"Tasteless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... faddists—blind to the deeply spiritual nature of bread, which is recognized by all great religions—held back our march toward perfection with their hair-splitting insistence on the vitamin content of the wheat germ, but their case collapsed when tasteless colorless substitutes were triumphantly synthesized and introduced into the loaf, which for flawless purity, unequaled airiness and sheer intangible goodness was rapidly becoming mankind's supreme ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... 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, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... 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
... end of the counter were squares of thick white paper covered with rows of small pink, also white, 'peppermint buttons,' small sticks, two inches in length, of chewing gum in waxed paper, a white, tasteless, crystalline substance resembling paraffine. What longing eyes I frequently cast at the small scalloped cakes of maple sugar, prohibitive as regards cost. They sold for a nickel, am I was always inordinately ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... melons, so wondrous fine for "sloken a body on hot days"; their contempt for tomatoes, so fine to look at with their sunny colors and so disappointing in taste; the miserable cucumbers the "Yankee bodies" ate, though tasteless as rushes; the character of the Yankees, etcetera. Then there were long discussions about the Russian war, news of which was eagerly gleaned from Greeley's "New York Tribune"; the great battles of the Alma, ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... power to prevent. So, my dear Marthe, see to it if you please in future that my slumber tonic is served just on the boil. The worthy Joanna does not understand the mysteries of the boiling process. Water, after it has passed the initiatory stage becomes flat, absolutely flat and tasteless. What I had to drink last night was so repugnant to my palate that I found it impossible to sink into repose with that calm attitude of mind which is so ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... bowl and led him around the base of the machine; then she filled the bowl again with the fragrant, red-brown liquid, from a tall urn of green metal. Larry took the dish eagerly and gulped down the rather insipid and tasteless food. ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson
... somewhat aroused, and I questioned him, whereupon he told me that the drug, being tasteless, was given in food or drink, and that the victim was seized with a terrible and immeasurable sadness and depth of despair, in which life appeared too horrible to endure, and which the unfortunate always ended by seizing a weapon of some sort and ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... out 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 ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... such commentators on men and things uniformly bringing every thing down to the standard of serf. Then the approaching marriages at the Wigwam had to run the gauntlet, not only of village and county criticisms, but that of the mighty Emporium itself, as it is the fashion to call the confused and tasteless collection of flaring red brick houses, marten-box churches, and colossal taverns, that stands on the island of Manhattan; the discussion of marriages being a topic of never- ending interest in that well regulated social organization, after the subjects of dollars, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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
... that he would feel the incurable barbarism of the Gothic blood. Contrasted with the fine displays that made the table of the Roman noble a picture, and threw over the indulgence of appetite the colors of the imagination, with what eyes must he contemplate the tasteless and commonplace dress, the coarse attendants, the meagre ornament, the want of mirth, music, and intellectual interest—the whole heavy machinery that converts the feast into the mere drudgery ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... be hams, were stowed snugly away in battens under the ceiling or upper-deck; a cask half full of flour stood in a corner; near it lay a large coarse sack in which was a quantity of biscuit, a piece of which I bit and found it as hard as flint and tasteless, but not in the least degree mouldy. There were four shelves running athwartships full of glass, knives and forks, dishes, and so forth, some of the glass very choice and elegant, and many of the dishes and ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... gone through the several kinds of my exotics, I had a mind to re-examine them after cooling, but could make nothing of any of my greens but the spinach. I tried several berries and nuts too, but, save a few sort of nuts, they were all very tasteless. Then I began to review the fruits, and could find but two sorts that I had any the least hopes from. I then laid the best by and threw the others away. After this process, which took me up near a whole day, and clearing my house of good-for-nothings, I returned to reexamine ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... 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
... subsequent impairment of vitality may result. Such children should have their meals made tempting by good cooking and pleasant variety, as well as an agreeable appearance of the food. Meat which is carved in unsightly masses and vegetables which are sodden and tasteless will be refused, and an ill attempt is made to supply the deficiency in proper food by eating indigestible candy, nuts, etc. Children often have no natural liking for meat, and prefer puddings, pastry or sweets when they ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... in our gayest and merriest mood, Our pleasures are tasteless and dim, For the thoughts of the past and of Tom that intrude Make us feel we're but ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... am obliged to listen to particularly tasteless speeches out of the mouths of uncommonly childish and excited politicians, and I have therefore a moment of unwilling leisure which I cannot use better than in giving you news of my welfare. I never thought that in ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... he had discovered a toxic product of extraordinary virulence, not a gas, but a tasteless and odorless liquid containing harmful bacteria. These bacteria showed great resistance against heat and cold and were able to propagate and disseminate themselves with incredible rapidity through living creatures, rats, earth worms, birds, ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... that we must not determine the intrinsic value of this kind of good by direct reference to another. If we do, we shall find ourselves maintaining what we did not expect. If poetic value lies in the stimulation of religious feelings, Lead, kindly Light is no better a poem than many a tasteless version of a Psalm: if in the excitement of patriotism, why is Scots, wha hae superior to We don't want to fight? if in the mitigation of the passions, the Odes of Sappho will win but little praise: if in instruction, Armstrong's Art of preserving ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... tempest-beaten sailor at his entrance into the harbour. When the pleasure of novelty went away, I employed my hours in examining the plants and minerals of the place. But that inquiry is now grown tasteless and irksome, and I have been for some time unsettled and distracted. I am sometimes ashamed to think that I could not secure myself from vice but by retiring from the exercise of virtue, and begin to suspect that I was rather impelled by resentment than led by devotion into solitude. I have ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Tasteless indeed must be those who can travel over these lofty and beautiful downs, without experiencing the most lively gratification from the checquered and magnificent prospects which invite their contemplation on every side: but to enjoy ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... observations, gives the history of a powder called magnesia alba, which had long been used and esteemed as a mild and tasteless purgative; but the method of preparing it was not generally known before he ...
— Experiments upon magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other Alcaline Substances • Joseph Black
... that boulevard of 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 table stands the counterfeit of that ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... timber, many funnels of 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 ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... in my chain of reasoning. Powdered opium is by no means tasteless. The flavor is not disagreeable, but it is perceptible. Were it mixed with any ordinary dish the eater would undoubtedly detect it, and would probably eat no more. A curry was exactly the medium which ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... of Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament lay before them. The most stately of ancient English buildings was contrasted with the most beautiful of modern ones. How anything so graceful came to be built by this tasteless and utilitarian nation must remain a marvel to the traveller. The sun was shining upon the gold-work of the roof, and the grand towers sprang up amid the light London haze, like some gorgeous palace in a dream. It was a fit centre for the rule to whose mild sway ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... 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
... monastery. At the end of the nave, you look to the left, opposite—and observe, placed in a recess—a pulpit, which, from top to bottom, is completely covered with gold. And yet, there is nothing gaudy or tasteless, or glaringly obtrusive, in this extraordinary clerical rostrum. The whole is in the most perfect taste; and perhaps more judgment was required to manage such an ornament, or appendage—consistently with the splendid style of decoration exacted ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... insisted that I should enter and have some coffee. I had so few words at my command that I could not invent even a flimsy excuse. So I went in. The coffee was tasteless. I put in four lumps of sugar. I stirred and stirred and stirred. Finally, I swallowed the contents of the cup. It was very hot. When the agony was past I ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... o'clock on a papier-mache tray spread with a crumpled tray cloth. It was a tepid, tasteless, unappetising meal, for the working housekeeper knew neither how to work nor to cook, and Pat invariably sent it away almost untasted; yet every day he looked forward afresh to the advent of one o'clock and the appearance of the tray. ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... would have appeared too minute and over-curious, I have purposely omitted them. The greater Incidents, however, are not only set off by being shewn in the same Light with several of the same nature in Homer, but by that means may be also guarded against the Cavils of the Tasteless or Ignorant. ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... the soil did not suit the growth. I know the fruits were not satisfactory to myself, and, indeed, were not fruits at all, to my sense of them; but rather dry husks and hard nut shells, with the most tasteless of small kernels inside. Yet Miss Pinshon did not seem unsatisfied; and, indeed, occasionally remarked that she believed I meant to be a good child. Perhaps that was something out of my governess's former experience; for it was the only style of commendation ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... 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
... still. Some reckless and unscrupulous hand had sundered them outwardly, and her instinct, guided by a hundred significant incidents, told her whose hand it had been. She fled to her little gloomy sitting-room, with its worn-out, tasteless furniture and drab walls, and fought her sorrow and despair single-handed and in her own way. She had a man's dislike for tears—though, being a woman, they came all too easily to her—and she fought against them now with all the strength at her ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... seven pieces of gold; fifty pieces were given for an ox, a rare and accidental prize; the progress of famine enhanced this exorbitant value, and the mercenaries were tempted to deprive themselves of the allowance which was scarcely sufficient for the support of life. A tasteless and unwholesome mixture, in which the bran thrice exceeded the quantity of flour, appeased the hunger of the poor; they were gradually reduced to feed on dead horses, dogs, cats, and mice, and eagerly to snatch the grass, and even ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... is that to leave the home Of the Waywode, my father, for the house Of some count palatine, a grateful bride? What do I gain of new from such a change? And can I joy in looking to the morrow When it brings naught but what was stale to-day? Oh, tasteless round of petty, worn pursuits! Oh, wearisome monotony of life! Are they a guerdon for high hopes, high aims? Or love or greatness I must have: all else Are unto me alike indifferent. Smooth off the trouble from thy brow, dear father! Let's trust the stream that bears us on its ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... lowered 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 ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... the gardener roared out some interpolated English popular songs, which suited Mozart's music just as a pitch-plaster would suit the face of the Venus de' Medici. The whole opera was, moreover, arranged by a certain Mr. Bishop; that is, adapted to English ears by means of the most tasteless and shocking alterations. The English national music, the coarse, heavy melodies of which can never be mistaken for an instant, has to me, at least, something singularly offensive, an expression of brutal feeling ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... fruit-bearing bushes. Who among my readers has not a lively recollection of bramble hunting, nutting, or merry expeditions for blueberries, wild strawberries, raspberries, and other wild fruits? You might walk many a mile through the sal jungles without meeting fruit of any kind, save the dry and tasteless wild fig, or ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... instead of this stale synthetic stuff! Real food, in place of these tasteless concentrates! A hot bath, instead ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... about vain earthly concerns, and often also from egotism and spiritual death; for I saw neglect of this kind in churches the pastors and congregations of which were rich, or at east tolerably well off. I saw many others in which worldly, tasteless, unsuitable ornaments had replaced the magnificent adornments ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... stew and may even be served as side dishes if one has butter and milk to season them. Generally they require soaking (which can be done over night); then they are to be boiled slowly until tender, taking about as much time as fresh vegetables. If cooking is hurried they will be woody and tasteless. ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... exalted by a lively and agreeable imagination, in order to attain the most perfect felicity of which human nature is susceptible. Ambition, avarice, vanity, when enjoyed in the most exquisite perfection, can yield but trifling and tasteless pleasures, which will be too inconsiderable to affect ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... 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 ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... grandsires; with their snowy hair floating over the pillow, and then he drew the most beautiful pictures on the window pane, to amuse them when they should wake. He crept slyly into the larders of thrifty housewives, and, with a touch, made chickens and ducks hanging there, quite stiff and tasteless; he skipped to the cistern, and magically rendered the pump handle immovable; he ran about the streets and played tricks with the bright gas lamps, and they went out, as though a puff of wind had blown over them. And, last of all, he ran against a stout Burgomaster, returning homeward from ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... for the very simple reason, that it resembles nothing but a chimney, and its lines are graceful. Fig. f, though ugly in the abstract, might be used with effect in situations where perfect simplicity would be too conspicuous; but both e and f are evidently the awkward efforts of a tasteless nation, to produce something original: they have lost the chastity which we admired in a, without obtaining the grace and spirit of l and o. In fact, ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... taste. A kind of bottled meat-flavoured sauce, manufactured from spent yeast, is used to make the soups, and is poured, with an equally nauseating result, over the hard veal, the tough chicken, the "mousey" quails, and the tasteless beef and mutton, which are never roasted, but are baked or stewed in boiling fat—though shamelessly described as "rotis" in the pretentious and mendacious "menu" placed on the dinner-table. The consequence is that the tourist, who has been overfed at home, ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... mon ami. But we must not dry them in the sun; for let me tell you, Mr. Louis, that they will be quite tasteless—mere ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... at the table in a dream, trying to eat the tasteless bread and butter. Suddenly and swiftly the thick and somewhat stale piece of bread on her plate was exchanged for a thin, fresh, and ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... electric lamps were switched on and the whole courtyard turned blue-white with black velvet shadows. Then the bell clanged, and we crowded again into the stifling dining hall for the last tasteless meal of the barren day. The same miserable stories were told again and again—Colonel Moller's surrender after Talana Hill, and the white flag at Nicholson's Nek—until I knew how the others came to Pretoria as well as I knew my ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... protracted woe. Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy, And shuts up all the passages of joy: 260 In vain their gifts the bounteous seasons pour, The fruit autumnal, and the vernal flower; 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, Diffuse the tuneful lenitives of pain: No sounds, alas! would touch the impervious ear, Though dancing mountains ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... more week, until the forenoon of September 7th, and then falls the frost, and that unfaltering will renders its supreme submission to the will of God."* Unusually checkered his life had been, and yet for Lanier as for Timrod poetry (and music) had "turned life's tasteless waters into wine, and flushed them through and through with purple tints."** The body was taken to Mr. Lanier's home in Baltimore, thence to the Church of St. Michael and All Angels, where services were conducted by the rector, the Rev. Dr. William Kirkus. It was then buried in Greenmount ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... your taste for fiction by the advertisements and buy a novel with as little care as you would buy a pair of scissors, who think, if you ever think, and I have already said that you do not, that because there are fifty thousand tasteless people in the world there is no reason why you should not swell that crowd, you are responsible for the decay of the novel. Traditions are dying, helped to their death by prize competitions and personal paragraphs, and Oxford is the home of tradition, ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... 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 ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... the cemetery is the tasteless mausoleum of Burns—a circular Grecian temple, the spaces between the pillars glazed, and a low dome, shaped like an inverted washbowl, clapped on top. The interior is occupied by Turnerelli's fine marble group of Burns at the plough, interrupted by the Muse of Poetry. At the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... world was his enemy—for was he not alone there, robbed of his mate? Presently the reaction from this violence came, and an intense apathy set in. A saltless, tasteless existence. What was Parliament to him? What was his country or his nation? or even his home? Only the hunting when it came gave him some relief, and then if the run were fast enough, or the jumps prodigiously high, or his horses sufficiently fresh to be difficult, his blood ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... quail in New 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 (q.v.), which shares with it a number of common names, every one may associate whatever bird and berry that best suit him. The delicious little twin-flower, beloved of Linnaeus, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... 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 ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey
... sea-eggs, or sit patiently in their canoes, and with a baited hair-line without any hook, jerk out little fish. If a seal is killed, or the floating carcass of a putrid whale is discovered, it is a feast; and such miserable food is assisted by a few tasteless berries and fungi. ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... extensive than in the central and northern districts. Several kinds of fruit are grown, and Nyland apples are famous for their flavour, while very fair pears, plums, and cherries can be bought cheaply in the markets. Currants and gooseberries are, however, sour and tasteless. In these southern districts the culture of cereals has reached a perfection unknown further north, for the farms are usually very extensive, the farmers up to date, and steam implements in general use. Dairy-farming is also carried on with excellent results and yearly increasing prosperity. Amongst ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... Union of Souls between these two Ladies; from what Affinity of Disposition, or mysterious Impulse, is a Secret only known to Nature and themselves. They love and hate alike; their Sympathies and Antipathies are the same; and all Joys are tasteless to the One, without the Company and Participation of the Other. Their Affection is of that tender, that delicate Nature, that the smallest Jealousie, the least Unkindness blasts it. It happen'd one Day, that Clarissa was more than commonly civil to her ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... 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
... ran the letter— "This scarf, forced on me by a hand I loath, With many an amorous word and tasteless kiss! As I for thee, so burns for me the wanton; To me as thine, cold is my heart to her; Nor canst thou more despise the gift than I Scorn the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... when introduced in large quantities or in large pieces, but if used in very small quantities, and chopped until it is fine as dust, then sprinkled over the meat, it would dissolve entirely, few would suspect that onion was present, and yet there would be no danger that the pie would be tasteless. A little piece of onion the size of a thumb-nail, chopped as small as possible, would be sufficient to flavour two small meat pies four inches in diameter. And a pie this size would be quite large enough for a ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... Just now our fashionable women are bitterly reprehended for copying the dress of the "Anonymas," who establish the very pronounced fashions of Paris. Half of them do not know what model they have taken. The other half accept the various and tasteless costumes, not because they are devised by "Anonyma," but because they are striking. There is something in the commonplaceness of fashionable life which smothers all originality of thought, of action, even of device in costume; and the women ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... 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
... three, 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 ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... said: "Man could direct his ways by plain reason and support his life on tasteless food, but God has given us wit and flavor, and laughter and perfumes, to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to charm his pained footsteps over the burning marl." And Sidney Smith was so much the life and soul of ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... Gramen Panicum, Reseda were most abundant, Chloroideum, Sinapis, Raphanus cultivated with Taira meera, two Cruciferous plants common, Salsola lanata also occurs. Water abundant in a channel of fifteen yards wide and three feet deep, clear and tasteless. Furas the most common shrub. No grass occurs but the remains of Panicum. Wheat is here sown in drills, in some places the crop is promising. The country is evidently occasionally overflowed, witness the indurated surface and the fissures, which away from the road, renders ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... throughout Germany, and valued them properly. But in 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 have ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... the English critics; but many sins against external costume may be easily remarked. Yet here it is necessary to bear in mind that the Roman pieces were acted upon the stage of that day in the European dress. This was, it is true, still grand and splendid, not so silly and tasteless as it became toward the end of the seventeenth century. (Brutus and Cassius appeared in the Spanish cloak; they wore, quite contrary to the Roman custom, the sword by their side in time of peace, and, according ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... embodying the life and teaching of the master, some of more didactic and epigrammatic intent, and, in the writings of the Northern Buddhists, some that have given up the verbose simplicity of the first tracts in favor of tasteless and extravagant recitals more stagey than impressive. The final collection of the sacred books (earlier is the Suttanta division into Nik[a]yas) is called Tripitaka, 'the three baskets,' one containing the tracts on discipline; one, the talks of Buddha; and ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... with the trading cities of the French and Italian coasts. The erection of San Siro marked the wealth and devotion of its citizens. Ruined as it is, like all the churches of the Riviera, by the ochre and stucco of a tasteless restoration, San Siro still retains much of the characteristic twelfth-century work of its first foundation. The alliance of the city with Genoa was that of a perfectly free State. The terms of the ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... 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 ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... If destroyed in the hurricane season, these structures are not renewed until settled weather. In so small and low lying an island as that of Nassau, it is very plain that this crystal liquid, pure and tasteless, cannot come from any rainfall upon the soil, and its existence, therefore, suggests a problem, the solving of which we submit ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... very, very glad of that, dear. I wish I had understood before. You see, just now, before Jack, I felt that you were hurt, displeased, by my inference from our talk this morning. You made me feel by your whole manner that you found me graceless, tasteless, to blame in some way—perhaps for speaking about it to Jack. Jack ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... says Mr. Long, speaking of some possible disputant; "but he will never convince any man of sense that the first of Roman writers, a man of good understanding, and a master of eloquence, put together such tasteless, feeble, and ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... subjected to an analysis, and found to be, as was suspected, a slow poison; clear, tasteless, and limpid, like that spoken of by the Duke of Guise. Upon this evidence, the house was surrounded by the police, and La Spara and her companions taken into custody. La Spara, who is described as having been a little ugly old woman, was put to the torture, but obstinately ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... tasteless, odorless gas, forming a large part of the atmospheric air, of water, of the earth's crust and of our foods. It is absolutely essential to life, for without oxygen there can be no combustion in the animal tissues, and without combustion there can be no life. The union of oxygen with fats, ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... 