"Tasteless" Quotes from Famous Books
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— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... bravest of the brave, and be rewarded with the fairest of the fair. This was not the true history, perhaps, of Dunois; but I am drawing the comparison between the associations and reminiscences conjured up by this decoration in opposition to the dull and tasteless recapitulation of the English manufacture. From the latter I could not extract a bare idea, except that shepherdesses are, as a race, extinct, and that Lord Althorp had taken the tax off shepherds' dogs, by way of a bonus, to relieve a ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... do not think so. I have never known any ill effects from eating it. The spotted parts are merely flavorless and tasteless. But it is a very disgusting disease, and no one, I am sure, would care to eat eel worms with their mushrooms. Until quite recently I used to regard the black spot as the mark of some parasitic fungus, and, acting under this impression, sent affected mushrooms ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... 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 ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... night in winter there is a masked ball at the Grand Theatre of Algiers, just as at the Paris Opera-House. It is the undying and ever-tasteless county fancy dress ball—very few people on the floor, several castaways from the Parisian students' ballrooms or midnight dance-houses, Joans of Arc following the army, faded characters out of the ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... tasteless figure!" cried Wilhelm. "Only see how coarse! the hair is covered with tar to keep off the rain! The peasants here have their peculiar superstition. If they allow the cross to fall they have no luck with their lands. It was upon this hill that the holy Anders, the celebrated ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... dissolved with the other ingredients. "And now," he gaily murmured, "distilled water," the last element needed to bind these together as a water of death. It is a royal secret of the rogue's pharmacy—the best garment for a flitting soul, tasteless and painless. ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... fix up a rod to-mo-oh an' hook a few, fer de pork's givin' out. Hain't got mich use fer trout meself. Dey's kind o' tasteless eatin' if a man can git a bit o' fat coon or a fatty [hare], let 'lone ven'zon. Pork's a sight better'n ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... very, very glad of that, dear. I wish I had understood before. You see, just now, before Jack, I felt that you were hurt, displeased, by my inference from our talk this morning. You made me feel by your whole manner that you found me graceless, tasteless, to blame in some way—perhaps for speaking about it to Jack. Jack ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... them, than be obliged to go through with this of Milton's, or the other's life of Boileau; where there is such a dull, heavy succession of long quotations of uninteresting passages, that it makes their method quite nauseous. But the verbose, tasteless Frenchman seems to lay it down as a principle, that every life must be a book,—and, what is worse, it seems a book without a life; for what do we know of Boileau after all his ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... held in one hand, and their piece of bread in the other, and repaired to their rooms to take their solitary repast. There were suspicions at times that the milk was diluted by a mixture of a very common tasteless fluid, which led a sagacious Yankee student to put the matter to the test by asking the simple carrier-boy why his mother did not mix the milk with warm water instead of cold. 'She does,' replied the honest youth. This mode of obtaining ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... the ceiling or upper-deck; a cask half full of flour stood in a corner; near it lay a large coarse sack in which was a quantity of biscuit, a piece of which I bit and found it as hard as flint and tasteless, but not in the least degree mouldy. There were four shelves running athwartships full of glass, knives and forks, dishes, and so forth, some of the glass very choice and elegant, and many of the dishes and plates also very fine, fit for the ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... however, met with no applause; for they were not so lightly improvised as the former distich, and it was clumsy and tasteless, as well as dangerous thus to name, in connection with such a jest, the potentate at whom it was aimed. And the fears of the jovial party were only too well founded, for a tall, lean Egyptian suddenly stood among the Greeks as if he had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... opinion, Sir? If Boas will bolt Blankets, Boas must: If Snakes will rush upon their end, why not?" "My friend," said I, "The Blanket and the Boa— You will conceive me—are a type, yes, just a type, Of this our day. The dumb and monstrous, tasteless appetite Of stupid Boa, to gobble up for food What needs must scour or suffocate, Not nourish! My friend, let the wool of that one blanket Warm but the back of one live sheep, And the Boa would bolt the animal entire, And flourish ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... that the lightest eyes of men, stupid at their clearest, had given her pretty well all she