“Broadway — the great sluice that washes out the dust of the gold-mines of Gotham.”
"From Each According to His Ability"
The Voice of the City (1908)
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O. Henry 49
American short story writer 1862–1910Related quotes

Haywood, William D. The Autobiography of Big Bill Haywood. New York: International Publishers, 1929, p. 171.
Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from "Tales of Power" (Chapter 10)

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
Quoted in: LIFE http://books.google.com/books?id=9EgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA9, Vol. 57, nr. 11 (11 September 1964). p. 9.
1960s

“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.”

“Turning, for them who pass, the common dust
Of servile opportunity to gold.”
Desultory Stanza.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Tolstoy's Diaries (1985) edited and translated by R. F. Christian. London: Athlone Press, Vol 2, p. 512
Context: People usually think that progress consists in the increase of knowledge, in the improvement of life, but that isn't so. Progress consists only in the greater clarification of answers to the basic questions of life. The truth is always accessible to a man. It can't be otherwise, because a man's soul is a divine spark, the truth itself. It's only a matter of removing from this divine spark (the truth) everything that obscures it. Progress consists, not in the increase of truth, but in freeing it from its wrappings. The truth is obtained like gold, not by letting it grow bigger, but by washing off from it everything that isn't gold.