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 ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... journey to the south, the country rises into dark forests and craggy mountains, as savage though not so lofty as the Alps and the Pyrenees. In this rigorous climate, [128] where the snows seldom melt, the fruits are tardy and tasteless, even honey is poisonous: the most industrious tillage would be confined to some pleasant valleys; and the pastoral tribes obtained a scanty sustenance from the flesh and milk of their cattle. The Chalybians [129] derived their name and temper ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... ashamed to lift up your eyes to meet other men's eyes. You dare not take their honest hands. You could tell Edwards himself things about humiliation now that would make his terribly searching and humbling book quite tame and tasteless. ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... out his mouthful in disgust. "It's tough as sole leather and about as tasteless. We ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... pit did sit a frowning, solemn, silent nucleus, but a nucleus of this description can never be large; a few Messieurs at 3 francs par jour would soon, when dispersed amongst them, like grains of pepper in tasteless soup, diffuse a tone of palatibility over the whole and render it more agreeable to the taste ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... the insurgent Danes is paralleled to an irruption of the sea, 'overpeering of his list;' in the well-known soliloquy is the expression, 'a sea of troubles,' which, in spite of Pope's suggested and tasteless emendation, commentators have shewn to have been used proverbially by the Greeks, and more than once by AEschylus and Menander. Still, Shakspeare, again like Horace, was not insensible to the merits of sea-air in a sanitary point of view. Dionyza, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... Insipidity. — N. insipidity, blandness; tastelessness &c. adj. V. be tasteless &c. adj. Adj. bland, void of taste &c. 390; insipid; tasteless, gustless|, savorless; ingustible|, mawkish, milk and water, weak, stale, flat, vapid, fade, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... in the lower working class in this country one of the most helpless and thriftless of beings, and which therefore impels the workman, whose comfort depends on her, not only to spend his free time in the public-house, but also tends to make him look to alcohol as a necessary condiment with his tasteless and indigestible diet. Both directly and indirectly, therefore, the employments that withdraw women from domestic pursuits are likely to increase alcoholism, and, it may be added, to increase its greatest potency for evil, namely ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... this—an intelligent, appreciative, quick-witted person; in a word, as the lexicon has it, "one who perceives." The man who is no aesthete stands confessed, by the logic of language and the necessity of the case, as a thick-witted, tasteless, senseless, and impenetrable blockhead. I do not wish to insult Mr. Whistler, but I feel bound to avow my impression that there is no man now living who less deserves the honour of enrolment in such ranks as these—of a seat in ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... afford 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 culminated when it developed ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... the interior of the house, it had been furnished, once for all, in the worst style of that most tasteless period of household art, which prevailed from 1840 to 1870; and it would be impossible to say which were most hideous, the carpets or the chandeliers, the curtains or the chairs and sofas; crude colors, lumpish and ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... the book simple,—tasteless, or with little taste,—with very little or no perfume. The usual way is for the poet or writer to put in as much taste, perfume, piquancy, as he can; but this is not the way of nature, which I take for model. Nature presents us her ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... spoiled by the tenor of his education, and the gay and reckless society which had administered tonics to his vanity and opiates to his intellect. The effect which the beauty, the grace, the innocence of Evelyn had produced upon him had been most deep and most salutary. It had rendered dissipation tasteless and insipid; it had made him look more deeply into his own heart, and into the rules of life. Though, partly from irksomeness of dependence upon an uncle at once generous and ungracious, partly from a diffident and feeling sense ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VII • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... 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 ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... was 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, ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... skin, and many are the sufferers who visit it in the hope that bathing in the trough into which the spring drops, may cure their ailments. The water is slightly tepid and not disagreeable to drink, being tasteless, and is recommended for diseases of the kidneys and stomach, by ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... ill-informed, who contended that such pageantry was ill-timed. They advanced against it all sorts of objections which would have been quite appropriate if the public had been bidden to witness some colossal farce or burlesque; some raree-show of tasteless oddities, or some untimely pantomime of fairy-lore. What was really intended, and was performed, at a great cost of toil and organizing skill, was the opposite of all this. All the best elements of a great and glorious ceremonial were displayed—colour and form and ordered motion; ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... like a bag of wheat or a cask of wine. He would dwell in pretentious and 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 ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... trousers and coloured head-bands. They sat all day near our camp selling melons, tomatoes, very cheap and tasteless chocolates, raisins, ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave |
