"Blandness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... am not so happy,' he answered—with such blandness that a servant by the door choked, and had to be hustled out in disgrace. 'But since Miss—er—Masterson is here, I shall be glad to place my rooms at ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... the tun; one hundred times did he purify them in clearest water; one hundred times with tireless hands did he knead the creamy paste, mingling it at last with colors known only to himself. Then was the vase shapen and reshapen, and touched and retouched by the hands of Pu, until its blandness seemed to live, until it appeared to quiver and to palpitate, as with vitality from within, as with the quiver of rounded muscle undulating beneath the integument. For the hues of life were upon it and infiltrated ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... fleeting 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
... fierce and lurid passions which he inherited from his nation and his clime, at all times but ill concealed beneath the blandness of craft and the coldness of philosophy, were released in the breast of the Egyptian. Rapidly one thought chased another; he saw before him an obstinate barrier to even a lawful alliance with Ione—the fellow-champion of Glaucus in the struggle which had baffled his designs—the ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... try him in any direction. You began to praise his intellect—an intellect of the highest and worthiest kind,... and he walked away! You began to praise his moderation, he instantly cut short your first words. You began to express admiration for his blandness and natural suavity of manner,... yet even here he resisted your compliments; and if you were led to exclaim that you had found a man who could not be overcome by those insidious attacks which every one ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... trouble from off of real estate." With dignity and blandness she proceeded to kiss Teacher's hand, and signified entire willingness to entrust her precious Sadie to the care of so estimable a young person, inquired solicitously if the work were not too much for so small a lady, and cautioned ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... much blandness of manner as he could assume, "I have sent for you to say that you are called upon to make your father happy ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... literally distracted. Remonstrance was in vain: Bonaparte laughed at forms. Finally, when protest had proved unavailing, the harried oligarchy began at last to arm, and it was not long before forty thousand men, mostly Slavonic mercenaries, were enlisted under its banner. With his usual conciliatory blandness, Bonaparte next proposed to the senate a treaty of alliance, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... debarred him from many comforts, as it obliged him to take his solitary tea and supper in the schoolroom. She consented, as she did to almost everything that I requested of her; and that afternoon I brought up to her the penitent hand-presser. Her natural good temper, and blandness of manner, soon put him again at his ease, and his love-speeches ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... stared with a vacuous blandness well calculated to madden his friend. Blake hurled a magazine, which his lordship deftly sidestepped. He reached for his hat, and ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... 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 his own spirit. Another man, who was hard and cruel in ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... them; in a car of state The Mayor and all the Councillors rode down To give them greeting, while the blue-eyed team Drawn in Cobb's glittering chariot of pure gold Careered it from the station.—But the Mayor - Thou shouldst have seen the blandness of the man, And watched the effulgent and unspeakable smiles With which he beamed upon them. His beard, by nature tawny, was suffused With just so much of a most reverend grizzle That youth and age should kiss in't. I assure you He was a Southern Palmerston, so ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... is the gentleman we accost politely?" he asked, very blandly, but behind this blandness of Cocardasse's there was something menacing to those that knew ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... 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 know where to put ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... young friend," said Diggle, with all his old blandness; Desmond never ceased to be amazed at the self command of this extraordinary man. "I have let some blood, I perceive; my sword arm is for the time disabled; but my great regret at this moment—you will understand the feeling—is that this gallant friend ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... had dwindled away almost imperceptibly. A benefit-night approached; Mr. Jennings Rodolph yielded to the earnest solicitations of Miss Amelia Martin, and introduced her personally to the 'comic gentleman' whose benefit it was. The comic gentleman was all smiles and blandness—he had composed a duet, expressly for the occasion, and Miss Martin should sing it with him. The night arrived; there was an immense room—ninety-seven sixpenn'orths of gin-and-water, thirty-two small glasses of brandy-and-water, five-and-twenty bottled ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... unceremonious designation I imagine you to mean to introduce Miss Underwood,' said a figure, appearing from beneath the archway, in trencher cap, surplice, and hood, with white hair, and a sort of precision and blandness that did not at all agree with Cherry's preconceived notions of the Harewood household. 'I am very glad to see you. My ladies, as usual, are unready. Will you have a glass of wine? No?—What do you say, Lancelot?—Very well, we will ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... knew this would happen," he said aloud with brazen blandness. "My poor old master made game of me for wearing black; but I always said I should be ready ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... though he had just uttered his words in Homer: "For verily there is no creature more afflicted than man, of all that breathe and move upon the earth." But that other, the Serapis, is above care of every kind; on his countenance is a divine placidity, a supernal blandness; he gazes for ever in sublime ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... of his blandness. "I have only a single question to ask of you. I will first whisper it. If that does not convince you, I will ask it aloud. There are those here who will understand its value." He leaned toward the angry man and whispered ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... 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. He looked carefully to the details of its winter keeping. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... their room with their pastor and Elder Judge, seemed very much pleased to see them, and, with their usual blandness of manner, spoke about their respective families while their pastor and Elder Judge looked so grave as to make the Proctors think there was really something ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... threw himself in the way of his guest, made leading remarks, and 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, in his ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... business of any kind, a very meddlesome client. But she was rich, and handsome still. 'She's a new broom in estate-management as yet,' he thought. 'She will soon get tired of this,' and he parted from her without a sentiment which could mar his habitual blandness. ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... my dear," she said, with hypocritical blandness, "but—but—it is simply unaccountable to me, knowing what I do about the family and their future plans for ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the course being up stream. Two days they paddled westward, and as many nights they encamped on islands. Fortunately the weather became mild, and when they reached the lake it was found smooth and glassy as a pond. It was the Indian summer, and the calms, and almost the blandness of June, ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... after the astounding statement reached him. His stillness and his look of 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
... 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, who, with more noise than effect, were ever ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... friend would not attempt your rescue. C'est entendu," said Chauvelin with his wonted blandness. "Then, my dear, enthusiastic young friend, shall we adjourn to the office of my colleague, citizen Heron, who is chief agent of the Committee of General Security, and will receive your—did you say confession?—and note the conditions under which you place yourself absolutely ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... forbore at first to attack him. He brought in only blandness and benevolence and a great content at having obeyed the mystic voice—it was really a remarkable case of second sight—which had whispered him that the recreant comrade of his prime was in town. He had just come back from Sicily after a southern winter, according to a custom frequent with him, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James |
