"Chaff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they tramped slowly forward. The darkness grew more intense, and the chaff and laughter—for the soldiers, elated by success, had hitherto shown no sign of fatigue—died gradually away. Nothing was to be heard but the clang of accoutrements, the long rumble of the guns, and the shuffle of weary feet. Men fell in the ranks, overpowered ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... sees one of these new citizens, or hears fresh stories of their address and ability, Mr. Punch is proud and delighted. Perhaps in the past, even in the present, he may have been, or even still is, a little given to chaff Englishwomen for some of their foibles, and even their aspirations. But he never doubted how splendid they were at heart; he never for a moment supposed they would be anything but ready and keen when ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... memory, and it plainly contradicts the Gospel. For there we read that John the Baptist compared the Church to a threshing-floor, which Christ will cleanse with his fan, and will gather the wheat into his garner, but will burn the chaff with unquenchable fire, Matt. 3:12. Wherefore this article of the Confession is in no way accepted, although we read in it their confession that the Church is perpetual, since here the promise of Christ has its place, who promises that the ...
— The Confutatio Pontificia • Anonymous
... pew, is not so enamoured of that idea of accomplishing those threescore years and ten which the young parson, fresh from Cambridge, is describing as such a lucky number in life's lottery. The attempt to paint it so is well-meaning, no doubt, 'the vacant chaff well meant for grain;' and it is touching to see how men generally (knowing that they themselves have to go through with it) are wont to portray it in ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... place to suppose a whiskey-sipping, cutty-pipe smoking, horse-racing, bar-frequenting fellow like Raleigh could by any possible means fall in love at first sight. But whiskey, cutty, horse, and bar were not the real man, any more than your hat is your head, they were mere outside chaff, he had a sound heart all the same, a great deal sounder and better, and infinitely more generous than some very respectable folk who are regularly seen in their pews, and grind down their clerks and dependents to the edge ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... the maniac sent these flying like chaff before the wind. It must be added, however, for the credit of the men of Ratura, that Ongoloo and his warriors had backed up ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... chaff and joke a little about these things," I continued; "but when it comes to practice, that is what always happens. We have mentioned to our wives that we are going. Naturally, they are grieved; they would prefer to come with us; failing that, they would have ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... must swear you'll tear up this letter at once, the moment you have read it). You remember you and the other girls used to laugh at me at school about my brown neck and my brown eyelids, and my brownish knuckles. You used to chaff me and tell me it was because I hadn't washed. Well, you were all wrong, and I told you at the time you were all wrong. I have just been reading a most interesting book, all about these things (but you must never let Peachy know about it, as it is one of father's and ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... questions. You might as fitly paint Dame Venus freckled, As fancy Punch will stoop to being "heckled." I have no "Programmes," I. My wit's too wide To a wire-puller's "platform" to be tied. I know what's right, I mean to see it done, And for the rest good-tempered chaff and fun Are my pet "principles"—till fools grow rash From toleration, then they feel the lash. I am a sage, and not a prig or pump, Therefore I never canvas, spout or stump, I'm Liberal—as the sunlight—of all Good, Which to Conserve I strive—that's understood, But Tory nincompoop, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... CONCERT.—Miss Greenfield made her debut in this city on Saturday evening, before a large and brilliant audience, in the lecture-room of the Young Men's Association. The concert was a complete triumph for her; won, too, from a discriminating auditory not likely to be caught with chaff, and none too willing to suffer admiration to get the better of prejudice. Her singing more than met the expectations of her hearers, and elicited the heartiest applause and frequent encores. She possesses a truly wonderful voice; and, considering the poverty of her ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... pleased, and stopped drinking and began his preparations with diligence. With more diligence than hope, 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 ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... 