"Dull" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... do not know myself. The catechism may explain it, but I was ever a dull scholar at reading and liked not study. Yes, thy face must be bleached up, and I will begin this very night. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... wharf, overseeing the going away of our goods. Harris, so soon as I gave him key and street-number had posted to Reade Street to attend the silk's reception. Waiting for the coming back of the conveying dray was but a slow, dull business, and I was impatiently, at the hour I've named, walking up and down, casting an occasional glance at the big last trunk where it stood on end, a bit drawn out and separated from that common mountain of baggage wherewith ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... of the brushes that bear on the commutator should be inspected to see that they are clean, and that the entire surfaces make contact with the commutator. The parts that are making contact will look smooth and polished, while other parts will have a dull, rough appearance. If the brush contact surfaces are dirty or all parts do not touch the commutator, draw a piece of fine sandpaper back and forth under the brushes, one at a time, with the sanded side of the paper against the brush. This will clean the brushes ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... invented which held the female mind in thrall save by indirect means. Where would croquet have been, so far as the Ladies were concerned, without its Curates, or lawn-tennis without its 'Greek gods' ... If men played for nothing, they would find it dull enough."—JAMES PAYN] ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... head sadly, and Shivers buried his head on Zoraya's shoulder, pressing his painted cheek close to hers, while the dull roar of the circus, off under the big top, drifted to them faintly, like the sighing of a ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... you everything you want to know about other animals; because it understands their talk quite naturally and without being made. The present parrot declined ordinary conversation, and when questioned only recited poetry of a rather dull kind that went on and on. 'Arms and the man I sing' it began, and then something about haughty Juno. Its voice was soothing, and riding on the camel was not unlike being rocked in a very bumpety cradle. The children ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... cliffs the western sky stood dimmed with gold. The lovers wandered aimlessly over the golf-links to where green mounds and turfed banks suggested to Helena that she was tired, and would sit down. They faced the lighted chamber of the west, whence, behind the torn, dull-gold curtains of fog, the sun was ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... the old man seldom joined in these wild orgies, but when minstrel, or troubadour, or storyteller wandered to his grim lair, the Outlaw of Torn would sit enjoying the break in the winter's dull monotony to as late an hour as another; nor could any man of his great fierce horde outdrink their chief when he cared to indulge in the pleasures of the wine cup. The only effect that liquor seemed to have upon him was to increase ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... dull, gloomy day; and with it came the inevitable leave-taking. The door closed behind me. For the last time I left my home and went alone down the garden to the beach, where the Fram's little petroleum launch pitilessly awaited me. Behind me lay all I held dear in life. And what ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... dull hurt. To him, it had seemed years. But he was nothing to her—just an acquaintance, one of a hundred. But what more, he asked himself, could he have expected? And with the thought came consolation. The painful sense of having lost ground left him. He saw that he had been allowing things to ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... point-blank again and again. A series of metallic clicks was all the harm he did, for Stingaree was in the saddle before the hurled revolver struck the mare on the ribs, and sent the pair flying through the moonlight with a shout of laughter, a cloud of sand, and a dull volley of thunderous hoofs. The overseer picked up his revolver and returned crestfallen to examine it in the lights of ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... under less artificial conditions it is capable of measuring distances and drawing conclusions with all the accuracy needful to its welfare; and the fact that Mr. Rosedale's drawing-room manner lacked perspective made Lily class him with Trenor and the other dull men she knew, and assume that a little flattery, and the occasional acceptance of his hospitality, would suffice to render him innocuous. However, there could be no doubt of the expediency of showing herself in his box on the ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... except that the embers of the fire threw a dull red light on the snow. The shelter seemed but half its former dimensions. The snow had drifted in at its entrance and lay in a bank piled up ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... broke out very soon; and three of the little band died on the first day. This rate mounted higher and higher, and at last smallpox broke out. So dismal was the prospect that the men sank into a dull despair. ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... ne'er-do-well of a son, a year or so younger than Hiram. He was a shrewd, quick-witted lad, idle, shiftless, willful, ill-trained perhaps, but as bright and keen as a pin. He was the very opposite to poor, dull Hiram. Eleazer White had never loved his son; he was ashamed of the poor, slack-witted oaf. Upon the other hand, he was very fond of Levi West, whom he always called "our Levi," and whom he treated in every way as though he were his own son. He tried to train ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... with untiring patience tried to instil into this dull head the principles of logic, the elements of mathematics, and the rudiments of the mnemonic art; but the pupil hated study, and had no faculty of thought; yet he insisted that Bruno should make science clearly known to him! But this was probably only to ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... A Gentleman of this City told me the other day, that he could not believe the People without doors would follow the Congress PASSIBUS AEQUIS if such Measures as SOME called spirited were pursued. It put me in mind of a Fable of the high mettled horse and the dull horse. My excellenct Colleague Mr J. A. can repeat this fable to you; and if the Improvement had been made of it which our very valueable Friend Coll M——- proposd, you would have seen that Confederation compleated long before ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... Book and similar strange exotics of the first period withered and died, and the cult of literature (!) for the British Home was shortly afterwards in full blast. There followed an avalanche of insufferably dull and puerile magazines, in which the word Sex was strictly taboo, and the ideal aimed at was apparently the extreme opposite to real life. It was odd how suddenly the sex note—(as I will call it for ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... of an old man, low in stature, squarely built, clumsily dressed, and standing on large feet. To this uncouth form, add a repulsive face, wrinkled, cold, colorless, and stony, with one eye dull and the other blind—a "wall-eye." His expression is that of a man wrapped in the mystery of his ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... heavy-heartedness. He knew no one in all England, but the spectacle of the mighty metropolis roused him somewhat from his apathy. Anything that was enormous usually found favor with Newman, and the multitudinous energies and industries of England stirred within him a dull vivacity of contemplation. It is on record that the weather, at that moment, was of the finest English quality; he took long walks and explored London in every direction; he sat by the hour in Kensington Gardens and beside the adjoining Drive, watching the ...
— The American • Henry James
... went to their respective homes." The adjective here (if an adjective is thought necessary) should be several. In the adverbial form the word is properly used in the sentence following: John and James are bright and dull, respectively. That is, John is ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... know that. I would rather have Lady Orlay's laugh than another woman's tears. And so would you; for you are a man of common-sense, though deadly dull ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... reached the meridian, and his scorching rays fell full on the rocks, which seemed themselves sensible of the heat. Thousands of grasshoppers, hidden in the bushes, chirped with a monotonous and dull note; the leaves of the myrtle and olive trees waved and rustled in the wind. At every step that Edmond took he disturbed the lizards glittering with the hues of the emerald; afar off he saw the wild goats bounding from crag to ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... veteran stage-producer as a beginning photoplay producer tries to give us a dialogue in the motion pictures, he makes it so dull no one follows. He does not realize that his camera-born opportunity to magnify persons and things instantly, to interweave them as actors on one level, to alternate scenes at the slightest whim, are the big substitutes for dialogue. By alternating scenes rapidly, ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... kicking up a row. I don't take advantage of him. I would scorn it. Outside the routine of duty he doesn't seem to understand more than half of what you tell him. We get a laugh out of this at times; but it is dull, too, to be with a man like this—in the long-run. Old Sol says he hasn't much conversation. Conversation! O Lord! He never talks. The other day I had been yarning under the bridge with one of the engineers, and he must have ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... found in the movement for woman's emancipation. Yellow journalists and milk-and-water litterateurs have painted pictures of the emancipated woman that make the hair of the good citizen and his dull companion stand up on end. Every member of the woman's rights movement was pictured as a George Sand in her absolute disregard of morality. Nothing was sacred to her. She had no respect for the ideal relation ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... finished eating, and as they drew themselves close about the fire there fell a strange silence among them. The lost gold. Rod gazed across at Wabigoon, whose bronzed face was half hid in the dancing shadows, and then at Mukoki, whose wrinkled visage shone like dull copper as he stared like some watchful animal into the flame glow. But it was Minnetaki who sent the blood in a swift rush of joy and pride through his veins. He caught her eyes upon him, shining like stars from out of the gloom, and he ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... had not had the temerity to dream of herself as a woman who possessed attractions likely to lead to marriage, so she was mentally restrained in these days. There was something spinster-like in the tenor of her thoughts. But she would have laid down her life for this dull man's happiness. And of late she had more than once blamed herself ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... previous summer. But the painting of it involved him in difficulties entirely foreign to him—difficulties born of technical timidity of the increasing and inexplicable lack of self-confidence. And deeply worried, he laid it aside, A dull, unreasoning anxiety possessed him. Those who had given him commissions to execute were commencing to importune him for results. He had never before disappointed any client. Valerie could be of very little service ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... gracious manners, and shone in the stiff though elegant society of Vienna,—not brilliant as in Paris or London, but exceedingly attractive, and devoted to pleasure, to grand hunting-parties on princely estates, to operas and balls and theatres. Probably Vienna society was dull, if it was elegant, from the etiquette and ceremonies which marked German courts; for what was called society was not that of distinguished men in letters and art, but almost exclusively that of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... single-handed by Beaumont close to my ear, as it seemed. I caught a momentary glimpse of the great head in the flash and of an enormous hoof amid the belch of fire and smoke seeming to be descending upon Beaumont. In the same instant I fired three chambers of my revolver. There was the sound of a dull blow and then that horrible, gobbling neigh broke out close to me. I fired twice at the sound. Immediately afterward something struck me and I was knocked backward. I got on to my knees and shouted for help at the top of my ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... Minna's garden. The sky was black. There was no one in the street. A cold rain was just falling. The weathercocks creaked. In a house near by a child was crying. The night weighed with an overwhelming heaviness upon the earth and upon his soul. The dull chiming of the hours, the cracked note of the halves and quarters, dropped one after another into the grim silence, broken only by the sound of the rain on ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... was dull in the tree-shade, but glowing in the light; Flashing like an opal-stone, Carved into a flagon; and the colours glanced and ran, Where at first there had seemed ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... same time disdains all other employments, he will have no employment at all, or he will be so poor at all other employments that he will work only now and again in lieu of better men. He will be among the first let off when times are dull, and among the last taken on when times are good. Or, to the point, he will be a member of ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... the edge of the hole and toppled it in. It struck the bottom with a dull crash, on its side, the face twisted up to the light. The ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... the mouth of one of his fellow-exiles: they say (xxxiii. 10), "Our transgressions and our sins are heavy upon us, and we pine away in them, and cannot live." In the same strain the prophet says (xxiv. 23) that in his dull sorrow for the death of his wife he will be an emblem of the people: "ye shall not mourn nor weep, but ye shall ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... have been good-by to cathedrals then," answered her father. "Mr. Primeval Man would have passed so much of his time in the easy chair that he would never have got beyond the age of dull-edged tools." ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... Sunday is a dull day with the street-boys, whatever their business may be. The boot-blacks lose least, but if the day be unpropitious their earnings are small. On such a day the Newsboys Lodge is a great resource. It supplies all that a boy actually needs—lodging ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... wanders slowly by; So pale is he, so dull and shy, The very neighbors in the street Turn round to gaze, when ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... hard and insipid. 2nd, New Guinea sago, of Planche, in rather smaller globules, of a bright red color on one side, and white on the other. 3rd. Grey sago of the Moluccas or brown sago of the English; of unequal globules, from one to three millimetres in diameter, opaque, of a dull grey color on one side, and whitish on the other. This grey color probably arises from long keeping and humidity. 4th. Large grey sago of the Moluccas, exactly resembling No. 3, only that the globules are from ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... people who are likely to be so frank, not to say dull, as the Professor's friends; but how many people there are who travel round the world and see nothing! There is a moral in the story which is probably applicable to at least half of ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... to her; but she said nothing nor seemed to rally from her terrible shock. A dark shadow lay always before her, conscious of nothing present, living over again her frightful experience. Again she seemed sunk in dull apathy. ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... his father to him, "how agreeable the change is of every thing before you? You cannot have yet forgotten how dull every thing appeared to you yesterday; the ground was parched up for want of rain; the flowers had lost their colour, and hung their heads in languor; and, in short, all nature seemed to be in a state of inaction. What can be the reason, that nature has so suddenly put on such a different ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... returned last night after enduring for five weeks the hardest conditions on record. They looked more weather-worn than anyone I have yet seen. Their faces were scarred and wrinkled, their eyes dull, their hands whitened and creased with the constant exposure to damp and cold, yet the scars of frostbite were very few and this evil had never seriously assailed them. The main part of their afflictions arose, and very obviously arose, from sheer lack of sleep, and to-day after ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... the restive but finally obedient Mr. Foulger had sent three thousand pounds to Paris in the unpoetic form of small oblong pieces of paper signed with his own dull signature. Audrey desired to experience the thrill of authentic money. She waited some time in front of a cage, with her cheque-book open on the counter, until a young man glanced at her ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... amidst all her suitors, of an awakening compared with which the life which these others called into being in her was but a deep, dull sleep. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... down and put out the light, they heard a dull, rumbling noise like an approaching thunder storm. Then a hoarse, rough ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... which I find a passage worth transcribing is of much later date, and abounds in initials. The postmark is illegible; but I can just make out the letters PO and L, the two first close together, the third after an interval; and there is internal evidence to show that the letter was written from some dull country place. Might not that place have been Spotswold? the PO and the L of the postmark would fit very well into the name of that village. Again I leave this question to the astute Sheldon. The date ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... was meant to be inobtrusive but that would have flattered the vanity of any other freshman. Freshmen were regaled with stories about her, which they promptly retailed for her benefit, and then sent her flowers as a tribute to her good luck and a recognition of the amusement she added to the dull routine of life at Harding. Seniors who had been duped by the phantom Georgia asked her to Sunday dinner and introduced her to their friends, who did likewise. Foolish girls wanted her autograph, clever ones demanded to know her sensations at finding herself so oddly ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... as far as Nancy was concerned, had been very dull indeed. To be bored, in her creed, was a confession of complete failure; it indicated the most contemptible inefficiency, since she designed the whole fabric of her life with the unique object of keeping herself amused. Nothing bored her ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... galleries and see nothing in the finest masterpieces of Raphael or Angelo. The grace is gone from the picture, the inspiration from the marble; the one is a meaningless collection of colors, the other a dull effigy carved in stone. ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... was born at Marbach, a town of Wurtemberg. At the age of fourteen he was admitted to the military academy at Stuttgart, where, in spite of its dull routine, he secretly educated himself as a poet. At the age of twenty-two, he gave to the world his tragedy of the "Robbers" (composed when he was only seventeen), in which his own wild longings for intellectual liberty found ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... well trained soldiers, going through the drill. The fact is, I here began my public speaking. I canvassed, with Henry and John, the subject of slavery, and dashed against it the condemning brand of God's eternal justice, which it every hour violates. My fellow servants were neither indifferent, dull, nor inapt. Our feelings were more alike than our opinions. All, however, were ready to act, when a feasible plan should be proposed. "Show us how the thing is to be done," said they, "and ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... prince, bitterly, "that I am free to wander through the stupid streets of Potsdam; appear at his table; that my clothes may be soiled by his unbearable four-legged friends, and my ears deafened by the dull, pedantic conversation of his no ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... to the press, but well away from it, stood a dressing-table surmounted by a wide, low swivel-mirror. The table was covered with tapestry under glass. The dull gleam of the tapestry seemed to tone down and control the glittering array of toilet articles in monogrammed gold. Facing the press, stood a large trinity cheval-glass, with swinging wings. In the center of ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... the sappers who waited to blow up the bridge remained at their posts silent and still. Forty yards after passing them I was alone. I stopped in the road and turned to look back. The sun was breaking through the mist, but it was a mournful landscape—dull, soulless. All at once I felt chilled and tired, and for the first time my thoughts turned seriously and intently towards what the newly-arrived day had in store for myself, for the Brigade, ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... that it is very difficult to turn to a passage which in a previous perusal has struck the eye. The eccentricity and whimsicality of the book contributed greatly to its immediate popularity. But the same characteristics which seem brilliant when novel, soon become dull when familiar, and although "Tristram Shandy" will always afford single passages of lasting interest to the lover of literature, the work as a whole is not a little tedious when read continuously from cover ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... trench warfare it is so important that the enemy should not be able to pick out easily the position of groups of men in order to "shell" them, that the armies of all nations use gray or brown or other dull shades. Khaki is a word which came into English through the South African War, when the policy of clothing the soldiers in this way was first begun on a large scale. It comes from a Hindu word, khak, which means "dust." The object of this kind of clothing for our soldiers is that ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... I decided to make straight for Mt. Darwin, which we are rounding. Every sign points to getting away off this plateau. The temperature is 20 deg. lower than when we were here before; the party is not improving in condition, especially Evans, who is becoming rather dull and incapable. [42] Thank the Lord we have good food at each meal, but we get hungrier in spite of it. Bowers is splendid, full of energy and bustle all the time. I hope we are not going to ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... lighted by it are of a most lively verdure, and this happens because the leaves lighted by the sun within the half of the horizon that is the Eastern half, are transparent; and within the Western semicircle the verdure is of a dull hue and the moist air is turbid and of the colour of grey ashes, not being transparent like that in the East, which is quite clear and all the more so in proportion as it ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... a different light from every one else," I said to myself as I walked along, "and even the wisest fails to see you as you are; for even the humblest human soul is like the sun, which one can gaze upon only through a dull medium." ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... when his son was enrolled, it should seem, the plague seized Pericles, not with sharp and violent fits, as it did others that had it, but with a dull and lingering distemper, attended with various changes and alterations, leisurely, by little and little, wasting the strength of his body, and undermining the noble faculties of his soul. So that Theophrastus, in his Morals, when discussing whether men's characters ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... dull man who lived on a bon mot of Moore's for a week; and his lordship once offered a wager of a considerable sum that the reciter was guiltless of understanding its point; but he could get no one to ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... shows that the public wants summer theatres of the highest class. There is no reason why the experiment should not be tried in England. If our enthusiasm for Handel can support Handel Festivals, laughably dull, stupid and anti-Handelian as these choral monstrosities are, as well as annual provincial festivals on the same model, there is no likelihood of a Wagner Festival failing. Suppose, for instance, a Wagner theatre were built at Hampton Court or on Richmond Hill, not to say Margate pier, so that we ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... owners use every effort to enforce the use of knives without teeth, so that the fibre may be fine, perfectly clean and white, to rate as first-class; the native opposes this on the ground that he loses in weight, whilst he is too dull to appreciate his gain in higher value. For instance, presuming the first quality to be quoted in Manila at a certain figure per picul and the third quality at two pesos less, even though the first-class basis price remained firm, the third-class ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... each fond endearment tries To tempt her new-fledged offspring to the skies, They tried each art, reproved each dull delay, Allured to brighter ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... herrings, good and cheap, three a penny!" So crying, he passes along the street, crosses at its end, and comes to where I am standing at the corner. Here he pauses, evidently wishing to fraternize with somebody, as a relief from the dull time and disappointed hopes of trade. I presume I appear a suitable object, as he comes close ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... From noon till 8 P.M. variable winds, hot sultry weather, dull fiery sky and so thick that we could not see above a mile ahead; kept making for Cape Albany (Otway). At 8 short sail and hove to...at 4 A.M. the wind settled into a westerly gale attended with heavy squalls and rain. By 9 A.M. it turned into ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... various other atmospheric commotions, lasted for half an hour, and ceased to attract their attention. The wind, however, continued to increase, and the ears of the four matrons anon caught the sound of a dull, steady roar, which rose above the fitful howling of the blast. They ran to the door and saw a dark cloud shaped like a monstrous funnel moving swiftly towards them from the west. The point of this funnel was scarcely more than one hundred feet from ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... that? Because there are so many people in the world who believe that poverty is not sensitive, that the ill-fed, overworked boy of the slums is as callous as he seems dull. Because so many people believe that the weak and desperate boy can never be anything but a weak and vicious man. Because I came out of that morbid period of adolescence with a sympathy for children that helped ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... was a clock, with a handsome case of dark wood, in a corner, and two or three chairs, with a table and bureau, that had evidently come from some dwelling of more than usual pretension. The clock was industriously ticking, but its leaden-looking hands did no discredit to their dull aspect, for they pointed to the hour of eleven, though the sun plainly showed it was some time past the turn of the day. There was also a dark, massive chest. The kitchen utensils were of the simplest kind, and far from numerous, but every article ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... be a weakness in him rather than a strength that he should always be silent, always guarded, always secret and dark. He had lamented it as an acknowledged infirmity;—as a man grieves that he should be short-sighted, or dull of hearing; but at the age of sixty he had taken no efficient steps towards curing himself of the evil, and had now abandoned all idea of any ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... adorn a table? No one sings or tells a fable In thy presence dull and drear; But the guest who erst was jolly, Laughing, joking, bent on folly, Silent sits ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... larger applicability. There are those of my profession who have a credulity about the action of drugs, a belief in their supreme control and exactness of effect which amounts to superstition, and fills many of us with amazement. This form of idolatry is at times the dull-witted child of laziness, or it is a queer form of self-esteem, which sets the idol of self-made opinion on too firm a base to be easily shaken by the rudeness of facts. But, if you watched these men, you would find them changing their idols. Such too profound belief in mere drugs ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... shiny. The glint or flash of a hunting bow will frighten game. I have often seen rabbits or deer stand until the bow goes off, then jump in time to escape the arrow. At first we believed they saw the arrow; later we found that they saw the flash. Bows really should be painted a dull green or drab color. But we love to see the natural grain of ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... Sir Richard Greville and Lord Overbury! Not for worlds! You may find it dull. Sir Richard lives the life of a hermit, and you won't get anything fit to eat at Lord Overbury's. He never knows what he's eating, and his cook has long given up trying to do credit to herself. I believe that only for his dining-out he'd be starved. Even ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... Jura, that country of reverie and energy, as mountainous countries always are. This young man loved war like a soldier—the Revolution like a thinker. He charmed with his verses and music the slow dull garrison life. Much in request from his twofold talent as musician and poet, he visited the house of Dietrick, an Alsatian patriot (maire of Strasbourg), on intimate terms. Dietrick's wife and young daughters shared in his patriotic feelings, for the Revolution was advancing towards the frontiers, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... speak with grace, that is, effectively. Whenever an author can do this, the fact is proclaimed by the public themselves. Does he lack the dramatic faculty, is he wanting in elocutionary skill, is his deliver dull, are his features inexpressive, is his manner tedious, are his readings marked only by their general tameness and mediocrity, be sure of this, he will speedily find himself talking only to empty benches, his enterprise will cease ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... mind of Atterbury recovered from this cruel blow. As soon as he was himself again he became eager for action and conflict; for grief, which disposes gentle natures to retirement, to inaction, and to meditation, only makes restless spirits more restless. The Pretender, dull and bigoted as he was, had found out that he had not acted wisely in parting with one who, though a heretic, was, in abilities and accomplishments, the foremost man of the Jacobite party. The bishop was courted back, and was without much difficulty induced ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... stores the grain. How long shall sloth usurp thy useless hours, Unnerve thy vigour, and enchain thy powers? While artful shades thy downy couch enclose, And soft solicitation courts repose, Amidst the drowsy charms of dull delight, Year chases year with unremitted flight, Till Want now following, fraudulent and slow, Shall spring to seize thee, like ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... that it has been called the world of silence. This is only comparatively true. The fish has an auditory cavity, which, though simple in itself, certifies the ordinary conviction of sound, but it is dull and imperfect; and perhaps all marine creatures have other means of communication. There is an instance, however, of musical sounds produced by marine animals, which seems to show an appreciation of harmony. In one of the lakes of Ceylon, Sir Emerson ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... cabin floor. Watching my chance, I stole five cans of the milk, and that night, when it was Louis's watch on deck, I traded them with him for a dirk as lean and cruel-looking as Thomas Mugridge's vegetable knife. It was rusty and dull, but I turned the grindstone while Louis gave it an edge. I slept more ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... frigate, of the kind Colonel O'Brien, and dear little Celeste, and the tears trickled down my cheeks as these scenes of former happiness passed through my mind in quick succession. O'Brien did not speak but once, and then he only said, "This is dull work, Peter." ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... sustained flight showed his astonished eyes that they were white, and each bird an enormous flake of SNOW! For an instant the air was filled with these disks, shreds, patches,—two or three clinging together,—like the downfall shaken from a tree, striking the leather roof and sides with a dull thud, spattering the road into which they descended with large rosettes that melted away only to be followed by hundreds more that stuck and STAYED. In five minutes the ground was white with it, the long road gleaming out ahead in the ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... a struggle and escapes them, and he perceives, in a corner filled with shadows, the old Ebionites, dried up like mummies, their glances dull, their eyebrows white. ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... I flow like thee, and make thy stream My great example as it is my theme! {175} Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull, Strong ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... famous books to those who could not read the originals. Alfred deplored the low state of Latin,—but then he could substitute his own language for it, and that not merely because he must, but also because the very scarcity of Latin had favoured the culture of English. For it was in no dull or stagnant time that Wessex had let Latin wane; it was in that vigorous stage of youth and growth when Wessex was fitting herself to take an imperial place at home and raise her head among the nations. ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... he said, touching the old man's hand; "why will not you go out and seek some change from your dull life? What sorrow is it that seems to press so hard on you to-day, and why do you think it necessary to give me words of warning? What ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... still, and anticipate the reproof that was preparing. What was my agreeable surprise to see the old gentleman standing at the stile, with his hands in his pockets, surveying the whole scene with evident satisfaction! And how dull I must have been, not to have known till my friend the grandfather (who, by- the-bye, said he had been a wonderful cricketer in his time) told me, that it was the clergyman himself who had established the whole thing: that it was his field ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... subtile reasonings I have met with in the books of the Peripateticks, and the pretty experiments that have been shew'd me in the Laboratories of Chymists, I am of so diffident, or dull a Nature, as to think that if neither of them can bring more cogent arguments to evince the truth of their assertion then are wont to be brought; a Man may rationally enough retain some doubts concerning ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... want them to sparkle so that when the table is set and the guests come in they'll see how beautiful they really are. See? Notice how dull this one is?" Mom held up one that hadn't been washed yet in her hot sudsy water nor rinsed in my hot clear water nor wiped and polished with my dry clean towel, which Mom's tea towels always were anyway, Mom being an extra clean housekeeper and couldn't help it, on account ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... with utter exhaustion; and I was so slow to realise all, that I hardly knew more than the absolute fact, before a message came hurriedly down that Dora was worse, and I must come instantly. Dermot, who had talked himself into a kind of dull composure, stood up and said he would come again on the morrow, when he was a little rested, for, indeed, he had not lain down since Saturday, ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and dull; children like the bright colours best, and they suit them better too. I see no reason why such natural suitability should not be taken into consideration; but as soon as they prefer a material because ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... through the afternoon, and when he woke the lamp was lit, and a dull yellow half-light lay over the ward. The others seemed to be sleeping; all was very quiet, only the man with the sores was whimpering softly. Then the door opened, and Peer saw Louise glide in, softly and cautiously, with her violin-case under her arm. She did not ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... relief. "Dat's different. I s'pose it mus' be purty dull on dem beeg town; now'ere to go, not'in' to see 'cept ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... handicapped by illness and lack of opportunity, the child who is inherently dull and backward, must be distinguished from the child with nervous instability or definite mental defect. Wherever possible, the training suitable for various improvable types of children should be arranged in connection with the ordinary public schools. ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... philosophers, there is a remarkable inclination to make a virtue of political indifference. Too passionate an absorption in public affairs is felt to be a somewhat shallow performance, and the reformer is patronized as a well-meaning but rather dull fellow. This is the criticism of men engaged in some genuinely creative labor. Often it is unexpressed, often as not the artist or scientist will join in a political movement. But in the depths of his soul there ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... repulsive under the fantastic shadows it so fitfully impressed upon them. The low-ceiled room, too, gained in its sordid aspect. An atmosphere of moral degradation looked out from every shadowy corner, claiming the features of everybody who came within the dull radiance of the two cheap oil lamps swinging from ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... soap-lye restores the original red, though somewhat paler. Artificial alizarine gives the same reaction. Turkey-reds, however, are quite unaffected by acid. Garancine and garanceux reds, if treated first with hydrochloric acid and then with milk of lime, turn to a dull blue. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... to seize the line of the Hudson and thus cut off New England from her sister provinces. But Howe was held fast by Washington's resistance and unable to send a man to the north; while the spirit of New England, which had grown dull as the war rolled away from its borders, quickened again at the news of invasion and of the outrages committed by the Indians employed among the English troops. Its militia hurried from town and homestead to a camp with which General Gates had barred the ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... was Captain Walker, with the fuse, the other was Lieutenant Orton S. Clark, of the 116th New York, then attached to the staff of Charles J. Paine. The long envelope he handed in felt rough to the touch; the light of a match showed its color a dull gray; every inch of ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... black as he hurried from room to room and evidently made a thorough examination of the place, the man reappeared, with the broad eager grin his countenance had worn entirely gone, to give place to a look of concern and scare. It seemed to Murray that the black's face no longer shone but looked dull and ashy, as if he had been startled, and his voice sank to a whisper as he crept up close to the young midshipman ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... headaches he was quite at a loss to account for his situation. He knew vaguely that he was lying flat on his back and that he was being jolted uncomfortably to and fro. His dazed brain registered sensations of pain both dull and sharp from a score of bruised nerve centers. For some reason he could neither move his hands nor lift his head. His body had been so badly jarred by the hail of blows through which he had plowed that at first his mind was too ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... melted from her. He fell back a pace, very white and even trembling, the fire all gone from his eye, which was now turned dull and deadly. ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... she crept forth in her clothes—as she had been all night—and stood for a time listening as if she expected some unusual sound. But all was still, no servant was yet abroad, and she sat down upon the bed, waiting with a dull heavy gleam of the eye that had something awful in it. At last she was aroused by a loud ring at the hall door, which brought a smothered scream to her lips; but she arose and went down stairs, opening the door with ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... and much given to long, lonely wanderings. Accustomed as he had been in boyhood to a solitary life in beautiful scenery, there was something in a fine landscape that was to him like a friend and companion; and he sometimes felt that it would have been worse if he had been in a dull, uniform country, instead of among mountain peaks and broad wooded valleys. Working hard, too, helped him not a little, and conic sections served him almost as well ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... week has been the calmest which we have had since the revolution. We have had no forced illuminations, no planting of trees of liberty, no physical-force demonstrations, no great display of any kind; in fact, we have been decidedly dull. But in some parts of the city, our sovereign lord and master, the Mob, has been graciously pleased to afford us a little interesting excitement by bullying the landlords into giving receipts for their rents, without the usual preliminary ceremony of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... and collected as soon as a child needed her care. She and Deborah sat by my bedside; I knew by the looks of each that there had been no news of Peter—no awful, ghastly news, which was what I most had dreaded in my dull state between ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... meannesses that dim each temporal deed, The dull decay that mars the fleshly weed, And flower of love that seems to fall and ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... ill-bred wives would be fastened upon Mrs. Henry Douglass. Every night, in every billiard-room, in every smoking-room in Berkshire, amusing stories, not always true, would be told of her mistakes; dull folk might find themselves reckoned as humorists by inventing anecdotes about her, and the general gaiety would find itself increased. Furthermore, there was this ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge |
