"Dross" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 be," had been perching ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... the right lines, with the desire not to be dependent upon diversion and stir and business, 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 wings ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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. ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... manuscripts on the table. "I find no traces of the golden pen with which I wrote in characters of fire. My treasure of fairy coin is changed to worthless dross. My picture, painted in what seemed the loveliest hues, presents nothing but a faded and indistinguishable surface. I have been eloquent and poetical and humorous in a dream,—and behold! it is all nonsense, now that ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... you are so decidedly superior to the rest, don't you know. I am somewhat gifted with a discerning mind, and am able at a glance to tell the gold from the dross." ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... 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, ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... rise with it, cleaned at last, he caught up a shallow film of water, flirted it about with a rotary motion, to sluice out the last bit of stubborn dross, then paused to stare in unbelief at a few bright particles down at the edge, washed free of ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... walls of a ruined town, the wallowing eloquence of the river, the sonorous din of the locust, that none could think this a couch of death. A Spanish priest is making ready for that last long voyage, when the soul of man sloughs the dross of earth. Beside him kneels another priest—a Frenchman of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... scoffers of his day. Few people have candour or patience enough to discriminate betwixt truth and its counterpart, when religion is to be investigated; and nothing is more common among the witlings, than a sneer at the bullion, because of its being occasionally blended with dross. But such behaviour has much stronger indications of spite than claims to the merit of ability ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... can restore thy scorched hide and flesh wert thou once stretched on these bars. Tell down thy [v]ransom, I say, and rejoice that at such a rate thou canst redeem thyself from a dungeon, the secrets of which few have returned to tell. I waste no more words with thee. Choose between thy [v]dross and thy flesh and blood, and as thou choosest so shall ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... 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 Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... enter into the cowardly weakness by which they were driven to betray their comrades. But in the case of the National Scouts there were no extenuating circumstances except perhaps that the greater responsibility rested on the men who paid in dross for the ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... Why do you hold me? 'Tis not courteous of you! Think'st thou I fear them? Fear! I rate them but As dust! dross! offals! Let me at them!—Nay, Call you this kind? then kindness know I not; Nor do I thank you for't! Let ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... 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 of what he is; on ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... certain pitch of intensity loses its sexuality. It becomes pure flame; immaterial, unearthly, and with no sensual dross left ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... in the history of the Western world—the exact point in time may be disputed but the event is admitted by all—men turned to explore the treasures of the ancient wisdom and the whole mass of Greek medical learning was gradually laid before the student. That mass contained much dross, material that survived from early as from late Greek times which was hardly, if at all, superior to the debased compositions that circulated in the name of medicine in the middle centuries. But the recovered Greek medical writings also contained some material of the purest ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... all thy sacred store, In triumph landed on the heavenly shore; Sure nature form'd thee in her softest mould, And grace, from nature's dross, refund the gold. ...
— Stories of Boys and Girls Who Loved the Saviour - A Token for Children • John Wesley
... every thing plain to her concerning the past, and they confirm her in the vow that was made beneath the old elm, long ago. It is such a treasure, that precious legacy; so filled with beautiful thoughts, and so free from earthly dross. Besides, it is all her own, sacred from the world. No other eye has ever seen it, and nobody else can ever know the secret workings of the great mind that is no longer clogged by the ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... hurried note to the bank where he had placed his six hundred pounds. Let them send him twenty pounds at once, in Bank of England notes. He felt himself a young king as he gave the order—king of this mean world and of its dross. All his business projects had vanished from his mind. He could barely have recalled them if he had tried. During the first days of his acquaintance with Elise he had spent a few spare hours in turning over the boxes on the quays, in talks with booksellers ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... their worldly store, And gripe and pinch to make it more; Their gold and silver's shining ore He counts it all but dross: 'Tis better treasure he desires; A surer stock his passion fires, And mild benevolence inspires The worthy Man ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... 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
... nobly gained, Or victory so free from selfish dross, But in the winning some one had been pained Or ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... archdeacon, and all authority, either ecclesiastical or civil. They live in cots (rather holes than houses) like swine, having all in common, multiplied without marriage into many hundreds. Their language is the dross of the dregs of the vulgar Devonian; and the more learned a man is, the worse he can understand them. During our civil wars no soldiers were quartered upon them, for fear of being quartered amongst them. Their ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... of life trembles in all the fibres of the poet's heart.... Then, the old age of Ecclesiastes is contrasted strikingly with the youth of Solomon—the king disillusioned, skeptical, convinced of the vanity of love, beauty, and knowledge. All is dross, vanity of vanities! And the young romantic poet ends his work with the conclusion that wisdom cannot exist without faith—that faith alone is capable of giving ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... iron-founder sprang from a generous impulse to free Raymer from an incubus. If it were the curse of the Midas-touch to turn all things to gold, it seemed to be his own peculiar curse to turn the gold to dross; to leave behind him a train of disaster, defeat, and tragic depravity. The plunge into the labor conflict had merely served to afford another striking example of his inability to break the evil spell, and ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... appear as a wasted life, spent with toil in getting what is not worth the gaining, and that only seems as dross in Thy sight!—Give me sufficient time and strength to show my gratefulness to Thee for Thy mercy in permitting me to know the sweetness of Love at last, and in teaching me to understand, through ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... transitory gleam of troubled waters, the drifting of fogs, at that distance seeming like gigantic veils constantly being moved forward and then slowly withdrawn, as though some sinister creature of the atmosphere were casting a net among all the dross and debris of human life for fantastic sustenance of its own—all this endless, ever-changing, always novel phantasmagoria had for him an extraordinary fascination. One of the memorable nights of his boyhood was an eve when he found his way, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... delightfully abridged the task which to their impatient eyes appeared to be much too slow in executing, could have spared their dear friend so much unnecessary time and labour in disencumbering himself of the superfluity of worldly dross which had fallen to his share. A little cogging, sleeving, and palming; nay, a mere spindle judiciously planted, or a few long ones introduced on the weaving system, could have effected in one evening what fifty milling matches, considering the 'glorious uncertainty' ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... that the Divine Grace operated by the same rules, and followed the same methods, that the Divine Providence observed in the natural world; and that the minds of men were purged from their vices and corruptions in the very same manner that metals were purified from their dross, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... written temesquitato; a Mexican word, applied to the dross from the surface of lead into which ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... wonderful that this man, who was so unworldly, so unselfish, so pure of the stains of earth himself, should have seen at once her position from her own point of view; that was neither a very exalted one, nor was it very free from the dross of worldliness. But it was so. All at once he seemed to know by a subtle instinct what were the weaknesses, and the temptations, and the aims of this girl, who, with all her faults, was so dear to him. He understood her better, perhaps, than she understood herself. Her soul was untouched by passion; ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... more; and they will go to mess and live together like soldiers in a camp. Gold and silver we will tell them that they have from God; the diviner metal is within them, and they have therefore no need of the dross which is current among men, and ought not to pollute the divine by any such earthly admixture; for that commoner metal has been the source of many unholy deeds, but their own is undefiled. And they alone of all the citizens may not touch ...
— The Republic • Plato
... Discord sordid Interest breeds! Oh! that I had shar'd a levell'd State of Life, With quiet humble Maids, exempt from Pride, And Thoughts of Worldly Dross that marr their Joys, In Any Sphere, but a Distinguished Heiress, To raise me Envy, and oppose my Love. Fortune, Fortune, Why did you give me ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... at the end, 'I die, but I die self-approved, and justified by self!' And if death is not all a sleep; if, as Socrates tells us, there are hopes that we but pass from a base life to another with less of dross, then how do pleasures and glories, griefs and dishonours, of this present life touch upon a man whose happiness or woe will be ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... this gentleman had given his mind from the time when he found himself a popular subaltern in a crack regiment, admired for his easy manners and good looks, respected by meaner men for his good blood, and rich in everything except that vulgar dross without which the life of West-end London is so hollow a delusion, so bitter a comedy of mean ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... in exceeding great honour and glory. For like as the sun exceeds in brightness all other works of God, and is beautiful in the eyes of every man; so shall all the faithful be beautiful and endued with honour and glory: although in this world they are but outcasts, and accounted as "The dross and filth of the world;" but in the other world, when the angels shall gather together the wicked, and cast them into the fire, then shall the elect shine as the sun in the kingdom of God. For no man can express the honour ...
— The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. • John Welch, Bishop Latimer and John Knox
... 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 appear wrong, those are the cases in which I interfere, or those in ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... went up in gratitude to heaven! Mother and child were sleeping—so peacefully, so soundly. Mother and child! At that early period the dearest, the sweetest, the holiest link of human love—the gold without the dross, the flower without the insect, the wine without the headache, the full fruition of the feelings without the wear and ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... are quoting here from the remarks of Mrs. Slapman's eminent counsel) "is very desirable in its way, but is it not the vilest dross, your Honor, when compared with the pure gold of connubial trust and sympathy?" Mr. Goldfinch nodded his head, as if to say that he rather ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... the full there can be no mercy, and without mercy to the full there can be no justice; that such is the mercy of God that he will hold his children in the consuming fire of his distance until they pay the uttermost farthing, until they drop the purse of selfishness with all the dross that is in it, and rush home to the Father and the Son, and the many brethren—rush inside the centre of the life-giving fire whose outer circles burn. I believe that no hell will be lacking which would help the just mercy of ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... influences which have most to do in the making of an individual, heredity is perhaps the greatest. It is the crucible in which the gold and dross of many generations of his ancestors are melted down and remixed in the man, who is, indeed, "a part of all" from ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... She seemed to scatter at random, out of sheer gaiete de coeur, as Jouffroy had said, and if some golden grain chanced to be gleaming in this soul or that, what cause for astonishment? The rest might be the worst of dross. As well might the chance occur to one of Nature's children as to another. She did not bestow even one golden grain for nothing, bien sur; she meant to be paid back with interest. Just one bright ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... transformation they cast away unconsciously the flesh and its errors. When the man lives in Love he has shed all evil passions: Hope, Charity, Faith, and Prayer have, in the words of Isaiah, purged the dross of his inner being, which can never more be polluted by earthly affections. Hence the grand saying of Christ quoted by Saint Matthew, 'Lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt,' and those ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... "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. ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... which in a whole life long he never 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... but a dim memory—such a land could ill afford to defy an empire ten times as populous and more than ten times as powerful. True, the Russians were pouring in under the guise of friendship; but the bitter memories of Tilsit forbade any implicit trust in Alexander. And, if the dross had been burnt out of his nature by a year of fiery trial, could his army, exhausted by that frightful winter campaign and decimated by the diseases which Napoleon's ghastly array scattered broadcast in its flight, ever hope, even with the help of Prussia's young levies, to cope ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... in his heart, and prompted him, that burned in her breast, and induced her, who was virgin to her very heart-core, and whose hand had hardly before been touched by the hand of man, to give so much, no power of prudence could keep him away from her. So she concluded she had given her gold for his dross. This conclusion was more easily arrived at owing to the fact that she had never been entirely sure of the state of his heart. There had always been a love-exciting grain of doubt; and when the thought came to her ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... applause and favor? Look out! God has wonderful ways of chastising His people in those very things in which they sell His interest. But you say that "everybody will be against you!" Yes, very likely. Let us settle that at once. Count all things dung and dross. Let none of these things move you. You say, "It will be a life of conflict to the end." Very likely, so was His. "I am so weak," you say. He knows all about that. You say, "It will be so cutting to have people saying this, and saying ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... Comely in thousand shapes appears. 'Tis not a tale, 'tis not a jest, Admir'd with laughter at a feast, Nor florid talk, which must this title gain: The proofs of wit for ever must remain. Much less can that have any place At which a virgin hides her face. Such dross the fire must purge away:—'Tis just The author blush ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... work, there is nothing that you will have more frequently to be mindful of than your views with respect to self-advancement. To take one form of it, the acquisition of money. Money, as Charles Lamb, a great despiser of cant, observed, is not dross, but books, pictures, wines, and many pleasant things. Still I suspect that money is more sought after to gratify vanity, than to possess the means of enjoying any of the above named pleasant things. Money is ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... by no costly curtains, but from which happy faces looked—lowly homes, poor in this world's wealth, but rich in domestic peace and love; and for the blessed quiet of their lowly hearthstones, he would joyfully have bartered wealth and fame, and all such dross as men call happiness. And Harry saw them too. The little, lonely heart, saddened by a shadow it could not comprehend, from its own gloomy home turned longingly to their homely cheerfulness, as flowers ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... his life and know nothing of his life's work?—from those who look at his life and his life's work through the smoked glass of their dull provincial minds? Let us hope for an assay of what is left to us of Poe—an assay which, not wholly ignoring the little dross, will still lose no grain of the pure, virgin gold, and give to the world something approaching what is due to the genius himself, and what, with such a subject, is due ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... 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, there's no more ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... living, a worthy actor in one kind is the strongest motive of affection that can be; for, when he dies, we cannot be persuaded any man can do his parts like him. But, to conclude, I value a worthy actor by the corruption of some few of the quality as I would do gold in the ore—I should not mind the dross, but ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... time for your folly's abating; Sigh and lament for a woman's loss: Earth is, alas, too full of such dross; One may be lost, still a thousand are waiting. Say but the word, of such goods I will bring Quickly a cargo—the Southland can spare them, Bed as the rose, mild as lambs in the spring; Then we'll cast lots, or as ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... narrow roads; the balconies were draped with awnings; gorgeously- clad flunkeys stood upon the doorsteps, ushering in long streams of visitors. In the City men worked for money; in the West End they threw it away, carelessly, heedlessly, as if it had been dross. The great hotels sheltered hives of strangers, who admired and criticised, envied and scoffed, and flitted industriously about on the edge of the feast; on the edge, but never actually passing ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... knew the true from the false, the dross from pure gold: "Which was the most splendid spectacle ever witnessed, the opening feast of Prince George in London or the resignation of Washington? Which is the noble character for ages to admire—yon fribble dancing in lace and spangles, ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... to lighten the misery of the people, but soon few heeded these laws which none were left to enforce. The vagabonds and evil-minded men who began by robbing the deserted houses of jewels, money and plate, ended by searching them for food and casting aside their treasures as worthless dross. It was even said that some of them did worse things, things not to be named, since in its extremities nature knows no shame. Only if bread and meat were scarce, wine remained in plenty. In the midst of death men—yes, and women—who ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... is so often represented. On the contrary, he was educated by circumstances; but the metal came out of the furnace of experience finely tempered, because it was by nature of the best and with but little dross to be purged away. In addition to all this he acquired for the moment what would now be called a European reputation. He was known in Paris as an assassin, and in England, thanks to the bullet letter, as ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... If you do, biography (that most inspiring of all literature) demonstrates that your reward will be as rich as the college man's reward. Yes, richer, for the gold which your refinery purges from the dross of your disadvantages will be doubly refined by the fires ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... climbed up to where I am just by sheer natural merit than I would be to ride the very sun in the zenith and have to reflect that I was nothing but a poor little accident, and got shot up there out of somebody else's catapult. To me, merit is everything—in fact, the only thing. All else is dross." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... I can not! It would be like putting bad money into the offertory to put me into that holy work. Not that I don't admire it, and love it, and worship it. It is the greatest work in the world, and last week I thought I could count everything else as dross, only remembering that I loved you and that nothing else mattered. But now I know that this was a vain and fleeting sentiment, and that the sights and scenes of your work repel me on a nearer view, just as the hospital repelled ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end? Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, And let that pine to aggravate thy store; Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; Within be fed, without be rich no more; So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men; And Death once dead, there's no more dying then. ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... very pretty woman," said her father, with a wise gentleness of his own. Lydia often saw him holding the balance for her intemperate judgments, his grain of gold forever equalising her dross. "I think she'd be called a beautiful woman. ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... estates, and do not know to what end these estates were instituted, and how we are in them to keep at the fulfilling of our baptism. They have been made a gorgeous show, and little more remains of them than worldly display, as Isaiah says, "Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water." [Isa. 1:22] On this may ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... stage, during a day-dream of popularity, with the ornaments and jewels borrowed from the common stock, to which nothing but their vanity and presumption gives them the least individual claim—he has dug into the mine of truth, and brought up ore mixed with dross! In weighing his merits we come at once to the question of what he has done or failed to do. It is a specific claim that he sets up. When we speak of Mr. Malthus, we mean the Essay on Population; and when we mention the ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... and a free forest life. He hopes not. And yet, as he glances at the calm yellow moon overhead, and listens to the low murmur of the little waterfall below the spring, he has a faint notion that it is not all loss and dross. ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... went home, reflecting in his own soul on the way that many thousands would be as dross in the pan to him if only he could ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... mainspring of everything. Money is indispensable, even for going without money. But though that dross is necessary to any one who wishes to think in peace, I have not courage enough to make it the sole motive power of my thoughts. To make a fortune, I must take up a profession; in two words, I must, by acquiring some privilege of position or of self-advertisement, either legal or ingeniously ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... and no device of labour credits [Footnote: Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, Ch. IX.] or free demand of commodities from a central store [Footnote: More's Utopia and Cabet's Icaria.] or the like has ever been suggested that does not give ten thousand times more scope for that inherent moral dross in man that must be reckoned with in any sane Utopia we may design and plan.... Heaven knows where progress may not end, but at any rate this developing State, into which we two men have fallen, this Twentieth Century Utopia, has still ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... thought which flowed into his mental chambers rapidly formed into orderly plans, all centering upon the child, Carmen. What could he teach her? The relative truths and worldly knowledge—purified, as far as in him lay, from the dross of speculation and human opinion—which lay stored in the archives of his mind? Yes; but that was all. History, and its interpretation of human progress; the languages; mathematics, and the elements of the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... 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 a woman, then he knows God's secret, and the secret of the ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... improved from 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 from all ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... the Lord's grace, to battle 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
... the door marked "MRS. MCCHESNEY," now took the direction of the door opposite—and that door bore the name of Buck. Those four months of Mrs. McChesney's absence had put her partner to the test. That acid test had washed away the accumulated dross of years and revealed the precious metal beneath. T. A. Buck had proved to be his ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... see at the gate the carriage which was to take us to the station. Now came the moment when I was tried by the crucible and found to be dross. I committed the most foolish blunder of my life. My love suddenly overleapt its bounds. In a moment my arms were around her lithe body; my lips met hers squarely. After it was done she stood very still, as if incapable of understanding ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... Manly Beauty.—The Greek worship of the beautiful masculine form is something which the later world will never understand. In this worship there is too often a coarseness, a sensual dross, over which a veil is wisely cast. but the great fact of this worship remains: to the vast majority of Greeks "beauty" does not imply a delicate maid clad in snowy drapery; it implies a perfectly shaped, bronzed, and developed youth, standing forth in his undraped manhood for some hard athletic ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... 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
... to us, Who despite our sin and dross Would exalt the Spirit. For without Thine aid and love All our life and work must prove ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... patient, it is scarcely necessary to 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 as Dead ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... the memory of the living with it. Commines, an honester writer, though I fear, by the masters whom he pleased, not a much less servile courtier, says that the virtues of Louis XI. preponderated over his vices. Even Voltaire has in a manner purified the dross of adulation which contemporary authors had squandered on Louis XIV. by adopting and refining it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... that Empirical knowledge is but a perverted view of Truth. All the fleeting things of life are but dross: their apparent reality an illusion. Material life is but a projection from the Cause world into the Effect world. Man is but a reflection of a reality that transcends his ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... the earthen part of them, the dross of them—yes, perhaps. But let us concede to them a spark that smoulders, way down deep within them—a spark of which they think they are ashamed, which they do not themselves realize the existence of except occasionally. What is the deep need of them? It is to feel ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... but saw things in the gross. Being much too gross to see them in detail, Who calculated life as so much dross, And as the wind a widowed nation's wail, And cared as little for his army's loss (So that their efforts should at length prevail) As wife and friends did for the boils of Job,— What was 't to him to hear ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... winged sandals he might take an occasional flight to the gods. Hermes, of course, was really a rascal, many-sided, and, like most many-sided people and gods, capable of insincerity and even of cunning; but the Hermes of Olympia, their Hermes, was the messenger purged, by Praxiteles of very bit of dross—noble, manly, pure, serene. Little Robin bore at present no resemblance to the Hermes, or indeed—despite the nurse's statements—to any one else except another baby; but already it was beginning mysteriously ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... silent reverence tread. Beneath those marble cenotaphs and urns Lies richer dust than ever nature hid Packed in the mountain's adamantine heart, Or slyly wrapt in unsuspected sand— The dross men toil for, and oft stain the soul. How vain and all ignoble seems that greed To him who stands in this dim claustral air With these most sacred ashes at his feet! This dust was Chaucer, Spenser, Dryden this— The spark ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... blows wide Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin, The vellum of the pedigree they claim. Great skill have they in palmistry, and more To conjure clean away the gold they touch, Conveying worthless dross into its place; Loud when they beg, dumb only when they steal. Strange! that a creature rational, and cast In human mould, should brutalise by choice His nature, and, though capable of arts By which the ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... cracking her finger-bones. "Now go I hot-foot to weave spells and enchantments, aha—oho! Spells that shall prove the false from the true, the gold from the dross. Thou, Sir Fool, art doubting lover, so art thou blind lover! I will resolve thee thy doubts, open thy eyes and show thee great joy or bitter sorrow—oho! Thou, proud lady, hast stooped to love a motley mountebank—nay, flash not thy bright eyes nor toss haughty ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... but I am realizing each day, more and more, with how much that is hard and bitter I have to contend. My teacher, Professor Marani, says 'one must mount with the wings of an eagle, then he leaves all the dross far beneath him.' I think he is right, but I am not an eagle, I am only what my dear grandfather has often called me, 'a singing bird,' with nothing but my voice, and no strength to mount to dizzy heights. The critics have said before now that my acting lacked fire and strength, and ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... "Merchant of Venice" when he was confronted with the caskets of gold, silver, and lead—had but chosen "to owe and hazard all for lead," instead of deciding as did the Prince of Morocco, the other suitor, that "a golden mind stoops not to shows of dross"—if France had hazarded all for the holding and settling of those regions whose worth was symbolized in those unpromising pieces of lead planted in the fertile soil of Louisiana, Michigan, and Ohio along the watercourses, rather than in the caskets of gold ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... in attributes and form. By subtile intelligence alone can we know Him. We cannot describe Him in words. The mind is seizable by the mind, the eye by eye.[701] By knowledge the understanding can be purified of its dross. The understanding may be employed for purifying the mind. By the mind should the senses be controlled. Achieving all this, one may attain to the Unchangeable. One who has, by contemplation, become freed from attachments, and who has been enriched by the possession of a discerning mind, succeeds ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... 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 ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... value of the true ore, and knew the deception of the flashy dross. The minds of the two girls being toned in harmony often ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... has gone out of the world, and there is nothing left but lead and dross. See how sharp the green is under the gray, and note the clearness of the air. Everything is keen and hard upon the eye to-day; the sky is full of rain and the sea is a wild harmony in ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... world within her mighty hand, And lo! it is a toy for babes to toss, And all its shining imagery but dross, To those that in her awful presence stand; As sun-confronting eagles o'er the land That lies below, they send their gaze across The common intervals of gain and loss, And hope's infinitude without ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... thousand ships And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies! Come, Helen, come; give me my soul again. Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips, And all is dross ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... child of blood and tears? Are wars the tidal waves in the mighty social sea, ordained by the Deity to prevent putrefaction? Was the Phoenix of the ancients but an old civilization, enervated by luxury and corrupted by peace, that could only be purified of its foul dross and infused with new energy by fire? Was that poet inspired who declared that, "Whatever is, is right?" ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... possible, for a musical programme. The reply staggered me: "No man, woman, or child in this island would for a moment even dream of singing a worldly song. We are all converted here, except a few benighted Catholics. The vain, fleeting joys of this world are as dross to us. The missionary has a modulator, and he trains the young men and women in the sol-fa so that they may sing Sankey's hymns in all the parts." I was dreadfully floored by this answer, and could only mutter mechanically, "Dross," "Missionary,'" ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... 