Subtle

Famous quotes containing the word subtle:

“In their precise tracings-out and subtle causations, the strongest and fieriest emotions of life defy all analytical insight.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)

“Any man which an idea, however subtle and unexpected it may be, finds lacking, is not a writer. The inexpressible does not exist.”
—Théophile Gautier (1811–1872)

“I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous ... as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both north and south. It is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)