"Dull" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... more common to find the children dealing with it either sunk in deepest apathy, or mercifully oblivious of the matter in hand and chatting with their neighbors. The fact is that we have too commonly made the exercises dull, dreary affairs; we have doled out the forms to the children and asked a series of formal questions about them, giving no experiments, no concerted work, and no opportunity for action. The children have been intensely ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was no question in those far-away days of my being asked to meet such a brilliant star; but it amused me often to hear the dull and uninteresting people of some standing in the University, whom Jowett had not favoured with an invitation, declaring that nothing would have induced them ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... shrill as a bugle, for Jim Last, white and dull as a moon in fog, let go his desperate hold on the pommel and slid, deadweight, into the reaching ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... he had heard the same gentleman complain of the difficulty of getting servants, shops, &c., in the (American) country; and the other, that, "to tell the truth, the country was all very well about sundown, but was deuced dull and uncomfortable on rainy days." Ashburner, however, felt that the remarks of his host should not be thrown away, at least before his face; so he looked around for a subject, and politely began to talk of farming. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... Dull, humdrum murmurs lull, but hubbub stuns. Lucullus snuffs up musk, mundungus shuns. Puss purrs, buds burst, bucks butt, luck turns up trumps; But full cups, hurtful, spur up ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... box; and ever a state flourisheth, when wealth is more equally spread. The fifth, that it beats down the price of land; for the employment of money, is chiefly either merchandizing or purchasing; and usury waylays both. The sixth, that it doth dull and damp all industries, improvements, and new inventions, wherein money would be stirring, if it were not for this slug. The last, that it is the canker and ruin of many men's estates; which, in process of time, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... and flour very dull of sale. A great stagnation in commerce generally. During the present bankruptcy in England, the merchants seem disposed to lie on their oars. It is impossible to conjecture the rising of Congress, as it will depend on the system they decide on; whether ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... which the Portuguese peasantry sustain a conversation, and the purity of the language in which they express their thoughts; and yet very few of them can write or read, whereas the peasantry of our own country, whose education is in general much superior, are in their conversation coarse and dull almost to brutality, and absurdly ungrammatical in the language which they use, though the English tongue, upon the whole, is more simple in its ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... and show such a lack of interest. I should think you might be in love, only I haven't been able to find the man. Anyway, if you aren't in love, you must pretend an interest in things. Of course, men's affairs are awfully dull, but they don't like you to talk about them, so it's really very easy. All you have to do is listen, stare them straight in the eyes, think of whatever you like, and look pleased! It does flatter them, and they think they are interesting, and you charming! Wear this, and think ...
— The Girl with the Green Eyes - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... flat-iron home with me, and it was for long a favourite plaything. I used to sprinkle corners of my pocket-handkerchief with water, as I had seen Nurse Bundle "damp fine things" before ironing them. But after all, "play" of this kind is dull work played alone. I was very glad when ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... countreys and the riches within them hitherto concealed: whereof notwithstanding God in his wisdome hath permitted to be reuealed from time to time a certaine obscure and misty knowledge, by little and little to allure the mindes of men that way (which els will be dull enough in the zeale of his cause) and thereby to prepare vs vnto a readinesse for the execution of his will against the due time ordeined, of calling ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... to church at the Cathedral, where we had a very dull sermon from a Minor Canon. In the afternoon, as we sat in the host's ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... re-visited my dear native country, after an absence of many weary years, and a long dull voyage, my heart was filled with unutterable delight and admiration. The land seemed a perfect paradise. It was in the spring of the year. The blue vault of heaven—the clear atmosphere—the balmy vernal breeze—the quiet and picturesque cattle, browsing ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... the conjunction but usually prepares the way for the second of the two contrasted terms: "He is good but dull." Where and is used instead of but, the incongruity savours of epigram: "He always talks truthfully and prosily." "He is always ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... until all sorts of gray dawn shadows danced before his eyes. Then he began slowly to crawl up the trail. Some of the dull, paralytic ache was gone from his limbs, and as he worked his blood began to warm them into new strength, until he stood up and sniffed like an animal in the wind that was coming over the ridge ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... old books! They are fat and dull, Their covers are dark and queer; But every time I push the door, And patter across the library floor, They seem to cry, "Here, oh here!" And I feel so sad for their lonely looks That I hate to take down ...
— A Jolly Jingle-Book • Various
... wild and miserable thoughts, but I cannot describe to you how the eternal twinkling of the stars weighed upon me and how I listened to every blast of wind as if it were a dull ugly siroc on its way ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... passer-by in the distance might have taken for a phantom, appeared erect upon the parapet of the quay, bent over towards the Seine, then drew itself up again, and fell straight down into the shadows; a dull splash followed; and the shadow alone was in the secret of the convulsions of that obscure form which had disappeared beneath ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... its work. Louis XIV. considered the "office of king" grand, noble, delightful, "for he felt himself worthy of acquitting himself well in all matters in which he engaged." "The ardor we feel for glory," he used to say, "is not one of those feeble passions which grow dull by possession; its favors, which are never to be obtained without effort, never, on the other hand, cause disgust, and whoever can do without longing for fresh ones is unworthy of all he ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... lie down, my trusty hound! Death comes, and now we part. In my dull ear strange murmurs sound— More faintly throbs my heart; The many twinkling lights of Heaven Scarce glimmer in the blue— Chill round me falls the breath of even, Cold on my brow the dew; Earth, stars, and heavens are lost to sight— The chase is ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... people, often starving and ailing, camping under improvised tents because there was no place for them to go. The sky became more and more densely overcast until at last it blotted out the light of day and left nothing but a dull red glare 'extraordinarily depressing to the spirit.' In this dull glare, great numbers of people were still living, clinging to their houses and in many cases subsisting in a state of partial famine upon the produce in their gardens and the ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... want her to have the feeling that she's played square. She has, but if she thought I felt as I do to-day, it would hurt her. You understand? She's like that. Why, she's fixed it up in her mind that I'm going to pull through, and she's braced to do her part to the end; but"—here Larry paused, his dull eyes filled with hot tears; his strength was almost gone—"but I wanted you to help her—if it means what it once did ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... broke gray and misty, driving sleet came along on the wind, and the horizon was closed in as by a dull curtain. ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... a dull sound arose within a quarter of a mile from the city gate, as of some feeble attempt to blow a blast upon a trumpet. In five minutes more a louder blast was sounded close to the gate. Questions were joyfully put, and as joyfully ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... lighted one. Now, Cecil, I desire no such a jetty to be celebrated as the decoration of my court: in simpler words, which your gravity may more easily understand, I would not from the fountain of honour give lustre to the dull and ignorant, deadening and leaving in its tomb the lamp of literature and genius. I ardently wish my reign to be remembered: if my actions were different from what they are, I should as ardently wish it to be forgotten. Those are the worst of suicides, who voluntarily and propensely ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... startled, he foolishly lashed his horses, while he held the reins so tightly that the poor beasts were in a foam: they were young and fiery. A hare jumped across the road and startled them, and they fairly ran away. The old sober maiden, who had for years and years moved quietly round and round in a dull circle, was now, in death, rattled over stock and stone on the public highway. The coffin in its covering of straw tumbled out of the van, and was left on the high-road, while horses, coachman, and carriage flew past in wild career. The lark rose up carolling ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... who will teach these new sciences or open the eyes of the child to the beauties around him? Not everyone can do it. It will require a master. Teaching "at" these things in a dull, perfunctory way will do no good. It would be better to leave them untaught. We have, everywhere, too much "attempting" to teach and not enough teaching, too much seeming and not enough being, too much appearance ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... dull and gloomy, a gray sky hung over the desolate hills, and Millicent, sitting alone on a rocky slope, felt troubled and depressed. Beneath her, the long hollow that crossed the big divide stretched back, colored in cheerless neutral tints, into drifting mist. It was sprinkled with little ponds, and ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... quality, as well as for methods of marketing the large production of Harford county. A move in the right direction has been started by the forming of associations, which seek to build extensive warehouses and aid weak packers to carry stock, instead of forcing it upon a dull market. ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... Florence, and he wishes for no modern ones, save Ary Scheffer's 'Christis Consolator,' mentioning a few of his special favourites to be procured if possible. For the Melanesians, pictures of ships, fishes, and if possible tropical vegetation, was all the art yet needed, and beads, red and blue, but dull ones; none not exactly like the samples would be of any use. 'It is no good sending out any "fancy" articles such as you would give English children. "Toys for savages" are all the fancies of those who manufacture such toys for sale. Of course, any manufacturer ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... passed. Now and then it stopped on its way to play with a straw, or chase a fly, and by degrees got a long distance from the tinsmith's shop. It was now late in the afternoon, a drizzling rain had begun to fall, and it was so dull and cold that it was almost like winter. The kitten began to feel wet and miserable. It looked round for shelter and warmth, shook one little damp paw, ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... room, could hardly repress a smile at their mistake, solemnized as they were, and I too, for that matter, by my recent demise. A sensation (the word you see is material and inappropriate) of etherealization and imponderability pervaded me, and I was not sorry to get rid of such a dull, slow mass as I now perceived myself to be, lying there on the bed. When I speak of my death, let me be understood to say that there was no change, except that I passed out of my body and floated to the top of a bookcase ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... anything I had experienced before. The house was dark, being surrounded and over-topped by a small but dense park climbing up an eminence above it; all the rainwater coming down this slope remained in stagnant pools about the lower story, the stones of which were of a dull and dirty green, being covered with moss. There was a queer circuitous kitchen round the base of the stairs, and the dishes prepared in it would have had to be carried up the stairs through an outside passage before arriving ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... has been a blank," she proceeded, "an empty dream—a dead, dull level; insanity, vengeance, ambition, all jostling and crossing each other in my unhappy mind; not a serious or reasonable duty of life discharged; no claim on society—no station in the work of life—an impostor to the world, and a dupe to myself; ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the dimly lighted cell. Then she saw the square window, the cobwebbed walls, and close at hand a narrow pallet, on which lay a woman in a coarse and soiled night-dress. She was tall and gaunt: one arm was thrown over her head, framing a heavy-jawed, livid face, with dull black ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... at the vineyard. The morning had dawned bright and clear. But the sky had soon clouded, and by nine o'clock there was a light shower, followed by others at brief intervals. By noon the rain had settled into a dull, steady downpour. The clouds hung low, and seemed to grow denser instead of lighter as they discharged their watery burden, and there was now and then a muttering of distant thunder. Outdoor work was suspended, and I spent most of the ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... caught up his tomahawk and two spears, and was going across country without another word, but George cried out in dismay, "Oh, stop a moment! What! to-day, Jacky? Jacky, Jacky, now don't ye go to-day. I know it is very dull for the likes of you, and you will soon leave me, but don't ye go to-day; don't set me against flesh ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... there is," Gilbert hurled at her from the other side of the table. "Fielding was an artist, inspired by God, but Lecky was simply a fact-pedlar, inspired by the Board of Education. Why even that dull ass, Richardson, makes you understand more about his period than ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... painfully aware that he was what he himself would have styled a poor creature. He was as weak, physically, as a girl; he was not particularly clever; he was given to a melancholy which made him pass for dull in society. Ill-health dogged him whenever he tried to achieve anything out of the commonplace. His tenantry regarded him still as a boy, and very few of his few friends set much store by him for his own sake apart ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... to her mind any stimulus or excitement to do it in any common way. But the idea of being actually married to another man while he was absent at a short distance from the city, would be something striking and new, which would vary, she thought, the dull monotony of the common ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... now go to bed and dream. Of which one I know not. My heart is full. Romanse has come at last into my dull and dreary life. Below, the revelers have gone. The flowers hang their herbacious heads. The music has flowed away into the river of the past. I am alone ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... musketry was incessant, and ever and anon came the dull booming of cannon. Soon more Federal troops appeared, and those who had come first moved ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... She quarrelled with Terry, but he interested her. Already she began to look on these two as her superior cultivated ones, aristocrats, with whom it was a joy to live and for whom it was a pleasure to work. To work for them, especially for Marie, she would drop her old Nick, good dull ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... seen it said in foolish books that it is a misfortune to Oxford that so many of the buildings have been built out of so perishable a vein of stone. It is indeed a misfortune in one respect, that it tempts men of dull and precise minds to restore and replace buildings of incomparable grace, because their outline is so exquisitely blurred by time and decay. I remember myself, as a child, visiting Oxford, and thinking that some of the buildings were almost shamefully ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... long ovals, the shell fine but with very little gloss; the ground-colour is a dull white or pinky white, and it is thickly freckled and mottled about the large end and thinly elsewhere with red, in some cases slightly browner, in others purple. The markings have a tendency to form a cap or zone about the large end, and here, where the markings are densest, some little lilac ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... for it was past midnight, but something in his fixed look, his dull suffering, checked her. She took an old stool and sat down near him. Neither spoke, but his eyes gradually turned to hers, and a strange communion arose between them. Though there were no words, he seemed ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her eye was caught by a dull blue gleam from something in the grass beyond the body lying face downward in the deeply rutted track; and there grew in the dazed mind of the girl an impulse to see what ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... satisfaction; but rather was a little brow-beaten for being muddy-headed. He often paused, and pondered, and read, and rubbed his head, and wondered what he ailed. Cole on "God's Sovereignty" was put into his hands to clear his dull head, and make him quite orthodox; but still he could not see how God could be just in condemning men for exactly doing what he had decreed them to do. After many conflicts, your little piece, entitled, "Predestination Calmly Considered" fell into his ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor
... sister, that you were as regular in letting me know what passes on your side of the globe, as I am careful in endeavouring to amuse you by the account of all I see here, that I think worth your notice. You content yourself with telling me over and over, that the town is very dull: it may, possibly, be dull to you, when every day does not present you with something new; but for me that am in arrears, at least two months news, all that seems very stale with you, would be very fresh and sweet here. Pray let me into more particulars, and I ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... was near thee, very near, the Good Spirit whispered his wishes, and I have saved thee for happiness. It is I who must die! I am nothing, have no friends, no one to care for me, to love me, to make pleasant in the lodge the dull hours of night. ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... scenery. It was a relief to be alone with Nature, dripping as she was with recent tears, after the depressing influences of the inn—the dimness, dampness, and dirt, the unreasoning anger of ignorance, the dull routine of human beings whose chief concern was to feed themselves and the animals which helped them to live. As an alterative to the mind, rural life is of real value in the case of those who have been ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... how to gain the love of a cold-blooded, vain and conceited woman. Her letters will show the various stages of her desires as she went along vainly struggling to beat something like comprehension into the dull brain of a clod, who could not understand the simplest principle of love, or the smallest point in the female character. At last she resolved to use an argument that was convincing with the brightest minds with whom she had ever dealt, that is, the power of her own love, ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... accompanied by extensive paralysis of the body, so that the child is not able to sit up. With the gradual improvement of the physical condition, so that the muscles become firm and the child can sit, stand, and even walk, there is a corresponding mental development; from being stupid and dull, the expression of the face brightens and becomes intelligent; the child talks quite as well as other children of its age, and sometimes becomes really intellectually precocious. Here we see the development of the brain as a direct result of the improved physical ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... is none of Mozart's sunlight, his delicious, fresh, early morning sunlight, in Beethoven's music; when he wrote such a number as the first duet, intended to be gracefully semi-humorous, he was merely heavy, clumsy, dull. But when the worst has been said, when one has writhed under the recollection of an adipose prima donna fooling with bear-like skittishness a German tenor whose figure and face bewray the lager habit, when one has shuddered to remember the long-winded idiotic dialogue, the ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... the landlord, "my guest's wits must be precious dull; I tell him I have neither pullets nor hens, and he wants me to have eggs! Talk of other dainties, if you please, and don't ask for ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... can one do on a voyage up the Mississippi? Much as I like him, old father Mississip, one gets awful sick of him after a time, steaming along for days and weeks together, nothing to be heard but clap-clap-clap, trap-trap-trap, or to be seen but the dull muddy waters and the never-ending forest. Day and night, wood and water, water and wood. It is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... where there was shadow we have light. But while we look it seems to fade again, as if it would disappear. Have no fear of that; it is only deepening its shadows. Now we place it under the running water which we have always at hand. We hold it up before the dull-red gas-light, and then we see that every line of the original and the artist's name are reproduced as sharply as if the fairies had engraved them for us. The picture is perfect of its kind, only it seems to want ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "I'm dull enough to find you take an odd way to show your sympathy for him," murmured Mrs. Marshall-Smith, with none of the acidity the words themselves seemed to indicate. She seemed indeed genuinely perplexed. "It's not been exactly a hilarious element in my life either. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... found my shoes, and was sitting in my own private room before a fire which had been lighted for me on the hearth. I was in a state of stupor now, and if my body shook, as it did from time to time, it was not from cold, nor do I think from any special horror of mind or soul (I felt too dull for that), but in response to the shuddering pines which pressed up close to the house at this point and soughed and tapped at the walls and muttered among themselves with an insistence which I could not ignore, notwithstanding my many ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... Commissioners of Internal Navigation. The duties to be performed have reference to the preservation of canal banks, the tolls to be levied at locks, and disputes with the Admiralty as to points connected with tidal rivers. The rooms are dull and dark, and saturated with the fog which rises from the river, and their only ornament is here and there some dusty model of an improved barge. Bargees not unfrequently scuffle with hobnailed shoes through the passages, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... saucepan with a long handle, full of lye-water, and placed it over the fire of the forge. Gervaise, again pushed forward by Coupeau, had to follow this last operation. When the chain was thoroughly cleansed, it appeared a dull red color. It was finished, and ready ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... and spirits, but now looks like a faded striped ribbon, white, yeller, pink, and brown—dappled all over her face, but her nose, which has a red spot on it—lifts up a pair of lack-lustre peepers that look glazed like the round dull ground-glass lights let into the deck, suddenly wakes up squeamish, and says, 'Please, Sir, help me down; I feel so ill.' Well, you take her up in your arms, and for the first time in your life hold her head from you, for fear she will reward you in a way that ain't no matter, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... moment there came a dull roar from the passage beyond. The doors of the court were being opened. Another second, and in rushed and struggled a hideous sea of barristers. Heavens, how they fought and kicked! A maddened herd of buffaloes could not have behaved more desperately. ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... length he paused: a black mass in the gloom, A tower that merged into the heavy sky; Around, the huddled stones of grave and tomb: Some old God's-acre now corruption's sty: 10 He murmured to himself with dull despair, Here Faith died, ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... terrifying thing happened. The earth under his feet began to shake. At first he could not believe it, but when he steadied himself and watched closely, the oscillating motion was undoubtedly there. It was accompanied, too, by a rumble, dull and low, but which steadily grew louder. It seemed to Dick that the round pit was ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... and look enquiringly about them, and set a German official turning round and round like a teetotum—his moustaches bristling, his hair on end, amazed at the din and fearful for the cause of it. It all commenced with a sudden shout, and then was emphasized by the explosion of a rifle. A dull thud followed as a bullet struck one of the huts and perforated it, and then a dozen weapons went off, the somewhat aged guardians of the camp losing their heads and blazing away without aim and ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... is silent—rocks and woods, All still and silent—far and near! Only the Ass, with motion dull, Upon the pivot of his skull Turns round his ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... upon the matter with another face. He said that since his last wife died, I think some fifty years before, he had found life very dull because he missed the exercises of her temper, and her habit of presenting things as these never had been nor could possibly ever be. Now, however, it grew interesting again, since the marvels which were happening in Egypt, being quite contrary to Nature, reminded ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... a strange rattling of wooden pieces, shaken in a bag, and as each piece is drawn, a bustling man with an obstreperous voice, calls out the number; not in full, sonorous German, but in broad, uncouth Platt Deutsche (low German), and eager tongues respond from distant corners claiming the prize. A dull-headed game is this, fitted only for the most inveterate gamblers; but it yields money to the Stadt, ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... cock never drinks before he calls to his hens to come and drink with him; I invite you to follow my example. I do not know what you may think; but, for my part, I cannot reckon him a wise man who does not love wine. Let us leave that sort of people to their dull melancholy humours, and seek for mirth, which is only to be found in ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... certain that they are pursued, as also who is the pursuer. She has heard the question asked by Aguara, recognising his voice; heard also the dull thud of his club as it descended on the skull of the unfortunate man; and now again hears the trampling of hoofs renewed and drawing nearer. She has still hold of Francesca's hand, and for a moment debates within herself what is best to be ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... appearance is that of primitiveness; the log-cabins seem to be only temporary expedients,—wooden tents, as it were. The men and women who are seen at the railroad stations are of the Tartar type, the ugliest of all humanity, with high cheekbones, flattened noses, dull gray eyes, copper-colored hair, and bronzed complexions. Their food is not of a character to develop much physical comeliness. The one vegetable which the Russian peasant cultivates is cabbage; this, mixed with dried mushrooms, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... beloved in the Emerald Isle for the first time since Charles James Fox. Nor should his great work for Ireland obscure the grand achievements of the earlier years when he led the Liberal party through its wonderful program of reform in England; nor should any prejudice against the friend of Ireland dull our perception to the clear voice which so often pleaded the cause of ignorance and oppression at home and abroad, and touched the best that was in the conscience of his countrymen. A good, great, learned, eloquent statesman, William Ewart Gladstone towers in ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... an impetuous muddy torrent, whose hoarse voice, mingled with the deep grumbling noise* [The dull rumbling noise thus produced is one of the most singular phenomena in these mountains, and cannot fail to strike the observer. At night, especially, the sound seems increased, the reason of which is not apparent, for in these regions, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... eminently peaceful scene. So still was the atmosphere, so unruffled the water, that the island and the piratical-looking schooner seemed to float in the centre of a duplex world, where every cloudlet in the blue above had its exact counterpart in the blue below. No sounds were heard save the dull roar of the breaker that fell, at long regular intervals, on the seaward side of the reef, and no motion was visible except the back-fin of a shark as it cut a line occasionally on the sea, or the stately ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... Those who were at a distance did not mind so much. A domestic squabble at a certain distance is interesting, like an engagement viewed from a point beyond the range of guns. In such a position one may some day be placed oneself! Moreover, it gives a touch of excitement to a dull evening to be able to say sotto voce to one's neighbor, "Do listen! The Skratdjs are at it again!" Their unmarried friends thought a terrible abyss of tyranny and aggravation must lie beneath it all, and blessed their ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... some of the residents were discussing, as they crocheted, knitted, or embroidered in Miss Major's room on a dull May morning. ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... expected, the mountain air did her good. Within three months her complexion cleared up and she took on several pounds in weight; color came into her lips and a snappy expression into her formerly dull eyes. Duffield, who had been so severe in his criticism of her appearance, began to take notice and to extend invitations to go driving, or to lunch, or for a walk, but she invariably answered that she could only go out ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... you, bless you, my children." As he spoke he smiled at the entire group with the most delightful interest and pleasure. He was dressed in a straight black coat with a plain silk vest cut around a white collar that buttoned in the back, and his dull gold mane was brushed down sleek and close to his beautiful head. Not a flash of expression in his strong face showed that he felt any resentment or dismay at thus having some of his most prominent church members backslide from his prayer meeting into a fox-trot, and yet I ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... her ears, heard only the dull drone of their voices. She shut her eyes, sometimes, and tried to fancy that she was dreaming and would waken presently,—that she would hear her father rap on the window with his cowhide, and call, "Supper, Dody dear?"—that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... how much is this supper of Christ regarded amongst us, where he himself exhibiteth unto us his body and blood? How much, I say, is it regarded? How many receive it with the curate or minister? O Lord, how blind and dull are we to such things, which pertain to our salvation! But I pray you, wherefore was it ordained principally? Answer: it was ordained for our help, to help our memory withal; to put us in mind of the great goodness of God, in redeeming us from everlasting death by the blood of our Saviour Christ; ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... Not' it is unnecessary to speak. It is one of the best of the stories in Miss Edgeworth's Parent's Assistant, most entertaining of books with dull names. I have my doubts as to whether Benjamin was not too much encouraged above Hal, but that has nothing ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... more uselessly employed than when he is at this trick of bastinadoing asses' hide. We know what effect it has in life, and how your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating. But in this state of mummy and melancholy survival of itself, when the hollow skin reverberates to the drummer's wrist, and each dub-a-dub goes direct to a man's heart, and puts madness ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there, watching, waiting.... The quick darkness of the desert fell like a velvet curtain. The stars burst forth as if lit by an invisible hand. Foulet stirred, leaned forward, gasped. My eyes followed his gaze. Before our plane spread a path of light, dull, ruddily glowing, like the ghost of live embers. It cut the darkness of the night like a flaming finger—and along it we sped as if ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... while—a few hundreds or thousands of years—and the masses of sediments became cemented into sandstone and shale, which we call the Cambrian formation, or the Tonto sandstone. This is to be seen resting both upon the Archaean and Algonkian from the porches of El Tovar. It is composed of strata of dull buff, very different from the brilliant reds—almost crimsons—of the Algonkian, and the bright reds of the strata which later were to rest ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... down she walked, her baby thoughts coming to her as through the roar of a Niagara, through pain and sensitiveness, through aches and a dull, never-ending sameness. ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... as I saw it under those circumstances from those exalted heights, it might also be much worse. And, as for us men—oh, well, we have our faults, no doubt, but we are very good company for all that. It would be a dull world without us, I am sure. Let us take life as it comes, my dear Svava! (Comes nearer to her. She gets up.) What is the matter? Are you still in a bad temper?—when you have had the pleasure of boxing his ears with your own gloves, before the whole family circle? What ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... phrases that utterly destroyed her illogical arguments. She would repeat these phrases, repeat even entire conversations, with pleasure; and, dwelling also with pleasure upon her grievances against her mother, would gradually arrive at a state of dull-glowing resentment. She could, if she chose, easily free her brain from the obsession either by reading or by a sharp jerk of volition; but often she preferred not to do so, saying to herself voluptuously: "No, I will nurse my grievance; I'll nurse it and ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... puzzled, at a loss. Then under the lash of Lessard's bitter tongue the dull red stole up into his weather-browned cheeks, glowed there an instant and receded, leaving his face white under the tan. His left hand was at its old, familiar trick—fingers shut tight over the thumb till the cords stood tense between the knuckles ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... strange magnetic power to follow Hester Prynne wherever she goes, but her suffering is less acute and her character less intricate than her lover's. She bears the outward badge of shame, but after "wandering without a clue in the dark labyrinth of mind," wins a dull respite from anguish as she glides "like a grey and sober shadow" over the threshold of those who are visited by sorrow. At the last, when Dimmesdale's spirit is "so shattered and subdued that it could hardly hold ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... exact, than in the other orders of animals. The eye is much larger in proportion to the bulk of the head, than in any of these. This is a superiority conferred upon them not without a corresponding utility: it seems even indispensable to their safety and subsistence. Were this organ in birds dull, or in the least degree opaque, they would be in danger, from the rapidity of their motion, of striking against various objects in their flight. In this case their celerity, instead of being an advantage, would become an evil, and their flight be restrained by the danger resulting from it. Indeed ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... on the clue, she ceased to be interested in the exhibition. It was, in fact, no more and no less interesting than if it had been their children. Most sorts of love were rather dull, to the spectator. Pamela and Frances were all right; decent people, not sloppy, not gushing, but fine and direct and keen, though rather boring when they began to talk to each other about some silly old thing ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... said that in the dull languor of our summer collapse we felt none of your fierce Northern excitements, I should have excepted the Anthony suffrage case. That touched nearly if not deeply. The ark of the holy political covenant resting here—the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... complications in the east. It has often been affirmed, that after the conquest of the west they forthwith proceeded to the subjugation of the east; a serious consideration will lead to a juster judgment. It is only dull prejudice which fails to see that Rome at this period by no means grasped at the sovereignty of the Mediterranean states, but, on the contrary, desired nothing further than to have neighbours that should not be dangerous in Africa and in Greece; and Macedonia was not really dangerous to ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... It was a dull October morning in Fenchurch Street, some weeks after the events with which our story opened. The murky City air looked murkier still through the glazed office windows. Girdlestone, grim and grey, as though he were the very embodiment of the weather, stooped over his mahogany ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... man right dull, wherfore for nat to be gainsayeng and rendant ung homme fort empos, pour quoy pour non estre ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous
... lady about forty years old, kept a boarding-house, called Russell House, at Brighton, in a dull but genteel part of the town—so dull that even those fortunate inhabitants who were reputed to have resources in themselves were relieved by a walk to the shops or by a German band. Miss Toller could not afford to be nearer the front. Rents were too high for her, even ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... there is no need to be fat, his clothes bulge where no clothes are expected to bulge, and he is the kind of man who loses a cap-badge once a week, preferably just before the C.O. comes round. There is only one saving grace about him. He can always be trusted to volunteer for a dull lecture or outing to which nobody else wants to go, but to which certain numbers have to be sent. His invariable reply to the question is, "Yiss, I'll ger-go, it's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... ultra-light projectors, like searchlights with three-foot lenses, which lined the wall. The floor beneath their feet was not a level steel platform, but seemed to be composed of many lenticular sections of dull blue alloy. ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... assigned to this department are entirely ignorant of their duties and unfit for any command. I assure you, Mr. President, it is very difficult to accomplish much with such means. I am in the condition of a carpenter who is required to build a bridge with a dull axe, a broken saw, and rotten timber. It is true that I have some very good green timber, which will answer the purpose as soon as I can get it into shape and ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... discretion. But remember, if you ever feel tempted to disclose a single word of these hidden matters, there are Unseen Powers who will amply avenge the profanation. Know, then, that since my Beloved was snatched from me by what dull men call death, all my faculties have been concentrated on the effort to discover some link of communication with the Invisible World. I will not dwell on my toils and sufferings, the terrible sights I have braved ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... his victim. I refer to the business crises at intervals of five to ten years, which wrecked the industries of the nation, prostrating all weak enterprises and crippling the strongest, and were followed by long periods, often of many years, of so-called dull times, during which the capitalists slowly regathered their dissipated strength while the laboring classes starved and rioted. Then would ensue another brief season of prosperity, followed in turn by another crisis and the ensuing years of exhaustion. As commerce developed, making the nations ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... tall, strong girl, already fully developed, and handsome in a rather dull and heavy way. Her hands and feet were beautifully made, her hair, although neglected, of a wonderful silky bronze, and her skin naturally of the clear creamy type that sometimes accompanies such hair. But Martie ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... in occupation of the Black Country, if Oxford were being daily shelled, as Rheims is, and if with a favouring breeze London could hear the dull rumble of the bombardment, as Paris can, I wonder if Members would still be encumbering the Order-paper with the sort of trivialities ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 29, 1916 • Various
... you some mad scarlet thing by Dvorak. The pallid figures on the tapestry are smiling at us, and the heavy eyelids of my bronze Narcissus are folded in sleep. Don't let us discuss anything solemnly. I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood. Don't degrade me into the position of giving you useful information. Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... twisted and bent, drift on the snow.—The common locust tree, Robinia Pseudacacia, blossoms and produces large numbers of thin, flat pods, which remain of a dull color even when the seeds are ripe. The pods of the locust may wait and wait, holding fast for a long time, but nothing comes to eat them. They become dry and slowly split apart, each half of the pod usually ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... need, when sickness and natural infirmities will lay hands on the mind or body. The debauch of to-day will borrow from to-morrow or from next week, or month, or year, that which can not be restored. The bloated face, the dull, glassy eye, the furtive glance of fear and shame, the trembling gait, all speak of ravages produced by other causes than those of time. Indeed, the flight of years can produce no such effects, for inexorable and wearing as fleeting days ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... porch, took a cigar from the jar where it had been kept moist with half an apple, and they went out to enjoy the cool freshness of the evening. The sun had sunk out of sight, the mood of the desert had changed. All of the dull gray monotone was gone. All the length of the long, low western horizon the dross of the garish day was being transmuted by the alchemy of the sunset into red and yellow gold, molten and ever flowing, as though spilled ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... held the great iridescent scales that formed isotopes after death. From some marsh-bamboo and some wire-vines he formed a shield. By that time it was midnight. He turned his light on the pool where the saurian had been, and shuddered. The water was dull red, and alive with creatures fighting each other to get to the carcass. The surface was covered with flying things, some small, some huge, all fighting, fighting. Life on Venus was an eternal, bloody fight. This slaughter, once started, would go on for weeks, until the fighting ...
— The Wealth of Echindul • Noel Miller Loomis
... of beys, of pachas, of rajahs, of nabobs, have shown themselves as great masters of statecraft as the members of the Committee of Public Safety. Djezzar, we imagine, was superior to any of them in their new line. In fact, there is not a petty tyrant in Asia or Africa so dull or so unlearned as not to be fully qualified for the business of Jacobin police and Jacobin finance. To behead people by scores without caring whether they are guilty or innocent; to wring money out of the rich by the help of jailers and executioners; to rob the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the spinners it is again run off on reels to be taken to the dye house. First the yarn is boiled off in soapy water to remove the remaining gum. Now the silk takes on its luster. Before it was dull like cotton. The silk is now finer and harder ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... please others in the village, who thought the boy dull. One man meeting Mr. Grant in the street, said bluntly: "I hear that your boy is going to West Point. Why didn't our Representative pick some one that would be a credit to ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... offered on the subject, and an imperturbable "Yes, sir" had been the extent of Parkinson's comment on the unusual proceeding. After leaving the station they turned sharply along a road that ran parallel with the line, a dull thoroughfare of substantial, elderly houses that were beginning to sink into decrepitude. Here and there a corner residence displayed the brass plate of a professional occupant, but for the most part they were given up to the various branches ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... looked again out of the coach window. The same silence prevailed. The children were still in front of the house, with their fingers in their mouths staring at the carriage. At a distance the dull lowing of the cows in their stables and the barking of dogs were to be heard. No human being, except the few children, was to be seen; even the superintendent did not make his appearance, although ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... and came. That was all there was of it. I looked at him long, my head still wagging. He had done this sort of thing before. I had never understood it. It was this that I meant when I had called Pierre, dull of wit as he seemed, the most ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... is that luminous colour which gives value to all others. If you compose a window in which there shall be no blue, you will get a dirty or dull (blafard) or crude surface which the eye will instantly avoid; but if you put a few touches of blue among all these tones, you will immediately get striking effects if not skilfully conceived harmony. So the composition of blue glass singularly preoccupied ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... of my friend Brunow!" he exclaimed. "Sir, I am delighted to meet you. And Brunow is here again? What news! And do you stay long? Oh, once again life will be bearable. In this dull hole, sir, I pledge you my most sacred word of honor, a man has but one contemplation; his thoughts are all towards suicide. Figure for yourself the life we lead here: the commandant a bachelor of sixty, and "—he lowered his voice and ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... but little in shade, the 6d, printed in comparatively small quantities, provides a number of striking tints. In his check-list, Mr. Howes gives "black-violet, deep-violet, slate-violet, brown-violet, dull purple, slate, black brown, brownish black, and greenish black", and we have no doubt the list could be considerably amplified, though the above should be sufficient for the most exacting ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... dull or cold land; No! she's a warm and bold land; Oh! she's a true and old land— This native land ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... singular thing," said he, "and mankind a very singular people. You suppose yourself to love my brother. I assure you, it is merely custom. Interrogate your memory; and when first you came to Durrisdeer, you will find you considered him a dull, ordinary youth. He is as dull and ordinary now, though not so young. Had you instead fallen in with me, you would to-day be as strong ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on him you fall! When others dance, he weighs the matter: If he can't every step bechatter, Then 'tis the same as were the step not made; But if you forwards go, his ire is most displayed. If you would whirl in regular gyration As he does in his dull old mill, He'd show, at any rate, good-will,— Especially if you heard and heeded ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... in long, graceful curve, it swept around an elbow of the snow-mantled stream and disappeared among the roofs and spires of far-away Braska. The boys, with the agile energy of their kind, had leaped out to scamper about on the rimy buffalo-grass, dull gray, dried and withered, yet full of nutriment for the little droves of horned cattle already browsing placidly along the slopes where but a few years before the Sioux and Cheyenne chased great herds of bison. Hastings ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... Sabbath's eve of love, When nature seem'd more holy; And nought in life was dull, but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... is a many-cornered thing; having its sharp points that sting, and its jagged points that wound; with others so dull and heavy and immoveable that one is ready to wish they could pierce through and make an end. And it is quite impossible to tell beforehand on which of them we may happen ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... thinker who can carry simultaneously two or three points of issue, or possibilities. Fourth, the question to gain a ready response must be interesting. Not only must the lesson as a whole be interesting, but the questions themselves must have the same quality. Dull questions can kill an otherwise good lesson. The form of the question is thus a big factor in gaining a ready response. All the qualities which gain involuntary attention can be used in framing an interesting question—novelty, exaggeration, contrast, ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... that untowardness in his outward appearance, which never afterwards left him, that made his schoolfellows consider him a dull boy, fit only to be the butt ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... enjoyment to the chickadee, and he is never so evidently and conspicuously contented as in very cold weather. In summer he withdraws to the thickets, and becomes less noisy and active. His plumage becomes dull, and his brisk note changes to a fine, delicate pee-peh-wy, or oftenest a mere whisper. They are so much less noticeable at this season that one might suppose they had followed their gold-crest companions to the North, as some of them doubtless do, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... stars are out, and by their glistening light, I fain would whisper in thine ear a tale; Wilt hear it kindly? and if long and dull Believe me far more ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... the dull weeks succeeded each other in the life of Agnes. She faced her position with admirable courage, seeing her friends, keeping herself occupied in her leisure hours with reading and drawing, leaving no means untried of diverting her mind from the melancholy remembrance of the ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... in the back. Dora, the colored maid who kept the house in order and cooked breakfast and lunch, went away at night. The rooms were very large, with high ceilings. The windows were long and narrow and hung with heavy, dusty curtains. The furniture was very old and very dull and dark, but Keineth loved the great chairs into which she could curl herself and read for hours ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... and the sky during the morning slowly assumed a dull, leaden hue. The storm came on in the afternoon, heavily pattering, and pouring, and blowing against the windows, and obscuring the little light of an autumn twilight. I wandered through the few small rooms of the cottage, endeavoring ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... Majesty's ball last night was, I am told, rather dull, though she herself seemed in high spirits, as if she were pleased at retaining her Ministers. She has a great concert on the 13th, but to both, as I hear, the invitations have been on a very exclusive ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... the courage to appear as usual at the Court; but a worm was gnawing him within and destroyed him. Oftentimes he opened his heart to me without rashness, and without passing the strict limits of his virtue; but the poniard was in his heart, and neither time nor reflection could dull its edge. He did nothing but languish afterwards, yet without being confined to his bed or to his chamber, but did not live more than two years. Villars, on the contrary, was in greater favour than ever. He arrived at Court triumphant. The King made him ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... saying, that twenty-five or thirty young girls were to be graduated, I concluded that it was better than nothing. I hate such places, as a rule, they are so close and stuffy, and the essays so long and dull, and the girls all look pretty much alike, and I begged Bell to get a seat as near the door as possible, so I could go out when it became unendurable. Just then your letter was brought to me, and after reading it, nothing could have kept me from Eloise Smith. I asked Bell ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... his tracks. His face went red, then white, then flushed a dull red again. For a moment there was a deathly silence and then the Montenegrin sprang toward Hal with a cry of fury. The boy stood ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... smuggled in on his cruiser-yacht from the east end of Cuba, and so-forth and so-forth until I began to feel that the only important thing in the world was the possession and dispensation of alcohol. And out of it I got the headache without getting the fun. I had the same dull sense of being cheated which came to me in my flapper days when I fell asleep with a mouthful of contraband gum and woke up in the morning with my jaw-muscles tired—I'd been facing all the exertion without ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... Why so dull and mute, young sinner? Prithee, why so mute? Will, when speaking well can't win her, Saying nothing ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... was told was a creeping plant [34]; made and worn by men only. The latter material is obtained by splitting the fibre into thin strips. These strips and the strips of split cane-like material are rather coarse in texture. The former are of a dull red-brown colour (natural, not produced by staining) and the latter are stone-yellow. The two are plaited together in geometric patterns. The width of the belt is about 2 inches. It only passes once round the man's body; and the plaiting is finished with the belt on the body, so that it ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... which had pain in it, and she felt a real pang of compunction. He had gripped the back of a chair; his face had lost its heaviness. A dull flush coloured his cheeks. Noel had a feeling, as if she had been convicted of treachery. It was his silence, the curious look of an impersonal pain beyond power of words; she felt in him something much deeper than mere disapproval—something which echoed within herself. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... artificial moonlight of the electric lamps, against the background of southern garden,—the outlines and masses, dim and mysterious in the night, of palms and cypresses, of slender eucalyptus-trees, oleanders, magnolias, of orange-trees, where the oranges hung, amid the dark foliage, like dull-burning lanterns. A crescent of diamonds twinkled in the warm blackness of her hair. She wore a collar of pearls round her throat, and a long rope of pearls that descended to her waist, and was then looped up and caught at the bosom by an ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... silk became blue; a dim, dull, sepulchral, leaden tinge fell over its purity. The hum of gnats arose, the bat flew in circling whirls over the tents, horns sounded from all quarters, the sun had set, the sabbath had commenced. The ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... this question depends on which will get the best of it, the real heat of the iron or the latent heat of the lead. Probably the iron will smite furthest into the ice, as molten iron is white and glowing, while melted lead is dull. ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... whether the chord shall be in minor or major key—which produces a tone of thought, now sublime, and now brimming over with coruscations of wit from almost the same incidents; and yet all those faculties of the soul, though not destroyed, are held in abeyance, because the body casts the dull shadow of its own inability and degradation over the spirit—because the spirit is still allied to the flesh, and ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... daily wages are beginning to understand that capital, though sometimes vaunting its importance and clamoring for the protection and favor of the Government, is dull and sluggish till, touched by the magical hand of labor, it springs into activity, furnishing an occasion for Federal taxation and gaining the value which enables it to bear its burden. And the laboring man is thoughtfully inquiring whether in these circumstances, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... wounded by a sharp blade. The mark was not disfiguring, particularly when his features were in repose; but when he was agitated by some violent passion or uncontrollable emotion, the edges of the scar assumed different hues, and appeared of a dull white ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... Disposition of the French Government" passed through four editions in England, and was commended by Lord Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review (Vol. XVI, p. 1). The American Quarterly Review did not share the same happy fate. The Monthly Review said of it, "It is as dull a work of the kind as any that we know of. It is heavier even than the Westminster when burthened by the lucubrations of Jeremy Bentham." Neal, in Blackwood's (XVI, 634), sarcastically styled Walsh "The ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... They are to be found in every suburb, creating wonder in all thoughtful minds as to who can be their tens of thousands of occupants. The houses are a little too good for artisans, too small and too silent to be the abode of various lodgers, and too mean for clerks who live on salaries. They are as dull-looking as Lethe itself, dull and silent, dingy and repulsive. But they are not discreditable in appearance, and never have that Mohawk look which by some unknown sympathy in bricks and mortar attaches itself to the residences of ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... the dry bones. One summer morning an awe fell on the parish as it ran from one to another that the guard of the Yarmouth and London Royal Mail had left word with the ostler at the Spread Eagle that George the Fourth was dead; then a certain dull sound as of cannon firing afar off had been wafted across the German Ocean, and had given rise to mysterious speculations on the subject of Continental wars, in which Suffolk lads might have to ''list' as 'sogers'; ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... small or large, commonly pea- or bean-sized, rounded or irregularly-shaped, not infrequently slightly raised, macules. When well established they do not entirely disappear under pressure. At first a pale-pink or dull, violaceous red, they later become yellowish or coppery. The eruption is generally profuse; the face, backs of the hands and feet may escape. It persists several weeks or one or two months; as a rule, it is rapidly responsive ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... her reel backwards and fall, with a queer grotesque movement, head over heels down the stone steps. The dull thud her body made as she fell on the half landing echoed up and down the bare well of ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... and himself go. He took Sir G. Ascue with: him, whom, I believe, he hath brought into play. At noon to the 'Change and thence home, where I found my aunt James and the two she joyces. They dined and were merry with us. Thence after dinner to a play, to see "The Generall;" which is so dull and so ill-acted, that I think it is the worst. I ever saw or heard in all my days. I happened to sit near; to Sir Charles Sidly; who I find a very witty man, and he did at every line take notice of the dullness ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... his only surcease. And as a rule, it was a poor one. For seldom did he have enough ready money to buy wholesale forgetfulness. More often he was able to purchase only enough hard cider or fuseloil whisky to make him dull and vaguely miserable. ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... our seats one moonlight evening upon a raft, and glided down between the dull banks of the Tigris. After seven hours, we landed, about 1 o'clock in the morning, at a poor village, bearing the high sounding name Nimroud. Some of the inhabitants, who were sleeping before their huts, made us a fire and ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... but for his eyes. They wandered over her with a kind of peaceful glee, like sunbeams playing on a statue. Poor Ford lay, indeed, not unlike an old wounded Greek, who at falling dusk has crawled into a temple to die, steeping the last dull interval in idle admiration of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... some villanous-looking faces. They passed with little tramp and a good deal of shuffle,—shabby, wretched, silent. I did not hear a laugh or an oath; I did not see a violent gesture, and hardly a smile, that day. The roistering, roaring, terrible 'Reds,' as I saw them, were weary, dull men, doing ill-directed work ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... big, dull, pain-filled eyes to his and cried: "No! I do not believe it now! I know it is not true! I killed his love for me. It is dead and gone forever. Nothing will revive it! Nothing in all this world. And that is not all. I did not know how to touch the depths of his nature. I never ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... to most of the scenes in Campaspe. But Endymion carries us into the realm of mythology, where all is unreal and where the least heaviness in the pencil of fancy must convert things that should appear golden into dull lead. Lyly's wit strives gallantly to maintain the light tints, pressing fairies and moonbeams into his service, and ransacking the stores of improbability in despair of mingling the impossible and the ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... overheated room the vitiated air had slowly mounted to the brain; soon a third of the spectators nodded in their chairs scarcely able to keep awake; others moved restlessly with a dull sense of physical discomfort, while the law, expressing itself in archaic terms, wound its way through a labyrinth of technicalities, and reached out hungrily ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... at once to sign a decree that thirty days should always elapse between a sentence of death and its execution. After this, Theodosius was allowed to come into the church, but only to the corner he had shunned all these eight months, till the 'dull hard stone within him' had 'melted', to the spot appointed for the penitents. There, without his crown, his purple robe, and buskins, worked with golden eagles, all laid aside, he lay prostrate on the stones, repeating the verse, 'My soul ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge |
