Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Leaven   Listen
noun
Leaven  n.  
1.
Any substance that produces, or is designed to produce, fermentation, as in dough or liquids; esp., a portion of fermenting dough, which, mixed with a larger quantity of dough, produces a general change in the mass, and renders it light; yeast; barm.
2.
Anything which makes a general assimilating (especially a corrupting) change in the mass. "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Leaven" Quotes from Famous Books



... helpless human beings as much as of game,—and for twenty years his name was a terror in every white household of the Ohio country. He is spoken of as honest. It was his one virtue, the sole redeeming leaven in a life ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... constable's younger son—at Pamiers, were cruelly abusing the Protestants whom they ought to have protected,[313] there was much in the tidings that came especially from southern France to encourage the reformers. In the midst of the confusion and carnage of war the leaven had yet been working. There were even to be found places where the progress of Protestantism had rendered the application of the provisions of the edict nearly, if not quite impossible. The little city of Milhau, in Rouergue,[314] is a striking ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... other circumstances he would certainly not have understood, not have imagined the possibility of such an insinuation against his poor mother, who was so kind, so simple, so excellent. But his spirit seethed with the leaven of jealousy that was fermenting within him. His own excited mind, on the scent, as it were, in spite of himself, for all that could damage his brother, had even perhaps attributed to the tavern barmaid an odious intention of which she was innocent. It was possible that his imagination ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... and has had sufferings far greater than could have been imagined; the latter because they attribute to the War and the conduct of the War the great trials which the nation has now to face. This sickness of the spirit is the greatest cause of disorder, since malcontent is always the worst kind of leaven. ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti

... all worthy things, prayer has most worth, It rises like sweet incense up to heaven, And from God's hand falls back upon the earth, Being of heavenly bread the accepted leaven. Through prayer is virtue saved and sin forgiven; In prayer the impulse and the force are found That bring in purple and ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit

... humility, By the proud sage, who, whilst he strove to hide, In that vain artifice reveal'd his pride; Philosophy, whom Nature had design'd To purge all errors from the human mind, Herself misled by the philosopher, At once her priest and master, made us err: 110 Pride, pride, like leaven in a mass of flour, Tainted her laws, and made e'en Virtue sour. Had she, content within her proper sphere, Taught lessons suited to the human ear, Which might fair Virtue's genuine fruits produce, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... and quiet than it had been since the moment of Kafka's appearance in the cemetery. The Wanderer noticed the tone. There was an element of real sadness in it, with a leaven of bitter disappointment and a savour of heartfelt contrition. She was in earnest now, as she had been before, but in a different way. He could hardly refuse her a ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... be any older person in this congregation who lets his years slip from him, not caring or forgetting the importance of it, and not striving to leaven all his hours of work or leisure with the thought of this indwelling Spirit from above; or if there should be any young boy who, in utter thoughtlessness, or from perversity or coarseness, or any induced depravity of taste, allows ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival

... like that your book should be an abolition book. You might have borne your testimony as decidedly as you pleased; but why leaven the whole book with it? This subject haunts us on almost every page. It is a great subject, but your book had ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... I think that the leaven working here is the rooted intellectualist persuasion that, to know a reality, an idea must in some inscrutable fashion possess or be it. [Footnote: Sensations may, indeed, possess their objects or coalesce with them, as common sense supposes that they do; and intuited differences between ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James

... of swift decay Shocks the soul where life is strong, Though for frailer hearts the day Lingers sad and overlong— Still the weight will find a leaven, Still the spoiler's hand is slow, While the future has its heaven, And the past ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... to be an absurdity. On the whole, therefore, it did not appear to me that this Church-theory had been hollow-hearted with me nor unscriptural, nor in any way unpractical; but that others were still infected with the leaven of creeds and formal tests, with which ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... to throw a wet blanket on the ardour of the volunteering, which, it is well known, was very readily done; for the ministers, on seeing such a pressing forward to join the banners of the kingdom, had a dread and regard to the old leaven of Jacobinism, and put a limitation on the number of the armed men that were to be allowed to rise in every place—a most ill-advised prudence, as was made manifest by what happened among us, of which I will ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... side. The direction of most religious teaching hitherto has been too purely personal; the exhortation is too obvious and the appeal falls flat. Politics without religion lacks foundation; but religion without politics lacks quite half its content. Christianity is the leaven, but so ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell

... perfect, though material leaven Forbid the spirit so on earth to be; But if for any wish thou darest not pray, Then pray to God ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... meet to take the children's bread and cast it to dogs;" and he ultimately showed them that she was better far than many who would have spurned her from their presence. So from the kindness showed to aliens by the Lord himself, we may learn not only to beware of this leaven of the Pharisees, but also to deal kindly and truly with men of every race, and make them sharers with us in the ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various

... familiarity with the life which has been their one calling—rather than upon that elastic vigor which is the privilege of youth. Should they elect to continue in the service, there still remain some years in which they are an invaluable leaven, by character and tradition. If they depart, they are for a few years a reserve for war—if they choose to come forward; but it is manifest that such a reserve can be but small, when compared with a system which in three ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan

... Englishman is a born Conservative, or, to use the old phrase, a Tory. Toryism is of two kinds,—political and social. The majority of the nation is certainly not, at the present day, Tory in political preferences, though there is still a large leaven of that feeling also. But very many persons who are political Liberals are social Tories: they venerate the aristocracy; they batten daily upon the "Court Circular"; they cling to class distinctions ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... to take his leave, Mrs. Langton asked for his address, with a view to an invitation at no distant time. A young man, already a sort of celebrity, and quite presentable on other accounts, would be useful at dances, while he might serve to leaven some of her husband's slightly heavy ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... From storms and calms, From potsherds and dry bones And ruin-stones. Into thy vigorous substance thou hast wrought Whate'er the hand of Circumstance hath brought; Yea, into cool solacing green hast spun White radiance hot from out the sun. So thou dost mutually leaven Strength of earth with grace of heaven; So thou dost marry new and old Into a one of higher mould; So thou dost reconcile the hot and cold, The dark and bright, And many a heart-perplexing opposite, And so, Akin by ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... occupies less than thirty pages, and may be read whilst smoking a cigar. It is all quaint fun, whim, humour, and frolic, and one of those merry morsels which amuse us more than the whole leaven of utilitarianism; and if to laugh and learn be your maxim, why read the "Epping Hunt." After this, hold your sides, and look at the cuts, designed by George Cruikshank, and engraved by Branston, Bonner, Slader, and T. Williams. Old Tom Rounding is the frontispiece, in a cosy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various

... book is of itself almost sufficient to show it; and though the exclusive notion of "the gay and frivolous Frenchman" always was something of a vulgar error, and has been increasingly so since the Revolution, Swiss seriousness, with its strong Germanic leaven, is not French seriousness at all. But he became, if not exactly a popular novelist to the tune of hundreds or even scores of editions, a prolific and fairly accepted one. I think, though he died in ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... War, and Whitbread for peace, And others as suited their fancies; But all were agreed that our debts should increase Excepting the Demagogue Francis. That rogue! how could Westminster chuse him again To leaven the virtue of these honest men! But the Devil remained till the Break of Day Blushed upon Sleep and Lord Castlereagh:[45] 170 Then up half the house got, and Satan got up With the drowsy to snore—or the hungry to sup:— But so torpid the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... astonished his constituents by taking a peerage. During the election caused by his transmigration, one of his former supporters said at a public meeting, "Mr. —— says as how he's going to the House of Lords to leaven it. I tell you, you can't no more leaven the House of Lords by putting Mr. —— into it than you can sweeten a cart-load of muck with a pot of marmalade." During the General Election of 1892 I heard an old labourer on a village ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... send Palladius among them, who, joining with the orthodox of south Britain, restored peace to that part of the church, by suppressing the heresy. Eugenius the second, being desirous that this church should likewise be purged of the impure leaven, invited Palladius hither, who obtaining liberty from Celestine, and being enjoined to introduce the hierarchy as opportunity should offer, came into Scotland, and succeeded so effectually in his commission, as both to confute Pelagianism and new-model the government ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... must confess that, in many cases, the condition is one rather of stagnation than of advance. There seems to be a want in them of the power to edify, and a consequent paralysis of the power to convert. The converts, too often, make such poor progress in the Christian life, that they fail to act as leaven in the lump of their countrymen. In particular, the Missions do not attract to Christ many men of education; not even among those who have been trained within their own schools. Educated natives, as a general rule, will ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene

... may be, not the corrupt, but those who have held back the righteous leaven, the salt that has lost its savor, the innocent who have not even the moral courage to show what they think of the effrontery of impurity,—the serious, who yet timidly succumb before some loud-voiced scoffer,—the ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston

... information of the evils and enormities involved in the traffic, and went quietly around among those most likely to be moved by motives of humanity and Christianity. In this manner he toiled for more than fourteen years, slowly implanting the leaven among the good men, until he gained a noble band of patriots and Christians, with Wilberforce ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher

... his handclasp. Mrs. Middler kissed her several times, and Janice thought with some surprise that the affectionate woman had been crying. Elder Concannon, that stern and bewhiskered patriarch who had once looked upon Janice Day and her ideas as the very leaven of unrighteousness in the community, strode over to the girl and rested his hands upon her shoulders to make ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long

... take the chance," said the lover calmly. "She is free too. I would not have her bound. The very air up here will conspire with me to win her. She must learn at once that I want her for my wife. Then let the leaven work." ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... remarks how interesting and highly agreeable it is in style, and while disclaiming any right to judge its fidelity and research, makes the odd observation that it has in some degree subdued the leaven of its author's unitarianism. He writes occasional verses, including the completion of 'some stanzas of December 1832 on "The Human Heart," but I am not impudent enough to call them by ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... former students and pupils, grown into manhood and womanhood, find the church life of their communities greatly inferior to that in which they were trained in our schools. They are reaching after something more pure, free and spiritual. The leaven of their intelligence and higher standard of morality is taking hold of many families about them. From many centers the call reaches us for the organization of Congregational churches, churches which shall stand for morality, ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 49, No. 5, May 1895 • Various

... of Atonement" deals with the preparation and deportment of the high-priest on that day. That on "The Passover" treats of the Lamb to be sacrificed, of the search for leaven, so that none be found in the house, and of all the details of the festival. "Measurements" is an interesting and valuable account of the dimensions of the Temple at Jerusalem. "The Tabernacle" deals with the ritual worship of the Jews ...
— Hebrew Literature

... virtues to the famous stone. They think simply that the grand magisterium is a ferment, which, thrown into metals in fusion, produces a molecular transformation similar to that which organic matter undergoes when fermented with the aid of a leaven. ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... capable of great sacrifices are yet not capable of the little ones which are all that are required of them. God seems to take pleasure in working by degrees; the progress of the truth is as the permeation of leaven, or the growth of a seed: a multitude of successive small sacrifices may work more good in the world than many a large one. What would even our Lord's death on the cross have been, except as the crown of a life in which he died daily, giving himself, soul, body and spirit, to his men and women? ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... perhaps not so natural, to seek help from some trusted friend unconnected by kinship with either family. Relations cannot take an unprejudiced view of the case; they are bound to be biassed in favour of their own, and even if family jars are not openly discussed the leaven works, and ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux

... to get among a crowd where I wasn't known, and wasn't ever likely to be known," he replied. "And my instinct was right. I was among farmers from Skye and butchers from Inverness and drunken scallywags from the slums of Aberdeen, and a leaven of old soldiers from all over Scotland. I had no idea that such people existed. At first I thought I shouldn't be able to stick it. They gave me a bad time for being an Englishman. But soon, I think, they rather liked me. I set my brains to work and made 'em like me. I knew there ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... Mercy! to the gates of Heaven This Minstrel lead, his sins forgiven; The rueful conflict, the heart riven With vain endeavour, And memory of Earth's bitter leaven, Effaced for ever. ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... But the leaven of the new doctrines was silently working throughout the length and breadth of the land in spite of all repressive measures, and King Edward the Fourth, either from policy or indifference, had done ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green

... in preaching religion and we are putting our energy into this agitation, looking on it as the principal part of our religion.... The present agitation, in its initial stages, had a strong leaven of the spirit of Western politics in it, but at present a clear consciousness of Aryan greatness and a strong love and reverential spirit towards the Motherland have transformed it into a shape in ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... became lecturers and expounded the Bible or taught religious truth in public or private. Rich men engaged private chaplains since public meetings could not be held. Somehow they taught the Bible still. Archbishop Laud forbade both. Yet the leaven worked the more for its restriction. At least one good cook I know says that if you want your dough to rise and the yeast to work, you must cover it. Laud did not want it to rise, but he made the mistake of ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee

... emigrants settle, it seems probable that, going back several generations, the numbers, even of Massachusetts men, who may be truly called "Americans" would dwindle considerably. These men, however, the children of equality, of the common school, and of democratic institutions, may be considered as leaven, leavening the lump of European emigration, and shaping, so far as they can, the character of the American; people that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various

... none else. She sees, as I also see, a something in Victor's temper—a kind of electrical ardour and power—which emits, now and then, ominous sparks; Hunsden calls it his spirit, and says it should not be curbed. I call it the leaven of the offending Adam, and consider that it should be, if not WHIPPED out of him, at least soundly disciplined; and that he will be cheap of any amount of either bodily or mental suffering which will ground him radically in the art of self-control. Frances gives this ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... eighteenth century, credulity and imposition shook hands heartily and held a great festival. Throughout civilized Europe a sort of carnival of empiricism prevailed. Quack was king. A spurious leaven of charlatanism was traceable in politics, in science, in religion—pervaded all things indeed. The world was mad to cheat or to be cheated. The mountebank enjoyed his saturnalia. Never had he exhibited ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... could never have been accomplished so far as it has been; and there never could have been any hope of its eventual success if there had been no hope of one or both these two countries bearing it up on their strong and unscrupulous arms. The leaven of foreign aid to rebellion was working even then, both in London and Paris; and perhaps we had opportunities over the water for a nearer guess at the peril of the nation, than you could have had in the midst of your party-political squabbles ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... on disloyalty for custom. Westmeath was once the home of Whiteboyism, Ribbonism, Fenianism, and all the other isms which have successively ruined the country by banishing security; and a spice of the old leaven still flavours the popular sentiment. "They may swear as they often did our wretchedness to cure, But we'll never trust John Bull again nor let his lies allure. No we won't Bull, we won't Bull, for now nor ever more; For we've hopes on the ocean, we've trust on the shore. Oh! ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... night on a conviction that our taste for barren reality is our chief error. If we could only believe forever, what a good world it could be—"a world of fine fabling," indeed! Also I wondered what J. Rodney Potts might have to apprehend from the leaven of fact in the fabling ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... towards the Liberal tendency of some of the Staff of that day that he would declare with a wink that he positively preferred to stay away; and on the occasion of the accession of Mr. Anstey, wrote this sturdy Conservative "I hope he's a Tory. We want some leaven to the set of sorry Rads that lead poor old Punch astray at present." But few independent readers, and fewer still of Keene's personal friends, will take very seriously his sweeping assertion and political pronunciamentoes—at least, as regards Punch, for ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... from the room. Prince Shan stood looking down upon the figure of quondam associate. There was a leaven of mild wonder in his clear eyes, a faintly contemptuous smile about the corners ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... St. Francis, the Beghards, Lollards, Bisocs, Fraticelli, Spiritual Brethren, Humiliati, and Poor Men of Lyons [Waldenses], who were exterminated by the state and the prisons of the Dominicans, have their origin in the old leaven of Katharism, Joachimism, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... thou unsalted leaven, speak] [T: unwinnow'dst] [W: windyest] Hanmer preserves whinid'st, the reading of the folio; but does not explain it, nor do I understand it. If the folio be followed, I read, vinew'd, that is mouldy leven. Thou composition of mustiness and sourness.—Theobald's assertion, however confident, ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... her principles, and true to her truths. The mere Lutheran name is unavailing. The American Lutheran synods, in order successfully to steer a unity-union movement, must purge themselves thoroughly from the leaven of error, of indifferentism and unionism. A complete and universal return to the Lutheran symbols is the urgent need of the hour. Only when united in undivided loyalty to the divine truths of God's Word, will the American Lutheran Church ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente

... the beginning of years There came to the making of man Time, with a gift of tears, Grief, with a glass that ran; Pleasure, with pain for leaven; Summer, with flowers that fell; Remembrance fallen from heaven, And madness risen from hell; Strength without hands to smite, Love that endures for a breath, Night, the shadow of light, And life, ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... been heartrending to many a continental or American general to see the unmilitary appearance of the Boer burgher, and in what manner an army of children, great-grandfathers, invalids, and blind men, with a handful of good men to leaven it, could be of any service whatever would have been quite beyond his conception. It was such a mixed force that a Russian officer, who at the outset of the war entered the Transvaal to fight, became disgusted with its unmilitary ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas

... rascals they are, Gervaise!" at length the rear-admiral exclaimed. "If the whole court was culled, I question if enough honesty could be found to leaven one puritan scoundrel. Tell me if you know this hand, Oakes? I question if ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Intelligence: Skilful retreat of the Sepoys under Captain de Caxton"! A captain already! What is the date of the newspaper!—three months ago. The leading article quotes the name with high praise. Is there no leaven of envy amidst the joy at my heart? How obscure has been my career,—how laurelless my poor battle with adverse fortune! Fie, Pisistratus! I am ashamed of thee. Has this accursed Old World, with its feverish rivalries, diseased thee already? Get thee ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... The leaven of the spiritualistic philosophy has been working its way through Christendom during this generation. We see clearly that the evil one is preparing the way for his ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer

... elevation of the race. Such, I say, is the issue of this mode of thought as it is frankly avowed by some of its representative men; but the peculiarity of it, when it is obscurely fermenting as a leaven in the mind, is, that it appeals to men as having special affinities to Christianity. In our own country it is widely prevalent among those who have had a university education, and indeed in a much wider circle, and it is a serious ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney

... Christian style, cannot be satisfactorily traced while, guided by Roman archaeologists, we continue to regard Rome as a source of Christian art apart from the rest of the world. Christianity itself was not of Rome, it was an eastern leaven in Roman society. Christian art even in that capital was, we may say, an eastern leaven in Roman art. If we set the year 450 for the beginning of Byzantine art, counting all that went before as early ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... of these persons," he said to Joseph Smith, "is worth his weight in gold. Their disinterested fidelity to duty is a type of character that almost became extinct generations ago, and no more valuable leaven could be introduced into the society of the future. Rather than leave them, I ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... children are the greatest bromides in the world. What boy of ten will wear a collar different from what his school-mates are all wearing? He must conform to the rule and custom of the majority or he suffers fearfully. But, if he has a sulphitic leaven in his soul, adolescence frees him from the tyrannical traditions of thought. In costume, perhaps, men still are more bromidic than women. A man has, for choice, a narrow range in garments—for everyday wear at most but four coats, three collars ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess

... other man, "in which to assure you that the fullest acknowledgments will be given in the case of the stores, and that their owner will be paid for them liberally and ungrudgingly. And, granting that much of what you have said is true, and that the leaven of self-seeking is to be found in every man's nature, and that greed is the predominating motive with those men who, more than others, work for the building-up of an Empire and the profitable union of Britain with her Colonies, don't you think that there may be something ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... swept out the room, let the dogs loose, and drove the rams to pasture on the margin of the river. After breakfast, which was but a sorry meal, we determined to make our first attempt at baking. Simon, a man of dauntless resolution, undertook the task, using a piece of stale bread as leaven. It was a serious business, and we all helped or looked on; but the result, notwithstanding the multitude of councillors, was a lamentable failure. Better success, fortunately, attended the labours of Hannibal, who boiled a piece of salt pork ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... dry. The milk is settled in the pans, And supper messes in the cans; In the hovel carts are wheel'd, And both the colts are drove a-field; The horses are all bedded up, And the ewe is with the tup. The snare for Mister Fox is set, The leaven laid, the thatching wet, And Bess has slink'd away to talk With Roger ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... its congratulations rather than its denunciations. Its theology became sweeter, and it is in no danger of framing a new "Auchterarder Creed" upon the lines of the last. When the new movement began for the improvement of public worship there was, indeed, enough of the old leaven left to lead to a vigorous resistance. This struggle centred round "The Crieff Organ Case" in 1866-67. Ultimately, however, the new views prevailed, and at the present moment (1896) the once hated "kist of whistles" has found its way into no fewer than thirteen out of the sixteen ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... no amount of civic instruction, or any other instruction, would have affected Tom's ethics. Tom is representative of his age. Come, come; I have every wish to be just to you. A new religion must have time; its leaven must work amid the lump. You, my dear boy, are convinced that the leaven is, though a new sort, a very sound and sufficient yeast; let that be granted. I, unfortunately, cannot believe anything of the ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... privileges; the devil, however, is apt to make a clean sweep of the board when he has got the game in his own hands, but these noble wiseacres could not see that. In other parts of the country good men and true were working up the leaven of reform. The great patriot Szechenyi, as long ago as 1830, when he published his work on 'Credit,' had shown his countrymen their shortcomings. He had proved to them that their laws and their institutions were not marching with the spirit of ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... considerable time and pains to prepare men for the gospel ministry. In quality of preaching and teaching, and in results already achieved, the race owes much to this as yet small band of workers. Like the leaven hidden in the meal its influence is being felt in the church, in the farm, and in the firesides of the people, and is destined to overthrow ignorance, immorality, and superstition. With the continued aid of well-equipped mission schools which must be the base of supply for our churches, ...
— The Defects of the Negro Church - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 10 • Orishatukeh Faduma

... York has not yet learned to govern itself, how can it be expected to be better governed by adding half a million to its population, and a great territory to its area, unless it be with the idea that a "little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." Is Brooklyn that leaven? If not, and if possibly "the salt has lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted?" Brooklyn is now struggling with this problem, it remains to be seen with what success; but ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley

... was "double the time which my brother could safely be absent from his scholars." The connection would be broken up, and the astronomy would be the ruin of the family. (A little of good old dame Herschel's housewifely leaven here, perhaps.) But William's letters from London to "Dear Lina" must soon have quieted her womanly fears. William had actually been presented to the king, and "met with a very gracious reception." He had explained the solar system to the king and queen, ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen

... underlying this whole series on Cost is that the place to put the leaven of progress is in the middle. The class to work for is the great mass of intelligent, industrious, and ambitious young people turned out by our public schools with certain ideals for self-betterment, but in grave ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards

... carpet—to say nothing of the general predilection for somebody else's wife which prevailed in those days, and which makes Suetonius read like a modern French novel. I did not think there was so much of the old leaven left in me. My sweet Clarissa! I fancy she likes me—in a sisterly kind of way, of course—and trusts me not a little. And yet I must seem cold to her, and hold myself aloof, and wound the tender untried heart a little perhaps. Hard upon both of us, but I suppose only a common ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... origin in small beginnings; that the narrow rivulet goes on gathering strength till it becomes the Great Cataract; that the minute plague-spot generated the virulent disease; that the acorn produces the oak; that the impaired seed failed to produce goodly fruit; that a small drop of leaven affected a huge mass. Lessons on the fecundity of little things had indeed grown ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... were forced to associate with others who were particularly depraved by life, and especially by these very institutions—rakes, murderers and villains—who act on those who are not yet corrupted by the measures inflicted on them as leaven acts on dough. ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... drawings that figure at the breaking up of a young ladies' seminary are the work of the professor attached to the establishment. Mr. Berkenshaw was not altogether happy in his pupil. The amateur cannot usually rise into the artist, some leaven of the world still clogging him; and we find Pepys behaving like a pickthank to the man who taught him composition. In relation to the stage, which he so warmly loved and understood, he was not only more hearty, but more generous to others. Thus he encounters Colonel Reames, "a man," says ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... for their mortification, instead of making necklaces of them for their adornment; whether they were ever walled up alive in odd angles and jutting gables of the building for having some ineradicable leaven of busy mother Nature in them which has kept the fermenting world alive ever since; these may be matters of interest to its haunting ghosts (if any), but constitute no item in Miss Twinkleton's half-yearly accounts. They are neither of Miss Twinkleton's inclusive regulars, ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... till our lump be leaven. The better! What's come to perfection perishes. Things learned on earth we shall practice in heaven. Work done least ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... We have with a leaven'd and prepared choice Proceeded to you; therefore take your honours. Our haste from hence is of so quick condition That it prefers itself, and leaves unquestion'd Matters of needful value. We shall write ...
— Measure for Measure • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... sees himself in the glass, something out of his own egotistic nature whispers to him to take care to remember that it is no stranger, but himself, that he is looking at; and this operates as a noli me tang ere, and prevents him taking an objective view. It seems, indeed, as if, without the leaven of a grain of malice, ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer

... Lawrence had supplied the one ingredient necessary to leaven the talk of these dreamers into action. Even the notary found himself compelled to contribute when Albert de Chantonnay asked him outright for a subscription. And the priests, ably led by the Abbe Touvent, acted after the manner of the sons of Levi since olden times. They did not give ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman

... more certain to change it, than the little leaven of truth dropped in the highways and byways of daily life. We must 'be diligent in season and out of season,' silently as a rule, but at times audibly, perchance forcibly, for some minds seem so dull and sluggish as to need ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson

... Washington Latest News Items Latest about "Lo." Letter from a Friend Letter of Advice, A Letter from a Japanese Student Letter from a Croaker, A Leaven of Leavenworth Literary Vampire Lines by a Hapless Swain Long Shot, A "Lot" on a Lot of Proverbs Love in a Boarding-House Lucus ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various

... of social morals to rely upon, corruption entered in and consumed it. The King's scepticism took possession of his subjects, who translated it into deeds. It was good "form"; everyone in Berlin took it up and conducted himself accordingly. The leaven of licence and sensuality which mars all the literature of the century fermented without let or hindrance in those coarse souls. An immature civilization had overstimulated imaginations and senses without abating the brutality of the primitive ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... woes, and lift their load away. I know not that our shares would then be even, For she you mourn may yet make glad your sight, While against me are banded death and heaven; But now the gloom of winter and of night With thoughts of sweet and bitter years for leaven, Lends to my talk with ...
— Esther • Henry Adams

... that the wholesome superstition which prevented people in former days from desecrating their ancient monuments will be any protection to them much longer, though the following story shows that some grains of the old leaven are still left in the Cornish mind. Near Carleen, in Breage, an old cross has been removed from its place, and now does duty as a gate-post. The farmer occupying the farm where the cross stood, set his laborer to ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... English. Many, too, of the dispossessed proprietors, the younger ones especially, continued to hang about, and either harassed the new owners and stole their goods, or made friends with them, and managed after a while to slip back upon some excuse into their old homes. No sternness of the Puritan leaven availed to hinder the new settlers from being absorbed into the country, as other and earlier settlers had been absorbed before them; marrying its daughters, adopting its ways, and becoming themselves in time Irishmen. The bitter memory of that vast and wholesale act of eviction has remained, but ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... in every baby born, All absolute of earthly leaven, Reveals itself, though man may scorn ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... of six and seven, Two fresh years' fountains, clear Of all but golden sand for leaven, Child, midway passing here, As earth for love's sake dares bless heaven, So dare ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... low-ceiled room; dimness veiled the corners, and through it each plate on the old dresser held a faintly glimmering crescent of light. On a sheet of iron laid upon the open hearth the last loaves of barley-bread were baking under a crock, and Vassilissa Beggoe was preserving the leaven for next week's breadmaking by the simple process of placing it in a saucer of water, where it ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... of religion that I must not neglect—the Zoroastrian or Parsi faith. Far as this faith may have travelled from its original spirituality, it still preserved in the Bāb's time some elements of truth which were bound to become a beneficial leaven. This high and holy faith (as represented in the Gathas) was still the religion of the splendour or glory of God, still the champion of the Good Principle against the Evil. As if to show his respectful sympathy ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne

... parents. She did not even look into the literature which Penloe had lent her that evening. She felt like retiring and thinking. When she laid her head on the pillow that night it seemed as if it was not to sleep; it was to think. The leaven was working in Stella's mind. The truths which she had just received were powerful; it seemed as if she could not get away from them, even if she wished, for truths possess us, we do not possess them. Nothing in the universe is more ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge

... in our likeness still we shape our fate. 90 Ah, there is something here Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer, Something that gives our feeble light A high immunity from Night, Something that leaps life's narrow bars To claim its birthright with the hosts of heaven; A seed of sunshine that can leaven Our earthly dullness with the beams of stars, And glorify our clay With light from fountains elder than the Day; 100 A conscience more divine than we, A gladness fed with secret tears, A vexing, forward-reaching ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... development of Protestantism and of Protestant churches without feeling that into the Reforrmation, too,—Hebraizing child of the Renascence and offspring of its fervor, rather than its intelligence, as it undoubtedly was,—the subtle Hellenic leaven of the Renascence found its way, and that the exact respective parts, in the Reformation, of Hebraism and of Hellenism, are not easy to separate. But what we may with truth say is, that all which Protestantism was to itself clearly conscious of, all which ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... regretted that one of the most illustrious of the great names of Naples should embrace and defend so plebeian a cause; one in their eyes so utterly without interest as that of popular rights. But it was wounded at the idea that a peer should die by the hand of the executioner. The old leaven of independence, innate in all the aristocracies of Europe; the feudal aspirations which Louis XI. and Richelieu had so completely annihilated and subdued in France, yet germinated in the minds of the nobles of Naples. They loved the king because he maintained their ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... Eight little fire crackers Trying to spell "LEAVEN," One went too near the gas, Then— ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various

... from Luclarion then than at any other opportunity. Perhaps that was because Miss Grapp could not walk off from the bread-trough; or it might be that there was some sympathy between the mixing of her flour and yeast into a sweet and lively perfection, and the bringing of her mental leaven wholesomely to bear. ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... and an effect which in the end was so powerful with the multitude, must have been visible long before in the braver and better natures. The increasing number of prosecutions in London shows, also, that the leaven was spreading. There were five executions in Smithfield between 1529 and 1533, besides those in the provinces. The prisons were crowded with offenders who had abjured and were undergoing sentence; and ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... how far, either in a Greek or modern state, such a limitation is practicable or desirable; for those who are left outside the pale will always be dangerous to those who are within, while on the other hand the leaven of the mob can hardly affect the representation of a great country. There is reason for the argument in favour of a property qualification; there is reason also in the arguments of those who would include all and so exhaust ...
— Statesman • Plato

... Academy, should be the leaven, the yeast, to work upon our great metropolis; not merely the flower, but the self-raising flour"—a pause for appreciation of the pun—"the self-raising flour [loud laughter, easily yielded and unnecessarily prolonged] that is ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... as a symbol of this passing of the classic mantle. And the symphonies of Gustav Mahler seem an assurance of present tendencies. The influence of Bach, revived early in the century, grew steadily as a latent leaven. ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp

... devilish deeds to endure in this earthly vale of sorrow to prepare for one a very decent purgatory, and give him hereafter well-founded hopes of heaven. Therefore I count upon remaining here below a while, and to knead with you this leaven of life that may yield to my subjects an eatable bread. You must help me, Herzberg, when I am the baker, to provide the flour for my people; you must be the associate to knead the bread. In order that the flour should not fail, and the bread give out, it may ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... the Faith begins to make one abandon the old way of judging. Averages and movements and the rest grow uncertain. We see things from within and consider one mind or a little group as a salt or leaven. The very nature of social force seems changed to us. And this is hard when a man has loved common views and is happy only ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... Neo-Pythagoreanism, the second and last Neo-Platonism. Leaving all detailed descriptions of these schools to special articles devoted to them, it is sufficient here to say that their doctrines were a synthesis of Platonism, Stoicism and the later Aristotelianism with a leaven of oriental mysticism which gradually became more and more important. The world to which they spoke had begun to demand a doctrine of salvation to satisfy the human soul. They endeavoured to deal with the problem of good and evil. They therefore devoted themselves to examining ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... and the leaven of the word Wrought ever after in the souls who heard, And a dead ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... pollutes the imagination, defiles the memory, and is a filth-creating leaven, which, unless purged away, ultimately corrupts ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

... was still among the Chinese much of that friction which is the inevitable reaction from an attempt to change the fundamentals of an ancient faith and long-standing habits. American merchants, it is true, had been of all classes, but at any rate there had always been a sufficient leaven of those of the highest type ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... that comes short, and woe to him that delayed!" So spoke on the beach the mother, and counselled the wiser thing. For Rahero stirred in the country and secretly mined the king. Nor were the signals wanting of how the leaven wrought, In the cords of obedience loosed and the tributes grudgingly brought. And when last to the temple of Oro the boat with the victim sped, And the priest uncovered the basket and looked on the face of the dead, Trembling fell upon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... see!" And, such was the wickedness of her spite, The man took the toothache that very night. With John Thow's wife she was at drawing of daggers, And twenty of John's sheep took the staggers. With old Joe Baxter she long had striven,— Joe set his sponge, but it never would leaven; And as for Gib Jenkinson's cow that gaed yeld, It was very well known that Crummie was spelled. When Luckie Macrobie's sweet milk wouldna erne, The reason was clear—she bewitched the concern. True! no man could swear that he ever saw Her flee on a broomstick over North Berwick Law; But ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton

... foundation for that great moral and intellectual awakening which a century or two later is represented by Confucious, Gotama Buddha, and Pythagoras. From the Persians, doubtless Jew and Gentile alike received the little leaven of spirituality which in later ages crept into their gross conception ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... the unique spectacle of four Protestant pastors to one Catholic priest! At one time the Protestant body numbered two-thirds of the entire population, now the proportion is somewhat less. This still strong Protestant leaven, and the long infiltration of German manners and customs has doubtless greatly modified the character of the inhabitants, who, whether belonging to the one denomination or the other, live side by ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... draw nigh; Long as at tale of anguish swells The heart, and lids grow wet, And at the sound of Christmas bells We pardon and forget; So long as Faith with Freedom reigns, And loyal Hope survives, And gracious Charity remains To leaven lowly lives; While there is one untrodden tract For Intellect or Will, And men are free to think and act Life ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... lovers say were duly said; but they are not for us to chronicle. Such words are better left to be remembered or forgotten as time and circumstance and result may decree. For one may never tell what words will do when they are laid within the years like the little morsel of leaven that leaveneth ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... himself as of the dominant race; at any rate he is ubiquitous. Pleasure, of the cafe and cabaret and boulevard kind, the sort of thing that gave Berlin the aspect of the gayest capital in Europe within the last decade, that is the insidious leaven that will help to denationalise London. Berlin will probably climb back to some of its old austerity and simplicity, a world-ruling city with a great sense of its position and its responsibilities, while London will become more and more the centre of what these people ...
— When William Came • Saki

... and defeat. There was a latent cruelty under his air of civility which astonished and terrified her. And the revelations with regard to Hugh Renwick, astounding though they were, had in them just enough of a leaven of fact to make them almost if not quite credible. Hugh Renwick, the man she had chosen—a friend, a paid servant of atrocious Serbia! She could not—would not believe it. And yet this man's knowledge of European politics was simply uncanny. If his civility had disarmed her earlier in ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... of the workmen the growth of kindergartens for children, and the cultivation of flowers, in and out of their homes, offering valuable prizes at annual flower shows. Harrisville voted to annex the village of Harris-Ingram, hoping that the gospel of helpfulness that had worked such wonders might leaven their ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton

... the eternal hills of God, there comes into it an affluent which has no stain on its pure waters, and so can purge that into which it enters. Jesus Christ willed to be born, and to plant a new beginning of holy life in the very heart of humanity which henceforth should work as leaven. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... to, who, residing in the 'midst of a vicious community, professed to be followers of that which was right, and to resist the current of bad example in their own times; or that such a people might be considered as a leaven, that might leaven the whole lump, but that, if this leaven were lost, the community might lose one of its visible incitements to virtue. Now in this way the Quakers have had a certain general usefulness in the world. They have kept more, I apprehend, to ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... of Houses of Mercy for the reception of penitent fallen women.—Is it right to speak of a century which could freely contemplate such works as these and carry into execution many of them[142], without some allusion to the leaven which was at work beneath the dry crust of Society? the living Catholic energy which neither the average dulness of the pulpit could quench, nor the lifeless morality which had been popularly substituted for Divinity ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... A powerful leaven was put into him by the tidings out of Wales. Gower, good fellow, had gone down to see the young mother three weeks after the birth of her child. She was already renewing her bloom. She had produced the boy in the world's early manner, lightly, without ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... this point than he knew. It is not too much to say that the spiritual tension of the people reached its highest point right there. The imitation of Jesus which had begun with the volunteers in the church was working like leaven in the organization, and Henry Maxwell would even thus early in his life have been amazed if he could have measured the extent of desire on the part of his people to take up the cross. While he was speaking this morning, ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon

... it—loyalty is for us both. You live your sermon—I say mine. I have said it. Now live yours. Put this wormwood away from you. Forgive Preston, as you need forgiveness at higher hands. Don't break the girl's heart, and spoil your boy's life—it may spoil it—the leaven of bitterness works long. You're at a parting of the ways—take the right turn. Do good and not evil with your strength; all the rest is nothing. After all the years there is just one thing that counts, and that our mothers ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... writes, 'to undeceive the world by unravelling that whole mystery of iniquity' (p. 5). He lays bare roguery enough, and in a spirit, it seems, of real sorrow. Nevertheless there are passages which are not free from the leaven of hypocrisy, and there are, I suspect, statements which are at least partly false. Johnson, indeed, looked upon him as little less than a saint; but then, as Sir Joshua Reynolds tells us, though 'Johnson was ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... Paschal lamb! And a sad keeping of the feast will be mine; I shall see scarce a familiar face, that of no relative save Abishai; and I owe him but little affection. And oh! worst of all, I fear me that I have an unholy leaven in my heart, which I in vain seek to put entirely away. I am secretly cherishing the forbidden thing, though not wilfully, not wilfully, as He knows to whom I constantly pray for strength to give up all that is displeasing ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker

... these points we have very insufficient data; for we are quite in the dark as to the development of feudal law in Normandy before the invasion, and may be reasonably inclined to refer some at least of the peculiarities of English feudal law to the leaven of the system which it superseded. Nor is it easy to reduce the organization described in Domesday to strict conformity with feudal law as it appears later, especially with the general ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... pointed to the report of a recent inquiry into Art and Morality, which set out that "Love sanctified everything," that "Sensuality was the leaven of Art," that "Art could not be Immoral," that "Morality was a convention of Jesuit education," and that nothing mattered except "the greatness of Desire." A number of letters from literary men witnessed the artistic purity of a novel depicting the life of bawds. Some of the ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... the mixture may not be too hard and brittle, a Sulphureous or Oyly Principle must intervene to make the mass more tenacious; to this a Mercurial spirit must be superadded; which by its activity may for a while premeate [Transcriber's Note: permeate], and as it were leaven the whole Mass, and thereby promote the more exquisite mixture and incorporation of the Ingredients. To all which (lastly) a portion of Earth must be added, which by its drinesse and poracity [Errata: porosity] may soak up part of that water wherein ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle

... Salisbury. Whoever goes into Christ Church new buildings from the river-side, will see, in the old edifice facing him, a certain bulging in the wall. That is the mark of the pulpit, whence a brother used to read aloud to the brethren in the refectory of St. Frideswyde. The new leaven of learning was soon to ferment in an easy Oxford, where men lived pro libito, under good lords, the D'Oilys, who loved the English, and built, not churches and bridges only, but the great and famous Oseney Abbey, beyond the church of St. Thomas, and not very far from ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang

... it, pitying the while the frail mortal vessels it consumes with its flame. No adulation can turn such natures from their goal, and in the hour of triumph the slave is always at their side to whisper the word of warning. This discontent is the leaven that has raised the whole loaf of dull humanity to better things and higher efforts, those privileged to feel it are the suns that illuminate our system. If on these luminaries observers have discovered spots, it is well to remember that these blemishes are ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... testimonies which have been made against us, God has used and blessed also our humble testimony." (9, 1.) The enmity which Missouri met everywhere was indeed a significant symptom of conditions changing for the better. It proved that the leaven of "foreign symbolism," as Schmucker pleased to style it, was doing its work. Foremost among the men that witnessed to the powerful influence of Missouri by testifying against her was B. Kurtz, who again and again denounced all confessionalists, especially those of the West, as "resurrectionists ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente

... For solitary thinkings, such as dodge Conception to the very bourne of heaven, Then leave the naked brain; be still the leaven That spreading in this dull and clodded earth, Gives it a touch ethereal—a ...
— Adonais • Shelley

... prove gentle, I shall borrow Sufficient strength of thee for new-year's sorrow. All other men and women that this earth Belongs to, who all days alike possess, Make general plenty cure particular dearth,[26:1] Get more joy one way, if another less: Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven— Sole light that helps me through the ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... pure or generous sentiment would undoubtedly have been received with a guffaw, and coarse cynicism be regarded as the only form of comic insight. At any rate the audiences for which Congreve wrote had just so much of the old leaven that we can quite understand why they were regarded as wicked by a majority of the middle classes. The doctrine that all playgoing was wicked was naturally confirmed, and the dramatists retorted by ridiculing all that their enemies ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... as that salt of the earth which keeps life sweet, and gives its savor to duty. To be of good family should mean being a child of the one Father of us all; and good birth, the being born into God's world, and not into a fool's paradise of man's invention. But even had this moral leaven been wanting, had the popular impulse been merely one of patriotism, we should have been well content to claim as the result of democracy that for the first time in the history of the world it had mustered an ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... to be the end of Hus's strivings? What was it in Hus that was destined to survive? What was it that worked like a silent leaven amid the clamours of war? We shall see. Amid these charred and smoking ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... human natur';" and although David Harum may tell us that some folks have more of this commodity than others, yet we know that every one has a lump of it, at least, and usually, thank God! a lump of leaven ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... thought, without regard to daintiness of flavor in the dressing of it.[15] Of the best English poetry, it might be said that it is understanding aerated by imagination. In Dryden the solid part too often refused to mix kindly with the leaven, either remaining lumpish or rising to a hasty puffiness. Grace and lightness were with him much more a laborious achievement than a natural gift, and it is all the more remarkable that he should so often have attained to what seems such an easy perfection in both. Always ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... hand-mills; and then it is left so coarse it must be sifted. They take the finest for bread, and the other for different kinds of groats, which, when it is cooked is called sapaen or homina. The meal intended for bread is kneaded moist without leaven or yeast, salt or grease, and generally comes out of the oven so that it will hardly hold together, and so blue and moist that it is as heavy as dough; yet the best of it when cut and roasted, tastes almost like warm ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... plot to ridicule these characters, and to make them satirize each other—as in the rival stories of the sompnour and friar—he turns with pleasure from these betrayers of religion, to show us that there was a leaven of pure piety ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... are entering into this new cycle of human unfoldment, and the greatest changes are before the race. Ye who read these words are in the foremost ranks of the new dispensation, else you would not be interested in this subject. You are the leaven which is designed to lighten the heavy mass of the world-mind. Play well your parts. You are not alone. Mighty forces and great Intelligences are behind you in the work. Be worthy of them. Peace be ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... which ought to have brought joy into the family, had introduced a small leaven of discord. The Receiver-General and the young lawyer were the objects of a ceremonious formality which the Countess and Emilie contrived to create. This etiquette soon found even ampler opportunity ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac

... leaven of decency and clean manhood might spread throughout the land! It might start a single-standard revival that would sweep the world. By the power of courage and faith and the ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... the fitness of things, he had always known and acknowledged that when in a passion he was not accountable for his acts; he admitted the fact with regret and also with a certain pride. To-night he might have felt the regret without any pride to leaven it but for the fact that his mind was lost to ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... Mercy! to the gates of heaven This minstrel lead, his sins forgiven; The rueful conflict, the heart riven With vain endeavour, And memory of Earth's bitter leaven Effaced forever. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... came forth and met the rough hand of the sinner. Skippy squeezed them convulsively, not daring to trust his voice, nodded twice and smiled bravely back in the moonlight to show that the leaven of higher things was ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... the country. The Englishman has set no distinguishable impress upon the prairie. It has absorbed him with his reserve and sturdy industry, and the Canadian from the cities is apparently lost in it, too, for theirs is the leaven that works through the mass slowly and unobtrusively, and it is the Scot and the habitant of French extraction who have given the life of it colour and individuality. Extremes meet and fuse on the wide white ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss



Words linked to "Leaven" :   bring up, lift, sourdough, substance, elevate, leavening, barm, raise, baking powder, get up



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com