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Leaven   /lˈɛvən/   Listen
Leaven

noun
1.
A substance used to produce fermentation in dough or a liquid.  Synonym: leavening.
2.
An influence that works subtly to lighten or modify something.  Synonym: leavening.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Leaven" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 idols)—the Dent du Midi, the Vaudois Alps, and ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... warmer pressure to his handclasp. Mrs. Middler kissed her several times, and Janice thought with some surprise that the affectionate woman had been crying. Elder Concannon, that stern and bewhiskered patriarch who had once looked upon Janice Day and her ideas as the very leaven of unrighteousness in the community, strode over to the girl and rested his hands upon her shoulders to make her look ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long

... may there not be something Of this world's leaven in thee too, when crying On Holy Church to thunder out her rights And thine own wrong so pitilessly. Ah, Thomas, The lightnings that we think are only Heaven's Flash sometimes out of earth against the heavens. The soldier, when he lets ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... 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 ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... 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 conquered ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... accomplish I do not know," said Miller, "but I'll do what I can. There are eight or nine million of us, and it will take a great deal of learning of all kinds to leaven that lump." ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... the old line under favorable conditions. Hence, too, the petty dimensions of aristocratic French life: little fortunes, little ambitions, little establishments, little families, among that very class in society which by cultivating the sentiment of honor should leaven the practical, materialistic temper of the multitude. At the present time, when the burghers amass in trade far greater fortunes than the aristocracy possess, when the learned secure greater power by intellectual vigor, when the demagogues grow mightier by the command of ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... of course the dicta of Conference were simply his own dicta), 'We believe the body of our hearers will even after our death remain in the Church, unless they are thrust out. They will either be thrust out or leaven the Church.' A few years later, 'In visiting classes ask everyone, "Do you go to church as often as you did?" Set the example and immediately alter any plan that interfereth therewith. Are we not unawares, by little and little, tending to a separation from the Church? Oh, remove every tendency ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... 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 was a great ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... extraordinary generosity, flung her handful of white colonists into the vast lands she had discovered, and hoped by this means to raise the leaven of the whole. In India, as exemplified in Goa, the result has met with scant success. In Brazil, however, where the proportion of white to black was greater, a race of intellect and culture has been developed, ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... therefore, was greeted at Nimes with a universal shout of joy; and a superficial-observer might have thought that all trace of the old religious leaven had disappeared. In fact, for seventeen years the two faiths had lived side by side in perfect peace and mutual good-will; for seventeen years men met either for business or for social purposes without inquiring about each other's religion, so that Nimes on the surface might have been held up as ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... do not like that your book should be an abolition book. You might have borne your testimony as decidedly as you pleased; but why leaven the whole book with it? This subject haunts us on almost every page. It is a great subject, but your book had ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... strange. Centuries of experience seemed to separate her from the past, and, looking backward, infinite spaces of time already stretched between what had been and what was. Now overmuch sorrow mingled with her reflections, though a leaven of it ran through all—a sense of loss, of sacrifice, of change, which flits, like the shadow of a summer cloud, even through the soul of the most deeply loving woman who ever opened her eyes to smile ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened Bread of ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... of Host, to designate the Rule, is worthy of particular consideration. Its import is that, as bread without leaven, which is called the Host, is made of the finest flour, so the Rule is composed of what is most perfect in the Gospel; and as this bread, by the words of consecration, is changed into the Body of Jesus ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... 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 and kindnesses" of Provost ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells

... Shepherd. He puts the dew of His blessing into the chalice of the tiniest flower, that it may 'share its dewdrop with another near.' Just as every particle of inert dough as it is leavened becomes in its turn leaven, and the medium for leavening the particle contiguous to it, so every Christian is bound, or, to use the metaphor of my text, is a debtor to God and man, to impart the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 'Greek and Barbarian,' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... weighs it, ponders it, and wants to hear more. Gradually, slowly, his mind is enlightened, his heart is interested, his will is changed. In him the Word is likely to grow as a seed, or operate like leaven in meal. There is seldom much excitement, ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding

... Kansas. His collar had been torn away; his straw hat had been twisted and battered; his shirt with ox-blood stripes split to the waist. And from head to knee he was drenched with some vile and ignoble greasy fluid that loudly proclaimed to the nose its component leaven of ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... yes. Weaver and another fellow named Haight have some hid in Chicago. Some is hid in the graveyard near Leaven worth, and some ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... and make it better. That's the only way—the only way on earth to make a better democracy—by putting the best we've got into it. You can't make bread rise from the outside. You've got to mix the yeast with the dough, if you want it to leaven ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... school have something to give, that can be gotten nowhere else. The public school where established and industrial training where available are good and necessary. But the christian school is still needed and very greatly, to give moral and spiritual ballast to the individual. The leaven of gospel power and purity is needed, to give moral strength to the character and the highest degree of ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... Grapp could not walk off from the bread-trough; or it might be that there was some sympathy between the mixing of her flour and yeast into a sweet and lively perfection, and the bringing of her mental leaven wholesomely to bear. ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... of gentry taken on for the numerous expeditions that were constantly being arranged: runaway seamen, cooks, stewards, and stokers from the ships, gangers and navvies from the railways, ne'er-do-wells of all descriptions, with but here and there an old "river digger," or genuine prospector to leaven the lump. ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell

... events, this Calendar proved not lacking in penetration; men of his stamp are commonly endowed with that quality to an eminent degree. Not slow to reckon the caliber of the man before him, the leaven of intuition began to work in his adipose intelligence. He owned ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... symbolical and spiritual religion; not only 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 an end—except as a peasant-cult—in ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... it—loyalty is for us both. You live your sermon—I say mine. I have said it. Now live yours. Put this wormwood away from you. Forgive Preston, as you need forgiveness at higher hands. Don't break the girl's heart, and spoil your boy's life—it may spoil it—the leaven of bitterness works long. You're at a parting of the ways—take the right turn. Do good and not evil with your strength; all the rest is nothing. After all the years there is just one thing that counts, and that our mothers told us ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... glorious truth of all truths—that there is some good in each of us, and that if that good only could be recognized and encouraged it would overcome the bad in us. You will remember the saying: "A little leaven leaveneth the ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... that the Faith begins to make one abandon the old way of judging. Averages and movements and the rest grow uncertain. We see things from within and consider one mind or a little group as a salt or leaven. The very nature of social force seems changed to us. And this is hard when a man has loved common views and is happy ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... 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 into the dough. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... this mass of disorder the break-up of the military households and the return of wounded and disabled soldiers from the wars introduced a dangerous leaven of outrage and crime. England for the first time saw a distinct criminal class in the organized gangs of robbers which began to infest the roads and were always ready to gather round the standard of revolt. ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... state, dreams of his little town as an organic unit in which all share alike; the syndicalist in his fancy sees his trade united into a co-operative body in which all are equal; the gradualist, in whose mind lingers the leaven of doubt, frames for himself a hazy vision of a prolonged preparation for the future, of socialism achieved little by little, the citizens being trained as it goes on till they are to reach somehow or somewhere in cloud land the nirvana of the elimination of ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock

... necessary to address them in the language of indignant expostulation. "Ye are puffed up," says he, "and have not rather mourned that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you.....Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." [224:2] At the same time, as an apostle bound to vindicate the reputation of the Church, and to enforce the rules of ecclesiastical discipline, he solemnly announces his determination to have the offender excommunicated. "I verily," ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... 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

