"Dull" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Penang. The pipe "up anchor" this morning was hailed with delight. Anything to change the dull monotony of the last few weeks. We started with an overcast and rainy sky, and by the next morning had reached Malacca, a small British settlement, essentially Malay, more a village than a town. It lies very low and close to the water's edge, the houses of the natives being ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... man to love a woman as I do,' he went on—'I did not seek to love her, it came upon me before I was aware—before I had ever thought about it at all, I loved her better than all the world beside. All my life, before I knew her, seems a dull blank. I neither know nor care for what I did before then. And now there are just two lives before me. Either I have her, or I have not. That is all: but that is everything. And what can I do to make her have me? ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... my wild endeavour To leave the dull unmoving strand, To hail thee, Sea; to leave thee never, And o'er thy foam to guide for ever My ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... the scoop, and looked at it as if he had never seen such a thing before; he moved about heavily, hardly knowing what he did, but conscious all the while of his own great misery. His limbs seemed half frozen, and a dull pain gathered about his head and in his breast—in fact, everywhere ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... to-night in the pretty detached cottages he passed, and he thought with growing wrath of the trivial errand on which he had been sent. "In happy homes he saw the light," but none of the high purpose of the youth of "Excelsior" fame stirred his heart—rather a dull sense of failure from all high things. What did his life amount to anyway, that he should count one thing more trivial than another? He loved his wife and children dearly, but he remembered a time when his ambition had not thought of being satisfied with the daily grind for a living and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... little figures another experience quite as strange. It was at the close of a dull winter's day,—a day from which all out-of-door festivity seemed to be naturally excluded: there was a baleful promise of snow in the air and a dismal reminiscence of it under foot, when suddenly, in ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... like to hear of Mr. and Mrs. Marsh. Charlotte is excessively plain, and I am afraid excessively dull, but it is satisfactory to see that she regards her husband as a superior being, not to be spoken of save with bated breath. Mr. Marsh is rather too stout for his years, and I should think very self-indulgent; whenever his wife looks at him, he unconsciously falls into the attitude of ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... a cloud in the sky. The night may be perfectly calm. Mosquitoes in vast numbers are busy with their sharp stings. Suddenly a rustling in the woods may be heard afar off. The noise increases into a dull roar. Clouds appear above the horizon. Still all is calm. The mosquitoes vanish. The dogs are howling in anticipation of danger. As if by magic, dark masses of clouds cover the heavens like a curtain. They are rent asunder, thunder roars, lightning flashes, and the wind, like ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... the door there appeared the figure of a small woman dressed in plain and poor black garments. She silently lifted her black net veil and disclosed a dull, pale, worn, weary face. The forehead was low and broad; the eyes were unusually far apart; the lower features were remarkably small and delicate. In health (as the consul at Mannheim had remarked) this woman must have possessed, ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... young man with dull brick colored hair, who was punching out some kind of a problem on a small ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... round for Tom, who should have been there to mend a tire. He saw nothing at first: only a few electric lamps studding the darkness; a faint glimmer lighting up a number of properties; farther on, the dull gleam of stacked-up bikes; and, lastly, Tom, with his cap cocked back and trousers turned up, ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... opening, and make plenty of money without a word of it reaching Charles's ears. Perhaps, after all, he was getting on well. Perhaps it would end in people saying, "See, at last Monsieur Alphonse shows what he is fit for, now that he is quit of his dull and crabbed partner!" ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... feeling, not of excitement. Let your religion, your duties, every thought and word, be ruled by the affections, not by the emotions, which are the expressions of them. Do not consider whether you are glad, sorry, dull, or spiritual at any moment, but be yourself—what God ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... much more than they appear— The simplest animals are teachers here. The bare dull moral weariness soon brings; The story serves to ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... crew. In those volumes of departed rubbish he sinks very low, whenever he essays to mount; but his dulness is innoxious, for few there be who can say, "We have read him." His "Book about Doctors" is the best literary venture he has yet made. It is not a dull volume. The anecdotes so industriously collected keep attention alert, and one feels inclined to applaud Mr. Jeaffreson as the leaves of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... can present them—give me these, I say, and I shall never sigh for the far-famed and long-deplored comforts of a box in a coffee-room, like a pew in a parish church, though certainly not so well cushioned, and fully as dull, with a hot waiter and a cold beefsteak—the only thing higher than your game being your bill, and the only thing less drinkable than ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... gallantry, which often involves the murderer in a death more cruel than that he has given, he pointed to the Florentine traitor with his amiable smile and his deadly poison. He indicated certain powders and potions, some of them of dull action, wearing out the victim so slowly that he dies after long suffering; others violent and so quick, that they kill like a flash of lightning, leaving not even time for a single cry. Little by little Sainte-Croix became interested in the ghastly science that ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... yet, the door was again opened, and Cethegus entered with the others, dull, gloomy, and crest-fallen; but Catiline was in a state of excitement so tremendous, that he saw nothing but ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... with the hope of getting a larger wage; but there was very little difference between the pits. Everywhere I went, labour and wages were about the same. Everywhere life had the same dull, monotonous round. It was a writhing, squirming mass of blackened humanity struggling for a mere physical existence, ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... dull, dark green of hemp breaks the unvarying stretches of maize, and far away there is a tanya (cottage) with a group of stunted acacias near it, and a well whose tall, gaunt arm stretches weirdly up to the sky, whilst to the south the sluggish Maros winds its slow course lazily ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... lived up three flights, in one of the big barracks that give to the lower end of Essex Street the appearance of a deep black canon with cliff-dwellers living in tiers all the way up, their watch-fires showing like so many dull red eyes through the night. The hall was pitch-dark, and the whole building redolent of the slum; but in the stuffy little room where the pedler lived there was, in spite of it all, an atmosphere of home that set it sharply apart from the rest. One of these visits I will always remember. I ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... dull leathery black. Its thick, hairless hide hung in creases and folds on a gaunt frame. Shorter than the tree-eater, it was still a thing of mammoth ugliness. Its hind legs were powerful and armed with claws that curved deep into the earth; its front legs displayed the same fearful ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... speech gave her courage, and she said more; and even as Guida listened hungrily—so soon had come upon her the apprehensions and wavering moods of loving woman!—she was wondering to hear this creature, considered so dull by all, speak as though out of a watchful and capable mind. What further Maitresse Aimable said was proof that if she knew little and spake little, she knew that little well; and if she had gathered ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... again excuse my long, and perhaps you will think presumptuous, discussion. Enclosed is a note from Emma to Mrs. Horner, to beg you, if you can, to give us the great pleasure of seeing you here. We are necessarily dull here, and can offer no amusements; but the weather is delightful, and if you could see how brightly the sun now shines you would be tempted to come. Pray remember me most kindly to all your family, and beg of them to accept our ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... heads of the third and fourth metatarsal bones. It is most often met with in adults between thirty and forty, is commoner in women than in men, and is often combined with flat-foot. The patient complains of a dull aching or of intense cramp-like pain in the anterior part of the foot. The pain is usually relieved by rest and by taking off the boot. It may be excited by pressing the heads of the metatarsals together or by grasping the fourth metatarso-phalangeal ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... had reached the Acropolis and had referred, in the hearing of the most eminently dull of the many distinguished members of that club, to the possibility of a girl's experiences of man being likened to an astronomer without a telescope, that he ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... in a thousand places on every side of the silent and deserted wreck. The sea had subsided to such a state of utter rest that it was only at long intervals that the huge and helpless mass, on which the ark of the expectants lay, was lifted from its dull quietude, to roll heavily, for a moment in the washing waters, and then to settle lower into the greedy and absorbing element. Still the disappearance of the hull was slow, and even tedious, to those who looked forward with such impatience to its total immersion, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... were vulgar enough to like it. I like young people because theyre not too afraid of dirt to live. Ive grown out of the mud pies; but I like slang; and I like bustling you up by saying things that shock you; and I'd rather put up with swearing and smoking than with dull respectability; and there are lots of things that would just shrivel you up that I think ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... verses, cut them out of the Croppy, and locked them in the box in which he stored the few papers of interest he possessed. The sorrowful judgment pronounced on his conduct affected him, but only in a dull way, like an additional blow upon a limb already bruised to numbness. He accepted his new duties and performed them without any feeling of enthusiasm, and after a little while without any definite hope of doing any good. He got no further in understanding the people he had to deal with, and ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... leaving him: to remain, according to the notions of her parents, would be wrong. Why was it that doing wrong agreed with her, energized her, made her more alert, cleverer, keying up her faculties? turned life from a dull affair into a momentous one? To abandon Ditmar would be to slump back into the humdrum, into something from which she had magically been emancipated, symbolized by the home in which she sat; by the red-checked tablecloth, the ugly metal lamp, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... increased to a small crowd and their dull humor had taken the form of cheerfully offering much gratuitous advice. "Tie into it, Slim—build up the old muscle." "Back her up and take a good run." "Go home an do some settinup exercises—come back next year." "Got to put the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... For there was magic in this day that had started so badly. It was only waiting for Eric to see it before it would take hold of him and carry him away into happiness. It had waited for him at the door of the dull, bare little house that had never been home to him, but his tears would not let him see it. So it had followed along beside him all the way to the factory, waiting for him to feel, even if he could not see. And he did feel,—just in time to let ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... this indifference! It is heartlessly ungrateful. Dogs lick the hand that feeds them; ox and ass in their dull way recognise something almost like obligation arising from benefits and care. No ingratitude is meaner and baser than that of which we are guilty, if we do not requite Him 'in whose hands our breath is, and whose are all our ways,' by even ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... at the head of an army. Metal weapons hung at the sides of his men, crudely fashioned bludgeons and jagged-edged swords, all quickly forged in the workshops of the Region of Mines. The babble of mind voices swelled around him, fear and anger and boredom, dull resentment, and other emotions Rynason could not identify. They were marching on the City ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... very dull of comprehension, my good man. I repeat, that, if the Prophet's animals have killed your horse, the Prophet himself has been badly wounded; so you may cry quits. In other words, you owe him nothing, and he owes you nothing. Now ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the cup that will stop that "gone" feeling so common after a near-breakfast. The man at work might once have found solace in a glass of beer; now, perhaps, he smokes an extra cigarette. It is well understood that children grow listless and dull before noon, when an insufficient breakfast is eaten. One who has breakfast leisurely at nine o'clock may be satisfied with a roll and a cup of hot drink, but a commuter with a trip ahead to office or shop, and the farmer who must make an early ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... genius, transcendent, unfortunate, noble in endeavour, unequal in accomplishment, typifies the ambiguous movement of the time. For still the flood of 'Precious' literature poured from the press—dull, contorted epics, and stilted epigrams on my lady's eyebrow, and learned dissertations decked out in sparkling tinsel, and infinitely long romances, full of alembicated loves. Then suddenly one day a small pamphlet in the form of ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... herself to be persuaded into accepting Mr. Latham's invitation. Life on the hill was growing a bit dull for Miss Sallie. She dreaded the long trip, but Mr. Latham's place lay between their hill and the town ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... could set off. After I had slept all the morning, he slept most of the afternoon. During his nap I found, behind the water-jar in the hut, a hatchet-head, with the handle broken off and what was left of it jammed in the hole. It was small, but not very rusty or dull. Before Agathemer wakened I had it well sharpened. We had found a mallet in the storehouse, and, with this and a cornel-wood peg he whittled with his sheath-knife, Agathemer drove out the broken bit of hatchet handle. He then fashioned with his sheath-knife a good handle of tough, seasoned ash ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... taking up a dropsical limb without hurting it, and of removing the cataract from the eye without the knife, and of starting the circulation through the shrunken arteries without the shock of the electric battery, and of putting intelligence into the dull stare of lunacy, and of restringing the auditory nerve of the deaf ear, and of striking articulation into the stiff tongue, and of making the stark-naked madman dress himself and exchange tombstone for ottoman, and of unlocking from the skeleton grip of death the daughter ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... shower of rain fell about three o'clock A.M.; it detained us in our camp until five, when we embarked. Why should I relate to you our dull progress through fields of rice—through intricate channels, and amidst myriads of ducks and wild water fowl. This day has been hot, beyond any experience on the journey. I sank back in my canoe, in a state of apathy and lassitude, partly from the heat, and partly from indisposition. My thoughts ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... by the fish-wives, the sickening sensations he had felt on close, damp days, the continuous indigestion which had afflicted his delicate stomach, and the latent hostility which was gathering strength against him. All these things he now accepted as chastisement. That dull rumbling of hostility and spite, the cause of which he could not divine, must forebode some coming catastrophe before whose approach he already stooped, with the shame of one who knows there is a transgression ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... first disclosed to me the nature of his feelings; I first told him who I was, and detected that enthralment of his will which you speak of; and he, reposing a just confidence in me, made his secret mine. He can witness whether I applauded his determination and his choice; for I am not so dull of understanding, Preciosa, as not to know how omnipotent is beauty; and yours, which surpasses all bounds of loveliness, is a sufficient excuse for all errors, if error that can be called for which there is so irresistible a cause. I am grateful to you, senora, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... into the black night. 'Maritime Calais' is left to well-earned repose; but for an hour or so only, until the returning mail arrives, when it will wake up again—a troubled and troublous nightmare sort of existence. Now for a plunge into Cimmerian night, with that dull, sustained buzz outside, as of some gigantic machinery whirling round, which seems a sort of lullaby, contrived mercifully to make the traveller drowsy and enwrap him in gentle sleep. Railway sleeping is, after all, a not unrefreshing form of slumber. There ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... all by a vague sense that he was going whither his heart-strings pulled. If he had been a more experienced traveller, he might have noticed some signs that things were, as Judy Ahern had said, out of joint. It was harvest-time, and the weather was not wet, though dull and chilly, but nobody was working in the fields. Nothing seemed to move in them, as they lay deserted, except trails of a white mist that drifted low among the furrows, where the potato-haulms looked strangely discoloured, speckled and blackened, as if a shrivelling ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... hear, for the windows of the big badly-lit room into which the man had conducted them clattered in their frames, while the dull, heavy report was preceded by a vivid flash ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... Redding served the various dishes and changed the plates which Anthony handed from his place. It was gracefully done and so simply that the absence of a maid was a thing to be enjoyed rather than regretted. When Juliet, in the softly sweeping dull-red frock which made of her a warm picture for a winter's night, slipped from her chair and moved about the room, or brought in from the kitchen a steaming dish, she seemed the ideal hostess, herself bestowing ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... to Heppach to salute the new Reverend Mother, and suggesting that he should come too. But his plain speaking had had its reward, no invitation had come for him. Under the circumstances, he writes, he could not think of going; besides he had been there several times before, and had found it very dull; it was clearly John's duty to go, as he had not been once in twenty years, although his parish was only three miles from Heppach. However the breach was healed, and a proper invitation came for ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... "A dull yellow like a rainbow, only more pointed, and my skipper said to me, 'Sir Owen, that is one of them hurricanes; if I knew which way she was going I'd try to get out of the way as fast as I could, for we shall be torn to pieces in a very few minutes.' I assure ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... Western world many are present out of respect or rule, having no sympathy with the devotions, sending out antagonistic aura which neutralizes the effect of worship, and makes it cold, formal, flat, dead, and dull, for there is not the right concentrated spiritual thought in the room, which is very essential for ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... languidly, "come and see me when you can, and I'll walk over to your quarters—I suppose I should so call them—and have a smoke with you occasionally. I expect to be awfully dull here, but between the river and the mountains I shall ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... last of Rosie's dull-green frock in the one hothouse in which there were flowers. Through the glass roof he could see the red disks of poinsettias and the crimson or white of azaleas coming into bloom. The other two houses sheltered long, level rectangles ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... was the house silenced than the wind arose. It smote the wooden framework with an unexpected buffet almost like an earthquake. The bamboo grove began to rattle like bones; and the snow slid and fell from the roof in dull thuds. ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... bowels of the monarchy"; "the Herculean labour of the honourable member, who will find himself quite disappointed when he has at last brought forth his Hercules"—such are a few of the rhetorical gems which occasionally sparkled in the dull quartz of his plentiful output. Nevertheless, so manly was his bearing, so dogged his defence, that he always gained a respectful hearing; and supporters of the Government plucked up heart when, after a display of dazzling rhetoric by Grattan or ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... they travel six miles a day, and cattle they ain't so much faster, so we brings 'em all the news. The Company has stables here, and feed, and we change horses. The old man and old woman keep it, with a boy or two. Mighty dull for the old woman, I should think, with on'y the ghost to keep her company. She was her cousin or her aunt or somethin', the ghost was, and, Lord, women is fools an' no mistake." It was July, and the winter rains had just fallen, ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... lawyer accompanied him. She had no friends of her own age, and Mrs. MacGregor wasn't, to say the least, companionable. And the books she was compelled to read bored her to distraction. She took it for granted they must be frightfully good, they were so frightfully dull! The deadliest, dullest of all seemed to be reserved for Sunday. She didn't mind going to church; in church you could watch other people, even though Mrs. MacGregor sat rigidly erect by your side, and expected you to be able to find your place in a Book of Common Prayer entirely unfamiliar to you. ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... greatness; he was an able warrior, an energetic legislator, a hero of poetry. And he united, he displayed all these merits in a time of general and monotonous barbarism when, save in the church, the minds of men were dull and barren. Those men, few in number, who made themselves a name at that epoch, rallied round Charlemagne and were developed under his patronage. To know him well and appreciate him justly, he must be examined under those various grand aspects, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... at Sir John, and he gave me a satisfied nod as he tried one of the seals, and then we both stood as if turned to stone, for from just at my feet there came a dull knocking sound, and as I looked down, I could see ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... would have become aware that a fanlike arrangement of sharply convergent lines, tempting his eye to run rapidly into their various angles, must be thought of as a chessboard of dikes, hedges, and roads, dull as if drawn with a ruler on a slate. Also that the foothills, instead of forming a monumental mass with the mountains behind them, lay in a totally different plane and distracted the attention by their aggressive projection. While, as if to spoil the aspect still more, he ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... these two types are well known to us; those of Sreng were chisel-shaped, round-edged, socketed celts; the De Danaan lances were long and slender, like our spears. There are two materials also—a beautiful golden bronze, shining and gleaming in the sunlight, and a darker, ruddier metal, dull and heavy; and these darker spears have sockets for greatly thicker hafts. Both also carried swords, made, very likely, the one of golden, the ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... the habit of calling for her. But he found it dull to sit on a chair in the goods department and have the porters knocking against him. He was always in the way. And when he tried to talk to her as she sat at her desk with the penholder behind her ear, she interrupted him ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... dull, he thought it would be nice to see a three-story house filled with beautiful furniture, and with vessels of silver and gold. So he rubbed the watch, and there it all was. Jenik went to look for his father, and said to him: 'You offered me no feast of welcome, but permit me to give one to ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... and held a festival that night in honour of the Sheikh Abdulcadir. On the morrow, Shemseddin gave his son ten thousand dinars, saying, 'O my son, when thou comest to Baghdad, if thou find stuffs brisk of sale, sell them; but if they be dull, spend of these dinars.' Then they loaded the mules and taking leave of their friends, set ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... and dutifulness could coexist with liveliness and great charms of mind and manners; and when the fact was out of sight, he went back to his old notion, that affectionate parents and dutiful daughters must be dull, prudish, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... regiment was immediately afterwards pushed forward. As company after company descended, their pipes playing, they were rapidly lost to sight in the thick smoke beneath, and their position could only be judged of by the sharp crack of their rifles, in contradistinction to the dull roar of the ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... impious assault of reason or innovation. The constitution was sacred to him as the voice of the Church and the oracles of her saints are sacred to the faithful. Study it, he cried, until you know how to admire it, and if you cannot know and admire, rather believe that you are dull, than that the rest of the world has been imposed upon. We ought to understand it according to our measure and to venerate where we are not able presently to comprehend. Well has Burke been called the Bossuet ...
— Burke • John Morley
... residence. As a rule the exterior of the ordinary house was little regarded. No architecture was wasted upon it; decoration and other magnificence belonged to the interior. Provided a house possessed a more or less imposing doorway its exterior walls might be left either to shops or to a dull monochrome of stucco, pierced here and there, if necessary, at 9 or 10 feet from the ground by barred slits, which cannot be called windows, for the admittance of light. The general principle of a Roman house, as of a Greek, was that ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... might have known it. But over me there came a rush of fear and anger and hurt pride; and died, leaving a strange, dull aching. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... unscrewed the pliers from her stump, put the knife in, and was arranging her scarf so it made a sling for the maimed arm—I wondered why but had no time to waste guessing, even if I'd wanted to, for at that moment a small dull silver plane, beetle-shaped more than anything else, loomed out of the haze beyond the cracking plant and came silently drifting ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... broad screen of life. By study of him, the nothing new under the sun can be made fresh and fragrant by the supreme art of putting things. Though none of us can handle his wand, all of us can be transformed by it into something different from and finer than our dull selves. That is our delight, that is our debt, both due to him, and long may he remain with us to brighten, to broaden and to better our souls with the magic mirth and with the mirthful magic of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... between a live play and a dead one is that in the former the characters control the plot, while in the latter the plot controls the characters. Which is not to say, of course, that there may not be clever and entertaining plays which are "dead" in this sense, and dull and unattractive plays ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... people who oppose are more or less intellectual than the people who advocate Birth Control, but only that they have fundamentally contrasted general ideas,—that, mentally, they are DIFFERENT. Very simple, very complex, very dull and very brilliant persons may be found in either camp, but all those in either camp have certain attitudes in common which they share with one another, and do not share with those in ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... quite surprised to find that she remained the same size. To be sure, this is what generally happens when one eats cake; but Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... abominable to mutiny. Ah, it is the doctor. Pardon, this light is not good, and they have boarded up the windows. We must live in darkness," she added peevishly. "But how are you, doctor? You have not been to cheer us lately. It is a dull ship." ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... Continue your insults; defame the name of an honest man who is attimpting to convey to yer dull comprehinsions some idea of the wonders of the acrobatic ring. I'll turn a hand-spring for yez meself that will illustrate what I mane," and Mr. McFudd carefully removed his coat and ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Always knit one row of the cord across plain after knitting in scraps of silk, as doing this holds them firmly in position. Of course, Mary, you will use judgment and taste in combining light and dark, bright and dull colors. Also, do not use several scraps of velvet together. Use velvet, silk and satin alternately. Should any scraps of silk be longer than others after knitting, trim off evenly so all will be of uniform size. When her rug was finished, Aunt Cornelia spread it, wrong side uppermost, on an ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... here, and not always to that. He has no taste for embroidery, or Miss Ringgan's crewels would receive more of his notice—he listens to my spirited conversation with a self-possession which invariably deprives me of mine!—and his ear is evidently dull to musical sensibilities, or Florence's harp would have greater charms. I hope there is a web weaving somewhere that will catch him—at present he stands in an attitude of provoking independence of all the rest of the world. It is curious!" ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... poetical and fanciful," said Rex, glancing down into the beautiful brilliant face beside him. "My thoughts are so dull and prosy compared with yours, are you not afraid you will have a ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... is a lighthouse-keeper, and welcomes me in a quiet way, glad, evidently, to see the face of a civilized being. It is very solitary, he says. I should think so. It is the end of everything. The Mediterranean waves beat with a dull thud on the worn crags below. The rocks rise up to the sky behind. There is nothing there but the sun, an occasional sail, and quiet, petrified Capri, three miles distant across the strait. It is an excellent place for a misanthrope ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... ache—this silence of greatness; and it became a relief to shift one's gaze to the reality of one's near neighbourhood—the grass, and the rhododendron bushes, and even the dull walls of ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... "Dear, brave Connie!" she exclaimed, "we must go help her, 'Randa." And as they went she added, pausing at the head of a stair, "Ah, dear! if we, poor sinners all, could in our dull minds only multiply the awful numbers of war's victims by the woes that gather round any one of them, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... dull music for you, I'm afraid. Whoa, you lop-sided hay-barge! Stand still till I give you orders to move, will ye! That's what I warned you, Cap'n Sears; not much goin' on around here. You'll be ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... million of dollars. For some years I went up and down through the South and West in the service of this Association. I went in and out of the rooms at No. 56 Reade Street, New York, and I must have been very dull not to know pretty well the inside workings of this Association. I have been among workers on the field. I know how closely everything is reckoned, how carefully every penny is spent; and I know how the demands of the work and the needs press upon the workers in the field, so that they look ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... "You are dull, Olaf. I have heard that these Easterns love music, especially if it be of a sort they do not know. Why, therefore, should not a blind man and his daughter—no, his orphaned niece—earn an honest living as travelling musicians in Egypt? These Prophet worshippers, I am told, think it a great sin ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... variable in vigor, productive, healthy. Canes long, numerous, dark brown with thin bloom; nodes enlarged; internodes long; tendrils intermittent, bifid or trifid. Leaves large; upper surface dark green, dull, rugose; lower surface grayish-green, pubescent; lobes one to five, terminal one acute; petiolar sinus deep, variable in width; basal sinus shallow, narrow; lateral sinus a notch; teeth deep, wide. Flowers self-fertile, open in mid-season; ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... not long since I was a cold, dull stone! I recollect That by some means I knew that I was stone; That was the first dull gleam of consciousness; I became conscious of a chilly self, A cold, immovable identity. I knew that I was stone, and knew no more! Then, by an imperceptible advance, ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... rewarded him, and hastened back to the castle to tell the King. When he heard the news he had a great tower built as quickly as possible, and there the Princess was shut up, and the King and Queen and her two brothers went to see her every day that she might not be dull. The eldest brother was called 'the Great Prince,' and the second 'the Little Prince.' They loved their sister dearly, for she was the sweetest, prettiest princess who was ever seen, and the least little smile from her was worth more than a hundred pieces of gold. When Rosette was fifteen ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... her relations toward ourselves, and thus occupied by country diversions of her own choosing, Miss Jessie passed her time at The Glen Tower, excepting now and then a dull hour in the long evenings, to her guardian's satisfaction—and, all things considered, not without pleasure to herself. Day followed day in calm and smooth succession, and five quiet weeks had elapsed out of the six during which her stay was to last without any ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... at any moment submerge all this phantasmal life in a sea of molten lava. And, hark! through the sounds of the roads and the streets, the chaffering of the market-place, the rush of motor-cars, the rhythmic tramp of men, there comes a dull, hollow roar, as from the ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... his three-fold personality as Marcel Troyon, Michael Lanyard, and the Lone Wolf. Had any one of these names been uttered in his hearing just then it would have meant nothing to him—or little more than nothing: he was for the time being merely himself, a shell of sensations enclosing dull embers of vitality. ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... not been aware that I was to travel on the same ship, and I also never dreamt that I would have had the good fortune of being in such good and agreeable company during a voyage which otherwise would have been extremely dull. Accordingly, when we met again thus accidentally on the deck of the Higo, the event was as much to our mutual ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... sort of dull despair, and so manifest was his lack of ginger and the spirit that wins to success that for an instant, I confess, I felt a bit stymied. It seemed hopeless to go on trying to steam up such a human jellyfish. Then I saw the way. With that extraordinary quickness of mine, I realized exactly what ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... acquired, and not only by the two principal contributors, though the writers were still working within very narrow metrical limitations. In 1559 appeared the Mirrour for Magistrates, for the most part dull and uninteresting but containing in the Induction and the Complaint of Buckingham two contributions by Thomas Sackville (afterwards Lord Buckhurst) which are a good deal more than clever verse-making. But after one other experiment—the part-authorship of the first English ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... was an agreeable sound, just then, and nobody referred to the event again. Yet, as has been told, the evening was a dull one for most of the party, the singing of the "rounds" its greatest amusement. Just as this ended, Dr. Jones appeared to read ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... every size and age, some being a clear, colorless onyx, while others proclaim their great age in the fact that they have so deteriorated that the onyx texture is either partly or completely lost, and what was once a pure drip crystal has returned to a common, porous, dull-colored limestone so soft that portions can be rubbed ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... chin-deep amongst the century of ledgers that testified of gainful years gone by, and were now mustily rotting away in the stagnant air of St. Benet's Sherehog: interest had lost its interest for him, profits profited not, speculation's self had dull, lack-lustre eyes, and all the hard realities of utilitarian life were become weary, flat, and stale. Sir Thomas was a miserable man—a bereaved old man—who nevertheless clung to what was left, and struggled not to grieve for what was lost: there was a terrible strife going on secretly within ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... other way, it seems he made him sit for his picture. The studio was never without an unfinished portrait of the King. From eighteen to fifty-four he sat to Velasquez—and it is always that same tall, spindle-legged, impassive form and the dull, unspeaking face. There is no thought there, no aspiration, no hope too great for earth, no unrequited love, no dream unrealized. The King was incapable of love as he was of hate. And Velasquez did not use ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... There's a dull pain keeps knocking at my heart, Dolefully saying, "Set thy house in order, For thou shalt surely die, and shalt not live! For me the shadow on the dial-plate Goeth not back, but ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... giving out of their poverty help to others, poorer still. We see many Chinese Christians who were once narrow and avaricious, giving out of their hard-earned month's wages, or more, yearly, to help the church's work. We see dull and uneducated people drinking in new ideas, mysteriously growing in their knowledge of Christian truth, and learning to shape their lives by its teachings. We have seen proud, passionate men, whose word was formerly law in their village, ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... Sullivan, speaking of the use of tobacco, says, "It has never failed to render me dull and heavy, to interrupt my usual alertness of thought, and to weaken the powers of my mind in analyzing ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... edit the Troy Budget, a Bucktail newspaper; but he preferred to read, sitting with his unblacked boots on the table, careless of his dress, and indifferent to his personal appearance. He looked dull and inactive, and people thought he lacked the industry and energy so necessary to success in any profession; but when the Budget appeared, its editorials made men read and reflect. It was the skill with which he marshalled facts in a gentle and winning ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... soon after leaving this camp a dull roar ahead told of our approach to Ashley Falls, for which we were on the lookout. The left bank was immediately hugged as closely as possible and we dropped cautiously down to the head of the descent. An immense rock stuck up in the middle of the river and the ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... modern notions generated by mere wealth the worst is this: the notion that domesticity is dull and tame. Inside the home (they say) is dead decorum and routine; outside is adventure and variety. This is indeed a rich man's opinion. The rich man knows that his own house moves on vast and soundless wheels of wealth, ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... last, everything was just right. I shall never forget Larry's face when he looked at the turkey; nor Peter's when he saw his watch; nor that sweet, sweet Kitty's smile when she kissed her dolly; nor the tears in poor, dull Sarah Maud's eyes when she thanked me ...
— The Bird's Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... led, In quick short glance each moment tow'rds him fled. How he, too, seemed to shun her speech and gaze, And yet he always lingered where she was; Though nothing in his aspect or his air Told that he knew she was in presence there; But an appearance of constrained distress, And a dull tongue of moveless silentness, And a down drooping eye of gloom and sadness, Oh! how unlike his former face of gladness. "'Tis plain! too plain! and I am lost," she cried; And in that thought her ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... of numbers and arrangements that come across one in the day. Other people noticed nothing. To me it was all alive—everything was alive. Sometimes I was so happy, so ecstatic, I could hardly breathe. The people who pitied me seemed to me dull and crawling beings. If they ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it will be printed in grave-looking histories, and will perhaps seem very dry and dull to the young people who have to commit to memory the strange names of men and places, and perhaps, the dates of ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... enormous yellow gravel-pit like an emptied lake gaped to heaven. Farther on, in the distance, a canyon zigzagged toward the horizon, rugged with pine-clad mountain crests. Nearer at hand, and directly in the line of the road, was an irregular cluster of unpainted cabins. A dull, prolonged roar vibrated in the air. McTeague nodded his head as ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... favorite in the division to which his brigade belonged. He was a good soldier, but a dull companion. He was also accused of hauteur and of an unsoldierly reserve with his ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... She was immensely happy to be free of the place, and yet loath to go. Queen's Crawley was abominably stupid, and yet the air there was somehow purer than that which she had been accustomed to breathe. Everybody had been dull, but had been kind in their way. "It is all the influence of a long course of Three Per Cents," Becky said to herself, and was ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for power should be able to launch destruction upon Canadian hearts and homes was intolerable. I looked down the Ypres road, and there, to my horror, saw the lovely City lit up with flames. The smoke rolled up into the moonlit sky, and behind the dull glow of the fires I saw the Cloth Hall tower stand out in bold defiance. There was nothing for us to do then and for nearly four years more but keep our heads cool, set our teeth and ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... that Mademoiselle Le Breton should accompany the Duchess to Lady Hubert's party almost with effusion. "It will be very dull," she said. "My sister-in-law makes a desert and calls it society. But if you want to go, go. As to Evelyn Crowborough, I am engaged ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lady no remunerative salary, and nothing but a pure missionary spirit could keep her in that dull and mournful place. If she raises money enough to keep the homestead in repair, it is all any one ought to ask, and all the nation wants. But for my part, I scorn this quiddling way of making money. There is a meanness about it ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... writing, and arithmetic; but both teacher and taught felt these more as painful duties to be gone through, than understood them as means to an end. The "There! child; now that's done with," of relief, from Mrs. Browne, was heartily echoed in Maggie's breast, as the dull routine ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... assay them first! I say to you, fair queen, this fact is foul. Let not provoking words whet dull-edg'd swords, But try if we can blunt sharp blades with words. Fitzwater's nephew, Bruce, I see thee there, And tell thee it is shame for such a boy To lead a many able men to fight. And, modest-looking maid, I see you too: An unfit sight to view ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... with the best recollections of English conversation. His admirers can only regret that gifts so rich and so rare should have been buried in judicial dining-rooms or squandered on the dismal orgies of the Cosmopolitan Club, where dull men sit round a meagre fire, in a large, draughty, and half-lit room, drinking lemon-squash and talking for talking's ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... but it is also due to the vivid imaginative faculty which pictures for them the glories of the coming decades when they shall lead not only the Orient, but also the Occident, in every line of civilization, material and spiritual, moral and religious. A dull, unimaginative, prosaic nature cannot be exuberantly optimistic. It is evident that writers who proclaim the unimaginative matter-of-factness of the Japanese as universal and absolute, have failed to see a large side of Japanese ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... are,—but me. It's kind of humiliating to be the only stupid one in a family of smart folks. I suppose you've no idea how it feels, and I can't explain it. But sometimes I think maybe I ought to go off and die, so the whole family can shine and sparkle together. As it is, there's just a dull glow from my corner, quite pale and ugly compared with the brilliant gleams the others are ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... feet and leaned over the table. The blue-black sequins on her dress glittered and shone in the dull light. Her figure was superb, her neck and bosom a flawless white. The Englishman, however, was unmoved. His keen gray eyes were fixed upon her, but the revolver remained in his right hand. From downstairs they could hear the music of violins, the rattle of glasses, the hum of voices and ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim |
