"Chaff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an uneventful one; Frank escaped the first fight in which new-comers generally have to take part before they settle down in their new sphere. He was thoroughly good-tempered, and fully a match for any of his messmates in chaff, and he soon became a favourite in the fo'castle. He was always ready to take his share of the work, and was soon as much at home on the yards as the rest. The change and the newness of the life were very good for him; he was never alone, and had no time to think ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... rightfully aspire? What is there, for instance, in theology, which she should not strive to learn? Give me only that in religion which woman may and should become acquainted with, and the rest may go like chaff before the wind. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... a very familiar footing, which was increased, no doubt, by the freedom with which the Emperor would chat with his old soldiers, and the liberties which he would allow them to take with him. It was no uncommon thing for a shower of chaff to come from the ranks directed at their own commanding officers, and I am sorry to say, also, that it was no very unusual thing for a shower of bullets to come also. Unpopular officers were continually assassinated by their own men; at the battle of ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have passed into immortality as a proverb. Perhaps a few other grains of corn might be picked out of these hundred and seventy pages of chaff. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... Cyrebion, or 'Light-as-Chaff', was the nickname of Epicrates, Aeschines' brother-in-law (not the Epicrates of Sec. 277). as a reveller, no doubt in some Dionysiac revel, in which it was not considered decent to take part without a mask. (The original purpose of masks, however, was not to conceal ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... Black Dog, with Teach, de Lussan, and L'Ollonois, was in the lead. Truth to tell, the captain was never backward when fighting was going on. The desperate onslaught of their overwhelming numbers, once they had gained a foothold, swept the defenders before them like chaff. Waiting for nothing, they sprang down from the fort and raced madly through the narrow streets of the town. They brushed opposition away as leaves are driven aside by a winter storm. Ere the defenders on the east forts could realize their presence, ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... pick the grains of wheat out of the chaff. No doubt she exaggerates and garbles, after the fashion of a scandal-loving woman, but her evidence is valuable, especially as showing that Lydia was not at Bath on Christmas Eve. We will tell her nothing, so she can suspect as much as she likes; if we do speak freely ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... he relented so far as to continue his visits as before; but he made it clear that he only came to see the Master and hear of Owd Bob's doings. On these occasions he loved best to sit on the window-sill outside the kitchen, and talk and chaff with Tammas and the men in the yard, feigning an uneasy bashfulness when reference made to Bessie Bolstock. And after sitting thus for some time, he would half turn, look over his shoulder, and remark in indifferent tones to the ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... such as flowers, little windfallen apples and pears, acorns, etc., or heaps of hay, straw or cut grass. As we wandered about the gardens—for we were left to do exactly as we liked—I got quite accustomed to seeing her hunt out and tread upon such things, and used to chaff her about it. At that time I was—as I am still—fond of lying at full length on a thick hearthrug before a good fire. One evening as I was lying in this way and we were alone, A. crossed the room to reach a bangle from the mantelpiece. Instead of reaching over me, she playfully stepped ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... failed in their former promises. Flynn's good-nature was as unfaltering as his self-esteem, perhaps because of his self-esteem. He only smiled with fatuous superiority when from time to time, after the elections, his patrons would chaff him about his failure to secure the mayoralty. They did so with more effect since there were always among the horse-players on such occasions a few who would cast votes for the barber, esteeming it as a choice and perennial ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... rested with a curious smile on one of the bookcases. It contained works on hypnotism, telepathy, and psychological speculations in general; he had studied some of them with ironical amusement and others with a quickening of his interest. Amid much that he thought of as sterile chaff he saw germs of truth; and once or twice he had been led to the brink of a startling discovery. There the elusive clue had failed him, though he felt that strange secrets might be revealed ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... me treat him largely; I should fear, (If with too prying lens I chanced to err, 90 Mistaking catalogue for character,) His wise forefinger raised in smiling blame. Nor would I scant him with judicial breath And turn mere critic in an epitaph; I choose the wheat, incurious of the chaff That swells fame living, chokes it after death, And would but memorize the shining half Of his large nature that was turned to me: Fain had I joined with those that honored him With eyes that darkened because his were dim, 100 And now been silent: ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... at home, by his bedside. There was a sudden silence, the boys were astonished. Then some began to bully and try and stop him; others stood up for him. But the battle was won. The better minded boys saw what cowards they had been to give up what they knew was right for fear of chaff—one by one they gradually followed his example, and before that lad left school it was the rule and not the exception for the ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... for that," he said. "A hard life under our German lords! They lay such taxes upon grist, that a poor man must eat the grain with the chaff, like an ox. And when they find a hand-mill in a cottage, they execute the peasant, take whatever he has, bah! they do not pardon even women and children.... They fear neither God nor the priests. They even put the priest in chains for blaming them for it. ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Mozart, and many other composers, the necessity of earning a living, and therefore of writing for "long" ears, mixed with the love of fame, produced works which, like the old Eden tree, contained both good and evil. To judge such great men really fairly, the chaff ought to be separated from the wheat; and the chaff ought to be thoroughly removed, even at the risk of sometimes losing a ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... that can teach a man to appreciate the ingrained thanklessness of the human race. I was obliged to make a clean breast of it to my sister, who of course did not keep the secret long; and for some time afterward I had to submit to a good deal of mild chaff upon the subject from my friends. But it is an old story now, and two of the actors in it are dead, and of the remaining three I dare say I am the only one who cares to recall it. Even to me it is a somewhat ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... should defray the whole expense of his cultivation, and that his sugar should be all clear profit. If this be true, for I pretend not to affirm it, it is as if a corn farmer expected to defray the expense of his cultivation with the chaff and the straw, and that the grain should be all clear profit. We see frequently societies of merchants in London, and other trading towns, purchase waste lands in our sugar colonies, which they expect to improve and cultivate with profit, by means of factors and ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... up her sewing materials, put them in her basket, and retired to her own room. Beulah felt relieved when the door closed behind her, and, taking up Theodore Parker's "Discourses," began to read. Poor, famishing soul! what chaff she eagerly devoured! In her anxious haste she paused not to perceive that the attempted refutations of Christianity contained objections more gross and incomprehensible than the doctrine assailed. Long before she had arrived ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... the grown plants is that of topping; this is the planter's hay harvest; the tops serve for chaff, for dry food instead of hay, for fodder. They are cut off above the ears, collected by a cart going along the intervals or roads, and stacked for winter use. Mr. Cobbett's harvest of tops was not so successful as it might have been: this arose from his absence ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... of production, organization and struggle known as modern industrialism going to do with the Negroes of the United States? Passing into its huge hopper and between its upper and nether millstones, are they to come out grist for the nation, or mere chaff, doomed like the Indian to ultimate extinction in the raging fires of racial and industrial rivalry and progress? Sphinx's riddle, say you, which yet awaits its Oedipus? Perhaps, though an examination of the past may show us that the riddle is not ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... gathers only the grain and seeds of the crop, leaving the straw to be plowed under the soil, thus maintaining its supply of soluble silicates, and increasing its amount of organic matter. After taking the seed heads from the standing straw and grasses, it thrashes them, blows out the chaff, separates the different kinds of seeds, and discharges them into bags ready for market. It consists of a car containing the machinery; to this may be attached any required number of horses. The inventor affirms that it has harvested the grain of two acres ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... let your tongue run away with you. Mr. Brooks is believing every word you say. You needn't," she murmured in a discreet undertone. "Mother and I chaff one another terribly, but we're really very nicely-behaved persons—for our station ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... numerous reversals of precedent between 1937 and 1950 was to bring judicial interpretation more generally into accord with the formal text of the Constitution, and to dispose of a considerable amount of constitutional chaff, Justice Roberts was moved to say in the Allwright case that frequent reversals of earlier decisions tended to bring adjudications of the Supreme Court "into the same class as a restricted railroad ticket, good for this day and train only."