should ever care for, she could still gather a freshness from the tribute of her own sex, still care to see her reflection in the faces of women. Never, probably, never would that sweet be tasteless—with such a straight grim spoon was it mostly administered, and so flavored and strengthened by the competence of their eyes. Women knew so much best how a woman surpassed—how and where and why, with no touch or torment of it lost on them; so that as it produced mainly ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... him amiable, attractive, affectionate, and only a little, a very little, peculiar. And she could not see him otherwise, for he was connected with what there was of the salt of passion in her tasteless life—the passion of indignation, of courage, of pity, and even of self-sacrifice. She did not add: "And you aren't likely ever to be as long as I live." But she might very well have done so, since she had taken effectual steps to ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... sweep. And all, to gratify my curiosity as to a romantic mystery, my vanity as to my own powers of fascination! Well, I have solved the mystery, and behold it was nothing. I have eaten of the fruit of knowledge, and it is tasteless in ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... the old strict and accurate combination of a limited amount of alliteration, jealously adjusted to words important in sense and rhythm, was exchanged for a profusion of alliterated syllables, often with no direct rhythmical duty to pay, and constantly leading to mere senseless and tasteless jingle, if not to the positive coining of fantastic or improper locutions to get the ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... of castor oil: one tasteless—pour facon de parler—for my own use and cases of serious illness; another in large tins, of the commonest kind, with an odour that would kill an ox, which I used occasionally for punishment on my men when ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... little, and all Friday morning I was in a burning fever. At noon I could not eat my lunch, but I tried to, manfully, and as I munched on the tasteless morsels, salt tears rained on the johnnycake I held in my hand. And even when the girls brought in big bunches of wild flowers and cornstalks, and began to decorate the platform, ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... get the boat up, and I thought I'd stop there. I had some fishing tackle, and matches, and some crackers. I camped in the cave for a couple of days, and had fires, and cooked fish. But, my goodness! fish gets awful tasteless when you don't have any ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... ever heard of. You see, we were 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 ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... that children shall be children before they are men. If we insist on reversing this order we shall have fruit early indeed, but unripe and tasteless, and liable to early decay; we shall have young savants and old children. Childhood has its own methods of seeing, thinking, and feeling. Nothing shows less sense than to try to substitute our own methods for these. I would rather require ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the hot wind bringing sand, that drove him in—with the feeling that these few days and nights had been immeasurable, and that he had been away a thousand years. He came back with the magic of the Desert in his blood, hotel-life tasteless and insipid by comparison. To human impressions thus he was fresh and vividly sensitive. His being, cleaned and sensitized by pure grandeur, "felt" people—for a time at any rate—with an uncommon sharpness of receptive judgment. ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... its form shall communicate itself to the very disguise, and indicate the shape it hides from the manner in which it is worn. A majestic form and graceful motions will express themselves through the most barbarous and tasteless costume. Few poets of the highest class have chosen to exhibit the beauty of their conceptions in its naked truth and splendour; and it is doubtful whether the alloy of costume, habit, &c., be not necessary to temper this planetary ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... darkness thickened, the 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 ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... imprisoned. The idea of some active good within her reach, "haunted her like a passion," and another's need having once come to her as a distinct image, preoccupied her desire with the yearning to give relief, and made her own ease tasteless. She was full of confident hope about this interview with Lydgate, never heeding what was said of his personal reserve; never heeding that she was a very young woman. Nothing could have seemed more irrelevant to Dorothea than insistence on ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... to the dry hill-sides. We have ceased shooting antelopes, as our men have been so often gorged with meat that they have become fat and dainty. They say that they do not want more venison, it is so dry and tasteless, and ask why we do not give them shot to shoot ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... creditable to Pope that his satire was on 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; ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... this Parliament Hampden again withdrew to his home, the home that, however disguised by tasteless changes without, still stands unaltered within on a rise of the Chilterns, its Elizabethan hall girt round with galleries and stately staircases winding up beneath shadowy portraits in ruffs and farthingales. Around are the quiet undulations of the chalk-country, billowy heavings ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... suffering, I am convinced. My health, too, was giving way. My strength, my energy were failing. I kept my bed, as I had never been willing to do before if able to arise from it, until noon sometimes, for want of nervous impulse, and my food was tasteless and innutritious, even when I forced myself to eat a portion of what was placed regularly before me. It seemed to me that, long ere this, Wardour Wentworth must have ascertained my fate, and the thought that he might be passive ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Brown-Jones-and-Robinson, Eighth Avenue. There are two rows of tables in the room, six in each row. On each table is a caster-stand, containing cruets of condiments and seasons. From the pepper cruet you may shake a cloud of something tasteless and melancholy, like volcanic dust. From the salt cruet you may expect nothing. Though a man should extract a sanguinary stream from the pallid turnip, yet will his prowess be balked when he comes to wrest salt from Bogle's cruets. Also upon each table stands the counterfeit of that benign ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... bottle was broached. There were two cases standing ready in a state-room; 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 Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... free himself from that curse. On the other hand, he continued to endure waste and emaciation. In consequence, however, of the wasting of Soma, the deciduous herbs failed to grow. Their juices dried up and they became tasteless, and all of them became deprived of their virtues. And, in consequence of this decadence of the deciduous herbs, living creatures also began to decay. Indeed, owing to the wasting of Soma, all creatures began to be emaciated. Then all the celestials, coming to Soma, O king, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... heard with great interest. His left hand and his constantly pure intonation were, to me, astonishing; but in his compositions and his execution I found a strange mixture of the highly genial and the childishly tasteless, by which one felt alternately ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... it is to be a lady and what not. You know that it is not to go, like the daughters of Zion in Isaiah's time, with mincing gait, and borrowed head-gear, and tasteless finery, the head well-nigh empty, the heart full of little save vanity and vexation of spirit, busy all the week over cheap novels and expensive dresses, and on Sunday over a little dilettante devotion. You know, I take for ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... place on baking dish. Broil in gas broiler for eight minutes, then place in hot oven for seven minutes longer. Spread with desired butter and send to the table in a baking dish. This will give a delicious flavored meat in place of the usual dry, tasteless cake ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... for folding the tobacco; the inner portion is then separated, boiled, hammered with a wooden mallet, and exposed to the air for a few hours. Some kinds have a reddish colour and an astringent taste, but the sort prepared by our host was of a beautiful satiny-white hue, and perfectly tasteless. He obtained sixty, eighty, and sometimes a hundred layers from the same strip of bark. The best tobacco in Brazil is grown in the neighbourhood of Borba, on the Madeira, where the soil is a rich black loam; but tobacco ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... light gleamed forth, the ashes grew less dense, and daylight once more gladdened our eyes. On examining the ashes, they had the appearance of calcined pumice-stone, nearly of the colour of wood ashes. In many places on the deck they lay a foot thick. They were perfectly tasteless, and had no smell of sulphur, though there was a slight burnt odour from them. We now stood back towards Sumbawa, as, with the wind from the eastward, it was the only course we could steer. As we approached it, we saw right ahead a shoal several miles ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... their relations since the evening of the dog-bite. On that evening Nellie had suddenly transformed herself into a distressingly perfect angel, and not once had she descended from her high estate. At least daily she had kissed him—what kisses! Kisses that were not kisses! Tasteless mockeries, like non-alcoholic ale! He could have killed her, but he could not put a finger on a fault in her marvellous wifely behaviour; ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... bushes, under the full sun, in order to dry it. After it has been sun-dried it will keep for long, before it becomes wholly putrid. Dried meat is a poor substitute for fresh meat; it requires long steeping in water, to make it tender, and then it is tasteless, and comparatively innutritious. "Four expert men slice up a full-grown buffalo in four hours and a-half." (Leichhardt.) The American buccaneers acquired their name from boucan—which means jerked meat, in an Indian dialect; for they provisioned ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... 