"Bland" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had in mind in this rather disturbing hour, was as interesting and forceful an individual as one would care to meet anywhere, a typical figure of Chicago and the West at the time. He was a pleasant, smiling, bland, affable person, not unlike Cowperwood in magnetism and subtlety, but different by a degree of animal coarseness (not visible on the surface) which Cowperwood would scarcely have understood, and in a kind of temperamental ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Tribunal at the Hague or elsewhere; and it must be able to enforce the decision of its tribunal, employing for the purpose, if necessary, the armed forces of the signatory Powers as an international police. "Out-voted minorities must accustom themselves to giving way." It is a bland and easy phrase; but it involves the whole question of world-government. "Men must accustom themselves not to demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," the earliest law-givers might have said, when the State first intervened ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... as I entered, Pigot with an evident contraction of the brows which showed how strongly his urbanity was strained; Simmonds with an affectation of surprise, and Grady with a bland and somewhat vacant smile. My heart rose ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... smooth white hand in which he held his hat and riding-whip had about it a certain plump kindliness which would best become a careless gesture of concession. And, after all, he looked but what he was—a bland and generous gentleman, whose heart was as ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... lover. She happened to have her glance fixed on some point in the opposite direction from him and did not know that he was near. He hesitated for an instant, and then decided that he would not intrude upon her privacy. There was something in her attitude of bland and helpless expectancy that probed the deepest fount ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... accumulated facts. Forensic oratory is the highest type of art, the most powerful of human gifts. The only trouble with most court oratory is that it is only fit for the market-place. The lawyer begins with the firm impression that he must win the jury. His voice is bland and soothing, he feels that he must be soft and persuasive. He rubs his hands and remembering the old adage, that laugh and the world laughs with you, attempts a little joke. There is nothing so good as to get a smile for his side. Perhaps the joke ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... a bland smile; "oh, my dear fellow, what can you mean? Why, the stage is a mirror of the world, and to show virtue her own image is ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... child-like and bland, he diverted suspicion to our laundry man and allowed him to be taken to prison. It was only after being arrested himself that he confessed and restored the revolver. He was allowed to go on the promise that ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... had coaxed. And the dear good soul, who was secretly jealous of Nan, and loved her about as much as mothers usually love an only son's choice, had bewailed her hard fate in secret; and had then stepped over to the cottage with a bland and cheerful exterior, which grew more cheerful as Mrs. Challoner's reluctance made ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... like—but to happen to a kind, silly, credulous pair, such as Dulcie and Will Locke! Clary sat fanning herself, and casting knots on her pocket-handkerchief, and glancing quickly at Sam Winnington's gloomy, dogged face, so different from the little man's wonted bland, animated countenance. What on earth could make Sam Winnington take the wilful deed so much to heart? Hear him rating Will, whom he had been used to patronize in a careless, gracious style, but upon whom he now turned in strong resentment. ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... of the community become indoctrinated with such lessons, and it needs no prophetic foresight to predict a crisis of unprecedented peril, an era of reckless revolution. A philosophic dreamer may affect a calm indifference, a bland and benignant Liberalism; but a nation, a community, cannot be neutral or inert in regard to matters of faith: it must and will be either religious or irreligious, it must either love the truth or hate it: it is ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... Rocking to and fro, the nurse tuned her cracked voice to a long-forgotten lullaby—something about a "boatie." It was stopped by a hand on her shoulder, followed by the approximation of a face which, in its bland gravity, ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... the tiger, you can see his stately stride; When they're returning home again, she'll take a place inside; And on the tiger's face will be the smile so bland and wide, But she's riding on the tiger in ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... changed to a bland smile as I saw the ragged straw hat with the hair standing out of the top, and the grubby face of Shock looking at me with his eyes twinkling and the skin all round wrinkled, while the rest of his face ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... well to screen it: it might cost him dear to fight it. But he was not a modern "smart" lawyer to seek popularity by screening criminals; nor a modern soft juryman, to suffer his eyes to be blinded by quirks and quibbles to the great purposes of law; nor a modern bland governor, who lets a murderer loose out of politeness to the murderer's mistress. He hated crime; he whipped the criminal; no petty forms and no petty men of forms could stand between him and a rascal. He had the sense ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... upstairs; but, as she had forgotten her spectacles, and was rather flurried by the unusual time of the visit, I was not surprised to see her return with one cap on the top of the other. She was quite unconscious of it herself, and looked at us, with bland satisfaction. Nor do I think Miss Barker perceived it; for, putting aside the little circumstance that she was not so young as she had been, she was very much absorbed in her errand, which she delivered herself of with an oppressive modesty that ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... people, neither better nor worse than a great many other ordinary people, who do or do not do much the same thing. They at least do not "wink or giggle"; they take things with the utmost simplicity, and they call upon us to imitate their bland unconsciousness. ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... looked idly at the moon, and the moon inscrutably returned his stare. Plausible, bright, bland, it gave no sign that it was at its awful work. For the bride of night is like a card-dealer whose fingers move so swiftly through the pack ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... temperature is normal, a semi-solid diet may be taken, such as baked, mashed, or creamed potatoes, soups thickened with rice, barley or flour, vegetables (peas, corn, asparagus, celery, spinach, etc.); eggs, light meats, stale breads, toast, bland or subacid fruits (sweet apples, prunes, figs, dates, pears, etc.); macaroni, browned rice (parched before steaming), etc.; ice cream, custards, and rice puddings for desserts after the seventh day. Three good meals ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... and, with a goblet of superior capacity before him, sits in solemn cogitation. His left elbow, supported by the table, and his right by a chair, with a pipe in one hand, and a stopper in the other, he puffs out the bland vapour with the dignity of an alderman, and fancies himself as great as Jupiter, seated upon the summit of Mount Olympus, enveloped by the thick cloud which his ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... merely warmed but lighted the devious path between the drifts. Yet it was not to make love he came; for he sat a silent, awkward figure when once within doors, speaking readily enough in response to the elders, but practically inarticulate whenever called upon to reply to Janice. Her bland unconsciousness was a barrier far worse than the snow; and never dreaming that he was momentarily declaring his love for her in a manner far stronger than words, he believed her wholly ignorant of what he felt, and stayed for hours at a time, longing ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... paused not, but proceeded along a hard and good road towards Green Mount, the first hill which we had to ascend. Green Mount, six miles from Guildford, is famous for a desperate skirmish which took place some years ago between a large body of natives and Messrs. Bland and Souper, at the head of a party escorting provisions from Perth to the infant settlement at York. Whilst slowly ascending the hill, a thick flight of spears fell among the party, wounding several of them. No enemy was visible, and the ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... in bland retort Disguise the truth with verbal circumstance; Our special correspondents still report: "Entrenching tools obscure the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... constitutional vigor to justify any attempt at abandonment of the drug. Hemorrhoids may result; they must be topically treated; mild astringents may be used when the tendency seems getting out of eventual control; bland foods must be given as often as the usually fastidious appetite will tolerate them; the only tonic must be beef-tea—diffusible stimulus invariably increasing the agony, whether in the form of ale, wine, or spirits. Short ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... appointed place in my life; and now I'm adding travel. I've wanted to see Europe once again before I went into my shell for good; and to enjoy the society of my dear friend, Albert Redmayne, visit his home, and hear his bland and childlike wisdom ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... say that it was to the beneficent Enriquez that I again owed my salvation? Scarcely a moment elapsed before his bland voice rose in a concentrated whisper from the corner of the garden below me. He had divined ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... replied Mr Clearemout with a bland smile; "my own limited experience goes far to corroborate what you say, and I hope to have the pleasure of still further testing the ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... service turned and looked wonderingly at the bland stranger and resumed: "After some reflection I have decided to make inquiries at all the hotels, to learn if any foreigner answering this description has lately arrived ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... sitting in a high chair, bland and fat and greedy, a bib about her neck. George and Minna, after a propitiatory smile at him, had climbed ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... man calmly. He picked up the nearest loose object and flung it into the bland face of the official news-announcer. The television set went dead, but there were hissings and sputterings in its interior. He had flung a Bissel battery at it, one of a display-group, and its high-tension terminals hissed and sparked among the ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... Should he be above doing what a general had done? However this may be, he certainly became a mendicant, after changing his name,—and, steadily pursuing this profession for more than a quarter of a century, by dint of his fair words, his bland smiles, and his constant "Fa buon tempo" and "Fa cattivo tempo," which, together with his withered legs, were his sole stock in starting, he has finally amassed a very respectable little fortune. He is now about fifty-five ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... of our otherwise forlorn race! is there a moment throughout that whole circle of the Sun which we call Day more sweet to us, than that which follows the well-performed duties of our lot and that gives thee altogether to us at its close, gentle, refined, affectionate, soothing, bland, and unreserved? The hour that precedes retirement for the night, when the early luxury of languor begins to take possession of the senses? When the eyes are not heavy, but threaten to become so, and long silken lashes first make love to each other? When it is time to confine part of that rich ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... Indian weed, unknown to ancient times, Nature's choice gift, whose acrimonious fume Extracts superfluous juices, and refines The blood distemper'd from its noxious salts; Friend to the spirits, which with vapours bland It gently mitigates—companion fit Of 'a good pot of ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... Beauty" was Miss Mary Bland. Tradition does not say whether or not she ever knew of Washington's admiration, ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... "You suppose correctly." Bland and heartless Nishimura filled in the pause. "A small part of the planetoid may be able to escape; which, to me at least, is pleasantly surprising news. It cannot carry all of our men and mechanisms, therefore only the most important of both are saved. What would you? For the rest it is ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... dear, he will—with a smooth, plausible story to account for his desertion and a bland denial of ever having seen our ham. I shall know how to deal with him then, the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the Santa Fe Chaco is more genuinely "childlike" than, and quite as "bland" as, the famous Celestial. He never quite grows up; he will spend his last dollar on a mouth-organ when he is forty, and give a wild war-whoop of delight as a stack of newly piled sleepers ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... a jolly tanner, With a hey down, down, a down down! His name was Arthur-a-Bland, There was ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... happiness he knew how severe a penalty he must pay: he knew and braved it. And in our poor judgment he was right. Let the secret, stealthy, unrequited lover enjoy to the full the presence, the smiles, the bland and cheerful society of her whom his heart is silently worshipping. Even this shall in future hours be a sweet remembrance. By and by, it is true, there will come a season of poignant affliction. But better all this than one uniform, perpetual torpor. He will have felt ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... therefore surprised to hear that they presently allowed Rutli to come in occasionally and look after his precious "slips." If they had any suspicions of his great strength, it was probably offset by his peaceful avocation and his bland, childlike face. Meantime, I had begun the usual useless legal proceeding, but had also engaged a few rascals of my own to be ready to take advantage of any want of vigilance on the part of my adversaries. I never thought of Rutli in that connection ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... give me great pleasure to know you better, and you may look to seeing me right early," was the bland reply. And yet Mrs. Emerson was not really attracted by this woman, but, on the contrary, repelled. There was something in her keen, searching eyes, which seemed to be looking right into the thoughts, that gave her a ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... Webster, in speaking one day of a Philadelphia family which had thus kept in place, said that they reminded him of Simeon Alleyn, Vicar of Bray, in Old England, who steered his bark safely through four conflicting successive reigns. A bland gentleman, he was first a Papist, then a Protestant, next a Papist, and lastly a Protestant again. "He must have been at times," said Mr. Webster, "terribly confused between gowns and robes, and," continued the Senator, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... way off on the dim silver skyline." Claire knitted her brows. She had not seen Milt's rhetoric. "You're an island of Hesperyds or Hesperides. Accent on the bezuzus. Oh, yes, moondream, I think you better come. Haven't decided"—Milt's tone was bland—"whether to kill you or just have you pinched. Miss Boltwood! ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... open window the gleaming spectacles and bald head of Herr Bergowitz, professor of the natural sciences and friend of Don Rafael and of me and of the cause. He waved his hand to me, with his broad, bland smile. ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... descend to the garden and smoke a cigar in that rural quiet spot. The night was very calm. The moonbeams slept softly upon the herbage of Gray's Inn gardens, and bathed with silver splendour Theobald's Row. A million of little frisky twinkling stars attended their queen, who looked with bland round face upon their gambols, as they peeped in and out from the azure heavens. Along Gray's Inn wall a lazy row of cabs stood listlessly, for who would call a cab on such a night? Meanwhile their drivers, at the alehouse near, smoked the short pipe ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... such an extraordinary nest; but before they had extricated themselves from the branches his face had assumed the stolid, cow-like, unintelligent look which had so often baffled judges and Crown Prosecutors. He was bland and child-like as ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... of Miss Decima at the Criterion, is uncommonly childlike and bland; moreover, she sings charmingly; while of Mr. DAVID JAMES as the pastor Jackson it may be said, "Sure such a pere was never seen!" The Irishman, Mr. CHAUNCEY OLCOTT, has a mighty purty voice, and gains a hearty encore for a ditty of which the music is not particularly striking. ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... The whisper went about that he received a hundred thousand francs per year for merely singing. His theatrical costume won universal admiration, and his bland smile shone first on one side and then on the other, as he nodded patronizingly to first one and then another of his ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... them. He was very nice looking and astonishingly cheerful. The hopes of the twain went up with a bound. His expression was so benign, so bland that they at once jumped to the conclusion that he was coming to tell them that they were free to go, that it had all been a stupid mistake. But they were wrong. He smilingly introduced himself as an advocate connected with the court by ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... and, to tell you my mind, He has not left a better or wiser behind: His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand; His manners were gentle, complying, and bland; 140 Still born to improve us in every part, His pencil our faces, his manners our heart: To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering, When they judg'd without skill he was still hard of hearing: When they talk'd of their Raphaels, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... friendship this brave and vigilant officer was also honoured for many years. And he continued in this rank and regiment till the 19th of April, 1743, when he received a colonel's commission over a regiment of dragoons lately commanded by Brigadier Bland, at the head of which he valiantly fell, in the defence of his sovereign and his country, about two years and a ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... type attempts to sweep back the tide of miseries created by unrestricted propagation, with the feeble broom of sentiment. As one of the most observant and impartial of authorities on the Far East, J. O. P. Bland, has pointed out: "So long as China maintains a birth-rate that is estimated at fifty-five per thousand or more, the only possible alternative to these visitations would be emigration and this would have to be on such a scale as would speedily overrun and overfill ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... princely hand, Which he waved with a gesture bland (Instead of a gentleman's walking-stick it was carried, you understand), In splendor of girdle and shoe, In a glitter of gold and of blue, With the fair Su-See at his side came he, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... bring us down tales of how, on the same principles, human beings intended to grace the festive platter were fed exclusively on rice. The salivary and buccal secretions, under such a simple diet as that indulged in by our Biblical forefathers, become bland and harmless; not only harmless, but even antiseptic and positively beneficial, acting on the same principle as local applications of pepsin. So that the practice, at the time of the patriarchs and in their own family, of this part ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... their Day (1887) is a more laboured and, save for one or two splendid episodes, a less remarkable achievement than Ferishtah. All the burly diffuseness which had there been held in check by a quasi-oriental ideal of lightly-knit facility and bland oracular pithiness, here has its way without stint, and no more songs break like the rush of birds' wings upon the dusty air of colloquy. Thrusting in between the lyrics of Ferishtah and Asolando, these Parleyings recall those other "people of ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... the premises he found Mr. Rollo Wrissell, and his own new acquaintance, Mr. Alloyd, the architect, chatting in the portico. Mr. Wrissell was calm, bland and attentive; Mr. Alloyd was ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... sake, Amos, hold your tongue!" exclaimed the Captain, to whom the name of Hooker was as poison; but at this moment a customer stepping in, Mr. Amos exchanged his ferocious aspect for a bland grin, and Mr. Walker ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... philanthropic few, The muse shall weave her brightest wreaths for you, Who in Humanity's bland cause unite, Nor heed the shaft by interest aimed or spite; Like the great Pattern of Benevolence, Hygeia's blessings to the poor dispense; And though opposed by folly's servile brood, ENJOY THE LUXURY ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... lofty and complacent approbation which we see in these modern days illuminating the countenance of a connoisseur before one of his own old pictures which he has bought as a great bargain, or dawning over the bland features of a linen-draper as he surveys from the pavement his morning's arrangement of the window of the shop. All things, however, have their limits, even a man's approval of an effort of his own skill. Accordingly, after a prolonged review of the proclamation, some faint ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... am a courtier grave and serious Who is about to kiss your hand: Try to combine a pose imperious With a demeanour nobly bland. ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... of quick life crops out In watchful mutual mockery. Gibe and flout In low asides flow freely. Oh, bland elysium for the brave and fair, Whose pleasures are the snigger and the stare, Chill snub, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... affable; with a high and swelling forehead; a deep, warm, lustrous eye that darted forth the living fire of intelligence and love; a long thin nose, winding in a slight and not ungraceful curve toward the right shoulder; an eloquent gesture, a clarion voice, and a face benignant and bland ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... Luigi!" The prisoner, silent till then, stirred and made some little noise of acquiescence. Behind him, still holding to the cord that bound his wrists, his two stolid guards stared uncomprehendingly; the old sergeant, his face one wrinkled mass of bland knowingness, stood with his thumbs in his belt and his short, fat legs astraddle. She leaned forward she seemed to sway like a wind-blown stalk and stared at the prisoner's quiet face. Jovannic saw her lips part in a movement of pain. Then her face ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... beamed upon him with an expression of the utmost benignity as the firelight played on the lenses, but her eyes peering over them seemed endowed in some sort with independence of outlook. It was as if from behind some bland mask a critical observation was poised for unbiased judgment. He felt in some degree under surveillance. But when a light step heralded an approach he looked up, regardless of the betrayal of interest, and bent a steady gaze upon Millicent as she ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... about—ends in the same way—in irksomeness, bewildered vision, fear, compromise, and failure, as seen from the inside. Seen on the outside or before the public, of course, the Institution will have the same old, bland, familiar air of looking successful and of looking intelligent, and yet of being uninteresting, and of not changing the ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... produce, from a district which could not contain above 5760 English acres; or above the value of L. 43 of average yearly value from every acre of that district. This astonishingly valuable produce was in the infancy of the sugar trade, when that bland and wholesome condiment was still an article of luxury, and not as now almost an indispensable necessary, even in the lowest cottages of modern Europe. The sugars of Madeira were long famous; but after the establishment ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... RANDLE FILSON enters, dressed in mourning. He is a man of sixty-three, of commanding presence, with a head resembling that of Alexandre Dumas Fils in the portrait by Meissonier, and a bland, florid manner. He seems to derive much satisfaction from listening to the rich modulations of ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... blander temper but thought himself much deeper than his brother Peter; indeed not likely to be deceived in any of his fellow-men, inasmuch as they could not well be more greedy and deceitful than he suspected them of being. Even the invisible powers, he thought, were likely to be soothed by a bland parenthesis here and there—coming from a man of property, who might have ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Miss Holland; she was looking from side to side, like a bird alighted among strange flowers; she met his eyes and dimpled in frank delight. Mrs. Hastings sat erectly beside her, her tortoise-rimmed glasses expressing bland approval. The improbability of her surroundings had quite escaped her in her satisfied discovery that the place was habitable. The lawyer, his thin lips parted, his head thrown back so that his hair rested upon his coat collar, remained standing, one long ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... or, sitting there in the low mullioned window at Burrough, with his cup of malmsey before him, and the lute to which he had just been singing laid across his knees, while the red western sun streamed in upon his high, bland forehead, and soft curling locks; ever the same steadfast, God-fearing, chivalrous man, conscious (as far as a soul so healthy could be conscious) of the pride of beauty, and strength, and valor, and wisdom, and a race and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... sight of us. He hesitated for a moment; then waved us a bland, unashamed salutation. We went up the nearest steps to the gallery and waited. After a polite leave-taking he bowed to his companions, and reeled towards us. I knew by the familiar gait that he had had many cognacs and absinthes ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... with a bland smile, "and if we would not have it drawn tight, we must e'en obey the commands of ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... near the Petit-Chapeau, the drinkers accosted each other with a grave air. They were heard to say: "Have you your pistol?" "Under my blouse." "And you?" "Under my shirt." In the Rue Traversiere, in front of the Bland workshop, and in the yard of the Maison-Brulee, in front of tool-maker Bernier's, groups whispered together. Among them was observed a certain Mavot, who never remained more than a week in one shop, as the masters always discharged ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... was a young man, about five feet six in height, but of a remarkably compact and athletic form. His complexion was dark, but his countenance open, and his features well set and regular. Indeed his whole appearance might be termed bland and prepossessing. If he ever appeared to disadvantage it was whilst under the influence of resentment, during which his face became pale as death, nay, almost livid; and, as his brows were strong and black, the contrast between them and his complexion changed the whole expression of his countenance ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... feeling that had swept through him earlier in the morning. Again there was that vague suggestion of a steel trap covered with velvet, or kidskin. Not to any one feature, either, could this suggestion be traced; the man's ruddy face was open and bland, his eyes sparkled like gems, his bearing was that of a man who owes no man, either in money ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... families of Colonel Black (an old warrior, who had been through the Crimea and Indian Mutiny), the Redpath girls, whose mother was a widow, the Snodgrass young ladies (three in number), the Misses Bland, residing at Jessimine Lodge, and, of course, many more lesser luminaries. The Colonel's daughters, or "Golden Slippers," as one of them was called by several members of the Camphill, who had caught her in the act of watching a practice game on the eve of a big Cup Tie, wearing a pair ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... The bland smile disappeared from the Oriental's face. He summoned a conference of the secret societies, and the reward for Kinyoun's death was abrogated. Next, the white politicians of Chinatown tried their hand and organized a lynching ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... as the mood of his frenzy changed, these sanguinary schemes were abandoned, (not, however, under any feelings of remorse, but from mere despair of effecting them,) and on the same day, but after a luxurious dinner, the imperial monster grew bland and pathetic in his ideas; he would proceed to the rebellious army; he would present himself unarmed to their view; and would recall them to their duty by the mere spectacle of his tears. Upon the pathos with which ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Hispaniola. Never, I am sure, were people gayer or happier. And there was Silver, sitting back almost out of the firelight, but eating heartily, prompt to spring forward when anything was wanted, even joining quietly in our laughter—the same bland, polite, obsequious seaman of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he in such a hurry to remedy the fault that he had no time to spare for consulting appearances? The doubt had hardly suggested itself, before it was set at rest in a most unexpected manner. Mr. Zant looked at his visitor with a bland smile, and said: ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... approached Rowland, to express the pleasure he had derived from his beautiful "collection." His smile was exquisitely bland, his accent appealing, caressing, insinuating. But he gave Rowland an odd sense of looking at a little waxen image, adjusted to perform certain gestures and emit certain sounds. It had once contained a soul, but the soul had leaked out. Nevertheless, Rowland reflected, there ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... Old aristocrat!" growled Rousselet secretly; but, not daring to show his ill humor, he replied in a bland voice: ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and in the end somewhat termagant female figure, this divine Emilie. Her temper, radiant rather than bland, was none of the patientest on occasion; nor was M. de Voltaire the least of a Job, if you came athwart him the wrong way. I have heard, their domestic symphony was liable to furious flaws,—let us hope at great distances apart:—that 'plates' in presence of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... a proclamation of war, could have assumed a more formidable mien than Mrs. Yellett, squatting erect on the prairie, crowned by her rabbit-skin cap. Mary and Judith, with bland, impassive expressions, noted the effect of the mandate. There was not the faintest symptom of rebellion; each Brobdingnag accepted the matriarch's ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... looked large and bland and friendly, and, somehow, the partisan of integrity and honor. He drew strength from it. Cleggett, like all poetic souls, was responsive to these familiar recurrent phenomena ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... to please, for she was as much annoyed by seeing Tom May sitting courteous and deferential by the side of Mrs. Pugh, as by his attentions to herself. She knew that he was playing the widow off, and that, when most smooth and bland in look and tone, he was inwardly chuckling; and to find the identical politeness transferred to herself, made her feel not only affronted but insulted by being placed on the same level. Thus, when, at a 'reunion' at Laburnum Grove, she had been ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on the ladder and he shut the glass, thrusting it into his pocket and turning a bland, innocent face upon the room. "Does beat all how good pickles be with fish. Set 'em right there, ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... the drink put forth his hand; Blood drawed his knife, with accent bland, "I ax yer parding, Mister Phinn— Jest ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... the promised time—it seemed too good to be true—bland, smiling, competent, and one of the first things Aunt Nell did was to send a telegram to Nancy inviting her to come just as soon as her mother would spare her. The answer came almost before Aunt Nell and Judith had finished planning their shopping expedition ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... Rawnpike, and Mr James Yarlett, entirely inattentive to the acclamations, stepped heavily from the platform and sat down. When Edwin caught Big James's eye he clapped again, reanimating the general approval, and Big James gazed at him with bland satisfaction. Mr Enoch Peake was now, save for the rise and fall of his great chest, as immobile and brooding as an ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... exalted station as well as for their force of character and acknowledged abilities. In no other country were judges so well paid, so independent, so much feared, and so deserving of honors and dignities. And in no other country were judges armed with more power, nor were they more bland and courteous in their manners and more just in their decisions. It was something to be a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... of the captain's voice Kamanako wheeled calmly about, holding up the gauge. The smile on the face of the Japanese was childlike and bland. ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... part) being such a curious mixture. He had a sort of enamel of good humour which showed that his indelicacy was his profession; and he asked for revelations of the vie intime of his victims with the bland confidence of a fashionable physician inquiring about symptoms. He wanted to know what Miss Chancellor meant to do, because if she didn't mean to do anything, he had an idea—which he wouldn't conceal ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... to me always," I replied, smiling at this bland assumption of tact; "and I always like to hear ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... that spoke, his restless pen that never paused. His was not one of those easy posts, not unknown in the modern administration of great affairs, where the subordinate furnishes the intellect, the industry, the experience, while the bland superior, gratifying the world with his sign-manual, appropriates the applause. So long as he lived and worked, the States-General and the States of Holland were like a cunningly contrived machine, which seemed to be alive ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... so rich in blisses, Sweet petitioners for kisses! Pouting nest of bland persuasion, Ripely ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... of the spheres, Majestic is Mong Blong, And bland the beverage that cheers, Called Sirupy Souchong; But sweeter, more inspiring far Than tea or peak or tuneful star I deem it to belong To such a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... of Princeton in the fall of '79 was captained by Bland Ballard of the class of '80. He had a bunch of giants back of him. There were fifteen on the team in those days, and among them were such men as Devereaux, Brotherlin, Bryan, Irv. Withington, and the mighty McNair. The scrub team player at that time was pretty nearly any chap that ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... deepest gloom! On earth no more those voyagers' steps shall roam That cast their anchor at an Heavenly "Home"! High beat their hearts, when first their fated prow Cut through the surge that boils above them now, They saw in vision rapt their fatherland And felt once more its odorous breezes bland— The frozen North receded from their sight And fancy's dream entranced them with delight— Oh! who can tell what pangs their soul assail'd When every hope of life and rescue fail'd, When wild despair their throbbing bosoms wrung And winds and waves a doleful requiem sung? There stood the ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... eyes. And we felt them, too, but there was no sign that they were anything to him beyond mere entertainments. Those visions of hell, those poor babes and women and girls and lads and men shrieking and supplicating in anguish—why, we could hardly bear it, but he was as bland about it as if it had been so many imitation ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... immediately. But as Sanno refused to bring out the jinrikisha, it was not possible to carry out his intention. Then the Honorable Percival, who was not used to being crossed, lost his temper, and the entire household came out to see him do it. Sanno and the proprietor watched him with bland and smiling faces, and the girls tucked their heads behind their sleeves and laughed immoderately at his scowls ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... the Southern breed. It was a curious sight to observe by how sudden and intuitive an instinct the hounds rushed up to Archer, and fawned upon him, jumping up with their forepaws upon his knees, and thrusting their bland smiling faces almost into his face; as he, nothing loath, nor repelling their caresses, discoursed most eloquent dog-language to them, until, excited beyond all measure, old Whino seated himself deliberately on the floor, raised his nose toward the ceiling, and set up a long, protracted, and ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... everybody ought to pull together," he would say, his bland tolerance falling like balm from heaven, and he would clinch the remark by passing round ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... piles of snow that, by alternate thaws and frosts, and repeated storms, had obtained a firmness which threatened a tiresome durability, began to yield to the influence of milder breezes and a warmer sun. The gates of heaven at times seemed to open, and a bland air diffused itself over the earth, when animate and inanimate nature would awaken, and, for a few hours, the gayety of spring shone in every eye and smiled on every field. But the shivering blasts from the north would carry their chill ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... The bland and easy-going catholicity which professes so much in our day, which embraces all faiths and unfaiths in one sweet emulsion of meaningless negations, which patronizes the Christ and His doctrines, and applies the nomenclature ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... much of his facial aspect was artificial. His present condition is only relieved when he is under the control of some powerful emotion. Then he can laugh as heartily and present the appearance of so doing as fully as ever. It is only the conventional smile, the bland, self-possessed smile of society, that is utterly gone from him. I elicited the confession by entering his room noiselessly one day, and detecting him in the act of making the gloomiest grimaces at a small boarding-house mirror on the wall. He was much confused, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... school twice a week to lecture on literature and natural science. He was a much greater general favourite than Mr. Browne; everybody appreciated his affable manner and bland smile, and the little jokes with which he punctuated ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... because of his great loyalty to Attila, he shared his plans. For Attila, comparing them in his wisdom, prized him and Valamir, king of the Ostrogoths, above all the other chieftains. Valamir was a 200 good keeper of secrets, bland of speech and skilled in wiles, and Ardaric, as we have said, was famed for his loyalty and wisdom. Attila might well feel sure that they would fight against the Visigoths, their kinsmen. Now the rest of the crowd of kings (if we may call them so) and the leaders of various nations hung upon ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... influence my choice." Hamilton is quoted as saying that Washington "never read any book upon the art of war but Sim's Military Guide," and an anonymous author asserted that "he never read a book in the art of war of higher value than Bland's Exercises." Certain it is that nearly all the military knowledge he possessed was derived from practice rather than from books, and though, late in life, he purchased a number of works on the subject, it was after his army ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... remarked the detective, flinging his revolver carelessly beside his pipe, much to the relief of the third party. Then, turning to the journalist, he said, with his customary bland courtesy— ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... sang it in boy's clothes the first time I heard it. I sometimes think the lower notes in my voice are like Mrs. Bland's. That glorious singer, Braham, one of my lights, is fled. He was for a season. He was a rare composition of the Jew, the gentleman, and the angel, yet all these elements mixed up so kindly in him that you could not tell which predominated; but he is gone, and one Phillips is engaged instead. ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... to reassure anyone whose dreams are haunted by apprehensions of wild-cat legislative schemes, or the imminence of a Radical millennium, than five minutes' contemplation of our champions of progress as they recline together, dignified and whiskered and bland, upon the benches ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... garden where the centuries gaze upon perpetual summer. Small it is, and of varied charms—set in the fountain of time-defying youth. Abundantly sprinkled with tepid rains, vivified by the glorious sun, its verdure tolerates no trace of age. No ill or sour vapours contaminate its breath. Bland and ever fresh breezes preserve its excellencies untarnished. It typifies all that is tranquil, quiet, easeful, dreamlike, for it is ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... on comparing Thackeray and Dickens, quite cheerfully. But the fashion of comparing Maltby and Braxton went out so long ago as 1795. No, I am wrong. But anything that happened in the bland old days before the war does seem to be a hundred more years ago than actually it is. The year I mean is the one in whose spring-time we all went bicycling (O thrill!) in Battersea Park, and ladies wore ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... myself, the cat leaps out of the bag. I looked at him with a calm glance, under which he seemed somewhat uneasy. More than ever now I suspected a plot. I remembered what my wife had said about abiding by the decision of Mr. Scribe. In a bland way, I resolved to buy up the ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... on imported goods, wares, and merchandise." Among the men who agreed to that declaration were some of the most eminent in our history. James Madison, then young enough to add junior to his name, was the most conspicuous; and associated with him were Richard Henry Lee, Theodorick Bland, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Rufus King, George Clymer, Oliver Ellsworth, Elias Boudinot, Fisher Ames, Elbridge Gerry, Roger Sherman, Jonathan Trumbull, Lambert Cadwalader, Thomas Fitzsimons, the two Muhlenbergs, Thomas Tudor Tucker, Hugh Williamson, Abraham ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine |
