"Bland" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ligatured by Kossman, Ruhl and Neuman for the sterilization of women with pelvic deformities; but all testify to the danger of subsequent abnormal or ectopic pregnancy, and several instances are given. Mr. Bland Sutton relates a case in an article on Conservative Hysterectomy in the ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... latter. It was not likely that Agnes would particularly enjoy having shreds of dirty flannel and linen flung into her lap, with a tittering remark that they would enrich her trousseau; nor feeling, when she sat at needlework, a rotten egg gently broken over her head, with the bland intimation that it was to dress her hair for the wedding; nor the presentation, in solemn form, of torn and faded ribbons, accompanied by the information that they would become her sweetly on her bridal. Of all approach to wedding attire poor Agnes ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... shrewdly replied: "Many arguments have lately been used here to show them that there is no difference;—at present they do not reason so; but in time they may possibly be convinced by these arguments." That time was now at hand. As early as 1766, Richard Bland, of Virginia, had declared that the colonies, like Hanover, were bound to England only through the Crown. This might be over-bold; but the old argument was inadequate to meet the present dangers, inasmuch as the Townshend ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... same reason, he had also trained himself to sleep at odd times, and in all sorts of odd places, choosing by preference some corner where Aunt Grace Mary and the maids would least expect to find him, the consequence being wild shrieks and shocks to their nerves, such as, to use his own bland explanation, might be expected from undisciplined females. Beth found him one day spread out on a large oak chest in the main corridor upstairs, with two great china vases, one at his head and one at his feet, filled with reeds and bulrushes, which appeared to be waving over him, and looking in ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... insanity, I think. A little too much love for an old man and his daughter, possibly. That is what I think. It is nothing worse than that. Thank you, very much, for bringing her to me. Take this, sir, for your trouble." He handed him, with bland benevolence, ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... of his employer, professionally bland and capable, and with no animus to be discerned in his attitude, provided Duncan with one brief, evanescent flash of hope, one last expiring instant of dignity (tempered by his unquenchable humour) in which to face his fate. Something of the hang-dog vanished from his habit and for a little ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... oh!, pretty well!" she answered, with the look of bland good-humour her face almost always wore "and glad to see ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... smell of young grass, the Duke of Gloucester sent for Edward Maudelain. The court was then at Windsor. The priest came quickly to his patron. He found the Duke in company with the King's other uncle Edmund of York and bland Harry of Derby, who was John of Gaunt's oldest son, and in consequence the King's cousin. Each was a proud and handsome man: Derby alone (who was afterward King of England) had inherited the squint that distinguished this family. To-day Gloucester was gnawing at his ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... however, which the brokers send to our house and which are spread broadcast in the homes of the country to people who have no technical knowledge of stock-buying are surely not confined to such child-like and bland forms of suggestion. The whole grouping of figures, the distribution of black and white in the picture of the market situation, the glowing story of the probable successes with the bewildering hints of special privileges, must increase the suggestibility ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... possessed of rather less moral sense than the criminals, for its heroes, and for its heroines a welter of adjectives exhaling an essence of sex. Banneker could imagine one of these females straying into Mr. Gaines's editorial ken, and that gentleman's bland greeting as to his own sprightly second maid arrayed and perfumed, unexpectedly encountered at a charity bazar. Too rarefied for Banneker's healthy and virile young tastes, the atmosphere in which The New Era lived and moved and had its consistently successful editorial ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... my face,—my eyes, "Scorch'd with hot embers! Is no better boon "Due for the fruits I furnish? Such reward, "Suits it my fertile crops? or cruel wounds "Of harrow, rake, and plough, which through the year "Enforc'd I suffer? For the herds I bring "Green herbs and grass; bland aliments, ripe fruit "For man; and incense for ye mighty gods: "Faulty is this? But grant thy wrath deserv'd, "How do the waves, thy brother's realm offend? "Why does the main, to him by lot decreed, "Shrink and ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... Crawshay persisted, with bland and officious precision, "that even intercepted messages, especially in time of war, were referred to some person of authority on board. Apart from that, however, the message I refer to was written down and delivered to one of your passengers. I happened to see your operator ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... day we had looked forward to—promised as good an evening as we could wish. The Capitalist, whose courteous and bland demeanor would never have suggested the thought that he was a robber and an enemy of his race, who was to be trampled underfoot by the beneficent regenerators of the social order as preliminary to the universal reign of peace on earth and good-will to men, astonished ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the man of rank and station at one side, the courtesan with his bland smiles at the other, Lorenzo had not seen the black poniard that was to cut the cord of his downfall,—it had remained gilded. He drank copious draughts at the house of licentiousness, became infatuated with the soft music that leads the way of the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... partner at 7:50 on the evening of the 15th. It was long over business hours, but my partner to oblige him stretched a point," pursued the soft, bland, malicious voice of the German Jew. "If he was not at our office—where was he? ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Sir, is the plain nature of the argument drawn from the Revolution maxims, enforced by a supposed disposition in the Catholics to unite with the Dissenters. Such it is, though it were clothed in never such bland and civil forms, and wrapped up, as a poet says, in a thousand "artful folds of sacred lawn." For my own part, I do not know in what manner to shape such arguments, so as to obtain admission for them into a rational understanding. Everything of this kind is to be reduced at last ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... clean-shaven face, mild blue eyes and white hair, a cassock would seem more suited to him than the apron he wears. Neither his voice nor his general manner dispel this illusion which has made him a personage of the water front. They are soft and bland. But beneath all his mildness one senses the man behind the mask—cynical, callous, hard as nails. He is lounging at ease behind the bar, a pair of spectacles on his nose, reading an ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... period we are now come to is that of Goldsmith, than which few names stand higher or fairer in the annals of modern literature. One should have his own pen to describe him as he ought to be described—amiable, various, and bland, with careless inimitable grace touching on every kind of excellence—with manners unstudied, but a gentle heart—performing miracles of skill from pure happiness of nature, and whose greatest fault was ignorance of his own worth. As a poet, he is the most flowing and elegant ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... de wurld," muttered the negro with a bland smile. "If a poor man obsarves an feels for de sorrows ob anoder, he allers gits credit for t'inkin' ob his-self. Neber mind, I's used ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... this great and touching spectacle. A dense crowd thronged the streets, and all shouted and cried when the pope, surrounded by his Swiss guard, appeared in their midst in his gilded armchair, and received the greetings of the people with a bland smile. ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... gives, This happy Baby on the tree-top dangling Whilst friends and foes about thy fate are wrangling! When the wind blows—ah! then the world shall see What a prophetic soul has kind Nurse C. Its face, perchance, had been more bright and bland Could kind Nurse C. have "brought it up by hand," As Mrs. Gargery did the infant "Pip." Nay, there are some who on the hint let slip That kind Nurse C. had never wished it slain Had it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... agreeably bland was he in his mode of conferring his favors, as to greatly augment the value of them, and at the same time heighten the esteem of the recipients for the donor." Outside of her alumni Dartmouth had few ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... they cracked their satirical whips, how they brawled in taverns, how pinched they were at times, how, when they possessed money, they flung it from them as if it were poison, with what fierce speed they wrote, how they shook the stage. Then we think of the "Mermaid" in session, with Shakspeare's bland, oval face, the light of a smile spread over it, and Ben Jonson's truculent visage, and Beaumont and Fletcher sitting together in their beautiful friendship, and fancy as best we can the drollery, the ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... thought Whitney winced; but his reply was bland and frank enough. He turned to Dr. Hargrave. "The senator is right," said he. "I shall vote ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... that is impossible," said Sartoris, who had lapsed into his bland manner once more. "I am sensitive of people's remarks and all that kind of thing. I dare say you will think that I am morbidly self-conscious, but then I have not always been a cripple. I was as straight ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... with an air carried from his supper hour, bland, dispensing. Well! Let us have it. "What did you wish to see me about?"—with a use of the past tense as connoting something of indirection and hence of delicacy—a nicety customary, yet unconscious. ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... these hours of stolen 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... 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 one ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... 