"Dross" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and a stout heart, how would he have disappointed his enemies if they could only have seen, in the dark cell of the Buytenhof, his pale face lit up by the smile of the martyr, who forgets the dross of this earth after having obtained a glimpse of ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... between, The Rivers and the restless deep, may all Prove intellectual gain to me, my wish Concurring with thy will; Science herself, 110 All cloud removed, inclines her beauteous head And offers me the lip, if, dull of heart, I shrink not and decline her gracious boon. Go now, and gather dross, ye sordid minds That covet it; what could my Father more, What more could Jove himself, unless he gave His own abode, the heav'n in which he reigns? More eligible gifts than these were not Apollo's to his son, had they been safe As they ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... invention, as was just enough to shew, that the contrivers of them neither knew how to lye, nor speak truth. In these voluminous extravagances, Love and Honour supplied the place of Life and Manners. But the over-refinement of Platonic sentiments always sinks into the dross and feces of that Passion. For in attempting a more natural representation of it, in the little amatory Novels, which succeeded these heavier Volumes, tho' the Writers avoided the dryness of the Spanish Intrigue, and the extravagance ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... there can be no justice; that such is the mercy of God that he will hold his children in the consuming fire of his distance until they pay the uttermost farthing, until they drop the purse of selfishness with all the dross that is in it, and rush home to the Father and the Son, and the many brethren—rush inside the centre of the life-giving fire whose outer circles burn. I believe that no hell will be lacking which would help the just mercy of ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... '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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the green betray New games begun and old ones put away. Let us fare on, dead friend, O deathless friend, Where under his old hat as green as moss The hedger chops and finds new gaps to mend, And on his bonfires burns the thorns and dross, And hums a hymn, the best, thinks he, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... mere fable; this ever rolling back of the stone to the hill-top for the tenth, for the hundredth, for the thousandth time, is only the history of the soul on its journey heavenward; the gold, ere it be freed from the dross, must be scorched, burnt, melted, dissolved; and the soul, to be made pure in its turn, must be likewise burnt, melted, fused. Think not, therefore, that Shakespeare, ere he wrote "To be or not to be," had been perching ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... cans't buy roses to strew life's rugged pathway—but thou cans't not, O great deity at whose shrine all men kneel, thou cans't not cleanse the polluted soul, still the troubled conscience, or dim the pure surface of unsullied honor. Nor cans't thou purchase me, thou sordid dross. Guns and grappling-irons!" abruptly added the Corporal, abandoning his philosophical strain, and getting into a towering passion,—"would you bribe me to desert my post as a guardian of innocence, and turn traitor to every ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... the unspoiled, untainted, deepest part. Fortunately for us all, the gold in human nature remains gold, whatever its alloys from base contacts; and it is worth the mining, though there be but a grain of it to the ton of dross. As Ross spoke Arthur warmed to him. "You must come to see us," he ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... 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 eternity ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... thought of envy Gus Ingle's gold had brought into the world, she could create a smile here and a hope fulfilled there and a glow yonder, she would ask nothing else of the yellow dirt. For dirt or rock or dross it was, and that was as clear as starlight. If her hand but lay in the hand of Mark King, what did gold matter? Or dresses—or what people thought or said of her or him? A strange ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... continues, "beyond devoting the gold of your genius to work, which dross, in the person of a dozen predecessors or contemporaries, has produced as well. Pun and parody, satire and invective, quaintness of fancy, and elegance, have each had its representative as successful as you. Your life-work, until this moment, has been the record of a genius ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... life shall grow into the life of a "beloved Son," and shall have in it the glory of the Christ. Every man may work in that direction by making every act and power a sacrifice, until the gold is purged from the dross, and only ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... patient with your pride. But now the cup of your offence is overfull, your silver has become dross, and Heaven is weary of you. You shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth and as a garden that hath no water. I will set you up as a gazing-stock, and it shall come to pass that all they that look upon you shall loathe you. Base of soul, be base of body. God will cause the arrogancy ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... called spelter, or the pig of zinc, and this is what is sold to refiners, who take out all the dross or impurities so it can be rolled or used for galvanizing iron, or for ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... surely smile at our want of comprehension, and look back on this earth as the College undergraduate remembers his kindergarten; for the spiritual evolution goes ever on, working always Godwards, and when the human dross falls away, the imperfect and the partial will be merged into the perfect and the eternal. The broken eggshells may lie in the old nest, but the fledged larks are singing in ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... the horizon that flies before us! Amazed and awed to find that I can only warn where I would control, I have looked into my own soul. It is true that the desires of earth chain me to the present, and shut me from the solemn secrets which Intellect, purified from all the dross of the clay, alone can examine and survey. The stern condition on which we hold our nobler and diviner gifts darkens our vision towards the future of those for whom we know the human infirmities of jealousy or hate or love. Mejnour, all around me is mist and ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of wild outdoor life, he knew at times a high, passionate searching for things of the spirit, when the outer world fell away like dross and he seemed to pass into a state resembling ecstasy. Never in cities or among his fellow men, struggling and herded, did these times come to him, but when he was abroad with the winds and stars in desolate places. Then, sometimes, he would be rapt away, caught up to see the tail-end ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... brother Charles Wesley, and myself, took boat for Gravesend, in order to embark for Georgia. Our end in leaving our native country was not to avoid want, (God having given us plenty of temporal blessings,) nor to gain the dung or dross of riches or honor; but singly this,—to save our souls, to live wholly to the glory of God. In the afternoon we found the 'Simmonds' off Gravesend, and ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... 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 ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... purifying chastening of a Father, rather than the avenging anger of a Destroyer, that all hearts may submit themselves in a solemn and holy calm still to bear the burning that shall make us clean from dross and bring us forth to a higher national life. Never, in the whole course of our history, have such teachings of the pure abstract Right been so commended and forced upon us by Providence. Never have public men been so constrained to humble themselves before God, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... women and men wellnigh smothered in a rain of flowers; I saw the people on their knees with uplifted hands, as though worshipping a Divinity; and I cannot wonder that the objects of such enthusiastic homage should have taken dross for pure gold in the firm belief that they personally were beloved of the people, even as children love their own parents. It is easy to understand that after such scenes the Emperor and Empress looked upon all ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... rich, and inexhausted vein. But if thy pre-existing soul Was form'd, at first, with myriads more, It did through all the mighty poets roll, Who Greek or Latin laurels wore, And was that Sappho last, which once it was before. If so, then cease thy flight, O heaven-born mind! Thou hast no dross to purge from thy rich ore: Nor can thy soul a fairer mansion find, Than was the beauteous frame she left behind: Return to fill or mend the choir ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... acquired to attain each glorious incarnation; for at each transformation they cast away unconsciously the flesh and its errors. When the man lives in Love he has shed all evil passions: Hope, Charity, Faith, and Prayer have, in the words of Isaiah, purged the dross of his inner being, which can never more be polluted by earthly affections. Hence the grand saying of Christ quoted by Saint Matthew, 'Lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt,' and those still grander words: 'If ye were of this world the world ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... you 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 I cannot win her save by ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... 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 ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... and Cordelia; we know how to Shakespeare, and in a lesser degree to some of the other great Elizabethans like Marlowe and Webster, there is nothing common and insignificant in life, nothing which the creative imagination of the artist cannot transform, transmute, from mere dross into pure gold. We say, and we say rightly, that here is the greatest thing that England has brought forth, and we think of it as representing the splendid youth and the first maturity of a ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... Let there be no more distance between each flash of vivacity, but what is necessary for giving time to observe its splendid radiance. I hope I shall never again approach so near the clod of clay. I hope the fire of my genius shall never again be so long in kindling, or so much covered up with the dross of stupidity. ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... and the Best! Where'er the goal for which we strive— Whate'er the knowledge we may win— This truth supreme shall live and thrive, 'Tis love that makes the whole world kin! The love sublime and purified, That puts all dross of self aside To live for others—to uphold Before our own a brother's cause: This is the master power shall mould The ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... once fierce opposition. A bill was brought into parliament to forbid the circulation of the Scriptures in English; but the sturdy John of Gaunt vigorously asserted the right of the people to have the Word of God in their own tongue; "for why," said he, "are we to be the dross of the nations?" However, the rulers of the Church grew more and more alarmed at the circulation of the book. At length Archbishop Arundel, a zealous but not very learned prelate, complained to the Pope of "that pestilent ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... design: points of native humour and wit, and lines of personal interest were taken in to diversify and relieve the allegorical sameness; and these grew more and more into the main texture of the workmanship. As the new elements gained strength, much of the old treasure proved to be mere refuge and dross; as such it was discarded; while so much of sterling wealth as had been accumulated was sucked in, retained, and carried up into ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... now they have degenerated, as though from a golden to an iron age, or as the Platonic cube degenerates into bad harmonies, which, Plato says brings destruction. [Now this precious gold is turned to dross, and the wine to water.] All the most wealthy monasteries support only an idle crowd, which gluttonizes upon the public alms of the Church. Christ, however, teaches concerning the salt that has lost its savor that it should be cast out and be trodden under foot, Matt. 5, 13. Therefore ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... so delightfully abridged the task which to their impatient eyes appeared to be much too slow in executing, could have spared their dear friend so much unnecessary time and labour in disencumbering himself of the superfluity of worldly dross which had fallen to his share. A little cogging, sleeving, and palming; nay, a mere spindle judiciously planted, or a few long ones introduced on the weaving system, could have effected in one evening what fifty milling matches, considering the 'glorious uncertainty' ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... others, like Oro, consider it as a realm of possibilities, probably unpleasant and perhaps non-existent; just this and nothing more. Only one thing is certain, that no creature which has life desires to leap into the fire and from the dross of doubts, to resolve the gold—or the ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... to be got by your becoming solemn-sides before your time. You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip. Diligence—ambition; noble words, but only if 'touched to fine issues.' Prizes may be dross, learning lumber, unless they bring you into the arena with increased understanding. Hanker not too much after worldly prosperity—that corpulent cigar; if you became a millionaire you would probably go swimming around for more like a diseased goldfish. Look to it that what you are doing is ...
— Courage • J. M. Barrie
... Button-Moulder explains to Peer that he must go into this ladle, for his time has come. He has neither been a good man nor a sturdy sinner, but a half-and-half fellow without any real self in him. Such men are dross, badly cast buttons with no loops to them, and must go, by the Master's orders, into the melting-pot again. Is there no escape? None, unless Peer can find the loop of the button, his real Self, the Peer Gynt that God made. After vain and frantic ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... pursue. I'll use it as the touchstone of Julia's sincerity and disinterestedness. If her love prove pure and sterling ore, my name will rest on it with honour; and once I've stamped it there, I lay aside my doubts for ever! But if the dross of selfishness, the alloy of pride, predominate, 'twill be best to leave her as a toy for some less cautious fool to ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... of the Renascence, all this treasure was found to be but dross. Investigators in the old Church and in the new joined in proving that the great ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... farm-work, for which he was paid the advanced wage of fourpence a day. But his highest ambition was to be taken on at the colliery where his father worked; and he shortly joined his elder brother James there as a "corf-bitter," or "picker," to clear the coal of stones, bats, and dross. His wages were then advanced to sixpence a day, and afterwards to eightpence when he was set to ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... cost, having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? 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's no more ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... all!—that flings itself at your feet, and cries, Love me, Arthur! Your heart beats no quicker at the kneeling appeal of my love!—your proud eye is dimmed by no tear of sympathy!—you accept my soul's treasure as though 'twere dross! not the pearls from the unfathomable deeps of affection! not the diamonds from the caverns of the heart. You treat me like a slave, and bid me bow to my master! Is this the guerdon of a free maiden—is this the price of a life's passion? Ah me! when was it otherwise? when ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dear these silent, yet eloquent, companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of adversity. When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these only retain ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... flow of intimacy, the two happy lovers ceased to be so shy of common themes, and their speech did not reject all as dross that was not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the devoted woman, it made very little difference to her whether she dwelt in a castle or a hovel, provided she could see her husband cheerful, and know that he was happy. This was all she looked for—cared for—lived for. He was her life. What was her money—the dross which mankind yearned after—but for its use to him, but for the power it might exercise amongst men to elevate and ennoble him? What was her palace but a dungeon if it rendered her beloved more miserable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... shipping authorities, all railway officials and employees, etc., should be as alert as possible to guard against all accidents. But this can be done without one moment's worry on the part of a solitary human being, and care is as different from worry as gold is from dross, coal from ashes. By all means, take due precautions; study to avoid the possibility of accidents, but do not give worry a place in ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... maid, And men who for Thy cross Fought with the Saracen of old, Counting their lives no loss— Martyrs who rose through golden flames, Free of the body's dross. ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... Sometimes sorrow changes the dross from the lamp of the spirit so that it burns with a purity almost unearthly; sometimes sorrow sears, rendering the very soul insensible; and sometimes sorrow remains under the ashes, a living coal steadily consuming all that is noble, hardening all that is ignoble; and is extinguished leaving ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... it but to fall. We are still up and doing; we may be frosty and shrewd, but kindly. We can wish all men well; like them, too, so far as they may be liked, and smile at the fuss, bother, hurry, and turmoil, which they make about matters which to us are worthless dross. The greatest prize in the whole market—in any and in every market—success, is to the old man nothing. He little cares who is up and who is down; the present he lives in and delights in. Thus, in one of those admirable comedies in which Robson acted, we find the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... for the 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 Golden Rule was no more a common ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... hard-earned money had taken a deeper hold upon him than a girl so young as Phebe could imagine. For what is money to a young nature but the merest dross, compared with the love and faith it has lavished upon some fellow-mortal? While she was mourning over the shipwreck of all her best affections, old Marlowe was brooding over his six hundred pounds. They represented so much to him, so many years of ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... 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 ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... was wonderful that this man, who was so unworldly, so unselfish, so pure of the stains of earth himself, should have seen at once her position from her own point of view; that was neither a very exalted one, nor was it very free from the dross of worldliness. But it was so. All at once he seemed to know by a subtle instinct what were the weaknesses, and the temptations, and the aims of this girl, who, with all her faults, was so dear to him. He understood her better, perhaps, ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... afterwards he had found himself out of his depth; and each and every theory had seemed to him but part of the chaotic contradictions and incoherences of humanity on its march. It was all a continuous piling up of dross, amidst which he lost himself. Although Fourier had sprung from Saint-Simon he denied him in part; and if Saint-Simon's doctrine ended in a kind of mystical sensuality, the other's conducted to an unacceptable regimenting ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... 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 ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... one kind is the strongest motive of affection that can be; for, when he dies, we cannot be persuaded any man can do his parts like him. But, to conclude, I value a worthy actor by the corruption of some few of the quality as I would do gold in the ore—I should not mind the dross, but the purity ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... been welded into caste, so the simple old beliefs of the Veda, the mild doctrines of Buddha, and the fierce rites of the non-Aryan tribes, have been thrown into the melting-pot, and poured out thence as a mixture of precious metal and dross, to be worked up into the complex worship ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... his age, began to fumble in his pockets. He went through them twice, and his countenance, now lighted by hope and now darkened by despair, conveyed to Captain Trimblett as accurately as speech could have done the feelings of a man to whom all reading matter, without his spectacles, is mere dross. ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... remained at their posts. Captain Layton, in very vexation of spirit, refused to go even to look at the mines, declaring that "all is not gold that glitters;" and it might be, after all, this seeming gold was no better than dross; or that if gold it was, it would stay there till he had time to go and fetch it. Roger and Vaughan were of his opinion; indeed, neither would have left those they were bound to protect, were it to prove as rich as the mines of Peru and Mexico. Some days ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... such a wonder of flix and floss, Freshness and fragrance,—floods of it, too! Gold did I say? Nay, gold's mere dross. Here Life smiled, "Think what I meant to do!" And Love ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... dissolute world of intellectual activity, Peter Martyr entered, and through it he passed unscathed, emerging with his Christian faith intact and his orthodoxy untainted. He gathered the gold of classical learning, rejecting its dross; his morals were above reproach and calumny never touched his reputation. Respected, appreciated, and, most of all, beloved by his contemporaries, his writings enriched the intellectual heritage of ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... 