"Dull" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a dress of light grey lawn. Though cool looking, it was unbecoming, for it had no touch of black or white to relieve its monotony, and on the colourless lady it had a very dull effect. But, though languid, Aunt Adelaide was quite able to give orders for what she wanted. She sent Mary for another book, and for more sugar for her lemonade. Then she fidgeted because a stray ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... woman repeated. Her face looked dull, as if there had ceased to be any thoughts behind it. Matilda wondered if it was because she had so little to think of. "What about reading the Bible?" ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... if he do nothing else, and holds no converse with the Muses, does not even that intelligence which there may be in him, having no taste of any sort of learning or enquiry or thought or culture, grow feeble and dull and blind, his mind never waking up or receiving nourishment, and his senses not ...
— The Republic • Plato
... chair, was taking a sort of siesta. His eyes were closed, and he had let his cigar go out. Whether it was due to the light through the colored awning, I was not sure, but I was suddenly attracted by a dull vacancy that seemed to be forming in his countenance. It stole upon the features as if they were being slowly sprinkled with fine dust, blotting their expression into a flat lifelessness. Then the ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... Capel Lofft! [70] Till, lo! that modern Midas, as he hears, [xciv] Adds an ell growth to his egregious ears! [xcv] There lives one Druid, who prepares in time [71] 'Gainst future feuds his poor revenge of rhyme; Racks his dull Memory, and his duller Muse, To publish faults which Friendship should excuse. 740 If Friendship's nothing, Self-regard might teach More polished usage of his parts of speech. But what is shame, or what is aught to him? [xcvi] He vents his spleen, or gratifies his whim. Some fancied slight ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... human happiness; it makes for the dull, idiotic happiness of the barnyard. The men who do things in the world, the men worthy of admiration and imitation, are men constitutionally incapable of any such pecksniffian stupidity. Their ideal is not a safe life, but a full life; they do not ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... of busy idleness, the worship of organisation and system, and all the other hindrances to life properly so-called, which it has been the cherished labour of this age to multiply, Earle would have had no reserve of patience. "The dull physician," we are told, has no leisure to be idle, that is, to study. "The grave divine," who has "studied to make his shoulders sufficient for his burden, comes not up thrice a week into his pulpit because he would not be idle"; ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... in tint and of carefully chosen colours, such as beef-blood, the old rose, and peach-blow hues, in which so many simple forms and inexpensive bits of Japanese pottery may be bought, a peculiar creamy yellow, a dull green, gobelin, and Delft blue and white, sacred to the jugs and bowls of our grandmothers, all do well. Cut glass is a fine setting for flowers of strong colour, but kills the paler hues, and above and beyond all is the dark moss-green glass of substantial texture that is fashioned in ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... by the car window glaring out of his dull green eyes at the pleasant countryside, his thin lips tightening and ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... saboteur may have to reverse his thinking, and he should be told this in so many words. Where he formerly thought of keeping his tools sharp, he should now let them grow dull; surfaces that formerly were lubricated now should be sanded; normally diligent, he should now be lazy and careless; and so on. Once he is encouraged to think backwards about himself and the objects of his everyday life, the saboteur will see many opportunities in his immediate environment which ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services
... from his place of concealment, and, standing on the rocky point behind which he had been hidden, he gazed to the west and north. The tumbling masses of buffalo were scattered far apart. Here and there he could see wide stretches of prairie, no longer green, but trampled into a dull brown by the tread of myriads of hurrying feet; and far to the north the land was clear, as if the main herd had passed down to the southward. Scattered bands still hurried along above him, here and there, nearer to the Fork, but the main ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... about that," put in Grace, who had heard the conversation. "I think it is always more lonely for those who are left behind. Oakdale will seem awfully dull and sleepy. We can't play basketball any more this year on account of the loss of the gym., and we seniors are going to give a concert instead of a play. So there are no exciting prospects ahead. There will be no class dances as we have no place to dance, unless we ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... this may be allowed—two men formed the crew. There were no sails, and the mainmast had one yard-arm, the rest had none. Up in the air, near the ship's masts, were two Arabs on horseback carrying spears; the whole tableau was coloured, as such works in the East always are, of a uniform dull red. ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... demonstration, and the bishops were acquitted. The news of the result of the trial was received not only by the people, but by the army as well, with shouts of joy, which did not fail to reach even the dull ears of the king. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... Earl, who was seated by the breakfast table, waiting the leisure of the lady to give him his cup of tea—"You find Wales very dull, sister. I sincerely hope both Derwent and Harriet will not forget their promise of visiting us ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... spot already described, Bobinette now felt the ground giving way beneath her. She rolled on to a steeply inclined plane. Gliding down into the void, clutching Vagualame, she heard a dull sound: it was the trap ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... no more. It was enough. Too late! She had failed. Her sacrifice, her atonement,—fruitless. She sank into a chair and buried her face in her hands, trying to think. But in her head was a dull chaos of sounds, echoes of her wild ride, and her body swayed as she sat. She had never fainted, but for a moment it seemed that she lost consciousness. She found herself presently staring through her fingers at the pattern in the gray aubusson carpet—and wondering where she ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... to her face; she also had disguised her feelings marvellously. There were other girls bidden to that brilliant feast who envied Miss Darryll and secretly wondered why she was dressed so plainly and simply. On her left hand sat Stephen Richford, a dull, heavy-looking man with a thick lip and a suggestion of shiftiness in his small eyes. Altogether he bore a strong resemblance to a prize-fighter. He was quiet and a little moody, as was his wont, so that most of Beatrice's conversation was directed to her neighbour ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... warning actually proved useful to me; it started a new idea in my mind! Before she spoke, I had been too dull or too preoccupied to see that it was quite needless to degrade myself by personally communicating with Van Brandt in his prison. It only now occurred to me that my legal advisers were, as a matter of course, the proper persons ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... costume, each one looking anxiously around to see what the others were like, each one carrying a mean yellow or black bag or a carefully-tied bundle. On the wharf stood a Zouave, in tremendous red trousers and a fez, among great heaps of dull brown woollen rugs. And as the recruits came hesitatingly along he stopped them with a sharp word, examined the tickets they held out, gave each one a rug, and pointed to the gangway that led from the wharf to the ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... 'way in and met one of the parties coming out with a stretcher. We were near enough to make signs to them, just visible in the dull gloom of dimly burning safety lamps when, woof! down came a mass of roof. I saw it coming and dodged back, but not quite in time, for a chunk of coal caught my shoulder. It twisted me round so that I fell with my left arm stretched ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... particular Apostle of Liberty. He,—stretching out his hands with a gesture of mingled authority and entreaty,—pacified the raging sea of contradictory and conflicting voices as if by magic,—and the horrid clamour died down into a dull roar, which in its turn ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... speak an uncivil word to him, mamma; he has never given me occasion; but I shan't break my heart if I never see him again. If you like, I won't once go near the place. Theodora's the only one I care about—and she's as dull as she is good!" ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... breast; she seemed to have no neck; I should have said there were a hundred years in her features, and more perhaps in her eyes—her malign, unfriendly eyes, with thick grey brows above, and livid lids all round. How severely they viewed me, with a sort of dull displeasure! ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... was rather neglected than otherwise. He was a dull and stolid baby, neither crying nor crowing much: he would sit all day over a single toy, not playing with it, but holding it idly in his hands or between his knees. He could neither crawl, walk, nor talk till long after the usual time for such accomplishments. ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... learnedly in his company, aiming continually at abstract disquisitions, for which Scott had little relish. The conversation of the latter, as usual, was studded with anecdotes and stories, some of them of great pith and humor; the well-bred gentleman was either too dull to feel their point, or too decorous to indulge in hearty merriment; the honest parson, on the contrary, who was not too refined to be happy, laughed loud and long at every joke, and enjoyed them with the zest of a man who has more merriment in ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... failings or foolishness, an admirer of briskness and vivacity, why did she welcome John Duck, that incarnation of stolidity and slowness, that enormous mountain of a man? Because extremes meet? No, since she was always complaining of Iden's dull, motionless life; so it was not the contrast to her own disposition that ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... the History was not a literary achievement, but the facts were there, as accurate as humanly possible; all the eloquent, stirring speeches were there, a proof of the caliber and high intelligence of the pioneers; and out of the otherwise dull record of meetings, conventions, and petitions, a spirit of independence and zeal for freedom shone forth, highlighted occasionally by dramatic episodes. As Mrs. Stanton so aptly expressed it, "We have furnished the bricks and mortar ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... disturbed. The labor saved by this hammer is immense. One man sits perched up on the frame to direct it, and another stands below to guide the iron on the anvil. The great long bar, white with heat, is pulled out of the furnace, laid on the massive piece of iron under the frame, and, with a dull, heavy sound, down conies the hammer, swiftly or slowly, according to the wishes of the director. From the forge and the foundry the "rough-hewn" iron-work passes to be planed, and its surface to be made "true." The wheel of an engine or a carriage, for example, after being forged ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Charley poked the barbed end down into the hole. Down, down it went, fifteen, twenty feet, then struck with a dull thud. He began twisting the sapling over and over, then drew it slowly and gently up, but the end came into view with nothing adhering to it. Again and again was the fruitless operation repeated, and a ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... from its apparent remoteness, a sandy cove from which, because of the projecting cliffs on either hand, neither town nor coast could be seen, but only the sea and sky. Although the grey was uniform enough to make it impossible to tell where cloud met water on the horizon, it was not dull, but luminous with the sunshine it enfolded, and full of colour in fine gradations as Beth beheld it. She sat a long time on the warm dry sand, with her chin resting on her knees, and her hands clasped round them, not gazing with seeing eyes nor listening ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... this short space to give a full account of this novel and interesting dinner party, but if any one supposes that there was a dull moment in it, ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... his chest, and Lora heard with a curiosity that became nervous a rhythmic wagging sound, like velvet bruised by some dull ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... flying here and there to bestow last touches on the different members of her cast. "Now, Clare, you must remember not to give such a shriek when you go on, mustn't he, Jappy? Just a dull, ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... of his once bright flame He has no feeling of the glory gone; He has no eye to catch the mounting flame That once in transport drew him on; He lies in dull oblivious dreams, nor cares Who the ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... happened. The earth under his feet began to shake. At first he could not believe it, but when he steadied himself and watched closely, the oscillating motion was undoubtedly there. It was accompanied, too, by a rumble, dull and low, but which steadily grew louder. It seemed to Dick that the round pit was the center ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... you will find it but dull time with me, Leof," Wulf said as they came up abreast of him, "for the earl says that he has charged you to ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... in 'The Author,' makes Vamp say: 'Books are like women, Master Cape; to strike they must be well dressed; fine feathers make fine birds: a good paper, an elegant type, a handsome motto, and a catching title, has drove many a dull treatise through three editions.' These adventitious aids may still possess a potent influence in selling a new book even to-day, but they have little effect on the sale of the books which gravitate ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... lodging, where his friend sits in the shabby sitting-room, quite serene, and cheerful, and poor? In 1704, Steele came on the town with another comedy, and behold it was so moral and religious, as poor Dick insisted, so dull the town thought, that the Lying Lover ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... then prevailing on the American continent and in the American seas. We see in these facts some deep organic bond, throughout space and time, over the same areas of land and water, independently of physical conditions. The naturalist must be dull who is not led to inquire what ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... part of their nature will be coloring all their activities. It will beautify their arts, and erotically confuse their religions. It will lend a little interest to even their dull social functions. It will keep alive degrading social evils in all their great towns. Through these latter evils, too, their politics will be corrupted; especially their best and most democratic attempts at self-government. Self-government works best among ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... fears his mind unman; Running, he knew not that he ran, Nor throwing that he threw; Heavily move his sinking knees; The streams of life wax dull and freeze; The stone, as through the void it passed, Reached not the measure of its cast, Nor held its purpose true. ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... never lost to the last,—his joyous energy, his reasonings so masterly, yet so prompt, his tact in disposing of them for his purpose, the light he threw upon obscure, and the interest with which he invested dull subjects, his humour, his ready resource of mind in emergencies; gifts such as these, so rare, yet so popular, were necessary for his success, and he had them at command. On that occasion of his handselling them to which I have referred, it was the common talk of Oxford, how ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... him and went over to the fireplace. There she stood quite silent before the dull red glow, locking and unlocking her slim fingers, and within her ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... eye and tried to look at everything but his companions. Corliss and Shoop exploded simultaneously. Slowly the light of understanding dawned, rose, and radiated in the dull red of the new cook's face. He was hurt and a bit angry. The anticipating and performing of his midnight ablutions had cost Slim a mighty struggle, mentally ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... requires deep breathing. The whole upper floor of her new building is a spacious gymnasium, where her pupils exercise every day under the instruction of a skillful German; and on every Saturday morning they take lessons from the best dancing master in the city. The result is, she has no dull scholars complaining of headaches. All are alike happy in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... without any questions about the matter; others enter it only when their understanding has become so enlightened as to discover the vanity and dangers of the world, and when they see clearly the greater security of salvation in the religious state. These latter persons may even be somewhat dull in their affection for this state, and not so inclined, humanly, to follow that which reason and faith point out to them; in their lower, animal feelings they may even experience a kind of repugnance to do what their higher reasoning powers dictate to them. This second kind ...
— Vocations Explained - Matrimony, Virginity, The Religious State and The Priesthood • Anonymous
... was literally alive with fish, feeding on the bottom. There were two kinds of bream—one a rather slow-moving fish, with large, dark brown scales, a perch-like mouth, and wide tail, and with the sides and belly a dull white; the other a very active game fellow, of a more graceful shape, with a small mouth, and very hard, bony gill plates. These latter fought splendidly, and their mouths being so strong they would often break the hooks and get away—as ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... those who fight for God's cause, and at the same time are taken up with worldly business. The owl, which sees clearly at night, but cannot see in the daytime, denotes those who are clever in temporal affairs, but dull in spiritual matters. The gull, which both flies in the air and swims in the water, signifies those who are partial both to Circumcision and to Baptism: or else it denotes those who would fly by contemplation, yet dwell in the waters of sensual delights. The hawk, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... this,' he thought, 'I'll hold on—hold on. There's a chance of keeping both—a chance!' One kept till things were taken—one naturally kept! He began walking round the gallery. He had made one purchase lately which he knew was a fortune in itself, and he halted before it—a girl with dull gold hair which looked like filaments of metal gazing at a little golden monster she was holding in her hand. Even at this tortured moment he could just feel the extraordinary nature of the bargain he had made—admire the quality of the table, the floor, the chair, the girl's figure, the absorbed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... miraculous prescience, unfavourable as the moment might seem, to go and ask for Nick in Calcutta Gardens, where he had extracted from his friend's servant an address not known to all the world. He showed Nick what a mistake it had been to fear a dull arraignment, and how he habitually ignored all lapses and kept up the standard only by taking a hundred fine things for granted. He also abounded more than ever in his own sense, reminding his relieved ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... was, I could see a certain nervous twitching of the lower limbs, which indicated that the old fellow actually felt some disposition to dance. It soon passed away, though his grim, hard, wrinkled, dusky, grey countenance continued to gleam with a sort of dull pleasure for some time. There was nothing surprising in this, the indifference of the Indian to melody being almost as marked as the ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... came to Keilhau he was already sixty-six years old, a man of lofty stature, with a face which seemed to be carved with a dull knife out ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... leads) did better than I ever heard them, and to my great pleasure I understood it all except one verse. This gave me the more time to try and identify what the parts were doing, and further convict my dull ear. Beyond the fact that the soprano rose to the tonic above, on one occasion I could recognise nothing. This is sickening, but I mean to teach my ear better before I am done with it ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... please others in the village, who thought the boy dull. One man meeting Mr. Grant in the street, said bluntly: "I hear that your boy is going to West Point. Why didn't our Representative pick some one that would be a ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... manager had the good sense to ring down the curtain on this painful scene, and, the next moment, there was a dull sound, as of somebody falling on the floor behind the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... accompanied him. But a few moments later, having shaken them off, he returned to collect ten cents—one real for rent and another for the candle. It was the first lodging I had paid since leaving Guatemala City. As I doubled up in my ill-hung hammock, the dull thump of a distant guitar and the explosion of a rare firecracker broke the stillness of New Year's eve, while now and then there drifted to my ears the sound of a band in the main plaza that tortured the night at intervals into the ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... an antiseptic corridor built from dull green plastic. The brown-suited man pressed a button outside one of the classrooms. A door slid noiselessly into the hall. A robot stood before them, gesturing gently. They followed the robot into the classroom. At the head of the classroom another robot was lecturing. There ...
— There Will Be School Tomorrow • V. E. Thiessen
... like it so well, that a plentiful estate, and a great acquaintance on the other side, have no charms to remove; my family being once fixed with me, and if no other thing occur, I am likely to be an adopted American." "Our heads are dull," he added, "but our hearts are good ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... has afflicted her,' so this simple-minded native, whom many men in their unthinking moments would call a canting, naked kanaka, says; but God has not afflicted her. He has blessed her, for in her eyes there is that which tells me better than all the deadly-dull sermons of the highly cultured and fashionable cleric, who patters about the Higher Life, or the ranting Salvationist who bawls in the streets of Melbourne or Sydney about the Blood of the Lamb, that there is peace beyond for all.... 'God has afflicted this poor child!' Would ...
— Susani - 1901 • Louis Becke
... watch. "Time for my restorative snooze. I personally resemble Napoleon the Great, as you may have remarked, Mr. Hartright—I also resemble that immortal man in my power of commanding sleep at will. Excuse me one moment. I will summon Madame Fosco, to keep you from feeling dull." ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... pulmonary bruit, the highly irritated state of the mucous linings is apparent. The affection ultimately assumes a chronic form, and continues present in the respirable portions of the organ during life. As the carbonaceous impaction advances, the sounds become exceedingly dull over the whole thoracic region, and in many of the cases no sound whatever can be distinguished. Where the lungs are cavernous, it is very easy to discover pectoriloquy, from the contrast to the general dulness, and when pleuritic ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... hall make merry, nor note the afternoon, And the time when men grow weary with the task that ends not soon; The sun falls down unnoted, and night and her daughter are nigh, And a dull grey mist and awful hangeth over the east of the sky, And spreadeth, though winds are sleeping, and riseth higher and higher; But the clouds hang high in the west as a sea of rippling fire, That the face of the gazer is lighted, if unto the west ye gaze, And white ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... there; but Mary was not so reticent with regard to her school existence. The only books allowed to be read were those written by priests, ritualists, or Roman Catholics. "The books were mostly very dull," said Mary; "but as we had no others, we were glad to get them. Then a clergyman came, who told us that we were all very sinful, but that when we came to him at confession he would give us absolution; ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... obtain of the town and its inhabitants under these circumstances did not now help him, when from office to office he went in quest of something to do. After many failures and renewed searchings, he found what he was after, an opportunity to practice his trade. Business was dull, which kept our journeyman printer on the wing; first at one and then at another printing office we find him setting types for a living during the year 1827. The winning of bread was no easy matter; but he was not ashamed to work, neither was he afraid of hard work. During this ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... written upon a subject in appearance so little instructive or diverting, should survive to three editions, and consequently find a better reception than is usual with such bulky spiritless volumes; and this, in an age that pretendeth so soon to be nauseated with what is tedious and dull. To which I can only return, that, as burning a book by the common hangman, is a known expedient to make it sell; so, to write a book that deserveth such treatment, is another: And a third, perhaps as effectual as either, is to ply an insipid, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... equally concerned with you in anything. I should be pleased to see something of my Lady Carlisle's writing, because she is so extraordinary a person. I have been thinking of sending you my picture till I could come myself; but a picture is but dull company, and that you need not; besides, I cannot tell whether it be very like me or not, though 'tis the best I ever had drawn for me, and Mr. Lilly [Lely] will have it that he never took more pains to make a good one ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... excellent spirits, and the only one who made an effort to apologise was Mr. Stillbrook, who said to me: "It was very rough on you to be kept waiting, but we had another spin for S. and B.'s." I walked home in silence; I couldn't speak to them. I felt very dull all the evening, but deemed it advisable NOT to say anything to Carrie ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... the living. It is a real and a pressing danger with many of us, that we should never find our own thoughts and our own souls, but be ever obsessed by the dead. Yet second-hand romance and second-hand emotion are surely better than the dull, soul-killing monotony which life brings to most of the human race. But best of all when the dead man's wisdom and strength in the living of ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... more than got on his pony again before he heard an ominous sound that made his heart leap. It was a frantic dull pounding of hoofs. He knew in a second what it meant. There was a stampede among the cattle. If the animals had all been his, he would not have lost his sense of judgment. But the realization that ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... things the men around him enjoyed, and the lack of which he had ever concealed even from himself—all these were made footless by the ache in the bottom of his soul. And, as he sat and pondered on it, a hard, dull resentment which he had hitherto kept down by sheer will power rose above his other thoughts and claimed admission as a reality. His father had no right to do this thing to him. He was an old man; his chance was past, given up for a ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... the cooper went home quite elated by his success. His present engagement would enable him to bridge over the dull time, until his trade revived, and save him from incurring debts, of which he had a ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... or he pass into age. For the elder the ass is, the fouler he waxeth from day to day, and hairy and rough, and is a melancholy beast, that is cold and dry, and is therefore kindly heavy and slow, and unlusty, dull and witless and forgetful. Nathless he beareth burdens, and may away with travail and thraldom, and useth vile meat and little, and gathereth his meat among briars and thorns and thistles.... And the ass hath another wretched condition known to nigh all men. For he is put ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... that refuses to die Bobs up again as the seasons appear; Deathless it hits us again in the eye— Changeless and dull as the calendar year. Musty and mouldy and yellow and sere, Stronger, withal, than the sturdiest oak; Ancient and solemn and deadly and drear— ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... book-societies, and the like; or those purely accidental meetings of a few people well known to each other! Then, indeed, we may see that "a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." Cheeks flush, and eyes sparkle. The witty grow brilliant, and even the dull are excited into saying good things. There is an overflow of topics; and the right thought, and the right words to put it in, spring up unsought. Grave alternates with gay: now serious converse, and now jokes, anecdotes, and playful raillery. Every one's best nature is ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... while. Presently, "You told me this afternoon," she began, in a dull voice, "that you anticipated much amusement from your perusal of Mr. Vanringham's correspondence. All his papers were to be seized, you said; and they all were to be brought to you, you said. And so many love-sick misses write to ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... again, holding on to the banister, so as not to fall, and went back to the drawing-room, where little George was sitting on the floor, crying; he fell into a chair, and looked at the child with dull eyes. He understood nothing, be knew nothing more, he felt dazed, stupefied, mad, as if he had just fallen on his head, and he scarcely even remembered the dreadful things the servant had told him. Then, by degrees his reason grew clearer like ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... of the emperor for the seat of war, the court of Vienna became supremely dull. All the state apartments were closed, the gentlemen and ladies in waiting went about silent as ghosts, the archduchesses were pale and sad, and the empress, disconsolate, spent all her days in the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... seen how readily the strings take up vibrations which are only pure when, as secondary vibrations, they arise by reversion from the sound-board. If vibration arises from imperfectly elastic wood, we hear a dull wooden thud; if it comes from metal, partials of the strings are re-enforced that should be left undeveloped, which give a false ring to the tone, and an after ring that blurs legato playing, and nullifies the staccato. I do not pose as the obstinate advocate of parallel ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... Caspar Cruciger, Doctor of Divinity, informed me with grief that on his various visitations he learned from your friends that you are afflicted with abnormal and strange thoughts pertaining to God's predestination, and are completely confused by them; also that you grow dull and distracted on account of them, and that finally it must be feared that you might commit suicide,—from which Almighty God may preserve you!... Your proposition and complaints are: God Almighty knows from eternity who are to be and who will be saved, be they dead, living or still ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... believe, is ever likely to succeed. We have seen a number by different inventors, and all have failed to give satisfaction. They may work well for a very brief period and with keen edges; but as they become dull, the shears are forced apart by the straw and grass—particularly the latter, and the machine fails, as it inevitably must do, in its allotted duty, and for very obvious reasons. If the shear rivet or bolt is kept tight there ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... this anomaly of a candidate canvassing in his own behalf, the campaign was devoid of exciting incidents. The personal canvass of Douglas was indeed almost the only thing that kept the campaign from being dull and spiritless.[860] Republican politicians were somewhat at a loss to understand why he should manoeuvre in a section devoted beyond question to Lincoln. Indeed, a man far less keen than Douglas would have taken note of the popular current in New England. Why, then, this expenditure ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... mechanism seemed to falter in the attack, as if bewildered. Across the exposed throat the Professor drew the gleaming blade. Flesh, tendons and arteries gave, blood spurted, and in the same moment the tentacles fell away from Talbot and the Professor and withdrew with a dull clang. The Professor released the bird and it ...
— The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds • Francis Flagg
... colonel, to stay as they did! But one I 'most wish had n't stayed. Mortally wounded, he'd torn off his knapsack; and then at the end he prayed— Easy to see, by his hands that were clasped; and the dull, dead fingers yet held This little letter—his wife's—from the knapsack. A ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... moving about in this dream-world we call practical life. Behind this tough matter that takes so many shapes and colors, what strange secrets are hidden, just beginning to reach our dull senses—X-rays, radium emanations, ...
— The Flutter of the Goldleaf; and Other Plays • Olive Tilford Dargan and Frederick Peterson
... of a distant city. He had done this before, and always with a feeling of exaltation, as if, for a time at least, the burden he carried was lightened. But to-day he experienced no compensatory relief. Life was dull and stale to him, effort ineffectual. At thirty a man should look back with tenderness, forward with hope. K. Le Moyne dared not look back, and had no desire to ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... written; "the scene in which Woodward was directly and apparently ridiculed by the introduction of a mummy and a crocodile, disgusted the audience, and the performance was driven off the stage with general condemnation."[9] The farce was not only dull, it was vulgar. And the geologist (played by Johnson) was not the only person introduced for the purpose of ridicule. Dennis was brought in as Sir Tremendous, and it was believed that Phoebe Clinket (played by Mrs. Bicknell) was intended for Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea, ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... she was alone. She came back to full remembrance slowly, as one toiling along a difficult road. Her brain felt very tired. She lay vaguely listening to the gay trill of a robin on the terrace below, dreading the moment when the dull ache at her heart should turn ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... shops) vary the monotony of Dutch villas, their white colonnades and porticos gleaming against the background of stately trees, and rising from a mass of tropical vegetation. The prevailing indigo of Soendanese dress gives a dull aspect to the wide but squalid streets, for in native capitals, though Dutch cleanliness may enforce perpetual "tidying up," the lacking sense of order produces a strange impermanence in the conditions insisted upon. The inner court ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... conceit upon names, and to Malcolm this—which had, in fact, been culled out of romance—seemed meetly to express the pure radiance of consolation and encouragement that seemed to him to shine from her, and brighten the life that had hitherto been dull and gloomy—nay, even to give him light and joy in ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in speechless horror. Before any one of us had sufficiently recovered himself to speak, we were startled by a dull sound, like a rushing wind, or distant, rumbling thunder; and an immense mass of snow, many hundred feet in depth, and covering a third of the cone, parted from its place, and, like a great, foaming wave, broken ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... tinge had now gone from the haze, leaving it cold and gray; the sea was dull and lifeless, no ripple breaking the stillness ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... looking down at her gold beads, but was too bashful to speak. Next Annie brought out the purple ball and laid it down. Then the red and green ones came out, and, lastly, the orange and blue. Now the teacher began to look very dull, even duller than her scholars; her eyelids began to droop, and she spoke very slowly, and said: "Children,—can—you—count—the—balls?" but not hearing any answer, she looked up and found they had all disappeared, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... leaves of algae, and is itself bright-green. But many brightly-coloured, white, or otherwise conspicuous species, do not seek concealment; whilst again some equally conspicuous species, as well as other dull-coloured kinds live under stones and in dark recesses. So that with these nudibranch molluscs, colour apparently does not stand in any close relation to the nature of the places which ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... so stupid and dull a while before, were blazing now. Aye, it was evident his law-abiding mind had arrived at a lawless decision; his lowering face boded no good for the brute who had maltreated his young friend. "Gott, if he die!" he said. It was a full-mouthed ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... Review" speaks no less warmly: "We can hardly give too much appreciation to that subtile alchemy of the brain which has enabled him to produce out of dull, crabbed, and often illegible state papers, the vivid, graphic, and sparkling narrative which he ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... can be, now you're rich. But I say, mother, what are you going to do? You ain't going to stick down in this dull place all your ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... sheer dull blue, there was a red rose in her hair—her white arms, her white neck, the blue and red, youth and fire, ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... cordially and freely together with a single creative purpose and endeavor. It may be possible for each worker to experience the joy of creative work as he takes part with others in the planning of the work along with the labor of fabrication. It is a creative experience or dull labor as his association with others in the solution of the problem is freely pursued and genuine, or as it is forced ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... that Dickens went when he was labouring with unusual difficulty over Bleak House, and lamenting his inability to "grind sparks out of this dull anvil". At Dover, on his Second Series of Readings, he found "the audience with the greatest sense of humour", and "they laughed with such really cordial enjoyment, when Squeers read the boy's letters, that the contagion" was ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... rang like a desolating knell in the ears of the bewildered, fear-stricken Theos, and startled him from his rigid trance of speechless misery. Uttering an inarticulate dull groan, he made a violent effort to rush forward —to serve as a living shield of defence to his adored friend, . . to ward off the imminent blow! Too late! too late! ... Zephoranim's dagger glittered in the air, and rapidly descended ... One gasping cry! ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... dull," said Roberts, as he passed on. "Matters look bad, I'm afraid. Too many people making ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... II., according as its author's interests with the Prince of Salerno and the Duke of Urbino varied. No substantial reward accrued to him, however, from its publication. His compliments wasted their sweetness on the dull ears of the despot of Madrid. In misfortune Bernardo sank to neither crime nor baseness, even when he had no clothes to put upon his back. Yet he took the world to witness of his woes, as though his person ought to have been sacred from calamities of common ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... endeavored to clothe the dull prose of the usual Library Rules with the mantle of poetry, that they may be more attractive, and more easily remembered by the great public whom ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... with them," Tai-y said to Pao-y laughingly. "But they're far worse than I. Is every one as simple in mind and dull of tongue as I am as to allow people to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... internal structure; new rocks being thus formed, as gneiss, mica slate, and granular limestone (Carrara and Parian marble). The old silurian or devonian transition schists, the belemnitic limestone of Tarantaise, and the dull gray calcareous p 256 sandstone ('Macigno'), which contains alggae found in the northern Apennines, often assume a new and more brilliant appearance after their metamorphosis, which renders it difficult to recognize them. The theory of metamorphism was not established until ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... A bard how dull in Indian groves, Distant from the land he loves! The muse to melody ne'er moves Far ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... velocity, the flat panel vanishes, and, behold, a species of cupboard with many shelves, upon which anything of a moderate size may be placed. Having deposited my letter on one of the shelves, it disappears, with the cupboard, like a pantomime trick, and the panelled window resumes its original dull aspect. But whether my document will reach the rightful owner, I can never ascertain, for days elapse, and no reply is forthcoming. Varying my proceedings at the torno, I sometimes express a desire to exchange a few greetings with my cloistered love, by meeting her in a certain chamber ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... angry, and his face turned a dull red. He raised his cane, and struck sharply at Hal. But Hal was not there, and a moment later the man received a sharp jolt on the jaw ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... not speak That parting word of bitterness; the cheek Grows pale when the tongue utters it; the knell Which tells "the grave is ready!" and doth swell On the dull wind, tolling—"the dead—the dead!" Sounds not more desolate. It is a dread And fearful thing to be of hope bereft, As if the soul itself had died, and left The body living—feeling in its breast The death of deaths, its everlasting ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... not batter, it was but natural that the enthusiastic youths should think of the Championship chances in terms of Thor. For one week, enthusiasm and excitement soared higher and higher, and then, to use a phrase of fiction, everything fell with a dull, sickening thud! ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... develops under artificial culture. The second is a matter of common-sense. How could the imagination create new worlds, save out of the material of the old? To offer strange images is to confuse the mind and dull the interest; to offer familiar ones "with a difference" is to pique the interest and engage ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... and distended—so tightly distended, indeed, that the Commandant called out to him to be careful of the contents. But the cry came a moment too late; for the bag, as it touched the counter, exploded with a dull report, collapsed, and flattened itself out into a playing-card—the queen ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the latter to hold him in. I consequently lent him my aid seriously; but this only made things worse:—the more he was held, the more violent and outrageous he became. He foamed at the mouth—stormed—swore—and tore about with such vehemence, that I really began to think the fellow was a dull flint, which produced, fire slowly, but that there was fire in him. The struggle still proceeded, and we pulled and dragged each other through every part of the house:—chairs, and tables, and office-stools were all overturned—and Phil's cry ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... subject is too vast to be opened here. In a special investigation of it. [*] I concluded that there is no proof of the presence of any degree of consciousness in the invertebrate world even in the higher insects; that there is probably only a dull, blurred, imperfect consciousness below the level of the higher mammals and birds; and that even the consciousness of an ape is something very different from what educated Europeans, on the ground ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... hundred times been told, what she herself believed full well, that she was absolutely the most beautiful creature in existence, that the tale had lost its interest. The champagne of flattery, its creaming foam long ago melted into the brain, stood untasted before her, dull and flat as the subsided fountain poured by the last rain-shower into the tulip's cup. And so the fairy princess stood listless and apart from the joyous revel, her little form swaying lightly to and fro, with the undulations of the lily-stem against which she more ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... but isn't it natural for a young man to have some personal aim or aspiration to live for? If David was a weak or dull man I could understand it; but I seem to feel a power, a possibility for something higher and better than any thing I see, and this frets me. He is so good, I want him to be ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... computation. A magnificent temple is a laudable monument of national taste and religion; and the enthusiast who entered the dome of St. Sophia might be tempted to suppose that it was the residence, or even the workmanship, of the Deity. Yet how dull is the artifice, how insignificant is the labor, if it be compared with the formation of the vilest insect that crawls upon the surface of the temple! [Footnote 103: Among the crowd of ancients and moderns who have celebrated the edifice of St. Sophia, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... will. If it is in the morning, there is the additional question of "How have you passed the night?" And the answer, "In your service." Even in Mexico the weather affords a legitimate opening for a conversation battery, but this chiefly when it rains or looks dull, which, occasioning surprise, gives rise to observation. Besides a slight change in the degree of heat or cold which we should not ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... the dowager, joyously. "You and Maude shall get ahead of Miss Ashton and her colonel, and have the laugh at them. The marriage shall be on Saturday, and you can go away together for months if you like, and get up your spirits again; I'm sure you have both been dull enough." ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... they crawled around the west side toward the entrance. In the right hand of the one in front was the dull glint of a knife. The ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... assumed almost the character of a confession of religious faith; they accordingly hated their own more lukewarm partisans and Pompeius with his personal adherents, if possible, still more than their open opponents, and that with all the dull obstinacy of hatred which is wont to characterize orthodox theologians; and they were mainly to blame for the numberless and bitter separate quarrels which distracted the emigrant army and emigrant senate. But they did not confine themselves to words. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... up the word, and spoke. "My brother Thorvid, who is considered to be the wisest of us brothers, holds the words 'quarrelsome, greedy, jealous, dull,' to be one and the same thing; for it applies to him who is weary of peace, longs for small things without attaining them, while he lets great and useful things pass away as they came. I am deaf; yet so loud have many spoken out, that I can perceive that all men, both ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... at the back of a cart, lifted up his head, and called out to me in wonderfully good English, "You good man—always say 'Good-morning.'" It was sad to think that these poor creatures should think so much of so small a piece of civility, and strange that (thinking so) they should be so dull as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their escort read a magazine: They were young, and trains are dull at night; All the passing signals, red and blue and green, Counted up the miles ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls
... ejaculation the intruder turned his head to look, then sprang back from the safe, breaking the contact. Instantly the room became black. David stared, still stupidly, at the dull red spot on the safe until it faded into blackness. Then he realized. He stood very still, muscles tense, senses sharply alert. He heard a faint rustling but he could not make out from what part ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... repetition the mother fell asleep, and the daughter, who had slumbered little the night before, could not but likewise drop into the world of soothing oblivion, though with a dull feeling of aching and yearning towards the friendly kindly Humfrey, yet with a certain exultation in the fate that seemed to be carrying her on ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... younger. I had never been the favourite of the three. In the first place, my brothers (my youngest especially) were uncommonly handsome, and, at most, I was but tolerably good-looking: in the second place, my mind was considered as much inferior to theirs as my body; I was idle and dull, sullen and haughty,—the only wit I ever displayed was in sneering at my friends, and the only spirit, in quarrelling with my twin brother; so said or so thought all who saw us in our childhood; and it follows, therefore, that I was either very ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... visualization of young grass and the faint blue of skies, evoked, perhaps, by the girl's careless singing, made for his dull concentration subtly pleasant environment. ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... dispiriting at any time, excepting when one is snugly at home with plenty to do, and it is particularly so to the unlucky traveller who has to live through half-a-dozen long hours intervening between arrival at and departure from Venice on a cold, dull, wintry afternoon. ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne |
