"Winnow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beyond this life and a tribunal at which all wrongs will be righted, and that to fear God and keep his commandments is the whole duty of man. There are thus many passages in the book which express a bitter skepticism; to winnow the wheat from the chaff and to find out what we ought to think about life is a serious undertaking. It is only the wise and skillful interpreter who can steer his bark along these tortuous channels of reflection, and not run aground. Yet, properly interpreted, the book is ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... the same: So put your Farming first, and next Distress, and there you have your text. But here the question comes to press, What farming be, and what's distress? Why, farming is to plough and sow, Weed, harrow, harvest, reap, and mow, Thrash, winnow, sell,—and buy and breed The proper stock to fat and feed. Distress is want, and pain, and grief, And sickness,—things as wants relief; Thirst, hunger, age, and cold severe; In short, ax any overseer,— Well, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Battle! ye linger, Sons of the Worm! Ye crouch adown, O kindreds, from the gathering of the storm! Ye say, it shall soon pass over and we shall fare afield And reap the wheat with the war-sword and winnow in the shield. But where shall be the corner wherein ye then shall abide, And where shall be the woodland where the whelps of the bears shall hide When 'twixt the snowy mountains and the edges of the sea These men have swept the wild-wood and the fields where men may be Of every living sword-blade, ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... nigrum, which twines its tendrils round poles or trees, like ivy or hops. The pepper-corns grow in bunches close to each other. They are first green, but afterwards turn black. When dried they are separated from the dust and partly from the outward membranous coat by means of a kind of winnow, and are then laid up in warehouses. The white pepper is the same production as the black. It undergoes a process to change its colour, being laid in lime, which takes off the outer black coat and leaves ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... While the wind, cooling through the boughs, Flatters with air my panting brows. Thanks for your rest, ye mossy banks, And unto you, cool zephyrs, thanks, Who, as my hair, my thoughts too shed, And winnow from the ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... cane and make sugar? Or find grain for seed, clear some land, plow, harrow, plant, hoe, reap, winnow, grind and bolt and present you with a bag ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... over Carrowmore 'T will be ever thus, meseems,— Like the winnow of wings o'er Carrowmore The surge of the ...
— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard
... the matter, the stronger one's opinion becomes that the Christian will have to follow the Eastern example and winnow the wheat from the chaff—worse than chaff, sometimes the positively pernicious and even poisonous refuse. Burns, in the "Cotter's Saturday Night," pictures the good man taking down the big Bible for ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... naturally a good-natured, but out-spoken fellow—"sooner than I'd take up a poor devil of a beggar that has enough to do to make out his bit and sup. Go on about your business, poor devil; you shan't be molested. Go to my uncle's, where you'll get a bellyfull, and a comfortable bed of straw, and a winnow-cloth in the barn. Zounds!—it would be a nice night's work to go out for Willy Reilly and to bring home a ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... forest into an arable inhabitable field for us; and we, idly dreaming it would grow spontaneous crops forever,—find it now in a too questionable state; peremptorily requiring real labor and agriculture again. Real "agriculture" is not pleasant; much pleasanter to reap and winnow (with ballot-box or otherwise) than ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... We need only recall John's earlier testimony to understand how these works would not seem to him to fill up the role which he had anticipated for Messiah. Where is the axe that was to be laid at the root of the trees, or the fan that was to winnow out the chaff? Where is the fiery spirit which he had foretold? This gentle Healer is not the theocratic judge of his warning prophecies. He is tending and nurturing, rather than felling, the barren trees. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the wondrous laws which regulate The fierceness of the bounding element? My thoughts which long had grovell'd in the slime Of this dull world, like dusky worms which house Beneath unshaken waters, but at once Upon some earth-awakening day of spring Do pass from gloom to glory, and aloft Winnow the purple, bearing on both sides Double display of starlit wings which burn Fanlike and fibred, with intensest bloom: E'en so my thoughts, erewhile so low, now felt Unutterable buoyancy and strength To bear them upward through the trackless fields Of undefin'd ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... read of that sin in a book?" said he; and Tomlinson said, "Ay!" The Devil he blew upon his nails, and the little devils ran, And he said: "Go husk this whimpering thief that comes in the guise of a man: Winnow him out 'twixt star and star, and sieve his proper worth: There's sore decline in Adam's line if this ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... he belies his name, "Lord Keppel," by starting at every soft glimmer of the sea. Therefore now he is left to roam at his leisure above high-water mark, poking his nose into black dry weed, probing the winnow casts of yellow drift for oats, and snorting disappointment through a ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... a thanksgiving morning as they (who had been old friends and had spent their youth