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

According to these notions, there existed a volatile principle that bore no specific name, but was diffused through every part of living bodies, more subtile than heat, air, or vapour.

From Curiosities of Medical Experience by J. G. (John Gideon) Millingen

Of a more subtile wit and a finer grain was Harte, who did his best work as a humorist in California.

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

Its subtile veins, its vivid sheen, Seem fragment of a god's array.

From The Star-Treader and other poems by Clark Ashton Smith

What if, through communication with subtiler organisms than my own, I could reach at a single bound the goal, which perhaps a life of agonizing mental toil would never enable me to attain?

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 03, January, 1858 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

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

That cause of motion he makes the Materia Subtilis; and the finer or subtiler that is, the better and fitter he conceives it to be to preserve Motion.

From Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 Giving some Accompt of the present Undertakings, Studies, and Labours of the Ingenious in many considerable parts of the World by Henry Oldenburg

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

Of the most noysom poyson that euer was mingled with the subtilest druggs that euer were.

From The Palace of Pleasure Volume 3 by William Painter

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

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

She took yellow honeysuckles from a vase of massed amethyst and began to weave them in her yellow hair,—humming a tune, the while, that was full of the subtilest curves of sound.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 67, May, 1863 by Various

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