"Dull" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was generally Mr. Addison's "Spectator;" but one year, I remember, we had to read "Sturm's Reflections" translated from a German book Mrs. Medlicott recommended. Mr. Sturm told us what to think about for every day in the year; and very dull it was; but I believe Queen Charlotte had liked the book very much, and the thought of her royal approbation kept my lady awake during the reading. "Mrs. Chapone's Letters" and "Dr. Gregory's Advice to Young Ladies" composed the ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... art. med. who cities this story verbatim out of Villanovanus, and so doth Magninus a physician of Milan, in his regimen of health. Such another excellent compound water I find in Rubeus de distill. sect. 3. which he highly magnifies out of Savanarola, [4183]"for such as are solitary, dull, heavy or sad without a cause, or be troubled with trembling of heart." Other excellent compound waters for melancholy, he cites in the same place. [4184]"If their melancholy be not inflamed, or their temperature over-hot." Evonimus hath a precious aquavitae to this purpose, for such as are ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... said, too like a nun; but nobody could condole or sympathize with a friend in trouble like Giselle. It seemed as if nature herself had intended her for a Sister of Charity—a Gray Sister, as Jacqueline would sometimes call her, making fun of her somewhat dull intellect, which had been benumbed, rather than stimulated, by ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... Avenue house proceeded apace—it was an eminently gratifying house to furnish, and Jim and Julia almost wished their labours not so light. All rugs looked well on those beautiful floors; all pictures were at their best against the dull rich tones of the walls. Did Mrs. Studdiford like the soft blue curtains in the library, or the dull gold, or the coffee-coloured tapestry? Mrs. Studdiford, an exquisite little figure of indecision, in a ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... 19: "Authors have lived and still live who write for what they call fame! —For my part I write for more substantial food—beef and mutton are the objects of my ambition." —Reynold's Preface to Begone Dull Care.] ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... flat-iron home with me, and it was for long a favourite plaything. I used to sprinkle corners of my pocket-handkerchief with water, as I had seen Nurse Bundle "damp fine things" before ironing them. But after all, "play" of this kind is dull work played alone. I was ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... "Dice is dull work for long," said one of the young men, indolently throwing himself back, and letting his caster fall upon the floor. "To think how much better one might be employed, but for having to watch this old fool here! I've a great mind ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... And pain this bosom by your wild excess, Ah! kindly cease—for pity's sake subside, Nor thus o'erwhelm me with joy's rapid tide: My beating heart, oppress'd with woe and care, Has yet to learn such happiness to bear: From grief, distracting grief, thus high to soar, To know dull pain and misery no more, To hail each op'ning morn with new delight, To rest in peace and joy each happy night, To see my Lycidas from bondage free, Restored to life, to pleasure, and to me, To see him thus—adorn'd with virtue's charms, To give ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... deserves to be refuted first), because it stands near to our Vedic system, is supported by somewhat weighty arguments, and has, to a certain extent, been adopted by some authorities who follow the Veda.—But now some dull-witted persons might think that another objection founded on reasoning might be raised against the Vedanta, viz. on the ground of the atomic doctrine. The Sutrakara, therefore, extends to the latter objection the refutation of the former, considering that by the conquest of the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... sprawled about, but made a very poor fight. Shiny-pate and two or three of his men would seize one of the kicking old fellows, and either push him or pull him to the edge of the rafters, whence he would fall with a dull thud on the floor, when he was generally too much stunned to make any more resistance, but even if he did he was soon overpowered, bitten, and dragged out of ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... towards her came a forlorn little figure. It was a child of nine, a girl whose grimy face was streaked and swollen with tears, whose red hood was faded to a dull yellowish shade, whose coarse gray coat was so many sizes too large for her that the sleeves were folded back to allow her blue, chapped hands to come forth to the light of day and to their destined usefulness. Theodora's ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... he had no intention of depriving them of either of their valuable parents, even for a single day. "But," added he, "unexpected business calls me to Plymouth. I shall be absent about a fortnight or three weeks, and shall be very dull without a companion. Ned, my boy, what say you to ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... the town was intentionally bent upon being attractive by exhibiting to an influx of visitors the local talent for dramatic recitation, and provincial towns trying to be lively are the dullest of dull things. ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... crews were covered nearly from stem to stern by iron bullet-proof awnings, which, as well as the boats, were painted black. The engines were so constructed as to make the least possible amount of noise, and when speed was reduced no sound was heard save a dull throbbing that was almost drowned ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... leaving him: to remain, according to the notions of her parents, would be wrong. Why was it that doing wrong agreed with her, energized her, made her more alert, cleverer, keying up her faculties? turned life from a dull affair into a momentous one? To abandon Ditmar would be to slump back into the humdrum, into something from which she had magically been emancipated, symbolized by the home in which she sat; by the red-checked ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that still fluttered, a remnant of the crimson adornings of autumn. Beyond were the bare, square outlines of the old college, with a wooden cupola perched on the roof, like a little hat on a fat man, the dull-red tints of the professors' houses, and the withered lawns and bare trees. The turrets and balconies and arched windows of the boys' school displayed a red background for a troop of gray uniforms and blazing buttons; ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... above all, obedient drudges (for so I must call them, although they are drudges of a superior order), men who will be contented to pass half their day in using their hands and eyes in the mechanical act of observing, and the remainder of it in the dull process of calculation."] ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... smile at us in derision? What would he have? These speeches of his, sown broadcast over the land, what clear distinct meaning have they? Are they not intended for disorganization in our very midst? Are they not intended to dull our weapons? Are they not intended to destroy our zeal? Are they not intended to animate our enemies? Sir, are they not words of brilliant, polished treason, even in the very Capitol of the Confederacy? (Manifestations of applause ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... too late for me to go back," says she. "Too late!" She don't try to be tragic, don't even whine it out, but just states it dull and flat. ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... glass in his hand. As Desmond watched him, he heard a muffled scream from somewhere within the house. Strangwise heard it too, for Desmond saw him put his glass down on the bar and raise his head sharply. There followed a dull crash from the interior of the inn and the next moment the yellow-faced man, whom Desmond judged to be Rass, stepped into the circle of light inside the window. He said something to Strangwise with thumb jerked behind ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... them. What then is their refuge? Doctor Martin Luther, or else Philip (Melancthon), or anyhow Zwingle, or beyond doubt Calvin and Besa have faithfully laid down the facts. Can I suppose any of you to be so dull of sense as not to perceive this artifice when he is told of it? Wherefore I must confess how earnestly I long for the University Schools as a place where, with you looking on, I could call those carpet-knights out of their delicious retreats into the heat and dust ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... no more than natural that such a chase should occasion some animation in a place as retired and ordinarily as dull as Porto Ferrajo. Several of the young idlers of the garrison obtained horses and galloped up among the hills to watch the result; the mountains being pretty well intersected by bridle-paths, though totally without regular roads. They ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... constituted, is dangerous, and calculated to contaminate any pure-minded woman who enters it, unless she be blessed with sufficient decision of character to choose a strict line of conduct and abide by it, at the risk of being called dull, prudish, and uninteresting. ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... February 16.—After long tarrying, House once more justified its old character. Been dolefully dull these weeks and months past. Thought it was dead; only been sleeping. To-night woke up, and audience that filled every Bench, blocked the Gangways, and thronged the Bar, had rare treat. Occasion was the indictment ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... delicate kind of fern very pretty, and this he presents to Moll with a gracious little speech, which act, it seemed to me, was to let her know that he respected her still as a young gentlewoman in spite of her short petticoat, and Moll was not dull to the compliment neither; for, after the first cry of delight in seeing these natural dainty flowers (she loving such things beyond all else in the world), she bethought her to make him a curtsey and reply to his speech with another as good and well turned, ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... an old man, low in stature, squarely built, clumsily dressed, and standing on large feet. To this uncouth form, add a repulsive face, wrinkled, cold, colorless, and stony, with one eye dull and the other blind—a "wall-eye." His expression is that of a man wrapped in the mystery of his own hidden ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... designated floor. Blount swore impatiently, and instead of waiting to be carried back, darted out and ran to the stairway. When he reached the lower corridor and was hurrying toward his suite in the corner of the building, there was a dull crash, as of a muffled explosion, and two or three of the glass doors in the street-fronting suite were shattered. Blount quickened his pace to a run, let himself in by means of his latch-key, and, cautiously opening his desk, ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... Enault, but is not like him a master of the ars artem celare. The weather, he tells us, was dull and damp, and had a depressing effect on the mind of Chopin. No friend had visited him during the day, no book entertained him, no musical idea gladdened him. It was nearly ten o'clock at night (the circumstantiality of the account ought to inspire confidence) when he bethought himself of paying ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... anything. A hard heart that values nothing is the only wear, and 'tis evident Scripture so enjoins it. My glass tells me I am still a personable woman, and 'tis open to me to find amusement in making a lover—and myself—happy if so I choose—and if 'twere not so dull a pastime. And there is crimp and quadrille for the asking, and the new game ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... and the low. It is a provision of our institutions, by which every generation is led to a line and made to start equal and together. There will be inequality enough as soon as men get into life. Some shoot ahead; some, like dull sailors in a fleet, are dropped behind, and men are scattered all along the ocean. But the Common School gathers up their children and brings them all back again to take a new start together. ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher
... of menstrual pain. It may be so mild as to be little more than discomfort, or so intense that unconsciousness results. The pain may be sharp and knife-like, or it may be a dull ache. It may be localized, low down in one or both sides, distributed over the whole abdomen or concentrated in the back. With this pain, there may be headache, or a headache may be the only symptom. Frequently there is gastro-intestinal disturbance—nausea, vomiting, ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... their survival in his work. The dulness of the poet's ear shows itself in the defective melody of his verse; for both metre and rhythm have a physiological basis; they represent and express the harmony which is in the body when the body is finely attuned to the spirit. Dull senses and a sluggish body are never found in connection with a great command of the melodic ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Irving, but I cannot conscientiously do so. If I had been writing ten or fifteen years ago I might have taken his work seriously; but it is impossible that anything so one-sided, so inaccurate, so untrue to life, and so profoundly dull could continue to exist save in the absence of any critical knowledge or light on the subject. All that can be said for him is that he kept the lamp of interest in Columbus alive for English readers during the period that preceded the advent of modern critical research. ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... very eye of your Imperial Majesty and of noting that you were not displeased with the performance of one of the most devoted of your subjects. This hope, springing up in my breast, gave me new strength and a fresh joy in the often dull round of my daily task, for in matters of the stage your Majesty, being, as we often say among ourselves, the greatest actor of us all and having from the earliest years imbibed the love of the footlights ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... any more than the lilac could engender the scent of roses or of violets. Nor do I profess to do faithfully all that I say in my book that it is well to do. That is the worst, and yet perhaps it is the best, of books, that one presents in them one's hopes, dreams, desires, visions; more than one's dull and mean performances. 'Als ich kann!' That is the best one can ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... these wonderful leaves. They struck me at first, hunting photographs one day, as some sort of a maple; but what maple could have such perfection of star form? A maple refined, perfected, and indeed polished, one might well think, for while other trees have shining leaves, they are dull in comparison with the deep-textured gloss ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... it was, and terrible for what it suggested, if ever that poor dull beast of labor took the bit permanently into its teeth, or, worse yet, hung back in the breeching and inexorably balked. What would then become of us others, us ladies and gentlemen who had never done a stroke of work and never wished to ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... urn, or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust Or flattery sooth the dull ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt
... are lucky; the Count de Laval had the same idea, and all he got was to be put into a room in the tower Du Tresor, where he said he was dreadfully dull, and had no amusement but speaking to the ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... to the brain, the patient grows nervous and irritable or becomes dull and apathetic. How often is a child reprimanded or even punished for laziness and inattention when it cannot help itself? In many instances the morbid matter affects certain centers in the brain and causes nervous conditions, hysteria, St. Vitus' dance, epilepsy, etc. In children the impurities ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... father's house. There was much in her sister Amelia's position which she did not envy, but there was less to envy in that of her sister Rosina. The Gazebee house in St. John's Wood Road was not so magnificent as Courcy Castle; but then it was less dull, less embittered by torment, and was moreover ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... and, horror! it is not the dog! it is the semblance of a human form that now throws itself heavily on the bed, outside the clothes, and lies there, huge and swart, in the red gleam that treacherously died away after showing so much to affright, and sinks into dull darkness. There was now no light left, though the red cinders yet glowed with a ruddy gleam like the eyes of wild beasts. The chain rattled no more. I tried to speak, to scream wildly for help; my mouth was parched, my tongue refused to obey. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... Gibbie. What could be the matter with the curious creature? they wondered. His gentle merriment and quiet delight in waiting upon them, had given a pleasant concussion to the spirits of the party, which had at first threatened to be rather a stiff and dull one; and there now was the boy all at once looking as if he had received a blow, or some cutting insult which he did not know how ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... soon each open compartment was filled from deck to ceiling with the slowly turning, graceful brown bodies, inspecting minutely the countless wheels and levers and gauges, and inspecting also, in turns, the pale, worn faces that stared with dull eyes at them through the ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter
... good. A few minutes later two others came in their place,—one a tiny, white, moth-like thing, the other a big, bristling bunch of crimson hairs. The latter stirred, far back in his dull memory, an association of pain and fear, and he backed deeper into his watery den. It was a red hackle; and in his early days, when he was about eight inches long and frequented the tail of a shallow, foamy rapid, he had had experience of its sharp allurements. ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... and no more spasms. They are calm, deliberate twinges, however, and upon a homoeopathical principle, the great object should be to get over each one in the calmest possible manner; idem cum eodem. The thing cannot be treated too coolly, for its very essence is dull deliberation. The name sonnet is probably derived, through the Italian sonno, from the Latin word for sleep, in allusion to its lethargic quality. The best mode of encouraging the efflux of the ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... wonderful smile—vrai sourire de France indeed—as she glanced up now and then at the window, or stretched out her little hand for the stately Spanish gentlemen to kiss. But the shrill laughter of the children grated on his ears, and the bright pitiless sunlight mocked his sorrow, and a dull odour of strange spices, spices such as embalmers use, seemed to taint—or was it fancy?—the clear morning air. He buried his face in his hands, and when the Infanta looked up again the curtains had been drawn, and the ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... longer wore her hair in its great avalanche of curls down her back; they were caught in now with an amber barrette. Nights Lilly loved to brush them out until they flared to a dust of gold about her head. There was no light too dull for this hair to catch. It sprang out in ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... was very hungry, and as soon as the bully had left she applied herself to what had been brought. Poor creature, she did not know that both sandwiches and milk had been doctored with a drug calculated to make her dull and sleepy! ...
— The Rover Boys on the Ocean • Arthur M. Winfield
... and imposing person present was Miss Fuller. The contrast between her grave, sweet beauty and the frivolous loveliness of the other two, was striking indeed. Sometimes her large gray eyes seemed dull and cold under their long black lashes, and the dark hair was banded smoothly away from a forehead that betokened intellectual strength; the mouth was a little compressed, giving token of the reticence and self-repose of her nature, ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... is a tall strong girl, and a fine hockey player, won the toss, and chose to play against the wind for the first half. At exactly eleven, the center forwards, Blossom and Veronica, began the bully-off. There were three dull clashes as their sticks met, and then with a dexterous stroke, Blossom passed the ball to her Right Inner, Janie Potter. Before she could strike, the wing on the opposite side captured the ball, and with a clean drive sent it spinning down the field. It was soon stopped, however, by Doreen Hayward, ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... not I; but I'm afraid I really ought to read you a lecture. I daresay you miss Sophy very much, but still there are young people enough left in the house to keep you from feeling very dull and lonely, I should think; and as you have all your dear ones about you, and expect to go home in ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... the patient complains of a feeling of tiredness, which prevents him walking far or standing for any length of time. Later, there is a constant, dull, gnawing pain in the back, increased by any form of movement, particularly such as involves jarring or bending of the spine. If the patient is a child, it is noticed that he ceases to play with his companions, and inclines to sit or lie about, usually assuming some ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... and older trees. In moving a tree, we begin by digging a wide trench six to eight feet from it, leaving all possible roots fast to it. By digging under the tree in the wide trench, and working the soil out of the roots by means of round or dull-pointed sticks, the soil falls into the cavity made under the tree. Three or four men in as many hours could get so much of the soil away from the roots that it would be safe to attach a rope and tackle to the ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... mirage or that ravishing Celestial City which Bunyan gazed upon in his dreams. A curved line of electric stars well up toward the horizon showed where the great East River Bridge spanned the unresting tides far below. Millard's apartment was so high that the street roar reached it in a dull murmur as of a distant sea, and he stood and absorbed the glory of the metropolitan scene—such a scene as was never looked upon in any age before our own decade—and it was to him but a fit accompaniment to his passion for Phillida, which by its subjective effect upon him ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... comfortable conditions wherein to exist. The multitude of harmless, necessary males (like myself) were doomed to it. But there was a race of Chosen Ones, to which he belonged, whose untamable and omni-concupiscent essence kept them outside the dull conjugal pale. For such as him, nineteen hundred women at once, scattered within the regions of the seven circumferential seas. He loved them all. Woman as woman was the joy of the earth. It was only the silly spectrum of civilisation that broke Woman up into primary ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... under the thwart an old shoe-knife which had been ground down to one third of its original width. It had been well sharpened for this important occasion, but he had provided an old whetstone as a further precaution against a dull blade. To skin a perch neatly and expeditiously is a nice operation; but Paul had had sufficient practice in the art to render him a skilful hand. Seating himself on the lee rail, he commenced work in earnest, occasionally glancing up to see that ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... is not, of course, one of exterior only. Some interest, at least, attaches to the contents, however dull the subject, however obscure the author. A new book is a new birth, not only to the aesthetic but to the literary sense. It contains within it boundless possibilities. There are printed volumes which are books only in form—which are mere collections of facts ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... boy. Only Cornelia, the worthy mother of the heroic brothers, remained. She could (according to the purport of Plutarch's pathetic narrative) speak of them without a sigh or tear; and those who concluded from this that her mind was clouded by age or misfortune, were too dull themselves to comprehend how a noble nature and noble training can support sorrow, for though fate may often frustrate virtue, yet 'to bear ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... heard the day before Storri's name coupled with that of Dorothy Harley. The Russ was a caller at the Harley house, it seemed, and rumor gave it that he and Mr. Harley were together in speculations. At that Richard hated Storri with the dull integrity of a healthy, normal animal, just as he would have hated any man who raised his eyes to Dorothy Harley; for you are to know that Richard was in a last analysis even more savage than was Storri himself, and withal as jealously hot as a coal of ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... later but the rush and roar of the oncoming torrent seemed to daunt it. For an hour it struggled, then gave up. But during that hour Truedale led Nella-Rose from the house. Silently they made their way to a little hilltop from which they could see an open space of dull, leaden sky. There Truedale took the girl's hands in his and lifted his eyes while his benumbed soul sought whatever ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... that had elapsed between the repulse of the Invulnerables and the arrival of Bandoola's army, Stanley's work was light, and the life dull and monotonous. An hour was spent, every morning, in examining the fugitives who had, by the retreat of the Burmese, been enabled to make their way back to the town; and of women who had escaped from the vigilance ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... had many pretty silver ornaments, but they were dull and shabby, and Margaret had to get the silver polish and a bit of chamois and make them shine before they could go on the fresh bureau-cover the aunt put on, and she was given a bit of velvety stuff to tuck in a corner of a drawer, ready to use every day or two, so they ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... very sure, shall not forget you, Master Deane," replied Elizabeth, looking up in his face. "I have never felt sad or dull as I used sometimes to do before you came—and I have been very happy! My only fear is that you will not recollect me as I shall you; and I want to give you something to make you remember me. I have very few jewels or any thing of value of my own, besides this ring. Please, ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... your father?' Peachey inquired. He had a dull, depressed look, and moved languidly to ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... thet when they can't take pleasure in extry smartness in a child, why, they make it up in tracin' resemblances. I suppose they's parental comfort to be took to in all kinds o' babies. I know I've seen some dull-eyed ones thet seemed like ez ef they wasn't nothin' for 'em to do ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... wonderful polychrome. He had plodded his way among many peculiar folk as he passed from Warwickshire to London by way of Banbury or Oxford. He had stopped at inns in strange company of fools and knaves, pedlars, roisterers and swashbucklers. He had hobnobbed with dull-pated village constables. He had ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... at the door. Her face was just Dorothea's grown older, and without its roses; her hair was Dorothea's with its gold grown dull; her very voice and dimples were Dorothea's. A large poppy-trimmed hat adorned her head, and a basket with an old pair of scissors in it was ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... myself in my studies, to win by my exemplary conduct the encomiums of the sisters Dulorre—all this made no impression upon cruel Georgette. She made no secret of her preference for a dull, idle, blustering fellow of nine years old, who won all the races, who could fling a ball farther than anyone else, carry two huge dictionaries under his ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... empty lie called drapery. The purpled silks of Titian's Lilac Lady, in the Pitti, the embroidered hems of Boccaccini da Cremona, the crimson velvet of Raphael's Joanna of Aragon, Veronese's cloth of silver and shot taffety, are replaced by one monotonous nondescript stuff, differently dyed in dull or glaring colors, but always shoddy. Characteristic costumes have disappeared. We shall not find in any of their Massacres of the Innocents a soldier like Bonifazio's Dall'Armi. In lieu of gems with flashing facets, or of quaint jewels from ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... colors in the Renaissance style of ornament, into which are introduced the Caraccioli arms belonging to the distinguished Neapolitan family of that name. The initial F on this page is historiated with a view of Rome, and each of the ten books has an eight-line initial of dull gold on a background of red, blue ...
— Catalogue of the William Loring Andrews Collection of Early Books in the Library of Yale University • Anonymous
... good, which may not be increas'd, but forth To manifest his glory by its beams, Inhabiting his own eternity, Beyond time's limit or what bound soe'er To circumscribe his being, as he will'd, Into new natures, like unto himself, Eternal Love unfolded. Nor before, As if in dull inaction torpid lay. For not in process of before or aft Upon these waters mov'd the Spirit of God. Simple and mix'd, both form and substance, forth To perfect being started, like three darts Shot from a bow three-corded. And as ray ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... and baseness,—to such Temptation are we all called. Unhappy if we are not! Unhappy if we are but Half-men, in whom that divine handwriting has never blazed forth, all-subduing, in true sun-splendour; but quivers dubiously amid meaner lights: or smoulders, in dull pain, in darkness, under earthly vapours!—Our Wilderness is the wide World in an Atheistic Century; our Forty Days are long years of suffering and fasting: nevertheless, to these also comes an end. Yes, to me also was given, if not Victory, yet the consciousness of Battle, and the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... been men with deeper insight; but, one would say, never a man with such abundance of thought: he is never dull, never insincere, and has the genius to make the reader care for all that ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the plowing of the orchard.... The last load of hay is in the barn; all in capital order. Fitted out a fugitive slave for Canada with the help of Harriet Tubman.... The teachers' convention was small and dull. The woman's committee failed to report. I am mortified to death for them.... Washed every window in the house today. Put a quilted petticoat in the frame. Commenced Mrs. Browning's Portuguese Sonnets. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... I awoke the next day with something of a dull ache in my neck, and a prodigious stiffness, studying the pleatings of the bed canopy over my head. And I know not how long I lay idly thus when I perceived Mrs. Willis moving quietly about, and my grandfather ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... strapped his carbine and small emergency bag to the toboggan, and carried only his service revolver at his belt. It was one o'clock and the last slanting beams of the winter sun, heatless and only cheering to the eye, were fast dying away before the first dull gray approach of desolate gloom which precedes for a few hours the northern night. As the black forest grew more and more somber about them, he looked over the grayish yellow back of the tugging huskies at the silent Indian striding over the outlaw's trail, and a slight shiver passed ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... of all blessednesses in the Lord, and he is divine love; and it is the essence of love to desire to communicate all its goods to another whom it loves; therefore together with man he created that love, and inserted in it the faculty of receiving and perceiving those blessednesses. Who is of so dull and doting an apprehension as not to be able to see, that there is some particular love into which the Lord has collected all possible blessings, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... complimentary of her music some years before, when he tells of being invited to Lady Lucan's to hear her daughters sing Jomelli's "Miserere," set for two voices: "It lasted for two hours, and instead of being pathetic was eminently dull, until at last I rejoiced when 'the two women had left ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... excuse of a dull companion. Her escort for the evening was a man of unusual conversational powers; but she seemed to be almost oblivious of his presence; and when, through some passing courteous impulse, she did turn her ear his way, it was with just that tinge of preoccupation ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... she did not mean to trifle with his affections or destroy his peace; but—it was very dull in the country, and Claudia had nothing else to occupy and interest her mind and heart. Besides, she really did appreciate and admire the wonderfully endowed peasant boy as much as she possibly could in the case of one so immeasurably far beneath her in rank. And she really did take more pride ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... surroundings in the still nights of days that are hoarse with the booming of guns. Few of us, however, despise comic songs here when time and scene fit. We have them at frequent smoking-concerts that help to enliven a routine of duty that would be dull without these entertainments. There are no regimental bands to cheer us, but the Natal Volunteers have improvised one in which tin whistles and tambourines make a fair substitute for fifes and drums. The pipes of the Gordon Highlanders we have ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... white at the base of the beak and behind the eye; back pale brown; breast, blue; throat marked with white; wings with white tips to the feathers and a small patch of bronze; tail short, tip white; feet, dull red. The evening ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... gone from the haze, leaving it cold and gray; the sea was dull and lifeless, no ripple breaking the ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... longer shall be a dull book. It shall walk incarnate in every just and wise man. You shall not tell me by languages and titles a catalogue of the volumes you have read. You shall make me feel what periods you have lived. ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... my case) no effect whatever. Perhaps this may all be of intention; the author may have meant to harrow us with the spectacle of our old nobility expiring as nonentities. But in that case the picture is manifestly unfair. And it is certainly dull—dull as the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... her companion. It hurt her that he should say it, and have cause; but she was so miserable before, that it could be felt only in the dull way in which pain added to pain sometimes makes itself known. She was subdued, humbled, ashamed. She said nothing more, nor did he, until after passing two or three houses they arrived at a spot where ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... half dozen more friends, we visited the splendid apartments in Duchess Street, Portland Place, we were not only struck with the appropriate arrangement of every thing, but, on our leaving them, and coming out into the dull foggy atmosphere of London, we acknowledged that the effect produced upon our minds was something like that which might have arisen had we been regaling ourselves on the silken couches, and within the illuminated chambers, of some of the enchanted palaces described in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... house with about a quarter of an acre of roses in front of it, looking at the palm-trees on the village street, and listening to the surf. This, so far as I could discover, was all she had to do. 'This is a very dull place,' she said. It appears she could go to no other village for fear of raising the jealousy of her own people in the capital. And as for going about 'tafatafaoing,' as we say here, its cost was too enormous. A strong able-bodied native must walk ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the water. She had sought the deep shadow of the ilex trees, for the afternoon was warm, an almost angry summer heat having followed yesterday's coolness. Her yellow gown gleamed like light against the dull brown of the stone and the dark moss-touched trunks of the trees. Whether she was looking at the tufts of fern and of grass that grew in the wet basin, or whether she was studying her own beauty reflected there, no one could tell, not even Apollo, ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... sang the way Americans usually sing, and had to do as well as he could in talking to bankers and investors not to look as if he were singing, but there it all was singing inside him, the seven years of digging, the seven years of dull thundering on rocks under the city, and at last the happy steel cars all green and gold, the streams of people all yellow light hissing and pouring through—those vast pipes for people beneath ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... had been a total absence of either artillery or rifle fire. The advance had been made silently and comparatively quietly. On either side of the mill, in the far distance, and to the rear, however, were dull rumblings and booms that ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... From the specimens we have seen of them we are quite ready to believe that. For them a doctor of souls may be necessary. Your heaven and your spiritual joys may be good enough for you, but they would be very dull for us. We must have seals, and fishes, and birds. Our souls can no more live without these than our bodies. You say we shall not find any of these in your heaven; well then, we do not want to go there; we will leave it to you and to ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... result of the lowest 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 History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... talked over every detail of their enjoyable time. Even Margot acknowledged that, for a quiet wedding, it was very well done, and that the bride did look the sweetest lady that she had seen for a long time. It was natural that after such excitement the next few days seemed dull and flat, but gradually the children settled down to their lessons, and the weeks ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... terrible moment of life, when the revolted soul desires it most, that death comes to free the sufferer. The Queen lived, no doubt, to think of the forlorn little boy in Holyrood, the five little maidens who were dependent upon her, and resumed the burden of life now so strangely different, so dull and blank, so full of alarms and struggles. Her elder child, the little Princess Margaret, had been sent to France three or four years before, at the age of ten, to be the bride of the Dauphin—a great match for a Scottish princess—and it is possible that her next sister, Eleanor, who afterwards ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... of the Most High. When Janet entered into the kingdom of her Father, she would see that he was not left outside. He was as sure of her love to himself, as he was of God's love to her, and was certain she could never be content without her old man. He was himself a dull soul, he thought, and could not expect the great God to take much notice of him, but he would allow Janet to look after him. He had a vague conviction that he would not be very hard to save, for he knew himself ready to do whatever was required of him. None ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... and say to this people: Hear and hear again, but understand not; See and see again, but perceive not. Make fat the heart of this people, And their ears dull, and besmear their eyes, Lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears And their heart should understand and ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... by my life I'le make thee pledge thy last, And be sure she be a maid, a perfect Virgin, (I will not have my expectation dull'd) Or your old pate goes off. I am hot and fiery, And my bloud beats alarms through my body, And fancie high. You of my guard retire, And let me hear no noise about the lodging But musick and sweet ayres, now fetch your Daughter, And bid the coy wench put on all her beauties, ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... their workes worthy fame, Did in my yonge age my heart greatly inflame, Dull slouth eschewing my selfe to exercise, In such small matters, or I durst enterprise, To hyer matter, like as these children do, Which first vse to creepe, and afterwarde to go. . . . . . . . . So where I in youth a ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... the corner of the building when I heard the shriek of a shell coming nearer. I guessed it was pretty close, and without a moment's hesitation dropped in the mud and water of a small ditch, and not a moment too soon for with a dull thud the shell struck and burst hardly seven feet from me. Had I not fallen down these lines would never have been written. Picking myself up, I hurried on. Still the shells continued to drop, but fortunately ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... 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 observe, they ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... the relation of mother and child. It should make every mother a better woman and a better mother. It should make every child a truer, holier child. Every home should have its sacred friendships between parents and children. Thus something of heaven will be brought down to our dull earth; ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... city President Poincare and his cabinet moved the government, they gave it a resting-place that was both dignified and charming. To walk the streets and wharfs is a continual delight. One is never bored. It is like reading a book in which there are no dull pages. ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... it! You are content to think of spending your life in a schoolroom, going over and over the same dull old books, Mary! How ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... mind, which he 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 ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... followed the drifts to the west where here and there a dull distant report told them the miners were blasting out the rocks with dynamite. After being broken up into large chunks the ore was placed on little cars and run along tracks to the hoisting apparatus from where it was ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... blonde, foolish, awkward daughter, Julia was in trouble. During the years the mother gave her no attention, Julia kept company with a young fellow who was a clerk somewhere in a store down in the city. He was a decent, dull young fellow, who did not make much money and could never save it for he had an old mother he supported. He and Julia had been keeping company for several years and now it was needful that they should be married. But then how could ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... pricked. In the draughts of night that poured their silent tide from the depths of the forest, with messages from distant ridges and from lakes just beginning to freeze, there lay already the faint, bleak odors of coming winter. White men, with their dull scent, might never have divined them; the fragrance of the wood fire would have concealed from them these almost electrical hints of moss and bark and hardening swamp a hundred miles away. Even Hank and Defago, subtly in league with ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... On a dull day in April I took my place, a solitary traveller, in the Shrewsbury coach, quite ignorant as to the road I was to travel, and far less at home than I should have been in the wildest part of North America, or on the deck of a ship bound to circumnavigate the globe. We rattled ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... those who are not thorough-bred, speaking physiologically, are as follow: A coarse, thick skin; a "muddy" complexion, or one permanently blotched, pimpled, or discolored; dull eyes, very small or very large and bulging; coarse hair, or that which is very light or colorless,—that is to say, of no decided hue. I regard very light colored, pallid people as morbid varieties; also those with irregular teeth, a very small or ill-shapen nose, small nostrils, perpendicular ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... being intended, was formal, unimpressive, and undevotional; the singing was languid; but we expected that the sermon would arouse the inattentive, and invigorate the dull. The moment for announcing the text arrived. Our curiosity was excited. With little less than famine in the land, our hearts were appalled at hearing the words, "When they shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... business, welcome strife, Welcome the cares, the thorns of life, The visage wan, the purblind sight, The toil by day, the lamp by night, The tedious forms, the solemn prate, The pert dispute, the dull debate, The drowsy bench, the babbling hall,— For ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... that the air was clearer—the fetid mists less choking—in the deep night-silence a few hours back he had fancied that he had heard the faint thunder of the sea. If this were indeed so, it would be but a short distance now to the end of his journey. With dull, glazed eyes and clenched hands, he reeled on. A sort of stupor had laid hold of him, but through it all his brain was working, and he kept steadily to a fixed course. Was it the sea in his ears, he wondered, that long, monotonous rolling of sound, and there were lights before his ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... I had to study the Latin grammar; but it was dull, and I hated it. My father was anxious to send me to college, and therefore I studied the grammar, till I could bear it no longer; and going to my father, I told him I did not like study, and asked for some other employment. It was opposing his wishes, and he was quick in his answer. 'Well, John, ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... Madonna and child confronted me at the door. The next moment I saw what I had not expected to see—a parrot in a cage suspended from the window! I made quite sure that it was not the parrot before I went up to it. It was asleep and appeared to be all over of a dull grey color, to match the Nuns, one might have said. I stood for quite a little while regarding it. Suddenly it stirred, shook itself, awoke and seeing me, immediately broke out into frantic shrieks to the old refrain "And for goodness sake don't say ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... received a long visit from a tall, loosely-built man of fifty or upwards, whom Silas had not hitherto seen. His tweed suit and coloured shirt, no less than his shaggy side-whiskers, identified him as a Britisher, and his dull grey eye affected Silas with a sense of cold. He kept screwing his mouth from side to side and round and round during the whole colloquy, which was carried on in whispers. More than once it seemed to the young New Englander as if their gestures indicated his own apartment; but the only thing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tightly that the poor beasts were in a foam: they were young and fiery. A hare jumped across the road and startled them, and they fairly ran away. The old sober maiden, who had for years and years moved quietly round and round in a dull circle, was now, in death, rattled over stock and stone on the public highway. The coffin in its covering of straw tumbled out of the van, and was left on the high-road, while horses, coachman, and carriage flew past in wild career. The lark rose up carolling from the ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... been gently infused at times into her demeanor ever since she had been at Springdale. She could do the uncomplaining sufferer with the happiest effect. She contrived to insinuate at times how she didn't complain,—how dull and slow she found her life, and yet how she endeavored to ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... agreed Fanny, happily, "and I don't s'pose it cost half so much. I dare say that mat on her hearth cost as much as all our plush furniture and the carpet, and it is a dreadful dull, homely thing." ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... stairs that led from the landing outside my door to the upper rooms. At the top of these stairs I found a door that differed from every other door I had seen at Deepley Walls. In colour it was a dull dead black, and it was studded with large square-headed nails. It was without a handle of any kind, but was pierced by one tiny keyhole. To what strange chamber did this terrible door give access? and who was the mysterious visitor who came here night after night with hushed ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... tinsel flare?— No pirouetting Bogeydom?— Only a Club, and one who there Forgot in sleep his Fogeydom! Welcome my Transformation Scene; I'm dull once more, and every Old Bachelor like me, I ween, May muse ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... Schisms and Sects, and make it such a calamity that any man dissents from their maxims.... Lords and Commons of England, consider what Nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors: a Nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to.... Now once again, by all concurrence ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... blown paper, bits of paper and refuse cluttered inside the round railings of each tree. She went up some dirty-yellowish steps, and rang the "Patients'" bell, because she knew she ought not to ring the "Tradesmen's." A servant, not exactly dirty, but unattractive, let her into a hall painted a dull drab, and floored with cocoa-matting, otherwise bare. Then up bare stairs to a room where a stout, pale, common woman with two warts on her face, was drinking tea. It was three o'clock. This was the matron. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... among the few undeniably good boys' books. He will be a very dull boy indeed who lays it down without wishing that it had gone on for at least ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... gasped, as she realised that the hands pointed to a quarter past eleven. "But I am so lonely and dull. ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... up even yet," Inez answered cheerfully. "Young men are not to be depended on, and he has often come out much later than this. We are but dull company for him, poor boy—all the world are but dull company for him at present, since she is not of them. Poor boy! poor Victor! it is ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... laugh reached us just then. Several men were standing over her chair. She was the centre of what seemed to be a very amusing conversation. Arthur was standing on the outskirts of the group, apparently a little dull. ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... arrest several times, and other serious dangers, as they thought him a spy with his camera and pictures. I gave a stag dinner for him just after his return from his war experiences, and the daily bulletins of war's horrors seemed dull reading ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... restlessly, as if hardly glad to see Guy, and not awake to the circumstances, in a dull, feverish oppression of the senses. Delirium soon came on, or, more properly, delusion. He was distressed by thinking himself deserted, and struggling to speak Italian, and when Guy replied in English, though the ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... girl, 'it may be that she is a witch, as they say; but I am sure she never would work a spell to harm a fly! And as for her tales, they would pass many a dull hour for you, when my ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... he calls to his hens to come and drink with him; I invite you to follow my example. I do not know what you may think; but, for my part, I cannot reckon him a wise man who does not love wine. Let us leave that sort of people to their dull melancholy humours, and seek for mirth, which is only to be ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... with him in that dull country neighborhood had wrought great changes in the simple feeling with which she had sought him at first. He had then been to her only a Prodigal who had squandered his substance, tried to feed his soul on the swinish husks of Doubt, and returning ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... ("Throw off dull care; thine angry moods restrain; Eschew the wine-cup; lightly eat, nor vain Deem our advice to make Enough thy feast. Take exercise, and ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... down piecemeal from the special orbital transport ship that had brought it. Only three landing craft sank during the process, and within two weeks Simpson and Barton set bravely off with their dull-witted cohorts to tackle the swamp with a spanking new piece of equipment. At last the delays ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse
... said Fausta, 'to urge against your argument. It adds some strength, I cannot but confess, to what belief I had before. I trust you have yet more that you can impart. Do not fear that we shall be dull listeners.' ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... soon seem to lose all fear of death. The noise of the big guns and the shell fire terrifies them at first, but they rapidly become accustomed to it and it makes but small impression on them. Life in the trenches becomes very dull and the men do all kinds of foolhardy things just to experience a thrill. They laugh at death and even play ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... a gravity of deportment so stupid and so dull, that in spite of all they had told me, I took him for an idiot, whom the people adored from superstitious motives. I saluted him, and talked to him, but he made no reply, and paid no attention to me. I was about to leave him, when a native made me understand that it was ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... uncounted realms and here unites The liquid mass from Alleganian hights. York leads his way embanked in flowery pride, And noble James falls winding by his side; Back to the hills, through many a silent vale, Wild Rappahannock seems to lure the sail; Patapsco's bosom courts the hand of toil; Dull Susquehanna laves a length of soil; But mightier far, in sea-like azure spread, Potowmac ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... The nurse of lady Wisdom's love, the link of man and man. What words shall me suffice to utter my desire? What heat of talk shall I devise, for to express my fire? I burn and yet I freeze, I flame and cool as fast, In hope to win and for to lese, my pensiveness doth last; Why should my dull spirit appal my courage so? O, salve my sore, or sle me quite, by saying yea or no! You are the mark at whom I shoot to hit or miss, My life it stays on you alone, to you my suit it is, A suit[400] not much unmeet with you some ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... lame and sore and weak, and as full consciousness returned he felt the sharp torture of many cruel wounds and the dull aching of every bone and muscle in his body as a result of the hideous ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Well, she was pretty, rather, the girl said; very cold, dull air, silent. They stayed for, it might be, five days; slept in the wing over against the stoep; quarrelled sometimes, she thought—the lady. She had seen everything when she went in to wait. One day the ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... There are things that tie us to the earth, to the flesh-life, and to the self-life; but to-day the message comes: "If thou wouldst die with Jesus, let go." Thou needst not understand all. It may not be perfectly clear; the heart may appear dull, but never mind; Jesus carried that penitent thief through death to life. The thief did not know where he was going, he did not know what was to happen, but Jesus, the mighty conqueror, took him in His arms, and landed him, in his ignorance, in Paradise. Oh, I have ...
— The Master's Indwelling • Andrew Murray
... at it in the first week of the War, as he had said, but that Vera had made it hard for him. She was not making it easy now. The dull, dark moth's wings of her eyes hovered ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... square table neatly spread for two stood against the wall; Fanny was standing by the window, her face close to the pane, and apparently intent upon the prospect without, which comprised a grassy stretch of yard flanked by a dull rampart ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... veil, do you call it?—down, so you couldn't see. But, oh, my conscience! how she is changed in these last six weeks! She is not a blooming rose any more. She is a snubbed, trampled on, crushed, and wilted rose. Her face looks pale; her hair dull; her eyes weak; her beauty nowhere; her ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... interrupting the old man. All listened, as the young miner was doing. His ears, which were very sharp, had caught a dull sound, like a distant murmur. His companions were not long in hearing it themselves. It was above their heads, a sort of rolling sound, in which though it was so feeble, the successive CRESCENDO and ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... knew no one but Teddy added zest to the inspiration which had seized me. For I determined to attend that dance, happen what might. It would be vastly more entertaining than a possibly dull theatrical performance. ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... as Thou saidst, the Spirit's voice Spake to dull hearts, and bade rejoice; And men that dwelt in sorrow's night, Felt hope awake as ...
— Hymns from the East - Being Centos and Suggestions from the Office Books of the - Holy Eastern Church • John Brownlie
... dull work," exclaimed Rhymer. "I'll bet anything that we don't make a single capture; and if we do, what is the good of it, except the modicum of prize money we might chance to pocket? The blacks won't be a bit the better off, and the Arabs ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... and Yankee Jake afoot. Up Lonesome they went toward the shaggy flank of Black Mountain where the Great Reaper had mowed down Chad's first friends. The logs of the cabin were still standing, though the roof was caved in and the yard was a tangle of undergrowth. A dull pain settled in Chad's breast, while he looked, and as they were climbing the spur, he choked when he caught sight of the graves ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... beaters was closing up. This was a curious contrast to the dull routine which had been the character of the drives throughout the day; there was game afoot, and the jungle being open, it could be seen, therefore immense enthusiasm was exhibited by the natives. Another burst of excited voices proclaimed a discovery of other ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... could do nothing but remain still, and anticipate the reproof that was preparing. What was my agreeable surprise to see the old gentleman standing at the stile, with his hands in his pockets, surveying the whole scene with evident satisfaction! And how dull I must have been, not to have known till my friend the grandfather (who, by- the-bye, said he had been a wonderful cricketer in his time) told me, that it was the clergyman himself who had established the whole thing: ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... as a strange voice in the distance, as she stood with fixed eyes, and breathless, parted lips before him. Yet even then I fear that, womanlike, she did not comprehend his rhetoric of honor, but only caught here and there a dull, benumbing idea that he despised her, and that in her effort to win his love she had killed it, and ruined ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... night all the military posts were strengthened, soldiers were concealed in different houses, and the galleys were brought near the shore. Silently and gloomily the masses filled the streets; a dull mood seemed to have taken possession of everyone. The Archbishop was celebrating high mass in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine. Scarcely was it ended and the prelate gone when Masaniello, with a crucifix in his hand, mounted the pulpit. His ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... so flat and dull without you, Circle!" Myra said. She calls me "Circle" because I'm fat—not awfully, you know, but just a little bit, and she's so thin herself. "I think I'll turn over a new leaf and go in for work. I don't seem to have any heart for getting into ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... thee Old puns restore, lost blunders nicely seek, And crucify poor Shakespear once a-week. For thee I dim these eyes, and stuff this head, With all such reading as was never read; For thee, supplying in the worst of days, Notes to dull books, and prologues to dull plays; For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it, And write about it, goddess, and about it; So spins the silk-worm small its slender store, And labours till it clouds itself ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... my spirit fled; In me behold the only skull From which, unlike a living head, Whatever flows is never dull. ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... of the steps which even we who are still so near the bottom of the golden ladder may see rising above us, so that we may report them to those who have not seen as yet, in order that they too may open their eyes to the unimaginable splendour which surrounds them here and now in this dull daily life. This is part of the gospel of Theosophy—the certainty of this sublime future for all. It is certain because it is here already, because to inherit it we have only to fit ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... Hal would all have been as like each other as are generally the first and second murderer. Nor is the mere fact that he tells a story with a strange appearance of veracity sufficient; for a story may be truth-like and yet deadly dull. Indeed, no candid critic can deny that this is the case with some of De Foe's narratives; as, for example, the latter part of 'Colonel Jack,' where the details of management of a plantation in Virginia are sufficiently uninteresting in spite of the minute financial details. ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... fond of my strange home, and would not have changed it for any other. Many people would have thought it dull, for we seldom saw a strange face, and the lighthouse men were only allowed to go on shore for a few hours once in every two months. But I was very happy, and thought there was no place in the world like our ...
— Saved at Sea - A Lighthouse Story • Mrs. O.F. Walton |