[291] A ninth limitation which has ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... of Augustus. Cato thought that a proper man ought to study oratory, medicine, husbandry, war, and law, and was at liberty to look into Greek literature a little, that he might cull from the mass of chaff and rubbish, as he affected to deem it, some serviceable maxims of practical experience, but he might not study it thoroughly. Varro extended the limit of allowed and fitting studies to grammar, logic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... freckled, As fancy Punch will stoop to being "heckled." I have no "Programmes," I. My wit's too wide To a wire-puller's "platform" to be tied. I know what's right, I mean to see it done, And for the rest good-tempered chaff and fun Are my pet "principles"—till fools grow rash From toleration, then they feel the lash. I am a sage, and not a prig or pump, Therefore I never canvas, spout or stump, I'm Liberal—as the sunlight—of all Good, Which to Conserve I strive—that's understood, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... conjuncture of an olive skin and light grey eyes. They do not wear mantillas. The lower classes use a shawl. Those who are of the bourgeois class or above it differ little from Londoners. The working or loafing men, for they laugh and loaf, and work and chaff and chatter at every corner, are more distinct in costume, wearing the flat felt sombrero with turned-up edges that one knows from pictures, while the long coat which has displaced the cloak still retains a smack of it in the way they disregard the ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... that sort of a tale before," Masters answered, with a sneer. "Job Masters is too old a bird to be caught by such chaff. I'll take my risks, gentlemen. I'll take ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... little to give it birth, there is nothing to cheek it or recall us to our senses in the prospect of consequences. We take up and rend in pieces the mere toys of humour, as the gusts of wind take up and whirl about chaff and stubble. Passion plays the tyrant, in a grand tragi-comic style, over the Lilliputian difficulties and petty disappointments it has to encounter, gives way to all the fretfulness of grief and all the turbulence of resentment, makes a fuss about nothing because there is nothing to ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... said to a sister, being led to it by the certain prospect of one of the dear labourers in the Orphan-Houses going to leave; "Well, my soul is at peace. The Lord's time is not yet come, but, when it is come, He will blow away all these obstacles, as chaff is blown away before the wind." It was only ONE QUARTER OF AN HOUR after, when the following paper was put into my hands, whereby I obtained power ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... a good deal of chaff of the Bishop of Peterborough in the letter, as this Bishop, whose name unfortunately rhymed to "tea," had been speaking against Lawson's views in the House ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... intellectually, and morally unlike any other community of which he has the means of forming an opinion. This is the really precious part of history, the corn which some threshers carefully sever from the chaff, for the purpose of gathering the chaff into the garner, and flinging ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... indignant denial that the character of the revolutionary French in aught resembled that of the English. "We have not," says the orator, "been drawn and trussed, in order that we may be filled, like stuffed birds in a museum, with chaff, and rags, and paltry blurred shreds of paper about the rights of man." Into this perilous but singularly effective department, closed against even superior men, Mr. Stewart could enter safely and at will. One of the last sermons I heard him preach—a discourse of ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... a great brown form lumbering down the street behind, and driving the people before it like chaff. ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... all men's hearts to the highest activity, and showing, by the light of their own strange deeds, the inmost recesses of their spirits, till those spirits burn down again, self-consumed, while the chaff and stubble are left as ashes, not valueless after all, as manure for some future crop; and the pure gold, if gold there ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... that, in time of fear, We opened overwide Shall softly close from year to year Till all be purified; For though no fluttering fan be heard Nor chaff be seen to flee— The Lord shall winnow the Lord's Preferred— And, Hey then up ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... endless. He had kept away from the club; the men in the club always knew everything—he had learned that by previous experience; he had no desire for the shower of chaff which he knew would greet his ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... these are, one by one, gathered away from the face of sin, and "no man layeth it to heart," as is spoken in Isaiah 57, 1. But when God, in this way, has shaken out the wheat and gathered the grain in its place, what, think you, shall be the future of the chaff? Nothing else but to be burned with inextinguishable fire, Mt 13, 42. This shall be ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... I have seen them comfortably traverse. No obstacle seems insurmountable to them. They are quaint-looking things, but, in spite of the Press correspondents, they are no more like to, or suggestive of, primeval monsters than a cow resembles a chaff-cutter. ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... habit in such cases, he invented every imaginable reason, without regard to their logical or illogical character, to convince others of the soundness of his conclusion. But the logic of the real reasons which convinced his own mind is, when the chaff is all winnowed away, as clear and bright ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... postponement of happiness to another world. The general tendency is to enjoy the present. All religions have taught men that the pleasures of this world are of no account; that they are nothing but husks and rags and chaff and disappointment; that whoever expects to be happy in this world makes a mistake; that there is nothing on the earth worth striving for; that the principal business of mankind should be to get ready to be happy in another world; that the great occupation is to save your soul, and when you ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... as the dust, through the volant vast Flung like chaff, as ashes cast To the nether storms, I sank, pride past, On the waiting wings of ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... native of that county amongst ignorant labourers who had never heard the real tongue. The landlord of the Feathers consented to the bargain and Goddard was told that he might sleep in the barn if he liked, and should take a turn at cutting chaff the next day to pay for the convenience. The convict slept soundly; he was past lying awake in useless fits of remorse, and he was exhausted with his day's journey. Moreover he had now the immediate prospect of obtaining sufficient money to carry him safely ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... were left galloping, Joris and I, Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky; The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh, 'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff; Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white, And 'Gallop,' gasped Joris, 'for Aix ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... short outs," argued Mr. Cameron. "No one expects any of us to read all the books of the past. The years have sifted the wheat from the chaff, and by a process of elimination we have found out pretty well by this time what the great books are. By classifying our subjects we can easily trace the growth and development of any of the really significant movements of the world; we can follow ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... last words the Professor relapsed into his former tone of dry chaff. The Father could not quite make up his mind whether Guildea was feeling unusually grave or unusually gay. As the two men drew near to Hyde Park Place their conversation died away and they walked forward ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... chaff they would have been surprised to see me leave them for the burly and sympathetic Mills. I was ready to drop any easy company of equals to approach that interesting man with every mental deference. It was not precisely because ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... you heard her call me mother. The boy's my son; but I am afeard they must give it up; for they're too poor, and the times is hard, and the agent's harder than the times: there's two of them, the under and the upper; and they grind the substance of one between them, and then blow one away like chaff; but we'll not be talking of that, to spoil your honour's night's rest. The room's ready, and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... ordinary loft in the roof, dusty, dark, with hay piled in one corner, a chaff-cutter, and trap-doors in the floor, through which the forage was thrust down into the mangers of the ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... Henry Everard, M.D., going by rail to Malbourne. Everard asleep; manly, cheerful, intellectual, healthy in body and mind. Cyril awake; consumed by unspeakable sorrow. Everard wakes; Cyril suddenly becomes gay in response to his friend's high spirits. They chaff each other. Cyril preaches to Everard, when Henry scolds him for fasting, and his laxity of faith and practice. They pass Belminster, when Cyril betrays unconscious ambition at Everard's jesting prophecy ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... from a god's gold fountain Of art or music or rhythmic song Must sift from his soul the chaff of malice, And weed from his heart the roots ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... now time to think of returning, so Angelo got out of the window into the sunlight and went off to fetch the carriage and the guards began to chaff poor Cicciu about his watch-chain which was a massive and extensive affair in silver. The corporal said they were playing a game with him and offered to teach it to me. I am not good at games, but this one was so simple that I mastered ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... the subject of a good deal of chaff that night at mess. The Rajah was being entertained, and he was the only man who paid the young officer any compliments on the matter of his achievement on the racecourse. Everyone else openly declared that the horse, and not its rider, was the ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... group composed of Audrey, Sara, and Garth had joined the main party now, and Garth was shaking eager, outstretched hands and laughingly tossing back the shower of chaff ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... ceremonia. Ceremony ceremonio. Certain (some) kelkaj. Certain (sure) certa. Certainly certe, nepre. Certainty certeco. Certify certigi. Certify atesti. Certitude certeco. Cessation (of hostilities) interpaco. Cessation cxesado. Cession cedo. Cetaceous balena. Chaff (ridicule) moki. Chaff pajlrestajxo. Chaffinch fringo. Chagrin cxagreno. Chain cxeno. Chain of mountains montaro. Chair segxo. Chairman prezidanto. Chaise veturileto. Chalice kaliko. Chalk kreto. Chalky kreteca. Challenge, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... a keen interest in the working men of whom his correspondent had written, point to the ideal of a sort of Tory Democracy. Carlyle writes: "We want more knowledge about the Lancashire operatives; their miseries and gains, virtues and vices. Winnow what you have to say, and give us wheat free from chaff. Then the rich captains of workers will he willing to listen to you. Brevity and sincerity will succeed. Be brief and select, omit much, give each subject its proper proportionate space; and be exact without caring to round off the ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... do?" said he, "a stranger in this great city—to set me a-finding what I never knew? A grain of wheat in a barn full of chaff, mayhap—a needle in a truss of hay—anything I might find but what was sheer impossible. And now am I like to be thrown to the dogs, like ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... "you may be quite sure that when I say that I am going to Killancodlem I mean to go to Killancodlem, and that no chaff about young ladies,—which I think very disgusting,—will stop me. I shall be sorry if Dobbes's roll of the killed should be lessened by a single hand, seeing that his ambition sets that way. Considering the amount ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... enough of your chaff, anyhow; don't we, Mr. Slide? I still sees the Banner, Mr. Slide,—most days; just for ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... with grandsires old, To whom this simple tale I told, It seemed to them such perfect chaff That its bare ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... army, that went closest to the heart. Take these pictures, caught almost anywhere during a journey: A knot of little children in difficulties with the village water-tap or high-handled pump. A soldier, bearded and fatherly, or young and slim and therefore rather shy of the big girls' chaff, comes forward and lifts the pail or swings the handle. His reward, from the smallest babe swung high in air, or, if he is an older man, pressed against his knees, is a kiss. ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... he continued for Bixiou's ear. "An Englishwoman is our Waterloo. There are women who slip through our fingers like eels; we catch them on the staircase. There are lorettes who chaff us, we join in the laugh, we have a hold on them because we give credit. There are sphinx-like foreign ladies; we take a quantity of shawls to their houses, and arrive at an understanding by flattery; but an Englishwoman!—you might as well attack the bronze statue of Louis Quatorze! That ...
— Gaudissart II • Honore de Balzac
... apace, until, in the third century of the Hijrah, it was put to writing. Nothing bears weight which has not the stamp of Muhammad's authority, as reported by his near surroundings and his friends. In such a mass of tradition, great care is taken to separate the chaff from the wheat. The chain of tradition (Isnad) must be given for each tradition, for each anecdote. But the "friends" of the Prophet are said to have numbered seven thousand five hundred, and it has not been easy to keep out fraud and deception. The subjects treated are ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... advanced, their heads swung lazily from side to side, very much like snakes, gobbling the yellow grain. In their throats, it was threshed, the chaff bundled and burped aside for pickup by the crawl trucks of a chemical corporation, the kernels quick-dried and blown along into the mighty chests of the machines. There the tireless mills ground the kernels to flour, which was instantly sifted, the bran being ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... Hobaddan, "you see the powers above are on our side; the arrows of Horam are as chaff on the plain, and as the dust which penetrates not the garments of the traveller. Halt not, therefore, but join your arms to the defender and supporter of ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... before them, she once more held up her face for a kiss, with trembling lips and blue eyes swimming in tears, as she told him how she should miss him, how she did not see what she should do without him, his hardly-won firmness was as chaff before the wind. He implored her to marry him; he told her of the beautiful home he would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... during his first talk with her—confined himself rigorously to the carefully sifted chaff which does duty for polite conversation over the same hors-d'oeuvres and entrees, from one dinner to the next, the season round. It wasn't until Eleanor had turned the table the second time, that he made his first gambit in ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... possible to agree on the idea of the divine; but no, that is not the question—the chaff must be separated from the good grain. The supernatural is miracle, and miracle is an objective phenomenon independent of all preceding casuality. Now, miracle thus understood cannot be proved experimentally; and besides, the subjective phenomena, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... effort in his power for the attainment of peace. Now, with magnanimity above all praise, without waiting for the first advance from his conquered foes, he wrote again imploring peace. Upon the field of Marengo, having scattered all his enemies like chaff before him, with the smoke of the conflict still darkening the air, and the groans of the dying swelling upon his ears, laying aside all the formalities of state, with heartfelt feeling and earnestness he wrote to the Emperor of Austria. This extraordinary ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... in the penitentiary, it's easy to say but hard to do. So much time, seemingly, has to be wasted in profitless study to find a few kernels amid much chaff. Napoleon said at one point that the trouble with books is that one must read so many bad ones to find something really good. True enough but, even so, there are perfectly practical ways to advance rapidly without undue waste motion. ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... chaff being sifted away, the grain came to this: His name was Morales, his birthplace Cadiz, his calling that of pilot: he had fallen (as I have said) into the hands of the Moors about thirty years before: and at Azamor, or a little inland, he had made acquaintance ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... their attempts, No lasting root shall find; Untimely blasted, and dispersed Like chaff before ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... am a lover whose words go lamely. They are but chaff blown along the wind of great accomplishment. With thee to fight for I would dare the very rage of ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... sugar, and all kinds of seeds which I gave them were immediately taken below, out of sight. I now visited the mounds on the barrens and found abundant indications of their food-supplies. At the base of each mound was a heap of chaff and shells of various kinds of seeds. The chaff was Aristida speciformis, which grew plentifully all about. I also found many seeds of Euphorbia and Croton, and several species of leguminous seeds. But the ants were not bringing seeds in at this time of year: they were only carrying out the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... of the whole matter is charity. If you turn aside from this, all is lost; here at once the controversy closes. So far as any rule fosters the spirit of love, that is, is used lawfully, it is wise, and has a use. So far as it does not, it is chaff. So far as it ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... absolutely necessary,—Disko did not wish to spend a week hunting for his cable,—but scuttled up into the wind as the Carrie passed within easy hail, a silent and angry boat, at the mercy of a raking broadside of Bank chaff. ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... would be a people. Somebody else can read the papers as well as Marse Tom and Frank. My ole Miss knows I can read the papers, an' she never tries to scare me with big whoppers 'bout the Yankees. She knows she can't catch ole birds with chaff, so she is just as sweet as a peach to her Bobby. But as soon as I get a chance I will play her a trick the devil ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... of others is easily perceived, but that of one's self is difficult to perceive; a man winnows his neighbor's faults like chaff, but his own fault he hides, as a cheat hides the bad ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... there is an American plow in Spain, much less a steam plow. Sowing and reaping machines are here unknown, and grain is tread out by oxen and mules just as it was in Scripture times, and cleaned by women, who toss it in the air to scatter the chaff. Everything is primitive ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... already in right use, only not quite clearly enough understood; and there remains only one real difficulty now in our system of nomenclature, that having taken the word 'husk' for the seed-vessel, we are left without a general word for the true fringe of a filbert, or the chaff of a grass. I don't know whether the French 'frange' could be used by them in this sense, if we took it in English botany. But for the present, we can manage well enough without it, one general term, 'chaff,' serving ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... that fables were the first kind of humour. As the days of Athenian civilization advanced, their light chaff was thought more of than their solid matter. Two hundred years of progress in man caused the animals to be truly considered "lower," natural distinctions were better appreciated, and there seemed to be something absurd in the idea of their thinking or talking. Hence AEsop's fables are spoken of ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... in his breast. I managed to get him safe back to camp—Heaven knows how!—and they made me a lance-corporal, and the beggar says I saved his life; but it was really through carrying a fat letter from his sister—not even his sweetheart. We chaff him at missing such a romantic chance. He got off with a flesh wound, but there is a great blot of red ink on the letter. You may imagine we were not anxious to let our comrades go unavenged. My superiors ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... argument by which to persuade any one to be of my opinion, or rather of my feeling; but yet I cannot help feeling that "Happy low-lie-down!" is either a proverbial expression, or the burthen of some old song, and means, "Happy the man, who lays himself down on his straw bed or chaff pallet ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... fastened a roller, with from eight to twelve long, broad, and blunt knives or hatchets. This was drawn by two horses or oxen over the bundles of corn laid on the ground, until the whole of the corn was separated from the straw. It was then thrown up into the air by means of shovels, so that the chaff might be separated from the grain by ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... afternoon after a protest that nothing he said was to be published, I heard him discuss the prospects and the works of our ultra-modern painters. Even in fields beyond his sympathy he picked out the chaff from the wheat, and was judicially accurate in his verdicts of the difference between 'tweedle-dum' and 'tweedle-dee,' both one would have said, ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... his party joined them, and fell upon the advancing enemy. Taken wholly by surprise, when they believed that victory was won, the two or three hundred men who had passed the abattis were swept before the crowd of peasants like chaff. The latter, pressing close upon their heels, followed them through the gaps that had ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... flowers, which lifted their heads as though to drink in the rays of the sun. In every tree in the garden a thrush woke up and began to sing; sparrows chirped, jays screamed, blue-tits chattered, and the chiff-chaff uttered his strange note. In the woods a cuckoo called and blackbird fluted to blackbird in the hedge. In the stables the horses awoke and champed at their stalls; the cat jumped down and ran after a mouse which crept out from under ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... read newspaper gossip about heiresses. Thank heaven, I've something better to do with my time. But the others wanted to meet her, or pretended to, perhaps to chaff Dennis, rather a cocky youth, though I oughtn't to say so, as he was nice to me, according to his lights. He got Sam Blake to introduce us, when he happened to hear my name, and went out of his way to pay me compliments, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Autumn breeze's bugle sound, Various and vague the dry leaves dance their round; Or, from the garner-door, on ether borne, The chaff flies devious from the winnow'd corn; So vague, so devious, at the breath of heaven, From their fix'd aim ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... the speaker led the laugh which followed this recital! And the chaff! Was it possible that Caesar dared to chaff a man who was supposed to have the peace of Europe in his keeping? And, by Jove! Caesar ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... undying interests of the soul are at stake. But the breath of the woman is ritual poison, and her touch will bring down the curses of the law. But the look of Christ indicates that depth of spirituality before which the institutions of Moses flee away as chaff before the wind. Simon has some esteem for Jesus, and in this juncture his sensations take a turn of pity, spiced, perhaps, with a little contempt, and he says with himself,—"Surely, this man cannot be a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... it reached him afore he saw my uncle at all; so she was brought home* that day, and, on the Thursday night after, I, my father, uncle, and several other friends, went there and made the match. She had sixty guineas, that her grandfather left her, thirteen head of cattle, two feather- and two chaff-beds, with sheeting, quilts, and blankets; three pieces of bleached linen, and a flock of geese of her own rearing—upon the whole, among ourselves, it wasn't aisy ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... of her character, as it had been hastily estimated, was even remotely suggested. The atmosphere in the post-office was, considering the potential violence of its visitors, singularly calm. And Judith, feeding these wild border lads on scraps of chaff and banter, and retaining their absolute loyalty, was a sight worth seeing. She had the alertness of a lion-tamer locked in a cage with the lords of the jungle; the rashly confident she humbled, the meek ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... a-sittin' on the top o' the corn-chest sir, yes sir, a crammin' a old pistol with wisps o' hay and horse-beans sir, and swearin' he's a goin' to blow hisself to hattoms, yes sir, but he doesn't, no sir. For I sees him arterwards a lyin' on the straw a manifacktrin' Bengal cheroots out o' corn-chaff sir and swearin' he'd make 'em smoke sir, but they hulloxed him off round by the corner of Drummins's-s-s-s-s-s sir, just afore I come here sir, yes sir. And so you never see'd us together sir, no sir." This was the remarkable dialect in which Dickens wrote from ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... laughter from all save Miss Leslie, and all possible changes were rung on the joke, until it became as nauseous to the rest of the company as to the bewildered tenor, who bore the chaff with the dignified ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... end at one o'clock! So said Marlanx! How could Dangloss or Braze or Quinnox say him nay? They would be dead or in irons before the first shock of disaster had ceased to thrill. The others? Pah! They were as chaff to the Iron Count. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... action, Mr. Crow began operations at once. He went home and for nearly an hour worked over the list of subscribers to the fund, aided by his wife and daughters. Among them they separated the wheat from the chaff. At least twenty per cent. of the contributors were set aside in a separate group and labelled "no good." Ten per cent. were designated as "fairly good," and the remainder as "good." It must not be assumed that the division had anything to do with the Loop ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... I think thou dost,] that there is any thing in these high flights among the sex?—Verily, Jack, these vehement friendships are nothing but chaff and stubble, liable to be blown away by the very wind that raises them. Apes, mere apes of us! they think the word friendship has a pretty sound with it; and it is much talked of—a fashionable word. And so, truly, a single woman, who thinks she has a soul, and knows that ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... garden, packing it till it is as hard as the unplowed or unspaded soil. Leave one of them in this condition; from two of them remove an inch or two of soil and replace it in the case of one with clean, dry, coarse sand, and in the case of the other with chaff or straw cut into half-inch lengths. Stir the soil in the fourth one to a depth of one inch, leaving it light and crumbly. Now weigh the jars and set them aside. Weigh each day for several days. The four jars illustrated in Fig. 30 were prepared in this way and allowed to stand seven days. In ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... but his long eyes were quite grave. Margaret supposed that it would be absurd to suspect anything but chaff in his proposal, and yet she felt an odd conviction that he meant what he said. Only vain women are easily mistaken about such things. Margaret turned the point with ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... which sustained your soul through many generations contains grain, but also chaff. In your treasure hoards there are diamonds and ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko |
