"Dross" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... empire ten times as populous and more than ten times as powerful. True, the Russians were pouring in under the guise of friendship; but the bitter memories of Tilsit forbade any implicit trust in Alexander. And, if the dross had been burnt out of his nature by a year of fiery trial, could his army, exhausted by that frightful winter campaign and decimated by the diseases which Napoleon's ghastly array scattered broadcast ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... should come to this." And, though she kept her face hidden, I knew that she was weeping. "A woman's love transforms the man till she sees him, not as he is, but as her heart would have him be; the dross becomes pure gold, and she believes and believes ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... advancing with trembling and hesitating steps. Those are the treasures, the golden vases and so forth, that the saint has catalogued and is going to exhibit to the prefect, who is waiting in the sanctuary. The prefect is dumb with rage; the saint observes that gold is found in dross; that the disease of the body is to be less feared than that of the soul; and he developes this idea with a good deal of wit. The boasters suffer from dropsy, the miser from cramp in the wrist, the ambitious from febrile heat, the gossipers, who delight ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... form dilated to the stature of the ideal time. Then we felt in our veins the pulse of immortal youth. Then all the chivalry of the ancient days, all the heroism, all the self-sacrifice that shaped itself into noble living, came back to us, poured over us, swept away the dross of selfishness and deception and petty scheming, and Patriotism rose from the swelling wave stately as a goddess. Patriotism, that had been to us but a dingy and meaningless antiquity, took on a new form, a new mien, a countenance divinely fair and forever young, and received once more the homage ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... flood, which gradually purifies itself in two ways,—the mud settles to the bottom, and the scum rises to the top. When we examine the writings that by common consent constitute our literature, the clear stream purified of its dross, we find at least two more qualities, which we call the tests of literature, and which ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Time, till 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 everything that is sincerely ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... loss; The call of honour all demands! What thought those generous hearts of dross Who sowed our races in these lands? Who blames the Loyalist of pelf? Champlain, what cared ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... it even in death, a white man could not hug the stuff more closely to his breast. Ah! Teule, would that the soil of Anahuac bore naught but corn for bread and flint and copper for the points of spears and arrows, then had her sons been free for ever. Curses on yonder dross, for it is the bait that sets these sea sharks tearing at our throats. Curses on it, I say; may it never glitter more in the sunshine, may it be lost for ever!' And he fell fiercely to the work ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... was a test, says my text. The word which it employs to designate the manner of testing or trying, is one drawn from the smelting operations of the goldsmith, by which, heat being applied, the mass is made fluid and the dross is run off, and as the result of the trial, there flows out ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... hug their worldly store, And gripe and pinch to make it more; Their gold and silver's shining ore He counts it all but dross: 'Tis better treasure he desires; A surer stock his passion fires, And mild benevolence inspires The worthy Man ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... cup I've quaffed, * And wept my woes when speech was vain as wind! And thou:—"Be patient, 'tis thy bestest course * And choicest medicine for mortal mind!" Then unto patience worthy praise cleave thou; * Easy of issue and be lief resigned: Nor hope thou aught of me lest ill alloy * Or aught of dross affect my blood refined: Such is my speech. Read, mark, and learn my say! * To what thou deemest ne'er ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... cracking her finger-bones. "Now go I hot-foot to weave spells and enchantments, aha—oho! Spells that shall prove the false from the true, the gold from the dross. Thou, Sir Fool, art doubting lover, so art thou blind lover! I will resolve thee thy doubts, open thy eyes and show thee great joy or bitter sorrow—oho! Thou, proud lady, hast stooped to love a motley mountebank—nay, ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... in my heart, celestial flame, With memories of him, Till, from earth's dross refined, I rise ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... leopard," concluded his wife, "trust not the fox, for I fear him and his wiles. If the place he tells of be so fair, why does not the fox take it for himself?" "Nay," said the leopard, "thou art a silly prattler. I have often proved my friend, and there is no dross in the ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... 490 The field, and saved him from the wrath of Moore; From either pistol snatched the vengeful lead, And straight restored it to her favourite's head; That head, with greater than magnetic power, Caught it, as Danaee caught the golden shower, And, though the thickening dross will scarce refine, Augments its ore, and is itself a mine. "My son," she cried, "ne'er thirst for gore again, Resign the pistol and resume the pen; O'er politics and poesy preside, 500 Boast of thy country, and Britannia's guide! For long as Albion's heedless sons submit, Or ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... 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
... military dress; we have seen boys sent from school in despair of improvement, and intrusted with military command; fools that cannot learn their duty, and children that cannot perform it, have been indiscriminately promoted; the dross of the nation has been swept together to compose our new forces, and every man who was too stupid or infamous to learn or carry on a trade, has been placed, by this great disposer of honours, above the necessity of application, or the reach ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... the 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 ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... of flix and floss, Freshness and fragrance—floods of it, too! Gold, did I say? Nay, gold's mere dross! ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... sound of it. It came, cleansing from his heart and from his life the dust and dimness of the world's petty cares, and vain pursuits. It found him weary of gains-getting, weary of toiling and moiling amid the dross of earth for that which could not satisfy, and it gave him for his own, the pearl which is above all price. Weary of tossing to and fro, it gave him a sure resting-place, "a refuge whereunto he may continually resort," a peace that is abiding. ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... well-being in which the realities of the future are engendering, but in the matter of sheer achievement I believe in my own time. It has been the cry of the irresponsive man since criticism began, that his own generation produced nothing; it is a cry that I hate and deny. When the dross has been cleared away and comparison becomes possible, I am convinced it will be admitted that in the aggregate, in philosophy and significant literature, in architecture, painting and scientific research, in ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... the Divine Grace operated by the same rules, and followed the same methods, that the Divine Providence observed in the natural world; and that the minds of men were purged from their vices and corruptions in the very same manner that metals were purified from their dross, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... hurrying on with fond impatience. Scarce could the Hierophant impose a rein Upon his headlong efforts. "What avails A part without the whole?" the youth exclaimed; "Can there be here a lesser or a greater? The truth thou speak'st of, like mere earthly dross, Is't but a sum that can be held by man In larger or in smaller quantity? Surely 'tis changeless, indivisible; Deprive a harmony of but one note, Deprive the rainbow of one single color, And all that will remain is naught, so long As that one color, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... mind, whether or no they have been well done; the sacrifice of the lower nature properly made, control of the triune being established, the transmutations correct and accurate, assimilation perfect and free from dross, harmony gained by loving obedience to the higher law of being, and thus becomes ruler of his kingdom; the long journey almost accomplished, so far as Earth is concerned, perceiving and understanding that all sciences, philosophies, and religions, have their origin from one primal source. ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... has been completely freed from dross, no fire, however great, has any further action on it, for nothing but its imperfections can be consumed. So it is with the divine fire in the soul. God retains her in these flames until every stain is burned away, and she is brought to the highest perfection of which ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... 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 ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... taste the fruit of the tropics even if it is worm-eaten! I would drink the wine though it were gall, and I want to put my arm around a maid's waist, even if a bankrupt father does sit at the hearth stone! I want silver and gold—if in the end it is nothing but dross! ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... he said, 'keep your dross. I care nothing for money. All I ask of you,' proceeded Clarence, 'is your consent to my engagement to ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind. Well, these are useless complaints; I shall certainly find no friend on the wide ocean, nor even here in Archangel, among merchants and seamen. Yet some feelings, unallied to the dross of human nature, beat even in these rugged bosoms. My lieutenant, for instance, is a man of wonderful courage and enterprise; he is madly desirous of glory, or rather, to word my phrase more characteristically, of advancement in ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... definition, foliated clouds of the highest rarity; that is, they undulated and broke into vegetable formations, and were tinged with splendors compared with which the gilding of our autumn woodlands is as dross compared with gold. Far away into the illimitable distance stretched long avenues of these gaseous forests, dimly transparent, and painted with prismatic hues of unimaginable brilliancy. The pendent branches waved along the fluid glades until every vista seemed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... curtains, but from which happy faces looked—lowly homes, poor in this world's wealth, but rich in domestic peace and love; and for the blessed quiet of their lowly hearthstones, he would joyfully have bartered wealth and fame, and all such dross as men call happiness. And Harry saw them too. The little, lonely heart, saddened by a shadow it could not comprehend, from its own gloomy home turned longingly to their homely cheerfulness, as flowers turn to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... dear babe, with all thy sacred store, In triumph landed on the heavenly shore; Sure nature form'd thee in her softest mould, And grace, from nature's dross, refund the gold. ...
— Stories of Boys and Girls Who Loved the Saviour - A Token for Children • John Wesley
... the Marathas. His battalions were officered by Europeans, but Europeans of respectability were unwilling to take service under a man so precariously situated, however great their necessities; and he was obliged to content himself for the most part with the very dross of society—men who could neither read nor write, nor keep themselves sober. The consequence was that the battalions were often in a state of mutiny, committing every kind of outrage upon the persons of their officers, and at all times in a state of insubordination bordering on mutiny. These battalions ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... defenceless and unarmed democracy with protection and with arms by means of the struggle beyond the Alps. And he spoke, not to the Clodian public whose republican enthusiasm had been long burnt down to ashes and dross, but to the young men from the towns and villages of Northern Italy, who still felt freshly and purely the mighty influence of the thought of civic freedom; who were still capable of fighting and of dying for ideals; who had themselves received for their country ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Those words had always seemed to me austere and cold, 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; that you ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... vivid than before that all the children of the earth dwell under the reign of the same divine law, and that for each and every one that law evolves through all the ages, the higher from the lower, the good from evil, slowly but surely separating the dross from the pure gold, disintegrating what is pernicious, consolidating what is beneficial to the race, so that the feeling that formerly told us that we alone had special care bestowed upon us gives place to the knowledge that every one in his day and generation, wherever found, receives ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... about government, and got the reply, dictated by some circumstances of which we are ignorant, 'Good government obtains, when those who are near are made happy, and those who are far off are attracted [5]' After a short stay in Sheh, according to Sze-ma Ch'ien, he returned to Ts'ai, and having to dross a river, he sent Tsze-lu to inquire for the ford of two men who were at work in a neighboring field. They were recluses, men who had withdrawn from public life in disgust at the waywardness of the times. One of them ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... missiles of which thou hast told me. Oh! Leo, when the nations are beggared and their golden god is down; when the usurer and the fat merchant tremble and turn white as chalk because their hoards are but useless dross; when I have made the bankrupt Exchanges of the world my mock, and laugh across the ruin of its richest markets, why, then, will not true worth come to its ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... leaping and crackling before his eyes was like a powerful medicine. It stirred things that had lain dormant within him. It consumed the heavy dross of four years of stupefying torture and brought back to him vividly the happenings of a yesterday that had dragged itself on like a century. All at once he seemed unburdened of shackles that had weighted him down to the point of madness. Every ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... and so on, and so on. But the fact is I was not a fool. Here was money enough to set me up as a fine gentleman for life, and I meant to save it and keep it too, if I could. A man on his deathbed, a man in such peril that his end is certain, can afford to be sentimental. He is going where money is dross indeed, and he is in a posture when to moralize upon human greed and the vanity of wishes and riches becomes him. But would not a man whose health is hearty, and who hopes to save his life, be worse off than a sheep in the matter of brains not to keep a firm grip of ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... if ye do not remember to be charitable, ye are as dross, which the refiners do cast out, (it being of no worth), and is trodden underfoot of ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... instance, a Refiner mingles Gold and Lead, and exposing this Mixture upon a Cuppell to the violence of the fire, thereby separates it into pure and refulgent Gold and Lead (which driven off together with the Dross of the Gold is thence call'd Lithargyrium Auri) can any man doubt that sees these two so differing substances separated from the Mass, that they were existent in it before it was committed to ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... missing. Indeed, Borodin had not even notated the overture when he died, and we know it thanks only to a pupil who had heard him play it on the piano and recollected it well enough to reconstruct it. Other of his works that are complete are spotty, commingled dross and gold. He was a curiously uneven workman. There appear to have been whole regions of his personality that remained unsensitized. Part of him seems to have gone out toward a new free Russian music; part of him seems to have been satisfied with the style of the Italian operas ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... part, I was mightily pleased to see her, for though she was, in the native ways of affairs, somewhat out of my star, still, as I said, she was to show later that she had an eye for a pretty fellow and owned a spirit above mere dross. I say no more. She seemed content enough to see me, but still more content to see Messer Guido. This was an experience in the ways of ladies with which those that walked with Messer Guido were familiar. ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Isabella, in whose spotless life, love and reason blended into perfect truth; nor Juliet, within whose heart, passion and purity met like white and red within the bosom of a rose; nor Cordelia, who chose to suffer loss rather than show her wealth of love with those who gilded dross with golden words in hope of gain; nor Miranda, who told her love as freely as a flower gives its blossom to the kisses of the sun; nor Imogene, who asked, "What is it to be false?" nor Hermione, who bore with perfect faith and hope the cross of shame, and who ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... 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 in 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 ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... have not been studying anything especially—medicine for instance. No? That's right. Had I been honoured by being asked to advise you on the use of your time when you arrived here I would have been strongly opposed to such a course. Knowledge in itself is mere dross." ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... 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? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... gold is tried in the furnace, So He tries the hearts of men; And the dwale and the dross shall suffer loss, When He tries the hearts of men. And the wood, and the hay, and the stubble Shall pass in the flame away, For gain is loss, and loss is gain, And treasure of earth is poor and vain, When He tries the hearts ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... friends; let it be a gift then, by the aid of which you can keep your mother from privation. Suwanee, Suwanee, why do you refuse to take this dross from me when I would give my heart's blood ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... know no joyful reaping this side of the grave. O my brothers, who have felt the fires of that furnace heated seven times hotter than usual, shall we not in the resting-place beyond the river realize that these fires burned out of us the dross that we did not know was in our souls? The bird that comes out of the tempest with broken wing may henceforth take a lowlier flight, but will be safer because it ventures no more into ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... which they had turned their backs men were struggling, men were fighting, men's souls were being torn by passion. In that world to which their faces were set no haunting, hurrying footsteps ever fell; no soul was yet vexed by fierce fire, no dross of budded hope was yet laid low. ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... own people, whom God is preparing to bless the earth. Bear the anguish and the smart. The iron is sharp—I know, I know—it rends the tender flesh. The draught is bitterness on the lips. But there is rapture in the cup—there is the vision which makes all life below it dross for ever. Come, my daughter, come ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... of self-denial, True obedience and the cross, We may pass the fiery trial, Which does separate the dross. If we bear our crosses boldly, Watch and ev'ry evil shun, We shall find a body ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... are to mortals given With less of earth in them than heaven; And if there be a human tear From passion's dross refined and clear, A tear so limpid and so meek It would not stain an angel's cheek, 'Tis that which pious fathers shed Upon a duteous daughter's head! And as the Douglas to his breast His darling Ellen closely pressed, Such holy drops her tresses steeped, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... back together to the camp. From that period until the end of the war, Myrtle passed her time between the life of the tent and that of the hospital. In the offices of mercy which she performed for the sick and the wounded and the dying, the dross of her nature seemed to be burned away. The conflict of mingled lives in her blood had ceased. No lawless impulses usurped the place of that serene resolve which had grown strong by every exercise of its high prerogative. ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... lordship's friendship more than such tinsel bits of fame as can fall to my share, and of which I am particularly sick at present, as the Public Advertiser dressed me out t'other day with a heap of that dross which he had pillaged from some other strolling playwrights, who I did not desire ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... ninety-nine. But upon every act there will be a preliminary 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
... I have indirect influence with the American Congress, and presses me to communicate his grievance to the authorities in Washington. I dare not close my ear against such applicants, for in the mass of valueless dross which I receive, I sometimes discover a rough diamond which, after due cutting and polishing, I dispose of to the New ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... she said mockingly with her glance upon the dwarf. He shifted uneasily in the throne. "You should have put him out before! But now"—turning contemptuously to the poor figure of the great man—"he's harmless. His silence is golden; his speech was dross." ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... of pretty home scenery that were unrivaled. She stood looking at it now, her eyes fixed on the distant hills, her heart re-echoing the words: "In the grave alone is peace." In her heart and mind all was dross; she seemed to have lost the power of thinking; she had an engagement to sing in her favorite opera on the evening previous. Hundreds had assembled to hear her, and at the last moment they were compelled ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... never exactly alike in any two men, and he sought to express the hidden motives and principles which govern individual action. In this field he is like a miner delving underground, sending up masses of mingled earth and ore; and the reader must sift all this material to separate the gold from the dross. ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Excursion and The Prelude are, as wholes, not good poems at all. They contain, indeed, passages of magnificent poetry. But how one longs, how, as one sees from this essay, Mr Arnold longed, for some mercury-process which would simply amalgamate the gold out of them and allow us to throw the dross down any nearest cataract, or let it be blown away ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... association with so many of its enthusiastic advocates, had indeed done much for Sarah Grimke. Her mind was rapidly becoming purified from the dross that had clogged it so long; religious doubts and difficulties were fading away one by one, and the wide, warm sympathies of her nature now freed, expanded gladly to a new world of light and love and labor. As she expressed ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... see, took some colour and character from the locality, the time, and the race. Golden lines and verses may have been shed in the passage from place to place and down the centuries. But less of this happened, we may feel sure, than a purging away of the dross. As a rule, what was fittest—what was truest to nature and to human nature—survived and was perpetuated in this evolution of the ballad. When, in the course of its progress, it gathered to itself anything ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... our life, which also is earth-sown, earth-rooted; which must struggle upward, be cut down, rotted and broken, ere the separation take place between our dross and our worth—poor perishable shard and immortal fibre. Oh, the mystery, the mystery of that growth from the casting of the soul as a seed into the dark earth, until the time when, led through all natural changes and cleansed of weakness, it is borne from the ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... not the power of God, nor what resurrection from the dead means. What if, while it restored not thy former innocence, it brought thee a purity by the side of whose white splendour and inward preciousness, the innocence thou hadst lost was but a bauble, being but a thing that turned to dross in the first furnace of its temptation? Innocence is indeed priceless—that innocence which God counteth innocence, but thine was a flimsy show, a bit of polished and cherished glass—instead of which, if thou ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?— Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.— [Kisses her.] Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!— Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips, And all is dross that is not Helena. I will be Paris, and for love of thee, Instead of Troy, shall Wittenberg be sack'd; And I will combat with weak Menelaus, And wear thy colours on my plumed crest; Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel, And then return to Helen for a kiss. O, ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... that believing sentence—'But all shall be right.' The worst thy friends can do is to keep thy money, which I look upon as dung and dross in comparison of thee. Ah, Polly! with the treasure of thy friendship, and the unsearchable riches of Christ, how rich thinkest thou I am? Count—cast up—but thou wilt never ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... what irregular; that proper Remedies may be applied, and those important Lessons more thoroughly learnt, which I was mentioning under the former Branch of my Discourse. Let us pray, that through our Tears we may read our Duty, and that by the Heat of the Furnace we may be so melted, that our Dross may be purged away, and the Divine Image instamped on our Souls in brighter and fairer Characters. To sum up all in one Word, let us endeavour to set our Hearts more on that GOD, who is infinitely better to us than ten Children[a], ...
— Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children • Phillip Doddridge
... savage mountains, amid these pathless forests, was a noble city built and paved with gold. Somewhere flowed a stately river whose waters swept between golden margins, over sands of gold. In some remote region dwelt a barbarian monarch to whom gold and precious stones were as the dross of the wayside. These stories were the offspring of the legends of the alchemists of the Dark Ages, who had professed to make gold in their crucibles; it was as good to pick up gold in armfuls on the earth as to manufacture it in the laboratory. The actual ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... good 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 ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... great fear of being married for her money," said Clary. "I used to laugh at her, and tell her that no one who knew her would ever remember her money; the treasures of her mind so far surpassed the dross of the world. Yet, for all that, she wrote and gave me this ballad the next morning. I felt very much inclined to scold her for her want ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... good fellow,' and he pulled out his purse. 'Sir,' said I, 'if, "exempt from public haunt," I could get something to do when this dross is gone. In London there are sermons in stones, certainly, but not "good in everything,"—an observation I should take the liberty of making to the Swan if he were not now, alas! "the baseless fabric of ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Emperor Caligula, who had formerly tried to make gold from orpiment by the force of fire, was only one of a thousand adepts pursuing a similar scheme. Some trusted to the addition of a material substance in aiding the fire to purge away the dross of the base body submitted to it. From this arose the doctrine of the powder of projection and the ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... 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 of ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... sufficiently complex in their intrigue, or subtle in their analysis of emotion, to suit the somewhat cloyed palates of the present generation of playgoers. Yet, through two or three among the long list of plays of this type, there runs like a vein of gold amid the dross, a noble and true idea that preserves them from the common fate, and one of these few pieces is 'Ingomar.' Its blank verse may be stilted, its action often forced and unreal; but the pictures it presents of a daughter's devotion, a maiden's purity, a brave man's love and ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... seek 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 to ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... persons, you will doubtless hear much that is uninteresting. But where will you find any thing pure or perfect below the sun? The richest ores contain dross. At the same time you cannot fail, unless the fault is your own, to learn many valuable things from them all. From war stories, you will learn history; from accounts of travels, geography, human character, manners ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... is turned to dross, The wife hath faded into air, My heart is thrown away, my loss ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... affection and softens the heart. It brings out into fact what was often only latent in feeling. Memory adds a tender glory to the past. We only think of the virtues of the dead: we forget their faults. This is as it should be. We rightly love the immortal part of them; the fire has burned up the dross and left pure gold. If it is idealization, it represents that which will be, ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... visits Toombs most enjoyed at his own home, with whom he afterward talked of God and religion. The good bishop lived to bury the devoted Christian wife of the Georgia statesman, and finally, when the dross of worldliness was gone, to receive into the Methodist Church the bowed and weeping figure of the ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... guided the ship cautiously past Capri and into the bay. The air was now black with volcanic dross and a gloom as of midnight surrounded them on every side. The shore, the mountain and the water of the bay itself ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... of 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 who would picture graven stone, but ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... wholesomely natural at the last as at the first, "in wit a man, simplicity a child," no artist, of whatsoever denomination, I make bold to say, ever went to his rest leaving a golden memory more pure from dross, or having devoted himself with a truer chivalry to the art goddess whom ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... them: they are our own—imperishable, inexhaustible; never wanting when called upon; balm to heal the blows of adversity, specific against all things malign. Cultivate the perception of beauty, the knowledge of truth; learn to distinguish between the realities of life and the dross of life; and you have a great shield of fortitude of which certainly man cannot rob you, and against which sickness, sorrow, or misfortune may strike tremendous blows without so much as bruising ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... bare, high-ceiled room, his hasty toilet made, he stood upon the hearth, beside the leaping fire, and looked about him. Of late—since the summer—everything was clarifying. There was at work some great solvent making into naught the dross of custom and habitude. The glass had turned; outlines were clearer than they had been, the light was strong, and striking from a changed angle. To-day both the sight of a face and the thought of an endangered State ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... essentially fair-weather men. The casual courier may be alert, loyal, and trustworthy; he may be relied on to try his honest best, but it is not to be expected of him that he will greatly dare and count his life but as dross when his incentive to enterprise is merely filthy lucre. But I could trust Andreas to dare and to endure—to overcome obstacles, and, if man could, to "get there," where, in the base-quarters in Bucharest, the amanuenses were waiting to copy ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... gentleness, hysteria becomes equanimity, and sound becomes silence. From its presence vaunting and vainglory and arrogance hasten away to be with their own kind. By its power, as of a miracle, it changes the dross into fine gold, the grotesque into the seemly, the vulgar into the pure, the water into wine. Into the midst of commotion and confusion it quietly moves, saying, "Peace, be still!" and there is quiet and repose. Like the sun-crowned summit of the mountain, ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... and what is still more extraordinary, I never found myself so much at my ease; I worked two hours a day with his majesty; corrected his works; and never failed highly to praise whatever was worthy of praise, though I rejected the dross. I gave him details of all that was necessary in rhetoric and criticism for his use: he profited by my advice, and his genius assisted him ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... was successful. He was now able to separate the pure spirit from the material gold that had all his life been harmonising and fusing, and while reading the books of the alchemists, to collect their truths, and pass over their errors as dross. It was two years before he had fairly accustomed his mind to this view of the subject; but his life was prolonged for five years more, during which time, notwithstanding his poverty and solitude, he probably enjoyed the only real ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... sorry you and yours have any plagues about dross matters. I have been sadly puzzled at the defalcation of more than one third of my income, out of which when entire I saved nothing. But cropping off wine, old books, &c. and in short all that can be call'd pocket money, I hope to be able to go on at the Cottage. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... contracted wants, and mortified desires, asked but the primeval simplicity of nature. All this time, though the honours of the house of Neville lay in abeyance, the rents were received by De Vallance, and Isabel wondered that so mortified a spirit should encumber itself with the dross which it affected ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... it!" he protested. "It's true! He's the finest chap in the world, all true gold and not a grain of dross. That's how it is we all knock under to him. Even Nap does that, though he doesn't care a tinker's curse for anyone else ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... not to be dependent upon diversion and stir and business, but to approach life simply and directly, practising for the days of loneliness and decline; and this was the error, that it tried to mould life too much, to select from its material, to reject its dross and debris, to rifle rather than to earn the treasure, to limit hopes, to dip ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the wine and the wealth and the mirth, The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth;— Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... was not what one would call pretty, but it was impossible to be long in her presence without feeling the influence of her strong buoyant disposition. The angel of pain had purged away much of the dross of her nature, leaving the pure gold undimmed. She inherited, too, much of her father's strength of character which seemed to be lacking ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... 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 drinkulo. Drunkenness ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... coarse speech sounds; and how unworthy of one who calls himself a man, to be always bent on material things, instead of rising towards those which are intellectual. Is that dross, the body, of importance enough to deserve even a passing thought? and ought we not to ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... 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 ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... 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 of our hero, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... of it. Experience shows that in all operations, involving the separation of objects worthless and of value, such as weeding, sifting, and winnowing, the former is removed from the latter and discarded. This view of the case seems to be supported by the fact of the dust and dross sifted from spices being called "garbles." The weeder removes weeds from flowers or plants, the garbler removes garbles from spices and bad bow staves from amongst good ones. Richardson's Dictionary contains the following notes ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... they were not permitted to enter into their synagogues to worship God, being esteemed as filthiness; therefore they were poor; yea, they were esteemed by their brethren as dross; therefore they were poor as to things of the world; and also ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... advocates. For ourselves, we hold that the divine genius of Homer, though working in an age distant rather than "early," selected instinctively the purer mythical materials, and burned away the coarser dross of antique legend, leaving little but the gold which is ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... we do not understand and cannot enter into the cowardly weakness by which they were driven to betray their comrades. But in the case of the National Scouts there were no extenuating circumstances except perhaps that the greater responsibility rested on the men who paid in dross for the dishonour ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... sight of the object, not seen through the medium of the imagination, soon reduce the passion to an appetite, if reflection, the noble distinction of man, did not give it force, and make it an instrument to raise him above this earthy dross, by teaching him to love the centre of all perfection! whose wisdom appears clearer and clearer in the works of nature, in proportion as reason is illuminated and exalted by contemplation, and by acquiring that love of order which ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... in anthems sing With the immortal Haydn, and do praise Creative Wisdom, Who, of one blood made All Nations for to dwell on earth in love, Then let celestial fires descend and burn Complete, the offering of the lips, and purge The dross of caste and hate ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 6, June, 1890 • Various |
