"Dully" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... prize-fighter, one who had taken a number of beatings, but always given better than he had received. His arms were akimbo, his feet planted as firmly as if he were a particularly stubborn brand of tree. He glared down at them, his face expressive of anger, hatred—and, Forrester thought dully, a complete lack of ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the corner of the open space in front of the palace, whence he had a view of the main gate between the two tennis courts, he halted and looked up and down as if he hesitated. A watch-fire smouldering and sputtering in the rain was burning dully before the drawbridge; the forms of one or two men, apparently sentinels, were dimly visible about it. After standing in doubt more then a minute, Bazan glided quickly to the porch of the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... grayish yellow day of autumn that I sat again after an interval on the upholstery of the famous cafe, I looked gratefully up at the brown slave-girl in the picture who blew upon her flutes as sleepily and dully as ever. I ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... "Blood," she said dully. "You mean that you found the broken end? And then—you had my gold pocket-book, and you saw the necklace in it, ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Him who Counsel can bestow, Still pleas'd to teach, and yet not proud to know; Unbias'd or by Favour or by Spite; Nor dully prepossess'd, nor blindly right; Tho learn'd, well-bred; and, tho well-bred, sincere; Modestly bold, and humanely severe; Who to a Friend his Faults can sweetly show. And gladly praise the Merit of a Foe. Here, there he sits, his chearful Aid to lend; A firm, unshaken, uncorrupted ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... stifling lethargy benumbed his senses. There was stupor in his brain, and all his limbs ached dully. He opened dazed eyes upon blank darkness. In his ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... He declined dully. He had had enough. But he drained the last of a bottle into his glass and accepted a cigar which I offered him. While he was lighting it I had a sort of confused impression that he wasn't such a stranger to me as I had assumed he was; and yet, on the other hand, ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... I'm sure of this"—I was fingering the ring as I spoke. The reproduction of our friends had faded, now, leaving that dully glowing pale blue light once more. "This ring is absolutely real; it's no hallucination. It performs as well in broad daylight as in the night; no special conditions needed. It's neither a fraud ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... only one more impression. He was dully aware that some time had passed. He shivered. He thought the wind had grown angry with him, for it no longer whispered. It shrieked, and he could make nothing of its wrath. He struggled frantically to emerge from the pit. ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... Greek and Latin, and the Latin verses were exercises out of which I got much real enjoyment, and some of the pride of authorship. But it was possible to be very idle, and to get much contraband help in work from other boys. Most of the school work consisted of repetition, and of classical books, dully and leisurely construed. I do not think I ever attempted to attend to the work in school; and there were few stimulating teachers. I needed strict and careful teaching, and got some from my private tutor; but otherwise there was no individual attention. ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the trumpet-calls rang out to one another in answering voice, imperatively calling off the attacking forces. Impelled to retire by this constant clamour, all the Chinese soldiery must have retreated, except a few straggling snipers, who remained for a few minutes longer, dully and methodically loosing off their rifles at our barricades. Ten or fifteen minutes passed, and then, as if the growing solitude were oppressing them, these last snipers desisted, and, coolly rising and disclosing their brightly coloured tunics and ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... Her week in the cotton mill had fixed indelibly on her mind the picture of the mill child, straggling to work in the gray dawn, sleepy, shivering, unkempt; of the young things creeping up and down the aisles between the endlessly turning spools, dully regarding the frames to see that the threads were not fouled or broken; of the tired little groups as they pressed close to the shut windows, neglecting their work to stare out into a world of blue sky and blowing airs—a world they could see but not enter, and ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... The road climbed dully up for half an hour, and then with a quick turn stretched out over splendid downs, beyond which lay a narrow glittering strip of grey sea. "There is the sea," announced Brigit, perfunctorily. It was not intrinsically beautiful, the scene, but as some chord in the human ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... flying the stars with a bad hangover, but Kieran had one. His head ached dully, he had an unpleasant metallic taste in his mouth, and his former ebullience had given way to a dull depression. He ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... his writing-table and straightened his back with a long sigh, clenching both hands tightly, and stretching both arms over his shoulders, as he moved across the little room to its window. The window gave him an extensive view of dully gleaming roofs and chimney-pots, seen through driving sleet, towards the end of a raw forenoon in February. The roofs he saw were those of one of London's cheap suburbs; first, a block of "mansions" similar to ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... Onward, ever onward, swung the great, long column of the hunters. Dully, then even faintly, came the ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... dimness, as he walked back and forth hunting for the fan or bringing her the water, he looked weirdly large—like, she thought dully, a fairy giant curiously draped. But the serenity of his expression touched her. She was glad she ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... before him the tiny neon tube flickered dully, glowed briefly like a piece of red-hot iron, then went out. In a moment it was glowing again, and then quickly its brilliance mounted till it was a line of crimson. Morey snapped the switch from the general ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... fattening on the poor waste of the desperately poor, fattening in the sun that drove their wretched betters to the daily fight with starvation, fattening in the vile filth to which starvation was dully indifferent, since cleanliness meant labour ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... to persuade, my loving Proteus: Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits. Were't not affection chains thy tender days To the sweet glances of thy honour'd love, I rather would entreat thy company To see the wonders of the world abroad, Than, living dully sluggardiz'd at home, Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness. But since thou lov'st, love still, and thrive therein, Even as I would, when ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... so peculiarly and so stolidly hanging in the air came plunging down toward them. From it there reached down twin fans of death and destruction: one flaming and almost invisibly incandescent violet which tore at the eyes and excruciatingly disintegrated brain and nervous tissues; the other dully glowing an equally invisible red, at the touch of which body temperature soared to lethal heights and foliage ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... flares up and dies out.... Who is that coughing yonder so hoarsely and dully? Curled up in a ring, my aged dog, my sole companion, is nestling and quivering at my feet.... I feel cold.... I am shivering ... and they are all dead ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... "Yes," she answered dully, "to-night. I have the the tickets. Don't you remember what day this is?" She strove to make her tone one of the most casual inquiry, but the attempt was miserably futile before the urge ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... he wondered—and dully thought that he couldn't see her, of course, and then suddenly knew that he must. After all, there didn't seem to be much use in saving for the sake of saving when all the saving you could possibly do didn't bring you one real inch nearer to what you ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... maybe you'd gone back to Eastshore," said Louisa dully, "but Sarah and Shirley said no, your brother was ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... senses came back he found that he was lying on hard-frozen ground. There were dark firs about, but, a little farther on, the rails glistened in the moonlight, and he dully realized that he had fallen off the car. A faint snorting and a rumble that echoed across the forest showed that the train was going on. Foster lay still and listened until the sound died away. It looked as if nobody but the men who had attacked him knew there ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... silent, till my usual hour; and might have been almost deceived in the man's nature but for one passage, in which his perfidy appeared too plain. Here was the passage; of which, after what he knows of the brothers' meeting, the reader shall consider for himself. Mr. Henry sitting somewhat dully, in spite of his best endeavours to carry things before my lord, up jumps the Master, passes about the board, and claps his brother on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... would entreat thy company To see the wonders of the world abroad, Than, living dully sluggardized at home, Wear out thy youth with shapeless ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... content; and after that they went to hear it time after time. Well, the beauty of that song, and of all art, is the 'Key of Heaven' itself. For Heaven is a state of being of which we all dream, however dully, in which all have the power of communication with each other; in which all are aware of the universal, possessed by it and a part of it, all members of one body, all notes in one tune, and therefore all the more intensely themselves, for a note is itself, finds itself, ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... are you a friend to truth, sir; it makes me love you the more. It is not the outward, but the inward man that I affect. They are not apprehensive of an eminent perfection, but love flat, and dully. ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... the strangely arresting voice were indeed that Fire-Tongue whose mere name was synonymous with dread in certain parts of the East, then Fire-Tongue was an impostor. He who claimed to read the thoughts of all men had signally failed in the present instance, unless Nicol Brinn stared dully into the smiling face of Rama Dass. Not yet must he congratulate himself. Perhaps the Hindu's smile concealed as much as the mask worn ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... a stretcher; he was dimly aware of an appalling weakness, which grew hourly, then an agreeable indifference enveloped him, and for a long time he lived in a land of unrealities, of dreams. The day came when he began to wonder dully how and why he found himself in a freezing cabin with Doctor Thomas, in fur cap and arctic overshoes, tending him. Bill pondered the phenomenon for a week before he ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... all the width and breadth of the Universe, if Death indeed was the end of everything!—and God or the great Force called by that name was nothing but a Tyrant and Torturer of His helpless creature, Man! So thinking, dully and feebly, he pressed his hand on his aching eyes, to shut out the sight of that grim crowd of fleshless, rigid Shapes that everywhere confronted him, . . the darkness of the place seemed to descend upon him ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... of the soaked shirt and the smell of blood turned Dan faint. He felt a sudden tremor in his limbs, and his arteries throbbed dully in his ears. "I didn't know it was like this," he muttered thickly. "Why, they're no better than mangled rabbits—I didn't know it was ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... formes of type fell about into confusion. Paul could pick his way through these blindfold, and many and many a night in the dark he raged out his verses, marching to and fro with the four big dim windows staring dully at him, wall-eyed with countless paper patches, seen as darker blots on ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... where he had hidden it. Yet it did not look half as inviting as it had when he covered it with dirt a few days before. He stared at it dully. Then he put it back in its hole and pawed the ...
— The Tale of Old Dog Spot • Arthur Scott Bailey
... biding thing did not affect the man with the same horror that it would if he had been a picnicker. He simply looked at the sea dully and ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... he said dully. "What's the use bucking the game after your luck is gone? Come on, let's go down-town. Yes, I ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... scanning the scrawl across its pages. A few moments, while its meaning seemed to seep into his slow-acting mind, and then a look of helpless bewilderment, as though the stolid Freshman just could not understand at all, came to his face; a minute John Thorwald stood, as in a trance, staring dully at the letter. ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... was like a person who has taken a narcotic and is dying for sleep, dying for rest from nagging, dying to be let alone, and who mechanically does everything the persecutor asks, taking but dull note of the things done, and but dully recording them in the memory. And so Joan put on the gown which Cauchon and his people had brought; and would come to herself by and by, and have at first but a dim idea as to when and how the change had ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... said, dully. "Well, you've taken my last holiday from me. I'll write to her tonight, ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... safely wav'd, By being courageously out-brav'd; 590 As wounds by wider wounds are heal'd, And poisons by themselves expell'd: And so they might be now agen, If we were, what we shou'd be, men; And not so dully desperate, 595 To side against ourselves with Fate; As criminals, condemn'd to suffer, Are blinded first, and then turn'd over. This comes of breaking Covenants, And setting up Exauns of Saints, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... was deserted, utterly still. At the end of it, the street lamp glowed dully, throwing a patch of ghastly light over the side of the adjoining building. I hurried through the shadows, and as I walked, a single idea had possession of me. I must hurry, I thought, with all possible speed, to that grim house ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... few minutes to get the sense of what they said. He stared at them dully. But when he first repeated it to himself aloud, it seemed already old news; he felt as if he had known it for a very long time: "The MAIL office caught fire yesterday, and the whole thing is burned ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... Dully he recognized that the opportunity for which he had watched and waited so patiently had come and gone a dozen times, for Deede Dawson had now quite relaxed his ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... no longer any black smoke. It had changed to heavy masses of living fire of shifting shades. Great ingots of steel sent the observers a white hot greeting or glowed more coolly as the train shot by them. Huge piles of smoking slag that had gleamed dully behind the mills now were veined with vivid red, looking like miniature ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... into a street-car," she thought dully, and just then a noisy, lighted street-car rushed toward her on a cross-street and she entered it as it stopped to take in a group of workmen. They shouldered by her roughly, and one of them laid his greasy bundle half upon ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... shook her head. "I must do it myself," she said dully. "My mother must have rented Sunnyside without telling my stepfather, and—Miss Innes, did you ever hear of any one being wretchedly poor in ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... better than none. There was nothing against the woman, as far as he knew, except that she whitewashed her face and had strange eyes. The rich Mrs. Ernstein, who was staying at the Villa Bella Vista, was undoubtedly—even dully—respectable, if common. Neither was there any real harm in Miss Wardropp; and poor Dauntrey did not seem to be a ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... lingering sloop, loaded to the gunwales with case goods, worth almost a millionaire's ransom—the dark sailors from Bimimi lolling around on deck, ready to up-sail and flee should the slightest sign of a Coast Guard raid make itself manifest. From off toward the distant shore line there came dully to their listening ears the repeated throb of one or more speed boats hastening to lay alongside and transfer their prearranged quota of cases, after which the burden of getting the illicit cargo safely landed would rest on the shoulders of those who manned ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... of the candle fell into the bottle which was of clear white glass, and there burned for a little while dully before it went out. Never shall I forget the scene illumined by its blue and ghastly light. The dying man lying on the low couch, rocking his head to and fro; the wizard bending over him like some grey vampire bat sucking the life-blood from his helpless throat. The terror in the eyes ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... open the door and climbed out stiffly. Although he wouldn't have confessed it for any reason, his leg had been aching dully for hours. ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... the apartment, and stood dully by the table as she untied the box and lifted half a dozen exquisite white orchids from their bed of maidenhair ferns. Then, trying very hard to keep his voice ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... which ranged from filmy white to the cold dead gray of old cigar-ashes. He wanted to hold back, not dash out into that danger-filled twilight. But already he was roaring over gray-green marshes, then was above fishing-boats that were slowly rocking in water dully opaque as a dim old mirror. He noted two men on a sloop, staring up at him with foolish, gaping, mist-wet faces. Instantly they were left behind him. He rose, to get above the fog. Even the milky, sulky water ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... brisk speech that led to one or two interludes of angry interruption across the Table. When he made an end of speaking, debate relapsed into former condition of languor. Talk dully kept up ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... the house on which their rooms were located, Jack and his guest were unable to see anything of the fire, as the hangar lay in an opposite direction. But the moment they emerged outdoors, the blaze showed dully against the sky above an ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... beyond her grey coifed head. For a minute she was silent. Then great sobs shook her so that Katharine swayed upon her seat. From her hidden face there came muffled and indistinguishable words, and at last Katharine said dully— ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... me yet, O kind friend!" he said dully, "what the traitors mean to do once they have murdered their Caesar. Whom would they set up as his successor? They cannot all be emperors of Rome. For whose sake then do they intend to ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... three short flights of iron that led past tiers of cells, through the tombs, into the prisoner's dock. Isaac dully remembered the huge coils of steam-pipe that curled up the side of the wall. He thought of pythons. As he passed by, the prisoners awaiting sentence held the rods of their doors in their hands, like monkeys, and swore, and laughed, and shot questions ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... regardless of coming shortness of breath, the lad kept on thrusting away, so intent upon his work that he did not bear the faint smothered click as of a latch behind him, nor note a white hand from one of whose fingers glistened dully the stone en cabochon of a big ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... to time, the noise of dropping particles, behind in the room, came dully to my ears. Once, I heard a loud crash, and turned, instinctively, to look; forgetting, for the moment, the impenetrable night in which every detail was submerged. In a while, my gaze sought the heavens; turning, unconsciously, toward the ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... "Thou?" she repeated, dully. "Yea, it is cold here. I am hungry . . . Are there not ahmingmah in the mountains, Ootah? Didst thou not tell me there were ahmingmah in the mountains . . . why do not the men of the tribe seek the ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... his breakfast and did up the morning chores mechanically. He seemed to be in a dream, and wondered dully to himself why he did not cry ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... ended lamely, and fell suddenly into a settled silence. The hard lines about his lips deepened; his eyes, cast to the ground, glowed dully; and in every feature Lucy read the despair that was gnawing at his heart. And with it there was something more—a tacit rebuke to her for having brought Kitty there to ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... "Why should a pyramid Stand always dully on its base? I'll change it! Let the top be hid, The bottom take the apex-place!" And as I bade ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... to his disciples. They looked at him dully. Andrew stood a distance away; his face ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... the County Times office. Harkness was a captain of the battalion that had gone out who had been left behind owing to some illness. The British Expeditionary Force had been in action. There had been scraps of news of some heavy fighting. Harkness said dully, "Hullo, Sabre. I've just been in to see that chap Pike to see if he'd got anything. We've had some news, you know." He stopped. His ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... towards him laughing. Her pearls, nestling in the white cleft of her bosom, gleamed dully, shaken by her quiet merriment. In the short time that he had known her, she had become extraordinarily girlish—almost girlish enough to put back the hands of time for the proper man. "It won't. It won't be wiser. It's never wiser to turn your back on ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... back and drew her closer, without answering, until her eyes also were able to look around the sharp edge of rock. Far away, it seemed a long distance up that narrow tunnel, a lantern glowed dully, the light so dim and flickering as to scarcely reveal even its immediate surroundings; yet from that distance, her eyes accustomed to the dense gloom, she could distinguish enough to quicken her breathing and cause her to clutch the ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... restive colt From whom the galling yoke is just removed, Will rush to freedom, and become once more Untamed and stubborn. But my place is here; Here must I sit and while away the days In meek inaction, burdened with the scorn And scoffing of mankind, mine only task Dully to muse upon my ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... husband was lying before the fire on a cot. There was another man there, your Mr. Holliwell; they were talking, Holliwell was dressing Pierre's wound. I went away like a ghost, and while I was going back, I thought it all out; and I decided to keep you for myself. I suppose," said Prosper dully, "that that was a horrible sin. I didn't see it that way then. I'm not sure I see it that way now. Pierre had tied you up and pressed a white-hot iron into your bare shoulder. If you went back to him, if he took you back, how was I to know that he might not repeat his drunken deviltry, ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... stood there, so near, so very near together and still so infinitely far apart. Dully, almost ploddingly, the ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... the first time to fill his lungs and look about him. Looking back as he ran down the tracks toward the shed where he had left Nigger, he saw shadowy forms of men running around the courthouse, which was now dully illuminated, the light from within dancing fitfully through the window shades. Flaming streaks rent the night from various points—thinking him still in the building the deputies were shooting through the windows. Manti, ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... fail as time wears on. Nerves of steel collapse at last. The relinquishment of the quest came gradually; the crowd thinned; now and again the sound of rapid hoof-beats told of homeward-bound horsemen; languid groups stood and talked dully here and there, dispersing to follow a new suggestion for a space, them ultimately disappearing; even the fire began to die ont, and the site of the cane-break had become a dense, charred mass, as far as eye could reach, with here and there ...
— The Crucial Moment - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... woe, punishment, and all mournfulness to the people all the time. Where you find sin, go ahead and denounce it mercilessly; but do it crisply, cuttingly, not dully and innocuously. Speak to kill. Do not forget that the Master told the people of His day that they "were ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... wondering whether Debs's threats had been carried out, and if consequently he should be compelled to remain in town over Sunday. On the street corners and in front of the newspaper offices little knots of men, wearing bits of white ribbon in their buttonholes, were idling. They were quiet, curious, dully waiting to see what this preposterous stroke might mean for them. In the heavy noonday air of the streets they moved lethargically, drifting westward to the hall where the A. R. U. committees were in session. Oblivious of his engagements, Sommers followed them, hearing the burden of their talk, feeling ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... I expected of him, Skinner," he said dully. "And I'd rather have him die than dog it! This report from the Ecudorian helps some, Skinner. It will do to keep hope alive in my Florry—and every two weeks until the boy is ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... the door and clasped the frightened child to her heart. The three men gathered round them, staring dully. The Hopper from behind the door waited for Muriel's joy over Billie's return to communicate itself to his father and the ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... and uncarpeted rooms which we entered. Whatever he had sought he failed to find, and at last we stood in a desolate apartment looking out into the tangled shrubbery before the windows. The back of the garage was visible from there and I viewed it dully, wondering what evil secret it held, and marveling at the trick of fate which had made me witness of an act ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... He was, in all things essential, Dickens's contemporary. And accordingly the married woman and her child are humiliated by his pencil; not grossly, but commonly. For him she is moderately and dully ridiculous. What delights him as humorous is that her husband—himself wearisome enough to die of—is weary of her, finds the time long, and tries to escape her. It amuses him that she should furtively spend money over her own dowdiness, ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... shake the head at so long a breathing;I warrant thee, Claudio, the time shall not go dully by us; I will, in the interim, undertake one of Hercules' labours; which is, to bring signior Benedick and the lady Beatrice into a mountain of affection, the one with the other. I would fain have it a match; and I doubt not but to fashion it, if you three will ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... Italian fury of her, was dully resentful even, suspecting that in such words from a woman were she twenty times his mother, there was ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... a heavy gesture. "Give Ruth an opiate," he said dully. "Let her forget ... forget!... Good God, can we ever forget—" He stumbled forward, heedless of Brent's arm across his shoulders as the surgeon took the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... seclusion of her room. Lassiter's subtle forecasting of disaster, Venters's forced optimism, neither remained in mind. Material loss weighed nothing in the balance with other losses she was sustaining. She wondered dully at her sitting there, hands folded listlessly, with a kind of numb deadness to the passing of time and the passing of her riches. She thought of Venters's friendship. She had not lost that, but she had lost him. Lassiter's friendship—that was more than love—it would endure, but soon he, too, ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... soul, the watcher left To brood the nearness of his own decay, Dully remarking the slow shameless theft Of the old holiness from day to day, How youth grows tarnished, wisdom changes false,— Till one bends near to ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... could with great joy indulge the pleasing hopes of seeing you, and the very few others that share my esteem; but while Mr W—— is determined to proceed in his design, I am determined to follow him. I am running on upon my own affairs, that is to say, I am going to write very dully, as most people do when they write of themselves. I will make haste to change the disagreeable subject, by telling you, that I am now got into the region of beauty. All the women have (literally) rosy cheeks, snowy foreheads and bosoms, jet eye-brows, and scarlet lips, ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... strove to comprehend—read, laid aside her paper, and went about her own business, which alone seemed dully real. ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... half-smothered cry dragging itself from the squatter's throat. Then he noted that something was wrong. Teola, pale and wretched, had gradually placed a greater distance between herself and the wooden box. Tess had involuntarily drawn closer to it. She dully comprehended that Teola was ashamed of the rabbit-like body, struggling for a mere existence. Expressions of consternation, of indecision and terror swept over her face. Her eyes dropped for an instant upon the silent ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... of a guide-book. I rose when I felt inclined; I was delighted to find it still raining. A dense mist above the rain gave me still greater pleasure. I had started quite at my leisure late in the day, and I did the thing stolidly, and my heart was like a dully-heated mass of coal or iron because I was acknowledging defeat. You who have never taken a straight line and held it, nor seen strange men and remote places, you do not know what it is to have to go ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... decided efforts to keep pace. His walking was no longer mechanical, but conscious. When it becomes so, a man soon tires. Thorpe resented the inequalities, the stones, the roots, the patches of soft ground which lay in his way. He felt dully that they were not fair. He could negotiate the distance; but anything else ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... end of the passage were as solid as rock, and they responded dully to the stroke of the hammer. I sounded them on both sides, retracing my steps to the stairway, becoming more and more impatient at my ill-luck or stupidity. There was every reason why I should know my own house, and yet a stranger and an outlaw ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... the fresher night air had its effect, and Carneta opened her eyes, I led her to the gates, nor did she offer the slightest resistance, but looked dully before her, muttering over and ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... Dreever's philosophical remarks. There was something of a cloud on his brain. To judge from his lordship's words, things had been happening behind his back; and the idea of Molly's deceiving him was too strange to be assimilated in an instant. He looked at the valet dully. ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... widened. Then they dropped before the questioner's searching gaze. "Yes," he went on dully. "I'll need to make a fresh one. There's things—Say," he cried, with sudden, almost volcanic passion. "For God's sake, why did you get around? Why didn't you leave me to the dog's death that was yearning for me?" He laughed harshly, mirthlessly. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... occupied in that neighborhood during the vacation. This bathroom was as much as forty steps distant even from that populated spot, and not a single footfall had sounded in the corridor since Berta had disappeared into the gloom. The light from the outer apartment glimmered dully over the partition. At intervals in the stillness, a drop of water clinked from the faucet out there. Bea found herself holding her breath to listen for the tinkle of its splash. Outside the small window, a pale moon ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... stimulant, and whispered to Buntingford to let her rest a little. He sat there beside her motionless, for half an hour or more, unconscious of the passage of time, his thoughts searching the past, and then again grappling dully with the extraordinary, the incredible statement that he possessed a son—a living but, apparently, an idiot son. The light began to fail, and Miss Alcott slipped in noiselessly again to light a small lamp out of sight of the ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... heart in that express car back to the corn belt. My poor parent, when I again met him, unwrapped me very tenderly, and sat for a long time turning me through very dully. I stayed on his desk for several days, and then fared forth again on my quest, valued this ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... side street to a quiet spot and laid his suddenly burning face against the cool iron of a lamp-post, and said dully: ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... here!" squeaked Ben Griebler, his face dully red. "D'you mean to imply that I'd steal your plan! D'you mean to sit there and tell ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... abruptly there, and his face became drawn into deep lines. Then he continued dully: "When I crossed over ther Virginny line ... a posse was atter me—they sought ter hang me over thar ... ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... before, and after the first few months of observation he had aroused no interest. He had minded his business, paid his way, taken his turn in camp at greenhorn jobs, accounted for his presence on the ground of seeking health, and that was all. Life went on as usual, sluggishly and dully—but on. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... dully at Speed, who sat by the window, brooding over the little woollen skirt on his knees, stroking it, touching the torn hem, and at last folding it ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... held even its erring Church, as Adam dully saw. The streets were darkening, but full even yet of children crowding in and out of the shops. Not a child among them was more busy or important, or keener for a laugh than Adam, with his basket on his arm and his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... rouleaus! how charming chests Containing ingots, bags of dollars, coins (Not of old victors, all whose heads and crests Weigh not the thin ore where their visage shines, But) of fine unclipt gold, where dully rests Some likeness, which the glittering cirque confines, Of modern, reigning, sterling, stupid stamp:— Yes! ready ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... below was the heavy thump of Jeb's boots on the oilcloth covering of the hall floor. Susan, from the window, dully watched the young farmer unhitch the mare and lead her up in front ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... against the cabin wall, was what half a century or more ago had been a living man! Now it was a mere skeleton, a grotesque, terrible-looking object, its empty eye-sockets gleaming dully with the light from the window, its grinning mouth, distorted into ghostly life by the pallid mixture of light and gloom, turned full up ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... didn't prove a lullaby at all, and, as usual these days, the girl cried herself to sleep. Every night, of late, the reaction came. Every morning she awoke with a sense of a heavy burden weighing her down. All day her heart ached, though dully and vaguely for the most part; for if the pain threatened to become acute, she could still drug it with anticipation of the excitement ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... Matterhorn could not but frown on him. He had been unmasked by his own actions. All the polish, the poise, the form that the city had given him had fallen from him like an ill-fitting mantle at the first breath of a country breeze. Dully he awaited the ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... the funeral procession would have reached Kensal Green, and then following in mechanical fashion, prayer-book in hand, the service, stage by stage, until to my unspeakable terror, with the words, dully spoken, "It is all over", she fell back fainting. And here comes a curious psychological problem which has often puzzled me. Some weeks later she resolved to go and see her husband's grave. A relative ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... his cousin—nothing but scraps of information gathered from his mother's letters to him. He would call again in a day or two and make some definite arrangements about their journey to England. Perhaps he had talked more dully than usual. . . . Or could it ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... all four feet once more, with no vestige left of scars or of lameness. And then, for the first time, a steady change that had been so slow as to escape any one's notice dawned upon the Mistress and the Master. It struck them both at the same moment. And they stared dully at ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... Sinclair listened to the sound of hoofs splashing through the shallows of the creek and thudding dully upon the floor of the valley beyond. When the sounds told her that the horseman had disappeared into the timber, she walked slowly to the door, and leaning her arm against the jamb, stared for a long time into the black sweep of woods that concealed the trail ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... no attempt to defend myself; I was not, perhaps, the complete villain they deemed me, but I felt dully that no doubt it all served me ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... this, friend, the end of all that we could do? And have you found the best for you, the rest for you? Did you learn so suddenly (and I not by!) Some whispered story, that stole the glory from the sky, And ended all the splendid dream, and made you go So dully from the fight we know, ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... floundered up and went on again. Doggedly he sought to shut his mind to the pain stabbing through his weary feet, to the constriction of his throat, to the ache of his body so sorely and so long punished. When, had matters been different, he might have cried out: 'God, for a drink!' he now muttered dully, 'God, put him ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... wonders, Rupert Venner hesitated in his decision; and in the next moment it was out of his power to decide. For Rufe, in desperation now, met the boarders at the rail, backed by his half-dozen crazed adherents, and murderous steel glittered dully ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... kicked something that rattled and rolled away from him. He stopped, freezing in his tracks, looking downward, trying to pierce the dully glowing gloom. The thing he had ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... came to himself again, he felt faint and sick, and his head ached dully. This was the effect of the powerful drug which had been used to overcome him, but for the rest he was unhurt and quite himself. He found at once that he was securely bound hand and foot. His ankles were fastened together by a short cord, his hands were tied behind him, and a rope ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... learning, what do you think of commencing author, like me? You have read in books, no doubt, of men of genius starving at the trade: At present I'll shew you forty very dull fellows about town that live by it in opulence. All honest joggtrot men, who go on smoothly and dully, and write history and politics, and are praised; men, Sir, who, had they been bred coblers, would all their lives have only mended shoes, but ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... not speak," he said dully. "Let me end quickly. Ay, I went with them, thinking that he would die on the way, for he was sorely wounded, and I mocked them and threatened them in vain. I led them to this place, and when they knew ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... away," remarked Rance, dully, shaking the ashes from his cigar, which answer, together with the peculiar look which Sonora saw on the other's face, made him at once suspicious that something was being held back from them which they had a right to know. It came about, therefore, that, with ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... to him dully and carelessly; I did not care to bring objections, which arose thick and fast, to everything he said. He tried to assure me—and did so with a great deal of cleverness—that this Tractarian movement was not really an aristocratic, but a democratic ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... are, and quite quelled her poor aunt, too weak to protest even at attacks on the monarchy. But Henrietta was much happier when the niece's holidays came to an end, and she was left to die quietly and dully with the nurse. ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... a small chandler's shop, with "Magnificent Tea, per 2/- lb."; "Excellent Tea, per 1/8d. lb"; "Good Tea, per 1/4d. lb." advertised in great bills upon its windows above a huge collection of unlikely goods gathered together like a happy family in its tarnished abode. Jenny passed the dully-lighted shop, and turned in at her own gate. In a moment she was inside the house, sniffing at the warm odour-laden air within doors. Her mouth drew down at the corners. Stew to-night! An amused gleam, lost upon the dowdy passage, fled across her bright eyes. Emmy wouldn't have thanked ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... and straight and calm in the ferry-boat as it shot swiftly and smoothly across stream. There was a horse attached to a light country wagon on board, and he pawed the deck uneasily. His owner stood near, with a wary eye upon him, although he was chewing, with as dully reflective an expression as a cow. Beside Rebecca sat a woman of about her own age, who kept looking at her with furtive curiosity; her husband, short and stout and saturnine, stood near her. Rebecca paid ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... just time to go over my part and drive to the theater. My dear, delightful Portia! The house was good, but the audience dull, and I acted dully to suit them; but I hope my last dress, which was beautiful, consoled them. What with sham business and real business, I have had ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Dully she recalled the night after Eliot had shown her he had no intention of claiming her love as a succession of interminable hours of mental and physical agony. But now she was hardly conscious of pain—only of a stupefied sense of loss. She felt as if her life were finished, as though all ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler |
