"Dross" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... He separates the dross from the gold, purifies the human character, through the furnace of affliction. Those who bear fruit He purgeth, that they may bear more fruit. Through the sacred law, He speaketh to the unfruitful in tones of Sinai: and, in [10] the ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... "Establish as few things jure divino as can well be;" which is, by interpretation, as little fine gold, and as much dross as can well be. "The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times," Psal. xii, 6. What you take from the word of God is fine "gold tried in the fire" (Rev. iii. 18); but an holy thing of man's devising is the dross of silver. Can he not be content ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... that venal band of mercenary and time serving politicians, those flippant summer flies of the metropolis, those fair-weather patriots, which, when compared with the steady, sound, and inflexible patriotism of Mr. Jones, are like the dross of the vilest metal put in competition with the purest gold. In doing this justice to Mr. Jones's character (and it is but bare justice), I do not, however, mean to say that all the members composing the Westminster Committee are quite the reverse ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... apostles and missionaries, and through the instrumentality of the numerous amanuenses and miniaturists in their monasteries and convents? Those holy men had brought them what Christian Rome had purified of the old pagan dross, and sanctified by the ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... that where he altered he invariably improved. His was not the unerring eye which, like Shakspere's in his dramatic transfusions of Plutarch, missed no particle of the gold mingled with the baser metal, but rejected the dross with sovereign certainty. In dealing with Italian originals more especially, he sometimes altered for the worse, and sometimes for the better; but he was never a mere slavish translator. So in the "Knight's Tale" he may be held in some points ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... bands of pilgrims, the strange, wild utterances of dervishes preaching on the streets, and the shouting responses of their auditors. Conspicuous above everything else in the city, as gold is conspicuous from dross, is the golden dome and gold-tipped minarets of the holy edifice that imparts to the city its sacred character. The gold is in thin plates covering the hemispherical roof like sheets of tin; like most Eastern things, its appearance is more impressive from a distance than at close quarters. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... for sending upon His Church periodical trials, hardships, persecutions—storms that winnow the wheat, fires that melt the gold. Such tests of faith purify the Church, run off the dross, throw out the counterfeits, break off the dead branches. The people of God are then distinguished; their heroic qualities are called into action; they become burning and shining lights in the surrounding darkness. ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... experience that burned all the remaining dross out of Belton's nature and prepared him for the even more terrible ordeal to follow ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... every other religion that has existed many centuries, it certainly now contains untruth mingled with truth; ever gold is found mixed with dross. The poetical imagination, the zeal, or the lingering superstition of Buddhist devotees have, in various ages, and in various lands, caused the noble principles of the Buddha's moral doctrines to be coupled more or less with what might ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
... but to approach life simply and directly, practising for the days of loneliness and decline; and this was the error, that it tried to mould life too much, to select from its material, to reject its dross and debris, to rifle rather than to earn the treasure, to limit hopes, to dip ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind. Well, these are useless complaints; I shall certainly find no friend on the wide ocean, nor even here in Archangel, among merchants and seamen. Yet some feelings, unallied to the dross of human nature, beat even in these rugged bosoms. My lieutenant, for instance, is a man of wonderful courage and enterprise; he is madly desirous of glory, or rather, to word my phrase more characteristically, of advancement in his profession. ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... Willie sadly, "has money told on you so fearfully already? Do you think that she would give you up for the sake of Auberly's dross?" ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... "Pericles" are not pure Shakespeare; they do not show us the master at his best—though the first named is fine enough to have given enduring reputation to a lesser man. The question of his collaboration is a difficult one to settle, but leading critics have picked out the gold and rejected the dross, and their analyses prove that Shakespeare's part in these works was ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... Pharisees in science, such sticklers for rigorously scientific method, might have been expected to begin by authenticating the materials they proposed to operate upon, and, when professing to experiment upon pure metal, at least to see that it was not mere dross they were casting into the crucible. Plainly, however, they despise any such nice distinctions. The most earnest prayer and the emptiest ceremonial prate are both alike to them. What sort of a process they imagine prayer to be may be at once ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... Sufficient it is, perhaps, to know that they have all felt the blessedness of books, for, as Washington Irving in one of his most lofty sentences has so well put it, 'When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these [the comforts of a well-stored library] only retain their steady value; when friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and commonplace, these only continue the unaltered countenance ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... steadfastly for the right. St. John states: "Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure". (1 John 3:3) These fiery trials through which the Christian passes have the same effect upon him that a fire has upon metal. It burns up the dross and refines the gold. It has a cleansing effect; and also for this reason the Lord ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... I know you have not loved at all. Love is the sacrament of life; it sets Virtue where virtue was not; cleanses men Of all the vile pollutions of this world; It is the fire which purges gold from dross, It is the fan which winnows wheat from chaff, It is the spring which in some wintry soil Makes innocence to blossom like a rose. The days are over when God walked with men, But Love, which is his image, holds his place. When a man loves ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... may well command the eyes of Angels, when, though deaf to earthly laws and considerations, the angry heart, in the first heat of its wild career, still stops obedient to the voice of religion. Amid the dross of human frailty, the pure metal shines with the lustre that surrounds the sinner in the ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... it, Italy again speaks to the world and the world listens to Italy. It is a great task and a great deed and it demands great efforts. To carry it through, we must, each one of us, free ourselves of the dross of ideas and mental habits which two centuries of foreign intellectualistic tradition have heaped upon us; we must not only take on a new culture but create for ourselves a new soul. We must methodically and patiently contribute something towards the organic and complete ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... trial Of men is drawing near, Who has the hidden substance, Who dross, will then appear. O God, let me experience Upon my heart thy grace; That is the stamp and image Alone ...
— Favourite Welsh Hymns - Translated into English • Joseph Morris
... do not pay in the coin you agreed for, or perform the bargain you made, or pay in the coin expected of you; and it is not just, because you do not give a valuable consideration for the goods you buy, but really take a tradesman's goods away, and return dross and dirt to him in the room ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... there any dross that love will not refine away, nor any vice that love can not expel from the heart. Wordsworth was so impressed with the evil of avarice that he could compare it only to a poisoned vine that wrapped itself so tightly about his favorite tree that vine and tree became one life, and the removal ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... hearts with steel, or those leaden missiles of which thou hast told me. Oh! Leo, when the nations are beggared and their golden god is down; when the usurer and the fat merchant tremble and turn white as chalk because their hoards are but useless dross; when I have made the bankrupt Exchanges of the world my mock, and laugh across the ruin of its richest markets, why, then, will not true worth come ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... science. From the earliest times man has been engaged in a search for general rules whereby to turn the order of natural phenomena to his own advantage, and in the long search he has scraped together a great hoard of such maxims, some of them golden and some of them mere dross. The true or golden rules constitute the body of applied science which we call the arts; the false ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... death of the terrible old corsair who had amassed them. Idly she had heaped the table with a glittering collection of gems that an empress might well have found interest in; but Dolores frowned as at so much dross, for her thoughts were far away. The filmiest of lace and silken shawls, jeweled slippers, gossamer-gold head dresses, pearls and rubies from India and Persia—all lay in confusion at her hand, and aroused no spark of joy in her breast. From time to time her brooding eyes ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Bucharest, whence everything was telegraphed to London; but they were essentially fair-weather men. The casual courier may be alert, loyal, and trustworthy; he may be relied on to try his honest best, but it is not to be expected of him that he will greatly dare and count his life but as dross when his incentive to enterprise is merely filthy lucre. But I could trust Andreas to dare and to endure—to overcome obstacles, and, if man could, to "get there," where, in the base-quarters in Bucharest, the amanuenses were waiting ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... time, and seem more exquisite in recollection, than when they were present; if they have not faded to dimness in the memory. Perhaps, there is so much evil in every human enjoyment, when present,—so much dross mixed with it, that it requires to be refined by time; and yet I do not see why time should not melt away the good and the evil in equal proportions;—why the shade should decay, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... say that every nerve would be strained to its utmost tension to bring the coveted prize within his grasp; yet here the reward is of infinitely greater value, a prize compared with which riches are as dross in comparison with gold. It is Health, without which the acquisition of Wealth, is well-nigh impossible, and its possession as profitless to the possessor ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... the great cacti, those soldiers of the waste, that guard the eternal solitudes. There was no wind. Only a breathless sense of brooding in the remote wonder of the sky. The desert is a hard country; a country to try out the mettle of a man and leave it all dross or pure gold. ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... honors, as though these things were worthy of our highest aspirations, as though they could satisfy the unappeasable appetite of man for happiness. Greater folly than this can no man be guilty of. He takes the dross for the pure gold, the phantom for the reality. Few men theoretically belong to this class; practically it has the ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... good, but it is very hard to take. May I not offer my own ideas to the light of day? Cannot the good make its way anywhere? Has truth need of the dross of error?" ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... 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
... thou run out thy race, Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours, Whose speed is but the heavy Plummets pace; And glut thy self with what thy womb devours, Which is no more then what is false and vain, And meerly 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, 10 Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss With an individual kiss; And Joy shall overtake us as a flood, When every thing ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... draped with awnings; gorgeously- clad flunkeys stood upon the doorsteps, ushering in long streams of visitors. In the City men worked for money; in the West End they threw it away, carelessly, heedlessly, as if it had been dross. The great hotels sheltered hives of strangers, who admired and criticised, envied and scoffed, and flitted industriously about on the edge of the feast; on the edge, but never actually passing ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... lowly shrine? What mean those prayers and sighs, The tearful mist that dims the light Of his flashing, eagle eyes? They tell of life's vain pomps and pride Esteemed as worthless dross, For the dauntless soldier has become The soldier ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... from dross! Who wrought the shining miracle? What magic cast the dazzling spell?— The star is ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... 