subtilize

Almost suffocating under the oppression of repressed feelings, using art only to repeat and rehearse for himself his own internal tragedy, after having wearied emotion, he began to subtilize it.

From Life of Chopin by Cook, Martha Elizabeth Duncan Walker

By long brooding over our recollections, we subtilize them into something akin to imaginary stuff, and hardly capable of being distinguished from it.

From The Blithedale Romance by Hawthorne, Nathaniel

To play with important truths, to disturb the repose of established tenets, to subtilize objections, and elude proof, is too often the sport of youthful vanity, of which maturer experience commonly repents.

From The Works of Samuel Johnson, Volume 06 Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons by Johnson, Samuel

However abstractly they speculate and subtilize, there is always an undigested bone of man-god, god-man, and vicarious atonement in the theological stomach.

From Bible Myths and their Parallels in other Religions Being a Comparison of the Old and New Testament Myths and Miracles with those of the Heathen Nations of Antiquity Considering also their Origin and Meaning by Doane, T. W.

Monsieur Pradel, it is imperative that the walls of the Abbaye should appear inscrutable, of great thickness, and yet subtilized by the mists of coming night.

From A Mummer's Tale by Roche, Charles E.

Gold was the soil converted into money, the soil mobilized, exchangeable, transportable, divisible, subtilized, spiritualized, as it were.

From The Companions of Jehu by Dumas père, Alexandre

Every page bears the impress of thought, but it is thought subtilized, and redolent of poetry.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 22, August, 1859 by Various

Still, all inward life works itself out in a few simple forms, and culture cannot go very far before the religious graces reappear in it in a subtilized intellectual shape.

From English Critical Essays Nineteenth Century by Jones, Edmund David

Except that the houses had receded and faded, and the passers-by were subtilized into unnoticeable ghosts!

From The Old Wives' Tale by Bennett, Arnold

Theosophy—and a large share of what is called theology—is simply a refining and subtilizing of mythology.

From The Next Step in Religion An Essay toward the Coming Renaissance by Sellars, Roy Wood

These were concessions to a ruling mode,—concessions the more readily made, owing to their being in complete harmony with the strong subtilizing and allegorizing tendencies of Dante's own mind.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 15, January, 1859 by Various

"Seest thou not," adds Philo, in the same spirit of subtilizing being into power, and dividing the Logos into two.

From Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

Beside it relieved me from a multitude of labours and cares, for, as I proceeded, Thomas Aquinas and his subtilizing competitors were thrown by in contempt.

From The Adventures of Hugh Trevor by Holcroft, Thomas

How! cries the metaphysician, the subtilizing philosopher, what! refuse to the Divinity, those qualities we discover in his creatures?

From The System of Nature, Volume 2 by Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'