"Duller" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that morning and dismissed for the season to find such work as he could in the city, Auld Jock did not question the farmer's right to take Bobby "back hame." Besides, what could he do with the noisy little rascal in an Edinburgh lodging? But, duller of wit than usual, feeling very old and lonely, and shaky on his legs, and dizzy in his head, Auld Jock parted with Bobby and with his courage, together. With the instinct of the dumb animal that suffers, he stumbled into the foul nook and fell, almost at once, into a heavy sleep. Out of that Bobby ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... have been plain to a far duller plotter that they should be fully clear of Hunston before he explained the situation to ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... answer humbly, that I will do my best. If you will bring a dull chapter on you, duller even than all the rest, at least read it, and exonerate me. The fact is, my dear sir, that women like Mary Hawker are not particularly interesting in the piping times of peace. In volcanic and explosive times they, with their wild animal ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... was able to vivify her grotesque skeleton of a plot with some degree of success is no mean tribute to her gifts. The energy and vigour of her style, her complete and serious absorption in her subject, carry us safely over many an absurdity. It is only in the duller stretches of the narrative, when her heart is not in her work, that her language becomes vague, indeterminate and blurred, and that she muffles her thoughts in words like "ascertain," "commencement," "peruse," "diffuse," instead of using their simpler Saxon equivalents. ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... strange feature of the American national game that the more perfectly it is played the duller it is. This was a pitchers' battle; and the game droned along, through inning after inning, with seldom more than three men to bat in each half, while the score board presented a most appropriate double procession of naughts. Spectators, warmly praising that smoothly oiled mechanical process ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... their Southern compatriots. But the ESQUIMAUX, who roam on the desolate and ice-bound coasts of Arctic America, certainly present us with a new stock. The Esquimaux (among whom the Greenlanders are included), in fact, though they share the straight black hair of the proper Americans, are a duller complexioned, shorter, and more squat people, and they have still more prominent cheek-bones. But the circumstance which most completely separates them from the typical Americans, is the form of their skulls, which instead of being broad, high, and truncated behind, ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... speed, due to the fierce wind, allows me plenty of time to admire the strangely beautiful surroundings. Above is the inverted bowl of blue, bright for the most part, but duller towards the horizon-rim. The sun pours down a vivid light, which spreads quicksilver iridescence over the cloud-tops. Below is the cloud-scape, fantastic and far-stretching. The shadow of our machine is surrounded by a halo of sunshine as it darts along the irregular ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... about, because it has a strong tinge of the tropical element in it; and yet people live in much the same kind of houses (only that they are very small), and wear much the same sort of clothes (only that they are very ugly), and lead much the same sort of lives (only that it is a thousand times duller than the dullest country village), as they do in England. Some small concession is made to the thermometer in the matter of puggeries and matted floors, but even then carpets are used wherever it is practicable, because this matting never ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... which at first sounded so loud, grew duller and fainter as they penetrated the wood until it became like the moaning of the distant ocean. The men spoke in guarded undertones and were able to hear each other plainly, while eyes and ears were on the alert, for the first ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... gods' bright nectar, Disencrowned of its foam; Duller, deader far the empty, Barren hearthstone of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... as a child groping benighted. Her presence, her readings alone, rendered vividly luminous the many mysteries of the transcendentalism in which we were immersed. Wanting the radiant lustre of her eyes, letters, lambent and golden, grew duller than Saturnian lead. And now those eyes shone less and less frequently upon the pages over which I pored. Ligeia grew ill. The wild eyes blazed with a too—too glorious effulgence; the pale fingers became of the transparent waxen hue of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... now sought the positions of the different vedettes, and all was so brilliant and clear that he saw where the men had stood up their muskets against bush or tree, noted the flash from bayonets and the duller gleam from musket-barrels. In one case, too, the men were sheltering themselves beneath a tree, and this sent an additional pang of suffering through the lad, as he felt for the first time that the sun was playing with burning force upon ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... trying to the unyielding courage of the British army than their disposition in square at Waterloo. There is an excited feeling in an attacking body that stimulates the coldest, and blunts the thought of danger. The tumultuous enthusiasm of the assault spreads from man to man, and duller spirits catch a gallant frenzy from the brave around them. But the enduring and devoted courage which pervaded the British squares, when, hour after hour, mowed down by a murderous artillery, and wearied by furious and frequent onsets of lancers ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... experienced in this art will remember that it is not always an easy matter for him, by scouring, to bring his plate to the desired lustre. All his efforts become unavailing; the more he rubs, the duller the surface of his plate appears; and although he renews his cotton repeatedly, still he is obliged to content ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... imagination, should have written a book whose most winning and enduring charm is the appeal to imagination it makes. Moreover, he is an enthusiast in behalf of just that which is distinctively modern: he is a white flame of precisely those heats which smoulder now in the duller breast of the world in general; he worships at all the pet shrines; he expresses the peculiar loves and hatreds of the time. Who is so devout a believer in free speech and free trade and the let-alone policy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... place five nights running in the open space between the Shinto shrine and the old barn theatre. Nothing could have been duller. The line from Ruddigore came to mind, "This is one of our blameless dances." The first night the performers were evidently shy and the girls would hardly come forward. Things warmed up a little more each night and on the last night of all there was a certain animation; but even then the movement, ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... Can a good thing come of Nazareth? High above the darkness, where our duller senses drown, Lifts the splendid Vision of a City, built on merchandise, Fairer than that City of Light ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... get back, I'm sorry to say. You see, I started at a moment's notice. Things are duller than a ditch in the City, but I'd no chance to make any arrangements for a stay. But I'll tell you what. If you're stopping on here and like to send me an invitation for a week or two, I'd come like a shot. I'll take a carriage ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... though he did attempt to fulfil Lady Eleanor's wishes in his sermon, only succeeded in being duller and longer than usual, and neither Dick nor Elsie could understand what he was talking about. Moreover they had been much distracted by a printed handbill which they had seen on the church door, headed in large letters by the word "Deserted," with the description ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... in a voice that had a duller sound than usual. "We had the hounds out this morning at Hilberry Green, and there was a good muster, Jack Purdy says; but I felt out of sorts, and neither Vixen nor I went. It was a loss for Vixen, ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... force of its sympathetic divination, restore the missing notes in the "music of humanity," and reconstruct the fragments into a whole which will really bring the remote past nearer to us, and interpret it to our duller apprehension—this form of imaginative power must always be among the very rarest, because it demands as much accurate and minute knowledge as creative vigor. Yet we find ladies constantly choosing to make their ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Mrs. Shaw did suggest it the next morning, Hilary was quite of Pauline's opinion. "I shouldn't like it a bit, mother! It would be worse than home—duller, I mean; and Mrs. Boyd would fuss over me so," she ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... Madame Dandelard was a little Italian lady who had married a Frenchman who proved to be a rake and a brute and the torment of her life. Her husband had spent all her money, and then, lacking the means of obtaining more expensive pleasures, had taken, in his duller hours, to beating her. She had a blue spot somewhere, which she showed to several persons, including Bellegarde. She had obtained a separation from her husband, collected the scraps of her fortune (they were very meagre) and come to live ...
— The American • Henry James
... details were becoming more and more difficult to catch. The reliefs grew more and more blurred and the outlines dimmer and dimmer. Even the great mountain profiles began to fade away, the dazzling colors to grow duller, the jet black shadows greyer, and the ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... There are more enjoyments and more privations in the one than in the other; but if, in the latter case, the enjoyments, though fewer, be more keenly felt,—if the privations, though apparently sharper, fall upon duller sensibilities and hardier frames,—your gauge of proportion loses all its value. Nay, in civilization there is for the multitude an evil that exists not in the savage state. The poor man sees daily and hourly all the vast disparities ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... stood looking around her, as though perplexed and preoccupied. There was sunlight on the glade and on the ripples, but the daylight seemed to have become duller to her. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... much. What had he to say? She gave him her hand to encourage him. She listened, and soon it was her hand that mastered his in the grasp, though she was putting questions incredulously, with an understanding duller than her instinct. Or how if the frightful instinct while she listened shot lightnings in her head, whose revelations were too intelligible to be looked at? We think it devilish when our old nature is incandescent ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that if they are cultivated and clever, can write what is delusively called a "brilliant style," and are familiar with the masterpieces of Literature, they must be more competent to succeed in fiction or the drama than a duller man, with a plainer style and slenderer acquaintance with the "best models." Had they distinctly conceived the real aims of Literature this mistake would often have been avoided. A recognition of the aims would have pressed on their attention a more distinct appreciation ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... (if we may say so) of conflagration-light which gives to it the character of impressive power with which we are all so familiar—the intense lights being here cut sharply off by equally intense shadows, and then grading into dull reds and duller greys. The sun, on the other hand, bathes everything in its genial glow so completely that all nature is permeated with it, and there are no intense contrasts, no absolutely black and striking shadows, except in caverns and holes, to form ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... duller and duller," said Mr. Tredgold to himself, wearily. "Two skittish octogenarians, one gloomy baby, one gloomier nursemaid, and three dogs in the last five minutes. If it wasn't for ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... dominant note of terracotta and red brick. There are strengths and splendours which belong to the building and its frescoes, but to me, at all events, it seems to lack the peace and mystery of quieter, duller chapels. A noble memorial of a master mind is the picture gallery in the grounds of the terracotta designing school founded by the late painter's wife. The gallery contains many of his finest pictures, and in particular the last of all which he painted—Destiny, a tremendous ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... are finely bound and good books to my great content. So home and to my office, where late. This evening I being informed did look and saw the Comet, which is now, whether worn away or no I know not, but appears not with a tail, but only is larger and duller than any other star, and is come to rise betimes, and to make a great arch, and is gone quite to a new place in the heavens than it was before: but I hope in a clearer night something more will be seen. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... species of Pyrocephalus, one or both of which would be ranked by some ornithologists as only varieties), and a dove—all analogous to, but distinct from, American species. Fourthly a swallow, which though differing from the Progne purpurea of both Americas, only in being rather duller coloured, smaller, and slenderer, is considered by Mr. Gould as specifically distinct. Fifthly there are three species of mocking-thrush—a form highly characteristic of America. The remaining land-birds form a most singular group of finches, related to each ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... duller reaction and the events of the last few minutes repeated themselves, impersonally, spectacularly,—as though they were the actions of another man; one for whom he felt very sorry. He even went into the future and saw this same man lying down with a ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... despair grew comfort, slowly at first, and more vigorously anon. The sudden shock of the news had robbed me of some of my wit, and had warped my reasoning. Later, as the pain of the blow grew duller, I came to reflect that what she had done was but a proof—an overwhelming proof—of how deeply she had cared. Such hatred as this can be but born of a great love; reaction is ever to be measured ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... said Highboy. "Duller than mine. You see, he has nothing to be afraid of. To be afraid of something gives you a thrill, you know. But everybody's afraid of time, and Grandfather's Clock has all the time ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... everybody's thoughts—where the men who make the millions are so jaded by the work that sport is the only thing they can occupy themselves with when they have any leisure, and the men who don't have to work are even duller than the men who do, and vicious as well; and the women live for display and silly amusements and silly immoralities—do you know how awful that life is?... Of course I know there are clever people and people of taste in that set, but they're swamped ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... to the senses of criminals, Lombroso and Ottolenghi have asserted that they are duller than those of ordinary people. The assertion is based on a collection made by Lombroso of instances of the great indifference of criminals to pain. But he has overlooked the fact that the reason is quite ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... lover: one whose ear (I have been told) is duller than his sight. The day of his departure had drawn near; And (meeting her beloved over-night) Softly and tenderly Corinna sigh'd: "Won't you be quite as happy now without me?" Metellus, in his innocence replied, "Corinna! O ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... can count the faults of either on his clumsy fingers. That born critic, the late Sir George Lewis, had barely completed his tenth year before he was able, in a letter to his mother, to point out to her the essentially faulty structure of Hamlet, and many a duller wit, a decade or two later in his existence, has come to the conclusion that Frederick the Great is far too long. But whatever were Carlyle's faults, his historical method was superbly naturalistic. Have we a historian ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... not the man he had been—no; and the long story had wearied him, he seemed duller now, whatever might be the cause. He was not the bright and confident soul he had been that morning. He looked at his ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... the wisest man ever dies with the greatest equanimity, the most foolish with the least? Does it not seem to you that the soul, which sees more and further, sees that it is passing to a better state, while that body whose vision is duller, does not see it? I, indeed, am transported with eagerness to see your fathers, whom I have respected and loved; nor in truth is it those only I desire to meet whom I myself have known; but those also of whom I have heard or read, and have myself written. Whither, indeed, as I proceed, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... be the delight of her heart that he should be happy while doing so. And all this must be safe and wise, because it was to be done under the advice of her father. Now it was proposed to her that she should abandon all this and live in some smaller, poorer, duller country residence, in which she would be the least of the family instead of the mistress of her own house. She thought of it all for a moment, and then she answered ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... being consigned to rest for ever. Even such is the course of a narrative like that which you are perusing. The earlier events are studiously dwelt upon, that you, kind reader, may be introduced to the character rather by narrative than by the duller medium of direct description; but when the story draws near its close, we hurry over the circumstances, however important, which your imagination must have forestalled, and leave you to suppose those things which it would be abusing your patience to ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Vitebsk about six months. I do not believe I was ever homesick during all that time. I was too happy to be homesick. The life suited me extremely well. My life in Polotzk had grown meaner and duller, as the family fortunes declined. For years there had been no lessons, no pleasant excursions, no jolly gatherings with uncles and aunts. Poverty, shadowed by pride, trampled down our simple ambitions and simpler joys. I cannot honestly say that I was very sensitive to our ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... discretion. The Prince was glad when he took his departure, and he exhausted his stock of malice in wishing the young coxcomb to the devil. His Excellency was becoming more and more morose over his snuff and the last mail—which was longer and duller than usual—with a peculiarly sharp note from his Chief into ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... things, and in many ways to change the conditions of life. Perhaps there are those who will understand me when I say that that necessary change may make life poorer for the rich, rougher for the refined, and, it may be, duller for the gifted—for a while; that it may even take such forms that not the best or wisest of us shall always be able to know it for a friend, but may at whiles fight against it as a foe. Yet, when the day comes ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... me past the endurance of a block: an oak, but with one green leaf on it, would have answered her; my very visor began to assume life and scold with her: She told me, not thinking I had been myself, that I was the prince's jester, and that I was duller than a great thaw; huddling jest upon jest, with such impossible conveyance upon me, that I stood like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at me: She speaks poniards, and every word stabs: if her breath were as terrible as her terminations, there were no ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... grateful to the ear! I lay drinking it in as thirstily as water after a day on the desert. It seemed that the world breathed again, was coming alive after syncope. And then beneath that loud and cheerful singing I became aware of duller half-heard movements; and a moment or so later yellow lights began to flicker through the transom high at the blank wall of the room, and to reflect in wavering patches on the ceiling. Evidently somebody was ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... or must not be suffered to continue in their society; if we converse with them who speak with more address than ourselves, then we repine equally at our own dulness, and envy the acuteness that accomplishes the speaker; or, if we converse with duller animals than ourselves, then we are weary to draw the yoke alone, and fret at our being in ill company; but if chance blows us in amongst our equals, then we are so at guard to catch all advantages, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Even the pains and troubles incident to his state visit the old man lightly. Because Southey sat for months in his library, unable to read or touch the books he loved, we are not to infer that he was unhappy. If the stage darkens as the curtain falls, certain it also is that the senses grow duller and more blunted. "Don't cry for me, my dear," said an old lady undergoing an operation; "I ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... and vain (The rippling water murmurs still), Stephen is somewhat duller of brain, Slower of speech, and milder of will; Stephen must toil a living to gain, Plough and harrow and gather the grain; Brian has little enough to maintain The station in life which he needs must fill; Both are fearless ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... over in his mind, trying to make a reality of it and spin into the warp and woof of the tapestry time had already woven this thread of new color. But so startling was it in hue that it refused to blend, standing out against the duller tones of the past with appalling distinctness; and never was it more irreconcilable than when the familiar confines of the little fishing hamlet by the sea were reached and those who struggled to harmonize it saw it in contrast with this ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... told mademoiselle I would say good-by to her forever when we reached Mrs. O'Fallon's, but in my own mind I was saying good-by to her now. It had been for several days that I had felt the weight of this approaching hour, and my brilliance had gradually departed. I had grown duller and quieter at each succeeding meal, and mademoiselle, too, had grown quieter (she could never be dull). Sometimes I fancied she looked sad, and once I was sure I recognized the trace of tears in her beautiful ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... perhaps, no very civil use of such personages: but the contrivance was, nevertheless, ingenious enough, and had its effect. And this will now plainly appear, if, instead of serious and comic, we supply the words duller and dullest; for the comic was certainly duller than anything before shown on the stage, and could be set off only by that superlative degree of dulness which composed the serious. So intolerably serious, indeed, were these gods and heroes, that harlequin (though the English gentleman of that ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... greater Wadys: these are the Cascalho of the Brazil, a rock which is treated by rejecting the pebbles and by pounding the silicious paste. The air was softer and less exciting than that of Sharma; and, although the vegetation was of the crapaud mort d'amour hue—here a sickly green, there a duller brown than April had showed—the scene was more picturesque, the "Gate" was taller and narrower, and the recollection of a happy first visit made me return to it with pleasure. Birds were more abundant: long-shanked water-fowl with hazel eyes; red-legged rail; the brown swallow of Egypt; green-blue ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... myself restrain; This likes me most that leaves me discontent, My courage serves and yet my heart doth fail, My will doth climb whereas my hopes are spent, I laugh at love, yet when he comes I quail; The more I strive, the duller bide I still. I would be thralled, and yet I freedom love, I would redress, yet hourly feed mine ill, I would repine, and dare not once reprove; And for my love I am bereft of power, And strengthless strive ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... he took the tissue paper from one of the buttons and found its brightness a little faded, and that distressed him mightily in his dream. He polished the poor faded button and polished it, and if anything it grew duller. He woke up and lay awake thinking of the brightness a little dulled and wondering how he would feel if perhaps when the great occasion (whatever it might be) should arrive, one button should chance to be ever ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... desired end, generally in practical affairs; acumen may increase with study, and applies to the most erudite matters. Shrewdness is keenness or sagacity, often with a somewhat evil bias, as ready to take advantage of duller intellects. Perspicacity is the power to see clearly through that which is difficult or involved. We speak of the acuteness of an observer or a reasoner, the insight and discernment of a student, a clergyman, or a merchant, the sagacity of a hound, the keenness of a debater, the shrewdness ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... wife was suffering, dying, and that he was not near to help, to assist, to assuage. He forgot that they were penniless, homeless; all was lost in a boundless pity, and he listened to the footsteps growing sharper as they approached, and duller as they went. At last the sound of the latchkey was heard in the lock, and Dick started to his feet. It ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... and figure to the last, but differing in plumage and in size, having dull red feathers over the rump, the blue being also of a duller shade. It ranges ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... a wife, of course," returned the prince. "She will lend a sympathetic ear to all plans and proposals; her ingenious imagination will suggest ideas that might escape my grosser mind; her brilliant fancy will produce combinations that my duller brain would never think of; her hopeful spirit will encourage me to perseverance where accident or disaster has a tendency to demoralise, and her loving spirit will comfort me should failure, great or small, be permitted to overtake me. All this, I admit, sounds very selfish, ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... and active wit For drudgery is more unfit, Compared to those of duller parts, Than running nags ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... not be made a subject of levity. But the girl reflected only that when his dark eyes blazed and his cheeks colored with that dammed-up fury she found him a more diverting vassal than in calmer and duller moods. A zoo is more animated when the beasts are stirred ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... he had once more resumed the dreadful burden of education, it seemed infinitely duller. And yet what pleasanter sight is there than a schoolroom well filled with children of those sprouting years just before the 'teens? The casual visitor, gazing from the teacher's platform upon these busy little ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... over the ledge, but the slanting rays lingered long enough to give me sight of a glittering patch on the gray stone shelf below. While I stared the sun withdrew its fading beams from the whole face of the cliff, but even in the duller light a glint of yellow showed dimly, a pin point of gold ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... from whom we have the Expression, was a very honourable Man, for I shall ever call the Man so who gets an Estate honestly. Mr. Tobias Hobson was a Carrier, and being a Man of great Abilities and Invention, and one that saw where there might good Profit arise, though the duller Men overlooked it; this ingenious Man was the first in this Island who let out Hackney-Horses. He lived in Cambridge, and observing that the Scholars rid hard, his manner was to keep a large Stable of Horses, with Boots, Bridles, and Whips to furnish the Gentlemen at ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... not gone next morning, though it had subsided into a duller sensation. His aunt at breakfast noticed that he had no appetite, merely trifling with his grapefruit and tasting his coffee. At once she inquired the reason, remarking at the same time that he had not his ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... parts; there is the list of things that qualify, the list of things that must not be done, and the list of things that must be done. Qualification exacts a little exertion, as evidence of good faith, and it is designed to weed out the duller dull and many of the base. Our schooling period ends now about fourteen, and a small number of boys and girls—about three per cent.—are set aside then as unteachable, as, in fact, nearly idiotic; the rest go on to ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... are not exercised. How can we expect our ambition to remain fresh and vigorous through years of inactivity, indolence, or indifference? If we constantly allow opportunities to slip by us without making any attempt to grasp them, our inclination will grow duller and weaker. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... would be ranked by some ornithologists as only varieties), and a dove — all analogous to, but distinct from, American species. Fourthly, a swallow, which though differing from the Progne purpurea of both Americas, only in being rather duller colored, smaller, and slenderer, is considered by Mr. Gould as specifically distinct. Fifthly, there are three species of mocking thrush — a form highly characteristic of America. The remaining land-birds ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... called, that it might be in some measure conveyed to those of duller mind, but by some ordinary word? And what, among all parts of the world can be found nearer to an absolute formlessness, than earth and deep? For, occupying the lowest stage, they are less beautiful than the other higher parts are, transparent all and shining. ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... tide of wine and wassail fast gaining on the dry land of sober judgment. The company grew merrier and louder as their jokes grew duller. Master Simon was in as chirping a humour as a grasshopper filled with dew; his old songs grew of a warmer complexion, and he began to talk maudlin about the widow. He even gave a long song about the wooing of a widow, which he informed me he ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... it requires to make a journey pleasant, when the companions are our friends!" said Gertrude, as they sailed along. "Nothing can be duller than these banks, nothing more ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... atmosphere, seeing that these are the agents which wear down ruggedness on the surface of our earth. The volcanic operations are on a stupendous scale. They are the cause of the bright spots of the moon, while the want of them is what distinguishes the duller portions, usually but erroneously called SEAS. In some parts, bright volcanic matter, besides covering one large patch, radiates out in long streams, which appear studded with subordinate foci of the same kind of energy. Other objects of a ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... converse of this. He has improved philosophic discussions by making them more popular. But he has also improved popular amusements by making them more philosophic. And by more philosophic I do not mean duller, but funnier; that is more varied. All real fun is in cosmic contrasts, which involve a view of the cosmos. But I know that this second strength in Shaw is really difficult to state and must be approached ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... on the dial; puts another peg in; and presses a button. Immediately the silvery screen vanishes; and in its place appears, in reverse from right to left, another office similarly furnished, with a thin, unamiable man similarly dressed, but in duller colors, turning over some documents at the table. His gold fillet is hanging up on a similar peg beside the door. He is rather like Conrad Barnabas, but younger, and much ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... as he was pointing. I noticed a small band of guanacos springing over the plain. I could easily distinguish them from the vicunas by their being larger and less graceful in their motions, but more particularly by the duller hue of brownish red. But what was there in their presence to draw down the maledictions of the padre, which he continued to lavish upon them most unsparingly? ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... pulling down all establishments. The Critical Reviewers are for supporting the constitution both in church and state. The Critical Reviewers, I believe, often review without reading the books through; but lay hold of a topick and write chiefly from their own minds. The Monthly Reviewers are duller men and are glad ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... it would," said old Mr. Crow with a smirk. And turning to his cousin, Jasper Jay, he remarked in a low voice that Daddy Longlegs was even duller than he had imagined. ...
— The Tale of Daddy Longlegs - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... clasp of love Outwearied! Walk thy ways with me, Up to the crested tower, above Thy father's wall.... Where they decree Thy soul shall perish.—Hold him: hold!— Would God some other man might ply These charges, one of duller mould, And nearer ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... tremendous effort which the learned writer then made to excel many titled competitors for honors in the antique line appears to have had a sad effect upon his mental powers—at any rate, his efforts have since yearly become duller and duller; happily, at last, we should suppose, 'the ancient {149} and modern usage in reckoning' indicates the lowest point to which the vis inertia of the learned writer's peculiar genius ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... was the only big man in the locality, and carried everything with a high hand, had disappeared for ever. Now all was bustle, hurry, and confusion, the getting and sending of telegrams, quick dispatches by railway, the watching of markets at a distance, rapid combinations that bewildered Gourlay's duller mind. At first he was too obstinate to try the newer methods; when he did, he was too stupid to use them cleverly. When he plunged it was always at the wrong time, for he plunged at random, not knowing what to do. He had lost heavily of late both in grain and cheese, ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... lute alike; To dear Saint Valentine, no thrush Sings livelier from a spring-tide bush, No nightingale her lovelorn tune More sweetly warbles to the moon. Woe to the cause, whate'er it be, Detains from us his melody, Lavished on rocks, and billows stern, Or duller monks of Lindisfarne. Now must I venture, as I may To sing his ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... bride, with scarcely spirit enough to cling to hope, and with less taste for Urquhart's motor than she had ever had for any duller task-work. Nothing in the house tended to her comfort. James was preoccupied and speechless; the coffee was wrong, the letters late and stupid. She felt herself at cross-purposes with her foolish little world. If James had resought her ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... their curry, and drinking their bitter beer, at home, in all the comfort of muslin and nankeen. Macaulay is vehement in his dislike of "those great formal dinners, which unite all the stiffness of a levee to all the disorder and discomfort of a two-shilling ordinary. Nothing can be duller. Nobody speaks except to the person next him. The conversation is the most deplorable twaddle, and, as I always sit next to the lady of the highest rank, or, in other words, to the oldest, ugliest, and proudest woman in the company, I am worse ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... her, at the proper retaliatory intervals, and gradually her mode of existence fell into routine. The doctor went out every day, and was out most of the day, while she sat at home and worked or read. She had to amuse herself, and sometimes found life duller than when she had to earn her bread—when, as she went from place to place, she might at any turn meet Paul upon Ruber or Niger. Already the weary weed of the commonplace had begun to show itself in the marriage garden—a weed which, like all weeds, requires only neglect for ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... and ending with silk stockings. With all sorts of wonderful things in between—for me, you understand. Things like "One brown frock, with something cloudy-yellow about it." ("Sophy, blondes can stand yellow wonderfully well; I suggest a bronze, instead of a duller brown.") ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... Infinite; but it reduced Sam to an almost imbecile state of boredom. He tried counting sheep. He tried going over his past life in his mind from the earliest moment he could recollect, and thought he had never encountered a duller series of episodes. He found a temporary solace by playing a succession of mental golf-games over all the courses he could remember, and he was just teeing up for the sixteenth at Muirfield, after playing Hoylake, St. Andrews, Westward Ho, Hanger Hill, Mid-Surrey, Walton Heath, Garden ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... temperature was still high, too high to allow of that placid sleep. I contemplated the thermometer meditatively. The port was shut, and the only sounds that broke the night were the dull beating of the screw and the duller wash of the waves against the side of the Sea Queen. The boatswain stood motionless ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... be ashamed of them. She knew, if her case proved such a one, it would be only one of a great many; she had read of such things, although chiefly among another class of people who were of coarser habits and duller natures, and if they fell had less distance to fall to get to the lowest level of society. But her father!—Dolly cowered with her head down upon the back of a chair, and a cry in her heart calling upon his name. Her father? could she have to blush for him? All her nature revolted ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... own standard to her husband. "It is very different—it is much worse for a man to be disappointed in that way: a woman can always be satisfied with devoting herself to her husband, but a man wants something that will make him look forward more—and sitting by the fire is so much duller to him than to a woman." And always, when Nancy reached this point in her meditations—trying, with predetermined sympathy, to see everything as Godfrey saw it—there came a renewal of self-questioning. Had she done everything in her power to lighten Godfrey's privation? ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... Socialist movement of the world. The Jew is almost always a student and often a fine scholar. The wide experience of the Jewish people has taught them (and they have always been quick to learn) the value of that something called "scholarship," which many of their duller Gentile brethren affect to despise. "Sound scholarship" should be one of the watchwords of the lecturer, and as he will never find time to read everything of the best that has been written, it is safe to conclude that, except for special reasons, he ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... store he had won out at last. Looking back, he saw his own progress toward this hill of elation no longer as a sometimes sordid and always gray decade of worry and failing enthusiasm and failing dreams, years when the moonlight had grown duller in the areaway and the youth had faded out of Olive's face, but as a glorious and triumphant climb over obstacles which he had determinedly surmounted by unconquerable will-power. The optimistic self-delusion that had kept him from misery was ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... local fair, attended with dancing and games. All these mental relaxations are lacking in our newer civilization; life is stripped of everything that is not distinctly practical; the dull round of weekly toil is only broken by the duller idleness of an American Sunday. Naturally, these people long for something outside of ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... the best. Promising, is the verie Ayre o'th' Time; It opens the eyes of Expectation. Performance, is euer the duller for his acte, And but in the plainer and simpler kinde of people, The deede of Saying is quite out of vse. To Promise, is most Courtly and fashionable; Performance, is a kinde of Will or Testament Which argues a great sicknesse ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... brought to its full perfection at this time. The value of the creamy surface of the vellum was recognized as part of the colour scheme. With the high polish of the gold it was necessary to use always the strong crude colours, as the duller tints would appear faded by contrast. In the later stages of the art, when a greater realism was attempted, and better drawing had made it necessary to use quieter tones, gold paint was generally adopted instead of leaf, as being less conspicuous and more in harmony with the general scheme; and one ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... story over the nightly fire, is held by them in esteem and rewarded, in one way or another, for so doing—in other words, it is an advantage to him to possess this power. He who can carve a paddle, or the figure-head of a canoe better, similarly profits beyond his duller neighbour. He who counts a little better than others, gets most yams when barter is going on, and forms the shrewdest estimate of the numbers of an opposing tribe. The experience of daily life shows that the conditions of our present social existence exercise the most ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... really is such a locality? I've been thinking lately I should like to go there; things don't seem to agree with me very well here. I've closed my books, walked the Thiergarten threadbare, sleep twelve hours out of twenty-four, do everything I've been told to do, with no result whatever except to grow duller." The young man yawned as he spoke. "Do excuse me; I've come to such a pass that I'm not able to look any one in the face without yawning. All things considered, I am afraid I shouldn't be any better off in heaven. I'm afraid I couldn't stand the people, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... wiser far Than our most valued sages are, Your sages, with their toys and cots, Are duller ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... complete was historically impossible, it needs but a little thought to prove. Progress in human affairs is more often a pull than a push, a surging forward of the exceptional man, and the lifting of his duller brethren slowly and painfully to his vantage-ground. Thus it was no accident that gave birth to universities centuries before the common schools, that made fair Harvard the first flower of our wilderness. So in ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... prayers may be answered, so be it we hear no more of him," Mme. de Montpensier retorted, tired of the subject she herself had started. "He was never tedious himself, M. de Mar, but all this solemn prating about him is duller than a sermon." She raised a dainty hand behind which to yawn audibly. "Come, mesdames, let us get back to our purchases. Ma foi! it's lucky these ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... "Interesting! A duller piece of human ware it has not been my fortune to meet for these dozen years. I should say ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... he hath never fed of the dainties bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal—only sensible in the duller parts; ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... is most difficult, if not impossible, because we have no sufficient evidence in individual cases of slight sexual difference, to determine whether the male alone has acquired his superior brightness by sexual selection, or the female been made duller by need of protection, or whether the two causes have acted. Many of the sexual differences of existing species may be inherited differences from parent forms, which existed under different conditions and had greater or less ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... with in tin-smelting; it closely resembles the phosphide, but the crystals have a duller grey appearance. It contains simply tin and arsenic. The determination is made by treating 1 gram of the substance with nitric acid and weighing the mixed oxides of tin and arsenic in the same manner ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... Venus and Mercury joining in one effort. In that number is the secret of all human affairs. Learned men have made their way to heaven by imitating this music; as have others also by the excellence of their studies. Filled with this sound the sense of hearing has failed among men. What sense is duller? It is as when the Nile falls down to her cataracts, and the nations around, astonished by the tumult, ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... the game proved, after ten minutes or so, to be one of the duller ones. Whatever people say, I don't think it compares with cricket, for instance. It is certainly not so subtle ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... ensign, which caught the quick and understanding glance of Ghita, and which had not escaped even the duller vision of the artillerists, were made at the outer end of this jigger-yard, A boy appeared on the taffrail, and he was evidently clearing the ensign-halyards for that purpose. In half a minute, however, he ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the scene of action. Encountering each other on the way they struggle together, each intolerant of interference, until the shrieking is heard on every hand, and the snow fog thickens, and the dull sun above grows duller, and the lurid "sun dogs" look like evil coals of fire burning ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... with excitement and had filled my creel with the rare fish before I began to notice other objects of interest. Suddenly I became aware of the presence of two birds hovering over and diving under the cold water. They were evidently feeding on some aquatic creature which my duller senses could not discern. ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... it—the vigour and picturesqueness of the recital. That Villehardouin was an eyewitness explains a little, but very little: we have, unfortunately, libraries full of eyewitness-histories which are duller than any ditch-water. Nor, though he is by no means shy of mentioning his own performances, does he communicate to the story that slightly egotistic interest of gossip and personal detail of which his next great ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... once to Paris, in which city I arrived on the 17th of May, Anno Domini 1819. I had seen much, fancied myself improved, and, by constant dwelling on my system, saw its excellences as plainly as Napoleon saw the celebrated star which defied the duller vision of his uncle the cardinal. At the same time, as usually happens with those who direct all their energies to a given point, the opinions originally formed of certain portions of my theory began to undergo mutations, as nearer and more practical views ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... servants to see that they made no balks in handling the body and getting it out; when they came with fresh clean towels, she sent back for the other kind; and when they had finished wiping the floor and were going, she indicated a crimson fleck the size of a tear which their duller eyes had overlooked. It was plain to me that La Cote Male Taile had failed to see the mistress of the house. Often, how louder and clearer than any tongue, does dumb ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of many scenes that torrid summer in New York, when Athalie intuitively felt that the year which had begun so happily for her with the entrance of Clive into her life, was growing duller and greyer; and that each succeeding day seemed to be swinging her into a tide of anxiety and mischance,—a current as yet merely perceptible, but already increasing in speed toward something swifter and ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... consolation and mourning? The people have since found an antidote for these experiences in Blair and Tupper, and other authors of renown. Where are those weird voices of the air and forest and stream, those symptoms of an enchanted Nature, which used to thrill and bless the soul of man? The duller ear of men has failed to hear them in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... down and pleasure glowed unwontedly within him. He did not answer, he did not give Ahmed Ismail leave to rise from the ground. He sated his eyes and his vanity with the spectacle of the man's abasement. Even his troubled heart ached with a duller pain. ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... strong fencing. One could not note its methods; even the keen-eyed wolverine, crouching low upon an adjacent monster limb, could never have followed the swift movements of these stone axes. The dreadful play was brief. The clash of stone together ceased as there came a duller sound, which told that stone had bitten bone. Oak, slightly the higher of the two, as they stood thus in the fray, leaned forward suddenly, his arms aloft, while from his hand dropped the blue ax. He floundered down uncouthly and grasped the beech ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... renewed the next morning, several positions being assailed in turn, while an uninterrupted gunfire was kept up. General Duller was commanding the enemy's right flank and General French was in charge of the left. We were able to resist all attacks and the battle went on for six days without a decisive result. The enemy had tried to break through nearly every weak point in our fighting line and found ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... re-appearance touches us like magic, and fills us with delight. Every new moon also was hailed with an almost superstitious devotion, and my Blackfellows vied with each other to discover its thin crescent, and would be almost angry with me when I strained my duller eyes in vain to catch a glimpse of its faint light in the brilliant sky which succeeds the setting of the sun. The questions: where were we at the last new moon? how far have we travelled since? and where shall we ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... elaborate, and systematic treatise. Pope, indeed, was flattered to have a scholar of such recognized authority as Warburton to interpret his works, and permitted him to print a commentary upon the 'Essay', which is quite as long and infinitely duller than the original. But the true nature of the poem is indicated by its title. It is not an 'Art of Poetry' such as Boileau composed, but an 'Essay'. And by the word "essay," Pope meant exactly what Bacon did,—a tentative sketch, a series of detached ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... civilisation and marred it. They did not possess it; they were born into some tendency to derogation, into an inclination for things mentally inexpensive. And the tendency can hardly do other than continue. Nothing can look duller than the future of this second-hand and multiplying world. Men need not be common merely because they are many; but the infection of commonness once begun in the many, what dulness in their future! To the ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... all nicely set in the order of pews; a table, ornamented with Bible and hymn-books, confronted them; behind it, on a cricket, towered the bigger brother, loudly holding forth. The little brother represented the audience—it was usually the little one who was forced to play this duller role—and, with open mouth, and with wriggling feet turned in on the rounds of the chair, absorbed as much exhortation as he ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... but five minutes' walk from Colonel Mildmay's official quarters, and conveniently near Eugene's school; it was very much in the minds of the teachers who now replaced the Misses Scarlett's institution as regarded the girls; it was not duller as to outlook and surroundings than had to be at Barmettle, for it faced St Wilfred's Church, one of the oldest and most interesting structures in the modern town, which had once been a pleasant straggling north-country village; and last, though not ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... the eastern ends of Lakes Huron and Ontario and made a fierce but unsuccessful attack on an Onondaga town near Lake Oneida. Parkman says: "In Champlain alone was the life of New France. By instinct and temperament he was more impelled to the adventurous toils of exploration than to the duller task of building colonies. The profits of trade had value in his eyes only as a means to these ends, and settlements were important chiefly as a base of discovery. Two great objects eclipsed all others—to find a route to the Indies and to bring ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... worked like demons with the wild exhilaration of despair, for even despair can exhilarate. One minute! three minutes! six minutes! The boat began to lighten, and no fresh wave swamped us. Five minutes more, and she was fairly clear. Then, suddenly, above the awful shriekings of the hurricane came a duller, deeper roar. Great Heavens! It was ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... oake but with one greene leafe on it, would haue answered her: my very visor began to assume life, and scold with her: shee told mee, not thinking I had beene my selfe, that I was the Princes Iester, and that I was duller then a great thaw, hudling iest vpon iest, with such impossible conueiance vpon me, that I stood like a man at a marke, with a whole army shooting at me: shee speakes poynyards, and euery word stabbes: ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... fishponds on the tops of houses, all things opposite to the vulgar sort, intricate and rare, or else they are nothing worth. So busy, nice, curious wits, make that insupportable in all vocations, trades, actions, employments, which to duller apprehensions is not offensive, earnestly seeking that which others so scornfully neglect. Thus through our foolish curiosity do we macerate ourselves, tire our souls, and run headlong, through our indiscretion, perverse will, and want of government, into ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... an end of this kind a general should not merely bring up all the troops from the rear, falling back for them if necessary, but should take care that none can be cut off by the enemy in his front. A decisive victory by Sir C.F. Clery or by Sir Redvers Duller, who may feel this action to be so important as to justify his presence, would leave no doubt as to the issue of the war. An indecisive battle would postpone indefinitely the relief of Ladysmith and leave the future of the campaign in suspense. Defeat would be disastrous, for it would ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... academic tediousness work a more dire mischief than in the teaching of ethics. It is bad to have students forever shun the best books because of poor instruction in literature; the damage is worse when it is the subject of moral obligation which they associate with only the duller hours of their college life. Not that the aim of a course in ethics is to afford a number of entertaining periods. The object rather is to help our students realize that here is a subject which seeks to interpret for them the most ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... only laughed a trifle at this commentary upon the botanical Latin nomenclature, and once more he was leaning from his saddle, peering down the aisles of the forest with a smiling, expectant interest, as if they held for him some enchantment of which duller mortals have no ken. A brown geode, picked up in the channel of a summer-dried stream, showed an interior of sparkling quartz crystal, when a blow had shattered it, which Hite had never suspected, ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Phyl had been delightful, then, little by little, her stiffness and seeming lifelessness had communicated themselves to him. It seemed to him that he had never met a duller or more awkward schoolgirl. His mind was of that quick order which requires to be caught in the uptake rapidly in order to shine. Slowness, coldness, dulness or hesitancy in others depressed him just as dull weather depressed him. He did not at all know with what ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... triumphant day, When you renew'd the expiring pomp of May![28] (A month that owns an interest in your name: You and the flowers are its peculiar claim.) That star[29] that at your birth shone out so bright, It stain'd the duller sun's meridian light, Did once again its potent fires renew, 290 Guiding our eyes to ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... to ask in concluding) should it be that the poets who have written for us the poetry richest in skiey grain, most free from admixture with the duller things of earth—the Shelleys, the Coleridges, the Keats—are the very poets whose lives are among the saddest records in literature? Is it that (by some subtile mystery of analogy) sorrow, passion, and fantasy are indissolubly connected, like water, fire, and cloud; ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... and attractive in the whole country; with no limit to the accommodations for those of a gregarious turn of mind, liking the advantages of select society combined with country air. In the autumn it held its own; for when the other elms changed their green to duller tints, the nooning tree put on a gown of yellow, and stood out against the far background of sombre pine woods a brilliant mass of gold and brown. In winter, when there was no longer dun of upturned sod, ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the little Bo-Peep! They had tears to laugh with, and tears to weep. So fringy, and shy, and blue, and sweet, That even the summer skies in color, Or the autumn gentians under her feet, Less tender were and duller. ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... the stage would have spoilt the play. French batteries were hard at work and their shells came rushing like fierce birds above the trees. The sharp "tang" of the French "Soixante-quinze" cracked out between the duller thuds of the "Cent- vingt" and other heavy guns, and there were only brief moments of silence between those violent explosions and the long-drawn sighs of wind as the shells passed overhead and then burst with that final crash ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... of daylight passed. From the house of De La Garcia the other division of Texans began to fire, the sharp lashing of their rifles sounding clearly amid the duller crash of musketry and cannon from the Mexicans. The Texans in the lower part of the Veramendi house were also at work with their rifles. Every man was a sharpshooter, and, whenever a Mexican came from behind a barricade, he was picked off. But the Mexicans had also ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Peggy again before I leave England, and visit my Edinburgh relatives again, too, and my time is getting short," said Mr. Brandon; "but if you cannot spare her, I cannot do anything but go to see her sister, and report myself on her appearance; perhaps your letters are duller than the reality." ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... heel. Your wardrobe slave must see that it has been kept properly folded and pressed. If you claimed to be a gentleman, and were not in mourning and not an official, it must be simply and scrupulously white. Poorer people might wear a toga of a duller or dark-grey wool, which would better conceal a stain and require to go less frequently to the fuller. The same dull hue was also worn in time of mourning, or as an ostentatious token of a gloomy spirit, as for example, when one of your friends was in peril of condemnation in the law-courts, ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... longer and duller than ever this afternoon, but Griselda bore it meekly; and when Lady Lavander, as usual, expressed her hopes about her, the little girl looked down modestly, feeling her cheeks grow scarlet. "I am not a good little girl at all," she felt inclined to call out. "I'm very bad ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... enough to speak of them by their Christian names. I remember you always told me never to do that—I mean to use people's first names in speaking of them if you are not acquainted with them—but evidently it is different here. The Tournelles and all the others did stop to speak to heaps of duller looking people, and every one tried to persuade us to stay and go to ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... hard in that direction; but saw nothing, except that the violet color of the cellar seemed a little duller just there. ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... logs, crumbling low, Sent out a dull and duller glow, The bull's-eye watch that hung in view, Ticking its weary circuit through, Pointed with mutely warning sign Its black hand to the hour of nine. That sign the pleasant circle broke My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke, Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... hanker for a touch of colour, So to relieve their sombre air; For me, I like my clothes to be much duller Than what the nigger minstrels wear; I hold by sable, drab and grey; I do not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... dark sour liquid runs away from the sweat-boxes, which is, in fact, a very dilute acetic acid, but of no commercial value. During the process of "sweating" the cotyledons of the cocoa-bean, which are at first a purple colour and very compact in the skin, lose their brightness for a duller brown, and expand the skin, giving the bean a fuller shape. When dry, a properly cured bean should crush between the finger ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head
... he is often sincerely convinced that he really possesses those wonderful powers which the credulity of his fellows ascribes to him. But the more sagacious he is, the more likely he is to see through the fallacies which impose on duller wits. Thus the ablest members of the profession must tend to be more or less conscious deceivers; and it is just these men who in virtue of their superior ability will generally come to the top and win for themselves ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the opposite side, filling the silence of the night with the jarring of the wheels on the cobble-stones and with their creaking on the ice. When the cab was passing across a moonlit strip, the noise was louder and more brisk, and in the shadows it was heavier and duller. The driver and the passenger in it were shaking and hopping about; for some reason or other they both bent forward and together with the horse formed one big, black mass. The street was speckled with spots of light and shade, but in the distance the darkness ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... Englishman endowed, by a fortunate chance, with matchless powers of expression. He is not silent or dull; but he understands silent men, and he enters into the minds of dull men. Moreover, the Englishman seems duller than he is. It is a point of pride with him not to be witty and not to give voice to his feelings. The shepherd Corin, who was never in court, has the true philosophy. 'He that hath learned no wit by nature nor art may complain ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... strong sins. It is far more often the man of superior gifts, with faculties overwrought and nerves strained above concert pitch by excessive mental exertion, who turns to vicious excitement for the sake of rest, as a duller man falls asleep. Men whose lives are spent amidst the vicissitudes, surprises and disappointments of the money market are assuredly less idle than country gentlemen; the busy lawyer has less time to spare than the equally gifted ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... loves me not. Plumped by storm or by shot, my Locker held a lot in the days gone by, But 'tis daily growing fuller. Is the British Tar off colour, are the sea-dogs slower, duller, though as game to die? Has Science spoilt their skill, that their iron pots so fill my old Locker? How I thrill at the lumbering crash, When a-crunch upon a rock, with a thundering Titan shock, goes some shapeless ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... yellow, along with white, black and the grays. His color circle reduces to a straight line with yellow at one end and blue at the other. Instead of the color circle, he has a double saturation series, reaching from saturated yellow through duller yellows to gray and thence through dull blues to saturated blue. What appears to the normal eye as red, orange or grass green appears to him as more or less unsaturated yellow; and what appears to the normal eye as greenish blue, violet and purple appears ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... little girl," said Miss Goldy-hair, "whose every-day life was rather dull and hard. In some ways I think it was duller than the lives of quite poor children, and in some ways I am not sure but that it was harder too. For though not really poor—that is to say, they had enough to eat in a plain way and clothes to wear of a plain kind—still her parents were what is called struggling people. And ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... herself why her happy feet had been guided there, while others, no doubt as worthy, stumbled and blundered in obscurity. She felt, in particular, a sudden urgent pity for the two or three other girls at Mme. Clopin's—girls older, duller, less alive than she, and by that very token more appealingly flung upon her sympathy. Would they ever know? Had they ever known?—those were the questions that haunted her as she crossed her companions on the stairs, faced them at the dinner-table, and listened to their ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... higher type has his desire-body composed of the finer qualities of astral matter, with the colours, rippling over and flashing through it, fine and clear in hue. While less delicate and less radiant than the mental body, it forms a beautiful object, and as selfishness is eliminated all the duller and heavier ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... like a red misty day outside, though there were no clouds. The sky was a perfectly cloudless dull red, and the coppery sun was shining almost overhead. His orb looked less than two-thirds the size it did from the Earth, and one could look at its duller light fixedly without hurting the eyes. Phobos was also faintly visible, steering his backward course across the ruddy sky. The thermometer showed a temperature just above freezing, but I was perfectly warm within the diver's suit and its envelope of air. The red haze and utter lack of breeze ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... and scarcely noted him. She remembered. But the world was duller, then, and the outlook grey. And then, too, her still, green eyes had not yet wandered beyond far horizons, nor had her heart been cut adrift to follow her fancy when the tides stirred it from its mooring—carrying it away, away through deeps or ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... and more readily capable of acquiring knowledge than mine. At this I secretly demurred; and having had in the course of a practical life, to sharpen my wits, whether at home or in travel, I could not allow that my cerebral organisation could possibly be duller than that of people who had lived all their lives by lamplight. However, while I was thus thinking, Zee quietly pointed her forefinger at my forehead, and ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton |