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, ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... you. Well, I'm not that kind of woman. I might have been, had you been different. I'm not at all sure. Certainly I'm not that kind now, even though I know in my heart that the sort of career you have made for yourself, and that I intend to make for myself is all dross. But now I ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... admire her, who would not love her, that should but see her dance as I did? O admirable, O divine Panareta! I have seen old and new Rome, many fair cities, many proper women, but never any like to Panareta, they are dross, dowdies all to Panareta! O how she danced, how she tripped, how she turned, with what a grace! happy is that man that shall enjoy her. O most incomparable, only, Panareta!" When Xenophon, in Symposio, or Banquet, had discoursed of love, and used all the engines ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... doubt, with faithlessness, with despair. For the fable of Sisyphus is not 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 ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... would die now. But there has never an hour of mine gone quite so dully yet; if it were spent waiting at a railway junction, I would have some scattering thoughts, I could count some grains of memory, compared to which the whole of one of these romances seems but dross." ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... civilising and refining influences of her time. And the question of morality in relation to the drama is confessedly very difficult to deal with. "It must be something almost of a scandalous character to warrant interference," says Mr. Donne. "If you sift the matter to the very dross, two-thirds of the plays of any period in the history of the stage must be condemned. Where there is an obvious intention, or a very strong suspicion of an intention to make wrong appear right or right ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... Horace, "when he writ on vulgar subjects, yet writ not vulgarly." But he has force, sincerity, and a line of his own in thought and fancy. A considerable section of his poetry is occupied with studies of men he has observed at the Front, a subaltern, a private of the Lancashires, conscripts, the dross of a battle-field, the one-legged man ("Thank God, they had to amputate!"), the sniper who goes crazy—savage, disconcerting silhouettes drawn ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... guided the ship cautiously past Capri and into the bay. The air was now black with volcanic dross and a gloom as of midnight surrounded them on every side. The shore, the mountain and the water of the bay ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... nothing better than to be worthy of it, to attempt great deeds and valiantly perform them, to confront foul abuses, and most potently destroy them,—and to esteem the powers and riches of this world as dross, weighed against this rare and fiery talisman. For it is a jewel which doth light up the heart, and make it strong to support all sorrow and ill fortune with cheerfulness, knowing that it is in itself of so lasting a quality as to subjugate all things and events unto its compelling sway.' What ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... animal in some obscure den among the rocks. For the moment her own troubles were pretty nearly forgotten, for there was something for her to do. She had been but a useless by-product of humanity in the great melting pot of the world and had proved incapable of rising above the dross and making even a poor place for herself. But this man was young and strong and able, bearing all the marks of one destined to be of use. He had looked splendid in his efficient and sturdy manhood and therefore there was something wrong, utterly wrong and ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... country in his car, was as simple and considerate and kindly as a man could be. Coppertop adored him, and, as Gillian reflected, the love of children is rarely misplaced. Some instinct leads them to divine unfailingly which is gold and which dross. ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... be ejected from Rome. The epithet was not bestowed at random; Lord Palmerston confirmed it when he said from his place in the House of Commons: 'In Rome there is a French garrison; under its shelter there exists a committee of 200, whose practice is to organise a band of murderers, the scum and dross of every nation, and send them into the Neapolitan territory to commit every atrocity!' As a criticism the words are not less strong; but the public defiance of Napoleon, and the threat with which it was accompanied, dictated one plain duty ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... too may rank among the most forlorn. I fling a palm into the sea; 'twill sink: Others throw lead, and it is lightly borne. What have I done, dear Lord, the world to cross? Gold in my hand forthwith is turned to dross. How have I made, dear Lord, dame Fortune wroth? Gold in my hand forthwith is turned to froth. What have I done, dear Lord, to fret the folk? Gold in my hand forthwith ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... with age, it is not so with the mental; for religious instruction only can develop the noble faculties of the soul. The soul of a child, so to speak, would continue to live enshrouded in Pagan darkness, if the mother did not impart and infuse the light of truth. All the gold in the world is but dross in comparison ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... boasting of his apostrophes, in the flow of his patriotic nonsense, in the emphasis of his harangues, in the ponderousness of his style, fleshy but ropy and lacking in marrow and bone, in the insupportable dross of his long adverbs with which he introduces phrases, in the unalterable formula of his adipose periods badly sewed together with the thread of conjunctions and, finally, in his wearisome habits of tautology. ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... coarse speech sounds; and how unworthy of one who calls himself a man, to be always bent on material things, instead of rising towards those which are intellectual. Is that dross, the body, of importance enough to deserve even a passing thought? and ought we not to ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... disposition of his materials. Yet there is no reason to complain of the way in which Warton has acquitted himself, as far as he has gone. His History of English Poetry is a rich mine, in which, if we have some trouble in separating the ore from the dross, there is much precious metal to reward our pains. The first volume of this laborious work was published in 1774; two others followed, in 1778, and in 1781; and some progress had been made at his decease in printing the fourth. In 1777, he increased the poetical ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... 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
... lord—Lord Harry. No; none of your nonsense—I won't have any more wine. Yes, I will; it might hurt your feelings if I didn't drink with you. Pass the bottle. Ha! That's a nice ring you've got on your finger. Perhaps you think it valuable? It's nothing, sir; it's dross, it's dirt, compared to my wife's diamond pin! There's a jewel, if you like! It will be worth a fortune to us when we sell it. A gift, dear sir! I'm afraid I've been too familiar with you. Speaking as a born gentleman, I beg to present my ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... soul live thou upon thy servant's loss, And let that live 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, ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... than himself and of lower social class, whose development he was able to assist. "But for my part," he remarks, "I owe him as much as I gave him, for his love lighted up the gold of affection that was in me and consumed the dross. It was from him that I first learned that there was no such thing as a hard-and-fast line between the physical and the spiritual in friendship." This relationship lasted for some years, when the young man married; its effects ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... bare, high-ceiled room, his hasty toilet made, he stood upon the hearth, beside the leaping fire, and looked about him. Of late—since the summer—everything was clarifying. There was at work some great solvent making into naught the dross of custom and habitude. The glass had turned; outlines were clearer than they had been, the light was strong, and striking from a changed angle. To-day both the sight of a face and the thought of an endangered State had worked to make the light ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... anticipate the wished for event? The Emperor Caligula, who had formerly tried to make gold from orpiment by the force of fire, was only one of a thousand adepts pursuing a similar scheme. Some trusted to the addition of a material substance in aiding the fire to purge away the dross of the base body submitted to it. From this arose the doctrine of the powder of projection and ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... 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, ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... sheathed in plate armour, mounted on strong horses, and provided with costly weapons. The knight and his horse were like a movable fortification; the peasantry or serfs who went along with them to battle, half-naked and half-fed, with rude and trifling arms, were looked upon as mere dross in comparison with the men-at-arms. One man-at-arms was considered equal to ten or even twenty of them; and when knights were not engaged in encountering each other, it was deemed as a sort of amusement for a few of them, with their ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... 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
... breathless race, Nor misses station, power or pelf; And only loses in the chase The hunted lord of all,—himself. His gain is loss, His treasure dross. "Step, step, step," mocks the whip of the sky, "Hurry up, limp along, rest ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... titles and long for high rank, Let this be your aim night and day, To increase the small balance you have at your bank, And to honors' 't will soon point the way. For you'll find that men bow to the glittering dross, Whate'er its possessor may be; And if obstacles rise they will help you across, If you only can boast ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... masses of burnt stone and sulphur on its surface, like dross on melted lead, and nothing was visible toward Bosco Trecase but endless acres of dark scoriae, broken here and there by the greenish, curling smoke of sulphur. At one point a great cone pine tree, torn up by its roots and turned to ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... Science inexorable, with her bill, her items. I vainly point out that the mixture has played its part, the tonic has played ITS part; and that, in the nature of things, the transaction is ended. The bill is unappeasable. I forget the details; a certain number of pieces of yellow and white dross are spoken of. Ah, I see it is fifteen and some odd shillings and coppers. Let ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... our boyhood days, heart to heart and hand to hand, They called us David and Jonathan, for our hearts were knit as one, And now I saw him left alone, in the shades of of the dying sun; Was it his spirit beside me stood; for do not their spirits come, Relieved from all burden of earthly dross, and win us up to their home? Was it his spirit urged me on, to seek for the Orient Light? It seemed that I should be nearer him if one in that mystic rite, Never a Syrian ready to perish, needed more timely aid, Never a pilgrim knocked at the door and found more ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... there in Crowland choir; that above them, and around them, and in them, destined to raise them out of that bitter bondage, and mould them into a great nation, and the parents of still greater nations in lands as yet unknown, brooded the immortal spirit of Hereward, now purged from all earthly dross, even the spirit of ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... being of a comparative, and not an absolute nature, there is none who in strictness can be called a Virtuous Man. Every one has in him a natural Alloy, tho' one may be fuller of Dross than another: For this reason I cannot think it right to introduce a perfect or a faultless Man upon the Stage; not only because such a Character is improper to move Compassion, but because there ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... enameled bits are missing. Indeed, Borodin had not even notated the overture when he died, and we know it thanks only to a pupil who had heard him play it on the piano and recollected it well enough to reconstruct it. Other of his works that are complete are spotty, commingled dross and gold. He was a curiously uneven workman. There appear to have been whole regions of his personality that remained unsensitized. Part of him seems to have gone out toward a new free Russian music; part of him seems to have been satisfied with the style of the Italian operas ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... found, felt the value of the true ore, and knew the deception of the flashy dross. The minds of the two girls being toned in harmony often chimed very ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... have that is nothing more than like millions of its kind? Millions? Nay, an infinitude, an endless number of beings, which Nature in secula seculorum unceasingly sends bubbling forth from her inexhaustible source; as generous with them as the smith with the dross that ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... her beating chest and looked round with dauntless eyes. "Of his," she said, "who saved my life and your honor: of my dear, dear champion's. I never can be his, but I will be no other's. Give my money to my kinsmen; it is that they long for. Take the dross, Simeon and Solomon, Jonah and Jochanan, and divide it among you, and leave me. I will never be yours, I tell you, never. Do you think, after knowing him and hearing him speak,—after watching him wounded on his pillow, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cries of woe her rafters rend in twain; For our Imperial One is brought to naught. Yea, even where most cunningly she was wrought, The fire has cleft its way each coign into, For wood and stone searching her bosom through. Astonishingly high she took the blue, Yet weeping molten dross shall meet the ground— A sight for grief profound to gaze across. Flame follows flame, each like a giant worm, To feast and batten on her beauteous form. Through gold and silver doors they sinuous swarm And crop the carven flowers with gust ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... works of the hands and mind, whether or no they have been well done; the sacrifice of the lower nature properly made, control of the triune being established, the transmutations correct and accurate, assimilation perfect and free from dross, harmony gained by loving obedience to the higher law of being, and thus becomes ruler of his kingdom; the long journey almost accomplished, so far as Earth is concerned, perceiving and understanding that all sciences, ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... never exactly alike in any two men, and he sought to express the hidden motives and principles which govern individual action. In this field he is like a miner delving underground, sending up masses of mingled earth and ore; and the reader must sift all this material to separate the gold from the dross. ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... not of man's knowledge, but rather of divine wisdom. But he esteeming all kind of handicraft and invention to make engines, and generally all manner of sciences bringing common commodity by the use of them, to be but vile, beggarly, and mercenary dross: employed his wit and study only to write things, the beauty and subtlety whereof were not mingled anything at all with necessity. For all that he hath written, are geometrical propositions, which are without comparison ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... better citizens for it. The police force became an army of heroes—for a season. All the good in it came out; and there is a lot of it in the worst of times. Roosevelt had the true philosopher's stone that turns dross to gold, in his own sturdy faith in his fellow-man. Men became good because ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... and a few other officers, 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. ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... inventing the narrative he depended upon the weakest element in his mental make-up, and the result could not but be dismal. We like to believe that there was better stuff in him than he himself ever found; and that when he left this world for the next, he had sloughed off more dross than most men have time ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... iron, the silver and gold in wondrous mixture, with wondrous iridescences of colour and wondrous scale of tone, all poured into the manifold moulds, fantastic and beautiful and grand, of Shakespeare. And as long as all this dross and ore and filth brought from the ruins of Italy was thus mingling in the heat of English genius, while it was yet but imperfectly fused, while already its purest and best compounded portion was being poured in Shakespeare's mould, and when already there remained only a seething ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... his heart. —He rests:—And the storm-clouds have fled, and the sunshine of Nature repress'd Breaks o'er the realm in smiles, and the land again has her rest. He rests: the great spirit is hid where from heaven the veil is unroll'd, And justice merges in love, and the dross is purged ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... art and wit and passion fade and vanish, Countless achievements, ever new and great, Are naught but dross within the sight ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... that common Philosopher's stone (much more easily discovered than the object of the alchemist's researches), which sometimes trips up kind and generous men, and has the fatal property of turning gold to dross and every precious thing to ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... Bishop le Veneur, is of the superlative degree of its era (early sixteenth century), bordering upon the profusion of splayed ornament which so soon after turned to dross, but standing, as it does, of itself, clearly defined. The gulf was finally crossed when, less than a half-century later, the incongruous west front with its ill-mannered towers was built,—in itself ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... not clearly defined, as the drift-wood in the river spoils the reflected image. We feel nothing intensely; our experience is a blur without distinct form and outline; in short we are incumbered with too much clay. Hence, when a slow disease burns the dross and earth out of one, how keen and susceptible his organization becomes! The mud-wall grows transparent. Our senses lose their obtuseness, our capacity both for experience and expression is enlarged, and we not only live deeper, but nearer ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... user His heart's desire at price of his heart's blood. The clamour of the arrogant accuser Wastes that one hour we needed to make good. This was foretold of old at our outgoing; This we accepted who have squandered, knowing, The strength and glory of our reputations, At the day's need, as it were dross, to guard The tender and new-dedicate foundations Against the sea we ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... in blessed unison with His will; the whole being impregnated with holiness—the intellect purified and ennobled, consecrating all its powers to His service—memory, a holy repository of pure and hallowed recollections—the affections, without one competing rival, purged from all the dross of earthliness—the love of God, the one supreme animating passion—the glory of God, the motive principle interfused through every thought, and feeling, and action of the life immortal; in one word, the heart ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... continual testings and temptings. Testings by God. Temptings by Satan. There will be testings by God that the realness of the surrender may be made clear, and, too, that in these repeated siftings the dross may all go, and only the pure gold remain. The will must be exercised in rejecting and accepting that its fiber may be toughened. No man knows how deep is his conviction until the test comes. God will test for love's sake to strengthen. Satan will tempt ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... memories and ideas, and in their turn build up the consciousness, the reason and finally the will, which translates into physical action the psychological purpose. In the process, moral character may be shaped and strengthened; but it will not be transformed if it is dross in the first place. That is something which every combat leader has learned in his tour under fire; the man of whom nobody speaks good, who is regarded as a social misfit, unliked and unliking, of his comrades, will usually desert them under pressure. There are others who have ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... when he 'saw the heavens opened,' to keep near Jesus Christ? It is slow work to hammer bits of ore out of the rock with a chisel and a mallet. Throw the whole mass into the furnace, and the metal will come out separated from the dross. Get up the heat, and the light, which is the consequence of the heat, will take care of itself. 'In the Lord' ye shall ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of our desires, but what our desires really are. We are released temporarily from tension of temporal and selfish longings. We hold a tranquil and reverential speech with a power not ourselves, and in communion with the infinite purge ourselves of the dross of immediate personal needs. In such a peaceful interlude we may find at once clarity and rest. Prayer, at its highest, might be defined as audible meditation, controlled by the sense of the divinity ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of the wine and the wealth and the mirth, The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth;— Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... and more into the human. Every such 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 ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... the prize all vain, The joys all empty made— To taste the sting in each sweet thing, To watch Love's roses fade, The fruit to ashes turn, the gold To worthless dross ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... ours (asserts the Club) is curiously compounded of Beauty and Dross. You ascend the Woolworth Building, let us say—one of man's noblest and most poetic achievements. And at the top, what do you find, just before going out upon that gallery to spread your eye upon man's ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... He is working in the minds of the souls abiding there, urging them to cast off the dross of earth-desires and to fix the aim upon higher things, to the end that their re-incarnations may be under improved conditions. On the Physical Plane He is working in the hearts and minds of the earth-people, ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... would have gained,—heights from which he has seen the light of God's face and been transfigured in it,—heights where the soul dilates to a stature it can never lose. Oh, Dan, there's a moment, a moment when the dross strikes off, and the impurities, and the grain sets, and there comes out the great white diamond. For by grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God,—of Him that maketh the seven stars and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... the earth 'by sinking a shaft, but simply excavated a cavern in the steep sides of the mountain, or, at most, opened a horizonal 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 ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... iniquity we are not cleansed until this day, though there was a plague in the congregation of the Lord.[189] Thou rainest upon us, and yet dost not always mollify all our hardness; thou kindlest thy fires in us, and yet dost not always burn up all our dross; thou healest our wounds, and yet leavest scars; thou purgest the blood, and yet leavest spots. But the spots that thou hatest are the spots that we hide. The carvers of images cover spots,[190] says the wise man; when we hide our ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... one week to another, and though 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 love ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... 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 ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... 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 ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 6, June, 1890 • Various
... is for all; bright as it is, it is not "too bright, nor good, for human nature's daily food;" it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and exalting of the heart, for the soothing it and purifying it from its dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful, never the same for two moments together; almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its infinity, its appeal to what is immortal in us, is as distinct, as its ministry ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... of loss; The call of honour all demands! What thought those generous hearts of dross Who sowed our races in these lands? Who blames the Loyalist of pelf? Champlain, what cared ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... a golden heart, Free from the dross of worldly art; Which, in the sight of heaven above, Is mine with all its hoarded love! Her love! Her boundless ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... her peak of highest noon, And bitter blasts the screaming autumn whirl, All night through archways of the bridged pearl And portals of pure silver walks the moon. Wake on, my soul, nor crouch to agony: Turn cloud to light, and bitterness to joy, And dross to gold with glorious alchemy, Basing thy throne above the world's annoy. Reign thou above the storms of sorrow and ruth That roar beneath; unshaken peace hath won thee: So shall thou pierce the woven glooms of truth; ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... toward a small outbuilding, in which was a forge. Here when he had set the forge glowing, he took from his pocket the vial of gold dust, and emptied the contents into a ladle. When the metal was melted, he poured off the dross, and proceeded to hammer the ingot into a broad band. Eventually, he succeeded in forming a massive ring of the virgin gold. But, throughout the prosecution of the task, there was none of that fond elation which had upborne him during the hours while he gathered the material. On the contrary, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... simply to the expression of our personal opinion that Home Economics, like every new idea, carries with it large quantities of dross which will have to be refined out in the smelter of trial. The real metal in it is its attempt to establish the principle that intelligent Consumption is an important and difficult task. For that reason it will not only desire but demand the utmost equality of educational opportunity. And women, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... steam roller stood, with its tarpaulin drawn over it for the night. In the field, along the wooden fence, some loads of dross had been shot between the haycocks; lengths of sod had been stripped off the soil and thrown in a heap, and planks had been laid down for the wheelbarrows. A rake, which some haymaker had left, stood planted ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... and great, of domineering and incompetent wills, of the powerful rich struggling blindly to dominate and the weak poor struggling blindly to keep their lives: the vast web of petty greeds and blind efforts. He should return, but humbly, with the crude dross of his self-will burnt out. They had rebelled together; they had had their wills to themselves; and that was ended. It could not have been otherwise. They could never have known each other in the world; they had to withdraw themselves ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... wonder at thy acts, thyself The fame and glory—glory, the reward That sole excites to high attempts the flame Of most erected spirits, most tempered pure AEthereal, who all pleasures else despise, All treasures and all gain esteem as dross, And dignities and powers, all but the highest? 30 Thy years are ripe, and over-ripe. The son Of Macedonian Philip had ere these Won Asia, and the throne of Cyrus held At his dispose; young Scipio had brought down The Carthaginian pride; young Pompey quelled ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... eternal stars, Humbling the tyrant, lifting up the lowly, And sending sun through the soul's prison-bars. Maker no more,—oh no! unmaker rather, For he unmakes who doth not all put forth The power given freely by our loving Father To show the body's dross, the spirit's worth. Awake! great spirit of the ages olden! Shiver the mists that hide thy starry lyre, 70 And let man's soul be yet again beholden To thee for wings to soar to her desire. Oh, prophesy no more to-morrow's splendor, Be no more shamefaced to speak out for Truth, Lay on her ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... ideal of the glorious perfection of womanhood. The effect on Fillmore Flagg of this fervent, all-absorbing love, was most excellent; it broadened and purified his life, eliminating from it all the dross of selfishness. He took a new interest in the lives of every married couple and every pair of lovers on the farm. By persevering effort, tact and skill, he completely won their confidence. He shared their hopes, plans, ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... didst thou commit, or whom offend? That doomed thee to a carnal cell so gross That scarce a hint of what thou really art Has ever reached the world,—who couldst transcend In matchless music, purged of all thy dross, The great ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... a stern, stone cross, Or it may be of frailer make; Eyes shut, ears closed to earth's drear dross, Immovable, serene, the world away From thoughts—the mind uncaring for ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... "' Mixed with dross the purest gold; "'Seek we then for heavenly treasures, "'Treasures never growing old. "'Let our best affections centre "'On the things around the throne; "'There no thief can ever enter, — "'Moth and rust are ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... sorrowfully, "how much a man will bear, and how far he will go, to get the soddered dross, as Parson Martin called it when he refused the beggar a sixpence for fear it might lead him into extravagance! Everybody is going to California and Chagrin arter gold. Cousin Jones and the three Smiths have gone; and Mr. Chip, the carpenter, ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... poor bodies are concerned; but our cherished beliefs, the hopes, the trust that stayed the hearts of those we loved who have gone before us, are cast into the fiery furnace of an age which is fast turning to dross the certainties and the sanctities once prized as our most precious inheritance. You will understand me, my dear sir, and all my solicitudes and apprehensions. Had I never been assailed by the questions that meet all thinking persons in our time, I might not ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... that Solomon had his gold from thence, wherewith he builded the temple. This golden shew made him so desirous also of like success that he left off his former voyage and returned home to bring news of such things as he had seen. But, when after another voyage it was found to be but dross, he gave over both the enterprises, and now keepeth home without any desire at all to seek into far countries. In truth, such was the plenty of ore there seen and to be had that, if it had holden perfect, might have furnished all the world with abundance of that metal; ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... 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. You have ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... the evolution of the race. Christianity brought new ideals and new motives into the lives of men. The world's desire was changed, a desire for the Kingdom of Heaven, in the search for which the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the pride of life were as dross. A master-motive swayed the minds of sinful men and a zeal to save other souls occupied the moments not devoted to the perfection of their own. The new dispensation made any other superfluous. As Tertullian ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... which sometimes injures his language, requires profound consideration. For the minute investigation requisite for this purpose few men were better qualified than Mr. Holcroft—few men much more equal to the task of bringing forth from the rich mine where they lay and purify of their dross the talents of Mr. Cooper. With an earnestness and indefatigable zeal proportioned to the object, and which nothing but the most generous friendship could impel him to employ, Mr. Holcroft gave those powers to the instruction of our hero, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... schoolboy, earned your generous praise For halting verse and stories crudely told? Over these childish scrawls the years have rolled, They might not know the world's unfriendly gaze; But still your smile shines down familiar ways, Touches my words and turns their dross to gold. ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer
... will turn my hand upon thee, and will thoroughly purge away thy dross, and will take away all thy tin: and I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counselors as at the beginning: afterward thou shalt be called the city of righteousness, ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... I am; but I'll resume. While I could buy them, friends indeed were plenty. Alas! prudence is seldom co-mate with youth and inexperience. The golden dream was soon to end—end even with the yellow dross that gave it birth. Fallacious hopes of coming "posts," averted for a time my coming wretchedness—three weeks, and not a line! The landlord suffered from an intermitting affection, characteristic of the "stiff-necked generation;"—he bowed to others—galvanism ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... significance for him and for all the world. If we ask how he differentiated his experiences, which had most value for him, we shall find something deficient. That is to say, things which were unique and precious to him do not always appear so to his readers. He counted as gold much that we regard as dross. But though we may differ from his judgments, the test which he applied to his recollected impressions is clear. He attached most value to those which brought with them the sense of an indwelling spirit, transfusing and interpenetrating all nature, transfiguring with its radiance, rocks and ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... rash. The enjoyer of every pleasure, who knows not what it is to deny himself aught, is a libertine and loose liver; while to throw over all the graces and delicious things of life, not as St. Paul did, who counted all things dross, that he might gain Christ, but absolutely, as though such things were of themselves devoid of attraction, is boorishness and insensibility. Thus the virtues of temperance and fortitude perish in excess and defect, and live in the mean. It is to be noticed ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... came—against it leaned— Glared wildly round a while; then, stretching forth, from his torn robes, a trembling hand, flung down, As if a snake had stung him, a small purse, That broke and scattered its white coins about, And, with a shrill voice, cried, 'Take back the purse 'Twas not for that foul dross I did the deed— 'Twas not for that—oh, horror! not for that! But that I did believe he was the Lord; And that he is the Lord I still believe. But oh, the sin!—the sin! I have betrayed The innocent blood, ...
— A Roman Lawyer in Jerusalem - First Century • W. W. Story |
