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier

... exclaimed explosively. This 'Ha!' was entirely different from his 'Ah!' Something shot across his eyes, something incredibly rapid—too rapid for a wink; yet it could only be called a wink. It was the most subtle transmission of the beyond-speech that I have ever known any man accomplish, and it endeared Mr Brindley to me. But ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... enclosure, which was almost a rude teepee, and, tucked away in the further-most corner, lay something with a trout-like, speckled, tawny coat. She bent over it. The fawn was apparently sleeping. Presently its eyes moved a bit, and a shiver passed through its subtle body. ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman

... pervert everything, do under-value and find fault with other men's opinions, although they be good and sound; I like not such brains which can dispute on both sides, and yet conclude nothing certain. Such sophistications, said Luther, are nothing but crafty and subtle inventions and contrivances to ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther

... works as Antony and Cleopatra and Lysistrata that makes it so easy to undervalue them, to see only a phallic play and political pamphlet in one, only a chronicle play in a grandiose method in the other. For we have to be in a highly sensitized condition before we can get to that subtle point where life and the image mix, and so really perceive the work at all; whereas we can command the response to a lesser work which does not call so finely on the full breadth and depth ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes

... conform to it. Science should be the handmaid of the church, philosophy its helpful brother; but its ecumenical council, its court of last resort, should be the religious instinct inherent in man—that perception so fine, so subtle, that all attempts to weave it into words to clothe it so that the eye may perceive and the reason handle it, have signally failed; which logic has hammered at with all her ballistae and battering-rams for thirty ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... how she controlled her feelings, how she remained and made no sign, she never knew. But that the instinct of self-esteem was one of her strongest passions, the dread of detection in proportion to it, she never had remained. There she was, and she could not get away again. The subtle dexterity which had served her in coming might desert her in returning. Had their senses been on the alert they might have heard her ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... may, perhaps, be thought more subtle than the grossness of real life will easily admit. Let it, however, be remembered, that the efficacy of ignorance has been long tried, and has not produced the consequence expected. Let knowledge, therefore, take its turn; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... Hassim and the Pangeran Budrudeen, with numbers of their families and retainers, have been basely murdered by their treacherous kinsman, because of their attachment to the English and their unswerving determination to put down piracy; and what is worst of all, Mr. Brooke's arch-enemy, the subtle and indefatigable villain Macota, the man whose accursed head was thrice saved by my too-generous friend, has now returned triumphantly to the scene of his former crimes, and is commissioned by the sultan to take ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... as far as our means of knowing what they receive are concerned. The wind of the spirit that is not of this earth, nor limited by time and space, breathes through their words, and thoughts, and deeds. They are not mere combinations, however deft and subtle, of known atoms. They must continually delight, and continually surprise; custom cannot stale them; like the heaven-born Laws in Sophocles, age can never lull them to sleep. Their works, when they are authors, never lose hold on ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... instinct in man that forces him to climb the hills of science, unlock the mysteries of ages, and wrest from the natural forces of earth and air, their well-guarded secrets. Is it the subtle workings of this desire for the mastery over mechanical agencies, this prying into Nature's secrets, that leads us out into the forest primeval and gives zest to ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various

... of all help; concealed in a corner of a wood, or squatting at the foot of a tree, he requires all his courage, all his experience; for he then finds himself engaged in a deadly conflict with the most subtle and ferocious beasts, possibly a mouthful for the largest and most powerful jaws, and at the mercy of the quickest ears of the forest. Motionless in his hut, like a spider in its web, nothing can put him off his guard—neither the view ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... book has a subtle intention. It indicates, and is true to the verities in doing so, the strange dreamlike quality of life to the man who has not yet fought his own battles, or come into conscious possession of his will—only such battles bite into the ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... this morning was a bit of real literature. It produced the effect you desired without making a bid for it. It was as subtle and full of suggestion as Jusserand's book on France and the United States. You gave an atmosphere to the old building as an institution, which made every one of us feel something more of ennobling standards and traditions. You touched emotion. Many an old chap there felt called upon ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... to a somewhat subtle distinction, the attention of the reader is drawn to the following line, slightly altered, ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham

... claims that its educational work in economics is dedicated to progress of free enterprise; and many of its programs in schools and colleges are educational; but its subtle and relentless emphasis is on the governmental interventionism that is the essence of New-Dealism, Fair-Dealism, Modern-Republicanism, and New-Frontierism—the governmental interventionism prescribed long ago as the way to socialize the economy of America in preparation for integrating this nation ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot

... your dog, then a man for your horse; that is the usual order of trouble. Of course the horse itself precedes the horse-keeper, but then I do not reckon the buying of a horse among life's troubles, rather among its luxuries. It combines all the subtle pleasures of shopping with a turbid excitement which is its own. From the moment when you first start from the breakfast- table at the sound of hoofs, and find the noble animal at the door, arching his neck and champing ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA



Words linked to "Subtle" :   harmful, perceptive, pernicious, impalpable, elusive, insidious



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