together, being in some way related, in a farm-house in that neighborhood) had ever known; and when they had said as much as this, they laughed out in very merriness of spirit, with a great winnow, as the happy audience came streaming forth at the meeting-house door. There were no cold, haughty, or distrustful faces now, as when they had entered in an hour ago; the genial air of the little meeting-house had melted away all frosts of that kind; and as they mingled under the sober autumn-trees, ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... Americanae (Copenhagen, 1837). This ponderous volume contained all the original sources, but it has given rise to much needless controversy on the Norse voyages, for many of the author's conclusions were soon found to be untenable. He failed to winnow the sound historical material from that which was unsubstantiated or improbable. And so far as the original sources are concerned, it was particularly unfortunate that he followed in the footsteps of seventeenth and eighteenth century scholars and gave precedence ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... St. Vincent the arrangement of the responsible expedition which, in 1798, led to the celebrated Battle of the Nile; in its lustre and thorough workmanship the gem of all naval exploits. To him it fell to choose for its command his brilliant younger brother, and to winnow for him the flower of his fleet, to form what Nelson after the victory called "his band of brothers." "The Battle of the Nile," said the veteran admiral, Lord Howe, "stands singular in this, that every captain distinguished himself." The achievement of the battle was Nelson's ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... places or celebrated persons. With such specialities and preferences we cannot presume to interfere; but, as a rule, the aggregate body comprised in them need not be large or very expensive, and in catholic or general literature it becomes almost surprising when we have taken the pains to winnow from literary remains of real and permanent interest the preponderant mass, of which the facilities for occasional examination at a public library ought to suffice, how comparatively slender ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... you deserve a great deal of credit for having pulled through so far on your limited capital," said she. "Some of the business-men I meet, think this will prove the hardest year in our history. It will winnow the chaff from the ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... be loath, diligent reader, to winnow my chaff, and lay up the wheat in the storehouse of your memory: for truth regards not who is the speaker, nor in what manner it is spoken, but that the thing be true; and she does not despise the jewel which she has rescued from the mud, but she ...
— History Of The Britons (Historia Brittonum) • Nennius
... of the Old Philosophers, [which] were rather Vices, if winnow'd well, form'd to gratify their Proud, Lazy, Superiority, at the Expence of all the Publick Duties incumbent on mankind, whom they pretend to Purge from his Passions, to make him happy, by that means to amuse our Curiosity with Chymera's, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... in the fields to Zephyrus, most bountiful of the winds, who came to aid him at his prayer, that he might right quickly winnow the grain ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... her, "My daughter, shall I not try to find a home for you where you will be happy and contented? Is not Boaz, with whose maidens you have been, a relative of ours? This very night he is going to winnow barley on the threshing-floor. So bathe and anoint yourself and put on your best clothes and go down to the threshing-floor; but do not make yourself known to the man until he is through eating and drinking. ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... Where, winnow'd by the gentle air, Her silken tresses darkly flow And fall upon her brow so fair, Like shadows ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... in the position of the suspended animal destroys the famous legend. Even so, many a time, the most elementary sieve, handled with a little logic, is enough to winnow a confused mass of statements and to release ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... from admitting the soundness of the principle, we hold that no monikin is ever wholly right, or that he will be wholly right, so long as he remains in the least under the influence of matter; and we therefore winnow the false from the true, rejecting the former as worse than useless, while we take the latter ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... showed, however, a lamentable lack of discrimination, a deficient sense of the fitness of things, and consequently, unreliable judgment. These deficiencies are worse than handicaps to an editor. They are absolute disqualifications. An editor's first duty is to discriminate, to sift, to winnow the few grains of wheat out of the bushels of chaff that come to his mill. Editors must have a very keen sense of the fitness of things. It is true that the discriminating reader of newspapers and magazines may be tempted to feel at times that this sense of the fitness of things ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... valuation shall be such That every slight and false-derived cause, Yea, every idle, nice and wanton reason Shall to the king taste of this action; That, were our royal faiths martyrs in love, We shall be winnow'd with so rough a wind That even our corn shall seem as light as chaff And good from ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... this pious Israelite in a duismal aspect—as Christ the Man, and as Christ the God. I must not, while here, forget that many advanced metaphysicians agree that they cannot satisfactorily prove the historical existence of Christ, and that they have to winnow through a vast amount of chaff to get at