"Blase" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time was more remarkable in Mr Stevenson than his extraordinary youthfulness of mind. At an age when other young men affect to be blase and world weary he was delightfully and fearlessly boyish. Boyish even in his occasional half-comic solemnity of appearance; he was boyish likewise in his charming jests and jokes, and, above all, in his hearty delight in any outdoor 'ploy' ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... I'm glad to learn your feelings are hurt," returned the aunt. "I'm sure, Carley, that underneath all this—this blase ultra something you've acquired, there's a real heart. Only you must ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... pretend you 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 doubt you ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... imperfect they would take a hand in setting it right. We know we felt that way, but we are loath to believe our children also cherish their high hopes. And so the tendency of the adult is to treat with cynicism the dreams of youth. Often we sedulously endeavor to pervert him to our blase view of the world; we would have him believe it is a fated heap of cinders instead of an almost new thing to be formed and made perfect. In the home those ideals must be nourished and guided. See that ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... was delivered with the blase air of weariness worn out, that should belong with him who has seen and heard and known a world's multitude; which manner is everywhere recognized as the ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... this intrigue. In the absorption of mind to which she 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 in the crowded rooms, and reflected ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac
... 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 wey now ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... 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 ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... gave 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. ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... perched on a poplar limb, who cocked his head and heard the singer through, and then made that almost imperceptible gesture with which a great critic indicates his approval of a novice. "Not half bad," he seemed to say,—this blase old habitue of the thicket music-halls. "I shouldn't wonder if something could be made of that voice if ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... 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 ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... the eyes of the country-folk pitied her as a sickly deformity? Why did Rigou, the old man, feel the passion of a young one for this girl? Which of the two men was young, and which was old? Was the young peasant as blase as the old usurer? Why did these two extremes of life meet in one common and devilish caprice? Does the vigor that draws to its close resemble the vigor that is only dawning? The moral perversities of men are gulfs guarded by sphinxes; ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... 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 declared ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... 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 became pals, he had always dominated, and while his moral teaching left much to ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... Linden married! It was incredible. And to whom had he struck the bold corsair flag which had so long been the terror of husbands? To Kaethe von Markwald, in whom nothing piquant could be discovered which would be likely specially to attract a blase man of the world! She was beautiful, certainly, but he had passed by many handsomer women. She was not stupid, but how many cleverer fair ones, with all their craft, had been unable to hold him in their nets! The ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... 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 ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... stood a quaint brick belfry containing a 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 ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... 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 ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... credited them all to Mme. de Combray's inspiration, and this accusation without proof is none too bold. The theft of state funds was a bagatelle to people whom ten years of implacable warfare had rendered blase about all brigandage. Moreover, it was easily conceivable that the snare laid by Bonaparte for Frotte, who was so popular in Normandy, the summary execution of the General and his six officers, the assassination of the Duc d'Enghien, the ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... 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
... young people than those gathered at the breakfast table could not have been found in New London or anywhere else; certainly not at the Griswold where the majority of them were either satiated society girls whose winters had been spent in a mad social whirl, or the blase city youths who at nineteen had already found ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... pflanzt sich auch der Schall in starren und flssigen Krpern fort. Hierauf beruht das sogenannte Fadentelephon[4]. Zwei[5] ber Holzringe ausgespannte Stcke Blase sind durch einen in ihren Mitten befestigten, frei ausgespannten Faden oder Metalldraht verbunden, der mehr als 100 m lang sein kann. Spricht man gegen die eine Membran, so reproduziert die ...
— German Science Reader - An Introduction to Scientific German, for Students of - Physics, Chemistry and Engineering • Charles F. Kroeh
... wasn't that blase. On the Moon, he had seen some of the old Mars of advanced native technology, now long extinct. But there was also the recent Mars of explorers and then footloose adventurers, wondering what they could ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... Miss B, twenty-eight and twenty-five years old respectively, have known one another for several years, and in spite of their occupation, which is supposed to make people blase and cynical—he being a reporter and she a special story writer—are quite in love with each other. But their occupation and income are such that they cannot possibly afford to have and to bring up any children. They would love to get married, but the ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... 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
... 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
... fabric 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
... men bunched excitedly and angrily around Bertie Messener. And Bertie was stirring them up and prodding them in his cool, cynical way. Bertie didn't care about the strike. He didn't care much about anything. He was blase—at least in all the clean things of life; the nasty things had no attraction for him. He was worth twenty millions, all of it in safe investments, and he had never done a tap of productive work in his life—inherited it all from his father and two uncles. ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... 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 al ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... chap, Dan," he remarked, as if he were deeply considering the verity of that statement. "One wouldn't pick you out as a blase individual who is tired of everything the world has to offer. You are as filled with energy and nervous force as any chap I ever knew; and you are not ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... has kept your reviewer awake when he reasonably expected to be otherwise engaged. We do not remember coming across a more fascinating volume, even to a somewhat blase reader whose business it is to read all that comes in his way. The marvels miracles they should be called, of the modern workshop are here exploited by Mr. Williams for the benefit of readers who have not the opportunity of seeing these wonders or the necessary mathematical knowledge to understand ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... whom I wrote from Rome an account of the services you rendered me, and to whom I announced your promised visit, and I may say that both the count and countess anxiously desire to thank you in person. You are somewhat blase I know, and family scenes have not much effect on Sinbad the Sailor, who has seen so many others. However, accept what I propose to you as an initiation into Parisian life—a life of politeness, visiting, and introductions." Monte Cristo bowed without making any answer; he accepted the offer ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... The blase reader may consider that we here manifested the characters of sensitive weaklings. But let him undergo the like! The supernatural, or seemingly so, has always had power to chill the hottest blood. And here was an invisible horror reaching out ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... your Mexicans, but I'm afraid they're too lazy to be very wild. Nothing but a revolution excites them these days and sometimes I think they're getting a bit blase over them. Now and then they wake up over a cock-fight." They walked down the street ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... her glass up to the light and said, "After all, does anything in life really matter?" She appeared very blase in all her desperate young beauty. She and Edgar Tomlinson looked as near right as anything you'd see in Washington Square. Vernabelle said the true spirit of Bohemia knew neither time nor place; it was wherever those gathered who were doing things, ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... 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
... new face the possibilities of a realization of his ideal. It was, perhaps, an unfortunate thing for the women, particularly as he brought to each trial a surprising freshness, which was very deceptive, and quite distinct from the 'blase' familiarity of the man of gallantry. It was this perennial virginity of the affections that most endeared him to the best women, who were prone to exercise toward him a chivalrous protection,—as of ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... 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 the rest. If those whom she liked so much, and with ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... her hands) She's so cold! Quick, Steen, build up the fire! (STEEN goes to the fire and puts on another log, the flames blase up. HOLGER busies himself chafing the woman's hands and covering her with the old cloak that has dropped back from her shoulders) She must have lost her way ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... in the air from some freshly-opened phial; an almost feminine neatness and luxury in an open morocco case like a jewel box on the table, shining with spotless steel. At the head of the bed one of her own servants, the powerful mill foreman, was assisting with the mingled curiosity and blase experience of one accustomed to smashed and lacerated digits. At first she did not look at the central unconscious figure on the bed, whose sufferings seemed to her to have been vicariously transferred to the concerned, eager, ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... deserve it. Where are the letters?" Thurston sprawled across the table for them. One was from Reeve-Howard; he put it by. Another had a printed address in the corner—an address that started his pulse a beat or two faster; for he had not yet reached that blase stage where he could receive a personal letter from one of the "Eight Leading" without the flicker of an eye-lash. He still gloated over his successes, and was cast into the deeps ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... business of the world were done! With half-closed dreamy eyelids he looked silent down upon two ladies who sat opposite to him, rallying, abusing, and admiring him to his vanity's content. They gave him his choice of three names, l'Ennuye, le Frondeur, or le Blase. L'Ennuye? he shook his head; too common; he would have none of it. Le Frondeur? no; too much trouble; he shrugged his abhorrence. Le Blase? he allowed, might be too true. But would they hazard a substantive verb? He would give them four-and-twenty hours to consider, and he would ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... part of the hall the audience could be divided into two species, one less numerous than the other. First, the devotees of music, who went to nearly every concert, extremely knowing, extremely blase, extremely disdainful and fastidious, with precise views about every musical composition, every conductor, and every performer; weary of melodious nights at which the same melodies were ever heard, but addicted to them, as some people ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... had reached that blase period when, only upon rare occasions, did he feel disposed to enlarge his acquaintance. But this fresh-skinned young Britisher went to his heart at once, a kindred soul, and he adopted him forthwith. ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... sentimentalist, an honest, true-born, downright 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 ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... Now Cady was blase, but he had a heart; his sympathies were slow, but he was not insensible to misfortune. Accordingly he responded with a cry of pity, running his eye over his friend to estimate the ravages of Temperance. Midway in its course ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... mingling in her nature of the vices of both sexes; the unbridled licentiousness of the courtesan coupled with the devotion of a man for horses, wine, and fencing; in short, her eccentric character, as it would now be called, kept a passion alive which would else have quickly died away in his blase heart. Nothing would induce him to follow Jeannin's advice to leave Paris for at least a few weeks, although he shared Jeannin's fear that the statement they had been forced to give the stranger would bring them into ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... time for an evening's 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 ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 a ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... 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 ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... blase chauffeur swung the car sharply to the left, past the aviation field, and so came to the wide-scattered settlement—almost a colony—which, hidden behind high, barb-wire-topped fences, carried on the many and complex activities of the partners' experiment station. Here ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... 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 ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... 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 ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... Mikhailov, a cynical and brutal Lovelace who abandons his mistresses when they are with child, is intermingled incessantly with gloomy episodes, such as the agonies of an old man or of a child. It is a book for "blase" people, a book which a reader with moral health will not read without a certain ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... 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. Bridge was just beginning to take hold ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... see 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 unknown ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... between 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 her first university, what was he doing? Polluting himself with a gay and dissipated secret ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in a few years of Mme. Pompadour and wished that he had not encouraged her to run away from her husband. She, however, retained her hold upon the blase and alcoholic monarch by ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... came into the hall, leaning upon the arm of a gentleman. Having requested her escort to get her a glass of water she was left alone a few moments. Hemstead immediately joined her and asked, "Who is that blase-looking man upon whose arm ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... with his brother-officers directly he joined. It was his freshness, his overflowing good spirits, his hearty and unmistakable enjoyment of life, that first won their regard. The boy suddenly dropped into their midst was no blase youth, no mere swaggering puppy. He was afire with the joy of existence, radiant with happiness, excited—and not ashamed to show it—by all the newness and fascination of Indian life. The Major ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... end of them unarmed and at the mercy of every adverse blast. The great dangers which seem to be resulting from the system of upbringing in the last fifteen years are that at seventeen or eighteen most young people are satiated with pleasure and blase with life, while they have no definite aim or end of achievement in view, and absolutely no sense of duty or responsibility to ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... Blase as the Legionaries were and hardened to wonders, the sight of this corridor and of the vast banquet-hall opening out of it, at the far end, came near upsetting their aplomb. The major even muttered ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... the lady, "and I will tell you why. We English—I mean that set of English—are blase. We see each other too much, we are all alike in our ways, and we are awfully tired of it. Therefore it refreshes us and amuses us to ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... Londoners were not simple prairie folk, I thought. How should my friend George Stairs hold that multitude? Two plain men from Western Canada, accustomed to minister to farmers and miners, what could they say to engage and hold these serried thousands of Londoners, the most blase people in England? I had never heard either of the preachers speak in public, but—I looked out over that assemblage, and I was horribly afraid for my friends. A Church of England clergyman and a Nonconformist minister from Canada, and ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... eye, the mind, and the heart of the portrait-painter; and now he read the little actress's behavior with a good measure of precision. Her restlessness, her chattering, the high, unpleasing pitch of her naturally lovely low voice, her assumption of the manner and speech of the blase young person of the stage, he saw to be primarily the cover of nervousness. He understood that the girl was troubled about something, was perhaps suffering, and tried to conceal it in this way. Moreover, he felt ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... 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 interested. They soon ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... 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 ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... rest of the day in London, where it must be admitted he caused a genuine sensation—no mean feat in such a blase place. ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... Are we going to surely catch up with 'em before they get there?" He was encouraging a faint hope that they might slip into the Minnehaha Club and meet the others there, be found in blase seclusion before the fire and quite regain his ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... "he had other uses for the twenty guineas, an invalid sister or an old mother to support!" She had no notion of the cost of brushes, frames, paints, and canvases. Also she forgave him much for the sake of his beautiful eyes and his eager enthusiasm of manner. So many men of thirty were already blase. ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... interest, 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 perdrix [Fr.]