"Tasteless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... mine own youth), when I consider what I shall be at last, by the hand of death, in my grave (first, but putrefaction, and, not so much as putrefaction; I shall not be able to send forth so much as ill air, not any air at all, but shall be all insipid, tasteless, savourless, dust; for a while, all worms, and after a while, not so much as worms, sordid, senseless, nameless dust), when I consider the past, and present, and future state of this body, in this world, I am able to conceive, able to express the worst that can ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... detain you a minute upon the road from Baden to this place; although we were nearly twenty-four hours so detained. Rastadt and Karlsruhe are the only towns worth mentioning in the route. The former is chiefly distinguished for its huge and tasteless castle or palace—a sort of Versailles in miniature; and the latter is singularly pleasing to an Englishman's eye, from the trim and neat appearance of the houses, walks, and streets; which latter have the footpaths almost approaching to our pavement. You ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... pain in the chest, an ache in the belly and thighs, an unfulfilled longing that destroyed sleep and made food tasteless. Love was supposed to be pleasant and exciting. She could remember every ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... 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
... the dull it will pass for wit, with some it will pass for scorn, and even the witty will not be enabled to point out the difference, without running the risk of being considered invidious. It will cover every defect with a defect still greater; for who can call small beer tasteless when it is sour, or dull when it is bottled and has a ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... all from the British Isles where they have pudding. The pie is an American institution. Nobody knows how to make pies but an American housewife. And lucky that she does, for men can not thrive in America without pie. I do not mean the standardized, tasteless things made in great pie factories. I refer to the personally conducted pies that women used to make. The pioneer wives of America learned to make a pie out of every fruit that grows, including lemons, and from many vegetables, including squash and sweet potatoes, as well as from vinegar ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... and paused for a moment, reflecting. Extracting a piece of tasteless gum from between his teeth, he deposited it in the grate, where a sickly fire burned; then, tearing the wrapper from a fresh slip, he resumed his chewing and stood looking about him with unseeing eyes. Fierce they were as ever, ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... them. Just how I would do it I could never decide: by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head,—some way. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry. Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The "shades of the prison-house" closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... and when brought together they unite and neutralize each other, forming compounds which are neither alkaline nor acid in their character. Thus, carbonic acid (a gas,) unites with lime—a burning, caustic substance—and forms marble, which is a hard tasteless stone. Alkalies and acids are characterized by their desire to unite with each other, and the compounds thus formed have many and various properties, so that the characters of the constituents give no indication of the character of the compound. For instance, lime causes the gases of animal manure ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... mobile liquids, readily soluble in water and exhibiting a characteristic odour and taste. The solubility decreases as the carbon content rises. The normal alcohols containing 1 to 16 carbon atoms are liquids at the ordinary temperatures; the higher members are crystalline, odourless and tasteless solids, closely resembling the fats in appearance. The boiling points of the normal alcohols increase regularly about 10 deg. for each CH2 increment; this is characteristic of all homologous series of organic compounds. Of the primary, secondary and tertiary ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 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 of his own inadequate pretensions to the hand of Miss Cameron, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VII • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... on earth, but that appreciation is weak and tasteless compared with the estimation of that "gift of the gods" by the inhabitants ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... green, hard, and tasteless vegetable substance into beautifully coloured, soft, and delicious substance, which produces what we call a fruit, is, in most cases, of the husk only; in others, of the part of the stalk which immediately sustains the seed; ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... nabala 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 operate. The Arabic word ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... The cablegram informed him that he should not sail on Saturday, and that explanations would follow. For a moment his proud heart failed him. Bitterness flowed in on him, so that the food in his mouth became tasteless. What did he care that his enemies had triumphed? Or, that he had been overthrown? The loss of the vision which had crowned his life, and made a hard struggle for what he thought the fit and right less sordid, even beautiful; that was ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... 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
... could hardly swallow the food, which seemed tasteless in the extreme, and he was about to give up and hasten back to his work when his heart leaped, for there was the distant sound of the bolts being drawn, and a minute or two later the soft yellow light came ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... 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 their ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... a bracing place. Olivia began to flag a little, the long hours of teaching, the hurried walks to and fro, tried her vigorous young frame. The little maids who followed each other in quick succession were all equally inefficient and unreliable. Marcus began to complain that such ill-cooked, tasteless meals would in time impair their digestion. The Marthas and Annes and Sallies, who clumped heavily about the corner house, with smudges on their round faces and bare red arms, had never heard of the School of Cookery at South Kensington. Olivia, fagged ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... 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 ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... 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 to ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... the first link 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 would disguise this taste. By no possible supposition ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... (in Egypt "Jammayz") the fruit of the true sycomore (F. Sycomorus) a magnificent tree which produces a small tasteless fig, eaten by the poorer classes in Egypt and by monkeys. The "Tin" or real fig here is the woman's parts; the "mulberry- fig," the anus. Martial (i. 65) makes ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... anxious. She gave the impression of one who had left sorrow or sickness at home, and who therefore (unlike those wonderful deluders, the French actresses, who, because they will not be ugly, rarely look so) had resigned every question of personal attraction as a hopeless one. She was singularly tasteless in her dress. Her one good point was her hair, which was splendidly profuse, and of ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... too—I could detect some of the latent feelings of the sex, as she gazed at my exquisite lace, perfect ornamental work, and unequaled fineness. Still, her education and habits triumphed, and she would not commend what she regarded as ingenuity misspent, and tasteless, ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... me," he said. "I told you you do not comprehend, but you comprehend everything. It is that which enrages me. You have had experience. You know what men are. You could teach me so much. I hate young girls. I have always hated them. They are so tasteless, so insufferably innocent. I could not talk to a young girl as I talk to you. It would be absurd. Now as ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... when it is fit for use. In that state it will keep for some time. It is generally mixed with water, and made into a sort of jelly, which tastes and looks not unlike honey. It is especially useful for giving a flavour to the otherwise tasteless cassava porridge. ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... without "liking" them the less, but we somehow liked Dickens the more for having forfeited half the claim to appreciation. That process belongs to the fact that criticism, roundabout him, is somehow futile and tasteless. His own taste is easily impugned, but he entered so early into the blood and bone of our intelligence that it always remained better than the taste of overhauling him. When I take him up to-day and find myself holding off, I simply stop: not holding off, that is, but holding on, and ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... bottle was broached. There were two cases standing ready in a stateroom; these two were brought out, broken open, and tested. Still with the same result: the contents were still colourless and tasteless, and dead as the ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... ever had of the outer world was that we went on Sundays to an extraordinarily ugly and tasteless modern church, where the services were hideously performed; and occasionally we were allowed to go over to Richmond with a shilling or two of pocket-money to shop; and sometimes there were walks, a dozen boys with a good-natured master rambling about Richmond Park, with its forest ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... like a bucket 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 ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... 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 ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... other, to load it with their treasures, and crown it queen of cities.' Here, instead of idol temples and altars, churches and crucifixes rose; though among them the statues of patron deities from all over Greece, mutilated by all sorts of tasteless adaptations, were also gathered in the new metropolis. The main hall in the palace was adorned with representations of the crucifixion and other Biblical scenes. The gladiatorial shows, so popular in Rome, were forbidden here, though theatres, amphitheatres, and hippodromes ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... which, as a general rule, I print at least half as dark again as the shade required. This done, I wash it well with water, and next with salt and water in the proportion of about half a grain per gallon, or quite a tasteless solution; this removes all the nitrate of silver from the paper, or if there is any left, the bath of salt decomposes it, leaving none in the texture of the paper to unite with the hypo., which otherwise forms a sticky substance, difficult ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... remonstrated her mother, "when will you cease such tasteless remarks!" She blushed in her pretty matronly fashion and put her hand on her ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... nutting, or merry expeditions for blueberries, wild strawberries, raspberries, and other wild fruits? You might walk many a mile through the sal jungles without meeting fruit of any kind, save the dry and tasteless wild ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... the hag, "that's a wondrous medicine, and those who drink it go crazed with love for the giver. It is compounded according to the Master's own receipt, from very costly tasteless herbs that grow only in ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... 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
... to husband you need not be winking, While wiping the soup with a smile from your lips; I know just as well as he does how you're thinking The soup is as tasteless as though ...
— Nothing to Eat • Horatio Alger [supposed]
... necessary that the sense of taste may be exercised. First, the substance to be tasted must be in solution, or be soluble in the fluids of the mouth. Insoluble substances are tasteless. If we touch our tongue to a piece of rock crystal, there is a sensation of contact or cold, but no sense of taste. On the other hand, when we bring the tongue in contact with a piece of rock salt, we ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... purpose. A man doubtful of his dinner, or trembling at a creditor, is not much disposed to abstracted meditation, or remote inquires. He published proposals for a History of the Revival of Learning; and I have heard him speak with great kindness of Leo the tenth, and with keen resentment of his tasteless successour. But probably not a page of the history was ever written. He planned several tragedies, but he only planned them. He wrote now and then odes and other poems, and did ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... and quivered. He moved hurriedly around a corner to one of the storage vats, and returned in a moment with a supply of the tasteless gelatin that was their food here. Dark fell to greedily, and Happy, his tongue loosed by this new companionship, started feeding him information ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... people, gulping 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 race in ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... knows the Way of the Country. At last the Wine is set upon the Table: Good God! how far from being tasteless? So thin and sharp, that Sophisters ought to drink no other. And if any of the Guests should privately offer a Piece of Money to get a little better Wine some where else; at first they'll say nothing to you, but give you a Look, as if they were going to murder you; and if ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... 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
... content with merely restoring them magnificently, but who keeps the place up with loving care. Sham philosophers, studying themselves while they profess to be studying humanity, call these glorious things extravagance. They grovel before cotton prints and the tasteless designs of modern industry, as if we were greater and happier in these days than in those of Henri IV., Louis XIV., and Louis XVI., monarchs who have all left the stamp of their reigns upon Les Aigues. What palace, what royal castle, what mansions, what noble ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... of "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy;" but all play and no work makes him something greatly worse. Nothing can be more hurtful to a youth than to have his soul sodden with pleasure. The best qualities of his mind are impaired; common enjoyments become tasteless; his appetite for the higher kind of pleasures is vitiated; and when he comes to face the work and the duties of life, the result is usually aversion and disgust. "Fast" men waste and exhaust the powers of life, and dry up the sources of ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... triumph of Christianism sealed the fate of Rome, and in the Emperor Julian Gibbon finds the same heroic but ill-starred defender of the past, as Tacitus found in the unfortunate Germanicus. This conception informs Gibbon's work throughout, prompting alike the furtive, malignant, or tasteless sketches of the great Pontiffs and the great Caesars, and the finish, the studied care, the vivid detail lavished upon the portraits of their enemies. Half-seriously, half-smiling at his own enthusiasm, he seems to discern in Mohammed, in Saladin, and ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... entirely rebuilt 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
... that he was wrong. They bore with him in his rage, hoping that a sense of his own self-interest might induce him to listen to reason. But it was all in vain. The property was sweet, but that sweetness was tasteless when compared to the ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... mind... I open eye and ear, and through these openings pleasures flow into my soul from a thousand sides: flowers painted by the hand of Nature, the rich music of the forest, the bright daylight which pours life and light all round me.... How indifferent, tasteless, and dead is all the fantastic glamour of artificial splendour and luxuriance in comparison with the living radiance of the real beautiful world of Nature, with the joyousness, repose, and admiration I feel before a meadow ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... 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
... for a historian; that no reader of sentiment and imagination can be entertained or interested by a detail of transactions such as these, which admit of no warmth, no colouring, no embellishment; a detail of which only serves to exhibit an inanimate picture of tasteless vice and mean degeneracy." On the contrary,—and Smollett might have discovered it, if he had been in the humour,—the subject is capable of inspiring as much interest as even a novellist can desire. Is there no warmth in the despair ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... cried he angrily; 'you may eat instead; but putrid or sulphureous water, you have heard, may produce the plague, and honest men be the sufferers by your folly and intemperance.' They assured him the water was tasteless, and very excellent, and had been kept cool in the same kind of earthern jars as the wine. He tasted it, and lost his patience. It was better, he protested, than any wine in the world. They begged his acceptance of the jar containing ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... to her supper, the cup which she had gone to fetch in her hand. The strength of night made her heart timid; the touch of food was dry and tasteless upon her lips. For the first time since coming to that country she felt the pain of discouragement. What could she do against such a great, rough thing? Would it ever be worth ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... describes as either a light and almost impalpable powder, tasteless, colorless, and inodorous, or a liquid clear as a dewdrop, when in the form of the aqua tofana. It was capable of causing death either instantaneously or by slow and lingering decline at the end of a definite number of days, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... 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 ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... 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 ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... much for the youth and health of the breakfasters! Should it be Sunday the undergraduate may hope (often in vain) to be asked to breakfast by some man in lodgings. Otherwise he will be condemned to feed either upon cold chicken—tasteless and a little dry—or upon gherkin pie, known only (by the mercy of Providence) to certain colleges in Oxford, and consisting of a dish of cold fat, interspersed with gherkins, and covered with lid of ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... 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 of ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... the attributes of clothes. 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 who give most time ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... been happier than during this stay at Newstead, absorbed as she had become for the first time in all the glory of him whose tenderness for her had been so carefully concealed from her. From that time all appeared insipid and tasteless to her; existence became a pain. Every thing told her of her father's renown, and nothing could replace it. All these feelings so possessed her that she fell ill, and when she was on the point of death she wrote to Colonel Wildman to beg that she might be buried next to her illustrious father. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... below. Fresh water passes slowly through this lower vat, removing the bitter sap from the flour, which is deposited on the bottom of the vat. From time to time this is scraped up and placed in baskets where it is kept until needed. The flour, while rather tasteless, is nutritious and in years of drought is the chief ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... physician, and at the same time a very prolific and very tasteless poet, whose works are now forgotten, unless when recalled to mind by some wit like Moore for the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... uninteresting, but clean and comely little place. Of antiquities it has none, except traces, to the S. of the church, of a bishop's palace, built by John Drokensford in the 14th cent., some windows of which have found their way into neighbouring houses. The church is a tasteless building, erected in 1829, with a showy semi-Italian interior. It has an odd-looking S. aisle, containing a somewhat dilapidated monument, with recumbent effigies of Humphrey Wyndham and wife, 1622-70. In the churchyard is a time-worn cross, with ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... 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
... borders in the more open wood lands; a very rich soil is not absolutely necessary, as a meager one frequently produces it abundantly. the natives on this side of the Rockey mountains who can procure this berry invariably use it; to me it is a very tasteless and insippid fruit. this shrub is an evergreen, the leaves retain their virdure most perfectly through the winter even in the most rigid climate as on lake Winnipic. the root of this shrub puts forth a great number of stems which seperate near the surface of the ground; ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... in coming to Skipper that night. He was almost starved when it was served. And such a supper! What do you think? Hay? Yes, but marsh hay; the dry, tasteless stuff they use for bedding in cheap stables. A ton of it wouldn't make a pound of good flesh. Oats? Not a sign of an oat! But with the hay there were a few potato-peelings. Skipper nosed them out and nibbled the marsh hay. The rest he pawed back under him, for the whole had been thrown at his feet. ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... the sugar and 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 Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... person born blind and deaf, and without the sense of touch, taste, or smell. Let such a person live on for a year, for five years, for a lifetime. What would he know? What ray of intelligence would enter his mind? What would he think about? All would be dark to his eyes, all silent to his ears, all tasteless to his mouth, all odorless to his nostrils, all touchless to his skin. His mind would be a blank. He would have no mind. He could not get started to think. He could not get started to act. He would belong to a lower ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... following caution be given, when art of every kind must contaminate the mind; and why entangle the grand motives of action, which reason and religion equally combine to enforce, with pitiful worldly shifts and slight of hand tricks to gain the applause of gaping tasteless fools? "Be even cautious in displaying your good sense.* It will be thought you assume a superiority over the rest of the company— But if you happen to have any learning keep it a profound secret, especially from the ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... hideous shade, Works through the throbbing eyeball to the brain, With a hot sense of heaviness and pain; 10 And bare, at once, Captivity displayed Stands scoffing through the never-opened gate, Which nothing through its bars admits, save day, And tasteless food, which I have eat alone Till its unsocial bitterness is gone; And I can banquet like a beast of prey, Sullen and lonely, couching in the cave Which is my lair, and—it may be—my grave. All this hath somewhat worn me, and may wear, But must ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... heart," I said, "Stag Eyes, it is now late, and there are no such grapes to be had in our part of the city—only the tasteless white grapes that are packed with sawdust into barrels—but in the morning I will go uptown and you shall have your White ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... your gardens produce. How is it that English cookery has never found any better treatment for vegetables than to boil them quite plain? French beans so treated are tender, and of a pleasant texture on the palate, but I have never been able to find any taste in them. They are tasteless largely because the cook persists in shredding them into minute bits, and I maintain that they ought to be cooked whole—certainly when they are young—and sautez, a perfectly plain and easy process, ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... 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 ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... hundred years ago, The wild grape by the river's side, And tasteless groundnut trailing low, The table of the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... never, known till this last week; for some days her strength had failed her—it was Jean that carried the creel now—before, Christie, in the pride of her strength, would always do more than her share of their joint labor. Then she could hardly be forced to eat, and what she did eat was quite tasteless to her, and sleep left her, and in its stead came uneasy slumbers, from which she awoke quivering from head ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... King, 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... pieces. In the case, however, of oil being used as a substitute for butter, it is of the utmost importance that the oil be pure and fresh. We here have to overcome a deeply-rooted English prejudice. Pure oil is absolutely tasteless, and it has often been remarked by high-class authorities that really pure butter ought to be the same. We fear, however, that purity in food is the exception rather than the rule, as at no period of this country's history has the crime of adulteration been so ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... up a school and taught it. Sometimes they paid you as high as $20 a month and board, lots of board, real buckwheat cakes ("riz" buckwheat, not the prepared kind), and real maple syrup, and real sausage, the kind that has sage in it; the kind that you can't coax your butcher to sell you. The pale, tasteless stuff he gives you for sausage I wouldn't throw out to the chickens. Twenty dollars a month and board! That's $4 a month more than a ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... eat dry husks; they loathe the tasteless morsel which well-meaning sectarians offer them, and hunger for that which will warm their hearts and stir their blood. The heart may be warmed, and the blood may be stirred, without corrupting the moral nature. The writer ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... now become a consuming fire in my breast, and could only end in utter misery—perhaps in destruction—or else in a degree of happiness no mortal had ever tasted before. I went about listlessly, like one on whom some heavy calamity has fallen: all interest in my work was lost; my food seemed tasteless; study and conversation had become a weariness; even in those divine concerts, which fitly brought each tranquil day to its close, there was no charm now, since Yoletta's voice, which love had taught my dull ear to distinguish ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... gayest and merriest mood, Our pleasures are tasteless and dim, For the thoughts of the past and of Tom that intrude Make us feel ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... into a small yard or court, within which are the office and prison of the police. A few long flag-staffs, fixed on the roof of the palace, do not add to the beauty of the edifice. The interior of the building corresponds with its outward appearance, being at once tasteless and mean. The largest apartment formerly bore the name of the Sala de los Vireyes. It is now used as a ball room when entertainments are given by the government. Under the Spanish domination this room ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... we might have saved ourselves the trouble, for that our wishes are untouched, and are as strong enemies to our peace of mind as ever. Hepburn's baulked hope was the Mordecai sitting in Haman's gate; all his success in his errand to London, his well-doing in worldly affairs, was tasteless, and gave him no pleasure, because of this blank and void of ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... with drawings, again he went back to the Metropole and to maddening columns of new figures—back to the monotony of tasteless meals served at ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... Agatha loved to go to church. And Rebecca gave Saturdays to church. And now Rosalie, who admired Mary Agatha, was taking to church. No wonder that to Emmy Lou biscuits and ham were tasteless. ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... engines. And this is the strength of the chemical: five pounds of it mingled with one million gallons of water is sufficient to render the water fit for drinking purposes. Nearly 98 per cent of the bacteria in the water is destroyed by this weak solution. The water is tasteless and odorless. Indeed, probably very few of the citizens of Detroit who are using the city water all the time, know that the ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... Selden, and Cowley. He talked and wrangled with the wise men of half Europe. He had sat at Richelieu's table and been loaded with honours by Cosmo de Medici. The laurels Hobbes won in the schools he lost on Parnassus. His translation of Homer is tasteless and contemptible. In mathematics, too, he was dismounted by Wallis and others. Personally he had weaknesses. He was afraid of apparitions, he dreaded assassination, and had a fear that Burnet and the bishops would burn him as a heretic. His philosophy, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... 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 ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... great difficulty in bearing up. I hate to speak of it, but it is the truth—before I saw you, I picked up a revolver more than once for a very definite purpose. Life weighed upon me like lead. It had turned stale and tasteless. The sight of you, Ingigerd, and, strange to say, the wreck, which I experienced not only symbolically but in actuality, taught me to value life again. You and bare existence—the two things I saved from the wreck. Once more I stand on terra firma. I ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... 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 ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... heed of the course he pursued, so long as that course led him through the swale bottoms. He felt his way through the wet snow to the watery muskeg berries, and went by feel as he pulled up the rush-grass by the roots. But it was tasteless stuff and did not satisfy. He found a weed that tasted sour and he ate all he could find of it, which was not much, for it was a creeping growth, easily hidden under the ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... white 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 ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... 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 both in ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... in irregular plates, like magnesium sulphate, soluble in water and bitter in taste. Carbonate of Barium is found in shops as a fine powder, tasteless and colourless, insoluble in water, but effervescing with dilute acids, and readily decomposed by the free acids of the stomach. Nitrate of Barium occurs in ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... the whole justified, so far as it could be justified, by the correctness of his judgment. The only great man whom he has seriously assaulted is Bentley; and to Pope, Bentley was of necessity not the greatest of classical critics, but the tasteless mutilator of Milton, and, as we must perhaps add, the object of the hatred of Pope's particular friends, Atterbury and Warburton. The misfortune is that the more just his satire, the more perishable is its interest; and if we regard the 'Dunciad' simply as ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Tasteless, implicit, indolent and tame, At second-hand we chiefly praise or blame. Hence 'tis, for else one knows not why nor how, Some authors flourish for a year or two: For many some, more wond'rous still to tell; 155 Farquhar yet ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... that which was first a luxury, and then a matter of indifference, becomes a necessity:[17] whereas in subjects of the intellect, the chief delight they convey is dependent upon their being newly and vividly comprehended, and as they become subjects of contemplation they lose their value, and become tasteless and unregarded, except as instruments for the reaching of others, only that though they sink down into the shadowy, effectless, heap of things indifferent, which we pack, and crush down, and stand upon, to reach things ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... ponderous sledge-hammers, wielded by athletic men. The tallow oozes in a melted state into a receptacle below, where it cools. It is again melted, and poured into tubs, smeared with mud, to prevent its adhering. It is now marketable, in masses of about eighty pounds each—hard, brittle, white, opaque, tasteless, and without the odour of animal tallow; under high pressure, it scarcely stains bibulous paper, and it melts at 104 degrees Fahrenheit. It may be regarded as nearly pure stearine.... The seeds yield about 8 per cent. of tallow, which sells for ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... 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
... the kitchen or on the table of the housewife, there would be no excuse for tasteless or ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... robbery he was more judicious. He snatched an infant dragon-fly from the jaws of the water-scorpion, devoured it with pleasure, and then turned his attention to the water-scorpion himself. He found him flat and tasteless. The water-boatman was more succulent, but, with only one soft spot, difficult to do justice to. It was the same with all the larger creatures. He was reduced to stickleback fry, small larvae, and ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... really like the Paris fashions of the Second Empire, and he might have found consolation for the tragedies of 1870, if he had known, as has been asserted, that they portended deliverance from the thraldom. France, so we are told, purged and purified by the baptism of fire, shook off its tasteless frippery, and sought a chaster and purer mode.... Thus elevated and touched to higher issues, the modistes of France, when once the Third Republic had settled down, made quite nice and simple dresses for a few years, and were imitated by the slavish islanders across the Channel, who ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... sense of home and intimacy in her little parlour no bigger than the never-entered and nerve-destroying salon of his parents at Aigues Mortes, but smiling with the grace of old oak and faded chintz. At Aigues Mortes the salon was a comfortless, tasteless convention, set apart for the celebrations of baptisms and marriages and deaths, a pride and a terror to the inhabitants. But here everything seemed to be as much a warm bit of Anne Honeywood as the tortoise-shell ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... rock. This was the "manger" where Christ was born. A silver star set in the floor bears a Latin inscription to that effect. It is polished with the kisses of many generations of worshiping pilgrims. The grotto was tricked out in the usual tasteless style observable in all the holy places of Palestine. As in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, envy and uncharitableness were apparent here. The priests and the members of the Greek and Latin churches ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... remarked, "there is a sect of doctors who get the benefit of that principle. They give their patients two or three little balls no bigger than a pin's head, or a few drops of tasteless liquid, and they sometimes work ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Apostles, they expounded the teaching of Kant, Fichte and Jacobi; and when the students became ministers, they had little but philosophy to offer the people. For ordinary people philosophy is as tasteless as the white of an egg. As the preachers spoke far above the heads of the people, they soon lost touch with their flocks; the hungry sheep looked up, and were not fed; the sermons were tinkling brass and clanging ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... her 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 ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... madam, 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
... is the vampire that sucks out the good of us and leaves us like the rind of a squeezed-out orange; it is the cooking-process that extracts and wastes all the nutritious juices of the meat and leaves nothing but the useless and tasteless fibre. ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... cultured plain; the daisied 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
... Jokes; Lingerie; Message/Bulletin Boards; Murder/Suicide; News; Nudity; Personal Information; Personals; Pornography; Profanity; Recreation/Entertainment; School Cheating Information; Search Engines; Search Terms; Sex; Sports; Stocks; Swimsuits; Tasteless/Gross; Tobacco; Violence; and Weapons. The "Nudity" category purports to block only "non-pornographic" images. The "Sex" category is intended to block only those depictions of sexual activity that are not intended to arouse. The "Tasteless/Gross" category includes contents such as "tasteless ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... 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 ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... distillery was to be established at Sassari, with moveable stills throughout the island, wherever the bulbs could be most easily procured. The projector gave us a sample-bottle of the alcohol, a strong and purely tasteless spirit. I heard afterwards that the speculation did not succeed. There is fine feeding for the wild hogs, in season, on the acorns of the vast cork and other oak woods in the interior of the island, where we afterwards hunted them. They commit great ravages in the cultivated grounds. One ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... fogs;' Hamlet is as 'mad as the sea and wind;' the violence of Laertes and 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, meditating Marina's murder, bids her take ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various |
