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Leaven   Listen
verb
Leaven  v. t.  (past & past part. leavened; pres. part. leavening)  
1.
To make light by the action of leaven; to cause to ferment. "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump."
2.
To imbue; to infect; to vitiate. "With these and the like deceivable doctrines, he leavens also his prayer."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Leaven" Quotes from Famous Books



... great rebellion to be overthrown; for not yet had the leaven of Liberty leavened the whole lump; not yet had the purposes of a mysterious Providence been accomplished; and the brave men who sighed for victory and peace in the swamps of the Chickahominy were doomed to years of blood and toil, of victory and defeat, as they marched ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic

... upon the opinion of others for want of internal resources. But the intellect, which has been disciplined to the perfection of its powers, which knows, and thinks while it knows, which has learned to leaven the dense mass of facts and events with the elastic force of reason, such an intellect cannot be partial, cannot be exclusive, cannot be impetuous, cannot be at a loss, cannot but be patient, collected, and majestically calm, because it discerns the end in every beginning, the origin in every end, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... come here to-night to ask me to forget, too?" There was no bitterness in his tone, but there was a strong leaven of regret. "Well, ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... choose one's philosopher in the Elysian fields, as once in Athens, I would surely join the smiling group who listened to the human, kindly words of the Sage of Boston. I suppose it is just that continual leaven of science, especially of medical science, which has from my early student days given those books so strong an attraction for me. Never have I so known and loved a man whom I had never seen. It was one of ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... kindred woe, one sorrowing face That smiles as we draw nigh; Long as at tale of anguish swells The heart, and lids grow wet, And at the sound of Christmas bells We pardon and forget; So long as Faith with Freedom reigns, And loyal Hope survives, And gracious Charity remains To leaven lowly lives; While there is one untrodden tract For Intellect or Will, And men are free to think and act ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... afresh. Some 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 ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... any judgment about externals.' To the honour of the Baptists, these peaceable principles appear to have commenced with two or three of their ministers, and for the last two centuries they have been, like heavenly leaven, extending their delightful influence over all ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... of bread may be leavened by yeast over night, but it requires thousands of years to leaven a planet with a new spiritual power. We look at the world just now and are inclined to say that it is at its worst. In truth, this is the hour before daybreak. In every land men are watching the East. Already some have cried out at the false dawns; and ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... only monument of antiquity to be met with in Africa. I am astonished that the negroes have not paid to this tree the same honours that the Druids did to the oak; for to them the baobab is perhaps the most valuable of vegetables. Its leaves are used for leaven, its bark furnishes indistructible cordage; and the bees form their hives in the cavities of its trunk. The negroes, too, often shelter themselves from storms in its time-worn caverns. The baobab is indisputably the monarch of African trees, p. 41.—Travels in the interior of Africa, ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard

... in reply to some question from Welland, "the agency at George Yard, to which I have referred, has a wide-embracing influence—though but a small lump of leaven when compared with the mass of corruption around it. This is a flock of the ragged and utterly forlorn, to many of whom green fields and fresh air are absolutely new, but we ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne

... painted in incomparably greater detail, with a fuller appreciation of character, and without that pious didacticism which even the most lively exertions of Eliza Haywood's romancing genius failed to leaven in ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... The leaven which animated my existence is gone: the charm which cheered me in the gloom of night, and aroused me from my morning ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe

... after a pause, "is a strange thing. The Book tells us that no man is altogether good; no, not one, and that's true. Never was a truer word. We try, lad, we try, and the grace of God works in us, but there remains the old leaven of evil; ay, it's there, even in the heart of a saint. Now, it isn't written, but I think it's just as true that there's no man altogether bad. There's a spark of good somewhere in the worst of us, if we could but get at it. There's a spark ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham

... deceptive and cruel divinity of religious dogmas. On the other hand, Agathe's religious faith had collapsed at Geneva, at sight of the narrow and imbecile practices of Calvinism, and all that she retained of it was the old Protestant leaven of rebellion. She had become at once the head and the arm of the house; she went for her husband's work, took it back when completed, and even did much of it herself, whilst, at the same time, performing her house duties, and rearing ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... in the worthiest poems of Browning's most poetic period, that, it seems to me, his highest greatness is to be sought. In these "Men and Women" he is, in modern times, an unparalleled dramatic poet. The influence he exercises through these, and the incalculably cumulative influence which will leaven many generations to come, is not to be looked for in individuals only, but in the whole thought of the age, which he has moulded to new form, animated anew, and to which he has imparted a fresh stimulus. For this a deep debt is due to Robert Browning. But over and above ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... ordinary people's minds, who adds his voice to the cry, 'It is better to give up than to take: it is nobler to suffer silently than to win praise: better to love than to organize,' whether it be by novel, poem, sermon, or article, has done more, far more, to leaven humanity. I long to open people's eyes to that; I learnt it late myself. Before God, if I can I will make this boy enlightened, should I live to do it; or at least not at the mercy of every vagrant prophet and bawler of ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson

... 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 Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... 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, almost ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... Waldense and Albigense sects, and was afterward perceptible in a branch of the Hussites. At the time of the Reformation their ancient doctrines had subsided into Biblical fanaticism; but the old leaven of revolt against the church, and against all compulsion—keenly sharpened by their experiences, in the recent Peasant's War—was as hot as ever among them. They had no great or high philosophy, but were in all respects chaotic, contradictory, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... still as ages roll, Have chew'd this bitter fare from year to year, No mortal, from the cradle to the bier, Digests the ancient leaven! Know, this Whole Doth for the Deity alone subsist! He in eternal brightness doth exist; Us unto darkness he hath brought, and here, Where day and night alternate, is ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... "America is the leaven of the future," answered Smuts. "She is the life-blood of the League of Nations. Without her the League is stifled. America will give the League the peace temper. You Americans are a pacific people, slow to war ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... remunerative. Twenty-four shillings a magazine page is the common valuation: but specially interesting papers rate higher. Literature as a profession, in England, is more certain and more progressive than with us. It is not debased with the heavy leaven of journalism. Among the many serial publications of London, ability, tact, and industry should always find a liberal market. There is less of the vagrancy of letters,—Bohemianism, Mohicanism, or what not,—in London than in ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... specialisation. Quality can sometimes hold its own against quantity. Although small numerically, the section of Russian society which Turgenev represents is enormously interesting, because it is the brain of the nation, the living ferment which alone can leaven the huge unformed masses. It is upon them that depend the destinies of their country. Besides, the artistic value of his works could only be enhanced by his concentrating his genius upon a field so familiar to him, and engrossing ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev

... 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 yeast will ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder

... it so to heart, while yet Our own hearts are so light with nature's leaven, You'll weep indeed when we in Hades sweat, And you look down upon us out of Heaven. In fancy, lo! I see your wailing shades Thronging the crystal battlements. Cascades Of tears spring singing from each golden spout, Run roaring ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... and barring no person on "account of any speculative principles," the new institution furnished an education that was "liberal" in the political as well as in the intellectual sense of the term. From this center emanated a new leaven. Here young men came from all the Middle and Southern country to receive the stamp of a new Presbyterianism compounded of vital religion and the latter-day spirit of Geneva. In this era, by such men as John Madison, Oliver Ellsworth, and ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... strangely turned, and in France the unique spectacle of four Protestant pastors to one Catholic priest! At one time the Protestant body numbered two-thirds of the entire population, now the proportion is somewhat less. This still strong Protestant leaven, and the long infiltration of German manners and customs has doubtless greatly modified the character of the inhabitants, who, whether belonging to the one denomination or the other, ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... befallen them, and who are always ready to cast upon the first person who comes to hand, as a legitimate grievance, the sum total of the deceptions, the bankruptcies, and the calamities of their lives,—when all this leaven was stirred up in him and boiled forth from his mouth and eyes, he was terrible. Woe to the person who came under his wrath at ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • 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 denial which causes the poverty ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... an effort to inoculate Lutheranism with a unionistic and Calvinistic virus. The distinct object of the Formula, however, was not merely to reduce, but to purge the Lutheran Church entirely from, this as well as other leaven. The Formula's theology is not Lutheranism modified by, but thoroughly cleansed from, antinomianism, Osiandrianism, and particularly from Philippism. Accordingly, while in the Formula Luther is celebrated and quoted as the true and reliable exponent of Lutheranism, Melanchthon is nowhere appealed ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... what is a lie? 'T is but The truth in masquerade; and I defy Historians, heroes, lawyers, priests, to put A fact without some leaven of a lie. The very shadow of true Truth would shut Up annals, revelations, poesy, And prophecy—except it should be dated Some years ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... in order to do so, the Lutheran Church must be loyal to herself, loyal to her principles, and true to her truths. The mere Lutheran name is unavailing. The American Lutheran synods, in order successfully to steer a unity-union movement, must purge themselves thoroughly from the leaven of error, of indifferentism and unionism. A complete and universal return to the Lutheran symbols is the urgent need of the hour. Only when united in undivided loyalty to the divine truths of God's Word, will the American Lutheran Church be able ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente

... 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 him ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... communion with the mountains found an outlet in prolific literary output, and a system of art and ethics destined to leaven the mass of human thought, the infinitude and grandeur of mountain scenery had a dispersive effect on Javelle's mind. I can so well understand him. He wandered over the chain of Valais—my mountains (each worshipper has his special ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... forth and met the rough hand of the sinner. Skippy squeezed them convulsively, not daring to trust his voice, nodded twice and smiled bravely back in the moonlight to show that the leaven of higher things was already beginning ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... lips, the serenity and smoothness of her forehead, and a thousand other attractions with which Heaven has endowed her? It is true that for one who bears within his soul the germ of evil thoughts, the leaven of vice, any one of the impressions that Pepita produces might be the shock of the steel against the flint, kindling the spark that would set fire to and consume all around it; but, prepared for this danger, watching ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... a leaven in the earth, O Republic! And a watch-fire on the hill-top scattering sparks; And an eagle clanging his wings on a cloud-wrapped promontory: Now the leaven must be stirred, And the brands themselves carried and touched To the jungles and the black-forests. Now the eaglets are grown, ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters

... was very happy, and he knew it, in being in a ship with such good men as Mr Charlton and Mr Martin, to whom he now found that he might add Mr Manners. These men, though only a few among many, had a great effect on the mass, and helped to leaven in some degree the whole ship's company. Ben himself produced a good effect not only on Tom, but among the other boys of the ship, and even with many of the men, though he was not aware of it, and would not have talked about it if ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston

... side. The direction of most religious teaching hitherto has been too purely personal; the exhortation is too obvious and the appeal falls flat. Politics without religion lacks foundation; but religion without politics lacks quite half its content. Christianity is the leaven, but so also is ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell

... began stiffly. "I have always believed that I furnished to the Neighborhood Club its only leaven ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... second to none who have labored to elevate and make their fellow creatures better. 'Untiring humor seemed the ruling passion of his soul. With a heart open to all innocent pleasures, purged from the leaven of malice and uncharitableness, it was as natural that he should be full of mirth as it is for the grasshopper to chirp or bee to hum, or the birds to warble in the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the people were 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, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... necessities. They have been eager and zealous workers for Sunday-schools, for temperance and righteous living, even when oftentimes opposed by the old-time preachers and church-officers of their own race, and sometimes opposed by the whites. So the leaven has spread far and wide. A great work has been accomplished by these schools and churches. These ten years have seen a most decided uplifting of character and power among the colored race. They are steadily acquiring property, building ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 4, April, 1889 • Various

... Weber's 'Freischuetz' was performed in Paris, followed a few years later by '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 ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... the flour as a baker puts yeast in his bread dough. The leaven kept working until it affected all the dough and made it rise ...
— Light On the Child's Path • William Allen Bixler

... Mexico is at present thoroughly Mexican in its character and vote. Sonora, if we acquire it at once, will be the same. By separating Arizona from it, and encouraging an American emigration, it will become "the leaven which shall leaven the whole lump." By allowing it to remain attached to New Mexico, or by attaching it to Sonora when acquired, the American influence will be swallowed up in the great preponderance of the Mexican vote. The Apache Indian is preparing Sonora for the rule of a higher ...
— Memoir of the Proposed Territory of Arizona • Sylvester Mowry

... of agitation had produced the leaven that has leavened the world. The revolutionary system was saved, because the king threw away his advantage. The Whig party became supreme in the State by a series of events which are the most significant ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... be forgotten that there came afterwards hordes of barbarians who in a certain sense renovated the worn-out society, but who poured over the new leaven a ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... the more sober, but still more glorious, light of Easter we begin to number the days of preparation, which if duly observed will fit us to keep the Paschal as the Apostle commands, 'not with the old leaven. . .but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.'" (See ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller

... of the Parables?' Without pursuing that dreadful enquiry I ask you to note how carefully the Parables—those exquisite short stories—speak only of 'things which you can touch and see'—'A sower went forth to sow,' 'The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took,'—and not the Parables only, but the Sermon on the Mount and almost every verse of the Gospel. The Gospel does not, like my young essayist, fear to repeat a word, if the word be good. The Gospel says 'Render unto Caesar the things ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... before me and I reflect that he came from myself, that he belongs to me through the intimate bond that links father and son, that, thanks to the terrible law of heredity, he is my own self in a thousand ways, in his blood and his flesh, and that he has even the same germs of disease, the same leaven of emotions. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... so formidable and odious a race as the Romans. And we, who live in the light of the nineteenth century, and with the records before us, can read the history of the convulsions of Europe during the decline of the Roman empire; we can understand how that leaven, which Odin left in the bosoms of the believers in the asa-faith, first fermented a long time in secret; but we can also see how in the fullness of time, the signal given, the descendants of Odin fell like a swarm of locusts upon this unhappy empire, and, after ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre

... She sees, as I also see, a something in Victor's temper—a kind of electrical ardour and power—which emits, now and then, ominous sparks; Hunsden calls it his spirit, and says it should not be curbed. I call it the leaven of the offending Adam, and consider that it should be, if not WHIPPED out of him, at least soundly disciplined; and that he will be cheap of any amount of either bodily or mental suffering which will ground him radically in the art of self-control. ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... 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, and while she had never denied or openly scoffed at religion, and had no reason ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow

... "He has a leaven of worldliness in him, I'll no deny," said she to her husband one night, when they were alone in the privacy of their own apartment. "And there is more desire for wealth in his heart, and for the honour that comes from man, than he himself kens. He'll ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... mind be sophisticated when this sort of state impresses it! But till these monuments of folly are levelled by virtue, similar follies will leaven the whole mass. For the same character, in some degree, will prevail in the aggregate of society: and the refinements of luxury, or the vicious repinings of envious poverty, will equally banish virtue ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... leaven that is working in much of the foremost thinking of our time. The reign of materialism is passing—that of mysticism waxing in imperative insistence and extent of sway. And the heart of the nature-mystic rejoices to know that his master-principle of kinship universal is ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... Washington on November 12, 1921, would have dared to assert these unmoral principles, accepted alike by the Congress of Vienna and the Congress of Berlin, in principle? King John of England looked on their negation as an unholy novelty, though that negation was the leaven of the best of the life of the ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... The same leaven was working in him that in other times begat Rubens and Jordaens and the Van Eycks, and all their wondrous tribe, and in times more recent begat in the green country of the Ardennes, where the Meuse washes the old walls of Dijon, the great artist of the Patroclus, whose genius ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various

... unsalted leaven, speak] [T: unwinnow'dst] [W: windyest] Hanmer preserves whinid'st, the reading of the folio; but does not explain it, nor do I understand it. If the folio be followed, I read, vinew'd, that is mouldy leven. Thou composition ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... beginning of years There came to the rule of the State Men with a pair of shears, Men with an Estimate— Strachey with Muir for leaven, Lytton with locks that fell, Ripon fooling with Heaven, And Temple riding like H—ll! And the bigots took in hand Cess and the falling of rain, And the measure of sifted sand The dealer puts in the grain— Imports by land and sea, To ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... 'the new man,' but simply what Peter calls the 'hidden man of the heart' the '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 is not any one aspect ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... Ephesus, over 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 of severe observances. They talked mysteriously of angels and powers intermediate between God ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... into a new life is not suddenly transformed, yet the change does take place and upon a larger scale. When once it has been accomplished, a new force has been introduced into the Chinese Empire, a salt to preserve, a leaven to pervade, a seed to bring forth after its kind in perpetually augmenting ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... we are entering a hitherto unknown realm. The definition of selfishness yesterday or to- day is quite another thing from the unselfishness that we have in view, and which we hope and expect will soon leaven society. I think, perhaps, we may reach the result quicker if we call it mankind's new and higher pleasure or happiness, for that is what ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House

... to believe it was the end sought in the catastrophe we deplore: that is, a spirit of liberty, a sense of personal independence, without which the refinements of art, even reinforced by genius, are unavailing. Such was undoubtedly the invigorating leaven brought into Gaul by the Frank, although for a time he succumbed to the enervating Gallic influence, and, while conquering and subduing, was himself ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... people to look up to, who, residing in the 'midst of a vicious community, professed to be followers of that which was right, and to resist the current of bad example in their own times; or that such a people might be considered as a leaven, that might leaven the whole lump, but that, if this leaven were lost, the community might lose one of its visible incitements to virtue. Now in this way the Quakers have had a certain general usefulness in the world. They have kept more, I apprehend, to first principles, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... sometimes. There comes a recrudescence of heathenism. Yet faith sees still the leaven at work. An old man's daughter went away to our Santee School and returned a believer in the Christian way. She taught her father what she had learned, and prayed for him. He yielded to her faith and threw away his fetishes after a hard struggle with all the ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen

... ancient Catholic Church springing up in the midst of heresies; in the parable of the mustard-bush resorted to by birds of the air as if it had been a tree, and loaded with their nests, a representation of the outward Church as established under Constantine the Great; in the leaven that is mixed among the three measures of meal, the pervading and transforming influence of Christianity in the mediaeval Church among the barbarous races of Europe; in the parable of the treasure in the field, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... element, Nor good, nor bad; That which thou callest to in the far skies Comes to thee in her eyes; That thou mayst slake Thy love of lilies, lo! her breasts! Be wise, Ask not that she, as thou, should human be, She that doth smell so sweet of distant heaven; Pity is mortal leaven, Dews know it not, nor morning on the hills, And who hath yet found pity of the sea That blesses, knowing not, and, not knowing, kills; And sister unto all of these is she, Whose face, as theirs, none reads; whose heart none knows; Whose words are as the wind's words, and whose ways, O lover, learn, ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne

... clung to him like so many leeches, waiting for a split of the proceeds of the sale of horses that no one appeared eager to buy in quantity. Ready cash was short. There were frequent quarrels; through it all there worked the leaven of Wyatt's jealousy, fermenting steadily. There were men among them who had fought with gunplay and who had killed but, as they were cheats, so ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... be the end of Hus's strivings? What was it in Hus that was destined to survive? What was it that worked like a silent leaven amid the clamours of war? We shall see. Amid these charred and smoking ruins the ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... that the leaven should work in all three; and this most of all in Lucien, because he felt that he was so heavily to blame. As for Eve, she was just the kind of sister to beg an erring brother to "Forgive me for your trespasses;" but when the union of two ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac

... thee, Wachusett, who like me Standest alone without society. Thy far blue eye, A remnant of the sky, Seen through the clearing or the gorge, Or from the windows of the forge, Doth leaven all it passes by. Nothing is true But stands 'tween me and you, Thou western pioneer, Who know'st not shame nor fear, By venturous spirit driven Under the eaves of heaven; And canst expand thee there, And breathe enough of air? Even beyond the ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... Church. It was a trying time for Aunt Bell. She felt that her return to the shadow of the cross was not being made enough of by the One above. After years of running after strange gods, the Episcopal service as administered by Allan had prevailed over her seasoned skepticism: through its fascinating leaven of romance—with faint and, as it seemed to her, wholly reverent hints of physical culture—the spirit may be said to have blandished her. And now this turpitude in a man of God came to disturb the first tender ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... interest, as well as that of eclipses and planetary conjunctions, was in relation to astrology. Reform, however, was obviously in the air. The doctrine of Copernicus was destined very soon to divide others besides the Lutheran leaders. The leaven of inquiry was working, and not long after the death of Copernicus real advances were to come, first in the accuracy of observations, and, as a necessary result of these, in ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant

... to fear that they should come to regard this full and humane development of the child as a mere luxury and ultimately neglect it. Worse still, the few of these schools which already exist may perhaps become exclusive to the Communists and their children, or that company of Samurai which is to leaven and govern the mass of the people. If so, they will soon come to resemble our public schools, in that they will prepare, in an artificial play atmosphere, men who will pass straight to the position of leaders, while the portion of the proletariat who serve under ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell

... but he was soon given to understand that he was a degraded being,— a barbarian; nay, a beggar. Now, you may draw the last cuarto from a Spaniard, provided you will concede to him the title of cavalier, and rich man, for the old leaven still works as powerfully as in the time of the first Philip; but you must never hint that he is poor, or that his blood is inferior to your own. And the old peasant, on being informed in what slight ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... is lengthy and uncertain, and a far more convenient method is to accelerate the fermentation by the addition of some active ferment. The ancient method of accomplishing this was by adding to the dough a leaven, a portion of old dough which had been kept until it had begun to ferment; but since the investigations of modern chemistry have made clear the properties of yeast, that has come to be considered the best agent for setting up the process of alcoholic fermentation ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... century over north France and Flanders. It would appear from the way in which Anabaptism sprang up everywhere independently, as if more than one ancient sect took in and through it a new lease of life. Ritschl discerned in it the leaven of the Fraticelli or Franciscan Tertiaries. In Moravia, if what Alex. Rost related be true, namely that they called themselves Apostolici, and went barefooted healing the sick, they must have at least absorbed into themselves a sect of whom we hear in the 12th century in the north ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... lifelong toil till our lump be leaven. The better! What's come to perfection perishes. Things learned on earth we shall practice in heaven. Work done ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... that we shall doe to all men like as we will be done ourselves; making no difference of what generation, descent or colour they are. And those who steal or robb men, and those who buy or purchase them, are they not all alike?"[20] This little leaven helped slowly to work a revolution in the attitude of this great sect toward slavery and the slave-trade. The Yearly Meeting at first postponed the matter, "It having so General a Relation to many other ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois

... this? "Indian Intelligence: Skilful retreat of the Sepoys under Captain de Caxton"! A captain already! What is the date of the newspaper!—three months ago. The leading article quotes the name with high praise. Is there no leaven of envy amidst the joy at my heart? How obscure has been my career,—how laurelless my poor battle with adverse fortune! Fie, Pisistratus! I am ashamed of thee. Has this accursed Old World, with its feverish rivalries, diseased thee already? Get thee home, quick, to the arms of thy ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... war. Twice before had British soldiers marched into the town, the last time but a few years agone, when blood had been shed on the stones in front of the parish church. But here were large numbers of well-armed men from the Eastern parishes, English and French, with four hundred regulars to leaven the mass. Lajeunesse knew only too well what this ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the torch of philosophy at the altar of Zoroaster. The conquest of Asia Minor by the Persians brought Thales, Anaximenes, and Herakleitos into contact with the Eranian dogmas. The leaven thus imparted had a potent influence upon the entire mass of Grecian thought. We find it easy to trace its action upon opinions in later periods and among the newer nations. Kant, Hegel, Stewart, and Hamilton, ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... had no tradition of social morals to rely upon, corruption entered in and consumed it. The King's scepticism took possession of his subjects, who translated it into deeds. It was good "form"; everyone in Berlin took it up and conducted himself accordingly. The leaven of licence and sensuality which mars all the literature of the century fermented without let or hindrance in those coarse souls. An immature civilization had overstimulated imaginations and senses without abating the brutality of the primitive passions. ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... old leaven, my dear boy! You are on the brink of perdition.—Don't you know Bertie Payne?" he continued, to his newly met friend. "He was one of my subs before he renounced the devil and all his works. He was with us at Barrackbore ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... blocking out a curriculum of study for Kit, when he happened to glance up, and beheld the trio passing happily out through the gates. Certainly they did not realize, nor did he at that moment, that already the leaven of youth was at work in the old shadowy house behind the ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester

... confidence in his unexpressed ability. To Mrs. Gorham the passages-at-arms between the two children, as she would have called them, were refreshing. She knew that each was being benefited by coming in contact with a different nature. Alice's serious side needed the leaven of a lighter viewpoint on life; Allen's buoyancy was already being tempered by her ambition. This was why, when Alice asked her later, in their apartment, "Don't you think Allen needs a little of that 'inspiration' you spoke of?" ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... large, so externally beautiful, and so trimly kept as to be both morally and architecturally among the noblest ornaments of the town. There is the Port of Hull Society, with its chapel, its reading-rooms, its orphanage, its seaman's mission, all most generously supported. There is that leaven of ancient pride which also may be classed among the institutions of the place, and which operates in giving to a population by no means wealthy a habit of respectability, and a look for the most part well-to-do. But among none of these will be found the institution to which we are about to ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock

... he spoke to 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

... disseminated, we cannot indulge the hope of seeing the animosities of mankind removed. Then only will they love their neighbours as themselves. It is to be most deeply lamented, that even where Christianity has taken root in the mind, this unholy leaven does not seem to be entirely purged away; and mutual jealousies, bickerings, and recriminations exist, where love should be the ruling principle and bond of union. O, when will the reign of perfect charity, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... followed the nurse from the room. Prince Shan stood looking down upon the figure of quondam associate. There was a leaven of mild wonder in his clear eyes, a faintly contemptuous smile about the ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the cliffs of Ziph and the rocks of the wild goats,—the thanksgivings and congratulations of prelacy arose in an unbroken strain of laudation from all the episcopal palaces of England. What mattered it to men, in whose hearts, to use the language of John Milton, "the sour leaven of human traditions, mixed with the poisonous dregs of hypocrisy, lay basking in the sunny warmth of wealth and promotion, hatching Antichrist," that the privileges of Englishmen and the rights secured by the great charter were violated and trodden under foot, so long as usurpation enured to their ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... artificially develops perverse habits in the normal man. The manipulations of sadism or masochism are even utilized to revive a sexual appetite weakened by abuse. Individuals who have become impotent often try to excite themselves by observing the coitus of others. In fact a leaven of corruption and ignominy ferments on the dunghill of venal and artificial excitation of ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... unexpected display of vigour on the Liberal side. But, on the whole, this movement towards collectivist organisation on the part of the Liberals rather strengthened than weakened my resolve to cross the floor of the house. It made it more necessary, I thought, to leaven the purely obstructive and reactionary elements that were at once manifest in the opposition. I assailed the land taxation proposals in one main speech, and a series of minor speeches in committee. The line of attack I chose was that the land ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... merely scratched small wrinkles, very lightly, with one talon, to mark you as his by and by. That is all as yet: and so the power of my high sister Suskind endures over you, who were once used to follow after your own thinking and your own desire, for there remains in you a leaven even to-day. Yes, yes, though you deny her to-day, you will be entreating her to-morrow, and then it may be she will punish you. Either way, I must be going now, since you are obstinate, for it is at this time I run about the September ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... leavened before with the leaven of some other doctrine, some doctrine of the righteousness of the world, or doctrine of devils, forthwith make head against and speak evil of the blessed doctrine; and because some that profess it are not cleansed from their filthiness of flesh and spirit, and do ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... struck me as so whimsical that I laughed until I was tired. You'll find there's so much tragedy in a doctor's life, my boy, that he would not be able to stand it if it were not for the strain of comedy which comes every now and then to leaven it. ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle

... it." She slid her hand out from under the covers and caught Gladys's in a warm clasp. She fell asleep soon after that and did not waken again during the night, but Gladys sat beside her until morning, watching her slightest movement. And the Camp Fire leaven was beginning to work in her, and she was learning to fulfil the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey

... these disorders. But this, in my opinion, is said without much observation of our present disposition, and without any knowledge at all of the general nature of mankind. If the matter of which this nation is composed be so very fermentable as these gentlemen describe it, leaven never will be wanting to work it up, as long as discontent, revenge, and ambition, have existence in the world. Particular punishments are the cure for accidental distempers in the state; they inflame ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... peace palaver of the Quakers sickened me. I came near to quarrelling with some of my old friends, and I grew eager to see fresh places, fresh faces. I turned it over in my mind, and I thought that if Quebec fell into our hands, English-speaking citizens would surely be wanted to leaven the French and Canadians who would remain. And if so, why should not I be one to take ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... with advantage have died out during the journey across the ocean is undeniable, but it is also true that it preserves at least an affectation of higher civilization. It contains the majority of the gentlemen and ladies by birth and education in each city, and they go far to leaven the whole lump. The parvenu has the merit of seeking after better things, and his imitation of aristocracy, if it necessarily falls far short of the mark, at least removes him a step or two above the way of ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... present at this marketplace affair, a confused crowded occasion, in which a little leaven of active men stirred through a large uncertain multitude of decently dressed onlookers. The whole big square was astir, a swaying crowd of men. A ramshackle platform improvised upon a trolley struggled through the swarming ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... every thing had been in the night before, the bakers had all forgot to lay their leaven—there were no butter'd buns to be had for breakfast in all Strasburg—the whole close of the cathedral was in one eternal commotion—such a cause of restlessness and disquietude, and such a zealous inquiry into that cause of the restlessness, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... winning men to obedience, not by Coercion, and Punishing; but by Perswasion: and therefore he said not to his Apostles, hee would make them so many Nimrods, Hunters Of Men; But Fishers Of Men. It is compared also to Leaven; to Sowing of Seed, and to the Multiplication of a grain of Mustard-seed; by all which Compulsion is excluded; and consequently there can in that time be no actual Reigning. The work of Christs Ministers, is Evangelization; that is, a Proclamation ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... grouse; and, in a state of perfect contentment with himself and all the world, he determines to give all his game away. Full of such kindly feelings, he retires to bed; but, alas, with day-light, when the effect of the tobacco has subsided, the old leaven of selfishness prevails, and his good intentions are abandoned. 'Mary,' said an old Cumberland farmer to his daughter, when she was once asking him to buy her a new beaver, 'why dost thou always tease me about such things when ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... the Lollards had been extinguished by persecution under the Lancastrian kings, and was in nowise continuous with modern English Protestantism. Nothing could be more erroneous. The extent to which the Lollard leaven had permeated all classes of English society was first clearly revealed when Henry VIII. made his domestic affairs the occasion for a revolt against the Papacy. Despot and brute as he was in many ways, Henry had some characteristics ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... deux, s'il vous plait,' responded Aunt Bel. 'Rose, hurry down, and leaven the mass. I see ten girls in a bunch. It's shocking. Ferdinand, pray disperse yourself. Why is it, Emily, that we are always in excess at pic-nics? Is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... everything from the excellent qualities and kind affections which attached me to him so strongly at school. I should hardly have thought it possible for society (or the world, as it is called) to leave a being with so little of the leaven of bad passions. I do not speak from personal experience only, but from all I have ever heard of him from others, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... country of which they have never heard the name. Mr. Anderson worked in his first books as if he were assembling documents on the eve of revolution. Village peace and stability have departed; ancient customs break or fade; the leaven of change ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren

... vanished up the street toward his destination, in the fulness of knowledge that the contemplated suggestion had been decided from the turning of the first wheel on the system, he left behind him a man imbued with an esprit de corps that was to grow and leaven the entire working force. It took but ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge

... of the six oldest colleges in Oxford, and is far on to celebrating its sexcentenary, but it has purged itself of the Gothic leaven in its buildings more completely than any other Oxford foundation. It does not even occupy its own old site, for the building originally lay well back from the High Street. It was only the "civilities ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells

... than all the seeds that be in the earth; but when it is sown, it groweth up, and becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth out great branches; so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of it." "Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom of God? Is it like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened?" Seek ye first the Kingdom, and the Holy Spirit, the channel of communion between God your source, and yourselves, will lead you, and will lead you into all ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine

... months old: 'tis 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 can take Than what her nursing ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... into a dough by a proper admixture with water, and being formed into small cakes, they are baked for about a quarter of an hour in a chatty. The fermentation which has already taken place in the nut has impregnated the flower with a leaven; this, without any further addition, expands the dough when in the oven, and the cake produced is very similar to a crumpet, both in ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... as flexible as steel, such a nation could not permanently maintain itself; with reason the Celts of the continent suffered the same fate at the hands of the Romans, as their kinsmen in Ireland suffer down to our own day at the hands of the Saxons—the fate of becoming merged as a leaven of future development in a politically superior nationality. On the eve of parting from this remarkable nation we may be allowed to call attention to the fact, that in the accounts of the ancients as to the Celts ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... and—as indifference to Zeppelins is not confined to the sterner sex—a sprinkling of ladies, plump and matronly, or of the masculine walking type, with two charmingly pretty girls and a gay young war widow to leaven the mass. ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... Though you have filled my heart with bitterness, I shall never have bitter thoughts of you; would it not be an ill beginning of the new tasks that I have set myself if I did not purge out all the evil leaven from my soul? Farewell, then, to the one heart that I love in the world, a heart from which I am cast out. Never has more feeling and more tenderness been expressed in a farewell, for is it not fraught with the life and soul of one who can never hope again, and must be henceforth ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... coextensive with the stage and inseparable from the smallest trifle of their existence. He did not limit His marvellous tongue to antiquities and traditions. He used the mustard-seed in the field and the leaven in the lump for His everlasting designs. His finger was stretched out to the cruel stones of self-righteousness flying through the air, and phylacteries of dissimulation worn on the walk. He was so political, He would have saved Jerusalem and Judea from Roman ruin, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... forethought has led them to spend considerable time and pains to prepare men for the gospel ministry. In quality of preaching and teaching, and in results already achieved, the race owes much to this as yet small band of workers. Like the leaven hidden in the meal its influence is being felt in the church, in the farm, and in the firesides of the people, and is destined to overthrow ignorance, immorality, and superstition. With the continued ...
— The Defects of the Negro Church - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 10 • Orishatukeh Faduma

... from thy tomb, Thus sleeping in thine Abbey's friendly shade, And the rough waves of life for ever laid! I would not break thy rest, nor change thy doom. Even as my father, thou— Even as that loved, that well-recorded friend— Hast thy commission done; ye both may now Wait for the leaven to work, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... are capable of great sacrifices are yet not capable of the little ones which are all that are required of them. God seems to take pleasure in working by degrees; the progress of the truth is as the permeation of leaven, or the growth of a seed: a multitude of successive small sacrifices may work more good in the world than many a large one. What would even our Lord's death on the cross have been, except as the crown of a life in which he died daily, ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... she speaks, most gently, "you 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 could not admit in the Knight of the swan a god-sent hero, she cannot see in Elsa an uncommonly ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall



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



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