"Tasteless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... did not find anything that really pleased him until he paused at a fat sugar-bowl. Since the sugar was sweet he couldn't help liking that, though it did seem somewhat tasteless to him after ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey
... but the elements of almost epic grandeur in the contest between Rome and Hannibal all disappear amid masses of tedious machinery. Without any invention or constructive power of his own, Silius copies with tasteless pedantry all the outworn traditions of the heroic epic. What Homer or Virgil has done, he must needs do too. The Romans are the Dardanians or the Aeneadae: Juno interferes in Hannibal's favour, and Venus, hidden in a cloud, watches the battle of the Trebia from a hill. Hannibal ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... were sufficient to leach the poisonous principle; but if the initial process of roasting the nuts was omitted—as in some districts—the meal was submitted to the purification of water for as long as two months, when it would be tasteless. It was then ground on the nether stone by the Moo-ki (almost a perfect sphere), used with a rotary action, until reduced to flour-like fineness, when it was made into flat or sausage-shaped cakes, wrapped in green leaves and baked. The intractability of the Cycad is ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... standard for him against which very few women can struggle, besides effecting for him a disengagement of his affections, his sense of beauty, and his idealism from his specifically sexual impulses. This makes him a standing puzzle to the huge number of uncultivated people who have been brought up in tasteless homes by commonplace or disagreeable parents, and to whom, consequently, literature, painting, sculpture, music, and affectionate personal relations come as modes of sex if they come at all. The word passion means ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... plums, or cherries, the process is much the same. Use the finest fruit, ripe but not over-ripe. There is no greater waste of strength, time, and sugar, than in preserving tasteless, inferior fruit. Pare peaches and drop instantly in water to save discoloration. Do the same with pears, pit cherries, saving the juice. Wash and prick plums if large—if small, merely wash and drain. Halve clear stone peaches but put in a few seeds for the flavor. Leave ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... the Paris fashions of the Second Empire, and he might have found consolation for the tragedies of 1870, if he had known, as has been asserted, that they portended deliverance from the thraldom. France, so we are told, purged and purified by the baptism of fire, shook off its tasteless frippery, and sought a chaster and purer mode.... Thus elevated and touched to higher issues, the modistes of France, when once the Third Republic had settled down, made quite nice and simple dresses for a few years, and ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... not a lively recollection of bramble hunting, nutting, or merry expeditions for blueberries, wild strawberries, raspberries, and other wild fruits? You might walk many a mile through the sal jungles without meeting fruit of any kind, save the dry and tasteless wild ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... and fearlessly meet the light, even though it flow from the sun of truth. Yet, as, without such generous courage, nothing of value can be learned or done, I hope to see many capable of it; willing that others should think their sayings crude, shallow, or tasteless, if, by such unpleasant means, they may attain real health and vigor, which need no aid from rouge or candle-light, to brave the ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... also very good; but when you go south, into Lake Erie or Michigan, the quality of the fish deteriorates. Few travellers ever taste a white-fish in perfection. As eaten upon hotel-tables at Buffalo or Chicago, it is a poor and tasteless fish. But, as found at the old French boarding-houses at Mackinac or the Sault, or, better still, cooked fresh from the icy waters on the rocky shores of Superior, it is, to our thinking, the best fish that swims,—better than the true salmon or brook-trout. The famous ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Life had become stagnant, a tasteless thing. He was keen for the open stretches, honing to be gone down the wind. He fretted and ate out his heart for the freedom of the range. Old Anita, passing at some work or other, stopped and gazed at him for ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... we were all three sucking the pulpy fruit. In an ordinary way we should have found it tasteless enough: as it was I thought it the most delicious thing I had ever tasted. After three days spent without food or water, in the desert, one is not particular. While we were still eating the fruit, the lady of my vision set her companion to work to partially ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... keeps the place up with loving care. Sham philosophers, studying themselves while they profess to be studying humanity, call these glorious things extravagance. They grovel before cotton prints and the tasteless designs of modern industry, as if we were greater and happier in these days than in those of Henri IV., Louis XIV., and Louis XVI., monarchs who have all left the stamp of their reigns upon Les Aigues. What ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... dozed off over her rolling-pin from sheer exhaustion. But then she earned far more than usual. Including tips from customers (the baker merely acted as a contractor for the families whose flour he transformed into flat, round, tasteless Passover cakes, or "matzoths") she saved up, during the period, a little over twenty rubles. With a part of this sum she ordered a new coat for me and bought me a new cap. I remember that coat very well. It was of ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... orchards were neglected and the apples fed to pigs or left to rot; and in the city, the fruit-stalls were loaded with the monotonous tasteless apples of commerce, cold-stored from time unknown; and those that were cheap were nasty, and those that were not nasty and not cheap were by mo means as high in quality as they ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... detected you, let me not lose the advantage of my discovery. I am equally weary of confinement with yourself, and not less desirous of knowing what is done or suffered in the world. Permit me to fly with you from this tasteless tranquillity, which will yet grow more loathsome when you have left me. You may deny me to accompany you, but cannot ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... sensibility, to the slightest invasions of contempt. Though possessed of fortitude to stand unmoved the expected bursts of an earthquake, yet of feelings so exquisitely poignant as to agonize under the slightest disappointment. Broken rest, tasteless meals, and causeless anxieties shorten life, and render it unfit for active employments; prolonged vigils and intense application still further contract his span, and make his ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... agree with you there," replied Harry; "one never knows who may be listening. And now let us turn our attention to breakfast, and see whether we have anything different this morning from that miserable and tasteless meal porridge and ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... summer yet one more week, until the forenoon of September 7th, and then falls the frost, and that unfaltering will renders its supreme submission to the will of God."* Unusually checkered his life had been, and yet for Lanier as for Timrod poetry (and music) had "turned life's tasteless waters into wine, and flushed them through and through with purple tints."** The body was taken to Mr. Lanier's home in Baltimore, thence to the Church of St. Michael and All Angels, where services were conducted by the rector, the Rev. Dr. William Kirkus. It was then buried in Greenmount ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... strange anomalies which I had so far met with on Mars, Sola returned bearing both food and drink. These she placed on the floor beside me, and seating herself a short ways off regarded me intently. The food consisted of about a pound of some solid substance of the consistency of cheese and almost tasteless, while the liquid was apparently milk from some animal. It was not unpleasant to the taste, though slightly acid, and I learned in a short time to prize it very highly. It came, as I later discovered, not from an animal, as there is only one mammal ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... In the case, however, of oil being used as a substitute for butter, it is of the utmost importance that the oil be pure and fresh. We here have to overcome a deeply-rooted English prejudice. Pure oil is absolutely tasteless, and it has often been remarked by high-class authorities that really pure butter ought to be the same. We fear, however, that purity in food is the exception rather than the rule, as at no period of this country's history ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... artificial taste would imagine. I must repeat, that it cannot be acquired without persevering practice. The best time to set vigorously about such practice would be when you have but just listened with dismay to the injuries inflicted on some favourite poet by the laboured or tasteless reading of ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... slightly or not at all lobed, quite glabrous on both sides, teeth obtuse and alternately large and small; bunches large, loose or compact, irregular conical; berries from small to large, cylindrical, flattened on the ends, very hard and tasteless." ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... embers, accompanied by potatoes. This precious tubercle, in its savage state, only reminded us very slightly of its cultivated progeny. The pulp, instead of being floury, is soft, transparent, and almost tasteless. That, however, did not prevent us from eating them, and doing justice to ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... were made to rear their unwieldy height in the air, and were strengthened, stiffened, and supported, against the envious winds, to the torment of the wearer, and to the disfigurement of his person. All through the first half of the tasteless reign of good old George III., did this horrible covering disguise the beau's head; and the effect of it may still be judged of by his grandchildren, when they contemplate, not without awe, the rubicund figure of some metropolitan church-beadle with his large-caped coat, silver-headed cane, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... me lies a mass of shapeless days, Unseparated atoms, and I must Sort them apart and live them. Sifted dust Covers the formless heap. Reprieves, delays, There are none, ever. As a monk who prays The sliding beads asunder, so I thrust Each tasteless particle aside, and just Begin again the task which never stays. And I have known a glory of great suns, When days flashed by, pulsing with joy and fire! Drunk bubbled wine in goblets of desire, And felt the whipped blood laughing as it runs! Spilt is that liquor, my too hasty ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... dandelions are to garden spinach and chicory what the wild duck is to the tame, or the hare to the rabbit. And it is a fact that garden plants are generally poor and tasteless, while those that grow wild have a certain astringency and pleasant bitter flavour. It is the venison of vegetables that you ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... usual habit, I lingered long over my dinner; at its close I poured out a full glass of fine Lacrima Cristi, and secretly mixing with it a dose of a tasteless but powerful opiate, I called my valet and bade him drink it and wish me joy. He did so readily, draining the contents to the last drop. It was a tempestuous night; there was a high wind, broken through by heavy sweeping gusts of rain. Vincenzo ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... through the several kinds of my exotics, I had a mind to re-examine them after cooling, but could make nothing of any of my greens but the spinach. I tried several berries and nuts too, but, save a few sort of nuts, they were all very tasteless. Then I began to review the fruits, and could find but two sorts that I had any the least hopes from. I then laid the best by and threw the others away. After this process, which took me up near a whole day, and clearing my house of good-for-nothings, I returned to reexamine ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... I did not stir out. Then, for the first time, I discovered how far I had travelled. My life felt utterly tasteless. Whatever I touched I wanted to thrust away. I felt myself waiting—from the crown of my head to the tips of my toes —waiting for something, somebody; my blood kept tingling ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... courted popularity by affecting privacy! His Letters shew him to have lived in a continual fever of petty vanity, and to have been a finished literary coquet. He seems always to say, "You will find nothing in the world so amiable as Nature and me: come, and admire us." His poems are indifferent and tasteless, except his Pastoral Ballad, his Lines on Jemmy Dawson, and his School-mistress, which last is a ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... tasteless food, and sitting afterward, coatless and thoughtless, in rocking-chairs prickly with inane decorations, listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical things about the excellence of Ford automobiles, and viewing themselves as the greatest ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... often regretted that the sculptured marble of Greece and Egypt,—classic urns, to whose keeping the ashes of the dead had been consigned, and antique sarcophagi, roughened with hieroglyphics,—should have been so often condemned to the lime-kiln by the illiterate Copt or tasteless Mohammedan; and I could not help experiencing a somewhat similar feeling here. The urns and sarcophagi, many times more ancient than those of Greece and Egypt, and that told still more wondrous stories, lay thickly ranged in ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Jokes; Lingerie; Message/Bulletin Boards; Murder/Suicide; News; Nudity; Personal Information; Personals; Pornography; Profanity; Recreation/Entertainment; School Cheating Information; Search Engines; Search Terms; Sex; Sports; Stocks; Swimsuits; Tasteless/Gross; Tobacco; Violence; and Weapons. The "Nudity" category purports to block only "non-pornographic" images. The "Sex" category is intended to block only those depictions of sexual activity that are ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... slave at our desks, in our workshops, to make a home for those we love; we give up our pleasures, we give up our rest. We toil in our kitchen from morning till night, and we render the whole feast tasteless for want of a ha'porth of salt—for want of a soupcon of amiability, for want of a handful of kindly words, a touch of caress, a ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... starch to be carried into another bark vat below. Fresh water passes slowly through this lower vat, removing the bitter sap from the flour, which is deposited on the bottom of the vat. From time to time this is scraped up and placed in baskets where it is kept until needed. The flour, while rather tasteless, is nutritious and in years of drought is the chief source of ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... ardent piety of the Middle Age were happily combined with modern art and civilisation; that the Puritan hatred of the Court, of stage-plays, of the fashions of the time, was only 'a scrupulous and fantastical niceness'; barbaric and tasteless, if sincere; if insincere, the basest hypocrisy; that the stage-plays, though coarse, were no worse than Shakspeare, whom everybody reads; and that if the Stuarts patronised the stage they also raised it, and exercised a purifying censorship. And many more who do not go all these lengths with the ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... green herb, called Sergalso or cresses by the Portuguese, resembling water-cresses, and so thickly that hardly can the water be seen, neither can ships make their way through it but with a stiff gale. This herb produces berries, resembling white gooseberries, but entirely tasteless. No one knows how this herb grows, as there is no ground or land about the place where it is found floating on the water, neither can it be supposed to come from the bottom, as the sea is very deep, and is in many places quite unfathomable. This ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... castor oil: one tasteless—pour facon de parler—for my own use and cases of serious illness; another in large tins, of the commonest kind, with an odour that would kill an ox, which I used occasionally for punishment on my men when they ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... a draught of the water, which was very cold and tasteless, and reminded the monk of his disorder in the reins, to which a similar potation might possibly be efficacious. To this suggestion the monk answered that he would certainly try the water some other time; but that at present ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... also was unsuccessful. The great trouble here is a dark shiny residue, which, while tasteless, is very disagreeable to look at. In the preparation of coffee by boiling, two and a half times as much matter ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the house, it had been furnished, once for all, in the worst style of that most tasteless period of household art, which prevailed from 1840 to 1870; and it would be impossible to say which were most hideous, the carpets or the chandeliers, the curtains or the chairs and sofas; crude colors, lumpish and meaningless forms, abounded in a rich and horrible discord. The old ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... pain in the chest, an ache in the belly and thighs, an unfulfilled longing that destroyed sleep and made food tasteless. Love was supposed to be pleasant and exciting. She could remember every word ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... just now from acute 'megalomania.' The abnormal self-conceit, the inflated national consciousness, express themselves in a thousand ways, some of which are naive and harmless, whilst others are grossly offensive. They show themselves in a craving for titles and in gaudy and tasteless public buildings;[5] in the thousand and one statues of Bismarck and William I.; they reveal themselves in the articles of journalists and in the writings of historians; but above all, the German ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... A hundred or more ladies were present; but stiff civility prevailed. None of the guests seemed to know each other. There was no friendly talking. There were no men guests. There was three hours' agony of squatting, a careful adjustment of expensive kimonos, weak tea and tasteless cakes, a blank staring at a dull ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... does but establish the exclusiveness, the puritanism, the ascetic gloom which, in the period between Aurelius and the first Christian emperor, characterised a church under misunderstanding or oppression, driven back, in a world of tasteless controversy, inwards upon herself. ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... of sickness, and the difficulty with which she regained it;—how during the day, nothing could tempt her to eat, while all night long she would dream of rich banquets, of which she eagerly desired to partake, but which changed to tasteless morsels, when she lifted the inviting food to her lips. For a time she strove against her feelings, but at last gave up, and ringing for the cook, directed her to broil a couple of thin slices of ham very nicely, make a good cup ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... And the tiresome, tasteless ribbon-beds of our day were preceded in earlier centuries by figured beds of diverse-colored earths—and of both we can say with Bacon, "they be but toys, you may see as good ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... to eat his breakfast when it was pushed under his cell door. The messes that were daily dabbed into the compartments of the tin tray were never appetizing; that morning his emotions made everything as tasteless as sawdust. But he ate for strength's sake; he did not know what form of endurance ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... offices, and partly used as the Mayor's Court, the roof of which still retains its old character." It was formerly known as the Old Market Hall, but the business of the market has been transferred to the huge but tasteless building of brick erected at the top of Mardol in 1869, the erection of which caused the destruction of several picturesque old houses which can ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... supposed, my body had absorbed it by contact, which would account for the movement being stilled. I now took the second little phial, and prepared it as I had been told. This time the fluid was motionless. I noticed it was very faintly tinged with amber. I drank it off—it was perfectly tasteless. Once in bed, I seemed to have no power to think any more—my eyes closed readily—the slumber of a year-old child, as Heliobas had said, came upon me with resistless and sudden force, and I remembered ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... seem to get furtive and fleeting glimpses which I take to be the weariness and condolence of age; indifference to sights and things once brisk with interest; tasteless stale stuff which used to be champagne; the boredom of travel: the secret sigh behind the public smile, the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a kind of nut, not much unlike a nutmeg, but smaller, and in a great measure tasteless, but yielding a red juice when chewed, which juice also is used by the Indians in painting chintzes, so much admired in Europe. The tree which bears this nut is very straight, and has leaves like those of the cocoa-nut tree. The betel is a plant producing ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... made familiar, watches his approach, Comes at his call, and serves him for a friend; To wear out time in numbering to and fro The studs that thick emboss his iron door, Then downward and then upward, then aslant And then alternate, with a sickly hope By dint of change to give his tasteless task Some relish, till, the sum exactly found In all directions, he begins again:— Oh comfortless existence! hemmed around With woes, which who that suffers would not kneel And beg for exile or the pangs of death? That man should thus encroach on fellow-man, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... of vivacity and wit; the acidity of the lemon will very aptly figure pungency of raillery, and acrimony of censure; sugar is the natural representative of luscious adulation and gentle complaisance; and water is the proper hieroglyphick of easy prattle, innocent and tasteless. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... fashionable women are bitterly reprehended for copying the dress of the "Anonymas," who establish the very pronounced fashions of Paris. Half of them do not know what model they have taken. The other half accept the various and tasteless costumes, not because they are devised by "Anonyma," but because they are striking. There is something in the commonplaceness of fashionable life which smothers all originality of thought, of action, even of device in costume; and the women who ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... Nancy was a tasteless affair, and we spent little time at table, having the pipes and wine brought into the library. As we sat there the sound of Jamie's violin came sobbing up from the Burnside as he played for his stricken ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... the trading cities of the French and Italian coasts. The erection of San Siro marked the wealth and devotion of its citizens. Ruined as it is, like all the churches of the Riviera, by the ochre and stucco of a tasteless restoration, San Siro still retains much of the characteristic twelfth-century work of its first foundation. The alliance of the city with Genoa was that of a perfectly free State. The terms of the treaty which was concluded between ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... clouds before a soft fitful breeze; innumerable finches fluttered and pecked above it, and bent the countless flower-heads. Far away, one tall tree rose above the level thistle-ocean. A strange longing seized me to go and tear it down. The forest leaves seemed tasteless; my stomach sickened at them; nothing but that tree would satisfy me; and descending, I slowly brushed my way, with half-shut eyes, through the tall thistles which buried even ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... a slave: "I am no more worthy to be called thy son, make me as one of thy hired servants." Any one who has lived in the excitement of the world, and then tried to settle down at once to quiet duty, knows how true that is. To borrow a metaphor from Israel's desert life, it is a tasteless thing to live on manna after you have been feasting upon quails. It is a dull cold drudgery to find pleasure in simple occupation when life has been a succession of strong emotions. Sonship it is not; it is slavery. A son obeys in ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... in addition I suffered disappointments outside my family life, I had great difficulty in bearing up. I hate to speak of it, but it is the truth—before I saw you, I picked up a revolver more than once for a very definite purpose. Life weighed upon me like lead. It had turned stale and tasteless. The sight of you, Ingigerd, and, strange to say, the wreck, which I experienced not only symbolically but in actuality, taught me to value life again. You and bare existence—the two things I saved from the wreck. Once more I stand on terra firma. I love the soil. I should like to fondle ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... but a chimney, and its lines are graceful. Fig. f, though ugly in the abstract, might be used with effect in situations where perfect simplicity would be too conspicuous; but both e and f are evidently the awkward efforts of a tasteless nation, to produce something original: they have lost the chastity which we admired in a, without obtaining the grace and spirit of l and o. In fact, they ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... I had made up my mind early in my career that tobacco and beer were for millionaires. Coffee was the grand consoler, and with coffee, soup, bread, I managed to get through my work. I ate at a cafe frequented by cabmen, and for ten cents I was given soup, the meat of the soup—tasteless stuff—bread, and a potato. What more did an ambitious young man want? There were many not so well off as I. I took two meals a day, the first, coffee and milk with a roll. Then I starved until dark for my soup meat. I recall wintry days when I stayed in bed to keep warm, for I never could indulge ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... he found himself alone for the second time that day. He ate his roast in gloomy silence. It seemed dry and tasteless. Even his favourite desert of plum pudding failed to rouse him from his dark meditations, and he rose from the ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... mispent my time in the service of the community."—Buchanan's Syntax, Pref., p. xxviii. "The leaves of maiz are also called blades."—Webster's El. Spelling-Book, p. 43. "Who boast that they know what is past, and can foretel what is to come."—Robertson's Amer., Vol. i, p. 360. "Its tasteless dullness is interrupted by nothing but its perplexities."— Abbott's Teacher, p. 18. "Sentences constructed with the Johnsonian fullness and swell."—Jamieson's Rhet., p. 130. "The privilege of escaping from his prefatory dullness and prolixity."—Kirkham's Elocution, p. iv. "But ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... behind cedar counters, among stores of Bryant's safety matches, Huntley and Palmers' biscuits, and Allsopp's pale ale. A church had been built, the shell at least, and partly floored, with a very simple, but not tasteless, altar; the Abbe had a good house, with a gallery, jalousies, and white china handles to the doors. The mighty palm in the centre of Gordon Square had a neat railing round it, as befitted the Palladium of ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... Portugal is far less rich in buildings of interest than is Spain. The earthquake has destroyed many, but more have perished through tasteless rebuilding during the eighteenth century when the country again regained a small part of the trade and wealth lost during the ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... Master Scarlett Trent," he said, "I will tell you why I crave for wealth. You are a young and an ignorant man. Amongst other things you do not know what money will buy. You have your coarse pleasures I do not doubt, which seem sweet to you! Beyond them—what? A tasteless and barbaric display, a vulgar generosity, an ignorant and purposeless prodigality. Bah! How different it is with those who know! There are many things, my young friend, which I learned in my younger days, and amongst ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a wondrous medicine, and those who drink it go crazed with love for the giver. It is compounded according to the Master's own receipt, from very costly tasteless herbs that grow only in ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... that half a dozen other (longer) scores will be in print. "Ha, der Verruchte!" ["Ah, the wretch!"] we can then say, as in "Tannhauser." Happily, however, no journey to Rome is necessary to obtain my absolution. We only wish to have done with so much outcry and tasteless chatter. ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... a large party at the mansion; many guests from the neighbourhood and from the capital had arrived. There were ladies with tasteful and with tasteless dresses; the big hall was quite crowded with people. The clergymen stood humbly together in a corner, and looked as if they were preparing for a funeral, but it was a festival—only the amusement had not yet begun. A great concert ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... words of the priest, and added that far away in the north, water turned into stone very often, and fog turned into a white salt which is tasteless, but breaks in the hands and causes ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... and ensure the durability of hydraulic works. It renders the foundations and superstructure of buildings impermeable to humidity. It is admirably adapted, by its resistance to decomposition by the most powerful solvents, to the construction of sewers, and, being tasteless, it is an excellent coating to water-pipes, aqueducts, and reservoirs. When masticated and prepared, it is a substitute for costly gums as applied to numerous purposes. Combined with a small portion of ligneous ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... Hall.[*] There were critics, neither malicious nor ill-informed, who contended that such pageantry was ill-timed. They advanced against it all sorts of objections which would have been quite appropriate if the public had been bidden to witness some colossal farce or burlesque; some raree-show of tasteless oddities, or some untimely pantomime of fairy-lore. What was really intended, and was performed, at a great cost of toil and organizing skill, was the opposite of all this. All the best elements of a great and glorious ceremonial were ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... colorless, tasteless, odorless gas, forming a large part of the atmospheric air, of water, of the earth's crust and of our foods. It is absolutely essential to life, for without oxygen there can be no combustion in the animal tissues, and without combustion there can be no life. The ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... longer afforded them a seat; and when they betook themselves indoors it was discovered that the doors and windows did not shut close, and that the chimney smoked. Then came those fruits, the funeral feast of the year, mulberries and walnuts; the tasteless, juiceless walnut; the dark mulberry, juicy but severe, and mouldy withal, as gathered not from the tree, but from the damp earth. And thus that green spot itself weaned them from the love of it. Charles looked around him, and rose to depart as a conviva satur. "Edisti ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... others scrambled along as best they might with one plantation and a few score of negroes. Some dwelt in very handsome houses, picturesque and beautiful, like Gunston Hall or Stratford, or in vast, tasteless, and extravagant piles like Rosewell. Others were contented with very modest houses, consisting of one story with a gabled roof, and flanked by two massive chimneys. In some houses there was a brave show of handsome plate and china, fine furniture, and London-made carriages, ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... a bitter salt in addition, probably the nitrate of lime; the natives, in order to render it palatable and wholesome, mix the salt with the juice of a gummy plant, then place it in the sand and bake it by making a fire over it; the lime then becomes insoluble and tasteless. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... carrion, to yield up all the strength and movement of my muscles that it may become strength and movement in fin and scale and the guts of fishes. Bah! And bah! again. The champagne is already flat. The sparkle and bubble has gone out and it is a tasteless drink." ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... very, very glad of that, dear. I wish I had understood before. You see, just now, before Jack, I felt that you were hurt, displeased, by my inference from our talk this morning. You made me feel by your whole manner that you found me graceless, tasteless, to blame in some way—perhaps for speaking about it to Jack. Jack is ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... chilled to the marrow; my lips would hardly close round the pipe-stem, and even while I smoked the breath froze on my moustache, stiff and hard. My flask was full of rare country whisky, fiery hot from the still; but it seemed at last to have lost all strength, and was nearly tasteless. I would have given anything for a brisk trot or rattling gallop to break the monotonous foot-pace, but the reasons before stated forbade the idea: there was nothing for it, but to plod steadily onwards. Walter himself suffered a good deal in hands and feet; but the Alabama ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... nothing is dearer than liberty to men, with which, the barren rock is able to afford its joys, and without which, the glorious fun shines upon them but in vain, and all the sweets and delicacies of life are tasteless and unenjoyed; what punishment can be more severe than the loss of so great a blessing? But if to this deprivation of liberty, we add the agonizing pangs of banishment; and if to the complicated stings of both, we add ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... false custom, Immoral ditties are their delight; Vain and tasteless praise they recite; Falsehood at all times do they utter; The innocent persons they ridicule; Married women they destroy, Innocent virgins of Mary they corrupt; As they pass their lives away in vanity; Poor innocent persons they ridicule; At ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... household and cooking utensils, while its color transforms the dark visaged, disagreeable array of pots, pans, and kitchen implements into things of comparative beauty. As a metal it surpasses copper, brass, and tin in being tasteless and odorless, besides ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... giving way. My strength, my energy were failing. I kept my bed, as I had never been willing to do before if able to arise from it, until noon sometimes, for want of nervous impulse, and my food was tasteless and innutritious, even when I forced myself to eat a portion of what was placed regularly before me. It seemed to me that, long ere this, Wardour Wentworth must have ascertained my fate, and the thought ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... could not only supply that brief historical sketch of Florence which Mrs. Bowen had lamented the want of, but he could make her history speak an unintelligible, an unmistakeable tongue in every monument of the past, from the Etruscan wall at Fiesole to the cheap, plain, and tasteless shaft raised to commemorate Italian Unity in the next piazza. With sketches from his own pencil, illustrative of points which he could not otherwise enforce, he could make such a book on Florence as did not exist, such ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... whole inoffensive, but anti-semitism was rife in certain circles in France. It was the era of the Dreyfus scandal, and he indulges in one or two tasteless gibes at the expense of the Jews, which I have suppressed or at least amended. He also has a passage which might well offend the delicate susceptabilities of the less tolerant believers in Islam, although to anyone with a nodding acquaintance with ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... of carbon differ in many properties, especially in color and hardness, yet they are all odorless, tasteless solids, insoluble in water and characterized by their stability towards heat. Only in the intense heat of the electric arc does carbon volatilize, passing directly from the solid state into a vapor. Owing ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... grandmamma, to send you by the first opportunity a dish of fruit of my own painting. Pray do not now devour it in anticipation, for I cannot promise that you will not find it sadly tasteless in reality. If so, please excuse it, for the sake of the poor young artist. I admire to cultivate a taste for painting, and I wish to improve it; it was what my dear mother admired and loved, and ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... and I questioned him, whereupon he told me that the drug, being tasteless, was given in food or drink, and that the victim was seized with a terrible and immeasurable sadness and depth of despair, in which life appeared too horrible to endure, and which the unfortunate always ended by seizing a weapon of some sort and killing himself; and the chief, being of an inquiring ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... interpolated English popular songs, which suited Mozart's music just as a pitch-plaster would suit the face of the Venus de' Medici. The whole opera was, moreover, arranged by a certain Mr. Bishop; that is, adapted to English ears by means of the most tasteless and shocking alterations. The English national music, the coarse, heavy melodies of which can never be mistaken for an instant, has to me, at least, something singularly offensive, an expression of brutal feeling ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... and let me take off these tasteless kisses the maid gave you; may we not join lips ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... Rallywood justice, he was far more occupied with this last thought than with the things which bore more directly on his own prospects and future. At this period his life was comparatively tasteless and void of interest; there was nothing to look forward to, and the recent past meant extremes of heat and cold, long solitary rounds ridden by night, and days rendered so far alike by iron-handed rule and method that one was driven to mark the lapse of time ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... cost her so much money and pains to procure, and it was not pleasant to see Mrs. Duncombe and Miss Moy hawking the tickets about, like regular touters, nor the most beautiful things drawn by the most vulgar and tasteless people. ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... roses, camellias, and every tree and plant that you can think of. It is really a bewilderingly lovely garden, and we wandered through its paths joyously until we came suddenly upon some artificial grottos at one end overlooking the lake. These remarkable creations are so utterly tasteless, with masses of bristling shellwork and crude, ungainly statues, that we wondered how anything so inartistic could find a home upon Italian soil. The children, however, found delight in the hideous grottos, were sure that they had been robbers' dens, and ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... of this stale synthetic stuff! Real food, in place of these tasteless concentrates! A hot bath, ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... time in numbering to and fro, The studs that thick emboss his iron door; Then downward and then upwards, then aslant And then alternate; with a sickly hope By dint of change to give his tasteless task Some relish; till, the sum exactly found In all directions, he ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... have sold the birthright of sweet tears, And no more feel a thrill in pulse or brain, Would gladly have exchanged my tasteless years For one salt hour ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the vantage ground of any pretence to scientific discussion, and descended to tasteless personalities. Here was the opportunity for an equally personal retort, which would show an audience, for the most part neither of a mind nor of a mood to follow closely argued reasonings, that personalities were not argument, and that ridicule is a two-edged weapon. As he spoke ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... in the kitchen or on the table of the housewife, there would be no excuse for tasteless or indigestible ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... frankly, sir, that I have not a particle of faith in your minute, tasteless dose affecting me in the slightest," said the Count with a half angry glare in ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... Petterick, in her common handsomeness, was as a barmaid accustomed to beer beside a gentlewoman of exceptional refinement. She wore the showy bracelet Dan had given her that afternoon, and it shone conspicuous in its tawdry newness on her arm; her dress was tasteless too, and badly put on, and altogether she contrasted unfavourably with Beth, and Dan ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... contaminate the mind; and why entangle the grand motives of action, which reason and religion equally combine to enforce, with pitiful worldly shifts and slight of hand tricks to gain the applause of gaping tasteless fools? "Be even cautious in displaying your good sense.* It will be thought you assume a superiority over the rest of the company— But if you happen to have any learning keep it a profound secret, especially ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... to flavor the walnut trees may be divided into three different groups. Those which bear nuts of sweet kernel are the best. Those nuts which have some bitter flavor are not bad, but those which are languid or tasteless are no ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... the wild nutmeg-tree in full flower, and growing to the height of twenty or thirty feet. The nutmegs lay in plenty under the trees, and are of considerable size, though elongated in shape, and tasteless, as usual in the wild sorts. While the East India Company were sending Captain Forest from their settlement of Balambangan as far as New Guinea in search of this plant, how little they dreamed of its flourishing so near them on the island of Borneo! The soil on which they grow is a yellowish ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... innocent and useful labour improves our mental and corporeal functions. How pitiable are they, whom necessity drags to the banquet of ostentation, who secretly yawn through the lengthened vigil of unenjoyed dissipation; who rise from feverish slumbers to tasteless delights; who feel that their present course of life is a captivity; and yet look on that which would bring them freedom as disgrace. Unmolested by creditors, unvexed by the reproachful glances of those who would attribute their undoing to our extravagance, with no open enemies to insult ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... cover. Now Billy was very partial to fruit of all kinds, so he upset the marble-top table the basket was setting on and out rolled all the luscious looking fruit. He bit into a rosy cheeked peach, but of all fruit he had ever eaten, this was the most tasteless and tough. It stuck to his teeth so he could not separate his upper jaw from his lower. Just then he heard voices, and some ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... thirst. He called for a second cup; and then he tried to eat the meat and eggs; but they were like dust—it seemed they might choke him. He tried the grapes which had got hidden under the cruet, and the acid of these pleased him for an instant, but the pulp was tasteless, unpalatable. ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... swallow the food, which seemed tasteless in the extreme, and he was about to give up and hasten back to his work when his heart leaped, for there was the distant sound of the bolts being drawn, and a minute or two later the soft yellow light came slowly towards him ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... too—I could detect some of the latent feelings of the sex, as she gazed at my exquisite lace, perfect ornamental work, and unequaled fineness. Still, her education and habits triumphed, and she would not commend what she regarded as ingenuity misspent, and tasteless, because ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the strong woman who lay down upon that couch, I lay despondent, vacant of all interest in the world hitherto so exciting to me. I had not seen Monsieur since this apparent commencement of recovery. A great, good-natured nurse kept watch over me, and fed me with spiritless dainties, tasteless, unsatisfying. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... as good, in other ways," Stanley replied. "The Burmans are no fools, and I consider that snake and lizards are very much better eating than their mutton; which is tasteless stuff, ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... the least judgment in men, he will be a cold, civil, inattentive husband; a tasteless, insipid, silent companion; a tranquil, frozen, unimpassion'd lover; his insensibility will secure her from rivals, his vanity will give her all the drapery of happiness; her friends will congratulate her choice; she will be the envy of her own sex: without giving positive offence, ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... ghost of mine own youth), when I consider what I shall be at last, by the hand of death, in my grave (first, but putrefaction, and, not so much as putrefaction; I shall not be able to send forth so much as ill air, not any air at all, but shall be all insipid, tasteless, savourless, dust; for a while, all worms, and after a while, not so much as worms, sordid, senseless, nameless dust), when I consider the past, and present, and future state of this body, in this world, I am able to conceive, able to express the worst that can befall it in nature, and ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... over the lot of others, and her emotions were imprisoned. The idea of some active good within her reach, "haunted her like a passion," and another's need having once come to her as a distinct image, preoccupied her desire with the yearning to give relief, and made her own ease tasteless. She was full of confident hope about this interview with Lydgate, never heeding what was said of his personal reserve; never heeding that she was a very young woman. Nothing could have seemed more irrelevant to Dorothea than insistence on her youth and sex when ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... boiled meat when cold is often neglected as being tasteless, but, prepared as I will show you, ...
— The Belgian Cookbook • various various
... alliteration, jealously adjusted to words important in sense and rhythm, was exchanged for a profusion of alliterated syllables, often with no direct rhythmical duty to pay, and constantly leading to mere senseless and tasteless jingle, if not to the positive coining of fantastic or improper locutions to get the ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... overlooking the park and high enough to make the noise of the traffic endurable. A Swedish maid, prepossessingly white and clean, ushered her into the little drawing-room, which was furnished with more simplicity and individual taste than is usual anywhere in New York, cursed of the mania for useless and tasteless showiness. There were no messy draperies, no fussy statuettes, vases, gilt boxes, and the like. Mildred awaited the entrance of Mrs. ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... Darsie repaired to Hannah's room and surprised that tasteless young woman engaged in putting the final touches to her own costume, in the shape of an abomination designated "a neck arrangement," composed of the cheapest of machine lace and papery satin ribbon. Hannah jumped with dismay as a hand descended suddenly over her shoulder, ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Woman, the characters and speeches of a dozen or two of angels and of as many devils, are as much above my reach as my entertainment. Keep this secret for me: for if it should be known, I should be abused by every tasteless pedant, and ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... tongue variously: alledging this for his chief reason, that the Salt which is extracted by Chymists out of any mixt body whatever it be, carries away with it all its taste, and that the rest remains tasteless. He adds that the Teeth in grinding the Food, serve much to extract this Salt: And he notes by the by, that the Teeth are so necessary for preparing the aliment, that certain Animals which seem to have none, have ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... from the beginning united them still. Some reckless and unscrupulous hand had sundered them outwardly, and her instinct, guided by a hundred significant incidents, told her whose hand it had been. She fled to her little gloomy sitting-room, with its worn-out, tasteless furniture and drab walls, and fought her sorrow and despair single-handed and in her own way. She had a man's dislike for tears—though, being a woman, they came all too easily to her—and she fought against them now with all the ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... willing to get from me all they can. If they were true artists, if I could trust their taste, they should have had my secrets long ago. But they are mere money-makers, and it is better that they should enrich themselves with the tasteless rubbish they make in their furnaces, than degrade our art by cheapening what should be rare and ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... sir. It's a very fine, tasteless oil, and supposed to be very good for sick people. They make cod-liver ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... serious subsequent impairment of vitality may result. Such children should have their meals made tempting by good cooking and pleasant variety, as well as an agreeable appearance of the food. Meat which is carved in unsightly masses and vegetables which are sodden and tasteless will be refused, and an ill attempt is made to supply the deficiency in proper food by eating indigestible candy, nuts, etc. Children often have no natural liking for meat, and prefer puddings, pastry or sweets when ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... the number of zealous clergymen was small, and it is probable that if one among the small minority had owned the livings of Broxton and Hayslope in the year 1799, you would have liked him no better than you like Mr. Irwine. Ten to one, you would have thought him a tasteless, indiscreet, methodistical man. It is so very rarely that facts hit that nice medium required by our own enlightened opinions and refined taste! Perhaps you will say, "Do improve the facts a little, then; make them more accordant with those correct views ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... spot unwholesome? I do not think so. I have never known any ill effects from eating it. The spotted parts are merely flavorless and tasteless. But it is a very disgusting disease, and no one, I am sure, would care to eat eel worms with their mushrooms. Until quite recently I used to regard the black spot as the mark of some parasitic fungus, and, acting under this impression, sent ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... dear Marthe, see to it if you please in future that my slumber tonic is served just on the boil. The worthy Joanna does not understand the mysteries of the boiling process. Water, after it has passed the initiatory stage becomes flat, absolutely flat and tasteless. What I had to drink last night was so repugnant to my palate that I found it impossible to sink into repose with that calm attitude of mind which is ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... stretch. Moreover, he would swallow but little of the rough food which was all Benita was able to prepare for him; nothing, indeed, except biscuit soaked in black coffee, which she boiled over a small fire made of wood that they had brought with them, and occasionally a little broth, tasteless stuff enough, for it was only the essence of biltong, or sun-dried flesh, flavoured ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... quite inexplicable to us that this play should have failed on the stage. Yet so it was; and the author, already sore with the wounds which Collier had inflicted, was galled past endurance by this new stroke. He resolved never again to expose himself to the rudeness of a tasteless audience, and took leave ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... obedience to a signal they precipitated themselves upon the highway, there would be such a masquerade of fancy dress as the world has never seen. The Riverside Drive, then, is a sermon in stones, whose text is the uselessness of uncultured dollars. If we judged New York by this orgie of tasteless extravagance, we might condemn it for a parvenu among cities, careless of millions and sparing of discretion. We may not thus judge it New York, if it be a parvenu, is often a parvenu of taste, and has given many a proof of intelligence and refinement. The home of great luxury, it does not always, ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... slept but little, and all Friday morning I was in a burning fever. At noon I could not eat my lunch, but I tried to, manfully, and as I munched on the tasteless morsels, salt tears rained on the johnnycake I held in my hand. And even when the girls brought in big bunches of wild flowers and cornstalks, and began to decorate the platform, things appeared ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... gentry were crowded into lodging-houses and the accommodations were primitive to a degree. But soon handsome villas arose on every side; hotels appeared; places of amusement were opened. The prince himself began to build a tasteless but showy structure, partly Chinese and partly Indian in style, on the fashionable promenade ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... of Souls between these two Ladies; from what Affinity of Disposition, or mysterious Impulse, is a Secret only known to Nature and themselves. They love and hate alike; their Sympathies and Antipathies are the same; and all Joys are tasteless to the One, without the Company and Participation of the Other. Their Affection is of that tender, that delicate Nature, that the smallest Jealousie, the least Unkindness blasts it. It happen'd one Day, that Clarissa was more than commonly civil to her Husband: ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... who forbore to connect themselves with beauty lest coquetry should be near, and with wit or birth lest insolence should lurk behind them, till they have been forced by their discretion to linger life away in tasteless stupidity, and choose to count the moments by remembrance of pain instead of enjoyment ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... and then a third animal came in sight, and their movements were like that of the first. Slowly and in an irregular line they approached me, halting every two or three seconds as though feeding upon the grass, which was rank and tasteless, and at length I came to the conclusion that they were animals peculiar to Australia, and such as I had ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... is fit for use. In that state it will keep for some time. It is generally mixed with water, and made into a sort of jelly, which tastes and looks not unlike honey. It is especially useful for giving a flavour to the otherwise tasteless cassava porridge. ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... warm, the comfortable house; and, lastly, a fair portion of that bounteous mother, whose flowing breasts yield redundant sustenance for all her numerous offspring, did not some too greedily and wantonly drive their brethren from the teat. Come thou, and if I am too tasteless of thy valuable treasures, warm my heart with the transporting thought of conveying them to others. Tell me, that through thy bounty, the pratling babes, whose innocent play hath often been interrupted by my labours, may one time be amply ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... creatures; and yet I had rather read the worst of them, than be obliged to go through with this of Milton's, or the other's life of Boileau, where there is such a dull, heavy succession of long quotations of disinteresting passages, that it makes their method quite nauseous. But the verbose, tasteless Frenchman seems to lay it down as a principle, that every life must be a book, and what's worse, it proves a book without a life; for what do we know of Boileau, after all his tedious stuff? You are the only ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... back to her supper, the cup which she had gone to fetch in her hand. The strength of night made her heart timid; the touch of food was dry and tasteless upon her lips. For the first time since coming to that country she felt the pain of discouragement. What could she do against such a great, rough thing? Would it ever be worth the labor ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... spiritual nature of bread, which is recognized by all great religions—held back our march toward perfection with their hair-splitting insistence on the vitamin content of the wheat germ, but their case collapsed when tasteless colorless substitutes were triumphantly synthesized and introduced into the loaf, which for flawless purity, unequaled airiness and sheer intangible goodness was rapidly ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... cigarette and blew billows of smoke at the ceiling. His whole bearing was that of a man who had drunk the cup of life to the very dregs and found even the dregs tasteless and pale. ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... into mistaking her mind's approval for real heart affection, and she chooses the artistic man, only to find, probably, that, like the O'Flaherty, one cannot comfortably worship a lily, without a considerable amount of mutton chops as well—and in the end she may sigh for the tasteless man who yet had ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... poplars and a range of low hills; and Astara, the Russo-Persian frontier. Trade did not seem very brisk at either port. We neither landed nor took in cargo at either. A few small boats came out to the ship with fish to sell. The latter is bad and tasteless in the Caspian, with the exception of the sturgeon, which abounds during certain seasons of the year. The fisheries are nearly all leased by Russians, who extract and export the caviar. There is good shooting in the forests around Lenkoran, and tigers are occasionally ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... the faculty divine, to make them more than melancholy ghosts of what they profess to be. The attempts at humor are inexpressibly dismal; the burlesque overpowers the most determined reader, by its leaden dulness. The style is ingeniously tasteless and feeble. He who has read it through can do or dare any thing. Mr. MATHEWS suffers from several erroneous opinions. He seems to think that literary elegance consists in the very qualities which make elegance impossible. Simplicity and directness of language he abominates. When he has an idea ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... exceeded nor often came up to. I shall certainly steal it, and set it in some future poetic production, and get immortal fame by it. 'Tis when you bid the Scenes of Nature remind me of Clarinda. Can I forget you, Clarinda? I would detest myself as a tasteless, unfeeling, insipid, infamous blockhead! I have loved women of ordinary merit whom I could have loved for ever. You are the first, the only unexceptionable individual of the beauteous sex that I ever met with: and never woman more entirely possessed my soul. I ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... thou usedst to take pleasure in repetitions from the poets; but thou must be tasteless of their beauties now: yet be not discountenanced by this uncouth and unreflecting Mowbray, for, as Juvenal says, Tears are the ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson |
