"Chaff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Expert tumblers, they executed most amazing and side-splitting fails. Sam recovered and came back. Toward the last, all three made a combined attack on Barney, striving to mount him simultaneously from different slants of approach. They were scattered and flung like chaff, sometimes falling heaped together. Once, the two white boys, standing apart as if recovering breath, were mowed down by Sam's ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... P'an vehemently, "the primary idea I had in view was to ask you to come out a moment sooner and I forgot to respectfully shun the expression. But by and bye, when you wish to chaff me, just you likewise allude to my father, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... had taken their chaff in good part; always before, she had joined them in making merry at her expense. But now she did not laugh. She rose slowly and stood looking at them, her breast heaving, her eyes like ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... me! I needs must chaff, And people will tickle me till I die— And I've missed of too many ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... breathless with haste and terror, rushed into the midst of the company, and told them that Thundel, a savage giant with two heads, had heard of the death of his two kinsmen, and was come to take his revenge on Jack; and that he was now within a mile of the house; the people flying before him like chaff before the wind. At this news the very boldest of the guests trembled; but Jack drew his sword, and said: "Let him come, I have a rod for him also. Pray, ladies and gentlemen, do me the favour to walk into ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... wanting wit to choose, Who house the chaff and burn the grain; Who hug the wealth ye cannot use, And lack the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... more. Our anger runs away with our reason, because, as there is 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, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... a beaker to drain, Then reeled to the linhay for more, When the candle-snoff kindled some chaff from his grain - Flames spread, and red vlankers, wi' might and wi' main, And round beams, thatch, and ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... the ripe ears in her hands to work the grain out of the husk, and then to winnow away the chaff by letting the corn slowly drop in a stream from one palm to the other, blowing gently with her mouth the while. The grain remained on account of its weight, the chaff floating away, and the wheat, still soft though fully formed, could thus ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... war and storm scatter them as the chaff! My liege, my royal master," continued the earl, in a deep, low, faltering voice, "why knew I not thy holy and princely heart before? Why stood so many between Warwick's devotion and a king so worthy to command it? How poor, beside thy great-hearted fortitude ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... all from distant parts of the country, and no one knew who it was that had so recklessly matched his strength and staying power against John Gardner, the acknowledged champion for miles around. Bets were freely laid; rough, but good natured chaff flew from mouth to mouth; and now and then a hearty yell echoed over the field, but the two men in the contest were silent; they ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... what this dressing may bring to the American home or how much the common interests of mankind will be helped! What a blessing is wealth when rightly used! True society looks inwardly and not outwardly, and all that does not belong to it falls away as does wheat fanned by a sheet; the trash and chaff ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... have made this strange blunder, it only shows that the 'moral and spiritual' could not be very clearly revealed within; and no wonder men began to think that perhaps it might come to them from without! When men begin to mistake blue for red, and square for round, and chaff for wheat, I think it is high time that they repair to a doctor outside them to tell them what is the matter with their poor brains. Meantime an external revelation ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... depths of the sea, reining back its foaming waves as a rider his white-maned steed; giving to the thirsty—water from the rock, to the hungry—bread from the skies, and scattering the foes of Israel before them, as chaff is driven by the wind. I have heard of the sun's fiery chariot arrested in its course by the voice of a man, speaking with authority given to him by an inspiring Deity. Tell me what is the name of the Hebrew's ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... bag of baked feathers enclosed in a dainty, spotless case of white linen, but a little upright piece of wood, six inches high and long, and one wide, rounded at the bottom like the rockers of a cradle. On the top, lying in a groove, is a tiny rounded bag of calico filled with rice-chaff, about the size of a sausage. The pillow-case is a piece of white paper wrapped around the top, and renewed in good hotels daily for each guest. One can rest about four or six inches of the side of his os occipitis on a Japanese pillow, and if he wishes may rock himself to sleep, though the words ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... pleasantly as John said this. He is a real good fellow, and takes all John's chaff with the utmost good-humour; but, in justice to him, I must say that, although he sticks to his national drink like a true Scot, I have never once seen him any the worse for it. He knows his limitations, ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... to herself. She settled herself comfortably in a corner—it was good to be coming home, even as things were. The day was very sunny and still. The blue sky was slightly misted—a yellow haze which smelt of chaff and corn smudged together the sky and the marsh and the distant sea. The farms with their red and yellow roofs were like ripe apples lying in ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... rais'd his battle-cry. The tide was turn'd; again they fac'd the Greeks: In serried ranks the Greeks, undaunted, stood. As when the wind from off a threshing-floor, Where men are winnowing, blows the chaff away; When yellow Ceres with the breeze divides The corn and chaff, which lies in whit'ning heaps; So thick the Greeks were whiten'd o'er with dust, Which to the brazen vault of Heav'n arose Beneath the horses' feet, that with the ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... was a small quantity of chaff and dirt, composed chiefly of sand, soil, particles of hemp leaves and flowers, and other extraneous matter. The sand and soil were present because of the practice of placing the stalks in shocks in the ...
— Hemp Hurds as Paper-Making Material - United States Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 404 • Lyster H. Dewey and Jason L. Merrill
... which had not made cowards of them. Their chief interest to-day was centred in a football match which was to take place about the same time as the "other business." It was not their day out in the firing line. We left them putting on their football boots and hurling chaff at each other in the dim light. Out of the way of the flying shells they forgot all about the horror of ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... as I was always an adept at athletics, soon won repute as an oarsman, and was well satisfied to be looked upon as the Yankee champion sundry amateur rowing-and boxing-matches, as well as in the lecture-room. Of course, I was the mark for no end of good-natured chaff about my nationality, but was nearly always able, I believe, to sustain the honor of the American name, and so at length graduated in the "firsts" as to scholarship, and enjoyed the distinguished honor of pulling ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... to dyscerne I purpose not to dele Soo large by my wyll it longeth not to me were hit dreme or vysyon for your owne wele All that shall hit rede here rad or se Take thereof the best & let the worst be Try out the corne clene from the chaff And then may ye say ye have a ...
— The Assemble of Goddes • Anonymous
... corroborated by the way in which most men converse; where their thoughts are found to be chopped up fine, like chaff, so that for them to spin out a discourse of ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... fire-brands plucked from the burning. You have said all that any one could have said; yes, and done all that could be done; never repeated any malicious speech, selected all the wheat that could be culled from the chaff. You have softened my obdurate heart. I have done wrong; you have shown me to the way of return. If Jessie will come forward and forgive and forget, then ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... unworried, was not nearly so tired as Louis who made himself hot and dissipated much energy in wondering when they would get there—wherever "there" might be. He had started the day whistling and gay; by ten o'clock he was in the depths of despair and took Marcella's attempts to chaff him as insults and injuries. As soon as they reached a patch of stunted bushes she decreed a halt and a rest. They filled the billy from their water-bottles and, making a fire with the scorched scrub, had it boiling in a few moments. Louis, ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... men and was capable of threshing about two bushels of wheat per hour—pretty slow work as compared with that of a modern thresher. And the grain had to be winnowed, or passed through a fan afterward to separate it from the chaff. ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... good-natured chaff. "Fellows, stop guying Ward; cut it out, I tell you. He's only a kid freshman, but he's liable to hand you a punch, and if he does you'll remember it. Besides, he's right.... Look here, Ward, you stick to that promise. It's a good promise ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... to be planed and polished diligently with some hard stone; but, above all, regard is to be had that the boarded floor be made of oak. As for such as do start or warp any way, they be thought naught. Moreover, it were better to lay a course of flint or chaff between it and the lime, to the end that the lime may not have so much force to hurt the board underneath it. It were also well to put at the bottom ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... such a kind lump of a heart of his own, and never took any of our chaff and banter unpleasantly. But I am quite sure that as far as he himself was concerned he never would have troubled himself about even the boat-house or the terraced gardens either, for every idle hour that he could spare he spent on the hill, as he called ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... tiresomely fussy and maddeningly disingenuous. In half an hour Lois had learned all she cared to know of the family history. She merely dipped into the bin, brought up a handful of wheat, blew away the chaff, eyed the remaining kernels with a sophisticated eye, and tossed them over ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... everyone did not recognise him as a member of an old Cornish family and the son of an ex-lord mayor of London. Often he felt obliged, in order to satisfy his own self-respect, to make the fact known; and the chaff, or indifference, or incredulity, with which his claims were received made him change his opinions regarding the "jolly company of actors." In fact, he was undoubtedly at this period of Denasia's career her very worst enemy; for whatever Denasia ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... before they could withdraw their charging columns across the plain between Round Top and the ridge where Sickles stood at the beginning of the fray, they were attacked by General Hancock with a heavy force, and driven almost like chaff before the wind. Their loss was terrible. At the close of this encounter our lines stood precisely where General Meade desired they should be before the fight commenced, with Round Top fully in our ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... would do him good to have his tongue slit," said Crayshaw, "but there's no need. When I torment him and chaff him, ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... to chaff Chris, but he had slipped away at the first words of the explanation. Soon he reappeared with an armful of dry wood. His face was still ashen, but his ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... is to fight for our lives. Even if these poor devils have right on their side, it is not a matter to stop and discuss, now. So keep your breath for fighting. I doubt not that we shall soon scatter them like chaff." ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... automaton. She would not quarrel with Arthur. But as no soft confession was possible, and no mending or undoing of what had happened, to laugh her way through the difficult hours was all that remained. So that whenever Meadows renewed the attempt to "have it out," he was met by renewed evasion and "chaff" on Doris's side, till he could only retreat with as much offended dignity as she ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... themselves in force upon the left bank, where they think to do us most hurt. We shall then destroy their bastilles, so that they will have no place of shelter to fly back to; and then we shall fall upon them hip and thigh on the south side, and drive them before us as chaff before the wind. They must needs then disperse themselves altogether, having no more cover to hide themselves in; so will the enemies of the Lord be dispersed, and the siege of Orleans ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Him whose wisdom is absolute, whose decrees are fixed and immutable, whom none can withstand, imploring that he will make your enemies eat the dust, that they may vanish as the morning dew, and flee away as chaff before the wind; that your throne may endure for ever, and that all who live under your sceptre may have peace, sitting under their own vine and their own fig-tree, none daring or ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... dismissed; by way of example, one was detained a few days in prison. Having often been served in its enterprises by the passions of the mob, the Parliament had not foreseen the day when those same outbursts would sweep it away like chaff before the wind with all that regimen of tradition and respect to which it still clung even in its most audacious acts ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... country from the inside. He had been brought at various times during his long diplomatic career into contact with most of the interesting people in the world. He knew well how to separate the grain from the chaff according to the tastes of his listener. The pathos of his present position appealed to her irresistibly. The possibilities of his life had been so great, fortune had treated him always so strangely. The greatest ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... brothers! As we go, O'er the mountains, Under the boughs of mistletoe, Log huts we'll rear, While herds of deer and buffalo Furnish the cheer. File o'er the mountains—steady, boys For game afar We have our rifles ready, boys!— Aha! Throw care to the winds, Like chaff, boys!—ha! And join in ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... far over the pool, in order to see a peculiarly large trout which was looking at him, he lost his balance and fell into it, head first, with a heavy plunge, which scattered its occupants right and left! Bunco chuckled immensely as he assisted to haul him out, and even ventured to chaff him a little. ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... anything but a Chapel of Ease. But some spiritual paralysis seemed to have befallen our pastor; for, though many faces turned toward him, full of the dumb hunger that often comes to men when suffering or danger brings then nearer to the heart of things, they were offered the chaff of divinity, and its wheat was left for less needy gleaners, who knew where to look. Even the fine old Bible stories, which may be made as lifelike as any history of our day, by a vivid fancy and pictorial diction, were robbed of all their ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... a common issue, and were indeed proof against all manner of friction. The continual pain I felt made me fretful, and my peevishness was increased by the mortification of my pride in seeing those miserable wretches, whom a hard gale of wind would have scattered through the air like chaff, bear those toils with alacrity under which I was ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... with traps, or by sinking some vessel almost level with the surface of the ground, the vessel half full of water, upon which let there be strew'd some hulls, or chaff of oats; also with bane, powder of orpiment in milk, and aconites mix'd with butter: Cop'ras or green-glass broken with honey: Morsels of sponge chopp'd small and fry'd in lard, &c. are very fit baits to destroy ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... of the Four Hundred idea as a logical system was broken by the quality of some of its members. Compared to the society I have previously mentioned it was as chaff. There was a total lack of intellectuality. Degeneracy marked some of their acts; divorce blackened their records, and shameless affairs marked them. In this "set," and particularly its imitators throughout the United States, the divorce rate is appalling. Men ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... discourse for all that, and I learnt many interesting things from this old trader, who seemed taciturn in our little crowd, but was, in reality, a tower of intelligent silence beat about by a flood of good-humoured chaff and loquacity. ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... is a favourite bit of chaff and is to be lengthened out almost indefinitely e.g. every brown thing is not civet nor every shining thing a diamond; every black thing is not charcoal nor every white chalk; every red thing is not a ruby ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Eleanor, had something to do with it, for little Eleanor had a gravity and steadiness about her that was very apt to compose and quiet her in her idlest moods. To- night she lay broad awake, tumbling about on the very hard mattress, stuffed with chaff, wondering how Rose could bear to sleep on it, trying to guess how there could be room for both when her sister came to bed, and nevertheless in a great fidget for her to come. She listened to the howling and moaning of the wind, the creaking of the doors, and ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... others laugh, Weary of gleaning for nothing but chaff, Of giving the whole, and receiving ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... valve of constitutional government. Wherever the people rule the public welfare is ever endangered whenever radical changes are to be introduced, unaccompanied with a vigorous opposition. A healthy opposition is the winnowing fan that separates the politician's chaff from the patriot's wheat, presenting the most desirable of the substantial element needed. At the convention in 1868 at Fort Yale, called by A. Decosmos, editor of The British Colonist, and others, for the purpose of getting an expression of the people ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... this globe," he says, "when brought rather near drops of water causes them to swell and puff up. It likewise attracts air, smoke, etc."(9) Before the time of Guericke's demonstrations, Cabaeus had noted that chaff leaped back from an "electric," but he did not interpret the phenomenon as electrical repulsion. Von Guericke, however, recognized it as such, and refers to it as what he calls "expulsive virtue." "Even expulsive virtue is seen in this globe," he says, "for it not only attracts, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... 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 most varied, sometimes ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... one of Twenty, blooming as a Rose, His dry and wither'd Carkass he bestows: She jilts, intrigues, and plays upon him still, Keeps her Gallants, and Rambles at her Will; Do's nothing but her Pride and Pleasure mind, And throws his Gold like Chaff before the Wind; Until at length she beggars the old Slave, And brings his Gray-Hairs ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... 466; nicety, refinement; taste &c 850; critique, judgment; tact; discernment &c (intelligence) 498; acuteness, penetration; nuances. dope [Slang], past performances. V. discriminate, distinguish, severalize^; recognize, match, identify; separate; draw the line, sift; separate the chaff from the wheat, winnow the chaff from the wheat; separate the men from the boys; split hairs, draw a fine line, nitpick, quibble. estimate &c (measure) 466; know which is which, know what is what, know 'a hawk from a handsaw' [Hamlet]. take into ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Thompson winnowed out the chaff from the heap, and has given us the golden grain in this volume. Many old newspaper favorites will be recognized in this collection,—many of those song-waifs which have been drifting up and down the newspaper world for years, and which nobody owns but everybody loves. We are glad for ourselves ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... misfortunes could have reduced the Duchess of Omnium,—but inclined to quiescence by feelings of penitence. She was less disposed than heretofore to attack him with what the world of yesterday calls "chaff," or with what the world of to-day calls "cheek." She would not admit to herself that she was cowed;—but the greatness of the game and the high interest attached to her husband's position did in some degree dismay her. Nevertheless she executed her purpose of "having ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... keep one exclaiming 'What next?' There's Browning to puzzle, and Gilbert to chaff, And Marcus Aurelius to soothe one if vexed, And good MARCUS TVAINUS to lend you a laugh; There be capital tomes that are filled with fly-hooks, And I've frequently found them ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... make signs to Ole, 'cause I thought that man was crazy and might get the machine stopped up. But Ole, he was glad to get down out of the sun and chaff—it gets down your neck and sticks to you something awful when it's hot like that. So Ole jumped down and crawled under one of the wagons for shade, and the tramp got on the machine. He cut bands all right for a few minutes, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... was still ably answering the chaff of Nini and the Germans. And her face was not the face she had shewn to Betty. Betty came quietly behind her and touched her shoulder. She leapt in her chair and turned white ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... I was aware that my uneasiness lay deeper far than the emotions of awe and wonder. It was not that I felt. Nor had it directly to do with the power of the driving wind—this shouting hurricane that might almost carry up a few acres of willows into the air and scatter them like so much chaff over the landscape. The wind was simply enjoying itself, for nothing rose out of the flat landscape to stop it, and I was conscious of sharing its great game with a kind of pleasurable excitement. ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... chaff with every wind disperst:(1) (1) "Dispurst," [rhyming with "curst"] Pronounce this ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... satisfactory reason for his activity in attempting to remove the figure. He knew that the selectmen would be obliged to clear the street of the obstruction, but a display of loyalty to the king might possibly inure to his benefit. Boys on their way to school began to chaff ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... by raising himself upon tip-toes, then flinging himself forward with a stooping jerk), towards the hearth, and squinting down into the coffee-pot in the most quizzical manner, exclaimed, "Miserable chaff! If that does not make you ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... is to prevent him? What force can the rebels oppose that he will not scatter like chaff before the wind? None! I tell you, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... good to us kids—when we pulled at his fur Or twisted his tail he would never demur; He seemed to enjoy all our play an' our chaff, For his tongue 'u'd hang out an' he'd laff an' he'd laff; An' once, when the Hobart boy fell through the ice, He wuz drug clean ashore ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... a hopper, below which a series of four or five fans, G, is arranged one below the other. By passing down through these fans the cane is separated from the lighter leaves, much as grain is separated from chaff. The leaves are blown away, and finally taken from the building by an exhaust fan. This separation of the leaves and other refuse is essential to the success of the sugar making, for in them the largest part of the coloring and other deleterious matters are contained. If carried into the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... paths. The axe will be laid at the root of the trees, and every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit will be hewn down and cast into the fire. The threshing-floor will be thoroughly purged, and the wheat will be gathered into the garner, while the chaff will be ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... man who, in this portentous age of reticence and pose, was wholly free from solemnity, and when he heard or saw what was ludicrous was not afraid to laugh at it. Sir Robert Peel was an excellent hand at what our fathers called banter and we call chaff. A prig or a pedant was his favourite butt, and the performance was rendered all the more effective by his elaborate assumption of the grand seigneur's manner. The victim was dimly conscious that he was being laughed at, but comically uncertain about the best means of reprisal. Sydney Smith ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... the creation of life by chemical agencies he was deeply interested. When a newspaper writer commented that a "consensus of opinion among biologists" would probably rate Dr. Loeb as a man of lively imagination rather than an inerrant investigator of natural phenomena, he felt called to chaff the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Plymouth, and north away to Callington and all the country round. Crowds came out every evening to watch the two boats at their practising; and sometimes, as they passed one another, Seth Ede, who had the reputation for a wag, would call out to Sal and offer her the odds by way of chaff. Sal never answered. The woman was in deadly earnest, and moreover, I dare say, a bit timmersome, now that the whole Borough had its eyes on her, ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... myth the sin which destroyed their race. The tendency of the lower class of Americans, especially in New England, to raise and emphasize the voice, to speak continually in italics and small and large capitals, with a wide display, and the constant disposition to chaff and tease, have contributed more than any other cause to destroy confidence and respect for them among ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... from the Maroccan town: see The Mines of Midian p. 74 for a note on the name. Near Gibraltar is a fuimara called Guadalajara i.e. Wady al-Khara, of dung. "Barts" is evidently formed "on the weight" of "Bartt;" and his metonym is a caricature, a chaff fit for Fellahe. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... across the ages, and the beacon moments see That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through oblivion's sea; Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry Of those crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly; Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... intention of yielding; her mind and her feet were braced against any divergence from the straight road now; but the man Janet Payne had called Gregory Jessup said something that scattered her resolutions like so much chaff. ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... baptism, gave himself no further trouble. He had for a long time known—for, by the power of the life in him, he had gathered from the Scriptures the finest of the wheat, where so many of every sect, great church and little church, gather only the husks and chaff—that the only baptism of any avail is the washing of the fresh birth, and the making new by that breath of God, which, breathed into man's nostrils, first made of him a living soul. When a man knows this, potentially he knows all things. But, ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... air, and the beasts of the field; for who will have pity on thee, O Jerusalem? Thou hast rejected me. I am weary of relenting. I will scatter them as with a broad winnowing-shovel, as men scatter the chaff ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... soldiers thus employed till nightfall, when he led them away. At daybreak a gentle breeze at first began to blow, which stirred up the lightest part of the earth that had been heaped together, and scattered it about like chaff; but when the caecias began to blow strong, as the sun got higher, and the hills were all covered with dust, the soldiers got on the heap of earth and stirred it up to the bottom, and broke the clods; and some ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... conversation while Dennis idly examined the knife, opening it and studying the blade absently. Presently Fuller, noticing his absorption, began to chaff him about it. ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux
... Nay, I 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
... young creature, and I believe she is as innocent as my baby. It is a burning shame to send her here, unless there is no doubt of her guilt. Judge Dent is too shrewd an old fox to be baited with chaff, and I am satisfied from what he told you, that he believes her statement. There is nothing I would not do to comfort her, but I would rather have my ears boxed than witness her suffering. The day I carried to her a change of clothes, until ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... poor and humble toil that we may have food, must not the high and glorious toil for him, in return, that he may have light and guidance, freedom, immortality?—these two, in all their degrees, I honor; all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... won't have any more chaff. I throw myself on your generosity, and trust you to remember there is an old man that loves you, and has more money than he knows ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... spots him as an Englishman the moment he opens his mouth. Very witty and all that. Pretends to turn up his nose at the theatre and says people make too much fuss about art [the Count is extremely indignant]. But thats only his modesty, because art is his own line, you understand. Mind you dont chaff him ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... Rinaldo and Dudon fight; then friendship make, And to each other fitting honour pay. Agramant's host the united champions break, And scatter it, like chaff, in disarray. Brandimart wages war, for Roland's sake, With Rodomont, and loses in the fray. This while, for good Baiardo, with more pain, Contend ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... looked at me reproachfully. I was about to say that "Blackman's Warbler" was the local name for the Chiff-chaff in our part of Flint, when the Authority ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... another man remarked: "I think he had better tell the medicine man (meaning myself) how he lost the power of speech when he first tried to court a girl." Two Strike, although he was then close to eighty years of age, was visibly embarrassed by their chaff. ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... silent, self-convicted; for she had taken chaff! ...Nevertheless, it was not dead within her—the self. It cried out under Renault's pitiless scorn for satisfaction, for life. The rebellious surge of desire still suffocated her at times. There was beauty, the loveliness of the earth, the magic wonder of music and art,—all the clamor of emotion ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... there came half a dozen great boatloads of armed Spaniards, who landed upon the Turtle's Back and sent the Frenchmen flying to the woods and fastnesses of rocks as the chaff flies before the thunder gust. That night the Spaniards drank themselves mad and shouted themselves hoarse over their victory, while the beaten Frenchmen sullenly paddled their canoes back to the main island again, and the Sea ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... yourselves that the doctrines of the cross are really irrational and absurd, and that you are doing right in opposing and deriding them? Recollect, I pray you, with whose word you are contending;—whose wisdom you are despising! Let the chaff contend with the tempest, and the stubble with the devouring flame; let the glow-worm despise all the lamps of heaven;—but Oh, let not a worm contend with Omnipotence; let not dim reason reject all the splendours of the Sun of righteousness. The redemption ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2 No. 7 Dec. 1827 • Aaron W. Leland and Elihu W. Baldwin
... Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink: 23. Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him! 24. Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. 25. Therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against His people, and He hath stretched forth ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... (op. cit., p. 100), "who, having attended two thousand Scripture lessons, says to himself when he leaves school: 'If this is religion I will have no more of it,' is acting in obedience to a healthy instinct. He is to be honoured rather than blamed for having realized at last that the chaff on which he has so long been fed is not the life-giving grain which, unknown to himself, his ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... as the down noon express was leaving H—— yesterday a lady! (God save the mark) attempted to force herself into the already full palatial car. Conductor Slum, who is too old a bird to be caught with chaff, courteously informed her that the car was full, and when she insisted on remaining, he persuaded her to go into the car where she belonged. Thereupon a young sprig, from the East, blustered like a Shanghai rooster, and began to sass the conductor with his chin music. That gentleman ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... cry, gran'pa. She'd chaff you worser 'n us! We're only poor little innocent boys. We don't know nothink, ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... deal to answer for as regards men, and every girl should do her best to be on the right side and to help a man to be at his best, by showing that she thinks silliness and vulgar chaff objectionable. Every girl sets the tone of those she talks with, for every one's conscience responds to the tacit appeal of a nice-minded girl's dislike of these things. If you do not respond, ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... 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
... 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 silently in the ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... element in the noble and beautiful character of her who was your first Patron and with whose name the Hospital will now be associated for all time." At the University of Sydney the Royal visitor was given an honorary degree amid the amusing chaff of a reception which was as hearty and enthusiastic as it was hilarious. A Citizen's Concert followed in the evening, and on the next day His Royal Highness conferred fourteen hundred medals upon volunteers who had returned from the war. In the afternoon there was a brilliant garden party at Government ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... with the opera-glass was gone. They were all gone, and the empty husks of a question which only concerned the comfort and life of the commonplace culprit in the dock were being turned over and over like chaff by the wind. And yet it was some time before poor young Pippo, shy of attracting attention, feeling some subtle change even in himself which he did not understand, afraid to have people look at him and divine him, knowing more of him perhaps than he himself knew, could make up his mind to move. ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... gentleman, immoderately jealous for the glory of the Fifth, was content as long as the two rowers remained grave and serious; he could then make himself believe they were engaged in mental exercises favourable to Monday's examination. But as soon as they began to whistle, and chaff him and one another, and talk of their holiday adventures, Paul became displeased, for they could not possibly do this and be inwardly preparing for the examination at the ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... "Chaff away," said Stafford, good-humouredly. "At any rate, he has been a jolly liberal father to me. Did I tell you that just before he came home be placed a largish sum at his bank for me; I mean over and ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... man would become lord of all other creatures in righteousness.... But the masculine powers of the poisoned flesh stand it out against the King of Glory till He cast them into the lake of fire, into His own spirit, by which they are tried, and, being found but chaff and not able to endure, are burned and consumed to nothing ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... yard, for they loved their master with all the love their strong, timid, patient hearts were as yet capable of. Satisfied that they were comfortable, for he found them busy with a large feed of oats and chaff and Indian corn, he threw his arm over the back of his favorite, and stood, leaning against her for minutes, half dreaming, half thinking. As long as they were busy, their munching and grinding soothed him—held him at least in quiescent mood; the moment ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... and scenes, which it might behoove us to look into; Courts needing to be encouraged to stand for the Kaiser's rights, against those English, French and intrusive Foreigners of the Seville Treaty. We may hope at least to ease our own heavy mind, and have the chaff somewhat blown out of it, by this rushing through the open atmosphere.—Such, so far as I can gather, were Friedrich Wilhelm's objects in this Journey; which turned out to be a more celebrated one than he expected. The authentic records of it are slight, the rumors about it have been many. [Forster ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle |
