"Tasteless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... He moved hurriedly around a corner to one of the storage vats, and returned in a moment with a supply of the tasteless gelatin that was their food here. Dark fell to greedily, and Happy, his tongue loosed by this new companionship, started feeding him information in a ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... and then a third animal came in sight, and their movements were like that of the first. Slowly and in an irregular line they approached me, halting every two or three seconds as though feeding upon the grass, which was rank and tasteless, and at length I came to the conclusion that they were animals peculiar to Australia, and such as I had ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... 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 ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... resistance. Ralph had always taken for granted that his father would survive him—that his own name would be the first grimly called. The father and son had been close companions, and the idea of being left alone with the remnant of a tasteless life on his hands was not gratifying to the young man, who had always and tacitly counted upon his elder's help in making the best of a poor business. At the prospect of losing his great motive Ralph lost indeed his one inspiration. If they might die ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... overproduction which, equally with economic overproduction, threatened the well-being of contemporary civilisation. People were inundated, blinded, deafened, and mentally paralysed by a flood of vulgar and tasteless externals, leaving them no time for leisure, thought, or creation from ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... artistic soul, who is not content with merely restoring them magnificently, but who keeps the place up with loving care. Sham philosophers, studying themselves while they profess to be studying humanity, call these glorious things extravagance. They grovel before cotton prints and the tasteless designs of modern industry, as if we were greater and happier in these days than in those of Henri IV., Louis XIV., and Louis XVI., monarchs who have all left the stamp of their reigns upon Les Aigues. What palace, what royal castle, what mansions, what noble ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... Life was absolutely tasteless to Lee without a very strong sprinkle of variety. Consequently he now tried fighting in an entirely different field, and went into politics. He became a Liberal, and with his voice fought the government for whom he had been previously ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... it I could never decide: by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head,—some way. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry. Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The "shades of the prison-house" closed round about us all: walls strait ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... to cry softly because she must eat her tasteless mush. "He's got the stomach to stand it," she repeated bitterly, while her ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... water passes slowly through this lower vat, removing the bitter sap from the flour, which is deposited on the bottom of the vat. From time to time this is scraped up and placed in baskets where it is kept until needed. The flour, while rather tasteless, is nutritious and in years of drought is the chief source of ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... account for the movement being stilled. I now took the second little phial, and prepared it as I had been told. This time the fluid was motionless. I noticed it was very faintly tinged with amber. I drank it off—it was perfectly tasteless. Once in bed, I seemed to have no power to think any more—my eyes closed readily—the slumber of a year-old child, as Heliobas had said, came upon me with resistless and sudden force, and ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... their religion, though not without some taint from the circumjacent idolatry. Their celebration of the Moharram, with tasteless and extravagant ceremonies, and their forty days' fast in Ramzan, were alike misplaced in a country where, from the movable nature of their dates, they sometimes fell in seasons when the rigour of the climate was such as could never have been contemplated ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... now arrived, and I was in hopes, from the animation which Kant had so recently displayed, that we should to-day have a pleasant party, but my hopes were vain—Kant was more than usually exhausted, and though he raised a spoon to his mouth, he swallowed nothing. For some time everything had been tasteless to him; and I had endeavored, but with little success, to stimulate the organs of taste by nutmeg, cinnamon, &c. To-day all failed, and I could not even prevail upon him to taste a biscuit, rusk, or anything ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... baked is most delicious, T'would have electrified Apicius. Roast veal with rich stock gravy serve, And pickled mushrooms too, observe, The cook deserves a hearty cuffing Who serves roast fowl with tasteless stuffing. But one might rhyme for weeks this way, And still have lots of things to say; And so I'll close, for reader mine, This is about ...
— My Pet Recipes, Tried and True - Contributed by the Ladies and Friends of St. Andrew's Church, Quebec • Various
... this passed upon Guido, and what a condemnation of his own theory, which would reduce and level all that is truly great and praiseworthy in art to this insipid, tasteless standard, by setting aside as illegitimate all that does riot come within the middle, central form! Yet Sir Joshua judges of Hogarth as he deviates from this standard, not as he excels in individual character, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... after being passed on from one official to the other, she found herself half-proprietess of a dark confined den, with two berths, two wash-hand-stands, and a sofa. Her partner in these luxuries had apparently taken possession and gone, for rather a queer shawl lay on one berth, and a singularly tasteless hat hung ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... different methods of preparing hydrogen, but the easiest laboratory method is to pour sulphuric acid, or hydrochloric acid, on zinc shavings and to collect in a bottle the gas which is given off. This gas proves to be colorless, tasteless, and ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... natives of sago districts consume a considerable quantity of sago flour, which is boiled into a thick, tasteless paste, called boyat and eaten by being twisted into a large ball round a stick and inserted into the mouth—an ungraceful operation. Tamarind, or some very acid sauce is used to impart to it some flavour. Sago is of course cheaper ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... from indifference, sloth, preoccupation of mind about vain earthly concerns, and often also from egotism and spiritual death; for I saw neglect of this kind in churches the pastors and congregations of which were rich, or at east tolerably well off. I saw many others in which worldly, tasteless, unsuitable ornaments had replaced the magnificent adornments ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... thinly-clad "hickory" sleeves, when a young girl of eighteen sauntered, half perfunctorily, half inquisitively into the room. It was his only remaining daughter. Already elected by circumstances to a dry household virginity, her somewhat large features, sallow complexion, and tasteless, unattractive dress, did not obviously suggest a sacrifice. Since her sister's departure she had taken sole charge of her father's domestic affairs and the few rude servants he employed, with a certain inherited following ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... 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 they ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... experience should force me to think of it! I have no doubt that they sip, every morning, coffee which is as much superior to that of Paris as that of Paris is to that of London; and that they eat the delicious rolls, in comparison with which those of Paris are tasteless. I wonder, in this land of wine,—and yet it must be so,—if the beer-gardens are still filled nightly; and if it could be that I should sit at a little table there, a comely lass would, before I could ask for what everybody is presumed to want, place before me a tall ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... repaired to Hannah's room and surprised that tasteless young woman engaged in putting the final touches to her own costume, in the shape of an abomination designated "a neck arrangement," composed of the cheapest of machine lace and papery satin ribbon. Hannah jumped ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... wondered, swallowed that same tasteless drug that I had swallowed, and been paralysed, as I ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... the least judgment in men, he will be a cold, civil, inattentive husband; a tasteless, insipid, silent companion; a tranquil, frozen, unimpassion'd lover; his insensibility will secure her from rivals, his vanity will give her all the drapery of happiness; her friends will congratulate her choice; she ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... apple, scarlet and yellow; the early strawberry and the late ruddy peach; figs from the Orient and pines from the Antilles; dates from Tunis and tawny persimmons from Japan; misty sea-green grapes and those from the hothouse—tasteless, it is true, but so lordly in their girth, and royal purple; portly golden oranges and fat plums; pears of mellow blondness and pink-skinned apricots. Here at least is the veritable stuff and essence of spring with all its attending aromas—of ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... meal of the day, which says much for the youth and health of the breakfasters! Should it be Sunday the undergraduate may hope (often in vain) to be asked to breakfast by some man in lodgings. Otherwise he will be condemned to feed either upon cold chicken—tasteless and a little dry—or upon gherkin pie, known only (by the mercy of Providence) to certain colleges in Oxford, and consisting of a dish of cold fat, interspersed with gherkins, and covered with lid ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... honey-cake making, and he believed strongly that from the pure fount of his own genius he could draw a formula for the making of lebkuchen so excellent that compared with it all other lebkuchen would seem tasteless. But these were the bright dreams of youth, which ...
— A Romance Of Tompkins Square - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... there," replied Harry; "one never knows who may be listening. And now let us turn our attention to breakfast, and see whether we have anything different this morning from that miserable and tasteless meal ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... eat canned peas? They are always old back numbers that are as hard and tasteless as chips, and are canned after they have been dried for seed. We bought a can of peas once for two shillings and couldn't crack them with a nut cracker. But they were not a dead loss, as we used them the next fall for buck shot. Actually, we shot a coon with a charge of those peas, and he came ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... and pecked above it, and bent the countless flower-heads. Far away, one tall tree rose above the level thistle-ocean. A strange longing seized me to go and tear it down. The forest leaves seemed tasteless; my stomach sickened at them; nothing but that tree would satisfy me; and descending, I slowly brushed my way, with half-shut eyes, through the tall thistles which buried ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... odourless, colourless, tasteless oil, which rapidly absorbs oxygen and becomes rancid. It has been prepared synthetically by heating glycerol and oleic acid together, and may be obtained by submitting olive oil to a low temperature for ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... her in, Radcliffe lingered aimlessly about, outside. Without, of course, being able to analyze it, he felt as if some rare source of entertainment had been withdrawn from him, leaving life flat and tasteless. He felt like being, what his mother called, "fractious," but—he remembered, as in a flash, "you never catch a thorerbred whinin'," and he snapped his jaws together ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... enormous extent. This affliction is painful, and dangerous, and nearly always unnecessary. It is always, therefore, more safe, and more desirable, to use some agent by the mouth, and we know of no better one than castor oil; and as castor oil can be so masked as to be practically tasteless at any drug-store soda fountain there can be small objection to it. My custom is to send the nurse or husband with an empty glass to the drug store to have the mixture made there and brought back ready for ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... present; but stiff civility prevailed. None of the guests seemed to know each other. There was no friendly talking. There were no men guests. There was three hours' agony of squatting, a careful adjustment of expensive kimonos, weak tea and tasteless cakes, a blank staring at a dull conjuring performance, and ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... made a small dish of a few of the birds' nests, which, when first put before us, were perfectly tasteless. When, however, she had added certain seasoning, it was pronounced as delicate as any food could be. The Chinese use them chiefly for thickening ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... fly, but is regarded as vermin, being very poor eating; it runs up to 4lb. and over. The squaw fish, also, will take the fly sometimes, but more often the minnow or grasshopper; its flesh is white and tasteless. It is a large-mouthed fish greatly resembling the chub and attaining about the same size. Both chub and squaw fish are great devourers of fry. In the Shuswap Lake, by trolling in deep water with a lead attached, a large grey char with pink spots can be caught, running up ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert
... besides effecting for him a disengagement of his affections, his sense of beauty, and his idealism from his specifically sexual impulses. This makes him a standing puzzle to the huge number of uncultivated people who have been brought up in tasteless homes by commonplace or disagreeable parents, and to whom, consequently, literature, painting, sculpture, music, and affectionate personal relations come as modes of sex if they come at all. The word passion means ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... of finished crime. If such his fate who yet but darkly dares, Whose guilty purpose yet no act declares, What were it, done! Ah! now farewell to peace! Ne'er on this earth his soul's alarms shall cease! Held in the mouth that languid fever burns, His tasteless food he indolently turns; On Alba's oldest stock his soul shall pine! Forth from his lips he spits the joyless wine! Nor all the nectar of the hills shall now Or glad the heart, or smooth the wrinkled brow! While o'er the couch his aching ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... period of architectural fashion; but they are as distinctly survivals from a dead past as is the wooden shanty which occupies one of the best sites on Fifth Avenue, in the very shadow of the new Delmonico's. I wish tasteless, conventional, and machine-made architecture were as much of a "back-number" in England as it is here. A practised observer could confidently date any prominent building in New York, to within a year or two, by its architectural ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... of all was, oddly enough, tea. Like most French tea it was tasteless, but we remedied that with large quantities of sugar and we ate with it a very rich cake soaked in syrup, which would have deprived the fiercest Indian tea ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... may whet; May teach him when to buy, when season's pass'd, What's stale, what choice, what plentiful, what waste, And lead him through the various maze of taste. The fundamental principle of all Is what ingenious cooks the relish call; For when the market sends in loads of food, They all are tasteless till that makes them good. Besides, 'tis no ignoble piece of care, To know for whom it is you would prepare. You'd please a friend, or reconcile a brother, A testy father, or a haughty mother; Would ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... a large party at the mansion; many guests from the neighbourhood and from the capital had arrived. There were ladies with tasteful and with tasteless dresses; the big hall was quite crowded with people. The clergymen stood humbly together in a corner, and looked as if they were preparing for a funeral, but it was a festival—only the amusement had not yet ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... happiness is that to leave the home Of the Waywode, my father, for the house Of some count palatine, a grateful bride? What do I gain of new from such a change? And can I joy in looking to the morrow When it brings naught but what was stale to-day? Oh, tasteless round of petty, worn pursuits! Oh, wearisome monotony of life! Are they a guerdon for high hopes, high aims? Or love or greatness I must have: all else Are unto me alike indifferent. Smooth off the trouble from thy brow, dear father! Let's trust the ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... palace. He had never liked, but, being a true New Yorker, had greatly admired the splendor of that palace, its costly art junk, its rotten old tapestries, its unlovely genuine antiques, its room after room of tasteless magnificence, suggesting a museum, or rather the combination home and salesroom of an art dealer. This evening he found himself curious, critical, disposed to license a long-suppressed sense of humor. While he was waiting for Josephine to come ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... I was sorry to see in the line of a scholar like Gray, "the honied spring." Had Johnson received but the faintest tincture of the rich Italian school of English poetry, he would never have formed so tasteless a criticism. Honied is employed by Milton in more places ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... he 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
... like all other delicate fish, is only at its best when eaten on the spot where it's caught," Thad told them; "putting it on ice for days hurts the flavor, and sometimes it's just as tasteless as so much sawdust." ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... smaller pieces, which are 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
... distilling alcohol from it on an extensive scale. A distillery was to be established at Sassari, with moveable stills throughout the island, wherever the bulbs could be most easily procured. The projector gave us a sample-bottle of the alcohol, a strong and purely tasteless spirit. I heard afterwards that the speculation did not succeed. There is fine feeding for the wild hogs, in season, on the acorns of the vast cork and other oak woods in the interior of the island, where we afterwards hunted them. They commit great ravages in the cultivated ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... that sad draught had been farther 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 Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... 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 Grade ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... are to garden spinach and chicory what the wild duck is to the tame, or the hare to the rabbit. And it is a fact that garden plants are generally poor and tasteless, while those that grow wild have a certain astringency and pleasant bitter flavour. It is the venison of vegetables that you have given ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... 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 ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... sadness that o'ershade, distort, And mar the face of beauty, when no cause For such immeasurable woe appears, These Flora banishes, and gives the fair Sweet smiles, and bloom less transient than her own. It is the constant revolution, stale And tasteless, of the same repeated joys That palls and satiates, and makes languid life A pedlar's pack that bows the bearer down. Health suffers, and the spirits ebb; the heart Recoils from its own choice—at the full feast Is famished—finds no music in the ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... of beautiful, original, and striking things than in the poems of Donne. Every second line, indeed, is either bad, or unintelligible, or twisted into unnatural distortion, but even the worst passages discover a great, though trammelled and tasteless mind; and we question if Dr Johnson himself, who has, in his 'Life of Cowley,' criticised the school of poets to which Donne belonged so severely, and in some points so justly, possessed a tithe of the rich fancy, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... visiting. Still, enough remains in the un-restored churches of Ravenna to captivate the attention of every student of history and every lover of early Christian art. It is only necessary to shut our eyes to the vapid and tasteless work of recent embellishers, as we should close our ears to the whispers of vulgar gossipers while listening to some noble and entrancing piece of ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... readers has not a lively recollection of bramble hunting, nutting, or merry expeditions for blueberries, wild strawberries, raspberries, and other wild fruits? You might walk many a mile through the sal jungles without meeting fruit of any kind, save the dry and tasteless wild fig, or the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... shading into blue, with a whole yellow-bird transfixed in the centre. When he triumphantly displayed it in their room, "Who's that for, Basil?" demanded his wife; "the cook?" But seeing his ghastly look at this, she fell upon his neck, crying, "O you poor old tasteless darling! You've got it for me!" and seemed about to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... almost perishing from thirst. He called for a second cup; and then he tried to eat the meat and eggs; but they were like dust—it seemed they might choke him. He tried the grapes which had got hidden under the cruet, and the acid of these pleased him for an instant, but the pulp was tasteless, unpalatable. ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... to cook chicken is to fry it. A poorly fed chicken is better stewed. For baking and broiling the chicken must be fat. In whatever way the chicken is cooked there is danger of its being tough, dry, stringy, and tasteless. Plain, artless, boiling results in insipidity. Quick, superficial frying means tough stringy fibres; and a hot oven frequently dries the meat until it ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... trailing evergreen, bearing scarlet berries, edible but nearly tasteless, which remain through the winter. It is peculiar to America, and this is probably the first time it was ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... family, and of occasional evenings, Alma Neugass, angular and full of the knobs of protruding neckbones, elbows, and shoulder blades, and with little sacs under her eyes as if she had wept down into them that life could be so tasteless, would knock at her door, and for an hour or two, and sometimes up to midnight, sit on the edge of Lilly's bed, the drone of their conversation surviving repeated rappings from ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... of this new power Nothing was safe: the elder-tree that grew Beside the well-known charnel-house had then A dismal look: the yew-tree had its ghost, That took his station there for ornament: 380 The dignities of plain occurrence then Were tasteless, and truth's golden mean, a point Where no sufficient pleasure could be found. Then, if a widow, staggering with the blow Of her distress, was known to have turned her steps 385 To the cold grave in which her husband slept, One night, or haply more than one, through pain Or half-insensate ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... and board, lots of board, real buckwheat cakes ("riz" buckwheat, not the prepared kind), and real maple syrup, and real sausage, the kind that has sage in it; the kind that you can't coax your butcher to sell you. The pale, tasteless stuff he gives you for sausage I wouldn't throw out to the chickens. Twenty dollars a month and board! That's $4 a month more than ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... 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
... Fragaria Indica, or "Indian" strawberry, there is little to say. It is a native of Northern India, and differs so much from the other species that it was formerly named as a distinct genus. It has yellow flowers, and is a showy house-plant, especially for window- baskets, but the fruit is dry and tasteless. It is said by Professor Gray to have escaped cultivation and become wild in some localities ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... ardent piety of the Middle Age were happily combined with modern art and civilisation; that the Puritan hatred of the Court, of stage-plays, of the fashions of the time, was only 'a scrupulous and fantastical niceness'; barbaric and tasteless, if sincere; if insincere, the basest hypocrisy; that the stage-plays, though coarse, were no worse than Shakspeare, whom everybody reads; and that if the Stuarts patronised the stage they also raised ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... so called because of its resemblance to a mighty loaf of bread, became a mockery to the hungry people cowering in its shelter. Bread! Rosa Varona could not remember when she had last tasted such a luxury. Raw cane, cocoanuts, the tasteless fruita bomba, roots, the pith from palm tops, these were her articles of diet, and she did not thrive upon them. She was always more or less hungry. She was ragged, too, and she shivered miserably through ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... Bumblebee did not find anything that really pleased him until he paused at a fat sugar-bowl. Since the sugar was sweet he couldn't help liking that, though it did seem somewhat tasteless to him after his feasts ...
— The Tale of Buster Bumblebee • Arthur Scott Bailey
... 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 it in nature, and ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... much more extensive than in the central and northern districts. Several kinds of fruit are grown, and Nyland apples are famous for their flavour, while very fair pears, plums, and cherries can be bought cheaply in the markets. Currants and gooseberries are, however, sour and tasteless. In these southern districts the culture of cereals has reached a perfection unknown further north, for the farms are usually very extensive, the farmers up to date, and steam implements in general ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... solution. From that single one, if the solution were kept at a fair temperature in a warm summer's day, there would be generated, in the course of a week, enough torulae to form a scum at the top and to form lees at the bottom, and to change the perfectly tasteless and entirely harmless fluid, syrup, into a solution impregnated with the poisonous gas carbonic acid, impregnated with the poisonous substance alcohol; and that, in virtue of the changes worked upon the sugar by the vital activity of these infinitesimally small ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... the right; but, alas! there was one person whom he could never deceive, and that was himself. He despised himself, and nothing could make him amends for the self-complacency that he had lost. Without self-approbation, all the luxuries of life are tasteless. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... I should enter and have some coffee. I had so few words at my command that I could not invent even a flimsy excuse. So I went in. The coffee was tasteless. I put in four lumps of sugar. I stirred and stirred and stirred. Finally, I swallowed the contents of the cup. It was very hot. When the agony was past I rose and ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... in our gayest and merriest mood, Our pleasures are tasteless and dim, For the thoughts of the past and of Tom that intrude Make us feel we're ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... this arose more from a sentiment than a principle. The relationship of your wife to me made the contemplated sin no greater, but rendered it more tasteless. ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... all my griefs a more than equal share! Here, where no springs in murmurs break away, Or moss-crown'd fountains mitigate the day, In vain ye hope the green delights to know, 25 Which plains more blest, or verdant vales bestow: Here rocks alone, and tasteless sands, are found, And faint and sickly winds for ever howl around. 'Sad was the hour, and luckless was the day, 'When first from Schiraz' walls ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... monuments of senatorial pride were broken to pieces in sport or in caprice, and those structures which had excited the admiration of ages were pulled down that their material might be used in erecting tasteless edifices. Literature shared the general desolation. The valued manuscripts of classical ages were mutilated, erased, or burned. The monks finished the destruction which the barbarians began. Ignorance as well as anarchy veiled Europe ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... associated with Harvey, Selden, and Cowley. He talked and wrangled with the wise men of half Europe. He had sat at Richelieu's table and been loaded with honours by Cosmo de Medici. The laurels Hobbes won in the schools he lost on Parnassus. His translation of Homer is tasteless and contemptible. In mathematics, too, he was dismounted by Wallis and others. Personally he had weaknesses. He was afraid of apparitions, he dreaded assassination, and had a fear that Burnet and the bishops would burn him as a heretic. His philosophy, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... 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 ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... feeling for the production of a perfect result of skill and taste. A kind of bottled meat-flavoured sauce, manufactured from spent yeast, is used to make the soups, and is poured, with an equally nauseating result, over the hard veal, the tough chicken, the "mousey" quails, and the tasteless beef and mutton, which are never roasted, but are baked or stewed in boiling fat—though shamelessly described as "rotis" in the pretentious and mendacious "menu" placed on the dinner-table. The ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... planted, though there was much about. Taro, the staple food of Hawaiians, either simply boiled or fermented as poi, was not a decided favorite in Tahiti. The natives thought it tasteless compared with the fei, so rich in color and flavor. The taro is a lily (Arum), and its great bulbs are the edible part, though the tops of small taro-plants are delicious, surpassing spinach, and we had them ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... their modicum of milk or chocolate in their vessel, 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 evening commons did ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... let me take off these tasteless kisses the maid gave you; may we not join lips before ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... of the sex, as she gazed at my exquisite lace, perfect ornamental work, and unequaled fineness. Still, her education and habits triumphed, and she would not commend what she regarded as ingenuity misspent, and tasteless, ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... into dust. Do not be deceived. The tutor breakfasts on coffee made of beans, edulcorated with milk watered to the verge of transparency; his mutton is tough and elastic, up to the moment when it becomes tired out and tasteless; his coal is a sullen, sulphurous anthracite, which rusts into ashes, rather than burns, in the shallow grate; his flimsy broadcloth is too thin for winter and too thick for summer. The greedy lungs of fifty hot-blooded ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... maxim is often quoted of "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy;" but all play and no work makes him something greatly worse. Nothing can be more hurtful to a youth than to have his soul sodden with pleasure. The best qualities of his mind are impaired; common enjoyments become tasteless; his appetite for the higher kind of pleasures is vitiated; and when he comes to face the work and the duties of life, the result is usually aversion and disgust. "Fast" men waste and exhaust the powers of life, and dry up the sources of true happiness. Having forestalled ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... stand! roll in malicious rage thy fiendish eyes! Stand and brave me with thine insupportable presence! Imprisoned! In hopeless misery! Delivered over to the power of evil spirits and the judgment of unpitying humanity!—And me, the while, thou went lulling with tasteless dissipations, concealing from me her growing anguish, and leaving her to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... up my mind early in my career that tobacco and beer were for millionaires. Coffee was the grand consoler, and with coffee, soup, bread, I managed to get through my work. I ate at a cafe frequented by cabmen, and for ten cents I was given soup, the meat of the soup—tasteless stuff—bread, and a potato. What more did an ambitious young man want? There were many not so well off as I. I took two meals a day, the first, coffee and milk with a roll. Then I starved until dark ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... dear Belton, thou usedst to take pleasure in repetitions from the poets; but thou must be tasteless of their beauties now: yet be not discountenanced by this uncouth and unreflecting Mowbray, for, as Juvenal says, Tears are the ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... was wonderful—this rough place miles in a desert and yet decent food! And think of the horrible, tasteless, pretentious mess cooking we have to put with in hotels in England anywhere except London. Whatever mood one might be in coming to America, even if it were fault finding and hostile, one would be convinced of their extraordinary go ahead ability, and be filled with respect ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... who gathers up the shards and fragments after an explosion, Griswold remembered cloudily the supper of tasteless courses at the Hotel Chouteau, still less distinctly, a drive through the streets to a great, echoing railway station, a glare of lights too painful to be borne, and, last of all, an overpowering weariness ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... blend and form a soap; and they are said to attract each other chemically or to have a chemical affinity for each other. It is a general character of chemical combination that it changes the qualities of the bodies. Thus, corrosive and pungent substances may become mild and tasteless; solids may become fluids, and solids ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... all. It is the vampire that sucks out the good of us and leaves us like the rind of a squeezed-out orange; it is the cooking-process that extracts and wastes all the nutritious juices of the meat and leaves nothing but the useless and tasteless fibre. ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... them, having been introduced by the whites. Their bean and chestnut bread, cornmeal dumplings, hominy, and gruel are all boiled in a pot, all contain lye, and are all, excepting the last, served up hot from the fire. When cold their bread is about as hard and tasteless as a lump of yesterday's dough, and to condemn a sick man to a diet of such dyspeptic food, eaten cold without even a pinch of salt to give it a relish, would seem to be sufficient to kill him without any further aid from the doctor. The salt or lye so strictly prohibited is really a tonic ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... breast, and could only end in utter misery—perhaps in destruction—or else in a degree of happiness no mortal had ever tasted before. I went about listlessly, like one on whom some heavy calamity has fallen: all interest in my work was lost; my food seemed tasteless; study and conversation had become a weariness; even in those divine concerts, which fitly brought each tranquil day to its close, there was no charm now, since Yoletta's voice, which love had taught my dull ear to distinguish no longer had any part in it. I was not allowed to enter the Mother's ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... natives, in order to render it palatable and wholesome, mix the salt with the juice of a gummy plant, then place it in the sand and bake it by making a fire over it; the lime then becomes insoluble and tasteless. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... intellectual capacity of woman, she did not look upon herself as a representative of the class: her admiration of her sex did not degenerate into self-laudation, and her enthusiasm was not tainted by egotism. Hers was not a strong-mindedness that showed itself in ungainly coiffures and tasteless attire. It was content with desiring and claiming for woman whatever is best, noblest and most lovely in mind and body. She would have given her life to further this end, but thought it mattered little if her name were forgotten in the bulletin that announced ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... 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 ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... you a minute upon the road from Baden to this place; although we were nearly twenty-four hours so detained. Rastadt and Karlsruhe are the only towns worth mentioning in the route. The former is chiefly distinguished for its huge and tasteless castle or palace—a sort of Versailles in miniature; and the latter is singularly pleasing to an Englishman's eye, from the trim and neat appearance of the houses, walks, and streets; which latter have the footpaths almost approaching ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... anomalies, of which the least are a double chorus and a change of scene from Oechalia to Trachis. Imitations and plagiarisms from the other plays abound, and the work has more than its fair share of vain repetitions and tasteless absurdities. On the other hand, metre and diction closely recall the dramas accepted as genuine. It is hard to give any certain answer to such a complicated problem, but it is noteworthy that all the worst defects in this play ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... let me into the Secret. It seems, there is a strange Union of Souls between these two Ladies; from what Affinity of Disposition, or mysterious Impulse, is a Secret only known to Nature and themselves. They love and hate alike; their Sympathies and Antipathies are the same; and all Joys are tasteless to the One, without the Company and Participation of the Other. Their Affection is of that tender, that delicate Nature, that the smallest Jealousie, the least Unkindness blasts it. It happen'd one Day, that Clarissa was more than commonly civil to her Husband: There was something ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... Remove the pits from 2 pounds cherries; boil 1 cup sugar with 1 pint water to a syrup, put in the cherries and boil 3 minutes; pour them into a dish and serve when cold. If the cherries are tasteless add the juice of 1 lemon or use 1 cup water, 1 cup red wine and a stick of cinnamon. If the cherries are small ...
— Desserts and Salads • Gesine Lemcke
... years ago, The wild grape by the river's side, And tasteless groundnut trailing low, The table ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... bowels; or take santonin, ten grains; white sugar, twenty grains; mix, triturate, and divide into ten powders, and give one every night at bed-time, and after giving two or three in this way, administer a mild cathartic. As santonin is almost entirely tasteless, if not combined with other medicines which are unpalatable, no difficulty will be experienced in administering it to children. By reference to the article on anthelmintics in this volume, other valuable vermifuges may be selected, and ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... next 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, ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... 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 the two Republics in 1361 in the Genoese basilica ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... at the boy, like a young man, by her side. She saw 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 that end. Mr Verloc was a ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... disappointment. He begins at last to find that success is not to be expected, and being unfit for any employment that might improve his fortune, and unfurnished with any arts that might amuse his leisure, is condemned to wear out a tasteless life in narratives which few will hear, and complaints ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... were made to rear their unwieldy height in the air, and were strengthened, stiffened, and supported, against the envious winds, to the torment of the wearer, and to the disfigurement of his person. All through the first half of the tasteless reign of good old George III., did this horrible covering disguise the beau's head; and the effect of it may still be judged of by his grandchildren, when they contemplate, not without awe, the rubicund figure of some metropolitan church-beadle ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... Some reckless and unscrupulous hand had sundered them outwardly, and her instinct, guided by a hundred significant incidents, told her whose hand it had been. She fled to her little gloomy sitting-room, with its worn-out, tasteless furniture and drab walls, and fought her sorrow and despair single-handed and in her own way. She had a man's dislike for tears—though, being a woman, they came all too easily to her—and she fought against them now with all the strength at her command, with all the ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... eat dry husks; they loathe the tasteless morsel which well-meaning sectarians offer them, and hunger for that which will warm their hearts and stir their blood. The heart may be warmed, and the blood may be stirred, without corrupting the moral nature. The writer has endeavored ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... are necessary that the sense of taste may be exercised. First, the substance to be tasted must be in solution, or be soluble in the fluids of the mouth. Insoluble substances are tasteless. If we touch our tongue to a piece of rock crystal, there is a sensation of contact or cold, but no sense of taste. On the other hand, when we bring the tongue in contact with a piece of rock salt, we experience the sensations of contact, ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... lycopodium means "wolf's 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 of dung: 110 By Heaven design'd on its own native spot Harmless to enlarge its bloated bulk, and rot. But gluttony the abortive nuisance saw; It roused his ravenous, undiscerning maw: Gulp'd down the tasteless throat, the mess abhorr'd Shot fiery influence round the maddening board. O had thy verse been impotent as dull, Nor spoke the rancorous heart, but lumpish scull; Had mobs distinguish'd, they who howl'd thy fame, The icicle from the pure ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... great end I aim at in all my pursuits. And so let us talk no more on this subject, which makes me melancholy, and that I would fain divert. Believe me, no man breathing at present has less share of happiness in life than I: I do not say I am unhappy at all, but that everything here is tasteless to me for want of being as I would be. And so, a short sigh, and no more of this. Well, come and let's see what's next, young women. Pox take Mrs. Edgworth and Sterne! I will take some methods about that box. What orders ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... in India. Indeed, in some places beef can be bought for two cents a pound. However, it is not so good as is the beef in America. In the hot weather, as it has to be eaten almost as soon as it is killed, it is tough and tasteless. ...
— The Khaki Kook Book - A Collection of a Hundred Cheap and Practical Recipes - Mostly from Hindustan • Mary Kennedy Core
... threatened to fall upon the rest of the baggage. Their friendly chief on this declared that some of it was his own, and also dashed to pieces one of the iron cases, when, to the astonishment of the simple people, instead of beholding heaps of dollars, they saw a dry and tasteless sort ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston |