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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 ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... Barzillai, son of iron Basil, kingly Bat, son of furrows Beavis, beautiful Ben, son of the right hand Benedict, blessed Benjamin, same as Ben Bennet, blessed Benoni, son of sorrow Berenger, bear spear Beriah, son of evil Bernard, bold as a bear Bertram, bright raven Bertran, fair and pure Blase (or Blaze), babbler Bohemond, God's love Boniface, well-doer Botolph, ruling wolf Boyd, yellow Brithric, bright king Brockwell, champion Bruno, brown Brush, immortal Bryan, strong Cadoe, war Cadogan, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... caprice or coquetry? Your mind is too serious and your soul too honest for such an act; and besides, what would be your object? Such feline cruelties may suit blase women of the world who are roused by the sight of moral torture; who give, in the invisible sphere of the passions, feasts of the Roman empresses, where beating hearts are torn by the claws of the wild beasts of the soul, unbridled desires, insatiate hate and maddened ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... is. But I think I could enjoy ever so many things for years and years without growing blase," said Erica. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... this person with increasing interest. He approached the railing himself and furtively studied the stranger's profile. Then, with an expression in his face less blase than heretofore, he approached the man and stood behind him. Laying a hand on one of the shoulders to prevent his victim ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... live off of the visitors, and 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 up with ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... of Bagnigge, Viscount Paon of Islington, Baron Pancras, Kingscross, and a Baronet, was, like too many of our young men of ton, utterly blase, although only in his twenty-fourth year. Blest, luckily, with a mother of excellent principles (who had imbued his young mind with that Morality which is so superior to all the vain pomps of the world!) it had not been always the young earl's lot to wear ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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
... each vice so regal, they seem to be sought and desired of all men. Where else can be seen in such careless magnificence Dukes of Russia with their polish of manner and their veiled insolence; Englishmen correct and blase; Americans a bit vociferous and truly amused; great ladies of all ages and manners; adventurers high and low; and the beautiful, sparkling women of no name, bravely dressed and barbarously jewelled? Such is the Riviera of to-day; the life imposed ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... But the women were distant. One can't, at such places, Accept as credentials good figures or faces. There was an unnameable something about Mrs. Travers which filled other women with doubt And all men with interest. Roger, blase, Disillusioned with life as he was, felt the sway Of her strong personality, there as she sat Looking out 'neath the rim of her coquettish hat With dark eyes on the sea. Few people had power To draw his gray thoughts from himself for an hour As this woman had done; ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... close of the festivities. There was no doubt as to one's welcome and there was no limit to the length of his stay. Isolation made opportunities for such social intercourse rare and therefore everyone got more "kick" out of these occasions than is possible in our swiftly moving, blase age. ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... 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 ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... 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
... people or things as having a value in themselves and for themselves; they deliberately view them as sources of a personal pleasurable sensation. I do not mean the crude egoist who asks of anything or anybody, "What good is it (or he) for me?" but I mean that connoisseur in emotions, casually blase and bored, who seeks new sensations. This is an introspective deviation of a serious kind, for the connoisseur in emotions rarely is happy and usually is most deeply miserable. Bourget in his remarkable psychological novel, "A Love Crime," has ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... a 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 height, ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... who prided herself on her carefully blase' and supercilious attitude towards life; but this changeling was too much for her. She released the handle, tottered back, and, having uttered a discordant squeak of amazement, stood staring, eyes and ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... habitually shows towards his son a dislike bordering on hatred—such are the sad subjects for study that I have found here. At first I wished to persuade myself that M. Leminof was simply a cold hard character, a skeptic by disposition, a blase grandee, who believed it a duty to himself to openly testify his scorn for all the humbug of sentiment. He is nothing of the kind. The Count's mind is diseased, his soul tormented, his heart eaten by a secret ulcer and he avenges its sufferings by making others suffer. Yes, the misanthrope ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... optimistic in its intellectual beliefs as this is, in an age when only a small minority disbelieve in social progress, and a large majority believe in an ultimate social perfection, there should be such a tired and blase feeling among numbers of young men. This, we think, is due, not to the want of an ultimate ideal, but to that of any immediate way of making for it: not of something to hope but of something to do. A human being is not satisfied and never will be satisfied with being told ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... couple of months in the borders of a Slave State, to study the institutions of the South,—a brother-in-law of Kirby's,—Mitchell. He was an amateur gymnast,—hence his anatomical eye; a patron, in a blase' way, of the prize-ring; a man who sucked the essence out of a science or philosophy in an indifferent, gentlemanly way; who took Kant, Novalis, Humboldt, for what they were worth in his own scales; accepting ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... you would come," she said; and as he helped her out he thrilled to the touch of her hand. At odd times before she had seemed old and blase, but now she was young and all-alive. He dismissed the taxi without a thought of his business and they hurried up to her apartments. She let herself in and as she locked the door behind them she reached up ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... into 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 ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... unsophistication which is the charm of youth, it rekindled now. He looked into her pretty face and felt the subtle waves of young life radiating therefrom. In that large clear eye he could see nothing that his blase nature could understand as guile. The little vanity, if he could have perceived it there, would have touched him as ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... fight with in Europe and the epoch of wars would be over. "I 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, ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... 