"Chaff" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his pots and pans wreathed with vine-branches, the sham cavalier in theatrical cloak and trunk hose who dashes about on a pony, the solemn group tossing a doll to a church-like chant in a blanket, the chaff and violet bunches flung from the windows, the fun and life and buzz and colour of it all. It is something very different, one feels, from the common country fair of home. In the first place it is eminently picturesque. As one looks down from the balcony through ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... by Jove, your Ladyship means!" shouts Mr. Slang. "No, no, old birds are not caught with chaff. Thrum, old boy, let's have some of your ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... host's arm. "Your grandson won't be willing to change, either, because he'll be the right sort. That's what your kind hands down." He spoke diffidently, but with a certain authority. Each man is a sieve through which life sifts experiences, leaving the garnering of grain and the blowing away of chaff to the man himself. Peter had garnered courage to face with a quiet heart things as they are. He had never accepted the general view of things as final, therefore he ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... a loud burst of laughter at the fore part of the steamer, Nigel went forward to see what was going on. He found a group of sailors round his comrade Moses, apparently engaged in good-natured "chaff." ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... scarcely visible in the dusk, an English aeroplane droned back from its reconnaissance, and once there was the order given to scatter over the fields as a German Taube passed across them. This caused much laughter and chaff among the men, and Michael heard one say, "Dove they call it, do they? I'd like to make a pigeon-pie of them doves." Soon they scrambled back on to the road again, and the interminable "Tipperary" was resumed, in whistle and song. ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... Now the chaff and the parting words of good luck were over, and the train was panting to be off. "Boys," he cried suddenly, "I want you to do something for me, something hard." "Anything you like, sir," they answered eagerly. But ...
— The Comrade In White • W. H. Leathem
... lady and gentleman came to my church from one of the neighbouring towns; they were professors of religion, and members of some Dissenting body. My sermon that evening was upon wheat and chaff—the former was to be gathered into the garner, the latter burned with fire unquenchable. I said that we were all either one or the other—to be gathered or burned. They went away very angry, and complained one to another of my want of charity; they also remarked that I took good care to let the ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... things 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-stone, where tender roots were sown blight, chaff, and wash of darkness ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... tea, from which it is prepared by extraction with boiling water, the tannin precipitated from the solution with litharge, and the solution then concentrated to crystallize out the caffein. It is further purified by sublimation or recrystallization from water. Coffee chaff and roaster-flue dust have been proposed as sources for medicinal caffein, but the extraction of the alkaloid from the former has not proven to be a commercial success. Several manufacturers of pharmaceuticals are now extracting caffein from roaster-flue dust, probably by an adaptation of the Faunce[134] ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... ourselves to lose their benefits, for the sake of escaping their mischiefs, it is worth our serious inquiry, how their benefits may be increased, and their mischiefs lessened; by what means the harvest of our studies may afford us more corn and less chaff; and how the roses of the gardens of science may gratify us more with their fragrance, and prick us less ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... Ashton had been seen about with her a great deal; knew that he had had to stand a lot of harmless chaff in consequence; he himself had joked about Ashton's "latest" as they had all called her: it seemed a memory to be ashamed of, when he thought of the way he had heard her sobbing in the street that night, ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... have set down concerning myself, the reader may take on credit as open and even- down truth; but as to whether Taffy's master's nick-nackets be true or false, every one is at liberty, in this free country, to think for himself. Old sparrows are not easily caught with chaff; and unless I saw a proper affidavit, I would not, for my own part, pin my faith to a single word of them. But every man his own opinion,—that's ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... sort of a tale before," Masters answered, with a sneer. "Job Masters is too old a bird to be caught by such chaff. I'll take my risks, ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and very soon too," he thought, gazing at the heavily moving, panting horse that kept walking up the wheel that turned under him. "And they will bury her and Fyodor the thrasher with his curly beard full of chaff and his shirt torn on his white shoulders—they will bury him. He's untying the sheaves, and giving orders, and shouting to the women, and quickly setting straight the strap on the moving wheel. And what's more, it's not them alone—me they'll bury ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... the rice is heated over a fire-place, and emptied into the hole while it is hot. A young man, having washed his feet and put on a new pair of moccasins, treads upon it until all is hulled. The women then pour it upon a robe and begin to shake it so that the chaff will be separated by the wind. Some of the rice is browned before ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... Alec stayed to chaff with them, while the Texan sauntered across the floor and took a seat on one of the benches which lined the walls. As he did so, a man and his partner, so busy in talk with each other that they had not observed who he was, sat down beside him ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... the best bed, as good-humoured, good-natured chaps generally do, without seeming to try for it. The growler of the party got the floor and chaff bags, as selfish men mostly do—without seeming to try for it either. I took it out of one of the "sofas", or rather that sofa took it out of me. It was short and narrow and down by the head, with a leaning to one corner on the outside, ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... officers happily knew nothing of his elopement with the minister's daughter, and the duel that followed it; but supposed that his long absence had been occasioned by a long illness, he escaped all that exasperating chaff that might, under the circumstances, have half ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... faith in him and that means that Tolstoy really is a great moral force, for if he were insincere and not irreproachable his daughters would be the first to take up a sceptical attitude to him, for daughters are like sparrows: you don't catch them with empty chaff.... A man can deceive his fiancee or his mistress as much as he likes, and, in the eyes of a woman he loves, an ass may pass for a philosopher; but a ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... hauds the grain and keeps it safe, and that's the history, and there's often no mickle nutriment in it; then there's the corn lying in the ear, which is the Evangel frae Eden tae Revelation, and that is the bread o' the soul. But the corn maun be threshed first and the cauf (chaff) cleaned aff. It's a bonnie sicht tae see the pure grain fallin' like a rinnin' burn on the corn-room floor, and a glint o' the sun through the window turning it intae gold. But the stour (dust) o' the cauf room is mair than ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... blind and wanting wit to choose, Who house the chaff and burn the grain; Who hug the wealth ye cannot use, And lack ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Fe the various individuals had gone their respective ways, to reassemble at the ranch in the near future, and for several days they had been drifting south in groups of twos and threes and, like chaff upon a stream, had eddied into Alkaline, where Mr. Peters had found them arduously engaged in postponing the final journey. After he had gladdened their hearts and soothed their throats by making several pithy remarks to the bartender, with whom he established their credit, he cautioned them ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... in my wheat with the dogs. The first year I had thirty bushels of beautiful wheat. This I cut with a sickle, and then thrashed it with a flail. Mrs Young sewed several sheets together, and one day, when there was a steady, gentle breeze blowing, we winnowed the chaff from the wheat in the wind. There were no mills within hundreds of miles of us; so we merely cracked the wheat in a hand coffee-mill, and used some of it for porridge, and gave the rest to the Indians, who made use ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... them, and fell upon the advancing enemy. Taken wholly by surprise, when they believed that victory was won, the two or three hundred men who had passed the abattis were swept before the crowd of peasants like chaff. The latter, pressing close upon their heels, followed them through the gaps that had ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... the ideal strawberry; and they so often get a good thing among the blanks that they seem disposed to continue indefinitely this mild form of speculation. In the final result merit asserts itself, and there is a survival of the fittest. The process of winnowing the wheat from the chaff is a costly one to many, however, I have paid hundreds of dollars for varieties that I now regard as little better than weeds. From thorough knowledge of the best kinds already in cultivation, the propagator should not impose any second- rate ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... would immediately burst forth upon you. The sovereign pleasure of God, for the present, stays his rough wind; otherwise it would come with fury, and your destruction would come like a whirlwind, and you would be like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor. The wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the present; they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given; and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course when ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... you walk down the way Where the world scatters chaff, Light your labors with play And your griefs with a laugh! And when it's all o'er And you reach heaven's stile, You will get through the door If you carry a smile! ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... Melbourne. Throughout the voyage nothing occurred worth chronicling, if I except the curious behaviour of Lord Beckenham, who, for the first week or so, seemed sunk in a deep lethargy, from which neither chaff nor sympathy could rouse him. From morning till night he mooned aimlessly about the decks, had visibly to pull himself together to answer such questions as might be addressed to him, and never by any chance sustained ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... expense of his cultivation, and that his sugar should be all clear profit. If this be true, for I pretend not to affirm it, it is as if a corn farmer expected to defray the expense of his cultivation with the chaff and the straw, and that the grain should be all clear profit. We see frequently societies of merchants in London, and other trading towns, purchase waste lands in our sugar colonies, which they expect to improve and cultivate with profit, by means of factors and agents, notwithstanding the great ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... lie in my cell and listen; I'll wish that I couldn't hear The laugh and the chaff of the fellows swigging the canteen beer; The nasal tone of ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... couple of little terriers, who are endowed to perfection with the ugliness and the intelligence of their race—they are of infinite service on the plantation, as, owing to the immense quantity of grain, and chaff, and such matters, rats and mice abound in the mills and storehouses. I crossed the threshing floor to-day—a very large square, perfectly level, raised by artificial means, about half a foot from the ground, and covered ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... is sent to market, costing from 10 to 12 pounds. When sold, the bullocks average 24 or 25 pounds. Thus the cake and the meal equal the whole difference between the buying and selling price, so that all the roots, chaff, and attendance go entirely to the account of manure. These three items, together with the value of pasturage for the months the cattle may lie in the fields, from October to May inclusive, could hardly amount to less than 5 pounds ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... prevented, or that the Boers did not want to fight. So they also became unfaithful to the cause, and to those along with whom they began the war. And the name of 'hands-upper' was earned by those burghers who of their own free will surrendered to the enemy. The chaff was divided from the grain; cowards and traitors remained behind, and the willing ones went to the veld, even though it were in a retreating direction. We were still very hopeful. There were still the good positions in the Lydenberg district, and we had heard ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... ragged. [Footnote: Joutel, 136, 137. The date of the return is from Cavelier.] Their story was a brief one. After losing Duhaut, they had wandered on through various savage tribes, with whom they had more than one encounter, scattering them like chaff by the terror of their fire-arms. At length, they found a more friendly band, and learned much touching the Spaniards, who were, they were told, universally hated by the tribes of that country. It would be easy, said ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... of Mamre oak, A knotted shepherd-staff that's broke The skull of many a wolf and fox Come filching lambs from Jesse's flocks. Loud laughs Goliath, and that laugh Can scatter chariots like blown chaff To rout: but David, calm and brave, Holds his ground, for God will save. Steel crosses wood, a flash, and oh! Shame for Beauty's overthrow! (God's eyes are dim, His ears are shut.) One cruel backhand sabre cut— 'I'm hit! I'm killed!' young David cries, Throws ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... was known as the "Laundryman," a name in which respect was mixed with chaff. Ernestine did not care. She knew that she had "made good," and it was pleasant. She could afford now to have a home of her own, and so she had installed herself in this apartment, far out of the dirt and the noise in ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... have not troubled each other for a long time. I suppose I am fortunate in being left alone." She was silent a few minutes, and then she told him kindly: "Hal says they always chaff you about marrying an heiress, for the sake of being rich without any need to work; but take my advice, and don't force the hand of Fate before she has had time to give you good ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... yet very many lingered to see the last of this drama of lost fortunes. A few of the riff-raff, who invariably attend these public scenes, were now rather the worse for drink, from the indifferent liquor provided by the auctioneer, and they were inclined to horseplay and coarse chaff. More than one ribald reference to Jean Jacques had been checked by his chivalrous fellow-citizens; indeed, M. Fille had almost laid himself open to a charge of assault in his own court by raising ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... time of Cassandra and 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 ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... once more held up her face for a kiss, with trembling lips and blue eyes swimming in tears, as she told him how she should miss him, how she did not see what she should do without him, his hardly-won firmness was as chaff before the wind. He implored her to marry him; he told her of the beautiful home ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... the test of war winnows the wheat from the chaff. This was so in those days as in these, and, as an amusing proof of it, one has only to glance over the names of the generals appointed by the Congress at the same time as Putnam. Artemas Ward, Seth Pomeroy, William Heath, Joseph Spencer, ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... have had a kind heart. He took me by the hand and made me carry his broom and brushes. Nobody took much notice of us, the dawn was only just breaking, and the passages were very dark and deserted; only once some soldiers began to chaff him about me: 'C'est ma fille—quoi?' he said roughly. I very nearly laughed then, only I had the good sense to restrain myself, for I knew that my freedom, and perhaps my life, depended on my not betraying myself. My grimy, tattered guide took me with him right through the interminable corridors ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... ascribed thee all and each By ignorant folk who part not truth from fiction. But I, whom even thyself didst stoop to teach, May poise the scales, weigh this with that confliction, Yea, sift the hid grain motive from the dense, Dusty, eye-blinding chaff of consequence. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... as each had found out about himself he wondered how it had gone with his chums, I halloo'd to Johnny Randall, and he halloo'd back that he was dead, but that Trotter was living. That's the way of it. A good deal of chaff, of course. By that time the veil was there, and getting thicker, and we lined up on our right sides. Then I could only see the living ones in shadow and hear their voices from a distance. They sang out to us for a while; but just at first, father, it was rather lonely when we couldn't hear their ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... mission,— Ever faithful, ever constant. Now he steppeth from his high throne, Builded to the gates eternal, Which are quickly opened to him, And he joins the never ending. Then his kingdom is forgotten, And in flames as chaff consumed, Rolled away as clouds of vapor; Clouds of smoke and clouds of vapor, Flying with the roar of thunders, Terrible, and loud, and mighty, And with lurid lights illuming All the vast unfathomed chaos. Then comes gloom ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... 