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 ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... might be despatched to them some hierarchical assistance for the good of their souls, and were answered: "D——n your souls, grow tobacco!" The English manner of to-day could not even have come into its own when that epitaph of a lady, quoted somewhere by Gilbert Murray, was written: "Bland, passionate, and deeply religious, she was second cousin to the Earl of Leitrim; of such are the Kingdom of Heaven." About that gravestone motto was a certain lack of the self-consciousness which is now the foremost characteristic of the ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... of heaven to the soul of the mystic. Now, how does Fra Angelico represent this? A row of saints, founders of orders, kneel one behind the other, and by their side stand apostles and doctors of the Church; admitting them to the sight of the super-human, with the gesture, the bland, indifferent vacuity of the Cameriere Segreto or Monsignore who introduces a troop of pilgrims to the Pope; they are privileged persons, they respect, they keep up decorum, they raise their eyes and compress their lips with ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... have thought he must have believed himself to be dreaming. Not a bit of it. He knew perfectly well that he was wide-awake. In fact, a doubt upon that point never crossed his mind for a moment. At length he resolved to ask the meaning of it all, and, observing a stout old gentleman, with a bland smile on his yellow countenance, in the act of taking a pinch of golden snuff from a gold snuff-box, he advanced and ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... away and the gold spectacles were fixed on us with bland benignity. Aunt Louisa writing a song scena and ordering a chorus, just like Mr. GEORGE EDWARDES, was not the least of the miracles produced by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... without paying blackmail. Few scenes in our history are more amusing, or more irritating, than the interview of John Adams with an envoy from Tripoli in London. The oily-tongued barbarian, with his soft voice and his bland smile, asseverating that his only interest in life was to do good and make other people happy, stands out in fine contrast with the blunt, straightforward, and truthful New Englander; and their conversation reminds one of the old story of Coeur-de-Lion with his curtal-axe and Saladin ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... he is about recovering of Gravely, but neither I nor he began any discourse of the business. From thence to Dr. Williams (at the little blind alehouse in Shoe Lane, at the Gridiron, a place I am ashamed to be seen to go into), and there with some bland counsel of his we discuss our matters, but I find men of so different minds that by my troth I know not what to trust to. It being late I took leave, and by link home and called at Sir W. Batten's, and there hear ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... 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 ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... surely you never saw a face which had lost by wear less of the divine image? How thoroughly it exemplifies your great law of Protestant art, that "the Ideal is best manifested in the Peculiar." How classic, how independent of clime or race, is its bland, majestic self- possession! how thoroughly Norse ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... calculated 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 of ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hummed it, bland and smiling. Then from the neighbouring group came an interruption. The wine he had drunk had put it into Bigot's head to snatch a kiss from Suzanne; and Suzanne's modesty, which was very nice in company, obliged her to squeal. The ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... Hobhouse on the subject of Hodgson. Haydon's account of Hobhouse's words is confused; but he definitely asserts that Hodgson's life was dissipated, and insinuates that he perverted Byron's character. Part of the explanation is probably this: Hodgson's friend, the Rev. Robert Bland, kept a mistress, described as a woman of great personal and mental attraction. He asked Hodgson, during his absence on the Continent, to visit the lady and send him frequent news of her. Hodgson did so, with the result that, at ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... But sad to tell, just half way down Jack tripped upon a hidden stone, And tumbled down and cut his head So badly that it nearly bled. And Jill was so alarmed that she. Let drop the pail immediately And fell down too, and sprained her hand, And had to go to Dr Bland And get it looked to; while poor Jack Was put to bed upon ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... was upside down. The contumacious Pathans had quietly reversed the work of the ship's carpenter, and the hook was now useless without being ornamental. With bland ingenuous faces they stared sadly at the hook, as if deprecating such unintelligent craftsmanship. The Field-Marshal smiled—he knew the Pathan of old; the colonel mentally registered a ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... 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 the, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... apartment, and in an arm-chair raised by a few steps from the floor, sat the president of the society of United Irishmen. He alone was covered, and though plainly dressed, there was an air of high breeding and distinction about him; while in his bland smile were exhibited, the open physiognomy of pleasantness, and love-winning mildness, which still mark the descendants of the great Anglo-Norman Lords of the Pale, the Lords of Ormond, Orrery, and Arran, the Mount Garrets, and Kilkennys,—in ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction - Vol. X, No. 289., Saturday, December 22, 1827 • Various
... their money in the embroidered leather wallets that hung from their girdled waists. The Jews of Morocco, dressed in oriental fashion with silk kirtle and an ecclesiastical calotte, passed by leaning upon sticks, as if thus dragging along their bland, timid obesity. The soldiers of the garrison,—tall, slender, rosy-complexioned—made the ground echo with the heavy cadence of their boots. Some were dressed in khaki, with the sobriety of the soldier in the field; others wore the regular red jacket. White helmets, some lined ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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 falls ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... believes that one's life is changed for ever by the sight of them. One passes the door, closes it behind one, steps into the outer world, looks back, and there is only before one's view a thick cold wall—the windows are dead, there is no sound, only bland, dull, expressionless space. Moreover this dull wall, almost instantly, persuades one of the incredibility of what one has seen. There were no beauties, there were no terrors.... Ordinary life closes round one, trivial things reassume their old importance, one disbelieves ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... Club Anthony felt better. He had run into two men from his class at Harvard, and in contrast to the gray heaviness of their conversation his life assumed color. Both of them were married: one spent his coffee time in sketching an extra-nuptial adventure to the bland and appreciative smiles of the other. Both of them, he thought, were Mr. Gilberts in embryo; the number of their "yes's" would have to be quadrupled, their natures crabbed by twenty years—then they would be no more than obsolete ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... approached 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 appointment and that he would be eternally grateful ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... gentleman and man of honour, whether I am claiming too much?" A little amicable altercation took place on this point, but finding that I would not yield, and that at every reply I was more and more polite and bland in my deportment, Mr Osborn gave up the point. I walked the twelve paces, and Mr Osborn placed his principal. I observed that Lord Tineholme did not appear pleased; he expostulated with him, but it was then too late. The pistols had been already loaded—the choice was given to his ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... Austrian flag on the tower of the hotel, languidly curling and uncurling in the bland evening air, as it had over a thousand years of stupid and selfish monarchy, while all the generous republics of the Middle Ages had perished, and the commonwealths of later times had passed like fever dreams. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... his prayers that morning, and was 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
... bumming—when I ought to be making my little old thousand dollars a flight. Maybe you've kept in touch with things on the Coast. I'm known there, well enough. Bland Halliday's my name. Here's my pilot's license—about all them sharks didn't pry off me in the hospital! I sure do wish I had of let well enough alone! But no, I had to go get gay with myself and try ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... constantly prized sense of knowing his enchanted city and his way about, he ceased to follow or measure their course, content as he was with the particular exquisite assurance it gave him. That was knowing Paris, of a wondrous bland April night; that was hanging over it from vague consecrated lamp-studded heights and taking in, spread below and afar, the great scroll of all its irresistible story, pricked out, across river and bridge and radiant place, and along quays and ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... tranquil possession. I cast an eye towards my pipe; perhaps I prepare it, with seeming thoughtfulness, for the reception of tobacco. And never, surely, is tobacco more soothing, more suggestive of humane thoughts, than when it comes just after tea—itself a bland inspirer. ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... in Theodore Hook's "Gilbert Gurney" are. Take Mr. Pickwick. The author supplied only a few hints as to his personal appearance—he was bald, mild, pale, wore spectacles and gaiters; but who would have imagined him as we have him now, with his high forehead, bland air, protuberant front. The same with the others. Mr. Thackeray tried in many ways to give some corporeal existence to his own characters to "Becky," Pendennis, and others; but who sees them as we do Mr. Pickwick? So with his various "situations"—many most dramatic and effective, but no one would ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... day on that altar cloth because I depended on you to know the date of the dedication of your own church. I have danced only once this week," said Letitia Cockrell, with her usual bland directness. ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... health visibly improved; and, what was yet more surprising, she entirely recovered her beauty. The whole of her time not devoted to exercise, was spent in reading, or in prayer. On the appointed day, Rochester presented himself. She received him with the most perfect composure, and with a bland look, from which he augured favourably. He waved his hand to the attendants, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... we could tell pretty well how long the time had been between the passing of the train and the breaking out of the fire. Judge Metcalf, who was always fussy and interfering, said: "How can we tell anything by that, unless we know how large the stocking was?" The old lady, with a most bland smile, turned to the Judge as if she were soothing an infant, lifted up the hem of her petticoats, and exhibited a very sturdy ankle and calf, and said, "Just the size I wear, your Honor." There was a roar of laughter in the court-house. The incident was published in the morning paper ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... a guidebook to the summer and winter resorts of the North Atlantic, from the desolate rocks called the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the ever-bland Madeira and the over-bright Bahamas. The varied company of the isles embraces even Wight, where Cockney consumptives go to get out of the mist, and the Norman group consecrated to cream and Victor Hugo. The author's good descriptive powers are assisted by a number of drawings, many of which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... influence of Marion was due to other acts. It was by the power of love, and not of terror, that he managed his followers. They loved him for himself, and loved his cause for their country. His rare command of temper, his bland, affectionate manner, his calm superiority, and that confidence in his courage and conduct, as a leader, without which militia-men are never led to victory,—these were the sources of his influence over them, and of their successes ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... night air in his face was sweet and smooth, not cold—for a marvel in that altitude—and stroked his eyelids with touches as bland as caresses of a pretty woman's fingers. He was sensible of drowsiness, a surrender to fatigue, to which the motion of the motor car, swung seemingly on velvet springs, and the shifting, blending chiaroscuro of the magic night were likewise conducive. So that there came ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... and looked at the clock. A dull impatience of this large, bland, prosperous personage was growing in him. From the rim the top-hat had left upon his shining forehead to the tightly-screwed eyeglass that assisted his left eye; from the pink Malmaison carnation in the buttonhole of his frock-coat to ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... figure which has idiosyncrasy," he added, with a bland eye wandering over the priest's gaunt form. It was his old way to strike first and heal after—"a kick and a lick," as old Paddy Wier, whom he once saved from prison, said of him. It was like bygone years of another life to appear in defence when ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... for thought. His bland and pleasant-spoken host took up too much of his attention, chatting fluently about the most matter-of-fact occurrences, political business being entirely excluded, and cleverly drawing the lads out in turn to talk about themselves and their aspirations, so ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... it became clear that the dominant issue of the presidential campaign would be the resumption by the United States of silver-dollar free coinage. Agitation for this, hushed only for a moment by the passage of the Bland Act, had been going on ever since demonetization in 1873. The fall in prices, which the new output of gold had not yet begun to arrest; the money stringency since 1893; the insecure, bond-supplied gold reserve, and the repeal of the silver-purchase ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... thrown on this curious problem since our return, by an American naturalist, Mr. Bland, in a paper read before the American Philosophical Society, on 'The Geology and Physical Geography of the West Indies, with reference to the distribution of Mollusca.' It is plain that of all animals, land-shells and reptiles give ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... very well know the bland emollient saponaceous qualities both of sack and silver, yet if any great man would say to me, 'I make you Rat-catcher to his Majesty, with a salary of L300 a-year and two butts of the best Malaga; and though it has been usual to catch a mouse or two, for form's sake, in public once ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... admirably, without the slightest change of colour, nor did his eye quail in the least. Looking suddenly up, however, he appeared first to discover that their eyes were turned towards him. Immediately rising, with a bland smile, he walked up ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... Gherardi, still preserving his bland suavity of demeanour, "But permit me, Donna Sovrani, to express the hope that when the veil is lifted a crown of laurels may be ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... prosperity. In the next market-town I chanced to dine at an inn with a Mr Wilson, who was lately come to settle in the neighbourhood. — He had been lieutenant of a man of war, but quitted the sea in some disgust, and married the only daughter of farmer Bland, who lives in this parish, and has acquired a good fortune in the way of husbandry. — Wilson is one of the best natured men I ever knew; brave, frank, obliging, and ingenuous — He liked my conversation, I was charmed with his liberal ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... 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.
... year. She dismissed a stewed squab, and questioned a sweetbread, and wondered if there were not some kind of game. In the end she decided to leave it to the provision man, and she lost no time after she reached her decision in going out to consult him. He was a bland, soothing German, and it was a pleasure to talk with him, because he brought her married name into every sentence, and said, "No, Mrs. Maxwell;" "Yes, Mrs. Maxwell;" "I send it right in, Mrs. Maxwell." She went over his whole list of provisions with him, and let him persuade her that a small ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... wretch.— Thus, for a devilish and unnatural gain, Mowing the lean grass of a Golgotha! Sitting, like grinning Death, to clutch the toll Tortur'd from poverty, disease and crime; And this with Liberty upon their lips, Bland words, and specious, vulgar eloquence, And large oaths, with the tongue thrust in the cheek, And promises, as if they were as gods, And no God held the forked bolt above! Turning all ignorance, disaffection, hatred, Religion, and the peasant's ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... walking home with him, we were stopped in the street by a crowd, which had gathered round a poor man, who had fallen from a scaffold, and had broken his leg. Dr. Frumpton immediately said, 'Send for Bland, the surgeon, who lives at the corner of the street.' The poor man was carried into a shop; we followed him. I found that his leg, besides being broken, was terribly bruised and cut. The surgeon in a few minutes arrived. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... course, this royal attention had an immediate result: all the great lords and ladies of the Court began to flock there to see and listen to the wonderful girl-soldier that all the world was talking about, and who had answered the King's mandate with a bland refusal to obey. Joan charmed them every one with her sweetness and simplicity and unconscious eloquence, and all the best and capablest among them recognized that there was an indefinable something about her that testified that she ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... much excited, and hurried to town. Mr. Jacques, as I afterwards learned, was there before him, and met him with his bland smile and well-turned compliments; and, strange as it may seem, scarcely an hour had passed before he had charmed away every shadow of suspicion. Matters now went on as before for a few weeks, when Joseph had another ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... who came first was of medium height and square build. He had a disarming, florid face, and the bland, good-natured expression of a genial farmer. The other glanced swiftly over the room. He was the shorter of the two, and his clean shaven face and his undistinctive tweed clothing would have left him quite unremarkable but for his air ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... tomatoes grasped in her hands, while her mother wandered from stall to stall in a tireless search for peas a few cents cheaper than those of Mr. Dewlap. Youth, with its ingenuous belief that love dwells in external circumstances, was protesting against the bland assumption of age that love creates its own peculiar circumstances out of itself. It was absurd, she knew, to imagine that her father's affection for her mother would alter because she haggled over the price of peas; yet the emotion with which she endowed Oliver Treadwell was so ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... other, only saving herself from injury by catching at the wall or the furniture with her hands. Several physicians who had been interested in the case had found the symptoms strongly suggestive of brain-tumor. There were, however, certain unmistakable earmarks of hysteria, such as childlike bland indifference to the awkwardness of the gait which was a grotesque caricature of several brain and spinal-cord diseases, with no accurate picture of any single one. This was evidently a case, not of actual loss of power ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... at Quebec, that he hoped to take up the plans of his father. The Governor's reply was that he had appointed another officer, Legardeur de Saint-Pierre, to lead in the search for the Western Sea. Francois hurried to Quebec. The Governor met him with a bland face and seemed friendly. Francois, urged that he and his brothers claimed no preeminence and that they were ready to serve under the orders of Saint-Pierre. The Governor was hesitant; but at last told Francois, frankly ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... was bland, His style so grand, He said with pride, "I know Miss Mouse so fair, Can find nowhere So suitable ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... The bland tone in which these words were spoken seemed at variance with their meaning, so that Maria Ivanovna did not know whether to be vexed ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... escaped the contagion of fashionable libertinism. In truth the shock which had overturned his early prejudices had at the same time unfixed all his opinions, and left him to the unchecked guidance of his feelings. But, though his principles were unsteady, his impulses were so generous, his temper so bland, his manners so gracious and easy, that it was impossible not to love him. He was early called the King of Hearts, and never, through a long, eventful, and chequered life, lost his right to that name. [315] Shrewsbury was Lord Lieutenant of Staffordshire and Colonel ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... pat upon his lips;—he was repeating, parrot-like, a current view; he was adopting the fashionable attitude of scorn towards what is regarded as an ancient tyranny, long since indicted and exploded. This bland acceptance of the meaninglessness and the inefficacy of beauty is habitual to most young professionals who wield pen or pencil. They have learnt it from Mr. Shaw, forgetting that when Mr. Shaw demands complete freedom for the writer he also demands objective truth; or they have learnt it from ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... Jennings with bland satisfaction. "Lawrie's Ironsides were the family of the mayor, I remember perfectly when you mention it;" and she added the mental note, "They were among the richest cotton-brokers ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... has become thin or shown a great tendency to fall, that daily firm finger-tip massage of the head for ten or twelve minutes, followed by rubbing into the scalp of a small amount of a tonic, either a bland oil or if need be of some more stimulating material, will in a great majority of the instances where loss of hair is due to general ill-health perfectly restore its vigor and even ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... substantials disappear—moulds of jelly vanish like lightning—hearty eaters wipe their foreheads, and appear rather overcome by their recent exertions—people who have looked very cross hitherto, become remarkably bland, and ask you to take wine in the most friendly manner possible—old gentlemen direct your attention to the ladies' gallery, and take great pains to impress you with the fact that the charity is always peculiarly favoured in this ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... sheathed in armor trod the shore. Slighting the petty need he showed, 425 He told of his benighted road; His ready speech flowed fair and free, In phrase of gentlest courtesy; Yet seemed that tone, and gesture bland, Less used to sue ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... OF QUEEN ANNE'S GATE thinks opportunity favourable for Prince ARTHUR to tell all he knows about Dissolution. Prince ARTHUR quite agreeable, but really knows nothing. Radicals look angry at being thus put off; show signs of intention to discuss the matter. Mr. G. interposes; makes one of his bland speeches; wouldn't press question now (a suggestion that pleases Ministers); by-and-by time will come, then we shall see; whereat SAGE and his friends brighten up; Mr. G. sits down having ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various
... hand, go and suffer, like petty colonists, the delays and chicanery of the tribunals of Lisbon, across two thousand leagues of ocean, where the sighs of the oppressed lose all life and all hope? Who would credit it, after so many bland, but deceitful expressions of reciprocal equality and ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... a gentleman should be dressed,—black frock coat, black vest, dark grey trousers, stand-up collar, smartly- tied bow, gloves of the proper shade, neatly brushed hair, and a smile, which if was not childlike, at any rate was bland. ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... divided one from the other by a high, precipitous, rocky island. I made a sketch, and we had dinner, and then, having accomplished the portage once more, started paddling. It was not far to go this time. In half an hour we had reached Bland portage, and everything again had to be unladen and carried. Soon we were in the canoe again heading for the opposite shore, with a new set of rapids on our right. Now for some stiff work again, a long portage of about two-and-a-half miles. ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... that lace-trimmed pillow lies Is fair as Psyche's. Yes, those snow-veiled eyes Look Dian-pure and saintly. Sure no Aholibah could own those lips, Through whose soft lusciousness the bland breath slips So fragrantly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... dried us more than the fires did, when "the winter of our discontent" was made "glorious summer," so to speak, by the news that the wagons had got up, and they were going to issue rations. Tom Armistead made this startling announcement in as bland, and matter of course a tone as if he were in the habit of giving us something to eat every day, which he was not, by a great deal. Tom was the dearest fellow in the world, and the best Commissary in the army, and we all loved him. Many a time when, in the confusion of ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... drooled onto a kindly Cop: "Since moons have feathers on their feet, Why is your headgear perched on top? And if you scorn the Commonplace, Why wear a Nose upon your Face? And since Pythagoras is mute on Sex Hygiene and Cosmic Law, Is your Blonde Beast as Bland a Brute, As Blind a Brute, as Bernard Shaw? No doubt, when drilling through the parks, With Ibsen's Ghost and Old Doc Marx, You've often seen two Golden Souls Drink Suds and ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... ready to act upon that conviction, at once. He met Gilbert with a bland condescension, and when the latter, after ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... "Idina Bland called yesterday on Marie," Angelo said abruptly, with a slight suggestion of constraint in his voice. "It was—rather a surprise to me. I ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... couldn't be led. But when he liked a line he bought like mad, never cancelled, and T. A. Buck had just got him going. It spoke volumes for his self-control that he could advance toward the waiting three, his manner correct, his expression bland. ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... far to go to encounter the worthy man, in the series of "Les Papas," who is reading the evening paper at the cafe with so amiable and placid a credulity, while his unnatural little boy, opposite to him, finds sufficient entertainment in the much-satirized Constitutionnel. The bland absorption of the papa, the face of the man who believes everything he sees in the newspaper, is as near as Daumier often comes to positive gentleness of humor. Of the same family is the poor gentleman, in "Actualites," seen, in profile, under a doorway where ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... 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 ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... behind her, and thus enthroned she knitted at a stocking of gray yarn. Seen in the daylight she was young, fresh-skinned, and not uncomely. Placidity seemed to be the dominating note of her personality. It found physical expression in the bland parting of her hair, drawn back from her smooth brow, her large plump hands with their deliberate movements and dimples where more turbulent souls had knuckles, and her quiet eyes, which turned upon anyone who addressed her a long ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... in a mystifying manner, he began to roll the cigarette briskly between his palms. A small shower of tobacco sifted to the floor: the rice-paper cracked and came away; and with the bland smile and gesture of a professional conjurer, Lanyard exhibited a small cylinder of stiff paper between ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... taste—would know that it was a bad print, without having any immediate model to compare it with. He would perceive with a glance of the eye, with a sort of instinctive feeling, that it was hard, and without that bland, expansive, and nameless expression which always distinguished Titian's most famous works. Any one who is accustomed to a head in a picture can never reconcile himself to a print from it; but to the ignorant they are both the same. To a vulgar eye there is no difference between a Guido and a daub—between ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... well-developed chest, muscular arms, and strong square-fisted hands; the joints of his fingers were covered with tufts of fiery red hair. His face was furrowed by premature wrinkles; there was a certain hardness about it in spite of his bland and insinuating manner. His bass voice was by no means unpleasant, and was in keeping with his boisterous laughter. He was always obliging, always in good spirits; if anything went wrong with one of the locks, he would soon unscrew it, ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... facts. He was greatly given to self-communing, and, when he and himself agreed upon anything, the thing was done. When every member of his domestic and political systems moved smoothly in its appointed course, his nature was bland and genial; but, whenever there was a little hitch, and some of his orbs got out of their orbits, he was blander and more genial still, for nothing pleased him so much as to make the crooked straight ...
— The Lady, or the Tiger? • Frank R. Stockton
... sleep, as well as breakfast, lunch, and dine with him daily,—and settle in the good old inn, with its three white gables overhanging the pavement, and its long lattice window buried deep beneath them, like—so Stangrave says—to a shrewd kindly eye under a bland white forehead. ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... the head of the table, on the right, looking down, where the "Autocrat" used to sit. At the further end sits the Landlady. At the head of the table, just now, the Koh-i-noor, or the gentleman with the diamond. Opposite me is a Venerable Gentleman with a bland countenance, who as yet has spoken little. The Divinity Student is my neighbor on the right,—and further down, that Young Fellow of whom I have repeatedly spoken. The Landlady's Daughter sits near the Koh-i-noor, as I said. The Poor Relation near the Landlady. At the right ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... with removal of the thick shell, and also to obtain less of that strong oily flavor; we wish to get rid of those two things. In order to do that I would first think of the Japanese walnut, juglans cordiformis, which has a much thinner shell and is less oily and more bland. Crosses between this Japanese walnut and the butternut we may fairly expect will sometimes give us a large, thin shelled butternut of good character. The next question is, who is going to do it? The men about my place ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... her last Retreat; Should Reason guide thee with her brightest Ray, And pour on misty Doubt resistless Day; Should no false Kindness lure to loose Delight, Nor Praise relax, nor Difficulty fright; Should tempting Novelty thy Cell refrain, And Sloth's bland Opiates shed their Fumes in vain; Should Beauty blunt on Fops her fatal Dart, Nor claim the Triumph of a letter'd Heart; Should no Disease thy torpid Veins invade, Nor Melancholy's Phantoms haunt thy Shade; Yet hope not Life from Grief or Danger free, Nor think the Doom of Man revers'd ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... abundantly on tropical soils so infertile and/or so droughty that no other food crop will succeed there. Manioc will do this because it needs virtually nothing from the soil to construct itself with. And consequently, manioc puts next to nothing nourishing into its edible parts. The bland-tasting root is virtually pure starch, a simple carbohydrate not much different than pure corn starch. Plants construct starches from carbon dioxide gas obtained the air and hydrogen obtained from water. There is no shortage ever of carbon from CO2 in the air and rarely a shortage of hydrogen ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... festivals he never preceded, but always followed after the elders. To all about him he assumed an appearance of simplicity and sincerity. To the court officials of the lower grade he spoke freely, and to superior officers his manner was bland but precise. Even at the wild gatherings which accompanied the annual ceremony of driving away pestilential influences, he paid honor to the original meaning of the rite, by standing in court robes on the eastern steps of his house, and received the riotous exorcists as though they were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... pauper-tenant's door, and taking from John No II. the packet of Epsom salts for the invalid's benefit, carrying it with her own imperial hand into the sick-room—Blanche felt a queen stepping down from her throne to visit a subject, and enjoyed all the bland consciousness of doing a ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... respon-see-bee-lee-ty he could never have supported were he not," and so forth. Again, a wonderfully ridiculous effect was imparted by the Reader to his mere contrasts of manner when, at one moment, in the bland and melancholy accents of Serjeant Buzfuz, he referred to the late Mr. Bardell as having "glided almost imperceptibly from the world to seek elsewhere for that repose and peace which a custom-house can never afford," adding, the ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... buttoning must have been done, in order that he might not arrive so very late. He was the only one concerned who was quite unconcerned; his patience with his delays was inexhaustible; he arrived at the expected houses smiling, serenely jovial, radiating a bland gaiety from his whole person, and ready to ignore any discomfort he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... be the first Norwegian translation of Shakespeare. Hauge and Lassen, to say nothing of the translator of 1818, are curtly dismissed from Norwegian literature. They belong to Denmark. This might be true if it were not for the bland assumption that nothing is really Norwegian except what is written in the dialect of a particular group of Norwegians. The fundamental error of the "Maalstraevere" is the inability to comprehend the ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud |
