"Sift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Petersburg in March 1881, after the assassination of the late Czar, in which he was seriously compromised. He is said to be an out-and-out Nihilist, an atheist, and, in short, a dangerous, disreputable fellow. Will you sift the matter for me? I don't wish to dismiss the fellow without good reason, but of course I could not think of permitting him to be engaged to my niece until these charges ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... groundless, and besought him first to communicate to me fully all the facts of the case—which, I pointed out to him, I ought to be made acquainted with, in order that I might be enabled to take the fullest advantage of any opportunity which might offer, in my wanderings, to sift the matter to the bottom—and then to dismiss all thought of it from his mind. This letter cost me three or four hours of severe study; but I contrived to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion at last; and then, with a considerably lighter heart, I began and finished a letter to Inez, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... dig for it as hard as if for life; sitting up by it at night lest any should take it from them, giving up houses and country, and wife and children, for the sake of a few feet of mud, whence they dig clay that glitters as they wash it; and how they sift it and rock it as patiently as if it were their own children in the cradle, and afterwards carry it in their bosoms, and forego on account of it safety ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... resolves all these clear and strong expressions into the mere ideal impersonation of a principle. O no! Satan is a being of subtle intelligence, with a depraved, unconquerable, malignant will; a dread living power, with whom we have continually to do, who "desireth to have us, that he may sift us as wheat," and with whom, if we wish to get to heaven, we must be prepared to fight at every step ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... has any hold on me, or that he can keep me on the rack as he did Hugh, he'll find he has made the biggest mistake of his life. It is nothing but a blackmailing scheme, and I've more than half a mind to sift the whole matter to the bottom and land that beggarly impostor ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... "Satan desires to have ye, and sift ye as wheat. I pray the Lord for ye. O! Misse Cassy, turn to the dear Lord Jesus. He came to bind up the broken-hearted, and comfort all ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... referrest can, and, assure thyself, He will. But, if compunction has really taken hold of thee—if, indeed, thou art touched for thy ungrateful baseness, and meanest any thing by this pleading the holy example thou recommendest to my imitation; in this thy pretended repentant moment, let me sift thee thoroughly, and by thy answer I shall judge of the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... I have come to you," continued Agatha, very seriously. "I am employed by those whose identity I must not disclose to sift this mystery of Colonel Weatherby to the bottom, if possible, and then to fix the guilt where it belongs. By accident you have come into possession of certain facts that would be important in unravelling the ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... Evidently in order that he might give, in an irregular manner, that sanction which in a regular manner he could not give, to the crimes of those who had recently hired him; and in order that a confused mass of testimony which he did not sift, which he did not even read, might acquire an authority not properly belonging to it, from the signature of the highest judicial functionary ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... for no recruits under false pretences, but rather discouraged than stimulated light-hearted adhesion. His constant effort was to sift the crowds that gathered round Him. So here great multitudes are following Him, and how does He welcome them? Does He lay Himself out to attract them? Luke tells us that He turned and faced the following multitude; ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... one of dried bread crumbs, a quarter of an onion, two table-spoonfuls of butter, and salt and pepper. Dry the bread in a warm oven, and roll into rather coarse crumbs. Sift; and put the fine crumbs which come through, and which make about one-third of a cupful, on to boil with the milk and onion. Boil ten or fifteen minutes, and add a table-spoonful of butter and the seasoning. Skim out the onion. Fry the coarse, crumbs a light brown in the remaining ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... myself. But Mr. Forbes has a very strong reason for wishing to sift this matter to the bottom. Don't, girls,—oh, DON'T ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... let us plant the apple-tree. Cleave the tough greensward with the spade; Wide let its hollow bed be made; There gently lay the roots, and there Sift the dark mould with kindly care, And press it o'er them tenderly, As round the sleeping infant's feet We softly fold the cradle sheet; ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... a vanilla bean in a mortar together with half a pound of sugar and pound well together and sift. Separate the whites from the yolks of three eggs, beat the yolks well, stir them in with a pint of cream and mix in with the vanilla sugar. Whisk the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth and mix lightly in with the other ingredients. Butter a pudding mould, pour ...
