good, bad, or indifferent

good, bad, or indifferent

However something or someone may be, take it/him/her as they come. The phrase appears in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1760–67) and is spelled out in Joel Barlow’s poem, “Hasty-Pudding” (1792): “E’en Hasty Pudding, purest of all food, May still be bad, indifferent, or good.”
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer
See also:
  • blivit
  • cetera
  • et cetera
  • damn it
  • no wucking furries
  • kissy
  • kissy face
  • kissyface
  • billie
  • billy
References in periodicals archive
Good, bad, or indifferent, it's news to me that air pollution might be killing people--but I'm going to dig into it more." Tim Crump, a veteran manager at Bowen, reports that "we don't get complaints about pollution at the plant--none I'm aware of."
Burning Atlanta: all the old regulatory weapons couldn't reform the Georgia power plant that is America's single biggest polluter. But a new law is working
I want to suggest that the connection in this text on Good Shepherd Sunday, particularly for the clergy, is not that we are the shepherds, good, bad, or indifferent, but that we are among the sheep.
Good shepherd, good sheep
Major topics include "Vegetarian Diets and Longevity/Mortality," "Vegetarian Diets and Bone Health," and "High Soy Consumption: Good, Bad, or Indifferent?"
International congress on vegetarian nutrition. (Veggie Bits)
In both works, Sextus takes the central question to be whether any things are good, bad, or indifferent by nature.
Against the Ethicists (Adversus Mathematicos XI)
We do not look at movie screens; we are movie screens, and Hollywood merely projects morality - good, bad, or indifferent - onto us.
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