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 had ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... and early experience. Unable to supply themselves, the majority became the victims of quack traders. They sickened of spongy apricots, and foxy pears, and withered plums, and blighted apples, and tasteless berries. They at length suspected that a nation might fare better if its race of fruiterers were overseen and supported by the State, if their skill and their market were alike secured. Although, no longer being tempted to suffer from a surfeit, the ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... difficulty with which she regained it;—how during the day, nothing could tempt her to eat, while all night long she would dream of rich banquets, of which she eagerly desired to partake, but which changed to tasteless morsels, when she lifted the inviting food to her lips. For a time she strove against her feelings, but at last gave up, and ringing for the cook, directed her to broil a couple of thin slices of ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... 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. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 of ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... carbonate of barytes, and mix with one pound of suet or tallow, place a portion of this within their holes and about their haunts. It is greedily eaten, produces great thirst, and death ensues after drinking. This is a very effectual poison, because it is both tasteless and odorless. 10. Take one ounce of finely powdered arsenic, one ounce of lard; mix these into a paste with meal, put it about the haunts of rats. They will eat of it greedily. 11. Make a paste of one ounce of flour, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... lofty room, with pillars cold, And spacious walls of chocolate and gold; The solid sombre glory Of tint oppressive and of tasteless shine, Dear to the modern British Philistine, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... ami. But we must not dry them in the sun; for let me tell you, Mr. Louis, that they will be quite tasteless—mere ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... better. The cathedral of this city, a noble basilica with double aisles, erected by Archbishop Ursus, A.D. 400 (Agincourt, pl. xxiii. No. 21), was unfortunately destroyed on the erection of the present tasteless building. Of the two basilicas of S. Apollinare, the earlier, S. Apollinare Nuovo, originally an Arian church erected by Theodoric, 493-525, measuring 315 ft. in length by 115 ft. in breadth, has a nave 51 ft. wide, separated from the single ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... half-hearted attempts, he arose one day about noon; then, having eaten a tasteless breakfast and strengthened his languid determination by a stiff glass of "hootch," he strolled out of town, taking he first random trail that offered itself. It was a wood trail, leading nowhere in particular, a fact ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... every corner of the land some unseemly disguise, in the Roman or Grecian taste, was thrown over the most lovely forms of the ancient architecture.'[855] His indignation was especially moved by the havoc perpetrated in Westminster Abbey, sometimes by set design of tasteless innovators, often by 'some low-hovelled cutter of monumental memorials,' or by workmen at coronations, 'who, we are told, cannot attend to trifles.'[856] Carter's lamentation is more than justified by Dean Stanley, who has enumerated in detail many of the vandalisms committed ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... restlessness came upon me, perhaps from too-long-continued labour. It was like a drought—a moral drought—as if I had been absent for many years from the sources of life and hope. The inner nature was faint, all was dry and tasteless; I was weary for the pure, fresh springs of thought. Some instinctive feeling uncontrollable drove me to the sea; I was so under its influence that I could not arrange the journey so as to get the longest day. I merely started, and of course had to ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... she recognized in the face of the insolent Venus the features of the Princess of Eboli. Prom his accustomed chair, the King could see this painting. Everywhere in the room there were rich objects that caught and reflected the light, things of gold and silver, of jade and lapis lazuli, in a sort of tasteless profusion that detracted from the beauty of each, and made Dolores feel that she had been suddenly transported out of her own element into another that was hard to breathe and in which it was bad to live. It oppressed her, and though her courage was ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... not reflect, he has longings, he has whims, and they must be satisfied. They are the longings of a dictator. Unlimited power would be tasteless without this seasoning. Go to,—cut off Charlet's head, and the others. M. Bonaparte is Prince-President of the French Republic; M. Bonaparte has sixteen millions a year, forty-four thousand francs a day, twenty-four cooks in ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... in their false custom, Immoral ditties are their delight; Vain and tasteless praise they recite; Falsehood at all times do they utter; The innocent persons they ridicule; Married women they destroy, Innocent virgins of Mary they corrupt; As they pass their lives away in vanity, Poor innocent persons they ridicule; At night ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... infected with the jail pollution of the Old Bailey, and was dashed and brewed and ineffectually stummed again into a senatorial exordium in the House of Lords, I found all the high flavor and mantling of my honors tasteless, flat, and stale. Unluckily, the new tax on wine is felt even in the greatest fortunes, and his Grace submits to take up with the heel-taps of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... 