"Blandness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... St. Lucas, a hundred miles from here, but it's still a far cry to San Francisco, which is in Upper California. But I fancy you don't seem as anxious as our friend Mr. Banks to get to your journey's end," he added, with paternal blandness. ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... Miss Faith," said the Squire, with a blandness on one side of his face which but poorly set off the other. "I go down for the paper once a week, and 'lection times maybe oftener, but I don't do much in the letter line. Correspondence never was my powder magazine. I shouldn't ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... assured him with all possible blandness. "I have brought them. What else was there to do? You had us in the palm of your hand. That door is old and worm-eaten; you could have crumpled it up like paper. When we thought the situation over we saw its hopelessness at ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... holds aloft between thumb and forefinger, turning it this way and that. It is the ready-made bow of a bow tie, the bow and nothing more. Yes, there are patent prongs to it, which he deftly slips beneath the wings of his collar. So! No trouble whatever. Instantaneous. A smile of luxurious blandness spreads over the face of the young man. Thus he stands for a moment. Then stoops and places in a corner of the window a large card inscribed "Ten Cents." With a pleasing sense of curiosity satisfied, the current of your own life as distinct ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... suspicion of a frown troubled the Brahminical calm of Mr. Greenough's brow, only to pass into unwrinkled blandness. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... arrested stupor suggested, indeed, a large blue-bottle slung securely in the subtle threads of a spider's web and reduced to torpid acquiescence by the spider's stealthy ministrations. He gazed with mildness, almost with blandness, upon the enchantress, as if some prodigy of nature overtopping all human power of comment had taken place before him. Then in a small, feeble voice he said: "Wass meinen ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... is the gentleman we accost politely?" he asked, very blandly, but behind this blandness of Cocardasse's there was something menacing to those ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... one at a time," replied Aunt Isobel with an exasperating blandness, which fortunately ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... Johnson for my charge, and asked him if he had noticed what passed, what I had suffered, and whether allowing for the state of my nerves, I was much to blame? He answered, "Why, possibly not; your feelings were outraged." I said, "Yes, greatly so; and I cannot help remarking with what blandness and composure you witnessed the outrage. Had this transaction been told of others, your anger would have known no bounds; but, towards a man who gives good dinners &c., you were meekness itself!" Johnson coloured, and Burke, I thought, looked ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... was going on to say, Madame," pursues Mr. Snivel, with great blandness of manner, "when our white trash get to living with our negroes they are as well as dead. One never knows what comes of them after that. Being always ready to do a bit of a good turn, as you know, I looked in at Sam Wiley's cabin. Sam Wiley is a negro of some respectability, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... being exceptionally favoured. It was this last stroke, I am convinced, that rubbed him the right way. A gratified blandness pervaded his countenance. He made no further attempts to dislodge me, and I settled myself into the angles of his shoulder and affected to ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... like music, rich in cadence and sweet in rhythm; but that beauty must be for one alone. It cannot, like music, be shared with others. The best of friends may, as rivals, become the bitterest foes. Fernando did not like the Englishman, for, with all his blandness, he thought he could observe a pompous air and self-consciousness of superiority, disgusting to sensible persons. This might have been prejudice or the result of imagination, yet he realized that he was in the presence of an ambitious rival, who would ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... course, he went to hell. Seeing a group of children in torment there, he pitied them very deeply, and straightway began to devise measures, by means of his skill in chemical science, to shield them from the flame. Instantly the whole scene changed. The beauty of heaven lay around him, and all its blandness breathed through him. Forgetting his own sufferings in sympathy for those of others, he had obeyed the law of virtue, subjecting a selfish desire to a disinterested one; and the omnipotent God enveloped him with the heaven of ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... even asked if he had seen the splendid dwelling of Captain Allen. The handsome stranger held him firmly at a distance. And not only on that day and evening, but on the next day and the next. He was polite even to blandness, but suffered no approach beyond the simplest formal intercourse. Every morning he was seen going to Captain Allen's house, where he always stayed several hours. The afternoons he spent, for the most part, ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... little money of their own, have they not?" inquired Mrs. Ingham-Baker, with the soft blandness of one for whom ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... members for Port Phillip, and it was chiefly to his efforts and abilities that separation from New South Wales was eventually conceded from Home. In the elective contests we saw some of the peculiar talent with which Lang fought his many political foes, when, with an inimitable blandness of address, and the softest of mellifluous language, he would build up a many-sided argument, patiently and leisurely, and at last, as with the bitterly biting end of a stockman's long whip, flay the Wentworths of opposition, ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... The Professor put up his handkerchief, and fiendishly smiled into its folds. Little monster of malice! He now thought he had got the victory, since he had made me angry. In a second he became good- humoured. With great blandness he resumed the subject of his flowers; talked poetically and symbolically of their sweetness, perfume, purity, etcetera; made Frenchified comparisons between the "jeunes filles" and the sweet blossoms before him; paid Mademoiselle ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... brushwood, the flower-patches, spreading away to the hills that swell afar until the peaks of the Atlas, cool with everlasting snow, close the view. One is tempted to linger there lovingly, though darkness is falling. There is a gift of blandness and briskness in the very breathing of the air. When you have had your fill of the beauties on the land side, turn to the sea, meet the evening breeze that comes floating up with a flavour of iodine upon it, range round the sweeping vista, from giant Calpe away over the Strait flecked with sails ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... with great activity. Did you ever remark, reader, when Nature begins to waken from her winter-sleep; when the woods 'beyond the swelling floods' of the rivers begin to redden; when the first airs of spring assume their natural blandness; when ladies are out with their 'spring hats' and carmen with their spring-carts; when the snow has left us, and the city-trees are about leave-ing; how innumerous kites begin to thicken in the air? Yonder a big unwieldy fellow rises with calm ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... much blandness of manner as he could assume, "I have sent for you to say that you are called upon to make your father ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... defended Hamlet against the common charge of "inability to act," and protested that he was the victim, not of a vacillating will, but of the fates. He contended that, so great were the issues and so dubious the evidence, Hamlet had every right to hesitate. "The commercial blandness," he wrote, "with which people talk of Hamlet's 'plain duty' makes one wonder if they recognize such a thing as plain morality. The 'removal' of an uncle without due process of law and on the unsupported evidence of an unsubpoenable ghost; the widowing ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... of the most awkward description. The demoiselles Cockayne "fell a giggling" to cover their confusion; and the party would have made a ridiculous figure before all the boarders, had not the Reverend Horace Mohun covered them with his blandness. ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... daughter's time?" Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations—yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... scarcely had a brush of winter yet. But very few days has the thermometer been below zero, and but a single day as low as ten degrees below. Most of the time it has been mild. For two weeks past, there has been a blandness and mellowness in the atmosphere, which was enough to cause the moodiest heart to sing for joy. There was a flare-up, however, for a single day (the 20th), when the storm descended, the wind blew, and there was great ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... with diabolical blandness, "that this lady is my wife, and will from this time take charge ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... deepened by a feeling that there was something wrong between his sister and Jeff, and it would be rash to commit himself to an open friendliness until he understood the case. His father met Jeff's advances with philosophical blandness and evasion, and Mrs. Durgin was provisionally dry and severe both with the Whitwells and her son. After breakfast she went to the parlor, and Jeff set about a tour of the hotel, inside and out. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... suburbs, he would let down the check-reins. The horses were sturdy brutes, not at all cruelly checked; but the saint could not rise superior to habit. Unfortunately she made the request with that blandly patronizing tone which in time becomes second nature to kindergartners. Its insinuating blandness ruffled our Jehu, who opined that his horses were all right, and that he could look after their comfort without any assistance. He did not say anything about old maids, but the air was surcharged with his unexpressed ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... selfishness, had never personally offended or injured any of them—they did cut him; and, when Tag-rag observed it, his miserable mind was unspeakably gratified with what they had done: and he spoke to all of them with unusual blandness; to the sinner, Titmouse, with augmented bitterness ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... silk hat was the embodiment of silkiness and solidity. He was a big, bland, bored and (as some said) boring man, with flat fair hair and handsome heavy features; a prosperous young doctor by the name of Warner. But if his blondness and blandness seemed at first a little fatuous, it is certain that he was no fool. If Rosamund Hunt was the only person there with much money, he was the only person who had as yet found any kind of fame. His treatise on "The Probable Existence of Pain in the Lowest Organisms" had been universally ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton |
