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Leaven   Listen
noun
Leaven  n.  
1.
Any substance that produces, or is designed to produce, fermentation, as in dough or liquids; esp., a portion of fermenting dough, which, mixed with a larger quantity of dough, produces a general change in the mass, and renders it light; yeast; barm.
2.
Anything which makes a general assimilating (especially a corrupting) change in the mass. "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Leaven" Quotes from Famous Books



... heart the joy of giving up, of deliverance from self; and pity, to leaven his contempt, awoke for Sercombe. No sooner had he yielded his pride, than he felt it possible to love the man—not for anything he was, but for what ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... "Cooper's new book, 'The Bravo,'" wrote Horatio Greenough, from Paris, to Rembrandt Peale, in November, 1831, "is taking wonderfully here. If you could transfuse a little of that man's love of country and national pride into the leading members of our high society, I think it would leaven them all." ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... of them must go! The bulk of the crew was to be crimped, of course, in the Swede knew what kennels of the town. But a few tried sailormen must go to leaven that sodden, sea-ignorant lump. It was like condemning men to penal servitude. No wonder they swore. And swear they did, with mouth-filling, curdling oaths, as though in vain hope their flaming words would quite consume that ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... is good to wish, ask that of heaven, Though it be what thou canst not hope to see. Pray to be perfect, though material leaven Forbid the spirit so on earth to be; But if for any wish thou darest not pray, Then pray to God ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... personally important and efficacious, but of enormous significance from the national point of view. But as you know, we do not at present aspire to outward or ceremonial changes. We are quite content to leaven the meal from within; to uphold the absolute right and necessity of the two languages in Christianity—the popular and the scientific, the mythological and the mystical. If the Pope could have his way, Catholicism would soon be at ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... advantage of his plot to ridicule these characters, and to make them satirize each other—as in the rival stories of the sompnour and friar—he turns with pleasure from these betrayers of religion, to show us that there was a leaven of ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... limb was full of electric springiness, was that charming clumsiness of the neophyte,—such a contrast! How they laughed together when Melanie came to announce that she had forgotten to put yeast in the cake, both her hands covered with sticky leaven, for all the world as if she were wearing winter gloves; or when, at Cizpra's command, she tried to take a little yellow downy chicken from the cold courtyard to a warm room, keeping up the while a lively duel with the jealous brood-hen, till finally ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... depends upon ingrained habit—perfect practical familiarity with the life which has been their one calling—rather than upon that elastic vigor which is the privilege of youth. Should they elect to continue in the service, there still remain some years in which they are an invaluable leaven, by character and tradition. If they depart, they are for a few years a reserve for war—if they choose to come forward; but it is manifest that such a reserve can be but small, when compared with a system which in three or five years passes men ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan

... would certainly not have understood, not have imagined the possibility of such an insinuation against his poor mother, who was so kind, so simple, so excellent. But his spirit seethed with the leaven of jealousy that was fermenting within him. His own excited mind, on the scent, as it were, in spite of himself, for all that could damage his brother, had even perhaps attributed to the tavern barmaid an odious intention of which she was innocent. It was possible that his imagination had, unaided, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... were these changes being accepted among the rank and file? Comments from official sources and civil rights groups alike showed the leaven of racial tolerance at work throughout the service.[16-105] Reporter Lee Nichols, interviewing members of all the services in (p. 427) 1953,[16-106] found that whites expected blacks to prove themselves in their assignments while blacks were skeptical ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... charmed with the promotion of individuals, upon whose virtues and abilities they had the most perfect reliance; but these new ingredients would never thoroughly mix with the old leaven. The administration became an emblem of the image that Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream, the leg was of iron, and the foot was of clay. The old junta found their new associates very unfit for their purposes. They could neither persuade, cajole, nor intimidate them into measures ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... our shores, our extended laws of franchise would enable them to swamp our free institutions, and reduce us to anarchy. But much reflection has satisfied me that we have only to elevate these millions and their descendants to the standard of American citizenship, and we shall find sufficient of the leaven of liberty in our system of government to absorb all foreign elements and assimilate them to a truly democratic form ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... evasion: We have with a leaven'd and prepared choice Proceeded to you; therefore take your honours. Our haste from hence is of so quick condition That it prefers itself, and leaves unquestion'd Matters of needful value. We shall write to you As time and our concernings ...
— Measure for Measure • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... the case with those which were the overflow of a redundant population; the great and the wealthy are never redundant!—the mass would thus ordinarily be composed of the discontented and the poor, and even where the aristocratic leaven was most strong, it was still the aristocracy of some defeated and humbled faction. So that in the average equality of the emigrators were the seeds of a new constitution; and if they transplanted the form of ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... surprisingly high. In the main, from among the class of manual labourers it was only the elite, who in any numbers interested themselves in our undertaking; and as, when the membership had gone beyond 20,000, a slight leaven of ignorance could not be very dangerous, the committee contented itself with requiring that the application should be made in the ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... space of more than an hour, did my grandfather hold converse and communion with Leonard Meldrum, in whom, he was often heard to say, there was more of the leaven of a sanctified nature than in the disposition of many zealous and ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... go to the devil as long as they retained their privileges; the devil, however, is apt to make a clean sweep of the board when he has got the game in his own hands, but these noble wiseacres could not see that. In other parts of the country good men and true were working up the leaven of reform. The great patriot Szechenyi, as long ago as 1830, when he published his work on 'Credit,' had shown his countrymen their shortcomings. He had proved to them that their laws and their institutions were not marching ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... which Timothy was bishop, people had been bewildered by the teaching of converted Jews, who mixed the old leaven of Judaism with the new spirituality of Christianity. They maintained the perpetual obligation of the Jewish law.—v. 7. They desired to be teachers of the law. They required strict performance of a number ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... Supposing that I consented, supposing I said, 'Arthur, I will put my hand in yours and be your wife,' and that we were married to-morrow, do you think, when the freshness of the thing had worn off, that you would be happy with me? I do not. You would soon get horribly tired of me, Arthur, for the little leaven that leavens the whole lump is wanting. You do not love me; and the redundance of my affection would weary you, and, for my part, I should find it difficult to continually struggle against an impalpable rival, though, indeed, I should be very willing to ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... the points at issue between the disputants had so seldom been of more than temporal significance as to have left on her mind no feeling of reverence for such subjects. There had always been a hard worldly leaven of the love either of income or power in the strains that she had heard; there had been no panting for the truth; no aspirations after religious purity. It had always been taken for granted by those around her that they ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... the Interpreter, "they were not all heroes. But there was the leaven that leavened the lump, and so ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright

... when a man sees his own person in the glass the egoistic side of him always whispers, It is not somebody else, but I myself, which has the effect of a noli me tangere, and prevents his taking a purely objective view. Without the leaven of a grain of malice, it does not seem possible to look at ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... was it from entering the field of her vision that possibly some of the good which distinguished George's unbelief from that of his brother ephemera of the last century, was owing to the deeper working of that leaven which he denounced as the poisonous root whence sprung all the evil diseases that gnawed ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... ordination, and when asked to find the book of Jude, he replied, after a fruitless search, "That book is torn out of my Bible and I can't find it." He was ordained just the same. Our friends may be sure, however, that the leaven has been cast into the meal, and in due time will leaven the mass. But, oh, the darkness, the moral corruption, the sorrow and ruin that comes from the long delay. Where we can put one good minister into the field we need a score, and where one boy or girl is in school there should be a ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 1, March, 1898 • Various

... to push forward into the ranks, but who stop short at the prima tonsura till they have ascertained how much their chances will be bettered by taking the final and irrevocable step. Yet, although they now and then bring somewhat more of worldly leaven into their intellectual and moral training, they well know that there is but one road to the red hat and the tiara, and that they who give themselves up to this ambition must give themselves up to it with undivided hearts. Thus the models which they set before themselves, the ideals after ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Christ has penetrated even where his rule is not acknowledged, and the humanitarianism of the present day is simply the leaven of Christian love working ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft

... article of food.[36] It is perhaps not irrelevant to notice in this place some of the researches which have recently been made upon fermentation, and particularly its effects in the manufacture of bread. It appears that when this process is brought about by the addition of yeast or leaven to the paste or dough, the character of the mass is materially altered. A larger or smaller proportion of the flour is virtually lost. According to Dr. William Gregory the loss amounts to the very large proportion of one-sixteenth part of the whole of the flour. He says, "To ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... them: The kingdom of heaven is like to leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various

... Christus. Itaque epulemur," Saint Paul cried from the south corner of the altar to the two converts. "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast, but not with the old leaven." ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... alloy and ultimately disintegrate the precious metal? Even if the world were bankrupt in morality and religion—which, thank God, it is not—one grand shining example, like Mr. Hammond, whose unswerving consistency, noble charity, and sublime unselfishness all concede and revere, ought to leaven the mass of sneering cynics, and win them to a belief in their capacity for rising to pure, holy, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... affluent which has no stain on its pure waters, and so can purge that into which it enters. Jesus Christ willed to be born, and to plant a new beginning of holy life in the very heart of humanity which henceforth should work as leaven. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... with fresh yeast until a stiff dough is formed. This is then dried, either in the sun or at a moderate temperature, and cut into cakes. By drying, many of the yeast cells are rendered temporarily inactive, and so it is a slower acting leaven than the compressed yeast. A dry ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder

... close upon three hundred years, a like element in our life, a frontier people always in our van, is, so far, the central and determining fact of our national history. "East" and "West," an ever-changing line, but an unvarying experience and a constant leaven of change working always within the body of our folk. Our political, our economic, our social life has felt this potent influence from the wild border all our history through. The "West" is the great word of our history. The "Westerner" has been the type and master of our American life. Now at length, ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... having in it a notion of God and his Christ, poor indeed and faint, but, by the very poverty and untruth in its presentation, fitted to the weakness and unbelief of men, seeing it was by men invented to meet and ease the demand made upon their own weakness and unbelief. Thus the leaven spreads. The truth is there. It is Christ the glory of God. But the ideas that poor slavish souls breed concerning this glory the moment the darkness begins to disperse, is quite another thing. Truth is indeed ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... the swelling up of the fermenting substance is seen in the Gallo-Latin terms "levure" and "leaven." ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... quite an age, and brings Grave moments, though your soul to rapture clings, You're at that hour of life most like to heaven, When present joy no cares, no sorrows leaven When man no shadow feels: if fond caress Round parent twines, children the world possess. Your waking hopes, your dreams of mirth and love From Charles to Alice, father to mother, rove; No wider range of view your heart ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... Now, this reproductive leaven—this eternal germ of life, this preparation of the land and manufacture of implements for production—constitutes the debt of the capitalist to the producer, which he never pays; and it is this fraudulent ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... in a bookcase so near that she could stretch out her hand for any particular one she wanted, rapidly reviewed some of her new experiments. First and foremost came the plan of sandwiching seniors and juniors together in their bedrooms. She hoped the influence of the elder girls would work like leaven in the school, and that putting them with younger ones would give them the chance of developing and exercising their motherly instincts. She tapped her book with her pencil as she mentally ran over the list of her seniors, and considered how—to the outside view of a head mistress—each ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... 'Oberon' and 'Euryanthe.' French musicians, always susceptible to external influences, could not but acknowledge the fascination of the romantic school, and the works of Herold (1791-1833) show how powerfully the new leaven had acted. But Weber was not the only foreigner at this time who helped to shape the destiny of French music. The spell of Rossini was too potent for the plastic Gauls to resist, and to his influence may be traced the most salient features of the school of ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... back several generations, the numbers, even of Massachusetts men, who may be truly called "Americans" would dwindle considerably. These men, however, the children of equality, of the common school, and of democratic institutions, may be considered as leaven, leavening the lump of European emigration, and shaping, so far as they can, the character of the American; people ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various

... interchange of electrical conditions between the two bodies. But an analogy is not an explanation, and why a few drops of yeast should change a saccharine mixture to carbonic acid and alcohol,—a little leaven leavening the whole lump,—not by combining with it, but by setting a movement at work, we not only cannot explain, but the fact is such an exception to the recognized laws of combination that Liebig is unwilling to admit the new ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... It must be done carefully, conservatively, and as secretly as possible." The lawyer's cautious fear of too much haste now displayed itself. "The most we can hope to do is send to the state convention some men who will leaven that lump of ring politics. Party usage and tradition are so strong that we must renominate Governor Harwood, I suppose, for a ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... church even, from which he can safely absent himself. A word, a kiss, some matrimonial charm dissolved—these electric disturbances of society must be averted. The Archdeacon is the lightning conductor; where he is, the leaven of naughtiness passes to the ground, and ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... question as to the number of piastres. If you want a million of piastres, shall it be said that Besso would not lend, perhaps give, them to the great Sheikh he loves? But, you see, my father of fathers, piastres and this Frank stranger are not of the same leaven. Name them not together, I pray you; mix not their waters. It concerns the honour, and welfare, and safety, and glory of Besso that you should cover this youth with a robe of power, and place him upon your best dromedary, and send him back to El ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... exempt. The microbes are the agents of infectious disease; when these swarm in the blood of an individual they seem to leave there something pernicious for parasites resembling themselves, or to bring away with them something necessary to the life of their successors. A glass of sugar and water, where leaven has already fermented and yielded alcohol, is incapable of producing a second crop of leaven; similarly the blood of an individual, once contaminated, becomes uninhabitable afterward for like microbes. The individual has acquired immunity. Such is the principle of vaccination.—Paris ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various

... though the exclusive notion of "the gay and frivolous Frenchman" always was something of a vulgar error, and has been increasingly so since the Revolution, Swiss seriousness, with its strong Germanic leaven, is not French seriousness at all. But he became, if not exactly a popular novelist to the tune of hundreds or even scores of editions, a prolific and fairly accepted one. I think, though he died in middle age and produced other things besides novels, he wrote some twenty or thirty stories, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... instrumentality of man, the British nation was spared the sin and shame, which it had well nigh incurred, of casting forth from its own shores a vile mass of uncleanness and corruption, and forgetting at the same time to place amongst it the smallest portion of that good leaven by which alone its evil might be corrected. Accordingly, one chaplain[89] was sent out to officiate among about 1000 souls, who were at first dispersed in eleven ships, and more than two-thirds of them were in a state of ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... Christianity. He exhibited his principles in his practice—in the daily duties of life,—till he taught the most profane and profligate to respect him, if not to adopt them. I wish there were more Basil Vernons in the service. Thank Heaven! there are some shining lights to lighten us in our darkness—leaven, which gradually, though slowly, may, by God's providence, leaven ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... said Mayakin, excitedly, trembling. "That either comes to him from excessive drinking, or else—Heaven forbid—from his mother, the orthodox spirit. And if this heathenish leaven is going to rise in him I'll have to struggle hard with him! There will be a great conflict between us. He has come out, breast foremost, against me; he has at once displayed great audacity. He's young—there's not much cunning in him as yet. He says: 'I'll drink ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... it, to conceal them altogether from one who is not only her pupil but her intimate friend and constant companion? Her whole life—thoughts, acts, words, and even looks—must be leavened with the evil leaven; how can Miss Affleck live with her in that intimate way without catching some of that spirit from her? You know that so long as they were not thus intimate this girl was everything that could be desired, that from the time they became close friends she began to change, and that ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... motives against acts, thought against deeds, with atom-like precision, nor measure the tempted with the temptation grain by grain, hair by hair. Ambition was the fault of the seraphim in the commencement—be well assured that some of the old angelic leaven lingers still about all of ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... not be wise to speak to the Chief about that now," responded John. "The leaven is working well in his mind. Besides, I fear that he will wreak vengeance on them, and we must prevent ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... Bourdaloue reaffirmed it. Montesquieu was the inventor of national workshops, and of the theory that the State owed every man a living. Nay, was not the Church herself the first organized Democracy? A few centuries ago the chief end of man was to keep his soul alive, and then the little kernel of leaven that sets the gases at work was religious, and produced the Reformation. Even in that, far-sighted persons like the Emperor Charles V. saw the germ of political and social revolution. Now that the chief end of man seems to have become the keeping of the body ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... same result. This was the invasion of the Oriental religions, and the slow working, from the advent of the Great Mother of the Gods in B. C. 204 to the downfall of paganism at the end of the fourth {x} century of the Christian era, of the leaven of Oriental sentiment. The cults of Asia and Egypt bridged the gap between the old religions and Christianity, and in such a way as to make the triumph of Christianity an evolution, not a revolution. The Great Mother and Attis, with self-consecration, enthusiasm, ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... strongly of a compilation which shall express the reasoned opinions of writers representing the allied nations, while it is a real pleasure to turn for a few minutes from the day's anxieties and consider the one great force which supplies the leaven to a war-sodden world. Are men to live in freedom or as slaves to a soulless system?—that is the question which is now being solved in blood and agony and tears on the battlefields of the Old World. The answer given by the New World has never been in doubt, but its clarion ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... this squint of pragmatism with surprise. He had thought of Verden University as a splendid democracy of intellectual brotherhood that was to leaven the world with which it came ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... Israel," Lazarus said after the door had closed behind Joel and Joseph. "Now must the house be searched for leaven that not ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock

... industry and hope. They demand multiplied comforts and conveniences, and expect attractive and healthful accommodations. Where they purchase and improve lands and buildings of their own they provide useful models to their less particular neighbors, and thus the leaven of a better type of living does its work ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... and bless Thee: happy mayst thou be. I would not make thy pleasure less; Yet, Darling, keep for me— My life to light, my lot to leaven,— One little ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... very different problem. Some of the most dangerous assaults upon the Constitution to-day are being made in that field. The leaven of socialistic ideas is working. Representative government is becoming more paternalistic. Legislation dealing with conduct and social and economic conditions is being demanded by public sentiment in constantly increasing measure. ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson

... most illustrious of the great names of Naples should embrace and defend so plebeian a cause; one in their eyes so utterly without interest as that of popular rights. But it was wounded at the idea that a peer should die by the hand of the executioner. The old leaven of independence, innate in all the aristocracies of Europe; the feudal aspirations which Louis XI. and Richelieu had so completely annihilated and subdued in France, yet germinated in the minds of the nobles of Naples. They loved the king because he maintained their privileges, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... and then, fermenting under the putrefactive influences, the gas which they formed blow up the yielding lime and mud around them into a long narrow cave, just as a glass-blower blows up a bottle, or as a little yeast blows up into similar but greatly smaller cavities a bit of leaven. And the stalactites and stalagmites which encrust the Kirkdale Cave are, Mr. Penn holds, simply the last runnings of the lime that exuded after the general mass had begun to set. Certainly any one disposed ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... than a dozen elementary schools for girls were also established under ecclesiastical auspices. Yet the amount of secular education imparted by all these seminaries was astoundingly small, and they did but little to leaven the general illiteracy of the population. Only the children of the towns attended the schools, and the program of study was of the most elementary character. Religious instruction was given the first place and received so much attention that there ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro

... Leaven, and break it small into some warm Water, let it be a sowre one, for that is best; about two Ounces or more: then take a Bushel of Elder Berries beaten small, and put them into an earthen Pot and mix them very well with ...
— The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet • Hannah Wolley

... evil leaven has seven names in Scripture. It is called evil, the foreskin, uncleanness, an enemy, a scandal, a heart of stone, the north wind; all this signifies the malignity which is concealed and impressed ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... And Flamens last, with net-work woollen veils. While these thus in and out had circled Rome, Look, what the lightning blasted, Arruns takes, And it inters with murmurs dolorous, And calls the place Bidental. On the altar He lays a ne'er-yok'd bull, and pours down wine, Then crams salt leaven on his crooked knife: The beast long struggled, as being like to prove 610 An awkward sacrifice; but by the horns The quick priest pulled him on his knees, and slew him. No vein sprung out, but from the yawning gash, ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... Eternal. The real, on the contrary, is fragmentary and passing. Law alone is eternal. The ideal is then the imperishable hope of something better—the mind's involuntary protest against the present, the leaven of the future working in it. It is the supernatural in us, or rather the super-animal, and the ground of human progress. He who has no ideal contents himself with what is; he has no quarrel with facts, which for him are identical with the just, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... filtered down from the social class where it originated, and acted as leaven among the masses, furnishing a moral standard for the whole people. The Precepts of Knighthood, begun at first as the glory of the elite, became in time an aspiration and inspiration to the nation at large; and though the populace could not attain the moral height of those loftier souls, yet Yamato ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... too true. The faith that has carried them to national unity will suffice neither the Greeks nor any other Balkan people for the new era that has dawned upon them, and the future would look dark indeed, but for a strange and incalculable leaven, which is already potently at work ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... Stanton then wrote: "My hope now rests with Kansas. If that fails too, we must trust no longer to the Republican and Democratic parties, but henceforth give our money, our eloquence, our enthusiasm to a People's party that will recognize woman as an equal factor in a new civilization." There was enough leaven of republicanism working then to cause the old fighting-ground, the free-soil State, to reject the amendment by a popular majority of 35,000. To the "People's Party" in Kansas woman suffrage may look for ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson

... can hardly conceive how unsuspecting is my heart! You have never known, belike, the happiness that belongs to perfect faith. Come in with me! Let me teach you the sweetness of an untroubled trust. Let me convert you to the faith that there exists a happiness without leaven of regret!" This warm young generous sweetness which makes Elsa open to any appeal, blind to grossest fraud, merely exasperates Ortrud's ill-will. She reads in it plain pride of superiority. As she ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... flourished again. Sylvie gave her girls one very instructive lecture on slips and flower-seeds, and one Saturday they went out to the woods for ferns and wild flowers. It was only one little corner, to be sure, but it was the leaven that was presently to do ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... the Covenant. But nobody wanted to be unlawful. There was no temptation to be so. Envy, hatred and malice and all uncharitableness had been left behind in the cities. They were a very cheerful company, suffering a little from fatigue, and with now and then a faint brush of bad temper to put leaven ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... loving of hearts for these children, how indignantly he repelled for them the name of savages, how he trusted them, respected them, honored them, and when they were formed and established, took them back to their island home, there to be a leaven for future ages. Yes, read the life, the work, the death of that man, adeath in very truth, aransom for the sins of others—and then say whether you would like to suppress a profession that can call forth such self-denial, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... received the new teaching as a leaven: at Oxford, in the very front of the High Church party at Keble College, was elaborated a statement that the evolution doctrine is "an advance in our theological thinking." And Temple, Bishop of London, perhaps the most influential thinker then in the Anglican episcopate, accepted ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... forgotten by the time their effects appear. Many things combine to render an enlarged view of the moral influences of sickness and recovery impossible. The kingdom cometh not with observation, and the working of the leaven of its approach must be chiefly unseen. Like the creative energy itself, it works "in secret shadow, far from all ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald

... until at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science of universal beauty, and then he will behold the everlasting nature which is the cause of all, and will be near the end. In the contemplation of that supreme being of love he will be purified of earthly leaven, and will behold beauty, not with the bodily eye, but with the eye of the mind, and will bring forth true creations of virtue and wisdom, and be the friend of God ...
— Symposium • Plato

... Bear mournfully, "I had worn them for ten years and moreover the leaven had denied ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... your duty's sake, forbear your tauntings and impatience, let me beseech you, that you will for mine.—Since otherwise, your mother may apprehend that my example, like a leaven, is working itself into the mind of her beloved daughter. And may not such an apprehension give her an ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... voluntarily opened her Bible, and now she knew that all her energetic study of the technicalities of the Holy Word had in it no grain of desire to please or glorify God. Even her devotion to Sunday-school teaching, usually supposed to be Christian work, had in it no leaven of Christianity, being only self-pleasing from end to end. Etta was sufficiently clear-sighted to see all this. She knew that she never thought of God. His approval or disapproval was all one to her, ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow

... chance," said the lover calmly. "She is free too. I would not have her bound. The very air up here will conspire with me to win her. She must learn at once that I want her for my wife. Then let the leaven work." ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... these girls come up? And how will they ever, unless somebody overlooks? They would find out these mistakes in a little while, just as they find out fashions: picking up the right things from people who do know how. It is a kind of leaven, like greater good. And how can we stand anywhere in the lump, and say it shall not ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... capable of allying themselves with it on any given point; not appearing at all as an antagonist body, to provoke a general rally against it, but working as one of the elements in a mixed mass, infusing its leaven, and often making what would be the weaker part the stronger, by the addition of its influence. The really moderating power in a democratic constitution must act in and through ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... the leaven of life; It lightens its doughy compactness. Don't always—the world with deception is rife— Construe what men say with exactness! I pity the girl, In society's whirl, Who's troubled ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.

... admitting that Lutherans are Protestants, suspect that their system is still imbued with the leaven of Romanism. In their classification of churches they are disposed to place us ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner

... of a negro shrink from using such words as bull or stallion in polite society; many in Texas will say, instead, male cow and caviard horse (a term spelled as they pronounce it), and consider that delicacy is thus achieved. Yet in this lump Texas holds leaven as sterling as in any State; but it has ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... Englishman is a born Conservative, or, to use the old phrase, a Tory. Toryism is of two kinds,—political and social. The majority of the nation is certainly not, at the present day, Tory in political preferences, though there is still a large leaven of that feeling also. But very many persons who are political Liberals are social Tories: they venerate the aristocracy; they batten daily upon the "Court Circular"; they cling to class distinctions in theory, and still more in practice; they strain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... to this, and his eyes sparkled with pleasure, and his homely but manly face lighted, and was elevated by the sympathy she expressed in these worthy objects. He could not help thinking: "What a Lady Uxmoor this would make! She and I and her brother might leaven the county." ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... 'soul,' or unseen self as distinguished from the visible material body which it animates and informs. It is this inner self, then, in which the Spirit of God is to dwell, and into which it is to breathe strength. The leaven is hid deep in three measures of meal until the whole be leavened. And the point to mark is that the whole inward region which makes up the true man is the field upon which this Divine Spirit is to work. It is not a bit of your inward life that is to be hallowed. It ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... no amount of civic instruction, or any other instruction, would have affected Tom's ethics. Tom is representative of his age. Come, come; I have every wish to be just to you. A new religion must have time; its leaven must work amid the lump. You, my dear boy, are convinced that the leaven is, though a new sort, a very sound and sufficient yeast; let that be granted. I, unfortunately, cannot believe anything of the kind. To me your method of solution seems a deliberate insistence on the worldly ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... on the road through Life a good spell of cheerful chat, and each is overbrimming with the tale of adventure, grave or gay, of the folk they have chanced upon, the inns they have slept at, a many trifles with a leaven of seriousness not too weighty for speech. How is it when the ways divided half a century ago, and no tidings came to hand of either for the most part of a lifetime? How when either has believed the other dead, through all those years? Neither old Phoebe ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... the basic fact in this running patter. Each was trying to buck up the other. Jane was honestly worried. She could not say what it was that worried her, but there was a strong leaven in her of old-wives' prescience. It wasn't due to this high-handed adventure of Cleigh, senior; it was something leaning down darkly from the future that ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath

... what would be right and good for his people, and it may be not; but it is sure that he realises that to educate would be to emancipate; to broaden their views would be to break down the defences of their prejudices; to let in the new leaven would be to spoil the old bread; to give unto all men the rights of men would be to swamp for ever the party which is to him greater than the State. When one thinks of the one-century history of this people, much is seen that accounts for their extraordinary ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... small towns—classes whose number and influence, intelligence and wealth, have been grossly exaggerated for factious purposes, but classes avowedly opposed to the maintenance of the English constitution. I do not see that the cause of popular power has much risen, even with the addition of this leaven. If the suffrages of the Commons of England were polled together, the hustings-books of the last general election will prove that a very considerable majority of their numbers is opposed to the present Government, and that therefore, under this new democratic scheme, this great ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... says, and says plainly, that a man thinking differently from all this or at least, quite unprepared to make this whole-hearted profession of faith, is yet his brother in Christ, in whom the knowledge of Christ that he has will work and work, the new leaven casting out the old leaven until he, too, in the revelation of the Father, shall come to the perfect stature of the fulness of Christ. Meantime, Paul, the Apostle, must show due reverence to the halting and dull disciple. He must and will make no demand upon him on the grounds of ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... definite dogmatic system; but could have a free hand so long as they did not wantonly come into conflict with some of the legal formulae laid down in a previous generation. The actual teaching showed the effects of the system. It had been easy to introduce a considerable leaven of the rationalism which suited the lay mind; to explain away the mysterious doctrines upon which an independent church had insisted as manifestations of its spiritual privileges, but which were regarded with indifference or contempt by the educated ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... the mean time, when the many thousands of the multitude were gathered together, insomuch that they trod one upon another, he began to say unto his disciples first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. 2 But there is nothing covered up, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known. 3 Wherefore whatsoever ye have said in the darkness shall be heard in the light; and what ye have spoken in the ear in the inner chambers shall be proclaimed ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman

... spiritual privileges as they appreciated most. He could not, indeed, content himself with the fragmentary forms of any sectarian creed. But in the few writings which he made some effort to adapt to the popular understanding, he seems to think it possible that the faith of Pantheism might some day leaven all religions alike. I shall endeavour briefly to sketch the story of that faith, and to suggest its significance for the future. But first we ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton

... truth, as were the partially unsealed eyes which saw "men, as trees, walking." The first letter to the Church at Corinth, proves that the new principles implanted in its members had not yet purged out the leaven of their old wickedness; and that their conceptions of Christian purity and conduct were sadly defective. As it was with the Corinthian Christians, so was it to a great extent with the other Christians of that age. Now, if the Apostles did not directly teach the primitive ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... your Dame's Art School, to learn the alphabet of the wonderful Renaissance; and in our chastened and reverent mood, it almost takes our breath away when your high-priestess unrolls the last pronunciamento, and tells us her startling story of 'Euphorion!' Why? Ah!—don't you know? The Puritan leaven of prudery, and the stern, stolid, phlegmatic decorum of Knickerbockerdom mingle in that consummate flower of the nineteenth century occident, the 'American Girl', who pales and flushes at sight of the carnival of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... was improving in character. Gradually it boasted a strong critical leaven; it became the recognised resort of the more enlightened playgoers. Dryden in his prologues and epilogues often addresses the pit, as containing notably the judges of plays and the more learned of the audience. "The pit," says Swift, in the introduction ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook



Words linked to "Leaven" :   raise, imponderable, bring up, yeast, leavening, barm, get up, prove, baking powder, rise, substance



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