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 ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... a cab with drawings, again he went back to the Metropole and to maddening columns of new figures—back to the monotony of tasteless meals served at ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... 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 befall ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... careful cross-fertilization, we are able to produce not only beautiful and new blossoms, but also many delicious new fruits. Most of our cultivated fruits have been produced in this way. For instance, if two species of wild strawberries were found, one, large and beautiful but sour or tasteless, the other, small but delicious, the two could be bred together until finally a perfect berry, large ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... to another field, the early critics were no doubt often provokingly wrong when they censured the language of particular passages in Shakespeare as obscure, inflated, tasteless, or 'pestered with metaphors'; but they were surely right in the general statement that his language often shows these faults. And this is a subject which later criticism has ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... delectable alley of trees[187] a least as far as the mountains of Cashmere;—while the Ladies who had nothing now to do all day but to be fanned by peacocks' feathers and listen to FADLADEEN seemed heartily weary of the life they led and in spite of all the Great Chamberlain's criticisms were so tasteless as to wish for the poet again. One evening as they were proceeding to their place of rest for the night the Princess who for the freer enjoyment of the air had mounted her favorite Arabian palfrey, in passing by a small ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... spoke too bravely about her hunger. Their food by this time had begun to pall. The good venison, of which they had eaten joyously at first, became tasteless and then disgusting. They had no salt. The bacon and the bread had long since been consumed, and the chocolate also. There was left nothing but the flesh of deer and rabbits. Marion stewed it, broiled it, baked it under hot ashes; and they ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... to see that they are not contracting mould; and your pickles, to see that they are not growing soft and tasteless. ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... glass, such as were thought handsome fifty years ago; an elephant of a writing-desk, staring with plush and gilding, almost covered the table. Altogether, the room was as desolate as its occupant; more could not be said. Lobelia seemed smaller and more shrunken than ever amid all this tasteless display; she seemed conscious of it, too, as she gazed piteously at Peggy. She had been crying, in a furtive, frightened way; and, gazing at her, Peggy felt that it must be years ago that she was crying, too, and ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... 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 to my career—what ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... causes Portugal is far less rich in buildings of interest than is Spain. The earthquake has destroyed many, but more have perished through tasteless rebuilding during the eighteenth century when the country again regained a small part of the trade and wealth lost ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... 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 ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Detroit River and the Straits of Mackinac are also very good; but when you go south, into Lake Erie or Michigan, the quality of the fish deteriorates. Few travellers ever taste a white-fish in perfection. As eaten upon hotel-tables at Buffalo or Chicago, it is a poor and tasteless fish. But, as found at the old French boarding-houses at Mackinac or the Sault, or, better still, cooked fresh from the icy waters on the rocky shores of Superior, it is, to our thinking, the best fish that ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... 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
... 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, but ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... a century ago, were treated with ridicule and contempt by a collector of very distinguished fame, both on account of his literary talents and extensive library. The following copious extract is curious on many accounts; and I do heartily wish that foppish and tasteless collectors would give it a very serious perusal. At the same time, all collectors possessed of common sense and liberal sentiment will be pleased to see their own portraits so faithfully drawn therein. It is taken ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... for this reason more readily softened. But violent boiling occasions an enormous waste of fuel, and by driving away in the steam the volatile and savory elements of the food, renders it much less palatable, if not altogether tasteless. The solvent properties of water are so increased by heat that it permeates the food, rendering its hard and tough constituents soft and easy ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... disappointments outside my family life, I had 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. ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... was milked and produced two and a half gallons of absolutely clear, odorless, tasteless and non-ignitable fluid. Eleven other Guernseys gave forth gushing, foaming, creamy rich gallon after gallon of ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... "naturalism"—pervades the book: from the other main characters—the luckless, brainless, tasteless, harmless husband; the vulgar Don Juans of lovers; the apothecary Homais[394]—one of the most original and firmly drawn characters in fiction—from all, down to the merest "supers." It floods the scene-painting (admirable in itself) with a light of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... continual rewards without excitement. This atmosphere of his father's sterling industry was the best of Archie's education. Assuredly it did not attract him; assuredly it rather rebutted and depressed. Yet it was still present, unobserved like the ticking of a clock, an arid ideal, a tasteless stimulant ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... artist thinks with pain of the hand and forgets the face. He desires an impossible perfection, and flies for safety to the little world that he can make and sway. That is why artists, as a rule, love twilight hours, shaded rooms, half-tones, subdued hues, because what is common, staring, tasteless, is blurred and hidden. Men of rich vitality are generally too much occupied with life as it is, its richness, its variety, its colour and fragrance, to think wistfully of life as it might be. The unbridled, sensuous, luxurious ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... says, we have been looking for a grass that would supply good grazing to our cattle and sheep after the native grasses have become dry and tasteless. In the early portion of 1881, his attention was called to a tame grass which had been introduced into the State of Michigan from West Virginia. This forage plant was causing some excitement among the farmers in the neighborhood of Battle Creek. So he entered into a correspondence with a friend living ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... 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 essential to ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... she is provoked into mistaking her mind's approval for real heart affection, and she chooses the artistic man, only to find, probably, that, like the O'Flaherty, one cannot comfortably worship a lily, without a considerable amount of mutton chops as well—and in the end she may sigh for the tasteless man who yet had the taste ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... tasteless food, and sitting afterward, coatless and thoughtless, in rocking-chairs prickly with inane decorations, listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical things about the excellence of Ford automobiles, and viewing themselves as the greatest race in ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... 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
... noblesse, San Remo became a town of busy merchants, linked by treaties of commerce with the trading cities of the French and Italian coasts. The erection of San Siro marked the wealth and devotion of its citizens. Ruined as it is, like all the churches of the Riviera, by the ochre and stucco of a tasteless restoration, San Siro still retains much of the characteristic twelfth-century work of its first foundation. The alliance of the city with Genoa was that of a perfectly free State. The terms of the treaty which was concluded between ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... room furnished after the fashion of a drawing-room, and resplendent with candles and gilding. The carpet was rich, the walls were hung with pictures, which if garish in colour were not tasteless in design, and between these glittered a quantity of gilded mirrors that caught and reflected the rays of a huge candelabrum depending from the centre of the ceiling. Innumerable wax candles also shone in various parts of the room, ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... doctor, "has to be without mass, invisible, tasteless, intangible, much more rigid than steel, and at the same time some six hundred billion times lighter than air, in order to fulfill all the requirements made of it ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... or areka is a kind of nut, not much unlike a nutmeg, but smaller, and in a great measure tasteless, but yielding a red juice when chewed, which juice also is used by the Indians in painting chintzes, so much admired in Europe. The tree which bears this nut is very straight, and has leaves like those of the cocoa-nut tree. The betel is a plant producing long rank leaves, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... arguments to prove 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 ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... If the water boils a long time before the vegetables are put in it loses all its gases, and the mineral ingredients are deposited on the bottom and sides of the kettle, so that the water is flat and tasteless: the vegetables will not look green, nor have a fine flavor. The time of boiling green vegetables depends very much upon the age, and how long they have been gathered. The younger and more freshly gathered, the more quickly they are cooked. The following ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... second was a fancy, which amounts to a mania, for similes, strung together in endless lists, and derived as a rule from animals, vegetables, or minerals, especially from the Fauna and Flora of fancy. It is impossible to open a page of Euphues without finding an example of this eccentric and tasteless trick, and in it, as far as in any single thing, must be found the recipe for euphuism, pure and simple. As used in modern language for conceited and precious language in general, the term has only a very partial application to its original, or to that original's author. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... partridge, is called partridge in the Middle and Southern states, where the ruffed grouse is known as pheasant. But as both these distributing agents, like most winter rovers, whether bird or beast, are inordinately fond of this tasteless partridge berry, as well as of the spicy fruit of quite another species, the aromatic wintergreen, which shares with it a number of common names, every one may associate whatever bird and berry best suit him. The delicious little ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... prodigious draught of water. 'Hold!' 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 it. But the master, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... oleomargarine was invented, or all things canned—the world will never see ye more! I have now lived for many months in a first-class Florence hotel, and in all the time have not tasted one fresh Italian mushroom, or truffle, or olive—nothing but tasteless abominations ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... ingeniously and efficiently built, out of two large provision tins and some piping which they got—together with a few tools—by swimming out to the air-liner. The still, with a brisk fire under it, proved capable of converting sea-water into flat, tasteless fresh water at the rate of two quarts an hour. Thirsty they might all get, to desperation; but with this supply they could survive till better ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... and went vigorously to work. "Yes, hair, too. Every square millimeter of skin and mucous membrane. Yes, into your eyes. It stings 'em a little, but that's a lot better than going blind. And your mouth. Swallow six good big mouthfuls—it's tasteless ...
— Subspace Survivors • E. E. Smith
... good a hunter not to know that the beef was prepared in such a way that, though tasteless, it nourished, and by sucking on it the saliva ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... shoes grinning behind cedar counters, among stores of Bryant's safety matches, Huntley and Palmers' biscuits, and Allsopp's pale ale. A church had been built, the shell at least, and partly floored, with a very simple, but not tasteless, altar; the Abbe had a good house, with a gallery, jalousies, and white china handles to the doors. The mighty palm in the centre of Gordon Square had a neat railing round it, as befitted the Palladium of the village. Behind the houses, among the stumps of huge trees, maize and cassava, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... claw," because of the claw-like ends to the trailing stems of this moss; and the word clavatum signifies that its inflorescence resembles a club. The spores of Club Moss constitute a fine pale-yellow, dusty powder which is unctuous, tasteless, inodorous, and only medicinal when pounded in all agate mortar until the individual spores, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... and another defect soon appeared: though fat they were tough and stringy. The breeder sent lots of them to me, and they looked fat and tender; but my customers complained that they could not be young, for they were tough and tasteless, and that I must have sold them aged dwarfs under the name of spring chickens. It was found absolutely necessary to let them run out of doors as soon as the weather allowed it, and by the time that they were ready for market the southern chickens were ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... not exactly a cell; it resembled rather the waiting-room of a penitentiary. The carpet, of a tasteless, gaudy pattern, was well worn, and the few pieces of hair-cloth furniture, a sofa, a table, and chairs, had a stiff, official air. A strongly barred window gave upon a contracted garden—one of those gardens sometimes attached to prisons, ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... indifferent to Uncle Ike's shameless partiality in loading my plate with choice tidbits, such as a gizzard, a merry-thought, or a cheese-cake, while Mary 'Liza had to ask twice for what she wanted. What was not tasteless was bitter to my palate. I wondered, dully, why the sight of the doll-baby and the fuss her owner made over her, turned me sick. As soon as I could get away, I slipped down, and out at the friendly side-door, and went ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... of 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 ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... kind 