"Uninteresting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The Times, two retired colonels had written letters. One of them was disquieted by the growth of the German Navy. He was uninteresting. The other—a Colonel Malcolmson, whom I meet occasionally at my club—had delivered himself of a plan of campaign, an actual fighting programme, which he recommended to the Ulstermen, supposing that they meant to declare war against any one who wanted them to govern themselves. ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... of L.60,000, all secured by mortgages bearing 7 per cent interest on the Brazilian slave-estates of a relative by marriage. But as an illustration of power—and power under any form of development has a singular fascination for most minds—I have thought it may not be uninteresting to glance briefly at a few of the more salient features of the metropolitan ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... history of the transaction. I should be ashamed to request that you would communicate it to the Honorable Court of Directors, whose time is too valuable for the intrusion of a subject so uninteresting, but that it is become a point of indispensable duty; I must therefore request the favor of you to lay it, at a convenient time, before them. In addressing it to you personally, I yield to my own feelings of the respect ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... purposes, and not of the measures themselves. I do not think the plan I am going to describe a wise one; but I do think that the teacher, while trying it, must have been interested in his intellectual experiment. His business, while pursued in such a way, could not have been a mere dull and uninteresting routine. ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... facts they described—teething, creeping, measles, cheeks growing round and rosy, all were conveyed in the same smooth, pat, and proper phrases, so absolutely empty of any glimpse of the child's personality that after the first few months it was like reading about a somewhat uninteresting infant in a book. I was sure Cecily was not uninteresting, but her chroniclers were. We used to wade through the long, thin sheets and saw how much more satisfactory it would be when Cecily could write to us herself. Meanwhile we noted her weekly ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... have undergone slight changes with us, in color, shape, or modes of use. A block of wood or stone contains, in the eye of the artistic workman, every possible grace of form and moulding; but a brick is a square, red, uninteresting fact, and the laying of them the most prosaic of all work. By common consent we expect no improvement in their use, but rather sigh for the good old times when work was honestly done and the size of the brick prescribed by law. We associate them with ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... Grandison is a coxcomb. What sort of a figure would he cut, translated into an epic poem, by the side of Achilles? Clarissa, the divine Clarissa, is too interesting by half. She is interesting in her ruffles, in her gloves, her samplers, her aunts and uncles—she is interesting in all that is uninteresting. Such things, however intensely they may be brought home to us, are not conductors to the imagination. There is infinite truth and feeling in Richardson; but it is extracted from a caput mortuum of circumstances: ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... much to arrest notice, saving its very durable bridge, dating from the time of Akbar, and the Atala Masjid, a mosque deformed from a rather ancient Hindoo temple; and the rest of the district of Jaunpoor which my route lay through was altogether uninteresting. The borders of the district crossed, after traversing a narrow strip of Oude I came again to British territory. This fragment formed a perfect island, so to speak, the domains of the nawab hemming it in on every side. The one European inhabitant of this isolated but fertile spot ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... 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 of finishing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... public three days in the week, and at other times is open to students and to strangers, upon their producing their passports. On public days, all descriptions of persons are here to be seen. The contemplation of such a mixture is not altogether uninteresting. ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... Hilton knew that the time had come to let all his BuSci personnel move into their homes aground. Everyone, including himself, was fed up to the gozzel with spaceship life—its jam-packed crowding; its flat, reprocessed air; its limited variety of uninteresting food. Conditions were especially irksome since everybody knew that there was available to all, whenever Hilton gave the word, a whole city full of all the room anyone could want, natural fresh air and—so the Omans had told them—an unlimited ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... point of view of the criminal expert," said Mr. Sherlock Holmes, "London has become a singularly uninteresting city since the death of the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... written. Just listen—it sounds better read aloud than when you pore over it silently: "THE COURT OF KELLYON CASTLE. A ROMANCE OF THE MIDDLE AGES. BY ERNEST FIELD. In the belief that we were for a while escaping the monotonous repetition of wearisome details in modern social scenery, analyses of uninteresting character, or the unnatural unfoldings of a sensation plot, we took this volume into our hands with a feeling of pleasure. We were disposed to beguile ourselves with the fancy that some new change might possibly be rung ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... length of my bicycle skirt, and on the shelf there is a pile of bedding. There is no trap door leading into either subterranean or overhead apartments. In fact, there is nothing else, except a chair. It's very uninteresting." ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... general aspect of the country on this side of the valley of Mexico, suffice it to say, that there is a universal air of dreariness, vastiness, and desolation. The country is flat, but always enlivened by the surrounding mountains, like an uninteresting painting in a diamond frame; and yet it is not wholly uninteresting. It has a character peculiar to itself, great plains of maguey, with its huts with uncultivated patches, that have once been gardens, still filled ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... said to herself that it was a bore having the Marchesino to lunch, that he was uninteresting, frivolous, empty-headed. But directly she set eyes upon him, as he stood in the drawing-room by her mother, she felt a change in him. What had happened to him? She could not tell. But she was conscious that he seemed much more definite, much more of a ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... here, the eloquent and pathetic style altogether, and only gives the unlucky prisoner's narrative in the baldest and most unimaginative style. How is a jury to listen to such a fellow? they ought to condemn him, if but for making such an uninteresting statement. Why not have helped poor Peytel with some of those rhetorical graces which have been so plentifully bestowed in the opening part of the act of accusation? ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with many spots upon its surface, which, unlike those of the leopard, are continually changing. These spots were first discovered by a gentleman named Galileo, in the year 1611. Though the Sun is usually termed and considered the luminary of day, it may not be uninteresting to our readers to know that it certainly has been seen in the night. A scientific friend of ours from New England (Mr. R.W. Emerson) while traveling through the northern part of Norway, with a cargo of tinware, on the 21st of June, 1836, distinctly saw the Sun in all its majesty, shining at midnight!—in ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... miles: the country uninteresting as far as Pont-sur-Yonne. Chapelle de Champigny affords a tolerably exact idea of a Spanish village; each farm-house and its premises forming a square, inclosed in blank walls, and opening into the street by folding gates, with hardly a window to be seen. From Pont-sur-Yonne to Sens, the road ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... ill-known country. Carl was unspeakably disconcerted. He was thinking that, to him, Gertie was set aside from the number of women who could appeal physically, quite as positively as though she were some old aunt who had for twenty years seemed to be the same adult, plump, uninteresting age. Gertie's solid flesh, the monotony of her voice, the unimaginative fixity of her round cheeks, a certain increasing slackness about her waist, even the faint, stuffy domestic scent of her—they all expressed ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... humours and passions—some of them among the highest and others certainly the basest that agitate humanity-upon the march of great events, upon general historical results at certain epochs, and upon the destiny of eminent personages. It may also be not uninteresting to venture a glance into the internal structure and workings of a republican and federal system of government, then for the first time reproduced almost spontaneously ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... kaleidoscope that is theatrical New York had altered since she left it. Only one or two of her former friends remained, and she found them uninteresting and narrow with the narrowness of their own absorbing world. She had forgotten that the theater was like an island, cut off from the rest of the world, having its own politics, its own society divided by caste, almost its own religion. Out of its insularity it made occasional ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... obliged to stop in a poor inn, and to take a bed with four others in the same room. These are the miseries of travelling; delays upon the road, especially being confined a day or two in some little uninteresting spot—so far, however, I have been pretty fortunate, and should not complain, but like all poor unreasonable mortals, the more we have, the more we wish to have. The last stage or two very hilly, covered as usual with forest. This I believe is ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... not her fault that she did not understand games, and was quite unable to act the part of any other character than her own. If she did make the attempt, she failed so miserably that Ruth had to tell her what to say, which made it so flat and uninteresting that she found it better to play alone. But she often became weary of this; and there were times when she was tired of her toys, and tired of Nurse Smith, and did not know what in the world to do ...
— The Kitchen Cat, and other Tales • Amy Walton
... of February, so each Thursday there is a Serata d' Onore of one of the actors. The first, and the only one for which prices were raised—to a fourpence entrance fee instead of threepence—was for the leading lady. The play was The Wife of the Doctor, a modern piece, sufficiently uninteresting; the farce that followed made ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... truth," bending forward confidentially, "isn't it awfully dry and uninteresting? There! I wouldn't dare lisp it before my husband, but isn't there a good deal of—of—well, humbug, ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... of course; but to-night I sat in the dark and the cold, shivering. And I asked myself if it must not be so after all. "Is it true, the thing that I did; is it natural?" I said. "Or must it not be exaggerated and crude, as they all tell me! And uninteresting!—What is the use of it? I tormented myself that way and tore myself to pieces, but it does not stir any ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... sake of the information they might give me on the subject in which my interest was so terribly profound. Company was irksome to me; when alone, I could fill my mind with the sights of heaven and earth; the voice of Henry soothed me, and I could thus cheat myself into a transitory peace. But busy, uninteresting, joyous faces brought back despair to my heart. I saw an insurmountable barrier placed between me and my fellow men; this barrier was sealed with the blood of William and Justine, and to reflect on the events connected with those names filled my ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... what degree of credit to give to the matters related therein. Like all other ancient histories, they appear to be a jumble of fable and of fact, and of probable and of improbable things, but which distance of time and place, and change of circumstances in the world, have rendered obsolete and uninteresting. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Yet, howsoever uninteresting this piebald jargon might seem, it was obviously Miss Wardour's purpose to give it her attention, in preference to yielding Captain M'Intyre an opportunity of renewing their private conversation. So that, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... of Russia deepens—that it is run by beautiful women and rich men; and yet how charming everyone is to meet! Hardly anyone is uninteresting, and half the men are good-looking. The Cossack-dress is very handsome, and nearly everyone wears it. When the colour is dark red and the ornaments are of silver the effect is unusually good. They all walk well. One is amongst a primitive ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... make much of it, but I could no longer ride my horse so got on a wagon. We moved on to Ladysmith at 4 p.m. and were much interested in the various hills and positions en route; we passed over Caesar's camp, which we found a very straggling uninteresting sort of place. The town itself lay on the left and was now used as a hospital; we passed along over the iron bridge where the troops from India were encamped, and much admired their khaki tents and green ambulances; and climbing the hill leading to the ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... think you most uninteresting, Mr. Holt. As it is I think you unusual. And I rather like you for it. Would you mind taking me to my cabin? It is number sixteen, on ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... you to continue the practice you have lately adopted of sending me a letter every fortnight. In addition to the last daily paper, send me likewise the Observer, or any other weekly depository of domestic news. You, who have passed all your days in the bustle of London, can scarcely conceive the uninteresting and insipid life I am doomed to lead in this retirement. My situation obliges me to maintain some sort of establishment, otherwise I should, from inclination, confine my intercourse to a very limited circle. I have been for some days projecting a jaunt into the interior of the States, and I ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... peculiarities of Cooper's beliefs that "Precaution" exemplifies. He has been constantly criticised for the unvarying and uninteresting uniformity of his female characters. This is hardly just; but it is just in the sense that there was only one type which he ever held up to admiration. Others were introduced, but they were never the kind of women whom he delighted to honor. Of female purity he had ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... for the Marquise de Chargeboeuf and other matters really uninteresting but about which politeness assumes that we are keenly interested, it dawned on Monsieur d'Hauteserre that the old gentleman had come to warn his young relatives against imprudence. He remarked ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... downstairs with a sober face. She had intended to tell Gladys the story of The Golden Doorway, and about the Spectacle Man, but she had not had a chance, and now she felt that these things would probably seem tame and uninteresting to a young person ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... knocked, as I could not say 'Good-night' yet. Parting was too hard, though sweet. So, we talked on in whispers to one another for some minutes—it may have been hours, for all I know to the contrary—what might be to you only a lot of uninteresting talk, but, ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... without much success, to see him as he watched the contortions of the acrobats, which apparently he enjoyed more than to her seemed reasonable. But, as with herself, it was the boy Moxy that chiefly attracted him, though the show of physical prowess was far from uninteresting to him; and although what she saw through the smoky illumination of the dip was not attractive to her, the question remains whether it was really the man himself she saw, or only an appearance made up of candle gleam and gloom, complemented ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... mind was too like my own. His was the lament of a man who had worn out all pleasures, and who seemed to think that life, to all who possess the good things of it, must necessarily be the vapid, uninteresting thing which I found it. His Harold and Manfred had the same burden on them which I had; and I was not in a frame of mind to desire any comfort from the vehement sensual passion of his Giaours, or the sullenness of his Laras. But while Byron was exactly what did not suit my condition, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... His education had long ago been finished. So he selected to stay in the warm kitchen, and lie as close to the stove as possible. He made dubious and uncertain friends with the cat. He slept a great deal, he ate a great deal. As the weeks flew on, he became fat, lazy-looking, and uninteresting. Were it not for subsequent and previous conduct he would not have been a dog worth writing about. So bad is prosperity ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... possible. She was determined never to marry without her father's consent, and was equally resolved never to marry anybody but the one particular person she was convinced he would never agree to her marrying. She was an excellent young woman, and nearly as uninteresting ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... relief this powerful head. He wore the well-known cassock of black cloth, fastened round his waist by a black cloth belt with a brass buckle, which became thenceforth the distinctive dress of all Calvinist ministers, and was so uninteresting to the eye that it forced the spectator's attention upon ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... may say that "business woman" has a hard sound, and stands for a character precise, selfish, and uninteresting. That is not what we intend by it at all. Is a girl to be less loveable, less gentle, less charming, whenever we cease to say of her, That girl, in regard to all the ways of business, is a perfect simpleton? ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... moderately good effect—the moderation being due to a not unnatural disinclination on the pupil's part to walk where she had been accustomed to run, and to a fixed loathing to practice. As the latter necessary, if uninteresting, pursuit was left entirely to her own discretion—for no one ever dreamed of ordering Norah to the piano—it is small wonder if it suffered beside the superior attractions of riding Bobs, rat trapping, "shinning up" trees, ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... starry pages of Mr. Symonds' "History of the Renaissance in Italy." The next few pages will deal only with the French tale-tellers, whose productions before Margaret's days were, if not very numerous, far from uninteresting, and whose influence on the slight difference of genre which distinguishes the tales before us from Italian tales was by ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... no ghosts, no fantastic, unearthly powers are terrible; there are no terrors in the Hoffmann world, in whatever form it appears.... What is terrible is that there is nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting and degradingly inane. Once one is soaked through and through with that knowledge, once one has tasted of that bitter, no honey more seems sweet, and even the highest, sweetest bliss, the bliss of love, of perfect nearness, of complete devotion—even ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... and is doing bloomingly. How lovely and of what happy omen is the name of MARIA PERI, whose Valentina in Les Huguenots is worth recording, even though it does not beat the record. It is said to be an uninteresting part, yet I remember everybody being uncommonly enthusiastic about this same Valentina when GRISI played it, and her "Valentine" was Romeo-like MARIO. Their struggle, his Leap for Life out of the window after the great "Tu M'ami" solo and duet, her despair, will never be forgotten. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... were the more important member of the construction; but the decorator now reverses the distribution of his care, adorns the vertical member with passionate elaboration, and runs a narrow band, of comparatively uninteresting work, round the arch. Between this outer shaft and inner door is a square pilaster, of which the architect carves one side, and lets the other alone. It is followed by a smaller shaft and arch, in which he reverses ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... capital of Prussia in the eil-wagen from Wusterhausen. We had tramped the previous day a distance of good two-and-thirty English miles, through a flat, uninteresting country, and being dead beat, had made an anxious bargain with the driver of the "Fast-coach," to carry us to Berlin for a dollar a-head. It was late in the evening as we rumbled heavily along the dusty road, and through the long vista of thick plantations which ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... swung into the rue de Sevres, and rolled smoothly out the long, uninteresting stretch of the rue Lecourbe, far out to where the houses, became scattered, where mounds and pyramids of red tiles stood alongside the factory where they had been made, where an acre of little glass hemispheres in long, straight rows winked and glistened in the afternoon sun—the ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... Calais is neither the chief town nor capital. It has scarcely a third of the population of Boulogne, and not much more than half the population of Arras, which is the seat of the prefecture; and though it is by no means so dreary and uninteresting a place as the casual traveller, seeing only the landing-pier, and the new station, which bears the name of the heroic Eustache de St.-Pierre, is apt to take it to be, it cannot compare, in point of beauty and interest, either with Boulogne or with Arras. ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... smoky chimneys would now seem without it! The Monument, recording the delusions of faction, and the Tower, with all its gloomy associations, were visible in the reach of the river. Of Churches there appeared a monotonous groupe; while the houses presented a dingy and misshapen mass, as uninteresting at the distance of seven miles as an ant-hill at the distance of seven feet. Indeed, any wretch capable of setting his foot upon an ant-hill, and of destroying it, because it made no palpable appeals to his sympathy, ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... the Knights of the Swan and the Red Rose, but it was uninteresting, the Knights passing each other twice, without touching, and, on the third course, the Knight of ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... the kitchen, sitting in the rush chair, always looked upon as the young master's, and freely entering into the games or gossip of the farm-servants. He was much amused at the enthusiasm and romance of his new-found friend, who, coming from a populous and uninteresting border country, was charmed by the unconventional ways of the Welsh coast. He threw a glamour of poetry and romance over the most commonplace incidents; and Cardo, to tease him, would often assume a stolid and unimpressionable manner that he was far ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... mingled with the little group, levelled their glasses, and made senseless remarks after the manner of tourists the world over. Boyd gathered somehow that they were officers of the Trust, or heavy stockholders, and their wives. They seemed to accept him as an uninteresting bit of local color, and he regarded them with equal indifference, for his eyes were wholly occupied with Mildred, his ears deaf to all but her voice. At length he saw some of them going over the rail, and later found himself alone with his sweetheart. ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... wit. This depends not only upon the execution, but on the choice of the subject. It is not enough to value oneself upon a close imitation of nature, if the subject chosen for imitation is not worth imitating, or improper to represent; that is to say, either trivial, indifferent, consequently uninteresting; or disgustful and unpleasing. The one tires, the other shocks. Even in the lowest classes of life, the composer must seize only what is the fittest to give satisfaction; and omit whatever can excite disagreeable ideas. It is from the animal joy of mechanics or peasants in their cessations ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... that presented itself. Ovid, not content with catching the leading features of any scene or character, indulged himself in a thousand minutiae of description, a thousand puerile prettinesses, which were in themselves uninteresting, and took off greatly from the effect of the whole; as the numberless suckers, and straggling branches of a fruit tree, if permitted to shoot out unrestrained, while they are themselves barren and useless, diminish considerably the vigour of the parent stock. Ovid had more genius, ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... enough of the nobleness of such a life to fill her with a certain enthusiasm, and make her feel a day blank and uninteresting if she could not make her way to the ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Monsieur is thought a worthy person, with some excellent qualities, such as freedom from uncomfortable jealousies and suspicions, and both capacity and willingness for furnishing remittances, but a person rather destitute of polish—invaluable from a domestic point of view, from any other somewhat uninteresting. But madame and mesdemoiselles have every possible tribute paid to their charms: their beauty, their wit, their dash and sparkle, their independence, receive as large a share of admiration as the most insatiable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... must be interpreted as if it said, like those whom the prophet describes, "Cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from amongst us. Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy way!" If your closets seldom witness your private devotions, if your moments in retirement are languid and uninteresting—your religion can have no hold on your heart; and the reason why your religion has no hold on your heart is because you have no love of God. There are some whose religion sits easy and delightful upon them; its acts and functions are free and lively: there are others who ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... more guile in you than in a stick of molasses candy, but you're like a sermon, comfortin', if sort of uninteresting, and I can talk at you if I can't talk with you. Ask me all about it, git me started somehow. I'm as full of conversation as an egg is of meat, but I don't know where ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... Asa sat at the very end of the table, facing the open door, eating as though he had not tasted food for a week. He was a homely, uninteresting lout, but Tim had compelled him to wash, and in consequence his freckled face shone, and the wet shock of hair appeared more tousled than ever. From the time of sitting down he had scarcely raised his eyes from off ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... this, my silly heart went out to her at once. She was the centre of a group; every one seemed to have something to say to her, and she was so nice with them all, kissing the children, and having a bright smile and word for some of the most uninteresting women and stupid-looking boys I ever saw. Just as I was going out of the door I felt a soft touch upon my arm, and turned to find her beside me. I am free to confess I never received such a welcome ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... twenty feet away, was seeing and hearing, when Arthur kissed Ruth good night. He laughed to himself. "How disappointed she looked last night when she saw I wasn't going to do that!" What a charmer Susie must be when the thought of her made the idea of kissing as pretty a girl as Ruth uninteresting, almost distasteful! ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... was wholly fortunate for me," he said, "although I admit I have no wish to end my uninteresting life by drowning. I am not a misanthrope, in spite of my bad stomach. The world is more useful to me than I am to the world, but that is not my fault. Pardon me for talking so ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... from a sick person or family, is a ceremony as singular as it is silly, but as I have frequently been a spectator of this farcical performance, a description of it may not be uninteresting to you. I have before observed, that if their medicines, (many of which are very powerful), or, as they will have it, their incantations, are of no avail, they then ascribe the illness to the immediate agency of the infernal spirit, who ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... another. They all have their joys and their griefs, their triumphs and their failures, their loves and their hates, their friends and their foes, much as men have them in that maturer life of which the days of youth are an epitome. It would be rather an uninteresting task, and an entirely thankless one, to follow in detail the career of Frederick Brent as he grew from childhood to youth. But in order to understand certain traits that developed in his character, it will be necessary to note some, at least, of the circumstances ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... been known to do, and it seemed a shame to waste so much effort on alleged "drammer." Mr. Fairbanks might possibly have made more of a lasting success in a real hotel than he will achieve in the spurious affair that was staged. A number of others, in an extremely uninteresting cast, labored ineffectively. Mr. Chalmers completely routed the good impression he had made in "Abigail," and I should recommend him to "bide a wee" before hurling further manuscripts at susceptible managers—not for their sake, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... I said, and hauled the things up, and got them inside. The photographs would be absolutely dull and uninteresting, but that wouldn't matter to Coppinger. He rather preferred them that way. One has to be careful about halation in photographing these dark interiors, but there was a sort of ledge like a seat by the side of each doorway, and so I lodged the camera on that to ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... for interest cannot be surpassed. It is one of the strangest things in the world that so many people have gotten the impression that a missionary meeting must be dull, and that a missionary discourse must be uninteresting. It is an impression that ought not to exist. Let sermons be preached. Let the thrilling, soul-inspiring facts that go to make up the history of missions be made known and the impression will soon ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 03, March, 1885 • Various
... however, by no means be supposed that because the surface of the valley above the head of the lake is flat and level, that it is on that account monotonous and uninteresting. Indeed, it is quite the reverse. It forms one of the richest and most enchanting landscapes that can be conceived. It is abundantly shaded with trees, some planted in avenues along the roadside, some bearing fruit in orchards and gardens, ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... quay while my father and the crew were hoisting sail. For a moment I questioned if I should not be happier in the bow of the Curlew, than tramping half a score of miles over rough uninteresting moorland on the chance of capturing a seal; but in the end I was satisfied in keeping to the plan arranged by my companions. I waited only to see the boat bend over in the fresh breeze as she sailed outward to the ships; then, ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... is of no importance, the whole idea being to train the mind to obey the Will, so that when you really wish to use the mental forces upon some important object, you may find them well trained and obedient. Do not be tempted to slight this part of the work because it is "dry" and uninteresting, for it leads up to things that are most interesting, and opens a ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... dragoman and the muker, who caused them quickly to disappear. An hour afterwards the scheikh came in person to pay his respects. We reclined on the steps of the hall; and while the men smoked and drank coffee, a conversation of a very uninteresting kind was kept up, the dragoman acting as interpreter. At length the scheikh seemed seized with the idea that we might possibly be tired with our journey. He took his leave, and offered unasked to send us two men as sentries, which he did. Thus ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... and with that, perhaps, no judge Heinsius, I prefer Lucan to Virgil. To speak fairly, I prefer great sense, to poetry with little sense. There are hemistichs in Lucan that go to one's soul and one's heart;—for a mere epic poem, a fabulous tissue of uninteresting battles that don't teach one even to fight, I know nothing more tedious. The poetic images, the versification and language of the Aeneid are delightful; but take the story by itself, and can anything be more silly and unaffecting? ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... seemed to him utterly unnecessary, having no sort of relation to all that was going on within him. For a moment, however, it lighted up the flame in his brain, and Semenoff clearly perceived the mock-mournful face of a man who was absolutely uninteresting to him. That was the last sign of life. What followed was for those living wholly beyond the pale of ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... most women, Ian," she replied. "Women haven't been taught to do things, to pay off their debts. Men run up bills and pay them off, and run them up again and again and pay them off; but we, while we run up bills, our ways of paying them off are so few, and so uninteresting." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... forking of the ways, and paused for breath. Before turning to the right, his proper and picturesque course, he looked up the uninteresting left road to the fortifications. It was new, long, white, regular, tapering to a vanishing point, like a lesson in perspective. About a quarter of the way up a girl was resting beside a basket of white ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... first sight of her Douglas was attracted, and for good reason—the face of the girl, once seen, was not soon forgotten. During the time he had been in Scotland it had seemed to him that the Scotch women were hard-featured, uninteresting, and altogether unlovely; but this girl was different. There was something of the savage in her, and yet she possessed a charm which fascinated the young man. Her black hair hung in curling and tangled tresses over ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... with the Marlows dragged by slowly. The children, four boys, proved uninteresting in the extreme, whilst between himself and Laura Marlow, May's sister-in-law, there was little in common. Two other guests, an elderly aunt and uncle of Henry's, arrived in time for dinner on the second night, and Jimmy retired more and more into the background, ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... appeared to win approval by my reading of the extremely uninteresting leading article, he shook his head at the sight of my handwriting, whilst he seemed to be astounded by my total ignorance of Latin ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... other; she was always wetting her lips, and coughed with a little dry cough. But in her these signs of nervous exhaustion suggested overwork in a close atmosphere, bending too close over the sewing-machine. Her uninteresting hair, like a rat's pelt, was eked out with a false addition of another color. Some threads had got ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... sure that Pippa did not think in parentheses. The agility and (it were to follow an indulgent fashion to add) the "subtlety" of Browning's mind too often led him into like excesses: I deny the subtlety here, for these clauses are so wholly uninteresting in thought that even as examples I shall not cite them. But their crowning distastefulness is in the certitude we feel that, whatever they had been, they never would have occurred to this lyrical child. The stanza without them is the stanza as Pippa felt it. . . . In the ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... beauty; the marshy coast of Essex was cleared of its hovering fogs; and its green meadows stretched away in the distance, until they were lost in the clear blue sky. The southern part of the island, flat and uninteresting as it is, looked gay and cheerful in the sun-light; for every little lake mirrored the smiling heavens, and danced in diamond measures to the music of bee ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... only now to mention my birds, and of them I can merely say that they went on as before; they bathed constantly, at the right season they laid eggs, the male birds caught fish and brought them to the cabin, and they were just as stupid and uninteresting as they were at first; however, they never left me, nor indeed showed any intention to leave me, after the first season of the birds returning to the island. They were useful but not very ornamental, and not at all interesting ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Christ; it is the sorrow that still rises up from beneath and the consolation that meets it from above; the bosom treacheries of the principal in the warfare and the exceeding faithfulness and long-suffering of the uninteresting ally;—in a word, it is the actual trial of the faith in Christ, with its accompaniments and results, that must form the arched roof, and the faith itself is the completing key-stone. In order to an efficient belief in Christianity, a man must have been a Christian, and ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... he had a free choice, were sporting stories with a strong racing and betting interest But in camp in the wilderness no sporting stories were obtainable. The one novel which remained to the mess dealt with the sex problem, a subject originally profoundly uninteresting to Maitland, who had a healthy mind He read it, however, as a remedy for insomnia. It proved effective. A couple of chapters sent him to sleep every night, so the book lasted a ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... he resumed his uninteresting conversation with the equally uninterested Rawlins, and the undenominated passenger subsided into an admiring and dreamy contemplation of them both. With all his principle and really high-minded purpose, Hale could not help feeling constrained and annoyed at the sudden subordinate ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... compactness. His mind was logical and direct, and he did not indulge in extraneous discussion. Generalities and platitudes had no charms for him. An unfailing vein of humor never deserted him; and he was able to claim the attention of court and jury, when the cause was the most uninteresting, by the appropriateness of his anecdotes. [Footnote: C. P. Linder once said to an Eastern lawyer who expressed the opinion that Lincoln was wasting his time in telling stories to the jury, "Don't lay that flattering unction to your soul. Lincoln is like Tansey's horse, he 'breaks ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... said the reviewers; "Bjoernson has evidently worked out his vein. He has ceased to be a poet. He has lost with his childhood's faith his ideal view of life, and become a mere prosy chronicler of uninteresting ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... with great difficulty at this moment, being only withheld from introducing such an episode by a strong conviction that it does not usually occur at such times. And I trust that my fairest reader, who remembers that, in a real crisis, it is always some uninteresting stranger or unromantic policeman, and not Adolphus, who rescues, will forgive ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... it to be the owls, sir, a bird very frequent in this locality. They make a sort of harsh, hooting howl, sir. I have sometimes wondered," said Webster, pursuing a not uninteresting train of thought, "whether that might be ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... could see that this did not help matters. "I—I do not mean that," she stammered. "I am sure you are very nice indeed, and we are going to be good friends, aren't we? But I am such a dunce myself that I am afraid of real clever people. They are so superior. And so uninteresting, and—oh, I do not mean that either." Then Prudence laughed at her predicament. "I may as well give it up. What I really mean is that you are so nice and friendly and interesting, that I can hardly believe you are so clever. You are the nicest smart person I ever saw,—except ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... characteristics were dead or not, who could tell? But certainly with temptation removed, with the routine of a bleak, uninteresting existence his only choice, Farwell was a harmless creature. Gradually he had found solace in the commonplaces that surrounded him. Like a person relieved of mortal agony he was grateful for semi-invalidism. ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... travelling-bags in a corner of the compartment, and settled himself for the short journey, he felt a kind of irrational surprise at the fact that there had been no changes during his absence. The city was just as dirty and uninteresting as when he had left, the beggars were just as ragged and importunate, the street coaches were just as rickety. It required an effort to realize that ten months is, after all, a very short time, for it seemed ten years since he had sailed away. It had been a difficult period for him, ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... farther still if he loved none such. He recalls the words of our Lord, "If ye love them which love you, what reward have ye?" and his mind fixes upon—let us say—one of a second class, and he tries to love him. The man is no enemy—we have not come to that class of neighbours yet—but he is dull, uninteresting—in a negative way, he thinks, unlovable. What is he to do with him? With all his effort, he finds the goal as far off ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... characteristic stages from the simplest living beings up to man. This will be our work in the three succeeding lectures. And to these I must ask you to bring a large store of patience. Anatomical details are at best dry and uninteresting. But these dry facts of anatomy form the foundation on which all our ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... Samuel got out and shut the door quickly again. I took the precaution of turning my back and letting him overtake and pass me on his way back through Duke Street. At the end of the street he mounted an omnibus going east, and I took another seat in the same vehicle. The rest was uninteresting. He went direct to No. 150 Hatton Garden, and there remained. I read his name on the door-post among a score of others, and after a twenty-minutes' wait I returned to my rooms. I had no doubt that it was the meeting in the brougham that Hewitt wished reported, ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... fellow-passengers and judged them uninteresting, she divided her attention between the fleeting landscape at her side, a box of fruit creams, which she was consuming with grave perseverance, and the contents of a pocket-portfolio, which she appeared to be slowly sorting ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... novelty had worn off, the monotony of my life became appalling. There were no neighbors with whom to foregather; there was no game to shoot; the surrounding country was uninteresting to a degree. Far away, just peeping over the rim of the horizon, were the peaks of the Amatole and Kabousie Ranges regions of enchantment, cliff-crowned and forest-clothed towards which my soul vainly sighed. But an accident quickly brought this chapter of my life to a tragic ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... though made especially for the benefit of my young audience, will not, I feel pretty sure, be uninteresting to more advanced connoisseurs. I am not at liberty to mention the names of the artists who in their kind sympathies for children have obliged me with them. It is a mystery to be unravelled by the little people themselves, who, as they advance in a knowledge and love of beauty, ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various
... in 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 ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... little volume to set down the arts used by the people of such houses to shut the eyes of the watchmen who were employed, to deceive them, and to escape or break out from them. A few incidents on this head may prove not uninteresting. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... down one of the wide clean stony streets of the city, with a warmth which he had not been able to impart to the air, a company of school-girls, two and two in long file, mostly with innocent, and, for human beings, rather uninteresting faces, was walking in orderly manner, a female grenadier at its head, along the pavement, more than usually composed, from having the sun in their eyes. Amongst the faces was one very different from the rest, a countenance almost ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... on as he had begun was precisely the difficulty with Aubrey. To do some magnificent deed by a sudden spurt of heroism, or behave angelically for a day, might be possible to him; but that quiet daily fulfilment of uninteresting duties—that patient continuance in well-doing, which seemed as if it came naturally to Hans, was to Aubrey Louvaine the hardest thing on earth. Had the lesson been a little less sharp, humanly speaking, he would have failed. But Aubrey's ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... car. Donna knew she ran little risk of meeting a San Pasqualian in first- class accommodations, and as she sat there, watching the shiny rails unwinding behind her, her luxurious surroundings imparted a sense of charm and comfort which she had never felt before. The scenery in the pass proving uninteresting, she forgot about it and gave herself up to a day-dream which had become a favorite with her of late—a dream which had to do with a little Spanish house surrounded by weeping willows and Lombardy poplars (Donna had once seen a picture of a ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne |
