"Subtly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I found it was well for them all. In three days more was our voyage ended; Then I fled, by my faithful men attended. For I knew right well, in the royal hall, That Audun subtly would ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... most charming and captivating actresses in Paris, rivaling Mme. Perrin and Mlle. Fleuriet, and destined likewise to share their fate. Coralie was a woman of a type that exerts at will a power of fascination over men. With an oval face of deep ivory tint, a mouth red as a pomegranate, and a chin subtly delicate in its contour as the edge of a porcelain cup, Coralie was a Jewess of the sublime type. The jet black eyes behind their curving lashes seemed to scorch her eyelids; you could guess how soft they might grow, or how sparks of the heat of the desert might flash from ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... issue and an important debate; the fight is proceeding hotly and its decision will be difficult; for, as violently as the one attacks, as cleverly and as subtly does the other reply. But don't keep always to the same ground; you are not at the end of your specious artifices. Make use of every trick you have, no matter whether it be old or new! Out with everything boldly, blunt though it be; risk ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... go out With titles blown from adulation? Will it give place to flexure and low bending? Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee, Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream That play'st so subtly with a king's repose: I am a king that find thee; and I know 'Tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball, The sword, the mace, the crown imperial, The intertissued robe of gold and pearl, The farced title running 'fore the king, The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... many little signs of the impending event. Martie had not been blind to the whispering and watching all about her. Fanny had subtly altered her attitude, even Sally was changed. Now came Rose, to prove that the matter was reaching a point where it ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... the diffusion of lively journalism and in consolidating the position of lady-correspondents as it was on the part of his companion to suppose that the cause of the Interviewer—a periodical of which he never formed a very definite conception—was, if subtly analysed (a task to which Mr. Bantling felt himself quite equal), but the cause of Miss Stackpole's need of demonstrative affection. Each of these groping celibates supplied at any rate a want of which the other was impatiently conscious. Mr. Bantling, who was of rather ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... our memories of Korea) to think of extending diplomatic recognition to red China; and they do not always openly advocate such a move; but their literature and Great Decisions operations and other activities all subtly inculcate the idea that, however much we may dislike the Chinese communists, it is highly probable that we can best promote American interests ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... What Egbert felt subtly and without question, his father-in-law felt also in a rough, more combative way. Different as the two men were, they were two real Englishmen, and their instincts were ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... perhaps, too exacting. He loved too well the sweet intricacies of Spenser, the majestic and subtly interwoven harmonies of Milton. These made him impatient of the simpler strains of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... throw the broken pieces of Morris's stick into the bushes? These inferences were of course but suggested in the questions counsel asked Mr. Taynton in the further cross-examination of this morning, and perhaps no one in court saw what the suggestion was for a moment or two, so subtly and covertly was it conveyed. Then it appeared to strike all minds together, and a subdued rustle went round the court, followed the moment after by an ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... nothing but the uneasiness of mind and memory disturbed and disorganized by the seething of the foul poison-wine, throwing up pictures and ideas out of their due course, and without subordination to the master-will? Was it merely the story of those fisher-folk, half apprehended, and yet evoked and subtly clad with form and shape by ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... human element, the writer of the hymn sometimes displays a genuine power of pathetic expression. The whole episode of the fostering of Demophoon, in which over the body of the dying child human longing and regret are blent so subtly with the mysterious design of the goddess to make the child immortal, is an excellent example of the sentiment of pity in literature. Yet though it has reached the stage of conscious literary interpretation, much of its early mystical or cosmical character still ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... with criticism of his work and his theories, and this discussion, as well as the appearance of his portrait in the magazines, had made of him a very exalted person in little Mrs. Haney's eyes, and the interest he took in her was too subtly flattering not to affect her. He seemed fond of the Captain, too, and often joined them in their trips about the city, and the fellows who had known Humiston in Paris and who did not know Bertha ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... thick and fast. But a few days back he had had but himself to consider; then, in some subtle way, he had felt a certain accountability for 'Frisco Kid's future welfare; and after that, and still more subtly, he had become aware of duties which he owed to his position, to his sister, to his chums and friends; and now, by a most unexpected chain of circumstances, came the pressing need of service for his father's sake. It was a call upon his deepest strength, and he responded ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... full. Lycanthropous flowers, no less than lycanthropous water, possess properties peculiar to themselves; properties which are, probably, only discernible to those who are well acquainted with them. Their scent is described as faint and subtly suggestive of death, whilst their sap is rather offensively white and sticky. In appearance they are much the same as other flowers, and are usually white ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... I pursue, still flies me; Her that follows me, I fly; She that I still court, denies me; Her that courts me, I deny; Thus in one web we're subtly wove, And yet we ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... new creations, such as the Dong with a luminous Nose, whose story is a sort of nonsense version of the love of Nausicaa for Ulysses, only that the sexes are inverted. In these verses, graceful fancy is so subtly interwoven with nonsense as almost to beguile us into feeling a real interest in Mr. Lear's absurd creations. So again in the Pelican chorus there ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... days, I think, doing nothing except read Grim's books and learn Arabic, when I noticed signs of impending activity. Camel saddles began to be brought out from somewhere behind the scenes, carefully examined, and put away again. Far-sighted men with the desert smell on them, which is more subtly stirring and romantic than all other smells, kept coming in to squat on the rugs in the library and talk with Grim about desert trails, and water, and what tribal feuds were in full swing and which were ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... been larger than life, more intelligent, more dangerous, subtly different from the normal animal it counterfeited. So now were these. And both of them raised their heads to gaze intently ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... Square. Had he given her a name, he would have called her his lady in heliotrope, for she was dressed in a heliotrope gown, trimmed round the hem and throat with gray opossum and topped with a little close-fitting turban of color and fur to match. She looked so dainty and subtly haughty, so austere in her virginal beauty, that it seemed to him he must have wronged her ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... there can read them now so as accurately to decipher every intended detail? Then comes some critic who will not even attempt to read them—who rushes through them by the light of some foregone conclusion, and missing the point at which the writer subtly aims, tells us of some purpose of which he was altogether innocent! Because he jokes about the augurship, we are told how miserably base he was, and how ready to ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... ever been. Remembering that she was engaged to Cecil, she compelled herself to confused remembrances of George; he was nothing to her; he never had been anything; he had behaved abominably; she had never encouraged him. The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul. In a few moments Lucy was ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... life, it was woven into the same fabric, and became an inseparable part of the consciousness; so, hearken when one will, after the changes and accessions of many peopled years, and amid the thousand-footed trample of the mob of immediate impressions, still secure and predominant it is heard subtly sounding. Deep conversation with any river readily interprets to us that venerable mythus which connects Eden with the four rivers of the world; as if water must flow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... which made his cheeks burn and his heart beat quickly as he sat there waiting for her. For the first time a definite doubt possessed him. A woman cannot change her soul. Then it was the woman herself who was changed. Anna was not "Alcide" of the "Ambassador's," whose subtly demure smile and piquant glances had called him to her side from the moment of their first meeting. It ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... carried—since human history began. Indeed, a very fair account of mankind might be made by writing the story, of its canes. And nothing that would readily occur to mind would more eloquently express a civilisation than its evident attitude toward canes. Perhaps nothing can more subtly convey the psychology of a man than his feeling ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... because none had known how to sound them, rose singing to the surface. For it seemed at length that forms of some intenser life, busily operating, moved to and fro within the painted white walls of that little cabin, working subtly to bring about a transformation of himself. A singular change was fast and cleverly at work in his own being. It was, he puts it, a silent and ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... accepted by Prussia and by Italy; it was accepted by Austria only under the condition that no arrangement should be discussed which should give an increase of territory or power to one of the States invited to the Congress. This subtly-worded condition would not indeed have excluded the equal aggrandisement of all. It would not have rendered the cession of Venetia to Italy or the annexation of Schleswig-Holstein to Prussia impossible; but it would either have involved the surrender of the former Papal territory ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... for India was but the sequel to the century-old conflict with the Moslem, a more subtly conceived crusade. Losing their hold on the Spanish Peninsula, the Moors were still intrenched in Africa; and in 1415 a Portuguese fleet, crossing to the northern point opposite Gibraltar, took and plundered the fortress and city of ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... Lucy was not bad, for the faint seemed to merge subtly into the narcotic sleep. It was with a feeling of personal pride that I could see a faint tinge of colour steal back into the pallid cheeks and lips. No man knows, till he experiences it, what it is to feel his own lifeblood drawn away into ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... another HENRY JAMES novel, to be called The Sense of the Past (COLLINS). Here especially it is the preliminary study that furnishes the chief interest; the spectacle of this so-skilled craftsman struggling to master an idea that might well, I think, have been found later too unsubstantial, too subtly fantastic, for working out. Very briefly, the theme is to treat of a young American, in whom this "Sense of the Past" is all-powerful; whom the gift of an old London house and its furnishings enables to transport himself bodily into the life of 1820. More than this, he lives that life (and it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... possessed a subtly weird and bizarre interest for the young girl. He had been injured. How? For what reason? Betty Dalrymple's mind swept, seemingly without very definite cause, to another scene, one of violence. Again ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... her? she wondered vaguely—she realised it all fully, completely, yet with no thrill of gladness. Something subtly potent seemed wound about her heart, holding her back; something that was stronger far than the thought of Jim was calling to her, crying aloud across the barren deserts of her soul. And in that moment she knew that her marriage with Jim had become ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... aid of the science of the white devil, we shall overcome the science of the white devil," purred Long Sin subtly. ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... looked at the supple strength of her, so subtly knit in curves of graciousness, alert and upright in the new saddle, Panama hat in one hand, the better to get the wind full in her face, her cheeks flushed with the caress of it, the thick brown braids fluffing ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... opposite is a beautiful lyric poem. She might be called "A Hymn to the Night." Every line of her figure is musical, every move suggested, rhythmical. Seen at night, she croons you a slumber song. How subtly Mr. Weinman has told you that she comes to fold the world within her wings - to create thru her desire a "still and pulseless world." The muscles are all lax - the head is drooping, the arms are closing in ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... the Jesuits; they fain Would undermine the power of the land In which they dwell, and every effort strain To take the civil sceptre in their hand. They creep, as serpents, smoothly on their prey, But subtly spread their ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... is trying to say that we have a body for each phase of personality through which we come into contact with the finer realities of the ascending planes of existence, and that the matter of these bodies is more subtly refined as we pass from mere sensation ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... man. I had been hit by the Golden Rule before in department stores, but always rather subtly—never with such a broad, beautiful flourish! I made some faint acknowledgment, I have forgotten what, and rushed ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... simple-minded fat man; deliberate, slow of speech, well-meaning, with honesty sticking out all over him, you would have said; one in whom the widow and the orphan would have found a staunch protector and an unselfish friend. And now, having thus subtly connoted the character of our villain, let ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... a propelling power in its motor, and it shifts its wings to take advantage of the currents. The buzzard and condor do the same thing. They are living airplanes, and their power is so evenly and subtly distributed and applied, that the trick of it escapes the eye. But of course they avail themselves of the ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... and Prince Otto rode away in anger, for they coveted the golden road as well as the lady. Prince Melchior, who loved fighting, went home to collect an army and avenge the insult, as he called it. Prince Otto, whose mind worked more subtly, set himself by secret means to stir up disaffection among the Carinthians, telling them that their labour and suffering had gone to make the splendid useless avenue of gold; and he persuaded them the more easily because it was perfectly true. (He forbore to add that ho coveted it for his own.) ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... the chill air as one who had been on the verge of suffocation. It was evidently she who had flung up the window. Her gloved hands leaned upon the woodwork on each side of it. There was a certain constraint in her whole attitude, a tension that was subtly evident in every graceful line. Her head was slightly bent as though she intently ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... the most part of a replaceable nature, need be only trivially referred to, the incident, indeed, being generally regarded as a most cordial and pressing variety of foreign politeness), but also—in the lack of highly-spiced actuality—with subtly-imagined and truly objectionable instances. These calumnies they have not hesitated to commit to the form of printed books, which, falling into the hands of the ignorant and undiscriminating, may even suggest to their ill-balanced minds a doubt whether ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... to the word "baconless." The word took on exquisite overtones of gray meaning, and I worked up those overtones until I had a perfectly wrought melancholy poem of one word—"Baconless." For, after all, a poem never existed upon paper, but lives subtly in the consciousness of the poet, and in the minds of those who understand the poet through the suggestiveness of his written symbols, and their own ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... leave a gap between the knee and the heavily spiked "cork boots"—all these were distinctive enough of their class, but most interesting to me were the eyes that peered from beneath their little round hats tilted rakishly askew. They were all subtly alike, those eyes. Some were black, some were brown, or gray, or blue, but all were steady and unabashed, all looked straight at you with a strange humorous blending of aggression and respect for your own business, and all without exception wrinkled ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... my humiliation that I seem to have none of it in my housework. The German woman evidently was capable of administering my household much better than I could do it. Perhaps it was because of this very reason that I found myself repelled by her, and subtly drawn by the ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... likeness clad, Before him stood the far-destroying King: Then fled, Achilles hast'ning in pursuit. He o'er the fertile plain with flying foot Pursu'd; beside Scamander's eddying stream Apollo turn'd, and still but little space Before him flying, subtly lur'd him on, Each moment hoping to attain his prize. Meantime the gen'ral crowd, in panic flight, With eager haste the city's refuge sought, And all the town with fugitives was fill'd. Nor did they dare without the walls to stand For mutual ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... fastness. The building itself would have seemed very wonderful to eyes accustomed to the flimsy architecture of an age when power was precious. It was made of granite, already a little roughened on the outside by frost, but polished within and of a tremendous solidity. And in a honeycomb of subtly lit apartments, were the spotless research benches, the operating tables, the instruments of brass, and fine glass and platinum and gold. Men and women came from all parts of the world for study or experimental research. ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... you impertinent, but I believe nothing more subtly and powerfully affects men than the aristocratic feeling. Do not misunderstand me,' he added, seeing that they would protest; 'it is not my own experience alone that guides me. All history bears witness ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... the Bishop of Silchester told me to come here. Did he really think that the spectacle of moderation in the moulding was good for me? Did he fancy that I was a young zealot who required putting in his place? Or did he more subtly realize from the account I gave him of Malford that I was in danger of becoming moderate, even luke-warm, even tepid, perhaps even stone-cold? Did he grasp that I must owe something to party as well as ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... Personalities are revealed one to another by faint and suggestive activities all unconsciously perceived. Your concentration of energy will inspire others. You will radiate an "atmosphere" of success. You will subtly influence your associates. You will be a force to reckon with, and the world will know it. Your air of success will draw others to you, will bring business and goodwill, and men and money will seek a share in ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... magnanimous forgiveness,—when we have explained that 'The Scarlet Letter' is the badge of Hester Prynne's shame, we ought to add that we recollect no tale dealing with crime so sad and revenge so subtly diabolical, that is at the same time so clear of fever and of prurient excitement. The misery of the woman is as present in every page as the heading which in the title of the romance symbolizes her punishment. ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... red of his neck, and bent down to catch the last tired efforts of the heart within. And the idea of her extraordinary intimacy with this man, of the incessant familiarity of more than twenty years, struck her and overwhelmed her. She saw that nothing is so subtly influential as constant uninterrupted familiarity, nothing so binding, and perhaps nothing so sacred. It was a trifle that they had not loved. They had lived. Ah! she knew him so profoundly that words could not describe her knowledge. He kept his own secrets, hundreds of them; and he had, in a way, ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... delusion. A community founded upon argument would soon be a community no longer. It would dissolve into its constituent elements. Think of the thousand ties most subtly woven out of common sentiments, common tastes, common beliefs, nay, common prejudices, by which from our very earliest childhood we are all bound unconsciously but indissolubly together into a compacted whole. Imagine these ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... placed in greatest dignity did see and perceive these men's practices, how Christ's commandments be despised by them, how the light of the Gospel is darkened and quenched out by them, and how themselves also be subtly beguiled and mocked, and unawares be deluded by them, and the way to the kingdom of heaven stopped up before them: no doubt they would never so quietly suffer themselves neither to be disdained after such ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... mountains, its towns on the forest border, its fair landscape, its dales, its waters, and its valleys, its white sea-mews, its beauteous women." Here as everywhere the sentiment of nature passes swiftly and subtly into the sentiment of a human tenderness: "I love its fields clothed with tender trefoil" goes on the song; "I love the marches of Merioneth where my head was pillowed on a snow-white arm." In the Celtic love of woman there is little of the Teutonic depth and earnestness, but in its stead ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... the loudest, even in those busy marts where voice reigns supreme, who are going to be heard. No one man can continue to shout the loudest. A momentary audience and a raw throat are the most he can expect. But it is he who can exaggerate the most intelligently and overpaint the most subtly. That sort of impertinence will attract the eye and ear of the most loudly howling mob. Even the wayfarer gets an inkling from a poster, but it is a man of the widest comprehension who gets the whole truth from the subtlest exaggeration, and he who possesses a ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... dissolutive, stuff that dreams are made of, fragments of lapsed memory, mechanical effects of habit and ordinary suggestion; some belongs to a middle region where a strange manufacture of inner romances perpetually goes on; finally, some of the content appears superiorly and subtly perceptive. But each has to appeal to us by the same channels and to use organs partly trained to their performance by messages from the other levels. Under these conditions what could be more natural to expect than a confusion ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... her widow's weeds; and, for all her right to look mankind in the face, she shrank instinctively from immediate recognition. Then in a clap came the temptation to discuss her own case with the owner of a voice at once confident and courtly, and subtly reminiscent of her native colony, where it is no affront for stranger to speak to stranger ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... penitent regretfulness, lie at the foundation of all true Christianity. Now I do not insist upon any uniformity of experience in people, any more than I should insist that all their bodies should be of one shape or of one proportion. Human lives are infinitely different, human dispositions are subtly varied, and because neither the one nor the other are ever reproduced exactly in any two people, therefore the religious experience of no two souls can ever ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... adventure, Agamemnon next day assumes the offensive. To consider thus is perhaps to consider too curiously. But it is clear that the Achaeans have been much encouraged by the events of Book X., especially Agamemnon, whose character, as Kiene observes, is very subtly and consistently treated, and "lies near the poet's heart." This is the point which we keep urging. Agamemnon's care for Menelaus is strictly ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... author for his frankness; to talk about submersion in "the infinite ocean of God," on the other hand, invests an idea which, nakedly stated, means annihilation pure and simple, with a pseudo-religious air which is far more subtly dangerous. Indeed, of the various expedients for extinguishing men's faith in the life to come, this is probably the most insidiously effective in use to-day; it is the silken handkerchief, drenched with chloroform and held quite gently to the victim's face—a lethal ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... elevator on his way to breakfast he found himself face to face with the man who so desperately needed financial assistance. "Why, how do you do, Mr. Worth. When did you land in San Felipe?" Cartwright's tone seemed to subtly change his commonplace question into—"Why are you in ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... idea of that potentiality awakens another quality of horror,—the horror of infinite Possibility. For this Inscrutable that pulses through substance as if substance were not at all,—so subtly that none can feel the flowing of its tides, yet so swiftly that no life-time would suffice to count the number of the oscillations which it makes within the fraction of one second,—thrills to us out of endlessness;—and the force of infinity dwells in its lightest ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... as in the foundation with which Adam Smith provided it, we must not miss the element of truth that it contains. No poison is more subtly destructive of the democratic State than paternalism; and the release of the creative impulses of men must always be the coping-stone of public policy. Adam Smith is the supreme representative of a tradition which saw that release effected by individual effort. ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... do dwell among us minds divine, In which th' etherial is so subtly mixed, That only matter in its outward mien To the observer shows. Such ever live Unto themselves alone, in sweet still lives, And die by all ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Hume was smiling subtly. He was a different man from the one Vye had known on Jumala. "Premium for the Guild is one thousand credits down, two thousand for training and say another for about the best field outfit you can buy. That'll give you maybe another two or three thousand to save ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... hat, coat, and stick, defeated, yet not spoiled of his air. But as he turned to go, and looked at her for his formal bow, he was all at once aware that she wore a wholly new dignity in his sight, a subtly enhanced desirability. Unexpectedly her marble loveliness shot him through and through, and he said in ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... tells about these medical fakes: habit-forming laxatives, head-ache powders full of acetanilid, soothing-syrups and catarrh-cures full of opium and cocaine, cock-tails subtly disguised as "bitters", "sarsaparillas", and "tonics". He shows how the fake testimonials are made up and exploited; how the confidential letters, telling the secret troubles of men and women, are collected by ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... for their overwrought capacities; and when pinned down where they sat to the acquirement of some short rule or passage, they explained sorrowfully that that had not been Mr Moss's method. In divinity they raised discussions on questions of dogma, and so subtly evaded challenge on questions of Greek Testament construction and various readings. In history they fell back on a few stock answers, which rarely possessed the merit of having any connection with the ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... of his many gallantries reached The Islands then?—and was this 'life-philosopher' afraid that 'Gloria '— whoever she was—might succumb to his royal fascinations? The thought was subtly flattering, but he disguised the touch of amusement he felt, and spoke his next words with a ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... noticed—and remembered. In his every feature, every action, was the absolute unconsciousness of self, which cannot be mistaken; whether active or passive, there was about him an insinuation of reserve force, subtly felt, of a strong, determined character, impossible to sway or bend. He lay, now, motionless, staring with wide-open eyes into the fire and breathing slowly, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... and the publicity are alien elements, which wean the man a little from himself. He steadies his dizzy brain on the crowd beneath and around him. He has his last part to play, and his manhood rallies to play it well. Nay, so subtly is vanity intertwined with our motives, the noblest and the most ignoble, that I can fancy a poor wretch with the noose dangling at his ear, and with barely five minutes to live, soothed somewhat with the idea that his firmness and composure ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... which things are seen whole and in their right colors, rather than of the close study or the academic class-room. We do not want our poetry from grammarians, nor our tales from philologists, nor our history from theorists. Their human nature is subtly transmuted into something less broad and catholic and of the general world. Neither do we want our political economy from tradesmen nor our statesmanship from mere politicians, but from those who see more and care for more than these men see or ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... been promised them. The Guardians put them off, promising to attend to them when the regular business of the meeting was over. So the poor fellows were kept waiting for three mortal hours, at the end of which time they espied the elected Nationalist members of the Board subtly filing out of the place. This angered them. They stopped the fugitives, blockaded the Board-room, and forced the Guardians to appoint a committee to act ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... suffered no trivialities to interfere with the grave objects of his genius? She had so long had him represented to her in that way—from the very first of their meetings, indeed. Grant her mature sense and a reflective mind, was that any reason why she should probe subtly the natural appearance of her friend, and attribute to him that which he gave no sign of harbouring? Why must she be mysteriously conscious of his inner being, rather than take him ingenuously for what he seemed? She had instruction and wit, but she was only a girl; her ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... my mind must have shown in my face, must have subtly flattered him, for, when I looked at him, he was giving me a look of genuine friendly kindliness. "This is—perfect, Langdon," said I. "And I think I'm ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... out of the simplicity and credulity which is native to him, often deceived, embraces and consorts him with these obvious and suborned striplings, as if they were his Mother's own sons, for so he thinks them while they subtly keep themselves most on his blind side. But, after a while, as his manner is, when, soaring up into the high tower of his Apogaeum, above the shadows of the Earth, he darts out the direct rays of his then most piercing eyesight upon the impostures and trim disguises that were used with ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... brief visualization of young grass and the faint blue of skies, evoked, perhaps, by the girl's careless singing, made for his dull concentration subtly pleasant environment. ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... stylistic. Alone, and apart from any context, they incorporate that cognate appeal of significance and sound which is the secret of style. Thus far the matter is extremely simple. But there are also many words which denote other things than sounds and yet somehow convey subtly to the ear a sensuous suggestion of their content. Such words, for instance, are "mud," "nevermore," and "tremulous." Any child could tell you that words like these "sound just like what they mean"; and ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... he'd won and rubbed it in, and Paul had lost, and hated him for it, until that mysterious day—when had it really happened?—when "that big-brained brother of mine" changed subtly into "Christ, man, quit floundering! Who wants engineers? They're all over the place, you'll starve to death" and then finally, ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... Agatha noticed these things it was Hawtrey's face that struck her most distinctly, and she became conscious of an astonishment which was mixed with vague misgivings as she gazed at it, for it had subtly changed since she had last seen it. The joyous sparkle that she remembered had gone out of the eyes. They were harder, bolder, than they used to be. The mouth was slack—it looked almost sensual—and the man's whole ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... they are selected from the middle-class families of rural parishes or small towns, amid that atmosphere of "fine old leisure," whose disappearance she lamented. Her drama is a still life drama, intensely and profoundly inward. Character is the stuff that she works in, and she deals with it more subtly than Thackeray. With him the tragedy is produced by the pressure of society and its false standards upon the individual; with her, by the malign influence of individuals upon one another. She watches "the stealthy convergence of human fates," the intersection at various ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... American Juvenile Keepsake" were William L. Stone, who wrote a prosy article about animals; and Mrs. Embury, called the Mitford of America (because of her stories of village life), who furnished a religious tale to controvert the infidel doctrines considered at the time subtly undermining to childish faith, with probable reference to the Unitarian movement then gaining many adherents. Mrs. Embury's stories were so generally gloomy, being strongly tinged with the melancholy religious views of certain church denominations, that one would suppose them to have been ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... by rage, merely; there would have been something petty in ordinary human resentment at that moment. There was another quality that was devilishly and subtly complex in the sudden mania which obsessed him. He had seen woodsmen leaping and shouting in the ecstasy of drunkenness; liquor seemed to affect the men of the woods in that way—to accentuate their sense of wild liberty. Latisan had been obliged to ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... condition on earth in which she would have nothing to do with vulgar people, and perhaps at last associate with relatives quite equal to the county people who looked down on the Middlemarchers. It was part of Rosamond's cleverness to discern very subtly the faintest aroma of rank, and once when she had seen the Miss Brookes accompanying their uncle at the county assizes, and seated among the aristocracy, she had envied them, notwithstanding their ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... fact that many of the other girls wore bobbed hair, and all had short skirts, they felt exceptionally youthful. Marjorie felt shy, too, and at the end of almost every dance she brought her partner over to Mrs. Hadley's corner, as if seeking her protection. The woman was subtly flattered; if Marjorie had tried to win her affection, she could not have chosen a more direct method. But she was all unconscious of the impression ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... course Mr. Laurie would never come to the shack. It had been absurd to think it for a moment. And even if he did, it would only be as a lofty and unapproachable spectator. Mr. Fernald's words were a subtly designed flattery intended to put him in good humor because he ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... in the writing as it is entertaining in the reading. It is actual comedy of the most artistic sort, and it is handled with a freshness and originality that is unquestionably novel."—Boston Transcript. "A feast of humor and good cheer, yet subtly pervaded by special shades of feeling, fancy, tenderness, or whimsicality. A merry ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... seen and occupying little space, is the true mother, and it seems that her explosive energy, as she rushes to the rescue of her child, has forced all these other figures back to the confines of the picture. Compare this restless yet subtly balanced composition, full of oblique lines and violent movement, with the gracious, placid formality of the "Adam and Eve," and you will have some notion of the meaning of ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... him off the dock. But now, having gone a little distance, he began to utter the most violent threats against the woods person, declaring, in fact, he would pull the fellow's nose. However, I restrained him from rushing back, as I subtly felt I was wished to do, and he at length consented again to be led toward ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... with which that individual mind is conversant. Imagination or mind employed in prophetically imaging forth its objects, is that faculty of human nature on which every gradation of its progress, nay, every, the minutest, change, depends. Pain or pleasure, if subtly analysed, will be found to consist entirely in prospect. The only distinction between the selfish man and the virtuous man is, that the imagination of the former is confined within a narrow limit, whilst that of the latter ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... net gown, sat on Lord Redford's right hand at the hastily improvised dinner party that evening. Berenice, more subtly and more magnificently dressed, was opposite, by Mannering's side. The conversation seemed mostly to circle ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... river bank he went where he saw a footprint in the soft loam, and presently it turned deeper into the great woods and he swung forward into those depths whose sweetness had called him subtly for these many days. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... to L1,020. The fluctuating market of the Cacklogallinian 'Change, which responded to every rumor, follows faithfully the actual situation in London in 1720; and the final crash which shook Cacklogallinian foundations—subtly suggested by Brunt's unwillingness to return and face the enraged multitude—is an echo of the crash which shook England when the Bubble ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... the meadow. My heart beat quicker. I laughed aloud for the sheer joy of living in the same world with her. I vowed that I should be very nice indeed to Mrs. Bannister. Had Penelope asked me to be very nice to her friend Medusa I should have given her my pledge. Subtly, by her admonition, she had conveyed to me the promise that this walk was to be but the first of many walks, the rambles of our childhood over again, but grown older and wiser and more sedate. Under what other circumstances could I be nice ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... fundamental character as an American citizen. He has simply signed on for the post graduate course where one learns how to exercise authority in accordance with the spirit of liberty. The nature of his trusteeship has been subtly expressed by an Admiral in our service: "The American philosophy places the individual above the state. It distrusts personal power and coercion. It denies the existence of indispensable men. It asserts the ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... in statement. Over statement is very dangerous; under statement subtly powerful. Moderation! I know but two words so potent—honor and industry. Honor, industry, moderation! What can prevail against this trinity! And in young men moderation ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... restricting the circulation, and diminishing the chance of life of the book, or other work, that contains them. But it is not these things that the admirers of Mademoiselle de Maupin admire. It is the wonderful and final expression, repeated, but subtly shaded and differenced, in the three characters of Albert, Rosette, and Madeleine herself, of the aspiration which, as I have said, colours Gautier's whole work. If he, as has been justly remarked, was the priest of beauty, Mademoiselle ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... most prominent literary naturalists,—Gilbert White, of England, and Thoreau and John Burroughs, of America,—men who have been so en rapport with nature that, while ostensibly only disclosing the charms of their mistress, they have at the same time subtly communicated much of their own wide knowledge of nature, and permanently enriched our ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... these, it must be remembered, are divine in their origin. Every heroic deed is an act of the spirit, and every perception of beauty is vision with the divine eye, and not with the mortal sense. The spirit was subtly intermingled with the shining of old romance, and it is no mere phantasy which shows Ireland at its dawn in a misty light thronged with divine figures, and beneath and nearer to us demi-gods and heroes fading into recognizable men. The bards took ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... life. To them official routine and the responsibilities of the state were burdens to be borne along the highway, with periods of rest and intimate re-union with nature to cheer the travellers. When the heavy load was laid aside, song rose naturally from the lips. Subtly connecting the arts, they were at once painters and poets, musicians and singers. And because they were philosophers and seekers after the beauty that underlies the form of things, they made the picture express its own significance, ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... sufficiently influential group of the governing class was ripe for the change, and this new mental attitude was in a great measure due to the scepticism and rationalism which were diffused by the Renaissance movement, and which subtly and unconsciously had affected the minds of many who were sincerely devoted to rigidly orthodox beliefs; so effective is the force of suggestion. In the next two chapters the advance of reason at the expense of faith will be traced through the ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... reading? The Standard: "Double Bigamy;" "Speech of the Mayor." And later—eh? yes! I meandered Through some chapters of Vanity Fair. How it fuses the grave with the festive! Yet e'en there, there is nothing so fine - So playfully, subtly suggestive - As that joke ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... and respect than are the more blatant propagandists for the adoption of fascist tactics and principles. Shortly after Hitler took power, the Professor started to do his share on the campus. At first he did it subtly, but when this made little headway he began to talk of the "growing domination of Jews in American life, politically as well as economically" and emphasized that the large number of Jews in the Law School and on the campus generally ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... already she had begun to wonder about him, and she realized that she should wonder still more because of what Miss Polly had told her. When he had approached her in the yard, she had been vaguely disturbed, vaguely thrilled by the strangeness and the mystery surrounding him; she had been subtly aware of his nearness before she heard his step, and turning, found his eyes fixed upon her. Her own weakness in not controlling her curiosity, in recurring, in spite of her determined resolve to that first meeting, in allowing ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... marksmen so arranged as to cover the arrival of reliefs, provisions, and fresh ammunition from the rear, might hold out against any visible attack for an indefinite period, unless the ground they occupied was searched very ably and subtly by some sort of gun having a range in excess of their rifle fire. If the ground they occupied were to be properly tunnelled and trenched, even that might not avail, and there would be nothing for it but to attack them by an advance under cover ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... take a different mental attitude for the sake of the reading world, which needs strong tonics of hope and courage, rather than the slow poison of pessimism, however subtly sweet the brew, my friend responds that "The song and dance of literature is not my special gift." And he is obliged to "speak of the ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... and Dr. Blake re-fused into one psychology and decided that her appearance of delicacy was subtly psychological. It haunted him with an irritating effect of familiarity—as of a symptom which he ought to recognize. In all ways was it intertwined with the expression of her mouth. She had never smiled enough; therein ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... Subtly, almost imperceptibly, the weather changed. There was a chill in the night air; it was no longer pleasant to sleep on deck. The stars were as bright, the sky as clear, the sea as smooth; but when the sun had gone, damp vapours came and left the deck chill and clammy ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... The dinner, subtly ordered, was a complete success, and Madeline Irwin was in a dream of happiness, but Bertha was sorry to see that Nigel, who was usually remarkably moderate in the matter of champagne, and to-night drank even less than usual, had the whole evening a trembling hand. ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... Very subtly he entered into conversation with her, and, guarding every word and look, took care to interest without alarming her. He said no more of friendship, but a great deal of regret for wasted years and wasted talents in the past and good ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... unconsciously the most subtly dangerous she could have chosen: 'If I like to give myself to you, why should you not take me? It is of my own free-will. My eyes are open.' It was his very thought put into words, and by her. For a moment he wavered—who could blame him? ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... bidding Roland put off his armour, but even in his own room a vision of maidenly beauty haunted him, thereby showing how subtly the young girl's charms had wound ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... Subtly it thrilled through every vein, Making her white cheek flush again; As pale hydrangeas blushing shine, Whose roots are steeped in ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
... and burn and know itself a fire; Yet doomed—ah, fate of the fulfilled desire!— To fade, a meteor, paying for the crime Of living glorious in the denser air Of our material earth. A strange despair, An agony, yet strangely, subtly sweet And tender as an unpassionate caress, Filled me ... Oh laughter! youth's conceit Grown almost conscious ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... neglect to send a card at a proper time is equivalent to a personal neglect. The man who comes himself and hands you his card also is apt to have too many elbows at a dinner, too many feet at a ball. He has about him a suggestion of awkward superfluousness that is subtly consistent with his duplicate announcement ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... follows that a grandly carved and completed model has for its counterpart an equally bold yet subtly refined outline; on the contrary, I have seen just the reverse, as I have also seen most wretched modelling wedded to an outline fit to grace the finest instrument extant. But it is not often so, for, as a rule, ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... Miller, while convinced that the tones of the vocal scale require, for their correct emission, subtly corresponding changes of adjustment in the vocal organs, utterly rejects anything like a deliberate or conscious attempt on the singer's part to bring about these adjustments. He holds that they should occur automatically ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... properly of its own having and substance. The laws of nature teach us what justly we need. After the sages have told us that no one is indigent according to nature, and that every one is so according to opinion, they very subtly distinguish betwixt the desires that proceed from her, and those that proceed from the disorder of our own fancy: those of which we can see the end are hers; those that fly before us, and of which we can see no end, are our own: ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... wagged their heads doubtfully, as they might have done had Slone just acquainted them with a hopeless and deathless passion for a woman. It was significant of the nature of riders that they accepted his attitude and had consideration for his feelings. For them the situation subtly changed. For weeks they had been three wild-horse wranglers on a hard chase after a valuable stallion. They had failed to get even close to him. They had gone to the limit of their endurance and of the outfit, and it was time to turn back. But Slone had conceived that strange and rare longing ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... gradually developing into an actual doubt of his sincerity. She knew that the man had himself well in hand, for never by word or look did he express any open avowal of love, although a dozen times a day he managed subtly to show that his love had ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... bored, and he was now evidently in a state of high exasperation. He had lately begun a representation of a lazzarone lounging in the sun; an image of serene, irresponsible, sensuous life. The real lazzarone, he had admitted, was a vile fellow; but the ideal lazzarone—and his own had been subtly idealized—was a precursor ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... handy places for planting telegraph poles and for swinging wires along which thoughts travel between country and country with the velocity of lightning. We see that the world with its swarming populations is growing more and more like some great organism whereof the nerve-centres are subtly, delicately connected by sensitive nerve-tissues. Even now, using a lady's thimble, two pieces of metal, and a little acid, we can speak to a friend across the Atlantic gulf, and before ten years are over, a gentleman in London will doubtless be able to sit in his office ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... excited cluster. There the same procedure was followed. A quiet-voiced man was talking, lauding the exploit of the three embattled Earthmen, skillfully and subtly enkindling enthusiasm, raising wholesome doubts as to the invulnerability of the ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... and exchange persiflages with the young men of the paymaster's corps, to giggle, to relate, sotto voce, certain stories that ended invariably in hysterical laughter. Janet detested these conversations. And the sex question, subtly suggested if not openly dealt with, to her was a mystery over which she did not dare to ponder, terrible, yet too sacred to be degraded. Her feelings, concealed under an exterior of self-possession, deceptive to the casual observer, sometimes became molten, and she was frightened by a passion ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Gehazi, That no man talk aside In secret with his judges The while his case is tried. Lest he should show them—reason To keep a matter hid, And subtly lead the questions Away ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... duke or bishop. They were covered with needlework of silk in all the colors of the rainbow, wrought into graceful interwoven garlands and figures. The cushions of chair and settle, the panels of a screen, the curtains of the latticed windows, displayed still more of this marvelous embroidery, subtly contrasted and harmonized with the coloring of a rich Persian rug upon the floor. The heart of all this glowing, exquisite beauty was a young girl in straight-hanging robes of fine silk and wool, her gleaming ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... exclaimed: "Then my dear—with such a chance—you were the perfection of a dunce!" He was so irritated—or she took him to be—that for the rest of the time they were in the Gardens he spoke no other word; and she meanwhile subtly abstained from any attempt to pacify him. That would only lead to more questions. At the gate of the Gardens he hailed a four-wheeled cab and, in silence, without meeting her eyes, put her into it, only saying "Give him THAT" as he ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... example,—and when these light ablutions were completed, the pages disappeared, coming back almost immediately with baskets of loose rose-leaves, white and red, which they scattered profusely about the room. A delightful odor subtly sweet, and yet not faint, began to freshen the already perfumed air,—and Sah-luma, flinging himself again on his couch, motioned Theos to take ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... said, "They are alike in their differences, but subtly differentiated in their likenesses, ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... showers shed From apple-boughs, or if the soft green wrought In fields, or if the robin's call be fraught The most with thy delight. Perhaps they read Thee best who in the ancient time did say Thou wert the sacred month unto the old: No blossom blooms upon thy brightest day So subtly sweet as memories which unfold In aged hearts which in thy sunshine lie, To sun themselves ...
— A Calendar of Sonnets • Helen Hunt Jackson
... mystery, and can only be penetrated and unravelled by the concentration of the intellect. Every object, even the simplest in nature and society, every event of life, is made up of various elements subtly bound together; so that, to understand anything, we must reduce it from its complexity to its parts and principles, and examine their relations to one another. Nor is this all. Every thing which enters the mind not only contains a depth of mystery in itself, but is ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... 'I would willingly bribe you from the service of his Grace of Canterbury to come into mine. But it may be that I shall not long outlive these days. Therefore I enjoin upon you these things: Serve well your master; guide him, for he needeth guidance, subtly as to-day ye would have guided him. I will not take you from him for this cause, that there is little need in one house of two that think alike. One sufficeth. For two houses with like minds are stronger than one that is bicephalous. ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... the fine fibres from the sentient brain Roll subtly-surging. Pressing on his steps Lo! PRIESTLEY there, Patriot, and Saint, and Sage, Whom that my fleshly eye hath never seen A childish pang of impotent regret Hath thrill'd my heart. Him from ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... diseases, and gathering round Him as disciples a few of the more advanced souls. The rare charm of His royal love, outpouring from Him as rays from a sun, drew round Him the suffering, the weary, and the oppressed, and the subtly tender magic of His gentle wisdom purified, ennobled, and sweetened the lives that came into contact with His own. By parable and luminous imagery He taught the uninstructed crowds who pressed around Him, and, using the powers of ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... joyfulness and reverence are a necessary part of theoretic pleasure is very evident when we consider that, by the presence of these feelings, even the lower and more sensual pleasures may be rendered theoretic. Thus Aristotle has subtly noted, that "we call not men intemperate so much with respect to the scents of roses or herb-perfumes as of ointments and of condiments," (though the reason that he gives for this be futile enough.) For the fact ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... the corner of the faded upholstery was an oval of gold. Before he perceived my intention, I had picked it up, and almost at the same moment his hand fell on my arm. I looked up quickly. His face was close to mine, closer than I had ever seen it, placid still, but somehow changed, somehow so subtly different that I wrenched myself free, and stepped a pace away. Brutus dropped the coat he was folding, ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... story, adds characters, and makes of it a romance, an elegant tale in which young Italian noblemen, equally handsome, youthful, amorous, and unscrupulous, win ladies' hearts, lose them, and discourse subtly about their desires ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand |
