"Dross" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... Bishop le Veneur, is of the superlative degree of its era (early sixteenth century), bordering upon the profusion of splayed ornament which so soon after turned to dross, but standing, as it does, of itself, clearly defined. The gulf was finally crossed when, less than a half-century later, the incongruous west front with its ill-mannered towers was built,—in itself a subject worth a deal of study from the artist ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... She had wed One of those common men, who serve as ore For the gold grains to lie in. Virgin gold Lay hidden there—no richer was the dross. She went to gay assemblies, not content; For she had found no hearts, that, struck with hers, Sounded one chord. She went, and danced, or sat And listlessly conversed; or, if at home, Read the new novel, wishing all the time For something better; ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... 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 ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... government of life; nor to make us live only, but to live happily. She teaches us what things are good, what evil, and what only appear so; and to distinguish betwixt true greatness and tumor. She clears our minds of dross and vanity; she raises up our thoughts to heaven, and carries them down to hell; she discourses on the nature of the soul, the powers and faculties of it; the first principles of things; the order of providence: she exalts us from things ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... repusxi. Drivel (to slaver) kracxeti. Driver (car, etc.) veturisto. Droll ridinda, sxerca. Drollery sxerco—ado. Dromedary unugxiba kamelo. Drone burdo. Droop (pine) malfortigxi. Drop guto. Dropsy akvosxvelo. Dross metala sxauxmo. Drought senpluveco. Drove (cattle) bestaro, brutaro. Drown droni. Drown (trans.) dronigi. Drowsy dorma. Drub (beat) bati. Drudge laboregi. Drug drogo. Druggist drogisto. Drum tamburo. Drum, of ear oreltamburo. Drunkard ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... highly prized by Oh-Oh. He averred, that they spoke of the mighty past, which he reverenced more than the paltry present, the dross and sediment of ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... 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 in lace and spangles, or yonder hero who sheathes his sword after a life ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... 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 ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... 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 fires ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... 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
... again speaks to the world and the world listens to Italy. It is a great task and a great deed and it demands great efforts. To carry it through, we must, each one of us, free ourselves of the dross of ideas and mental habits which two centuries of foreign intellectualistic tradition have heaped upon us; we must not only take on a new culture but create for ourselves a new soul. We must methodically and patiently contribute something towards the organic and ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... 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 blade of tempered steel; her will was to be obeyed, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... an abstract of love's noble flame, 'Tis love refined, and purged from all its dross, 'Tis next to angel's love, if not the same, As strong as passion ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... coals; let him try how his memory will aid him, with such feeble helps as broken twigs and dry mosses, and then he may be able to appreciate, in a degree, how this man had won the mastery of paint and canvas and turned their dross into the fine ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... would be to ride the very sun in the zenith and have to reflect that I was nothing but a poor little accident, and got shot up there out of somebody else's catapult. To me, merit is everything—in fact, the only thing. All else is dross." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... spelter, or the pig of zinc, and this is what is sold to refiners, who take out all the dross or impurities so it can be rolled or used for galvanizing ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... enter more fully into the subject of great men who were also book-lovers. Sufficient it is, perhaps, to know that they have all felt the blessedness of books, for, as Washington Irving in one of his most lofty sentences has so well put it, 'When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these [the comforts of a well-stored library] only retain their steady value; when friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and commonplace, these only ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... monuments. And while, in the name of a purely manufacturing civilization, it has been proposed to destroy our German forests, they alone have guarded for us in their shade the earliest speaking witnesses of national industry. In the mountain-forests of the middle Rhine one often finds large dross-heaps on sequestered hill tops, far from brooks and water courses. These are the places where stood the primeval "forest smithies," whose forges were perhaps worked with the hand or the foot, and of which our heroic legends sing; these are the scenes ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... Let there be no more distance between each flash of vivacity, but what is necessary for giving time to observe its splendid radiance. I hope I shall never again approach so near the clod of clay. I hope the fire of my genius shall never again be so long in kindling, or so much covered up with the dross ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... maddens in the breathless race, Nor misses station, power or pelf; And only loses in the chase The hunted lord of all,—himself. His gain is loss, His treasure dross. "Step, step, step," mocks the whip of the sky, "Hurry up, limp along, rest when ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... gold has gone out of the world, and there is nothing left but lead and dross. See how sharp the green is under the gray, and note the clearness of the air. Everything is keen and hard upon the eye to-day; the sky is full of rain and the sea is a wild harmony in gray ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... digressions of Cicero. There was nothing to beguile him in the boasting of his apostrophes, in the flow of his patriotic nonsense, in the emphasis of his harangues, in the ponderousness of his style, fleshy but ropy and lacking in marrow and bone, in the insupportable dross of his long adverbs with which he introduces phrases, in the unalterable formula of his adipose periods badly sewed together with the thread of conjunctions and, finally, in his wearisome habits of tautology. Nor was his enthusiasm wakened for Caesar, celebrated for his laconic style. ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Israel, being a study of the Zohar,[52] or Hebrew "Book of Splendor," a feat for which no Hebrew scholar has had the heart. This Bible of Kabbalism is indeed so confused and confusing that only a "golden dustman" would have had the patience to sift out its gems from the mountain of dross, and attempt to reduce its wide-weltering chaos to order. Even Waite, with all his gift of research and narration, finds little more than gleams of dawn in a dim forest, brilliant vapors, and glints that tell by ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... 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 ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... were [not jails or everlasting prisons, but] schools for Christian instruction, now they have degenerated, as though from a golden to an iron age, or as the Platonic cube degenerates into bad harmonies, which, Plato says brings destruction. [Now this precious gold is turned to dross, and the wine to water.] All the most wealthy monasteries support only an idle crowd, which gluttonizes upon the public alms of the Church. Christ, however, teaches concerning the salt that has lost its savor that it should be ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... enclosed. Then he wrote another 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 ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... plenty of wrong turns taken at cross roads, time misused or wasted, gold taken for dross and dross for gold, manful effort mis-directed, facts misread, men misjudged. And yet those who have felt life no stage play, but a hard campaign with some lost battles, may still resist all spirit of general insurgence in the evening of ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... this, some of 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 ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... peace, so far as these poor bodies are concerned; but our cherished beliefs, the hopes, the trust that stayed the hearts of those we loved who have gone before us, are cast into the fiery furnace of an age which is fast turning to dross the certainties and the sanctities once prized as our most precious inheritance. You will understand me, my dear sir, and all my solicitudes and apprehensions. Had I never been assailed by the questions ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a man to sigh after wealth! Of all men, his friends would have unanimously declared he was the last to do so. But how little our friends know us! In his period of stoical rejection of this world's happiness, he had cast from him as utter dross all anxiety as to fortune. He had, as it were, proclaimed himself to be indifferent to promotion, and those who chiefly admired his talents, and would mainly have exerted themselves to secure to them ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... to the perishing around her, saying, "I would labor a little longer for them, if it is my Father's will." The young converts whom she had taught could not bear the thought of her leaving them; but they sought to stay an angel in his course. The dross had been consumed, and the spirit was made meet for the inheritance of the saints ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... 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) 645; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... requires profound consideration. For the minute investigation requisite for this purpose few men were better qualified than Mr. Holcroft—few men much more equal to the task of bringing forth from the rich mine where they lay and purify of their dross the talents of Mr. Cooper. With an earnestness and indefatigable zeal proportioned to the object, and which nothing but the most generous friendship could impel him to employ, Mr. Holcroft gave those powers to the instruction ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... in a state of high, attenuated calm—a molten planet under a transcontinental ice sheet. And yet, above all most of all, Daylight was impressed by the terrific and almost awful cleanness of the man. There was no dross in him. He had all the seeming of having been purged by fire. Daylight had the feeling that a healthy man-oath would be a deadly offence to his ears, a sacrilege and ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... Lord, we rededicate ourselves at this hour to be used of thee in the salvation of men. Come into these temples of clay afresh at this hour, O Lord, and let the fire of thy holy presence consume all the dross that may be in us. Anoint our feeble lips to speak the unsearchable riches of Christ ... Hear us, Lord, we ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison
... the lower floor of the house—they were especially costly skins, and the lot might be worth a duke's ransom; but at the moment, with those two precious lives in peril, to the anxious factor they were as dross, and he would only too willingly have stood the loss of the whole kit could he by this means have saved the one so dear ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... perhaps alone, stood aloof from the motley throng of worshippers,—with them, but not of them,—coolly analyzing every sentence delivered by the oracle, and sufficiently learned in the divine lore to separate the gold from the dross. What was good and productive he was ready to recognize and assimilate; leaving the opium pomps and splendors of the discourse, and all the Oriental imagery with which the speaker decorated his bathos, to those who could find profit therein. It is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... with the caskets of gold, silver, and lead—had but chosen "to owe and hazard all for lead," instead of deciding as did the Prince of Morocco, the other suitor, that "a golden mind stoops not to shows of dross"—if France had hazarded all for the holding and settling of those regions whose worth was symbolized in those unpromising pieces of lead planted in the fertile soil of Louisiana, Michigan, and Ohio along the ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... with these mighty mountains is not the impression made upon him. He is not overawed and overcome by them. His soul goes out most lovingly to them because they have aroused in him all the greatness in his soul, and purified it—even if only for a time—of all its dross and despicableness. And he loves them for that. He does not go cringing along, feeling himself a worm in comparison with them. There is warm kinship between him and them. He knows what is in their soul. And ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... faced the black evil and hideous cruelty in a man's world, and that she understood, and forgave. You felt her soul had passed through a fierce, white heat of pain, and had emerged burned clean of dross, free of all petty rancor or hatred. It glowed in her face, this wide understanding and sympathy, looked from her eyes, and sounded in her voice, and it was this that won the worship of the desperate men and broken derelicts who ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... intimacy, the two happy lovers ceased to be so shy of common themes, and their speech did not reject all as dross that was not pure ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... blasts the screaming autumn whirl, All night through archways of the bridged pearl And portals of pure silver walks the moon. Wake on, my soul, nor crouch to agony: Turn cloud to light, and bitterness to joy, And dross to gold with glorious alchemy, Basing thy throne above the world's annoy. Reign thou above the storms of sorrow and ruth That roar beneath; unshaken peace hath won thee: So shall thou pierce the woven glooms of truth; So shall the blessing ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... that perfection share? Yes; our lives are pages of thy story, We thy shape and superscription bear; Tarnished forms—torn leaves—but thou canst mend them, Thou thine own completeness canst unfold From our imperfections, and wilt end them— Dross consuming, turning ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... question, Does this act concern the confederacy? And was there ever a proposition so plain, as to pass Congress without a debate? Their decisions are almost always wise; they are like pure metal. But you know of how much dross this is the result. Would not an appeal from the State judicature to a federal court, in all cases where the act of Confederation controlled the question, be as effectual a remedy, and exactly commensurate to the defect. A British ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... 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 ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 6, June, 1890 • Various
... fame-drunken, shall be named first. Herr Goldstein follows, sonorous, curly-haired, heavy, a trifle anxious, as some bear that had caught, somehow, a butterfly in his claws. Next, a man condemned to a newspaper, sad, courted, armed, analyzing for press agent's dross every sentence that was poured over him, eating his a la Newburg in the silence of greatness. To conclude, a youth with parted hair, a name that is ochre to red journals and gold on the back of a supper check. These sat at a table while the musicians ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... promise that unity of interest and stability of fortune that Devil's Ford had lacked. But nothing could be done until the rainy season had fairly set in; until the long-looked-for element that was to magically separate the gold from the dross in those dull mounds of dust and gravel had come of its own free will, and in its own appointed channels, independent of the feeble auxiliaries that had hopelessly riven the rocks on the hillside, or hung incomplete and unfinished in ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... in the mines the need for strictest economy and fullest efficiency was patent enough. It was still a case of faith and hope—a case of continual putting in of work and money, and, so far, of getting little out—except the dross which intervened between them ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... there, still pale, erect, modest, two pairs of eyes saw what no other eyes saw, two minds were thinking what none others were—the mother and Judith Page. Others saw him as the soldier, the generous brother, the returned hero. These two looked deeper and saw the new man who had been forged from dross by the fire of battle and fever and the fire of love. There was much humility in the face, a new fire in the eyes, a nobler bearing—and his bearing had always been proud—a nobler ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... frame in the foreview of it had allowed her to speak: she felt grave alarms in one direction, where Nesta stood in the eye of her father; besides an unformed dread that the simplicity in generosity of Victor's nature was doomed to show signs of dross ultimately, under the necessity he imposed upon himself to run out his forecasts, and scheme, and defensively compel the world to serve his ends, for the protection of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and the weeks passed, and the months, and the years! And little Lionel was growing up amidst the dross. His long hair was filthy, and matted together, and his skin was always stained with the clay. His parents could scarcely know whether he was a lovely boy or not. It was so dark down there, that his mother could not ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... dross of its earthly embodiments being burned away by this renunciation, ideal beauty is revealed to the poet, not merely in a flash of inspiration, as at the beginning of his quest, but as an abiding presence in the soul. At least this is the ideal, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... 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
... The thing is impossible, for the Science is absolute. It cannot be otherwise, since it proceeds directly from the All-in-all and the Everything-in-Which, also Soul, Bones, Truth, one of a series, alone and without equal. It is Mathematics purified from material dross ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Wellington? Have we ever tried to make them understand that they are called to be the temporary custodians of very glorious traditions, and the trustees of a spiritual wealth compared with which the gold mines of the Rand are but dross? Do we even teach them, in any rational manner, the fine old language which has been slowly perfected for centuries, and which is now being used up and debased by the rubbishy newspapers which form almost the sole reading of the majority? We have marvelled ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... gold-piece from out of his purse 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 he ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... of a rich merchant, as he was called in the school, although I knew that title to be one of courtesy only, and I was ashamed of the little superiority which that advantage gave me. What cause for pride can there be in the possession of so much dross? You will smile, sir, when I tell you of the resolution which fixed itself in the mind of a boy scarcely in his teens. My playfellows were respected on account of the considerations which I have named. Why should I not be respected? I vowed that I would become ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... near. Even pleasing scenes improve by time, and seem more exquisite in recollection, than when they were present; if they have not faded to dimness in the memory. Perhaps, there is so much evil in every human enjoyment, when present—so much dross mixed with it—that it requires to be refined by time; and yet I do not see why time should not melt away the good and the evil in equal proportions; why the shade should decay, and the light ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... 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
... of the vine is a type of earth-born pleasures; those who would enjoy Nazarite nearness to GOD must count His love "better than wine." To win CHRIST, the Apostle Paul gladly suffered the loss of all things, and counted them as dross and dung for the excellency of the knowledge of CHRIST JESUS his LORD. The things he gave up were not bad things, but good—things that in themselves were gain to him; and CHRIST Himself for our redemption ...
— Separation and Service - or Thoughts on Numbers VI, VII. • James Hudson Taylor
... Milly loomed up with a thousand dishes on her bare arm—loomed up big and white and pink and awful as Mount Saint Elias—with a smile like day breaking in a gulch. And the Klondiker threw down his pelts and nuggets as dross, and let his jaw fall half-way, and stared at her. You could almost see the diamond tiaras on Milly's brow and the hand-embroidered silk Paris gowns that he meant ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... the copper streak, nor yet the yellow dust; I am not fain for sake of gain to irk the frozen crust; Let fellows gross find gilded dross, far other is my mark; Oh, gentle youth, this is the truth—I go ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... 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 ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... that he had drawn back within himself some further revealing would come from him. It was little that he said in all, but language that has been fused in the furnace of so strong a sorrow and silence has little of the dross of common speech—the unmeaning, misleading, unnecessary elements: his veritable memory and thought and feeling were painted ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... 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 ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... are weapons in these contests Keener than the Damask blade, There are metals of such temper As no crucible e'er made; For the dross must be extracted In the furnace of the soul Till no refuse or pollution Shall defile the ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... another race 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. Johnson, and Burton's Anatomy of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... 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
... some obscure den among the rocks. For the moment her own troubles were pretty nearly forgotten, for there was something for her to do. She had been but a useless by-product of humanity in the great melting pot of the world and had proved incapable of rising above the dross and making even a poor place for herself. But this man was young and strong and able, bearing all the marks of one destined to be of use. He had looked splendid in his efficient and sturdy manhood ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... she meant. It was wonderful that 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 him. He understood her better, ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... Coppertop for a run into the country in his car, was as simple and considerate and kindly as a man could be. Coppertop adored him, and, as Gillian reflected, the love of children is rarely misplaced. Some instinct leads them to divine unfailingly which is gold and which dross. ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... 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
... of his vocation, without one grain of self-ambition, 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 ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... my hand he dropped a lump of solid glittering virgin ore. He had not the smallest idea of having done any thing worthy of human applause; and he put out his long red tongue and licked his teeth to get rid of uneatable dross, and gave me a quiet nudge to ask what more I wanted ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... asked this question in all good faith, looking up at her friend with a radiant countenance. What irony there was in the question for Diana Paget, whose whole existence had been poisoned by the lack of that sterling coin of the realm which seemed such sordid dross in the ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... perpetuated on his canvas,—meant strength, food and medicine for the dying wife he adored. The art failure that cast him into the depths of poverty unified with marvellous intensity all the finer elements of his nature. This rare spiritual unity, this purging of all the dross of triviality as he passed through the furnace of poverty, trial, and sorrow gave eloquence to his brush and enabled him to paint as never before,—as no prosperity would ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... it were a sacred relic, and narrates the story of Veere's indignation when a millionaire attempted to buy it, so feelingly as to fortify and complete one's suspicions that money after all is but dross and the love of it the ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... the uncleanness of thy soul (Matt. xxiii. 27.) Stand not therefore so stoutly to it, now thou art before God; sin is with thee, and judgment and justice is before him. It becomes thee, therefore, rather to despise and abhor this life, and to count all thy doings but dross and dung, and to be content to be justified with another's righteousness instead of thy own. This is the way to be secured. I say, blind Pharisee, this is the way to be secured from the wrath ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... chaff did disappear; Shall life's sweet Spring forever last? Look up, Old age approaches ominously near. Oh shake thou off the world, even as the bird Shakes off the midnight dew that clogged his wings. Soar upward, seek redemption from thy guilt And from the earthly dross that round thee clings. Draw near to God, His holy angels know, For whom His bounteous streams of ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... Protestants, taking the Bible as an oracle which personal inspiration was to interpret, could reform tradition in any way and to any extent which their reason or feeling happened to prompt. But so long as their Christianity was a positive faith, the residue, when all the dross had been criticised and burned away, was of divine authority. The Bible never became for them merely an ancient Jewish encyclopaedia, often eloquent, often curious, and often barbarous. God never became a literary ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... glance freer from this dross than the love of man to man? the love of the creature for his fellow; the ordained test of his love to his Creator? What seems more preeminently pure than the affection of the parent for the child, who owes him not only life ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... medical attendant sends you there; as a patient and an invalid, you can revel with a clear conscience. Money? Well, money is a secondary matter. All philosophies and all religions agree that money is mere dross, filthy lucre. Rise superior to it. We have a fair sum in hand to the credit of the firm; we can pick up some ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... golden goblet, brimming With the precious, ruby wine, Look back with weary longing To the damp and dusky mine? Is the sparkling coin, that beareth A monarch's image, fain To seek the glowing furnace, Where they purged its dross again? ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... was an alchemist, and the dross of outer events turned to gold in the marvellous crucible of his mind. Fortune should have known this and abandoned the vain attempt to torment him. He had failed, but no other man could have come so near success. He was alone, therefore free: poor, therefore independent; desirous ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... now receive the Holy Fire! 'Twill burn away all dross, All earthly, selfish, vain desire, 'Twill make you ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... celebrated copper-mines of Fahlun, some of which have been worked for 600 years, we saw nothing. We took their magnitude and richness for granted, on the strength of the immense heaps of dross through which we drove on approaching the town, and the desolate appearance of the surrounding country, whose vegetation has been for the most part destroyed by the fumes from the smelting works. In our sore ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... time for 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 ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the same time setting off fireworks, and so create such terrifying effects that none would venture near the spot again. With bated breath, she even suggested that I should make a "death-bone" to be employed for the secret ill of Duckbill; she thus exposed the dross of hereditary superstition which rose to the surface ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... roads; the balconies were draped with 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
... ships And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. 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 in these lips, And all is dross that is not Helena." ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... golden heart, Free from the dross of worldly art; Which, in the sight of heaven above, Is mine with all its hoarded love! Her love! Her boundless wealth ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... work begin, Burn up the dross of self and sin; Burn off my fetters, set me free, And through the furnace ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... it is not "too bright, nor good, for human nature's daily food;" it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and exalting of the heart, for the soothing it and purifying it from its dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful, never the same for two moments together; almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its infinity, its appeal to what is immortal ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... held her, made her realize, at last, the grandeur, the immensity of love. Her soul was awed. Thought followed thought through her brain; love in its sublimity was bared to her gaze; self fell away—burned as dross in the fire of suffering; to guide herself was not enough; she must aid and comfort others. If hands were outstretched in anguish, she must clasp them; if a heart cried to her in desolation, she had no right to turn aside. Was she so pure, so clean, so righteous, that contact with another ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... Oberon, tossing the manuscripts on the table. "I find no traces of the golden pen with which I wrote in characters of fire. My treasure of fairy coin is changed to worthless dross. My picture, painted in what seemed the loveliest hues, presents nothing but a faded and indistinguishable surface. I have been eloquent and poetical and humorous in a dream,—and behold! it is all nonsense, now ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 aid ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... slaves in the mines I should have received such valuable legacies; from poor Ingram a diamond worth so much money, and from the other Englishman a tattered Bible which made me a sincere Christian—a legacy in comparison of which the diamond was as dross. ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... high with an old silk cord and took her umbrella. Remembering that she had not covered the fire, and that it would have burnt away before she returned, she took a bucket out to the coal-house. The wet dross hissed and smoked as she covered the fire. She drew out the damper to heat the water, turned back the rag hearthrug lest a cinder should fall on it in her absence, and once more taking her umbrella, and lifting the key from its nail ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... he was—poor Herbert!—and so gentlemanly." And here Mrs. Sefton sighed; for to her it was always a perilous thing to recall the past. No woman had ever been so foolish as she; she had cast away gold for dross. ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... sudden laugh. "I'm not gold, my dear chap, but the tinniest dross that ever was made. Shall we go and have a drink, what? This sort of ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... his fierce confidence in the theory of liberative Individualism. But afterwards he had found himself out of his depth; and each and every theory had seemed to him but part of the chaotic contradictions and incoherences of humanity on its march. It was all a continuous piling up of dross, amidst which he lost himself. Although Fourier had sprung from Saint-Simon he denied him in part; and if Saint-Simon's doctrine ended in a kind of mystical sensuality, the other's conducted to an unacceptable regimenting of society. Proudhon, for his part, demolished ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Analogy in modern 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 which seemed to follow. He had no methods of difference or of concomitant variations, ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... 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
... woman. I might have been, had you been different. I'm not at all sure. Certainly I'm not that kind now, even though I know in my heart that the sort of career you have made for yourself, and that I intend to make for myself is all dross. But now I can't ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... the watcher watched. I had been placed in one of the first boarding-schools near town; a most liberal stipend had been paid with me; I had every description of master; yet, after all this outlay of money, which is not dross—and waste of time, which is beyond price precious, what was I at leaving this academy? Let the good folks withinside of the Stickenham stage testify; by one trick or another I had contrived to make them all tolerably uncomfortable before ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... a tale, 'tis not a jest, Admir'd with laughter at a feast, Nor florid talk, which can that title gain, The proofs of wit for ever must remain. Neither can that have any place, At which a virgin hides her face; Such dross the fire must purge away; 'tis just, The author blush ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... 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, flash not thy bright eyes nor toss haughty ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... live in; every day are heard the chanting and singing of newly arriving bands of pilgrims, the strange, wild utterances of dervishes preaching on the streets, and the shouting responses of their auditors. Conspicuous above everything else in the city, as gold is conspicuous from dross, is the golden dome and gold-tipped minarets of the holy edifice that imparts to the city its sacred character. The gold is in thin plates covering the hemispherical roof like sheets of tin; like most Eastern things, its appearance is more impressive from a distance than ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... express; 'Tis love just peeping in a hasty dress. Retire, fair creature, to your needful rest; There's something noble labouring in my breast: This raging fire, which through the mass does move, Shall purge my dross, and shall refine my love. [Exeunt ALMAHIDE and ESPERANZA. She goes, and I like my own ghost appear; It is not living ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... in everything but name, was a true marriage. Just before he met Mathilde, Heine had written to his friend and publisher, Campe, that he was at last sick to death of the poor pleasures which had held him too long. "I believe," he writes, "that my soul is at last purified of all its dross; henceforth my verses will be the more beautiful, my books the more harmonious. At all events, I know this—that at the present moment everything impure and vulgar ...
— Old Love Stories Retold • Richard Le Gallienne
... up in lead, and then putting them into little earthen cupps made of stuff like tobacco pipes, and put them into a burning hot furnace, where, after a while, the whole body is melted, and at last the lead in both is sunk into the body of the cupp, which carries away all the copper or dross with it, and left the pure gold and silver embodyed together, of that which hath both been put into the cupp together, and the silver alone in these where it was put alone in the leaden case. And to part the silver and the gold in the first experiment, they put the mixed body into a glass of ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... for I find I have been rich in dross of thought, and poor In that I was a fool, and lastly blind For ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... but they must bear the consequences. If they were evil-minded, it would be their wish to consort with those of like mind, and in time they must pass to the abode of the wicked; if pure-minded, they would seek out kindred spirits, and, when finally purged of the dross of earth, be translated to the realm of bliss. To heaven, then, voyaged Swedenborg, on a journey of discovery; and to hell likewise. What he saw he has set down in many bulky volumes, than which philosopher has written none ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... art of ruling India consists not in treading barefooted on scorpions—not in virtuous indignation at men who know no better— but in seeking for and making much of the gold that lies ever amid the dross. There is gold in the character of any man who once passed the grilling tests before enlistment in a British-Indian regiment. It may need experience to lay a finger on it, but ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... listen to our fellow workers, and, listening and sympathizing with the unselfish labor being carried on everywhere, pledge ourselves to a flaming loyalty to suffrage and suffragists that will burn away all dross of dissension, all barriers to united effort. Let us come with high resolve that we will never waver in our effort to obtain the right to stand side by side with the men of this country in the mortal struggle that shall bid perish from this land political corruption, privilege, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... at price of his heart's blood. The clamour of the arrogant accuser Wastes that one hour we needed to make good. This was foretold of old at our outgoing; This we accepted who have squandered, knowing, The strength and glory of our reputations, At the day's need, as it were dross, to guard The tender and new-dedicate foundations Against the ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... of lights,[576] too, up to Charing Cross, Pall Mall, and so forth, have a coruscation Like gold as in comparison to dross, Matched with the Continent's illumination, Whose cities Night by no means deigns to gloss. The French were not yet a lamp-lighting nation, And when they grew so—on their new-found lantern, Instead of wicks, they ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... whining youth, Forsooth! Go, weep and wail, Sigh and grow pale, Weave melancholy rhymes On the old times, Whose joys like shadowy ghosts appear,— But leave me to my beer! Gold is dross, Love is loss; So, if I gulp my sorrows down, Or see them drown In foamy draughts of old nut-brown, Then do I wear the crown Without ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... has become soft enough to stir with a clean pine stick skim off the dross. Continue heating metal ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... with nature, then does Folly throw aside her smiling mask, become terrible with her importunities, and hound us into the grave. I am paying Folly, Monsieur," exhibiting a palsied hand. "I am paying in precious hours for the dross she lent ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... fire was given Not to dissolve our clay, But draw Promethean beams from Heaven, And purge the dross away. ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... the presence of physical torture. I learnt secrets about the fineness of his spirit which, I believe, he never allowed you to suspect. Probably he never suspected them himself until the ordeal of terror had sifted the gold from the dross. It was the dross that Maisie remembered. But we, who were his comrades in khaki, saw nothing but the gold—his untiring ability to share. You weren't there; nevertheless, that's what I've got to help you to understand. I've got to make you see the ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... 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 ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... even more severe, Mr Cargrim. He said, "Burning lips and a wicked heart are like a potsherd covered with silver dross." I fancy there were Mrs Panseys in ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... they have suffered the common fate of mankind; these very dutiful children reverence only their errors and mistakes, but their excellences they either overlook, or conceal, or corrupt; so that it may truly be said to be their only study to collect dross from the midst of gold. Then they overwhelm us with senseless clamours, as despisers and enemies of the fathers. But we do not hold them in such contempt, but that, if it were consistent with my present design, I could easily support by their suffrages most of the sentiments ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... from his helpless Creature be repaid Pure Gold for what he lent him dross-allay'd— Sue for a Debt he never did contract, And cannot ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... as though they implied that our poor love would be superseded by higher attributes possessed by the angelic hosts, of which we knew nothing. Now I know that they mean that our human love shall be refined from all the dross of earthly passion, purified and exalted above mortal conception. I prayed that my love for you might be in some such measure refined and purified, and I know that prayer has been answered. I pledge you that love, Kathie; a love that will never wrong you even in thought; ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... nothing more than like millions of its kind? Millions? Nay, an infinitude, an endless number of beings, which Nature in secula seculorum unceasingly sends bubbling forth from her inexhaustible source; as generous with them as the smith with the dross that ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... 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 ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... rule the northern portion of his land, and they will send to me everything which I shall tell them to send to me, saying, 'Let such and such a thing be brought,' until such time as I can make the journey to the South (i.e. to Egypt), when I will have thy miserable dross brought to thee, even to the uttermost portion thereof, in very truth." That was ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... opposition. A bill was brought into parliament to forbid the circulation of the Scriptures in English; but the sturdy John of Gaunt vigorously asserted the right of the people to have the Word of God in their own tongue; "for why," said he, "are we to be the dross of the nations?" However, the rulers of the Church grew more and more alarmed at the circulation of the book. At length Archbishop Arundel, a zealous but not very learned prelate, complained to the Pope of "that pestilent wretch, John ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Richard, it is surely no small matter to lose the respect of those who looked up to us for countenance; and the favour of a right learned king; and, O Master Hooker, such a power of money! But money is mere dross. I should always hold it so, if it possessed not two qualities: that of making men treat us reverently, and that of enabling us to ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... 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 across, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... true metal of a Golden Deed is self-devotion. Selfishness is the dross and alloy that gives the unsound ring to many an act that has been called glorious. And, on the other hand, it is not only the valor, which meets a thousand enemies upon the battlefield, or scales the walls ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... written temesquitato; a Mexican word, applied to the dross from the surface of lead into which pulverized ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... was this, "Establish as few things jure divino as can well be;" which is, by interpretation, as little fine gold, and as much dross as can well be. "The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times," Psal. xii, 6. What you take from the word of God is fine "gold tried in the fire" (Rev. ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... faint: there came a further change: Once more uprose the mystic mountain-range: Below were men and horses pierced with worms, And slowly quickening into lower forms; By shards and scurf of salt, and scum of dross, Old plash of rains, and refuse patch'd with moss, Then some one spake [6]: "Behold! it was a crime Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time". [7] Another said: "The crime of sense became The crime of ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... THE COST.—Who shall estimate the cost of a priceless reputation—that impress which gives this human dross its currency—without which we stand despised, debased, depreciated? Who shall repair it injured? Who can redeem it lost? Oh, well and truly does the great philosopher of poetry esteem the world's wealth as "trash" in the comparison. Without ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... hour What in an age they, with incessant toil And hands innumerable, scarce perform. Nigh on the plain, in many cells prepared, That underneath had veins of liquid fire Sluiced from the lake, a second multitude With wondrous art founded the massy ore, Severing each kind, and scummed the bullion-dross. A third as soon had formed within the ground A various mould, and from the boiling cells By strange conveyance filled each hollow nook; As in an organ, from one blast of wind, To many a row of pipes the sound-board breathes. Anon out of the earth a fabric huge Rose like an exhalation, with the ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... 