"Dullness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... too that it is a little dull, Donald," Minnie said, "but not being a man, I suppose desires like yours would seem improper When you go," and her voice trembled a little, "I will feel the dullness all ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... tone do you expect me to take?" was the retort in the listless voice. Yet, now, in the dullness ran a faint suggestion of ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... the immense service of freeing us for ever from the dilemma—refuse to accept the creation hypothesis, and what have you to propose that can be accepted by any cautious reasoner? In 1857, I had no answer ready, and I do not think that any one else had. A year later, we reproached ourselves with dullness for being perplexed by such an inquiry. My reflection, when I first made myself master of the central idea of the 'Origin,' was, "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!" I suppose that Columbus' companions said much the same when ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the servants at Mount Morven remarked that the weeks seemed to follow each other more slowly than usual. In the higher regions of the house, the same impression was prevalent; but the sense of dullness among the gentlefolks submitted to circumstances ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... with the history of political and intellectual activity in this country, however, still exist as influential organs. The Quebec Gazette was, some years ago, merged into another Quebec paper—having become long before a memorial of the past in its appearance and dullness, a sort of Rip Van Winkle in the newspaper world. The Canadien has always had its troubles; but, nevertheless, it continues to have influence in the Quebec district, and the same may be said of the Journal de Quebec, though the writer who first gave it power ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... Vice grows old in triumph. 235 Is it Mercy's hand, that for the bad man holds Life's closing gate?—— Still passing thence petitionary Hours To woo the obdurate spirit to repentance? Or would this dullness tell me, that there is 240 Guilt too enormous to be duly punished, Save by increase of guilt? The Powers of Evil Are jealous claimants. Guilt too hath its ordeal, And Hell its own probation!—Merciful Heaven, Rather than this, pour down upon thy suppliant 245 Disease, and agony, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... young bee-eaters are to be seen hawking at insects; they are distinguishable from adults by the dullness of the plumage and the fact that the median tail feathers are ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... rumination irregular, tongue coated, mouth slimy, dung passed apparently not well digested and smelling bad, dullness, and fullness of the flanks. The disease may in some cases assume a chronic character, and in addition to the foregoing symptoms slight bloating or tympanites of the left flank may be observed; the animal breathes ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... The dullness left her face, and an unselfish light dawned in its place. As she rose to go, she leaned over the other figure, and he looked up at her, with something of ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... preceding symptom will generally be found, instead of that natural brilliance of expression in the eyes and countenance, an unnatural dullness and vacantness altogether foreign to childhood. This is a just ground ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... Minister Adams may have felt, the first effect of this shock upon his son produced only a dullness of comprehension — a sort of hazy inability to grasp the missile or realize the blow. Yet he realized that to his father it was likely to be fatal. The chances were great that the whole family would turn round and go home within a few weeks. The horizon widened out in endless waves ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... to shed it on those who are not of their class. Selfishness is common enough everywhere, in men of all races. It is not selfishness, nor the growth of towns or decay of agriculture, which as a fact does not decay, nor education, nor any of the other causes usually given for the dullness, the greyness of village life. The chief cause, I take it, is that gulf, or barrier, which exists between men and men in different classes in our country, or a considerable portion of it—the caste ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... chill that the patient is violently shaken from head to foot and the teeth chatter. Chills are not generally seen in children under six, but an attack begins with uneasiness, the face is pinched, the eyes sunken, the lips and tips of the fingers and toes are blue, and there is dullness and often nausea and vomiting. Then, instead of a chill, the eyelids and limbs begin to twitch, and the child goes into a convulsion. While the surface of the skin is cold and blue during a chill, yet the temperature, taken with the thermometer ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dullness of communication, compared with the simple altar-like structure and silent heart-language of the old dial! It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... all are spread The ruins and the symbols of the winter that is dead. But the bleak and barren picture very shortly now will pass, For the halls of life are ready for their velvet rugs of grass; And the painters now are waiting with their magic to replace This dullness with a beauty that no ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... he made upon her was that of weakness; but she liked the sincerity and kindness which expressed themselves in his sad smile and large, honest blue eyes. His gaze reminded her of that of an ox, but it had not only the ox's dullness, but also its simplicity ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... has become antiquated in the present day. Scholars have discovered that it blunders here and there, perhaps is prejudiced, perhaps extravagant. Newer writers, therefore, base a new book upon the old one, not changing much, but paraphrasing it into deadly dullness by their efforts after accuracy. Thanks to our introduction we can revive the more spirited account, and, while pointing out its value to the reader, can warn him of its errors. Thus he secures in briefest form the results of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... have not returned, and conversation, it must be confessed, languishes. Miss L'Estrange, who is present in a cap of enormous dimensions and a temper calculated to make life hideous to her neighbors, scarcely helps to render more bearable the dullness of everything. Sir George in a corner is buttonholing Frederic and saddening him with ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... of the dullness of Rohar, she had gone to Poona to spend part of the festive and fashionable season there and was now revelling in the many dances, dinners, theatricals and other gaieties of the lively station. Everybody was very kind to her, especially the men. She was invited ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... later. A most egregious fop, according to all accounts, he was, but a very pleasant one notwithstanding, as your fop of parts is apt to be. Pope gained but little in the warfare he waged with him, for this plain reason—that the great poet accuses his adversary of dullness, which was not by any means one of his sins, instead of selecting one of the numerous faults, such as pertness, petulance, and presumption, of which ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... Italians should envy this so much more methodical, cleanly and prosperous nation. For glowing life and blooming beauty fare still more madly among the Hollanders, and sharp anguish is more salutary to man, and preferred by the genitive soul of humanity, than the unfelt evil of ugliness, of dullness and of the great and beautiful passions stifled by fear. Everywhere in the present world a minority sensitive to beauty exists among a great horde of cads. But in no country is the minority nobler, ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... of the infancy of Chatterton, parents may be satisfied that an inaptness to learn in childhood, is far from being a prognostic of future dullness. At the age of five years, he was sent to the school of which his father had been master, and was found so incorrigibly stupid, that he was rejected by the teacher, whose name was Love, as incapable of profiting by his instruction. His mother, as most mothers would have done in ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... ready to go anywhere: into the jaws of a crocodile, or even into the jaws of hell, so long as I don't have to stay here. I am horribly bored. I am stupefied by this dullness. Every one here is tired of me. You leave me at home to entertain Anna, but I feel more like scratching and ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... to grow very impatient of remaining at school, to be flogged for things that I did not like. I longed for variety, especially now that I had not my uncle's to resort to, by way of diversifying the dullness of school with the dreariness of his country seat. I was now turned of sixteen; tall for my age, and full of idle fancies. I had a roving, inextinguishable desire to see different kinds of life, and different orders of society; and this vagrant humor had been fostered in me by Tom Dribble, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... If, O monarch, these thy brothers were in their senses, they would then have immured thee with all unbelievers (in a prison) and taken upon themselves the government of the earth. That person who from dullness of intellect acts in this way never succeeds in winning prosperity. The man that treads along the path of madness should be subjected to medical treatment by the aid of incense and collyrium, of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... about his work that afternoon with a droop to his head, and a dullness about his dark eyes, which Jim noticed with vague discomfort, and which made him wish heartily that he had not confided to the postmaster the story of Billings and the brake. He had quarreled with Gertrude—everything ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... cries, Woe? who, Alas? Who has contentions? Who, complaining? Who has dullness of eyes? They who linger long over wine, They who go about tasting mixed wine. Look not upon the wine when it is red, When it sparkles in the cup. At last it bites like a serpent, And stings like an adder. Your ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... he said, as the hostess gave the signal for the ladies to rise, "you will long look back upon this dinner as one of unprecedented dullness." ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... evil. If you come as a prince, with a cheerful, buoyant nature, in the name of God, do not lay aside those royal robes of yours. Let humor bedew duty; let it flash across care. Let gayety take charge of dullness. So employ these qualities that they shall be to life what carbonic acid is to wine, making it ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... at least three counties. No doubt you folk, who live so near, are well accustomed to them, and would miss your liveliness in coming home after nightfall, and the joy of finding your sheep and cattle right, when you not expected it. But after awhile you might get used to the dullness of being safe in your beds, and not losing your sisters and sweethearts. Surely, on the whole, it is as pleasant not to be ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... offices the sprightly woman who martyrises herself because she must work in a room with other women whose dullness and primness jar on her vivacities; the woman who is aggrieved because winter is warmed for her by a gas stove instead of an open fire; the woman who feels insulted because male associates do not accord her the elaborate ritual of deference to which she has been accustomed in ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... dullness got on her nerves now, especially as Legrand had avoided the house altogether since the complaint about the frequency of his visits. He was about to leave Paris to fulfil some engagements in the ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... party; on the contrary, everybody appeared to be so determined not to say the wrong thing, that they remained silent; the dullness of the meal was only broken at long intervals by such carefully expressed sentiments as "I'll trouble you to pass the salt, if you please," or "Will you kindly hand the ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... alarmed, expecting some disaster, unless he hastens to prevent you. Therefore he is awake and on the watch against us; he courts certain people, who from cupidity, he thinks, will be satisfied with the present, and from dullness of understanding will ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... such a Government. He is a "safe" man, without taint of fanaticism. His sincerity for the improvement of the lot of the poor does not compel him to extravagant speech on the subject, and his imagination is sufficient to exclude dullness of view. He has proved that the application of Socialist principles does not require any violent disturbance of the existing order, and is compatible with social respectability and political authority. A public opinion that would revolt against the notion of an ex-workman ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... mysterious confines of life and death. That tomb you led me to, of which I knew nothing—as I know nothing, or scarcely anything, concerning her whom it covers—brought back to me emotions which were unique in my life, and which seem in the dullness of that life like some light gleaming upon a dark road. The light recedes farther and farther away as the journey lengthens; I have now almost reached the bottom of the last slope; and, nevertheless, each time I turn to look back I see the glow ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... know what, Shatushka?" She shook her head. "You may be a very sensible man but you're dull. It's strange for me to look at all of you. I don't understand how it is people are dull. Sadness is not dullness. I'm happy." ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... had reconciled herself long since to the dullness of her life-partner; he could not help it and she had willfully married him in the face of as imposing a phalanx of family and friendly opposition as ever attempted to stand between ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... he, "has shortened his day to twenty-three hours, and the general advice of "all to heaven," destroys the peculiar appropriation of a certain period to religious exercises." [v. 233.] Now we did not think that it was in human dullness to miss the meaning of the lines so completely. Sir William distributes twenty-three hours among various employments. One hour is thus left for devotion. The reader expects that the verse will end with "and one to heaven." The whole point of the lines consist in the unexpected ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... addresses to him the tenderest counterfeit verses; he returns them in kind. She even simulated such an illusory sadness that the duke has sent his own jester, who has but just arrived at court, to amuse her (ahem!) dullness, until he himself ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... with Meta Beggs, in that world of which Paris was the prefigurement, he might still wring from life a measure of the sharp pleasures of tempestuous youth and manhood; he might still dance to the piping of the senses. With Lettice in Greenstream he would rapidly sink into the dullness of increasing age. ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... that the Romping Betsy drove steadily on her way into the west, either battered by storm, or idly drifting in calm, while life on board became a tiresome routine. The dullness and ill treatment led to trouble below, to dissatisfaction and angry outbreaks of temper. The prisoners grew quarrelsome among themselves, and mutinous toward their guards. I took no part in these affairs, which at one time became serious. Two men were shot dead, and twice afterwards bodies were ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... her own people. Every afternoon when her housework was done she took the boy into the front room of the house and spent hours laboring with him over his lessons. She worked upon the problem of rooting the stupidity and dullness out of his mind as her father had worked at the problem of rooting the stumps out of the Michigan land. After the lesson for the day had been gone over and over until Hugh was in a stupor of mental weariness, she put the books aside and talked ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... Phil accused herself of dullness in not having thought earlier of the photograph gallery. Her father must have been conducting himself very quietly there or she would have heard him before. It had been a bright day and he had undoubtedly been taking advantage of the sun to do his printing. She had always encouraged his ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... himself, with a show of surprise, in these words: "So, Perry! I find you don't want genius, when you think proper to use it." Such encomiums kindled the spirit of emulation in his little breast; he exerted himself with surprising alacrity, by which he soon acquitted himself of the imputation of dullness, and obtained sundry honorary silver pennies, as acknowledgments of his application; his school-fellows now solicited his friendship as eagerly as they had avoided it before; and in less than a twelvemonth after his arrival, this ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... careful of getting weary and missing the best through the need of rest. Intensify my desire for the songs and glorious ways, that I may not settle into dullness and slumber, while others pass on in the light. I pray for a keener sense of the possessions made possible by the deeds and cares of noble men and ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... Eliza Haywood. But a statement of high moral purpose from the author of "The Dunciad" was almost inevitably the stalking-horse of an unworthy action. Mr. Pope's reasons, real and professed, for giving Mrs. Haywood a particularly obnoxious place in his epic of dullness afford a curious illustration of his unmatched capacity ostensibly to chastise the vices of the age, while in fact hitting an ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... first and foremost, a period of latency or of incubation, in which there is more or less of dullness and loss of appetite, and this glides gradually into a state of feverishness. The fever may be ushered in with chills and shivering. The nose now becomes hot and dry, the dog is restless and thirsty, and the ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... down in the library to wait for her. Looking out he saw Sallie Pruitt carrying a jug across the yard. A few moments later he asked for Tom and was told that he had just left the house. He tried to read, but nothing interested him. There was nothing but dullness in the newspaper and even Ivanhoe had lost his charm. It was nearly three o'clock when Mrs. Cranceford returned. He did not ask whither she had gone; he waited to be told. She sat down, taking ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... for this excitement, I am afraid Boston would be a little dull. I am reluctant to put such a confession in writing, for some one has quite truly remarked that to say of any place that it is dull is too often a confession of one's own dullness, but I am going to be honest about it. Do you suppose it is because New York, after being denied by me so long, will have its hour?—or is this a permanent thing? Somehow I cannot get away from the feeling that Boston is small and narrow and cold. Perhaps it is because of the wonderful life that ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... himself of all garments, slip quietly into the water on the seaward side of the ship, where none of the sentries were immediately placed, the object being to guard the access to the shore more especially. Once in the water he had only to strike out quietly for the shore, trusting the dullness of the sentries and the favoring darkness of the night to enable him ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... had not spoken to each other all that while, unless an unfinished word or two of Mrs. Derrick's reached ears that did not heed them. It was Faith herself who first moved, perhaps reminded by the increasing dullness that her mother was feeling it too. She took her hand from the gate, and passing the other round Mrs. Derrick, led her into the house, and into the sitting-room and to a chair; and then went for wood ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... prayer meeting; evenings when Rebecca would read aloud Hiawatha or Barbara Frietchie, The Bugle Song, or The Brook. Her narrow, humdrum existence bloomed under the dews that fell from this fresh spirit; her dullness brightened under the kindling touch of the younger mind, took fire from the "vital spark of heavenly flame" that seemed always ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Just so at her words and her look his heart suddenly filled, as if it came from afar, with the youthful passion he had felt toward Miss Bood, but which, he knew not exactly when or how, had been gradually overgrown with the dullness of familiarity and had lapsed into an indolent affectionate habit. The warm, voluptuous pulse of this new feeling—new, and yet instantly recognized as old—brought with it a flood of youthful associations, and commingled the far past with the present in a confusion more complete and more intoxicating ...
— A Summer Evening's Dream - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... or symptoms of adenoids are mouth breathing, restlessness at night, snoring, recurring colds, nasal discharge, swelling of the glands of the neck, poor nutrition, loss of appetite, bed wetting, impaired hearing, lack of attention, and mental dullness. The removal of adenoids is neither a serious or difficult procedure, and they may safely ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... gray crossed the track quickly and addressed the two women cordially. Taylor’s back was to her and he was growing eloquent in a mild well-bred way over the dullness of our statesmen in not seeing the advantages that would accrue to the United States in fostering our shipping industry. His wife, her sister and the girl in gray were so near that I could hear plainly what they were saying. They were referring apparently to the girl’s refusal of an invitation ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... nothing of love in Keith's feelings toward Johan, nothing emotional. The tenderness that was such a marked feature of his character did not come into play at all. In fact, he rather looked down on Johan, who frequently annoyed him by his dullness and his lack of personal neatness. The truth of it was that he played with Johan merely because he was the only other boy in sight, and in so far as that particular game was concerned, Johan was simply an accessory to it in same way as his tin soldiers and ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... too surely so, in Aminta's mind. She tried, by looking out of the window, to forget her companion. The dullness of the roads and streets opening away to flat fields combined with the postillion's unvarying jog to sicken her thoughts over the exile from London she was undergoing, and the chance that Matthew Weyburn might call at a vacant house next day, to announce his term of service ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in a state of restlessness and dullness, complaining of difficulty in swallowing. Mrs. Martin was uneasy lest there should be something malignant about the attack; but to Phillida the case seemed an ordinary one, not likely to prove serious. She held Tommy in her arms ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... complaining of the tediousness of the voyage, and the dullness of her own circle, invited Ishmael and his party to spend the evening and play whist in the ladies' cabin—forbidden ground to all gentlemen who had no ladies with them, unless indeed they should happen, as in this case, ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... some cease feeling Even themselves or for themselves. Dullness best solves The tease and doubt of shelling, And Chance's strange arithmetic Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling. They keep ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen
... was brought from London to replace Phoebe Marks about the person of my lady—a very showy damsel, who wore a black satin gown, and rose-colored ribbons in her cap, and complained bitterly of the dullness of Audley Court. ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... I thought 'twas someone speaking this in my ear, and turn'd my head. But 'twas really the last word I had heard from Delia, now after half an hour repeated in my brain. And as I grew aware of this, the dullness fell off me, and all became very distinct. And the muscles about my wound had stiffen'd—which was vilely painful: and the country, I saw, was a brown, barren moor, dotted with peat- ricks: and I ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... remark even to dramatic poetry, if indeed even the Nurse itself can be deemed altogether a case in point—it is not possible to imitate truly a dull and garrulous discourser, without repeating the effects of dullness and garrulity. However this may be, I dare assert, that the parts—(and these form the far larger portion of the whole)—which might as well or still better have proceeded from the poet's own imagination, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... So despite the dullness of the fog, which prevented her seeing much of the ocean, the day passed very well. When she was asked if she could play and to give her new friends a little music, she took the violin from its shelf and gave them her simple best. To please them who were so kind to her was ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... stupidity is over. Personally, I regard every hour I have spent in this public-house as wasted. I never in my life heard a word of real fun, or real sense, excepting from men who were merely casual visitors. The person whose mind is satisfied by the parlour dullness of that nightly foolery only becomes animated when he is indecent. In tracing the natural history of a public-house I have found the respectable dullards the most revolting ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... did not mean to allow his light to remain hidden, as May apparently intended it should be; consequently, dinner had scarcely begun before she started to draw him out scientifically, and, after the dullness of the last few days, her guest was not loath to talk. He was always interesting, but this time he was almost brilliant; and when Ethel gave the signal to the other ladies, she left the room feeling ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... to a dullness of the brain resulting from too much sleep. "If I should speak of it," quoth he, "people would laugh at me." Still, the glory that was to be his son's dazzled him, albeit the meaning of the prophecy was not clear to him, and he even doubted that he ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... will be more satisfactory to our readers—those at least who preserve their numbers for binding, and probably most do—than publishing the index in a separate sheet. The list of claims in this number will be found to be unusually full, a gratifying evidence that dullness of business does not cripple the resources nor abate the industry of our inventors. With a parting word of good will to our present subscribers and a welcome to those who begin with our new volume, we wish for all a ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... "would become of the fine arts if all men delighted in dirt, dust, dullness, and desks? Depend upon it, John, that our tastes and tendencies are not the result of accident; they were given to us for a purpose. I hold it as an axiom that when a man or a boy has a strong and decided bias or partiality ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... Our fellow passengers were two officers of dragoons, several commissaries with their servants, horses, etc. After a passage of twenty-four hours, we entered the harbour of Ostend at one o'clock the following day. Ostend, once so flourishing and opulent, has long since fallen into decay; its usual dullness is however just now interrupted by the bustle of troops landing to join the allied army. Cavalry, infantry, artillery, horses, guns, stores, etc., are landed every minute. The quays are the only parts of this city which can boast of handsome buildings; ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... were so much alike in that respect, that the people were often to be found drawn up on opposite sides of dinner-tables, in the shade of their own loftiness, staring at the other side of the way with the dullness of the houses. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... something of the town. Its extreme cleanness after Mexico is remarkable. In that respect it is the Philadelphia of the republic; with wide streets, well paved; large houses of two stories, very solid and well built; magnificent churches, plenty of water, and withal a dullness which makes one feel as if the houses were rows of convents, and all the people, except beggars and a few business men, shut up in performance of ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... He is certainly much mended, though I still fear a consumption for him; he has not been able to move from Richmond this whole winter: I never fail to visit him twice or thrice a week. I heartily pity the fatigue and dullness of your life; nor can I flatter you with pretending to believe it will end soon: I hope you will not be forced to gain as much reputation in the camp as you have in the cabinet!—You ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... I have been doing since you left. I spent three whole days in the most unimaginable wretchedness; I had no hindrances like yours—only the most fearful burden of dullness and sloth, that had crept upon me and mastered me, during all the weeks that I had let myself be so upset and delayed. I cannot picture what I go through when I lose my self-command in that way, but it is like one who ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... a woman making the best translation and criticism of Kant which had appeared until her day! Her revelations might have found more value in the eyes of pedants had she been more obscure. But, as Sir James Mackintosh says, "Dullness is not accuracy, nor is an elegant writer necessarily superficial." Divest German metaphysics of their obscurities, and they might seem commonplace; take away the clearness of French writers, and they might pass for ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... failing health, from poverty, from overwork and sleepless nights and constant care, from thwarted plans, disappointed ambitions, slighted love, and base ingratitude. Old age comes on with its grey hairs, failing strength, dimness of sight, dullness of hearing, tottering step, shortness of breath, and general weakness and decay. The friends of youth die, and a new, strange, pushing generation that knows not the old man, comes elbowing him aside and taking ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... If we can imagine an artist confining himself to this single issue, relying on no finenesses outside it, then we might have a work of art which men and women, representing in other respects any degree of imagination and dullness, might all almost equally enjoy. In practice it is seldom that an artist is content to confine himself so exclusively to this issue; it is not in the nature of the imaginative temperament to limit itself in that way. But I think we have an ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... sensation was that of dullness and damp, accompanied by a mouldering vapour, like that from the charnel-house or the grave. Their way was down a winding and broken staircase; at the bottom a straight passage led them on to a considerable ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... listen to what they had to say. She did not know that their travels, their adventures, their stored-up experience had made them rich in anecdote, ready of tongue to tell of wonders undreamed of in the dullness ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... from people who once were fond of theater and music hall that there is an inconceivable dullness pervading the stage; the habitual patron can no longer endure the offerings of the present time with a degree of pleasure, much less with ease. It has ceased to be what it once was, what its name implies. If the old school inclined ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... represents her thought; it is the measure, if one may so put it, in modern terminology, of her degree of spiritual culture. Much that we say about S. Mary, her simplicity, her social place, and so on, seems to carry with it the implication of the ignorance and spiritual dullness that we associate with the type of poverty we are accustomed to to-day. But the poor folk whom we meet in association with our Lord are neither ignorant nor spiritually dull; and it would be a vast mistake to think of Blessed Mary as other than of great intelligence and spiritual ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... the noble-minded scholars instead of cherishing ill feeling kindly correct whatever errors have been here committed through the dullness of my intellect in the way of wrong ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... it might be so. It would be rare sport to hunt the old rat out of his hole, or, better still, burn him in it. It would be a pleasant change from the dullness of mounting eternal guard, marching and countermarching every day, and all to what purpose? For my part I am tired of it, and long for a little more of the sport we had in dear Paris. Ah! it was worth living for, to see ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... being a master in argument, is free to pursue his bent in illustration, and thus conjures up a whole picture that dwells on the mind, and is remembered for its effect on the feelings or the imagination, even by men whose levity or dullness precluded their being fixed by the argument. The very structure of his sentences is more adapted for this kind of speaking than any other. They sometimes appear involved, to an ordinary mind, from their length, and the abundance of illustration ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... loose, not hard and knotty, as in glanders. This ailment, which is apt to persist for months, unless properly treated, may leave an animal in an unthrifty state, with a staring coat, disturbed appetite, dullness at work, cough and discharge from one or both nostrils; but there are no pustules or ragged sores or ulcers within the nose, as in glanders. Chronic nasal gleet, however, is apt to run into glanders; and, as there is ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... very well, and had access to his presence when officials were kept cooling their heels in the Waiting-room. The President liked to hear the Colonel talk, his voluble ease was a refreshment after the decorous dullness of men who only talked business and government, and everlastingly expounded their notions of justice and the distribution of patronage. The Colonel was as much a lover of farming and of horses as Thomas Jefferson was. He talked ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... firmament in a pall of vapor. This incumbrance retaining its position till about three o'clock, the heat became tormentingly sultry. There was not a breath of air; the atmosphere was overloaded; and irresistible lassitude seized the people. A stupefying dullness seemed to pervade every place but the woods, which now trembled, and rustled, and shook with an incessant and thrilling noise of explosions, rapidly following each other, and mingling their reports with a discordant variety ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... god monkey who sees no evil, his hands cover his eyes; this one is the god monkey who hears no evil, his hands cover his ears; and this one is the god monkey who speaks no evil, his hands cover his mouth. Half ashamed of our own dullness an old lesson came back with new significance,—be blind, deaf, and dumb ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... were lusus naturae!" exclaimed the dissolute Cornbury, losing all his reserve in a manner that better suited his known and confirmed character. "You should have caged them, Skimmer, and profited by their dullness, to lay the curious under contribution. Don't mistake me, Sir, if I speak a little in confidence. I hope I know the difference between a gentleman and a leveller, as well as another; but trust me, this Mr. Hunter is human, and he will yield if ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... tediousness. But in "The Monikins" the introductory tediousness is unendurable. It is not until we are nearly half-way into the work and have actually entered upon the voyage to the land of the monkeys, that the dullness at all disappears. After the country of Leaphigh is reached the story is far less absurd and more entertaining; though (p. 135) Cooper's descriptions are of the nature of caricature rather than of satire. There are, however, many shrewd and caustic remarks scattered ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... respiration were absent. Careful palpation showed a uniform, drum-like resistance, otherwise nothing abnormal. The percussion note over the abdomen upon light tapping (and only this could be borne) revealed no decided difference, and nowhere any dullness; upon prolonged continued auscultation, high-pitched intestinal murmurs ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... debaters in this singular parliament, where self-satisfied ignorance and dullness of apprehension were so hard to pierce, was the youthful envoy of the Czechoslovaks, M. Benes. This politician, who before the Conference came to an end was offered the honorable task of forming a new Cabinet, which he wisely declined, displayed a masterly grasp of Continental ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... before going to Endsley Gardens; and now, made wiser by a startling experience, I proceeded with systematic care. It was still broad daylight—for the lamps in the tea-shop had been rendered necessary only by the faulty construction of the premises and the dullness of the afternoon—and in an open space I could see far enough for complete safety. Arriving at the top of Sloane Street, I crossed Knightsbridge, and, entering Hyde Park, struck out towards the Serpentine. Passing along the eastern shore, I entered one of ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... though there is a fountain in every square, and you are never out of the sound of falling water. The Corso and some of the principal streets do not so much impress you with their filth as with their dullness; but that part of the city where some of the most memorable relics of antiquity are to be found is unimaginably vile. The least said of the state of the archways of the Coliseum the soonest mended; and I have already spoken of the Forum. The streets ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... a favorite and characteristic notion of modern society to associate goodness with dullness, and consequently, I suppose, to connect badness with all that is gay, interesting, and diverting. There is nothing more perverted, absurd, and contemptible than that notion in the ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... unerring rectitude or invariable propriety, requires a degree of firmness and of cool attention, which does not always attend the higher gifts of the mind. Yet, difficult as nature herself seems to have reduced the task of regularity to genius, it is the supreme consolation of dullness, to seize upon those excesses, which are the overflowings of faculties they never enjoyed."[111] Are not the gifts of imagination mistaken here for the strength of passions? Doubtless, where strong passions accompany great ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... for a few enthusiastic women at Weimar, I should have heard nothing of the third opera week. Even the most unheard-of efforts which you make on my behalf become an empty breath of air to me. I am condemned to perish amidst leather and oppressive dullness. ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... day did not now seem likely to be dull; but it might prove to have in store for me more difficult tasks than the enduring of a little dullness. ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... the anthropologists being a bete noire to scientific men, I am not surprised, for I have just skimmed through the last "Anthrop. Journal," and it shows, especially the long attack on the British Association, a curious spirit of insolence, conceit, dullness, and vulgarity. I have read with uncommon interest Travers' short paper on the Chatham Islands. (362/1. See Travers, H.H., "Notes on the Chatham Islands," "Linn. Soc. Journ." IX., October 1865. Mr. Travers says he picked up a seed of Edwardsia, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... are another objection; all causes are heard, at present, in little narrow rooms, where spirit and strenuous exertion are unnecessary. The orator, like a generous steed, requires liberty and ample space: before a scanty tribunal his spirit droops, and the dullness of the scene damps the powers of genius. Add to this, we pay no attention to style; and indeed how should we? No time is allowed for the beauties of composition: the judge calls upon you to begin, and you must obey, liable, at the same time, to frequent interruptions, ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... to sea; we are in for it now; the machine guns muttered as through chattering teeth—up to our necks in it now. But would we be out of it? No; not one of us; not for five hundred years stuffed full of dullness and routine. ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... what the coming of the submarine might mean. Yet he seemed actually pleased to see her. He hurried to find Gorman. All the nervous agitation which had set him quarrelling with his Corinne disappeared. The effects of the horrible dullness and intolerable boredom of the past three months dropped away in an instant. The sirocco no longer afflicted him. He greeted Gorman with smiles. He was once more the irrepressible, cheery, street arab among kings, who had swindled ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... sweetest delight of gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dullness of that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the bed of Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... the word to apply to American farmers and their families. One might as aptly employ it when describing the people of England who live on their "landed estates." Ignorance and dullness and awkwardness we shall not often find among country children. The boys and girls on the farms are as well informed, as mentally alert, and as attractive as children in any other good homes ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... a great historical figure, but he was certainly not a great man. His execution remains an enduring monument not only of Philip's cruelty and perfidy but of his dullness. The King had everything to hope from Egmont and nothing to fear. Granvelle knew the man well, and, almost to the last, could not believe in the possibility of so unparalleled a blunder as that which was to make a victim, a martyr, and a popular idol of a personage brave ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... she say when she would return?" "No sir, but it will be I dare say about the usual time." "When is that?" "Half-past five, or six o'clock, perhaps later." I again turned down the garden, and as that did not relieve my dullness, returned to the house. I could not read though I tried, sat down on a chair by the dining-room table, laid my head on my hands upon it, and thought of my unhappy home till ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... throat? Difficulty in breathing? Have you pain in the head between and above the eyes? A sense of fulness in the head? Are the passages of the nose stopped up? Is your breath foul? Have you lost all sense of smell? Are you troubled with hawking? Spitting? Weak, inflamed eyes? Dullness or dizziness of the head? Dryness or heat of the nose? Is your voice harsh or rough? Have you any difficulty in talking? Have you an excessive secretion of mucus or matter in the nasal passages, which must either be blown from the nose, or drop back behind the palate, or hawked or snuffed ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 03, March, 1885 • Various
... would merely send her to sleep. The only thing that could be said against it was that the author's dread of inspiration had made it grievously dull, but it was the publisher's opinion that after a glut of sensational fiction the six-shilling public had come to regard dullness as the hall-mark of literary merit. He had no illusions as to its possible success, but, on the other hand, he knew that he could not lose any money on it, so he wrote a letter to the author inviting ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... intellectual stimulus which the farmers received from the movement was probably even more important than any direct political or economic results. It is difficult for the present generation to form any conception of the dreariness and dullness of farm life half a century ago. Especially in the West, where farms were large, opportunities for social intercourse were few, and weeks might pass without the farmer seeing any but his nearest neighbors. ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... Baird was his mental nourishment and solace. When they were apart he found his mind dwelling on him as a sort of habit. But for this one man he would have lived a squalid life among his people at Janney's Mills—squalid because he had not the elasticity to rise above its narrow, uneducated dullness. The squalor so far as he himself was concerned was not physical. His own small, plain home was as neat as it was simple, but he had not the temperament which makes a man friends. Baird possessed this temperament, and his home ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... life, and how lately with the continual drudgery of her work, she had changed to a pessimism unnatural to one of her years. Yes, one continual round of work at the farm house is apt either to crush to dullness or to arouse to rebellion. Carlia was of the kind not easily crushed.... But what could they now do? What could he do? For, it came to him with great force that he himself was not altogether free from blame in this matter. He could have done more, vastly more ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... that Rastignac drew first blood. The tip of his epee drove past a bewildered mucketeer's blade and entered the fellow's throat just below the chin. It did not penetrate very far because of the dullness of the point. Nevertheless, when Rastignac withdrew his sword ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... trained and tutored the thoughtful mind of Euripides; and hence that art which in Sophocles was learned in more miscellaneous and active circles, and moulded by a more powerful imagination, in Euripides often sickens us with the tricks of a pleader, the quibbles of a schoolman, or the dullness of a moralizing declaimer. But as, in the peculiar attributes and character of his writings, Euripides somewhat forestalled his age—as his example had a very important influence upon his successors—as he did not exhibit till the fame of Sophocles ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... KATE. Oh, dullness! dullness! I do wish Harry was at home, or Sir William would march some of his troops this way! What's the use of an army in the country, if one can't have a ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce
... beautifully pencilled eyebrows. Schomberg muttered something about the locality being dull and uninteresting to travellers—nothing going on—too quiet altogether, but he only provoked the declaration that quiet had its charm sometimes, and even dullness was welcome as ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... seemed to learn nothing there, and that he drove his reverend preceptors to the desperate course of advising his removal. They told his father he would make a good farmer, but a scholar, never. They nicknamed him the mole, for his dullness; but, in the mean time, he was making underground progress of his own, and he came to the surface one day, a mole no longer, to everybody's amazement, but a thing of such flight and song as they had never seen before,—in ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... seen it all, time and again; and this he remembered, that each time the dead, weather-worn, miry or dusty dullness of it had crept into his soul, sending him back to the freshness of the Paradise fields and forests at eventide with grateful ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... things go wrong," Tom said, with a kind of pathetic dullness that must have gone straight to the other's heart. "As long as I got a friend it doesn't make any difference what one—I mean who he is. Lots of times the wrong trail takes you ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... to virtue, and inspire it with a sublime devotion. Warmed in this honourable cause, he might, perhaps, suffer his zeal to transport him to a height, which his enemies called enthusiasm; but of the two extremes, no doubt can be made, that Blackmore's was the safest, and even dullness in favour of virtue (which, by the way, was not the case with Sir Richard) is more tolerable than the brightest parts employed in the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... Augustan age, and were acted as late as the reign of Diocletian. Life, bustle, surprise, unexpected situations, sharp, sparkling raillery that knew no restraint nor bound, left his audience no time for dullness or weariness. Although Greek was the fountain from which he drew his stores, his wit, thought, and language were entirely Roman, and his style was Latin of the purest and most elegant kind—not, indeed, controlled by much deference to the laws of metrical harmony, but ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... The dullness of the church life, so conspicuous at present in many of the churches, is only partly due to the fact that the Christians are tired of the services. It is true that these services no longer afford them that mental and spiritual stimulus which they found at the first, and that, lacking ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... nor cards, scandal nor love-making; no news of the fashions, no visits from silk-mercers or jewellers, no Monsu to curl her hair and tempt her with new lotions, or so much as a strolling soothsayer or juggler to lighten the dullness of the long afternoons. The only visitors to the castle were the mendicant friars drawn thither by the Marchioness's pious repute; and though Donna Laura disdained not to call these to her chamber and question them for news, yet their country-side scandals were ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... as he asks his eyes glitter with a gleam of hope—when you shake your head he simply trudges on over the rocks and scrub with the same fatigued and sullen dullness which we all suffered. ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... sorrow which he was hardly feeling. But he said to himself that sorrow must come unbidden, and that it was no sorrow that was made with labour and intention. He was a little angered with himself for his dullness—but then song was so beautiful, that he could think of nothing else; ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... His appearance fulfilled the promise of his voice over the telephone. A sort of nervous dullness wrapped him ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... wandering from my story, let me say here that my father had been in treaty with this Mr. Peter Walpole concerning my apprenticeship to him in Norwich. After moping a long time at the dullness of my life in Brandon I had plucked up courage to tell my father that I would fain be abroad. He heard me less unkindly than I had feared, and contrived this plan for settling me away from home for a few years, after which, he was pleased ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... colour may appear to be of a different tint to different eyes; and it seems certain that climate and surroundings affect the colour sense: light and colour will stimulate the delight in colour; while, where grayness and dullness characterize the surroundings of life, the colour sense will grow weak, or, if it is manifested at all, it will show a tendency to grayness and heaviness ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... grumbled because she had to rise at four that morning, get breakfast, milk the cows, bake bread, prepare seven children for school, get dinner, preserve twenty quarts of strawberries, get tea, and milk the cows again. All her days were alike as far as hard work and dullness went, but she accepted them cheerfully and uncomplainingly. But she did resent having to look after the baby when she wanted ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the girl, sitting very upright in her chair, "I confess to loneliness. The sameness of life in this castle oppresses me, and in its continuous dullness I grow old before my time. I wish to enjoy a month or two in Frankfort, and, as doubtless you have guessed, I send you forth as my ambassador ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... cure our dullness. Tell us a story, monsieur, if you will neither sing nor play. We love a story, ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... hopeless eyes, out of which all the old-time flash had gone, and nothing but heavy dullness remained. "Have you heard from my boy, from George?" ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... Ass' is full of dramatic power and variety. The succession of incident, albeit grossly licentious at times, engages the interest without a moment's dullness. The main narrative, indeed, is no less entertaining than the episodes. The work became a model for story-writers of a much later period, even to the times of Fielding and Smollett. Boccaccio borrowed freely from ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Regan told me. I don't know what or where it is, but I'm ready for a start if it's a cannibal isle. Anything is better than dying of dullness here. Where are you off so ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... vital forces of the body are called upon to help the stomach digest its food. If our bodily energies are compelled, in addition to this, to help the muscles or brain, digestion is retarded, and a feeling of dullness and heaviness follows. Fermentative changes, instead of the normal digestive changes, are apt to take place in ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... interest. But the rector's daughter pined for neither society nor scandal: she had plenty of interest in her life, and in pleasing other people, whenever she could do it with pleasure to herself, and that was nearly always. Her present ailment was not languor, weariness, or dullness, but rather the want of such things; which we long for when they happen to be scarce, and declare them to be our first need, under ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... of Tolstoy, in capitalistic conditions, is necessarily dramatic. Your labor here will be for your daily bread, and it will be real." The inner dullness of the woman came into her eyes again, and he addressed himself to Lord Moors in continuing: "If a company of indigent people were cast away on an English coast, after you had rendered them the first aid, what ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... in revelling roundelays, Belched out with hickups at bacchanal Go, Bellowed, till heaven's high concave rebound the lays, Are all for college carousals too low. Of dullness quite tired, with merriment fired, And fully inspired with amity's glow, With hate-drowning wine, boys, and punch all divine, boys, The Juniors combine, boys, in friendly HIGH-GO. Glossology, by William Biglow, inserted in Buckingham's ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... be known by the neat appearance of the boys, in their shiny boots and clean, boiled shirts, as they make their early morning entree for company inspection of arms and accouterments, after which, all is dullness and vacuity. There is a sensible void, apparent to all, requiring something to remove the depressing dullness now surrounding them; and that something is to be found only in the presence of an accommodating and pleasing chaplain. Being to-day in the camp of the ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... call depth in a book is often obscurity; and an author whose meaning is got at only by severe mental exertion, and a straining of the mind's eye, is generally weak in the backbone of him. Occasionally it is the dullness of the reader, but oftener ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... Asher and Virginia had already peopled the valley with imaginary settlers, each one of a certain type, and they adapted their pastime to the particular neighbors whom they chose to invite for the evening. How little the helpless folk in the city, bored with their own dullness, and dependent on others for amusement—how little could such as these cope with the loneliness of the home on the plains, or comprehend the resourcefulness ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... large classroom downstairs the other thirty pupils were enjoying themselves with a zest all the greater for the dullness of the weeks which had gone before. The floor had been sponged with milk until it was quite smooth and slippery, a table supplied with such refreshments as lemonade, ginger-beer, and sweet biscuits, was placed outside the door, and the violin ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... precipice the moon rode into view. Night had for some while now hooded the marvelous city. They had planned it to be symmetrical, its maps were orderly, near; in two dimensions, that is length and breadth, its streets met and crossed each other with regular exactitude, with all the dullness of the science of man. The city had laughed as it were and shaken itself free and in the third dimension had soared away to consort with all the careless, irregular things that know not ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... ever let them in. No, no, she was done with them. She would forget, as Jerry had forgotten. She would destroy every link between herself and the past—and pack the neat little steamer trunk neatly—and bid these kind and gentle people good-by—and take herself and her bitterness and her dullness back to the class-room in the Western university town—back to the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... attracted the attention of the monsters and brought them upon me with a rush. It almost appeared as though some malicious influence was at work to prevent my escape, as though fate was against me! Yet, after all, it was not fate that was to blame, but my own dullness in not perceiving my chance and availing myself of it the moment that it presented itself. If instead of vacillating, as I had done, I had promptly taken the plunge, I should have accomplished my short ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... of rank which graces occupy in reference to gifts. The most trifling act which is marked by usefulness to others is nobler in God's sight, than the most brilliant accomplishment of genius. To teach a few Sunday-school children, week after week, commonplace simple truths—persevering in spite of dullness and mean capacities—is a more glorious occupation than the highest meditations or creations of genius which edify or instruct only our own ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... to me at thirteen. He was always a conscientious and amiable boy, but was nervous and dull. By fifteen his dullness had increased, and he complained of brain-strain and poorness of memory. Finally he began to develop St. Vitus's dance. I sent him to our school doctor, who returned him with a note saying that his condition was serious—that he must stop all work, &c. &c. I was ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... way—and like the sting of a wasp or serpent his hatred rushed out armed and poisonous against anything like opposition. He was proud of his hatred as of everything else. Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness takes ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... brother joined them at the end of the week a dullness of despair had come upon her. Again she saw herself trapped and helpless, lacking even the spirit to attempt escape. She greeted Jack almost abstractedly, and he observed her throughout the evening with anxiety in his eyes. When it was over ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Longestaffe had despised from her youth upwards it was George Whitstable. He had been a laughing-stock to her when they were children, had been regarded as a lout when he left school, and had been her common example of rural dullness since he had become a man. He certainly was neither beautiful nor bright;—but he was a Conservative squire born of Tory parents. Nor was he rich;—having but a moderate income, sufficient to maintain a moderate country house and no more. When first there came indications that Sophia ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Enright, soft an' depreecatory, tryin' to get her feelin's bedded down, 'which you'll shore pardon us if in our dullness we misreads your sentiments. You see, the notion gets somehow proned into us that you wants this party. Which if we makes a mistake, by way of repa'rin' that error, let me say that if thar's any one else in sight whom ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... went—walked along the pavement, turned down the close, and put the sun, I believe, into her pocket when she disappeared, so suddenly did dullness and darkness sink down on the square, when she was no longer visible. I stood for a moment as if I had been senseless, not recollecting what a fund of entertainment I must have supplied to our watchful friends on the other side of the green. Then it darted on my mind ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... little boy entered Harrow school and was put in a class beyond his years, wherein all the other boys had the advantage of previous instruction. His master used to reprove his dullness, but all his efforts could not raise him from the lowest place in the class. The boy finally procured the elementary books which the other boys had studied. He devoted the hours of play and many of the hours of sleep to ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... was full day, and the color and life of Charin had subsided into listlessness again, a dim morning dullness and silence. Only a few men lounged wearily in the streets, as if the sun had sapped their energy. And always the pale fleecy-haired children, human and furred nonhuman, played their mysterious games on the curbs and gutters and staring at us with ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... the stereotypes, and offer men a picture of facts, which is unfamiliar and to them impersonal. When this is not painful, it is dull, and those to whom it is painful, the trading politician and the partisan who has much to conceal, often exploit the dullness that the public feels, in order to remove the pain that ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... narration, in the Eleventh and Twelfth Books, consoling and strengthening Adam, before the Expulsion from the Garden, by a rapid survey of the prospective history of the World from that event down to the Millennium. Considered as a narrator, Michael is very subject to dullness; were it not for the unfailing dignity and magniloquence of his diction, his tale would be merely a bleak compendium of the outlines of Scripture history; but to Raphael is committed the story of the war in Heaven and its amazing sequel,—a story containing ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... hospital. All this is far from enlivening, even had I a larger share of the national philosophy; and did I not oftener make what I observe, than what I suffer, the subject of my letters, I should tax your patience as much by repetition, as I may by dullness. ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... the Formation of the Earth, two mighty octavo volumes, elicits the following complimentary remarks from the Athenaeum. "This work is saved from being mischievous only by the circumstance of the excessive dullness diffused over these twelve hundred pages—which will in all probability prevent their being much read.... Of no one department of science does the author appear to have a correct conception. His views are all distorted. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... to the music; for if a balance be struck between the words and music of hymns, it will be found to be heavily in favour of the musicians, whose fine work has been unscrupulously altered and reduced to dullness by english compilers, with the object of conforming it in rhythm to words that are unworthy of any music whatever. The chief offenders here are the protestant reformers, whose metrical psalms, which the melodies ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... strong repugnance. All this, it must be remembered, took place in the earliest part of the reign of the Emperor Alexander I[A]. He was obliged, greatly against his will, to return to his father's country house. Dirty, poor, and miserable did the paternal nest seem to him. The solitude and the dullness of a retired country life offended him at every step. He was devoured by ennui; besides, every one in the house, except his mother, regarded him with unloving eyes. His father disliked his metropolitan habits, his dress-coats and shirt-frills, his books, his flute, his cleanliness—from ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... originality enough to start a fresh one. For they ARE a pretty limited lot, you will admit that? Originality is not in their line; they can't think up anything new, anything to freshen up the old moss-grown dullness of the language lesson and put life and "go" into it, and charm and ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... "I dodged away from dullness last evening; I was hoping to have a bit of a frolic. And I found a young gentleman who asked no impertinent questions, who was very gracious, and who was a delight in the dance. It was all very innocent—rather imprudent—but altogether ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... been left too much alone, as M. Fille had said to Judge Carcasson. Her spirits had moments of great dullness, when she was ready to fling herself into the river—or the arms of the schoolmaster or the farrier. When she first came to St. Saviour's, the necessity of adapting herself to the new conditions, of keeping faith ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Inasmuch as there are many criminals among barbarous people, barbarity, criminality and indifference to pain come together in a large number of cases. But there is nothing remarkable in this, and a direct relation between crime and dullness of the senses can ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... about this time, "he's a slow-minded, unimaginative, commercial Briton, with as much nimbleness as an elephant. British commerce is his deity, British advantage his duty and mission; and he goes about his work with blunt dullness and ineptitude. That's his mental calibre as I ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick |
