"Dross" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... coarse speech sounds; and how unworthy of one who calls himself a man, to be always bent on material things, instead of rising towards those which are intellectual. Is that dross, the body, of importance enough to deserve even a passing thought? and ought we not to leave it ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... o't?" echoed Andrew, as he glowered across the little bing of dross at his mate, "it's just in keepin' wi' the rest o' his dirty doin's, the dirty black brute that ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... marvellous, bubbling, electric, 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 ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... 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 at close ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... 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. All ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... 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 Essay on Population, we mean a distinct leading proposition, that ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... until this day, though there was a plague in the congregation of the Lord.[189] Thou rainest upon us, and yet dost not always mollify all our hardness; thou kindlest thy fires in us, and yet dost not always burn up all our dross; thou healest our wounds, and yet leavest scars; thou purgest the blood, and yet leavest spots. But the spots that thou hatest are the spots that we hide. The carvers of images cover spots,[190] says the wise man; when we hide our spots, we become idolators of our own stains, of ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... nor forget a pennyworth of the sin that made up the sum, though his agony is such as if the pieces of gold, red-hot, were stamped into his naked soul. Often, while he is in torment there, he hears the steps of living men, who love the dross of earth as well as he did. May they never groan over their miserable wealth like him! Night after night, for above a hundred years, hath he done this penance, and still must he do it, till the iron box be brought to light, and each separate coin be cleansed by grateful tears ...
— Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... him, as I wuz wont to do, and I see he had quite a few, but what was my surprise to see that man sarahuptishushly and with a guilty look try to conceal one on 'em under his bandanna. And any woman will know that all his other letters wuz as dross to me compared to the one he was hidin'. I will pass over my argyments—and—and words, before that letter lay in my hand. But suffice it to say, that when at last I read it and all wuz explained to me, groans and ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... rule 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. iii. 18); but an holy thing of man's devising is the dross of silver. ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... it appears to me one of the most refined productions in the language. The elegance of the composition is in exact proportion to the coarseness of the materials: by "happy alchemy of mind," the author has extracted an essence of refinement from the dregs of human life, and turns its very dross into gold. The scenes, characters, and incidents are, in themselves, of the lowest and most disgusting kind: but, by the sentiments and reflections which are put into the mouths of highwaymen, turnkeys, their mistresses, wives, or daughters, ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... which sometimes injures his language, 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, and with ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... fiction, the principles are given, to find the facts: in history, the facts are given, to find the principles; and the writer who does not explain the phenomena as well as state them, performs only one half of his office. Facts are the mere dross of history. It is from the abstract truth which interpenetrates them, and lies latent among them like gold in the ore, that the mass derives its whole value: and the precious particles are generally combined with ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... plain to her concerning the past, and they confirm her in the vow that was made beneath the old elm, long ago. It is such a treasure, that precious legacy; so filled with beautiful thoughts, and so free from earthly dross. Besides, it is all her own, sacred from the world. No other eye has ever seen it, and nobody else can ever know the secret workings of the great mind that is no longer clogged ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... whom allegiance was easily swayed. His loyalty was only for the top man of any hierarchy, and he suddenly began to regard Baker with an amazed incredulity. It seemed akin to witchcraft to be able to pull out works of near genius from the dross material Baker had been supporting with his grants. Pehrson wasn't quite sure how it had been done although he had been present throughout the whole process. He only knew that Baker had developed a kind of prescience that was nothing short ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... as one thunderstruck, raised his hands on high. 'O sack of sin!' he groaned, 'O dross for the melting-pot! O unspeakable sacrifice!' But Jehane, gravely smiling, checked him. 'Why, Lord Abbot, is any sacrifice too great for King Richard?' she asked, gently reproving him. 'Nay, go, my father; ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... this divine white-heat of temper, were it only for a season and not again, the Nation is thenceforth considerable through all its remaining history. What immensities of DROSS and crypto-poisonous matter will it not burn out of itself in that high temperature, in the course of a few years! Witness Cromwell and his Puritans,—making England habitable even under the Charles-Second terms for a couple of centuries more. Nations are benefited, I believe, for ages, by ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... town, the wallowing eloquence of the river, the sonorous din of the locust, that none could think this a couch of death. A Spanish priest is making ready for that last long voyage, when the soul of man sloughs the dross of earth. Beside him kneels another priest—a Frenchman ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... energy of heart, mind, and hand to the work before him. The miners might delve for gold; Curly and his companions might gamble to their hearts' content; such things were nothing to him. He had struck a vein of wealth, the true gold of love, by the side of which all the treasures of earth were as dross. ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... 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 ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Your 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 more, ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... of burnt stone and sulphur on its surface, like dross on melted lead, and nothing was visible toward Bosco Trecase but endless acres of dark scoriae, broken here and there by the greenish, curling smoke of sulphur. At one point a great cone pine tree, torn up by its roots and ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... at Burwood through the window in the flattering belief that Catherine was the captive of the weather, she had spent an hour or more with Mary Backhouse, and the austere influences of the visit had perhaps had more share than she knew in determining her own mood that day. The world seemed such dross, the pretences of personal happiness so hollow and delusive, after such a sight! The girl lay dying fast, with a look of extraordinary attentiveness in her face, hearing every noise, every footfall, and, as ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... book has as its aim the gentle purpose of pointing the way to a knowledge that shall be a guide in knowing gold from—not from dross, that is too simple, but gold from gold-plating let us say, for the mad lover of tapestries will not admit that any hand-woven tapestry is on the low level of dross. Any work which human hands have touched and lingered on in execution is deserving of the respect ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... dust- man, sweep; beast. dirt, filth, soil, slop; dust, cobweb, flue; smoke, soot, smudge, smut, grit, grime, raff[obs3]; sossle[obs3], sozzle[obs3]. sordes[obs3], dregs, grounds, lees; argol[obs3]; sediment, settlement heeltap[obs3]; dross, drossiness[obs3]; mother|, precipitate, scoriae, ashes, cinders. recrement[obs3], slag; scum, froth. hogwash; ditchwater[obs3], dishwater, bilgewater[obs3]; rinsings, cheeseparings; sweepings &c. (useless refuse) 645; offscourings[obs3], outscourings[obs3]; off scum; caput mortuum[Lat][obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 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 at the slowness with which the ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... the door, love flies out of the window. Shall I then make you miserable! No! no! Hear me, Clementina. I will be generous. I now absolve you from all your vows. You are free. Should the time ever come that prosperity shine upon me, and I find that I have sufficient for both of us of that dross which I despise, then will I return, and, should my Clementina not have entered into any other engagement, throw my fortune and my person at her feet. Till ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... speaking of the cleansing fountain of salvation in that day, said: "And I will turn my hand upon thee, and purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy sin." Isa. 1:25. The cleansing stream will remove all the dross and leave the soul pure. These are garments of salvation. This is not literal, but the cleansing away of sin and the infusion of righteousness is represented by the taking away of filthy rags and being clothed ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... choir; that above them, and around them, and in them, destined to raise them out of that bitter bondage, and mould them into a great nation, and the parents of still greater nations in lands as yet unknown, brooded the immortal spirit of Hereward, now purged from all earthly dross, even the spirit of Freedom, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... who 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 ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... Handerson kept his head down, absorbed in putting in the fine touches which wash out the last particles of dross, though he answered, "Ay tank Ay ban wort' five hundred ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... retorted sadly, "have burned away the dross from the pure gold of many a soul, I suppose. But no fires were ever heated that could burn dross fiercely enough to ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... be likened to gold or silver which is spread on dross, rotten wood or mire. When uttered the truths may be likened to a breath exhaled and gone, or to a delusive light which dies away, though they appear outwardly like genuine truths. They are seeming truths in those who utter them; to those hearing and assenting, and unaware ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... launched a 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 sacked; And I will combat with weak Menelaus, And wear thy colours on my plumed crest; Yea, I will wound Achilles ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... but it was said that she was most expert. She died young (as you know), or I should have known much more. Think you, Philip, that this world is solely peopled by such dross as we are?—things of clay—perishable and corruptible? Lords over beasts—and ourselves but little better. Have you not, from your own sacred writings, repeated acknowledgments and proofs of higher intelligences ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... spacious lumber-room was needed, where all the superfluous odds and ends that no longer fitted to the changed order of things might be stowed away for safe-keeping. Now, as you will frequently in a lumber-room, amid a deal of absolute dross, stumble upon an object of rare and curious value, so also in America you may, among heaps of human trumpery, be startled by the sparkle of a genuine human jewel. Our friend here, I need not add, is such a jewel, though cut according to the fashion of the last century, when men went wild ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... 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 over ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... 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
... embraced the faith, and public {212} churches were erected. Decius equally hated the Philips and the Christian religion, against which he published the most cruel edicts in the year 250; which caused the seventh general persecution, permitted by God to purge away the dross to his flock, and to awake them ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... in the gross, Being much too gross to see them in detail, Who calculated life as so much dross, And as the wind a widow'd nation's wail, And cared as little for his army's loss (So that their efforts should at length prevail) As wife and friends did for the boils of job,— What was 't to him to ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... times, yet great and noble times, for these are days of fiery ordeal whereby mean and petty things are forgotten and the dross of unworthy things burned away. To-day the two great Anglo-Saxon peoples stand united in a noble comradeship for the good of the world and for those generations that are yet to be, a comradeship which ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... drawing-room, the room from which she could see the hills and the trees, and catch glimpses 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 to find a substitute. Leone could not sing; ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... for one strong, unguarded, real, earnest word from the man who had stolen from her her whole being. She was beginning to feel in some dim wise what an untold treasure she was daily giving for tinsel and dross. She leaned back in the carriage, with a restless, burning cheek, and wondered why she was born to be so miserable. The thought of Mary's saintly face and tender eyes rose before her as the moon rises on the eyes of some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... she was no saint, and that hitherto very little opportunity had been given to her of learning to discriminate true metal from dross. Then—she thought of Mr Samuel Rubb, junior. Mr Samuel Rubb, junior, was a handsome man, about her own age; and she felt almost sure that Mr Samuel Rubb, junior, admired her. He was not worn out with life; he was not broken with care; he would look forward ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... gives up much the gods give more in turn: The music of the spheres for dross of gold; For o'er-officious cares, flame-songs that burn Their pathway through the years and never old. And he who shunned vain cares and vainer strife Found an ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... most part, had somehow conceived the idea that they were coming back to a better world, a world purged of dross by the bloody sweat of the war. And they found it pretty much the same old world. They had been uprooted. They found it a little difficult to take root again. They found living costly, good jobs not so plentiful, masters as exacting as they had been before. The ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... patience, too, my countrymen, In this our nation's fierce ordeal! Bright burns the searching flame, and then, The dross consumed, shall shine the real. Wake, watcher! see the mountain peaks Already catch a golden ray, Light on the far horizon speaks The ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... am; but I'll resume. While I could buy them, friends indeed were plenty. Alas! prudence is seldom co-mate with youth and inexperience. The golden dream was soon to end—end even with the yellow dross that gave it birth. Fallacious hopes of coming "posts," averted for a time my coming wretchedness—three weeks, and not a line! The landlord suffered from an intermitting affection, characteristic of the "stiff-necked generation;"—he bowed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... jealous of her power, and a great nation looking towards herself for support and consolation, she might well shrink as she contemplated the arduous task which had so suddenly devolved upon her. Moreover, death is the moral crucible which cleanses from all dross the memories of those who are submitted to its unerring test; and in such an hour she could not but forget the faults of the husband in dwelling upon the greatness of the monarch. Who, then, shall venture to follow her through the reveries of that ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... to 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 pans picked ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... the added transitory gleam of troubled waters, the drifting of fogs, at that distance seeming like gigantic veils constantly being moved forward and then slowly withdrawn, as though some sinister creature of the atmosphere were casting a net among all the dross and debris of human life for fantastic sustenance of its own—all this endless, ever-changing, always novel phantasmagoria had for him an extraordinary fascination. One of the memorable nights of his boyhood was an eve when he found his way, not without perturbation of spirit because of ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... from any other. They doubtless said a great many foolish things, but they did so many wise ones that it seemed but reasonable to assume that there must be some grains of wisdom mingled with whatever dross was to be found ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... is red, the second orange, the third yellow, the fourth green, the fifth blue, the sixth indigo, the seventh a violet-purple. Each of these rays, transmitted afterwards by a hundred other prisms, will never change the colour it bears; in like manner, as gold, when completely purged from its dross, will never change afterwards in the crucible. As a superabundant proof that each of these elementary rays has inherently in itself that which forms its colour to the eye, take a small piece of ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... came down from the mountain, or like Stephen's when he 'saw the heavens opened,' to keep near Jesus Christ? It is slow work to hammer bits of ore out of the rock with a chisel and a mallet. Throw the whole mass into the furnace, and the metal will come out separated from the dross. Get up the heat, and the light, which is the consequence of the heat, will take care of itself. 'In the Lord' ye shall ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... with the lightning of his glances, for a heavenly power dwells in his eyes. Moreover, your lover writes that he is beloved by the officers of the garrison, that all the soldiers sympathize with him. It is well that it is not necessary to bribe them with miserable dross; Trenck has already bribed them with his youth and manly beauty, his misfortunes and his amiability. He will find no opposition; no one will dispute his ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... telegraphed to London; but they were 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 out in round ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... can bless, if mortals will be kind. Conscious of wanting worth, he views the bowl, And feels compassion touch his grateful soul. Thus artists melt the sullen ore of lead, 220 With heaping coals of fire upon its head; In the kind warmth the metal learns to glow, And, loose from dross, the silver ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... I find I have been rich in dross of thought, and poor In that I was a fool, and lastly blind For never having ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... sound! It woke all the finer instincts of the woman. All the dross and thought of self passed away. Nature, sweet and simple and true, reigned alone. Instinctively she rose and came towards him. In the simple nobility of her self-surrender and her purpose, which were at one with the grandeur of nature around her, to be negative ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... of Cyprus; Young men and old making holiday, Decking them daintily forth In robes of Sidonian purple; The maidens all beauteous, but wanton, Foolishly flinging youth's gifts, Its jewels—its richest adornment, Like dross on the altar of pleasure; Letting the worm of mortality Eat out their hearts till they bear Only ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... stenographers, we don't mind having their cooperation, we welcome it. Women may even go to war—as an absolutely separate division of the army, said the men of Dahomi, as non-combatant pahia women or workers of magic, said the Roro-speaking tribesmen of New Guinea, or as Red (dross nurses, say the men of Europe and America. If we men can be sure women will not interfere with us, we really do not mind. Women have only to give us that assurance of non-interference to make us doubt the assertion we sometimes make that in going to war they are interfering ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... direction. It is an indication that the individual is out of harmony with himself, with the Law of his being. The sole and supreme use of suffering is to purify, to burn out all that is useless and impure. Suffering ceases for him who is pure. There could be no object in burning gold after the dross had been removed, and a perfectly pure and enlightened being could ...
— As a Man Thinketh • James Allen
... replied, "the long trial of our love has purified it from earthly dross, and proved it the type of love immortal ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... 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
... my good qualities; and I now live and do well by having discarded them. We must fight the world with its own weapons; but still, as I said before, there is some good in it, some pure ore amongst the dross; and it is possible to find high rank and large fortune, and at the same time an innocent mind. If you do marry, I will try hard but you shall possess both; not that fortune can be of ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... 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, but, being a poet, Shelley cannot ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... 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 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
... fine scorn, "gold would be dross beside it. Of course I haven't analyzed it yet, but if it is what I think it is, it is the most valuable ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... he does not blunder into heroic fooleries in the way of self-abnegation; for, if his choice is judicious, the lady will prevent him from hurting his own prospects. Whether he be aristocrat or plebeian, he knows the worth of money, and he knows how to despise the foolish beings who talk of "dross" and "filthy lucre" and the rest. Mere craving for money he despises; but he knows that the amount of "dross" in a man's possession roughly indicates his resources in the way of energy, ability, and self-control. ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... 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 repentest, thou ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... but surely Mr. Arabin was not 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 their deserved ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... 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 in tale-bearing, from the ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... went up in gratitude to heaven! Mother and child were sleeping—so peacefully, so soundly. Mother and child! At that early period the dearest, the sweetest, the holiest link of human love—the gold without the dross, the flower without the insect, the wine without the headache, the full fruition of the feelings without the wear and ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... my daughter, baron! my daughter! (Letting go.) No, no! Money does not make the man—whether I feed on vegetables or on partridges, enough is enough, and this coat will do very well as long as the sunbeams don't peep in at the elbows. To me money is mere dross. But my girl shall benefit by the blessing; whatever wish I can read in her eyes shall ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... are the pure gold with less dross of nonsense than any lecturer that has come upon the stage at this Chautauqua. From the first word to the last she has something to say, and says it as a cultured lady in the best of English, which has no tinge of the high falootin or the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... had become so great a factor in national wealth, mainly through manipulation by northern hands. He did not stop to calculate that—those hands removed and, in addition, the ports of the South herself hermetically sealed—all product, not consumable, must become as valueless as the leaves and dross of ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... felt completely demoralised this January afternoon and sat in her most unbecoming dress, with the fire drearily, if economically, banked up with dross, hoping that no one would come near her. And Mrs. Duff-Whalley and her ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... deeper drooped his head: Calculus racked him: Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead: Tussis attacked him. "Now, master, take a little rest!"—not he! (Caution redoubled! 90 Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!) Not a whit troubled, Back to his studies, fresher than at first, Fierce as a dragon He ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... we, Without the useless silt and dross; And like our cousins, all are free, Yet we have no election boss. No union here of Church and State, Yet Church and State full well agree That nations never can be great If they refuse to ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... to the fire symbol. Gold is spoken of in Scripture as tried in the fire. So of silver. "He" (Christ) "shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver." The precious metals will endure the fire, but "dross and tin," as well as reprobate silver, will and must be consumed. The baptism with the Holy Ghost and with fire is a sin-consuming baptism. Fire is a great purifier. It makes the substance which is subjected to it pure through and through, and not like anything cleansed by water, ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... Fire-philosophers, of the Jacob Boehmes and the St. Martins, are expressions believed more than amply sufficient to cover the whole field of "thimble-rigging." They are terms of contempt, and used generally only in reference to the dross and residues of the Dark Ages and its preceding aeons of paganism. Therefore have we no terms in the English tongue to define and shade the difference between such abnormal powers, or the sciences that lead to the acquisition of them, with the ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... become an harlot! she that was full of judgement! righteousness lodged in her, but now murderers. Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water. Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves; every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them. ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... silver from the dross is performed at some distance from Cerro de Pasco, in haciendas, belonging to the great mine owners. The process is executed in a very clumsy, imperfect, and at the same time, a very expensive manner. The amalgamation of the quicksilver with the metal is effected by the tramping of ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... 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)
... difficulty her elastic-sided boots. She fastened her skirt 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 on the cupboard ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... 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, ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... we not anticipate the wished for event? The Emperor Caligula, who had formerly tried to make gold from orpiment by the force of fire, was only one of a thousand adepts pursuing a similar scheme. Some trusted to the addition of a material substance in aiding the fire to purge away the dross of the base body submitted to it. From this arose the doctrine of the powder of projection and the ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... heaven." Peter's knowledge, which was also that of his brethren, was of a kind apart from all that man may find out for himself; it was a divine bestowal, in comparison with which human wisdom is foolishness and the treasure of earth but dross, Addressing Himself further to the first of the apostles, Jesus continued: "And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... flesh and blood, Virtue and Beauty, and all that's good, To strike to mere dross their topgallants— But what were Beauty, or Virtue, or Worth, Gentle manners, or gentle birth, Nay, what the most talented head on earth To a Leg ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... If there be wretched women, sure I think I too may rank among the most forlorn. I fling a palm into the sea; 'twill sink: Others throw lead, and it is lightly borne. What have I done, dear Lord, the world to cross? Gold in my hand forthwith is turned to dross. How have I made, dear Lord, dame Fortune wroth? Gold in my hand forthwith is turned to froth. What have I done, dear Lord, to fret the folk? Gold in my hand forthwith ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... O, what a waste is there; of noble and thrice-noble national virtues; peasant Stoicisms, Heroisms; valiant manful habits, soul of a Nation's worth,—which all the metal of Potosi cannot purchase back; to which the metal of Potosi, and all you can buy with it, is dross ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... 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]
... his mind from the time when he found himself a popular subaltern in a crack regiment, admired for his easy manners and good looks, respected by meaner men for his good blood, and rich in everything except that vulgar dross without which the life of West-end London is so hollow a delusion, so bitter a comedy of mean shifts ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... of some wicked manifestation of that power which was temporarily committed to the invisibles. In both of these expectations, however, he was fated to be disappointed Notwithstanding the strong spiritual bias of the opinions of the credulous sentinel, there was too much of the dross of temporal things in his composition, to elevate him altogether above the weakness of humanity. A mind so encumbered began to weary with its own contemplations; and, as it grew feeble with its extraordinary efforts, the dominion of matter ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... through a stormy cloud; An angel hovering o'er the paths of life, But sought in vain amidst its cares and strife; Claimed by the many—known but to the few Who keep thy great Original in view; Who, void of passion's dross, behold in thee A ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... nor yet me. Go! I am lost to you forever! your own cowardice, your own weak worship of expediency, have been your real obstacles. For your sake I was willing to brave poverty, debt, expatriation. It was you who preferred the dross of gold, and the indulgence of your own luxury and that of the sybarite, your father, to the passionate affection I bore you. It is too late now for regret or recrimination. Go, I command you! accomplish your destiny; continue to beguile Miriam with the tale ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... that pride to pampered priesthood dear; Churchman and votary alike despised. Foul Superstition! howsoe'er disguised, Idol, saint, virgin, prophet, crescent, cross, For whatsoever symbol thou art prized, Thou sacerdotal gain, but general loss! Who from true worship's gold can separate thy dross. ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... forgotten in the next. But the silver cord of the Bible is not loosed, nor its golden bowl broken, as Time chronicles its tens of centuries passed by. Has the human race gone mad? Time sits as a refiner of metal; the dross is piled in forgotten heaps, but the pure gold is reserved for use, passes into the ages, and is current a thousand years hence as well as to-day. It is only real merit that can long pass for such. Tinsel will rust in the storms of life. False ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... understand that you 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
... folly," remonstrated the elder man, who had a rather fine face, and much of the air and manner of a gentleman, as Tom was quick to perceive. "I desire no man's death; I only ask for his gold, which is, after all, but the dross of the earth; and life for a fine young fellow like yourself is full of joyous promise, even though he carry no ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... 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 of ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... we were honest folks," said she, "I 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 ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... capable, though misled by the teachings of a crude philosophy, despising and maltreating their bodies as clogs and incumbrances to the life of the indwelling soul. Countless martyrs we have seen throwing away the physical earthly life as so much worthless dross, and all for the sake of purely spiritual truths. As with religion, so with the scientific spirit and the artistic spirit,—the unquenchable craving to know the secrets of nature, and the yearning to create the beautiful in form and ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... offered me two hundred thousand," retorted the other fiercely. "Go and tell that, to those who sent you. Tell them that I— Heriot—would look upon a fortune as mere dross against the delight of seeing that man Fabrice, whom I hate beyond everything in earth or hell, mount up the steps to the guillotine. Tell them that I know that Agnes de Lucines loathes me, that I know that she loves him. I know that ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... for the optimist, who does not fly from them, but welcomes them. He has a mental prism which can separate the insipid white light of existence into bright hues. He has a mental alchemy by which he can produce golden instruction out of the dross of failure. He has a spiritual magic which makes the nectar of joy out of the tears of sorrow. He has a clairvoyant eye that can perceive the existence of hope through the iron walls of despair. Prosperity tends to make one forget the grace of Buddha, but ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... 