"Chaff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his wife's power over me. He suspected every man and every woman under the sun, yet he was the least jealous of men so far as his wife was concerned, though he loved and was proud of her. From time to time he would chaff Dora and myself on the danger of our falling in love with each other, but that was never more than a joke and, at any rate, I heard it from him far less often than that other joke of his—about my being ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... mission,— Ever faithful, ever constant. Now he steppeth from his high throne, Builded to the gates eternal, Which are quickly opened to him, And he joins the never ending. Then his kingdom is forgotten, And in flames as chaff consumed, Rolled away as clouds of vapor; Clouds of smoke and clouds of vapor, Flying with the roar of thunders, Terrible, and loud, and mighty, And with lurid lights illuming All the vast unfathomed chaos. ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... unlike than the "ways" of Dickens and Thackeray? The subjects chosen by these great authors are not more diverse than their styles. Thackeray writes like a scholar, not in the narrow sense, but rather as a student and a master of all the refinements and resources of language. Dickens copies the chaff of the street, or he roams into melodramatics, "drops into poetry"—blank verse at least—and touches all with peculiarities, we might say mannerisms, of his own. I have often thought, and even tried to ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... no further trouble. He had for a long time known—for, by the power of the life in him, he had gathered from the Scriptures the finest of the wheat, where so many of every sect, great church and little church, gather only the husks and chaff—that the only baptism of any avail is the washing of the fresh birth, and the making new by that breath of God, which, breathed into man's nostrils, first made of him a living soul. When a man knows this, potentially he knows all things. But, ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... I was red to the ears, not knowing whether it were wiser for a lady's-maid to run away, or to take the rough chaff good-humouredly, and make the best of it. I fluttered, undecided, never thinking of the old adage concerning the ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... inspired Thinker, who with heaven-made Implement conquers Heaven for us! If the poor and humble toil that we have Food, must not the high and glorious toil for him in return, that he have Light, have Guidance, Freedom, Immortality?—These two, in all their degrees, I honor: all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... then a subject of the Queen, and entitled to a pension from the Cape Government. The canteen interest on the goldfields, playing upon the prejudices of the Boers, represented that this was unfitting the dignity of the Republic. The President, who was too shrewd to be caught with such chaff, was perfectly ready to support them for the sake of the liquor interest, which for him constitutes a very useful electioneering and political agency throughout the country. Mr. Esselen was sent for, and it was represented ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... have, And carry Horns fresh budding to his Grave, On one of Twenty, blooming as a Rose, His dry and wither'd Carkass he bestows: She jilts, intrigues, and plays upon him still, Keeps her Gallants, and Rambles at her Will; Do's nothing but her Pride and Pleasure mind, And throws his Gold like Chaff before the Wind; Until at length she beggars the old Slave, And brings his Gray-Hairs ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... the Autumn 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 ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... corpse, the birds of the air, and the beasts of the field; for who will have pity on thee, O Jerusalem? Thou hast rejected me. I am weary of relenting. I will scatter them as with a broad winnowing-shovel, as men scatter the chaff on ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... as I am, received two crowns for officiating there; I even preached a very good sermon on the text, 'God has separated the wheat from the chaff.' It is in the Bible, 'God will separate,' but as it is a long time since that was written, I supposed that ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... dreams were scatter'd, As chaff is toss'd by the wind, The faith has been rudely shattered That listen'd with credence blind; Things were to have been, and therefore They were, and they are to be, And will be;—we must prepare for The doom we ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... I fear you may possibly have to submit to a certain amount of good-natured chaff, but nothing more. All, if I may say so, is ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... under coverlets made of dagswaine or hopharlots, (I use their own terms,) and a good round log under their head instead of a bolster. If it were so, that the father or the goodman of the house had a matrass or flock-bed, and thereto a sack of chaff to rest his head upon, he thought himself to be as well lodged as the lord of the town, so well were they contented. Pillows, said they, were thought meet only for women in childbed. As for servants, if they had any sheet above them, it was well; for seldom ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... 'twon't disappoint you! There's a good deal of rubbish here, but a scattering of grain among the chaff. Ah, messieurs! Good-evening!" ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... is not concerned with the physical ecstasies of Sex. It has no interest in such human matters. But deprive it of the fact of Sex-difference, and it drifts away whimpering like a dead leaf, an empty husk, a wisp of chaff, a skeleton gossamer. The poor, actual, warm lips, "so sweetly forsworn," may have had small interest for this "spiritual" lover, but now that she is dead and buried, and a ghost, they must remain a woman's ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... what is called grocery stores, we had simply to dispense with them. Our food was abominably bad; the sheep we purchased were little better than London cats; and as no flour-mill is to be found in Abyssinia, far less any bakers, we were obliged to purchase the grain, beat it to remove the chaff, and grind it between two stones—not the flat grinding-stones of Egypt or India, but on a small curved piece of rock, where the grain is reduced to flour by means of a large hard kind of pebble held in the hand. It was brown bread with a vengeance. ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... twenty-four hours, then run off, and fresh water put on. This precaution is essentially necessary, in order to make clean bright malt, and should never be omitted. It is further right, at each watering, to skim off the surface of the water the light grain, chaff, and seed weeds, that are found floating on it; all this kind of trash, when suffered to remain in the steep, is a real injury to the malt, and considerably depreciates its value when offered for sale, and not less so when brewed. The depth of water over the barley in the steep need not exceed ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... one to which chaff did not commend itself. He snatched his hand from beneath the Doctor's fingers, and picked up some letters that ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... the Vedas, from Plato and Pythagoras, from India, Persia, Phœnicia, and Syria, from Greece and Egypt, and from the Holy Books of the Jews. Hence we are called Knights of the East and West, because their doctrines came from both. And these doctrines, the wheat sifted from the chaff, the Truth separated from Error, Masonry has garnered up in her heart of hearts, and through the fires of persecution, and the storms of calamity, has brought them and delivered them unto us. That God is One, immutable, unchangeable, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Joris and I, Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky; The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh; 'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff; Till over by Delhem a dome spire sprung white, And "Gallop," gasped Joris, ...
— O May I Join the Choir Invisible! - and Other Favorite Poems • George Eliot
... people more and more are declining the postponement of happiness to another world. The general tendency is to enjoy the present. All religions have taught men that the pleasures of this world are of no account; that they are nothing but husks and rags and chaff and disappointment; that whoever expects to be happy in this world makes a mistake; that there is nothing on the earth worth striving for; that the principal business of mankind should be to get ready to be happy in another world; that the great occupation is to save ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... wit"; that Shakespeare betrayed very early signs of poetic genius; that he paid annual visits to his native place when his career was at its height; that he loved at tavern meetings in the town to chaff John Combe, the richest of his fellow-townsmen, who was accused of usurious practices; and finally, that he died possessed ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... common interests of mankind will be helped! What a blessing is wealth when rightly used! True society looks inwardly and not outwardly, and all that does not belong to it falls away as does wheat fanned by a sheet; the trash and chaff being blown away. ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... him speak with something like his old manner. He felt he could stand any amount of chaff from him now, and so the proposition he had made in seriousness he went on to defend in the hope of giving amusement, yet with a secret wild delight in the dream of such full devotion to the service ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... in fact, for it was not a promising case. He had many interviews in his office with Seppi and me, and threshed out our testimony pretty thoroughly, thinking to find some valuable grains among the chaff, but the harvest ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... I have compared the humorous vein of the comic tales with our northern "wut," chiefly for the dryness and slyness which pervade it. But it differs in degree as much as the pathos varies. The staple article is Cairene "chaff," a peculiar banter possibly inherited from their pagan forefathers: instances of this are found in the Cock and Dog (vol. i. 22), the Eunuch's address to the Cook (vol. i. 244), the Wazir's exclamation, "Too little pepper!" (vol. i. 246), the self- communing of Judar (vol. vi. 219), ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... the perplexed pair threshed away, striving to winnow the chaff from the pure grain in Aunt Sharley's nature, and the upshot was that Emmy Lou had a headache and Mildred had a little spell of crying, and they agreed that never had there been such a paradox of part saint and part sinner, part black ogre and part black angel, as their Auntie was, created ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... and into this I fell. The cool water revived me, and I had just enough wits left to think of escape. I squirmed up the lade among the slippery green slime till I reached the mill-wheel. Then I wriggled through the axle hole into the old mill and tumbled on to a bed of chaff. A nail caught the seat of my trousers, and I left a wisp ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... threatened private houses, all had their cases dismissed; by way of example, one was detained a few days in prison. Having often been served in its enterprises by the passions of the mob, the Parliament had not foreseen the day when those same outbursts would sweep it away like chaff before the wind with all that regimen of tradition and respect to which it still clung even in its most ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... from liberty on shore, was heard saying to another with drunken impressiveness, "Remember, our motto is, 'Patriotism and laziness.'" Of course, this went round the ship, greatly delighting on both counts our marine officers, and became embodied in the chaff that passed to and fro between the two corps; of which one saying, "The two most useless things in a ship were the captain of marines and the mizzen-royal," deserves for its drollery to be committed to writing, now that mizzen-royals have ceased to be. May it be long before the like extinction ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... religious chaff; the Shaykh had doubtless often dipped his hand abroad in such dishes; but like a good Moslem, he contented himself at home with wheaten scones and olives, a kind of sacramental food like bread and wine in southern Europe. But his ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... this, we find it hard to vindicate Burke from the charge of factiousness. Nothing can have been more unworthy of him than the sneer at Pitt in the great speech on the Nabob of Arcot's debts (1785), for stopping to pick up chaff and straws from the Irish revenue instead of checking profligate expenditure ...
— Burke • John Morley
... fortunes be, This or that man's fall I fear not; Him I love that loveth me, For the rest a pin I care not. You are sad when others chaff, And grow merry as they laugh; I that hate it, and am free, Laugh and ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... next morning, his five tentmates fell to catechising him as to his pensive mood, and their catechism was largely intermingled with chaff. ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... of all wisdom and strength is the Holy Scriptures. Many disciples practically prefer religious books to the Book of God. He had indeed found much of the reading with which too many professed believers occupy their minds to be but worthless chaff—such as French and German novels; but as yet he had not formed the habit of reading the word of God daily and systematically as in later life, almost to the exclusion of other books. In his ninety-second year, he said to the writer, that for every page ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... countryman, in their yearly order. She stands, with her hair yellow like the ripe corn, at the threshing-floor, and takes her share in the toil, the heap of grain whitening, as the flails, moving in the wind, disperse the chaff. Out in the fresh fields, she yields to the embraces of Iasion, to the extreme jealousy of Zeus, who slays her mortal lover with lightning. The flowery town of Pyrasus—the wheat- town,—an ancient place in Thessaly, is her sacred precinct. But when [94] Homer ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... the ages and the beacon-moments see, That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's sea; Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly; Never shows the choice momentous till the ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... violent, the largest trees having been torn up by the roots and whirled aloft. Before such a furious tempest no living thing could stand. Men, horses, and cattle were whirled into the air like so much chaff, and then dashed violently down on the ground. The sea rose nearly twelve feet above the highest tide- mark, sweeping away houses, trees, ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... The Southwest has been noted for what are termed "triangular fights." A party of Americans have been driven at bay by an overwhelming number of Mexicans or greasers, who have suddenly found themselves attacked by a party of howling Comanches. The latter have scattered the Mexicans like chaff, the Americans acting the part of spectators until the rout was complete, when the Comanches turned about and sailed into the Americans. The Kiowas, Comanches, Apaches, Mexicans and Americans afforded just the elements for ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... were sae snell, His back they loundert, mell for mell, Mell for mell, and baff for baff, Till his hide flew round his lugs like chaff.' ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... such princely estates as Eumaeus managed in the Ionian seas. Flaxman has certainly not given him the look of a large proprietor in his outlines: his toilet is severely scant, and the old gentleman appears to have lost two of his fingers in a chaff-cutter. As for Perses, who is represented as listening to the sage,[A] his dress is in the extreme of classic scantiness,—being, in fact, a mere night-shirt, and a tight fit ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... the present Pope, being a horrid Radical, would be sure to blackball me as an honest Tory, I would send him a copy of my Opera Omnia, requesting his Holiness to say, by return of post, whether I ranked amongst the chaff winnowed by St. Peter's flail, or had his gracious permission to hold myself amongst the pure wheat gathered into the Vatican garner.] which index, continually, she is enlarging by successive supplements, needs also an Index Expurgatorius for the catalogue of her prelates. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... doubt, in all its harrowing details. Simultaneously those details flashed into his own consciousness with a horrible distinctness, depressing his spirits and extinguishing a natural gayety and light chaff that had ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... repulsion of electrostatically charged bodies for each other, shown when charged with electricity. If charged with electricity of the same sign they repel each other. If with opposite they attract each other. The classic attraction and subsequent repulsion of bits of straw and chaff by the excited piece of amber is a case of electrostatic attraction and repulsion. (See Electricity, Static—Electrostatics—Coulomb's Laws of Electrostatic ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... wakes the fury of the sea? O God! thy justice makes the world turn pale, When on the armed fleet, that royally Bears down the surges, carrying war, to smite Some city, or invade some thoughtless realm, Descends the fierce tornado. The vast hulks Are whirled like chaff upon the waves; the sails Fly, rent like webs of gossamer; the masts Are snapped asunder; downward from the decks, Downward are slung, into the fathomless gulf, Their cruel engines; and their hosts, arrayed In trappings of the battle-field, are whelmed By ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... be able to accuse me of attacking Athens before strangers;(1) we are by ourselves at the festival of the Lenaea; the period when our allies send us their tribute and their soldiers is not yet. Here is only the pure wheat without chaff; as to the resident strangers settled among us, they and the citizens are one, like ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... isle, o'er its billows of green, To the billows of foam-crested blue, Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen, Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue: Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray As the chaff in the stroke of the flail; Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way, The sun gleaming ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... away the chaff from her handful of beans. The spring breeze blew the chaff back again, and sifted it over her face and shoulders. She rubbed it out of her eyes impatiently, and happened to notice old Peggy holding her own ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... it," interposed Sir Norman, "to let you make your escape, as you most assuredly will do the moment you are out of our sight! No, no; we are too old birds to be caught with such chaff; and though the informer always gets off scot-free, your services deserve no such boon; for we could have found our way without your help! On with you, Sir Robber; and if your companions do kill you, console yourself with ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... there is something lamentable in a state of the public mind, which was so little prone to examination as to receive such a mass of superstition without sifting the wheat, for such there undoubtedly is, from the chaff. Calmet's work contains enough, had we the minor circumstances in each case preserved, to set at rest many philosophic doubts, and to illustrate many physical facts; and to those who desire to know what was believed by our Christian forefathers, and why it was believed, the compilation is absolutely ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... great cruel conspiracy, their silliest possibilities; fencing them in to these, and so not only shutting them out from others, but mounting guard at the fence, walking round and round outside it, to see they didn't escape, and admiring them, talking to them, through the rails, in mere terms of chaff, terms of chucked cakes and apples—as if they had been antelopes or zebras, or even some superior sort of performing, of dancing, bear. It had been reserved for Basil French to strike her as willing to let ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... confine ourselves to the study of one side of mediumship only. The phenomena produced in the presence of mediums are various. All the phenomena classified as "psychical" must be carefully considered and thoroughly investigated. The grain must be separated from the chaff; it must be decided which among these phenomena appear to be due to spirits, which, according to the evidence, are due to incarnated minds, and finally, which (if there are such) have only ordinary physical causes. The new workmen who are entering the ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... Lambourne; "you cannot put the change on me so easy as you think, for I have lived among the quick-stirring spirits of the age too long to swallow chaff for grain. You are a gentleman of birth and breeding—your bearing makes it good; of civil habits and fair reputation—your manners declare it, and my uncle avouches it; and yet you associate yourself with a sort of scant-of-grace, as men ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... suffered to a serious degree. My tribulations increased to such an extent that I seriously contemplated suicide. I am convinced that this period left an indelible mark, and that not an improving one, on my character. Where sensitive children are concerned, chaff may be useful in hardening them, but it should not be carried ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... rapidly, as only the mind knows and comprehends in moments of stress and crisis; and before her knowledge, all ideas save one fell away like chaff before the wind. At all costs—in face of every obstacle—she must warn and save ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... to this, we find in the conversation of most men that their thoughts are cut up as small as chaff, making it impossible for them to spin out the thread of their discourse to any length. If this world were peopled by really thinking beings, noise of every kind would not be so universally tolerated, as indeed the most horrible ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... "None of your chaff, Richards. Just tell where the paper went, for in the loss of that lot of paper, as it proved, the bottom dropped out of the Treasury tub. On that paper was to have been printed our new issue of ten per cent, convertible, you know, and secured on that up-country cotton, which Kirby Smith ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... all the kernels were shaken or crushed out of the heads. It usually took several days to thresh all the grain from an average-sized field. Then the straw was raked away, and the grain was left mixed with chaff and dust. The next windy day the winnowers, with large "fans," or wooden shovels, came and tossed the mingled chaff and dust and grain in the wind. The kernels of wheat fell back and the chaff and ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... two thousand Scripture lessons, says to himself when he leaves school: 'If this is religion I will have no more of it,' is acting in obedience to a healthy instinct. He is to be honoured rather than blamed for having realized at last that the chaff on which he has so long been fed is not the life-giving grain which, unknown to himself, his ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... brings forward the apocryphal book of Enoch, has been among my people in my absence, and many have been led after him. How humbling is this to them and to me! Lord, what is man! This may be blessed, 1st, to discover chaff which we thought to be wheat; 2nd, to lead some to greater distrust of themselves, when their eyes are opened: 3rd, to teach me the need of solidly instructing those who seem to have ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... one and another couple? The wind had risen, for one thing, and the little boat was so tossed about by the vigorous waves that the skipper declared it would be imprudent to attempt to land on the Rip-Raps. Was it the thought that the day was over, and that underneath all chaff and hilarity there was the question of settling in life to be met some time, which subdued a little the high spirits, and gave an air of protection and of tenderness to a couple here and there? Consciously, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... all the news," stated the landlord. "I'll sift the wheat out of the chaff and hand you what's for your own good. And now you'll have to excuse me whilst I go and pound steak and dish up dinner and wait on the table. That's the trouble with running a tavern up here in the woods. I can't keep help of ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... repulse at the Redan, the death of Lord Raglan, and the vainglorious boast of Prince Gortschakoff, who declared 'that the hour was at hand when the pride of the enemies of Russia would be lowered, and their armies swept from our soil like chaff blown away by the wind,' rendered all dreams of diplomatic solution impossible, and made England, in spite of the preachers of peace at any price, determined to push forward her quarrel to the bitter end. The nation, ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... thousands who are just as anxious to see the king on the throne again as you are, Edward—and you now know that I am one of them; but the time is not yet come, and we must bide our time. Depend upon it, that General Cromwell will scatter that army like chaff. He is on his march now. After what has passed between us this day, Edward, I shall talk unreservedly to you on what ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... adversary he had come upon! Was it even an adversary? Really, he had neither the tone of one nor the appearance. Very calm, but with a real calmness, not one assumed to cloak the passion of a man endeavoring to restrain himself; very polite, but without exaggeration; smiling, but without chaff, he presented the most perfect contrast to Arsene Lupin, a contrast so perfect even that, to my mind, Lupin appeared as much perplexed ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... of piles of chaff, portends many hours spent in useless and degrading gossip, bringing them into notoriety and causing them to lose husbands who would have maintained them without work on ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... identification of what remained of her parents' bodies, and the magnificent ceremony with which they were removed from the cemetery of the Madeleine to the Abbey of St. Denis,—when the escape of Napoleon from Elba in February,1815, scattered the royal family and their followers like chaff before the wind. The Duc d'Angouleme, compelled to capitulate at Toulouse, sailed from Cette in a Swedish vessel. The Comte d'Artois, the Duc de Berri, and the Prince de Conde withdrew beyond the frontier. The King fled from ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... himself in favor of the sliding-scale, which he understood to mean the wooden pavement. Things went much more smoothly wherever it was established. He contended for the abolition of nose-bags, which he designated as an intolerable nuisance; urged the prohibition of chaff with oats, as unfit for the use of able-bodied horses; and indeed evinced the truth of his professions, that he 'yielded to no horse in an anxious desire to promote the true interests of the horse-community.' An OLD ENGLISH ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... certainly sown tares among the exclusive federalists. It has winnowed the grain from the chaff. The sincerely Adamites did not go. The Washingtonians went religiously, and took the secession of the others in high dudgeon. The one sect threatens to desert the levees, the other the parties. The whigs went in number, to encourage the idea that the birth-nights hitherto ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the rust come to dim its brightness or spoil the keenness of her weapon's edge, knowing that she, as with the sword of the cherubim, will scatter, at the last, the evil legions and their dark array, as the whirlwind scatters the chaff. ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... lips, The conquering smile wherein his spirit sails Calm as the God who the white sea-wave whips, Yet full of speech and intershifting tales, Close mirrors of us: thence had he the laugh We feel is thine: broad as ten thousand beeves At pasture! thence thy songs, that winnow chaff From grain, bid sick Philosophy's last leaves Whirl, if they have no response—they enforced To fatten Earth when ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is fair—and though I buy this Knowledge at the vast Price of all my Repose; yet I must own, 'tis a better Bargain than chaff'ring of a Heart for feign'd Embraces—Thou hast undone me—yet must have my Friendship; and 'twill be still some Ease in this Extreme, to see thee yet ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... others is easily perceived, but that of oneself is difficult to perceive; a man winnows his neighbour's faults like chaff, but his own fault he hides, as a cheat hides the bad die from ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown
... /n./ 1. The perforated edge strips on printer paper, after they have been separated from the printed portion. Also called {selvage} and {perf}. 2. obs. The confetti-like paper bits punched out of cards or paper tape; this has also been called 'chaff', 'computer confetti', and 'keypunch droppings'. This use may now be mainstream; it has been reported seen (1993) in directions for a card-based ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... abyss he wheels,— So fell Darius. Upon his crown, In the midst of the barnyard, he came down, In a wonderful whirl of tangled strings, Broken braces and broken springs, Broken tail and broken wings, Shooting stars, and various things,— Barnyard litter of straw and chaff, And much that wasn't so sweet by half. Away with a bellow flew the calf, And what was that? Did the gosling laugh? 'Tis a merry roar from the old barn-door, And he hears the voice of Jotham crying; "Say, D'rius! how de yeou ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... indication that parliamentary government will within a limited period be more successful in China than in some European countries; and that the Chinese with their love of well- established procedure and cautious action, will select open debate as the best method of sifting the grain from the chaff and deciding every important matter by the vote of the majority. Already in the period of 1916-1917 Parliament has more than justified its re-convocation by becoming a National Watch Committee. Interpellations on every conceivable subject have been constant and frequent; fierce verbal assaults ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... like to know, Alfred, is—what's come to you?" she commenced indignantly. "Not a word have you spoken all the evening—you that there's no holding generally with your chaff and jokes. What Mr. and Mrs. Johnson must have thought of you, I can't imagine, standing there like a stick when they stopped to be civil for a few minutes, and behaving as though you never even heard their asking us to go in and have a bite of supper. What have we done, ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... aloft the standard of a chaste and holy life; such men in this day are spoken of as "too slow" as "weak-kneed," and {426} "goody-goody" men. Let me recall that word, the fast and indecently-dressed "things," the animals of easy virtue, the "respectable" courtesans that flirt, chaff, gamble, and waltz with well-known high-class licentious lepers—such is the ideal of womanhood which a large proportion of our large city society accepts, fawns ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... devil entered into him, and ruled his hand with a whirlwind power which he could no more withstand than the chaff ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... be; that I very much feared that we had fallen into the hands of pirates ourselves, but that I would have justice done as soon as we arrived at James Town, without he intended to murder us all before we arrived. His answer was, that he was too old a bird to be caught with such chaff, and that he would secure us and deliver us up to the authorities as soon as he arrived. I replied, in great anger, that he would then be convinced of his error, if it was an error, on his part; that ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... and was not in the least disturbed nor daunted that they had failed in their former promises. Flynn's good-nature was as unfaltering as his self-esteem, perhaps because of his self-esteem. He only smiled with fatuous superiority when from time to time, after the elections, his patrons would chaff him about his failure to secure the mayoralty. They did so with more effect since there were always among the horse-players on such occasions a few who would cast votes for the barber, esteeming ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... or his cause; when you can make it appear, that in the course of this administration, since the Queen thought fit to change her servants, there hath one step been made toward weakening the Hanover title, or giving the least countenance to any other whatsoever; then, and not until then, go dry your chaff and stubble, give fire to the zeal of your faction, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... on the 22nd day of the month. The following is recounted by this personage with malicious glee, and certainly, if authentic, it is a sad proof of how chaff is mixed with wheat, and how ignorant, almost impious, persons were engaged in this movement; nevertheless we give it, for we wish to present with impartiality all the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... your chaff, mister," retorted one of the street boys, irreverently. "When did you come from the ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... to be so recuperative as you, Anna Belle. I have a plan, however, a plan of self-defense; but if it weren't for your discretion, I shouldn't tell it to you, for I'm an old bird, young lady, and can't be caught with chaff. There are many worthy persons who may rise to lofty heights in eternity, who nevertheless, meanwhile are not desirable to sit opposite a man at his breakfast table. A visit, Anna Belle, a short visit from my daughter Julia is all I shall ask for at first, ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... palate, in short, all the grosser tastes. All that is not only like savages, but like animals. They are merry and contented at the prospect of a savory meal, and they are fond of playing tricks on each other—both sexes chaff and tease constantly. I believe that the development of our larger brain is the intellectual work of man during hundreds and thousands of years, and it would gratify me to see it raised to a still greater state ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... reflecting that all the Negroes from whom any assistance could reasonably be expected, behaved like so many Heroes of Antiquity; risking their lives and limbs for us and our property, while their own poor houses were flying like chaff before the hurricane. There are few White people here who can say as much for their Black dependents; and the force and value of the relation between Master and Slave has been tried by the late calamity ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... d'ye see, that my mot, Yellow a-bit about the swag that I'd got, Thinking that I should jeer and laugh, Although I never tips no chaff [13] Tries her hand at the downy trick, And prigs in a shop, but precious quick "Stop thief!" was the cry, and she vas taken I cuts and ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... came out every evening to watch the two boats at their practising; and sometimes, as they passed one another, Seth Ede, who had the reputation for a wag, would call out to Sal and offer her the odds by way of chaff. Sal never answered. The woman was in deadly earnest, and moreover, I dare say, a bit timmersome, now that the whole Borough had its eyes on ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and upon her homely errand, across the plains of ocean, and past the gorgeous scenery of dawn and sunset; and the ship's company, so strangely assembled, so Britishly chuckle-headed, filling their days with chaff in place of conversation; no human book on board with them except Hadden's Buckle, and not a creature fit either to read or to understand it; and the one mark of any civilised interest being when Carthew filled in his spare hours with the pencil and the brush: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... other presents on her plate that morning. And she had written to thank him for it, but he did not answer the letter. He had always been by way of writing to her from time to time; letters, generally embellished with comic sketches and full of chaff and nonsense, which were shared by the family. Lately he had not felt in the mood to write such letters. He wanted to see her with an unceasing ache of longing intense and persistent; and if he wrote he wanted to write, not a love letter—Reggie did not fancy he'd be much ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... system of mythology, when, in its second century, the Christian Church was ready to replace the forms of heathen worship. He laughed at the philosophers, confounding together in one censure deep conviction with shallow convention. His vigorous winnowing sent chaff to the winds, but not without some scattering of wheat. Delight in the power of satire leads always to some excess in its use. But if the power be used honestly—and even if it be used recklessly—no truth can be destroyed. Only the reckless use of it breeds in minds ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... Montalembert, Correspondance, ii. 58-65.] 'With all my heart,' answers Soltikof; 'I make the Austrians and History perfectly welcome! Monsieur, my ammunition is in Posen; my bread is fallen scarce; in Frankfurt can you find me one horse more?' Indignant Soltikof is not to be taken by chaff; growls now and then, if you stir him to the bottom: 'Why should we, who are volunteer assistants, take all the burden of the work? I will fall back to Posen, and home to Poland and East Preussen, if this ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... shallow furrow with a sharp-pointed stick. We see the sheep being driven across sown fields to trample the seed into the moist soil. We watch the patient laborers as with hand sickles they gather in the harvest and then with heavy flails separate the chaff from the grain. Although their methods were very clumsy, ancient farmers raised immense crops of wheat and barley. The soil of Egypt and Babylonia not only supported a dense population, but also supplied food for neighboring ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... was in no sense alarmed. He left the palace convinced that a few hours of repose would bring back the color to her cheeks and the natural buoyancy to her manner. Then he meant to chaff her about her distracted air; for Joan was no neurotic subject, and she herself would be the first to laugh at the nervous ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... were all on the ground beside him—Wally, disdaining the steps, having sprung down, and unexpectedly measured his length on the earth, to the accompaniment of much chaff. He picked himself up, laughing more than any of them, just as Norah popped her head through the scrub that ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... fascinating steps along front row. Chaff—exclamations—near and distant poppings of corks, striking of matches, and other accompaniments ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... natives joined the movement, and troops had to be sent to suppress the rising. Having assumed the title of King of the Tagalogs, he pretended to have direct heavenly support, telling the ignorant masses that he was invulnerable and that the soldiers' bullets would fly from them like chaff ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... keep his hand in that he adopted a tone of serious chaff to Mr. Norbury, such as some people think a well-chosen one towards children, to their great embarrassment. He replied to that most responsible of butlers with some pomposity of manner. "The question before the house," said he—and paused to enjoy a perversion of speech—"the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... was known as the "Laundryman," a name in which respect was mixed with chaff. Ernestine did not care. She knew that she had "made good," and it was pleasant. She could afford now to have a home of her own, and so she had installed herself in this apartment, far out of the dirt ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... condition to which hardly any series of misfortunes could have reduced the Duchess of Omnium,—but inclined to quiescence by feelings of penitence. She was less disposed than heretofore to attack him with what the world of yesterday calls "chaff," or with what the world of to-day calls "cheek." She would not admit to herself that she was cowed;—but the greatness of the game and the high interest attached to her husband's position did in some degree dismay her. Nevertheless she executed her purpose of "having it out with ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... of others is easily perceived, but that of one's self is difficult to perceive; a man winnows his neighbor's faults like chaff, but his own fault he hides, as a cheat hides the ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... accounted me their equal, and actually patronised me in a sort of good-humoured fashion. What in particular excited in me this feeling was their feet, their dirty nails and fingers, a particularly long talon on Operoff's obtrusive little finger, their red shirts, their dickeys, the chaff which they good-naturedly threw at one another, the dirty room, a habit which Zuchin had of continually snuffling and pressing a finger to his nose, and, above all, their manner of speaking—that is to say, their use and intonation of words. ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... recognized as the product of a long line of erroneous theory and zigzag development, but the wheat has largely been sifted and the chaff thrown to the winds of antiquity. Its therapeutic and psychological value is ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... to get a graff Of this unspotted tree? —For all the rest are plain but chaff, Which seem good ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... ministers do not know—and never will know—the heart-hunger of the world. When they rise to speak, there is always some one present whose breath is hushed with longing to hear spoken some real word of truth, or strength, or comfort. If he receive but chaff!— ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... calls the men to milking; he rouses up Betty, our maid; as often as not he gives the horses their feed before the man is up—for Jem, who takes care of the horses, is an old man; and father is always loth to disturb him; he looks at the calves, and the shoulders, heels, traces, chaff, and corn before the horses go a-field; he has often to whip-cord the plough-whips; he sees the hogs fed; he looks into the swill-tubs, and writes his orders for what is wanted for food for man and beast; yes, and for fuel, too. And then, if he has a bit of time to ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the mountains of chaff there may be a grain worth preserving, as where I read that at Haddon Hall the old lady who showed the house, and who boasted that her ancestors had been servitors of the possessors of it for more than three hundred years, pointed ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope |
