"Corrode" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... biting comment which undoes the generosity and frankness of the eulogium. Why should this younger man, who was not born when his own ministry was at full tide, now carry all before him, while the waves are quietly withdrawing from the margin of seaweed they once cast up! Thoughts like these corrode and canker the soul; and there is no arrest to them, unless, by a definite effort of the Spirit-energised will, the soul turns to God with the words: "A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... admitted to the bar—the stern judgment bar where each solitary drinker is arraigned. For it is universally admitted that in art, quality is more important than quantity. "If that powerful corrosive, alcohol, only makes us do a little first-class work, what matter if it corrode us to death immediately afterwards? We shall have had our day." Thus many a gallant soul argues. But is there not another ideal which is as far above mere quality as quality is above mere quantity? I think there is. It is quantity of quality. And quantity of quality is ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... sense of shame, at the prospect of sharing largely in commercial benefits which they had not earned, whilst the burdens of the day were falling exclusively upon the troops of our nation; but that is a consideration for their own feelings, and may happen to corrode their hearts and their sense of honour most profoundly at some future time, when it may have ceased to be remediable. If that were all, for us there would be no arrears of mortified sensibilities to apprehend. But what is ominous even in relation to ourselves from these professedly ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... my flattering dreams of joy? Monimia, give my soul her wonted rest;— Since first thy beauty fixed my roving eye, heart-gnawing cares corrode my pensive breast! ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... filled, with a sense of burning indignation. He feels he has had a cruel wrong done to him and is in no mood to be converted to better courses. That to which his mind reacts at once is some form of vengeance, some way of getting even with his tormentor. The words that burn or rankle or corrode are not the words to stimulate. No doubt Socrates said that he was the gadfly of the State and stung that noble animal into action, but what may be good for a sluggish old coach-horse is not necessarily good for a thoroughbred ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... the broad Danaan host, who was adjudged Odysseus by all voices. Aias grudged The vote and wandered brooding, drawn apart From his room-fellows, seeding in his heart Envy, which biting inwards did corrode His mettle, and his ill blood plied the goad Upon his brain, until the wretch made mad Went muttering his wrongs, ill-trimmed, ill-clad, Sightless and careless, with slack mouth awry, And working tongue, and danger in the eye; And oft would stare at Heaven and laugh his scorn: ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... him not to enjoy, though the law allowed him to do so, yet if he did so, he was too like that rich Steward which he had mentioned to him; and told him that riches so gotten, and added to his great estate, would, as Job says, "prove like gravel in his teeth:" would in time so corrode his conscience, or become so nauseous when he lay upon his deathbed, that he would then labour to vomit it up, and not be able: and therefore advised him, being very rich, to make friends of his unrighteous Mammon, before ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... acrimonious in her temper, that that mild advocate for spiritual affection, found it impossible to live with her. Rousseau was tormented by such a host of ungovernable passions, that he became a burden to himself and to every one around him. Lord Byron suffered a badness of temper to corrode him in the flower of his days. Contrasted with this unpleasing part of the perspective, let us quote the names of a few wise and good men, who have been proverbial for the goodness of their tempers; as Shakspeare, Francis ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... tree, I have seen used as soap in South America and the West Indies under the name of soap berries. The seed vessels are very acrid, they lather freely in water and will cleanse more linen than thirty times their weight of soap, but in time they corrode or burn the linen. Humboldt says that proceeding along the river Carenicuar, in the Gulf of Cariaco, he saw the Indian women washing their linen with the fruit of this tree, there called the parapara. Some other species of Sapindus and of Gypsophila have similar ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... may corrode the nuptial state of literary men. Females who, prompted by vanity, but not by taste, unite themselves to scholars, must ever complain of neglect. The inexhaustible occupations of a library will only present to such a most dreary solitude. Such a lady declared of her learned husband, that ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... are produced, some by wind and some by phlegm and some by bile. When the lung, which is the steward of the air, is obstructed, by rheums, and in one part no air, and in another too much, enters in, then the parts which are unrefreshed by air corrode, and other parts are distorted by the excess of air; and in this manner painful diseases are produced. The most painful are caused by wind generated within the body, which gets about the great sinews of the shoulders—these are termed ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... should have no hand in unlawfully secreting property, or encouraging perjury to accumulate gains; that the man of great wealth should have neither usury nor the shedding of blood by privateering to corrode his treasures; that all should observe a just weight and a just measure in their dealings, as in the presence of God. Let every Christian seek after the consolation of Mrs. Douglas, that the light which refreshes him ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... models operated by batteries and 110-volt current. It is believed that the battery-operated type has the greater utility, since house current may not be available at the crime scene. When not in use the batteries should be removed as they will eventually deteriorate and corrode the brass ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... provided lugs to insure the adhesion of the concrete to the plate, such precaution, in the writer's opinion, will not prevent the separation of the concrete from the smooth steel plate, and, at some future time, the water will reach and corrode the steel. It would have been better to have reinforced the wall of the tank with rods, as is generally done. The full thickness would have been available, and less plastering would have been required. Furthermore, the adhesion of concrete to a smooth steel plate is of doubtful ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 - A Concrete Water Tower, Paper No. 1173 • A. Kempkey
... diameter and airproofed with a rubberoid fluorocarbon plastic, and furnished with air and heating units. Made as it was, it offered protection nothing else could offer; it was almost a perfect insulator and was resistant to the attack of any chemical reagent. Not even elemental fluorine could corrode it. And the extreme strength of the lux metal fiber made it stronger, pound for ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... country—gloomy conjectures in the dark vista of futurity—consciousness of my own inability for the struggle of the world—my broadened mark to misfortune in a wife and children;—I could indulge these reflections, till my humour should ferment into the most acid chagrin, that would corrode the very ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... facades. He declares with the imperturbable assurance inspired by a fact that he had heard speak of whilst on the knees of his nurse, that on a particular side of the future building, the moon, an active agent of destruction, will incessantly corrode the stones of the frontage, the shafts of the columns, and that it will efface in a few years all the projecting ornaments; and hence the fear of the moon's voracity will lead to the upsetting of all the views, the studies, and the well-digested ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... jewelers are as nearly creators as finite beings can be, because they almost make something out of nothing, while the cheap trinkets they turn out by the barrel have to be hurried to market by rapid express, lest they corrode and tarnish before they can be disposed of. Such jests, however, convey a very erroneous and unfair notion of the real character of most of the work done in those large shops, and the amount of ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... than for her own. Now that she was cleared of her burden—at least, technically—would not his own weigh too heavily upon him? If she should cling to him, would not the difference forever silently mar and corrode their happiness? Thus she reasoned; but there were a thousand little voices calling to her that she could feel rather than hear, like the hum of distant, powerful machinery—the little voices of the world, that, when raised ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... any seaside plants with bloom? I find that drops of sea-water corrode sea-kale if bloom is removed; also the var. littorum of Triticum repens. (By the way, my plants of the latter, grown in pots here, are now throwing up long flexible green blades, and it is very odd to see, ON THE SAME CULM, the rigid ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... was not hers to feel The miseries that corrode amassing years, 'Gainst dreams of baffled bliss the heart to steel, To wander sad down age's vale of tears, As whirl the wither'd leaves from friendship's tree, And on earth's wintry wold alone to be: ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... them into glass boxes to watch them, they manage to corrode the glass so it ceases to be transparent. And they can bore their way out of any wood, or even metal, containers you try to keep them in. The termite seems destined to remain a ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... ground and becomes what is termed ground water, it takes into solution from the soil humus acids and carbon dioxide, both of which are constantly being generated there by the decay of organic matter. So both rain and ground water are charged with active chemical agents, by the help of which they corrode and rust and decompose all rocks to a greater or less degree. We notice now three of the chief chemical processes concerned in weathering,— solution, the formation of carbonates, ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... will corrode a cylinder wall it'll corrode wire," said Tom, after a few moments' silence. "It might take a few days, but after that you could break the wire with your fingers. It wouldn't make any noise. That ain't what I wanted to ask you about—'cause I know about that. The thing is, ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... your eyes shall rest on these pages, mine will be closed in the slumbers of death. Let not your heart be troubled, my only beloved, at the record of wrongs which no longer corrode; of sorrows which are all past away. 'In my Father's house are many mansions,' and one of them is prepared for me. It is my Saviour's promise, and I believe it as firmly as if I saw the golden streets ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... polecat, sovereign of its native wood, Dashes damnation upon bad and good; The health of all the upas trees impairs By exhalations deadlier than theirs; Poisons the rattlesnake and warts the toad— The creeks go rotten and the rocks corrode! She shakes o'er breathless hill and shrinking dale The horrid aspergillus of her tail! From every saturated hair, till dry, The spargent fragrances divergent fly, Deafen the earth and scream ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... an extent did it corrode him that even when he could boast his $100,000,000 he still persisted in haggling and huckstering over every dollar, and in tricking his friends in the smallest and most underhand ways. Friends in the true sense of the word he had none; those who regarded themselves as such ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... inverse at a feast on Olympus, exhausted of wine, But inlaid as with rose from the lips of Dione that left it divine: From the lips everliving of laughter and love everlasting, that leave In the cleft of his heart who shall kiss them a snake to corrode it and cleave. So glimmers the gloom into glory, the glory recoils into gloom, That the eye of the sun could not kindle, the lip not of Love could relume. So darkens reverted the cup that the kiss of her mouth ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... or fats are composed of fatty acids in combination with glycerine, and these, under the influence of high-pressure steam, are decomposed or dissociated, the fatty acids being liberated from the glycerine, leaving the former to act upon or corrode the iron of the cylinder. But here their objectionable influence does not end. They form with the iron hard, insoluble compounds called iron soaps, which increase the friction between the cylinder and piston, and in some cases gradually collect into the form ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... of the leaves of this plant is so very acrid as often to corrode the skin, if the leaves are gathered when the dew is on them. Great care should certainly be taken in the giving such a medicine internally, as also in its preparation, it being usually ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... did for her when she was a baby. She doesn't know everything, but she intends to; that is plain enough. At present she is washing one of baby's frocks with my savon de rose, because she declares that the soap they gave her in the kitchen contains enough lye to corrode the fibers of ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... dissolving the metal, and so of poisoning what is intended to be eaten. Stone and earthen vessels should be provided for soups and gravies intended to be set by, as likewise plenty of common dishes, that the table-set may not be used for such purposes. Vegetables soon turn sour, and corrode metals and glazed red ware, by which a strong poison is produced. Vinegar, by its acidity, does the same, the glazing being of lead or arsenic. Care should be taken of sieves, jelly bags, and tapes for collared ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... manufacturers in leaden pans. Almost all "canned'' goods contain more or less tin as a contamination from the tin-plate. While animal foods do not attack the tin to any great extent, their acidity being small, almost all vegetable materials, especially fruits and tomatoes, powerfully corrode the tin covering of the plate, dissolving it and becoming impregnated with tin compounds. It is quite easy to obtain tin-reactions in abundance from every grain of tinned peaches, apples or tomatoes. These tin compounds are by no means innocuous; ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... securely packed in airtight waterproof cases. Nothing liable to spontaneous decay should be admitted. Stereotype plates of metal would be even more open to objection than printed sheets. The noble metals would be too costly, the baser would corrode; and with either the value of the plates as metal would be a standing danger to the deposit. The material basis of the library must be, as nearly as possible, worthless for other uses (to insure them against the natural ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... to enter the mind, stick like the leprosy. They corrode, contaminate, and infect like the pestilence; naught but Almighty power can deliver from the bondage of concupiscence a soul once infected by this foul ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... enslaved to the immensely powerful non-moral forces, in the midst of which humanity finds its way. I cannot speak more clearly—[Greek: bous epi glosse]. The nations face each other in conflict, while death, disease, violence, bestial indolence and docility corrode ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... infected room, put in a few drops of sulphuric acid—the fumes arising from it will purify a room where there has been any infectious disorder. Care is necessary in using it, not to inhale the fumes, or to get any of the acid on your garments, as it will corrode ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... happy who comes and goes as he pleases. There must be responsibilities to shoulder, and ties which bind him. If he lives for himself alone and for what, in the first glad bursts of unattachment he imagines to be pleasure, a day will come when the acid of self-contempt begins to corrode him. ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... destruction. Its waters, filtering through the soil, were perpetually in contact with the lower courses of these buildings, and kept the foundations of the walls and the bases of the columns constantly damp: the saltpetre which the waters had dissolved in their passage, crystallising on the limestone, would corrode and undermine everything, if precautions were not taken. When the inundation was over, the subsidence of the water which impregnated the subsoil caused in course of time settlements in the most solid foundations: the walls, disturbed by the unequal sinking of the ground, got out of the perpendicular ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... subjected to severe accelerated corrosion tests held in accordance with rigid specifications laid down by the American Society for Testing Material, and has proven to corrode much less than either charcoal iron, wrought iron, ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... should always be used for mechanical drawing: First, because it lies upon and does not sink into the paper, and is, therefore, easily erased; and, secondly, because it does not corrode ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... rust. This has been effected by coating it with an alloy of tin and much lead, so as to form an imitation of tin plate. Trials have been made, and proved favourable; it resists the action of certain fluids that would rapidly corrode iron alone; it can be prepared of any size, and at a low price. Its use in the manufacture of sugarpans and boilers, in the construction of roofs and gutters, is expected to be very ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 379, Saturday, July 4, 1829. • Various
... you bestowed: Where now are gone the faces hid by curtain and by veil, * Whose charms were told in proverbs, those beauties a-la-mode? The tombs aloud reply to the questioners and cry, * 'Death's canker and decay those rosy cheeks corrode' Long time they ate and drank, but their joyaunce had a term, * And the eater eke was eaten, and was eaten ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... store-room of his matron contains many articles whose utility is increased by the use of it, and some that could be made of nothing else. In a small rubber case the physician carries with him and preserves his lunar caustic, which would corrode any metallic surface. His shirts and sheets pass through an India rubber clothes-wringer, which saves the strength of the washer-woman and the fibre of the fabric. When the government presents him with ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... of this group, including every quality, property, or faculty by which any change, effect, or result is, or may be, produced; as, the power of the legislature to enact laws, or of the executive to enforce them; the power of an acid to corrode a metal; the power of a polished surface to reflect light. Ability is nearly coextensive with power, but does not reach the positiveness and vigor that may be included in the meaning of power, ability often implying latent, as distinguished from ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... of other metals, such as aluminum. Especially is this true of utensils used for the canning of acid fruits or vegetables, because, if such food remains in contact with tin or iron for more than a few minutes, the acid will corrode the surface sufficiently to give the food a bad or metallic taste. In addition, such utensils often give the food a dark color. If enameled kettles are used for the cooking of foods that are to be canned, it is important that the surface be perfectly smooth and unbroken. Otherwise, ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... match to, apply the torch to; rekindle, relume^; fan the flame, add fuel to the flame; poke the fire, stir the fire, blow the fire; make a bonfire of. melt, thaw, fuse; liquefy &c 335. burn, inflame, roast, toast, fry, grill, singe, parch, bake, torrefy^, scorch; brand, cauterize, sear, burn in; corrode, char, calcine, incinerate; smelt, scorify^; reduce to ashes; burn to a cinder; commit to the flames, consign to the flames. boil, digest, stew, cook, seethe, scald, parboil, simmer; do to rags. take fire, catch fire; blaze &c (flame) 382. Adj. heated ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... portrait-busts, comprising those of two or three of the illustrious men of our own country, whom Kenyon, before he left America, had asked permission to model. He had done so, because he sincerely believed that, whether he wrought the busts in marble or bronze, the one would corrode and the other crumble in the long lapse of time, beneath these great men's immortality. Possibly, however, the young artist may have underestimated the durability of his material. Other faces there were, too, of men who (if the brevity of ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Home, where'er it be; thy load Can cheer the pauper's dark abode, And lack of it, with gloom corrode The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various
... pale Form your imagings raise, That waits on us all at a destined time, It is not the Fourth Figure the Furnace showed, O that it were such a shape sublime; In these latter days! It is that under which best lives corrode; Would, would it could ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... lay great stress on the purity of marriage. Although they live chiefly in towns, illegitimate births are proportionately rarer among them than among either Protestants or Catholics. They have been as a rule singularly free from the kinds of vice that do most to enfeeble and corrode a race. They are distinguished for their domestic virtues, especially for care of their children, and they are nearly everywhere less addicted than Christian nations to intoxicating drinks. These things help to explain the curious ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... and people were greatly taken with it. He was something strange and great. Women generally were so much the more smitten with this original person because he was not to be caught by their flatteries, however adroit, nor by the wiles with which they circumvent the strongest men and corrode the steel temper. Their Parisian's grimaces were lost upon M. de Montriveau; his nature only responded to the sonorous vibration of lofty thought and feeling. And he would very promptly have been dropped but for the romance that hung about his adventures and his life; but for the men who cried ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... before, in the life-time of the Marchioness, and at that age when the mind is particularly sensible to impressions of gaiety and delight, he had once visited this spot, and, though he had passed a long intervening period amidst the vexations and tumults of public affairs, which too frequently corrode the heart, and vitiate the taste, the shades of Languedoc and the grandeur of its distant scenery had never been remembered by him ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... to Jericho I've borne my crest And back from Jericho to Mons again; I've sampled smells in Araby the Blest Would burst a boiler or corrode a drain; The Blankshires have a port that raises Cain— I've messed with them and never come to grief; And yet I'm dashing like a non-stop train Full steam into ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... irritant poisons are evident immediately after being taken. They burn and corrode the skin or membrane or other parts with which they come in contact. There are burning pains in the mouth, throat, stomach, and abdomen, with nausea and vomiting. A certain amount of faintness and shock is ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... their colouring in the ancient poet, that might well startle people by no means timid, he turns with frowning forehead and reproving hand to corresponding delineations in the modern, that stand less in need of it, and spits his spite on Pope, which we wipe off that it may not corrode. "This translation was done at sixteen or seventeen," says Pope in a note to his January and May—and there is not, among the achievements of early genius, to be found another such specimen of finished art ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... cordite, and the methods of its manufacture have been modified. The form has also been altered. Axite is made in the form of a ribbon, the cross section being similar in shape to a double- headed rail. It is claimed for this powder, that it does not corrode the barrel in the way cordite does, that with equal pressure it gives greatly increased velocity, and therefore flatter trajectory. That the effect of temperature on the pressure and velocity with axite is only half that ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... from air currents. At m is the sighting lens. H is a lead box packed with pumice stone, moistened with oil of vitriol or concentrated sulphuric acid, to preserve the atmosphere dry. Before use the acid is boiled with some ammonium sulphate to expel any corrosive nitrogen oxides, which might corrode the brass. ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... dried upon copper, may perhaps imagine they cannot be so pernicious if they were dried upon iron; but this opinion cannot be entertained by any persons who have the least knowledge of the manner in which the vegetable acid will corrode iron. Those who are acquainted with culinary processes must know in what manner the acid of onions will operate upon any steel instrument; it corrodes a knife so as to turn the onions black with the particles eaten away from the edge and the face of the blade. To ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... and constant association with other minds, the great variety of amusements compensate largely for the loss of many of the advantages of farm life. In spite of the great temperance and immunity from things which corrode, whittle, and rasp away life in the cities, farmers in many places do not live so long as scientists ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... the days in my lonely abode; Driven forth from the world where once I was known, I muse o'er the fate upon me bestow'd; A fragment forgotten that the moss will corrode, To hide from mankind the world ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... particular specific action on stones in the bladder, without affecting the rest of the body, he considered quite plausible through the analogy that quicksilver has an affinity with gold but has no effect upon iron. Furthermore, a substance than can corrode a solid body may nevertheless be unable to "fret" a different body which is considerably softer and thinner, if the "texture" does not admit the small particles.[55] Reasoning by analogy served to explain the logical plausibility. ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... and where the litter had been stood a eunuch. "I am Envy," he said, and his eyes drooped sullenly. "I separate those that love; I dismantle altars and dismember nations. I corrode and corrupt; I destroy, and I never rebuild. My joy is malice, and my creed false-witnessing. Mary, come with me, and you will learn ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... are we scabbards to our souls. And the drawn soul of genius is more glittering than the drawn cimeter of Saladin. But how many let their steel sleep, till it eat up the scabbard itself, and both corrode to rust-chips. Saw you ever the hillocks of old Spanish anchors, and anchor-stocks of ancient galleons, at the bottom of Callao Bay? The world is full of old Tower armories, and dilapidated Venetian arsenals, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... but she would fight him with the weapons she had. Her lips closed in a thin line, and a glint as of polished metal came into her eyes as the scene in the house of the Beg of Rataj shut out the lovely landscape before her. To destroy—to fan the spark to flame that she might extinguish it; to corrode the spirit with the biting acid of contempt; to envenom the soul—newly born, perhaps—to the sweeter uses of beneficence, and then ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... endurance of memorials in the open air. Twenty years of it suffice to give as much antiquity of aspect, whether to tombstone or edifice, as a hundred years of our own drier atmosphere,—so soon do the drizzly rains and constant moisture corrode the surface of marble or freestone. Sculptured edges loose their sharpness in a year or two; yellow lichens overspread a beloved name, and obliterate it while it is yet fresh upon some survivor's heart. Time gnaws an English ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