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 ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... over the rims of his spectacles. Then for once his frank and mellow face annexed a reflection of the curl on the lawyer's lip. "Do you know," he said, "it never once came into my simple old pate to ask which would find the dross and which ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... the silvery bubbles spring! Good! the mass is melting now! Let the salts we duly bring Purge the flood, and speed the flow. From the dross and the scum, Pure, the fusion must come; For perfect and pure we the metal must keep, That its voice may be perfect, and pure, and deep. That voice, with merry music rife, The cherished child shall welcome in, What time ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... there was still much room for improvement, and it might take months and perhaps years to undo the effect of Maude's early training in selfishness, yet there was a great deal that was very sweet and lovable in her character, hidden away under all the dross; and Mrs. Boardman knew that if she kept on trying to improve, some day she would be a very sweet girl, and one who would win ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... at him with the prettiest confidence; her clinging hand clasped his with love and trust immeasurable. He felt and knew that love like this was a treasure beside which the Reverend John Haygarth's hoarded thousands must needs seem but sorry dross. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... (even many MS-DOS hackers) loathe 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 brand ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... pretty woman," said her father, with a wise gentleness of his own. Lydia often saw him holding the balance for her intemperate judgments, his grain of gold forever equalising her dross. "I think she'd be called a beautiful woman. Jeff thought ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... say impatiently to his sister. But the madness told. And the madman was all the while consolingly rich in other, and, to Philip, more attractive kinds of madness—the follies of the hunter and climber, of the man who holds his neck as dross in comparison with the satisfaction of certain wild instincts that the Rockies excite in him. Anderson had enjoyed his full share of adventures with goat and bear. Such things are the customary ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... art. Should I outlive thee, I will tell him, and say, blackened as thou art, cursed and full of sin, there was yet a spark of the Divine in thee, a spark which anon shall fire and blaze and burn the dross, and leave thee pure and unsullied as the air in which ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... Hebrew "Book of Splendor," a feat for which no Hebrew scholar has had the heart. This Bible of Kabbalism is indeed so confused and confusing that only a "golden dustman" would have had the patience to sift out its gems from the mountain of dross, and attempt to reduce its wide-weltering chaos to order. Even Waite, with all his gift of research and narration, finds little more than gleams of dawn in a dim forest, brilliant vapors, and glints that tell by their very ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... of fourteen or sixteen hours. In addition 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 and cleaned, a process which occupies a full day; and this unavoidable ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... Christianity, even in its New Testament, has possessed or does possess up to the present, is for the most part taken from the Old Testament, viewed from a Christian stand-point, in virtue of the impression of the person of Jesus. Even its dross was changed into gold; its hidden treasures were brought forth, and while the earthly and transitory were recognised as symbols of the heavenly and eternal, there rose up a world of blessings, of holy ordinances, and of sure grace ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... 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 (soul-hydroptic ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... 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
... All that there is of progress, learning, skill, Of beauty, culture, grace—and I might even Include religion, though that flouts at heaven— Comes at thy bidding, flies before thy loss;— And yet men call thee dross! If thou art dross then I mistaken be ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... inconceivable theory about Homer that has not its 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 ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... Blower, there is a strap, that is fastned to two posts, and comes round behind him, on which he leans his back: and he has a stick laid cross-ways before him, on which he lays both his hands, and so he blows with greater ease. As the Stones are thus burning, the dross that is in them melts and runs out at the bottom, where there is a slanting hole made for the purpose so big as the lump of Iron may pass thro: out of this hole, I say, runs out the dross like streams of fire, ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... "the long trial of our love has purified it from earthly dross, and proved it the type of ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... staggered me: "No man, woman, or child in this island would for a moment even dream of singing a worldly song. We are all converted here, except a few benighted Catholics. The vain, fleeting joys of this world are as dross to us. The missionary has a modulator, and he trains the young men and women in the sol-fa so that they may sing Sankey's hymns in all the parts." I was dreadfully floored by this answer, and could ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... 