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 ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... appearance of what might be called, for want of a more specific 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 Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... juncture, that in Charleston, many proper names of foreign origin have been corrupted in pronunciation. A few examples will suffice: The Dutch name Vanderhorst, conspicuous in the early annals of the city, has come to be pronounced "Van-Dross"; Legare, the name of another distinguished old family, commemorated in the name of Legare Street, is pronounced "Legree"; De Saussure has become "Dess-a-sore," with the accent on the first syllable, and Prioleau ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... region of felicity. That man, who follows kine every day in the woods himself subsisting the while on grass and cowdung and leaves of trees, his heart freed from desire of fruit, his senses restrained from every improper object and his mind purified of all dross,—that man,—O thou of a hundred sacrifices, lives in joy and freed from the dominion of desire in my region or in any other region of happiness that he wishes, in the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... MS-DOS for its single-tasking nature, its limits on application size, its nasty primitive interface, and its ties to IBMness (see {fear and loathing}). Also 'mess-loss', 'messy-dos', 'mess-dog', 'mess-dross', 'mush-dos', and various combinations thereof. In Ireland and the U.K. it is even sometimes called 'Domestos' after a ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... he had no one to be familiar with. Consider Gibbon, in his own domain supreme, but the magnificent fall of his cadences, however fit for his subject, was fit for no other; and look at Landor, the last great writer of English, though even he never quite scoured off the lingering dross of Johnsonese, and at the best has the air of a giant ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... sordid Interest breeds! Oh! that I had shar'd a levell'd State of Life, With quiet humble Maids, exempt from Pride, And Thoughts of Worldly Dross that marr their Joys, In Any Sphere, but a Distinguished Heiress, To raise me Envy, and oppose my Love. Fortune, Fortune, Why did you give me ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... Shakespeare, wealth and name are both dross compared with the theft of hope— and Maxwell had to rob a ...
— Graveyard of Dreams • Henry Beam Piper
... disposition of his materials. Yet there is no reason to complain of the way in which Warton has acquitted himself, as far as he has gone. His History of English Poetry is a rich mine, in which, if we have some trouble in separating the ore from the dross, there is much precious metal to reward our pains. The first volume of this laborious work was published in 1774; two others followed, in 1778, and in 1781; and some progress had been made at his decease ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... nature and a free forest life. He hopes not. And yet, as he glances at the calm yellow moon overhead, and listens to the low murmur of the little waterfall below the spring, he has a faint notion that it is not all loss and dross. ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... 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 ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... looked at him almost pensively. "I thought it my duty. I have encountered ridicule and obloquy; but I do not mind them. I count them but dross. Wherever I have found the print of my Lord's shoe in the earth, there I have coveted ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... day, inflaming the spirit of religious difference. Yet this was not an unmixed evil—"The greatest blessings have been achieved by discussions, errors suffer in the ordeal; truth never does; the dross is consumed in the fire; the gold comes out more ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... influences which have most to do in the making of an individual, heredity is perhaps the greatest. It is the crucible in which the gold and dross of many generations of his ancestors are melted down and remixed in the man, who is, indeed, "a part of all" from whom ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... 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
... and insulted by that venal band of mercenary and time serving politicians, those flippant summer flies of the metropolis, those fair-weather patriots, which, when compared with the steady, sound, and inflexible patriotism of Mr. Jones, are like the dross of the vilest metal put in competition with the purest gold. In doing this justice to Mr. Jones's character (and it is but bare justice), I do not, however, mean to say that all the members composing the Westminster Committee are quite the reverse ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... Goetterdaemmerung as one of the most eloquent in existence, and contains melodies so touching that they could have come only from the very soul of Beethoven. Especially noteworthy is the aspiring melody of the middle, contrasting portion (Maggiore) where the spirit, freed from earthly dross, seems to mount to the skies in a chariot of fire. The third part, where the minor mode is resumed, abounds in dramatic touches; especially that fugal passage, where the ecclesiastical tone, combined with pealing trumpets, ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... licentious, and oppressive, the ornaments which ought only to add grace to truth, and loveliness to innocence? Every other kind of adulation, however shameful, however mischievous, is less detestable than the crime of counterfeiting characters, and fixing the stamp of literary sanction upon the dross ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... yet in some respects 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 that ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot |