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 whom ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... took no more notice of the gold than if it had been so much dross; at which the honest burgher marvelled exceedingly. He ordered that the wounds of the merchant should be dressed, and his own examined. On taking off his cuirass, his wound was found to be but slight; but his men were so exasperated at seeing his blood, that they would have ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... cried Lord Berrington, who, having entered during the contest, had stood unobserved until this moment; "and their gold and tinsel would prove but dross and bubble, if struck by the Ithuriel touch ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... hour upon the stage, during a day-dream of popularity, with the ornaments and jewels borrowed from the common stock, to which nothing but their vanity and presumption gives them the least individual claim—he has dug into the mine of truth, and brought up ore mixed with dross! In weighing his merits we come at once to the question of what he has done or failed to do. It is a specific claim that he sets up. When we speak of Mr. Malthus, we mean the Essay on Population; and when we mention ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... One, who dwells above, And of the soul's untraceable descent From that high fount of spirit, through the grades Of intellectual being, till it mix With atoms vague, corruptible, and dark; Nor yet even then, though sunk in earthly dross, Corrupted all, nor its ethereal touch Quite lost, but tasting of the fountain still. As some bright river, which has rolled along Through meads of flowery light and mines of gold, When poured at length into the dusky deep, Disdains to take at once its briny taint, Or balmy freshness, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Plane He is working in the minds of the souls abiding there, urging them to cast off the dross of earth-desires and to fix the aim upon higher things, to the end that their re-incarnations may be under improved conditions. On the Physical Plane He is working in the hearts and minds of the earth-people, striving ever to uplift to higher things. His aim is ever ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... solemn trial Of men is drawing near, Who has the hidden substance, Who dross, will then appear. O God, let me experience Upon my heart thy grace; That is the stamp and image Alone that day ...
— Favourite Welsh Hymns - Translated into English • Joseph Morris
... thou run out thy race, Call on thy lazy, leaden-stepping hours, Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace; And glut thyself with what thy womb devours, Which is no more than what is false and vain, And merely mortal dross; So little is our loss, So little is thy gain. For when as each thing bad thou hast entomb'd, And last of all, thy greedy self consum'd, Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss With an individual kiss; And Joy shall overtake us as a flood; When ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... 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, there's no ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... questioned her," replied Bigot; "she never spoke of money; alas! all the money in the world was as dross in her estimation. Other things than money occupied her ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... dim the gold of life has grown, I will not count it dross, Nor turn from treasures still my own To sigh ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... at the gate the carriage which was to take us to the station. Now came the moment when I was tried by the crucible and found to be dross. I committed the most foolish blunder of my life. My love suddenly overleapt its bounds. In a moment my arms were around her lithe body; my lips met hers squarely. After it was done she stood very still, as if incapable of understanding my ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... tares and earthiness ... I gave over my will entirely to its [wisdom's] fiery smelting furnace as to a fire of purification, till all my vain and chaff-like desires and the tares of earthly lust had been burnt away as by fire, and all my iron, tin and dross had been entirely melted in this furnace, so that I appeared in spirit as a pure gold, and could see a new heaven and a new earth created and ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... "bar[a]r," separavit, in its Pilpel form, [Hebrew: BARBAR] "barbar;" hence, "one who is separated," "a foreigner." And even though Clel. Voc. 126., n., admits that purus, "clean," "separated from dross," originally signifies cleansing by fire, [Greek: pur], yet both it and far-farris, "bread-corn," i. e. separated from the husk, and fur-fur, "bran," which is separated from the flour, may find their origin ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... them scorn the gold and give chase to the possessors of the gold; let them admire the lustre, not of lucre, but of conquest; remembering, that a trophy gave more reward than gain. Courage was worth more than dross, if they measured aright the quality of both; for the one furnished outward adorning, but the other enhanced both outward and inward grace. Therefore they must keep their eyes far from the sight of money, and their soul from covetousness, and devote it to the pursuits of war. Further, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the naturalist, clearing his throat, like one who was much in earnest, "let us discuss understandingly and in amity. You speak of the dross of ignorance, whereas my memory dwells on those precious jewels, which it was my happy fortune, formerly, to witness, among the treasured glories ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... this world's applause and favor? Look out! God has wonderful ways of chastising His people in those very things in which they sell His interest. But you say that "everybody will be against you!" Yes, very likely. Let us settle that at once. Count all things dung and dross. Let none of these things move you. You say, "It will be a life of conflict to the end." Very likely, so was His. "I am so weak," you say. He knows all about that. You say, "It will be so cutting ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... wouldn't mind at all. But then . . . you know the life we lead; well, anyway I mean (That is, providing it's a girl) to call her Angeline." "Cheer up," said I; "it's all in life. There's gold within the dross. Come on, we'll drink another verre to Angeline ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service |