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 to its ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... conventionalities of society. There lies a brilliant future before this section of the country, which in grand possibilities defies calculation; it has passed through its baptism of fire, and, let it be hoped, has burned out the dross which is incident to the too rapid growth of ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... told that the agent is mercury, sometimes that it is gold, but not common mercury or common gold. "Supplement your common mercury with the inward fire which it needs, and you will soon get rid of all superfluous dross." "The agent is gold, as highly matured as natural and artificial digestion can make it, and a thousand times more perfect than the common metal of that name. Gold, thus exalted, radically penetrates, ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... and The Prelude are, as wholes, not good poems at all. They contain, indeed, passages of magnificent poetry. But how one longs, how, as one sees from this essay, Mr Arnold longed, for some mercury-process which would simply amalgamate the gold out of them and allow us to throw the dross down any nearest cataract, or let it be blown away ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... worthless splendour— All the brilliance of the earthly toy That we deck with careful hands and tender, Is not gold, but dross and ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... certainly seem to be an ill-destined one," admitted Tian, "for, as the Verses say: 'Gold sinks deeper than dross.' Is there anything that an ordinary person can do to alleviate ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... has its reward. It never leaves us where it found us. The furnace separates the gold from the dross that the precious metal may 67:1 be graven with the image of God. The cup our Father hath given, shall we not drink it and learn the lessons ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... 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 ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... night, Do you remember the letter I wrote you Of the beautiful love of Christ? And whether you ever took it or not, My, boy, wherever you are, Work for your soul's sake, That all the clay of you, all of the dross of you, May yield to the fire of you, Till the fire is nothing but light!... Nothing ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... weather, she had spent an hour or more with Mary Backhouse, and the austere influences of the visit had perhaps had more share than she knew in determining her own mood that day. The world seemed such dross, the pretences of personal happiness so hollow and delusive, after such a sight! The girl lay dying fast, with a look of extraordinary attentiveness in her face, hearing every noise, every footfall, and, as it seemed to Catherine, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... for that believing sentence—'But all shall be right.' The worst thy friends can do is to keep thy money, which I look upon as dung and dross in comparison of thee. Ah, Polly! with the treasure of thy friendship, and the unsearchable riches of Christ, how rich thinkest thou I am? Count—cast up—but thou wilt never make ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... name is Love! I hear it from the Cross; Thy name is Love! I read it in yon tomb; All meaner love is perishable dross, But this shall light ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... "And will ye know the fine things from the dross, child? That wealth is more times what ye give, aye, than what ye get? It's rich ye are of your fine things if the heart of ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... call anything but vindictive. Crayston is to be made an example of, they say. As if my father had not half the sin on his own head! As if he had rightly discharged his duties as a rich man! Money was as dross to him; but he ought to have remembered how it might be as life itself to many, and be craved after, and coveted, till the black longing got the better of principle, as it has done with this poor Crayston. They say the man was once so truthful, ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... first glance freer from this dross than the love of man to man? the love of the creature for his fellow; the ordained test of his love to his Creator? What seems more preeminently pure than the affection of the parent for the child, who owes him not only life but the nurture which ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... cried Lord Berrington, who, having entered during the contest, had stood unobserved until this moment; "and their gold and tinsel would prove but dross and bubble, if struck by the Ithuriel touch ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... I find I have been rich in dross of thought, and poor In that I was a fool, and lastly blind For never having ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... to fling the debater forward, and its boards, lying loose on an uneven foundation, rose and looked at you as you crossed the room. In winter, when the meetings were held regularly every fortnight, a fire of peat, sod, and dross lit up the curious company who sat round the table shaking their heads over Shelley's mysticism, or requiring to be called to order because they would not wait their turn to deny an essayist's assertion, ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... by 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 the light ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... She was not what one would call pretty, but it was impossible to be long in her presence without feeling the influence of her strong buoyant disposition. The angel of pain had purged away much of the dross of her nature, leaving the pure gold undimmed. She inherited, too, much of her father's strength of character which seemed to be ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... "Perish the dross!" cried Curius, fiercely. "Out on it! when I come to you, burning with love and passion, you cast cold water on the flames, by your incessant cry for gold. By all the Gods! I do believe, that you love me only for that you can wring from ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... Is the diamond in danger when it is put into the crucible; is the gold deteriorated when it is being deterged from dross?" was responded. ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... fourpence a day. But his highest ambition was to be taken on at the colliery where his father worked; and he shortly joined his elder brother James there as a "corf-bitter," or "picker," to clear the coal of stones, bats, and dross. His wages were then advanced to sixpence a day, and afterwards to eightpence when he was set to drive ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... 