"Scentless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... honour; and I, who have the habit of dangling a flower, generally a sweet one, caught myself more than once rejecting the spicy clove and the starry jessamine, the blossomed myrtle and the tuberose, my old fragrant favourites, for this scentless (but triumphant) beauty; everybody who beheld the Phoebus begged for a plant or a cutting; and we, generous in our ostentation, willing to redeem the vice by the virtue, promised as many plants and cuttings as we could reasonably imagine ...
— The Lost Dahlia • Mary Russell Mitford
... N. inodorousness[obs3]; absence of smell, want of smell. deodorant, deodorization, deodorizer. V. be inodorous &c. adj[obs3].; not smell. deodorize. Adj. inodorous[obs3], onodorate; scentless; without smell, wanting ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... several months in succession, inserts his acojote or gourd, a kind of siphon, and applying his mouth to the other end, draws off the liquor by suction; a curious-looking process. First it is called honey-water, and is sweet and scentless; but easily ferments when transferred to the skins or earthen vases where it is kept. To assist in its fermentation, however, a little old pulque, Madre pulque, as it is called, which has fermented for many days, is added ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... doors were flung open, and the two royal brides entered, followed by their maids of honor. Clotilda, self-possessed in her proud beauty, looked like a queen indeed. She was magnificently dressed, and the pale, scentless rose upon her breast was almost hidden by diamonds. But many there turned their eyes from her handsome, haughty face, to gaze upon young Edith, who leaned upon the arm of her betrothed, the unknown knight. They wondered that they had ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... down and pecked at her inquisitively; the cruel wagons crushed her beneath their iron wheels; careless feet buffeted her hither and thither. She was no longer a beautiful rose; no, nor even a reminiscence of one,—simply a colorless, scentless, ill-shapen mass. ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... thee, thou lone one! To pine on the stem; Since the lovely are sleeping. Go, sleep thou with them. Thus kindly I scatter Thy leaves o'er the bed, Where thy mates of the garden Lie scentless and dead. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... repeated Mary quickly and recklessly, letting her eyes wander from her own clasped hands to Eve's bouquet of delicate, scentless fritillaries, which lay neglected where it had fallen on the floor between their feet. "How easy it sounds!—is perhaps—and yet—I have not so much ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... strange bloom, by sun and wind unwooed, Seems to expand and blossom 'mid the snows, A lily sceptreless, a scentless rose, For ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... pain have yielded good, Which prosperous days refused; As herbs, though scentless when entire, Spread fragrance when ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... he think without bringing himself in—get out of himself and see what he ought to do? The thought hurt him, then lost edge, as if it had come in contact with a breastplate. Out of oneself! Impossible! Out into soundless, scentless, touchless, sightless space! The very idea was ghastly, futile! And touching there the bedrock of reality, the bottom of his Forsyte spirit, Soames rested for a moment. When one ceased, all ceased; it might go on, but there'd ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that she must cultivate a closer acquaintance with farm life. She pronounced it immensely interesting, feigning to ignore the ironical glances exchanged by Phil and Amzi. She exclaimed in a mockery of rapture over a bowl of scentless wild violets which Phil had gathered. They were amazingly fragrant, she said, waving her hand lately ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... was a regular hothouse bouquet, of tea-rosebuds, scentless heath, and smilax; the second was just a handful of sweet-peas and mignonette, with a few cheerful pansies, and one fragrant little rose in the middle; the third, a small posy of scarlet verbenas, white ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... sickle keen Aimed at its crest of gold and green With spiteful stroke relentless, And would have rooted from the ground The "Solidago"—blossom-crowned, But gaudy, rank, and scentless. ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... beautiful mossy gall, so commonly seen on the branches of the wild rose, which has been called the bedeguar of the rose. This is the production of a cynips; and, from its vivid tints of crimson and green, might well pass at a short distance for a flower, brilliant, but scentless. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... stunted shoots as well as their free-growing, stately blossoms. It is the same marvellous, fragrant life struggling to come forth through generous or barren soil. There are some thin, dwarfed, almost scentless flowers of love and friendship, of which we can discern the faint fragrance only when we are on our knees. But some of us have conscientious scruples about kneeling down except at shrines. Magdalen ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... rhymes rudely strung with intent less Of sound than of words, In lands where bright blossoms are scentless, And songless bright birds; Where, with fire and fierce drought on her tresses, Insatiable summer oppresses Sere woodlands and sad wildernesses, And faint ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... dazzling radiant reflex such as you see on Perfection, Monsignor and Black Knight? But it is always there shimmering in the sunlight. There is a fairy—a pure snowy queen. How was that sweetness and purity ever extracted from the scentless soil? Every bloom uncorks a vial of perfume which has the odor of ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... many-peaked cloud—the gleaming, wandering Alps of the blue ether; outstretched far below, the warming bosom of the earth, throbbing with the hope of maternity. Two spirits abroad in the air, encountering each other and passing into one: the spirit of scentless spring left by melting snows and the spirit of scented summer born with the earliest buds. The road through the forest one of those wagon-tracks that were being opened from the clearings of the settlers, and that wound along beneath trees of which those now seen in Kentucky are the unworthy ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... Mildred remembered her mother, the color of her hair was dark, not golden. Still it might have been cut in youth, before its hue had deepened. And what a world of mystery, of feeling, of associations there was in that scentless and withered rose-bud! What fair hand had first plucked it? What pledge did it carry? Was the subtile aroma of love ever blended with its fragrance? Had her father borne it with him in his wanderings? The secret was in his coffin. The struggling lips could not utter it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... picturesque appearance) across the Kishwaukie, the most graceful of streams, and on whose bosom rested many full-blown water-lilies,—twice as large as any of ours. I was told that, en revanche, they were scentless, but I still regret that I could not get at one of them to try. Query, did the lilied fragrance which, in the miraculous times, accompanied visions of saints and angels, proceed from water ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... The flowers are scentless, black, and sere, The perfume long has passed away; The sea whose tides are year by year Is set ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... life by the creeping moonlight. He had the oddest feeling of actual companionship, as if a million white moths or spirits had floated in and settled between dark sky and darker ground, and were opening and shutting their wings on a level with his eyes. In the bewildering, still, scentless beauty of that moment he almost lost memory of why he had come to the orchard. The flying glamour which had clothed the earth all day had not gone now that night had fallen, but only changed into this new ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... cur-breeding florist. Its species, though many resembling each other, are severally constant in aspect, and easily recognizable; and I have never seen it provoked to glare into any gigantic impudence at a flower show. Fortunately, perhaps, it is scentless, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... such flowers, what am I?" continued Fan. "Someone once called me a flower, but he must have been thinking of some poor scentless ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... nine weeks of drought and east wind, scarcely a flower to be seen, no verdure in the meadows, no leaves in the hedgerows; if a poor violet or primrose did make its appearance it was scentless. I have not once heard my aversion the cuckoo... and in this place, so evidently the rendezvous of swallows, that it takes its name from them, not a swallow has yet appeared. The only time that I have heard the nightingale, I drove, the one ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... nettle-juice to bicarbonate of ammonia, which Dr. Thomson and I ascertained was certainly not present in this species.] that I had difficulty in getting help to cut it down. I gathered many specimens without allowing any part to touch my skin; still the scentless effluvium was so powerful, that mucous matter poured from my eyes and nose all the rest of the afternoon, in such abundance, that I had to hold my head over a basin for an hour. The sting is very virulent, producing inflammation; and to punish a child with "Mealum-ma" is the severest Lepcha threat. ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... which, at the time, the cub attached considerable importance. He had killed what seemed to be a large, heavy rabbit, which, though evidently possessed of a healthy appetite, was almost scentless, and differed in taste from any he had hitherto captured. He was not particularly hungry, so he buried the insipid flesh, and resolved never to destroy another rabbit that did not yield a full, strong scent. ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... perfume of the magic blossom, as it shone upon her breast; but selfish thoughts would come to tempt her, she would yield, and unkind words fell from her lips; and then the flower drooped pale and scentless, the fairy bell rang mournfully, Annie would forget her better resolutions, and be again ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... old rail-fence back of Mrs. Marshall, a field of brown stubble, a distant grove of beech-trees, and beyond and around them the immense sweeping circle of the horizon. The very breath of the pure, scentless winter air was to come back to ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... and sun-fed, glancing with the dews of youth now, when it had just unclosed, in all its earliest beauty, but already soiled and tainted by the bed from which it sprang, and doomed to be swept away with time, scentless and loveless, down the rapid, noxious current of that broad, black stream of vice on which it now floated ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... little rosebud, With a dew crown encircling your head; Now, out of the window I toss you, Shriveled, and scentless, and dead. You had opened to wondrous perfection, Had only my hand let you pass; Yet here you have perished for water— I forgot to ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... lips should continually be offered. Literally, of course, there cannot be that unbroken and exclusive utterance of thanksgiving. There are many other things that men have to talk about; but through all the utterances there ought to spread the aroma—like some fragrance diffused through the else scentless air from some unseen source of sweetness—of that name to which the life is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... part they grow only near the sea. Here they are replaced by bananas, mango trees, pipals (ficus religiosa), fig trees, and thousands of other trees and shrubs, unknown to such outsiders as ourselves. The Indian flora is too often slandered and misrepresented as being full of beautiful, but scentless, flowers. At some seasons this may be true enough, but, as long as jasmines, the various balsams, white tuberoses, and golden champa (champaka or frangipani) are in blossom, this statement is far from being true. The aroma of champa alone is so powerful ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... purple chandeliers, their tiny balls of blossom, but in many places among their foliage where, only a week before, they had still been breaking in waves of fragrant foam, these were now spent and shrivelled and discoloured, a hollow scum, dry and scentless. My grandfather pointed out to my father in what respects the appearance of the place was still the same, and how far it had altered since the walk that he had taken with old M. Swann, on the day of his wife's death; ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... thus at first wonderfully keen. It was so with his hearing and smell. The latter was the source of most of his sufferings; for, being so exceedingly sensitive, even the most scentless things made him sick. He liked but one smell, that of bread, which had been his only food for seventeen years. It was a long time, indeed, before he could take any other food at all, and he only became accustomed ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... length grant her the poor consolation of having brought about his release," said he to himself. "She has been so long and so terribly punished for this unhappy passion, that I will give her the consolation of plucking a few scentless blossoms from the grave of her heart. Let her turn to the fireman of the empress, and may my pious aunt be warmed up by his representations and prayers! I will not interfere; and if Maria Theresa ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... — N. inodorousness^; absence of smell, want of smell. deodorant, deodorization, deodorizer. V. be inodorous &c adj.^; not smell. deodorize. Adj. inodorous^, onodorate; scentless; without smell, wanting smell &c 398. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Turned into roses. Circling bloom Crowned the loose-lifted tresses there. "O Love," I cried, "forever Dwell wreathed, and perfume-haunted By my heart's deep honey-breath!" But even as I bending looked, I saw The roses were not; and, instead, there lay Pale, feathered flakes and scentless Ashes upon your hair! ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... more obviously the atmosphere is poisonous, the more we shall put some cloth over our mouths to prevent it from getting into our lungs. The dangerous place is the place where the vapours that poison are scentless as well as invisible. But whatever be the difficulties, there is strength waiting for us, and we may all win the praise which the Apostle gives to another of these Roman brethren, whom he salutes as 'Apelles, approved in Christ'—a man that had been ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... better. 'The Persian Iris appears to some persons to possess a sweet and very powerful perfume, while to others it is perfectly scentless.' Fine that, and very delicate! Turn it about a little, and it will do wonders. We'll have some thing else in the botanical line. There's nothing goes down so well, especially with the help of a ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... he seemed to have known some time, on the sin of gluttony which must so often be committed at La Trappe, then tasted, pretending a chuckle of delight, the scentless bouquet of the poor wine he poured out, and lastly, when he divided with a spoon the omelette which was the main dish of their dinner, he pretended to cut up a fowl, and to be delighted with the fine appearance of the flesh; saying to ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... pretty penny saved too," went on Mr. Jacobi, not in the least silenced by Malcolm's lack of interest. "Gyp told me a thing or two about that. It seems they had a farm in Cornwall"—here he sniffed at his scentless orchid with an air of enjoyment, a habit of his when his subject interested him. "It was a rotten concern—farm buildings out of repair, and a few scrubby fields with more stones than grass. Miss Templeton was just going to sell it for a mere song when some ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Normandy; and Daudet had the Southern expansiveness and abundance, just as Maupassant had the Northern reserve and caution. If an author is ever to bring forth fruit after his kind he must have roots in the soil of his nativity. Daudet was no orchid, beautiful and scentless; his writings have always the full flavor of the southern soil. He was able to set Tartarin before us so sympathetically and to make Numa Roumestan so convincing because he recognized in himself the possibility of a like ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... The night was a wonderland of deep spaces and glittering stars. Somewhere far away a native tom-tom throbbed like the beating of a fevered pulse, quickening spasmodically at intervals and then dying away again into mere monotony. The air was scentless, still, and heavy. ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... apart from the common occurrences of life. He is occupied now, in devising means of imparting to her, higher knowledge; and of conveying to her some adequate idea of the Great Creator of that universe in which, dark and silent and scentless though it be to her, she has such deep delight and ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... most glad to see that I am withdrawing from the argumentative. I begin to enjoy more than ever the pure still characters which I meet. Intellect is not quite satisfying though so alluring. It is a scentless flower; but there is a purer summer pleasure in the sweet-brier than the dahlia, though one would have each in his garden. It is because Shakespeare is not solely intellectual, but equally developed, that his fame is universal. The old philosophers, the sheer ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... not imaginative, but as he watched her he seemed to be gazing at some gorgeous cactus blossom opening its scentless petals to the burning sun. Beneath and beyond her stretched the gray wastes of the desert turning to gold under her feet, but still untrammeled and merciless, holding strange secrets close to its savage heart; now, exerting ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... the first time that the collar of her dress was cut too low. It showed the shrunken lines of the throat. She rummaged feverishly in a tidy scentless drawer, and snatching out a bit of black velvet, bound it about her neck. Yes—that was better. It gave her the relief she needed. Relief—contrast—that was it! She had never had any, either in her appearance or in her setting. She was as flat as the ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... — We gladly travelled down the valley to our former night's lodging, and thence to near the Agua amarga. On July 1st we reached the valley of Copiapo. The smell of the fresh clover was quite delightful, after the scentless air of the dry, sterile Despoblado. Whilst staying in the town I heard an account from several of the inhabitants, of a hill in the neighbourhood which they called "El Bramador," — the roarer or bellower. I did not at the time pay sufficient attention ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... queen!" But she stood motionless; radiant, and scentless: a dahlia on its stalk. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... in a clump of scentless white violets. No one had come to tell the flowers that the season of their strength was long past, and they had bloomed merrily in the ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... this yellow stone or prickly-smells and sparse. Who holds the gold heart of the sun that fed these timber bars, Nor any scentless lily lives for One that smells ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... atmosphere was laden with the delightful perfume of the woods—a perfume that is sweet and pleasant to those long used to it, how much more enchanting to nostrils rendered delicately sensitive by long exposure to the scentless gales of ocean? ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... scentless," replied the Major; "they are all very brilliant in appearance; but one modest English violet is, to my fancy, ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... writers, who made the Anemone to be the flower of Adonis. Theocritus compares the Dog-rose (so called also in his day, kynosbatos) and the Anemone with the Rose, and the Scholia comment on the passage thus—"Anemone, a scentless flower, which they report to have sprung from the blood of Adonis; and again Nicander says that the Anemone sprung ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe |
