All 25 Uses of
subtle
in
The Sunlight Dialogues
- You see great marvels performed on the stage--the lady sawed in half, the fat man supported by empty air, the Hindu vanishing with the folding of a cloth--and the subtlest of poisons drifts into your brain: you think the earth dead because the sky is full of spirits, you think the hall drab because the stage is adazzle with dimestore gilt.†
Chpt 2
- The subtle trap in which he'd found himself when the old man died had all the attributes of a cage except the essential one: he did not mind it.†
Chpt 3
- He studied the paper unhappily, sharply remembering his younger son's face, arrogant and sullen, handsome as his mother's face (except for those ears, long as an elephant's ears, and red)--quick to sneer, quick to smile, as hers was, a face as delicate as his own was blunt: his own, or Will's, or his daughter Mary Lou's--the face of Luke Hodge in whom all that was subtly wrong, for obscure reasons contemptible, in W. B. Hodge, Attorney at Law, came into enigmatic focus.†
Chpt 3
- He hooked his tingling fingers around inside his suspenders, elbows going out like ducks' wings, and, smiling as if his enormous son were some magnificent achievement of subtle wit, which he was, he walked behind Will through the outer office to the frosted-glass door which bore the neatly lettered sign, in reverse: TAGGERT FAELEY HODGE ATTORNEY NO. 11 BANK ST. BATAVIA, N. Y. (Taggert Faeley Hodge was no longer here.†
Chpt 3
- Once more the subtle tyranny of the Congressman's image.†
Chpt 3 *
- It had not taken Hodge long to see what no doubt he'd been subtly aware of all his life, that those who called his father an idealist were snatching at words to express a feeling that had nothing to do with the word they happened to get hold of: the old man was in blunt truth superior, an implicit condemnation of men who were not; in short, a source of unrest.†
Chpt 3
- The times were wrong, not incorrupt and not out of joint but subtly mellowed, decayed to ambiguity: If right and wrong were as clear as ever, they were clear chiefly on a private scale, and though God was in his Heaven yet, He had somewhat altered, had become archetypal of a new, less awesome generation of fathers: Wisdom watching the world with half-averted eyes, chewing His ancient lip thoughtfully, mildly, venturing an occasional rueful smile.†
Chpt 3
- Very abstract, abstruse, or subtle: often used derogatorily of reasoning.†
Chpt 3
- But subtly, so subtly that no one had noticed the thing as it happened, the might of the Hodges had sifted between their fingers.†
Chpt 3
- But subtly, so subtly that no one had noticed the thing as it happened, the might of the Hodges had sifted between their fingers.†
Chpt 3
- It was subtle, but it was as surely there as the fireplace or the full-length windows that showed her only her own drawn face.†
Chpt 4
- The policeman resists this inevitable tendency of his thought, if only because human beings are by nature social creatures, even policemen; nevertheless, the subtle pressure toward cynicism is everlastingly there.†
Chpt 5
- But either way, bachelor or married, the policeman is lucky if he does not eventually (however subtly) go mad.†
Chpt 5
- The cop on the beat had another advantage, more subtle and yet even more important: he need not be bored.†
Chpt 5
- What would have been for himself or Ben or Art Jr a matter of snapping the fingers was for Will a case of vast difficulty and subtlety, a labyrinthine question of justice.†
Chpt 5
- They talked then of politics, in the age-old style of Western New York farmers, arguing shades of a point of view no longer remembered, much less believed, in most of the world; spoke, sorrowful and incredulous, of all that was falling apart in the world; to Bliss an outrage, a matter of plots and stupidity; to Hodge a subtle mystery.†
Chpt 7
- His monstrous groin cries out to mount the wind As the mind cries out for subtleties worth thought And the heart for a sacrifice as thick as time: Hunger and surfeit gathered in one red heat.†
Chpt 7
- Infinitely subtle compared to her father's, and for that reason more deadly.†
Chpt 7
- He was in no shape to catch any subtleties, that was for sure.†
Chpt 7 *
- Somewhere even now Clumly would be sitting with his hands around his nose, his tiny bullet-eyes half-shut, listening with all his poor clumsy wits to the Sunlight Man's grand tirade, or walking back and forth in a locked bedroom, puffing fiercely at his green cigar, going through in his mind all the subtle twists of the Tale of the Negro in the Cellar.†
Chpt 11
- The explanation he gave was involved, incredibly subtle, and though it was thrillingly lucid at the time, he could not remember it later.†
Chpt 11
- Or she could defeat him more subtly and terribly, by pain worse than physical pain, pick his bones and snap them in her jaws, destroy him with the image of his own ruined face.†
Chpt 12
- So, long ago, thus subtly disguised, he had felt like an attorney.†
Chpt 14
- Or she'd been a witch before and he had exorcised her demon, had brought her gaze down from grand visions of sex and subtle wit to the bare earth where he stood.†
Chpt 21
- If he was guilty of limitations of foresight, or subtlety, or humor, or taste--if he had been foolish in his time and partly unworthy--his grief was anyhow absolute and most profound and better than justice or mercy or wisdom or any of the other great words of the ancient schools.†
Chpt 23
Definitions:
-
(subtle as in: a subtle difference or thinker) not obvious, but understandable by someone with adequate sensitivity and relevant knowledge (perhaps depending upon fine distinctions)
or:
capable of understanding things that require sensitivity and relevant knowledge (perhaps understanding fine distinctions)
-
(subtle as in: a subtle shade of blue) understated so as not to draw excess attention