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 Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that she was no saint, and that hitherto very little opportunity had been given to her of learning to discriminate true metal from dross. Then—she thought of Mr Samuel Rubb, junior. Mr Samuel Rubb, junior, was a handsome man, about her own age; and she felt almost sure that Mr Samuel Rubb, junior, admired her. He was not worn out with life; ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... it was said that she was most expert. She died young (as you know), or I should have known much more. Think you, Philip, that this world is solely peopled by such dross as we are?—things of clay—perishable and corruptible? Lords over beasts—and ourselves but little better. Have you not, from your own sacred writings, repeated acknowledgments and proofs of higher intelligences ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... indicated a grain of pure gold at the bottom of the gold-seeming dross, that, from the first moment she saw him, she ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... had wrought in him by every artificial means in his power, to make the distraction the more complete. He had not known anything like this self-obscuration for a dozen years, and when he conjectured that she might really learn to love him he felt exalted in his own eyes and purified from the dross of his former life. Such uneasiness of conscience as arose when he suddenly remembered Dare, and the possibility that Somerset was getting ousted unfairly, had its weight in depressing him; but he was inclined to accept his fortune ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... blue, the sixth indigo, the seventh a violet-purple. Each of these rays, transmitted afterwards by a hundred other prisms, will never change the colour it bears; in like manner, as gold, when completely purged from its dross, will never change afterwards in the crucible. As a superabundant proof that each of these elementary rays has inherently in itself that which forms its colour to the eye, take a small piece of yellow wood, for ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... If there had been nothing else, her very gratitude to them would have been a stimulus such as the ordinary governess never has. Under such a stimulus the last vestige of Zillah's old willfulness died out. She was now a woman, tried in the crucible of sorrow, and in that fiery trial the dross had been removed, and only the pure gold remained. The wayward, impetuous girl had reached her last and fullest development, and she now stood forth in adversity and affliction, right noble in her character—an earnest woman, devoted, tender, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... former 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 spots, we become idolators of our own stains, of our own foulnesses. ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... make them understand that they are called to be the temporary custodians of very glorious traditions, and the trustees of a spiritual wealth compared with which the gold mines of the Rand are but dross? Do we even teach them, in any rational manner, the fine old language which has been slowly perfected for centuries, and which is now being used up and debased by the rubbishy newspapers which form almost the sole reading of the majority? We have marvelled ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... be 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 ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... observations, however, amount 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 ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... be made as hot as practicable; that it shall be stirred up at the time of taking the sample; and that the portion withdrawn shall be taken out with a ladle at least as hot as the molten metal. The further precaution that if any dross be on the surface of the metal it shall be skimmed off and separately sampled and assayed is almost too obvious to require mention. An alternative and, perhaps, better way of taking the sample is to withdraw portions at equal intervals from the stream of metal whilst the pot is being ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... enter more fully into the subject of great men who were also book-lovers. 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 ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... and the weeks passed, and the months, and the years! And little Lionel was growing up amidst the dross. His long hair was filthy, and matted together, and his skin was always stained with the clay. His parents could scarcely know whether he was a lovely boy or not. It was so dark down there, that his mother could not ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... murmur, "Thy will be done," Sweet little cherub, to me but loaned, Now safe at home, far beyond the sun. Soon the dark river I too shall cross, And hopefully climb up that golden stair, And all this world's riches will be but dross, If those tiny ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... nothing to beguile him in the 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
... I have told everything truthfully. I value my word, sir." The few who talk about his vindictive spirit, while they really admire his heroism, have no test by which to detect a noble man, no amalgam to combine with his pure gold. They mix their own dross with it. ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... to gold or silver which is spread on dross, rotten wood or mire. When uttered the truths may be likened to a breath exhaled and gone, or to a delusive light which dies away, though they appear outwardly like genuine truths. They are seeming truths in those who utter them; to ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg |
