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

We find doctors in the first ages speaking to us of God and the soul as material substances, more subtile indeed than ordinary bodies.

From Ecce Homo! A Critical Inquiry into the History of Jesus of Nazareth: Being a Rational Analysis of the Gospels by Paul Henry Thiry Baron d' Holbach

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

He will come very near to us in his books, and by that subtile law of communion which, through the brightest and noblest utterances, makes all the better world akin.

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

It is the subtiler nature of doubt to penetrate the heart more profoundly than confidence, and to underlie it.

From Two Days' Solitary Imprisonment 1898 by Edward Bellamy

We rather think that far subtiler things than the doctrine of association had from of old been familiar to him.

From Life of Robert Burns by Thomas Carlyle

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

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

A book might be written on the Stratagems of Literature, as Frontinus has composed one on War, and among its subtilest heroes we might place this great poet.

From Calamities and Quarrels of Authors by Isaac Disraeli

Truth is a point; the subtilest and finest; harder than adamant; never to be broken, worn away, or blunted.

From Imaginary Conversations and Poems A Selection by Walter Savage Landor

As for me, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are now only the subtilest imaginable essences, which would not stain the morning sky.

From A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers by Henry David Thoreau

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

He was the farthest reach of subtlety compatible with an individual self,--the subtilest of authors, and only just within the possibility of authorship.

From Beacon Lights of History, Volume 13 Great Writers; Dr Lord's Uncompleted Plan, Supplemented with Essays by Emerson, Macaulay, Hedge, and Mercer Adam by John Lord