Fine by defect, and delicately weak.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Moral Essays. Epistle ii. Line 43.

That air and harmony of shape express,

Fine by degrees, and beautifully less.

Matthew Prior (1664-1721): Henry and Emma.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact:

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,

That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

Such tricks hath strong imagination,

That if it would but apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy;

Or in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act v. Sc. 1.

The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine!

Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Man. Epistle i. Line 217.

Nature is fine in love, and where 't is fine,

It sends some precious instance of itself

After the thing it loves.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act iv. Sc. 5.

I cannot talk with civet in the room,

A fine puss-gentleman that's all perfume.

William Cowper (1731-1800): Conversation. Line 283.

'T is a very fine thing to be father-in-law

To a very magnificent three-tailed Bashaw!

George Colman, The Younger (1762-1836): Blue Beard. Act ii. Sc. 5.

Libertas et natale solum:

Fine words! I wonder where you stole 'em.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745): Verses occasioned by Whitshed's Motto on his Coach.