"Insipid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... maximum price was fixed. For a fortnight the supply of cats held out, after which rats and mice became the chief staple of food. Dog-flesh was next reluctantly tasted, and found, as our conscientious chronicler observes, to be somewhat sweet and insipid.[1300] And so the spring of 1573 passed away, and summer came; but no succor arrived for the beleaguered city. On the contrary, there came the disheartening tidings from the west that a peace had been ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... the Tschirsky group dreaded such an insipid solution, and had insisted, therefore, on drastic action. In 1870 Bismarck was the attacking party, and he succeeded in interchanging the parts. We also succeeded, but ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... "to prove this, Dr. Symonds, of Hereford, about the year 1800, made one hogshead of cider entirely from the rinds and cores of apples, and another from the pulp only, when the first was found of extraordinary strength and flavor, while the latter was sweet and insipid." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... my absurd relations with women of both orders in the excitement of play, and yet I was well aware of the meanness of that diversion, which only ceases to be insipid when it becomes odious, because it is a clever calculation upon money to be gained without working for it. There was in me something at once wildly dissipated and yet disgusted, which drove me to excess, and at the same time ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... sharply upon them his nose in the air, "ribbons are plentiful,—shillings scarce; and kisses, though pleasant in private, are insipid in public. What, still! Beware! know that, innocent as we seem, we are women-eaters; and if you follow us farther, you are devoured!" So saying, he expanded his jaws to a width so preternaturally large, and exhibited a row of grinders so formidable, that the girls fell back in consternation. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... The conversation is so insipid, so entirely confined to the merest platitudes, that it becomes absolutely a relief to escape. You are not pressed to stay and dine, as you would have been in the old days—not because there is a lack of hospitality, ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... see the last of this chap: and him the last of all the rest. I'll be damned for ever if I see their Jims and Roberts and Julias and Scotts any more. Let them dance round their insipid ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... have my face Zion-ward, though prejudice and error might occasionally fling a mist over the glorious vision before me—but I am not like you. If you knew my thoughts, the dreams that absorb me, and the fiery imagination that at times eats me up, and makes me feel society, as it is, wretchedly insipid, you would pity and I dare say despise me. But I know the treasures of the Bible; I love and adore them. I can see the Well of Life in all its clearness and brightness; but when I stoop down to drink of the pure waters they fly from my lips ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... human bodies are sic fools, For all their colleges and schools, That, when nae real ills perplex 'em, They make enow themselves to vex 'em. They loiter, lounging lank and lazy, Though nothing ails them, yet uneasy. Their days insipid, dull, and tasteless; Their nights unquiet, lang, and restless, An' e'en their sports, their balls and races, Their gallopin' through public places, There's sic parade, sic pomp, an' art, The joy can scarcely reach ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... coasts of Africa is more astringent than what comes from Goa. It is found on high rocky land. Bartholomew Stibbs met with it on the banks of the Gambia river, and describes it under the name of Par de Sangoe, or blood-wood tree. The gum is a red, inodorous, and insipid resin, soluble in alcohol and oils; and when dissolved by the former, is used for staining ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... compliment the artiste on the stage, and follow her with their commonplaces to her very box. There was no scarcity of sacrificers. The noblest of Naples overwhelmed me with adulations; from compliments they came to declaration, and there, as at Rome, Venice, and elsewhere, I was persecuted by the insipid gallantries of suitors, to which every successful artiste possessed of any personal attraction must submit. To all these advances my heart remained cold, and my insensibility cost me nothing; for I neither loved nor wished to. A strange event, however, changed my plans. It ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... Dominie replies, "Really, madam, you must be aware that every volume of a narrative turns less and less interesting as the author draws to a conclusion,—just like your tea, which, though excellent hyson, is necessarily weaker and more insipid in the last cup." He compares the orthodox happy ending to "the luscious lump of half-dissolved sugar" usually found at the bottom of the cup. This topic might be discussed, and indeed has been discussed, endlessly. ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... that your visit to Paris will be a very valuable addition to your journals. If I may judge by the letters which I receive thence, society there has never been flatter, nor more insipid, nor more entirely without any dominant idea. I need not tell you that your opinion of our statesmen is the same as that which prevails in Paris, but it is of such an ancient date, and is so obvious, that it cannot give ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... King Solomon's Mines. I can assure you I have become the victim of an almost unaccountable craving. I am sick of shooting pheasants and partridges, and want to have a go at some large game again. There, you know the feeling — when one has once tasted brandy and water, milk becomes insipid to the palate. That year we spent together up in Kukuanaland seems to me worth all the other years of my life put together. I dare say that I am a fool for my pains, but I can't help it; I long to go, and, what is more, I mean ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... for the optimist, who does not fly from them, but welcomes them. He has a mental prism which can separate the insipid white light of existence into bright hues. He has a mental alchemy by which he can produce golden instruction out of the dross of failure. He has a spiritual magic which makes the nectar of joy out of the tears of sorrow. He has ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... Certainly. To be free, I have no taste of those insipid dry discourses with which our sex of force must entertain themselves apart from men. We may affect endearments to each other, profess eternal friendships, and seem to dote like lovers; but 'tis not in our natures long ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... elaborate garnishings, and you will soon become proficient in the art. Do not prepare plain salads until the moment they are wanted at table. Should they be mixed long before they are served, you will find the lettuce flabby and the dressing watery and insipid. ...
— Fifty Salads • Thomas Jefferson Murrey
... begin from God. It must spring out of love fuller and more hungry than our desirous hearts. It must spring out of love, not—how could it?—out of our love for God, but out of His love for us. If God's love for us, manifested in the utterly real and suffering love of Jesus, and in no insipid fancy of our sentimental moments, wins its way past our guard and over the barriers of self, hatred of sin and sorrow for sin will follow. But it is a question of order: first, what God is; second, what we are. The more vivid the first is to ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... valley, swearing that her ardent love for the noble robber—through the horrible trapdoor, the rusty chains, her briny tears—in a word, it was stirring! And there was more morality in it, too, than in all the insipid imitations. All the members of the band were married and wore gloves. In the cave was an altar, with wax tapers; and those chapters in which girls were abducted always ended with a row of most decorous periods, or with mysterious dashes—which Walter vainly ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... powder thus prepared; and observes, that it is an absorbent earth which joins readily with all acids, and must necessarily destroy any acidity it meets in the stomach; but that its purgative power is uncertain, for sometimes it has not the least effect of that kind. As it is a mere insipid earth, he rationally concludes it to be purgative only when converted into a sort of neutral salt by an acid in the stomach, and that its effect is therefore proportional to the ...
— Experiments upon magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other Alcaline Substances • Joseph Black
... the articles of the "Gazette" with a humility and rancour that compensated for his lack of talent. The marquis, in entering on the campaign, had perceived immediately the advantage that might be derived from the co-operation of this insipid sacristan with the coarse, mercenary pen. After the February Revolution the articles in the "Gazette" contained fewer ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... made another misstep, and has a wife who sympathizes neither with his tastes nor his trials: who has no comprehension of him whatever, save that he is a being whose business it is to love her and furnish her with spending money. The beauty which fascinated him has grown faded and insipid. The pretty coquetries that won him pall upon him; he is absolutely alone with the burden of life pressing heavily upon him. Is it strange that he is mastered in the battle and finally falls beneath the world's pitiless tread? This is a sad little picture, but it ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... of the fruit is nicely browned, and the inner part so strongly resembles the crumb of wheaten bread as to have suggested the name of the tree. It is not, however, quite so pleasant to the taste, being rather insipid and slightly sweet. Nevertheless it is extremely good for food, and is much prized by the natives, to whom it may almost be said to ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... and character, to that strong and serious school of artists of another age who, finding that art is long and life is short—ars longa et vita brevis—did not commit the mistake of wasting their time and lessening their powers of creation by silly and insipid intrigues. ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... To this insipid personage the duke presented himself. She soon liked him, and in spite of his outrageous infidelities, continued to like him after ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... intestines for the epicurean Arabs; a little saddlery; half a camel-load of corn; a broken cart-wheel and rickety furniture put up to auction; one or two halfa-mats of admirable workmanship; grinding-stones; musty pressed dates, onions, huge but insipid turnips and other green ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... him, I see none but him; and I could eat no dinner this evening because he had not come back. I find him handsomer than any man in the world. When he says that he loves me, I can see, I can feel that it is true; I feel displeased, and at the same time delighted. M. de la Marche seems insipid and prim since I have known Bernard. Bernard alone seems as proud, as passionate, as bold as myself—and as weak as myself; for he cries like a child when I vex him, and here I am crying, too, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... however, that all crops which can be raised without watering are superior in flavor and in nutritive power to those grown by the aid of irrigation. Garden vegetables, particularly, profusely watered, are so insipid as to be hardly eatable. Wherever irrigation is practised, there is an almost irresistible tendency, especially among ignorant cultivators, to carry it to excess; and in Piedmont and Lombardy, if the supply of water is abundant, it is so liberally applied as sometimes not only to injure the ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... for speculation makes his pamphlets worthless beside Burke's philosophical discourses; but the treatment, if wrong and defective on the theoretical side, is never contemptible. Here, as elsewhere, he judges by his intuitive aversions. He rejects too hastily whatever seems insipid or ill-flavoured to his spiritual appetite. Like all the shrewd and sensible part of mankind he condemns as mere moonshine what may be really the first faint dawn of a new daylight. But then his intuitions ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... P—-, the President of the notorious Repressive Commission of some years ago, the Minister of State invested with extraordinary powers. The newspapers made noise enough about that fanatical, narrow-chested figure in gold-laced uniform, with a face of crumpled parchment, insipid, bespectacled eyes, and the cross of the Order of St. Procopius hung under the skinny throat. For a time, it may be remembered, not a month passed without his portrait appearing in some one of the illustrated papers of Europe. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... Kew's plan was most edifying. She was charmed to hear that Lady Kew loved veal; there were some who thought that meat rather insipid." A waltzer came to claim her hand at this moment; and as she twirled round the room upon that gentleman's arm, wafting odours as she moved, her pink silks, pink feathers, pink ribands, making a mighty rustling, the Countess ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dream of making or eating custard, indicates she will be called upon to entertain an unexpected guest. A young woman will meet a stranger who will in time become a warm friend. If the custard has a sickening sweet taste, or is insipid, nothing but sorrow will intervene where you had expected ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... hero's career we are struck by the absence of shadows. One would say that so unrelieved a record of success, of honour, glory, love and wealth, so much pure sunshine, so complete a lack of all trouble or defeat, must make a picture flat and characterless, insipid in its light, bright colours, insignificant in its deeper values. But it is not so. Peter Warren, the spoiled child of fortune, was something more than a child of fortune, since he won his good things of life always at the risk of that life ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... they had the vinegar bottle put on the table to improve the flavour of the black butter, which seemed rather insipid. They ate with a will, and the hunks of bread swiftly disappeared. There was nothing refined about the repast, and the wine was mere common stuff, which they watered considerably from a feeling of delicacy, in order to lessen their host's expenses. They had ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Lafayette and her family, she regretted nothing of past splendor; she possessed an affectionate husband, and was happy in retirement. The son was a pleasing young man, and his wife engaging and interesting; the daughters were charming women, entirely free from the insipid languor or wretched affectation, which in young ladies of fashion so much destroys originality of character, and makes us find, in one of the fashionables, the prototype and pattern of thousands. In a word, this amiable and happy family seemed united by one bond of affection, and to desire ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... come so thick, your Claps so plenty, Most of you are threescore at five and twenty. Our Town-bred Ladys know you well enough, Your courting Women's like your taking Snuff; Out of mere Idleness you keep a pother, You've no more need of one than of the other. Ladies— Wou'd you be quit of their insipid noise, And vain pretending take a Fool's advice; Of the faux Braves I've had some little trial, There's nothing gives 'em credit but Denial: As when a Coward will pretend to Huffing, Offer to fight, away sneaks Bully-Ruffian, So when ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... with much pleasure, the "Essays upon several Subjects" published by Sir Richard Blackmore.—Swift. I admire to see such praises from this author to so insipid a scoundrel, whom I know ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... different person, "not as one who intentionally stoops, kneels, or prostrates himself to excite compassion, but like a man borne down on all sides by the pressure of some invisible force, which crushes him to the earth without power of resistance." A movement of abhorrence from me, as her insipid confidante turned away, attested the triumph of the poet-actress. Had not all been over in a moment, I believe I could not have refrained from rushing forward to raise the fair frail being, who seemed so prematurely humbled in her parent dust. I burst ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... upon American intelligence and morals, than in its effect upon American political and economic development. The system, that is, has only partly served the purpose of its founder and his followers, and it has failed because it did not bring with it any machinery adequate even to its own insipid and barren purposes. Even the meager social interest which Jefferson concealed under cover of his demand for equal rights could not be promoted without some effective organ of social responsibility; ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... Dryden "regretted that Shakspere did not know or rarely observed the Aristotelian laws of the three unities," but was good enough to express his surprise at the powerful effect of his plays. "He is many times flat, insipid, his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... that it would not be possible to prevail on Dr Johnson to relinquish, for some time, the felicity of a London life, which, to a man who can enjoy it with full intellectual relish, is apt to make existence in any narrower sphere seem insipid or irksome. I doubted that he would not be willing to come down from his elevated state of philosophical dignity; from a superiority of wisdom among the wise, and of learning among the learned; and from flashing his wit upon minds ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... be to take out a compartment of a noble coloured window, and engrave it in the same manner. What is at once refined and effective, if seen at the intended distance in unison with the rest of the work, becomes coarse and insipid when seen isolated and near; and the more skilfully the design is arranged, so as to give full value to the colours which are introduced in it, the more blank and cold will it become when it is ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... was darker and more gloomy than its wont. He had supped with his officers, Manlius and a nobleman of Fsul, whose name the historian has not recorded, who held the third rank in the rebel army, but their fare had been meagre and insipid, their wines the thin vintage of that hill country; a little attempt at festivity had been made, but it had failed altogether; the spirits of the men, although undaunted and prepared to dare the utmost, lacked all that fiery and enthusiastic ardor, which kindles patriot ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... that M. Bellegarde, a gallant old gentleman, after the fashion of the Court of Henri III., pleased her till he was going to the army, when he begged for one favour before his departure, which was only to put her hand to the hilt of his sword, a compliment so insipid that her Majesty was out of conceit with him ever after. She approved the gallant manner of M. de Montmorency much more than she loved his person. The aversion she had to the pedantic behaviour of Cardinal de Richelieu, who in his amours was as ridiculous ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... have each their place in art, as in all true criticism. When one's curiosity is deficient, when one is not eager enough for new impressions, and new pleasures, one is liable to value mere academical proprieties too highly, to be satisfied with worn-out or conventional types, with the insipid ornament of Racine, or the prettiness of that later Greek sculpture, which passed so long for true Hellenic work; to miss those places where the handiwork of nature, or of the artist, has been most cunning; to find ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... on the steps, dressed up for a visitor, her hair done for a visitor, and with phrases ready prepared for a visitor. She was no longer the light haired, insipid girl I had seen in church fifteen years previously, but a stout lady in curls and flounces, one of those ladies without any fixed age, without intellect, without any of those things which constitute a woman. In short, she was a mother, a stout, commonplace mother, the human ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... to success in any kind of business. One cannot accumulate wealth, acquire learning, rise to distinction in any of the professions or trades without system. Even the pleasures of life depend much on regularity; otherwise they cloy and become insipid. He, who is unsteady in his habits, now indulging in ease, and now straining every muscle; who, as some excitement arouses him,—such perhaps as the fresh inculcation of economy and industry, flares up and bustles about, resolves that his business shall ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... a short, green shooting-jacket, booted and spurred, and having a pair of brilliant, black, Italian eyes. He in turn offered to read; but finding probably the poetry of the Musen-Almanach of that year rather too insipid for him, he soon began to improvise the wildest and most fantastic poems imaginable, and in all possible forms and measures, all the while pretending to read from the book. 'That is either Goethe or the Devil,' said good old father ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... before a mirror learning how to smile correctly without showing his teeth too prominently to his ladylove; another preparing his tale to tell her, repeating the same thing an hundred times. Wearied with this insipid babbling we came to another cell: here a nobleman had sent for a poet from the Street of Pride to indite him a sonnet of praise to his angel, and an eulogy of himself; the bard was discoursing of his art: "I can," said ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... along, it was soon filled, and mostly by ladies, there being only one more gentleman and myself. The conversation of the ladies among themselves, who appeared to be a little acquainted with each other, seemed to me to be but very insipid and tiresome. All I could do was, I drew out my book of the roads, and marked the ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... his features and betrayed that he was smiling. In this mood his face lost the air of affected refinement—which was then the mode, and went perfectly with a wig and ruffles—and appeared in its true cast, plain and strong, yet not uncomely. His features lacked the insipid regularity which, where all shaved, passed for masculine beauty; the nose ended largely, the cheek-bones were high, and the chin projected. But from the risk and even the edge of ugliness it was saved by a pair of grey eyes, keen, humorous, and kindly, and a smile that showed the eyes at their best. ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... was gathering together the plates. He glanced at them all, stooping and swaying and gesticulating round the table-cloth. Amiable and modest, respectable in many ways, lovable even in their contentment and desire to be kind, how mediocre they all were, and capable of what insipid cruelty to one another! There was Mrs. Thornbury, sweet but trivial in her maternal egoism; Mrs. Elliot, perpetually complaining of her lot; her husband a mere pea in a pod; and Susan—she had no self, and counted neither one way nor the other; Venning ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... cup of sparkling wine and bade me drink and be merry. Strange to me though it was, I knew the taste when it touched my lips. It was not that bastard concoction I had tasted in the pseudo-Bohemias of Soho; it was not the showy but insipid beverage I should have drunk my fill of at Morven Lodge; it was the purest of her pure vintages, instilling the ancient inspiration which, under many guises, quickens thousands of better brains than mine, but whose essence is always ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... cut into very thin slices, and are much improved by a little lemon peel. Sweet apples are not good for pies, as they are very insipid when baked, and seldom get thoroughly done. If green apples are used, they should first be stewed in as little water as possible; and made ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... almost a mania with Mrs. Bergson. Stout as she was, she roamed the scrubby banks of Norway Creek looking for fox grapes and goose plums, like a wild creature in search of prey. She made a yellow jam of the insipid ground-cherries that grew on the prairie, flavoring it with lemon peel; and she made a sticky dark conserve of garden tomatoes. She had experimented even with the rank buffalo-pea, and she could not see a fine bronze cluster of ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... women more easy to yield. For as to the first, by raising the value of the place, we raise the value and the desire of the conquest. Might it not be Venus herself, who so cunningly enhanced the price of her merchandise, by making the laws her bawds; knowing how insipid a delight it would be that was not heightened by fancy and hardness to achieve? In short, 'tis all swine's flesh, varied by sauces, as Flaminius' host said. Cupid is a roguish god, who makes it his sport to contend ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... They talked clean; and, if they did not display any marked signs of intelligence or imagination, if they had not the largeness of personality for the noble and big things of life, you felt that at least they had not the bent for doing anything dirty. Altogether, a nice set, as insipid people mostly are: what are known in certain circles ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... bitter. Berard of Montpelier found that the ripening of fruits is merely the turning the acid which they contain into sugar, by exposure to the light; and that too much light and heat, before they have attained their proper size, will bring on premature ripening, and make them insipid. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... family and would leave the children, the offspring of the anarchy of free-love, to grow up in public nurseries. This would appear to be very humanitarian; indeed these socialists talk of nothing but the interests of humanity—they are never weary of uttering their insipid jests on the institution of the family, as if it were the principle of all narrow-mindedness. Have these fanatics, who are seeking after an abstraction of humanity, ever examined our foundling-hospitals, orphan asylums, barracks, and prisons, to discover in some degree ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... commenced his sermon, Ned opened his eyes, threw back his head, dropt his under jaw, and surrendered himself to the most intense interest. The preacher was an indifferent one; and by as much as he became dull and insipid, by so much did Ned become absorbed in his discourse. And yet it was impossible for the nicest observer to detect anything in his looks or manner, short of the most solemn devotion. The effect which his conduct had upon the congregation, and their subsequent ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... has a pretty trivial taste that will keep him amused and happy till he drops into the grave—but, lord! what insipid trash it all seems to the heart on fire with passion!' Fareham said in his impetuous way, as if he despised Mr. Evelyn for taking ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... are so many and varied, language affords so rich a continuity of themes and the comic is here capable of passing through so great a number of stages, from the most insipid buffoonery up to the loftiest forms of humour and irony, that we shall forego the attempt to make out a complete list. Having stated the rule, we will simply, here and there, ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... the romances of Calprenede and the sentimental Bergeries of Racan. Such Arcadian pictures seemed to have a singular fascination for these courtly dames and plumed cavaliers. They tried to reproduce them. Assuming the characters of the rather insipid Strephons and florimels, they made love in pastoral fashion, with pipe and lute—these rustic diversions serving especially to while away the long summer days in the country at Rambouillet, at Chantilly, or at Ruel. ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... the cold critic who comes only to judge according to the standard of a rigid rule; and so on in every case that we can think of. If we do not enter the spirit of a thing, it has no invigorating effect upon us, and we regard it as dull, insipid and worthless. This is our everyday experience, and these are the words in which we express it. And the words are well chosen. They show our intuitive recognition of the spirit as the fundamental reality in everything, however small or however great. Let us be right as ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... we have the mirthful Taylor and the rugged sea-captain, the lady fair and free, and the lady gay. It may be objected that there is too great a sameness in the female characters: but no; the lady fair and free is brave and revengeful; the lady gay is simply gay, a mere insipid character, and introduced by the poet, no doubt, as a contrast to the turbulent and busy character of the other lady. The boisterous captain is a well-drawn and a well-supported character. He is rugged, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... substance, perfectly white, soluble in water, insipid, odorless. An aqueous solution, if shaken violently, foams like a solution of soap. Boiling makes it turbid and when concentrated it has a slightly astringent taste. It is precipitated by hydrochloric, ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... severe from rugged, malicious from pensive, scornful from melancholic, and such other bordering qualities. There are beauties which are not only haughty, but sour, and others that are not only gentle, but more than that, insipid; to prognosticate from them future events is a matter ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... we had no insipid Casino, where people only gather for show, where they talk in whispers, where they dance stupidly, where they succeed in thoroughly boring one another, we sought some other way of passing our evenings pleasantly. Now, just guess what ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... learned: he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat and insipid; his comick wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some great occasion is presented to him: No man can say, he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... for argument's sake, to maintain that men of learning and talents might have very good intellectual society, without the aid of any little gratifications of the senses. Berrenger joined with Johnson, and said, that without these any meeting would be dull and insipid. He would therefore have all the slight refreshments; nay, it would not be amiss to have some cold meat, and a bottle of wine upon a side-board. 'Sir, (said Johnson to me, with an air of triumph,) Mr. Berrenger knows the world. Every body loves to have ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... goddesses, among whom were Allah and his female consoler Al-Lat. And so, by the year 610, Mohammed, at the age of forty, was nothing more than a respectable but unknown tradesman who had experienced no extraordinary crises, whose few existing utterances were dull and insipid, and whose life seemed destined to remain as insignificant and unsung as any ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... Rapin observe, That he says the best Things in the World, and yet very often he says the most wretched. A little before he says, Plautus is ingenious in his Designs, happy in his Imaginations, fruitful in his Invention; yet, that there are some insipid Jests that escape from him in the Taste of Horace; and his good Sayings that make the People laugh, make sometimes the honester sort to pity him. The most remarkable Thing in his Stile, is the natural and unaffected Easiness of it, I mean in opposition to Stiffness, ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... careless treatment, and many who would be the first to appreciate its good qualities if it were placed before them well cooked and served, now recoil from the idea of habitually feeding off what they know only under the guise of a stodgy, insipid, or watery mass. A few hints, therefore, respecting the best manner of preparing ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich
... lived in his times, to be qualified to judge of this. The subtle salt and spirit of the ancient raillery, according to father Brumoi, is evaporated through length of time, and what remains of it is become flat and insipid to us; though the sharpest part will retain its vigour ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... shiny leaves showed brightly against the blue of the sky, and cast upon the ground a network of light and shadow, figuring the palms of some Indian fabric. Here there was shade beside which that of the European orchard seemed colourless, insipid; the warm joy of sunlight, softened into flying gold-dust; the glad certainty of evergreen foliage; the penetrating perfume of blossom, and the more subdued fragrance of fruit; all helping to fill the body with the soft languor of ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... in the fleece of male sheep is considered, if not absolutely desirable, at any rate quite pardonable? A male sheep with a fleece as white as that of a ewe-lamb,—is he not considered to be, among muttons, somewhat insipid? It was of this taste which Pope was conscious when he declared that every woman was at heart a rake. And so it comes to pass that very black sheep indeed are admitted into society, till at last anxious ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... are acceptable gifts. Emerson took especial pleasure in the beauty of fruits and the thought of how they had been evolved from useless, insipid seed cases.] ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Christianity in them. They were a pale, harmless set of valetudinarians, who were, like all weakly persons, morbidly alive to their own bodily states, and principally employed in experimenting on the effects of various insipid articles of diet. Tea and coffee were tabooed by these people. Ale and wine were abominations in their Index Expurgatorius of forbidden ingesta. The presence of a boiled egg on their breakfast-tables would cause some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... suppose the Mississippi, which was flowing quietly along, minding its own business, hates the Missouri for coming into it all at once with its muddy stream. I suppose the Missouri in like manner hates the Mississippi for diluting with its limpid, but insipid current the rich reminiscences of the varied soils through which its own stream has wandered. I will not compare myself, to the clear or the turbid current, but I will own that my heart sinks when I find all of a sudden I am in for a corner confluence, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... out sleighing most afternoons, and Bluebell was thrown on nursery and school-room for companionship—insipid pabulum to the vanity of a young lady in her first glimpse of conquest, and who believed she had stricken down a quarry worthy of her bow. Having nothing to distract her, she considered the problem exhaustively from morning till night, and, if she were not in love with him before, ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... "while soluble crystalloids are always highly sapid, soluble colloids are singularly insipid," as might be expected; for, as the sentient extremities of the nerves of the palate "are probably protected by a colloidal membrane," impermeable to other colloids, a colloid, when tasted, probably never reaches those nerves. Again, "it has been observed that vegetable gum is not digested ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... just the same little suffering boy whose bed I had shared when I was six years old. He was just as frail, just as plaintive, and he still had that insipid odour of a sick child that had been so repugnant to me previously. I am relating all this so that you may not be jealous. I was seized with a sort of disgust. I remembered the physic I had drank. I got as far away from him as the bed would ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... the scale of Parisian enjoyment, a ball or rout is dull and insipid, a moins qu'on ne manque d'y etre etouffe, how supreme must have been the satisfaction of the company at the Salon des Etrangers! The number present, estimated at seven or eight hundred, occasioned so great a crowd that it was by no means ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... was, but as perfection is Insipid in this naughty world of ours, Where our first parents never learn'd to kiss Till they were exiled from their earlier bowers, Where all was peace, and innocence, and bliss (I wonder how they got through the twelve hours), Don Jose, like a ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... the smoke of natives a few miles ahead of us; I suppose we will see something of them tomorrow. Shot a new pigeon, will try to preserve the skin. Some figs were got by some of the party this morning before starting; I ate one of them apparently ripe, it was very insipid, the principal part of them were full of small flies. Distance travelled by bed of river not direct about ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... without either rhyme or reason,—a sort of ballad like that of the wandering Jew. As for their occupations, they are commonly employed in knitting coarse woollen stockings, or in preparing, in the dirtiest manner in the world, the poorest and most insipid cheese that ever was made. The youths and maidens are by no means Estelles and Nemourins. I am aware that this account will be considered profane, and the writer of these facts, a morose, disagreeable ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... baskets full of the large prawns for which the coast is famous, eight or ten inches long, and with antennae of twelve or fourteen inches in length. They make up in size for want of quality, for they are insipid and tasteless, though, being tender, they make excellent curry. The oysters, on the other hand, are particularly small, but of the most delicious flavour. They are brought from a park, higher up ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... silver spoon. There was one within arm's reach of him. 'But why was it not before him?' He repeated the question again and again, until he forced an answer, which gave him no satisfaction, but provoked fresh rage. Then came insipid remonstrances from my mother, foolish argument—passionless, but not on that account less irritating, allusions to the past. There was little incitement required, and a word from her lips scarcely worth ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... redden, seemed to be buckets of unmixed blood, torrents of blood, inundating the gentle flowers of the parterre. Although the room was thoroughly ventilated a nauseating smell arose from the tables and their horrid burdens, mingled with the sweetly insipid ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... of Indolence and Idleness has gone, and to what Excess, may be seen in all Orders among us; friendly Visits for Conversation are become insipid Things, and are degenerated into Meetings for Gaming, where People hardly known to each other, are invited by one Tye only, the Love of Play: Which seems now to be, not an Amusement or Diversion, but a serious Business of Life, and one would think a necessary one, by seeing how some Children ...
— A Letter from the Lord Bishop of London, to the Clergy and People of London and Westminster; On Occasion of the Late Earthquakes • Thomas Sherlock
... within the loop of her husband's music it suddenly became insipid, futile, and lacking in those enchantments for which she yearned. Her eyes dropped to the shapely hands meekly folded in her lap, dropped because the bold, interrogative expression on Rentgen's face disturbed her. She knew, as any woman would have known, that he admired her—but was he ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... cleanliness upon the public table; nor is it worth while to cover the walls with mirrors to reflect a want of comfort. One prefers a wooden bench to a greasy velvet cushion, and a sanded floor to a soiled and threadbare carpet. An insipid uniformity is the Procrustes-bed, upon which "society" is stretched. Every new house is the counterpart of every other, with the exception of more gilt, if the owner can afford it. The interior arrangement, instead of being characteristic, instead of revealing ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... or—to resign the inheritance of the great warrior and lawgiver. The meek, bald, fat, stammering, simple Charles, or Louis, who successively sat upon his throne—princes, whose only historic individuality consists in these insipid appellations—had not the sense to comprehend, far less to develop, the plans of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in the funds. Women of quality treated him with great familiarity, young ladies began to spread their charms for him, when an accident happened that put a stop to his continuance in a way of life too insipid and inactive to afford employment for those great talents which were designed to make a much more considerable figure in the world than attends the character of a ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... blunt directness of speech. She was educated in the Presbyterian faith, and this was a source of some discordant feeling between her and her husband. The preaching of her favorite ministers seemed to him harsh and rigid, while she regarded Quaker exhortations as insipid and formal. But as time passed on, her religious views assimilated more and more with his; and about twenty-four years after their marriage, she joined the Society of Friends, and frequently spoke at their meetings. She was a spiritual minded woman, always ready to sympathise with the ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... the dunce from his own point of view,—the dunce with his eyes turned inward,—confining his duncehood to the bosom of his family. The dunce objective is the dunce butting against his neighbor's study-door,—intruding, obtruding, protruding his insipid folly and still more insipid wisdom at all times and seasons. He is a creature utterly devoid of shame. He is like Milton's angels, in one respect at least: you may thrust him through and through with the two-edged sword of your satire, and at the end he shall ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... pleasure becomes insipid when the spirit is roused by a different object, it is well known, likewise, that the sense of pain is prevented by any vehement affection of the soul. Wounds received in a heat of passion, in the ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... and Virginia. All at once the carnal man in me rose up and damned these lying foes of mine. Resignation went whistling down the wind. Hang me! Hang me! No, by the God that gave me breath! I sat back and laughed—laughed at my own insipid virtue, by which, to keep faith with the fanatical follower of Prince Charlie, I had refused my liberty; cut myself off from the useful services of my King; wasted good years of my life, trusting to pressure and help to come from England, which never came; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... perhaps fifty pages of it which he would have had bound in morocco.[34] It is a stale romance, he cries, while the Social Contract is only remarkable for some insults rudely thrown at kings by a citizen of Geneva, and for four insipid pages against the Christian religion, which are simply plagiarized from Bayle's centos.[35] Partly, no doubt, this extreme irritation was due to the insults with which Jean Jacques had repulsed his offers ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... tell, on many occasions, what it is that renders one man's conversation so agreeable and entertaining, and another's so insipid and distasteful. As conversation is a transcript of the mind as well as books, the same qualities, which render the one valuable, must give us an esteem for the other. This we shall consider afterwards. ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... ever bear with her a deep conviction of the power she there exercises. Her deportment should never be of that frivolous, or insipid character, which betrays no consciousness of a share in the dignity of our nature. She should carry to the social circle a sense of the value of human life, and a resolution to acquit herself as becomes an intelligent and immortal being. ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... without having been deeply in love. I had, of course, had transient periods of inclination towards more than one of the demoiselles in the neighborhood of La Tournoire; but these demoiselles had rapidly become insipid to me. As I grew older, I found it less easy to be attracted by young ladies whom I had known from childhood up. I had none the less the desire to be in love; but the woman whom I should love must be new to me, a mystery, ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... deceit. So you love de Sigognac, do you? So much the better, say I—it will be all the sweeter to call you mine. It will be a pleasing variety to press ardent kisses upon sweet lips that say 'I hate you,' instead of the insipid, everlasting 'I love you,' that one gets a surfeit of from all the pretty women of ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... demanding that this antagonism be brought to an end, have erred in mistaking its source, and in seeing in it only a mental oversight, capable of rectification by a legal decree. Hence this lamentable outbreak of sentimentalism, which has rendered socialism so insipid to positive minds, and which, spreading the absurdest delusions, makes so many fresh dupes every day. My complaint of socialism is not that it has appeared among us without cause, but that it has clung so long and ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... foregoing example in one dull, monotonous tone of voice, without regard to the sentiment expressed, would render the passage extremely insipid and lifeless. But by a proper modulation of the voice, it infuses into the mind of the reader or hearer the ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... apologising with all the consideration due to his father's employer, and assured her that Benedetto was as beautiful as an angel. A rather insipid young woman who had come, "Goodness only knows why!" the two Friends thought angrily, announced, in quiet tones, that she had seen him twice, and ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... univalve that has been much in vogue among the Chinese but has seldom found place on the tables of restaurants owing to the difficulty in preparing them, as they are tough and insipid under ordinary circumstances. When made tender either by the Chinese method of pounding, or by steeping in vinegar, they serve the purpose of clams but have not the fine flavor. The Hof Brau restaurant is now making a specialty of abalone's, but it takes sentiment to say that one really finds ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... profane to penetrate, which signifies that all that he learned from God, concerning amorous adventures, should be wrapped in profound silence. How beautiful all these allegories are! And how true! How insipid life would be without these mysterious liaisons, by which Nature carries out her designs, eluding the social ties, without breaking them! Disciples of Mercury, I salute you, whatever be your sex; to your discretion, to your persuasive arts are confided our dearest interests, the peace ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... find America insipid,—they for whom London and Paris have spoiled their own homes, can be spared to return to those cities. I not only see a career at home for more genius than we have, but for more than there ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... some fat benefice. Dulness, that in a playhouse meets disgrace, Might meet with reverence, in its proper place. The fulsome clench, that nauseates the town, Would from a judge or alderman go down, Such virtue is there in a robe and gown! And that insipid stuff which here you hate, Might somewhere else be called a grave debate; Dulness is decent in the church and state. But I forget that still 'tis understood, Bad plays are best decried by showing good. Sit silent then, that my pleased soul may see A judging audience once, and worthy me; My faithful ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... live and die. Come, and bring any of your friends the mandarins with you. My best room commands a court in which are trees and a pump, the water of which is excellent cold—with brandy, and not very insipid without." At about the same time we find Mary Lamb recording that her genial brother had suddenly taken to living like an anchorite. He tabooed all alcoholic drinks, and confined himself to cold ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... he said, "I advise you to eat freely of the excellent fruit provided at the camp table." Now with us fruit, cooked or raw, is almost lacking, and nothing exasperates me quite so much, when I remember the wonderful apples that were just ripening at home, as to see the small bruised insipid fruit that they serve us here. So the men began to laugh, quietly at first; but the laughter rippled from one end of the crowd to the other, and then rose in waves, and then boomed louder and louder, in one great hearty roar. Whether or not the ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... brought in first some dry biscuits in deep tin boxes, those crisp, insipid English cakes which seem to have been made for a parrot's beak, and soldered into metal cases for a voyage round the world. Next she fetched some little gray linen doilies, folded square, those tea-napkins which in thrifty families never get washed. A third time ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... me to have to confess that I have most awkwardly come to a standstill with the transcription of the Beethoven Quartets. After several attempts the result was either absolutely unplayable—or insipid stuff. Nevertheless I shall not give up my project, and shall make another trial to solve this problem of pianoforte arrangement. If I succeed I will at once inform you of my "Heureka." [Discovery (from a Greek ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... sometimes as close work to get the passengers on board, Mr. Toast, as to get the people. I have often admired how gentlemen and ladies love procrastinating, when dishes that ought to be taken hot, are getting to be quite insipid and uneatable." ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... ratified by King George, was returned to the United States government in February, much to the relief of its friends, and indeed of all parties. "We are wasting our time in the most insipid manner, waiting for the treaty," wrote John Adams to his wife on the tenth of January. "Nothing of any consequence will be done till that arrives, and is mauled and abused, and then acquiesced in. For the antis must be more numerous than I believe them, and made of sterner ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... How insipid, how forbidding were the usual classbooks, the second-rate natural histories above all, stuffed with dry statements, with raw knowledge, which brought nothing but the memory into play! How many youthful faces ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... apply it as he please: Beat not the dirty paths where vulgar feet have trod, But give the vigorous fancy room. For when, like stupid alchymists, you try To fix this nimble god, This volatile mercury, The subtile spirit all flies up in fume; Nor shall the bubbled virtuoso find More than fade insipid mixture left behind.[6] While thus I write, vast shoals of critics come, And on my verse pronounce their saucy doom; The Muse like some bright country virgin shows Fallen by mishap among a knot of beaux; They, in their lewd and fashionable prate, Rally her dress, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... it smoothes down asperities and polishes manners, is apt to impair if not destroy much of the originality and raciness peculiar to clever people. To suit themselves to the ordinary level of society, they become either insipid or satirical; they mix too much water, or apply cayenne pepper to the wine of their conversation: hence that mind which, apart from the artificial atmosphere of the busy world, might have grown into strength ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... The lady was, therefore, anxious to get it copied out, and had offered Miss Crisp a small sum for the service. Mrs Cruden clutched eagerly at the opportunity thus presented. The work was laborious and dreary in the extreme, for the story was long and insipid, and the wretched handwriting danced under her eyes till they ached and grew weak. But she persevered boldly, and for three hours a day pored over her self-imposed task. When Horace returned at evening no trace ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... imagine, his tree will yet show a sameness and sickening repetition in all its parts, and all his trees will be like one another, except so far as one leans east and another west, one is broadest at the top and another at the bottom, while through all this insipid repetition, the means by which he forces contrast, dark boughs opposed to light, rugged to smooth, etc., will be painfully evident, to the utter destruction of all dignity and repose. The imaginative ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... moment springs, He'll rise—then "hear him, hear him," loudly rings, He speaks—th' enraptur'd list'ning through admire His voice, his argument, his genius' fire! The fond old man, in pure ecstatic joy, Blesses the gods that gave him such a boy! But if insipid Dulness guide his tongue, With what sharp pangs his aged heart is wrung— Despair, and shame, and sorrow make him rue The hour he brought him to the public view. And now what fears! what doubt, what joys I ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... feeling goes, no healthy minded person, it seems to me, can help to some degree partaking of it. Militarism is the great preserver of our ideals of hardihood, and human life with no use for hardihood would be contemptible. Without risks or prizes for the darer, history would be insipid indeed; and there is a type of military character which every one feels that the race should never cease to breed, for every one is sensitive to its superiority. The duty is incumbent on mankind, of keeping military characters ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... contradictory condition of alternate peace, rendered insipid by Miss Onslow's coolness, and anxiety converted into happiness unspeakable by the warmth and tenderness of her sympathy, I carried the brig toward the spot indicated in O'Gorman's document; and at noon on a certain day my observations showed that we had arrived ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... the dahlia, salted and boiled, are eaten by the Indians; it is a farinaceous food of a somewhat insipid taste. Certainly, the wild potato is not much better; and who can tell whether cultivation, after having enriched our gardens with its beautiful flowers, may not also furnish our tables with the bulbs of this plant rendered more ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... never known any world except their little world of books, who ranged women into two camps, one in which they held a docile Tennysonian place, as chaste adorners of the sacred home, mothers of children, man's property, insipid angel housekeepers of his demure middle age; the other where they were depicted as cheap, vulgar temptresses, on a level with the wine cup and the ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... his life within myself, and his sprightliness renews my youth. His form, his bearing, his countenance, manifest self-confidence and happiness. Health glows in his face; his firm step is a sign of bodily vigor. His complexion, still delicate, but not insipid, has in it no effeminate softness, for air and sun have already given him the honorable stamp of his sex. His still rounded muscles are beginning to show signs of growing expressiveness. His eyes, not yet lighted with the ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... poetical taste rather than poetic faculty; of a whimsical rather than a humorous or witty man. There is a very marked resemblance to Washington Irving's manner in the prose, which is inevitably, of course, less polished than that of the more purely literary man, and which is apt to be insipid and strained in greater degree in the same direction. It would not be just to say that Paulding's style was formed upon that of Irving; but both had given their days and nights to the virtuous poverty of the essayists of the last century; and while one grew into something ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various |
