Famous quotes containing the word subtle:
“Lords and Commoners of England, consider what nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors; a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“Language is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved. It has arrested ten thousand lightning flashes of genius, which, unless thus fixed and arrested, might have been as bright, but would have also been as quickly passing and perishing, as the lightning.”
—Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886)
“The half-caught smile,
the subtle little sort of differentiating
between the thing that’s said
and that’s said not;
the “have I seen you somewhere else?
forgot? impossible.””
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)