— Twenty-four Little French Dinners and How to Cook and Serve Them • Cora Moore
... of judicial proceedings in Northern Ohio. The older lawyers have vivid recollections of a multitude of cases when he was in full practice, and in his prime, in which his ready insight into character—his power to sift testimony and bring into clear relief the lines of truth involved in complicated causes—his ability to state the legal principles so that the jury could intelligently apply them to the facts—his ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... Jo. I'll comfort Meg while you go and get Laurie. I shall sift the matter to the bottom, and put a stop to ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... to me upon the wickedness of my ways might with advantage bestow some of their spare time in conversing with you upon the beauty and godliness of straightforwardness. General Leslie, you will arrest at once, on his leaving our presence, Colonel Alan Campbell, and will cause a court of inquiry to sift this matter to the bottom. And hark you, my lord of Argyll, see you that no more of your kinsmen practice upon the life of my faithful Colonel Furness. This is the third time that he has been in jeopardy at your hands. I am easy, ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... though it were the original article which appeared before that book was written. I could not and would not believe that Mr. Darwin had condescended to this. Nevertheless, I saw it was necessary to sift the whole matter, and began to compare the German and the English articles ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... the inquest on the double crime of ten days ago. To my mind it would be well if a preliminary public inquiry could be held at once. Say, on the very day the discovery of a fresh murder is made. In that way alone would it be possible to weigh and sift the evidence offered by members of the general public. For when a week or more has elapsed, and these same people have been examined and cross-examined in private by the police, their impressions have had time to become blurred and hopelessly ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... plans; and it is my opinion there is more to be learned in regard to this matter. I will foil her by following her own advice, and at the appointed hour will station myself as desired, not as a spy upon her ways, but that I may sift this affair ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... perform its particular work under the strong pressure of responsibility to the nation at large; that our public affairs should be got into a state in which there should be no impunity for foolish or faithless conduct. In this way the public judgment would sift out incapability and dishonesty from posts of high charge, and even personal ambition would necessarily become of a worthier sort, since the desires of the most selfish men must be a good deal shaped ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... kings piled the Pyramids; Their tombs were robbed by ruthless hands. Who now shall sing their fame and deeds, Or sift their ashes from ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... was terribly wrought up over the matter. It might cost him his Dogs. He refused to believe the report and set off to sift the evidence for himself. Renaud was chosen to go with him, and before they were within three miles of the fatal place Renaud pointed to a very large track crossing from the east to the west bank of the river, just after the Dog sled. ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... see them part, and the Sugar as it were sifted upon them, then put them upon a paper while they are warm and rub them gently with your hands; till all the Lumps be broken, then put them into a Cullender, and sift them as clean as may be, then pour them upon a clean Cloth, and shake them up and down till there be hardly any Sugar hanging about them; then if you would have them look as though they were new gathered, have some help, and open them with your fingers before they be quite ...
— The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet • Hannah Wolley
... is voluminous, but little has been given under the sanction of an oath so as to constitute formal and legal evidence. It is chiefly in the form of letters, often containing such a mixture of rumors, conjectures, and suspicions as renders it difficult to sift out the real facts and unadvisable to hazard more than general outlines, strengthened by concurrent information or the particular credibility of the relator. In this state of the evidence, delivered sometimes, too, under the restriction ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... Ireland to be productive of increased agitation and social disorder. The perplexities of the question were evidently taking a very distinct shape at this time, and occupying no inconsiderable share of the attention of Government. In endeavouring to sift them, and to extricate something like a practical line of policy from them, Mr. Hobart was not a little embarrassed by the example of England, which he could not quite make up his mind either to ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... so distant a planet would be no easy matter. When seen in a large telescope it would still only look like a star, and it would require considerable labour and watching to sift it out from the other stars surrounding it. We know that Uranus had been seen twenty times, and thought to be a star, before its true nature was by Herschel discovered; and Uranus is only about half as far away ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... into contact with the bottom; where its flattened surface qualifies it for performing the functions of the lower one in birds of the same class; and the edges of both being laminated, it is thus enabled, like the duck, by the aid of its fleshy tongue, to sift its food ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... that we were summoned below to dinner, the sky had become entirely overcast with heavy, black, thunderous-looking clouds that entirely-obscured the stars, and only allowed the light of the moon to sift feebly through; yet there was light enough to enable us to see our way about the deck, or to reveal to a sharp eye a sail as far away as seven or eight miles, had anything been within that distance. As we left the deck a quivering ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... him? Was Colonel Vorse proclaiming himself the equal of Prince San Sorcererino who had entertained us in his palaces last year? Well. And was he not? All at once something seemed to sift away from before my eyes—a veil that had hidden my kind from me. Was there no longer even that natural aristocracy in which Shakspeare or Homer or Dante was king? Was the world a brotherhood, and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... money into that scheme. Sam and Bill Holton made a big play for small investors, and a lot of people put their savings into it—the kind o' folks who scrimp to save a dollar a week. Tom's trying to sift out the truth about the building of the line, and if he can force the surrender of the construction company's graft over and above the fair cost of the road, Sycamore will be all right. Your bonds are good, I think. People have been up in the air over the rumors, and ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... Frank! If you are going to sift everything so, and get back of everything! I can't live in metaphysics: I have to live in the things themselves, ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the other, "but didn't you hear the fella how he wanted to sift you about the Irish sintiment of the garrison, as well as lade us out upon the feelins of the Irish ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... of butter in a quart of warm milk; add a spoonful of salt, sift two pounds of flour, make a hole in the centre, put in three table-spoonsful of yeast, add the milk and butter; make a stiff paste; when quite light, knead it well, roll it out an inch thick, cut it with a tumbler, prick them with a fork, bake in buttered pans, with a quick ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... be enough to sift this affair of my father's to the bottom, and if claims he has, to establish them thoroughly," he observed to ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... slightest atmospheric changes may alter the whole condition of the deposit, and decide whether it shall sparkle like Italian marble, or be dead-white like the statuary marble of Vermont,—whether it shall be a fine powder which can sift through wherever dust can, or descend in large woolly masses, tossed like mouthfuls to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... his gown hangs awkwardly, he [at the same time] being trimmed in a very rustic manner, and his wide shoe hardly sticks to his foot. But he is so good, that no man can be better; but he is your friend; but an immense genius is concealed under this unpolished person of his. Finally, sift yourself thoroughly, whether nature has originally sown the seeds of any vice in you, or even an ill-habit [has done it]. For the fern, fit [only] to be burned, overruns ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... the human body, with its bony skeleton or framework, and all the various organs and parts supported by it; or to a tree, with its trunk, branches and leaves. Thus to consider the relative importance of facts, to sift out the essential ones, will train the power of mental discrimination and ...
— How to Study • George Fillmore Swain
... the motion of the bough while the wind crooned him to sleep. The cradle would sometimes be placed upright against a tree-trunk, so that Tecumseh's eyes might follow Tecumapease as she helped to grind the corn in a hollow stone or sift it through baskets; or, again, while she mixed the meal into cakes, and carefully covered them with leaves before baking them in ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... sift Jamie's tender passion—that's the novelle-name for calf-love; and if it's within the compass o' a possibility, get the swine driven through't, or it may work us a' muckle dule, as his father's moonlight marriage did to your ain, worthy ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... Hole—2 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 pound link sausages, 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons melted Crisco, and 3 cups milk. Sift the flour and salt into a basin; beat up eggs well, and after mixing them with the milk and melted Crisco, pour gradually on flour, beating it well with a wooden spoon. When quite smooth, pour it into a well Criscoed fireproof dish; skin the sausages and lay them in ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... Importance to us than thus diligently to sift our Thoughts, and examine all these dark Recesses of the Mind, if we would establish our Souls in such a solid and substantial Virtue as will turn to Account in that great Day, when it must stand the Test of infinite Wisdom ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... see that to accept blindly what you are told is not half so great as to sift it all, and to separate the chaff from the wheat, and to find the kernel of truth in the shell of tradition?" Elisabeth had not talked to Alan Tremaine for over a year without learning his tricks of thought and even of expression. "Don't you think that it ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... for you," he said. "You have of course been very busy during these last weeks in making your preparations for the solemn ceremony at which we have just assisted. It was therefore impossible for you to attend to the multifarious details which it has been my care, my privilege, to sift and examine. For it is a privilege we should value highly to labour for those we love, for those with whom we share our dearest affections. I am now about to communicate to you an affair of the highest importance, which, when brought to a successful termination will exercise a tremendous ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... been introduced, and the Devil, instead of his own permitted agency, would have employed his servant the witch as the necessary instrument of the Man of Uzz's afflictions. In like manner, Satan desired to have Peter, that he might sift him like wheat. But neither is there here the agency of any sorcerer or witch. Luke ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... begun in numberless directions—had, indeed, been under way in many a laboratory for some years before. It is too early yet to speak of the results in detail. But enough has been done to show that this method also is susceptible of the widest generalization. It is not easy at the present stage to sift that which is tentative from that which will be permanent; but so great an authority as Behring does not hesitate to affirm that today we possess, in addition to the diphtheria antitoxine, equally specific antitoxines of tetanus, cholera, typhus fever, pneumonia, and tuberculosis—a ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... boiler 2 cups of milk and 1/2 cup of cream. When this reaches boiling point salt to taste. While stirring constantly sift in 1/2 cup of white corn meal (this is best). Boil 5 minutes still stirring, then add 1 tablespoon of butter and from 2 to 5 well beaten eggs (beaten separately) 1 for each person ...
— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber
... North 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 ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... "I shall sift this affair," said Mrs. Handsomebody, "to its most appalling dregs. You, Alexander"—to The Seraph—"are the smallest, look through that keyhole and inform me ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... up by an early train the next morning. He had a long day's work before him—a mass of correspondence to sift, several business interviews, and some proofs to revise. It was later than usual when he went back to Cheyne Walk, but Verity had put aside his dinner for him, and sat beside him while he ate it. She even brought ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... produced in great numbers, and many of them fall upon the female flowers, which when ready for pollination have the scales somewhat separated. The pollen spores now sift down to the base of the scales, and finally reach the opening of the ovule, where they germinate. No spermatozoids are produced, the seed plants differing in this respect from all pteridophytes. The pollen spore bursts its outer ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... faculties fully restored, "I want to know the meaning of this; let us sift this whole thing to ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... administered all My providences toward thee to humble thee and to prove thee, and to make thee dust and ashes in thine own eyes. And I go away to carry on from heaven this same intention of My Father's and Mine toward thee. We shall try thee as silver is tried. We shall sift thee as wheat is sifted. We shall search thee as Jerusalem is searched with lighted candles. I tell thee the truth, I shall bend from heaven all My power which My Father has given Me, and all My wisdom, and all My love, and all My grace. What to do, dost thou think? ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... next morning to the moan of wind and the sift of snow clouds past their walls. Staring through his peep-hole, George distinguished only a seethe of whirling flakes that greyed the view, blotting even the neighbouring huts, and when the early evening brought a rising ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... powder and 1/2 teaspoonful salt, then sift twice, work in Crisco with tips of fingers, add milk gradually. The dough should be just soft enough to handle. Toss on floured baking board, divide into two parts, pat lightly and roll out. Place in two shallow ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... copied them, with half that force and vividness which they receive from his delineation. In like manner, the historian—one to whom history is a genuine vocation—applies to the facts with which he has to deal, to the evidence which he has to sift, to the relations which he has to peruse, a faculty which shall detect a meaning where the common reader would find none,—which shall conceive a whole picture, a complete view, where another would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... the white cold world of snow outside, seen through the curtainless window. I can remember the howling of the wind and the quaking of the house on stormy nights, and how snug and cozy one felt, under the blankets, listening, and how the powdery snow used to sift in, around the sashes, and lie in little ridges on the floor, and make the place look chilly in the morning, and curb the wild desire to get up—in case there was any. I can remember how very dark that room was, in the dark of the moon, and how packed it was with ghostly stillness ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... phenomena, cannot be confined to the brain, but that it exists in a latent state in every part of the organism." (Ibid., p. 1355.) The "nerve power," contended for by Mr. Bain, also may suggest a rational solution of much that has seemed incredible to those physiologists who have not condescended to sift the genuine phenomena of mesmerism from the imposture to which, in all ages, the phenomena exhibited by what may be called the ecstatic temperament ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... previous students of Shelley as poet and man—not last nor least among whom is my husband—for their loving and truthful research on all the subjects surrounding the life of Mrs. Shelley. Every aspect has been presented, and of known material it only remained to compare, sift, and use with judgment. Concerning facts subsequent to Shelley's death, many valuable papers have been placed at my service, and I have made no new statement which there are not existing ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... it was a big undertaking to try to sift the wheat from a mountain of chaff and become enthusiastic in one's devotion to State and Church. Why should there be such a state of chaos on matters of the most vital importance? Is human nature not sincere? Or is ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... evidence (initiated by Wolf, Niebuhr, Ranke)—have for the most part worked on the assumptions of genetic history or at least followed in the footsteps of those who fully grasped the genetic point of view. But their aim has been to collect and sift evidence, and determine particular facts; comparatively few have given serious thought to the lines of research and the speculations which have been considered in this paper. They have been reasonably shy of compromising their work by applying theories which are ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... an hour, for the clouds that had hung heavy all day long began to sift down snow; and soon a blizzard howled through ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... was to make me a sieve, to sift my meal and part it from the bran and husk. Having no fine thin canvas to search the meal through, I could not tell what to do. What linen I had was reduced to rags: I had goat's hair, enough, but neither tools to work it, nor did I know how to spin it: At length I remembered I had ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... grand jury after that, to study the findings of the coroner's jury and to sift out what evidence comes ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... go to him—I bring the case to you. Go, I beg of you, to Washington and plead with the congressman from this, your native district, and the Arkansas representative, who is your kinsman. Urge them to see the President and prevail upon him to sift the evidence. I realize most bitterly that I have no claim upon you, but oh, for God's sake, Madam, do what you can for a distracted father. Hanging! Oh, save him from that—and act quickly, for he has only five days to live. I am ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... trains. It is to these posts that, if its men are properly trained, its graduates rapidly ascend, after a brief apprenticeship in the city-room and a round in the routine work of a paper. Dull men, however educated, will never pass these grades, and not passing they will drop out. A school should sift such out; but so far, in all our professional training, it is only the best medical schools which are inflexible in dealing with mediocrity. Most teachers know better, but let the shifty and dull pass by. The newspaper itself has to be inexorable, and no well-organized ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... eggs, 1-1/2 cups granulated sugar, 1 cup flour, 1 teaspoon cream tartar, 1/2 teaspoon of almond or vanilla. Beat the eggs to a froth; sift the sugar five times; sift the flour 4 times; add cream tartar and sift again. Beat eggs and sugar together; add flavoring; then flour; stir quickly and lightly; put in an unbuttered pan and bake ...
— The Cookery Blue Book • Society for Christian Work of the First Unitarian Church, San
... "You shall sift mine. You shall tell me what to do. For I know nothing! Not even if I may dare to take this angel at ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... farmers represented here than there had been in most of the homestead projects—men who were equipped to farm. But they were still in the minority. They picked up handfuls of the earth that the locators turned over with spades, let it sift through their fingers and pronounced it good. A rich loam, not so heavy or black as the soil back east, but better adapted, perhaps, to the climate. Aside from the farmers nobody seemed to know or care anything about the soil or precipitation. And, ironically enough, it occurred to no one to ask ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... following pages I will try to sift the evidence obtainable, with the impartiality of one trammeled by the support of no particular theory; always bearing in mind, however, one fact, all-important in a study where so much depends on nomenclature, namely, to give that shade of meaning and that amount of weight to any term ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams
... earth I hate," said George, walking about the room, "it is romance. If you keep it for reading in your bedroom, it's all very well for those who like it, but when it comes to be mixed up with one's business it plays the devil. If you would only sift what you have said, you would see what nonsense it is. Alice and I are to be man and wife. All our interests, and all our money, and our station in life, whatever it may be, are to be joint property. And yet she is the last person in the world to ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... "that stuff is as slazy as a washed cotton handkerchief, and coarse enough almost to sift sand through. It wouldn't last you any time. The silks they make now-a-days ain't worth anything; they don't wear well at all. Why," continued she, "when I was a girl they made silks that would stand on end—and one of them would ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... end of my lecture on Philosophy[353] I held out the notion that an impartial science of religions might sift out from the midst of their discrepancies a common body of doctrine which she might also formulate in terms to which {501} physical science need not object. This, I said, she might adopt as her own reconciling ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... gain entrance into serious literature(!) He appeals to the fact that the conception of angels, though certainly long developed with the people, occurs in the earlier prophets only in isolated instances, and in the later prophets, as Ezekiel, Zechariah, Daniel, more frequently. It is difficult to sift out what is true and what is false in this confused argument. In the Priestly Code there are, it is true, no angels, but on the other hand we have Azazel and Seirim (2Chronicles xi. 15; Isaiah xiii. 21, xxxiv. 14, comp. supra), for where the gods are not, the ghosts ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... answer came, and following the trail where it could be seen, I went on. I missed it often, and circled about until I found it, or something like it, always bearing away deeper and deeper into the wood. Then the wind blew awfully, and the snow began to sift down. My first torch was well burned out, and I knew I had been out some hours. I lighted the other and went on; soon I struck this creek, and fancied that you, if you had reached it, ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... more racing chatter to be heard at the great hairdressers' than almost anywhere else outside a race-course. Some of it is worth hearing, most of it is valueless. The difficulty, as elsewhere, is to sift the wheat from ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... field to another. On sandy beaches the wind often blows the sand along like snow and piles it into drifts. The entire surface of sandy regions is sometimes changed in this way. Sands blown from deserts sometimes bury forests which with their foliage sift the fatal winding sheet from the ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... unscale thou my eyes: teach thou to me the thing which is substance; and teach thou to me the thing which is shadow, while I sing of things which are to come, as one sings of things which are past rehearsing. Grant thou to me thought and phraseology which shall severely sift out the whole idea. ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... ourselves that we are prepared to hold on to our own experience as the final test of the truth and value of our theories? Or are we big enough in the light of Imperial experience to revise our judgment, to sift our theories, and to go forward carrying those which stand the test of the wider arena, and being prepared to surrender those which only seemed right and proper in the conventional setting of these ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... the lungs there is no provision for sifting the air, for freeing it from foreign matter, or for warming it if it is too cold; whereas the nostrils appear to have been designed for this very purpose. Their narrow and winding channels are covered with bristly hairs which filter or sift and arrest the dust and other impurities in the air; and in the channels of the nostrils and back of them the air is warmed or sufficiently tempered before it reaches the lungs. Moreover it can be felt that the lungs fill more readily when air is taken in ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... Sift a quart of flour, leave out a little for rolling the paste, make up the remainder with cold water into a stiff paste, knead it well, and roll it out several times; wash the salt from a pound of butter, divide it into four parts, ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph
... the apple tree would be blooming, and the petals would sift down on Gabriella. Looking up at the marriage bell of blossoms, and speaking in the language of ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... dimensions, and search out the intricacies of its construction, was the primary task of his life, which he never lost sight of, and to which all his other investigations were subordinate. He was absolutely alone in this bold endeavour. Unaided, he had to devise methods, accumulate materials, and sift out results. Yet it may safely be asserted that all the knowledge we possess on this sublime subject was prepared, and the greater part of it ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... for him entrance into the hospital of Richmond. The hospital was crowded; regulations were stringent, and under some technical ruling his sick soldier was shipped back to his brigade. Toombs was fired with indignation. He proceeded to sift the affair to the bottom, and was told that General Johnston had fixed the rules. This did not deter him. Riding up to the commander's tent and securing admission, he proceeded to upbraid the general as only Toombs could do. When he returned to his headquarters he narrated the circumstance ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... in her firmest handwriting, "Come by all means. I shall be here between five and six to-morrow." After which she went about with head erect and shining eyes, like one who has secretly received and accepted a challenge. She was going to sift this matter for herself. Since a hurried note reporting the latest news of the Mainstairs victims, which had reached her from Faversham on the morning of her departure for London, she had heard nothing from him; and during her weeks of nursing in a darkened room, she had sounded the dim and ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... yet employed, or ever needed, in ransacking the earth for gems and gold, or the deep sea for pearls. Would you shovel diamonds and rubies, or turn up "as it were fire," you have but to dig into and sift the rubbish that lies heaped up in your very streets—or to drive the ploughshare through the busiest places ever trodden by the multitude. You need not blast the mountains, nor turn up the foundations of the sea, nor smelt the constellations. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... But sift down under the surface and always is found the same thing. The upper growth is varied by what it finds on the surface to mingle with, but the sub-stuff is ever the same. The root always is self. The whole ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... may go back to our twentieth century for a parallel—by which I mean, electricity. It is gathered crudely; but the time will come when it will be picked up out of the air in precisely the same manner that men pick hydrocarbons out of petroleum, or as I sift the desired quality of ether ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... paths of intellectual eminence that Sir Walter Scott has won his fame; as a poet, a biographer, an historian, and a novellist. It is not now a time (with the great man's clay scarce cold) to enter into the niceties of critical discussion. We cannot now weigh, and sift, and compare. We feel too deeply at this moment to reason well—-but we ourselves would incline to consider him greatest as a poet. Never, indeed, has there been a poet so thoroughly Homeric as Scott—the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... after I was freed. It is a hard matter to tell you what we could find or get. We used to dig up dirt in the smokehouse and boil it and dry it and sift it to get the salt to season our food with. We used to go out and get old bones that had been throwed away and crack them open and get the marrow and use them to season the greens with. Jus plenty of niggers then didn't have anything ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... the hour drew near at which Philinnion usually appeared, they were on the watch for her. She came, as was her custom, and sat down upon the bed. Machates made no pretence, for he was genuinely anxious to sift the matter to the bottom, and secretly sent some slaves to call her parents. He himself could hardly believe that the woman who came to him so regularly at the same hour was really dead, and when she ate and drank with ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... retorted Gabriel, with pure irrelevancy; "I'd scotch his sheets; I'd pour water in his boots; I'd sift sand in his hair-brush; I'd spatter vitriol on his shirts. A man who marries a ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... affirmeth that a certain discourteous person, who calleth himself the devil, even now, and in thwart of your fair inclinations, keepeth and detaineth your irradiant frame in hostile thraldom. Suffer then, magnanimous and undescribable lady! that I, the most groveling of your unworthy vassals, do sift the fair truth out of this foul sieve, and obsequiously bending to your divine attractions, conjure your highness veritably to inform me, if that honourable chair which haply supports your terrestrial perfections, containeth the inimitable burthen ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... hours had awakened suspicions which the lightest accusations might confirm. He remembered his son's guilt; the facility of his escape; and it might be that treason stood on the very threshold, ready to strike. He determined to sift the matter; and the guard now summoned, the parties were separated—each awaiting the fiat of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... feuds the great And universal arbiter; endowed With penetration to pierce any cloud Fogging the field of controversial hate, And with a sift, inevitable, straight, Searching precision find the unavowed But vital point. Thy judgment, when allowed By the chirurgeon, settles the debate. O useful metal!—were it not for thee We'd grapple one another's ears alway: But when we hear thee ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... time. And the question of morality in relation to the drama is confessedly very difficult to deal with. "It must be something almost of a scandalous character to warrant interference," says Mr. Donne. "If you sift the matter to the very dross, two-thirds of the plays of any period in the history of the stage must be condemned. Where there is an obvious intention, or a very strong suspicion of an intention to make wrong appear right or right appear wrong, those are the cases in which I interfere, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... action are fond of asserting the same thing, yet, as to lose ourselves is not what we want, but to find the intelligible law of things, this assertion too we shall not blindly accept, but shall sift and try it a little first. And if we see that because the believers in action, forgetting Goethe's maxim, "to act is easy, to think is hard," imagine there is some wonderful virtue in losing oneself in a mass of mechanical ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... result may follow. I cherish, however, none of these fears. The multiplicity of denominations, and the diversity of opinions, can work no serious injury to religion. The discussions, researches, and critical examinations, which necessarily grow out of this state of things, will but sift error from truth; and result, ultimately, in laying broader and deeper the foundations of pure Christianity in human society; bringing out its highest excellencies and beauties to the admiration of men, and elevating ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... on my protection, doubtless," said Elizabeth. "Thou shalt have it—that is, if thou art worthy; for we will sift this matter to the uttermost. Thou art," she said, bending on the Countess an eye which seemed designed to pierce her very inmost soul—"thou art Amy, daughter of Sir Hugh ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... came again to him to sift him, and to know what answer the Queen had given to his objections upon the new articles. But Whitelocke fitted his inquiry, and thought not convenient to communicate to him more than what might advantage his business to be reported to Grave Eric; and because, ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... Sift dry ingredients together, mix yolks with milk and stir in. Add cheese and when thoroughly incorporated fold in the egg whites to make a smooth batter. Drop from a big spoon into hot deep fat and cook until ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... the negroes will be found often, either from fear or other motives, to give all the information they can obtain to the Southerners. And the Southerners know far better than we do how to obtain, and sift, and estimate, the value of what ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson |
