"Dull" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Last night they were shunting and jigging us about all night between Rouen and Sotteville. Slow bumping over hundreds of points is much worse to sleep in than fast travelling. In either case you wake whenever you pull up or start off. But we shall miss the train when we get into a dull hotel bedroom or a billet, or perhaps a tent. My month at Le Mans in Madame's beautiful French bed was the one ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... a realist in the sense that he keeps close to reality, truth, and nature. But in the pursuit of photographic faithfulness to life, he never allows himself to be tedious and dull, as some of the best representatives of the school think it incumbent upon them to be. His descriptions are never overburdened with wearisome details; his action is rapid; the events are never to be foreseen a hundred pages beforehand; he keeps his readers ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... terrifying thing happened. The earth under his feet began to shake. At first he could not believe it, but when he steadied himself and watched closely, the oscillating motion was undoubtedly there. It was accompanied, too, by a rumble, dull and low, but which steadily grew louder. It seemed to Dick that the round pit was the ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... and his plants had been everything to him. Now he began to surround himself with an infinity of feminine belongings, and to promise himself an infinity of feminine blessings, wondering much that he should have been content to pass so long a portion of his life in the dull seclusion which he had endured. He was not by nature an impatient man; but now he became impatient, longing for the fruition of his new idea of happiness,—longing to have that as his own which he certainly loved beyond all ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... knowledge of the circumstances, justify my conduct in my own eyes; but in what light will it appear to my brother! For, can it be denied that the insolence of these foreign teachers waxes daily more audacious? They have desecrated our sanctuaries, unsettled the dull minds of the people, and conjured up amongst them a spirit of delusion. Impure spirits have mingled among the insurgents, horrible deeds have been perpetrated, which to think of makes one shudder, and of these a circumstantial account must be transmitted ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... have but little to say. A dull pressure lay upon the nation; it was as if the heavy strokes inflicted on them had paralyzed their very limbs. Innumerable monks came to Bohemia from Italy, Spain, and the south of Germany, who condemned and sacrificed to the flames every Bohemian book as necessarily heretical. There were ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... be feared. That he might also be a rival in his profession, that he was so rich that he was far above the straits in which Morris found himself more and more frequently involved, only added to the flame that consumed him; life without Silvia herself would be dull, colorless, objectless; life without her music would be but "wind ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... was not dull nor ungrateful; he read clearly enough the loving purpose of his sister. His brow cleared up under her sunshine. He smiled, he laughed; and Amelie had the exquisite joy of believing she had gained a victory over the dark spirit that had taken ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... source of the host of wild rumours and speculations concerning this strange tragedy that conveys this sense of the impossible. Have I thereby suggested that the book lacks interest? On the contrary, it hasn't a dull or insincere page. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... 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 peccant humor is for the patient to have a cigar ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... feeling an odd premonition of danger, when I finally attained the top of the bank, perhaps twenty feet back from the river, and looked out through a slight fringe of bushes. The first thing noticeable was the dull red glow of a fire, nearly extinguished, some few yards in advance. The little gleam of light thrown out as the wind stirred the smouldering embers served to reveal the dirty flap of a tent set up at the edge of a grove of saplings, and a horse, standing with lowered head, sharply outlined against ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... the stick at an angle of about 45 deg., making a clean single cut. The sharp edge of this is now cut off to make a mouthpiece. This is a delicate operation, for the bark is apt to crush or split if the knife is dull, or the hand is unskillful. The boy holds it up, inspecting his own work critically. Sometimes he is dissatisfied and cuts again. If he makes a third cut and is still unsuccessful he tosses the spoiled piece away. ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... 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 they ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... the wharf, overseeing the going away of our goods. Harris, so soon as I gave him key and street-number had posted to Reade Street to attend the silk's reception. Waiting for the coming back of the conveying dray was but a slow, dull business, and I was impatiently, at the hour I've named, walking up and down, casting an occasional glance at the big last trunk where it stood on end, a bit drawn out and separated from that common ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... answered. Slowly walking backward, with bent shoulders and arms wrapped around some dark object, entered the driver of the express, while following him and bent in a like manner came the fireman. With a dull foreboding of evil I took a step forward. They were carrying Herbert, all torn and mangled! 'We must have backed over him,' said the driver, quietly as he laid the poor battered burden down. 'There is just a spark of life left in him, nothing more.' I saw the pallid lips move, and kneeling, ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... grew more bare and ill-furnished as things wore out and time went by, Mistress Anne waxed thinner and paler. She was so thin in two months' time, that her soft, dull eyes looked twice their natural size, and seemed to stare piteously at people. One day, indeed, as she sat at work in her sister's room, Clorinda being there at the time, the beauty, turning and beholding her face suddenly, uttered ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Sometimes there came dull explosions, when smoke and flame belched out about you. Sometimes stones and bricks and cornices fell near you. But you were not to flinch or stir until Lannigan, who watched all these happenings with critical and unwinking eyes, ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... outside world, too, the sky was dull and gloomy. The Puritans were in no greater favour than they had been, though the Papists were at the lowest ebb. That there was any inconsistency in their conduct did not apparently occur to the authorities, nor that the true way to repress ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... materials, the very smoke from the big chimney, all took on a kind of glory. The rows of machines looked like a parade and the mingled roar and grinding of them sounded like a brass band at a picnic. The dull routine of a daily schedule was suddenly changed to a thrilling ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... frank affection, and represented to her how much better suited she was to Brussels than to her stately but dull ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Mary frankly, "I like him very much. We have enough in common to be rather sympathetic, and we differ enough not to be dull, and so we get on very well. I never had a brother," she continued, after a momentary pause, "but I feel toward him as I fancy I should feel toward a brother of about my own age, though he is five or six years older ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... reflected in fantastic glow upon the heaving surface of the lake. For a moment we paused, standing upon the slope of the mound on which the Fort was built, and gazed about us. There was little movement to arrest the eye. The dull, dreary level of shore and prairie was deserted; what the more distant mounds of sand or the overhanging river banks might hide of savage watchers, we could only conjecture. Seemingly the mass of Indian life, which only ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... such cases his course is straightforward enough. His judgment may be in great peril, but his volume or chapter will be easily written. Ridicule and censure run glibly from the pen, and form themselves into sharp paragraphs which are pleasant to the reader. Whereas eulogy is commonly dull, and too frequently sounds as though it were false. There is much difficulty in expressing a verdict which is intended to be favorable; but which, though favorable, shall not be falsely eulogistic; and though ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... MEETING? Reluctantly? No. Burdened by a feeling of obligation to attend? No. Expecting something dull and tedious? No! If a meeting evokes only dullness in its members it is a dead meeting and ought to be laid down. A live meeting evokes life. Just the prospect of attending such a meeting should quicken us. It ...
— An Interpretation of Friends Worship • N. Jean Toomer
... and Marjorie were invited. Lily Pearl's and Helen's attentions to Peggy and Polly having proved abortive, they contrived ways and means of their own to reach the Land o' Heart's Desire. Helen's old bachelor uncle, a queer, dull old gentleman, whose mind was certainly not active, and whom Helen could, figuratively speaking, turn and twist about her little finger, was persuaded to pass the holidays at Wilmot Hall. He knew a number of people in Annapolis, so the path ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... he had asked her what she was thinking of when he surprised her with his visit, she had not replied: she could not have avowed even to herself that she was thinking of such things as these: that having, for some years, drawn out a hard, dull life in that settlement of pathfinders, trappers, woodchoppers, hunters, Indian fighters, surveyors; having afterwards, with little interest, watched them, one by one, as the earliest types of civilization followed,—the merchant, the lawyer, ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... laid myself down on my back to think, I should have had it. I am unerring when I set to speculating on my back. One is cooler: ideas come; they have not to be forced. That is why I am brighter on a dull winter afternoon, on the sofa, beside my tea-service, than at any other season. However, your trouble is over. When did the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... dull, rumbling report. The whole ocean about the island seemed to upheave. There was a gigantic shower of spray, a sound like an explosion, and when the waters subsided the island had ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... A dull, crashing, grinding sound set the black fog vibrating. Then a brief clamor of panic-stricken voices rang in to the shore. Silence followed that—a silence that was suddenly broken by the thumping report of a cannon. The light flared dimly in ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... and black basaltic rock, and the streets are beautifully paved with small square blocks of the same rock, giving it a neat and clean appearance. There are few windows on the street; the houses are one story high, with diminutive doors, not more than four feet high; and the low dull walls stretching along the streets, give the city a dismal and monotonous appearance. The reason of building the doors so low, is to prevent the quartering of Turkish government horsemen on their families, as well as to prevent the Bedawin Arabs from plundering them. On the southwest corner ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... three in a horseshoe, invited the guests to repose, with their arms of ebony and cushions of dull olive-green brocade, on which a delicate pattern of gold and silver seemed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... for Confirmation, watching over the homes, and, however otherwise busied, always at the beck and call of every one in the parish. To the old men and women of the workhouse he paid special attention, bringing them little dainties, trying to brighten their dull minds as a means of reaching their souls, and endeavouring to raise their spirits to higher things. One who had been removed to another Union, when asked how he liked Hursley, said, "It seemed as if they was saying Holy, ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... two hours' sleep, Saniel woke, he did not at first think of this knife; he was tired and dull. Mechanically he walked about his room without paying attention to what he was doing, as if he were in a state of somnambulism, and it astonished him, because he never felt weariness of mind any ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... silence looking at me, or now and again to exchange a word in a PATOIS of their own. By the time my supper was ready, the knaves numbered six in all; and, as they were armed to a man with huge Spanish knives, and made it clear that they resented my presence in their dull rustic fashion—every rustic is suspicious—I began to think that, unwittingly, I had put my head into a ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... to sneer at picturesque writing. Professor Seeley, for reasons of his own, appears to think that whilst politics, and, I presume religion, may be made as interesting as you please, history should be as dull as possible. This, surely, is a jaundiced view. If there is one thing it is legitimate to make more interesting than another, it is the varied record of man's life upon earth. So long as we have human hearts and await human destinies, so long as we are alive to the pathos, the ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... the popular bachelor decidedly absent-minded. The crack young polo player thought the scenery disappointing. Decidedly, it was a dull party. ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... upon the matter with another face. He said that since his last wife died, I think some fifty years before, he had found life very dull because he missed the exercises of her temper, and her habit of presenting things as these never had been nor could possibly ever be. Now, however, it grew interesting again, since the marvels which were happening in Egypt, being quite contrary to Nature, reminded him of his last wife ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... same way as they are at other places—except, indeed, by a few such proficients in Turkish manners as Mr. Hunter. The little Arab children stood around them, expectant of scraps, as I have seen children do also in England; and the conversation, which was dull enough at the commencement of the feast, became more animated when a few corks had flown. As the afternoon wore on, Mr. M'Gabbery became almost bellicose under the continual indifference of his lady-love; and had it not been for the better sense ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... perhaps inevitable so long as the employer holds her belated ethics; but the situation is made even more difficult by the character and capacity of the girls who enter this industry. In any great industrial change the workmen who are permanently displaced are those who are too dull to seize upon changed conditions. The workmen who have knowledge and insight, who are in touch with ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... opening oration by one of the learned professors of the University, which was voted by the savants to be a masterpiece of erudition and eloquence, but which the young people present found intolerably dull and stupid. And when the great man sat down a storm of ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... unsettledness and defect of understanding." Thus she was the sort of human wreck that the world finds it easy to fling away. Katherine fell victim to the sin that was not her own. A child was born. The Church censured her. She did penance in a white sheet at the church doors. But her poor, dull brain had no power to restrain her. A second child was born. Then the Bishop committed her for twenty-one days to his prison at the Peel. Let me tell you what the place is like. It is a crypt of the cathedral church. You enter it by a little door in the choir, leading to a tortuous flight of ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... stems from the creativity and humor they often display. Interpreting a sitename is not unlike interpreting a vanity license plate; one has to mentally unpack it, allowing for mono-case and length restrictions and the lack of whitespace. Hacker tradition deprecates dull, institutional-sounding names in favor of punchy, humorous, and clever coinages (except that it is considered appropriate for the official public gateway machine of an organization to bear the organization's name or acronym). Mythological references, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... The moon rose. It was a lovely night. Dull-gleaming glimpses of the river came through the light fog that hovered over it in the rising moon like a spirit-river continually ascending from the earthly one and resting upon it, but flowing in heavenly places. The white webs shone very white in the moon, ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... to pass very nigh the pool to which Turkey and I had gone the night of our adventure with Bogbonny's bull. That story was now far off in the past, but I did not relish the dull shine of the water in the hollow, notwithstanding. In fact I owed the greater part of the courage I possessed—and it was little enough for my needs—to Missy. I dared not have gone on my own two legs. It was not that ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... stories; for then there were no Greeks on the Black Sea shores, nor in Sicily, or Italy, or anywhere but in Greece and in Ionia. And if you are puzzled by the names of places in this book, you must take the maps and find them out. It will be a pleasanter way of learning geography than out of a dull lesson-book. ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... they settled into their graves. They read old-fashioned newspapers with effort, and were just taking with avidity to a new sort of paper, costing a halfpenny, which they believed to be extraordinarily bright and attractive, and which never really succeeded until it became extremely dull, discarding all serious news and replacing it by vapid tittle-tattle, and substituting for political articles informed by at least some pretence of knowledge of economics, history, and constitutional law, such paltry follies and sentimentalities, snobberies and ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... before him now. The coarse cotton gown that was familiar to Andy's boyhood was gone. A dull, bluish linen with white cuffs and collar had replaced it, and above the becoming dress shone the ...
— Then Marched the Brave • Harriet T. Comstock
... of a story, or rather of the idea for a story that I think I must have read in that curious collection of fantasies and observations, Hawthorne's Note Book. It was to be the story of a man who found life dull and his circumstances altogether mediocre. He had loved his wife, but now after all she seemed to be a very ordinary human being. He had begun life with high hopes—and life was commonplace. He was to grow fretful and restless. His discontent was to lead to some action, some irrevocable action; ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... wharf in the fast-falling darkness of the October evening. The other men, as well as Mr. Grey, had known Captain Dene from his infancy almost, and two of them had little ones of their own snug and safe by their cottage hearths at that dull evening hour. They consequently felt keenly the sorrow that threatened the absent father; also the distress and trouble of the aunts at Firgrove, who had so generously taken upon them the responsible duty, which not infrequently turns out a thankless task, of ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... little imagination and so little love that he is sitting here and does not know what I am saying; and what suspicion he has of what I am saying is just enough to make him dislike both me and what I am saying too. But his dull suspicion and his blind dislike are more than made up for by the love and appreciation of those lovers and defenders of the truth who painfully feel how wild and inconsiderate, how hot-headed, how thoughtless, and how reckless ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... the unknown past rose the Anglo-Saxon lyric and epic, Deor's Complaint, Beowulf, and the poems of Caedmon and Cynewulf. From the death-like sleep of our language which followed the Norman Conquest rose the heights of thirteenth-century romance. From the dull poetic pedantries of the age which succeeded Chaucer rose the glittering pinnacles of Shakespeare and his fellows. From the coldness and shallowness of the eighteenth century rose the rich and varied tableland of whose occupants Burns was one of the first and ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... the camp helped to break the long dull spell of forty-below-zero weather, when two suns shone feebly through ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... very beasts that be devoid of reason, dull and dumb, By nature learn to shun those things whereof their hurt may come. If man were then but as a beast, only by nature taught, He would also by nature learn to shun what things are nought. But man with reason is endued: he reason hath for ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... the king. The whole of this disposition hath much resemblance to theatrical representation. The king sitting as in a gallery, the great men raised as actors on a stage, and the vulgar below in a pit gazing at the show. The king, on my presentation, interrupted the dull formality of my interpreter, bidding me welcome to the brother of the king my master. I then delivered a translation of the king's letter, and then my commission, on both of which he looked curiously; and afterwards on my presents, which were well received. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... man went away. They heard once more at a distance the dull beating of the drum and the faint voice of the crier. Then they all began to talk of this incident, reckoning up the chances which Maitre Houlbreque had of finding or of ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... dram-shop desecrated the soil which gave nourishment to the brave old forest tree. This was the squalid object that fell upon Chester's gaze as he glanced reluctantly from those long pendent branches, flashing and shivering as it were with a fruitage of diamonds, to the dull and dirty windows. ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... over two thousand fathoms in that neighborhood, you can imagine the seismic forces at work beneath us. There had been no wind for days, and no sea, except the agitation caused by the upheavals. The sky was a dull mud color, and the sun looked like nothing but a dark, red ball, rising day by day in the east, to move overhead and set in the west. The air was hot, sultry, and stifling, and I had difficulty in keeping ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... of childishness, but it is the same poor hollow mockery of it, that death is of sleep. Where, in the dull eyes of doating men, are the laughing light and life of childhood, the gaiety that has known no check, the frankness that has felt no chill, the hope that has never withered, the joys that fade in blossoming? ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... skill would hardly give more satisfaction to the reader than the skill of the photographer does to the anxious mother desirous to possess an absolute duplicate of her beloved child. The likeness is indeed true; but it is a dull, dead, unfeeling, inauspicious likeness. The face is indeed there, and those looking at it will know at once whose image it is; but the owner of the face will not ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... rude to people whom he disliked ... he could not be civil to them, however hard he might try to be so, but his feeling in the presence of people who disliked him, was one of powerlessness: he was tongue-tied and nervous and very dull, and his faculties seemed to shrivel up. There was a look of cold efficiency about Rachel Wynne that frightened him. She seemed to be incapable of wasting time or of waywardness. Her career at Newnham, Roger had told him, had been one of steady brilliance. "There wasn't a flicker in it," he ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... to the house, urged by a feeling of anxiety which he was unable to explain; and, at the same time, he listened to a dull sound which rose in the distance, from the direction of Enghien, and which seemed to be coming nearer... People ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... lymphatic is indicated by paleness, roundness of the form, softness of muscle, fair hair, sleepy, half-closed eyes, and a dull, sluggish, inexpressive face. In this temperament the brain and all other parts of the body appear to be slow, dull, and languid, and the whole body little else than one great manufactory of fat. These temperaments, however, are rarely found ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... case of trees felled by professional woodsmen. Rather did it present the aspect of having been gnawed down by slow degrees, resembling, if I may use the simile, a very hard lead pencil, the point of which has been renewed with a very dull knife. ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... (which is the lower part of the classical school), and doing the work of the lower boys. The Rev. James Bowyer, who was at that time head master, a quick discerning man, but hasty and severe, sent for the master of the grammar school, and inquired about Coleridge; from him he learnt that he was a dull and inapt scholar, and that he could not be made to repeat a single rule of syntax, although he would give a rule in his ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... dressing with great alacrity. Where was the distress of last night? Gone with the darkness. She had slept well; the bracing atmosphere had restored strength and spirits; and the bright morning light made it impossible to be dull or downhearted, in spite of the new cause she thought she had found. She went on quick with the business of the toilet. But when it came to the washing, she suddenly discovered that there were no conveniences for it in her ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... earth, the vision of Convent walls filled her with a shuddering horror. To be shut in that Flemish garden for ever; her life enclosed within the straight lines of that long green alley leading to a dead wall, darkened over by flowerless ivy. How witheringly dull the old life showed, looking back at it after years of freedom and enjoyment, action and variety. No, no, no! She could not bury herself alive, could not forego the liberty to wander in a wood like this, to gaze upon ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... were present. His mental content could not be determined at the time, as his replies were indistinct and monosyllabic, and were obtained only after much effort. He appeared to comprehend what was wanted of him, although this was not absolutely certain. His perception was very dull, ideation slow and laborious. His attention could be gained only after considerable difficulty, and he had to be aroused first from a more or less profound stupor. Spontaneous speech was almost wholly absent, but occasionally ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... organist of St. Paul's, but there is no evidence to support this. It must be confessed that his service in the Dorian mode, which heads the collection in Boyce's Cathedral Music, and which is indeed the first harmonised setting of the Canticles ever composed for the English Liturgy, is very dull, but his harmony of the Litany and of the Versicles after the Creed, has never been equalled for beauty. His Canon tune, to which we sing Ken's Evening Hymn, is also unsurpassed, and his anthem, "If ye love Me," is one of ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... close enough he hurled the stone at the wolves, and a dull thud, followed by a shrill, dog-like howl of pain, told him that he had countered on the rib plate of one of the nasty brutes. Then he let out a wild yell, and three of the wolves ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... not remain insensible, while their bodies are in the dull, but become angels, * see and serve God and bear his messages, and minister to the heirs of salvation, hath been argued from several considerations, in the preceding discourse; but we chiefly depend on revelation. The text and several other scriptures, we conceive ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... family or representatives. These masses are generally advertised in the papers, with thanks to those friends who have attended funeral masses. As there is scarcely any intellectual activity in Portugal, there is practically no religious thought. A dull acquiescence in the dictates of the Church may be crossed by an occasional gleam of rebellion against sacerdotalism, roused by some temporary stirring up of the hatred felt against the Jesuits. But it in no way alters the habitual attitude of the people ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... You see, he is a little book, and I have done most of my translating in these odd moments, or, as you say, in this odd fashion." And he added, with a kind of cynical grin on his face, 'You will find plenty of dull people in the rooms above.' He had been bored and this ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Dull 'ole, this 'ere 'Arrygate, CHARLIE! The only fair fun I can find Is watching the poor sulphur-swiggers, a-gargling and going it blind. Oh, the sniffs and sour faces, old fellow, the shudders and shivers, and sighs; ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... state of the market. If things are dull, he will very likely meet me out here. If the Street is brisk, I won't see him till he arrives home to-night. If medium, he will be on the wharf ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... farther along in the course of study. Actually, if arithmetic were made more simple, vast numbers would; stay longer, since they would not be driven out of school by the terrible inroads on their interest in school work by dull and to them impossible arithmetic. If metric arithmetic texts were substituted for our present texts, it is safe to say children would average one full year more of education. What the increased earning power would be from this it would be hard to estimate, ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... expected a very quiet, not to say dull, visit at the Casa Verdi during her father's absence, found herself instead in the midst of hospitable friends who extended cordial invitations ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... up and follow the first piper that leads you down Petticoat Lane, there, on a Sabbath, to gather, for the week, from the dull rags of ages wherewith to bedeck yourselves? that, beneath your travestied awkwardness, we have trouble to find your own dainty selves? Oh, fie! Is the world, then, exhausted? and must we go back because the thumb of the mountebank jerks ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... nervous, dear man. I'll be perfectly correct, I promise you—only I had to come. I have been good, absolutely tiptop beastly good, I tell you. I have washed the slate. It is as clean as a vacuum, as the inside of an exhausted receiver. And I feel as dull as empty space ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... letter," she went on, "I tried to think myself into his condition of mind, so that I could decide whether he intended to keep his word and kill himself or not. I tried to reason out just how he felt and how he thought. Now I know. It's hopeless, dull, sodden desperation. I haven't even the ambition to ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... time since Shann had heard the crackle of the Throg attack he remembered the reason he had been heading into the hills. Of all the men on the Survey team, Shann Lantee had been the least important. The dirty, tedious clean-up jobs, the dull routines which required no technical training but which had to be performed to keep the camp functioning comfortably, those had been his portion. And he had accepted that status willingly, just to have a chance to be included among Survey personnel. Not that he ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... fleisshes wille. 1940 It were a travail forto preche The feith of Crist, as forto teche The folk Paiene, it wol noght be; Bot every Prelat holde his See With al such ese as he mai gete Of lusti drinke and lusti mete, Wherof the bodi fat and full Is unto gostli labour dull And slowh to handle thilke plowh. Bot elles we ben swifte ynowh 1950 Toward the worldes Avarice; And that is as a sacrifice, Which, after that thapostel seith, Is openly ayein the feith Unto thidoles yove and granted: ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... you to keep eternal silence on what has occurred to you since you entered the door of the house in Monmouth Street, that dull evening in November. I ask you never to refer to it again from this moment, in ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... charge of him in the water. He had always four or five boys whom he had taught to swim thoroughly well, and he made them swimming-masters. They benefited by having to give instruction to others, and by learning to keep their tempers. Nothing, perhaps, tries the temper so much as having to teach dull or inattentive boys. Blackall had been made one of the swimming-masters, but at the commencement of the bathing season the Doctor called him up, and without a word of explanation told him that he thought fit to dismiss him from ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... the King would return to his own again. So firmly did he believe in this, and so keenly was his heart set upon it, that Louis had never dared to let him know that for himself exile in Paris and the Riviera was vastly to be preferred to authority over a rocky island hung with fogs, and inhabited by dull ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... promising place, but to no purpose. It was midwinter; trade was dull; and with clerks idling about the shops employers were in no mood ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... greens, blue used sparingly; all these colours are dominated and brought into harmony by the greys of the architectural setting. It may indeed be said that the different qualities of flesh-tints, the architectural greys, and a dull bronzed yellow strike the chord of the composition. Reds are conspicuous by their absence in any positive hue. There is no vermilion, no pure scarlet or crimson, but a mixed tint verging upon lake. The yellows are brought near to orange, tawny, bronze, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... is no exaggeration:—"The past week has been the calmest which we have had since the revolution. We have had no forced illuminations, no planting of trees of liberty, no physical-force demonstrations, no great display of any kind; in fact, we have been decidedly dull. But in some parts of the city, our sovereign lord and master, the Mob, has been graciously pleased to afford us a little interesting excitement by bullying the landlords into giving receipts for their ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... they heard a dull sound. Presently it became louder, and they could distinguish, above the trampling of horses, the clash of steel. It came nearer and nearer, until within two or three hundred yards of the chateau, then it ceased. Presently a figure could be made out, creeping quietly forward until it reached the ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... the light in the low-roofed damp rooms was dull and gray. Along the walls were ranged various pieces of carved furniture, several large diptychs and triptychs of the Tuscan school of the fourteenth century; four pieces of Flemish tapestry representing the Story of Narcissus ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... of retiring altogether from Mississippi, and of suddenly moving the army, by the Southern railroads, away around into Tennessee again—losing the slow, dull-scented Halleck—if conceived by a subordinate, was, at least, attributed to him. It was brilliant in itself, and was successfully executed. Men waited, in breathless interest, the consummation of such a career. But right there he began to fail, and soon he gave ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... in the first few miles of her uneasy and troublesome journey, that they would proceed no further than Highgate. The physician returned to town to report her state, and declared that she was assuredly very weak, her pulse dull and melancholy, and very irregular; her countenance very heavy, pale, and wan; and though free from fever, he declared her in no case fit for travel. The king observed, "It is enough to make any sound man sick to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... first place where a pen can be used, to give you some account of my trip to Minnesota. And if any one should complain that this is a dull letter, let me retain his good-will by the assurance that the things I expect to describe in my next will be of more novelty and interest. And here I am reminded of a good little anecdote which I am afraid I shall not have a better ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... fierce and warriors big, He writes in phrases dull and slow, And waves his cauliflower wig, And shouts ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I read familiarly was the Rev. T. Scott, of Aston Sandford, a rather dull, very unoriginal, half-educated, but honest, worthy, sensible, strong-minded man, whose works were then much in vogue among the Evangelicals. One day my attention was arrested by a sentence in his defence of the doctrine of the Trinity. He complained that Anti-Trinitarians ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... few animals that happened to be in his charge. They were not many; most of those that so frequently of late had stood here were away with their owners, following the fortunes of the Earl of Derwentwater; business was dull at the inn. Well, let the weather be what it liked, at least the groom's work was over for the night, and he might go sit by the cheerful peat fire in the kitchen, and drink a health to the King—the rightful King, God bless him; ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... when headstrong drivers persist in carrying a pair of fiery, vicious horses into the midst of a procession of wild beasts that would have scared even your sober dull Dapples out of their lazy jog-trot, it is not at all surprising that snapped harness, broken carriage, torn flesh, and strained joints should attest the folly of the experiment. The accident occurred not ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... dull Englishman ever came to be admitted within the intellectual circle which revolved round "the cleverest woman in Europe," as her friends unanimously called her, no one ventured to guess—golden key is said to open every door, asserted the ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... knife-edges are in contact with the agate plates. When the balance is not in use the beam must be supported by this device since, otherwise, the constant jarring to which a balance is inevitably subjected, will soon dull the knife-edges, and lessen ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... know myself. The catechism may explain it, but I was ever a dull scholar at reading and liked not study. Yes, thy face must be bleached up, and I will begin this very night. They were good ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... a shabby red clutter of streets, uninviting, forbidding, dull, squalid, became for Joe the very swarm and drama and warm-blooded life of humanity. He began to sense the fact that he was in the center of a human whirlpool, in the center of beauty and ugliness, love and bitterness, misery ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... set a German official turning round and round like a teetotum—his moustaches bristling, his hair on end, amazed at the din and fearful for the cause of it. It all commenced with a sudden shout, and then was emphasized by the explosion of a rifle. A dull thud followed as a bullet struck one of the huts and perforated it, and then a dozen weapons went off, the somewhat aged guardians of the camp losing their heads and blazing away without ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... is, a grand pretender, a self-deceiver Above all things I detest the writing for money At the age of forty, men that love love rootedly Barriers are for those who cannot fly Be good and dull, and please everybody Beginning to have a movement to kiss the whip Centres of polished barbarism known as aristocratic societies Clotilde fenced, which is half a confession Comparisons will thrust themselves on minds ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... but too well the influence such a woman was likely to have over an old man who had fallen in love with her. It made her tremble. But grim Mrs. Brian appeared to her hardly less formidable. She could read nothing in her dull, heavy eye but cold wickedness; nothing in her lean, yellow face but an implacable will; all the wrinkles seemed to be permanently ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... amuck until the harpoon is thrust into them. They usually roll about the sea in the most harmless way. No doubt the sight of a huge creature in localities unaccustomed to it creates an impression of dull alarm, and, strange though it be, some minds are so constituted that their superstitions and imaginations are always thirsting after ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... in the same case, the most charming creature in the world. He was followed by a second, and she found him as charming; but when a succession of adorers appeared, she was completely perplexed. Her heart was incapable of making an election, and she began to think it would be very dull to fix upon one, and by that means lose the adulation and flattery of all the others. She therefore received them all alike, and divided her attention and her smiles equally amongst them. Thus the innocent Amaranthe, who was unacquainted with the name of coquetry, soon grew expert in the ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... day following that of my retreat, I was polishing phrases by gaslight in the dull sitting-room of my lodgings in the Lambeth Road, when he staggered in upon me. His face was like a sheep's, white and vacant; his hands had caught a trick of groping blindly along the ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... father; he also forgot to visit Brownsville. Years afterwards Alfred met Palmer. He was painting, he was an artist, so he stated. He looked like a vagrant; there was not much change in his face, only a little more weather beaten, the lines and wrinkles deeper, the eyes more dull and his ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... drooping willow's shade, Where the mourning cypress grows, The beloved and lost is laid In a quiet, calm repose. Silent now the voice whose tones Wakened rapture in thy breast— Dull the ear—thy anguished groans Break not on ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... look upon this lonely, wrinkled, decrepit old man, in the richly-furnished but half-obscure room; the dull light illuminated his malicious but smiling face; here and there as he advanced it flashed upon the gilding, or was reflected in a mirror, while behind him the gloom of night seemed to have thrown an ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... labourer of modern times the life of his forefathers would have seemed unutterably dull. No books, no newspapers, no change of scene by cheap excursions, no village school, no politics. The very cultivation of the soil by the old three-course system was monotonous. But there were bright spots in his existence: the village ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... about other animals; because it understands their talk quite naturally and without being made. The present parrot declined ordinary conversation, and when questioned only recited poetry of a rather dull kind that went on and on. 'Arms and the man I sing' it began, and then something about haughty Juno. Its voice was soothing, and riding on the camel was not unlike being rocked in a very bumpety cradle. The children were securely seated in things like ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... they had left her, as they would always find her, not like a woman with a hopelessly injured spine, but like a lady of the happy world, resting in luxury, a little while, from the assault of her own brilliant and fatiguing vitality. The flat, dark masses of her hair, laid on the dull red of her cushions, gave to her face an abrupt and lustrous whiteness, whiteness that threw into vivid relief the features of expression, the fine, full mouth, with its temperate sweetness, and the tender eyes, dark as the brows that arched them. Edith, in her motionless beauty, propped ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... they were all awakened by a dull thud and a smothered shout. Erik and Father Mikko jumped up and lit a lantern, and then hurried to the door, which stood open. They had dug a passage-way out through the snow the day before, and they saw that the walls of snow had just ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... not convinced but libelled; and when these weapons are futile there ensues the persecution of silence. That serves for a time, but only for a time; it may obstruct, but it cannot prevent, the spread of unbelief. It is like a veil against the light. It may obscure the dawn to the dull-eyed and the uninquisitive, but presently the blindest sluggards in the penfolds of faith will see ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... must I this evening, ere I go to bed, eat much or little? I do not ask this without cause. For if I sup not well, large, round, and amply, my sleeping is not worth a forked turnip. All the night long I then but doze and rave, and in my slumbering fits talk idle nonsense, my thoughts being in a dull brown study, and as deep in their dumps as is ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... was naturally to look for traces of the lost man, and he set about this with a dull fear at his heart, lest at any moment he should come upon the dead body of his friend. In a few minutes he discovered the track made by the Indians, which led him to the spot near to the spring where Tom had fallen. To his now fully-awakened senses Trevor easily read the story, ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... The neighing of the tethered horse, the distant tinkling of the bell, or the occasional cry of night birds, alone interrupt the silence of our camp. The fire, which was bright as long as the corroborri songster kept it stirred, gradually gets dull, and smoulders slowly under the large pot in which our meat is simmering; and the bright constellations of heaven pass unheeded over the heads of the dreaming wanderers of the wilderness, until the summons of the ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... dull, and cannot comprehend the right of secession. We do not recognize the right to make a revolution by a vote. We do not recognize the right of Maryland to repeal the Constitution of the United States, and if any convention there, ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... perhaps one word in three of this talk. Then the Colonel, seeing his mistake, turned to fluent and picturesque Urdu and Kim was contented. No man could be a fool who knew the language so intimately, who moved so gently and silently, and whose eyes were so different from the dull fat ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... can one possibly sleep? Out there in the dark there is the wild tattoo of a thousand rifles; and hark! that dull roar is the explosion of a mine. There! the purring of the rapid firers. Desperate things are doing. There will be lots of work for me before this night is ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... Cherub, and in another sitting on a Throne, both in the very same moment of action. In another place he has brought him in making a Speech to his Saints, when 'tis evident he had none there; for we all know Man was not created till a long while after; and no body can be so dull as to say the Angels may be called Saints, without the greatest absurdity in nature. Besides, he makes CHRIST himself distinguish them, as in two several Bands, and of differing Persons and Species, as to be sure ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe |