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 inmost ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... alway, Will faintly take to fleeing, A lion's heart have I to-day For Kaiser Henry's seeing. The wheat springs forth, the chaff's behind;[12] Strike harder, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... here to the colorful, high-tensioned thing I had seen in devastated areas where loves of all gradations were torn and scattered and trampled into the earth like chaff! Fretfully I told ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... payment of these notes he by no means relied, as the world foolishly imagined, on the seeming opulence and secret funds of Welbeck. These were illusions too gross to have any influence on him. He was too old a bird to be decoyed into the net by such chaff. No; his nephew, the supercargo, would of course receive the produce of the voyage, and so much of this produce as would pay his debt he had procured the owner's authority to intercept its passage from the pocket ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... sort of way with little What's-her-name. She always seemed to understand it well enough, and I should have thought she was old enough to see the simpler kind of joke, at all events. One day I chanced to chaff her about a stamp she took off some envelope. Well, I daresay I said something about stealing and prisons, all in fun, of course, never dreaming she would think any more about it. A fortnight afterwards, suddenly there's ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... prince," said Mrs. Epanchin; "she says that sort of thing out of mischief. Don't think anything of their nonsense, it means nothing. They love to chaff, but they like you. I can see it in ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... "toff" in its midst. His light topcoat and silk hat-rendered him as conspicuous as a red Indian in war-paint would have been on Rotten Row. A cry of surprise was raised, and drowned in a volley of ribald inquiry and chaff. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... great big shout and whacked it on the head with a victorious smile, it lay submissively prone at his feet. His singing, nasal and out of tune, sounded like a gruesome mixture of groaning and moaning coming from some ghost-world. Our singing master Vishnu would sometimes chaff him: "Look here, Munshi, you'll be taking the bread out of our mouths at this rate!" To which his only reply would be a ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... sir," answered Joe, in much lower tones than my own, obviously with the intention of putting me on my guard. "You see, sir, them chaps for'ard are pretty cute; they're too old birds to be caught with chaff; and I knew that if I was to get on the blind side of 'em, it'd have to be by means of throwin' you into a genuine, downright passion with me. Besides, if you'll excuse me for sayin' of it, Captain Saint Leger, you ain't much of a hactor, sir; you're altogether ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... of courage which swept away so much chaff. According to Deuteronomy xx. 8, the standing enactment was that such a proclamation as that in verse 3 should precede every battle. Much difficulty has been raised about the mention of Mount Gilead here, as the only Mount Gilead otherwise mentioned in Scripture lay to the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... grumbled and scolded, but settled down to it after a while. He busied himself with odd jobs, patched oilskins and mended wooden shoes for the fishermen and became quite brisk again. Maren could feel the improvement, when he good-naturedly began to chaff ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... She needed no encouragement for when she was once on a subject she generally threshed it so thoroughly that nothing but chaff remained. ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... Josephus saw this ram still battering the same place, and that the wall would quickly be thrown down by it, he resolved to elude for a while the force of the engine. With this design he gave orders to fill sacks with chaff, and to hang them down before that place where they saw the ram always battering, that the stroke might be turned aside, or that the place might feel less of the strokes by the yielding nature of the chaff. This contrivance ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... the New World. He held up to their abhorrence the licentious manners and atheistical principles of the French, among whom God was disregarded or forgotten; and, elevated by the importance of his subject, he described the Almighty as mustering his wrath to descend on that nation, and disperse it as chaff in a whirlwind. He called on them to look towards their home of England, and to see with what eager devotion the inhabitants worshiped the golden image of Commerce, and laid the tribute of all their ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... me much—almost all that I ever learned, until the bitterer experiences of life brought it all to the test, and sifted out the chaff, and left ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... "Don't chaff me, Polly. This is a serious business. If you sell my girl, I'm going to buy a new one. I'll ask Jessie Gordon to go with us and, if Jack is half the man I take him to be, he'll replenish our stock of girls ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... grumbled Mr. Gabbett, "and let's have no more chaff. If we're for bizness, let's ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... and their attempts, No lasting root shall find; Untimely blasted, and dispersed Like chaff before the wind. ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... suddenly hopped like a kangaroo (which feat he performed by raising himself upon tip-toes, then flinging himself forward with a stooping jerk), towards the hearth, and squinting down into the coffee-pot in the most quizzical manner, exclaimed, "Miserable chaff! If that does not make you ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Pierson on shore; and though he was disposed at first to chaff me, and avoid giving me any information in regard to this steamer, he afterwards informed me that the gentleman who owned her intended to get rid of her ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... vii. Palinode is referred to by the shepherd Thomalin, as "lording it over God's heritage," feeding the sheep with chaff, and keeping for himself the grains.—Spenser, Shepheardes ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... thing has occurred: a man who pretends to be a missionary for Israel, and who 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 grace in ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... through the crowd that continued to chaff us good-naturedly—"joshing" they called it. Then we managed to struggle into a sort of backwater at the side of the dais upon which an alleged string band was trying to make good, as the ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... her mother found, yes. The actor is married, but he tells you he will divorce the wife; you are to wait for him, and in the meantime he wants you near him; away from the office, where other men are apt to come in with letters to be typed, and to chaff you. You are a ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... but I hardly think it would be for your advantage to oppose me too much," returned his father with an ominous pucker of his eyebrows, which warned Dick, that it was hardly safe to chaff the ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... deal to answer for as regards men, and every girl should do her best to be on the right side and to help a man to be at his best, by showing that she thinks silliness and vulgar chaff objectionable. Every girl sets the tone of those she talks with, for every one's conscience responds to the tacit appeal of a nice-minded girl's dislike of these things. If you do not respond, it ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... and to get a good view. If the fox gets away or the cover is drawn without a find, you are always sure of having your spirits raised by the cheerful sunrise: by the time you get home, tired and spattered, the ladies are down stairs ready to make pretty exclamations over the brush or to chaff you pleasantly for your want of success; and then there is just time to get your hair brushed and your clothes changed before the mingled aromas of fried sausage and old Java put the keen edge on your already ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... processes. They were quite unaware that there had commenced a movement in the brain of France, which was going to liberate terrific forces—forces which would sweep before them the work of the Richelieus and the Mazarins and the Colberts as if it were chaff. ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... of my day and relations? I suspect an advantage designed for me, but not yet extracted, in marriage and the family-life, in books, in politics, in business, in the garden, in music. How much of each, as I know them, is chaff? how much is life coming in from the deep by these low doors? What is society? An eating and drinking together? a bit of gossip? a volley of jokes? Do men meet in these exercises, or in hope and humanity? We are all superior to amusement. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... and greased their shooting-gloves and fastened their bracers. They plucked and cast up a few blades of grass to measure the wind, examined every small point of their tackle, turned their sides to the mark, and Widened their feet in a firmer stance. From all sides came chaff and ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... time during her four years at Wareham as circumstances would permit. Her idea of pleasure was an ever-changing circle of admirers to fetch and carry for her, the more publicly the better; incessant chaff and laughter and vivacious conversation, made eloquent and effective by arch looks and telling glances. She had a habit of confiding her conquests to less fortunate girls and bewailing the incessant havoc and damage she was doing; a damage she avowed herself as innocent of, in intention, ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... provost. "But I am an old bird, not easily caught with chaff, and would like to be sure that it is really a lady of the court, and not an Englishman, for these English have flesh as white and soft as women, and I know it well, because I've hanged so ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... too old a bird to be caught with chaff. It's a dirty shame, of course, about this man Henderson, but I'm not running the criminal jurisprudence of ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... the metate (hand-mill), which is one of the most important articles of the Californian culinary apparatus. While the muchacha ground, or rather crushed, the wheat between the stones, the ranchera, with a platter-shaped basket, cleansed it of dust, chaff, and all impure particles, by tossing the grain in the basket. The flour being manufactured and sifted through a cedazo, or coarse sieve, the labour of kneading the dough was performed by the muchacha. An iron plate was then placed over a rudely-constructed furnace, and the dough, being ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... side of the baize door a fine hospitality and a finer flow of spirits were the order of the night. There was a sound representative assortment of quite young Old Boys, to whom ours was a prehistoric time, and in the trough of their modern chaff and chat we old stagers might well have been left far astern of the fun. Yet it was Raffles who was the life and soul of the party, and that not by meretricious virtue of his cricket. There happened ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... that she should suffer what my friend had suffered. I knew her very well,—in fact she was a distant connection; so I went to her at a ball at the Van Sueindells'. I had engaged her to dance the German[2], and had sent her some very handsome roses. I had laid my plan already, and after a little chaff and a few turns I challenged her to a set flirtation. 'Let us swear,' I said, 'to be honest, and let us make a bet of a dozen pairs of gloves. If one of us really falls in love, he or she must acknowledge it and pay the gloves.' ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... only "civvies" about, and though the admiration of any youthful male was dear to Dot's heart, and though chaff and blandishments were not wanting, still the wall was high, and she lacked the resolve to descend. But presently two khaki coats appeared and the matter grew more serious. It was evident that it was not principle or modesty that held her back, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... So, amidst the chaff of the men, who asserted that Ching Wang must have about fifty wives by this time at various ports, considering the number of times he had contracted matrimonial engagements, he went over the side into a sampan he had waiting for him, smiling blandly to ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... towns were all held by them. Arriving at early dawn of the 14th, Nelson at once visited the general and the Viceroy. The former saw no hope, under the conditions, of saving either stores, cannon, or provisions. "The Army," said Nelson in a private letter to Jervis, with something of the prejudiced chaff of a seaman of that day, "is, as usual, well dressed and powdered. I hope the general will join me cordially, but, as you well know, great exertions belong exclusively to the Navy." After the evacuation, however, he admitted handsomely that it was impossible to "do justice to the good dispositions ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... a small council now, and during five days they sifted the huge bulk of answers thus far gathered from Joan. They winnowed it of all chaff, all useless matter—that is, all matter favorable to Joan; they saved up all matter which could be twisted to her hurt, and out of this they constructed a basis for a new trial which should have the semblance of a continuation of the old one. Another ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... find it in the jeering of a jest, Or distil it from the folly of a fool. I can teach you with a quip, if I've a mind; I can trick you into learning with a laugh; Oh, winnow all my folly, and you'll find A grain or two of truth among the chaff! ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... is a version of a moral sentence. The moral law lies at the centre of Nature and radiates to the circumference. What is a farm but a mute gospel? The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun—it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the fields. Who can guess ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... Wattlesea, a kind of town village in the flat below. He could not get back till dinner was half over, and came in alarmed and apologetic; but he had nothing worse to encounter than Griff's unmerciful banter (or, as you would call it, chaff) about his knight errantry, and Emily's lovely heroine in the sweetest of ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Captain Dacres who had anticipated that pleasure, for while responding with the best grace he could command to the chaff and banter which began to be darted at him, he was consigning Miss Fisher, and more especially the effusive Doady, to every depth between this world ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... her furious blushes. Of course the story of the sugaring-off had gone the length of the land and had formed the subject of conversation at the church door that morning, where Ranald had to bear a good deal of chaff about the young lady, and her dislike of forfeits, till he was ready to fight if a chance should but offer. With unspeakable rage and confusion, he noticed Hughie's pointing finger. He caught, too, Maimie's quick look, with the vivid blush that ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... or two the journey in the fresh morning air was pleasant enough; pipes and cigarettes were lit and chaff bandied about. But the very monotony of the country soon banished any attempt at conversation, and hour after hour we jogged along in silence. With the exception of ourselves there was no living thing in sight, no sign ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... apprehended from them. I think the best remedy is exactly that provided by all our constitutions, to leave to the citizens the free election and separation of the aristoi from the pseudo-aristoi, of the wheat from the chaff. In general, they will elect the really good and wise. In some instances, wealth may corrupt, and birth blind them; but not in sufficient ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... fortune, but what is the good of it if it is buried in the earth? It is just riches wasted with no profit to anyone, like chaff or sheep's dung, and yet there are riches there, lad, fortune enough for all the country round, but not a soul sees it! It will come to this, that the gentry will dig it up or the government will take it away. ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... to escape and subsequently to be placed under the protection of Augustus. Cato thought that a proper man ought to study oratory, medicine, husbandry, war, and law, and was at liberty to look into Greek literature a little, that he might cull from the mass of chaff and rubbish, as he affected to deem it, some serviceable maxims of practical experience, but he might not study it thoroughly. Varro extended the limit of allowed and fitting studies to grammar, ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... of mischief. The councils of the wicked were being troubled. Danger was on its way. Stories were brought in by scouting Sepoys of terrible bronzed men coming up the Grand Trunk Road, before whose advance the rebel hosts were fleeing like chaff and dust before the fan of the threshing-floor, Futtehpore had fallen, and disaster had overtaken the rebel forces at Aoung. Reinforcements were despatched by Nana in rapid succession, but all was of no ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... she thought, but she found him handsome all the same, and, retreating behind the beer-taps, she eyed him surreptitiously. She was a raw country lass, not yet stript of all her natural shyness, or she would have begun to 'chaff' him. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "She seems to like to talk to me," he answered simply. "She seems to me to have rather a remarkable mind, Doctor Mary." (She was "Doctor Mary" to all the Old Place party now, in affection, with a touch of chaff.) ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... writes, that 'Other friends remain,' That 'Loss is common to the race'— And common is the common-place, And vacant chaff well meant for grain. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... nearly every one of the judges. Had they been dressed as longshoremen, one would still have known them for possessors of the judicial temperament—men born to hold the balances and fitted and trained to winnow out the wheat from the chaff. So many eagle-beaked noses, so many hawk-keen eyes, so many smooth-chopped, long-jowled faces, seen here together, made me think of what we are prone to regard as the highwater period of ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... third, and case it into a blood-dyed tank. The headless fish leaped from under his hands as though they were facing a rapid. Other Chinamen pulled them from the vat and thrust them under a thing like a chaff-cutter, which, descending, hewed them into unseemly red ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... possible restraint? Was it superstition, disgust, patience, fear—or some kind of primitive honour? No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze. Don't you know the devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating torment, its black thoughts, its sombre and brooding ferocity? Well, I do. It takes a man all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly. It's really easier to face bereavement, dishonour, and the perdition of ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... colour of her cheeks, she yields herself up to an undeserving wight, even as one poureth forth, from the sacrificial ladle, the sanctified oblation on a heap of ashes. O, see that the clarified butter is not poured into an unigniting fire of paddy chaff; that a garland of flowers is not thrown away in a cemetery. O, take care that the Soma juice of a sacrifice is not licked up by a dog through the carelessness of the officiating priests! O, let not ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... worthy of careful consideration?" Not necessarily, by any means. The production of thought parallels the production of grain. An acre of ground, that yields thirty bushels or eighteen hundred pounds of wheat, may easily grow two whole tons of straw and chaff. These latter are absolutely necessary to the formation of the wheat kernel; yet the consumer usually has little use for them; he gets past them to the grain with the least possible delay, often ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... it amusing to chaff me about us introducing the girl as Miss Smith," said Fyne, going surly in a moment. "He said that perhaps if he had heard her real name from the first it might have restrained him. As it was, he made the discovery too late. Asked me to tell Zoe this together ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... perception of them; the only thing allied to nature and truth was my having to act on that perception. I felt after I had spoken in this sense that my assurance was complete; nothing had been wanting to it but the sight of my effect on him. He disguised indeed the effect in a cloud of chaff, a diversion that gained him time and covered his retreat. He challenged my sincerity, my sanity, almost my humanity, and that of course widened our breach and confirmed our rupture. He did everything in short but convince me either that I was wrong or that he ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... certainly the impression produced by the two last biographies that have appeared of Keats himself. It cannot be said that either Mr. Colvin or Mr. William Rossetti makes us love Keats more or understand him better. In both these books there is much that is like 'chaff in the mouth,' and in Mr. Rossetti's there is not a little that is like 'brass on the palate.' To a certain degree this is, no doubt, inevitable nowadays. Everybody pays a penalty for peeping through ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... it; she thought I looked at it too much, and kep' it secret. So she nagged and nagged, and kept the pitch boilin' until I had to let it out: I told 'em" (Miss Eunice shivered). "'No,' says she, my wife's sister, 'that won't do, Gorman. That's chaff, and I'm too old a bird.' Ther'fore I fetched her straight to you, so she ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... in columns, and opened a ledger account with every hen, by a name he give her; and we got up to the ticket-window, and he put his hand into his breast-pocket for his wallet—by George! I 've seen him chaff and joke, sort of quiet, when we was going to ride under every minute; but he turned as white then as that new mainsail, and off he went, like a shot But 't was no use. Of course, the jewelry feller would n't disgorge on David's ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... 