subtile

Recent scientific discoveries have conferred upon man new powers of investigation, whereby nature has been made to reveal secrets so subtile that they never had been dreamt of before in philosophy.

From Scientific American ● Jan. 13, 2013

At Paris the Universe is seen, compos’d of Vortices of subtile Matter; but nothing like it is seen in London.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton

Every plant and shrub will have some part in a subtile and soothing ministry; and then, if ever, it will occur to you that this is a mellow old world after all.

From A Breeze from the Woods, 2nd Ed. by William Chauncey Bartlett

It could boast of Shakespeare, and Jonson, and Raleigh, and Camden, and Beaumont, and Selden, but, alas! it had no Boswell to record its words, "So nimble, and so full of subtile flame."

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 120, October, 1867. by Various

The mental attitude of the speaker is subtile enough in itself to be fascinating, but the real suspense does not lie there.

From Shelburne Essays, Third Series by Paul Elmer More

Something keener than philosophy, subtiler than Epicurus, pricked Fred, as Minnie vanished into the cloud of snowflakes.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 18, April, 1859 by Various

The heavens change by a subtiler movement than the precession of the equinoxes.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 23, September, 1859 by Various

No, his temperament needed a subtiler atmosphere than this, rarer essence than mere brutal freedom The East, the Old World, was his proper sphere for self-development.

From Margret Howth, a Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis

Bread is a binder, and for that abolisht even in their Ale, whose lost room fills an apple, which is more airy and of subtiler nature.

From The Scornful Lady by John Fletcher

Is not the Heat of the warm Room convey'd through the Vacuum by the Vibrations of a much subtiler Medium than Air, which after the Air was drawn out remained in the Vacuum?

From Opticks or, a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections, and Colours of Light by Sir Isaac Newton

It was this mastery of the interior life, this impassioned voicing of its subtilest secrets, that made Rousseau so irresistibly attractive to women.

From The Friendships of Women by William Rounseville Alger

What stuff is the man made of who is not coexistent in our thought with the purest and subtilest truth?

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 72, October, 1863 by Various

This is a truth that takes all the sting out of Lord Bacon's observation that "against Atheists the very savages take part with the very subtilest philosophers."

From Flowers of Freethought (Second Series) by G. W. (George William) Foote

The notion of nonentity may thus be called the parent of the philosophic craving in its subtilest and profoundest sense.

From The Will to Believe : and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by William James

Said to us, during the past season, the subtilest thinker of Great Britain,—"I must send to America whatever I wish to put in print, unless I pay for its publication from my own pocket."

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 12, October, 1858 by Various