"Duller" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fire, is held by them in esteem and rewarded, in one way or another, for so doing—in other words, it is an advantage to him to possess this power. He who can carve a paddle, or the figure-head of a canoe better, similarly profits beyond his duller neighbour. He who counts a little better than others, gets most yams when barter is going on, and forms the shrewdest estimate of the numbers of an opposing tribe. The experience of daily life shows that the conditions of our present social ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... human affairs. Learned men have made their way to heaven by imitating this music; as have others also by the excellence of their studies. Filled with this sound the sense of hearing has failed among men. What sense is duller? It is as when the Nile falls down to her cataracts, and the nations around, astonished by the tumult, ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... them, when darkness may dissever 2695 The close caresses of all duller plants Which bloom on the wide earth—thus we for ever Were linked, for love had nursed us in the haunts Where knowledge, from its secret source enchants Young hearts with the fresh music of its springing, 2700 Ere yet its gathered flood ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... nothing to do but to put on spaces of red, white, and brown, in the same shape, and gradated from dark to light in the same degrees, and your drawing is done. If you will not look at what you see, if you try to put on brighter or duller colors than are there, if you try to put them on with a dash or a blot, or to cover your paper with "vigorous" lines, or to produce anything, in fact, but the plain, unaffected, and finished tranquillity of the thing before you, ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... day, or for a few days, there is certain to come a great and deadly calm. Uganda is not a subject that excites anybody but Mr. Labouchere and Mr. Burdett-Coutts; and even on them it has a disastrous effect. Mr. Burdett-Coutts is always dull; but Uganda makes him duller than ever. Labby is usually brilliant; while he discoursed on Uganda he actually made people think Mr. Gladstone ought to have made him a Cabinet Minister—he displayed such undiscovered and ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... country, and said something that has remained in my memory ever since. "You Americans," he said, "wear too much expression on your faces. You are living like an army with all its reserves engaged in action. The duller countenances of the British population betoken a better scheme of life. They suggest stores of reserved nervous force to fall back upon, if any occasion should arise that requires it. This inexcitability, this presence at all times of power not used, I regard," continued Dr. Clouston, ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... it the informing idea of his parallel "Lives," and gives form and feature to a grandeur that else were incredible. It appears in the duller work of the industrious Dion Cassius, and in the fourth century forges some of the noblest verse of Claudian. And as we have seen, it is enshrined nine centuries after Claudian in the splendid eloquence of the De Monarchia, and yields such ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... loose raptures, Donne, shall meet with those That do confine Tuning unto the duller line, And sing not but in sanctified prose, How will they, with sharper eyes, The foreskin of thy fancy circumcise, And fear thy wantonness should now begin Example, that hath ceased to be sin! And that fear fans their ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... to say. This seemed to him quite the flattest lunch he had ever sat out with her, while, as for the people round about, he thought he had never seen a duller lot. Perhaps, after all, he had been a little hasty in shutting up the devil so unceremoniously, but it made him laugh to think that the fellow would get no lunch anyway and that his stock of cigars would hardly last him through ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... do not think we felt the disappointment as keenly as the first time we were brought to Savannah. Imprisonment had stupefied us; we were duller and more hopeless. ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... back, and soon the black coats appeared buried between the light-colored bodices, and bare shoulders, half turned toward the table, began to gleam as soft as silk. It was too hot, and the glare of the candles above the table grew ever yellower and duller. Now and again, when a women bent forward, the back of her neck glowed golden under a rain of curls, and the glitter of a diamond clasp lit up a lofty chignon. There was a touch of fire in the passing jests, in the laughing eyes, in the sudden gleam of white teeth, in the reflection ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... the pages of the old romantic ages, ere the world grew cold and gray, When there wasn't a relation between Oxford and the Nation, or a Movement every day, How I marvel at the glamour (in these duller days and tamer) which informed those scenes of glee, At the glamour and the glory of contemporary story, and the Eights as they used ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... often make large fortunes. They are men of imagination about two things—women and money, and, combining their imaginings about both, usually make a wise first marriage. Later, however, they are apt to imagine too much about some little woman without whom life seems duller than need be. They run away, leaving the first wife well enough dowered. They are never intentionally unkind to women, and in the end they usually make the mistake of thinking they have had their money's worth of life. Here was Mr. ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... the prince, differing from that between the peasant and the savage? There are more enjoyments and more privations in the one than in the other; but if, in the latter case, the enjoyments, though fewer, be more keenly felt,—if the privations, though apparently sharper, fall upon duller sensibilities and hardier frames,—your gauge of proportion loses all its value. Nay, in civilization there is for the multitude an evil that exists not in the savage state. The poor man sees daily and hourly all the vast disparities produced by civilized society; and reversing ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of his filial chivalry, took, as it seems, the affair into his own hands, and flattered himself that where his father had failed he should come forth victorious. Poor boy! he has paid dearly for his mistake. His sword has proved duller than his hopes. He has encountered the Chevalier in his turn, and in his turn has bit the dust. Francois de Guise pierced him through and through one day last week near ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... But never fear. Keep silence, and you shall have the bird in your hand, only you must be patient. Hold! I will make you and Monsieur Sidney gentlemen of my bed-chamber, which will give you the entree of the Louvre; and if you cannot get her out of it without an eclat, then you must be a much duller fellow than half my court. Only that it is not their own ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thou huggest in a corner. If thou art one of those eavesdroppers, who would have their moroseness be counted gravity, thou wilt condemn a mirth which thou art past relishing; and I know no other way to quit the score than by writing (as like enough I may) something as dull, or duller than thyself, if possible. If thou art one of those critics in dressing, those extempores of fortune, who, having lost a relation and got an estate, in an instant set up for wit and every extravagance, thou'lt either praise or discommend this book, according ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... getting it out; when they came with fresh clean towels, she sent back for the other kind; and when they had finished wiping the floor and were going, she indicated a crimson fleck the size of a tear which their duller eyes had overlooked. It was plain to me that La Cote Male Taile had failed to see the mistress of the house. Often, how louder and clearer than any tongue, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... reference to her sarcastic powers, as "The Sark," which by general custom became "The Snark." On the whole Miss Strong's pithy, racy, humorous style of teaching made her a far greater favorite than mistresses of duller caliber. She had a remarkable faculty for getting work out of the most unwilling brains. Her form always made excellent progress, and she had a reputation for obtaining record successes in examinations. To judge from the first few days of term, she ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... the plains, where I remained three years; and when the governor wrote to me that he was about to remove from Kentucky, I resigned my commission as captain of scouts, and here I am. I must confess that I am sorry enough for it; for I never saw a duller country than California. There's no society here, no excitement—nothing to stir up a ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... finished, he said slowly, "Sweeting, because my mind is laboring under so many burdens that my wits are even duller than they are wont, will you not have the patience to answer one question that is not clear to me? Do you think it troublesome to tell me why it was that you said, that day in the garden—Now shake off ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... monuments to the maladroitness of a much over-praised Creator. Women, it would seem, actually have smaller brains than men, though perhaps not in proportion to weight. Their nervous responses, if anything, are a bit duller than those of men; their muscular coordinations are surely no prompter. One finds quite as many obvious botches among them; they have as many bodily blemishes; they are infested by the same microscopic parasites; ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... was placed on size and color of the nut, the large, bright brown nuts being considered more desirable than the smaller, duller colored, pubescent nuts. The amount of space between the shell and the kernel was important. If the kernel fitted tightly it was easily broken or chipped in cracking the nut. Thickness of shell was of minor importance as only ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... One was not over civil to you; but Nathanael—yes, certainly you and that juvenile are great friends, considering you have met but four evenings. All in one week, too. Our house is getting quite gay, Miss Tittens; only it is so much the duller in ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... before I began to notice other objects of interest. Suddenly I became aware of the presence of two birds hovering over and diving under the cold water. They were evidently feeding on some aquatic creature which my duller senses ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... guess, then you are duller than I thought," answered Asti in her quick, dry fashion, adding; "however, I will try to translate. The Prince Abi, your noble uncle, means that he has trapped you here, and that you shall not leave these walls save ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... Some chapters were duller than others, and at last I got into a very dull one, about the vine, and it had a good deal of Greek in it, and we have not ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Was ever anything duller than this, more conventional, more commonplace or didactic, less imaginative? Himself added, "You are a romantic idiot, and I love you more than tongue can tell." Francesca did not say what Ronald added; probably a part of this same sentence (owing to the aforesaid ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the waters at Kreuznach. He is going into Egypt;—to see the Pyramids? Stuff! the climate on the Nile is so good for the mucous membrane! Set him down at the dullest of dull places, and he himself is never dull. The duller the place the better; his physician has the more time to attend to him. When you meet him he smiles on you, and says, poor fellow, "The doctor assures me that in two years I shall be quite set up." He has said the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... IV., where the Dutch envoy was so all-powerful, had ceased to exist. A duller eye than that of Aerssens could have seen at a glance that the potent kingdom and firm ally of the Republic had been converted, for a long time to come at least, into a Spanish province. The double Spanish marriages (that of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... his mind better than his marriage, and his savoir vivre was no match for his learning. He bore his spouse and his country-gentleman life patiently enough in general; but every now and then he fell into exasperation. His wife flooded him too persistently, perhaps, with cousins and grandees of the duller sort, whose ideas seemed to him as raw as their rent-rolls were large—till he rebelled. Then he would have his friends; selecting them more or less at random from up and down the ranks of literature and science, till Lady Driffield raised her eyebrows, invited a certain ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with the family of the violets and the lilies? The prescient harebells, do they not let drop their closing blossoms when the heavens are niggard of their dews, or uphold them like cups thirsty for wine, when the blessing, yet unfelt by duller animal life, is beginning to drop balmily down from the rainy cloud embosomed in the blue of a midsummer's ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... the market of poems and plays by Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster, Ludwick Carlell, Shirley, Davenant, Killigrew, and other celebrities dead or living. To this group of Moseley's authors Cowley and Cartwright were soon added; and it was not long before he snapped out of the hands of duller men Denham's Poems, Carew's Poems, various things of Sir Kenelm Digby, and every obtainable copyright in any of the plays of Shakespeare, Massinger, Ford, Rowley, Middleton, Tourneur, or any other of the Elizabethan and Jacoban ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... buttercups must always be The same old tiresome color; While daisies dress in gold and white, Although their gold is duller. ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... whether she would recover her faculties, or remain apathetic for the rest of her life. She was a nervous, sensitive, and overstrung woman at all times, and would suffer far more under a sudden and violent strain than a duller nature could. The view she took in regard to Alexander's disappearance proved that her faculties were not evenly balanced. Of course the story was a very queer one, and Russians are queer people, as the professor said to himself. ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... too deep, probably, for his wisdom; at any rate he had to control himself not to interrupt angrily such dry, interested palaver, the false voice of commerce and of cant. He stared tragically out of the window and saw the stupid rain begin to fall; the day was duller even than his own soul, and Jersey Villas looked so sordidly hideous that it was no wonder Mrs. Ryves couldn't endure them. Hideous as they were he should have to tell Mrs. Bundy in the course of the day that he was obliged to seek humbler ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... demonstrations in his presence, exaggerated by the groundless fear that he had guessed into the deepest springs of her feelings, then she felt those drops of blood congeal. Even if the apothecary had been duller of discernment than she supposed, here was Aurora on the opposite side of the table, reading every thought of her inmost soul. But worst of all was 'Sieur Frowenfel's indifference. It is true that, as he had directed upon her that gaze ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... the tide of wine and wassail fast gaining on the dry land of sober judgment. The company grew merrier and louder as their jokes grew duller. Master Simon was in as chirping a humour as a grasshopper filled with dew; his old songs grew of a warmer complexion, and he began to talk maudlin about the widow. He even gave a long song about the wooing of a widow, which he informed me he had gathered from an excellent black-letter work, entitled ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... R. megalotis is similar to that described for R. humulis by Layne (1959:69-71). The subadult pelage is thicker, longer and brighter than juvenal pelage and closely resembles the pelage of adults; it differs from adult pelage dorsally in being somewhat duller and in having less contrast between ...
— Geographic Variation in the Harvest Mouse, Reithrodontomys megalotis, On the Central Great Plains And in Adjacent Regions • J. Knox Jones
... horses and dogs, his short-horns and orchids; his pictures rested temporarily under a cloud, and he was rarely to be found in the spacious gallery. In London, Victor Nevill enjoyed life with as much zest as his conscience would permit; Madge Foster dragged through weary days and duller evenings at Strand-on-the-Green; and the editor of the Illustrated Universe wondered what had become of his bright young war-artist since the one ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... Trujillos and Tachiras. They are fair to good body without acidity; make a duller roast than Cucutas, but contain fewer quakers. They are used for blending with Bourbon Santos. Boconos are light in color and body. They are of two classes; one a round, small to medium, bean; and the other larger ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... wrong here, Mac," remarked Duller, decisively. "This isn't all accident, and, if you say so, I'll ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... duller was that during them I saw very little of Marie, who now only entered the place in the company of her father. Once I managed to ask her why she did not come oftener and alone. Her face grew troubled as she whispered back, ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... the duller fibre of which cyclists rather than psychists are made; and when, on his return from the City one afternoon, his wife tried to get him to appreciate a certain eeriness in the atmosphere of the new home, he sniffed it dutifully, and declared that he could detect nothing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... way through the Park; the searer, yellower Park of late November. It looked duller and more cheerless than David ever remembered it. The leaves rattled on the trees, and ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... and it is not without reason that Apollo Citharedes, and Jesus of Nazareth, are sometimes represented clad, like women, in flowing robes. The initiator was therefore wise—whatever you may say to the contrary, Dorion—in bestowing light, not on the duller Adam, but on Eve, who was whiter than milk or the stars. She freely listened to him, and allowed herself to be led to the tree of knowledge, the branches of which rose to heaven, and which was bathed with ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... after an interval of tender and tenderly expressed regrets he found himself, in spite of the most strenuous efforts to keep bright and kindly and optimistic in the best style, dull and getting duller—he could disguise the thing no longer. And he weighed more. Six—eight—eleven pounds more. He took a flat in London, dined and lunched out lightly but frequently, sought the sympathetic friendship of several charming ladies, and involved himself ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... dwarfed children of science. Nature, that stores this priceless boon, seems to shrink from conceding it to man—the invisible tribes that abhor him oppose themselves to the gain that might give them a master. The duller of those who were the life-seekers of old would have told you how some chance, trivial, unlooked-for, foiled their grand hope at the very point of fruition; some doltish mistake, some improvident oversight, a defect in the sulphur, a wild overflow in the quicksilver, or a flaw in the bellows, or ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... six months. I do not believe I was ever homesick during all that time. I was too happy to be homesick. The life suited me extremely well. My life in Polotzk had grown meaner and duller, as the family fortunes declined. For years there had been no lessons, no pleasant excursions, no jolly gatherings with uncles and aunts. Poverty, shadowed by pride, trampled down our simple ambitions and simpler joys. I cannot honestly say that I was very sensitive to our losses. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... to supply the new workers that were always needed. But, even so, only those who had a real fitness for it ought to offer themselves, and I thought too that something else would be needed. I wasn't any duller than lots of other church members—even the older ones didn't seem to know much more about the church outside than I did. You would take up collections for the benevolences, but if you told us what they meant, we didn't pay enough attention to get the idea clearly, so as to have ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... appetite is sharper than a scythe; but my indigestion is duller than a whetstone," said the mate, to whom a feast was always prophetic ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... loves of plants. But that it was a good thing for that same paved yard to have such a delicate little figure flitting through it, that it passed like a smile from the grimy old houses and the worn flagstones, and left them duller, darker, sterner than before, there is no sort of doubt. The Temple fountain might have leaped up twenty feet to greet the spring of hopeful maidenhood that in her person stole on, sparkling, through ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... variety to our wood-scenery at all times, and by contrast serves to make the foliage of other trees the more brilliant and conspicuous. In the latter part of summer, when the woods have acquired a general uniformity of verdure, the Junipers enliven the face of Nature by blending their duller tints with the fading hues of the fully ripened foliage. Thus will an assemblage of brown and gray clouds soften and at the same time enliven the deep ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... old smooth-bore muskets, and the smoke from the powder rose in clouds over the undergrowth and drifted to the tree-tops, he had detected the sharp crack of a modern rifle occasionally among the duller reports of the more ancient weapons. The mysterious attackers were apparently numerous and completely surrounded them. Dermot cursed himself for his folly in halting for food instead of pushing on to safety without a stop. But he had calculated on the superstitious fears of ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... find their parents in the wrong; dreadful to have occasion to be ashamed of them. She knew, if her case proved such a one, it would be only one of a great many; she had read of such things, although chiefly among another class of people who were of coarser habits and duller natures, and if they fell had less distance to fall to get to the lowest level of society. But her father!—Dolly cowered with her head down upon the back of a chair, and a cry in her heart calling upon his name. Her father? could she have to blush ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... nothing else could have excited you so much," he went on masterfully, still hypnotizing her with his eyes, until even a duller woman would have grasped his meaning. But maybe he wanted to read out the news himself? Nurse Yorke handed him ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... waited for her chance, scanning the duller columns of the journals, morning and evening with an assiduity which at first puzzled old Jolyon; and when her chance came, she took it with all the promptitude and resolute tenacity ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... great content. So home and to my office, where late. This evening I being informed did look and saw the Comet, which is now, whether worn away or no I know not, but appears not with a tail, but only is larger and duller than any other star, and is come to rise betimes, and to make a great arch, and is gone quite to a new place in the heavens than it was before: but I hope in a clearer night something more will be seen. So home ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... magnificent spectacle, the closing scene of the great drama in Europe, the after-piece to the successful defence of Gibraltar, was eighty-three of the line,—forty-nine allies and thirty-four English. Of the former, thirty-three only got into action; but as the duller sailers would have come up to a general engagement, Lord Howe was probably right in declining, so far as in him lay, a trial which the allies ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... there was beginning to draw to a close,—some of the birds took their departure from the coast,—the dull routine of the place went on as usual, rendered even duller by the absence of the "witch" element of discord,—a circumstance that had kept the superstitious villagers, more or less on a lively tension of religious and resentful excitement—and by-and-by, the rightful minister of Bosekop came back to his duties ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... he hath never fed of the dainties bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal—only sensible in the duller parts; ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... the opportunity escape, but make it a rule always to pursue a weaker with a stronger force. (21) These, indeed, are rules of procedure, which it only requires a simple effort of the mind to appreciate. Creatures far duller of wit than man have this ability: kites and falcons, when anything is left unguarded, pounce and carry it off and retire into safety without being caught; or wolves, again, will hunt down any quarry left widowed of its guard, or thieve what they can in darksome corners. (22) ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... of the Ohio penitentiary remarks that not only in the prison of that state, but in others, depraved appetites and corrupt habits, which have led to the commission of crime, are usually found with the ignorant, uninformed, and duller part of mankind. Of 276 at one time in that institution, nearly all were below mediocrity, and 175 are represented as grossly ignorant, and, in point of education, scarcely capable of transacting the ordinary business ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... been a cowboy, a stage-driver, a bar-tender, a miner; had wandered all over that great Western country and done hard work everywhere, though, as grandmother said, he had nothing to show for it. Jake was duller than Otto. He could scarcely read, wrote even his name with difficulty, and he had a violent temper which sometimes made him behave like a crazy man—tore him all to pieces and actually made him ill. But ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... these merry days Should we, I pray, be duller? No, let us sing some roundelays To make our mirth the fuller. And whilst we thus inspired sing, Let all the streets with echoes ring; Woods, and hills, and everything ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... Be you as dull as e'er you could; (And by the bye 'tis understood, You're not so pleasant, as you're good;) Yet, knowing well your worth and place, I'll welcome you with cheerful face; And though you stay'd a week or more, Were ten times duller than before; Yet with kind heart, and right good will, I'll sit and listen to you still; Nor should you go away, dear Rain! Uninvited to remain. But only now, for this one day, Do go, dear Rain! do ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... mine own—No man can guess what a well-governed trading-house may earn in half a century.—Yes, I tell you, Margery, I can hold out and wait. Two, or at most three months; they will soon slip away. The older we grow and the duller is life, the swifter ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sister of the late Queen Mary, now came to the throne. She was a negative character, with kindly impulses and little intelligence. "When in good humor she was meekly stupid, and when in ill humor, sulkily stupid."[2] But if there was any person duller than her Majesty, that person was her Majesty's husband, Prince George of Denmark. Charles II, who knew him well, said, "I have tried Prince George sober, and I have tried him drunk, and drunk or sober, there ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... qualify, the list of things that must not be done, and the list of things that must be done. Qualification exacts a little exertion, as evidence of good faith, and it is designed to weed out the duller dull and many of the base. Our schooling period ends now about fourteen, and a small number of boys and girls—about three per cent.—are set aside then as unteachable, as, in fact, nearly idiotic; the rest go on to ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... one instant over a steaming saucepan, and the next was lifting a full milk-jug or opening a wine-bottle. Above the clatter of the dishes and the stirring of spoons arose the thick Normandy voices, deep alto tones, speaking in strange jargon of speech—a world of patois removed from our duller comprehension. It was made somewhat too plain in this country, we reflected, that a man's stomach is of far more importance than the rest of his body. The kitchen yonder was by far the most comfortable, the warmest, and altogether the prettiest ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... model dramatist. The merest tyro can count the faults of either on his clumsy fingers. That born critic, the late Sir George Lewis, had barely completed his tenth year before he was able, in a letter to his mother, to point out to her the essentially faulty structure of Hamlet, and many a duller wit, a decade or two later in his existence, has come to the conclusion that Frederick the Great is far too long. But whatever were Carlyle's faults, his historical method was superbly naturalistic. Have we a historian left us so honestly possessed as he was with the ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... street you would rush to the window. And if anyone were to say that you were as cruel as the people who let the lion loose on the man, you would be justly indignant. Now that we may no longer see a man hanged, we assemble outside the jail to see the black flag run up. That is our duller method of enjoying ourselves in the old Roman spirit. And if the Government decided to throw persons of unpopular or eccentric views to the lions in the Albert Hall or the Earl's Court stadium tomorrow, can you doubt that all the seats would be crammed, mostly by people who could not give ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... do, Though I should run away: I bid my Guard Stand, whilst my self advanc'd near these shapes, Which as I did, the little Devil fled, th' other seem'd To turn it's Eyes to fire, and glare upon me; I still advanc'd, Arm'd with my former thoughts, And as I nearer came, the fire grew duller, Yet still it stood, for truly it could not run, Proving, when I laid hold on't, this Old Woman, Cas'd in a Leopard's skin; the fiery Eyes Prov'd but two Lobster-shells: So she confessing, That for a Living she did use these Cheats, Helping poor People to their stolen Goods, In Devils ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... abstract could show—though the few scraps of actual phrase purposely inserted may convey glimpses of it—the vigour and picturesqueness of the recital. That Villehardouin was an eyewitness explains a little, but very little: we have, unfortunately, libraries full of eyewitness-histories which are duller than any ditch-water. Nor, though he is by no means shy of mentioning his own performances, does he communicate to the story that slightly egotistic interest of gossip and personal detail of which his next great ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... a high hand, had disappeared for ever. Now all was bustle, hurry, and confusion, the getting and sending of telegrams, quick dispatches by railway, the watching of markets at a distance, rapid combinations that bewildered Gourlay's duller mind. At first he was too obstinate to try the newer methods; when he did, he was too stupid to use them cleverly. When he plunged it was always at the wrong time, for he plunged at random, not knowing what to do. He had lost ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... and smoked and pondered, And deep in the mystery sunk; And the more Nick Hammer wondered The duller he grew about Funk. The wagoners talked it over, And a new idea to trace Enlivened the dead old village Like a new ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... we lived in Was duller than a drain And nearly as dingy. There were the big College And the pseudo-Gothic town-hall. There were the sordid provincial shops— The grocer's, and the shops for women, The shop where I bought ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... office, was, "At such a time! Just when—Now what is to be done?" True for her that there followed gentle feelings, and gentler yet in her attendance on her patron's obsequies, in the discovery that all of which he died possessed he'd left to her, but it is the duller surfaces that are slowest to give refraction, the least used springs that are least pliant. She was come a long road from her first signs of hardening. She was past, now, the stage where, when grieving for the little old man, she would have felt contrition that her first thought ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... the table; she ate slowly. She did not speak spontaneously, and her replies were very slow in coming. She had to be urged considerably before she would speak and, as a rule, she did not answer. On one occasion she was for a day totally inactive and looked duller. That day and on a few other occasions she wet the bed. There was at times an appearance of dull bewilderment. When, soon after admission, asked whether she felt cheerful or downhearted, she said "downhearted," ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... is the course of a narrative like that which you are perusing. The earlier events are studiously dwelt upon, that you, kind reader, may be introduced to the character rather by narrative than by the duller medium of direct description; but when the story draws near its close, we hurry over the circumstances, however important, which your imagination must have forestalled, and leave you to suppose those things which it would be abusing your ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... evening of Gorman's dinner with the King I happened to meet Sir Bartholomew Bland-Potterton at another, a much duller dinner party. Sir Bartholomew was not yet Secretary of State for Balkan Problems, but he was well known as an authority on the Near East, and was in constant unofficial touch with the Foreign Office. He is a big man in his ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... the altars shout The Cretans and the Dryopes, and painted Scythian rout: He steps it o'er the Cynthus' ridge, and leafy crown to hold His flowing tresses doth he weave, and intertwines the gold, And on his shoulders clang the shafts. Nor duller now passed on AEneas, from his noble face such wondrous glory shone. 150 So come they to the mountain-side and pathless deer-fed ground, And lo, from hill-tops driven adown, how swift the wild goats bound Along the ridges: otherwhere across the open lea Run hart and hind, and ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... former, that in spite of the obvious changes in his body (which made inhumation or some other procedure necessary) the deceased was still continuing an existence not unlike that which he enjoyed previously, only somewhat duller, less eventful and more precarious. He still needed food and drink, as he did before, and all the paraphernalia of his mortal life, but he was dependent upon his relatives for the maintenance ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... rises about eight o'clock in the morning, and is off to rehearsal by nine. A duller, more dreary sight than a rehearsal of a ballet by daylight, and in plain dress, cannot be imagined. The theatre is dark and gloomy, the stage not much lighter, and everything is in confusion. There is ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... reply, we admit as truth that Woman seems destined by nature rather for the inner circle, we must add that the arrangements of civilized life have not been, as yet, such as to secure it to her. Her circle, if the duller, is not the quieter. If kept from "excitement," she is not from drudgery. Not only the Indian squaw carries the burdens of the camp, but the favorites of Louis XIV. accompany him in his journeys, and the washerwoman stands ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... pointer on the dial; puts another peg in; and presses a button. Immediately the silvery screen vanishes; and in its place appears, in reverse from right to left, another office similarly furnished, with a thin, unamiable man similarly dressed, but in duller colors, turning over some documents at the table. His gold fillet is hanging up on a similar peg beside the door. He is rather like Conrad Barnabas, but younger, and ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... did suggest it the next morning, Hilary was quite of Pauline's opinion. "I shouldn't like it a bit, mother! It would be worse than home—duller, I mean; and Mrs. Boyd would fuss over ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... feeling and effect. The Court of Flowers is Italian, the Court of Palms Grecian, though Grecian with an exuberance scarcely Athenian. Perhaps there is something Sicilian in the warmth of its decoration. When it is bright and warm, the Court of Palms is most Greek in feeling; less so on duller days. ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... quiet street which showed hardly a sign of life. There were lions couchant guarding the entrances. The walls on that side showed mostly blank, uninteresting windows. With an odd pride the great houses showed only their duller aspects ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... occupied with my fields and folios, as to render me uncourteous to thee. If ever thou hast known me in the city, I give thee a hearty invitation to come and visit me in the country. I promise thee, that my wines and viands shall not disgrace the companion of Guloseton: nor my conversation be much duller than my book. I will compliment thee on thy horses, thou shalt congratulate me upon my wife. Over old wine we will talk over new events; and if we flag at the latter, why, we will make ourselves amends with the former. In ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bells; so faint, at first, that I thought it was but fancy, then distincter. It was even more eerie than the silence, I thought, though I knew it could come but from some passing sleigh. All at once that ceased, and again my duller senses could perceive nothing, though I saw by my host's craning neck that he was more on the alert than ever. But at last I too heard once more, this time not bells, but as it were the tread of horses muffled by the snow, intermittent ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... human beings grow duller every day, and I see nothing in them that I have not known before. So I sink to the level of watching Solem's increasing passion for Miss Torsen. But that too is familiar ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... clear orange and black, but the former color much duller, and the latter mixed up with gray, olive, ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... that if they are cultivated and clever, can write what is delusively called a "brilliant style," and are familiar with the masterpieces of Literature, they must be more competent to succeed in fiction or the drama than a duller man, with a plainer style and slenderer acquaintance with the "best models." Had they distinctly conceived the real aims of Literature this mistake would often have been avoided. A recognition of the aims would have pressed on their attention ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... "Lawrence" in action, at two hundred and fifty yards, at 12.10. This calculation, made independently, received subsequent confirmation in consulting Barclay's report, which says 12.15.[94] The same time, for the duller "Caledonia" and the "Niagara," would place them one thousand yards from the British line. This range, for the 32-pounder carronades of the "Niagara," and the 24's of the "Queen Charlotte," required an elevation of ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... members of his family, a cuckoo clock whose weights hung on long cords which by Saturday night reached almost to the floor. When I have sat at his table, I have neglected cheese and the lesser foods, when the hour came near, in order not to miss the cuckoo's popping out. And in the duller spaces, when the door was shut, I have fancied it sitting in the dark and ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... constitution both in church and state.[91] The Critical Reviewers, I believe, often review without reading the books through; but lay hold of a topick, and write chiefly from their own minds. The Monthly Reviewers are duller men, and are glad to read ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... duller and duller," said Mr. Tredgold to himself, wearily. "Two skittish octogenarians, one gloomy baby, one gloomier nursemaid, and three dogs in the last five minutes. If it wasn't ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... admirable steadiness as a model. But, while the work of the studio thus proceeded with all the smoothness and expedition that could be desired, the incidental conversation by no means kept pace with it. In spite of all that young Thorpe could say or do, the talk lagged more and more, and grew duller and duller. Valentine was evidently out of spirits, and the Hercules of the evening had stolidly abandoned himself to the most inveterate silence. At length Zack gave up all further effort to be sociable, and left the painting-room to go up stairs and ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... paper, and to my thinking it is three-and-twenty furlongs from here to the end of this demi-sheet. I have not a thing to say, nothing is of more importance than another. I am flatter than a denial or a pancake; emptier than Judge Parke's wig when the head is in it; duller than a country stage when the actors are off it,—-a cipher, an o! I acknowledge life at all only by an occasional convulsional cough, and a permanent phlegmatic pain in the chest. I am weary of the world; life is ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... because he so often uses his hands instead of a spade. This is a sign that Dering will never get on in the world. His mind is in the same condition as his fingers, working back to clods. He will get a rise of one and sixpence in a year or two, and marry on it and become duller and heavier; and, in short, the clever ones ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... confined us to the house. Gloriana had borrowed a sewing-machine from a neighbour, and worked harder than ever, inflaming her eyes and our curiosity. We speculated daily upon her past, present and future, having little else to distract us in a life that was duller than a Chinese comedy. We waxed fat in idleness, but the ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... glory, and to the liberation of the fatherland. This it is which enables him and those who think with him to endure hunger; thirst, cold, heat, and all the misfortunes which Heaven may send. . . . . . Our enemies spare neither their money nor their labor; will ye be colder and duller than your foes? Let, then, each church congregation set an example to the others. We read that King Saul, when he would liberate the men of Jabez from the hands of Nahad, the Ammonite, hewed a yoke of oxen in pieces, and sent them as tokens over all Israel, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... by the sheer weight of its grinding daily machinery, worked its slow effect upon him. He became less sensitive to impressions. These duller periods were interrupted sometimes by states of brilliant receptiveness, as at Bourcelles; but there was a fence between the two—a rather prickly frontier, and the secret of combining them lay just ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... I 'd like to know, Ef 't ain't the difference o' color, To keep up self-respec' an' show The human natur' of a fullah? Wut good in bein' white, onless It 's fixed by law, nut lef' to guess, Thet we are smarter an' they duller? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... same time your severe judgments and unreasonable expectations may be productive of unceasing discomfort to yourself and all around you. Your friends plainly see that you expect too much from them, that you are annoyed when their duller perceptions can discover no grounds for your annoyance, that you decline their offers of service when they are not made in exactly the refined manner your imagination requires. Your annoyance may seldom or never express itself ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... himself for failing, he can hear his playmates jeer, For they've left him with the dullards—gone ahead a half a year, And he tried so hard to conquer, oh, he tried to do his best, But now he knows, he's weaker, yes, and duller than the rest. He's ashamed to tell his mother, for he thinks she'll hate him, too— The little boy who didn't pass, who failed ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... Sprites! oh, wake again! You slumber all too soon, And, look you, drawn by imps of rain A ring is round the moon. With all your might rub out the ring, Mop all this rain away, For such a night can only bring An even duller day.' ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... re-appearance touches us like magic, and fills us with delight. Every new moon also was hailed with an almost superstitious devotion, and my Blackfellows vied with each other to discover its thin crescent, and would be almost angry with me when I strained my duller eyes in vain to catch a glimpse of its faint light in the brilliant sky which succeeds the setting of the sun. The questions: where were we at the last new moon? how far have we travelled since? and where shall we be at the next?—were invariably discussed amongst ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... storm is gradually abating. The lightning flashes less and less often. The thunder sounds duller, just like a satiated beast—oooooo-oooooo ... The clouds scurry away. The first rays of the blessed sun ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... of a heavy mass of stone or metal striking full upon the thwart behind him, while crash again, right upon the first sound, there was a duller ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... of means, his generous impetuous temper was able to gratify itself in ways that would have been impossible to others. The story of his summer reading parties, for instance, if one could have unravelled it, would have been found to be one long string of acts of kindness towards men poorer and duller than himself. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... him that morning and dismissed for the season to find such work as he could in the city, Auld Jock did not question the farmer's right to take Bobby "back hame." Besides, what could he do with the noisy little rascal in an Edinburgh lodging? But, duller of wit than usual, feeling very old and lonely, and shaky on his legs, and dizzy in his head, Auld Jock parted with Bobby and with his courage, together. With the instinct of the dumb animal that suffers, he stumbled into the foul nook and ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... had great fun to-day!" Storch said, gulping his claret with a flourish. "They're on my track again. You should have seen how easily I gave them the slip! As a matter of fact there is nothing duller than a detective. He usually has learned every formula laid down for the conduct of criminals and if you don't run true to ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... operation alone, but sometimes is discoverable even in the ordinary process of scouring. Every one at all experienced in this art will remember that it is not always an easy matter for him, by scouring, to bring his plate to the desired lustre. All his efforts become unavailing; the more he rubs, the duller the surface of his plate appears; and although he renews his cotton repeatedly, still he is obliged to content himself with ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... tough days of literary and professional work. The Famous History of Montelion, the Knight of the Oracle (1633?) proclaims its Amadisian type even more clearly: but I have only read it in an abridged edition of the close of the century. I should imagine that in extenso it was a good deal duller than Parismus. And of course the comparative praise which has been given to that book must be subject to the reminder that it is what it is—a romance of disorderly and what some people call childish adventure, and of the above-ticketed ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... to whether I stay here so many weeks or so many years, that is a matter of supreme uncertainty. I never am in the same mind very long together. But I am heartily sick of knocking about abroad, and I cannot possibly find life emptier or duller here than I have found it in places that people ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... lantern was reflected from the glossy ebon of her hide, spotted with stains of a duller black. For an instant she remained motionless, crouching upon her thick-set limbs, with her head close to the floor, as if calculating the distance of the leap by which she was to reach the horse; then suddenly ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... of currant wine, and a shivering plate-warmer that never could get any comfort out of the wretched old cramped grate yonder. Don't you know in such houses the grey gloom that hangs over the stairs, the dull-coloured old carpet that winds its way up the same, growing thinner, duller, and more threadbare as it mounts to the bedroom floors? There is something awful in the bedroom of a respectable old couple of sixty-five. Think of the old feathers, turbans, bugles, petticoats, pomatum-pots, spencers, white satin shoes, false fronts, the ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... keep children's heads a blank,' said Felix, 'and Edgar's good taste ought to be trusted in his own home, for his own sisters. Even you might stretch a few points to keep him happy and occupied with Cherry. Besides, I believe we do live a duller life than can be really good for any one. It can't be right to shut up all these young things all their ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a change came over her crying. The rebellion died out of it; it grew duller, and more blunted, hopeless, without life. Her strength was almost gone. Now, however, there was another note of childishness in it, that of complete exhaustion, which it is so hard to hear. The tears rose to his own eyes; he would have liked to go to her, to lay his hand ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... pauses the voice of Buck Daniels broke at length; and it was a cheerless and lonely voice in that large room, in the dull darkness, and the duller lights. ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... followed him hither was so much of his own temper, that I do not wonder at the engagement between them. She was duller than himself, and consequently did not find out that he was so; and had lived in that figure at Hanover almost forty years (for she came hither at three score) without meddling in any affairs of the Electorate, content with the small pension he allowed her, ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... found that in the composition of the human body as compared with the bodies of animals the organs of sense are duller and coarser. Thus it is composed of less ingenious instruments, and of spaces less capacious for receiving the faculties of sense. I have seen in the Lion tribe that the sense of smell is connected with part of the substance of the brain which comes down the nostrils, which form a spacious ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... but perhaps it was as well, on the whole, that the idea of Theo's future supremacy should have been got into the heads of the duller portion of the family. Warrender was so anxious that there should be no unnecessary haste in his mother's departure, and so ready to find out a pleasant place where they could all go, that everything that had been harsh was forgotten. ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... had been delightful, then, little by little, her stiffness and seeming lifelessness had communicated themselves to him. It seemed to him that he had never met a duller or more awkward schoolgirl. His mind was of that quick order which requires to be caught in the uptake rapidly in order to shine. Slowness, coldness, dulness or hesitancy in others depressed him just as dull weather depressed him. ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... else in the world was worth having. There had been Evelyn, it is true, but now Evelyn did lessons with a little friend of her own age, and she and the friend were all in all, and did not want Henrietta in the holidays. Henrietta reflected that she was not uglier, or stupider, or duller than anyone else. There was a large set at school who were ugly, stupid, and dull, and they were devoted to one another, though they none of them cared about her. Why had God sent her into the world, if ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... was renewed the next morning, several positions being assailed in turn, while an uninterrupted gunfire was kept up. General Duller was commanding the enemy's right flank and General French was in charge of the left. We were able to resist all attacks and the battle went on for six days without a decisive result. The enemy had tried to break through nearly every weak point in our fighting line and found out that the key to ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... said, becoming suddenly pale, and rising to her feet, as though prepared to retreat to some protection. Bertram's duller ear could not hear him, but he also rose from his chair. "Are you sure ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... plain to a far duller plotter that they should be fully clear of Hunston before he explained the situation ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all this was visible; and which was doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a great extinguisher for a cap, which it ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens |
