"Uninteresting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unpleasant quarter, devoted to manufactures, his vehicle bore him out of Hollingford, and then along a flat, uninteresting road, whence at moments he had glimpses of the river Holling, as it flowed between level fields. Presently the country became more agreeable; on one hand it rose gently to wooded slopes, on the other opened a prospect over a breezy common, yellow with gorse. At the ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... and not uninteresting study in psychology. He has no great talent, but he is not without some ability; in his youth he was an industrious plodder and fond of study. He has read much but absorbed little; he is well educated in the narrow sense of the schoolmaster, but he has no philosophic background; his is the ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... he sauntered through the city, meeting some old friends, who all seemed changed and singularly uninteresting. They were all engaged or married, and could talk of nothing but matrimony, and their prospects of advancement in the Government service. One had an influential uncle who had been a chum of the present minister of finance; ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... fields where the blue-fringed gentian blooms with the pink bell-heather, and the bridal torch nods from the brook-side, bending its stately head to the west wind that sweeps ever in from the sea with touch as soft as of a woman's hand? Flat and uninteresting? Yes, if you will. If one sees only the fields. My children saw them and longed back to the hills of Long Island; and in their cold looks I felt the tugging of the chain which he must bear through life who exiled himself from the land of his birth, however near to his heart that of his choice ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... not a bit better or worse than everywhere else; so I shall find out what can be done by the best intentions and a fabulous faith in me. So much I am confident in saying, that the performance would not be uninteresting to you, and therefore I invite you quite seriously, after receipt of this letter, to get leave for a week, trust yourself to the railway, and visit me at Zurich. The first performance takes place Wednesday, April 21st, and between that and May 1st there will be two repetitions. ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... the history of England. The older historians stop when they come to the year 1284, and sometimes give a hasty outline of a few rebellions up to 1535. They then give the Welsh a glowing testimonial as a law-abiding and loyal people, and find them too uninteresting to write ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards
... that would be fun," Peace commented candidly, still holding the unopened volume in her hand, thinking it was another uninteresting story-book. "I don't like writing any better than ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... It is not uninteresting to watch the Epeira at dinner. I light upon one, the Banded Epeira, at the moment, about three o'clock in the afternoon, when she has captured a Locust. Planted in the centre of the web, on her resting-floor, she attacks the venison at ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... Is he songless, sooty, uninteresting, vulgar? Not if you live on a roof. He may be all of this, a pest even, in the country. But upon my roof, for weeks at a stretch, his is the only bird voice I hear. Throughout the spring, and far into ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... the effect of the joker in a pack of cards. Push back the flap over Jack's face and you will see a club like a policeman's billy. Along this club the inconspicuous flowers are borne. Later, in the fall, the fruit forms, and inside, instead of rather uninteresting flowers, are bright red berries. So Jack ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... anything be more dull than the life of an actor in a repertory theatre? Daily rehearsals in a dingy and draughty theatre and nightly performances in half-rehearsed plays!... "Give me the life of a bank clerk for real gaiety," he murmured. "An actor's just a drudge ... and a dull drudge, too! Very uninteresting people, actors!... Why the devil did ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... with "useful knowledge." The important note (ii. 45) upon the normal English mispronunciation of the J in Jerusalem, Jesus, Jehovah, a corruption whose origin and history are unknown to so many, and which was, doubtless, a surprise to this Son of King "We," is damned as "uninteresting to the reader of the Arabian Nights." En revanche, three mistakes of mine ("p. 43" for "p. 45" in vol. ii., index; "King Zahr Shah" for "King Suleyman Shah," ii. 285, and the careless confusion of the Caliphs Al-Muntasir and Al- Mustansir, ii. 817, note i.) were corrected ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... is that people often are so modest; they think that their own experience is so dull, so unromantic, so uninteresting. It is an entire mistake. If the dullest person in the world would only put down sincerely what he or she thought about his or her life, about work, love, religion and emotion, it would be a ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... was delayed and confused. I had thought of going back by Dieppe and Newhaven; but a storm was blowing, and I knew that meant a longer sea-passage, so I went to Calais, thus riding through one of the most uninteresting parts of France. It was five o'clock on Christmas Eve when we arrived at this little French seaport, and then it took us two hours to cross the straits, although we happened to be on one of the fast-sailing ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... exhausted earth still keeps for the holiday-maker. 'Tis a sad but sober fact, that the most of men lead flat and virtuous lives, departing annually with their family to some flat and virtuous place, there to disport themselves in a manner that is decent, orderly, wholly uninteresting, vacant of every buxom stimulus. To such as these a suggestion, in all friendliness: why not try crime? We shall not attempt to specify the particular branch — for every one must himself seek out and find the path his nature best fits him to follow; but the general ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... Later on he had given the prisoner a vivid and realistic description of the way in which men are hanged, but Neal had made no sign of hearing a word that was said to him, so the occupation grew uninteresting. Now he whistled a few of his favourite airs, speculating on the amount of the fifty pounds reward offered for Neal's capture which would fall to his share, and estimating his chances of taking some of the other United Irishmen for whom the Government had offered ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... see what has been going forward in the old parsonage this long weary year. Not much that is noteworthy, I fear. The chronicle of a year's sickness and unhappiness, would be rather uninteresting, so I must get on as quick ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... it was evident that he had recovered his spirits, and was well on the road to recovery. After some general talk on uninteresting topics, he began ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... is an Epithalamium composed for a drama which his friend Williams was writing. Students of the poetic art will find it not uninteresting to compare the three versions of this Bridal Song, given by Mr. Forman. (Volume 4 page 89.) They prove that ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... this work, the object of the author has been to render the knowledge of Plants entertaining and useful, not only to Botanists, but to those who have hitherto deemed it a difficult and uninteresting science. He has endeavoured to ascertain of what countries the vegetables now cultivated are natives, the earliest accounts of their cultivation, and how far they have improved by attention, or degenerated by neglect; also the various uses made of ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... to write a book entitled: "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow." How much is buried in the wreckage of yesterday—how uninteresting today is and how little is to be done—our burden we shift to the strong, young shoulders of tomorrow; tomorrow of the big heart, who in kindness hides our sorrows and whispers only of hope. I ended by writing,—this—which I have called "Chit-Chat," thus classifying the book, knowing that such a ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... of King Arthur" was a fascinating book, and Missy was amazed that, up to this very summer, she had passed by the rather ponderous volume, which was kept on the top shelf of the "secretary," as uninteresting-looking. Uninteresting! ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... body seemed somehow to have faded out of him. Perhaps he had been bleached. As he leant over the taffrail, gazing down with open mouth and vacant stare at the water, I took a good long look at him. He interested me much—because he was so exceptionally uninteresting; a pallid, anaemic, indefinite hobbledehoy, with a high, narrow forehead, and sketchy features. He had watery, restless eyes of an insipid light blue; thin, yellow hair, almost white in its paleness; and twitching hands that played nervously all the time with a shadowy moustache. This ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... one perfect resource for men or women in this situation. It lies in God. Other people always seem dull and uninteresting to those who want supremely one special person. But God is not uninteresting. He has to be sought. He is not found by the careless or the cowardly. But those who seek Him earnestly do find Him, and as a sense of His love and His reality steals into the heart healing begins at once. He restores ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... of an unjustly neglected Father, by specifying the MSS. which contain his Work. Dry enough to ordinary readers, these pages will not prove uninteresting to the critical student. An enumeration of all the extant Codices with which I am acquainted which contain VICTOR OF ANTIOCH'S Commentary on ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... in this volume, which were collected in the Philippines during the years from 1908 to 1914, have not appeared in print before. They are given to the public now in the hope that they will be no mean or uninteresting addition to the volumes of Oriental Maerchen already in existence. The Philippine archipelago, from the very nature of its geographical position and its political history, cannot but be a significant field to the student of popular stories. Lying as it does at ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... cantabile, and which required more fulness of tone in the execution; and we can understand why even so conservative a critic as Louis Ehlert should exclaim, apropos of Chopin's "entirely new pianoforte life," "How uninteresting is the style of any previous master (excepting Beethoven) compared with his! What a litany of gone-by, dead-alive forms! What a feelingless, prosaic jingle! If anyone should, without a grimace, assure me sincerely that he can play pianoforte pieces by Clementi, Dussek, Hummel, and Ries, with ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... the body active, it is because they rejoice in its force, and when they draw it inactive, it is because they rejoice in its repose. But Michael Angelo and Raphael invent for it ingenious mechanical motion, because they think it uninteresting when it is quiet, and cannot, in their pictures, endure any person's being simple-minded enough to stand upon both his legs at once, nor venture to imagine anyone's being clear enough in his language to ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... I can't get over," responded the young lady addressed, "is that these alkali plains, which have been described as so dreary and uninteresting, should prove to be in reality one of the most wonderfully impressive and beautiful regions in the world. What awful fibbers or what awfully dull people they must have been whose descriptions have so misled the public! It is perfectly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... standards were far below those of our own times are wholly unsuited to the mind of childhood, and should be left until maturity has given the mental perspective by which to interpret them. Other parts of the Bible prove dry and uninteresting to children, and are of no immediate spiritual significance to them. Still other parts, which later will be full of precious meaning, are beyond the grasp or need of the child in his early years and should ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... was not quite what many had anticipated, perhaps, and Cornish was looking forward with undisguised pleasure to the moment when he could rid himself of these persons whom Joan had gaily designated as "rather gruesome," and whom he frankly recognized as sordid and uninteresting. He did not even look, as Joan had looked, to the wives and children who were to follow as likely to prove ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... experiences, it comes out looking like dark-colored sand or coarse brown sugar. It is not interesting, and no one who saw it for the first time would ever fancy that it was going to turn into something beautiful. It is dumped into freight cars and trundled off to the smelting furnaces. But however uninteresting it looks, it is well worth while to follow these cars to see what happens to it at the smelters. First of all, even before it goes into the smelting furnace, it must be roasted. There is usually sulphur combined with the copper, and roasting ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... Epi was rather uninteresting. Owing to the dense French colonization there the natives have nearly all disappeared or become quite degenerate. We spent our time in visits to the different French planters and then sailed for Malekula, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... natural love for books, and constant access to her grandfather's well-stocked library, had read many more, and with much more thought, than most children of her age, so that Mr. Travilla found her a not uninteresting companion, and was often surprised at the intelligence shown by her ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... Herodotus.] The very truth, and mere facts of history, reaching Herodotus through such a haze of remote abstraction, and suffering a sort of refraction at each translation from atmosphere to atmosphere, whilst continually the uninteresting parts dropped away as the whole moved onwards, unavoidably assumed the attractions of romance. And thus it has happened that the air of marvellousness, which seems connected with the choice and preferences of Herodotus, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Batuta crossed the Arabian Desert a second time, and took up his residence in Mecca for the space of three years. His account of the voyage along the eastern coast of Africa, as far south as Quiloa, is brief and uninteresting; but on his return he visited Oman, of which province he gives us the first authentic account. From the Pearl Islands in the Persian Gulf, he bent his way once more across Arabia to Mecca, whence he crossed the Red Sea to ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... obliged to discover his own views, he can detail opposite arguments forcibly and luminously, and he is allowed the use of those oratorical powers in which, after all, his great strength lay. In those subjects, on the other hand, which are uninteresting because they are familiar, he may pause or digress before the mind is weary and the attention begins to flag; the reader is carried on by easy journeys and short stages, and novelty in the speaker supplies the want of novelty in ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... Delphiniums, Salvias, and perennial Lobelias in the mixed border. The stately spikes of this flower also associate well with shrubs, and help to enliven a bed of Rhododendrons at a period of the year when the latter is uninteresting. Roots may be planted in any soil from November to March; and, as they are perfectly hardy, they can be left in the open ground all the year without the least misgiving as to their safety. A strong root will produce a succession of flower-spikes, and this tendency will ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... from the caprices of their lords and masters, and hence inspired no veneration. The wives and daughters of the rich tyrannized over their servants, decked themselves with costly ornaments, and were merely gilded toys, whose society was vapid and uninteresting. The wives and daughters of the poor were drudges and menials, without attraction or influence; noisy, quarrelsome, garrulous women, who said the least when ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... thinking that they are serving an idea or the people, as their heads are always stuffed with thoughts of their daily bread, of wood for the fire, of bad roads, of illnesses. It is a hard-working, an uninteresting life, and only silent, patient cart-horses like Mary Vassilyevna could put up with it for long; the lively, nervous, impressionable people who talked about vocation and serving the idea were soon weary of it ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... one or two blocks in silence. They were now in the suburb of Schwabing, far out by the western end of the Englischergarten. The street was very uninteresting and comparatively deserted. ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... working incessantly. The staff passed quickly, however, and riding on about a mile forded the tributary stream of the Jandol, and reached the camp at Kotkai about noon. Thence we proceeded on the following day to Ghosam, but as the road is uninteresting, and I am beginning to think the reader will readily excuse further description, we need not toil along it in the dust and the heat. The narration of the daily movements of troops, unmarked by variety of incident, is dull and wearying. ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... Adolphus mounted into the seventh heaven. He came home and did not tell his wife where he had been. This silence was significant. As a rule, if he but visited the tailor or had his hair cut, he told everybody all about it. He had really no idea that some things were uninteresting. I do not mean to say that this trait ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... many pleasantries by which we were diverted and amused. Idle fancies these indeed, and such as sterner judgments may deem trifling or absurd, yet not uninteresting, since many of them evidently afford vestiges of classic times and manners, transmitted through the course of ages; nor unuseful, since they tend to smooth and adorn the rugged way of life, and to strew its flinty ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... we say? Is it necessary to add that, the two principals in the business being well pleased, everybody else was satisfied? We think not. But it may not be uninteresting to state that, from that auspicious day, a regular system of annual visitation was established between Bawbylon and the Braes of Yarrow, which held good for many a year; one peculiarity of the visitation being that the Bawbylonians ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... into details of uninteresting daily occurrences, I may here give a general account of such circumstances regarding the natives as have not previously been alluded to or insufficiently described. It would be difficult to state the peculiarities of this portion of the Papuan* Race (including also the inhabitants ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... made one ask whether the workman had learned something of epicurean philosophy. He had the same excited love of tattling as a thoughtless girl, and the animal love of enjoyment of a sailor after a long voyage. His ordinary life seemed to him so uninteresting, so dull, that he tried to give color and charm to it by taking as many holidays as possible, and making his work more agreeable with gambling and drinking, and going for loafing excursions about the neighborhood. Visits to wine ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... yet the aspect of it is changed for us daily. You see violets and roses often, and are not tired of them. True! but you did not often see two roses alike, or, if you did, you took care not to put them beside each other in the same nosegay, for fear your nosegay should be uninteresting; and yet you think you can put 150,000 square windows side by side in the same streets, and still be interested by them. Why, if I were to say the same thing over and over again, for the single hour you are going to let ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... always was in fancying myself necessary,' said Theodora, gaily, though there was a trembling in her voice; and when she went up to her own room, she hid her face in her hands, and felt as if life was very dreary and uninteresting, and as if it was a miserable exile to be sent into the country just now, to have to force cheerful conversation for her mother, and to be wearied with Helen's wild spirits. 'But have I not deserved everything? And after ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was in some way connected with Mr. Floyd, whose reputation was national, and she went on reviving reminiscences of him while we strolled about. She addressed me with such unhesitating talkativeness that I succumbed at once, and became an easy prey. What she said was quite uninteresting, besides being rambling in a degree which hindered my getting the smallest idea of her meaning; but her own enjoyment of her loquaciousness never once faltered, and she discoursed as fluently as an eighteenth-century poet, and without any more idea of the grace ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... cousins. (By the way, was ever a man so brave as to say the cut wasn't all right, when the barber held that hand-glass behind his head? And what would the barber say if he did?) No, this shop was antiseptic, and uninteresting. There was not even a picture ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... hours a day acting as teller in a bank, or sitting upon the bench of a court, or looking to the inexpressibly trivial details of some process of manufacturing, or writing imbecile articles for a newspaper, or managing a tramway, or administering ineffective medicines to stupid and uninteresting patients—a man so engaged during all his hours of labour, which means a normal, typical man, is surely not one to be oppressed unduly by the dull round of domesticity. His wife may bore him hopelessly as mistress, just ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... better, he believed. But he did not say. Unknown to himself, he had reached that stage which Mr Pennycuick came to when he began courting Sally Dimsdale, who had made him such a good and faithful (and uninteresting) wife. ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... I. 46. "Tame and elegant, uninteresting and polite, the mingled mass of communicated ideas has power neither to offend nor instruct..... All vigor of thought seems excluded from expression..... Where there is much polish of character there is little argument."—Cabinet des Estampes. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and sang little French chansonettes so sweetly, and got herself up in such a charming manner, giving so much "chic" and style even to the simplest of toilettes, was just the person to take upon herself the task of amusing the uninteresting invalid. ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... well enough to ride to Miss Martha's in a carriage, escorted by Madam Delia and by Anne, "that dull, uninteresting child," as Miss Amy had reluctantly described her, "so different from this graceful Adelaide." This romantic name was a rapid assumption of the soft-hearted Miss Amy's, but, once suggested, it was as thoroughly-fixed as if a ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... go out into another river: a bright spot breaks upon us—a lumber station with new, fresh-looking piles of sawed lumber. The banks of this stream are just as low, marshy and uninteresting as the one we have passed through, and more crooked. There are perhaps a few more trees—some oaks, and we observed a tree with its crimson and yellow autumn foliage, backed by a clump of pines, looking beautiful against the dark ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... imitations of Negro melodies made by ears that caught the jingle but not the music, the body but not the soul, of the Jubilee songs. It is thus clear that the study of Negro religion is not only a vital part of the history of the Negro in America, but no uninteresting part ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Paris two days after; and a journey of three days, through an uninteresting country, brought us to the little town of Granville, on the sea-coast, in the channel. We remained at this delightful place some days; and our letters being regularly forwarded to us, brought us intelligence from England. ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... were three hours in which to decide ... and Moussa Isa commenced to draw, pausing, from time to time, to smile meaningly at the Brahmin, and to lick his chops suggestively. Anon he rested from his highly uninteresting and valueless labours, laid his pencil on the desk, and gazed around in search of inspiration in the matter of the best method of ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... devilish will, his life presents a total picture of sordid vice, differing only from pothouse dissipation and school-boy cruelty in point of size. And this of a truth is the Nemesis of evil. After a time, mere tyrannous caprice must become commonplace and cloying, tedious to the tyrant and uninteresting to the student of humanity; nor can I believe that Caligula failed to perceive this ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... form in which it was afterward detailed from the witness-stand; and it is only on account of the effect which this and other occurrences of like nature had in bringing about the final event of our history, that we take the trouble to narrate matters so trifling and uninteresting; for it appeared that every incident of the kind was carefully registered in the memory of the Erinnys of this devoted household, whence it came out magnified and distorted into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... universal and indiscriminate, provided only that he knows what to do with it, had not dawned on the general mind. On the other hand, Lady Louisa was right in objecting to the finale,—it has been admitted that Scott was never good at a conclusion,—and personally I have always thought George Staunton uninteresting throughout. But how much does this leave! The description of the lynching of Porteous and the matchless interview with Queen Caroline are only the very best of such a series of good things that, except just at the end, it may be said to be uninterrupted. ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... to inform him that all he could get out of the Dewdrop was (a very incomprehensible sentiment to a sleepy bird), that he was a tear wept by the Sky when it lost the Sun; and he was bound in all sincerity to add, that it seemed rather a dull and uninteresting ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... DOGE AND SENATE OF VENICE, Oct. 1657:—A rather long letter, and not uninteresting. First the Protector congratulates the Venetians on their many victories over the Turks, not only because of the advantage thence to the Venetian State, but also because of the tendency of such successes to "the liberation of all Christians under Turkish ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... of the Civil War we enter on a time of confused struggles, a time tedious and uninteresting in its outer details, but of higher interest than even the war itself in its bearing on our after history. Modern England, the England among whose thoughts and sentiments we actually live, began, however dimly and darkly, ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... upon our courtship, I am inclined to think it must have been uninteresting to a third party; but there is no denying the fact that to us it was most soothing, and well calculated ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... and had to do all the uninteresting things, such as unpacking the spoons and forks, and taking the paper wrappings off the tumblers, while the others laid out the provisions and quarrelled over the best arrangement. But it was fun when we all sat down and began to eat. The Japanese lanterns were tied to the trees overhead, ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... way, may be made to serve a variety of useful purposes of a dramatic or semi-dramatic nature. They may safely be cast for the unpleasant or uninteresting characters of the nursery drama. They form convenient targets for the development of their brothers' marksmanship; and they make excellent horses for their brothers to drive, and, it may be added, for their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... lae—makes an admirable vowel-sound and syllable on which to begin training the voice. The vowel-sound alone is too open. An absolutely pure tone can be produced upon it, but it will lack color. It will be a pure tone, but otherwise uninteresting. With the consonant added, it obtains color and gains interest. Voice is indebted in an amazing degree to the consonants. Sing the phrase "I love you," and put the emphasis on "you," which, for practical purposes, is a pure vowel-sound. ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... house in Pennyfields which closely resembled that which we had left in Wade Street, in that it was flatly uninteresting, dirty and commonplace, we paused. There was no sign of life about the place and no lights showed at any of the windows, which appeared as dim cavities—eyeless sockets in the gray face of the building, as dawn proclaimed the birth ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... foliage, and the trees were festooned with a large, blue Thunbergia of great beauty. It is eight miles from the landing at Teluk Kartang to Taipeng, where the British Residency is. The road crosses uninteresting level country, but every jolt brings one nearer to the Hijan mountains, which rise picturesquely from the plain to a height of over three thousand feet. In the distance there is an extraordinary "butte" or isolated hill, Gunong Pondok, a landmark for the whole region, and on ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... abstract from the treasury report on the finances of the United States, up to the 1st January, 1831, may not be uninteresting. ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... possessed with a passionate desire to learn the game of ping-pong. When all the world was playing table-tennis eight or ten years ago, King viewed the game with disgust. He thought it utterly childish, uninteresting, and admirably illustrative of all the idiotic qualities that go to make up a fad. But for the last six months, King said, he frequently wakes at night and sits up in bed and yearns with all his soul for a ping-pong set. He was, of course, ashamed to speak ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... quick but uninteresting. Dick acknowledged that he had a faint idea of staying in Rome, but saw a friend who advised him not to. He had taken the reins and driven for a great part of the way, while Pietro had gone inside and slumbered ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... eye could reach, the castaways saw no signs of life, not a sail, not a smoke, not a gull, not even the ripple of a wave; nothing but gaudy, motionless markings from one flat horizon to the other, dead traceries that swiftly became uninteresting, then monotonous, then disagreeable, then maddening in the aching eyes ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... inquire whence she came, the invariable reply (generally preceded by that peculiarly intoned French "Ah!" signifying, "Why, you certainly ought to know!") was "Grand Anse." ...Ah! c'est de Grande Anse, a! And if any commonplace, uninteresting type showed itself it would be signalled as from somewhere else—Gros-Morne, Capote, Marigot, perhaps,—but never from Grand Anse. The Grande Anse girls were distinguished by their clear yellow or brown skins, lithe light figures and a particular grace in ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... very curious," said Gerald, whose attention began to revive as he saw a possible column to be compiled on the details of the case that had seemed so uninteresting to ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... of life was invariably a sentimental one, so the aunts were to him merely middle-aged women—uninteresting, and useful only so far as their efforts contributed to render the lives of young people easy and pleasurable. In abrupt and passing impressions he concluded that Aunt Mary was bright and pleasant, but tediously voluble, given to wasting that time which he would have liked to spend talking to the ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... the table, and with a sudden flush, took up a letter that lay there among two or three uninteresting-looking epistles. ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... hands of dutiful politeness, in addressing Mademoiselle de Seilles, likewise upon the beauty of the night; and the French lady, thinking—too conclusively from the breath on the glass at the moment, as it is the Gallic habit—that if her dear Nesta must espouse one of the uninteresting creatures called men in her native land, it might as well be this as another, agreed that the night ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... than any of the author's novels; it is based far less than any other on personal experience. Unfortunately such thorough-going invention was not suited to Smollett's genius. The result is, that while uninteresting as a novel of contemporary manners, Fathom has an interest of its own in that it reveals a new side of its author. We think of Smollett, generally, as a rambling storyteller, a rational, unromantic man of ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... lessons to hate, stones to throw, apples to steal, fights to fight. I take my word that by the time I was nine or ten the whole tragic episode had gone out of my head. Meeting Mary Matheson on the street, where she came but rarely, she was precisely as mysterious and precisely as uninteresting as any other grown-up. And if I saw Joshua Blake (who, pulling himself by the bootstraps out of drink and despair, had gone into Mr. Dow's law-office and grown as hard as nails)—if I saw him, I say, my only romantic thought of him was the fact that I had broken his wood-shed ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... had quit the altogether uninteresting wharf. The Robert O he had seen many times from a distance, and once of twice near at hand lying at the cribs and piers, but this was his first chance to explore. Accordingly he dropped down to her deck, and, with the natural instinct to see as far ahead as possible, marched immediately ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... a disgrace to our sex," said Hoffland. "To tell a young lady that the manner in which she proposes appearing at a ball is uninteresting, sounds like Ernest." ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... Sweetbriar. In fact, I had tried to come to look over the fields just to kill time when I nearly killed myself and fell down upon you. Do you suppose he could have sent the prospector?" Again Everett brought Uncle Tucker back to the uninteresting topic of what might lay under the fields, the top of which he ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... scope, no less than the whole history of England based on original documents. But though excelling as a collector of materials, and as a laborious, conscientious and accurate transcriber, he had little power of generalization or construction, and died without publishing anything except an uninteresting tract, The Primitive Practice for Preserving Truth (1645), and some speeches. His Journals of all the Parliaments during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, however, a valuable work, was published in 1682. His large collections, including transcripts from ancient records, many of the originals ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... latter is remarkable for its entire homeliness in the general treatment of the subject; the entertainment being represented like any large supper in a second-rate Italian inn, the figures being all comparatively uninteresting; but we are reminded that the subject is a sacred one, not only by the strong light shining from the head of Christ, but because the smoke of the lamp which hangs over the table turns, as it rises, into a multitude of angels, all painted in grey, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... for her on the pavement outside the grimy little office. Mr. Debenham was there, and a clerk he had brought with him as witness. The ceremony was brief and uninteresting; she became Mrs. Doughton before she quite realized ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... check his tendency to condemn all he beheld, yet I could not in truth otherwise than acknowledge that it was as uninteresting as it was possible to be, of which every one must be aware who has travelled from ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... of the legislature of 1785, he is careful to give other information in a letter to Jefferson, which is not uninteresting as written ninety-eight years ago, ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... by the circumstance that nearly fifteen months had passed since I had been in a large town; and, after Majorca, Ballarat seemed to me like a capital. After wandering about the streets for half an hour, I looked into the Court-house, where an uninteresting case of drunkenness was being heard. I next went into the adjoining large building, which I found to be the Public Library. The commodious reading-room was amply supplied with books, magazines, and newspapers; and here I amused myself for an hour in reading a new book. ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... edifice which ran into one line with the Palace of the Tuileries. Turn round the corner of the Pavilion to examine the south or river front of the connecting gallery—one of the finest parts of the whole building, but far less known to ordinary visitors than the cold and uninteresting northern line along the Rue de Rivoli. The first portion, as far as the gateways, belongs originally to the age of Henry IV., but it was entirely reconstructed under Napoleon III., whose obtrusive N appears in many places on ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... me coming out of the perfumery, and my doom was sealed. They announced that they would show me the way to the confectionery. I might have refused to enter the perfumery. But, having entered, there was no way of escaping the confectionery. I resigned myself to the inevitable. It was by no means uninteresting, however,—the half hour spent watching violets, orange blossoms and rose petals dancing in cauldrons of boiling sugar, fanned dry on screens, and packed with candied fruits in wooden boxes for America. And I had followed the flowers of Grasse to ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... She longed to throw herself in his arms, cry that she was tired of taking care of silly, uninteresting babies (though as a matter of fact when she wasn't tired she loved them all, the cross as well as the good-natured ones), and tell him the whole story about the lost ring. But there was her promise to Sarah. A promise was a promise—Hugh himself had ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... island called Nkuesi, opposite a remarkable saddle-shaped mountain, and found that we were just on the 17th parallel of latitude. The sail down the river was very fine; the temperature becoming low, it was pleasant to the feelings; but the shores being flat and far from us, the scenery was uninteresting. We breakfasted on the 27th at Pita, and found some half-caste Portuguese had established themselves there, after fleeing from the opposite bank to escape Kisaka's people, who were now ravaging all the Maganja ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... entirely disenchanted. She thought it was all very ugly and uninteresting. She smiled in order to gratify the Lorilleuxs, but she was annoyed and troubled at the profound silence they preserved in regard to her marriage, on account of which she had called there that evening. These people treated her ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... February, 1828, and I speak of the town as it was then; several small churches have been built since, whose towers agreeably relieve its uninteresting mass of buildings. At that time I think Main street, which is the principal avenue, (and runs through the whole town, answering to the High street of our old cities), was the only one entirely paved. The troittoir is of brick, tolerably well ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... cultivated by hand; for at that time there was but little farm machinery. The greatest single task of the people was to clear the forests and bring the soil under cultivation. Greenfield was, therefore, in part an agricultural town and in part a lumber town. Like most small towns, it was slow-moving and uninteresting. The scenes most ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... a singular one,—Selphar. It always savored too nearly of brimstone to please me. I used to call her Sel, "for short." She was a good, sensible, uninteresting-looking girl, with broad face, large features, and limp, tow-colored curls. They used to hang straight down about her eyes, and were never otherwise than perfectly smooth. She proved to be of good temper, which is worth quite as much as brains ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... "hoped she should do her duty." Some portions of this duty, now explained to her, were sufficiently to her taste; others sounded very uninteresting. These were the usual services expected from a lady's maid two ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... abruptly towards the face of a precipice and seemed to terminate in a small shallow cave. Any one following the path out of mere curiosity would have naturally imagined that the cave was the termination of it; and a very poor termination too, seeing that it was a rather uninteresting cave, the whole of the interior of which could be seen at a single glance from ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... was to be coaled by outside labor. We took no stock in the latter rumor till an officer voiced it—then we believed. Our clean blues were furbished up, lanyards scrubbed, and money counted. We understood that there was little to see at Key West; that it was a dull and uninteresting place. Still it was land, and we had not set foot ashore for almost ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... with the family history and step by step trace the history of the patient from earliest childhood or infancy through the various stages and phases of activity and development up to the very moment of examination. This may at times appear quite dull, quite uninteresting and entirely unnecessary to certain patients. For this reason and also for many other reasons, which I shall not enumerate at this point it is at times well to resort to dream analysis. And in analyzing dreams it is well to remember a fact, with which I believe all ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... more gushing persons, the slightly ludicrous air which attached to the modest boast of somebody that he was "the third best authority in England on gray shirtings." On the other hand, the critic of this kind will not be able to neglect the uninteresting with the serene nonchalance of some of his fellows. He will sometimes have to look back on days and months and years of laborious reading and say to himself, "Were it not well for us, as others use, to take all this for granted?" ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Miss Prince, the younger, for her aunt's sake, and had made up his mind that he would be very attentive to her, no matter how displeasing and uninteresting she might be: it was sure to be a time of trial to his old friend, and he would help all he could to make the visit as bearable as possible. Everybody knew of the niece's existence who had known the Prince family at all, and though ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the temple uninteresting, and the cemetery an abomination of desolation. Spaces once occupied by graves had been turned into potato-patches. Between were tombs leaning at all angles out of the perpendicular, tablets made illegible by scurf, empty ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... was never brought to a glorious completion by the Madigans, even though they skipped uninteresting and difficult parts, and, like the early Elizabethans, permitted no intermission between acts. It was very often laughed to death. At times it became a saturnalia of extravagant action, and it frequently ended in ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... to have had enough of most things,—perhaps too much. If your countrymen are uninteresting, you may possibly wish to meet some of your countrywomen. I've been abroad enough to know that you have never ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... experiences, of life in its higher revealings. It may have been a companionship for a season with one above us in experience or attainment, that has lifted us up for a little time into exalted thoughts and feelings, after which it is hard to come back again to the old plodding round, and to the old, uninteresting companionships. It may have been a visit to some place or to some home, with opportunities, refinements, inspirations, privileges, above those which we can have in our own narrower surroundings and plainer home ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... pavements, of frescoed walls and ceilings, and carved mantelpieces. They were entered from a quiet street which showed hardly a sign of life. There were lions couchant guarding the entrances. The walls on that side showed mostly blank, uninteresting windows. With an odd pride the great houses showed only their duller aspects to ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan |