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 ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... Beauty—that transforms Old dross to dreams, that softly glows On the fierce rainbowed front of storms, And smiles on unascended snows, That from the travail of lone seas Wrests sighing shell and moonlit pearl, And gathers up all sorceries In the ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... 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 fluid glades until every vista seemed to break through half-lucent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... attention to those things. They said that such are their devils, whom they abhor; adding, that in their minds there abides absolutely nothing that is heavenly, but only what is earthly, which they called dross. They said that they had also ascertained this to be the case from the fact, that when they heard that on that earth they go naked, obscenity instantly occupied their thoughts, and that they gave no thought at all to their heavenly ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... 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 ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... again. "Oh, well, he thinks me perfectly beautiful anyway," said she, in the tone of one to whom love was as dross because ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to anybody except my informant. Sometimes the applicant is persuaded that 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 ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... 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
... within himself some further revealing would come from him. It was little that he said in all, but language that has been fused in the furnace of so strong a sorrow and silence has little of the dross of common speech—the unmeaning, misleading, unnecessary elements: his veritable memory and thought and feeling were ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... to lighten the misery of the people, but soon few heeded these laws which none were left to enforce. The vagabonds and evil-minded men who began by robbing the deserted houses of jewels, money and plate, ended by searching them for food and casting aside their treasures as worthless dross. It was even said that some of them did worse things, things not to be named, since in its extremities nature knows no shame. Only if bread and meat were scarce, wine remained in plenty. In the midst of death ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 under ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... those in which he raised his voice against the contempt with which our fine old ballads were regarded, and showed the scoffers that the same gold which, burnished and polished, gives lustre to the Aeneid and the Odes of Horace, is mingled with the rude dross ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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
... 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 ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... with the skill of a practised orator. The text was "Our conversation is in Heaven," its theme the contrast between the man of this world, with his heart fixed upon its pomps, its vanities, its honours, and the believer indifferent to all these, esteeming them as dross merely compared to the heavenly treasure, the one thing needful. Certainly the utter worthlessness of the prizes for which men labour and so late take rest, barter their happiness, their peace, their honour, was never more ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... struck off to left or right, running as directly as possible up the terraced benches until the final dim traces were completely lost amid the low-growing cedars. Each one of these led as straight as nature would permit to some specific spot where men toiled incessantly for the golden dross, guarding their claims with loaded rifles, while delving deeper and deeper beneath the mysterious rocks, ever seeking to make their own the secret hoards of the world's great storehouse. Countless centuries were being rudely unlocked through the ceaseless toil of pick ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... another calendar, as much or more material which is a calendar of popular errors: I mean chiefly in natural history, such as pass in speech and conceit, and are nevertheless apparently detected and convicted of untruth, that man's knowledge be not weakened nor embased by such dross and vanity. As for the doubts or non liquets general or in total, I understand those differences of opinions touching the principles of nature, and the fundamental points of the same, which have caused the diversity of sects, ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... and choose the subjects of her wilful ministrations. She seemed to scatter at random, out of sheer gaiete de coeur, as Jouffroy had said, and if some golden grain chanced to be gleaming in this soul or that, what cause for astonishment? The rest might be the worst of dross. As well might the chance occur to one of Nature's children as to another. She did not bestow even one golden grain for nothing, bien sur; she meant to be paid back with interest. Just one bright bead of the ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... Professor Gray, and am ready to settle any indemnity that may be demanded of me. I tell you, one and all, that I count these things as but dross when compared with the life of my Feodora. She shall not die if any high-handed outrage that I can commit will prevent it. ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... Shakespeare, wealth and name are both dross compared with the theft of hope— and Maxwell had to rob a whole planet ...
— Graveyard of Dreams • Henry Beam Piper
... but after they are once kindled, the materials run together into an hard cake or lump, which is sustained by the furnace, and through this the mettal as it runs trickles down the receivers, which are placed at the bottom, where there is a passage open, by which they take away the scum and dross, and let out their mettal ...
— Iron Making in the Olden Times - as instanced in the Ancient Mines, Forges, and Furnaces of The Forest of Dean • H. G. Nicholls
... sunbeam streaming 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 glorious attribute ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... this may be going through the same experience as Harry Moncrief. Remember, rough as the experience may be, it goes to make the man in you, and it depends upon you whether you come from these trials dross or pure gold. ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... Liberty, who has been neglected 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 ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... faithful city 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. Therefore saith the Lord, the LORD of hosts, the Mighty One ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... of Fahlun, some of which have been worked for 600 years, we saw nothing. We took their magnitude and richness for granted, on the strength of the immense heaps of dross through which we drove on approaching the town, and the desolate appearance of the surrounding country, whose vegetation has been for the most part destroyed by the fumes from the smelting works. In our sore and sodden ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... he said, "has changed to brass, our silver to dross, our wisdom, to folly—it is His will, who confounds the counsels of the wise, and shortens the arm of the mighty. To the chapel—to the chapel, Lady Eveline; and instead of vain repining, let us pray to God and the saints to turn away their displeasure, and to ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... put on Next his white skin. A leather apron then, Well sewn, upon his body's lower part He placed, and over it a mighty stone As large as any mill-stone was secured. His firm, deep, iron apron then he braced Over the mighty stone—an apron made Of iron purified from every dross— Such dread had he that day of the Gaebulg. His crested helm of battle on his head He last put on—a helmet all ablaze From forty gems in each compartment set, Cruan, and crystal, carbuncles of fire, And brilliant rubies of the Eastern ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... thy votaries in anthems sing With the immortal Haydn, and do praise Creative Wisdom, Who, of one blood made All Nations for to dwell on earth in love, Then let celestial fires descend and burn Complete, the offering of the lips, and purge The dross of caste and hate ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 6, June, 1890 • Various
... shouted into Caesar's ear, above the wind that was roaring in the trees, and scattering the ripening leaves in clouds, "And how's Dross?" ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... in the steep sides of the mountain, or, at most, opened a horizontal vein of moderate depth. They were equally deficient in the knowledge of the best means of detaching the precious metal from the dross with which it was united, and had no idea of the virtues of quicksilver, - a mineral not rare in Peru, - as an amalgam to effect this decomposition. *22 Their method of smelting the ore was by means of furnaces built in elevated ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... smile, "you have been too much in the wars; and of the two forms of metal that may be earned by worshiping the god of trade, you have taken the worse—the dross!" [This dialogue is garnished with puns for which it is difficult to find any English equivalent.] And Crevel roared with laughter. Though Marneffe could take offence if his honor were in peril, he always took these rough pleasantries in good part; they were the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Put off their dross and mortal guise, And with the look that is to be They looked from those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... are the people 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 ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... substantial boon Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon? The little that we sec: From doubt is never free; The little that we do Is but half-nobly true; With our laborious hiving What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, Only secure in every one's conniving, A long account of nothings paid with loss, Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen wires, After our little hour of strut and rave, With all our pasteboard passions and ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... 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 forever. Come, my daughter, come back to your ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke |
