"Dull" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one of Ross's landscape lenses, without any stop whatever being used, and after an exposure of five minutes during a heavy rain. The sky is scarcely so dense as could be desired, which will be fully accounted for by the dull state of the atmosphere during the exposure in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... overpowering them in the House of Commons. Amongst others, they had thought it worth while to practise upon Richard Waverley. This honest gentleman, by a grave mysterious demeanour, an attention to the etiquette of business, rather more than to its essence, a facility in making long dull speeches, consisting of truisms and commonplaces, hashed up with a technical jargon of office, which prevented the inanity of his orations from being discovered, had acquired a certain name and credit in public life, and even ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... unendurably bored, but she never refused assent to any definitely expressed wish of her aunt's. At last, after three or four evenings, the point was reached where the lovers exchanged their vows. The tale was faultlessly moral and horribly dull. Vera hardly listened. At each word of love her aunt looked at her to see whether she was touched, whether she blushed or turned pale, but ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... to think he had saved the Byzantine. His next duty was to go to the relief of the little Princess. A dull fancy would have taught how trying the situation must have been to her; but with him the case was of a quick understanding quickened by solicitude. Taking Nilo with him, he made ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... brigadier-generals assigned to this department are entirely ignorant of their duties and unfit for any command. I assure you, Mr. President, it is very difficult to accomplish much with such means. I am in the condition of a carpenter who is required to build a bridge with a dull axe, a broken saw, and rotten timber. It is true that I have some very good green timber, which will answer the purpose as soon as I can get it into shape and season it ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... pink. Black and lilac. Black and scarlet. Black and maize. Black and slate color. Black and orange, a rich harmony. Black and white, a perfect harmony. Black and brown, a dull harmony. Black and drab or buff. Black, white or yellow and crimson. Black, orange, blue and scarlet. Black and chocolate brown. Black and shaded cardinal. Black and cardinal. Black, yellow, bronze and light blue. Black, cardinal, blue and old gold. Blue and brown. Blue and black. ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... who strangle serpents while yet in the cradle. We know the temperament which from the earliest hour consumes with eager desire for knowledge, and energises spontaneously with unceasing and joyful activity in that bright and pure morning of intellectual curiosity, which neither the dull tumultuous needs of life nor the mists of spiritual misgiving have yet come up to make dim. Of this temperament was Turgot in a superlative degree, and its fire never abated in him from college days, down to the last hours while he lay ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... Mirth as this is always unseasonable in a Critick, as it rather prejudices the Reader than convinces him, and is capable of making a Beauty, as well as a Blemish, the Subject of Derision. A Man, who cannot write with Wit on a proper Subject, is dull and stupid, but one who shews it in an improper Place, is as impertinent and absurd. Besides, a Man who has the Gift of Ridicule is apt to find Fault with any thing that gives him an Opportunity of exerting his beloved Talent, and very often censures a Passage, not because there is any Fault ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... which is really changed, but also in the aspect of the clouds, which have that firmament as a background. It is possible, for example, to choose clouds of such a depth of shade that when the Nicol quenches the light behind them, they shall vanish, being undistinguishable from the residual dull tint which outlives the extinction of the brilliancy of the sky. A cloud less deeply shaded, but still deep enough, when viewed with the naked eye, to appear dark on a bright ground, is suddenly changed to a white cloud on a dark ground by the quenching of the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... circumstance. A few months now, and Salem, she hoped, would see her no more forever. She knew, for Master Raymond had told her, that there were plenty of places in the world where life was reasonably gay and sunny and hopeful; not like this dull valley of the shadow of death in which she was now living. Raymond's plan was to get married; sell her property, which might take a few months, more or less; and then sail for England, to introduce his charming wife to a large ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... entrance into London, amid the acclamations of the populace, her high spirit, her kind heart, and the excitement of adventure lent a passing glow to her sallow cheeks. But ill-health and disillusion followed. She became morbid and sullen, sometimes remaining for days in a dull stupor, at other times giving way to gusts of hysterical passion. But beneath her forbidding exterior there beat a warm, tender, womanly heart, which yearned for some one to love and to cherish. Her mother had died when she was ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... man he could fix upon by the description was a young fellow, washing his face in a tin basin, and he felt that this could not be the colonel; but he did not like to appear dull, so he thanked the man and rode on, thinking he would go to the point indicated, and ask some one else to ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... said, I believe is true, but as for the proud Dames in England that profess, they have Moses and the Prophets, and if they will not hear them, how then can we hope that they should recieve good by such a dull sounding Ramshorn as I am? However, I have said my mind, and now if you will, we will proceed to some other of Mr. ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... courtiers as were well versed in the subject, perceived how far Giotto surpassed all the other painters of his time. This incident becoming known, gave rise to the proverb still used in relation to people of dull wits, 'In sei piu tondo che l'O di Giotto,' (round as Giotto's O,) the significance of which consists in the double meaning of the word tondo, which is used in the Tuscan for slowness of intellect, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... be 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 ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... ferrous and ferric phosphates mixed with black iron oxide may be varied in composition, texture and color. It is ordinarily a dull gray and oiling gives a soft mat black more in accordance with modern taste than the shiny nickel plating that delighted our fathers. Even the military nowadays show more quiet taste than formerly and have ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... his drawing after the works of Annibale Caracci. Domenico disobeyed this command, and was so severely treated by Calvert that he persuaded his father to take him from that master, and place him in the school of the Caracci. When he entered the Academy he was so dull that his fellow-pupils nicknamed him "The Ox;" but Annibale Caracci said: "Take care: this ox will surpass you all by and by, and will be an honor to his art." Domenichino soon began to win many prizes ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... Crusades against the unbeliever, even those more popular ones which combined the saving of souls with the getting of gold, were long out of fashion. Lastly, the entire ecclesiastical body—the formidable phalanx of the endowed, with their patrons dependents, and dupes—though they were too dull to perceive and too dense to feel the shafts aimed at obscurantism and superstition, had something more than a suspicion that this book called Don Quixote was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... will find but few chances in Mossvale. Times are dull here—ever since the hat factory moved away. I guess the stores have all the help they want. You might get a place on one of ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... birds were singing there—was suddenly full of a tumultuous crackling; a little dull red flame ran about the base of the pyre, changed to blue upon the ground, and set out to clamber, leaf by leaf, up the stem of a giant nettle. A singing sound ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... eagerly—"so interesting, always to be among the animals and things. And then his shop's in the very best part of Dorminster, where he can see everything pass, and all his friends drop in and tell him the news. I don't expect he's ever dull." ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... that to tell again," retorted vernon; "it really is so seldom you do say a witty thing, that it's a pity it should be lost upon these dull moors." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... and she seemed such a vision of loveliness that his cold, dull eye, opened and brightened with astonishment. It was the first time he had really looked at her. A low, chuckling laugh, burst from his lips, which Helen thought frightful, and he handed her the basket, saying, "I can do it myself; take this to the kitchen." ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... finances of France passed alternately from the hands of an honest man without talent into those of a skilful knave. M. de Calonne was thus far from acting in concert with the Queen all the time that he continued in office; and, while dull verses were circulated about Paris describing the Queen and her favourite dipping at pleasure into the coffers of the comptroller-general, the Queen was avoiding ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... horrible nightmare, culminating in a number of Sepoys leaping on board the boat as it touched the bank, and bayoneting her uncle and all on board except herself, Mrs. Hunter, and her daughter, who were seized and carried ashore. Then followed a night of dull despairing pain, while she and her companions crouched together, with two Sepoys standing on guard over them, while the others, after lighting fires, talked and laughed long into the night over the ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... Fr. buffle, a buffalo), a leather originally made from the skin of the buffalo, now also from the skins of other animals, of a dull pale yellow colour, used for making the buffcoat or jerkin, a leathern military coat. The old 3rd Foot regiment of the line in the British army (now the East Kent Regiment), and the old 78th Foot (now 2nd battalion ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... touchy upon slight points of social precedence. Most of all, he liked Beatrix Dane, herself. In the gay, chattering multitude among whom she moved, her own steadfast quietness stood out in bold relief, and it answered to certain traits of his own Puritanism. It was not that she was dull, or overfreighted with conscience. She frisked with the others of her kind; but her friskiness was intermittent and never frivolous. To Beatrix Dane, pleasure was an interlude, never the sole end and aim of life. And, on her own side, Beatrix felt a thorough admiration for the clean-minded, ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... snuff very solemnly, and looked round him with a calm circumspection, fixing his dull eye upon me, and wagging his head, with an equable motion, slowly up and ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... (1774-92): THE QUEEN.—Louis XVI. differed from his two predecessors in being morally pure, and benevolent in his feelings; but he was of a dull mind, void of energy, and with an obstinacy of character that did not supply the place of an enlightened firmness. He had married (1770) Marie Antoinette, the daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa. The vivacious ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... the war was coming to an end, trade began to get dull. I had been wanting to get out of the store and "try my wings" at something else. When I began to cast my eyes about for something different from the routine of store work, I met a certain Mr. Joe Dillon, who offered me ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... till his after-dinner sleep overtook him; and when he woke again the chariot was clattering across the bridge of Chivasso. The Po rolled its sunset crimson between flats that seemed dull and featureless after the broken scenery of the hills; but beyond the bridge rose the towers and roofs of the town, with its cathedral-front catching the last slant of light. In the streets dusk had fallen and a lamp flared under the arch of the inn before which the travellers ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... and communicating by covered bridges over the larger of the torrents. The hum of watermills, the splash of running water, the clean odour of pine sawdust, the sound and smell of the pleasant wind among the innumerable army of the mountain pines, the dropping fire of huntsmen, the dull stroke of the wood-axe, intolerable roads, fresh trout for supper in the clean bare chamber of an inn, and the song of birds and the music of the village-bells—these were the recollections of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by a Gentleman infinitely to advantage; but how much of the French is in this, I leave to those who do indeed understand it and have seen it at the Court. The play had no other Misfortune but that of coming out for a Womans: had it been owned by a Man, though the most Dull Unthinking Rascally Scribler in Town, it had been a most admirable Play. Nor does it's loss of Fame with the Ladies do it much hurt, though they ought to have had good Nature and justice enough to have attributed all its faults to the Authours unhappiness, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... be sworn, and I hope you will amplify my wrath, till it has an effect upon him. You tell me always you have much to write about. Write it, but let us drop metaphysics;—on that point we shall never agree. I am dull and drowsy, as usual. I do nothing, and even that nothing ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... thus outlined becomes a great dramatic thing. The lines which trace the problem are immense, stretching from China to every shore bathed by the Pacific and then from there to the distant west. Whenever there is a dull calm, that calm must be treated solely as an intermission, an interval between the acts, a preparation for something more sensational than the last episode, but not as a permanent settlement which can only come by the methods we have indicated. For the ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness, That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... fight the demands of his outraged stomach. He rolled on his side, retching violently until the sour smell of his illness battled the foul odor of the ship. His memories of how he had come into this place were vague; his body was a mass of dull pain, as if he had been scorched. Scorched! Had the Throgs used one of their energy whips to subdue him? The last clear thing he could recall was that slow withdrawal down the cleft inside the skull rock, the Throg not too far away—the sound from ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... those who set the social pace often feel rebellious toward this dictator. Beneath the disguise of caste New York's select circle love, hate, despair, trust, doubt, rejoice, and suffer in degree like others. I have found such life dull, but concede the right to 'pay the price.' Temperaments differ. Constant touch with their kind is ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... here much longer," he said; "it's too dull. I can't stand much more school. If it wasn't for you I'd ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... Milton, to all of whom he is far inferior in sustained excellence,—but because he is like very Nature herself. Whether great, small, serious, pleasureable, or even indifferent, he still has the life, ease, and beauty of the operations of the daily planet. Even where he seems dull and common-place, his brightness and originality at other times make it look like a good-natured condescension to our own common habits of thought and discourse; as though he did it but on purpose to leave nothing unsaid that could bring him within the category of ourselves. His charming manner ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... embryo; song, dance, drums, quartette and solo—it is the drama full developed although still in miniature. Of all so-called dancing in the South Seas, that which I saw in Butaritari stands easily the first. The hula, as it may be viewed by the speedy globe-trotter in Honolulu, is surely the most dull of man's inventions, and the spectator yawns under its length as at a college lecture or a parliamentary debate. But the Gilbert Island dance leads on the mind; it thrills, rouses, subjugates; it has the essence of all art, an unexplored imminent significance. Where so many ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dull; he was at first Dull,—oh so dull, so very dull! Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed, Still with this dulness was he cursed! Dull,—beyond ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... through storm and smoke and flame, Columbia's seamen long Have bravely fought and nobly wrought that shame Might never dull their song. They sing the Country of the Free, The glory of the rolling sea, The starry flag of liberty, The ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... shot up into abounded power. On the Guise side the Cardinal de Lorraine was the cleverest man, the true head, while Francois, the Duke, was the arm; he showed leanings towards the Lutherans. On the other side, the head was the dull and obstinate Anne de Montmorency, the Constable, an unwavering Catholic, supported by the three Coligny brothers, who all were or became Huguenots. The Queen-mother Catherine fluctuated uneasily between the parties, and though Catholic herself, or rather not a Protestant, did ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... better view told him immediately that he was not in the Canadian Rockies. At least, Canada, to his knowledge, had no desert. And, on the left, this valley came to an end perhaps a little more than a mile away from the cabin, its wooded slopes flowing steeply down to a landscape which was dull rust-red—flat sand stretches alternating with worn rock escarpments, until the desert's rim rose toward and touched the hazy white sky. Not ...
— Gone Fishing • James H. Schmitz
... how precarious a thing is the glory and magnificence of a king. This man took me for a servant; his dull eyes could not perceive ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... 9-10th we entered the tropics. We were now in daily expectation of greater heat and a clearer sky, but met with neither. The atmosphere was dull and hazy, and even in our own raw fatherland the sky could not have been so overcast, except upon some days in November. Every evening the clouds were piled upon one another in such a way that we were continually expecting ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... "Heap fight!" he repeated simply, his eyes fixed on the vast form of the babbling giant. He dropped his blanket fully back from his body and stood with his eyes boring forward at his foe, his arms crossed arrogantly over his naked, ridging trunk, proud, confident, superb, a dull-hued statue whose outlines none who ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... assurances which have been given them by the late Mr. G. P. R. James and kindred writers will find it hard to substitute for the joyous scenes of sunshine and freedom he has associated with the nomadic existence, the dull, wearisome round of squalor and wretchedness which is found, upon examination, to constitute the principal condition of the Gipsy tent. Whether it is that in this awfully prosaic period of the world's history the ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... out to the switch that controlled the power. Suddenly the power beams flamed, changed from a dull glow into an intense, almost intolerable brilliance. A dull grumble of power climbed up to ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... who has been handicapped by illness and lack of opportunity, the child who is inherently dull and backward, must be distinguished from the child with nervous instability or definite mental defect. Wherever possible, the training suitable for various improvable types of children should be arranged in connection with the ordinary ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... little valley belonged to three brothers called Schwartz, Hans, and Gluck. Schwartz and Hans, the two elder brothers, were very ugly men, with overhanging eyebrows and small dull eyes, which were always half shut, so that you could not see into them, and always fancied they saw very far into you. They lived by farming the Treasure Valley, and very good farmers they were. They killed everything that did not pay ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... 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; for, ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... "Brickdust Row" she is depressed by its dull aspect, its dreary environment. But she accepts Ella's proposal, and the two girls begin their sharing of the tiny ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... of this indifference! It is heartlessly ungrateful. Dogs lick the hand that feeds them; ox and ass in their dull way recognise something almost like obligation arising from benefits and care. No ingratitude is meaner and baser than that of which we are guilty, if we do not requite Him 'in whose hands our breath is, and whose are all our ways,' by even one thankful heart-throb or one ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... 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
... and hope without vain thinking Each of us will prove himself a fool given perfect opportunity Never believed that when man or woman said no that no was meant No note of praise could be pitched too high for Elizabeth Nothing is futile that is right Religion to him was a dull recreation invented chiefly for women She had never stooped to conquer Slander ever scorches where ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... be a witness of God's glory, and to give testimony to the appearances and out-breakings of it in the ways of power and justice and mercy and truth. Other creatures are called to glorify God, but it is rather a proclamation to dull and senseless men, and a provocation of them to their duty. As Christ said to the Pharisees, "If these children hold their peace, the stones would cry out," so may the Lord turn himself from stupid and senseless man, to the stones and woods and seas and sun and moon, and exhort them ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... butcher's sponge. Yes, here you see how people become rich; how they get hold of other people's property. Conscience hunts the scoundrel to the deuce: he lets his skin grow thick; feigns outwardly to be dull; if anyone spits in his face he regards it only as a May-shower; if anyone goes for him for his rascality, he takes it as a joke. And so the rascals become rich! One must be born to those things, that's the way ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... so often made into a dull and dreary business for ourselves and others, is that we accept some conventional standard of duty and rectitude, and heavily enforce it; we neglect the interest, the zest, the beauty of life. In my own career as an educator, I can truthfully ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... instant the windlass creaked; the ropes which hung from the summit of the column tightened; the gaping hole in the masonry below, gradually closed; the statue bent forward in the rays of the setting sun, and then suddenly describing in the air a gigantic sweep, fell among the flags with a dull, heavy thud, scattering a whirlwind of blinding dust ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... back door, but the women and children think it is made by the devils, and are much terrified. Then the priests enter the shed, followed by the boys, one at a time. As soon as each boy has disappeared within the precincts, a dull chopping sound is heard, a fearful cry rings out, and a sword or spear, dripping with blood, is thrust through the roof of the shed. This is a token that the boy's head has been cut off, and that the devil has carried him away ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... may attain heaven at the command of a Brahmana. Thou wilt, O king, without doubt ascend to regions of everlasting bliss, in consequence of thy worship of the Pitris and the gods, and thy reverence for the Brahmanas, even though thy body is filled with phlegmatic humours and withal so dull and inert! He that desires virtue and heaven should adore the Brahmanas. One should feed Brahmanas with care on occasions of Sraddhas, although those among them that are cursed or fallen should be excluded. They also should ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... shooting. If things lagged with the ladies he had landmarks or scenery or early-day stories. With Mrs. Whitney he could in extremity discuss St. Louis. Marie Brock he could please by placing her in marvellous spots for sketching. As for Gertrude and Louise Donner the men of their own party left them no dull moments. ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... looking down on her with dull, aching eyes, as he said to himself it was perhaps for the last time. It was the last time she would ever see him as her good son. With her, in her heart and memory, all his life dwelt; she knew the whole of it, with no break or interruption. Only this one ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... dull heavy appearance, yet of a form that indicates both strength and activity; and approaches nearly to that of the wild Buffalo. Its head is set on like the Buffalo's, and it carries it much in the same manner, with the nose projecting forward; ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... could be induced to go into the woods and there labor with his ax. But as he pointed out to Hannibal, a poor man's capital was his health, and he being a poor man it behooved him to have a jealous care of himself. He made use of the dull days of mingled mist and drizzle for hunting, work being clearly out of the question; one could get about over the brown floor of the forest in silence then, and there was no sun to glint the brass mountings of his rifle. The fine days he professed to regard with keen suspicion as weather ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... stupidity in not having our rifles handy, when a strange sound was heard in the distance. By this time Jack had come up, so we all three seized our rifles and listened intently. The sound was evidently approaching. It was a low, dull, booming roar, which at one moment seemed to be distant thunder, at another the cry of some huge animal in rage or pain. Presently the beating of heavy hoofs on the turf and the crash of branches were heard. ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... doomed to end their days in this sort of stately confinement, subject to restrictions which render life so dull and monotonous, how different would these veterans feel, could they retire to the bosom of their families and friends! Then, indeed, would they dwell with delight on the battles and sieges in which they had served, enumerating their many hair-breadth escapes, and detailing the particulars ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... soul. Who cared what he said or did or felt? The City had forgotten his very existence. In the West End, only here and there some person might chance to remember his name as that of some rich bounder who had married Lady Cressage. Nowhere else in England, save one dull strip of agricultural blankness in a backward home county, was there a human being who knew anything whatever about him. And this was his career! It was for this that he had planned that memorable campaign, and waged that amazing series ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... said Tip-Top one day to them, "this old nest is a dull, mean, crowded hole, and it's quite time some of us were out of it. Just give us lessons in flying, won't ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... aquarium to rights, assisting to rearrange the plants in the conservatory, and helping to water them, so that they should not be teased by seeing the rain fall outside whilst they were kept dry within doors, it got to be tea-time; and, dull as the day had been, Fred declared he had enjoyed it wonderfully, and only wanted tea to be over for Mr Inglis to fulfil his promise, and show them the pictures of the sea anemones, and the other wondrous things that were found ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... is not Fortune's work neither, but Nature's, who perceiveth our natural wits too dull to reason of such goddesses, and hath sent this natural for our whetstone: for always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.— How now, wit? whither ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... had been dispossessed of his large holdings of land through the operation of tax laws, and to escape imprisonment for debt, he removed to Philadelphia, where on the 4th of January 1814 he died. He published a dull and biassed, but useful Natural and Political History of Vermont (1798), reissued (1870) in vol. i. of the Collections of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... marvellous courage, and although their trade was quite lucrative, the Delobelles often found themselves in straitened circumstances, especially in the dull season of the ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... are the clear will and the immediate dispensation of Almighty God. And, then, we feel no shame at all at the most dishonourable things, and that simply because the men around us are too coarse in their morals and too dull in their sensibilities to see any shame in such things. And thus it comes about that, in the very best of men, their still perverted sense of shame remains in them a constant snare and a source of temptation. A man of a fine nature ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... and plainly enough the reports of guns and the shouting of combatants reached their ears, the fighting having already commenced, and evidently within the city, though as they waited the sounds grew more distant. But the dull trampling of unshod horses told of the passing of mounted men, and Ibrahim went out to join the guard at the gate, for he was in an intense state of excitement for fear there should be any demand made upon his camels, which were peaceably ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... lights, and the great pictures framed in crimson and gold, and thought that the Temple of Solomon could not have been more grand. She could scarcely believe Mrs. Delano was wealthy. "She's a beautiful lady," said she to Flora; "but if she's got plenty o' money, what makes her dress so innocent and dull? There's Missy Rosy now, when she's dressed for company, she looks like ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known,—cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honor'd of them all,— And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. ... How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains; but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new ...
— Theodore Roosevelt • Edmund Lester Pearson
... I saw what I had deemed A shadow near thy hand, a dusky wing, A bird like last year's leaves, so dull a thing Beside its fellow; as the sunshine gleamed Each breast showed letters bright as crystalled rain, The fair bird bore "Delight," ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... to purchase, putting it upon the ground that he had been unfortunate and had a claim to their charity. I happened to see him in the office of the popular hotel in Podgeville, when he was more than usually clamorous for patronage. He accosted nearly every man in the room with a dull, uninteresting volume in his hand, and for which he asked a respectable price. At last he set down his basket, and commenced a kind of snivelling harangue to his little audience. Mr. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the lake and back again before he answered her, in a dull, heavy tone, "I've had bad luck, and, when you get down, there are plenty ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... beautiful cool sheets with the breeze blowing in at the open window stirring the dainty white muslin curtains, Helen dropped into a dull heavy sleep, but she was so restless that Marshland dared ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... colored flycatcher, with white forehead and rump and two very long tail-feathers; a black and slate-blue tanager; a black ant-thrush with a concealed white spot on its back, at the base of the neck, and its dull-colored mate; and other birds which he believed to be new to science, but whose relationships with any of our birds are so remote that it is hard to describe them save in technical language. Finally, ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... is not a very wonderful structure, and the guide-books will tell one practically nothing about it. The town itself is a dull place, a tidal port, at some little distance from the sea, which flushes in upon it twice during ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... obvious longing to display the extent of his learning. Perrault's case is finally stated in his four volumes, "Le Parallele des Anciens et des Modernes," which were published in 1688-1696. He evidently took vastly more pride in this dull and now almost forgotten work than in the matchless stories which have ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... wilderness. As trappers, hunters, and guides; as fishermen and slayers of whale and seal; as the light horseman, quick, brave, self-sustaining, and self-reliant, the Indian was capable of valuable services to a people who offered him but two alternatives—extinction, or a dull, plodding, vegetative, unnatural existence.'" ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... bedside, rolling bandages, when the sudden, far-distant, dull boom of cannon, followed by the quick rattling of the window-panes, gave intimation that the long contest was fiercely renewed. A courier had arrived from Malvern Mill with intelligence that here the enemy's forces were very strongly posted, were making desperate resistance; and though ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... door before she paused. Then she turned. I had risen mechanically and stood looking at her. As slowly she came back and waited as if for me to speak. And when the dull philosopher groped helplessly for words and could not meet the appealing eyes, she put her hands on his shoulders, and laid her warm, young face on his heart, and ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... alcoholic drink have a thirst which water does not satisfy. It is an unnatural thirst. Even beer or wine will not satisfy such a thirst except for a few minutes. Very often a person's thirst is not satisfied until he has used so much wine or whisky that he becomes dull and unsteady in his walk. He is ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison
... His dull expectation of the usual disagreeable routine with an aged patient—who can hardly believe that medicine would not "set him up" if the doctor were only clever enough—added to his general disbelief in Middlemarch charms, made a doubly effective background to this vision of Rosamond, whom old ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... indifference to interest, that it seems easiest to suppose the author to be writing while his conceptions of what is to follow are freshest and as yet unwrought out. We cannot ask him; even while we have overlooked him in his labor, his form has faded, and we are again in this dull every-day Present. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... white fields, drifting north with the spring tide that sets through Behring Strait, till, on the morning of the fifth, open water showed to the east. Creeping through, she broke out into the last stage of the long race, amid the cheers of her weary passengers; and the dull jar of her engines made welcome music to the girl ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... garden,—the outlines and masses, dim and mysterious in the night, of palms and cypresses, of slender eucalyptus-trees, oleanders, magnolias, of orange-trees, where the oranges hung, amid the dark foliage, like dull-burning lanterns. A crescent of diamonds twinkled in the warm blackness of her hair. She wore a collar of pearls round her throat, and a long rope of pearls that descended to her waist, and was then looped up and caught at the bosom by an opal clasp. A delicate perfume, like the perfume of ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... feel injured if he excuses himself on the ground of having to take his sister out, or spend his evening with his parents. He will be all the better husband for this courtesy to his own relations. Of course his people may be very dull, possibly unpleasant, and in that case real friendship will be a labour, if not an impossibility; but, for the man's sake, they must be treated in such a way as not to hurt either his feelings or their own. The same, naturally, holds good with ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... until then had been kept in equilibrium by the active and passive forces. The inert forces of nature commence from thence to gain the upper hand over the living forces of the organism; the form is oppressed by matter, humanity by common nature. The eye, in which the soul shone forth, becomes dull, or it protrudes from its socket with I know not what glassy haggardness; the delicate pink of the cheeks thickens, and spreads as a coarse pigment in uniform layers. The mouth is no longer anything but a simple opening, because its form no longer depends upon the action ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... litanies which she had learnt in her infancy, and which of late had seemed to her to have somewhat too set and mechanical a rhythm. The earnestness and fervour seemed to have gone out of them in somewise since she had come to womanhood. The names of the saints her lips invoked were dull and cold, and evolved no image of human or superhuman love and power. What need of intercessors whose personality was vague and dim, whose earthly histories were made up of truth so interwoven with fable that she scarce dared believe even that which might be true? In ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... this autumn at Brighthelmstone. The place was very dull, and I was not well; the expedition to the Hebrides was the most pleasant journey that I ever made[272]. Such an effort annually would give the world ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... severe shower of rain fell about three o'clock A.M.; it detained us in our camp until five, when we embarked. Why should I relate to you our dull progress through fields of rice—through intricate channels, and amidst myriads of ducks and wild water fowl. This day has been hot, beyond any experience on the journey. I sank back in my canoe, in a state of apathy and lassitude, partly from the heat, and partly from ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... in the gardens. These are, as usual, full, abundant, fragrant, and quite uninteresting, keeping the traditional secret by which the suburban rose, magnolia, clematis, and all other flowers grow dull—not in colour, but in spirit—between the yellow brick house-front and the iron railings. Nor is there anything altered for the ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... strong within me ever since. My uncle James had procured for me from a neighbour the loan of a common stall-edition of Blind Harry's "Wallace," as modernized by Hamilton; but after reading the first chapter,—a piece of dull genealogy, broken into very rude rhyme,—I tossed the volume aside as uninteresting; and only resumed it at the request of my uncle, who urged that, simply for his amusement and gratification, I should read some three or four chapters more. Accordingly, the three or four chapters ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... supported it and married comfortably afterwards? It is not what you lose, but what you have daily to bear that is hard. I can fancy nothing more cruel, after a long easy life of bachelorhood, than to have to sit day after day with a dull, handsome woman opposite; to have to answer her speeches about the weather, housekeeping and what not; to smile appropriately when she is disposed to be lively (that laughing at the jokes is the hardest part), and to model your conversation ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the way of the older girls. Moreover, the notion of being officers was attractive to such temperaments as Winnie's, Biddy's, and Daisy's. They thought they should rather enjoy training the younger ones, and giving their opinions at committee meetings. It was so dull simply to form audiences while the ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... was at first Dull,—oh so dull, so very dull! Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed, Still with this dulness was he ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... a dull, terrible thud, a smothered groan, a fall—and I stood there powerless to move—stricken dumb and motionless! And while I stood transfixed, some person rushed past me, breathless, panting, reckless ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... purpose, 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 certayne worke began, And not concluded, ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... rose,—as it would of course become us to write if we were dealing with the life of a living sovereign,—would not be interesting. No one on going to hear Thackeray lecture on the Georges expected that. There must be some piquancy given, or the lecture would be dull;—and the eulogy of personal virtues can seldom be piquant. It is difficult to speak fittingly of a sovereign, either living or not, long since gone. You can hardly praise such a one without flattery. You can hardly censure him without injustice. We are either ignorant of his personal doings ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... continued with a contemptuous laugh. 'Look at them! the people you are trying to make idealists of! Look at them! Some of them howling and roaring like wild beasts, or laughing like idiots, others standing with dull and stupid faces devoid of any trace of intelligence or expression, listening to the speakers whose words convey no meaning to their stultified minds, and others with their eyes gleaming with savage hatred of their fellow men, ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... loved and fair, The whelmed beneath the tide,— The broken harps around whose strings The dull sea-monsters glide! Mother and nursling sweet, Reft from the household throng; There's bitter weeping in the nest Where breathed their soul ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... sudden, a great but dull noise, like that of the fall of a heavy body, then another awful cry, I had not a drop of blood left in ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... there were drilled into his character many good lessons of plain commonsense—a rather unusual equipment for a poet, but still one that should not be waived or considered lightly. At the village school William was neither precocious nor dull, neither black nor white: his cosmos being simply a sort of slaty-gray, a condition of being which attracted no special attention from either his schoolfellows or his tutors. From the village school he went to Marlborough Academy, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... curtain of the large bow-window, so common in the West Indian houses, and the rich moonlight, now unvexed by the dull glare of the taper, flowed into the apartment, bathing every object it touched with silvery radiance. Clara sat in the window, in the full glow of the light, leaning forward toward the open air, and I, with a beating heart, gazed upon her superb beauty. Shall ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... porphyry conspirators, engaged in their eternal task of mystification at the corner of San Marco. That all attempts should have failed to settle the character and social standing of those red-complexioned, rather dull-witted gentlemen, who clasped one another in such undecipherable opacity, was almost more ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... these circumstances did not now help him, when from office to office he went in quest of something to do. After many failures and renewed searchings, he found what he was after, an opportunity to practice his trade. Business was dull, which kept our journeyman printer on the wing; first at one and then at another printing office we find him setting types for a living during the year 1827. The winning of bread was no easy matter; but he was not ashamed to work, neither was he afraid of ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... pleasant proposal that had been made to me, since the day of my dining with the bishop! My heart bounded while he spoke! It was with difficulty I could contain my joy; and the effort must have been much greater, had not the brother of Olivia been the dull undiscerning Hector Mowbray. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... build it of copper ore—splendid yellow forty-per-cent. ore! There's fortunes upon fortunes of copper ore on our land! It scared me to death, the idea of this fool starting a smelting furnace in his house without knowing it, and getting his dull eyes opened. And then he was going to build it of iron ore! There's mountains of iron ore here, Nancy—whole mountains of it. I wouldn't take any chances. I just stuck by him—I haunted him—I never let him ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the afternoon seem dull and dreary? Sweet, did you murmur as the tears fell thick— "My true love cometh not and I am weary; This is a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... watched his motions, and listened attentively to his observations, for we had employed an Indian mainly that I might have an opportunity to study his ways. I heard him swear once mildly, during this operation, about his knife being as dull as a hoe,—an accomplishment which he owed to his intercourse with the whites; and he remarked, "We ought to have some tea before we start; we shall be hungry before we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Trade an outward-bound ship is obliged to steer much more to the westward than she wishes to do, in consequence of the wind blowing so directly towards the equator, and not along it, as some of the books will insist on, in spite of Nature. So that if she be a dull sailer she may have some difficulty in weathering the coast of Brazil about Cape St. Roque. As she proceeds onwards, however, and makes a little more southing, the wind will haul more and more round from the south to the south-east, then east-south-east, and eventually to ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... I protested, glancing at Miss Lyberg. I could have sworn that I detected a gleam in the woman's eyes and that the sphinx-like attitude of dull incomprehensibility suggested a strenuous effort. "She doesn't understand anything. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... of hot air. Dull thunder, singularly uncanny in its low, distant note, began to grumble. Lightning of an intense coppery color flashed again and again across the heavens. The river began to rise in yellow waves ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... And, oh, lady, there is a soul within me that longs to do something for somebody! I want to accomplish something; not to sit here day after day making figures in the sand, only to see them drift back again into a dull level. But I shall live in vain. What can I do with this poor ...
— Harper's Young People, June 8, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Not that dull spleen which serves i' the world for scorn, Is hers I watch from far off, worshipping As in remote Chaldaea the ancient king Adored the star that heralded the morn. Her proud content she bears as a flag is borne Tincted the hue royal; ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... luggage examined, to see if we carry wigwams and war-whoops about with us. No, it is clearly necessary that we master the gentle art of eating eggs tidily and daintily from the shell. I have seen English women—very dull ones, too—do it without apparent effort; I have even seen an English infant do it, and that without soiling her apron, or, as Salemina would say, 'messing her pinafore.' I propose, therefore, that we order ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... circumvent their cunning. That is right; pat his neck and smile, as if you praised the horse, and keep the ear on my side open to my words. Be careful not to worry your beast, for though but little skilled in horses, reason teaches that breath is needful in a hard push, and that a weary leg makes a dull race. Be ready to mind the signal, when you hear a whine from old Hector. The first will be to make ready; the second, to edge out of the crowd; and the third, to go—am ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... high good-humor, having done her errand quite to her satisfaction. The bell rings and they gather slowly. Madame Lepelletier is more enchanting still in some soft black fabric, with dull gold in relief. Floyd has washed and brushed and freshened, but still wears his travelling suit for a very good reason. Cecil is in white, with pale blue ribbons, which give her a sort of seraphic look. Yet she is tired with all the jaunting about, and after a while Laura ceases ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... cold dull wintry weather, and the old man looked so solitary, that one or two tried to rally him, and even asked him to come and dine or spend the evening with them, to which he responded by his old harsh laugh, and putting on his worsted gloves, ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... flame or electric arc, and on cooling it assumes a crystalline form closely resembling the mineral species. Crystallized alumina is also obtained by heating the fluoride with boron trioxide; by fusing aluminium phosphate with sodium sulphate; by heating alumina to a dull redness in hydrochloric acid gas under pressure; and by heating alumina with lead oxide to a bright red heat. These reactions are of special interest, for they culminate in the production of artificial ruby and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... hot water after the addition of a little hydrochloric acid. This clouds in cooling, and after a certain time it separates in small crystals of indeterminate form which unite in warty concretions. After drying the salt forms a dull powder, melting between 275 deg. F. and 280 deg. F. It also melts in boiling water, and its aqueous solution exposed to the light is partially reduced, 100 grammes of water acidulated with 10 cubic centimeters of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... part of the seventeenth century the social life of the colonists, at least in New England, was what would now be considered monotonous and dull. Aside from marriages, funerals, and church-going there was little to attract the Puritans from their steady routine of farming and trading. In New York the Dutch were apparently contented with their daily eating, drinking, smoking, and walking along the Battery or out ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... two remaining great cities of Mid-Europe—Berlin and Vienna—and leads us to the inevitable conclusion that the Europeans, in common with all other peoples on the earth, only succeed—when they try to be desperately wicked —in being desperately dull; whereas when they seek their pleasures in a natural manner they present racial slants and angles that are very interesting to observe and very pleasant ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... A dull red showed on Pink's forehead above the tan-mark, and crowded into his pale-blue eyes, destitute of lashes. The two men looked steadily at each other. Then, as Melissa drew near, Pink broke into an ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... no real gulf between God and man. If we have only to say, 'As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are' His 'ways higher than' our 'ways,' that difference is not unlikeness, and establishes no separation; for low and flat though the dull earth be, does not heaven bend down round it, and send rain and sun, dew and blessing? But it is because 'your ways are not as my ways'—because there is actual opposition, because the directions are different—that there is unlikeness. The image of God lies not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... fondest hopes till they gradually sink to ruin and oblivion. It is a grief that mortal eyes cannot see; it is only keenly felt; its tears are the wasting away of health, and its lamentation is the low beating of a sinking pulse. The loudest cry of its woe is but the dull, bitter sigh of its lonely unhappiness, engendered by the deep misery of the secret depression of its mental complaining, making the heart like a faded flower in a gloomy wilderness; like a blighted tree in a sultry ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... position in the office made the rest of my time at Derby more agreeable, though, to tell the truth, I often jibbed at the drudgery of the desk and the monotony of writing pencilled-out letters which was now my daily task. Set tasks, dull routine, monotonous ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... from the earth than any of the planets in the solar system, visible to the naked eye. It is distinguished from the fixed stars by the steadiness of its light, which is dull and of a yellow hue, though to some it appears to be of a greenish tinge. It seems barely to move, so slow is its motion among the stars, for it takes two and one half years to pass through a ...
— A Field Book of the Stars • William Tyler Olcott
... filled with a sombre dusk, echoing to every step as they passed through it. They did not see the flash of eyes and glimmer of smiles from the minstrel's gallery, and the solitude, size, and gloom had, even on their dull natures, a palpable influence. The whole castle seemed deserted as they followed the false earl across the second court—with the true one stealing after them like a knave—little imagining that bright eyes were watching them from the curtains of every window like stars from ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald |