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 from the ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... boiled sheepskin—and it was uncommon tough as well as tasteless; but it is wonderful what men will eat when ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... and tasteless the hours When Jesus no longer I see! Sweet prospects, sweet birds, and sweet flowers Have lost all their sweetness to me: The midsummer sun shines but dim; The fields strive in vain to look gay; But when I am happy in him, December's as ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... slightly or not at all lobed, quite glabrous on both sides, teeth obtuse and alternately large and small; bunches large, loose or compact, irregular conical; berries from small to large, cylindrical, flattened on the ends, very hard and tasteless." ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... 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 purpose ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... and the larger the proportion of flesh to that of pulp and seed the better. This may be true of itself, but the fruit-like acid tomato flavor which most people value is found chiefly in the pulp, and the fruit which has not a due proportion of pulp and flesh seems to be insipid and tasteless. Again, the division into many small cells is often connected with a large and pithy placenta and unevenness in maturity and coloring, which faults often more than overbalance any advantage from small cells and thick flesh. The size and character of the placenta ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy
... my usual habit, I lingered long over my dinner; at its close I poured out a full glass of fine Lacrima Cristi, and secretly mixing with it a dose of a tasteless but powerful opiate, I called my valet and bade him drink it and wish me joy. He did so readily, draining the contents to the last drop. It was a tempestuous night; there was a high wind, broken through by heavy ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... morning was one of the pleasantest episodes which Cornelia had known since her arrival. Truth to tell, she had felt many doubts as to the reception of her fineries, but the mental vision of Elma's tasteless home-made garments, against the background of the beautiful old Manor, had been distressing enough to overcome her scruples. She dimpled as she read, and laughed triumphantly. Things were going well; excellently well, and those dresses ought to exercise ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... every one of these neighbours. There they were, every day and all the days, just the same, echoing his own stagnation. They pained him all round the top and back of his head; they made his legs and arms weary and spiritless. The air was tasteless by reason of them. He lost his ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... 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
... principal, chosen from different dynasties, with a view to combine, or at worst to balance, conflicting hereditary interests? In the conduct of Murkertach, we admire, in turn, his many shining personal qualities, which even tasteless panegyric cannot hide, and the prudence, self-denial, patience, and preservance with which he awaits his day of power. Unhappily, for one every way so worthy of it, that day ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... steep street to the upper town. The most prominent object in the first open space we came to is the cathedral, a new and large but tasteless structure, with a profusely gilt bell-tower, in the Russian manner; and the walls of the interior are covered with large paintings of no merit. But one must not be too critical: a kindling of intellectual energy ever seems, in most countries, to precede ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... least was not deficient in a comfortably good opinion of himself, Mr. Montenero," said I. "Is not it recorded of Cano, that having finished a statue of Saint Antonio de Padua for a Spanish counsellor, the tasteless lawyer and niggardly devotee hesitated to pay the artist his price, observing that Cano, by his own account, had been only twenty-five days about it? The counsellor sat down, with stupid self-sufficiency, to calculate, that at a hundred ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... its toothed edges, the soft mud in which these birds love to dabble. The tongue of the duck is full of nerves, so that its sense of taste is very keen, and thus provided the bird can find out all that is savoury to its palate in puddles, ponds, etc., and throwing away all that is tasteless, swallow only what it likes. Try and examine the bill of the next duck that you see, and you will discover this wonderful apparatus which I have described as acting like a filter. The duck is very capable of affection for its owners, ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... retreat I rejoiced like a tempest-beaten sailor at his entrance into the harbour. When the pleasure of novelty went away, I employed my hours in examining the plants and minerals of the place. But that inquiry is now grown tasteless and irksome, and I have been for some time unsettled and distracted. I am sometimes ashamed to think that I could not secure myself from vice but by retiring from the exercise of virtue, and begin to suspect that I was rather ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds. |