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 ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... prospect of gaining a livelihood, receive a peremptory order of exclusion on grey paper and must return by the next vessel to their fatherland. The others who pass the examination proceed in small steamers to the great city, where, among the four millions of New York, they vanish like chaff before the wind. ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... chaff Chris, but he had slipped away at the first words of the explanation. Soon he reappeared with an armful of dry wood. His face was still ashen, but his teeth ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... 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 blow ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... the air. In the neighbouring sea-port the effects were even more 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
... and her father crossed the hall. She was no sooner alone than a rush of unbidden thoughts and emotions swept over her, carrying all her promises like chaff before a hurricane. While her father had been in the room she had thought herself quite determined to take the hard step of explaining to Uncle Josiah just enough to remove the blame from the one she loved to the half-brother. ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... at me reproachfully. I was about to say that "Blackman's Warbler" was the local name for the Chiff-chaff in our part of Flint, when the Authority ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... spring, nor stunted in their summer's growth; they may be found in harvest taller than their fruitful neighbours; but the ear is never filled, never ripened, and the reaper gets nothing in his arms but long slender straw adorned at the top with graceful clusters of empty chaff. The roots of the thorns drank up the sap of the ground, while their branches veiled off the sunlight, and thus the good seed, starved beneath and overshadowed above, although it started fair in spring, produced nothing in ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... of the one arose from an exuberance of enjoyment—of the other, from an excess of indifference, real or assumed. Voltaire had no enthusiasm for one thing or another: he made light of every thing. In his hands all things turn to chaff and dross, as the pieces of silver money in the Arabian Nights were changed by the hands of the enchanter into little dry crumbling leaves! He is a Parisian. He never exaggerates, is never violent: he treats things with the most provoking sang froid; and expresses his contempt by ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... time became incumbent. The district was taken out of Haworth Chapelry, and Mr. Grant collected the funds to build a church, schoolhouse, and parsonage. He died at Oxenhope, many years ago, greatly respected by his parishioners. He seems to have endured good-naturedly much chaff from Mr. Bronte and others, who always called him Mr. Donne. It was the opinion of many of his acquaintances that the satire of Shirley had ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... day; while the Latin is the fat. The Saxon puts small and convenient handles to things, handles that are easy to grasp; while your ponderous Johnsonian phraseology distends and exaggerates, and never peels the chaff from the wheat. Johnson's periods act like a lever of the third kind,—the power applied always exceeds the weight raised; while the terse, laconic style of later writers is eminently a lever on the first principle, and gives the mind the utmost ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... instrument which produces the effect of shears. Threshing consists in beating the ears with thick sticks to loosen the husks, after which the padi is carried in baskets to platforms ten feet above the ground, and is allowed to fall on mats, when the chaff is driven away by the wind. It is husked by a pestle, and it requires some skill to avoid crushing the grain. All these operations ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... way—"you want money, and you think I'm sure to give it, because it wouldn't be pleasant just now to have discreditable stories going about concerning the future Mrs. Ascott's relatives. You're quite right, it wouldn't. But I'm too old a bird to be caught with chaff for all that. You must rise very early in the morning to ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... learn that as the down noon express was leaving H—— yesterday a lady! (God save the mark) attempted to force herself into the already full palatial car. Conductor Slum, who is too old a bird to be caught with chaff, courteously informed her that the car was full, and when she insisted on remaining, he persuaded her to go into the car where she belonged. Thereupon a young sprig, from the East, blustered like a Shanghai ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... Lord, Such common things as neither you nor I, Nor any of these noble gentlemen, Have ever need at all to think about; They say the bread, the very bread they eat, Is made of sorry chaff. ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... the revelation. It seemed as if that devil of a man had sworn to puzzle him up to the last moment and to bewilder him by the most unexpected sensational news. And how well this last detail depicted the fellow, a queer mixture of dignity and impudence, of mischief and simplicity, of smiling chaff and disconcerting charm, a sort of hero who, while conquering kingdoms by most incredible adventures, amused himself by mixing up the letters on his name so as to ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... During the whole of the drama, Hamlet is doing, not what he would really wish to do, but what is necessary for the author's plan. One moment he is awe-struck at his father's ghost, another moment he begins to chaff it, calling it "old mole"; one moment he loves Ophelia, another moment he teases her, and so forth. There is no possibility of finding any explanation whatever of Hamlet's actions or words, and therefore no possibility of attributing any character ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... Therefore, as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, their root shall be rottenness, and their blossoms shall go up as dust; because they have cast away the law of the Lord of Hosts, and despised the word of the Holy ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... Hope he'll be a great success; His clean face and natty dress Ought to please. But there'll be no end of eyes On his buttons, hooks, and ties; Prompt to chaff and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... people rule the public welfare is ever endangered whenever radical changes are to be introduced, unaccompanied with a vigorous opposition. A healthy opposition is the winnowing fan that separates the politician's chaff from the patriot's wheat, presenting the most desirable of the substantial element needed. At the convention in 1868 at Fort Yale, called by A. Decosmos, editor of The British Colonist, and others, for the purpose of getting an expression of the people of British Columbia regarding union with ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... that I seen him was the day he rode away; He was goin' acrost the plain to catch the train for the East next day. 'Twas the only time I ever seen poor Bill that he didn't laugh Or sing, an' kick up a rumpus an' racket around, and chaff, For he'd got a letter from his folks that said for to hurry home, For his mother was dyin' away down East an' she wanted Bill to come. Say, but the feller took it hard, but he saddled up right away, An' started ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... longer poems, his titanic prophecies and apocalyptic splendors, it is impossible to write justly in such a brief work as this. Outwardly they suggest a huge chaff pile, and the scattered grains of wheat hardly warrant the labor of winnowing. The curious reader will get an idea of Blake's amazing mysticism by dipping into any of the works of his middle life,—Urizen, Gates of Paradise, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... through the volant vast Flung like chaff, as ashes cast To the nether storms, I sank, pride past, On the waiting wings of the ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... right:— night brands and chokes as if destruction broke over furze and stone and crop of myrtle-shoot and field-wort, destroyed with flakes of iron, the bracken-stems, where tender roots were sown, blight, chaff and waste of darkness ...
— Hymen • Hilda Doolittle
... visitor was the butcher's boy, who came round to take "orders" for the following day. This boy had a tendency to chaff. ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... I? Because I couldn't be in half a dozen places at once," answered her cousin, rather crossly. "I've been badgered within an inch of my life by confounded women in shabby dresses and poky bonnets all day. Out of two or three bushels of chaff I only found one grain ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... catch your little Arab, if you can. I say, if you can; for he is too old to be caught by chaff, and you shall need as much guile as any fowler ever did. Then with patient hands bestow on his body its first baptism of clean water, a task often unspeakably shocking; reduce to fit size and shape a cast-off suit humbly begged for the occasion, and give him his first experience of decent ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... to 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
... did those red varmints spare us?" Gummidge cried hoarsely. "They melted away like chaff. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... there came half a dozen great boatloads of armed Spaniards, who landed upon the Turtle's Back and sent the Frenchmen flying to the woods and fastnesses of rocks as the chaff flies before the thunder gust. That night the Spaniards drank themselves mad and shouted themselves hoarse over their victory, while the beaten Frenchmen sullenly paddled their canoes back to the main island again, and the Sea Turtle ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... said George. "Sometimes, when I listen to the preachers, I get so befuddled and mixed up that there's nothing but a big pile of chaff, with now and then a few stray grains of truth, and the parson keeps the air so full of the dust and dirt that you'd rather he wouldn't hunt for the grain of truth at all. Then I'm an infidel. And again I see something like that last night, and I believe it must be true. And then I think of Clara, ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... having its effect on them all. They showed that their sleep could not have been as sound as appearances might indicate, for many had red eyes, which were the cause of considerable comment, and not a little good-natured chaff on the part of those who betrayed no such ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... measure could be devised for superseding the use of nosebags, which he designated as an intolerable nuisance, especially during the summer months; but he principally relied for an improvement in condition on the prohibition of the mixture of chaff with oats; which latter article, he contended, was unfit for the use of able-bodied horses, who earned their daily food, and ought to be limited to those cattle who spent an idle ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... seems to entail a set of conditions that everybody knows: "Now," Maury says, "if bits of cork or chaff, or any floating substance, be put into a basin, and a circular motion be given to the water, all the light substances will be found crowding together near the center of the pool, where there is the least motion. Just such a basin is the Atlantic ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... ashes and fungus that fell into rot at a touch; Clusters of grapes in the garden blighted and sour on the vines; Wheat-fields that waved in the valley and promised a harvest of gold, Thrashing but chaff and weevil or cockle and shriveled cheat. Fair was the promise of spring-time; the harvest a harvest of lies: Fair was the promise of summer with Fortune clutched by the robe; Fair was the promise of autumn—a hollow harlot in red, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... and threshed it out with horses on the barn floor. Sometimes we had a fanning mill, and how it would make my arms ache to turn the crank! At other times, if a stiff breeze sprang up, the wheat and chaff would be shaken loose and the chaff would be blown away. If all other means failed, two stout arms at either end of a blanket or a sheet would move the sheet as a fan to clean the wheat. Now we see the great combination harvester garner thirty acres a ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... life beyond this life and a tribunal at which all wrongs will be righted, and that to fear God and keep his commandments is the whole duty of man. There are thus many passages in the book which express a bitter skepticism; to winnow the wheat from the chaff and to find out what we ought to think about life is a serious undertaking. It is only the wise and skillful interpreter who can steer his bark along these tortuous channels of reflection, and not run ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... intention of entering a Carthusian monastery) ebbing out of the educational and academical town of Cracow spread itself over several provinces. It spread itself shallow but far-reaching. It stirred up a mass of remonstrance, indignation, pitying wonder, bitter irony, and downright chaff. I could hardly breathe under its weight, and certainly had no words for an answer. People wondered what Mr. T. B. would do now with his worrying nephew and, I dare say, hoped kindly that he would make short work of ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... we passed along Till that eventful day When all the labor of our hands Like chaff was swept away: We saw our home made desolate, Our pleasant cottage sold; Men called us poor, but we were rich In better things ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... at times,' said Scott. 'You see I didn't know much about milking or babies. They'll chaff my head off, if ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... read a story that is all wheat and no chaff, read "Blix." Last winter that brilliant young Californian, Mr. Norris, published a remarkable and gloomy novel, "McTeague," a book deep in insight, rich in promise and splendid in execution, but entirely without charm ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... series of essays filled with literary charm and individuality, not self-willed or over-assertive, but gracious and winning, sometimes profoundly contemplative, and anon frolicsome and more inclined to chaff than to instruct—but interesting and ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... ploughed a piece of barren upland. Having ploughed he had no seed paddy to sow; he went to try and borrow some paddy from the neighbours, but they would lend him nothing. Then he went and begged some paddy chaff, and a neighbour readily gave him some. The man took the chaff and sowed it as if it had been seed. Wonderful to relate from this chaff grew up the finest crop of paddy that ever was seen. Day by day the man went and watched with joy his ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... end at one o'clock! So said Marlanx! How could Dangloss or Braze or Quinnox say him nay? They would be dead or in irons before the first shock of disaster had ceased to thrill. The others? Pah! They were as chaff to ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the thick shrubbery upon the opposite side of the creek; there was the simultaneous report of as many rifles, and five messengers of death went tearing among the Shawnees, mangling, killing and scattering them like chaff ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... Jeremiah up, there have been prophets. Prophets for good and prophets for ill—of which some few have been God-appointed, and the sayings of such alone have been preserved. The rest vanish away into oblivion like chaff before the wind—never mind what their achievement, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... threat. Hardly had the crowd begun to assemble next night before he appeared once more upon the barrel and began to read with the same monotonous vigour, tripping over words! muddling up sentences, but still boring along through chapter after chapter. Laughter, threats, chaff—every weapon short of actual violence—was used to deter him, but all with the same want of success. Soon it was found that there was a method in his proceedings. When silence reigned, or when the conversation was of an innocent nature, the reading ceased. A single word of blasphemy, however, ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle |
