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Blase   /bleɪz/   Listen
Blase

adjective
1.
Very sophisticated especially because of surfeit; versed in the ways of the world.  Synonym: worldly.  "The benefits of his worldly wisdom"
2.
Uninterested because of frequent exposure or indulgence.  Synonym: bored.  "A petulant blase air" , "The bored gaze of the successful film star"
3.
Nonchalantly unconcerned.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Blase" Quotes from Famous Books



... the unhappy Jim a chance to recover himself, to regain his vanished cuffs, display his heavy watch-chain, curl his mustache, and otherwise reassume his air of blase fastidiousness. But the transfer made, Phoebe, after shaking hands, became speechless under these perfections. Not so ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte

... settlers propped along the fence. Behind them were the sheds for produce, and the machinery sections where steam threshers and earth scoops hummed and buzzed and thundered unnoticed. Crowds of sightseers wandered past the cattle stalls to gape at the fat bullocks; side-shows flourished, a blase goose drew marbles out of a tin canister, and a boxing showman displayed his muscles outside his tent, while his partner urged the youth of the district to come in and be thumped for ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... ineradicable Englishman. Intellectually his own life was, and continued to the last to be, romantic to an extent that few lives are. Pessimistic he may at times appear, but this is almost entirely on the surface. For he was never in the least blase or ennuye. He had the pathetic treasure of the humble and downcast and unkindly entreated—unquenchable hope. He has no objectivity. His point of view is almost entirely personal. It is not the lacrimae rerum, but the lacrimae dierum suorum, that makes his pages often so forlorn. ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... certain beyond a doubt that space travel will forever remain in the realm of the impossible, probably would, if a rocket that were shot to the moon, for instance, did arrive, and perhaps return to give proof of its safe arrival on our satellite, accept the phenomenon in a perfectly blase, twentieth century manner. Dr. Smith, that phenomenal writer of classic scientific fiction, seems to have become so thoroughly convinced of the advent of interplanetary travel that it is difficult for the reader to feel, after finishing "Spacehounds ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... them, and said she liked under-things that would boil. She has always had very dainty things made by herself; Great-aunt Alison taught her to do beautiful fine sewing.... Jean is a delightful person to do things with; she brings such a freshness to everything is never bored, never blase. I was glad to see her so deeply interested in new clothes. I confess to having a deep distrust of a woman who is above trying to make herself attractive. ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... think you are a genius to think about it," I gasped, as I sat down on a very cruet Killarney branch and just as quickly sat up again, receiving comforting expressions of sympathy from across the bush, to which I paid no heed. "Those blase city men will go crazy about it. We can have the barbecue up on the bluff, where we have always had it for the political rallies, and a fish-fry and the country people in their wagons with children tumbling all over everything ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... was to arrive Graydon was dining with the Jack Percivals. There were a dozen in the party—a blase, bored collection of human beings who had dined out so incessantly that eating was a punishment. They had come to look upon food as a foe to comfort and a grievous obstacle in the path of pleasure. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... even better than Drusilla had hoped. Under Miss Lee's very evident admiration, the Reverend Algernon seemed to grow at least three inches in height, and his rather prosy compliments did not fall upon too critical nor blase' ears. Sarah blushed and fluttered and stammered as would any young girl with her first sweetheart. She even grew pretty; took to arranging her hair in a more becoming style and was particular about her dress. One morning she came over with a fluffy little ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper

... a rather blase child confronted with a new mechanical toy; 'did I really say that? well, honestly, it wasn't bad; it's what one would expect on that hypothesis. You see, we are only different, as it were, in our differences. ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... entertainment; but they refuse to be put asunder as steadfastly as did the twin brothers of Helen and Clytemnestra. There has been no operatic Zeus powerful enough to separate and alternate their existences even for a day; and though blase critics will continue to rail at the "double bill" as they have done for two decades or more, the two fierce little dramas will "sit shining on the sails" of many a managerial ship and bring it safe to haven for many a ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... Greeley was so much pleased with Thoreau that he offered to set him to work as reporter, for Greeley had guessed the truth that the best city reporters are country boys. They observe and hear—all is curious and wonderful to them: by and by they will become blase—sophisticated—that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... are getting to be a blase man. I know that you are only about ten years older than I am—not more than nine, I think—and you dance very well, and no ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty

... correct and absolutely literal, teeming with local color and atmospheric effect like the canvas of a Claude Lorraine or a Bierstadt. As we approached the ancient city, all early recollections of the glowing text were revived; nor had months of constant travel rendered us so blase but that an eager anticipation thrilled every nerve. The train crept slowly along in the twilight with provoking deliberation, until we were finally deposited in the depot of the gray old capital, so intimately connected with the most romantic ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... March, 1789, long before the night of August 4, they voluntarily surrendered every pecuniary privilege; under severe trials, their courage, heightened by polished manners, adds even to their heroism, elegance, tact and gaiety. The most corrupt, a Duke of Orleans, the most frivolous and the most blase, a Duc de Biron, meet death with stoical coolness and disdain.[4154] Delicate women who complain of a draught in their drawing-rooms, make no complaint of a straw mattress in a damp, gloomy dungeon, where they sleep in their clothes so that they may ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... cares, furnishing him at fair rates, or for nothing, with corn, wine, and oil, giving him sumptuous meals and well-got-up fetes, providing him with pictures, statues, pantomimists, gladiators, and lions, resuscitating his "blase" taste every morning with some surprising novelty, and even occasionally converting themselves into actors, charioteers, singers, and gladiators for his especial delight. In order to lodge this group of amateurs in a very suitable to its regal pretensions, architecture ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various

... out and homesick. Here were miners in red-flannel shirts, sailors, soldiers in uniform and soldiers of fortune. The preacher looked at the motley mass in a vain attempt to pick out his old friends from New England. The genteel, slightly blase quality of culture that leans back in its cushioned pew and courteously waits to be instructed, was not there. These people did not lean back: they leaned forward, and with parted lips they listened for every word. There was no choir, and when "an old ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... bon vivant, with a blase shrug. "She was a good little quail with more heart than head! ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith

... was quite serious, but there was an odd expression in her eye. Mr. Holway, blond, immaculate and blase, bowed. Then ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln

... they have in England,—but even here the blades of grass seem to press closer together, as if they were crowded or overpopulated, like the country; and this forest, which has been always wild and was a hunting park, has a blase look, as if it was already tired of the unchanging traditions and monotony around it. I think over there Nature affects and influences us: here, I fancy, it is itself affected by ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte

... standing at the window, stared out from troubled, frowning eyes that saw nothing of the kaleidoscopic scene. His back was turned to the group of people in the room, and he had no thought of wonders that were prosaic, nor of passengers, eager or blase; his thoughts were only of freight and of the acres of flat roofs far in the distance where alternate flashes of color marked the descending area for fast freighters of the air. And in his mind he could see what his eyes could not discern—the markings on those roofs that were ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... girlish-looking youth to a big grizzled man whom everybody addressed as "Judge." None of the women appeared to be under thirty, but each of them struck me as being handsome. I was not long in finding out that they were all decidedly blase. Several of the women smoked cigarettes, and with a careless grace which showed they were used to the habit. Occasionally a "Damn it!" escaped from the lips of some one of them, but in such a charming way as to ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson

... he became a member of the Committee on Ways and Means. On the floor of the House his formal speeches on the tariff, a topic to which nothing new could be brought, commanded the attention of one of the most critical and blase audiences of the world. The silver question, which was the principal topic before Congress at the following session, afforded a fresher field for his oratory; indeed, Bryan was the principal aid ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck

... me again, and been painfully reminded, by my coolness and indifference, how little he counted for in my life. Petsjorin had done with life; I had not even begun to live. Petsjorin had drained the cup of enjoyment; I had never tasted so much as a drop of it. Petsjorin was as blase as a splendid Russian Officer of the Guards could be; I, as full of expectation as an insignificant Copenhagen schoolboy could be. Nevertheless, I had the perplexing feeling of having, for the first time in my life, seen my inmost nature, hitherto ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... time in Saul's Cardillac seemed to have no rival. He combined, to an admirable degree, the man of the world and the sportsman; he had an air that was beyond rubies. He was elegant without being effeminate, arrogant without being conceited, indifferent without being blase. He had learnt, at Eton, and at the knee of a rich and charming mother, that to be crude was the unforgivable sin. He worshipped the god of good manners and would have made an admirable son of the great Lord Chesterfield. Finally he was the only man in Saul's who had any "air" at all, and ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole

... affected a veneer of worldly knowledge and sophistication that was misleading. It almost deceived myself. At eighteen I had accepted as a sad truth the wickedness of the world, and especially that of men. I was very blase, very resigned—at least the two top layers of me were. Down underneath, way down, I know now I was young and innocent and hopeful. I know now that my first meeting with Breckenridge Sewall was simply ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty

... Delightful technique! Wonderfully powerful!' In that way you can always get along. I know that those two are very blase about everything, but admiration ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... expect then," he wrote, "to be within measurable distance of a marshal's baton, and you will be an experienced married woman. You shall look out a wife for me. I will be, probably, bald by then, and a little blase. I shall require a young girl, pretty of course, and with a large fortune, which should help me to close my glorious career in the splendour befitting my exalted rank." He ended with the information that he had just given a lesson to a worrying, quarrelsome fellow who imagined he had ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... out of season live on their fat like the ground-hog, and do a little fishing for profitable amusement. It is a thing to see, Scheveningen, but it is no place for a prolonged stay unless you are a gambler or a blase boulevardier who needs bracing ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... dream. It is the thoughts we have thought, the painfully-wrought products of the waking mind, given in a sparkle of mocking laughter against the background of nightly visions. See the play over and over again. Do not study it with Bottom's ass's head, and do not be so blase that you reject the performance because it does not command ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud

... his composure. What the girl had just told him was a staggering and unexpected blow. Underneath the man's stolid, business-like manner, there was a big heart. He was selfish and comfort-loving, like most men of his class and opportunities, but he was far from being as callous and blase as he pretended. He had grown to be very fond of Laura. He knew that up to this time and during her whole career he was the first man who had had any real influence over her. Since the day when they first ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow

... Adrian, with deliberation, "I freely confess that I am not an effete and blase old thing, like—like one who shall be nameless. There is a variety of fruit (the husbandman's despair), a tough, cross-grained, sour-hearted variety of fruit, that dries up and shrivels, and never ripens. There is another variety of fruit that grows rounder and rosier, tenderer and ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... they were blase, or indifferent to novel sights, but travel was now, with them, an old story. They had been out West, to the Pacific Coast, and in far-off jungle lands, to say nothing of their trip to the place of the earthquakes, and the more recent trip to the ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton

... work will be a product of its university system. Of this we may be sure, the training for strenuous life is not in academic idleness. The development of living ideals is not in an atmosphere of cynicism. The blase, lukewarm, fin-de-siecle young man of the clubs will not represent university culture, nor, on the other hand, will culture be dominated by ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan

... nom de guerre, and during the past four years had several times appeared at war charity garden-parties as a classical dancer—to the great delight of the guests and greater disgust of her family. Her maternal uncle, head of her house, said to be the most blase member of the British peerage and known as "the noble tortoise," was generally considered to have pronounced the final verdict upon his golden-haired niece when he ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... tabor, two empties and a brass tray. Yet the semblance of the thing is there and this often deceives the very elect. Around every art studio are found the young men in velveteen who smoke infinite cigarettes, and throw off opinions about this great man and that, and prate prosaically in blase monotone of the Beautiful. Sometimes these young persons give lectures on "Art as I Have Found It"; but do not be deceived by this—the art that lives is probably being produced by small, shy, red-headed men who work on a top floor, and whom ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... good chime of bells, and on market days when surrounded with the farmers' green wagons and the lines of booths about which the people gathered chaffering, its appearance was picturesque enough to satisfy anyone, even the most blase of travelers. The belfry had four large gilt clock faces, and its bells could be plainly seen through the windows hanging from the huge beams. On the tower were gilded escutcheons, and a couple of armor-clad statues in niches. There was a fine church dedicated to Notre Dame, which was commenced ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards

... sophisticated intelligence; and she is inclined to infer that jovial irony and animal spirits are qualities sufficient to amuse a young nation of people like the Americans who do not, like the French, pique themselves upon being blase. According to her judgment, Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner are lacking in the requisite mental grasp for the "stupendous task of interpreting the great tableau of the American scene." Nor does she regard their ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... old SWISHTALE would be better for a week (under supervision) in London. Might take him to the Empire, the Pav., and to see Ruy Blas, or the Blase Roue. If it did him no other good, it would afford him a topic for conversation at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various

... the latest sport because it affords him a new sensation. Being blase of all else in life, he plunges into automobiling, buys a white and red racer—a ponderous flying juggernaut that growls and snorts and smells of the lower regions whenever it stands still, trembling in its ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith

... with a passion for adventure. But invariable success in his flirtations had made him blase, and now it was only the absolutely novel that could appeal to him. And there could certainly be no question about the woman who had sent him the present invitation being anything but a commonplace one! Moreover, it was not just any woman who had asked him to keep this assignation ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... reaction—lassitude and weariness—and human nature is palled by the surfeit of amusement as much as it is by the luxuries of the table. There cannot be a more humiliating spectacle than that of the man of the world, as he is called, or the woman of fashion or pleasure. Blase is too considerate an expression. Such persons are worn-out prematurely in body, mind and intellect—they are soulless and unsympathetic—the wrecks of the noble creatures God created as man and woman in all the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various

... arrived in his riding boots and breeches he immediately shared attention with a large, venerable-looking Durham that was being auctioned. The Durham, however, returned the stare of the crowd with blase eyes which said that he had seen all of life he wanted to and did not care what further happened, while Wallie felt distinctly uncomfortable at the attention he attracted, and wished he might ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart

... preserved in this modern maelstrom some sense of its falseness, its baseness. He wept for Helen, playmate of the years never to return, sweetheart of his youth, betrayer of his manhood, the young woman of the present, blase, unsexed, seeking, provocative, all perhaps, as she had said, that men had made her—a travesty on splendid girlhood. He wept for her friends, embodying in them all of their class—for little Bessy Bell, ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... in time, you enmesh yourself in theories and generalisations, you ride your imagination proudly, in order to reconcile yourself to something which suggests itself as more ideal than that for which the unreasoning heart hungers. You are sad, but you are not practical and you are not blase. ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London

... returned Fouche, "but a real elegant divorce, followed by an imperial wedding, would rattle the bones of this blase old Paris as they haven't been rattled since ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs

... glistening in the surrounding darkness to which their faces formed no relief; the white officers in brown linen, shouting, swearing, and gesticulating; the yellow, flickering torchlight over all,—made up a scene of which the weird interest would have appealed to a more blase traveler than this girl upon ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... there, Whan he to thyle come were. Sche seide, at entre of the pas Hou Mars, which god of Armes was, Hath set tuo Oxen sterne and stoute, That caste fyr and flamme aboute Bothe at the mouth and ate nase, So that thei setten al on blase 3510 What thing that passeth hem betwene: And forthermore upon the grene Ther goth the flees of gold to kepe A Serpent, which mai nevere slepe. Thus who that evere scholde it winne, The fyr to stoppe he mot beginne, Which that the fierce bestes caste, And daunte he mot hem ate laste, So that ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower

... he conveys distinctly the impression of a creature to the last degree blase. Even when a crab is let down into his grotto by an attendant for the edification of the visitors the octopus seems to regard it with only lukewarm interest. If he deigns to go in pursuit, it is with the air of one who says, "Anything ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... chess by looking at the pieces. And then the old escape-to-paradise theme took hold of us again and we studied the colored blobs on the World screen, trying to decide which would have the fanciest accommodations for blase ex-murderers. On the North America screen too there was an intriguing pink patch in southern Mexico that seemed to take in old Mexico City and ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... a requited attachment, one of the most convenient things that a young man can carry about with him at the beginning of his career, is an unrequited attachment. It makes him feel important and business-like, and blase, and cynical; and whenever he has a touch of liver, or suffers from want of exercise, he can mourn over his lost love, and be very happy ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... Such is this savage strife! Will it not cease until there is no more blood to shed? In the meantime, Paris of the boulevards, the elegant and fast-living Paris, lounges, strolls, and smiles. In spite of the numerous departures there are still enough blase dandies and beauties of light locks and lighter reputation to bring the blush to an honest man's cheek. The theatres are open; "La Piece du Pape" is being played. Do you know "The Pope's Money?" It is a suitable piece for diverting ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... with peculiar awe. Stuart noted with a smile that not one of them spoke loudly in the presence of ninety millions of dollars. All whispered except a blase youngster from The Evening Post. He dared to articulate his words in modulated tones. He seemed to regard himself as a sort of assistant high priest at this extraordinary function. The other fellows unconsciously paid the tribute of whispered awe to the ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... lips, And they were flesh; they breath'd on mine a warmth Temperate as westerne kisses which the morne Weaps liquid drops to purchase. This confirmes It was no apparition that contemnd My willingnes, but he, his reall selfe, Mockt my integrity: he must not passe soe, To blase abroad ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... You get awfully blase on this duty—things which should excite you don't at all. For instance, out of the air come messages like the following: "Am being chased and delayed by submarine." "Torpedoed and sinking fast." And you merely look at the chart and decide whether to ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... Mr. Atkins, after one languid glance in his direction, had sprung from the truck and was gazing at him as if he was some apparition, some figure in a nightmare, instead of his blase self. And he, as he looked at the lightkeeper's astounded countenance, dropped the cigar stump from his fingers and stepped ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln

... but now lifted so chastely and so eagerly. She casts a glance upon the nuptial bed, with modesty and without shamelessness; and, if she longs for anything, it is for the green fruit that calls up again to life the dulled papillae with which her blase palate is bestrewn. Finally the philosophical Experience of Life presents herself, with careworn and disdainful brow, pointing with her finger to the results, and not the causes of life's incidents; ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac

... as active mentally as this crowd never grow blase, however they may affect it. But surely you had ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... group of ladies, whose white shoulders and arms and animated faces flashed out in the semi-obscurity; and in their rear stood a crowd of spectators —beautiful young gentlemen with vacant faces and the elevated Oxford shoulders, rosy youth already blase to all this world can offer, and gray-headed men young again in the prospect of a new sensation. So they kneel or stand, worshipers before the shrine, expecting the advent of the Goddess of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... what might Omar have been with a nobler philosophy of life, and a more wholesome self-restraint. Blase, toper as he was, how did he ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... had been an invincible and dangerous enemy to the blue frog from the Mentone china shop, poor, blase Hilda, who spent most of her time choking in flies a size too large for her, or trying helplessly to push them down her blue throat with a tiny turquoise hand. Dodo, however, had been a ray of brightness in the house: meretricious, garish brightness ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... doctor put Jack in with Arabella, and Archer with Jill. Arabella promptly yielded to Jack. New devotion. More transports. Jill and Archer were shocked. Jill clung to the bars of her cage, quivering, and screaming remonstrance; and even blase Archer chattered angrily at some of the scenes. Then the doctor hung curtains between the cages to shut out the view. Jill and Archer, left to each other, grew ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.

... cereals. The whole wheat with the addition of a little milk is sufficient to support life indefinitely. It is one of the foods of which people never seem to tire. Tiring of food is often an indication of excess. It is with food as with amusement, if we get too much we become blase. Those who eat in moderation are content with simple foods, but those who eat too much want a great variety, as a rule. There are beef gluttons, who are satisfied with their flesh and liquor, but this is because the ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... of this recipe for poetic achievement stands revealed in the cynicism with which expositions of the frankly immoral poet end. If the quest of wickedness is a powerful stimulus to the emotions, it is a very short-lived one. The blase note is so dominant in Byron's autobiographical poetry,—the lyrics, Childe Harold and Don Juan—as to render quotation tiresome. It sounds no less inevitably in the decadent verse at the other end of the century. Ernest Dowson's Villanelle of the Poet's Road is a typical expression ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... that voice is very often out, you know," Pen said, bitterly. "I have heard a great deal of music, in London," he continued. "I'm tired of those professional people—they sing too loud—or I have grown too old or too blase. One grows old very soon, in London, Miss Amory. And like all old fellows, I only care for the songs ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and the Spiritualists, as a rule, do not shut up shop even in August. Their Summerland lies elsewhere than Margate or the Moors; and a valse with a pirouetting table or a little gentle levitation or elongation delights them more than all the revels of the countryside. I was getting a little blase, I own, on the subject of Spiritualism after my protracted experiences during the Conference, and I do not think I should have turned my steps in the direction of the Progressive Institution that week had not the following ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... ferry-boat one morning and walked into the core of the town with the blase air of a cosmopolite. He was dressed with care to play the role of an "unidentified man." No country, race, class, clique, union, party clan or bowling association could have claimed him. His clothing, which had been donated to him piece-meal by citizens of different ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... directed the porter to paste the scarlet labels on his cases. He was beginning to take a certain blase pride in his luggage. Already it had the appearance of having traveled widely. It would look well on week-end ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... to Lord de Winter, who, kissing it respectfully, went out and traversed alone and unconducted those large, dark and deserted apartments, brushing away tears which, blase as he was by fifty years spent as a courtier, he could not withhold at the spectacle of royal distress ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... her intently, narrowly, searchingly. He saw what she herself had not seen—the natural changes that ten years had brought to her. He saw other things—that she had not suspected—a certain blase sophistication; a too bold and artful expression of the eyes—as though she knew their power and the lure of them; the slightly hard curve in the corners of her mouth; a second character lurking around her—indefinite, ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... and bloodthirsty "doctrinaire," Henry VIII., be the means of a brilliant and lasting success to St. Saens, who richly deserves it; but in the matter of serious opera the public has reached that blase point which is explained in the words of Ronge, ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... For six months they moped about their corral, but at last they began to improve. The oldest doe gave birth to two fawns which actually survived. But, even when the next mating season began, the buck continued to be lanquid and blase. At no time did he exhibit signs of temper, of ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... us in an instant, or, at least, on a little consideration. But neither she nor anyone else dreamed or imagined that I could be other than the King. So the likeness served, and for an hour I stood there, feeling as weary and blase as though I had been a king all my life; and everybody kissed my hand, and the ambassadors paid me their respects, among them old Lord Topham, at whose house in Grosvenor Square I had danced a score of times. Thank heaven, the old man ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope

... said gravely, and turned to speak to the others. They welcomed him eagerly, and made room for him. He had lost something of the cold, blase air which had ennobled him in the eyes of the young women. He looked around presently, and ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis

... intervals toward the fireplace. Near him sat Edward S. Baker, statesmanlike, impressive, despite his drink-befuddlement; Edward Jones, of Palmer, Cook & Co., smaller, shrewd, keen and avaricious-eyed, was pouring a drink from a decanter; Volney Howard, fat, pompous, aping a blase, decadent manner, stood, as ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... dry, monotonous, dull, arid, tedious, humdrum, mortal, flat; prosy, prosing; slow, soporific, somniferous. disgusting &c v.; unenjoyed^. weary, tired &c v.; drowsy &c (sleepy) 683; uninterested, flagging, used up, worn out, blase, life-weary, weary of life; sick of. Adv. wearily &c adj.; usque ad nauseam [Lat.]. Phr. time hanging heavily on one's hands; toujours ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... under that wonderful Southern sky, with the air laden with the perfume of countless cherry blossoms, Paul felt that he had been translated into fairy-land, and he was almost afraid to speak lest he break the spell and suddenly find himself back in blase Western Europe again. ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous

... and appointments of the apartment would have brought joy into the gloomy heart of the most blase connoisseur. Entering a spacious foyer with a lofty, elaborately decorated ceiling and walls of white marble hung all round with tapestries, trophies and oil paintings, the visitor passed through a number of wide halls, treading on thick Oriental rugs until he reached the salon, a ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow

... and an English dandy: the first is an impertinent, affected coxcomb, who makes love to every woman as a matter of course—it is his vocation. The second is a cold, contemptuous, conceited creature, intrenched in a double armour of selfishness, blase ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)

... the working class. You may perhaps be a small manufacturer, the agent of a manufacturing firm in the country, a clerk with a moderate salary, or a mechanic in his best clothes. Remember that and do not complain of the music. You do not hear it every day. Let us hear no more blase speeches, if you please.... Good! The dinner arrives. We dine here, my friend, for two francs. You will probably require another meal before the evening is concluded. On the other hand, you may feel that you never require another meal as long as you live. That is a matter of luck. In any case, ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... survived better than most. Humorous verse stands a slightly better chance of evoking smiles in its old age. There is always its unalterable verbal neatness; tradition, too, lingers more lovingly around fair shapes, and a poem is a better instance of form than a paragraph. Mankind may grow blase, if it will, but as a poet of the comic, Chesterton will live long years. Take for example that last and worst of his novels The Flying Inn. Into this he has pitched with a fascinating recklessness a quantity of poems, garnered from The New Witness and worthy of the immortality ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... friend of a married woman with a limousine and a respectful chauffeur, and wonderful clothes and an air of taking them all for granted—precisely as he made up his mind to this, he became so very mature, and wise and blase, modeled his manners and his conversation so strictly on John Drew in his attempt to rise to the situation, that the schoolboy topics she suggested froze on his tongue. So that, by the time he had picked out the books for her and seen them stowed away in the car, and then had telephoned Rodney's ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... uplifted all at once on to a strange summit, and pierced with the intensest pangs of an unknown devotion. Henceforward her life was dedicated; but, unlike the happier saints of a holier persuasion, she was to find no peace on earth. It was, indeed, hardly to be expected that Walpole, a blase bachelor of fifty, should have reciprocated so singular a passion; yet he might at least have treated it with gentleness and respect. The total impression of him which these letters produce is very damaging. ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... a man," she said, sententiously. "Don't worry for fear the poor dears' hearts will be broken. Now I'll tell you something. Mrs. Jimmie's sincere indifference and my silent eye-homage have stirred these blase officers out of their usual calm. There you have the whole thing. Von Engel thinks Mrs. Jimmie's indifference is assumed, and both Von Engel and Von Furzmann are determined that my silence shall voice itself. I have no doubt that they would like to have me write it, ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... notoriously slow service. He begged her to order—and she did: ordered a meal which contained T.N.T. possibilities for acute indigestion. Carroll smiled and let her have her way—he was amused at her valiant efforts to appear the blase society woman. ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen

... even imagined such comments, though she passed these rows of critical eyes a hundred times a day, sat at table with people who were keenly observant of her every act and word, and spent some reluctant hours in the society of those who strove to cultivate her for their own blase enjoyment. She only knew that among the company she met a number of interesting men and women, with whom she and her husband were thoroughly congenial, and that it did not matter in the least about ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond

... a great mistake to figure Mephistopheles as a rather blase brunette," she remarked crisply. "I am absolutely certain that if you could catch the devil without his mask you'd find him a ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... cheeks as she spoke, and Wilhelm was not sufficiently blase to scoff at the doting nonsense of a love-sick woman. Love has enormous power, and at its heat all firmness, all resistance, melts away. Pilar's affection filled Wilhelm with heartfelt emotion and gratitude. He denied himself the right of judging her, suspecting or doubting her, ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... giveaway names? It was a measure of their contempt for the humans around them and of their own grim wit. Look at all the double entendres the salesman had given his father, and his father had never suspected. Even the head of the Bureau of Health and Sanity had been terrifyingly blase about it. ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer

... repeat to you what I said before," shrieked Marat. "Did you ever hear of a wise man looking down upon the crown prince, and thinking more of the king, who is old, unnerved by his vices, and blase! You, the people, you are the crown prince of France, and if you, at last, in your righteous and noble indignation, tread the tyrant under your feet, then the young prince, the people, will rule over France, and the beautiful words ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... is crumbling when quite impossible people like life guards permit themselves to become blase' over such matters! ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis

... was a prey she was no longer mistress of herself. The Colonel, interpreting to his own advantage the embarrassment evident in the Countess' manner and speech, became more ardent and pressing. The old blase diplomates, amusing themselves by watching the play of faces, had never found so many intrigues at once to watch or guess at. The passions agitating the two couples were to be seen with variations at every step ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac

... wear—if the Swiss had any navy—and holding a speaking trumpet in his hand. This person is not excited, for he sends thirty-odd-thousand-ton ships off to Europe at frequent intervals, and so he is impressively and importantly blase about it; but everybody else is excited. You find yourself rather that way. You wave at persons you know and then at persons you do ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... seemed compared to the varied scenery of the cure's soul-lit character! Of all kinds of nature, human nature is assuredly the best; it is at least the most perdurably interesting. When we tire of it, when we weary of our fellow-man and turn the blase cheek on the fresh pillow of mother-earth, how quickly is the pillow deserted once the mental frame is rested or renewed! The history of all human relations has the same ending—we all of us only fall out of love with man to fall as ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... and stared, filled with admiration, thrilled with this new experience in his blase existence. Who would have expected to find a beauty like that in a little out of the way place like this? His theory of a great estate and a rich man's daughter with a fad for music instantly came ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... the party of Order did not for a moment deceive themselves on the confidence that this unbosoming deserved. They were long blase on oaths; they numbered among themselves veterans and virtuosi of perjury. The passage about the army did not, however, escape them. They observed with annoyance that the message, despite its prolix enumeration of the lately enacted laws, passed, ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx

... the cloud that had come over our intercourse with him; a cloud which, considering late events, was scarcely unnatural: for when evening came, his leave-taking, always a regret, seemed now as painful as his blase indifference to all emotions, pleasant or unpleasant, could allow. He lingered—he hesitated—he repeated many times how glad he should be to see Beechwood again; how all the world was to him "flat, stale, and unprofitable," ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... be inferred from this that our hero's character had grown so blase and hard, or his conscience so blunted, as to preclude his experiencing a particle of sympathy or compassion. As a matter of fact, he was capable both of the one and the other, and would have been glad to assist his old teacher ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... like the man, that for to swale his vlyes [i.e. flies] He stert in-to the bern, and aftir stre he hies, And goith a-bout with a brennyng wase, Tyll it was atte last that the leam and blase Entryd in-to the chynys, wher the whete was, And kissid so the evese, that brent was ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston

... head remained in the clouds. In common with most men whose lot is cast in climes far removed from civilization, Curtis worshiped an ideal of womanhood which was rather that of a poet than of the blase, cynical town-dweller. He had seen death too often to be shocked by its harsh visage, and, perhaps in protest against the idle belief that the crime was preventable, his sympathies were absorbed now by the vision of some fair girl waiting vainly for the bridegroom who would ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... for his wife least of all. He boasted that he had never known such love as makes a fool of a man. He declared that he was happy to have done with women; the most angelic of them, he frankly said, was not worth what she cost, even if you got her for nothing. He was supposed to be so entirely blase, that he no longer paid two thousand francs a month for the pleasure of being deceived. His eyes looked coldly down from his opera box on the corps de ballet; never a glance was shot at the capitalist by any one of that formidable swarm of old young girls, and ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... debatable. A few abnormal characters like Byron and Shelley doubtless experienced all the adolescent phenomena which Mr. Cheyney describes, but we believe that the average youth is a copyist, and for the most part reflects his environment. Radicalism and novel ideas arise just as much from blase, elderly cynics, who are tired of sane and sober conservatism. We have been reflecting on Life for about twenty years, ever since we were five, and have consistently believed that the wisdom of the ancient sage is the true wisdom; that Life is essentially immutable, and that ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... noyse of peple up-stirte thanne at ones, As breme as blase of straw y-set on fyre; For infortune it wolde, for the nones, 185 They sholden hir confusioun desyre. 'Ector,' quod they, 'what goost may yow enspyre This womman thus to shilde and doon us lese Daun Antenor? — a wrong ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer

... been surely the worst symptom. With his airs of young milord, his fast horses, his gold and silver cigarette-cases, his clothes from a New York tailor, his recklessness of money showered upon him by indulgent mothers or doting grandfathers, he respects nothing and nobody. He is blase if you please. Watch him at a social function how condescendingly he deigns to select a partner for the popular waltz or two step how carelessly he shoulders older people out of his way, with what a blank stare he returns the salutation of some old ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... time passing delightfully. There was no one at present to restrain him when he worried Mrs Gummidge. The tabby daily grew thinner and sadder-eyed. The parrot grew daily more blase. He sneered more and more bitterly, and his eyelid, when closed, struck a chill to the ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers

... l'etouffais-tu, cette flamme brulante Que ton sein palpitant ne pouvait contenir! Tu vivrais, tu verrais te suivre et t'applaudir De ce public blase la foule indifferente, Qui prodigue aujourd'hui sa faveur inconstante A des gens dont pas ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield

... her record and his own. He had found fault with her—so he mused—HE! And what could he say for himself? When she built her first church what was he doing? Gathering other blase multimillionaires into a Poker Club; defiling his own palace with it; losing hundreds of thousands to it at every sitting, and sillily vain of the admiring notoriety it made for him. When she was building ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... both hands, but that was not possible in the publicity of a dinner-table. He whispered in my ear, he leant to me, he behaved as an infatuated lover, and presently it seemed to me that my fellow-guests smiled here and there and looked significant. Lady Ardaragh talked more than ever to the blase-looking young lord who was her neighbour and her colour was heightened. Her witticisms came to me across the table, or a portion of them, and I thought she was saying wild, unbecoming things. I was sure I saw Sir Arthur wince when I turned to ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan

... fear, no remorse, none of that Shakespearean horror after the murder, which, today, sceptic though I am and blase and utterly, utterly disillusioned, sets me shuddering whenever I am alone in ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... less our children hear of this, the less they may have to unlearn. Nature studies have long been valued as "a means of grace," because they arouse the enthusiasm, the love of work, which belongs to open-eyed youth. The child blase with moral precepts and irregular conjugations turns with fresh delight to the unrolling of ferns ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... more to the thrifty Swiss than to the amiable and less energetic Italians. Lugano is full of quaint corners, interesting narrow streets, market wagons, drawn by oxen, and stalls and carts on all sides, filled with curios and native wares that would tempt the most blase shopper. Yesterday, being a market day when the peasants come in from the surrounding country in their ox carts, and with their great panniers, or hottes, on their backs, we found many delightful bits for our kodaks. ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

... perceptible droop of pathos at the other, lent an indescribable piquance to her dimpled smile. The blue orbs which raised to his own with a Sphinxian laugh in their azure depths thrilled him—Holloway, the blase, the hardened theatrical manager, flattered and cajoled by hundreds of beautiful women on ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... Even the blase bell-captain, by virtue of his calling a person of few enthusiasms and no illusions, edged up to the desk and inquired the name of the distinguished ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... in a fortissimo scale. He had always belonged to that class of men—a class which is not small—whose senses are open to life's varied abundance. Only on the rarest occasions he found a thing commonplace or ordinary, and was never blase in meeting a novelty. But, after all, there are very few persons who would be dull to the impressions of an embarkation by night, outside a harbour ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... vast clashing of the elements. It seems so outside one's jurisdiction. One is oppressed with a sense of the futility of interference. And this was no ordinary dog fight. It was a stunning melee, which would have excited favourable comment even among the blase residents of a negro quarter or the not easily-pleased critics of a Lancashire mining-village. From all over the beach dogs of every size, breed, and colour were racing to the scene: and while some of these merely remained ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... In speaking of Plutarch he had brightened up for a moment, and his eye had even flashed; but his general manner was as unlike what youthful females expect in a Pope as you can conceive. I can only describe it in French. Le gentilhomme blase. A highbred, and highly cultivated gentleman, who had done, and said, and seen, and known everything, and whose body was nearly worn out. But double languor seemed to seize him at the ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... bearing!" echoed the clerk, with the derision of blase youth. "If that's your test, you ought ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte



Words linked to "Blase" :   worldly, uninterested, sophisticated, unconcerned



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