"Dross" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... general rules whereby to turn the order of natural phenomena to his own advantage, and in the long search he has scraped together a great hoard of such maxims, some of them golden and some of them mere dross. The true or golden rules constitute the body of applied science which we call the arts; the false ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... a whole life long he never would have gained,—heights from which he has seen the light of God's face and been transfigured in it,—heights where the soul dilates to a stature it can never lose. Oh, Dan, there's a moment, a moment when the dross strikes off, and the impurities, and the grain sets, and there comes out the great white diamond. For by grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God,—of Him that maketh the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... mixture, which is brought from Egypt to the commercial marts of the East, and which is termed in Turkish Rastiko-petra, or Rastik-Yuzi, is employed for this purpose. This metal, which looks like dross, is by some Armenians intentionally fused, and consists of iron and copper. It obtains its name from its use for the coloration of the hair, and particularly the eyebrows—for rastik means eyebrows, ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... the employers have latterly introduced a new mode of diminishing the actual payment in wages. As has already been stated, the salt-pans in the course of a few days require cleansing from the impurities and dross thrown down with the process of boiling. The accumulation may vary from one-eighth of an inch to one foot, according to the quality of the brine. Therefore, every fortnight the fires are let out and the pans picked and cleaned, a process which occupies a full day; and this unavoidable ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... to purge a soul is to do with it as they do with foul clay—thrust it into the fire and that will burn all the blackness out of it. Get the love of God into your hearts, and the fire of His Divine Spirit into your spirits to melt you down, as it were, and then the scum and the dross will come to the top, and you can skim them off. Two powers conquer my sin: the one is the blood of Jesus Christ, which washes me from all the guilt of the past; the other is the fiery influence of that Divine Spirit which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... all terrestrial pleasures, "' Mixed with dross the purest gold; "'Seek we then for heavenly treasures, "'Treasures never growing old. "'Let our best affections centre "'On the things around the throne; "'There no thief can ever enter, — "'Moth and rust ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. . . . How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers. Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water; thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves; every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them. Therefore, saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts, the mighty one of Israel, Ah, I ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... up devoutly at the ceiling. "Tak' those words in connection with that other Screepture: Many are ca'ad, but few are chosen. Tak' that again, in connection with Rev'lations, Chapter the First, verses One to Fefteen. Lay the whole to heart; and what's your Walth, then? Dross, sirs! And your body? (Screepture again.) Clay for the potter! And your life? (Screepture once more.) The Breeth o' ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... is made good already. I have no complaint against Providence. My compensation is a hundredfold. For dross I have gold. I and mine needed the discipline of misfortune, and it came through the perfidy of a friend. That false friend, selfish and grasping—seeing in money the greatest good—was permitted to consummate his evil design. That his evil will punish him, I am sure; and in the pain of his ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... you been come from abroad? — How did you leave our good friends the Dutch? The king of Prussia don't think of another war, ah? — He's a great king! a great conqueror! a very great conqueror! Your Alexanders and Hannibals were nothing, at all to him, sir — Corporals! drummers! dross! mere trash — Damned trash, heh?' — His grace being by this time out of breath, my uncle took the opportunity to tell him he had not been out of England, that his name was Bramble, and that he had ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... the influences which have most to do in the making of an individual, heredity is perhaps the greatest. It is the crucible in which the gold and dross of many generations of his ancestors are melted down and remixed in the man, who is, indeed, "a part of all" from ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... aggression had not died away, and events occurred, from day to day, inflaming the spirit of religious difference. Yet this was not an unmixed evil—"The greatest blessings have been achieved by discussions, errors suffer in the ordeal; truth never does; the dross is consumed in the fire; the gold comes out more ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Aeschylus described himself and his fellow-dramatists as subsisting on scraps filched from the great banquet of Homer, our English epic poets could but follow humbly in the wake of the dramatists, the alchemy of whose genius had already turned the dross of ancient chronicles to gold. In the mighty series of Shakespeare's historical plays, including in the enumeration Marlowe's "Edward the Second" and the anonymous "Edward the Third," England possesses a national epic inferior to that of ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... sacred altar, every form dilated to the stature of the ideal time. Then we felt in our veins the pulse of immortal youth. Then all the chivalry of the ancient days, all the heroism, all the self-sacrifice that shaped itself into noble living, came back to us, poured over us, swept away the dross of selfishness and deception and petty scheming, and Patriotism rose from the swelling wave stately as a goddess. Patriotism, that had been to us but a dingy and meaningless antiquity, took on a new ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... clearer to him every day that some deep experience or sorrow has so thoroughly refined away the dross of her nature as to make her seem the embodiment of truth and purity. What though she still maintained complete reticence as to the past, avoiding in their conversation all allusion to herself, as far as possible; ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... hurried note to the bank where he had placed his six hundred pounds. Let them send him twenty pounds at once, in Bank of England notes. He felt himself a young king as he gave the order—king of this mean world and of its dross. All his business projects had vanished from his mind. He could barely have recalled them if he had tried. During the first days of his acquaintance with Elise he had spent a few spare hours in turning over ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... other side I see a real nation, numerically small, in whose veins the Anglo-Saxon blood flows almost untainted; I see rich men casting down their gold, and strong men casting down their lives, as if both were dross, in the cause they have sworn to win; I see Sybarites enduring hardships that un vieux de la vieille would have grumbled at, without a whispered murmur; I hear gentle and tender women echo in simple earnestness the words that once ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... essays, "The Lantern-Bearers," he declared that never an hour of his life had gone dully yet; if it had been spent waiting at a railway junction, he had had some scattering thoughts, he had counted some grains of memory, compared to which the whole of many romances seemed but dross. The author who aspires to write fiction should cultivate the faculty of caring for all things that come to pass; he should train himself rigorously never to be bored; he should look upon all life that swims into his ken with curious and sympathetic eyes, remembering always that ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... fire. He separates the dross from the gold, purifies the human character, through the furnace of affliction. Those who bear fruit He purgeth, that they may bear more fruit. Through the sacred law, He speaketh to the unfruitful in tones of Sinai: and, ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... John, I can not! It would be like putting bad money into the offertory to put me into that holy work. Not that I don't admire it, and love it, and worship it. It is the greatest work in the world, and last week I thought I could count everything else as dross, only remembering that I loved you and that nothing else mattered. But now I know that this was a vain and fleeting sentiment, and that the sights and scenes of your work repel me on a nearer view, just as the hospital repelled me in the early mornings when the wards were being cleaned ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... some streaks of a serener radiance, which he will pray devoutly that time may purify and ripen into perfect day. The Philosophy of Kant is probably combined with errors to its very core; but perhaps also, this ponderous unmanageable dross may bear in it the everlasting gold of truth! Mighty spirits have already laboured in refining it: is it wise in us to take up with the base pewter of Utility, and renounce such projects altogether? ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... demand of commodities from a central store [Footnote: More's Utopia and Cabet's Icaria.] or the like has ever been suggested that does not give ten thousand times more scope for that inherent moral dross in man that must be reckoned with in any sane Utopia we may design and plan.... Heaven knows where progress may not end, but at any rate this developing State, into which we two men have fallen, this Twentieth Century Utopia, has still not passed beyond money and ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... all world's desire will in thee die, And all earth's glory, on which men do gaze, Seem dust and dross in thy pure-sighted eye, Compared to that celestial beauty's blaze, Whose glorious beams all fleshly sense do daze With admiration of their passing light, Blinding the eyes and lumining ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... instantly pursue. I'll use it as the touchstone of Julia's sincerity and disinterestedness. If her love prove pure and sterling ore, my name will rest on it with honour; and once I've stamped it there, I lay aside my doubts for ever! But if the dross of selfishness, the alloy of pride, predominate, 'twill be best to leave her as a toy for some less cautious fool ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... she replied, "the long trial of our love has purified it from earthly dross, and proved it the type of ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... artery in her round snowy throat, and see the shadow of her long lashes; and again some electric current flashed from her feverishly bright eyes, burning its way to the secret chambers of his selfish heart, melting the dross that ambition and greed had slowly cemented, and dropping one deathless spark into a deep adytum, of the existence of which he had never even dreamed. Unconsciously he leaned toward her, but she pressed back against the iron bars, and drew her dress aside as if shunning a leper. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... this man, who was so unworldly, so unselfish, so pure of the stains of earth himself, should have seen at once her position from her own point of view; that was neither a very exalted one, nor was it very free from the dross of worldliness. But it was so. All at once he seemed to know by a subtle instinct what were the weaknesses, and the temptations, and the aims of this girl, who, with all her faults, was so dear to ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... fashion. The joy of life trembles in all the fibres of the poet's heart.... Then, the old age of Ecclesiastes is contrasted strikingly with the youth of Solomon—the king disillusioned, skeptical, convinced of the vanity of love, beauty, and knowledge. All is dross, vanity of vanities! And the young romantic poet ends his work with the conclusion that wisdom cannot exist without faith—that faith alone is capable of giving ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... the language. The elegance of the composition is in exact proportion to the coarseness of the materials: by "happy alchemy of mind," the author has extracted an essence of refinement from the dregs of human life, and turns its very dross into gold. The scenes, characters, and incidents are, in themselves, of the lowest and most disgusting kind: but, by the sentiments and reflections which are put into the mouths of highwaymen, turnkeys, their mistresses, wives, or daughters, he has converted this motley group into ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... asked but the primeval simplicity of nature. All this time, though the honours of the house of Neville lay in abeyance, the rents were received by De Vallance, and Isabel wondered that so mortified a spirit should encumber itself with the dross ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... 'The dross has been refined away, if there were any,' said Ulick. 'You will be able to love him better now than ever you ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and tossed it carelessly to the passing throng. She watched it with fascinated eyes,—how it rose and sailed and whirled and struggled in the air, then seemed to burst, and upward flew its light and sheen and downward dropped its dross. She glanced at the king, but he was lighting a match. She watched the dross wallow in the slime, but the sunlight fell on the back of the beggar's neck, and ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... which seemed to us already too good for earth. So does the Lord watch His people, and tries them with fire, as the refiner of silver sits by his furnaces watching the melted metal till he knows that it is purged from all its dross by seeing the image of his own face ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... with it, cleaned at last, he caught up a shallow film of water, flirted it about with a rotary motion, to sluice out the last bit of stubborn dross, then paused to stare in unbelief at a few bright particles down at the edge, washed free of ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... until this day, though there was a plague in the congregation of the Lord.[189] Thou rainest upon us, and yet dost not always mollify all our hardness; thou kindlest thy fires in us, and yet dost not always burn up all our dross; thou healest our wounds, and yet leavest scars; thou purgest the blood, and yet leavest spots. But the spots that thou hatest are the spots that we hide. The carvers of images cover spots,[190] says the wise man; when we hide our spots, we become ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... spend? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end? Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, And let that pine to aggravate thy store; Buy terms divine with selling hours of dross; Within be fed, without be rich no more: So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men, And Death once dead, ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... pallid maid, And men who for Thy cross Fought with the Saracen of old, Counting their lives no loss— Martyrs who rose through golden flames, Free of the body's dross. ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... your folly's abating; Sigh and lament for a woman's loss: Earth is, alas, too full of such dross; One may be lost, still a thousand are waiting. Say but the word, of such goods I will bring Quickly a cargo—the Southland can spare them, Bed as the rose, mild as lambs in the spring; Then we'll cast lots, or as brothers we'll ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... do not so intend it, but your master does not understand me. Pray you, note this: two days ago that meat was hot; it has remained cold since, and there is enough still for to-morrow; and I am well content. A man so easily satisfied is not likely to exchange an approving conscience for dross ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... and they rested also too much upon their watery dispensation, instead of passing on more fully to that of the fire and Holy Ghost, which was his baptism, who came with a fan in his hand, that he might thoroughly, and not in part only, purge his floor, and take away the dross and the tin of his people, and make a man finer than gold. Withal, they grew high, rough, and self-righteous; opposing further attainment; too much forgetting the day of their infancy and littleness, which gave them ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... over again—I could adduce a score of historical examples—it has thwarted the mightiest designs of the human mind. We mortals are much addicted to talking of our minds and our souls and treating our bodies as mere dross. But I hold—it is a personal opinion—that in the vast majority of cases the former are largely governed by the last. I conceive, therefore, that a novel which takes our daily sustenance as one of its themes has the best of all raisons d'etre. ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... human. Every such life shall grow into the life of a "beloved Son," and shall have in it the glory of the Christ. Every man may work in that direction by making every act and power a sacrifice, until the gold is purged from the dross, and only ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... suppose all men have moments when they are not exactly themselves, in which they act very differently from what it has been their practice to act. On this occasion, I was not alarmed for myself, but I thought the course I took was necessary to save that dross which lures so many to perdition. Avarice blinded me to the ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... stenographers, we don't mind having their cooperation, we welcome it. Women may even go to war—as an absolutely separate division of the army, said the men of Dahomi, as non-combatant pahia women or workers of magic, said the Roro-speaking tribesmen of New Guinea, or as Red (dross nurses, say the men of Europe and America. If we men can be sure women will not interfere with us, we really do not mind. Women have only to give us that assurance of non-interference to make us doubt the assertion we sometimes make that in going to war they ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... fourpence a day. But his highest ambition was to be taken on at the colliery where his father worked; and he shortly joined his elder brother James there as a "corf-bitter," or "picker," to clear the coal of stones, bats, and dross. His wages were then advanced to sixpence a day, and afterwards to eightpence when he was set to ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... rash to assume that where he altered he invariably improved. His was not the unerring eye which, like Shakspere's in his dramatic transfusions of Plutarch, missed no particle of the gold mingled with the baser metal, but rejected the dross with sovereign certainty. In dealing with Italian originals more especially, he sometimes altered for the worse, and sometimes for the better; but he was never a mere slavish translator. So in the "Knight's Tale" he may be held in some points to have deviated disadvantageously from his ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... here from the remarks of Mrs. Slapman's eminent counsel) "is very desirable in its way, but is it not the vilest dross, your Honor, when compared with the pure gold of connubial trust and sympathy?" Mr. Goldfinch nodded his head, as if to say that he rather thought ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... If you do, biography (that most inspiring of all literature) demonstrates that your reward will be as rich as the college man's reward. Yes, richer, for the gold which your refinery purges from the dross of your disadvantages will be doubly refined by the ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... I am; but I'll resume. While I could buy them, friends indeed were plenty. Alas! prudence is seldom co-mate with youth and inexperience. The golden dream was soon to end—end even with the yellow dross that gave it birth. Fallacious hopes of coming "posts," averted for a time my coming wretchedness—three weeks, and not a line! The landlord suffered from an intermitting affection, characteristic of the "stiff-necked generation;"—he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... which I discovered that Isaiah i. 25 uses this very illustration; for the word translated "dross" in English is the colloquial word for verdigris in Tamil; so the verse reads, "I will turn My hand to thee, and thoroughly purify thee, so ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... temptress, "Get thee behind me, Miss Ramsbotham. My journalistic instinct whispers to me that your scheme, judged by the mammon of unrighteousness, is good. It is a new departure. Ten years hence half the London journals will have adopted it. There is money in it. But what of that? Shall I for mere dross sell my editorial soul, turn the temple of the Mighty Pen into a den of—of milliners! Good morning, Miss Ramsbotham. I grieve for you. I grieve for you as for a fellow-worker once inspired by devotion to a noble ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... missiles of which thou hast told me. Oh! Leo, when the nations are beggared and their golden god is down; when the usurer and the fat merchant tremble and turn white as chalk because their hoards are but useless dross; when I have made the bankrupt Exchanges of the world my mock, and laugh across the ruin of its richest markets, why, then, will not true worth come ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... taste the fruit of the tropics even if it is worm-eaten! I would drink the wine though it were gall, and I want to put my arm around a maid's waist, even if a bankrupt father does sit at the hearth stone! I want silver and gold—if in the end it is nothing but dross! ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... times only points the way, and is immediately verified by experiment. The dreams and visions, which pass through the philosopher's mind, of resemblances between different classes of substances, or between the animal and vegetable world, are put into the refiner's fire, and the dross and other elements which adhere to them are purged away. But the contemporary of Plato and Socrates was incapable of resisting the power of any analogy which occurred to him, and was drawn into any consequences ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... hope my ambition is not sordid; is unstained with the dross of avarice. It is a stern god, and I shall not deny that 'Ephraim is joined to ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... brilliant throng Lucille moved gaily and happily, taking, with the faith of youth, dross for gold, and a high head for the token of a noble heart. When Phillip Gayerson claimed his dance he found her a little tired, but still dazzled and excited by the ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... slammock[obs3], slummock[obs3], scrub, draggle-tail, mudlark[obs3], dust- man, sweep; beast. dirt, filth, soil, slop; dust, cobweb, flue; smoke, soot, smudge, smut, grit, grime, raff[obs3]; sossle[obs3], sozzle[obs3]. sordes[obs3], dregs, grounds, lees; argol[obs3]; sediment, settlement heeltap[obs3]; dross, drossiness[obs3]; mother|, precipitate, scoriae, ashes, cinders. recrement[obs3], slag; scum, froth. hogwash; ditchwater[obs3], dishwater, bilgewater[obs3]; rinsings, cheeseparings; sweepings &c. (useless refuse) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... misanthrope, was not a brute; and when in process of time Timandra's health required special care, rugs and pillows were provided for her, and also for Timon; for he saw that he could no longer pass for a churl if he made his wife more comfortable than himself. And, though he counted gold as dross, yet was he not dissatisfied that Timandra had saved the gold he had given her formerly against a rainy day. And when a child was born, Timon was at his wits' end, and blessed the old woman who came to nurse it. And she admonished him of his duty to ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... knew the true from the false, the dross from pure gold: "Which was the most splendid spectacle ever witnessed, the opening feast of Prince George in London or the resignation of Washington? Which is the noble character for ages to admire—yon fribble dancing ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... I am realizing each day, more and more, with how much that is hard and bitter I have to contend. My teacher, Professor Marani, says 'one must mount with the wings of an eagle, then he leaves all the dross far beneath him.' I think he is right, but I am not an eagle, I am only what my dear grandfather has often called me, 'a singing bird,' with nothing but my voice, and no strength to mount to dizzy heights. The critics have said before now ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... effect of giving them all an education equal to the best would at once raise their earnings, annually, two hundred millions of dollars! But this is the lowest sense in which we can estimate the value of education, even in the sterner sex. This sum, vast as it may seem, is as dross to gold when compared with the refining and elevating influence which eight millions of educated females would exert upon the domestic and social institutions of our country, in uplifting our national character and improving the condition of ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... would certainly seem to be an ill-destined one," admitted Tian, "for, as the Verses say: 'Gold sinks deeper than dross.' Is there anything that an ordinary person can do to alleviate ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... e'er were those of yore. Transmuting every thing to glittering dross, Wasting their energies o'er magic scrolls, Day-books and ledgers leaden, gain and loss— Casting the holiest feelings of their souls High hopes, and aspirations, and desires, Beneath their crucibles to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... of critics who might be designated as the Occult School—vere adepti. They discern no beauties but what are concealed from superficial eyes, and overlook all that are obvious to the vulgar part of mankind. Their art is the transmutation of styles. By happy alchemy of mind they convert dross into gold—and gold into tinsel. They see farther into a millstone than most others. If an author is utterly unreadable, they can read him for ever: his intricacies are their delight, his mysteries are their study. They prefer Sir Thomas Brown to the Rambler by Dr. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... burnt the topless[163] towers of Ilium— Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.— [Kisses her.] Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!— Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. Here will I dwell, for heaven is[164] in these lips, And all is dross that is not Helena. I will be Paris, and for love of thee, Instead of Troy, shall Wertenberg be sack'd; And I will combat with weak Menelaus, And wear thy colours on my plumed crest; Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel, And then return ...
— The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... me across the thousands of miles of land and sea, carried by sooty train and boat, buried in a dross of mail in prosy canvas sacks: I open them with the delight one feels when he brushes aside the mat of damp and frosty withered leaves to find ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... shocking such a coarse speech sounds; and how unworthy of one who calls himself a man, to be always bent on material things, instead of rising towards those which are intellectual. Is that dross, the body, of importance enough to deserve even a passing thought? and ought we not to leave it ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... reason and finally the will, which translates into physical action the psychological purpose. In the process, moral character may be shaped and strengthened; but it will not be transformed if it is dross in the first place. That is something which every combat leader has learned in his tour under fire; the man of whom nobody speaks good, who is regarded as a social misfit, unliked and unliking, of his comrades, will usually desert them under pressure. There are others who ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... passionate, deathless soul, Was less than his finger-tips; He turned away fro the gold of my love For the dross on a wanton's lips. My faith in his truth is broken— Even truth itself is a lie. I have cursed him!—but I love him, And I'll ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... therefore it has been with regard to her only, that I have considered this Tragedy. It is not to be denied, but that Shakespeare's Dramatic Works are in general very much mix'd; his Gold is strangely mingled with Dross in most of his Pieces. He fell too much into the low Taste of the Age he liv'd in, which delighted in miserable Puns, low Wit, and affected sententious Maxims; and what is most unpardonable in him, he has interspersed ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... salvation clear to us, Who despite our sin and dross Would exalt the Spirit. For without Thine aid and love All our life and work must prove Vain and ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... and The Prelude are, as wholes, not good poems at all. They contain, indeed, passages of magnificent poetry. But how one longs, how, as one sees from this essay, Mr Arnold longed, for some mercury-process which would simply amalgamate the gold out of them and allow us to throw the dross down any nearest cataract, or let it be blown away by ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... Perilous, or Magic Chair. Thither will I guide ye, and there ye shall see what ye shall see. But first it is needful, as all sages have declared, that ye shall show your confidence in me! I value not wealth. Gold is mere dross—nay, I have the mines of King Solomon at my disposal. But when the weary King Ecclesiast confided to me, in his palace of ivory and cedar in Jerusalem, long ago, the secret of these diamond treasures, he bade me reveal it to none who did not show ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... for event? The Emperor Caligula, who had formerly tried to make gold from orpiment by the force of fire, was only one of a thousand adepts pursuing a similar scheme. Some trusted to the addition of a material substance in aiding the fire to purge away the dross of the base body submitted to it. From this arose the doctrine of the powder of projection and ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... the fire symbol. Gold is spoken of in Scripture as tried in the fire. So of silver. "He" (Christ) "shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver." The precious metals will endure the fire, but "dross and tin," as well as reprobate silver, will and must be consumed. The baptism with the Holy Ghost and with fire is a sin-consuming baptism. Fire is a great purifier. It makes the substance which is subjected to it pure through and through, and not like anything ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... been but one real American, and that was Phineas T. Barnum. He was the genuine product of his country and his times,—native ore without foreign dross. He knew the American people as no man before or since has known them; he knew what the American people wanted, and gave it to ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... which she had been made to pass, and through which she was yet to pass again and again,—obstruction to the development of her genius, and loneliness of heart,—were the very furnace needed to burn the dross from her gold, till it could fitly image the Heavenly Refiner. By inherited traits, and indiscreet treatment, self-love had early become so excessive that only severest discipline could transmute it to disinterestedness. Pity for her own misfortunes had, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Witch, cracking her finger-bones. "Now go I hot-foot to weave spells and enchantments, aha—oho! Spells that shall prove the false from the true, the gold from the dross. Thou, Sir Fool, art doubting lover, so art thou blind lover! I will resolve thee thy doubts, open thy eyes and show thee great joy or bitter sorrow—oho! Thou, proud lady, hast stooped to love a motley mountebank—nay, ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... "Perish the dross!" cried Curius, fiercely. "Out on it! when I come to you, burning with love and passion, you cast cold water on the flames, by your incessant cry for gold. By all the Gods! I do believe, that you love me only for that you can wring ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... hesitating steps. Those are the treasures, the golden vases and so forth, that the saint has catalogued and is going to exhibit to the prefect, who is waiting in the sanctuary. The prefect is dumb with rage; the saint observes that gold is found in dross; that the disease of the body is to be less feared than that of the soul; and he developes this idea with a good deal of wit. The boasters suffer from dropsy, the miser from cramp in the wrist, the ambitious from febrile heat, the gossipers, who delight ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... of Liberty, who has been neglected and insulted by that venal band of mercenary and time serving politicians, those flippant summer flies of the metropolis, those fair-weather patriots, which, when compared with the steady, sound, and inflexible patriotism of Mr. Jones, are like the dross of the vilest metal put in competition with the purest gold. In doing this justice to Mr. Jones's character (and it is but bare justice), I do not, however, mean to say that all the members composing the Westminster ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... of the cleansing fountain of salvation in that day, said: "And I will turn my hand upon thee, and purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy sin." Isa. 1:25. The cleansing stream will remove all the dross and leave the soul pure. These are garments of salvation. This is not literal, but the cleansing away of sin and the infusion of righteousness is represented by the taking away of filthy rags and ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... Trojan and the Pre-Trojan worthies sweeping backward through all Greek time he has witnessed and in part heard; he has become acquainted with the prophet Tiresias who knows Past, Present and Future, who is the universal mind in its purity from all material dross; he has beheld the Place of Doom and its penalties, as well as the supreme Greek Hero, the universal man of action, Hercules. Nor must we forget that he has run upon a limitation, that Gorgon from whom he fled. Truly he has obtained in this journey to Hades a grand experience ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... which flowed into his mental chambers rapidly formed into orderly plans, all centering upon the child, Carmen. What could he teach her? The relative truths and worldly knowledge—purified, as far as in him lay, from the dross of speculation and human opinion—which lay stored in the archives of his mind? Yes; but that was all. History, and its interpretation of human progress; the languages; mathematics, and the elements of the physical sciences; ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... flies out of the window. Shall I then make you miserable! No! no! Hear me, Clementina. I will be generous. I now absolve you from all your vows. You are free. Should the time ever come that prosperity shine upon me, and I find that I have sufficient for both of us of that dross which I despise, then will I return, and, should my Clementina not have entered into any other engagement, throw my fortune and my person at her feet. ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... soon as the streams, that are called Elivogs" (the rivers from under ice), "had came so far that the venomous yeast" (the clay?) "which flowed with them hardened, as does dross that runs from the fire, then it turned" (as) "into ice. And when this ice stopped and flowed no more, then gathered over it the drizzling rain that arose from the venom" (the clay), "and froze into rime" (ice), "and one layer of ice was laid ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... the graces of the drawing-room. "Especially," the two older ones agreed, "if the previous lack is due merely to outward circumstances." But Marguerite was still. Here was a new thought. One who attained all those graces and love's prize also might at last, for love's sake, have to count them but dross, or carry them into retirement, the only trophies of abandoned triumphs. While she thought, the ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... softens the heart. It brings out into fact what was often only latent in feeling. Memory adds a tender glory to the past. We only think of the virtues of the dead: we forget their faults. This is as it should be. We rightly love the immortal part of them; the fire has burned up the dross and left pure gold. If it is idealization, it represents that which will be, and that which ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... a great fear of being married for her money," said Clary. "I used to laugh at her, and tell her that no one who knew her would ever remember her money; the treasures of her mind so far surpassed the dross of the world. Yet, for all that, she wrote and gave me this ballad the next morning. I felt very much inclined to scold her for ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... who read this may be going through the same experience as Harry Moncrief. Remember, rough as the experience may be, it goes to make the man in you, and it depends upon you whether you come from these trials dross or pure gold. ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... wont to do, and I see he had quite a few, but what was my surprise to see that man sarahuptishushly and with a guilty look try to conceal one on 'em under his bandanna. And any woman will know that all his other letters wuz as dross to me compared to the one he was hidin'. I will pass over my argyments—and—and words, before that letter lay in my hand. But suffice it to say, that when at last I read it and all wuz explained to me, groans and sithes riz from my burdened heart deeper and ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... their worldly store, And gripe and pinch to make it more; Their gold and silver's shining ore He counts it all but dross: 'Tis better treasure he desires; A surer stock his passion fires, And mild benevolence inspires The ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... wholesomely natural at the last as at the first, "in wit a man, simplicity a child," no artist, of whatsoever denomination, I make bold to say, ever went to his rest leaving a golden memory more pure from dross, or having devoted himself with a truer chivalry to the art goddess whom ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... orange, the third yellow, the fourth green, the fifth blue, the sixth indigo, the seventh a violet-purple. Each of these rays, transmitted afterwards by a hundred other prisms, will never change the colour it bears; in like manner, as gold, when completely purged from its dross, will never change afterwards in the crucible. As a superabundant proof that each of these elementary rays has inherently in itself that which forms its colour to the eye, take a small piece of yellow wood, for instance, and set it in the ray of a red colour; this wood will instantly ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... is the mainspring of everything. Money is indispensable, even for going without money. But though that dross is necessary to any one who wishes to think in peace, I have not courage enough to make it the sole motive power of my thoughts. To make a fortune, I must take up a profession; in two words, I must, by acquiring some privilege of position or of self-advertisement, ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... admire her, who would not love her, that should but see her dance as I did? O admirable, O divine Panareta! I have seen old and new Rome, many fair cities, many proper women, but never any like to Panareta, they are dross, dowdies all to Panareta! O how she danced, how she tripped, how she turned, with what a grace! happy is that man that shall enjoy her. O most incomparable, only, Panareta!" When Xenophon, in Symposio, or Banquet, had discoursed of love, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... own people, whom God is preparing to bless the earth. Bear the anguish and the smart. The iron is sharp—I know, I know—it rends the tender flesh. The draught is bitterness on the lips. But there is rapture in the cup—there is the vision which makes all life below it dross forever. Come, my daughter, come back to your place!" [Footnote: ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... and characters of this story are those once familiar to the writer. The story itself is but a disconnected diary of one who, early refined from earthly dross, lived only long enough to show us that there was both reason and divine authority in the words of an apostle, when he ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... then: deeper drooped his head: Calculus racked him: Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead: Tussis attacked him. "Now, master, take a little rest!"—not he! (Caution redoubled! 90 Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!) Not a whit troubled, Back to his studies, fresher than at first, Fierce as a dragon He (soul-hydroptic with ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... thousand "famous writers" come up in this century, to be forgotten in the next. But the silver cord of the Bible is not loosed, nor its golden bowl broken, as Time chronicles its tens of centuries passed by. Has the human race gone mad? Time sits as a refiner of metal; the dross is piled in forgotten heaps, but the pure gold is reserved for use, passes into the ages, and is current a thousand years hence as well as to-day. It is only real merit that can long pass for such. Tinsel will rust in the storms ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... do; and more than once was he tempted to say he would leave the meeting; and that he had not remained there to be slandered and persecuted. But he was reminded that the best of men had thus suffered, that God had furnaces through which we must pass, to burn up the dross, and that in the midst of this state of things the Church was being revived, wanderers brought back, souls awakened and converted from day to day, and that he had the sympathy, prayers and co-operation of many pious, devoted ...
— There is No Harm in Dancing • W. E. Penn
... the people, but soon few heeded these laws which none were left to enforce. The vagabonds and evil-minded men who began by robbing the deserted houses of jewels, money and plate, ended by searching them for food and casting aside their treasures as worthless dross. It was even said that some of them did worse things, things not to be named, since in its extremities nature knows no shame. Only if bread and meat were scarce, wine remained in plenty. In the midst of death men—yes, ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... thought, "I, too, can do my bit to save England.... It needs but the spark to burn away the dross of this terrible horse-sense which ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a very pretty woman," said her father, with a wise gentleness of his own. Lydia often saw him holding the balance for her intemperate judgments, his grain of gold forever equalising her dross. "I think she'd be called a beautiful woman. ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... as thy votaries in anthems sing With the immortal Haydn, and do praise Creative Wisdom, Who, of one blood made All Nations for to dwell on earth in love, Then let celestial fires descend and burn Complete, the offering of the lips, and purge The dross of caste and hate from ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 6, June, 1890 • Various
... the Emerald-Hathor, under whose influence the precious stones are hewn from the rocks, metals dug out, and purified by fire. The Goddess shall purge me from my uncleanness as metal is purged from the dross. At a day's journey and more from the mines, an abundant stream flows from the holy mountain-Sinai," as it is called by the Mentut—and near it stands the sanctuary of the Goddess, in which priests grant ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... times, sorrowful times, yet great and noble times, for these are days of fiery ordeal whereby mean and petty things are forgotten and the dross of unworthy things burned away. To-day the two great Anglo-Saxon peoples stand united in a noble comradeship for the good of the world and for those generations that are yet to be, a comradeship which I, for one, do ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... brilliant, dissolute world of intellectual activity, Peter Martyr entered, and through it he passed unscathed, emerging with his Christian faith intact and his orthodoxy untainted. He gathered the gold of classical learning, rejecting its dross; his morals were above reproach and calumny never touched his reputation. Respected, appreciated, and, most of all, beloved by his contemporaries, his writings enriched the intellectual heritage of posterity with inexhaustible treasures of original information concerning the great events of the ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... looks With reverence still: to that, as to a fence Against affliction and the darts of pain, Her drooping hopes repair—and, once opposed To that, all other pleasure, other wealth, Vile, as the dross upon the molten gold, Appears, and loathsome as the briny sea To him who languishes with thirst, and sighs For some known fountain pure. For what can strive With Virtue? Which of Nature's regions vast 330 Can in so many forms produce to sight Such ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... hinted for flesh and blood, Virtue and Beauty, and all that's good, To strike to mere dross their topgallants— But what were Beauty, or Virtue, or Worth, Gentle manners, or gentle birth, Nay, what the most talented head on earth To ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... myth is to religion what alchemy is to chemistry or astrology is to astronomy. Like these sciences, religion retains much of the material of the cruder phase of thought that is displayed in myth, alchemy, and astrology, but it has been refined and elaborated. The dross has been to a large extent eliminated, and the pure metal has been moulded into a more beautiful and attractive form. In searching for the elixir of life, the makers of religion have discovered the philosopher's stone, and with its ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... beyond all!—that flings itself at your feet, and cries, Love me, Arthur! Your heart beats no quicker at the kneeling appeal of my love!—your proud eye is dimmed by no tear of sympathy!—you accept my soul's treasure as though 'twere dross! not the pearls from the unfathomable deeps of affection! not the diamonds from the caverns of the heart. You treat me like a slave, and bid me bow to my master! Is this the guerdon of a free maiden—is this the ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that sound! It woke all the finer instincts of the woman. All the dross and thought of self passed away. Nature, sweet and simple and true, reigned alone. Instinctively she rose and came towards him. In the simple nobility of her self-surrender and her purpose, which were at one with the grandeur of nature around her, to be negative ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... Ablest Men in England put to preside over your ten principal departments of affairs. To sift and riddle the Nation, so that you might extricate and sift out the true ten gold grains, or ablest men, and of these make your Governors or Public Officers; leaving the dross and common sandy or silty material safely aside, as the thing to be governed, not to govern; certainly all ballot-boxes, caucuses, Kennington-Common meetings, Parliamentary debatings, Red Republics, Russian Despotisms, and constitutional or unconstitutional ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... and they went out to enjoy the cool freshness of the evening. The sun had sunk out of sight, the mood of the desert had changed. All of the dull gray monotone was gone. All the length of the long, low western horizon the dross of the garish day was being transmuted by the alchemy of the sunset into red and yellow gold, molten and ever flowing, as though spilled from some great retort to run sluggishly in a ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... what our desires really are. We are released temporarily from tension of temporal and selfish longings. We hold a tranquil and reverential speech with a power not ourselves, and in communion with the infinite purge ourselves of the dross of immediate personal needs. In such a peaceful interlude we may find at once clarity and rest. Prayer, at its highest, might be defined as audible meditation, controlled by the sense of the divinity of the power we are addressing. So that the truly spiritual man prays not ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... pure ore is than foul dross. You seem to doubt me; I don't doubt myself: I know what my aim is, what my motives are; and at this moment I pass a law, unalterable as that of the Medes and Persians, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... have told everything truthfully. I value my word, sir." The few who talk about his vindictive spirit, while they really admire his heroism, have no test by which to detect a noble man, no amalgam to combine with his pure gold. They mix their own dross with it. ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... dreamed—Arab, Hindoo, Malayan, Chink, Jap, South Sea Islander—a mere catalogue of the names is a romance. Here are pace and high adventure; the tang of the East; fusion of blood and race and creed. A degenerate dross it is, but, do you know, I cannot say that I don't prefer it to the well-spun gold that is flung from the Empire on boat-race nights. Place these fellows against our blunt backgrounds, under the awful mystery of the City's night, and they ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... first-fruit of this knowledge, that the thoughts of those who are plunged into the fires of a pure devotion fly upwards as surely as the sparks? Nothing but the dross, the grosser earthly part is purged away by their ever-chastening sorrow, which is, in truth, a discipline for finer souls. For did there ever yet live the man or woman who, loving truly, has suffered, and the fires burnt out, has not risen Phoenix-like ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... point in time may be disputed but the event is admitted by all—men turned to explore the treasures of the ancient wisdom and the whole mass of Greek medical learning was gradually laid before the student. That mass contained much dross, material that survived from early as from late Greek times which was hardly, if at all, superior to the debased compositions that circulated in the name of medicine in the middle centuries. But the recovered Greek medical writings also contained some material of ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... awnings; gorgeously- clad flunkeys stood upon the doorsteps, ushering in long streams of visitors. In the City men worked for money; in the West End they threw it away, carelessly, heedlessly, as if it had been dross. The great hotels sheltered hives of strangers, who admired and criticised, envied and scoffed, and flitted industriously about on the edge of the feast; on the edge, but never actually passing ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Nor is there any dross that love will not refine away, nor any vice that love can not expel from the heart. Wordsworth was so impressed with the evil of avarice that he could compare it only to a poisoned vine that wrapped itself so tightly about his favorite tree that vine and tree became one life, and ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... remain there standing in the archway. He blew her a kiss from his lips, and blessed her in his heart, and protested to himself that he knew she would come out of the fire pure altogether and proved to be without dross. And then he went his way. In the mean time Nina, chill and wretched, crept to her cold bed, all unconscious of the happiness that had been so near her. "If he thinks I can be false to him, it will be better to die," she said to herself, ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... discreetly, Ask for further evidences: Thus invited, He, delighted, Gives the usual references. This is business. Each is fluttered When the offer's fairly uttered. "Which of them has his affection?" He declines to make selection. Do they quarrel for his dross? Not a bit of it - they toss! Please observe this cogent moral - English ladies never quarrel. When a doubt they come ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... seen what great poets write of, and great painters try to render, and only great musicians by their impalpable, mysterious tone-art can come nearest to conveying—the earthly beauty that has been purged of all grosser particles of dross in the white fires of the Divine Love. She was not altogether perfect, or one could not have loved her so. Her scorn of any baseness was bitterly scathing; the point of her sarcasm was keen as any thrusting ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... transforms Old dross to dreams, that softly glows On the fierce rainbowed front of storms, And smiles on unascended snows, That from the travail of lone seas Wrests sighing shell and moonlit pearl, And gathers up all sorceries In the white being ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... fearful, but beautiful too—very beautiful—like fire. Did you ever think what a strange dual element fire is? It consumes—is a force of destruction. But it also purifies, burns out dross. Love is like that, my Tony. Mine for you may damn me forever, or it may take me to the very gate of Heaven. I don't know myself which ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... bauld ye set your nose out, As plump an' gray as onie grozet; O for some rank, mercurial rozet, Or fell, red smeddum, I'd gie you sic a hearty doze o't, Wad dross your droddum! ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... looked again over the rims of his spectacles. Then for once his frank and mellow face annexed a reflection of the curl on the lawyer's lip. "Do you know," he said, "it never once came into my simple old pate to ask which would find the dross and which ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... the cowardly weakness by which they were driven to betray their comrades. But in the case of the National Scouts there were no extenuating circumstances except perhaps that the greater responsibility rested on the men who paid in dross for ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... Goodness being of a comparative, and not an absolute nature, there is none who in strictness can be called a Virtuous Man. Every one has in him a natural Alloy, tho' one may be fuller of Dross than another: For this reason I cannot think it right to introduce a perfect or a faultless Man upon the Stage; not only because such a Character is improper to move Compassion, but because there is no such a ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele |