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 ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... passing in Richmond in most singular gayety. Though the hostile lines were so close that the pickets could "chaff" each other without raising their voices, still both had learned that direct attacks in front were not practicable; and such was the state of the roads all around Petersburg, that no movement out of works could be attempted. Therefore more active fighting had for the moment ceased; numbers of young ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... are tearing their legs off for just number nought. And in the latter, there 's a wicket down, and what you may call a widower walking it bat on shoulder, parted from his mate for that mortal innings, and likely to get more chaff than consolation ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... numbering of Israel, when the anger of the Lord was kindled against them, it was He who inflicted the punishment, 2 Sam. xxiv. 1, 15, 16. As He encampeth round about them who fear the Lord, so He is, in regard to the ungodly, like the wind which carries away the chaff, Ps. xxxiv. 8, xxxv. 5, 6.—In opposition to the objection raised by Baur,—"That, with the exception of the passage in Is. vi., nowhere, in the books composed before the Chaldee period, do angels appear to act as mediators in the execution of the divine commands,"—it is sufficient to refer ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... 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, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... two thousand Scripture lessons, says to himself when he leaves school: 'If this is religion I will have no more of it,' is acting in obedience to a healthy instinct. He is to be honoured rather than blamed for having realized at last that the chaff on which he has so long been fed is not the life-giving grain which, unknown to himself, his inmost ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... mention this in confidence) as if there were too much talk and too much law - as if some grains of truth were started overboard into a tempestuous sea of chaff. ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... young man, who can do a little of every thing instead of——but never mind what; your actor has not yet sufficient standing to come down before the footlights, and have his little bit of private chaff with the audience. Only this will I say, so help me N. P. Willis, I mean to go on with these sketches till they are finished, provided always that Fraser will take them so long and that you continue to read ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Christ was really to cleanse the soul from the filth of sin. Thus John, speaking of Jesus Christ, in allusion to this baptism, says,[147] "whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into his garner, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." By this he insinuated, that in the same manner as the farmer, with the fan in his hand, winnows the corn, and separates the light and bad grains from the heavy and the good, and ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... Tom, and took more than a fair share of the blame, saying he ought to have been more careful; but he was rather distressed when he found that he had a black eye, and that it could not be well before the cricket match, when the boys would be sure to chaff him. ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... her sewing materials, put them in her basket, and retired to her own room. Beulah felt relieved when the door closed behind her, and, taking up Theodore Parker's "Discourses," began to read. Poor, famishing soul! what chaff she eagerly devoured! In her anxious haste she paused not to perceive that the attempted refutations of Christianity contained objections more gross and incomprehensible than the doctrine assailed. Long before she had arrived ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... shall we own such judgment? no—as soon Seek roses in December—ice in June; Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff, Believe a woman or an epitaph, Or any other thing that's false, before You trust in Critics, who themselves are sore; 80 Or yield one single thought to be misled By JEFFREY'S heart, or LAMB'S Boeotian head. [10] To these young tyrants, by themselves misplaced, Combined ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... soon Seek roses in December—ice in June, Hope, constancy in wind, or corn in chaff; Believe a woman or an epitaph, Or any other thing that's false, before You ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... thus look back through a period of some twenty, thirty, and forty years," continued the old man, "noting the changes that have taken place, and counting over the hopes that have been given like chaff to the winds, I feel sad. And yet, amid all this change and disappointment, there is much to stir the heart with feelings of pleasure. A single instance I ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... This gossip and information, Which the young sentinel picked up bit by bit, he pieced together to make a picture of an invincible, veteran British army, waiting to fall upon the huddled mob of "rebels" at Valley Forge, and sweep them away like chaff. He heard it over and over again, that the Hessians, with their tall and gleaming brass hats and fierce mustaches, "were dreadful to look upon," that the British Grenadiers, who tramped the Philadelphia streets in legions, "were like ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... the boys would sit down on the bank and have a sort of boys' exchange, in which all matters of interest were talked over, and a great deal of good-natured chaff was exchanged. Any newcomer had to pass through an ordeal of this character, in which his temper and quality were thoroughly tried. I remember now an occasion which must have happened when I was not more than eight or ten years old, when a rather awkward-looking greenhorn had come down from New ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... the neat little girl who, among other blithe and gentle faces, turned out to see the leading football matches, to cheer the players when they won, and chaff ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... blackguard) faring with her battered fineries and upon her homely errand, across the plains of ocean, and past the gorgeous scenery of dawn and sunset; and the ship's company, so strangely assembled, so Britishly chuckle-headed, filling their days with chaff in place of conversation; no human book on board with them except Hadden's Buckle, and not a creature fit either to read or to understand it; and the one mark of any civilised interest, being when Carthew filled in his spare hours with the pencil and the brush: the whole unconscious crew ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... generous; their subject is the future of his children. In midwinter, instead of trapping and "murthering" the quail, "often in the angles of the fences where the motion of the wind prevents the snow from settling, I carry them both chaff and grain: the one to feed them, the other to prevent their tender feet from freezing fast to the earth as I have frequently observed them to do." His love of birds is marked: this in those provinces of which a German traveller wrote: "In the thrush ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... to the spirit inevitably lead in diverging paths. The axe will be laid at the root of the trees, and every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit will be hewn down and cast into the fire. The threshing-floor will be thoroughly purged, and the wheat will be gathered into the garner, while the chaff will be burned with ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... contaminating society of the "Best models," wrote well and naturally from the first. Had he been unfortunate enough to have had an educated taste, we should have had a series of poems from which, as from his letters, we could sift here and there a kernel from the mass of chaff. Coleridge's youthful efforts give no promise whatever of that poetical genius which produced at once the wildest, tenderest, most original and most purely imaginative poems of modern times. Byron's "Hours of Idleness" would never find a reader except from an intrepid ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... talk of thy doings, and become the envy of surrounding flunkies, but to taste of the fruit of thy doings themselves, is thine. What the Eternal Laws will sanction for thee, do; what the Froth Gospels and multitudinous long-eared Hearsays never so loudly bid, all this is already chaff for thee,—drifting rapidly along, thou knowest whitherward, on the ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... having taken a wallet and neckband, became a Jogi, and began to wander far and wide, living on nothing but chaff, and practicing his devotions. In order to see Brahma he attended to the following duties; 1. Hearing; 2. Meditation; 3. Fixing the Mind; 4. Absorbing the Mind. He combated the three evils, restlessness, injuriousness, voluptuousness by settling the Deity in his spirit, by subjecting ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... the house, with machinery for extracting the juice from the cane, the refining rooms, the places where it is dried, etc., all on a large scale. If the hacienda is, as here, a coffee plantation also, then there is the great mill for separating the beans from the chaff, and sometimes also there are buildings where they make brandy. Here there are four hundred men employed, exclusive of boys, one hundred horses, and a number of mules. The property is generally very extensive, containing the fields of sugar-cane, plains for cattle, and the pretty plantations of ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... charged bodies for each other, shown when charged with electricity. If charged with electricity of the same sign they repel each other. If with opposite they attract each other. The classic attraction and subsequent repulsion of bits of straw and chaff by the excited piece of amber is a case of electrostatic attraction and repulsion. (See Electricity, Static—Electrostatics—Coulomb's Laws of Electrostatic ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... of Audrey, Sara, and Garth had joined the main party now, and Garth was shaking eager, outstretched hands and laughingly tossing back the shower of chaff which greeted his ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... was not wearied with oscillating above the rostrum, the crowd was not wearied with waiting around it. The joking continued to increase, and the chaff never ceased for a moment. One individual offered two dollars for the island, costs included. Another said that a man ought to be paid that ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... may possibly have to submit to a certain amount of good-natured chaff, but nothing more. All, if I may say ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... the Pharisee, and consequently might, had he been so disposed, have pleaded that before God. But he would not, he could not, for his conscience was under convictions, the awakenings of God were upon him; wherefore his privileges melt away like grease, and fly from him like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor, which the wind taketh up and scattereth as the dust; he therefore lets all privileges fall, and pleads only that ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... do or be swept off his feet, and when it had passed there was not one scrap of that dry alfalfa hay where I'd thrown it. I found my hat a mile distant. My nostrils and ears and eyes and mouth were literally loaded with dirt and fine hay chaff. And my hair! Heavens!" She put her hands to it. "I usually wear it in braids, you know, but to-day I thought I'd be smart and perk up a bit. Now I'll have to 'go to the cleaners,' ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... new partnership going, by this time," she asked, after the manner of one who re-winnows the chaff of the commonplaces in the hope of finding grain enough for ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... Laugh Are two little fairies bright; They're always ready for fun and chaff, And ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... red to the ears, not knowing whether it were wiser for a lady's-maid to run away, or to take the rough chaff good-humouredly, and make the best of it. I fluttered, undecided, never thinking of the old adage concerning the woman ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... 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
... p. 74 for a note on the name. Near Gibraltar is a fuimara called Guadalajara i.e. Wady al-Khara, of dung. "Barts" is evidently formed "on the weight" of "Bartt;" and his metonym is a caricature, a chaff fit for Fellahe. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... de Tomkyns when we have followed her adventures up a little way in the back numbers of Punch. But, if we may be permitted the slang, the type itself is anything but "a back number." Du Maurier's work bids fair to live in the enjoyment of many generations, from the fact that its chaff, for the most part, is directed against vanities that recur in human nature. Mr. James tells us that the lady of whom we write "hesitates at nothing; she is very modern. If she doesn't take the aesthetic line more ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... of straw, mountain grass, or green and dried rushes. Among the nine thousand people there were but two feather-beds, and but eight beds stuffed with chaff. There were but two stables and six cow-houses in the whole district. None of the women owned more than one shift, nor was there a single bonnet among them all, nor a looking-glass ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... ancestor of their own. Soon all assembled under that part of the cornice which, giving South, was quite free of moss and always dry. Thither the airy folk came flying every evening as surely as doves to the dovecote. They easily found room, grown tiny now and light as the chaff that scuds before the winnowing-fan. For my own part, sallying out from my quiet death-chamber, I would sit down sometimes in the midst of them under shelter of the marble edge-tiles, and in a feeble, whistling voice sing them songs of the days of Saturn ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... not let your tongue run away with you. Mr. Brooks is believing every word you say. You needn't," she murmured in a discreet undertone. "Mother and I chaff one another terribly, but we're really very nicely-behaved persons—for our station ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... an th' wimmen sigh'd, But th' chaps did nowt but laff; Poor Billy he could hardly bide, To sit an hear ther chaff— Then up he jumped, an off he run, But whear fowk nivver knew; An what wor th' war'st, when mornin coom, Th' deead ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... "Don't chaff, Bob. Tell me, there's a good chap. You came on then in search of us as soon as you knew that ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... rejoinder caused was interrupted by the waitress bringing out tea; and these Hillsborough worthies felt bound to chaff her; but she, being Yorkshire too, gave them as good as they brought, and a trifle ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... and some a gown, 'Gainat one another jostling; They flew about like chaff i' th' wind, For haste some left their masks behind, Some could not stay their gloves to find, There never ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... suffering, broken under the tramplings of revolution and counter-revolution that swept back and forth from gulf to gulf. Still, it was not his business to sift out the plump grains of truth and justice, but to keep the chaff from lighting and spreading a wildfire ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... marble, for pillows and pin-cushions; others petrifying the hoofs of a living horse, to preserve them from foundering. The artist himself was at that time busy upon two great designs; the first, to sow land with chaff, wherein he affirmed the true seminal virtue to be contained, as he demonstrated by several experiments, which I was not skilful enough to comprehend. The other was, by a certain composition of gums, minerals, and vegetables, outwardly applied, to prevent the ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... and there with dimes on the eyes walking, To feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning, Tickets buying, taking, selling, but in to the feast never once going, Many sweating, ploughing, thrashing, and then the chaff for payment receiving, A few idly owning, and ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... The first of them is taken up with the celebration of the blessedness and fruitful, stable being of the man who loves the Law of the Lord, as contrasted with the rootless and barren life of the ungodly, who is like the chaff. The second is occupied with the contemplation of the divine 'decree' by which the coming King is set in God's 'holy hill of Zion,' and of the blessedness of 'all they who put their trust in Him,' as contrasted with the swift destruction that shall fall on the vain imaginations of the rebellious ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... tremendous system of production, organization and struggle known as modern industrialism going to do with the Negroes of the United States? Passing into its huge hopper and between its upper and nether millstones, are they to come out grist for the nation, or mere chaff, doomed like the Indian to ultimate extinction in the raging fires of racial and industrial rivalry and progress? Sphinx's riddle, say you, which yet awaits its Oedipus? Perhaps, though an examination of the past may show us that the riddle is not awaiting its Oedipus ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... Globe? Did he loaf in the coffee-houses, and spin the fine thread of his adventures to the idlers and gallants who resorted to them? If he dropped in at any theatre of an afternoon he was quite likely to hear some allusion to Virginia, for the plays of the hour were full of chaff, not always of the choicest, about the attractions of the Virgin-land, whose gold was as plentiful as copper in England; where the prisoners were fettered in gold, and the dripping-pans were made of it; and where—an unheard-of thing—you might become an alderman ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... suggested to him the scheme of his famous plot. We do not think so little of our hero's intellect, or so much of his heart, as to credit this story. Though not aged, he was by far too old to be caught with such chaff. He knew, too, before, Charles' private sentiments towards him, and we incline with some of his biographers to suppose that these words of royalty were simply the signal to Waller to fire the train which the king knew right ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... its way," he said; "and this gauntlet of criticism is all for the best. What is true in my book will survive, and that which is error will be blown away as chaff." He was neither exalted by praise nor cast down by censure. For Huxley, Lyell, Hooker, Spencer, Wallace and Asa Gray he had a great and profound love—what they said affected him deeply, and their steadfast kindness at ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... consists of a great number of flowers grouped closely together to form one or more spikelets. The spikelets themselves may be either solitary or clustered. The individual flowers are covered by glumes and are arranged spirally on the axis. As the fruit matures, the glumes of the flowers become the "chaff" of the grain. ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller
... the procession, and we turn off to secure our seats in the grand stand. But before we take them I must go and look at the wheelbarrow and spade, and above all at the "first sod." For some weeks past it has been a favorite chaff with us Maritzburgians to offer to bring a nice fresh, lively sod down with us, but we were assured D'Urban could furnish one. Here it is exactly under the triumphal arch, looking very faded and depressed, with a little sunburned grass growing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... Treasurer, who kept the chink, And all the cash Collectors; With hundreds of that class, so kindly credulous, Without whose help, no charlatan alive, Or Bubble Company could hope to thrive, Or busy Chevalier, however sedulous— Those good and easy innocents in fact, Who willingly receiving chaff for corn, As pointed out by Butler's tact, Still find a secret pleasure in the act ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... dream of universal irresistibility was but short-lived, for next afternoon, as William and I sat out at some cafe together, I found myself the object of chaff. ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... patting his head and laughing her low, sweet silvery laugh, "you betray your Scotch accent, my fine follow; and I'm too old a chaff to ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... coming home from school, Look in at the open door; They love to see the flaming forge, And hear the bellows roar, And catch the burning sparks that fly Like chaff ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... around. His hat blew off as if by accident and fell near the spur. In stooping to pick it up, the spur also found its way into his hand beneath the hat. He was truly a quick-witted gentleman, and I forgave him from my heart all his chaff in the matter of teaching me manners. It took him not a great while to comprehend, and taking note of the situation of my window, he sauntered off. Thence forward only three men passed by the house, at much ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... colonies. Whatever stress may be laid upon this, we find it hard to vindicate Burke from the charge of factiousness. Nothing can have been more unworthy of him than the sneer at Pitt in the great speech on the Nabob of Arcot's debts (1785), for stopping to pick up chaff and straws from the Irish revenue instead of checking profligate ...
— Burke • John Morley
... and Shelburne for not acting the part of Good Samaritans. He, at least, may throw the first stone who has always taken the trouble to sift the grain from the chaff amidst all the begging letters which he has received, and who has never lamented that his benevolence outran his discretion. But there was one man in England at the time who had the rare union of qualities necessary ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... me! Take your chaff to the goslings. I tells you I can't do without that 'ere lad. ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... 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, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... the butler and he had the sensation of chaff scattering before a strong wind. In truth Mrs. Oglethorpe was an impressive figure and quite two inches taller than himself. He could only stare at her in helpless awe, the more so as he had recognized her at once. Leadership ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... chaff from his friends on the subject of the "darkey," of course. At another time he would rather have enjoyed it than otherwise; but to-day he was unable to ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... endure in the day that I shall deal with thee?" Now will the ghastly jaws of despair gape upon thee, and now will condemnings of conscience, like thunderclaps, continually batter against thy weary spirit. It is the godly that have boldness in the day of judgment; but the wicked will be like the chaff which the wind ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... P'an vehemently, "the primary idea I had in view was to ask you to come out a moment sooner and I forgot to respectfully shun the expression. But by and bye, when you wish to chaff me, just you likewise allude to my father, and we'll ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... all his sonnets to the Queen, to Gloriana, and for years these manuscript poems are handed about by Shakespeare, as his own, among the actors, hack scribblers, and gay young nobles of his acquaintance. They 'chaff' Shakespeare about his affection for his 'sovereign;' great Gloriana's praises are stained with sack in taverns, and perfumed with the Indian weed. And Bacon, careful toiler after Court favour, 'thinks ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... hear at a distance coming onwards upon every road,—if too surely thou wilt work for me and others irreparable wrong and suffering, work also for us a little good; this way turn the great hurricanes and levanters of thy wrath; winnow me this chaff; and let us enter at last the garners of pure wheat laid up in elder days for our benefit, and which for two centuries have been closed ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... into my yard for leave to gather horsechestnuts, I own I enter into Nature's game, and affect to grant the permission reluctantly, fearing that any moment they will find out the imposture of that showy chaff. But this tenderness is quite unnecessary; the enchantments are laid on very thick. Their young life is thatched with them. Bare and grim to tears is the lot of the children in the hovel I saw yesterday; yet not the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... every country from the inside. He had been brought at various times during his long diplomatic career into contact with most of the interesting people in the world. He knew well how to separate the grain from the chaff according to the tastes of his listener. The pathos of his present position appealed to her irresistibly. The possibilities of his life had been so great, fortune had treated him always so strangely. ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ourselves. We'll go straight ahead on a new tack, and forget everything that's happened. If our friends the enemy look askance at us at first (and we needn't be surprised if they do), that mustn't affect us. Remember this: Scores are Settled. That's our motto; there is to be no more paying off. Chaff them if you like—I fancy they'd think there was something fishy if we didn't—but no tricks, ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... 6th of August. Hale and strong the big fellows looked in their campaigning khaki. "First-class fighting material," as Arabs and negroes, who are by no means poor judges, were openly heard to confess in their interchange of confidences. There is always much camp chaff and yarning amongst "Tommies"—and their officers, too, for that matter—at the expense of England's picked battalions. "Have you seen the 'Queen's Company,' my man," asked a subaltern of the Grenadiers ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... chaff, Richards. Just tell where the paper went, for in the loss of that lot of paper, as it proved, the bottom dropped out of the Treasury tub. On that paper was to have been printed our new issue of ten per cent, convertible, you know, and secured on that up-country cotton, ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... us kids—when we pulled at his fur Or twisted his tail he would never demur; He seemed to enjoy all our play an' our chaff, For his tongue 'u'd hang out an' he'd laff an' he'd laff; An' once, when the Hobart boy fell through the ice, He wuz drug clean ashore ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... hickory-nuts, wild grapes, pucker-berries, not to speak of loads of elder-berries for making wine. And the pigeons, flying southward, darkened the sky once more; and then the horses were unshod for treading out the wheat, and we children fanned away the chaff with big palm-leaves; and the combs of honey were gathered and shelved; and the October husking began by our having the first kettleful of white corn, swollen and hulled by being boiled in lye of wood ashes, spooned steaming into ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... I have got matters pretty straight. The question is, whether the Baron will accept my last message as chaff, or resent it. Let me see, how does it read—"It is suggested, for the President's consideration, that rumours uncorrected or unexplained acquire almost the force of admitted truth." Quite so—so they do. Let me see—"That any want of confidence between ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... only experience that can teach a man to appreciate the ingrained thanklessness of the human race. I was obliged to make a clean breast of it to my sister, who of course did not keep the secret long; and for some time afterward I had to submit to a good deal of mild chaff upon the subject from my friends. But it is an old story now, and two of the actors in it are dead, and of the remaining three I dare say I am the only one who cares to recall it. Even to me it is a ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... ears and grass beaten down and twisted by a terrible squall; here and there, between the distorted stalks, the muddy earth of the rice-swamp was visible; there were even little pools of water, produced by bits of the transparent lacquer on which tiny particles of gold seemed to float about like chaff in a thick liquid; two or three insects, which required a microscope to be well seen, were clinging in a terrified manner to the rushes, and the whole picture was no larger than ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... the tall mustard, managed to take up an enfilading position as the Harrisons advanced to break in the door. A threatening shout from the ambuscaded partisans caused them to hurriedly fall back towards the rear of the barn. There was a pause, and then began the usual Homeric chaff,—with this Western difference that it was cunningly intended to ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... much, sir; a couple o' cuts that you might lay your finger in. We an' the Haimigans had another set to on Thursday last, but be my sowl, we thrashed them into chaff—as we're well able to do. Will I have the pleasure of drinking your health, gintlemen? I think I see ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... took the utmost pains with his charger. As long as the war lasted, he looked upon him as his fellow-helper in all emergencies and fed him carefully with hay and corn. But when the war was over, he only allowed him chaff to eat and made him carry heavy loads of wood, subjecting him to much slavish drudgery and ill-treatment. War was again proclaimed, however, and when the trumpet summoned him to his standard, the Soldier put on his ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... would surrender in a few days; but they told me, as near as I can now remember, "We regret to leave you, but we have to obey orders." The most ignorant private in the whole army saw everything that we had been fighting for for four years just scattered like chaff to the winds. All the Generals resigned, and those who did not resign were promoted; colonels were made brigadier-generals, captains were made colonels, and the private soldier, well, he deserted, don't you see? The private soldiers of the ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... those theories yourself? Babbalanja, you almost affect my immortal serenity. Must you forever be a sieve for good /grain to run through, while you retain but the chaff? Your tongue is forked. You speak two languages: flat folly for yourself, and wisdom for others. Babbalanja, if you have any belief of your own, keep it; but, in Oro's name, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville |
