Famous quotes containing the words subtle and/or knife:
“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)
“When she, and though some said she played
I said that she had danced heart’s truth,
Drew a knife to strike him dead,
I could but leave him to his fate;
For, no matter what is said,
They had all that had their hate....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)