... little fingers came 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 ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... of years There came to the making of man Time, with a gift of tears, Grief, with a glass that ran; Pleasure, with pain for leaven; Summer, with flowers that fell; Remembrance fallen from heaven, And madness risen from hell; Strength without hands to smite, Love that endures for a breath, Night, the shadow of light, And life, ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... of '93 was utterly different from those, wherein the Maison du Roi took the right of the line. It was hastily raised, and loosely constructed, out of rude material perilous to handle. But—putting aside that military aptitude inherent in every Frenchman—in all ranks there was a leaven of veterans strong enough to keep the turbulent conscripts in order, though the aristocratic element of authority was wanting. Traditions of subordination and discipline survived in an army, not the less thoroughly French, because it was rabidly Republican. The recruits ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... morning, and was suggested by my seeing one of my knights who was in the soap line come riding in. According to history, the monks of this place two centuries before had been worldly minded enough to want to wash. It might be that there was a leaven of this unrighteousness still remaining. So I sounded ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... "carnal mind" which remains, "even in the heart of the regenerate," is "enmity against God." There is a dark SOMEWHAT in the soul that fairly hates the word "sanctification." Theologians call it "inbred sin" or "original depravity"; the Bible terms it the "old man," "the old leaven," "the root of bitterness," etc. Whatever its name it abhors holiness and purity, and though the regenerate man loves Christ and His words, he does so over the vehement protest of a baser principle chained and manacled in the basement dungeon ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees

... all ecclesiastical bodies are yet in cordial alliance with the beast of the sea; and this alliance is the Antichrist. The Pope is now nearly divested of his former civil supremacy, and in this respect become less the express image of the imperial beast of the sea, (ch. xiii. 14;) yet the leaven of the Romish religion pervades all the Christian community, so far as allegiance to the beast or his horns is either enjoined or tolerated. This usurpation of the royal prerogatives of Christ over the ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele

... 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 ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... portrait-painter, really belongs to this group, as does also Whistler (1834-[23]), one of the most artistic of all the moderns. Whistler was long resident in London, but has now removed to Paris. He belongs to no school, and such art as he produces is peculiarly his own, save a leaven of influences from Velasquez and the Japanese. His art is the perfection of delicacy, both in color and in line. Apparently very sketchy, it is in reality the maximum of effect with the minimum of display. It has the pictorial charm of mystery and suggestiveness, ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... and quiet than it had been since the moment of Kafka's appearance in the cemetery. The Wanderer noticed the tone. There was an element of real sadness in it, with a leaven of bitter disappointment and a savour of heartfelt contrition. She was in earnest now, as she had been before, but in a different way. He could hardly refuse ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... adroitly written. Political prejudices, one notice said, would no doubt be aroused by statements made in the book, and one newspaper went so far as to publish a double-leaded editorial protesting against the revival of party animosities buried more than two generations ago. The leaven worked, and when the book was placed in the stores on the eleventh of November, the demand for it was unparalleled. Orders came for it from all parts of the country, particularly from the State of New York, and the resources of the great publishing house of Hinckley, Morton, & Co. were taxed ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... 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

... been accomplished so far as it has been; and there never could have been any hope of its eventual success if there had been no hope of one or both these two countries bearing it up on their strong and unscrupulous arms. The leaven of foreign aid to rebellion was working even then, both in London and Paris; and perhaps we had opportunities over the water for a nearer guess at the peril of the nation, than you could have had in the midst of ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... 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 ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... undertood{sic} that this element in the population of San Antonio was a powerful one, and that a little of such leaven would stir into activity a people who, beneath the crust of their formal piety, had still something left of that pride and adventurous spirit which distinguished the Spain of Ferdinand ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr

... all his self-restraint the old leaven would at times begin to work in him, and bring on fits of what his enemies would call fanaticism and his friends piety, though it must be confessed that this piety was prone to take a fierce and fiery shape. As I look back, one or two instances of that stand out so hard and clear in my recollection ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... answered Rachel; 'but what can I say? Even in the best-trained temper there may remain some leaven of the old Adam; and I know not whether it is this or a better spirit that maketh my brother Joshua determine, that though he will not resist force by force, neither will he yield up his right to mere threats, or encourage wrong to others by yielding to menaces. His partners, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... 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. Such legislation for the most part affects state police ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson

... engraven,—when the First Man with his own hand put from him the cup of innocence, and went forth from the happy garden, sin-stained and fallen, the whole head sick, and the whole heart faint,—even then she saw within him the divine spark, the leaven of life, which had power to vitalize and vivify what Crime had smitten with death. Though sea and land teemed with strange perils, though night and day pursued him with mysterious terrors, though the now unfriendly elements combined to check his career, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... 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 its ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... impossible gates and its magic tree of life yielding twelve kinds of fruit, are imagery; then the lake of burning sulphur, and the resurrection trumpet, and the indictment of the dead before the dazzling throne, are imagery too. The reader smiles at the idea that the good Esquimau will sit in Leaven amidst boiling pots of walrus meat, while in hell the fish lines of the bad Esquimau will break, and his canoe be crushed by falling ice. But what better reason can the civilized man give for the reflecting ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... toward the organization of women to protect their own rights came from the injustice of laws toward married women, and in 1848 it manifested itself in the first Woman's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls. Slowly the leaven spread. There was agitation in one State after the other about the property rights of women.... Now in many States married as well as single women are proprietors of business enterprises upon the same basis as men, and are interested as capitalists and tax-payers ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... year of dis-Grace, 1914, there had existed, as let us pray will one day exist, a Supreme Court of Civilization, before which the sovereign nations could litigate their differences without resort to the iniquitous arbitrament of arms and that each of the contending nations had a sufficient leaven of Christianity or shall we say commonplace, everyday morality, to have its grievances adjudged not by the ethics of the cannon, but by ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck

... sleepless nights that 'brother'[16] is fond of showing himself," answered the brigadier. "I don't like all these Free Staters about. They may be able to stir up the new crop of rebels into doing something desperate. Raw guerillas, with a leaven of hard-bitten cases, are always a source of danger. But I think that we worked our own salvation in the skirmish this morning. They would hardly believe that we should have such a small force with so many guns. No; our luck was in to-day, when they discovered us instead of Twine's squadron. ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer

... redeeming feature, and turned his garb from that of a thousand corporals into the homely attire of a gentleman farmer. So soon as you saw them, you forgot the War. The style of them was most effective. It beat the spear into a pruning hook. With this to leaven them, the rough habiliments were most becoming. In a word, they supplied the very setting which manhood should have; and since Anthony, sitting there at his meat, was the personification of virility, they served, as all true settings ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... more proper-looking, and better suited, too, for the world's work, when it goes about with some sort of a garment on it. We are so used to a leaven of falsehood in all we hear and say, nowadays, that nothing is more likely to deceive us than the absolute truth. If a shopkeeper told me that his wares were simply middling, of course, I should think that they were not worth a farthing. But all that has nothing to do with my poor ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... Ionian sages lighted 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, as well as Plato, Zeno, and Aristotle, had their prototypes in the world and antiquity ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... was no light act of courage in those days for a little fellow to say his prayers publicly, even at Rugby. A few years later, when Arnold's manly piety had begun to leaven the school, the tables turned: before he died, in the Schoolhouse at least, and I believe in the other houses, the rule was the ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... ever ascended the pulpit, he has left behind him a fame 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 spring breeze and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... I did was to learn what each man could do best. Of course I could make only broad classifications. Still there were men better at lifting than others; men better with the crowbar; men better at shoveling; men naturally industrious who would leaven a group of three or four lazy ones. As well as I could I sorted ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton

... selected for publication were his best commentaries, then eight volumes of his Gospel and Epistle sermons and one volume of his best catechetical writings. These rich evangelical works introduced us to the real Luther, not the polemical, but the Gospel Luther. They contain the leaven of the faith, life and spirit of Protestantism. We now return to his spiritual commentaries on the Bible which are the foundation of all his writings. The more one reads Luther the greater he becomes as a student of the ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... Unlike the M. D.'s, Christian Scientists are not afraid to take their own medicine, for this medicine is divine Mind; and from this saving, ex- haustless source they intend to fill the human mind with enough of the leaven of Truth to leaven the whole lump. [20] There may be exceptional cases, where one Christian Scientist who has more to meet than others needs support at times; then, it is right to bear "one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... did he profess himself towards the Liberal tendency of some of the Staff of that day that he would declare with a wink that he positively preferred to stay away; and on the occasion of the accession of Mr. Anstey, wrote this sturdy Conservative "I hope he's a Tory. We want some leaven to the set of sorry Rads that lead poor old Punch astray at present." But few independent readers, and fewer still of Keene's personal friends, will take very seriously his sweeping assertion and political pronunciamentoes—at least, as regards Punch, for whom and for his colleagues he ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... that the dead had risen from the grave, to drag him relentlessly back to the fullest glare of earthly ignominy—to the keenest experience of human suffering. And yet, did he quite deserve it? Was there no grain of leaven in his lump of sinfulness and weakness, if all were known? He is a hardened criminal, indeed, who can find no hope in the thought of appealing from ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... moments does he make rows of figures on available scraps of paper and on the blotter at his office, and abstractedly compute interest on various sums at four and a half and five per cent.? Why? Because the leaven of his wife's threat that her life will be shortened is working in his bosom and he beholds her in his restless dreams crushed to death beneath a myriad of waterbugs, all for the lack of an inch of closet-room. Why? Because he is haunted ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant

... 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 ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various

... Neo-Platonism. Leaving all detailed descriptions of these schools to special articles devoted to them, it is sufficient here to say that their doctrines were a synthesis of Platonism, Stoicism and the later Aristotelianism with a leaven of oriental mysticism which gradually became more and more important. The world to which they spoke had begun to demand a doctrine of salvation to satisfy the human soul. They endeavoured to deal with the problem of good and evil. They therefore devoted themselves to examining the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... 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 maybe get them, and maybe no'. But ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... political servitude and in the presence of acknowledged but unredressed grievances. Education, through the disinterested efforts of a group of philanthropists, was, moreover, beginning—in some slight degree, at least—to leaven the mass of ignorance in the country, the power of the press was making itself felt, and other agencies were also beginning to dispel the old ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... mentioned on a Sunday. It was a bundle of ceremonies, not a living principle. To Father Bevis, on the contrary, religion was everything or nothing. If it had anything to do with a man at all, it must pervade his thoughts and his life. It was the leaven which leavened the whole lump; the salt whose absence left all unsavoury and insipid; the breath, which virtually was identical with life. One mistake Father Bevis made, a very natural mistake to a man who had been repressed, misunderstood; ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt

... He was showing them that it achieved nothing.... But the mob was beyond the control of wise counsel. Possibly the feet of many had pressed brass rails while elbows crooked. Certainly there was present a leaven of toughs, idlers, in no way connected with the business, but sent by the devil to add to the horror ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... as if marriage was a state very much at variance with natural habitude, seeing that it requires a special ripeness of judgment in those who conform to it. All the world knows what Rousseau said: "There must always be a period of libertinage in life either in one state or another. It is an evil leaven ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac

... ministers ever acted more fairly, in any international question, than Lord Aberdeen and M. Guizot have done on the subject of the Greek revolution; but for this very reason we feel inclined to warn our countrymen against the leaven of old principles, which still exists in the palace at Athens. Let us judge of the new government of Greece by its acts, and let Great Britain and France remember that they are not looked on without ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... train at railhead, and supervised the efforts of his solitary N.C.O. to arrange the members of his draft in a straight line. There were some thirty of them in all. Some were old hands—men from the First and Second Battalions, who had been home wounded, and had now been sent out to leaven "K(1)." Others were Special Reservists from the Third Battalion. These had been at the Depot for a long time, and some of them stood badly in need of a little active service. Others, again, were new hands altogether—the ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... O days from your fathomless deeps. In cabin'd ships at sea. Out of the cradle endlessly rocking. Sands at seventy. The sobbing of the bells. Soon shall the winter's foil be here. Thou mother with thy equal brood. To the leaven'd soil they trod. Yon tides with ceaseless swell. When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed. Sparkles from the wheel. Brother of all with generous hand. As a strong ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler

... as water, thou shalt not excel. How often would I have gathered my children together, as a hen doth gather her broodunder her wings! The Kingdom of God is like a grain of mustard seed, is like leaven hidden in three measures of meal. Their lives glide on like rivers that water the woodland. Mercy droppeth as the gentle rain from ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... character of the warm peasant of Berne, who, to say truth, has not much to conceal from us, and I will turn my searching looks into the soul of this pious pilgrim, the reverend Conrado, whose unction may well go near to be a leaven sufficient to lighten all in the bark of their burthens of backslidings. Thou earnest the penitence and prayers of many sinners, besides some merchandise of ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... of course, against the collective church of the community or the nation, rather than against any local congregation. It may be that there are a hundred churches in a city, and that ten of them are working efficiently to leaven society with Christian ideas and principles, while the other ninety are content to fill up their membership lists and furnish the consolations of religion to the people who make up their congregations. ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden

... facts throughout with a liberal leaven of fiction, tells us that "this is the precise moment in which Cesare Borgia, fixing his eyes upon the Roman Caesar, takes him definitely for his model and adopts the device 'Aut Caesar, ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... followed by feeble prayer and moderate speech on behalf of those who were bound. And the churches themselves began to feel that they were "an offence" to the world. Every note of sympathy that fell from the pulpit was amplified into a grand chorus of pity for the slave. And thus the leaven of human sympathy hid in the orthodox church of New England, leavened the whole body until a thousand pulpits were ablaze with a righteous condemnation of the wrongs of the slaves. Even Dr. Channing came to the conclusion that something should be "So done as not to put in jeopardy the peace ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... nothing lost; Therefore, not blood. Above or underneath, What matter, brothers, if ye keep your post On duty's side? As sword returns to sheath, So dust to grave, but souls find place in Heaven. Heroic daring is the true success, The eucharistic bread requires no leaven; And though your ends were hopeless, we should bless Your cause as holy. Strive—and, having striven, Take, ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... having finished his visit to his patient did not prolong it. He picked up his hat, remarked that he "didn't doubt so clever a young man could find a fitting place, if he gave what was left of his mind to it," and bowed himself out, leaving the leaven of his sensible advice ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond

... of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... would be languid, our march would be slow, were it not for the revolutionary leaven which Godwin's generation set fermenting. They taught how malleable and plastic is the human mind. They saw that by a resolute effort to change the environment of institutions and customs which educate us, we can change ourselves. They liberated us not so much from "priests ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... can sing the sweetest and most spiritual songs in praise of Mary and the saints. I would have him in our choir at Sweetheart Abbey, where we have much need both of a voice such as his, and also of a youth whose sanctity and innocence cannot fail to leaven with the grace of the spirit the neophytes of our college, and the consideration of whom may even bring repentance into older and more ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... blanket on the ardour of the volunteering, which, it is well known, was very readily done; for the ministers, on seeing such a pressing forward to join the banners of the kingdom, had a dread and regard to the old leaven of Jacobinism, and put a limitation on the number of the armed men that were to be allowed to rise in every place—a most ill-advised prudence, as was made manifest by what happened among us, of which I will now rehearse the particulars, and ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... vitality of the British League of Nations. And not even Mr. Rowell could have surpassed it for breadth of view on that subject, Clark looked at the Empire from within outwards. He saw in it the expression of a great race of people working the leaven upon other races; a mighty confederacy of ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... undeceive the world by unravelling that whole mystery of iniquity' (p. 5). He lays bare roguery enough, and in a spirit, it seems, of real sorrow. Nevertheless there are passages which are not free from the leaven of hypocrisy, and there are, I suspect, statements which are at least partly false. Johnson, indeed, looked upon him as little less than a saint; but then, as Sir Joshua Reynolds tells us, though 'Johnson was not easily imposed ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... this: To prove to high-mettled lads, American, and English as well, that forest quarters, to be the most jovial quarters on earth, need not be made a shambles. Sensation may reach its finest pitch, excitement be an unfailing fillip, and fun the leaven which leavens the camping-trip from start to finish, even though the triumph of killing for triumph's sake be ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... cause, however, wrought to bring about the 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, ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... power, like popular education, was widely diffused. Practically Massachusetts was almost independent of the mother-country. Its people were purely English, of sound yeoman stock, with an abundant leaven drawn from the best of the Puritan gentry; but their original character had been somewhat modified by changed conditions of life. A harsh and exacting creed, with its stiff formalism and its prohibition of wholesome recreation; excess in the pursuit ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... except for a proud little colony here and there, the old, aristocratic Spanish blood is sunk in that of the conquering race. Then there was an influx of intellectual French people, largely overlooked in the histories of the early days; and this Latin leaven ...
— The City That Was - A Requiem of Old San Francisco • Will Irwin

... on a conviction that our taste for barren reality is our chief error. If we could only believe forever, what a good world it could be—"a world of fine fabling," indeed! Also I wondered what J. Rodney Potts might have to apprehend from the leaven of fact in the ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... neighborhood to renewed 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 in ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... soon disappeared, their influence was more lasting. Their mission, it has been well said, was to be leaders and energizers of society—"the little leaven that leaveneth the whole lump." The peoples of medieval Europe owed much to the courage and martial spirit, the genius for government, and the reverence for law, of the Normans. In one of the most significant movements of the Middle Ages—the crusades—they took ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... of Devon, They have honey-coloured hair. Where the sun has worked like leaven. Turning russet tones to fair, And they hold you by the strands of it, And drive ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... lolling tongue he runs to try If the horse-trough be not dry. The milk is settled in the pans, And supper messes in the cans; In the hovel carts are wheel'd, And both the colts are drove a-field; The horses are all bedded up, And the ewe is with the tup. The snare for Mister Fox is set, The leaven laid, the thatching wet, And Bess has slink'd away to talk With ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... however, that she should think of death and of the sweetness of it, after her work accomplished, in the very moment of her height of triumph—to show something of a new leaven ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... they are, Gervaise!" at length the rear-admiral exclaimed. "If the whole court was culled, I question if enough honesty could be found to leaven one puritan scoundrel. Tell me if you know this hand, Oakes? I question if you ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... progress, while civic righteousness must certainly share the same fate. Such social injustice is as sure to provoke crime as stagnant water is to produce disease. Yet, in spite of this iniquitous caste system the leaven of democracy, of equality has found lodgment in the black man's mind, and he craves the chance to become all that the white man has become and to do all that the white man does by virtue of his American freedom and citizenship. Nothing less ...
— The Ultimate Criminal - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 17 • Archibald H. Grimke

... of the movements that detached the English hierarchy from the Roman see had for one inevitable result to leaven the English church as a lump with the leaven of Herod. That considerable part of the clergy and people that moved to and fro, without so much as the resistance of any very formidable vis inertiae, with the change of the monarch or of the monarch's caprice, might leave ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... then, thou 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

... like Tolstoi, can gracefully stoop to conquer; and those who shall be ordained to revolutionize conditions will rise from the ranks, even as did Booker T. Washington. This, of course, is the ultimate object of settlement work: to prepare the leaven for ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... after all, 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

... autosuggestion are not permanent. This objection is really artificial, arising from the fact that we ignore the true nature of autosuggestion and regard it merely as a remedy. When we employ autosuggestion to heal a malady our aim is so to leaven the Unconscious with healthful thoughts, that not only will that specific malady be excluded, but all others with it. Autosuggestion should not only remove a particular form of disease, but the ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks

... This leaven of Americans affected the whole. They had been accustomed to the fostering hand of the National Government in the matter of improving means of transportation and communication in the older States from which they had migrated, and they did not hesitate to ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... Rye 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 ...
— The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet • Hannah Wolley

... rather than have a famous scholar at my table, unsupported by another famous scholar. Doctor Middleton would ride down a duke when the wine is in him. He will terrify my poor flock. The truth is, we can't leaven him: I foresee undigested lumps of conversation, unless you ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... to Robert Leaven, the coachman; and I've a little girl besides Bobby there, that I've ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... more 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 shall ...
— Measure for Measure • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... generation as can recollect the last twenty or twenty-five years of the eighteenth century, will be fully sensible of the truth of this statement;—especially if their acquaintance and connexions lay among those, who, in my younger time, were facetiously called 'folks of the old leaven,' who still cherished a lingering, though hopeless, attachment, to the house of Stuart. This race has now almost entirely vanished from the land, and with it, doubtless, much absurd political prejudice—but also, many living examples of singular and disinterested attachment to the principles ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... 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 Parts."[21] Eventually, however, in 1696, the Yearly Meeting advised "That ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois

... 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 ...
— Symposium • Plato

... of gratification and pride to behold a laborer in the vineyard of letters escaping from the envy, the jealousy, the rivalry, the leaven of all uncharitableness, with which literary intercourse is so often polluted. The writers of England have been tardy in their justice, not only to the progress, circumstances and customs of America, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... 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 ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... good. Delusion springs from this, that the wicked are in earnest and the good are lukewarm. Good is stronger than evil. A single really good man in an ill place is like a little yeast in a gallon of dough; it can leaven the mass. If St. Paul or even George Whitfield had been in Lot's place all those years there would have been more than fifty good men in Sodom; but this is out of place. I want you to give me the benefit of your experience, Evans. When I went to Robinson and spoke kindly to him he trembled ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... majestic mass is the 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, ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard

... despatches are full of complaints of the soldiers, of the want of stores, and the need of honest, free men to cultivate the soil by way of a leaven to the hundreds of convicts who were arriving every year, he, like Phillip, believed that New South Wales would ultimately become a prosperous colony. More than this, it was under Hunter that Bass and Flinders did most of their surveying; that ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery

... earth am I, and thou the heaven, The mass am I, and thou the leaven, No other heaven do I want but thee, Oh ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... every denomination to unite their endeavors and to lend a helping hand in carrying on so charitable a design; and we are heartily sorry if party spirit and party differences shall at all obstruct the progress of it; or the old leaven of this land ferment upon this occasion, and give a watchful adversary opportunity so to turn the course of endeavors into another channel as to defeat the design of spreading the gospel among the heathen. To prevent which, and encourage unanimity and zeal in prosecuting ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... seems to set in against the flowing tide of admiration for everything Greek;[747] but it was too late to arrest the flood. All that could be hoped for was that in the lives and minds of the wiser Romans the new Greek civilisation might so leaven the old Roman ignorance that no permanent harm should be done to the instincts of virtus and pietas: and to some extent this hope was realised. But for the masses there was no such hope. What Greek teaching reached their minds was almost wholly ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... believers nearly constituted the whole of the population of the kingdoms of antiquity. Even those who professed to have shaken off the prejudices of their education, and to rise above the absurdities of paganism, had still some of the old leaven adhering to them. One of the last acts of the life of Socrates, was to order the sacrifice of a cock ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... hand on 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 Law, which ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey

... 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 of the ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... fullest acknowledgments will be given in the case of the stores, and that their owner will be paid for them liberally and ungrudgingly. And, granting that much of what you have said is true, and that the leaven of self-seeking is to be found in every man's nature, and that greed is the predominating motive with those men who, more than others, work for the building-up of an Empire and the profitable union of Britain with her Colonies, don't you think that there may ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... 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 I'm quietly smoking ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... the rams to pasture on the margin of the river. After breakfast, which was but a sorry meal, we determined to make our first attempt at baking. Simon, a man of dauntless resolution, undertook the task, using a piece of stale bread as leaven. It was a serious business, and we all helped or looked on; but the result, notwithstanding the multitude of councillors, was a lamentable failure. Better success, fortunately, attended the labours of Hannibal, who boiled a piece of salt pork with ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... 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 of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Galiani). No new thought, nothing of the nature of a finer turning or better expression of an old thought, not even a proper history of what has been previously thought on the subject: an IMPOSSIBLE literature, taking it all in all, unless one knows how to leaven it with some mischief. In effect, the old English vice called CANT, which is MORAL TARTUFFISM, has insinuated itself also into these moralists (whom one must certainly read with an eye to their motives if one MUST read them), concealed ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... in his efforts to arrange Mr. Leaven worth's manuscript for the press," I said; "I will give Mr. Clavering an opportunity to form my acquaintance; and I will listen, if Miss Leavenworth chooses to make me her confidant in any way. But any hearkening at doors, surprises, unworthy ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green



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



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