"Subtilty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Region, where at present the most refined sugar of the Island is made. Caonabo then reigned there, who surmounted all the rest in Power, State, and the splendid Ceremonies of His Government. This King beyond all expectation was surpriz'd in his own Palace, by the great subtilty and industry of the Spaniards, and after carried on board in order to his transportation to Castile, but there being at that time six Ships Riding in the Haven, and ready to set Sail such an impetuous storm suddenly ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... collection of finite objects, which the mind may mistake for a true infinite. It is the true infinite of which we have the thought and idea. We know it so well, that we exactly distinguish it from whatever it is not; and that no subtilty can palm upon us any other object in its room. We are so well acquainted with it, that we reject from it any propriety that denotes the least bound or limit. In short, we know it so well, that it is in it alone we know all the rest, just as we know the night by the ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... yourself down to those with whom you converse; and sometimes affect ignorance: lay aside power and subtilty in common conversation; to preserve decorum and order 'tis enough-nay, crawl on the earth, if they so ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... acquainted with the cold glittering court of Louis XIV. through the lovable character of Mdlle. de Scudery; and whilst on the one hand following with deep interest the fate of Brusson and his love, on the other we are led to contrast the subtilty of the plot with the fine analytic power of Poe in The Murders in the Rue Morgue. When visiting with Hoffmann the weird castle of Das Majorat, we are made to hear the cold shrill blasts of the Baltic whistling ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... a lad in the University of Oxford who was by his poverty forced to leave his studies there and at last to join himself to a company of vagabond gipsies. Among these extravagant people, by the insinuating subtilty of his carriage, he quickly got so much of their love and esteem that they discovered to him their mystery. After he had been a pretty while exercised in the trade, there chanced to ride by a couple of scholars ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... to perplex a plain matter of science by introducing into its discussion a metaphysical subtilty. The principle here contended for is one of the first dictates of the inductive philosophy, and as such it has been frankly acknowledged and acted upon by all the great improvers of science in modern days. When ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... assent, but afterwards brought upon its author the charge of Atheism. He concealed the poison most carefully; for apparently he defended the belief in the Divine Providence and in the immortality of the soul, but with consummate skill and subtilty he taught that which he pretended to refute, and led his readers to see the force of the arguments against the Faith of which he posed as a champion. By a weak and feeble defence, by foolish arguments and ridiculous reasoning, he secretly exposed the whole Christian religion to ridicule. But ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... large black ants, that gallop about, eating up sugar preserves, cakes, anything nice they can gain access to; these insects are three times the size of the black ants of Britain, and have a most voracious appetite: when they find no better prey they kill each other, and that with the fierceness and subtilty of the spider. They appear less sociable in their habits than other ants; though, from the numbers that invade your dwellings, I should think they formed a community like the ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... circumstance, on which the effect depends, is frequently involved in other circumstances, which are foreign and extrinsic. The separation of it often requires great attention, accuracy, and subtilty. ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... Middle Ages merely reproduced Greek ideas; and even the profound and patient Germans have gone round in the same circles that Plato and Aristotle marked out more than two thousand years ago. Only the Brahmans of India have equalled them in intellectual subtilty and acumen. It was Greek philosophy in which noble Roman youths were educated; and hence, as it was expounded by a Cicero, a Marcus Aurelius, and an Epictetus, it was as much the inheritance of the Romans as it was of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... talked with him frequently at Twickenham, without his appearing to understand it, or ever thinking to alter those passages which we suggested."—This extract is to be valued, for the information is authentic; and it assists us in throwing some light on the subtilty of Warburton's critical impositions. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... and crafty devices is lying in wait to deceive and lead astray. He comes to us and appeals to our physical nature in many respects, and it is necessary that we keep in a watchful and prayerful attitude "lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ."—2 Cor. 11:3. Even through our appetites would Satan gain the advantage over us, and finally bring us into bondage, if he were permitted to ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... often pass out of my comprehension, or indeed I think of any man's, into a labyrinth of abstraction and subtilty, and then suddenly return with some verbal conceit or turn of wit. The mind is known to attain, in certain conditions of trance, a quickness so extraordinary that we are compelled at times to imagine ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... life with which the priest is not authorized to deal; not many natural phenomena for which he may not claim the credit. And in case anything should have been overlooked, there is a blanket order upon Providence: "Graciously hear us, that those evils which the craft or subtilty of the devil or man worketh against us, be brought to nought!" I am reminded of the idea which haunted my childhood, reading fairy-stories about the hero who was allowed three wishes that would come true. I could never understand why ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... II raised him to the bishopric of Down and Connor (1660), in which post he remained until his death in 1667. His "Ductor Dubitantium," dedicated to Charles II, is a work of subtilty and ingenuity; his "Holy Living" and "Holy Dying" (1652), are unique monuments of learning and devotion. His sermons form, however, his most brilliant and most voluminous productions, and fully establish his claims to the first place among the ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... confide, that, if at any time I do not understand the expression, it is yet just. Such was the wealth of his truth that it was not worth his while to use words in vain. His poem entitled "Sympathy" reveals the tenderness under that triple steel of stoicism, and the intellectual subtilty it could animate. His classic poem on "Smoke" suggests Simonides, but is better than any poem of Simonides. His biography is in his verses. His habitual thought makes all his poetry a hymn to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... caviare to the multitude. We need not comfort ourselves on the facility with which we take his name in vain. We venture to say that the whole of Shakspeare's thought is inwardly tasted by as many people as enjoy the subtilty of Robert Browning. Shakspeare has broader places over which the waters lie, sweet and warm, to tempt disporting crowds, and places deep as human nature, upon whose brink the pleasure-seekers peer and shudder. But if Mr. Browning had a theatrical ability equal to his dramatic, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... explained to me ingeniously the faults, or alleged faults, of my temper and character. If it was a question of Madame de Maintenon, she was of a birth equal and almost superior to the rest of the Court. He forgot himself so far as to quote before me the subtilty of her answers or the delight of her most intimate conversation. Did he wish to describe a noble carriage, an attitude at once easy and distinguished, it was Madame de Maintenon's. She possessed this, she possessed that, she ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... we whether Socrates were so eminent indeed, and of so extraordinary a disposition? For that he died more gloriously, that he disputed with the Sophists more subtilty; that he watched in the frost more assiduously; that being commanded to fetch innocent Salaminius, he refused to do it more generously; all this will not serve. Nor that he walked in the streets, with much gravity and majesty, as was objected unto him by his adversaries: which nevertheless a man ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... the sand too, which the first surge of the sea, upon a high wind, would have defaced entirely. All this seemed inconsistent with the thing itself, and with all the notions we usually entertain of the subtilty ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... but none of "things,"' says the reporter. 'What do you read, my lord?' 'Words, words, words,' echoes the Prince of Denmark. 'I find in these antique books, in these Philosophies and Poems, a certain resplendent or lustrous mass of matter chosen to give glory either to the subtilty of disputations, or to the eloquence of discourses,' says the other and graver reporter; 'but as to the ordinary and common matter of which life consisteth, I do not find it erected into an art or science, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... the nice and difficult task was to have been undertaken by one of the most luminous minds of the present age, had not politicks 'turned him from calm philosophy aside[1387].' What an admirable display of subtilty, united with brilliance, might his contending with Berkeley have afforded us[1388]! How must we, when we reflect on the loss of such an intellectual feast, regret that he should ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... if thou needs wilt hunt, be rul'd by me; Uncouple at the timorous flying hare, Or at the fox which lives by subtilty, Or at the roe which no encounter dare: 676 Pursue these fearful creatures o'er the downs, And on thy well-breath'd horse keep ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... but another name for extinction of mind. This argument is subtle, but not conclusive; because it supposes what cannot be proved, that the nature of mind is properly defined. Others affect to disdain subtilty, when subtilty will not serve their purpose, and appeal to daily experience. We spend many hours, they say, in sleep, without the least remembrance of any thoughts which then passed in our minds; and since we can only by our own consciousness be sure that we think, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... and ever the more shall we discover and confess our shameful insufficiency, and the more shall we, till the day of our death, every day still begin our ministry of labour and of prayer anew. Let us do that, for the devil, with all his boldness and all his subtilty, never threw a card first or last ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... beyond all controversy and dispute. And therefore the providence of God wisely suffered men of deep genius and learning then to arise, who should search into the truth of the Gospel now made known, and canvass its doctrines with all the subtilty and knowledge they were masters of, and in the end freely acknowledge that to be the true wisdom only "which cometh ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... possessing all possible senses or the best of those possible, is infinitely small. What a magician a man with eyes would be among a race of sightless men; or a man with ears among a deaf population! How studiously would the scientists explain the effects of sight as produced by subtilty of hearing; and those of hearing as due to abnormal ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... Hotel de Rambouillet; and the salons of the Rue St. Thomas du Louvre were probably the most fitting school for such a mind as hers, in which grandeur and finesse were almost equally blended—a grandeur allied to the romantic, and associated with a finesse frequently merging into subtilty, as indeed may be discerned in Corneille himself, the most perfect mental ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... virtuous actions, performed in very distant ages and remote countries; where the utmost subtilty of imagination would not discover any appearance of self-interest, or find any connexion of our present happiness and security with events ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... of, or read of. A wider range is thus exhibited, not of thought merely, but also of the possible modes of expressing thought, than is elsewhere to be found, even in writers the most skilled in rhetorical subtilty. The distance between these two opposites De Quincey does not traverse by violent leaps; he does not by some feat of legerdemain evanish from the fields of impassioned eloquence, where he is an unrivalled master, to appear forthwith in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... would have thought magical, have produced a literature which may boast of works not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us, have discovered the laws which regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies, have speculated with exquisite subtilty on the operations of the human mind, have been the acknowledged leaders of the human race in the career of political improvement. The history of England is the history of this great change in the moral, intellectual, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... declaration of the sultan's views—whether he was determined to espouse the cause of France, or renew his alliance with England, and second her efforts in opposing the tyranny of Napoleon. The British were again overreached by French subtilty. Sebastiani, the French envoy, inspired the Sultan with confidence, and persuaded him to enter into a negociation, while in the mean time all the approaches to Constantinople should be fortified. All this was done, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... them a rapture and one of the great pursuits of their lives; it was music visible, and they cultivated it as such,—not by rule and measure, by scales and opposites, through theories and canons, with petrific chill of intellect or entangling subtilty of analysis. Their lives developed their instincts, and their instincts their art. They loved color more than everything else; and therefore color made herself known to them in her rarest and noblest beauty. They went to Nature as children, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... cacique of the neighboring Timbuez Indians (with whom Lara had contrived to establish a friendship), cast his eyes on this fair creature, and no sooner saw than he coveted; no sooner coveted than he plotted, with the devilish subtilty of a savage, to seize by force what he knew he could never gain by right. She soon found out his passion (she was wise enough—what every woman is not—to know when she is loved), and telling her husband, kept as much as she could out of her new lover's ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... Subtilty means that our risen bodies will be endowed with the power of penetrating all things, even the hardest substances, as easily as the sun's rays penetrate a clear crystal. This is the power which our blessed Lord possessed and exercised, when He arose ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... anything more refined, anything more after the ancient type, anything more delicious, anything more Latin. O happy you, to be endowed with eloquence so great! O happy I, to be tinder the charge of such a master! O arguments,(4) O arrangement, O elegance, O wit, O beauty, O words, O brilliancy, O subtilty, O grace, O treatment, O everything! Mischief take me, if you ought not to have a rod put in your hand one day, a diadem on your brow, a tribunal raised for you; then the herald would summon us all-why do I say "us"? Would summnon all, those scholars and orators: one by one you would beckon them ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... placed before them in a deified or heroic form. This satisfies the natural idolatrous cravings of Egotism, and this is all that priests or teachers desire. Now in the worship of Nagaya, we have the natures of Man and Woman conjoined, . . the Snake is the emblem of male wisdom united with female subtilty—and the two essences, mingled in one, make as near an approach to what we may imagine the positive Divine capacity as can be devised on earth by earthly intelligences. If, on the other hand, such an absurd doctrine as that formulated in ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... interfered with or babbled about, and he could come and go without questioning. He had occasionally thought: "If she were such a woman as I have read of and imagined,—if she could supplement my reason with the subtilty of intuition and the reticence which some of her sex have manifested,—she would double my power and share my inner life, for there are few whom I can trust. The thing is impossible, however, and so I am glad she ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe |