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 was as blind as a bat, and did not claim ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... 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 him. But ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... before a madonna. He had never been so happy; he was overwhelmed with joy. Until then, he had only thought of business matters. To be rich was the aim of his life; and now he was going to work for happiness. It was all pleasure for him. He was not blase; he amused himself like a child, adorning the rooms which were to be occupied by Jeanne. To his mind nothing was too expensive for the temple of his goddess, as he said, with a loud laugh which lighted up his whole face. ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... 9th Monday 1804 one man Sent back to the river we passed last night to Blase a tree with a view to notify the party on Shore of our passing Set out and passed the head of the (1) Island which was Situated opposit to our Camp last night a Sand bar at the head (2) opsd. this Island a Creek or Bayaue ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... the edge of every desire dulled, the glow of every passion cooled. My answer was simply this: I should try to give him what I constantly and without much effort gave most men—A new sensation. After all it is not such a hard thing to do. Blase men are my especial prey; they can always be reached; their vulnerable points are many, but generally ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... 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 ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... not difficult for the twentieth century reader, even if blase, to understand that "Adam Bede," published when its author was forty, aroused a furore of admiration: it still holds general attention, and many whose opinion is worth having, regard it with ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... is respected and believed in. The best and fairest pass the day in the Corso, and gallant young gentlemen think it worth while to dress elaborately for a few hours of harmless and spirituelle intrigue. A society that enjoys a holiday so thoroughly has something in it better than the blase cynicism of more civilized capitals. These young fellows talk like the lovers of the old romances. I have never heard prettier periods of devotion than from some gentle savage, stretched out on the front seat of a landau under the peering eyes of his lady, safe in his disguise, ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... not in those days so blase to this sort of allocution as they are now; Monsieur de Grandville's appeal had the power of things new, and the jurors were evidently shaken. After this passionate outburst they had to listen to the wily and ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... ranged in appearance from a 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 rob it of all vulgarity. The most ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... 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 one of the stratagems that the contest I had entered required of me. I am ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... troubled thought. "Remember, now, you're the crocus, the first violet, or something like that—not the last rose of summer. Don't think, don't droop! There, that's right! What have you to think or droop about? When you're as old and blase as Humiston there, you'll have a right to ponder the mysteries, but not now. You and I ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... bon vivant, with a blase shrug. "She was a good little quail with more heart than head! ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... all. No 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 a ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... kind found in the following sally of Figaro's (though here an attempt is perhaps made to suggest the image of an animal rather than that of a thing): "Quel homme est-ce?—C'est un beau, gros, court, jeune vieillard, gris pommele, ruse, rase, blase, qui guette et furette, et gronde et geint tout a la fois." [Footnote: "What sort of man is here?—He is a handsome, stout, short, youthful old gentleman, iron-grey, an artful knave, clean shaved, clean 'used ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... invitation only to the extent of throwing his hat on the table. He did not sit or remove his overcoat. He was pale, his eyes were swollen and red, his hair was disarranged, and in all respects he looked unlike his usual blase and immaculate self. His forehead was wet, showing that he had hurried on his way to ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... 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 ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... 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)
... write simply for the refined, the blase, and the squeamish. We must write for that man who goes there on the street with his nose in his newspaper and his umbrella under his arm. We must write for that fat, breathless woman whom I see from my window, as she climbs painfully ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... Southern California resort a world-weary woman, young and beautiful but disillusioned, meets a girl who has learned the art of living—of tasting life in all its richness, opulence and joy. The story hinges upon the change wrought in the soul of the blase woman by this glimpse into a ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... had taken my two distinctly blase daughters to see a popular melodrama. The great audience that packed the theater to the roof went wild, and my young ladies, infected in spite of themselves with the same enthusiasm, gave evidences of a quite ordinary variety of excitement; but I felt ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... horse, an air cushion, a reliable earth-stopper and an anise-seed bag, a man must indeed be thoroughly blase who cannot enjoy a scamper across country, over the Pennsylvania wold, the New Jersey mere, the Connecticut moor, the Indiana glade, the Missouri brake, the Michigan mead, the American tarn, the fen, the gulch, the buffalo wallow, the cranberry ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... would 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 ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... very blase fashion and held out her hand. The spots in the veil seemed to dazzle him; for a moment he did not ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... and Bugs Butler, with a final smirk, left Sally and dived under the ropes. There was a stir of interest in the audience, though the newspaper men, blase through familiarity, exhibited no emotion. Presently Mr. Burrowes reappeared, shepherding a young man whose face was hidden by the sweater which he was pulling over his head. He was a sturdily built young man. The sweater, moving from ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... the 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 |