his presumed philosophy, and the facts in his life, which like that of Buddha is wrapped up ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... of the first countries of the western world to use coffee cleaning machinery. Marcus Mason, an American mechanical engineer then managing an iron foundry in Costa Rica, invented three machines that would respectively peel off the husk, remove the parchment and pulp, and winnow the light refuse from ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... are Kunojee Brahmins, who tell me that they can do almost everything in husbandry save holding their own ploughs: they can drive their own harrows and carts, reap their own crops, and winnow and tread out their own corn; but if they once condescend to hold their own ploughs they sink in grade, and have to pay twice as much as they now pay for wives for their sons from the same families, and take half of what they now take for their daughters from the same families, into ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... therefore I at last Perforce conclude some angry Deity. Steeds have I none or chariot to ascend, 225 Who have eleven chariots in the stands Left of Lycaon, with fair hangings all O'ermantled, strong, new finish'd, with their steeds In pairs beside them, eating winnow'd grain. Me much Lycaon my old valiant sire 230 At my departure from his palace gates Persuaded, that my chariot and my steeds Ascending, I should so conduct my bands To battle; counsel wise, and ill-refused! But anxious, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... when we combine therewith, Life's self is nourish'd by its proper pith, And we are nurtured like a pelican brood. Aye, so delicious is the unsating food, That men, who might have tower'd in the van Of all the congregated world, to fan And winnow from the coming step of time 820 All chaff of custom, wipe away all slime Left by men-slugs and human serpentry, Have been content to let occasion die, Whilst they did sleep in love's elysium. And, truly, I would rather be struck dumb, Than speak against this ardent listlessness: ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... winds that winnow Her shrubless hills of sand, Free as the waves that batter Along ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... waters I flew in the autumn, Then there was plenty of seed, of seed, of seed. Women have winnow'd it, threshers have garner'd it, Barns must be ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... with wax, and so fashioned two great wings like those of a bird. When they were done, Daedalus fitted them to his own shoulders, and after one or two efforts, he found that by waving his arms he could winnow the air and cleave it, as a swimmer does the sea. He held himself aloft, wavered this way and that with the wind, and at last, like a great fledgling, he ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... Charlestown to their industrialism. Tywardreath (the "house or town-place on the sands") claims mention for the memory of its old Benedictine priory, now vanished. To pursue the Fowey River inland, past the charming Golant and St. Winnow, is a delightful excursion with a fitting termination in the beauties of Lostwithiel; but on the present occasion it takes us too far from the coast. The loveliness of this river resembles and equals that of the Fal and of ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... unreflected shone' on the lonely wastes of the desert—but the host of God was there still. The transitory appearance of the permanent realities is a revelation to us as truly as to the patriarch; and though no angel wings may winnow the air around our road, nor any sworded seraphim be seen on our commonplace march, we too have all the armies of heaven with us, if we tread the path which God has marked out, and in our weakness and trembling commit ourselves to Him. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... are simply a sharpened stick, such as Abraham plowed with, and they still winnow their wheat as he did—they pile it on the house-top, and then toss it by shovel-fulls into the air until the wind has blown all the chaff away. They never invent any ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... beginning of the Book is a myth, like one of Ovid's Metamorphoses; and that the prophecy of the resurrection, at the end, is another; and that there are a great many legends in the middle. Now, if so, why winnow such chaff? ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... from the East and from the West, That's subject to no academic rule: You may find it in the jeering of a jest, Or distil it from the folly of a fool. I can teach you with a quip, if I've a mind! I can trick you into learning with a laugh; Oh, winnow all my folly, and you'll find A grain or two ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... events, and writings that have been too much overlooked. As might be expected, there is much in Stillingfleet's account that requires correction. His prejudices against the Separatists were strong, and led him into several errors. But it is no very difficult task to winnow the chaff from the wheat, and the result will amply repay the labor. So far from having the sympathy of the Nonconformists or Puritans, the Separatists were pursued by them with greater virulence, in tracts, pamphlets, and larger publications, than by ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... position of a clamorous applicant for public favor. The press, like everything else, is ruled by majorities, and in order to live it must cater to the weaknesses of popular majorities, it must reflect their prejudices, it must sustain their ill-formed judgments, and it must so sift and winnow the news of the day that the whims and the passions of the day shall be sustained. There are some newspapers and magazines that are honorably willing to represent only ripe thought and unbiased judgments, but they are not ...
— Morals in Trade and Commerce • Frank B. Anderson
... and aunt and Felix Page all came from the same town, and there you can find plenty of old gossips who can—they 'll be only too willing to—give you all the information you want. They 'll give you more; but we can winnow the wheat from the chaff after you get back. Do you feel equal to ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... meddles but with men and women, and these cannot utter a story all lies, let them try ever so. Wherefore we shut not the barn-door (as the saying is) against any man's grain. Only having taken it in, we do winnow and sift it. And who told you I had swallowed the thief's story whole like fair water? Not so. I did but credit so much on't as was ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... In the village of Isser Jang, on the road to Montgomery, there be four Changar women who winnow corn—some seventy bushels a year. Beyond their hut lives Purun Dass, the money-lender, who on good security lends as much as five thousand rupees in a year. Jowala Singh, the smith, mends the village ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... him a third cup of hot coffee he dropped into a more familiar tone. He told with some sprightliness of having seen threshings in Mexico, how the grain was beaten out with flails in the patios, and afterwards thrown up in the wind to winnow out. ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... These ants winnow or husk the grain after it has been carried into the nest. All during the harvesting I observed workers bringing chaff from the nest and carrying it some distance away. It is said by Texan observers that the harvesters of that state bring the grain to the ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... rain falling and the rainbow drawn On Lammermuir. Hearkening I heard again In my precipitous city beaten bells Winnow the keen sea wind. And here afar, Intent on my own race and place, I wrote. Take thou the writing: thine it is. For who Burnished the sword, blew on the drowsy coal, Held still the target higher, chary of praise And prodigal of counsel—who but thou? So now, in the end, if ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the various Corruptions of the Text. [The reader shall be shewn with illustrations to what particular source they are to be severally ascribed. When representative passages have been thus labelled, and the causes are seen in operation, he will be able to pierce the mystery, and all the better to winnow the evil ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... origin of her walks on the Budmouth Road, her return from those walks was often coincident with Farfrae's emergence from Corn Street for a twenty minutes' blow on that rather windy highway—just to winnow the seeds and chaff out of him before sitting down to tea, as he said. Henchard became aware of this by going to the Ring, and, screened by its enclosure, keeping his eye upon the road till he saw them meet. His face assumed an expression of ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... the castle of Macharim beside the Dead Sea, and after he was translated of his disciples, and buried at Samaria. And there let Julianus Apostata dig him up and let burn his bones (for he was at that time emperor) and let winnow the ashes in the wind. But the finger that shewed our Lord, saying, ECCE AGNUS DEI; that is to say, 'Lo! the Lamb of God,' that would never burn, but is all whole; - that finger let Saint Thecla, the holy virgin, be born into the hill of Sebast; and ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... been the first to announce your brother's legacy to you, but I am glad whenever my news reach you without being quite stale. I see but few persons here. I begin my letters without knowing when I shall be able to fill them, and then am to winnow a little what I hear, that I may not send you absolute secondhand fables: for though I cannot warrant all I tell you, I hate to send you every improbable tale that is vented. You like, as one always does in absence, to hear the common occurrences of your ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... faces; they quoited blazing pitch-hoops with, unerring dexterity about their necks. The rustics too, armed with their ponderous flails, worked as cheerfully at this bloody harvesting as if thrashing their corn at home. Heartily did they winnow the ranks of the royalists who came to butcher them, and thick and fast fell the invaders, fighting bravely, but baffled by these novel weapons used by peasant and woman, coming to the aid of the sword; spear, and musket of trained ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... from mixture.] Simpleness. — N. simpleness &c. adj.; purity, homogeneity. elimination; sifting &c. v.; purification &c. (cleanness) 652. V. render simple &c. adj.; simplify. sift, winnow, bolt, eliminate; exclude, get rid of; clear; purify &c. (clean) 652; disentangle &c. (disjoin) 44. Adj. simple, uniform, of a piece[Fr], homogeneous, single, pure, sheer, neat. unmixed, unmingled[obs3], unblended, uncombined, uncompounded; elementary, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... breeze's bugle sound, Various and vague the dry leaves dance their round; Or, from the garner-door, on ether borne, The chaff flies devious from the winnow'd corn; So vague, so devious, at the breath of heaven, From their fix'd aim are mortal ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... idlers, the butterflies, Broke, to-day, from their winter shroud; These light airs, that winnow the skies, Blow, just born, ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... there been no Jew the Law from Sinai had not been given and we too would be unclean as the Gentiles. What worse could one do than set at naught the traditions of the Elders? But this is not all. He doth both harvest and winnow on ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... in the position of the suspended animal annihilates the famous legend. Even so, many a time, the most elementary sieve, handled with a little logic, is enough to winnow the confused mass of affirmations and to release the good grain ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre |
