"Tasteless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... historian. A reader of sentiment and imagination cannot be entertained or interested by a dry detail of such transactions as admit of no warmth, no colouring, no embellishment, a detail which serves only to exhibit an inanimate picture of tasteless vice and mean degeneracy. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... regard to the Beethoven symphonies he placed himself on record in a highly entertaining manner. He says of the melody of the famous "Hymn to Joy," in Beethoven's ninth symphony, that it is so "monstrous and tasteless, and its grasp of Schiller's ode so trivial, that I cannot even now understand how a genius like Beethoven could ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... 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, ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... his eyebrows and drew up his chin, but disdained to waste more arguments upon so tasteless a being. "To talk sense to a woman is like feeding chickens upon turtle soup," thought he ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... surprised at the meanness of the town; the great majority of the houses being built of bamboo, and thatched with grass, and having a very poor appearance. The public buildings and the houses of the great officers were constructed of planks, and tiled; but were heavy and tasteless, and it was only upon the innumerable pagodas, in and around the town, that any care seemed ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... provoked 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 taste to ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... which they had been provided. The stock of salt had given out, the bulk of their supply having been left on the mountain. Several large mushrooms were brought in by Cruzatte, but these were eaten without pepper, salt, or any kind of grease,—"a very tasteless, insipid food," as the journal says. To crown all, the mosquitoes were pestilential ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... been pretty, and now she had grown ugly; in addition to that, she was short and thin, while her careless and tasteless way of dressing herself concealed her few small feminine attractions, which might have been brought out if she had possessed any taste in dress. Her skirts were always awry, and she frequently scratched herself, no matter on what part of her person, totally indifferent ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... 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 the incessant stripes, wounds, and miseries, which are undergone ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... ami. But we must not dry them in the sun; for let me tell you, Mr. Louis, that they will be quite tasteless—mere dry husks." ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... If such his fate who yet but darkly dares, Whose guilty purpose yet no act declares, What were it, done! Ah! now farewell to peace! Ne'er on this earth his soul's alarms shall cease! Held in the mouth that languid fever burns, His tasteless food he indolently turns; On Alba's oldest stock his soul shall pine! Forth from his lips he spits the joyless wine! Nor all the nectar of the hills shall now Or glad the heart, or smooth the wrinkled ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... back on this camp which I call Rowdy Creek Falls Camp after the poor little bullock we killed here, which gave us about 70 pounds of such stuff as one could hardly imagine without seeing it—nothing like a particle of fat visible anywhere and excessively tasteless. It is fortunate our two remaining bullocks are in better condition or we would not be in the most enviable plight on our arrival at the settled districts, Queensland. Started on bearing of 335 1/2 degrees over good open country. At two and three-quarter miles came to and crossed a creek ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... 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
... be effected if good taste were exercised in the buildings, and on the disposal of the ground. How lovely would such a spot be rendered in England or Scotland. Nature here has done all, and man but little, excepting sticking up some ugly wooden cottages, as mean as they are tasteless. It is, however, very possible there may be pretty villas and houses higher up, that are concealed from the ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... variety has such an affinity for oxygen that it will burn in water, and it is poisonous. Bring this variety to a high temperature away from the air, and its molecular structure seems to change, and we have the red variety, which is tasteless, odorless, and non-poisonous, and is not affected by contact with the air. Such is ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... less marked than his learning. "With the permission of God, I will speak in riddles," says Kalir in opening the prayer for dew. The riddles are mainly clever allusions to the Midrash. It has been pointed out that these allusions are often tasteless and obscure. But they are more often beautiful and inspiring. No Hebrew poet in the Middle Ages was illiterate, for the poetic instinct was fed on the fancies of the Midrash. This accounts for their lack of freshness and originality. The poet was a scholar, and ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... pieces of smoked buffalo hide, more or less curled and crumpled. In this condition they are sent away to China and elsewhere to be used in soup. Australian gourmands are beginning to appreciate this delicacy, which is said to be marvellously strengthening, though without elaborate cooking it is almost tasteless, and therefore unlike dugong soup, which surpasses turtle in flavour and delicacy, and would fatten up a skeleton. Beche-de-mer is merely a substantial foundation or stock for a more ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... voluntary act in the Chautauqua Community was to take a swim. But the water was tepid, and brown, and tasteless, and unbuoyant; and I felt, rather oddly, as if I were swimming in a gigantic cup of tea. From this initial experience I proceeded, somewhat precipitately, to induce an analogy; and it seemed to me, at the time, as if I had forsaken the ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... boldest beauties round, The varied valley, and the mountain ground Wildly majestic: what is all the pride Of flats with loads of ornament supplied? Unpleasing, tasteless, impotent expense, Compared with Nature's rude magnificence. Oft on some evening, sunny, soft, and still, The Muse shall hand thee to the beech-grown hill, To spend in tea the cool, refreshful hour, Where nods in air the pensile, nest-like bower; Or where the Hermit hangs his ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... two minutes 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 ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... spaniel the other day, it was by no means bad, something like lamb, but I felt like a cannibal. Epicures in dog flesh tell me that poodle is by far the best, and recommend me to avoid bull dog, which is coarse and tasteless. I really think that dogs have some means of communicating with each other, and have discovered that their old friends want to devour them. The humblest of street curs growls when anyone looks at him. Figaro has a story that a man was followed for a mile by a party of dogs barking fiercely ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... Belton, 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
... to eat canned peas? They are always old back numbers that are as hard and tasteless as chips, and are canned after they have been dried for seed. We bought a can of peas once for two shillings and couldn't crack them with a nut cracker. But they were not a dead loss, as we used them the next fall ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... poor, characterless portals. They open on a large vaulted hall, with chapels in its six bays and a small and narrow choir. The principal charm of the interior is negative; its dim misty light, by concealing a mass of tasteless decorations and the poverty and bareness of the whole architectural scheme, gives to the generous height and size of the room an atmosphere of subdued and mysterious spaciousness. The south door is the one bit of this Gothic which ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... that day, and the terrible night which succeeded! We had no resource but to gnaw at the tasteless wood. We were surrounded with water, yet perishing with thirst! pinched by hunger, without hope of relief! Better to have been drowned at once; better to have fallen by the paw of a mouser, or to have been caught like my brothers in a trap, than to be dying thus by inches on a barrel, ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... 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 ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... 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, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... to me that in memory, they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferiour. As I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing, and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous. It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation. We will consider them here, on the same stage with the whites. And where the facts are not apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed, ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... glance at the boy, like a young man, by her side. She saw him amiable, attractive, affectionate, and only a little, a very little, peculiar. And she could not see him otherwise, for he was connected with what there was of the salt of passion in her tasteless life—the passion of indignation, of courage, of pity, and even of self-sacrifice. She did not add: "And you aren't likely ever to be as long as I live." But she might very well have done so, since she had taken effectual steps to that end. Mr Verloc ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... place of salt, which is seldom used among them, having been introduced by the whites. Their bean and chestnut bread, cornmeal dumplings, hominy, and gruel are all boiled in a pot, all contain lye, and are all, excepting the last, served up hot from the fire. When cold their bread is about as hard and tasteless as a lump of yesterday's dough, and to condemn a sick man to a diet of such dyspeptic food, eaten cold without even a pinch of salt to give it a relish, would seem to be sufficient to kill him without any further aid from the doctor. The salt or lye so ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... that impudent and presumptuous quack, as he was considered, Paracelsus. (Encyc. Brit. art. "Paracelsus.") Arsenic was introduced into England as a remedy for intermittents by Dr. Fowler, in consequence of the success of a patent medicine, the Tasteless Ague Drops, which were supposed, "probably with reason," to be a preparation of that mineral. (Rees's Cyc. art. "Arsenic.") Colchicum came into notice in a similar way, from the success of the Eau Medicinale ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Court, and bel-air for the seventeenth of August, 1661,—the fete de Vaux, which fills a paragraph in every history of France. In June, he had entertained the Queen of England in a style which made Mazarin's pageants for the Infanta Queen seem tasteless and old-fashioned. The present festival cast the preceding one into the shade. It began in the early afternoon, like a dejeuner of our day. The King was there, the Queen-Mother, Monsieur, brother to the King, and Madame, daughter of Charles I. of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... is felt in the brain as sweetness is destroyed. The sweetness, like the color, is a nervous sensation. We can conceive of a development of the nerves of taste which might receive a host of new impressions from contact with objects now tasteless. The saccharine compound does exist as a chemical quantity, and has a special effect on the nerves of taste, exciting them peculiarly, the result of the excitement being the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... the illusory influence of their apparent refinement, become grossly offensive. A cold repulsive manner, such as is commonly assumed by persons in high life, is sometimes a necessary shield against the pushing familiarity of underbred persons. Their tasteless imitations of habits and manners which do not belong to their station or character, deserve the ridicule they meet with. The most offensive form vulgarity can take, is an affectation of the follies and vices of high life. It is true that the notion ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... this latter day of discontents few are more pressing than speculating as to why sausages and pork-pies have so degenerated. Under the malign influence of Peace, sausages have become tasteless and pork-pies nothing but pies with pork in them; the crust chiefly plaster-of-Paris, and the meat not an essential element, soft and seductive and fused with the pastry, but an alien assortment of half-cooked cubes. I can understand that after a great ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 29, 1920 • Various
... Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy, And shuts up all the passages of joy; In vain their gifts the bounteous seasons pour, The fruit autumnal, and the vernal flow'r; With listless eyes the dotard views the store, He views, and wonders that they please no more; Now pall the tasteless meats, and joyless wines, And luxury with sighs her slave resigns. Approach, ye minstrels, try the soothing strain, [bb]Diffuse the tuneful lenitives of pain: No sounds, alas! would touch th' impervious ear, Though dancing mountains witness'd Orpheus near; Nor lute nor lyre ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... used to prop up old crumbling walls. The costly monuments of senatorial pride were broken to pieces in sport or in caprice, and those structures which had excited the admiration of ages were pulled down that their material might be used in erecting tasteless edifices. Literature shared the general desolation. The valued manuscripts of classical ages were mutilated, erased, or burned. The monks finished the destruction which the barbarians began. Ignorance as well as anarchy veiled Europe in darkness. The ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... Brown-Jones-and-Robinson, Eighth Avenue. There are two rows of tables in the room, six in each row. On each table is a caster-stand, containing cruets of condiments and seasons. From the pepper cruet you may shake a cloud of something tasteless and melancholy, like volcanic dust. From the salt cruet you may expect nothing. Though a man should extract a sanguinary stream from the pallid turnip, yet will his prowess be balked when he comes to wrest salt from Bogle's cruets. Also upon each ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... 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 his feasts among ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey
... steamers; and there, creeping along out in the middle of the river, is the steamer we are to join, which left Glasgow an hour before us. We have not stopped since we left Glasgow; thirty-five minutes have elapsed, and now we sweep into a remarkably tasteless and inconvenient station. This is Greenock at last; but, as at Glasgow, the station is some forty feet above the ground. A railway cart at the foot of a long stair receives the luggage of passengers, and then sets off at a ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... with Olga A latter day romance discreet, Whose author truly painted nature, With cunning plot, insight complete; Oft he passed over a few pages, Too bald or tasteless in their art— And coloring, began on further, Not to disturb the maiden heart. Again, they sat for hours together, With but a chess board to divide; She with her arms propped on the table, Deep pondering, puzzled to decide— Till Lenski from his inward storm ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... more lay back watching the clouds. An hour passed without either's speaking. The deck-steward brought them tea and biscuits which he declined and she accepted. She tried the big, hard, tasteless disk between her strong white teeth, then said with a sly smile: "You pried into my secret a few minutes ago. I'm going to pry into yours. Who ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... fish, like all other delicate fish, is only at its best when eaten on the spot where it's caught," Thad told them; "putting it on ice for days hurts the flavor, and sometimes it's just as tasteless as so much sawdust." ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... the history as told by Livy, and without any inventive or constructive power of his own copies, with tasteless pedantry, Homer and Vergil. 'He cannot perceive that the divine interventions which are admissible in the quarrel of Aeneas and Turnus are ludicrous when imported into the struggle between Scipio and Hannibal. Who can help resenting the unreality when at Saguntum Jupiter ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... fish, clean it thoroughly, put it over the fire with a sufficient quantity of water, allowing for each pound of fish one quart of water; add an onion cut fine and a bunch of sweet herbs. When the fish is cooked, and is quite tasteless, strain all through a colander, return to the fire, add some butter, salt and pepper to taste. A small tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce may be added if liked. Serve with small squares of fried bread and thin slices ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... too. Every square millimeter of skin and mucous membrane. Yes, into your eyes. It stings 'em a little, but that's a lot better than going blind. And your mouth. Swallow six good big mouthfuls—it's tasteless and goes ...
— Subspace Survivors • E. E. Smith
... kinds of 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 ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... 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
... are usually in the Italian style, having heavy facades, plain brick sides and queer but rather picturesque bell-towers. Internally, they are gaudy and tasteless, the altars ornamented on high days and holidays with innumerable wax candles, festoons of red, white and blue drapery, and huge pyramids of paper roses with gold foliage. Ecclesiastical affairs are presided over by Monsignor Pietro Sola, a charming old bishop, who is the essence of kindliness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... its summit, the art therefore declines in one of two directions. It either becomes academic, forsakes the study of nature, and degenerates into empty convention, or else it becomes ignoble, forsakes beauty, and sinks into a tasteless and unimaginative technique. The latter was the course of sculpture in ancient times, the former, with moments of reawakening, has been its dreadful ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... of vegetables as of odour, fruit, gum, resin, wax, honey, seem brought about in the same manner as in the glands of animals; the tasteless moisture of the earth is converted by the hop plant into a bitter juice; as by the caterpillar in the nutshell, the sweet powder is converted into a bitter powder. While the power of absorption in the roots and barks of vegetables ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... by a fashionable 'Queen Anne' artist. She told us that the quaintly pretty furniture of the last century which adorned it had recently been brought down from the attic, whither her fore bears had consigned it as tasteless—Gillow in ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... a summary way, but how is it to be made apparent? Taken by themselves the pastimes of society are not to be described; they are too ephemeral; their charm arises from their accompaniments. A narrative of them would be but tasteless dregs, does the libretto of an opera give any idea of the opera itself?—If the reader would revive for himself this vanished world let him seek for it in those works that have preserved its externals or its accent, and first ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... in the last century, and is now scarcely worth visiting. Still, enough remains in the un-restored churches of Ravenna to captivate the attention of every student of history and every lover of early Christian art. It is only necessary to shut our eyes to the vapid and tasteless work of recent embellishers, as we should close our ears to the whispers of vulgar gossipers while listening to some noble and entrancing piece of ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... to sink into slothful satisfaction and enjoy a tasteless leisure or with inane self-deception hide his head under the shadows of his wings, like the foolish bird, which thereby hopes to escape the wrath to come. The white race, through philanthropy, has done much; but its vicarious task ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... never get them away till the poor fellows effloresce into dust. Do not be deceived. The tutor breakfasts on coffee made of beans, edulcerated with milk watered to the verge of transparency; his mutton is tough and elastic, up to the moment when it becomes tired out and tasteless; his coal is a sullen, sulphurous anthracite, which rusts into ashes, rather than burns, in the shallow grate; his flimsy broadcloth is too thin for winter and too thick for summer. The greedy lungs of fifty hot-blooded boys suck the oxygen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... 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
... shall give it to the world, or exercise his own maturer judgment upon it, had best be very sure of the original strength and durability of the work; otherwise on withdrawing it from its crypt he may find, that like small wine it has lost what flavour it once had, and is only tasteless when opened. There are works of all tastes and smacks, the small and the strong, those that improve by age, and those that won't bear keeping at all, but are pleasant at the first draught, when ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and high. On its Brussels carpet immense vases of flowers and peacock's feathers sprawled; stiff and gaudy furniture was ranged round the painted walls; stiff window curtains fell from stiff borders of tasteless upholstery. Susannah, long ignorant of anything but deal and rag carpets, knew hardly more than Smith how to criticise, and her taste was only above his in the fact ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... turned into slate-stones—their splendid plate into pieces of clay fantastically twisted—and their victuals, unsavoured by salt (prohibited to them, we are told, because an emblem of eternity), became tasteless and insipid—the stately halls were turned into miserable damp caverns—all the delights of the Elfin Elysium vanished at once. In a word, their pleasures were showy, but totally unsubstantial—their activity unceasing, but fruitless and unavailing—and ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... young girl of eighteen sauntered, half perfunctorily, half inquisitively into the room. It was his only remaining daughter. Already elected by circumstances to a dry household virginity, her somewhat large features, sallow complexion, and tasteless, unattractive dress, did not obviously suggest a sacrifice. Since her sister's departure she had taken sole charge of her father's domestic affairs and the few rude servants he employed, with a certain inherited following ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... as the carriage proceeds on its course, the scene changes little by little. The streets become vulgar: the houses of "The Arabian Nights" give place to tasteless Levantine buildings; electric lamps begin to pierce the darkness with their wan, fatiguing glare, and at a sharp turning the new ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... quite good, the fish should be thick at the neck, the flesh white and firm, the gills very red, and the eyes bright and fresh. When flabby, they are not good. The cod is generally boiled whole; but a large head and shoulders contain all that is relishing, the thinner parts being overdone and tasteless before the thick are ready. But the whole fish may often be purchased more reasonably; and the lower half, if sprinkled and hung up, will be in high perfection one or two days. Or it may be made salter, and ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... of the families whom Kirtley met through them, went to church. The Protestant churches were, in fact, gloomy, tasteless and almost empty. Their services appeared cheerless and forbidding. Tremendous fear was their keynote. It seemed far more agreeable to a German to partake of the national sacrament out in a ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... of spring water," thought Richard, as he turned away, "cool, pure, tasteless. But there isn't enough of him to put out a fire, or swim a boat, or turn the wheel of any mill ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... 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 ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... of it! I have no doubt that they sip, every morning, coffee which is as much superior to that of Paris as that of Paris is to that of London; and that they eat the delicious rolls, in comparison with which those of Paris are tasteless. I wonder, in this land of wine,—and yet it must be so,—if the beer-gardens are still filled nightly; and if it could be that I should sit at a little table there, a comely lass would, before I could ask for what everybody is presumed to want, place before me a tall ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... larger the proportion of flesh to that of pulp and seed the better. This may be true of itself, but the fruit-like acid tomato flavor which most people value is found chiefly in the pulp, and the fruit which has not a due proportion of pulp and flesh seems to be insipid and tasteless. Again, the division into many small cells is often connected with a large and pithy placenta and unevenness in maturity and coloring, which faults often more than overbalance any advantage from small cells ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... when they came proved to be nice little pan-fish, not unlike what in New England are called "scup." All the party took kindly to them; but the muffins were a great disappointment, tough and tasteless, with a flavor about ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... wonderful—this rough place miles in a desert and yet decent food! And think of the horrible, tasteless, pretentious mess cooking we have to put with in hotels in England anywhere except London. Whatever mood one might be in coming to America, even if it were fault finding and hostile, one would be convinced of their extraordinary go ahead ability, and be ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... more pitiable than the manner in which the inferior members of it, men originally and for ever destitute of the painting faculty, force themselves into an unnatural, encumbered, learned fructification of tasteless fruit, and pass laborious lives in setting obscurely and weakly upon canvas the philosophy, if such it be, which ten minutes' work of a strong man would have put into healthy practice, or plain words. I know not anything more melancholy ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... bank: but he solemnly adds, I was sorry to see in the line of a scholar like Gray, "the honied spring." Had Johnson received but the faintest tincture of the rich Italian school of English poetry, he would never have formed so tasteless a criticism. Honied is employed by Milton in more places ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... the class had baked sweet potatoes many times, had read cookbooks as often as novels, and—since they were not altogether young—had scores of times been called upon to eat potatoes that were not clean, or were unsound, or not done, or were tasteless, or burnt, or soggy, or cold. Therefore, probably not one of the questions was entirely new to any one of the students, so that the raw material for thought was present in abundance and even very ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... own account, and only sighed at the pain the news would cause poor George. Her George was gone, her mother had been dead this two years. Her life, which had been full of innocent pleasures, was now utterly tasteless, except in its hours of bitterness when sorrow overcame her like a flood. She had a pretty flower-garden in which she used to work. When George was at home what pleasure it had been to plant them with her lover's ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... the passengers by raising their large forms close to the boat. It is said that they resort to the lake to feed on a favorite grass that grows on its bottom in shallow water, and which they dive for. Their flesh is not eaten, except that of the young ones, for it is tough and tasteless. The milk is nutritious, and of a character between that of the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... a cab with drawings, again he went back to the Metropole and to maddening columns of new figures—back to the monotony of tasteless meals served ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... Roman or Grecian taste, was thrown over the most lovely forms of the ancient architecture.'[855] His indignation was especially moved by the havoc perpetrated in Westminster Abbey, sometimes by set design of tasteless innovators, often by 'some low-hovelled cutter of monumental memorials,' or by workmen at coronations, 'who, we are told, cannot attend to trifles.'[856] Carter's lamentation is more than justified by Dean Stanley, who has enumerated in detail many of the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... 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 in ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... own pleasure and that of all the rest. Because there is a square inch more of cake in his brother's piece, that which he has doesn't taste good. If he have one sugar-plum less than the others, they become tasteless, and he throws them all, perhaps, ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... comparison with the Burroughs palace. He had never liked, but, being a true New Yorker, had greatly admired the splendor of that palace, its costly art junk, its rotten old tapestries, its unlovely genuine antiques, its room after room of tasteless magnificence, suggesting a museum, or rather the combination home and salesroom of an art dealer. This evening he found himself curious, critical, disposed to license a long-suppressed sense of humor. While he was waiting for Josephine to come down to the small salon into ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... 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 ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... salt. We 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, ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... only cigars here are those trifling, insipid, tasteless, flavorless things they call Manilas—ten for twenty-five cents—and it would take a thousand of them to be worth half the money. After you have smoked about thirty-five dollars' worth of them in the forenoon, you feel nothing but a desperate yearning ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... be resorted to as an entertaining room when he and his associates may feel inclined to take their pastime on the Lake. Every passenger will be disgusted with the sight of this edifice, not merely as a tasteless thing in itself, but as utterly out of place, and peculiarly fitted, as far as it is observed (and it obtrudes itself on notice at every point of view), to mar the beauty and destroy the pastoral simplicity ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... are we that we do not want what we need; that our wishes and needs are often diametrically opposite? All men desire happiness, but some of us have so vitiated our tastes and our palates by fiery intoxicants that the water of life seems dreadfully tasteless and unstimulating, and so we will rather go back again to the delusive, poisoned drinks than glue our lips to the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... the vegetation of which will vie with that of any part of the world, are in almost every island inferior in abundance and duality to those of Britain. Wild strawberries and raspberries are found in some places, but they are such poor tasteless things as to be hardly worth eating, and there is nothing to compare with our blackberries and whortleberries. The kanary-nut may be considered equal to a hazel-nut, but I have met with nothing else superior to our crabs, oar haws, beech-nuts, wild plums, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... 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 ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... a description of the actual event as can be obtained is contained in a letter from Anthony Storer to his friend George Selwyn, a morbid cynic whose cruel and tasteless bon-mots were hailed as wit by Horace Walpole and his cronies. The execution was that of Dr. Dodd, the "macaroni parson", whose unfortunate vanity led him to forgery and Tyburn. The date—June 27, 1777—is considerably after the period of our book, but the description applies as well as if it had ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... those who tasteless live, And say this world no joys can give: Why tempts yon turtle sprawling, Why smoaks the glorious haunch, Are these not joys still calling To bless our mortal paunch? O 'tis merry in the Hall When beards wag all, What a noise and what a din; How they glitter round the chin; Give me fowl and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... at home in good time. My wife prepared part of the iguana for supper, which was pronounced excellent. The crab was rejected as tough and tasteless. Our new utensils were then tried, the egg-baskets and the milk-bowls, and Fritz was charged to dig a hole in the earth, to be covered with boards, and serve as a dairy, till something better was thought of. Finally, we ascended our leafy ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... dawned, the tent was buried nearly to the ridgepole under snow. Outside, the storm was roaring with unabated fury, and Uncle Bill's emergency supply of wood was almost gone. He crept from under the blankets and boiled some water, making a few tasteless pancakes with ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... English tobacco in their pack; but they have been too busy to look for it. I hope they will light on it, tomorrow. If they do, I will give you half a pipeful. I won't give you more, for it is strong enough to blow your head off, after this tasteless stuff ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... very inmost haunts of memory, and called up that longing for the ocean breeze which those who have once breathed and salted their blood with it never get over, and which makes the sweetest inland airs seem to them at last tame and tasteless. She held a tigershell to her ear, and listened to that low, sleepy murmur, whether in the sense or in the soul we hardly know, like that which had so often been her lullaby,—a memory of the sea, as Landor and ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... mother, "when will you cease such tasteless remarks!" She blushed in her pretty matronly fashion and put her hand on ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... 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 ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... questions, because I felt that you ought to measure the disclosure of your thoughts according to the occasion, and the capacity of those to whom you spoke. I write in haste, in the midst of engagements engrossing in themselves, but partly made tasteless, partly embittered by what I have heard; but I am willing to trust even you, whom I love best on earth, in God's Hand, in the earnest prayer that you may be so employed as is best for the ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... some sound advice," said a fourth: "whenever you meet with a fool who is inclined to lay out his money in the purchase of such a poor tasteless garden as you have made, dispose of it to him, and with the proceeds take a little shop, and support ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... room furnished after the fashion of a drawing-room, and resplendent with candles and gilding. The carpet was rich, the walls were hung with pictures, which if garish in colour were not tasteless in design, and between these glittered a quantity of gilded mirrors that caught and reflected the rays of a huge candelabrum depending from the centre of the ceiling. Innumerable wax candles also shone in various parts of the room, while here and there rich chairs and sofas were disposed; but these ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... be a flirt, every clever woman a politician; the aim, the animus, the intrigue, the rivalry which accompany each of these pursuits make the salt without which the great dinner were tasteless. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... order to dry it. After it has been sun-dried it will keep for long, before it becomes wholly putrid. Dried meat is a poor substitute for fresh meat; it requires long steeping in water, to make it tender, and then it is tasteless, and comparatively innutritious. "Four expert men slice up a full-grown buffalo in four hours and a-half." (Leichhardt.) The American buccaneers acquired their name from boucan—which means jerked meat, in an Indian dialect; for they provisioned their ships with the dried ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... with the grand company, and were to disappear and to be dispersed at the same time. And truly there were manifold traces of hasty and temporary arrangement; new carpets and old hangings; old paint, new gilding; battalions of odd French chairs, squadrons of queer English tables; and large tasteless lamps and tawdry chandeliers, evidently true cockneys, and only taking the air by way of change. There was, too, throughout the drawing-rooms an absence of all those minor articles of ornamental furniture that are the offering of taste to the home we love. There were ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... old strict and accurate combination of a limited amount of 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 ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... language is powerful, picturesque, and expressive, but still harsh and uneven, the ordinary vernacular being mingled with Church-Slavonic, and frequently obscuring the meaning; also, and owing to his deficient education, he often had recourse to inelegant, tasteless forms. If we compare him with Lomonosoff and Sumarokoff, it is evident that Russian poetry had made a great stride in advance under him, both as to external and internal development, in that he not only brought it nearer to life, but also ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... now very decidedly bent on authorship, for which his degree of B.C.L., taken in this year, was doubtless a magical equipment. Another poem, "The Force of Religion; or, Vanquished Love," founded on the execution of Lady Jane Grey and her husband, quickly followed, showing fertility in feeble and tasteless verse; and on the Queen's death, in 1714, Young lost no time in making a poetical lament for a departed patron a vehicle for extravagant laudation of the new monarch. No further literary production of his appeared until 1716, when a Latin oration, which he delivered ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... elder-tree that grew Beside the well-known charnel-house had then A dismal look: the yew-tree had its ghost, That took his station there for ornament: 380 The dignities of plain occurrence then Were tasteless, and truth's golden mean, a point Where no sufficient pleasure could be found. Then, if a widow, staggering with the blow Of her distress, was known to have turned her steps 385 To the cold grave in which her husband slept, One night, or haply more than one, through ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... 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 I cherish it for her sake. I have thought more of ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... a 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 ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... doctor, "has to be without mass, invisible, tasteless, intangible, much more rigid than steel, and at the same time some six hundred billion times lighter than air, in order to fulfill all the requirements made of it and to meet ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... in India. Indeed, in some places beef can be bought for two cents a pound. However, it is not so good as is the beef in America. In the hot weather, as it has to be eaten almost as soon as it is killed, it is tough and tasteless. ...
— The Khaki Kook Book - A Collection of a Hundred Cheap and Practical Recipes - Mostly from Hindustan • Mary Kennedy Core
... laud May's sowing, Nor heed how harvests please When nowhere grain worth growing Greets autumn's questing breeze, And garnerers garner these— Vain words and wasted breath And spilth and tasteless lees— Until ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of the metal will settle slowly, and will at first nearly fill the vessel. The supernatant fluid, which is sulphate of potash in solution, may now be carefully poured off, and its place filled with water; this operation should be repeated several times until the water which passes off is tasteless. The carbonate of the metal rapidly changes to an oxide by contact with the air, and it will generally be found, when it is sufficiently washed, that it is at least half oxide. On adding hydrochloric acid cautiously to the mixture, a chloric ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... England or wherever the ruffed grouse is known as partridge, is called partridge in the Middle and Southern states, where the ruffed grouse is known as pheasant. But as both these distributing agents, like most winter rovers, whether bird or beast, are inordinately fond of this tasteless partridge berry, as well as of the spicy fruit of quite another species, the aromatic wintergreen, which shares with it a number of common names, every one may associate whatever bird and berry best suit him. The delicious little twin-flower ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... that she often 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. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Duelmen camp, where I was kept two months. The food was bad, and very, very scanty. For breakfast we had black bread and coffee; for dinner, soup (I still shudder at the thought of turnip soup), and sometimes a bit of dog meat for supper, a gritty, tasteless porridge, which we called "sand storm." We used to sit around with our bowls of this concoction and extract a grim comfort from the hope that some day Kaiser Bill would be in captivity and we might be allowed to feed him on ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... had been given canned corned beef we would have been all right, but instead of this the soldiers were issued horrible stuff called "canned fresh beef." There was no salt in it. At the best it was stringy and tasteless; at the worst it was nauseating. Not one-fourth of it was ever eaten at all, even when the men became very hungry. There were no facilities for the men to cook anything. There was no ice for them; the water was not good; and they had no ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... her teeth ache, and a singular, revivifying current steal all through her, wonderful in its cool absorption of that dry heat of flesh, irresistible in its appeal to thirst. Helen raised her head to look at this water. It was colorless as she had found it tasteless. ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... the stiff tasteless Old-Prussian Uniform; on each of his temples three stiff rolls as if done with gypsum; the tiny three-cocked hat scarcely covering his crown; so much the thicker the long pigtail, with the slender neck crammed into a very narrow horsehair stock; ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... fact, destroyed at one fell sweep. And all, to gratify my curiosity as to a romantic mystery, my vanity as to my own powers of fascination! Well, I have solved the mystery, and behold it was nothing. I have eaten of the fruit of knowledge, and it is tasteless in my mouth. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... a.m., she was milked and produced two and a half gallons of absolutely clear, odorless, tasteless and non-ignitable fluid. Eleven other Guernseys gave forth gushing, foaming, creamy rich gallon after gallon of Grade ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... Some delight in the sweetest grapes; others feel the sweetness to be sickly. It is all a matter of palate. Some people love the Word of the Lord; to others the reading of it is a dreary task. To some the Bible is like a vineyard; to others it is like a dry and tasteless meal. One takes the word of the Master, and it is "as honey to the mouth"; to another the same word is as unwelcome as a bitter drug. It is ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... chapter I will give a recipe for making it. Nudelsuppe of strong chicken stock and home-made Nudeln used to be what the Berliner called his roast goose—"eine jute Jabe Jottes," but the degenerate Germans of to-day buy tasteless manufactured Nudeln instead of rolling out their own. Nudeln are the German form of macaroni, but when properly made they are better than any macaroni can be. If you have been brought up in an old-fashioned German menage, and, as a child likes to do, peeped into the kitchen sometimes, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... topic in literary history. Besides this, it really is, in some of its kinds, remarkable work. Voltaire's epic verse is almost an exception, needful to be made, from our assertion that this author is nowhere dull. "The Henriade" comes dangerously near that mark. It is a tasteless reproduction of Lucan's faults, with little reproduction of Lucan's virtues. Voltaire's comedies are bright and witty, but they are not laughter-provoking; and they do not possess the elemental and creative character of Shakspeare's or Moliere's ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... 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 ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... said to be essentially composed of a very weak acid—gummic, or arabic acid—united with lime and potash. The solution of gum is very slightly acid, and has a mucilaginous, ropy consistence: it is almost tasteless. Mucilage, or bassorin, is simply a modified form of gum, which, though insoluble in water, forms a gelatinous mixture with that fluid. It exudes from certain trees—the cherry for example—and exists largely in linseed and other seeds. Gums are nutritious foods, but it ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... rust fits it most eminently for all 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 being ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... required great study, long practice, and early experience. Unable to supply themselves, the majority became the victims of quack traders. They sickened of spongy apricots, and foxy pears, and withered plums, and blighted apples, and tasteless berries. They at length suspected that a nation might fare better if its race of fruiterers were overseen and supported by the State, if their skill and their market were alike secured. Although, no longer being tempted to suffer from a surfeit, the health of the Islanders had ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... ingredients. "And now," he gaily murmured, "distilled water," the last element needed to bind these together as a water of death. It is a royal secret of the rogue's pharmacy—the best garment for a flitting soul, tasteless and painless. ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... circumstance in time, I should easily have managed to put a stop to the proceeding; but the doctor did not lose an instant in administering his medicine, which, I hear, only consisted of one little white and tasteless pill. From all accounts, and as ill luck would have it, the effect it has produced is something quite marvellous. The grand vizier has received such relief that he can talk of nothing else; he says, 'that he felt the pill drawing the ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... proceeded Eames, 'the pleasures of life, trivial and soon tasteless, are bribes to bring us into a torture chamber. We all see that for any thinking man mere extinction is the... What are you doing?... Are you mad?... Put ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... instead of their former tasteless array, wore delightfully pretty frocks and hats, and had other charming decorations chosen for them. They began to love the memory of their dead mother. What could she not have been to them if she had lived, when only a step-mother was so sweet and so ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... animation which Kant had so recently displayed, that we should to-day have a pleasant party, but my hopes were vain—Kant was more than usually exhausted, and though he raised a spoon to his mouth, he swallowed nothing. For some time everything had been tasteless to him; and I had endeavored, but with little success, to stimulate the organs of taste by nutmeg, cinnamon, &c. To-day all failed, and I could not even prevail upon him to taste a biscuit, rusk, or anything of that sort. I had once heard him say that several of his friends, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... driven by those rivers, to ascertain that they have no contrivances for taking the fry on their way to the sea, as it appears that in some rivers they are taken in large quantities. There ought also to be a penalty attached to the killing of Kelt fish, which in that state are not only tasteless and insipid, but actually unwholesome; yet they are pursued and destroyed with as much avidity as the fresh fish, and a very small number of the few that spawn in safety ever return to the sea. A penalty ought also ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... in their 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 night they get drunk, they sleep the day; In idleness ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... shall be children before they are men. If we insist on reversing this order we shall have fruit early indeed, but unripe and tasteless, and liable to early decay; we shall have young savants and old children. Childhood has its own methods of seeing, thinking, and feeling. Nothing shows less sense than to try to substitute our own methods for these. I would rather require a child ten years old to be five feet tall than to be judicious. ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... dragon of Wales. The interior is now partly devoted to various municipal 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 ill ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... monumental hotels, where he would be numbered like a convict; he would meet the same carnivorous English family, with whom he might have made a tour of the world without exchanging one word; swallowing every day the tasteless soup, old fish, tough vegetables, and insipid wine which have an international reputation, so to speak. But above all, he was to have the horror, every evening upon going to his room, of passing through those uniform and desolate corridors, faintly lighted by gas, where ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... which are for this reason more readily softened. But violent boiling occasions an enormous waste of fuel, and by driving away in the steam the volatile and savory elements of the food, renders it much less palatable, if not altogether tasteless. The solvent properties of water are so increased by heat that it permeates the food, rendering its hard and tough constituents soft and easy ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... means to die, that is, to fall. From the last syllable of the Chaldee nasar, to saw, we can derive the Latin serra, the High German sagen, the Danish sauga, and our word to saw. The Arabic nafida, to fade, is the same as the Italian fado, the Latin fatuus (foolish, tasteless), the Dutch vadden, and our to fade. The Ethiopic word gaber, to make, to do, and the Arabic word jabara, to make strong, becomes the Welsh word goberu, to work, to operate, the Latin operor, and the English ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... who was well-bred, and saw what Emilius meant, withdrew; but Roderick, with the utmost indifference, put on his mask again, placed himself before the glass, and said: 'Verily I am a hideous figure, am I not? To say the truth, it is a tasteless, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... 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
... whole days 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 ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... the face. He desires an impossible perfection, and flies for safety to the little world that he can make and sway. That is why artists, as a rule, love twilight hours, shaded rooms, half-tones, subdued hues, because what is common, staring, tasteless, is blurred and hidden. Men of rich vitality are generally too much occupied with life as it is, its richness, its variety, its colour and fragrance, to think wistfully of life as it might be. The unbridled, sensuous, luxurious strain, that one finds in so many artists, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... poisonous, it is white but it is darkness all the same. There are other kinds of sin than the sins that break the Ten Commandments; there are other kinds of sin than the sins that the world takes cognisance of. The worst poisons are the tasteless ones, and colourless gases are laden with fatal power. We may walk in a darkness that may be felt, though there be nothing in our lives that men call sin, and little there of which our consciences are as yet educated enough to be ashamed. Rent ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and let me take off these tasteless kisses the maid gave you; may we not join lips before we ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... partridge-berry, Mitchella, a trailing evergreen, bearing scarlet berries, edible but nearly tasteless, which remain through the winter. It is peculiar to America, and this is probably the first time it was noticed ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... We didn't learn to love that fruit. We sometimes had it baked for dinner. I think it is never eaten uncooked. The tree is fine-looking; its leaves are large, and of a very brilliant green. The fruit is round, has a rough outside, and to me seemed rather mealy and tasteless. ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... sago districts consume a considerable quantity of sago flour, which is boiled into a thick, tasteless paste, called boyat and eaten by being twisted into a large ball round a stick and inserted into the mouth—an ungraceful operation. Tamarind, or some very acid sauce is used to impart to it some flavour. Sago is of course cheaper ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher |
