C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Subtlety
Subtlety may deceive you; integrity never will.
Cromwell.
It is said that Windham, when he came to the end of a speech, often found himself so perplexed by his own subtlety that he hardly knew which way he was going to give his vote. This is a good illustration of the fallaciousness of reasoning, and of the uncertainties which attend its practical application.
Hare.
Subtlety will sometimes give safety, no less than strength; and minuteness has sometimes escaped, where magnitude would have been crushed. The little animal that kills the boa is formidable chiefly from its insignificance, which is incompressible by the folds of its antagonist.
Colton.