"Blase" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were blase, or indifferent to novel sights, but travel was now, with them, an old story. They had been out West, to the Pacific Coast, and in far-off jungle lands, to say nothing of their trip to the place of the earthquakes, and the more recent trip ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... a lazy chap, Dan," he remarked, as if he were deeply considering the verity of that statement. "One wouldn't pick you out as a blase individual who is tired of everything the world has to offer. You are as filled with energy and nervous force as any chap I ever knew; and you ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... possibilities of a realization of his ideal. It was, perhaps, an unfortunate thing for the women, particularly as he brought to each trial a surprising freshness, which was very deceptive, and quite distinct from the 'blase' familiarity of the man of gallantry. It was this perennial virginity of the affections that most endeared him to the best women, who were prone to exercise toward him a chivalrous protection,—as of one likely to go astray, unless looked after,—and indulged in the ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... is a man," she said, sententiously. "Don't worry for fear the poor dears' hearts will be broken. Now I'll tell you something. Mrs. Jimmie's sincere indifference and my silent eye-homage have stirred these blase officers out of their usual calm. There you have the whole thing. Von Engel thinks Mrs. Jimmie's indifference is assumed, and both Von Engel and Von Furzmann are determined that my silence shall voice itself. I have no doubt that they would like to have me write it, so that they could ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... would come," she said; and as he helped her out he thrilled to the touch of her hand. At odd times before she had seemed old and blase, but now she was young and all-alive. He dismissed the taxi without a thought of his business and they hurried up to her apartments. She let herself in and as she locked the door behind them she reached up and ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... think you are a genius to think about it," I gasped, as I sat down on a very cruet Killarney branch and just as quickly sat up again, receiving comforting expressions of sympathy from across the bush, to which I paid no heed. "Those blase city men will go crazy about it. We can have the barbecue up on the bluff, where we have always had it for the political rallies, and a fish-fry and the country people in their wagons with children tumbling all over everything and—and you will make a great speech with all of ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... that blase. On the Moon, he had seen some of the old Mars of advanced native technology, now long extinct. But there was also the recent Mars of explorers and then footloose adventurers, wondering what they could find ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... at her intently, narrowly, searchingly. He saw what she herself had not seen—the natural changes that ten years had brought to her. He saw other things—that she had not suspected—a certain blase sophistication; a too bold and artful expression of the eyes—as though she knew their power and the lure of them; the slightly hard curve in the corners of her mouth; a second character lurking around her—indefinite, ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... intrigue. In the absorption of mind to which she was a prey she was no longer mistress of herself. The Colonel, interpreting to his own advantage the embarrassment evident in the Countess' manner and speech, became more ardent and pressing. The old blase diplomates, amusing themselves by watching the play of faces, had never found so many intrigues at once to watch or guess at. The passions agitating the two couples were to be seen with variations at every step in the crowded rooms, and reflected with different shades in other countenances. The spectacle ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... cynicism and effrontery of young girls regarding marriage particularly revolted her. Eager for wealth and social position, they offered themselves with brazen effrontery in the matrimonial market, immodestly displaying their charms to the lecherous, covetous eyes of blase, degenerate men. Any question of attachment, love, affection was never for a moment considered. The idea that a man could be even considered unless he were able to provide a fine establishment was laughed to scorn. The girls were all men hunters but they hunted only rich men. They called ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... three o'clock of a warm spring morning. The two legal adults converse in whispers, like bad boys kept after school. They whisper so as not to waken the manager, a blase, mature youth of twenty who sleeps expertly in the big chair back of the railing. They whisper of the terrific hazards and the precarious rewards of their adventurous calling. The hazards are nearly all provided by the youngsters who come on the ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... dull, arid, tedious, humdrum, mortal, flat; prosy, prosing; slow, soporific, somniferous. disgusting &c v.; unenjoyed^. weary, tired &c v.; drowsy &c (sleepy) 683; uninterested, flagging, used up, worn out, blase, life-weary, weary of life; sick of. Adv. wearily &c adj.; usque ad nauseam [Lat.]. Phr. time hanging heavily on one's hands; toujours perdrix [Fr.]; crambe ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... sated curiosity, perhaps on account of a pin famine, the attendance began to languish. Only four responded to the next call of the band; the four dwindled to three; finally the entertainment was given for one blase auditor, and Schofield and Williams looked depressed. Then followed an interval when the ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... of the waking mind, given in a sparkle of mocking laughter against the background of nightly visions. See the play over and over again. Do not study it with Bottom's ass's head, and do not be so blase that you reject the performance because it does not command the latest ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... bloodthirsty "doctrinaire," Henry VIII., be the means of a brilliant and lasting success to St. Saens, who richly deserves it; but in the matter of serious opera the public has reached that blase point which is explained in the words of Ronge, a naive ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... lazily Long Ned, rising with that blase air which distinguishes the matured man of the world from the enthusiastic tyro,-"done! and we will adjourn ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... old mother to support!" She had no notion of the cost of brushes, frames, paints, and canvases. Also she forgave him much for the sake of his beautiful eyes and his eager enthusiasm of manner. So many men of thirty were already blase. ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... should bring that chance which always comes. And when at the Sylvester Arms, on one of those rare occasions when M'Adam was not present, Tammas summed up the little man in that historic phrase of his, "When he's drunk he's wi'lent, and when he bain't he's wicious," there was an applause to gratify the blase heart ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... very blase fashion and held out her hand. The spots in the veil seemed to dazzle him; for a moment he ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... course!" interposed a blase, cynical-appearing young man who had just emerged from the cabin. "Don't know where she wants to go, or what she wants to do; but don't say she can't; really you ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... they met the twins and Gladys Bailey just returning from their round of calls. One look at the strange pair, and even Gladys lost her air of blase indifference. Her eyes opened wide and she took a deep breath of ...
— The Hickory Limb • Parker Fillmore
... that blase period when, only upon rare occasions, did he feel disposed to enlarge his acquaintance. But this fresh-skinned young Britisher went to his heart at once, a kindred soul, and he adopted him forthwith. He and Thomas paired off ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... was no casuist, nor had ponder'd Upon the moral lessons of mankind: Besides, he had not seen of several hundred A lady altogether to his mind. A little 'blase'—'t is not to be wonder'd At, that his heart had got a tougher rind: And though not vainer from his past success, No doubt his sensibilities ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... visitors, and out of season live on their fat like the ground-hog, and do a little fishing for profitable amusement. It is a thing to see, Scheveningen, but it is no place for a prolonged stay unless you are a gambler or a blase boulevardier who needs bracing ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... like the canvas of a Claude Lorraine or a Bierstadt. As we approached the ancient city, all early recollections of the glowing text were revived; nor had months of constant travel rendered us so blase but that an eager anticipation thrilled every nerve. The train crept slowly along in the twilight with provoking deliberation, until we were finally deposited in the depot of the gray old capital, so intimately ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... been even less disturbed than the magistrate. He also was blase, having witnessed too many of those frightful and shameless dramas which are enacted at a dead man's bedside, to be surprised at anything. If he had deigned to glance at the escritoire, it was only because he was curious to see how small a space would suffice to contain two millions; and then ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... could have told us in an instant, or, at least, on a little consideration. But neither she nor anyone else dreamed or imagined that I could be other than the King. So the likeness served, and for an hour I stood there, feeling as weary and blase as though I had been a king all my life; and everybody kissed my hand, and the ambassadors paid me their respects, among them old Lord Topham, at whose house in Grosvenor Square I had danced a score of times. Thank heaven, the old man was as blind as a bat, ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... just yawning. Are we going to surely catch up with 'em before they get there?" He was encouraging a faint hope that they might slip into the Minnehaha Club and meet the others there, be found in blase seclusion before the fire and quite regain ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... married three times, and divorced once. So fastidious a fine gentleman was he that the maids were not allowed to make his bed except in white kid gloves, and his groom of his chambers had orders to fumigate his rooms after liveried servants had been in them. He is described as handsome, witty, and blase, a roue in principles and a Tory in politics. Nothing pleased Lady Morgan better in her old age, we are told, than to have it insinuated that there had been 'something wrong' between ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... more than nine-and-twenty; but he had all the blase airs of a man of forty. He began to say entreprenant things to Theodora after three turns round ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... said the lady, "and I will tell you why. We English—I mean that set of English—are blase. We see each other too much, we are all alike in our ways, and we are awfully tired of it. Therefore it refreshes us and amuses us to see something ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... alive. For six months they moped about their corral, but at last they began to improve. The oldest doe gave birth to two fawns which actually survived. But, even when the next mating season began, the buck continued to be lanquid and blase. At no time did he exhibit signs of ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... thirty-four years had plowed those deep, rugged lines in his swarthy and colorless but still handsome face; where midnight orgies and habitual excesses had left their unmistakable plague-spot, and Mephistopheles had stamped his signet. Blase, cynical, scoffing, and hopeless, he had stranded his life, and was recklessly striding to his grave, trampling upon the feelings of all with whom he associated, and at war with a world, in which his lordly brilliant intellect would have lifted him to any eminence he desired, and which, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... an unknown devotion. Henceforward her life was dedicated; but, unlike the happier saints of a holier persuasion, she was to find no peace on earth. It was, indeed, hardly to be expected that Walpole, a blase bachelor of fifty, should have reciprocated so singular a passion; yet he might at least have treated it with gentleness and respect. The total impression of him which these letters produce is very damaging. It is true that he was in a difficult position; and it is also ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... of the day in London, where it must be admitted he caused a genuine sensation—no mean feat in such a blase place. ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... the ship was to arrive Graydon was dining with the Jack Percivals. There were a dozen in the party—a blase, bored collection of human beings who had dined out so incessantly that eating was a punishment. They had come to look upon food as a foe to comfort and a grievous obstacle in the path of pleasure. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... watched her attentively through many long evenings. At first, she had seemed to him what she really was, a strong and beautiful woman, but the desire to know her never troubled him. She possessed nothing to recommend her in the eyes of a blase man, and yet he returned to the Circus, allured by he knew not what, importuned by a ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... riding boots and breeches he immediately shared attention with a large, venerable-looking Durham that was being auctioned. The Durham, however, returned the stare of the crowd with blase eyes which said that he had seen all of life he wanted to and did not care what further happened, while Wallie felt distinctly uncomfortable at the attention he attracted, and ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... tendered her hand to Lord de Winter, who, kissing it respectfully, went out and traversed alone and unconducted those large, dark and deserted apartments, brushing away tears which, blase as he was by fifty years spent as a courtier, he could not withhold at the spectacle of royal distress ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with a sensuous smile at one corner, and a barely perceptible droop of pathos at the other, lent an indescribable piquance to her dimpled smile. The blue orbs which raised to his own with a Sphinxian laugh in their azure depths thrilled him—Holloway, the blase, the hardened theatrical manager, flattered and cajoled by hundreds of beautiful women on the quest ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... finde there, Whan he to thyle come were. Sche seide, at entre of the pas Hou Mars, which god of Armes was, Hath set tuo Oxen sterne and stoute, That caste fyr and flamme aboute Bothe at the mouth and ate nase, So that thei setten al on blase 3510 What thing that passeth hem betwene: And forthermore upon the grene Ther goth the flees of gold to kepe A Serpent, which mai nevere slepe. Thus who that evere scholde it winne, The fyr to stoppe ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... and a brass tray. Yet the semblance of the thing is there and this often deceives the very elect. Around every art studio are found the young men in velveteen who smoke infinite cigarettes, and throw off opinions about this great man and that, and prate prosaically in blase monotone of the Beautiful. Sometimes these young persons give lectures on "Art as I Have Found It"; but do not be deceived by this—the art that lives is probably being produced by small, shy, red-headed men who work on a top floor, and whom you can only find with the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... my ear, he leant to me, he behaved as an infatuated lover, and presently it seemed to me that my fellow-guests smiled here and there and looked significant. Lady Ardaragh talked more than ever to the blase-looking young lord who was her neighbour and her colour was heightened. Her witticisms came to me across the table, or a portion of them, and I thought she was saying wild, unbecoming things. I was ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... be inferred from this that our hero's character had grown so blase and hard, or his conscience so blunted, as to preclude his experiencing a particle of sympathy or compassion. As a matter of fact, he was capable both of the one and the other, and would have been glad to assist his old teacher had no great sum ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... heard her say; and then she made the Japanese doll bow to them, which he did, in a very languid and blase fashion. "You'll never see such trees again," she told him, giving him a vindictive shake, "for you'll be brokened ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... dapper catbird, perched on a poplar limb, who cocked his head and heard the singer through, and then made that almost imperceptible gesture with which a great critic indicates his approval of a novice. "Not half bad," he seemed to say,—this blase old habitue of the thicket music-halls. "I shouldn't wonder if something could be made of that voice if it were trained ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... praises he used to give her at home, when he promenaded round her on festival occasions, and told her she was 'altogether jolly', with a hearty smile and an approving pat on the head. She didn't like the new tone, for though not blase, it sounded indifferent ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... having a value in themselves and for themselves; they deliberately view them as sources of a personal pleasurable sensation. I do not mean the crude egoist who asks of anything or anybody, "What good is it (or he) for me?" but I mean that connoisseur in emotions, casually blase and bored, who seeks new sensations. This is an introspective deviation of a serious kind, for the connoisseur in emotions rarely is happy and usually is most deeply miserable. Bourget in his remarkable psychological novel, "A Love Crime," has ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... fabric is crumbling when quite impossible people like life guards permit themselves to become blase' over ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... same kind found in the following sally of Figaro's (though here an attempt is perhaps made to suggest the image of an animal rather than that of a thing): "Quel homme est-ce?—C'est un beau, gros, court, jeune vieillard, gris pommele, ruse, rase, blase, qui guette et furette, et gronde et geint tout a la fois." [Footnote: "What sort of man is here?—He is a handsome, stout, short, youthful old gentleman, iron-grey, an artful knave, clean shaved, clean 'used ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... is not difficult for the twentieth century reader, even if blase, to understand that "Adam Bede," published when its author was forty, aroused a furore of admiration: it still holds general attention, and many whose opinion is worth having, regard it ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... counting on the ignorance or inexperience of their audience, make a very unsafe calculation. The taste and critical faculty of that public are in their fulness of vigour. Old Europe is more bound by traditions, more weary, more blase, in her judgment, not always sincere or disinterested. In America the national pride is warmly felt, and the national artists enjoy high honour. The Americans know how to offer an exquisite hospitality, but woe to the man who seeks to impose on them! They profess a cult, ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... as Emil says,' answered Dolly, the dandy, carefully spreading a napkin over the glossy expanse of shirt-front whereon a diamond stud shone like a lone star. His stutter was nearly outgrown; but he, as well as George, spoke in the tone of condescension, which, with the blase airs they assumed, made a very funny contrast to their youthful faces and foolish remarks. Good-hearted little fellows both, but top-heavy with the pride of being Sophs and the freedom that college ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Latin-Greek speech of the city folks, gaping with their mouths wide open, greedily at the steaks of sacrificial meat displayed behind enlarging glasses in the cheap cook shop windows. There they giggle and chuckle, those wily landlords with their blase habitues and their underlings, the greasy cooks, the roguish "good mixers" at the bar and the winsome if resolute copae—waitresses—all ready to go, to do business. So slippery are the cooks that Plautus calls one Congrio—sea eel—so ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... he conveys distinctly the impression of a creature to the last degree blase. Even when a crab is let down into his grotto by an attendant for the edification of the visitors the octopus seems to regard it with only lukewarm interest. If he deigns to go in pursuit, it is with the air of one who says, "Anything to oblige," rather than of eagerness for a morsel of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... all thinking with one mind on what is now going on about us. It is a very grave but a splendid time. Whatever in the last analysis we shall go through, at present there is no longer any one of us who any longer regards life in the role of a blase or critical spectator, but each one of us stands in the very midst of life, and, indeed, in the very midst of a higher life. God has of a sudden brought us out of the wretchedness of the day to a high ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... mon Dieu!" grumbled a very old man to a very blase porter, who dutifully shot out of the hotel to rescue our luggage, if not us, from possible though improbable danger. We let him haul in our bags, but remained glued to the pavement, utterly absorbed and fascinated, waiting ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... resort a world-weary woman, young and beautiful but disillusioned, meets a girl who has learned the art of living—of tasting life in all its richness, opulence and joy. The story hinges upon the change wrought in the soul of the blase woman by this glimpse into ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... has kept your reviewer awake when he reasonably expected to be otherwise engaged. We do not remember coming across a more fascinating volume, even to a somewhat blase reader whose business it is to read all that comes in his way. The marvels, miracles they should be called, of the modern workshop are here exploited by Mr. Williams for the benefit of readers who have not the opportunity of seeing these wonders or the necessary mathematical ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... the certain blase, matter-of-fact attitude he had for all of nature's phenomena; he found himself admiring the majestic buttes that fringed it; there was a glint of appreciation in his eyes for the colossal bigness of it—for the gigantic, sweeping ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... has not seen much of society. Well, since she is not gawky, I like her better than if she were blase. Anything but your blase girls," he observed to himself, with a consciousness that he was an experienced man of ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... the realm of the impossible, probably would, if a rocket that were shot to the moon, for instance, did arrive, and perhaps return to give proof of its safe arrival on our satellite, accept the phenomenon in a perfectly blase, twentieth century manner. Dr. Smith, that phenomenal writer of classic scientific fiction, seems to have become so thoroughly convinced of the advent of interplanetary travel that it is difficult for the reader to feel, after finishing "Spacehounds ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... and of amusement is always within their reach, thanks to the loftiness of their station, their wealth, and facilitated furthermore by the anxiety of their courtiers both to please them and to retain their favor, they naturally soon become blase to such an extent that they become a prey to ennui—a thoroughly royal malady, from which few, if any, of the scions of the reigning houses of Europe are exempt. "Ennui," like "chic," is a French word difficult to translate ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... how little he counted for in my life. Petsjorin had done with life; I had not even begun to live. Petsjorin had drained the cup of enjoyment; I had never tasted so much as a drop of it. Petsjorin was as blase as a splendid Russian Officer of the Guards could be; I, as full of expectation as an insignificant Copenhagen schoolboy could be. Nevertheless, I had the perplexing feeling of having, for the first time in my life, seen my inmost nature, hitherto unknown even to myself, understood, interpreted, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... of the hall the audience could be divided into two species, one less numerous than the other. First, the devotees of music, who went to nearly every concert, extremely knowing, extremely blase, extremely disdainful and fastidious, with precise views about every musical composition, every conductor, and every performer; weary of melodious nights at which the same melodies were ever heard, but addicted to them, as some people are addicted to ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... gifted of Frenchmen, in point of great intellectual endowments, was Benjamin Constant; but, blase at twenty, his life was only a prolonged wail, instead of a harvest of the great deeds which he was capable of accomplishing with ordinary diligence and self-control. He resolved upon doing so many things, which he never did, that people came ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... witty enough, but he lives on the surface of everything! He is altogether shallow and blase. His good-nature is the fruit of want of feeling; between his gracefulness and his sneering persiflage he is a ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... incredible. And to whom had he struck the bold corsair flag which had so long been the terror of husbands? To Kaethe von Markwald, in whom nothing piquant could be discovered which would be likely specially to attract a blase man of the world! She was beautiful, certainly, but he had passed by many handsomer women. She was not stupid, but how many cleverer fair ones, with all their craft, had been unable to hold him in their nets! The event was and remained ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... porter to paste the scarlet labels on his cases. He was beginning to take a certain blase pride in his luggage. Already it had the appearance of having traveled widely. It would look well ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... that—Is it caprice or coquetry? Your mind is too serious and your soul too honest for such an act; and besides, what would be your object? Such feline cruelties may suit blase women of the world who are roused by the sight of moral torture; who give, in the invisible sphere of the passions, feasts of the Roman empresses, where beating hearts are torn by the claws of the wild beasts of the soul, unbridled desires, insatiate hate and maddened jealousy, ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... on't; I felt his lips, And they were flesh; they breath'd on mine a warmth Temperate as westerne kisses which the morne Weaps liquid drops to purchase. This confirmes It was no apparition that contemnd My willingnes, but he, his reall selfe, Mockt my integrity: he must not passe soe, To blase abroad my infamy. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... her arm, and, still more like Baron, she almost always came back with them. Her vain approaches were to the music-sellers; she tried to compose—to produce songs that would make a hit. A successful song was an income, she confided to Peter one of the first times he took Sidney, blase and drowsy, back to his mother. It was not on one of these occasions, but once when he had come in on no better pretext than that of simply wanting to (she had after all virtually invited him), that she mentioned how ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... between her record and his own. He had found fault with her—so he mused—HE! And what could he say for himself? When she built her first church what was he doing? Gathering other blase multimillionaires into a Poker Club; defiling his own palace with it; losing hundreds of thousands to it at every sitting, and sillily vain of the admiring notoriety it made for him. When she was building her first university, what was he doing? Polluting himself with a gay and dissipated ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Omar have been with a nobler philosophy of life, and a more wholesome self-restraint. Blase, toper as he was, how did he begin ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... that wonderful Southern sky, with the air laden with the perfume of countless cherry blossoms, Paul felt that he had been translated into fairy-land, and he was almost afraid to speak lest he break the spell and suddenly find himself back in blase Western Europe again. ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... flattered, just a little, for he was only human; but she had an unbounding enthusiasm for everything she saw and did which made it a real delight to be with her anywhere, at dance, or theater or football game or moving picture. There was nothing blase or jaded of any of life's offerings about Arethusa. She developed, as the days passed, into a young lady much sought after by the male of the species; for this same quality which endeared her to Mr. Bennet brought her many other suitors. And, argued ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... wheel, the beautiful embodiments of the picture deer, to snort and paw the leaves. Hundreds of birds, of which he did not know the name, stooped to his inspection, whirred away at his approach, or went about their business with hardy indifference under his very eyes. Blase porcupines trundled superbly from his path. Once a mother-partridge simulated a broken wing, fluttering painfully. Early one morning the traveller ran plump on a fat lolling bear, taking his ease from the new sun, and his meal from a panic stricken army of ants. As beseemed two innocent ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... those days so blase to this sort of allocution as they are now; Monsieur de Grandville's appeal had the power of things new, and the jurors were evidently shaken. After this passionate outburst they had to listen to the wily and specious prosecutor, who went over ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... slepe, but slumber, Geve Otes unto Saynt Uncumber, And Beanes in a certen number Unto Saynt Blase ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... neighborhood. As we knew him to be one of the most authentic narrators of the province we begged him to let us have the particulars, and accordingly, while we refreshed ourselves with a clean long pipe of Blase Moore's tobacco, the authentic John Josse Vandermoere related ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... once a cobbler, BLASE by name; A wife had got, whose charms so high in fame; But as it happened, that their cash was spent, The honest couple to a neighbour went, A corn-factor by trade, not overwise To whom they stated facts without disguise; And begged, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... morning I have stated that I am not particularly afraid of anything. Strange as it may seem, this statement still applies. Or put it this way,—I have grown blase. People have threatened me too often. No, gentlemen, you are going to lose your trading privileges, I think. And I am going to remain in my house quite as ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... undiscovered, they credited them all to Mme. de Combray's inspiration, and this accusation without proof is none too bold. The theft of state funds was a bagatelle to people whom ten years of implacable warfare had rendered blase about all brigandage. Moreover, it was easily conceivable that the snare laid by Bonaparte for Frotte, who was so popular in Normandy, the summary execution of the General and his six officers, the assassination of the Duc d'Enghien, the death of Georges Cadoudal (almost a god to the ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... to figure Mephistopheles as a rather blase brunette," she remarked crisply. "I am absolutely certain that if you could catch the devil without his mask you'd find him ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... Child, I can get all of that stuff I want, on my face, off the girls in the candy dep," he explained with a blase air. "You keep it for you and your friends, and I'll get you more. I'm tired of ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... a ferry-boat one morning and walked into the core of the town with the blase air of a cosmopolite. He was dressed with care to play the role of an "unidentified man." No country, race, class, clique, union, party clan or bowling association could have claimed him. His clothing, which had been donated ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... cette flamme brulante Que ton sein palpitant ne pouvait contenir! Tu vivrais, tu verrais te suivre et t'applaudir De ce public blase la foule indifferente, Qui prodigue aujourd'hui sa faveur inconstante A des gens dont pas un, certes, n'en ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... would wear—if the Swiss had any navy—and holding a speaking trumpet in his hand. This person is not excited, for he sends thirty-odd-thousand-ton ships off to Europe at frequent intervals, and so he is impressively and importantly blase about it; but everybody else is excited. You find yourself rather that way. You wave at persons you know and then at persons you ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... comments, though she passed these rows of critical eyes a hundred times a day, sat at table with people who were keenly observant of her every act and word, and spent some reluctant hours in the society of those who strove to cultivate her for their own blase enjoyment. She only knew that among the company she met a number of interesting men and women, with whom she and her husband were thoroughly congenial, and that it did not matter in the least about ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... is. But I think I could enjoy ever so many things for years and years without growing blase," said Erica. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... her hands) She's so cold! Quick, Steen, build up the fire! (STEEN goes to the fire and puts on another log, the flames blase up. HOLGER busies himself chafing the woman's hands and covering her with the old cloak that has dropped back from her shoulders) She must have lost her ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... old SWISHTALE would be better for a week (under supervision) in London. Might take him to the Empire, the Pav., and to see Ruy Blas, or the Blase Roue. If it did him no other good, it would afford him a topic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... Stillwood, when a blase man about town, verging on forty, had first seen her, then a fair-haired, ethereal-looking child, in spite of her dirt, playing in the gutter. To his lasting self-reproach it was young Gadley himself, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... I'm afraid they're too lazy to be very wild. Nothing but a revolution excites them these days and sometimes I think they're getting a bit blase over them. Now and then they wake up over a cock-fight." They walked down ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... every desire dulled, the glow of every passion cooled. My answer was simply this: I should try to give him what I constantly and without much effort gave most men—A new sensation. After all it is not such a hard thing to do. Blase men are my especial prey; they can always be reached; their vulnerable points are many, but generally ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... Reddy Johnson, and Carl Polhemus—answered not at all, as is the custom with young men. Sally and Martie did not like the Patterson boys; George was fat and stupid; Arthur at eighteen sophisticated and blase, with dissipated eyes; both were supercilious, and the girls did not really believe that they would come. Still, there was not much to lose ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... Fouche, "but a real elegant divorce, followed by an imperial wedding, would rattle the bones of this blase old Paris as they haven't been rattled ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... world who, through long custom, can find themselves engaged without any particular whirl of emotion. King Solomon probably belonged to this class; and even Henry the Eighth must have become a trifle blase in time. But to the average man, the novice, the fact of being accepted seems to divide existence into two definite parts, before and after. A sensitive conscience goads some into compiling a full and unexpurgated ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... two and then disappears; to the sleek little gentleman who dances off a moment or two to the tune of his doll-like partner whose voice is usually littler than his own? Perhaps our acrobat is still the delight of those more characteristic audiences of the road whose taste is less fickle, less blase. This is so much the case with the arts in America—the fashions change with the season's end and there is never enough of novelty; dancing is already dying out, skating will not prevail for long among the idle; what shall we predict for our variety which is in its last ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... been a day when he had thought that the thing would make his fortune! And yet—he turned the pages over tenderly—there might be something to be said for it, Miss Monogue had thought well of it. These publishers, blase, cynical fellows, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... such love as makes a fool of a man. He declared that he was happy to have done with women; the most angelic of them, he frankly said, was not worth what she cost, even if you got her for nothing. He was supposed to be so entirely blase, that he no longer paid two thousand francs a month for the pleasure of being deceived. His eyes looked coldly down from his opera box on the corps de ballet; never a glance was shot at the capitalist by any one of ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... of peple up-stirte thanne at ones, As breme as blase of straw y-set on fyre; For infortune it wolde, for the nones, 185 They sholden hir confusioun desyre. 'Ector,' quod they, 'what goost may yow enspyre This womman thus to shilde and doon us lese Daun Antenor? — a wrong ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... very strange to him, this gay throng—and he was not very favourably impressed. If this was Society, he did not want it! Everyone seemed blase and satiated with pleasure. The conversation was clever, but superficial. It seemed to him as though ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... slightly better chance of evoking smiles in its old age. There is always its unalterable verbal neatness; tradition, too, lingers more lovingly around fair shapes, and a poem is a better instance of form than a paragraph. Mankind may grow blase, if it will, but as a poet of the comic, Chesterton will live long years. Take for example that last and worst of his novels The Flying Inn. Into this he has pitched with a fascinating recklessness a quantity of poems, garnered from The New Witness and ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... cover up my deficiency in years I affected a veneer of worldly knowledge and sophistication that was misleading. It almost deceived myself. At eighteen I had accepted as a sad truth the wickedness of the world, and especially that of men. I was very blase, very resigned—at least the two top layers of me were. Down underneath, way down, I know now I was young and innocent and hopeful. I know now that my first meeting with Breckenridge Sewall was simply ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... the clouds. In common with most men whose lot is cast in climes far removed from civilization, Curtis worshiped an ideal of womanhood which was rather that of a poet than of the blase, cynical town-dweller. He had seen death too often to be shocked by its harsh visage, and, perhaps in protest against the idle belief that the crime was preventable, his sympathies were absorbed now by the vision ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... I fare like the man, that for to swale his vlyes [i.e. flies] He stert in-to the bern, and aftir stre he hies, And goith a-bout with a brennyng wase, Tyll it was atte last that the leam and blase Entryd in-to the chynys, wher the whete was, And kissid so the evese, that brent was ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... cut deep into his own being in order to leave her; that he had fled, leaving for Italy with a craving desire for solitude and forgetfulness! Eh! yes, Marianne had been his true love, the true love of this blase Parisian sceptic and braggart, and he sought, while again looking at the lovely girl, to recover some of the sensations that had flown, to recall some of those reminiscences which more than ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... young, Robin," said Randal, laughing. "When you've seen as much as I have you'll be blase. Not that one ought to be, but Germany—well, it hardly lasts, I think. Ruegen—why, it rained and there were mists round the Studenkammer, and how those people eat at the Jagdschloss! Heidelberg! picture postcards and shocking hotels—Oh! No, Robin, you'll see all that later. I wish ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... working class. You may perhaps be a small manufacturer, the agent of a manufacturing firm in the country, a clerk with a moderate salary, or a mechanic in his best clothes. Remember that and do not complain of the music. You do not hear it every day. Let us hear no more blase speeches, if you please.... Good! The dinner arrives. We dine here, my friend, for two francs. You will probably require another meal before the evening is concluded. On the other hand, you may feel that you never require another meal as long as you live. That is a matter ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to learn your feelings are hurt," returned the aunt. "I'm sure, Carley, that underneath all this—this blase ultra something you've acquired, there's a real heart. Only you must hurry and listen ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... Horses was a well-known sporting house, with an old prize-fighter for landlord. And the arrangements were as primitive as the most Bohemian could wish. It was one of the many curious fashions which have now died out, that men who were blase from luxury and high living seemed to find a fresh piquancy in life by descending to the lowest resorts, so that the night-houses and gambling-dens in Covent Garden or the Haymarket often gathered ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... centuries. It will create its own, and the young man who does the century's work will be a product of its university system. Of this we may be sure, the training for strenuous life is not in academic idleness. The development of living ideals is not in an atmosphere of cynicism. The blase, lukewarm, fin-de-siecle young man of the clubs will not represent university culture, nor, on the other hand, will culture be dominated by ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... in with Arabella, and Archer with Jill. Arabella promptly yielded to Jack. New devotion. More transports. Jill and Archer were shocked. Jill clung to the bars of her cage, quivering, and screaming remonstrance; and even blase Archer chattered angrily at some of the scenes. Then the doctor hung curtains between the cages to shut out the view. Jill and Archer, left to each other, grew interested. ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... solemnity," to use the language of the advertisement, began by being terribly tiresome. There was an audience present who were accustomed to grand Parisian soirees, a blase and satiated public, who, upon this warm evening in the suffocating theatre, were more fatigued and satiated than ever. The sleepy journalists collapsed in their chairs, and in the back part of the stage-boxes, ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... good horse, an air cushion, a reliable earth-stopper and an anise-seed bag, a man must indeed be thoroughly blase who cannot enjoy a scamper across country, over the Pennsylvania wold, the New Jersey mere, the Connecticut moor, the Indiana glade, the Missouri brake, the Michigan mead, the American tarn, the fen, the gulch, ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... and animated faces flashed out in the semi-obscurity; and in their rear stood a crowd of spectators —beautiful young gentlemen with vacant faces and the elevated Oxford shoulders, rosy youth already blase to all this world can offer, and gray-headed men young again in the prospect of a new sensation. So they kneel or stand, worshipers before the shrine, expecting the advent of the Goddess ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... fifty years, the festival of Bishop Blase is observed with great ceremony. What connexion ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... man with a passion for adventure. But invariable success in his flirtations had made him blase, and now it was only the absolutely novel that could appeal to him. And there could certainly be no question about the woman who had sent him the present invitation being anything but a commonplace one! Moreover, it was not just any woman who had asked him to keep this ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... Jim a chance to recover himself, to regain his vanished cuffs, display his heavy watch-chain, curl his mustache, and otherwise reassume his air of blase fastidiousness. But the transfer made, Phoebe, after shaking hands, became speechless under these perfections. ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... Zealanders, and Americans were much in evidence. Set them down anywhere on the face of the globe, under any conditions conceivable, and you could not surprise them; such was the impression. The British officers and even the British Tommies were blase, wearing the air of the 'semaine Anglaise', and the "five o'clock tea," as the French delight to call it. That these could have come direct from the purgatory of the trenches seemed unbelievable. The ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Blase as the Legionaries were and hardened to wonders, the sight of this corridor and of the vast banquet-hall opening out of it, at the far end, came near upsetting their aplomb. The major even muttered an oath or two, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... past four years had several times appeared at war charity garden-parties as a classical dancer—to the great delight of the guests and greater disgust of her family. Her maternal uncle, head of her house, said to be the most blase member of the British peerage and known as "the noble tortoise," was generally considered to have pronounced the final verdict upon his golden-haired niece when he ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... women were distant. One can't, at such places, Accept as credentials good figures or faces. There was an unnameable something about Mrs. Travers which filled other women with doubt And all men with interest. Roger, blase, Disillusioned with life as he was, felt the sway Of her strong personality, there as she sat Looking out 'neath the rim of her coquettish hat With dark eyes on the sea. Few people had power To draw his gray thoughts from himself for an hour As this ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... write simply for the refined, the blase, and the squeamish. We must write for that man who goes there on the street with his nose in his newspaper and his umbrella under his arm. We must write for that fat, breathless woman whom I see from my window, as she climbs ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... days when Louisa Musgrove lived at Captain Harville's house. Every one who stays at Lyme must buy or borrow a copy of Persuasion. It is wonderful how an old-fashioned tale such as this novel of Jane Austen will delight and interest the most blase of readers when he or she can identify the scenes depicted in its pages, and how the early Victorian atmosphere of the book will seem to descend on the quaint streets that have altered so little ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... this, the less they may have to unlearn. Nature studies have long been valued as "a means of grace," because they arouse the enthusiasm, the love of work, which belongs to open-eyed youth. The child blase with moral precepts and irregular conjugations turns with fresh delight to the unrolling of ferns or ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... prided herself on her carefully blase' and supercilious attitude towards life; but this changeling was too much for her. She released the handle, tottered back, and, having uttered a discordant squeak of amazement, stood staring, eyes and ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... settled again to rest, the announcement was monotonously recited: "Nine, red, odd, first dozen." And the blase prodigal was ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... table, taking his opal drops of absinthe, was a French gentleman with the blase aspect of an empty champagne-bottle, which always has the air ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... no remorse, none of that Shakespearean horror after the murder, which, today, sceptic though I am and blase and utterly, utterly disillusioned, sets me shuddering whenever I am alone ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... good had it done him? He was the first boy Charity had ever played with. Her nurse had bragged about her to his nurse when Charity was just beginning to take notice of other than alimentary things. By that time Jim was a blase roue of five and his main interest in Charity was a desire to poke his finger into the soft spot in ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... movement as though he really could not be expected to stand waiting there for ever. Also a magnificent lady, in furs so rich that you could see nothing of her but her powdered nose, was waving ropes of pearls about in a blase manner very close to them, and Maggie had a strange, entirely unreasonable fear that this splendour would suddenly turn round and snatch the little pearl ring ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... cranked and ready for another Vanderbilt Cup Race." Bobbie gave the waiter one of his best smiles—behind that smile was a manful look, a kindliness of character and a great power of purpose, which rang true, even to this blase and cynical dispenser of the grape. The latter nodded and smiled, albeit flabbily, into the winsome ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... her and returns to the Bourse. She cries all night, but discovers that tears make her eyes red. She takes a consoler, for the loss of whom another consoles her; thus up to the age of thirty or more. Then, blase and corrupted, with no human sentiment, not even disgust, she meets a fine youth with raven locks, ardent eye and hopeful heart; she recalls her own youth, she remembers what she has suffered, and telling him ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset |
