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Insipid

adjective
1.
Lacking taste or flavor or tang.  Synonyms: bland, flat, flavorless, flavourless, savorless, savourless, vapid.  "Insipid hospital food" , "Flavorless supermarket tomatoes" , "Vapid beer" , "Vapid tea"
2.
Lacking interest or significance or impact.  Synonym: jejune.  "Jejune novel"



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"Insipid" Quotes from Famous Books



... sit quiet. But they come wearing shiny clothes, and mop and mow at me and expect me to answer their gibberings. Polite conversation always appears to me to be a wicked perversion of the blessed gift of speech, which, I take it, was given us to season our lives rather than to make them insipid. New friends are the worst in this respect. With old friends one is more at home; you give them something to eat or drink, or look at, or something—whatever they seem to want—and just turn round and go ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... Hence the insipid or vapid taste of newly boiled water, from which these gases are expelled: fish cannot live in water ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum

... "Remember, my good friend, that I am unacquainted with your language, that I am too far advanced in years to acquire a knowledge of it, and that, to converse through the medium of an interpreter upon common occasions, especially with the Ladies, must appear so extremely awkward, insipid, and uncouth, that I can scarce ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... in point of temper any more than other men, but Lucy had never suffered from it before. She was frightened, but she did not give way. The colour went out of her cheeks, but there was more in her than mere insipid submission. She looked at her husband with a certain courage, though she was so pale, and felt so profoundly the displeasure which ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... of an Arab? May I, really? I always thought you were a man in a hundred; and now I know it! That's a bargain, then. Things have been deadly insipid the last two days. But I have something to ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... the previous day, Saturday morning felt a little flat and insipid. There was still plenty to do—desks to clean, trunks to pack, the last preparations to be made for to-night's play—a hundred ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett

... ever insure to you. But the question is, not whether the butterfly can contentedly dispense with the higher instincts of the industrious, laborious, and useful bee, but whether the superior creature could content itself with the insipid and objectless pursuits of the lower one. The mind requires more to fill it in proportion to the largeness of its grasp: hope not, therefore, that you could find either their peace or their satisfaction in the purse-netting, embroidering lives of your thoughtless ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... like the office, because the Powers demanded that all writing in the "Gazette" be very innocent and very insipid. "To publish a newspaper and say nothing is no easy task," said Steele. Had he lived in our day he could have seen the trick ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... pleasure of real companionship, and looked back to the old days wondering how I had endured them, and with dread to those that seemed to lie ahead. Penelope was a girl, to be sure, but she was not like the insipid creatures of the village who were held in such contempt by boys of my age. Where I dared to go she followed. Did I climb to the highest girder in the barn and balance myself on the dizzy height, she was with me. Did I venture to run the wildest rapids of the creek in the clumsy box which I called ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... at the same period as marjoram, carraway seed, sweet basil, coriander, lavender, and rosemary were used to add their pungent flavour to sauces and hashes, on the same tables might be found herbs of the coldest and most insipid kinds, such as mallows, some kinds of ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... show that water under the boiling point, 212 deg., is inefficient for coffee brewing, and does not extract the aromatic oils[378]. Used under this temperature, it is a sure cause of weak and insipid flavor. The effort to make up this deficiency by longer contact of coffee and water, or repeated pouring through, results in no extraction of the oils, but draws out undesirable elements, such as coffee-tannin, which is soluble in water at any temperature and is governed ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... It was not an insipid perfection of character which reported itself in these celestial terms, and Lanfear conjectured that angelic immortality, if such a thing were, could not imply perfection except at the cost of one-half of human character. When the girl wore a dress that she ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells

... a gourd-cup, or vessel. jonote. a tree. Jornada. a day's march. juez. judge. ke'esh. a votive figure. ladino. a mestizo, a person not Indian. ladron, ladrones. thief, thieves. liana. vine. licenciado. lawyer. lima. a fruit, somewhat like an insipid orange. lindas. pretty (girls). llano. a grassy plain. machete. a large knife. maestro. teacher, a master in any trade. maguey. a plant, the century plant or agave, yielding pulque. mai, pelico. tobacco, mixed with chili ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... brought in first some dry biscuits in deep tin boxes, those crisp, insipid English cakes which seem to have been made for a parrot's beak, and soldered into metal cases for a voyage round the world. Next she fetched some little gray linen doilies, folded square, those ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... said, "my Lady Kew's plan was most edifying. She was charmed to hear that Lady Kew loved veal; there were some who thought that meat rather insipid." A waltzer came to claim her hand at this moment; and as she twirled round the room upon that gentleman's arm, wafting odours as she moved, her pink silks, pink feathers, pink ribands, making a mighty rustling, the Countess of Kew had the satisfaction of thinking that she had planted an arrow in ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... had still to work upon the old lines, which would not lend themselves to the new purpose. His passages of moral exhortation would not supply the salt of the old cynical brutalities; they had a painful tendency to become insipid and sentimental, if not maudlin; and only illustrated the difficulty of using a literary tradition which developed spontaneously for one purpose to adapt itself to a wholly different aim. He produced at best not a new genus but an awkward hybrid. But behind this was the ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... deeply so on the young suckers, serrate, very rough above and quite soft-downy beneath; leaves on the old trees almost without lobes; bark tough and fibrous. Flowers in catkins, greenish; in spring. Fruit club-shaped, dark scarlet, sweet and insipid; ripe in August. Small cultivated tree, 10 to 35 ft. high, hardy north to New York; remarkable for the great variety in the forms of its ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar

... relates this as a matter of fact, it is doubtful if it be more than an on dit which he had picked up in London society. Voltaire could not have seen Andreini's drama, for it is not at all a ridiculous trifle. Though much of the dialogue is as insipid as dialogue in operettas usually is, there is great invention in the plot, and animation in the action. Andreini is incessantly offending against taste, and is infected with the vice of the Marinists, the pursuit ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... notwithstanding his youthful years, been able to show the measure, not the tendency of his genius, as well as his aversion for all that is artificial, superficial, insipid, and effeminate; and he had proved that the two great characteristics of his nature ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... flower of precocious iniquity, the young Baglionis, Vitellis, and Orsinis, grouped round Signorelli's preaching Antichrist at Orvieto, are, in their gallantly trimmed jerkins and jewelled caps, the veriest assemblage of harmless young dandies, pretty and insipid; we can scarcely believe that these mild beardless striplings, tight-waisted and well-curled like girls of sixteen, are the terrible Umbrian brigand condottieri—Gianpaolos, Simonettos, Vitellozzos, and Astorres—whose abominable deeds fill the pages ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee

... Zion-ward, though prejudice and error might occasionally fling a mist over the glorious vision before me—but I am not like you. If you knew my thoughts, the dreams that absorb me, and the fiery imagination that at times eats me up, and makes me feel society, as it is, wretchedly insipid, you would pity and I dare say despise me. But I know the treasures of the Bible; I love and adore them. I can see the Well of Life in all its clearness and brightness; but when I stoop down to drink of the pure waters they fly from my lips ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... incompetent alike to hold, to delegate, or—to resign the inheritance of the great warrior and lawgiver. The meek, bald, fat, stammering, simple Charles, or Louis, who successively sat upon his throne—princes, whose only historic individuality consists in these insipid appellations—had not the sense to comprehend, far less to develop, the plans of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... by every one, for miles round; yet his intimate acquaintances were very few. Himself thoroughly original, he had no taste for what was ordinary: a racy, rough character, high or low, ever found acceptance with him; a refined, insipid personage, however exalted in station, was his aversion. He would spend an hour any time in talking freely with a shrewd workman of his own, or with some queer, sagacious old woman amongst his cottagers, when he would have grudged a moment to a commonplace fine ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... that he would soon get absorbed in those pursuits from which I had been able to draw him for a brief time, and then I would be compelled to satisfy myself with the mild excitement of conjugal affection, housekeeping, and the insipid tea-drinkings for which Cavendish has been noted. Not very long after our engagement, I met, at a grand society ball, George Le Grande. He professed to have fallen in love with me at first sight, ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter

... regard— But see, Thalia checks the doubtful thought, 'Canst thou, (she cries,) with sense, with genius fraught, Canst thou to Fashion's tyranny submit, Secure in native, independent wit? Or yield to Sentiment's insipid rule, By Taste, by Fancy, chac'd through Scandal's school? Ah no—be Sheridan's the comic page, Or let me fly with Garrick from the stage. Haste then, my friend, (for let me boast that name,) Haste to the opening path of genuine fame; Or, if thy muse a gentler ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... walk of parts he fatally misplaced, And inclination fondly took for taste; 380 Hence hath the town so often seen display'd Beau in burlesque, high life in masquerade. But when bold wits,—not such as patch up plays, Cold and correct, in these insipid days,— Some comic character, strong featured, urge To probability's extremest verge; Where modest Judgment her decree suspends, And, for a time, nor censures, nor commends; Where critics can't determine on the spot Whether ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... Great Britain, ratified by King George, was returned to the United States government in February, much to the relief of its friends, and indeed of all parties. "We are wasting our time in the most insipid manner, waiting for the treaty," wrote John Adams to his wife on the tenth of January. "Nothing of any consequence will be done till that arrives, and is mauled and abused, and then acquiesced in. For the antis must be more numerous than I believe ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... though there were perhaps fifty pages of it which he would have had bound in morocco.[34] It is a stale romance, he cries, while the Social Contract is only remarkable for some insults rudely thrown at kings by a citizen of Geneva, and for four insipid pages against the Christian religion, which are simply plagiarized from Bayle's centos.[35] Partly, no doubt, this extreme irritation was due to the insults with which Jean Jacques had repulsed his offers of shelter and assistance, had repudiated Voltaire's ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... beauty and prowess of the East; not the triumphs and absolute dominions which followed: all this gave him not half that serene pride and satisfaction of spirit as when he retired himself to umpire the different excellencies of his insipid friends, and to distribute laurels among his poetic heroes. If now upon the authority of this and several such examples, I had the ability and opportunity of drawing the value and strange worth of a poet, and withal of applying some of the lineaments to the following pieces, I should ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... read in his boyhood. I remember that he one day tried to read 'Les etudes de la Nature', but at the expiration of a quarter of an hour he threw down the book, exclaiming, "How can any one read such silly stuffy. It is insipid and vapid; there is nothing in it. These are the dreams of a visionary! What is nature? The thing is vague and unmeaning. Men and passions are the subjects to write about—there is something there for study. These fellows ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... read with much pleasure, the "Essays upon several Subjects" published by Sir Richard Blackmore.—Swift. I admire to see such praises from this author to so insipid a scoundrel, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... be admired. Of his Progress of Love, it is sufficient blame to say that it is pastoral. His blank verse in Blenheim has neither much force nor much elegance. His little performances, whether songs or epigrams, are sometimes sprightly and sometimes insipid. His epistolary pieces have a smooth equability, which cannot much tire, because they are short, but which seldom elevates or surprises. But from this censure ought to be excepted his Advice to Belinda, which, though for the most part written when he was very ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms, and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... see none but him; and I could eat no dinner this evening because he had not come back. I find him handsomer than any man in the world. When he says that he loves me, I can see, I can feel that it is true; I feel displeased, and at the same time delighted. M. de la Marche seems insipid and prim since I have known Bernard. Bernard alone seems as proud, as passionate, as bold as myself—and as weak as myself; for he cries like a child when I vex him, and here I am crying, too, as I think ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... he has now discovered the reason 'why domestic servants in Holland and Scotland, when taking a situation, stipulate that they shall not be made to eat salmon more than three times a week;' it is, the insipid taste of young salmon. It is safe to say, that however much M. de la Malle may know about fish, he knows but little of the habits of the countries to which he refers. M. Yvart mentions a fact that may be useful to graziers—the breed of cattle has been improved ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various

... water is put to it, according as it is to be strong or weak; the juice, thus diluted, is strained through some fibrous stuff like fine shavings; after which it is fit for drinking, and this is always done immediately. It has a pepperish taste, drinks flat, and rather insipid. But, though it is intoxicating I only saw one instance where it had that effect, as they generally drink it with great moderation, and but little at a time. Sometimes they chew this root in their mouths, as Europeans do tobacco, and swallow their spittle; ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook

... unfortunate, though in spite of it, Spenser's verse is more melodious than any other English poet's except Mr. Waller's.[19] Ambrose Philips—Namby Pamby Philips—whom Thackeray calls "a dreary idyllic cockney," appealed to "The Shepherd's Calendar" as his model, in the introduction to his insipid "Pastorals," 1709. Steele, in No. 540 of the Spectator (November 19, 1712), printed some mildly commendatory remarks about Spenser. Altogether it is clear that Spenser's greatness was accepted, rather upon trust, throughout the classical period, but that this ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... but she interrupted him with a loud laugh. 'Hold, hold,' cried she; 'was there ever such a romantick description? I wonder how such silly ideas come into your head—"shady bowers! and purling streams!"—Heavens, how insipid! Well' (continued she), 'you may be the Strephon of the woods, if you think fit; but I shall never envy the happiness of the Chloe that accompanies you in these fine recesses. What! to be cooped up like a tame dove, only to coo, and bill, and breed? ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... under the restraints of the same sacred profession. They are all young. They are all in love. Not any one of them has any hobby-horse, to use the phrase of Sterne. Not one has any ruling passion, such as we read in Pope. Who would not have expected them to be insipid likenesses of each other? No such thing. Harpagon is not more unlike Jourdain, Joseph Surface is not more unlike Sir Lucius O'Trigger, than every one of Miss Austen's young divines to all his reverend brethren. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... romance? I fear you would hardly think it worthy of the name," said my companion. "Every life has its romantic episodes, or, at least, incidents which appear such to him who experiences them. But these tender little histories are usually insipid enough when told. I have a maiden aunt, who once came so near having an offer from a pale stripling, with dark hair, seven years her junior, that to this day she often alludes to the circumstance, with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... entertain. We must demand of literary art, however, that it shall interest in people's fortunes by first interesting in people. Can any one of all Mr. Collins's readers declare that he sympathizes with the loves of Armadale and Neelie Milroy, or actually cares a straw what becomes of either of those insipid young persons? Neither is Midwinter one to take hold on like or dislike; and Miss Gwilt is interesting only as the capable but helpless spider out of which the plot of the story is spun. Pathos there is not in the book, and the humor is altogether too serious ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... realistic, because the subject-matter is contemporary life in Paris and the provinces, and because in them Flaubert indulges his hatred for mediocrity—for the humdrum existence of the country doctor, the apothecary, the insipid clerk, the vapid sentimental woman, and the charlatans of science. But as a matter of fact, ALL his books are essentially constructed on the same theory: all are just as "realistic" ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... sluggish Germans, the knights distinguished themselves rather by drinking and stealing; they were good at boozing and filling their castles with plunder; though in the courts, to be sure, there was no lack of insipid love songs. What caused this utter transformation? Migration ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer

... of the middle-aged workmen, whose constitutions seemed undermined by a previous course of dissipation and debauchery. The conversation became very loud, very involved, and though highly seasoned with emphatic oaths, very insipid; and leaving with Cha—who seemed somewhat uneasy that my eye should be upon their meeting in its hour of weakness—money enough to clear off my share of the reckoning, I stole out to the King's Park, and passed an hour to better purpose among the trap rocks than ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... of the traitor was darker and more gloomy than its wont. He had supped with his officers, Manlius and a nobleman of Fsul, whose name the historian has not recorded, who held the third rank in the rebel army, but their fare had been meagre and insipid, their wines the thin vintage of that hill country; a little attempt at festivity had been made, but it had failed altogether; the spirits of the men, although undaunted and prepared to dare the utmost, lacked all that fiery and enthusiastic ardor, which kindles ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... complexion. Pink and white alone will not give that hue which seems best to denote light and life, and to tell of a mind that thinks and of a heart that feels. I can name no colour in describing the soft changing tints of Madeline Staveley's face, but I will make bold to say that no man ever found it insipid or inexpressive. ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... some taper-lighted chapel, such was the glow of all the bare flesh they contained. And on the beds of straw were lines of tin cans, full of the blood that had trickled from the pigs. Thereupon Florent was attacked by a sort of rage. The insipid odour of the meat, the pungent smell of the tripe exasperated him. He made his way out of the covered road, preferring to return once more to the footwalk of the Rue ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... music passionately. At this time he conceived God as the Great Musician of the spheres; and soon he will write that "we are a strophe in a poem." At the same time, the vivid and lightning figures of the Psalms, sweeping over the insipid metaphors of the rhetoric which encumbered his memory, awoke in the depths of him his wild African imagination and sent him soaring. And then the affectionate note, the plaint in those sacred songs: Deus, Deus meus!—"O God! O my ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... only a small part of the entertainment prepared for the people. There were fountains which, instead of throwing up jets of cold, insipid water, were to spout forth incessantly into huge tanks a stream of the much-loved vodka, from which all around might draw forth and drink to their ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... glanced back at Cadover, and thought of the insipid day that lay before him. Generally he was attracted by fresh people, and Stephen was almost fresh: they had been to him symbols of the unknown, and all that they did was interesting. But now he cared for the unknown no longer. ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... Why this was so, she said she could not tell him, not now, perhaps years from now when both had grown old. She could not do it, for if she endeavoured to refresh old memories or revive what she had half forgotten, her whole past arose before her, flat, languid, and insipid, easily misinterpreted by the person who heard the story, however clear it might be to her. She repeated that this was the way it was, and she could not help it. Once again she asked that he spare her feelings ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... poet's existence. "If you only knew what a nuisance these volumes of verse are! Rascals send me theirs per post from America, and I have more than once been knocked up out of bed to pay three or four shillings for books of which I can't get through one page, for of all books the most insipid reading is second-rate verse." ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... bench beside her husband, and her eye ranged from group to group of those strange faces, with a mechanical, uninterested gaze. Here a pretty insipid-looking girl sauntered the deck with a book in her hand, from which she never read; and another, more vivacious, and equally intent on attracting her share of public notice, raved to an elderly gentleman, on whose arm she was leaning, of the beauty and magnificence ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... book [libretto]. Except the first act, which is rather insipid, it is written in such a masterly style that it does not by any means require a first-rate composer. I will not say that on this very account it would be the more suitable for me; still, if I can get rid of previous engagements, ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace

... about five o'clock the McPherson carriage drove into the park near Apsley House, and in it sat Miss Blanche, gorgeous in light-blue silk and white lace hat, with large solitaires in her ears, her red parasol held airily over her head and her insipid face wreathed in smiles, as she talked to her companion, the handsome Neil, whose dark face was such a contrast to her own, and who reclined indolently at her side, answering her questions mechanically, but thinking always of Bessie, and wondering if she ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes

... A soft amusement, an humane delight. To raise th' insipid nature of the ground, Or tame its savage genius to the grace Of careless sweet rusticity, that seems The amiable result of happy chance, Is to create, and give a god-like joy, ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. V - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis

... gentlemen, that is to say, enough to exhilarate, not to overwhelm the animal spirits. A French woman with three or four glasses of wine in her head, would certainly make an English one stare; but France is the land of love, and it is an universal maxim that life is insipid without it. ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney

... in the clouds. I listened with transport like St. Cecilia; if I had had my harp in my hands I should certainly have dropped it; at that moment all terrestrial music appeared totally spiritless and insipid. ...
— The "Ladies of Llangollen" • John Hicklin

... the fashion in Italy, and every part of the peninsula abounded in them. They bore names fanciful or grotesque, such as The Ardent, The Illuminated, The Unconquered, The Intrepid, or The Dissonant, The Sterile, The Insipid, The Obtuse, The Astray, The Stunned, and they were all devoted to one purpose, namely, the production and the perpetuation of twaddle. It is prodigious to think of the incessant wash of slip-slop which they poured out in verse; ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... indeed, he would have lost it if he had not established a reputation for honesty, which drew customers to him, who, notwithstanding the denunciations of the parson, preferred tea with some taste in it from a Unitarian to the insipid wood-flavoured stuff which was sold by the grocer who believed ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford

... the settlement itself, the difficulties were so numerous that days and weeks passed without an agreement being reached. No matter how striking and expressive the title offered by one man, the majority promptly protested. It was too sulphurous, or too insipid or it lacked in that nebulous characteristic which may be defined as true Americanism. It looked as if the problem would never be solved, when Landlord Ortigies, taking the bull by the horns, appointed a committee of three to select a name, the others pledging themselves ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... method in his power. For no man can bear to be entirely deprived of such enjoyments; it is only because they are not used to taste of what is excellent, that the generality of people take delight in silly and insipid things, provided they be new. For this reason, he would add, 'one ought at least every day to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... savour. applied to an insipid mannerless man as "brid" (cold) is to a fool. "Ahl Zauk" is a man of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... to remember that Pope, who had considerable intellectual relationship with Ibsen, also nourished in childhood the ambition to be a painter, and drudged away at his easel for weeks and months. As he to the insipid Jervases and Knellers whom he copied, so Ibsen to the conscientious romantic artists of Norway's prime. In neither case do we wish that an Ibsen or a Pope should be secured for the National Gallery, ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... perhaps six-or seven-and-thirty. She had been married now for seventeen years, and for all that time, and even before her marriage, she had been the most envied, the most admired, and the most copied woman in the village. Her mother, an insipid, spoiled, ambitious little woman, whose fondest hope was realized when her dashing daughter made a financially brilliant match, had lost no time in warning the bride that the agonies of motherhood, and the long ensuing slavery, were avoidable, and Clara had entirely agreed ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris

... process, by which he baffled his competitors, and often overwhelmed himself, did not, indeed, always permit him to attend deliberately to this principle, and often hurried him into an abuse of practice which in the lights turned breadth into mannered or insipid flatness; and in the shadows into a total extinction of parts. Of all this he has in the schools of San Rollo and Marco given the most unquestionable instances—'The Resurrection of Christ,' and 'The Massacre of the Innocents,' comprehend every charm by which chiaro-scuro fascinates ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet

... echo. In his 'Short View of Tragedy' (1692) Rymer mainly concentrated his attention on 'Othello,' and reached the eccentric conclusion that it was 'a bloody farce without salt or savour.' In Pepys's eyes 'The Tempest' had 'no great wit,' and 'Midsummer Night's Dream' was 'the most insipid and ridiculous play;' yet this exacting critic witnessed thirty-six performances of twelve of Shakespeare's plays between October 11, 1660, and February 6, 1668-9, seeing 'Hamlet' four times, and 'Macbeth,' which ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... military talent to her and to the substitution of a kind of polytechnic phenomenon for the fifteenth century's artless marvel. The Catholic historians of the present day when they make a saint of the Maid are much nearer to nature and to truth. Unfortunately the Church's idea of saintliness has grown insipid since the Council of Trent, and orthodox historians are disinclined to study the variations of the Catholic Church down the ages. In their hands therefore she becomes sanctimonious and bigoted. So much so that in a search for the most curiously travestied of all the Jeannes d'Arc ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... insinuations that the premises and maxims of religion were refuted by the outcome of the war. To woman his heart was as hard, cold, and polished as celluloid. Only when pressed did he admit that he regarded her as an insipid necessity. One has to have a female parent in order to get into this world—no gentleman admitted without a lady; and when one goes out of it again, it is good to leave children so as to keep the great unwashed from getting ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... overcharged. In his very errors as a critic there is often shewn more ability than in the right judgments of most other. When he is most wrong, he gives us some good reason for his being so. He is often mistaken, but never trivial and insipid. It is more safe to trust to him when he commends than when he dispraises; when he enlarges the boundaries of criticism which his predecessors had contracted, than when he sets up new fences of his own. The higher station ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... continued Harley, "though you have lost your election, see before you at this moment such prospects of wealth and happiness, that I shall only have to offer you congratulations to which those that greet Mr. Audley Egerton may well appear lukewarm and insipid, provided you prove that you have not forfeited the right to claim that promise which the Duke di Serrano has accorded to the suitor of his daughter's hand. Some doubts resting on my mind, you have volunteered ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... in seeds. What rioting storms cannot do is done by the silent sap and sunshine. All the fundamental qualities called patience, perseverance, courage, fidelity, are the gains of drudgery. Character comes with commonplaces. Greatness is through tasks that have become insipid, and by duties that are irksome. The treadmill is a divine teacher. He who shovels sand year in and year out needs not our pity, for the proverb is "Every man has his own sand heap." The greatest mind, fulfilling its career, once the freshness ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis

... opportunity of predicting the future rivalry between Rome and Carthage, and the ultimate triumph of the former power. All through the poem there are allusions to the history of Rome, and to the descent of the Julian house from the great Trojan hero. The hero Aeneas, himself, is rather an insipid character, but, on the other hand, Dido is painted with great force, truth, and tenderness. The visit to Carthage gives occasion for the narrative of the fall of Troy in the second and third books, while the sixth book, describing the landing in Italy and the hero's descent to the infernal ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... our diet he said, "I advise you to eat freely of the excellent fruit provided at the camp table." Now with us fruit, cooked or raw, is almost lacking, and nothing exasperates me quite so much, when I remember the wonderful apples that were just ripening at home, as to see the small bruised insipid fruit that they serve us here. So the men began to laugh, quietly at first; but the laughter rippled from one end of the crowd to the other, and then rose in waves, and then boomed louder and louder, in one great hearty roar. Whether or not ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French

... required all their Precaution and Activity, none but the Favourite was left for the Monarch to divert himself with. But Conversation between two Lovers, who are continually together, would soon become insipid, if they confined themselves to common Topics. These Lovers were not so Phlegmatic, they ardently repeated their Protestations to love each other with an eternal Constancy. They mutually urged that the present Vehemence of their Passions, was a Pledge of its unalterable Permanency. ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon

... his have come down to us. Almost every play of Sophocles, which is now extant, was one of his masterpieces. There is hardly one of them which is not mentioned with high praise by some ancient writer. Yet one of them, the Trachiniae, is, to my thinking, very poor and insipid. Now, if we had nineteen plays of Sophocles, of which twelve or thirteen should be no better than the Trachiniae,—and if, on the other hand, only seven pieces of Euripides had come down to us, and if those ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... from their own lively knowledge of the subject. The new writer frequently omits the best things they say, their most striking illustrations, their happiest remarks; because he does not see their value or feel how pregnant they are. The only thing that appeals to him is what is shallow and insipid. ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer

... usually found only on countenances with fantastic features. Have you ever seen on the fair insipid faces of our young swells the imprint of ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... care for Mrs. Jowett's tea-parties, and she always felt irritated by her drawing-room. The gentle voice of her hostess made her want to speak louder than usual, and she thought the conversation insipid to a degree. How could it be anything but insipid with Mrs. Jowett saying only "How nice," or "What a pity" at intervals? She did not even seem to care to hear Mrs. Duff-Whalley's news of "the County," and "dear Lady Tweedie," merely murmuring, "Oh, really," when told the ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... reserved for men has been on the whole a good one. It has produced a higher level of health, stronger nerves, and less morbid characters, and it has given keen and innocent enjoyment to many who from their circumstances and surroundings once found their lives very dreary and insipid. Yet most good observers will agree that amusements which have no kind of evil effect on men often in some degree impair the graces or characters of women, and that it is not quite with impunity ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... that I have made no use of the Apocryphal Gospels. These compositions ought not in any manner to be put upon the same footing as the canonical Gospels. They are insipid and puerile amplifications, having the canonical Gospels for their basis, and adding nothing thereto of any value. On the other hand, I have been very attentive to collect the shreds preserved by the Fathers of the Church, of the ancient Gospels ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... you must be aware that every volume of a narrative turns less and less interesting as the author draws to a conclusion,—just like your tea, which, though excellent hyson, is necessarily weaker and more insipid in the last cup." He compares the orthodox happy ending to "the luscious lump of half-dissolved sugar" usually found at the bottom of the cup. This topic might be discussed, and indeed has been discussed, endlessly. In our actual lives it is probable that most of us have found ourselves living ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... to the two artists, "to do you the honors of the chateau. We both love art, and, above all, artists," she added in a mincing tone; "and I beg you to make yourselves at home here. In the country, you know, every one should be at their ease; one must feel wholly at liberty, or life is too insipid. We have already ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... observed, but they do not lead a youth through the dry places of literature, or stimulate him to severe intellectual training. Pope seems to have made some hasty raids into philosophy and theology; he dipped into Locke, and found him "insipid;" he went through a collection of the controversial literature of the reign of James II., which seems to have constituted the paternal library, and was alternately Protestant and Catholic, according to the last book ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... which they do not progress mutually is the theatre. Look at the scenery of our patent theatres, and compare it with the vulgar daubs even of John Kemble's time. Some of the scenes by Stanfield, Roberts, Grieve, and Pugh, are "perfect pictures." Yet the language of the stage is at a stand, and insipid comedy, dull tragedy, and stupid farce are more abundant than ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various

... that, "to prove this, Dr. Symonds, of Hereford, about the year 1800, made one hogshead of cider entirely from the rinds and cores of apples, and another from the pulp only, when the first was found of extraordinary strength and flavor, while the latter was sweet and insipid." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... in the Presbyterian faith, and this was a source of some discordant feeling between her and her husband. The preaching of her favorite ministers seemed to him harsh and rigid, while she regarded Quaker exhortations as insipid and formal. But as time passed on, her religious views assimilated more and more with his; and about twenty-four years after their marriage, she joined the Society of Friends, and frequently spoke at their meetings. She was a spiritual minded woman, always ready ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... 1803 was declared doctor by the Paris medical school, a pupil of Desplein; practiced medicine at Montegnac, Haute-Vienne, under Louis Philippe, small man of fair skin and very insipid appearance, but with gray eyes which betrayed the depth of a physiologist and the tenacity of a student. Roubaud was introduced to Madame Graslin by the Cure Bonnet, who was in despair at Roubaud's religious indifference. The young ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... smiled wearily when asked by Mrs. Woodhull to go with her to the examination then in progress at the seminary. There was nothing there to interest him, he thought, as Euclid and algebra, French and rhetoric were bygone things, while young school misses in braided hair and pantalets were shockingly insipid. Still, to be polite to Mrs. Woodhull, a childless, fashionable woman, who patronized Canandaigua generally, and Katy Lennox in particular, he consented to go, and soon found himself in the crowded room, the cynosure ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... woman maketh herself inordinately dear and difficult to thee, and by Allah, O son of my uncle, I fear for thee from her.[FN503] Know, O my cousin, that the meaning of the salt is thou west drowned in sleep like insipid food, disgustful to the taste; and it is as though she said to thee; 'It behoveth thou be salted lest the stomach eject thee; for thou professes to be of the lovers noble and true; but sleep is unlawful and to a lover undue; therefore is thy love but a lie.' However, it ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... human type, destined to represent woman's misery in its utmost expression, namely, sorrow undyingly active; the description of which would need such minute observations that to persons eager for dramatic emotions they would seem insipid. This analysis, in which every wife would find some one of her own sufferings, would require a volume to express them all; a fruitless, hopeless volume by its very nature, the merit of which would consist in faintest tints and ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac

... or not? And then is it not the fact that some little amount of shade in the fleece of male sheep is considered, if not absolutely desirable, at any rate quite pardonable? A male sheep with a fleece as white as that of a ewe-lamb,—is he not considered to be, among muttons, somewhat insipid? It was of this taste which Pope was conscious when he declared that every woman was at heart a rake. And so it comes to pass that very black sheep indeed are admitted into society, till at last ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope

... goat-butter is obtainable. But to fry eggs in water? O the barbarity of it! Why not, my friend, take them boiled and drink a little hot water after them? This savours of originality, at least, and is just as insipid, if not more. Withal, they who boil cabbage, and heap it in a plate over a slice of corn-beef, and call it a dish, can break a few boiled eggs in a cup of hot water and call them fried. Be this as it may. The Americans will be solesistically ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... is very frequent amongst the children of the poor in large towns, who are in general ill fed, ill lodged, and ill clothed; and who are further weakened by eating much salt with their scanty meal of insipid vegetable food, which is seldom of better quality than water gruel, with a little coarse bread in it. See diarrhoea of infants, Class I. 1. 2. 5. Scrophulous ulcers are difficult to heal, which is owing to the deficiency of absorption on their pale and flabby surfaces, and ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... Virginia. All at once the carnal man in me rose up and damned these lying foes of mine. Resignation went whistling down the wind. Hang me! Hang me! No, by the God that gave me breath! I sat back and laughed—laughed at my own insipid virtue, by which, to keep faith with the fanatical follower of Prince Charlie, I had refused my liberty; cut myself off from the useful services of my King; wasted good years of my life, trusting to pressure and help to come ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... entitled by her birth. This slight acquaintance with the nobility of France did not, however, elevate them in her esteem. She found the conversation of the old marquises and antiquated dowagers who frequented the salons of Madame De Boismorel more insipid and illiterate than that of the tradespeople who visited her father's shop, and upon whom those nobles looked down with such contempt. Jane was also disgusted with the many indications she saw, not only of indolence ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... that he is extremely intelligent. Literature reconstructs life, and penetrates even to the very life- blood of humanity, from generation to generation. To destroy literature would be to take away all colour from life and make it insipid." ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef

... sometimes to please their fancy; but, much oftener than is suspected, they consider what the world will say of it, how such a woman in their friends' eyes will look at the head of a table. Hence we see so many insipid beauties made wives of, that could not have struck the particular fancy of any man that had any fancy at all. These I call furniture wives; as men buy furniture pictures, because they suit this or that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... people. Her pictures of fashionable society are often curious studies, considered as efforts of the Evangelical imagination; but in one particular the novels of the White Neck-cloth School are meritoriously realistic—their favorite hero, the Evangelical young curate, is always rather an insipid personage. ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... the optimist, who does not fly from them, but welcomes them. He has a mental prism which can separate the insipid white light of existence into bright hues. He has a mental alchemy by which he can produce golden instruction out of the dross of failure. He has a spiritual magic which makes the nectar of joy out ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya

... picture of anecdotal interest, no matter how vivid and pleasant that interest may have been at first, it is not hard to predict which will please us longest—which will grow to be an element in the happiness of every day, while the other becomes at last fade and insipid. This even if we suppose its technical excellence to be great. How, then, shall such interest take the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... Thus, by a bloodless victory, might they accomplish the chief object of their adventure—the rescue of their little master; though, to the Fighting Nigger's taste, a victory without blood were but as a dram without alcohol, gingerbread without ginger, dancing without fiddling—insipid entertainment. This brilliant stratagem, smacking more of Burlman Reynolds's lively fancy than of the Fighting Nigger's slower judgment, was another thought scarce worth the second thinking. After all their trouble, they ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... run in grooves. The same style of man nearly always marries the opposite type of girl. I mean that the intellectual, the clever, invariably choose the insipid brainless girl. Pretty, she may be, but it is in a doll-like way, with not a thought above her household. You would have imagined that such men would require some help-meet, in the fullest sense of the word; with a brain almost as quick as ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren

... rhyme or reason,—a sort of ballad like that of the wandering Jew. As for their occupations, they are commonly employed in knitting coarse woollen stockings, or in preparing, in the dirtiest manner in the world, the poorest and most insipid cheese that ever was made. The youths and maidens are by no means Estelles and Nemourins. I am aware that this account will be considered profane, and the writer of these facts, a morose, disagreeable person; but ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... should be very young to look nice in light dresses on a frosty morning, and the bridesmaids at Lady Alexandrina's wedding were not very young. Lady Rosina's nose was decidedly red. Lady Margaretta was very wintry, and apparently very cross. Miss Gresham was dull, tame, and insipid; and the Honourable Miss O'Flaherty, who filled the fourth place, was sulky at finding that she had been invited to take a share in so ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... Charles X, surrounded by his gloomy, ceremonial little court of faithful followers, was playing his nightly game of whist in the melancholy shelter of Holyrood, where he was to remain for the next two years, an insipid, sorrowful figure, distinguished by such dignity as unquerulous passivity can lend to the foolish and unfortunate. Meanwhile, Paris was attempting to vamp up some interest in her new King, who walked the streets with ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... the augers that had scuttled the Proserpine, and soon turned the pith out. "They pound that pith in water, and run it through linen; then set the water in the sun to evaporate. The sediment is the sago of commerce, and sad insipid stuff it is." ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... rather disappointed to find such a scarcity of fruit, there being none, as far as we could discover, beyond the cocoa-nuts and a few wild figs: the latter rather insipid to the taste, though still a welcome change after the food we ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood

... the Sherkieh.] Whenever the inundation of the Nile failed, they repaired in great numbers to these mountains, and pastured their herds in the fertile valleys, the vegetation of which is much more nutritious for camels and sheep than the luxuriant but insipid pastures on the banks of the Nile. After long wars the Szowaleha and Aleygat succeeded in reducing the Oulad Soleiman; many of their families were exterminated, others fled, and their feeble remains ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... common vinegar a quantity of powdered chalk or whiting, sufficient to destroy the acidity; and when the white sediment is formed, pour off the insipid liquor. The powder is then to be dried, and some oil of vitriol poured upon it, as long as white acid fumes continue to ascend. This substance forms the essential ingredient, the fumes of which are particularly useful in purifying rooms ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... of indulgences contains such insipid, antiquated, and absurd crimes, that it is impossible to turn it to much account. It was composed in stupid and barbarous times; and it is now highly necessary to make a new tariff of sin, for which Rome herself can ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... vacuous. Poetry can pass no power into any human being unless it itself has power—power of beauty, truth, wit, humor, pathos, satire, worship, and other attributes, always through form. No poor poetry is worth reading. Taste for the best makes the other kind insipid. ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie

... fellow at the pleugh, His acres till'd, he's right eneugh; A country girl at her wheel, Her dizzen's done, she's unco weel: But Gentlemen, an' Ladies warst, Wi' ev'n down want o' wark are curst. They loiter, lounging, lank, an' lazy; Tho' deil haet ails them, yet uneasy; Their days insipid, dull, an' tasteless; Their nights unquiet, lang an' restless; An' even their sports, their balls an' races, Their galloping thro' public places, There's sic parade, sic pomp, an' art, The joy can scarcely reach the heart. The men cast out ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... numbers and a more sociable and agreeable way than they do later in the season. I was at two parties last week, each time, I am ashamed to say, after acting. I can't say that I find society pleasant; it reminds me a good deal of a "Conversation Cards," the insipid flippancy, of whose questions and answers seems to me to survive in these meetings, miscalled occasionally conversaziones. Dancing appears to me rational, and indeed highly intellectual, in comparison with such talk; and ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... this feeling goes, no healthy minded person, it seems to me, can help to some degree partaking of it. Militarism is the great preserver of our ideals of hardihood, and human life with no use for hardihood would be contemptible. Without risks or prizes for the darer, history would be insipid indeed; and there is a type of military character which every one feels that the race should never cease to breed, for every one is sensitive to its superiority. The duty is incumbent on mankind, of keeping military ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... dunce from his own point of view,—the dunce with his eyes turned inward,—confining his duncehood to the bosom of his family. The dunce objective is the dunce butting against his neighbor's study-door,—intruding, obtruding, protruding his insipid folly and still more insipid wisdom at all times and seasons. He is a creature utterly devoid of shame. He is like Milton's angels, in one respect at least: you may thrust him through and through with the two-edged sword of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... sympathy between the stomach and the tongue, that in proportion as the former is empty, the latter is acute and sensitive. This is the cause that "good appetite is the best sauce," and that the dish we find savoury at luncheon, is insipid at dinner, and at ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... quietly along, minding its own business, hates the Missouri for coming into it all at once with its muddy stream. I suppose the Missouri in like manner hates the Mississippi for diluting with its limpid, but insipid current the rich reminiscences of the varied soils through which its own stream has wandered. I will not compare myself, to the clear or the turbid current, but I will own that my heart sinks when I find all of a sudden I am in for a corner confluence, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... and gambolling in pursuit. But I as ever partial to what is termed in the 'Young Men's Own Book'—'the society of virtuous and intelligent young ladies;' and in the absence of the mermaids, the amusement became dull and insipid. One morning I expressed to my faithful servitor my desire for the return of the nymphs. The honest fellow looked at me bewildered for a moment, and then shook his head solemnly, and murmured 'taboo! taboo!' giving me to understand ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... originality, repeating what has been heard a thousand times already; (2) equally trite and monotonous accompaniments, the harmony limited to half a dozen elementary chords, the rhythm mechanical and commonplace, and the cadences unchanging as the laws of Nature; (3) insipid, sensational titles; (4) words usually so silly that a respectable country newspaper would refuse to print them in its columns—true to the French bon-mot, that what is too stupid to be spoken or ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... least there is none in our mind, that since the commencement of the Spectator and Tatler, periodicals have principally assisted in developing, if we may so term it, the powers of observation. Intelligent readers of this kind of literature would naturally turn away from the insipid stuff of the rhymer, and the equally sentimental trash of the getter-up of fiction, of which our old magazines were mostly composed, to the more rational parts of the publication, such as original essays, critiques, stories which had really some truth for their foundation, ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown

... later a dramatist seems to have tried his hand at depicting the new resort on the stage, for Pepys tells how in October, 1666, he saw a play called "The Coffee-House." It was not a success; "the most ridiculous, insipid play that ever I saw in my life," was Pepys' verdict. But there was nothing insipid about the pamphlet which, under the title of "The Character of a Coffee-House," issued from the press seven years later. The author withheld his name, and was wise ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... insipid details which overlay them, the annals of Ceylon present comparatively few stirring incidents, and still fewer events of historic importance to repay the toil of their perusal. They profess to record no ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... plan had been frustrated because the Poysers had refused to be "put upon," and Mrs. Poyser's outbreak was discussed in all the farm-houses with a zest which was only heightened by frequent repetition. The news that "Bony" was come back from Egypt was comparatively insipid, and the repulse of the French in Italy was nothing to Mrs. Poyser's repulse of the old squire. Mr. Irwine had heard a version of it in every parishioner's house, with the one exception of the Chase. But ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... visited, not long ago, one of the old-time cemeteries, the pride of a neighbouring city. It was indeed a place of beauty to the eye; but to my mind there is always something flat and insipid about a landscape lacking the music of singing birds. Therefore I looked and listened for my feathered friends. Some English Sparrows flew up from the drive, and I heard the rusty hinge-like notes of a small company of Purple Crackles that were nesting, I suspected, ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson

... along, it was soon filled, and mostly by ladies, there being only one more gentleman and myself. The conversation of the ladies among themselves, who appeared to be a little acquainted with each other, seemed to me to be but very insipid and tiresome. All I could do was, I drew out my book of the roads, and marked the way we ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz

... of course aware (I never tried to hide it) I moisten my insipid fare With water—which ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... single instance of a very beautiful head left by the highest school of Greek art. On coins, there is even no approximately beautiful one. The Juno of Argos is a virago; the Athena of Athens grotesque, the Athena of Corinth is insipid; and of Thurium, sensual. The Siren Ligeia, and fountain of Arethusa, on the coins of Terina and Syracuse, are prettier, but totally without expression, and chiefly set off by their well-curled hair. You might have expected something subtle in Mercuries; but the Mercury of AEnus is a very stupid-looking ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... his Persian expedition, he was made a subject of mockery and ridicule at Antioch, on account of his low stature, gigantic gait, great goat's beard, and bloody sacrifices. In answer to which, he wrote his Misopogon, or Beardhater, a low and insipid satire. He everywhere threatened the Christians upon his return from the Persian war. The oracles of Delos, Delphos, Dodona, and others, promised him victories, as Theodoret, St. Gregory Nazianzen, Philostorgius, and Libanius ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... gentleness, self-control, sound common sense and domestic virtues are superior to wit or beauty. Unfortunately, contrary to public belief, people are attracted by their like, not by their opposites. The sensitive, refined neuropath finds the normal person insipid and dull; the normal person is rendered uncomfortable by the ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... compromise. His love and His wrath are both burning. All the separate elements of human nature are in full flame, and it is the only ultimate way of peace and safety. The various colours of life must not be mixed but kept distinct. The red and white of passion and purity must not be blended into the insipid pink of a compromising and consistent respectability. They must be kept strong and separate, as in the blazing Cross of St. George on its ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... organist, who risks his job, to fight the prejudice of the congregation, offset the repose and large salary of a more celebrated choirmaster, who holds his job by lowering his ideals, who is willing to let the organ smirk under an insipid, easy-sounding barcarolle for the offertory, who is willing to please the sentimental ears of the music committee (and its wives)—who is more willing to observe these forms of politeness than to stand up for a stronger and deeper music of simple devotion, and for ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... here—stand up! Roll thy devilish eyes round grimly in thy head! Stand and defy me with thy intolerable presence! Imprisoned! In irretrievable misery! Given over to evil spirits and to the judgment of unfeeling humanity, and me meanwhile thou lullest in insipid dissipations, concealest from me her growing anguish, and leavest her ...
— Faust • Goethe

... and these must be supplied out of the fortunes of those they serve. Man and wife are often nothing better than assistants in each other's ruin; domestic virtues are exploded, and social happiness despised as dull and insipid. ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott

... the Tennysonian King Arthur posing as Guinevere becomes Don Quixote grovelling before Dulcinea. You must admit that here Nature beats Comedy out of the field: the wildest hominist or feminist farce is insipid after the most commonplace "slice of life." The pretence that women do not take the initiative is part of the farce. Why, the whole world is strewn with snares, traps, gins and pitfalls for the capture of men by women. Give women the vote, and in five years there will be a crushing tax on bachelors. ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... thick, your Claps so plenty, Most of you are threescore at five and twenty. Our Town-bred Ladys know you well enough, Your courting Women's like your taking Snuff; Out of mere Idleness you keep a pother, You've no more need of one than of the other. Ladies— Wou'd you be quit of their insipid noise, And vain pretending take a Fool's advice; Of the faux Braves I've had some little trial, There's nothing gives 'em credit but Denial: As when a Coward will pretend to Huffing, Offer to fight, away sneaks Bully-Ruffian, So when these Sparks, whose business is addressing, In Love pursuits grow ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... John Pye Smith says, "Translations were made of our Deistical writers of that time, and of a large number of vindications of Christianity which were published by some English divines of note in reply to Collins, Tindal, Morgan and their tribe; and which, in addition to their insipid and unimpassioned character, involved so much of timid apology and unchristian concession that they rather aided than obstructed the progress of infidelity." Through the influence of Baumgarten and others Deism now gained great favor in Germany. Toland was personally welcomed, flattered and honored ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... differences he can imagine, his tree will yet show a sameness and sickening repetition in all its parts, and all his trees will be like one another, except so far as one leans east and another west, one is broadest at the top and another at the bottom, while through all this insipid repetition, the means by which he forces contrast, dark boughs opposed to light, rugged to smooth, etc., will be painfully evident, to the utter destruction of all dignity and repose. The imaginative work is necessarily the absolute opposite of all this. As all ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... some fat benefice: Dulness, that in a playhouse meets disgrace, Might meet with reverence in its proper place. The fulsome clench, that nauseates the town, Would from a judge or alderman go down; Such virtue is there in a robe and gown! And that insipid stuff, which here you hate, 30 Might somewhere else be call'd a grave debate: Dulness is decent in the church and state. But I forget that still 'tis understood, Bad plays are best decried by showing good. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... in a raptured daze, Looked in a mirror with startled gaze, Didn't seem to be pleased at all; Savagely muttered: "Insipid Doll!" Clutched her hair and a pair of shears, Cropped and bobbed it behind the ears; Aimed at a wan and willowy-necked Sort of a Holman Hunt effect; Robed in subtile and sage-green tones, Like the dames of Rossetti and E. Burne-Jones; Girdled her garments billowing ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... affect or enjoy a gleam of cheerfulness; but his plan of happiness was for ever destroyed: and after the loss of his companion he was left alone in a world, of which the business and pleasures were to him irksome or insipid. After some unsuccessful trials he renounced the tumult of London and the hospitality of Putney, and buried himself in the rural or rather rustic solitude of Beriton; from which, during ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon

... one need not be a professed stole to draw the line at a little country girl, pious to insipidity and simple to the brink of silliness. Here Lawrence, not being one of those who deny facts when they are unwelcome, caught himself up: she was not insipid and her power over him was undeniable. Twice within forty-eight hours she had defeated his will, and what was stranger was that each time he had surrendered eagerly, feeling for the moment as though it didn't matter what he said or did before Isabel.—It was at this point of his analysis ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... mistook flippancy and triviality for wit, he met her everywhere on common ground, and she wondered why she had not seen the attractions of this grave, quiet young man long before! Surely such a conquest—and she was not certain yet that it was achieved—was worth a half-dozen victories of the insipid and over-easy kind. ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... boil drinking water, which usually has a flat, insipid taste. Do young housewives know it is said that after water has been boiled and when quite cool if a bottle be half filled and shaken well the water will become aerated, and have the ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas

... provided by the Government, the writer continues, "Our kangaroo cats are like mutton but much leaner and there is a kind of chickweed so much in taste like spinach that no difference can be discerned. Something like ground ivy is used for tea but a scarcity of salt and sugar makes our best meals insipid...Everyone is so taken up with their own misfortunes that they have no pity to bestow on others."* (* To-day Sydney is the seventh city of the Empire.) What was written of Sydney may be said to have been true of all the settlements. Everywhere hardships were encountered, ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee

... knew there was such a being," said Miss Thayer, while young Robinson, a lisping, insipid dandy, drawled out, "A sthool-marm, J. Thee? I'th really romantic! Thend for her, of courth. A little dithipline ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes

... beside Burke's philosophical discourses; but the treatment, if wrong and defective on the theoretical side, is never contemptible. Here, as elsewhere, he judges by his intuitive aversions. He rejects too hastily whatever seems insipid or ill-flavoured to his spiritual appetite. Like all the shrewd and sensible part of mankind he condemns as mere moonshine what may be really the first faint dawn of a new daylight. But then his intuitions are noble, and his fundamental belief is the vital importance of order, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... as it is justly called—a poor, insipid, not overclean curd cheese. The curds are often merely squeezed in a cloth, then turned out and placed upon an upper shelf to dry, where they look like the back portions of gigantic skulls until damp and mould somewhat destroy the resemblance. The kind ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... and despatch with impatience a more odious vice, of which modesty rejects the name, and nature abominates the idea. The primitive Romans were infected by the example of the Etruscans and Greeks; in the mad abuse of prosperity and power, every pleasure that is innocent was deemed insipid; and the Scatinian law, which had been extorted by an act of violence, was insensibly abolished by the lapse of time and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various



Words linked to "Insipid" :   uninteresting, bland, tasteless



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