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More "Dull" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or essayist, or story-writer, never lost your cud, and wandered about days and weeks without being able to start a single thought or an image that tasted good,—your literary appetite dull or all gone, and the conviction daily growing that it was all over with you in that direction? A little elder-bark, something fresh and bitter from the woods, is about the best thing you ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... was no 1820 port, and no recollections of old days. They were rather dull, the three of them, as they sat together,—and dullness is always more endurable than sadness. Old Mr Harding went to sleep and the archdeacon was cross. "Henry," he said, "you haven't a word to throw to a dog." ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... boots. Inch by inch we dragged him out of them. The strain was terrific. Suddenly—much too suddenly—the tension broke. Harrison shot into the air and fell again with a dull thud in the Ooze beside his boots, while the rescue party collapsed head over heels ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... always met the people you most wanted to meet, found every facility for enjoying your favourite pastime, were fed and housed in perfect style, and spent some of the most ideal days of your summer, or cheery days of your winter, never dull, never bored, free to come and go as you pleased, and everything seasoned everybody with the delightful "sauce piquante" of never being quite sure what the duchess would ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... said Hugh Redgauntlet, after a pause, that you are either so dull as not to comprehend the import of my words—or so dastardly as to be dismayed by my proposal—or so utterly degenerate from the blood and sentiments of your ancestors, as not to feel my summons as the horse hears ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... stage direction of the operetta. The professor had congratulated himself on obtaining such valuable assistance, while the actor looked upon the affair as a pastime which would serve to lighten his stay with his rather dull cousin. He had come to Sanford for a period of relaxation before going to New York to begin rehearsals with a summer show, and the prospect of directing the operetta promised ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... were so overjoyed that their past troubles were forgotten. The dull blue-gray lines of the mainland, with its white patches of glaring sandhills, could be seen in the distance, and that afternoon they landed on ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Johann Appelmann, when his father went to the Diet at Wollin. For as the old burgomaster held strictly by his word, and sent him each day to the writing-office, and locked him up each night in his little room, the poor young man had found life growing very dull. Now he was his mother's pet, and all his sins and wickedness were owing to her as much as Sidonia's to her father. She had petted and spoiled him from his youth up, and stiffened his back against his father. For whenever ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... went out on a point of rocks where the tide swirled and cast in a fishing line, not because he hoped to catch anything but because fishing, of all the resources available, had most surely the ways of peace. The book was a French treatise on the Marxian philosophies—dull reading for a summer's day when the water lapped merrily at one's feet, the breeze sighed softly, laden with the odors of the mysterious deeps, and sea and sky beckoned him invitingly into the realms of adventure and delight, so dull that, the fish ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... aside his epics and dramas (one of the latter received the honours of translation at the hands of Nicolas Chretien, a sort of scenic du Bartas), much of his work remains yet readable and pleasant. His grand Pindarics are dull, it is true, but some of his Canzonette, like the anacreontics of Ronsard, are exceedingly elegant and graceful. His autobiographical sketch is also extremely interesting. The simple old poet, with his adoration of Greek (when a thing pleased him greatly he was wont to talk of it ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... time in her seventeenth year. She had a lively perception of the foibles of others, and no reverence for her seniors, whom she thought dull, cautious, and ridiculously amenable by commonplaces. But she was subject to the illusion which disables youth in spite of its superiority to age. She thought herself an exception. Crediting Mr. Jansenius and the general mob of mankind with nothing but a grovelling ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... by no means dull, nor in want of work to fill up our time, we were glad when the time came for the rain to cease, and when we could gaze once more on the green fields. We went out the first fine day, and took a long walk by the base of the cliff. On the shore we ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson Told in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... monotones of inarticulate groanings, and the explosive suddenness of seemingly irrelevant Amens. Above all, he tingled from the electric atmosphere of intense religious excitement; he was charged with currents at a pressure so high that his nerves were unresponsive to dull details of ordinary life. ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... country, is set off by the patriotic Lady Oranmore; the virtuous Mr. Burke forms too obvious a pendant to the rascally agents old Nick and St. Dennis. It is needless to say that the exclusively virtuous people are deadly dull. It is the novel with a purpose written by a novelist whose strength lies in the delineation of character. Miss Edgeworth can never carry you away with her story, as Charles Reade sometimes can, and make you forget ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... well for Johnnie and Tina; but if you are kind children with feeling hearts you will perhaps feel sorry for the poor deceived, deluded dragon—chained up in the dull dungeon, with nothing to do but to think over the shocking untruths that Johnnie had ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... answer. She looked away from the disconcerting brown eyes and down at her hand, against his shoulder, her own little hand, with the careful manicure and the dull polish that was all her mother permitted; bare of rings, though Norah had given her a beautiful garnet ring for Christmas. How shiny his coat-sleeve was, and her hand looked unfamiliar to her—not like ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... the products of the latter for foreign ports. The traffic with Spain was limited to the conveyance of officials, priests, and their usual necessaries, such as provisions, wine and other liquors; and, except a few French novels, some atrociously dull books, histories of saints, and ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... and gave it him, and he read it several times, and came to Lysias in great dejection and said, "When I first perused this defence, it seemed to me wonderful, but when I read it a second and third time, it seemed altogether dull and ineffective. Then Lysias laughed, and said, "What then? Are you going to read it more than once to the jury?" And yet do but consider the persuasiveness and grace of Lysias' style;[554] for he "I say was a great favourite with the dark-haired Muses."[555] And of ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... I ministered to the sick in that hospital; but when I went away, I walked down to the sea, and paced there to and fro over the hard sand: and the moon showed bloody with the hot mist, which the sea would not take on its bosom, though the dull east wind blew it onward continually. I walked there pondering till a noise from over the sea made me turn and look that way; what was that coming over the sea? Laus Deo! the WEST WIND: Hurrah! I feel the joy I felt then over again now, in all its intensity. ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... last coin that pays for the body and soul of a woman; the falling of the last wall that encloses artificially the activity of woman and divides her from man; always we picture the love of the sexes, as, once a dull, slow, creeping worm; then a torpid, earthy chrysalis; at last the full-winged insect, glorious in the sunshine ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... is by no means pitched too high. Justice has hardly been done in recent times to the noble conception, the intense feeling, and the broad manner of this Deposition. That may be due in part to the dull twilight in which the group is plunged, depriving all its lines of salience and relief. It is also true that in certain respects the composition is fairly open to adverse criticism. The torso of Christ overweighs ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... with very scanty materials. With a bad title and many pretenders, with an evil heritage of social disorder, he must have been sorely tempted to indulge in the heroics of Henry V. He followed a sounder business policy, and his reign is dull, because he gave peace and prosperity at home without fighting a battle abroad. His foreign policy was dictated by insular interests regardless of personal glory; and the security of his kingdom and the trade of his people ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... which the Germans are so fond. She was somewhat beautiful, and exquisitely formed—a little fairy-like figure, with large curls falling on her neck, which was rather too long, as Perugino sometimes makes his Virgins, and her eyes dull from fatigue. She was said to have a weak chest, and like Antonia in the "Cremona Violin," she would die one day while singing. Monte Cristo cast one rapid and curious glance round this sanctum; it was the first time he had ever seen Mademoiselle d'Armilly, of whom he had heard ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... But in turning metal plates it is found very in expedient to increase the speed of the work beyond a certain quantity; for when this happens, and the tool passes the work at too great a velocity, it heats, softens, and is ground away, the edge of the cutter becomes dull, and the surface of the plate is indented and burnished, instead of being turned. Hence loss of time on the part of the workman, and diminished work on the part of the tool, results which, considering the wages of the one and the capital expended on the ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... restoration, he was promptly removed. Just now he was trying to practise law, and to edit the Troy Budget, a Bucktail newspaper; but he preferred to read, sitting with his unblacked boots on the table, careless of his dress, and indifferent to his personal appearance. He looked dull and inactive, and people thought he lacked the industry and energy so necessary to success in any profession; but when the Budget appeared, its editorials made men read and reflect. It was the skill with which he marshalled facts in a gentle and winning style that attracted ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... were to take into consideration, at the same time, the circumstance, that they never partook of the amusements of the world, in which he placed a part of his own pleasures, he would be induced to conclude, that they had dull and gloomy minds, and that they could not be upon the whole a happy people. Such a conclusion, however, would be contrary to the fact. On my first acquaintance with them I was surprised, seeing the little variety of their pursuits, at the happiness which ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... the infidel parsons mouthed in the infidel temples to the richly dressed infidel congregations, who heard but did not understand, for their hearts were become gross and their ears dull of hearing. And meantime, all around them, in the alley and the slum, and more terrible still—because more secret—in the better sort of streets where lived die respectable class of skilled artisans, the little children became thinner and paler day ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... for continuing to direct the fire of his battery from the roof of a building until it was literally shot from under his feet. "The friend of the cathedral," is also an experienced aviator and when business is dull in the howitzer line around Rheims, kills time by aerial reconnoitring. "Be sure and send me a copy of your paper," he laughed, when I beat a hasty strategic retreat to the rear to keep the Wilsonian neutrality from being violated, for after lunch French shells have a habit ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... for a while. Presently, "You told me this afternoon," she began, in a dull voice, "that you anticipated much amusement from your perusal of Mr. Vanringham's correspondence. All his papers were to be seized, you said; and they all were to be brought to you, you said. And so many love-sick misses ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... plate glass all screwed on, thus becoming the loveliest place to write on that you could well imagine. And the inside parts of the Desk were running over with delightful things, note-paper and envelopes, and pads and pencils, and new white blotting-paper and—true as true, dull black, with the cutest little silver belt—a beautiful Founting Pen. Inside also were pigeonholes of the best quality, like in the Netiquette. And in one of the pigeonholes there lay, sure enough, a note; not, indeed, from a mustached count with a neyeglass, but from one who perhaps ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... not even in a storm. There was not a breath of wind to-night. The thick dull green plant-trees looked as solid as stone, a petrified forest. The sky had never seemed so high above, the stars so hard ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... were traversing a stretch of newly springing up trees, for everything was of a young and tender green, but after a time there was a parched, dried-up aspect; then they came upon withered patches, and by degrees the vivid green gave place to a dull parched-up drab and grey, every leaf and blade of grass being burned up or scorched by heat and ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... in the plan is not counterbalanced by any felicity in the execution. Many of the incidents are more than improbable, they are impossible. The style, likewise, is labored, and the conversations combine the two undesirable peculiarities of being both stilted and dull. The characters, female or male, are in no case successfully drawn. The inferior ones, introduced to amuse, serve only to depress the reader. The hero in the course of the tale does several absurd things; but he finally surpasses himself by hurrying away from the woman he loves, without ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... to die Bobs up again as the seasons appear; Deathless it hits us again in the eye— Changeless and dull as the calendar year. Musty and mouldy and yellow and sere, Stronger, withal, than the sturdiest oak; Ancient and solemn and deadly and drear— Down with ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... of old-fashioned keys, etc.—which pointed to the fact that the Priory had stood on that site. This spot is still pointed out not far from Kilburn Station, close by the place where Priory Road goes over the railway. It is a most uninteresting spot at present, with dull respectable middle-class ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... presently, and as though en passant, "I have dismissed Tardif to-day—I hope you won't mind these dull ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... we emerge from the defile, than we became sensible of a dull, jarring sound; and Yoomy was almost tempted to turn and flee, when informed that the sea-cavern, whose mouth we had passed, was believed to penetrate deep into the opposite hills; and that the surface of the amphitheater ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the appalling roar of the hungry rapids and the dull, thunderous, monotonous undertone ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... to the same consistence as the skin, which is rather thick. When ripe, they are easily peeled, and well repay the trouble, the spines being then much less obdurate than when green. The mature fruit is of a deep, dull, coppery red color, and in flavor is equal, if not superior, to any of the red varieties which I have eaten in England. I have often wondered whether cultivation might not remove the spines from the berries, or, that failing, ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... part, I cared very little whether I lost or won at a game so random, so complex, and so dull; but it was sorry news to write to my poor father, and I employed all the resources of my eloquence. I told him (what was the truth) that the successful boys had none of the education; so that if he wished me to learn, he should rejoice at my misfortune. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... reached a sort of settled oldness, like an arm-chair which may once have been covered with bright-coloured silk, but which, with time and wear, has got to have an all-over-old look which never seems to get any worse. Not that Marcelline was dull or grey to look at—she was bright and cheery, and when she had a new clean cap on, all beautifully frilled and crimped round her face, Jeanne used to tell her that she was beautiful, quite beautiful, and that if ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth
... had taken place in Victor de Gisons' condition. He remained in a state almost of lethargy, with an expression of dull hopelessness on his face; sometimes he passed his hand wearily across his forehead as if he were trying to recollect something he had lost; he was still too weak to stand, but Jacques and his wife would dress him and place him on a couch which Harry purchased for his use. ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... fine portrait by Pantoja, of Philip in his age, there is scarcely any trace of the fresh, fair youth that Titian painted as Adonis. It is the face of a living corpse; of a ghastly pallor, heightened by the dull black of his mourning suit, where all passion and feeling have died out of the livid lips and the icy eyes. Beside him hangs the portrait of his rickety, feebly passionate son, the unfortunate Don Carlos. The forehead of the young prince is narrow and ill-formed; ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... entirely devoted to this flower was published, and four hundred named varieties were on sale. From these circumstances this plant seemed to me worth studying, more especially from the great contrast between the small, dull, elongated, irregular flowers of the wild pansy, and the beautiful, flat, symmetrical, circular, velvet-like flowers, more than two inches in diameter, magnificently and variously coloured, which are exhibited at our ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... that it generally meets with a good reception. The laugh rises upon it, and the man who utters it is looked upon as a shrewd satirist. This may be one reason why a great many pleasant companions appear so surprisingly dull when they have endeavoured to be merry in print; the public being more just than private clubs or assemblies, in distinguishing between what is ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... was not the earth—of that he was sure. None of the familiar continents lay before his eyes. And then he saw the great dull red ball of the dying sun. That was not the sun of his earth. It had been a great ...
— The Jameson Satellite • Neil Ronald Jones
... what, Shatushka?" She shook her head. "You may be a very sensible man but you're dull. It's strange for me to look at all of you. I don't understand how it is people are dull. Sadness ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... at the time, had accurate knowledge of the whole circumstances. The late celebrated Dr. Macknight, a learned and profound scholar and commentator, was nevertheless, as a preacher, to a great degree heavy, unrelieved by fancy or imagination; an able writer, but a dull speaker. His colleague, Dr. Henry, well known as the author of a History of England, was, on the other hand, a man of great humour, and could not resist a joke when the temptation came upon him. On one occasion when coming to church, Dr. Macknight had been caught in a shower of rain, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... I tell that? Because there are so many people in the world who believe that poverty is not sensitive, that the ill-fed, overworked boy of the slums is as callous as he seems dull. Because so many people believe that the weak and desperate boy can never be anything but a weak and vicious man. Because I came out of that morbid period of adolescence with a sympathy for children that helped to make possible one of the first courts established in America for the protection ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... despised and dying king,— Princes the dregs of their dull race who flow Through public scorn, mud from a muddy spring,— Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, But leech-like to their fainting country cling, Till they drop blind in blood without a blow,— A people starved and ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... thing,' continued Kupfer, 'of late I noticed a great change in her: she grew so dull, so silent, for hours together there was no getting a word out of her. I asked her even, "Has any one offended you, Katerina Semyonovna?" For I knew her temper; she could never swallow an affront! But she was silent, and there was no doing anything with her! Even her triumphs on ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... sealed the letter, and stamped it with a seal suspended at his breast, beneath his doublet, and when the operation was concluded, presented—still in silence—the missive to M. de Baisemeaux. The latter, whose hands trembled in a manner to excite pity, turned a dull and meaningless gaze upon the letter. A last gleam of feeling played over his features, and he fell, as ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... in the same strain. The Pythagoreans, you know, were of opinion that the reason why we do not hear or heed the music of the heavenly bodies is that they are always sounding in our ears; and I fear that even the influence of your song may be diminished by falling upon the world's dull ear too constantly." ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... handicaps this race will have in building religions? The greatest is this: they have such small psychic powers. The over-activity of their minds will choke the birth of such powers, or dull them. The race will be less in touch with Nature, some day, than its dogs. It will substitute the compass for its once innate sense of direction. It will lose its gifts of natural intuition, premonition, ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... her father home had been long and dull. There had been no callers, and they had not gone out. A cold north wind had shrieked around the house all day, rattling the windows, and tearing frantically through the gaunt arms of the stripped trees. The sky was like lead, the river black and turbid. As ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... immense astonishment. Again explained. Members tapped their foreheads, and said I had better see the Doctor. Why? Then they all avoided me. Grand chance to show my ability "to support solitude, and to endure silence." Deuced dull, but it saved me from "the poisoned atmosphere of crowded rooms." Began to feel hungry about lunch-time, but happily remembered that "it is not luxury which is enervating, it is over-eating." Exhausted, but virtuous. Remembered that I had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... to your Business, and I to mine. [Speaks as the rest go out. Let the dull trading Fool by Business live, Statesmen by Plots; the Courtier cringe to thrive; The Fop of Noise and Wealth be cullied on, And purchase no one Joy by being undone, Whilst I by nobler careless ways advance, Since Love and ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... rustic; but there was a clock, with a handsome case of dark wood, in a corner, and two or three chairs, with a table and bureau, that had evidently come from some dwelling of more than usual pretension. The clock was industriously ticking, but its leaden-looking hands did no discredit to their dull aspect, for they pointed to the hour of eleven, though the sun plainly showed it was some time past the turn of the day. There was also a dark, massive chest. The kitchen utensils were of the simplest kind, and far from numerous, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... leaned out of the window, looking into the dull street that roared seventy feet below. Then he sighed; and whether it was a sigh of relief or pain he ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... enemy plane. Luckily, we all had time to duck out before the bomb landed, but there wasn't anything left of our fine station but a big hole in the ground and bits of apparatus scattered around over the landscape. There were very few dull moments in ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... makes Jack a dull boy." The subject of this sketch might put in a claim for at least something towards redeeming Jack's dulness, for he had a few odd ways, and a fertile turn for epigrammatics, some of them not bad. He boasted of having Beau Brummell's antipathy to certain vegetables. During the early ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... Jane Austen, whose novels were sound educators as well as sources of amusement. From Miss Kingsley's natural fluency and sprightliness I expected something "racy," to quote Paul Barr, and I was disappointed to find "Moderation" dull and didactic. It was however heralded and published with a great flourish of trumpets; and Mr. Spence wrote a review of it in one of the leading newspapers under the symbol XXX (a signature of his known only to the initiated), in which he called attention to its exquisite ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... my excited imagination carried me, when again the yacht shook with the thud of something striking her, and a great revulsion of relief came over me as I recognised the dull sound of wood striking wood, this time farther aft, and I ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... a sullen darkness in the sky, and the sun had gone angrily down, tinting the dull clouds with the last traces of his wrath, when the same black monk walked slowly on, with folded arms, within a stone's-throw of the abbey. A blight had fallen on the trees and shrubs; and the wind, at length beginning to break the unnatural ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... authors, except Palm and Mohl, who have discussed the spiral twining of plants, maintain that such plants have a natural tendency to grow spirally. Mohl believes (p. 112) that twining stems have a dull kind of irritability, so that they bend towards any object which they touch; but this is denied by Palm. Even before reading Mohl's interesting treatise, this view seemed to me so probable that I tested it in every way that I could, but always with a negative result. I rubbed many shoots ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... worthy gift of expression. The writer, whoever he may have been, scatters his gold with a lavish hand. In the fine panegyric[47] on painting, there is a freedom of fancy that lifts us into the higher regions of poetry; and dull indeed must be the reader who can resist the contagion of Lassenbergh's enthusiasm. But this strain of charming poetry is brought too quickly to a close, and then begins the comic business. Haunce, the serving-man, is ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... all this he is still essentially fleeing from the street in which he was born; and of this flight he is always ready with his own explanation. He says he is fleeing from his street because it is dull; he is lying. He is really fleeing from his street because it is a great deal too exciting. It is exciting because it is exacting; it is exacting because it is alive. He can visit Venice because to him the Venetians are only Venetians; the people in his own street are men. He can stare ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... out where his sister lived, going to look at the house, and getting into it if he might. Nor could his companion help him with any suggestions, and indeed he could not talk much with him because of the presence of Davy, a rough, round eyed, red haired young Scot, of the dull invaluable class that can only do what they are told, but do that to the ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... The leaves are whirling in dusty spirals and shutters bang with unmelodious emphasis, and all the world seems dreary; yet, to him, with love lighting the way, with the knowledge that the girl he has learned to worship is here within these dull brick walls, there is a thrill and vigor in every nerve. No light burns in the hallway; none in the lower floor of the number to which he has been directed. He well knows it is too late to call, even to inquire for them, but the army ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... second report came a dull, booming sound, apparently from a distance. We eyed one ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... of moral superiority as the Arabs when they swept down upon Egypt and North Africa. The burning of the library of Alexandria remains forever the symbol of the triumph of a militarist "culture" over civilization. This easy belief of the dull and violent that war "braces" comes out of a real instinct of self-preservation against the subtler tests of peace. This type of person will keep on with war if it can. It is to politics what the criminal type is to social order; it will be resentful ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... incident thus described by The Times correspondent. "One of the maidservants described a sort of dull knocking which, according to her, goes on between two and six in the morning, in the lath and plaster partition by the side of her bed, which shuts off the angular space just inside the eaves of the house. She likened it to the noise of gardeners nailing up ivy outside. ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... breeches gaped wide open at the knee; the long woollen stockings looked as if they had been set up at some time for a target. Israel looked suddenly metamorphosed from youth to old age; just like an old man of eighty he looked. But, indeed, dull, dreary adversity was now in store for him; and adversity, come it at eighteen or eighty, is the true old age of man. The dress befitted ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... in all the Lives, And in the Separate, One Inseparable. There is imperfect Knowledge: that which sees The separate existences apart, And, being separated, holds them real. There is false Knowledge: that which blindly clings To one as if 'twere all, seeking no Cause, Deprived of light, narrow, and dull, and "dark." ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... are a poor, dull mineral, after all," said the bean; "and if so, of course you can not understand what pleasure a ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... exaggeration:—"The past week has been the calmest which we have had since the revolution. We have had no forced illuminations, no planting of trees of liberty, no physical-force demonstrations, no great display of any kind; in fact, we have been decidedly dull. But in some parts of the city, our sovereign lord and master, the Mob, has been graciously pleased to afford us a little interesting excitement by bullying the landlords into giving receipts for their rents, without the usual preliminary ceremony of fingering the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... close upon daybreak. The great wall of pines and hemlocks that keep off the east wind from Stillwater stretches black and indeterminate against the sky. At intervals a dull, metallic sound, like the guttural twang of a violin string, rises from the frog-invested swamp skirting the highway. Suddenly the birds stir in their nests over there in the woodland, and break into that wild jargoning ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... which often involves the murderer in a death more cruel than that he has given, he pointed to the Florentine traitor with his amiable smile and his deadly poison. He indicated certain powders and potions, some of them of dull action, wearing out the victim so slowly that he dies after long suffering; others violent and so quick, that they kill like a flash of lightning, leaving not even time for a single cry. Little by little Sainte-Croix became interested in the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... The sun was glowing dull red as it slipped down behind the curving horizon of Mars, but Gregory Hunter was not able ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... execution the beneficial plan first practised and made known by the great Captain Cook. It was in the standing orders of the ship, that on every fine day the deck below and the cockpits should be cleared, washed, aired with stoves, and sprinkled with vinegar. On wet and dull days they were cleaned and aired without washing. Care was taken to prevent the people from sleeping upon deck, or lying down in their wet clothes; and once in every fortnight or three weeks, as circumstances permitted, their ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... but I'm not so sure about the teachers," declared Bob enthusiastically, an odd little smile quivering on his lips. "With you and Bobby Littell about, I doubt if the school knows a dull moment." ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... sharply, and wonder of wonders! the upper portion of the wounded man's flank was seen to become transparent, the muscular portions to dissolve in a soft, dull light, leaving the bones weirdly plain as if he had long passed away, and the awe-stricken beholders were gazing upon the skeleton remains; while most horrible of all, amidst the low murmur of dread which arose from the Mullahs and Ibrahim, a skeleton hand suddenly darted out, holding a knife ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... not detain you long with our voyage, but will only mark out its course. Leaving the African shore, we struck across to Sicily, and coasting along its eastern border, beheld with pleasure the towering form of Aetna, sending up into the heavens a dull and sluggish cloud of vapors. We then ran between the Peloponnesus and Crete, and so held our course till the Island of Cyprus rose like her own fair goddess from the ocean, and filled our eyes with a beautiful vision of hill and valley, wooded promontory, and ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... blast from a silver trumpet: "What would he have? These speeches of his, sown broadcast over the Land, what clear distinct meaning have they? Are they not intended for disorganization in our very midst? Are they not intended to dull our weapons? Are they not intended to destroy our zeal? Are they not intended to animate our enemies? Sir, are they not words of brilliant, polished Treason, even in the very Capitol of ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... did not observe how white he was, how dull his eye, how abject his whole attitude. She caught him by the sleeve and dragged him into ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... Spanish Government with a profound disapproval and mistrust, but a rumor had run up the coast that made every sea-gull look like the herald of a hostile fleet. This was young Arguello's first taste of command, and life was dull on the northern peninsula; he would have welcomed a declaration ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... that bear on the commutator should be inspected to see that they are clean, and that the entire surfaces make contact with the commutator. The parts that are making contact will look smooth and polished, while other parts will have a dull, rough appearance. If the brush contact surfaces are dirty or all parts do not touch the commutator, draw a piece of fine sandpaper back and forth under the brushes, one at a time, with the sanded side of the paper against the brush. This will clean the brushes and shape the contact surfaces to ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... still deploring our stupidity in not having our rifles handy, when a strange sound was heard in the distance. By this time Jack had come up, so we all three seized our rifles and listened intently. The sound was evidently approaching. It was a low, dull, booming roar, which at one moment seemed to be distant thunder, at another the cry of some huge animal in rage or pain. Presently the beating of heavy hoofs on the turf and the crash of branches were heard. Each of us sprang instinctively ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... 5; In mid-stream among a lot of islands; rafts of ducks; a dull, blue day, still those great limestone hills, with hollows through which the wind comes when opposite—coolies?——; in the far distance a rowboat. On the Missouri side, the hills; on the other the flats, with landing ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... realised by everybody. Never has a coast been so well laid down by a first explorer, and it must have required unceasing vigilance and continual observation, in fair weather and foul, to arrive at such a satisfactory conclusion; and with such a dull sailer as the Endeavour was, the six and a half months occupied in the work must be counted as a short interval ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... the dull, heavy report, then another and another, followed by the screeching overhead. Shells dropped into the water on all sides. And then another bomb burst on the pontoon where ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... term at school, and she had never before seen much of other children. She had lived her eight years all alone at home with her mother, and she had never been told about Christmas. Her mother had other things to think about. She was a dull, spiritless, reticent woman, who had lived through much trouble. She worked, doing washings and cleanings, like a poor feeble machine that still moves but has no interest in its motion. Sometimes the Browns had almost enough to eat, at other ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... appalling confidence that was in his antagonist's eyes. From those eyes, rather than from the man, he found himself slowly retreating. They followed him, never taking themselves from his face. In them the fire returned and grew deeper. Two dull red spots began to glow in Croisset's cheeks, and he laughed softly when he suddenly leaped in so that Howland struck at him—and missed. He knew what to expect now. And ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... into unknown hands. He had never told her where he passed his evenings. And she was afraid to ask, lest he should think her jealous. Instead of exposing her feelings in words, she treated him with such sweetness that a more intelligent husband would have divined all. But, except in business, he was dull. He continued to pass his evenings away; and as his conscience grew feebler, his absences lengthened. Haru had been taught that a good wife should always sit up and wait for her lord's return at night; and by so doing she suffered from nervousness, ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... this harangue, in order to conceal my rising disgust, I sat down on the grass and began to play with the goat. Mercanson turned on me his dull ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... quick-witted, however, and fond of fun. The gloomy doctrines of his learned father made him shudder, and he came to the conclusion that Sunday was a day of penance, and the Catechism a species of torture invented for the punishment of dull boys. At the age of ten, he was sent to a boarding-school in Bethlehem, where he studied by shouldering his gun and going after partridges. Then his sister, Catharine, took him in hand, but he spent his time in teazing the girls ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... found, and the bright stars shining through the canopy of leaves overhead gave them sufficient light to pursue their way. For two hours they toiled along through the silent forest, hearing no sound except now and then the affrighted rush of some startled wild boar, and, far distant, the dull cry of the ever-restless breakers upon the coral reef. At last the summit of the range was reached, and they sat down to rest upon the thick carpet of fallen leaves which covered the ground. Here North took a spirit-flask ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... servant, was often heard to object to this arrangement. She gave solid reasons for her objections, declaring roundly that human nature was far more agreeable to her than any part of the vegetable kingdom; but though Hannah found her small kitchen rather dull, and never during the years she stayed with them developed the slightest taste for the beauties of Nature, she was sincerely attached to the Mainwaring girls, and took care ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... one on the place was as nice as could be, and the cook in authority lenient, and Ragnhild as bright-eyed as ever, we all felt it dull with the master and mistress away. All save Grindhusen, honest fellow, who was quite content. Decent work and good food soon set him up again, and in a few days he was happy and waxing fat. His one anxiety was lest the Captain should turn him off when he came ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... limited to white hairs on the chest, toes, or the tip of the tail. In fact, a white marking on the chest is said to be typical of the true breed. Any white on the head or body would place the dog in the other than black variety. The black colour should preferably be of a dull jet appearance which approximates to brown. In the other than black class, there may be black and tan, bronze, and white and black. The latter predominates, and in this colour, beauty of marking is very important. The head should ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... himself as if he were conversing with some familiar spirit or demon, and as he babbled his dull eyes stared around him stupidly, taking slow stock of unfamiliar objects. He grinned spitefully at the church and its great archangel and mouthed a lewd objurgation. Turning his back on the church, he leered at the pillars and the mosque contemptuously until it dimly dawned upon him that the ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... had witnessed the tremendous struggle in which so many had gone overboard, but so dull was she of apprehension, and so little disposed to suspect any thing one-half so monstrous as the truth, that she did not hesitate to comply. She was profoundly awed by the horrors of the scene through which she was passing, the raging billows ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... square, as related by a Tortirran storyteller, I fell asleep. On waking I found myself lying in a cot-bed amidst unfamiliar surroundings. A bandage was fastened obliquely about my head, covering my left eye, in which was a dull throbbing pain. Seeing an attendant near by I beckoned him to my bedside and asked: ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... turn'd to ice, and all my vitals Have ceas'd their working. Dull stupidity Surpriseth me at once, and hath arrested That vigorous agitation, which till now Exprest a life within me. I, methinks, Am a meer marble statue, and no man. Unweave my age, O time, to my first thread; Let me lose fifty years, in ignorance spent; That, being made an infant once ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... redundant, defective and highly technical, but redeemed by a certain earnestness. "I'm never within sixpence of what I reckon to be," she said. "It's a bit too 'ot." Then Mr. Polly, feeling that he was being conspicuously dull, launched into a description of the shop he was looking for and the shops he had seen. His mind warmed ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... and seized the despatches and letters which had arrived. The persons about him suffered severely from his detestable mood, but the dull weather of this gloomy day appeared also to have a bad effect upon the confessor De Soto, for his lofty brow was scarcely less clouded than the sky. He did not allude to Barbara by a single word, yet she was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... young maidens. Some communion linked them and the few men who stood with them. All wore a black band upon their left arms. Drab or grey was their attire, but sun-bonnets nodded bright as butterflies among them, and even their dull raiment was more cheerful than the gathering company in black who now began to mass their numbers and crane ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... know what it is. You've let yourself get interested in Sandro; you've let him lay hold of you." May nodded. "And it would seem rather dull now to lose him?" Again May nodded, laughing a little. Aunt Maria understood her feelings very well, it seemed. "I should be dull too if I lost him." The old lady folded her hands in her lap. "There is that about Sandro," ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... thee everywhere, beloved, I miss thee everywhere; Both night and day wear dull away, And leave me in despair. The banquet-hall, the play, the ball, And childhood's sportive glee, Have lost their spell for me, beloved, My souls ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... there were three of them—the peculiar soft, dull messages of hot lead to living flesh. A Stetson went down; another stumbled; Rufe Stetson, climbing the fence, caught at his breast with an oath, and fell back. Rome and Steve dropped for safety to the ground. Every other Stetson turned ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... the assurances which have been given them by the late Mr. G. P. R. James and kindred writers will find it hard to substitute for the joyous scenes of sunshine and freedom he has associated with the nomadic existence, the dull, wearisome round of squalor and wretchedness which is found, upon examination, to constitute the principal condition of the Gipsy tent. Whether it is that in this awfully prosaic period of the world's history the picturesque and jovial rascality which novelist and poet have insisted in ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... "In the morning the dull monotonous double note of the whee-whee (so named from the sound of its calls), chiming in at regular intervals as the tick of a clock, warns us . . . it is but half an hour ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... intervals by the tambourines and cymbals; while behind them was drawn a car with large wheels, the spokes of which represented serpents entwined with each other. Upon the car, which was drawn by four richly caparisoned zebus, stood a hideous statue with four arms, the body coloured a dull red, with haggard eyes, dishevelled hair, protruding tongue, and lips tinted with betel. It stood upright upon the figure of a prostrate ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... gravel, with occasional tufts of dry grass and scrub. Sometimes the troops marched four abreast, at other times they had to go in single file across the rocky ground. The fun of the camel-riding very soon passed off, and the men found the marches extremely dull and monotonous, and were heartily glad when they ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... soul is single and personal; as it is not a plexus of inherited tendencies, so it is not heritable, and a great soul showing suddenly in the dusk of a dull race contributes nothing of its essential quality to the issue of the body it has made its house. The stews of a mill town may suddenly be illuminated by the radiance of a divine soul, to the amazement of profligate parents and the confusion ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... grew very angry, and his face turned a dull red. He raised his cane, and struck sharply at Hal. But Hal was not there, and a moment later the man received a sharp jolt on the jaw as Hal's ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... reminiscences any reference to a scene which I witnessed in the House of Commons during Disraeli's first brief premiership, although Sir Mountstuart was himself the hero of the occasion. It was one Wednesday afternoon. There was an empty House and a dull debate, but Disraeli was in his place on the Treasury Bench, so that anything might happen. It pleased the Mr. Grant Duff of those days to deliver himself of a philippic, at once voluminous and violent, against the Prime Minister. ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... purplish red suffused all over the heavy furrowed forehead to where it met the white wig, all over the flabby cheeks, hanging in big loose folds upon the short, loose-folded red neck; massive features, but coarsened and drawn; and dull, thick, silent-looking lips, of purplish red scarce redder than the red skin; pale blue eyes tending to a watery greyness, leaden, vague, sad, but with angry streakings of red; something inexpressibly sad, gloomy, helpless, vacant and debased in the whole face: such was the ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... known as "fine" condition. He should observe good hours, and take at least eight hours sleep nightly; and he may eat generously of wholesome food, except at noon, when he should take only a light lunch. There are many players who eat so heartily just before the game that they are sleepy and dull the entire afternoon. The traveling professional player needs to pay particular attention to the kind and quality of his food. The sudden changes of climate, water, and cooking are very trying, and unless he takes great care he will not get through a season without some trouble. Especially ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... forward. When he straightened there came a dull report, a lurid flash of light, and with a sharp whirring sound a model torpedo about half the regulation size, leaped through the darkness and with a clear parting of the waters disappeared. A green Very star cleaved the night. Intense silence followed. One second, two seconds, ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... privations which we do not share with them. I do not as yet see the slightest obstacle, in the nature of the blacks, to making them good soldiers, but rather the contrary. They take readily to drill, and do not object to discipline; they are not especially dull or inattentive; they seem fully to understand the importance of the contest, and of their share in it. They show no jealousy or ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... and the barns, working on the farms, wading the mud and water of the river bank, or tingling with cold on the ice went two Dannies. The one a dull, listless man, mechanically forcing a tired, overworked body to action, and the ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... try to turn all wandering fancy out of doors, and listen attentively to Whately's Logic, and old Spinoza still! I find some of Spinoza's Letters very good, and so far useful as that they try to clear up some of his abstrusities at the earnest request of friends as dull as myself. I think I perceive as well as ever how the quality of his mind forbids much salutary instinct which widens the system of things to more ordinary men, and yet helps to keep them from wandering in it. I am now reading ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... I deny it; at least, I see no proof of it whatever. I do not doubt that there are individuals of an enterprising character, disposed to emigrate, who know nothing about New Mexico but that it is far off, and nothing about California but that it is still farther off, who are tired of the dull pursuits of agriculture and of civil life; that there are hundreds and thousands of such persons to whom whatsoever is new and distant is attractive. They feel the spirit of borderers; and the spirit of ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... as it appeared at the outset, proved an exceptionally happy one. Sir Charles was a straightforward, worthy, if somewhat dull gentleman, with no ambition, a nervous distaste for society, and a natural indolence of temperament. To his wife he gave the unstinted sympathy and admiration that her restless vanity craved, while she invariably ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... an hypothetical person whom Sir W. Scott makes use of to introduce some of his novels by means of prefatory letters. The word is a synonym for a dull, prosy, plodding historian, with great show of learning, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... chattered sometimes as with ague, and his fingers were numb and stiff. It was an hour before noon when the travellers left Kendal, and now they had ridden for two hours. The brighter clouds of the morning had disappeared, and a dull, leaden sky was overhead. Gradually the heavy atmosphere seemed to close about them, yet a cutting wind ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... a tree since they started in the morning, and they had therefore less fear of being disturbed by wild beasts. They had, indeed, talked of keeping watch by turns; but without a fire, they felt that this would be dull work; and would moreover be of little avail, as in the darkness the stealthy tread of a lion would not be heard, and they would therefore be attacked as suddenly as if no watch had been kept. If he should announce his coming by a roar, both would be sure to awake, ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... mention here that I found the water of many streamlets and brooks throughout the western mountains of Mexico to have a slightly whitish colour and a dull, opalescent look, like a strong solution of quinine. The Mexicans call it agua blanca, or agua zarca, and consider it the best water they have. Many places, especially ranches, are named after it. In the locality where we now found ourselves the water had a slightly ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... characteristic. Julius, bent and emaciated, has the nervous glance of a passionate and energetic temperament; though the brand is hoar with ashes and more than half burned out, it glows and can inflame a conflagration. Leo, heavy jawed, dull-eyed, with thick lips and a brawny jowl, betrays the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... what are you doing?" asked Faith one cold, dull November day, as she hurried into the kitchen from her village trip, and found the older ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... abhorred by the peasantry of Le Morvan; for near the walls, they say, at certain periods, sounds can be distinctly heard under ground, funeral chaunts, and the tolling of bells; and if you have the daring to apply your ear to the sod, you will be able to distinguish sighs and sobs, and the dull rattle of the earth thrown upon the ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... was but one suit left. It was not pretty. It was a plain, dull color,—and very short of feathers at the neck and head. Turkey Buzzard put it on. He did not like it. It did not fit him well: it was cut too low in the neck. Turkey Buzzard thought it was the homeliest suit of all. But it was the last suit, so he ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... 'tower,' and unexceptionable in every respect. Also I do hold that nobody with an ordinary understanding has the slightest pretence for attaching a charge of obscurity to this new number—there are lights enough for the critics to scan one another's dull blank of visage by. One verse indeed in that expressive lyric of the 'Lost Mistress,' does still seem questionable to me, though you have changed a word since I saw it; and still I fancy that I rather leap at ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... shrinking creature, having a face walled with wrinkles, and wearing a short blue petticoat, showing heavy dull boots like a man's, and ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... gently. "I am dull of wit, I know. And you have often laughed at my superstitions and old family beliefs, whether religious or otherwise. They are strange—I admit that. And I shall die in the Church, and take my chances on the future, for I have ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... see it till all was done, then she was led triumphantly in. It was pretty—and queer—perhaps queerer than pretty. The walls were green-gray, the carpet gray-green, the furniture pale yellow, almost white, with brass handles and hinges, and lines of dull red tiles set into the wood. Every picture on the walls had a meaning, Miss ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... the beauty, "I do like him, exceedingly,—what I have seen of him. He will do—for a month or so. People are frequently quite charming at first, like fresh bouquets,—but dull and tame enough when the dew ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... while the unhappiness of the past seemed to have faded from her mind. She spoke little of Paris, less of the dull pension, and never of Pasquale. She bore towards him an animal's silent animosity against a human being who has done it an unforgettable injury. On the other hand, as I have since discovered, she was slowly developing, and had begun ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... said Mrs. Makely, "is that I like to have my husband belong to his club. It's a nice place for him in summer; and very often in winter, when I'm dull, or going out somewhere that he hates, he can go down to his club and smoke a cigar, and come home just about the time I get in, and it's much better than worrying through the evening with a book. He hates books, poor Dick!" ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... there be any music here, I trust it will not fail, like notes Of May-birds, when the warning year Abates their summer-wearied throats. Shame on us, if we drudge once more As dull and ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... in the cabal of "The Importants," of whose jargon he had retained some smattering, which, together with some expressions he had perfectly acquired from Madame de Vendome, formed a language that would have puzzled a Cato. His speech was short and stupidly dull, and the more so because he obscured it by affectation. He thought himself very sufficient, and pretended to a great deal more wit than came to his share. He was brave enough in his person, and outdid the common Hectors by being so upon ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... this dull-witted young lord, "I shall count the hours until you go to Spain. You will send me some 'touru', for I am very fond ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... books of minute investigation were every month being published by the dozens in the Fatherland. There was not a professor who could resist the temptation of constructing from the simplest detail an enormous volume written in a dull, involved style. The people, therefore, appreciating that these near-sighted authors were incapable of any genial vision of comradeship, called them Sitzfleisch haben, because of the very long sittings which their works represented. That was what this cousin ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Durandal shines as he falls on his foeman's head; the sunshine is all round them in the day, and the night passes quickly; sparks fly from the weapons as they strike one another, and light up the very shadows with a dull flash. Take again La Rose de l'Infante. Everything round the little princess is bright: 'le profond jardin rayonnant et fleuri,' 'un grand palais comme au fond d'une gloire,' 'de clairs viviers,' 'des paons etoiles.' The very grass, too, seems to ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... started, with words of protest trembling on his lips; but, as his look turned on his little sister, as she now leaned drowsily against the girl's knees, he stifled them unspoken, while a spasm of pain crossed his worn face. With a dull nod of acquiescence he held out his arms to receive the child, whom Rose had lifted and wrapped in a blanket from her little bed that had been ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... by caring more for all children because she loves one so deeply. Even lovers, after the first absorption of newly-discovered joy, must learn to share their happiness and the happiness of their home with others if it is not to grow hard and dull. And friends may easily estimate the worth of their friendship by the measure with which it has humanized their relations ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... by enabling the investigator to know nature under a fresh aspect that electricity rises to its highest office. The laboratory routine of ascertaining the conductivity, polarisability, and other electrical properties of matter is dull and exacting work, but it opens to the student new windows through which to peer at the architecture of matter. That architecture, as it rises to his view, discloses one law of structure after another; what in a first ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... two letters from Madge, and had answered them with a line. She gave rather generously of her correspondence and her letters were never dull. In the last one she had asked him to join her on ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... dusty automobile whose driver, a boy of eighteen or twenty, with a torn hat, eyed her with dull curiosity. ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... I kept my promise," he said. "There is not a week that we don't drive half-a-dozen miles, and sometimes a dozen, to take part in a dull dinner." ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... of his life and principles. But meanness will not be baulked of its victims. The hatred of all excellence which made Caligula try to put down the memory of great men rages, though less openly, in the minds of many. They delight to degrade human life into that dull and barren plain "in which every molehill is a mountain, and every thistle a forest-tree." Great men are as small in their eyes as they are said to be in the eyes of their valets; and there are ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... Negroes are taking but a small part in their creation, glory and profit. If there are men among us who can be the means of bringing better conditions to the great Negro masses, and who can weed out the slow, dull, plodding process of evolution, they should not be denied the opportunity. The masses seem to be hedged about by a wall of indifference. Negroes have such little respect for their own kind that the thing is becoming proverbial. Now they pretend otherwise ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... her champion had dimmed a little by evening, however. Walter had seemed so very quiet and dull the rest ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... what your mind imagines of the warm, reddish tints of the Brown Mountains of Cervantes, where the shepherds and shepherdesses of that pastoral scene passed their happy, sunny hours. The same deep feeling of repose is shown in all the half-developed objects of the hill-side, in the dull, sleepy tint of the summer air, and in the warm, motionless haze that wraps sky, land, tree, water, and cloud. It is quite wonderful by how few tints and touches, by what almost shadowy and indistinct forms, a whole world of poetry can be breathed into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... before me in all its ugliness—The Thing born not of hate but of the mere love of excitement in people wearied by the dull routine and the reliable, plodding respectability of that countryside. The crime of Amos had been a great help in its way but as a topic it was worn out and would remain so until ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... spent half a dozen hours apart. We lived in the country, winter and summer, seeing but three or four people. I had a succession of tutors, and a library to browse about in; I assure you I am a tremendous scholar. It was a dull life for a growing boy, and a duller life for a young man grown, but I never knew it. I was perfectly happy." He spoke of his father at some length, and with a respect which I privately declined to emulate. Mr. Pickering had been, to my sense, a frigid egotist, unable to conceive of any ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... glow around Gaddon began to color. From a weird phosphorescent whiteness it changed to a dull but intense yellow. And with the change, a strange feeling crept ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... my boy," said Josh, with his grave good humor of the great man tolerating the antics of a mountebank, "you'll appreciate it wasn't the subject that was dull, but the ears. For the day'll come when everybody'll be thinking and talking about me most ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... noblemen, and furious, hard-drinking country gentlemen. If these were, in a sense, the more conspicuous types, there were other types very different and very admirable. Apart from the great mass of the people, living their dull daily lives, doing their dull daily tasks, quiet, ignorant, unconscious that they {21} could or should ever have any say in the disposition of their existences, there were both in town and country plenty ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... glory, was spread in its most vivid hues beneath his feet. Still he could not perceive the body of the sun, although the light behind him was dazzling; but the cloud of haze lying dense in that deep dell that separates the hill from the rocks of Salisbury, and the dull shadow of the hill mingling with that cloud made the dell a pit of darkness. On that shadowy cloud was the lovely rainbow formed, spreading itself on a horizontal plain, and having a slight and brilliant shade of all the colours of the heavenly bow, but all of ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... times but shyness probably had something to do with that. In spite of a certain self-possession he was diffident in most company, but, though he may have been subject to those spells when words do not rise and the mind seems wrapped in a kind of dull cloth which everyone dumbly stares at, instead of looking through—he would easily get off a rejoinder upon occasion. When a party of visitors came to Walden and some one asked Thoreau if he found it lonely there, ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... The result of this attitude of the preacher is to make the pulpit studiously, and even eagerly, attractive and interesting. This virtue has its corresponding fault. The American preacher of to-day is little in danger of being dull; his peril lies at the other extreme. His temptation is rather to the feebleness of extravagant statement, and to an overstrained and theatric rhetoric such as some persons find so attractive in the discourses of Dr. Talmage, and others ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... and that it was as much as his place was worth to venture even to knock at the door. So, yawning heavily, he dozed on his bench in the hall,—woke with a start and dozed again,—while the clock slowly ticked away the minutes till with a dull clang the hour struck One. Then on again went the steady and wearisome tick-tick of the pendulum, for a quarter of an hour, half an hour,—and three- quarters,—till the utterly fatigued valet was about to knock down a few walking-sticks ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... with that eloquence and with that melody of voice which few could bear unmoved; and even the dull ear and the hard heart of the official who heard him were for one brief moment moved as by the pathos of a song sung by some ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... said: "People, you have recovered from the errors which led you astray; you have recalled your kings and your priests," they replied: "We have nothing to do with those prattlers." And when some one said: "People, forget the past, work and obey," they arose from their seats and a dull rumbling could be heard. It was the rusty and notched saber in the corner of the cottage chimney. Then they hastened to add: "Then keep quiet, at least; if no one harms you, do not seek to harm." Alas! they ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... reproof that was preparing. What was my agreeable surprise to see the old gentleman standing at the stile, with his hands in his pockets, surveying the whole scene with evident satisfaction! And how dull I must have been, not to have known till my friend the grandfather (who, by- the-bye, said he had been a wonderful cricketer in his time) told me, that it was the clergyman himself who had established the whole thing: that it was his field they played ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... in a rather thick voice. "You know that it's pretty dull here, except in these September days. You must make the most of them. Have you had ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... so something whistled past my ear, so closely as almost to touch it—and struck with a dull thud upon the ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... for already there was a throng before the door. The music had started up, and half a block away you could hear the dull "broom, broom" of a cello, with the squeaking of two fiddles which vied with each other in intricate and altitudinous gymnastics. Seeing the throng, Marija abandoned precipitately the debate concerning the ancestors of her coachman, and, springing from ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... the winter of affliction and adversity, that it may grow up stronger, and produce a better harvest in the end. As an abstract truth, how clear this is! But, at the first chilling blast, how the spirit sinks; and when the sky grows dull and ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... words, but, like the torment of dropping water, they had their effect at last. The girl sat up in bed again, her fingers pressed to her temples, her eyes staring, listening, listening. Yes—they were the same eternal taps and words. With the dull desperation of fatigue, she got out of bed and ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... 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 ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... as something overbeautiful for daily use, even more than as something dull, inactive, over-prudent; if vice, on the other hand, is conceived as easy, brilliant, gay, gallantly reckless, in opposition to the too ethereal or merely stupid and prosaic aspects of life (though in reality seldom do the dissipated and those who prey on the vices of mankind possess ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... out, but it was dead. The old man gazed on it, helplessly weeping, for some time and then got a large piece of brown paper in which he wrapped up the body of his favourite; he tied it neatly with a piece of string and, placing it in his cart, went homeward with a heavy heart. The day was dull, the gutters were full of cabbage stalks and the air resounded ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... it. It is the worst kind of policy to be constantly blaming, chiding them, and positively cruel, bordering on criminality even, to suggest to them that they are mentally deficient or peculiar, that they are stupid and dull, and that they will probably never amount to ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... its predecessors, lifted the inert body on its crest, and flung it contemptuously high up upon the shore. Then the waters swept back and left the two children shivering alone on the strand: behind them were the dull, dead heaps of sea-weed, and at their feet a black mass of clothing. The children clung together in silent awe. Neither of them had ever seen a dead body. Hitherto death had been an abstraction, but now they felt themselves face ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... sound to reach me in reply was the low metallic hum of the live wire between his ear and mine. And then, as I sat gazing distractedly at my four safe walls, with the receiver still pressed to my head, there came a single groan, followed by the dull and dreadful crash of a human body falling ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... Indian another glance when she had taken but a step. He grunted and held up something in his hand—something that shone with a dull yellow light. It was a small, oval, gold locket which she had always worn in her bosom. She sprang and ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Dull eyes and a greenish tinge of the whites of the eyes point toward digestive disturbances due to an oversupply of food. The green color comes from bile thrown into the blood when the liver is overworked. The ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... hear, between the thunder of the big bombs, the dull report of exploding cordite. Meanwhile the dark sky was resplendent with the red glow ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... pleaded. A fragile thing, her lightest wish was heeded. Would she pluck roses? they must first be shorn, By careful hands, of every hateful thorn. And loving eyes must scan the pathway where Her feet may tread, to see no stones are there. She'll grow dull here, in this secluded nook, Unless you aid me in the pleasant task Of entertaining. Drop in with your book— Read, talk, sing for her sometimes. What I ask, Do once, to please me: then there'll be ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... am by no means going to leave you to the reading of cyclopA|dias. The vice of cyclopA|dias is that they are dull. What is done for this passage of Macaulay in the lists above is only preliminary. It could be easily done in three hours' time, if you went carefully to work. And when you have done it, you have taught yourself a good deal about your ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... once. If you went back it's just possible that into the fellow's dull mind might steal a ghost of suspicion. I'm ready to take my turn now, though I hate the damned inactivity. I am a presumed illiterate. I struggle over the printed page—and with me loafing in his office he would chat away over his ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... and the number of the civilized, who return to the forests in order to become Cimarronese, is, on the other hand, very inconsiderable indeed—still smaller than in Luzon, as the natives, from the dull, almost vegetating life which they lead, are not easily brought into such straitened circumstances as to be compelled to leave their village, which, still more than in Luzon, is all the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... have a good memory Air of science calculated to deceive the vulgar And scarcely a woman; for your answers are very short Bad habit of talking very indiscreetly before others Beaumarchais sent arms to the Americans Because he is fat, he is thought dull and heavy Can make a Duchess a beggar, but cannot make a beggar a Duchess Canvassing for a majority to set up D'Orleans Clergy enjoyed one-third the national revenues Clouds—you may see what you please in ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... down—as a matter of fact, he and his wife had invested nearly a thousand pounds of their hard-earned savings in their relation's hotel, the Villa du Lac. If Madame Bailey really wanted to leave salubrious, beautiful Paris for the summer, why should she not go to Lacville instead of to dull, puritanical, stupid Switzerland? ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... men. Of my own free will I give you wit, (O man so sorely in need of it!) And happiness; and the flame that hath dwindled On this dull hearth shall be rekindled. But this you must swear: To will, and to dare, To seek the spirit and slay the sense; And for this hour To give me power To lead you in silent obedience, Though I bade you fall ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... dull-green lattices, little gateways with roses, white enamel with cute little diamond panes of glass for windows, inviting bowers of artificial flowers and dim yellow lights. It makes you feel like a sybarite just to see it. It's a cosmetic ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... these remarks of hers, here and there. She had a very bright, alert way in talking, and now she added, easily, a sentence or two to the effect that it would be a dull world if we all held precisely the same views. She did the thing well, and in a few minutes I found myself chatting away with her in the most friendly manner. She managed with the utmost deftness to remove all ground for my embarrassment regarding my position. She talked for a while ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... that it would have been very easy for me to open the coffin with any sort of a tool. I looked about me and saw a hatchet and a couple of spades lying near the fence. I took one of the latter, put its flat end between the boards—the old coffin fell apart with a dull crackling protest. ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... my object to write a summary of the literature of antiquity. It would be as dull as a catalogue, or a dictionary, or a compendium of universal history for the use of schools in a single volume. And it would be as profitless. My aim is simply to show that the old civilization can boast of its ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... a valiant warrior, and was an admirable second to an enterprising leader; but he was altogether without initiative, and, except when excited by danger, was dull and silent. Although all esteemed him and honoured him for his strength and bravery, they felt that he would be a poor substitute indeed for the ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... in former days. These Janissaries were a strange, distorted resemblance of the knights themselves, for they were bound in a strict brotherhood of arms, and were not married, so as to care for nothing but each other, the Sultan, and the honor of their troop. They were not dull, apathetic Turks, but chiefly natives of Circassia and Georgia, the land where the human race is most beautiful and nobly formed. They were stolen from their homes, or, too often, sold by their parents when too young to remember their Christian baptism, and ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it! The thing would be ridiculous! We have no time nor inclination to break in green hands, besides, we've got help enough at present; it's almost our dull season." ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... slender annual growing to a height of 2 feet. The stems are creeping below, erect above, and with roots in the lower internodes of the decumbent part of the stem, smooth, dull green or partly purplish. ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... placed over the region of the heart, certain sounds are heard, which recur with great regularity. First is heard a comparatively long, dull sound, then a short, sharp sound, then a pause, and then the long, dull sound again. The first sound is caused mainly by the tricuspid and mitral valves, and the second is the result of sudden closure ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... might be the blood pounding through his ears, so strange and uncanny it seemed. Then, all at once there came a puff, as if a long breath had been drawn, like one lifting a heavy weight, and then a dull thud. A brief silence and more scratching in soft ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... cordiality, and entered into a long discourse with them, promising them the assistance of himself and order, and received from them a profusion of thanks. After a time Murtagh, observing, in a jocular tone, that consulting was dull work, proposed a game of cards, and the leaders, though somewhat surprised, he went to a closet, and taking out a pack of cards, laid it upon the table; it was a strange dirty pack, and exhibited ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... occasion far away to the north) seemed to watch over me. For all these reasons I venture to claim the indulgence of the public and the kindness of my friends, for these recollections of days in South Africa, in which shade and sunshine have been strangely mingled, and which to me have never been dull. To sum up, I have always found that life is what you make it, and have often proved the truth of the saying, "Adventures to ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... others advance. Let me not, therefore, be understood as expecting any immediate results, were it in my power to bring these matters promptly and prominently before the nation. I fully know I should not be heard, were the attempt made; for nothing is more dull than the ear of him who believes himself already in possession of all the knowledge and virtue of his age, and peculiarly entitled, in right of his possessions, to the exclusive control of human affairs. The most that I should expect from them, were all the facts published to-morrow, ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... you, Vandal guns of dull intent! We lacked till now our Beauty's monument Twice hallowed o'er ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... Or would you stare out upon the world into which you were contemptuously tossed with dull, hating, revengeful eyes, suspicious of all men, hopeless of good, but resolved to get even, so far as you might, by plying the evil trades which your life of slavery had taught you? Would you behave like Christ upon the Cross, or like an ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... an instant's compunction. "It does—it does indeed," he assured her. "It concerns Miss Elfrida Bell very much, in a way. Ah!" he went on impatiently, as she still sat silent, "why are you so unnaturally dull, Janet? I've finished that young woman's portrait, and it is more—satisfactory—than I ever in my life dared hope that any ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... over, the Lord our God will send for her, by that angel that taketh no bribe to delay execution of His mandate.' And then I knew his meaning: my darling was to die. But the steps of the angel were very slow. The autumn came and went. The child seemed languid and dull, and the Lord King offered a chasuble of samite to the blessed Edmund of Pontigny ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... unusually strong. The brightness of the fire seemed subdued. It was like a huge bonfire smothered by some great covering, penetrated by different, widely separated points of flame. These corners of flame flew up, curling in the wind, and then died down. Thus the scene was constantly changing from dull light to dark. There came a moment when a blacker shade overspread the wide area of flickering gleams and then obliterated them. Night enfolded the scene. The moon peeped a curved yellow rim from under broken clouds. To all appearances ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... and I bought it very cheap at a pawnbroker's, and there was—he, he, he!—a tarnished shilling in the waistcoat pocket. To think that the pawnbroker shouldn't have known there was a shilling in it! I knew it! I felt it when I was examining the quality. Oh, what a dull dog of a pawnbroker! It was a lucky suit too, this bottle-green. The very day I put it on first, old Lord Mallowford was burnt to death in his bed, and all the post-obits fell in. I'll be married in the bottle-green. Peg. Peg ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... I have been dull to-day, haunted by the thought of how much there is that I would fain know, and how little I can hope to learn. The scope of knowledge has become so vast. I put aside nearly all physical investigation; to me it is naught, or only, at moments, a matter of idle curiosity. This ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... he saw a woman, who had entered bearing some articles of food for his morning's repast. In a moment Russell descended from the lofty heights of imagination to the dull realities of a cold world, and, in plain language, began to feel rather sheepish at being discovered in such a frame of mind. Nay, this very frame of mind, this new sense of personal dignity as general, made his ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... however, was slight, owing to lack of practice and experience. She moved over to the bed, trying first to force her own darting rays into the opaque, dull cloud surrounding the other; then seeking a better way-for this had no results—-she slipped somehow inside the mist, getting behind it, down at the very source. From here she forced her own light through, mixing her beams of coloured radiance with the ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... picture I have seen, is a dull-faced, shallow boy, smooth-haired, and provincial; he had no money nor employment, except that he clerked for a druggist a while, until he knew Wilkes Booth, who looked at him only once, and bought his ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... no answer, but glided out of the room and slid away to her own apartment. She bolted the door and drew her curtains close. Then she threw herself on the floor, and fell into a dull, slow ache of passion, without tears, without words, almost without thoughts. So she remained, perhaps, for a half-hour, at the end of which time it seemed that her passion had become a sullen purpose. She arose, and, looking cautiously round, went to the hearth, which was ornamented ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... misses of Albion see nothing in the dull inhabitants of their brumous isle, which can compare with the ardour and vivacity of the children of the South. We bring our sunshine with us; we are Frenchmen, and accustomed to conquer. Were it not for this affair of the heart, and my determination ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Karl. I understand, and I will be good. I will be better than Hannah. I will be better than yourself, than the saints, even. I will admire all things. Behold the ravishing country! The wonder of that sky! Not Italy, not Spain has such a dull gray color! The beauty of the dirty streets! The charm of the crowded street-cars! Only five cents a ride, sitting upon the laps of others! I will no longer sew on Sunday. I will never ask for beer. I will eat every morning ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... on it a skeleton; a dull, grey sky, in which an Eagle soars, full-fed, it seems, from the flesh ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... chains and lozenges and balls of white and blue, purple and pink lightning, followed by the deafening crash and roll of thunder, the dreadful roaring of the mighty wind, and the torrents of plashing rain. At times was heard in the distance the dull gurgling of the swollen river, interrupted by explosions, as slips of earth-bank fell headlong into the stream. But once more the Jogi raised his arm and all was still: nature lay breathless, as if awaiting the ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... projected from the midrib, so that a cross section would be nearly in the form of [Symbol: )O( turned 90 degrees.]. In an orange leaf presenting this appearance the lower surface of one lamina was, as usual, dull in colour, while the upper surface of the subjacent lamina was likewise dull; hence the impression might arise that this was an instance of the adhesion of two leaves back to back, but the petioles were not twisted, as they must have been had two leaves thus ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... meant it in his Martyrdome? Where is the Classis, and the Assembly, the Lay-elder; all that geare of Scottish discipline, and the fine new Trinkets of Reformation? Were not all these taken out of their hand, while now they were in the height of their pride and triumph? And their dull Generall made to serve the execution of their Sovereign, and then to be turn'd off himself, as a property no more of use to their designes? Their riches and their strength in which they trusted, and the Parliament which they even idoliz'd, ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... should think. They are relics of the grandeur of Genoa's palmy days—the days when she was a great commercial and maritime power several centuries ago. These houses, solid marble palaces though they be, are in many cases of a dull pinkish color, outside, and from pavement to eaves are pictured with Genoese battle scenes, with monstrous Jupiters and Cupids, and with familiar illustrations from Grecian mythology. Where the paint has yielded ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... much better it was to hang in the cold wind upon the pier, to go down with Bob Bain among the roots of the staging, to be all day in a boat coiling a wet rope and shouting orders—not always very wise—than to be warm and dry, and dull, and dead-alive, in the most comfortable office. And Wick itself had in those days a note of originality. It may have still, but I misdoubt it much. The old minister of Keiss would not preach, in these degenerate times, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a credulity about the action of drugs, a belief in their supreme control and exactness of effect which amounts to superstition, and fills many of us with amazement. This form of idolatry is at times the dull-witted child of laziness, or it is a queer form of self-esteem, which sets the idol of self-made opinion on too firm a base to be easily shaken by the rudeness of facts. But, if you watched these men, you would find them changing their idols. Such too profound belief ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... streets And the red sun on the houses, And the books read A million times ago. Come, we must go far Away from the city. Let us lie down In this gentle meadow. Let us raise, threatening yet helpless Against the mindless, large, Deadly blue, shiny skies, The fleshless, dull eyes, The cursed ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... know. None of them knows. I am wiser than all the rest, for I have learned what a soul is. Eyes cannot see it—fingers cannot feel it, but he who possess it knows that it is there for it fills his whole breast with a great, wonderful love and worship for something infinitely finer than man's dull senses can gauge—something that guides him into paths far above the plain of soulless beasts ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... vacuums, as you know, We, therefore, will descend below, And fill, with dainties nice and light, The vacuum in your appetite. Besides, good wine and dainty fare Are sometimes known to lighten care; Nay, man is often brisk or dull, As the keen stomach's ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... The abbot began by depreciating the beauty of the building, remarking that Michelangelo's figures in the Sacristy did not interest him, and on his way up the stairs, he chanced to look out of a window and caught sight of Brunelleschi's dome. When the dull ecclesiastic began to say that this dome did not merit the admiration which it raised, the exasperated Tasso, who was loyal to his friends, could stand no more. Il Lasca recounts what happened: "Pulling the abbot backward with force, he made him tumble down the staircase, and he took good ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... loomed swiftly larger, he shut off the space-control, and set the coils for full charge, while the ship entered the planet's atmosphere in a screaming dive, still at a speed of better than a hundred miles a second. But this speed was quickly damped as the ship shot high over broad oceans to the dull green of land ahead in the daylit zone. Observations made from various distances by means of the space-control, thus going back in time, show that the planet had a day of approximately forty hours, the diameter was nearly nine thousand ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... whispered, pointing to the dull glow of dead bodies burning somewhere near, and laughing till her teeth flashed ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... such cases were dull. No really dramatic moments. The book-keeping of The Orb and all the rest of them was certainly a burlesque revelation but the public did not care for revelations of that kind. Dull dog that de Barral—he grumbled. He could not or would not take the trouble to characterize for me the appearance ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... him, with a kind of solemn yet eager scrutiny. "I was afraid," she said, after some hesitation, speaking still in a dull monotone, whose strangely sorrowful accents were marked and impressive, and in a voice whose tone was constrained and stiff, but yet had something in it which deepened the General's perplexity—"I was afraid that perhaps you might have witnessed some marks of agitation ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... tutor now at Tracy Park for Jack, but Maude had been transferred to Arthur's care. This was wholly due to Jerry, who alone could have induced him to let Maude share her instruction. Arthur did not care for Maude. She was dull, he said, and would never learn her lessons. But Jerry coaxed so hard that Arthur consented at last, and when Jerry had been with him about three years, Maude became his pupil, and that of Jerry as well, for nearly every day when the lessons were over the two little girls ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... in the middle of a long dull winter the change to Culversham was received by Jane with whole-hearted joy. Miss Abingdon's large staff of servants, all elderly and all over-paid, combined with their mistress to welcome Miss Erskine ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... deep, dull red; his small eyes seemed to recede into his head, and grow deeper and more cunning. He did not speak at all for a moment or two, and when he did, the flush was succeeded by a more ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... so dull and lifeless, Margaret. He cannot understand our impatience." Out of the corner of my eye I saw her crimson to the roots of her hair at this vicious insult. "Off, my man," he added to me, "or I'll prick your bull's hide." ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... all was now the main question, and it was discussed between them for a long time, till the shades of evening came upon them, and the dull dingy chambers became almost dark as they sat there. Mr. Die at first conceived that it would be well that Herbert should stick to the law. What indeed could be more conducive to salutary equanimity in the mind of a young man so singularly circumstanced, than the study of Blackstone, ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... broke out very soon; and three of the little band died on the first day. This rate mounted higher and higher, and at last smallpox broke out. So dismal was the prospect that the men sank into a dull despair. ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... enabled to see a real value in those things which others disregard and overlook. He perceives a difference in cases where inferior capacities see none; as the fine ear for music can distinguish an evident variation in sounds which to another ear more dull seem to be the same. This example will also apply to the eye in ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... stared as he rushed to and fro, hardly heeding the piles of luggage with which railway servants seek to break the dull monotony of a platform promenade. There was French blood in Tressamer: short, dark, thick-necked, yet far from stout in figure, he possessed the strain of sombre passion which runs through the blood of the Celtic races. He could no more ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... this vital point sink home. Only the same dull silence came in reply, and this continued taciturnity seemed to irritate Hovey. When he spoke again, his voice was cold ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... were few and with all due deference to them, extremely dull. At least I could not understand them because in them there did not seem to be anything to understand, and I am quite certain that they did not understand me. More, when they came to learn that I was radical in my views and had written certain "dreadful" and somewhat socialistic ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... buzzed outside on the sunny threshold of the door, making a sleepy sound like the winding of a rustic horn in the golden stillness, as they went forward on tiptoe between the dull red walls of the hall of the Victory, and came into the room beyond, where the Hermes stood alone but for the little ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... the Linnet it appears to sight, And like the Linnet sings from morn till night. A reddish spot upon his rump is seen, Short is his bill, his feathers always clean: When other singing birds are dull or nice, To sing again ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... remained till dinner. He was a servant in the house. He must not forget that. He had been worse things than this, and still he had not forgotten. He had felt the blush of shame, yet he had remembered, and white anger had embossed the dull scars; it was impossible that ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... months. The Iroquois were beginning to let us wander about alone. Chouart there had sewed his thumb up, where an old squaw had hacked at it with a dull shell. The padre's nails, which the Indians tore off in torture, had grown well enough for him to handle a gun. One day we were allowed out to hunt. Chouart brought down three deer, the padre two moose, and I a couple of bear. That night the warriors came ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... leaving Rome, Lucille had complained of a dull headache and chills at night. In France Mrs. Harris was fearful that the summer trip to Italy was not wise, but Leo and her family thought the yacht voyage to Naples would be charming. On the morning of the third day at Marino, Lucille was unable to leave her bed. Leo ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... doctrine deserves to be refuted first), because it stands near to our Vedic system, is supported by somewhat weighty arguments, and has, to a certain extent, been adopted by some authorities who follow the Veda.—But now some dull-witted persons might think that another objection founded on reasoning might be raised against the Vedanta, viz. on the ground of the atomic doctrine. The Sutrakara, therefore, extends to the latter objection the refutation of the former, considering that by the conquest of the most dangerous adversary ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... replied; and then my new friend trotted off, swinging half-a-dozen books at the end of a strap, and I sat at the window wishing that I too could go to school and have a strap to put round my books and swing them, for my life seemed very dull. ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... crest. The roller broke just as it reached the wreck, expending its full force upon her already shattered hull; the black mass was seen to heel almost completely over in the midst of the wildly tossing foam, there was a dull report, almost like that of a gun, a piercing shriek, which rose clearly above the howling of the gale and the babel of the maddened waters, and when the wreck again became visible it was seen that she ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... had a great many people on board, and she was already an hour behind time. The dangerous fog kept the suspense at high pressure; but as the time passed, the excitement gave place to a feeling of dull oppression. Fog is the seaman's worst enemy, and there were many unpleasant possibilities. On the best supposition the ship had gone inshore too far north or south, and now lay somewhere out at sea hooting and heaving the lead, without daring to move. One could imagine ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... notwithstanding God in his wisdome hath permitted to be reuealed from time to time a certaine obscure and misty knowledge, by little and little to allure the mindes of men that way (which els will be dull enough in the zeale of his cause) and thereby to prepare vs vnto a readinesse for the execution of his will against the due time ordeined, of calling those pagans ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... pray; For though you pine your life away With dull complaining breath, Or speed with song and wine each day, Still, still ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... discovery of man's darkness. We have three ways of creeping towards that glorious light of God. First, his own works are like some visible appearances of that invisible and incomprehensible God, and in these we know him, but not what he is in himself. Consider how dark and dull we are in piercing into the hidden natures of things, even below us, as beasts and plants. We behold some effects flow from them, but from what principle these do flow, that we know not. How much less can we apprehend any thing suitable of the divine Majesty, that is infinitely above us, from ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... evening, the magpie was perched upon a projecting bough of her oak, and the cat, who thought the cottage particularly dull that day, had come out for ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... the difference in human types or talents are considerably wasting their time. If they can understand how two coins can count the same though one is bright and the other brown, they might perhaps understand how two men can vote the same though one is bright and the other dull. If, however, they are still satisfied with their solid objection that some men are dull, I can only gravely agree with them, that some men ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... thought of all the stormy days, That fill some lives that tread less favoured ways, How little sunshine through their shadows gleamed, My own dull life had much the brighter seemed; If I had thought of all the eyes that weep Through desolation, and still smiling keep, That see so little pleasure, so much woe, My own had laughed more often long ago; If I had thought how leaden was the weight Adversity lays ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... Away with dull thoughts! Raise your brooding eyes To yonder unclouded azure skies; Look round on the earth, robed in bridal white, All glittering and flashing with diamonds bright, While o'er head, her lover and lord, the sun, Shines brightly as e'er ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... thet when they can't take pleasure in extry smartness in a child, why, they make it up in tracin' resemblances. I suppose they's parental comfort to be took to in all kinds o' babies. I know I've seen some dull-eyed ones thet seemed like ez ef they wasn't nothin' for 'em to ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... gets home to Bill Hatfield's, Bill takes one look at the pup, breaks the big rasp on Dick's head, throws the forehammer at him, an' bids him go back to Jedge Chinn an' tell him that he, Bill, will sally over the first dull day an' p'isen his cattle an' burn his barns. Dick takes the basket full of dog on his arm, an' goes p'intin' for Jedge Chinn. Nacherally, Dick stops at Hickman's tavern so as to mollify his feelin's with that red-eye. ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... her! When she came on in her boy's clothes she was perfectly wonderful. She wore a moss-coloured velvet jerkin with cinnamon sleeves, slim brown cross-gartered hose, a dainty little green cap with a hawk's feather caught in a jewel, and a hooded cloak lined with dull red. She had never seemed to me more exquisite. She had all the delicate grace of that Tanagra figurine that you have in your studio, Basil. Her hair clustered round her face like dark leaves round a pale rose. As for her acting—well, ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... gathered in the library, and everybody was deadly dull. Aunt Selina said she had been reared to a strict observance of the Sabbath, and she refused to go to bed early. The cards and card tables were put away and every one sat around and quarreled and was generally nasty, except Bella and Jim, who had gone into ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... is burning before the "holy pictures," we feel that these poor tillers of the soil, ignorant and uncouth though they too often are, may be raised at times by lofty thoughts and noble aspirations far above the low level of the dull and hard lives which they ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... had joined him there that I heard what had alarmed his quicker senses. There was a noise somewhere within the house. A door slammed in the distance. Then a confused, dull murmur broke itself into the measured thud of heavy footsteps rapidly approaching. They were in the passage outside the room. They paused at the door. The door opened. There was a sharp snick as the electric light was turned on. The door closed once more, and the pungent reek of a strong ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Ray Lankester, and whether in each case some malicious fiend has not palmed off a counterfeit upon me that differs toto caelo from the original. I felt exactly the same when I read Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister"; I could not believe my eyes, which nevertheless told me that the dull diseased trash I was so toilsomely reading was a work which was commonly held to be one of the great literary masterpieces of the world. It seemed to me that there must be some other Goethe and some other Wilhelm Meister. ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... rocking-horse met his gaze. He looked at it so long that his eyes blinked. Older people would have said that just then the old horse creaked—as old things have a way of doing. But children understand these things better than old folks who have grown dull. Basil knew quite well that the old horse had sighed, and he asked ...
— Tom, Dot and Talking Mouse and Other Bedtime Stories • J. G. Kernahan and C. Kernahan
... treaty with England lies at the threshold of all your business. The American Government never did two more foolish things than when it signed that Treaty and recalled Mr. Monroe, who was the only man could do them any service." Mr. Ellsworth put on the dull gravity of a Judge, and was silent. I added, "You may perhaps make a treaty like that you have made with England, which is a surrender of the rights of the American flag; for the principle that neutral ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... day Caesar was no better; his dinner was ordered to be served upstairs, and the governor paid him a visit as before. He found his prisoner so dull and bored with his own company, that he offered to come and share his supper. Caesar accepted the offer with ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... and their scorn of gain. Your period of dream—'twas but a breath— Is closed in the indifference of death. Sealed in your silences, to you alike If hands are lifted to applaud or strike. No more to your dull, inattentive ear Praise of to-day than curse of yesteryear. From the same lips the honied phrases fall That still are bitter from cascades of gall. We note the shame; you in your depth of dark The red-writ testimony cannot mark On every honest cheek; ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... me Is sum of something; which to term in gross, Is an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractis'd: Happy in this, she is not yet so old But she may learn; and happier than this, She is not bred so dull but she can learn; Happiest of all, is that her gentle spirit Commits itself to yours to be directed, As from her lord, her governor, her king." MERCHANT ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... in the direction of Marylebone, and stopped at last at a dull, yellow-washed house, which bore on its door a very dingy brass plate, inscribed in red letters, 'M. et Mdlle. Tirard. Salon de Danse.' Ernest opened the door without ringing, and turned down the passage towards the salon. 'Remember,' he said, turning to Harry Oswald by ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... crowd that had collected to see all these foreign soldiers go by, a sight so new and strange, listened uneasily to a dull sound which got nearer and nearer. The earth visibly trembled, the glass shook in the windows, and behind the king's escort thirty-six bronze cannons were seen to advance, bumping along as they lay on their gun-carriages. These cannons were eight ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a little disappointed that he returned so unexpectedly and shabbily, for they had read in the newspapers that he was a great ruler, which, however, was strange enough, for they knew in their own minds that he was dull of intellect, and in truth had a ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... whispered, "let me go back with you, uncle. I don't care how dull it is—I shall not be any trouble to grandmother while she is ill. Do let me go back—I ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... begin with an assumption, and I would rather begin with God and reason down, than begin with a piece of dirt and reason up. The difference between the Christian theory and the materialistic theory is that the Christian begins with God, while the materialist begins with dull, inanimate matter. I know of no theory suggested as a substitute for the Bible theory that is as rational and as ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... was not yet born; and what should issue from that dull ghastly unrevealing fog on the horizon, he did not care. Thither the tide setting eastward would carry him, and his future must be born. All he cared about was to leave the empty garments of his dead behind him—the ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... as he now secured would have ham strung or otherwise maimed its victim and left her wallowing helpless. But the dull teeth merely barked the leg's tough skin. And a spasmodic jerk ripped it ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... earth began to move faintly back and forward, and a dull, distant, subterraneous noise continued without interruption. The first powerful shock occurred on the 23d of December. During the whole month of January, 1841, heavy thunder prevailed, but without any motion of the earth. On February 11th, we ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... conception—the keynote—must be one that is sufficient alike for the every-day mood, for the exalted hours, and for the emergencies. That keynote is given in this truth: that there is no moment so dull or so hard but one can ask himself, What is the best the situation allows? and conform to that; can open his eyes to some beauty close at hand; can enter sympathetically ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... smiled gently. "Why, of course, Mathew. I know you'll look after Maggie. It will be a change for her. She's been having rather a dull time here, I'm afraid." ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone, Drew Priam's curtains in the dead of night, And would have told him, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... not come, however, and she grew more uneasy as the time slipped by, while the wail of the wind grew louder and the stove crackled more noisily, until at last one of the little girls rose with a cry, and she fancied she heard a dull beat of hoofs. It grew plainer until she was sure of it, but soon after that the sound ceased abruptly, and she could not hear the rattle of flung down logs which she had expected. This struck her as curious, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... than all, One sacred spot his own he loved to call; Save at mid-day, half-hidden by the gloom; The people call it The White Maiden's Tomb: For there she stands; her folded hands are pressed Together, and laid softly on her breast, As if she waited but a word to rise From the dull earth, and pass to the blue skies; Her lips expectant part, she holds her breath, As listening for the angel voice of death. None know how many years have seen her so, Or what the name of her who sleeps below. And here the child would come, and strive to trace, Through the dim twilight, the pure ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... a dull sort of way where they were being taken. I learned later that they were flung one and two at a time into the Seine, while their savage ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... all sides. For hundreds of square miles the country was under water, and Vincennes was in the centre of a great shallow lake. It was freezing water, too, for this was no longer the warm spring time, as it had been in the march to Kaskaskia, but dull and drear February. Yet the brave colonel knew that he must act quickly if he was to act at all. Hamilton had only eighty men; he could raise twice that many. He had no money to pay them, but a merchant in St. Louis offered to lend him all he needed. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... infancy is leaning upon established arts, just as the infant learns to walk alone by first depending upon support. The use of color in painting developed slowly, being supported for centuries by the strength of drawing or subject. The landscapes of a century ago were dull, for color was employed hesitatingly and sparingly. The colors in the portraits of the past merely represented the gorgeous dress of bygone days. But the painter of the present shows that color is ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... in a blur of wind and cold, penetrating rains. Except for the placing of the insurance on the Hilmer shipbuilding plant, business was dull. Fred began to make moves toward getting in money. But it was heartbreaking work. The people who had yielded up their consent so smilingly to Fred for personal accident policies, or automobile insurance, passed him furtively on the street or sent word out to him when he called at their ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... of those men who are remarkable for thick, massive, and saturnine features. At a first glance he was not at all ill-looking; but, on examining his beetle brows, which met in a mass of black thick hair across his face, and on watching the dull, selfish, cruel eyes that they hung over—dead as they were to every generous emotion, and incapable of kindling even at cruelty itself—it was impossible for any man in the habit of observing nature closely not to ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... were rather strange; but the narration of them is not very profitable, not that I go in for the utilitarian theory of conversation; but I think, on the whole, that, in story-telling, fiction should be preferred to dull facts like these, and so the next time I tell a story I will make ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... disadvantages to start with. She lay in a dull and marshy bottom, with no building stone at hand, and therefore she was forecondemned by her very position to the curse of brick and stucco, when Bath, Oxford, Edinburgh, were all built out of their own quarries. Then fire destroyed ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... rosy sea! The radiant head half-sunk! A pool of light, As the blue globe had by a blow been broken, And the insphered glory bubbled forth! Or the sun were a splendid water-bird, That flying furrowed with its golden feet A flashing wake over the waves, and home! Lo there!—Alas, the dull blank wall!—High up, The window-pane a dead gray eye! and night Come on me like a thief!—Ah, well! the sun Has always made me sad! I'll go and pray: The terror of the night begins ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... what it was like. And here he saw the beautiful Helener, and likewise her husband Menelayus. And one day, Menelayus went out hunting, and left Paris and Helener alone, and Paris said: "Do you not feel dul in this palis?"[2] And Helener said: "I feel very dull in this pallice," and Paris said: "Come away and see the world with me." So they sliped off together, and they came to the King of Egypt, and he said: "Who is the young lady"? So Paris told him. "But," said the King, "it is not propper for you to go off with other ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... fact, I have her written permission to use the house, which I should have shown you if we had got in a pinch. But it seemed so much more fun just to let matters take their course. It's a pet theory of mine that life is a dull affair unless we trust to luck a little. After my brother's death I was very unhappy and had gone out East to visit Aunt Alice, who is a great roamer. I thought it would be nice to stop here on the way home, just for a lark, without telling papa, who was frantically ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... saloon was doing a fine business. The swinging doors between the backroom and the bar were swinging all the time—and at the various tables a score of young men and a dozen or so of young women, and one stout fellow at the piano, were roaring dull care away. ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... births and virtue equally they scorn, As asses dull, on dunghills born; Impervious as the stones their heads are found, Their rage and hatred steadfast ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... however, the weather showed signs of changing. They had been sailing along with a good following breeze, the sky overhead a deep, cloudless, sapphire blue, and the sea smooth enough to relieve them from all uneasiness. Now, however, the sun was sinking toward the horizon like a ball of dull red copper, and the western sky, instead of being clear as previously, was heavy with black clouds that were banking up and threatening to obscure the sun ere it set. Overhead, too, deep violet clouds ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... departs for the country, which means, economizing for some months in a huge half-furnished mansion. In short, the romance of a Roman Princess is made up of a certain number of noisy winters, and dull summers, and plenty of children. If there be, by chance, any more exciting chapters, they are ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... Bell no longer belonged to the group. They had found matters so intolerably dull that they started off on their own hook to ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... did hear the language of Heaven, and the dull souls around her wuz too earthly to comprehend the divine harmonies, and so they ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... this bosom by your wild excess, Ah! kindly cease—for pity's sake subside, Nor thus o'erwhelm me with joy's rapid tide: My beating heart, oppress'd with woe and care, Has yet to learn such happiness to bear: From grief, distracting grief, thus high to soar, To know dull pain and misery no more, To hail each op'ning morn with new delight, To rest in peace and joy each happy night, To see my Lycidas from bondage free, Restored to life, to pleasure, and to me, To see him thus—adorn'd with virtue's charms, To give him to a longing mother's arms, To know ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... began to be (as the phrase is) extremely brilliant. However, as nothing past in it which can be thought material to this history, or, indeed, very material in itself, I shall omit the relation; the rather, as I have known some very fine polite conversation grow extremely dull, when transcribed into books, or repeated on the stage. Indeed, this mental repast is a dainty, of which those who are excluded from polite assemblies must be contented to remain as ignorant as they must of the several dainties of French cookery, which are served only at the tables ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... showery and dull. True to her resolution, Katherine put her mother's lucubrations into their covers, and prepared to ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... judgment of the mind, 57. By corporeal judgment is meant the judgment of the mind according to the external senses, which judgment is gross and dull, 57. See Justice ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... and through the smoke Sam descried two young men, one a slight wiry fellow, the other a large, broad-shouldered, fair-haired man with a dull expression of ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... moon!" Chet Bullard broke in, but again a movement from Harkness silenced his exclamations. Whatever of dull apathy had gripped young Harkness was gone. No thought now of the devastation below them that spelled his financial ruin. Some greater, more gripping idea had now possessed him. ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... sat on the edge of her nest; Her yellow-beaks slept as sound as tops; That day she had done her very best, And had filled every one of their little crops. She had filled her own just over-full, And hence she was feeling a little dull. ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... changing contrasts. Love of neighbors, human or animal, grows up amid savage traits, coarse and fine. When father made out to get us securely locked up in the back yard to prevent our shore and field wanderings, we had to play away the comparatively dull time as best we could. One of our amusements was hunting cats without seriously hurting them. These sagacious animals knew, however, that, though not very dangerous, boys were not to be trusted. One time in particular I remember, when we began throwing stones at an experienced old Tom, ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... take heed! You put your sword into the hands of recreant knights; they will dull its edge and mar its brightness, and, when your hour of need comes and you would put it into other hands, you will find its edge chipped and its point broken. ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... three in high spirits. When they came to the cloister, they flung an iron hook upon the roof of the treasure-room, and Tim climbing up by means of a rope which was attached to it, at once gave proof that he was anything but a dull pupil. In a trice a hole was made in the roof—the chests in the treasury were broken open—money-bags were piled up upon the floor, and then flung down out of the treasury upon the ground, where they were gathered up by Tim's comrades, ...
— The Story of Tim • Anonymous
... that painful transformation in his face: a difficult dull-red flood sweeping over it, only to recede instantly, leaving him white from neck ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... cannot, with their honour, call for after The Play, they look to be serv'd up in the middle: Your dance is the best language of some comedies And footing runs away with all; a scene Express'd with life of art and squared to nature Is dull and ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... witnesses which made it truth. There was the chair in which she had so often sat plying her needle with such tardy grace while her impatient thoughts did battle with the humdrum, narrow life she led. How she had beat against the fate which seemed to promise naught but that dull round of commonplace events in which her early years had passed away! How as a gall and fret had come the thought of Reuben's proffered love, because it shadowed forth the level of respectable routine, the life she then most dreaded! To be courted and sought ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... the war-path again," he remarked to Pinetop, who was stalking at his side. The two had become close friends during the dull weeks after their first battle, and Bland, who had brought a taste for the classics from the lecture-room, had already referred to them in pointless jokes ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... could not prevail. I am forced to allow the Sheriff 40 s. per Week for keeping Kidd safe; otherwise I should be in some doubt about him. He has without doubt a great deal of gold, which is apt to tempt men that have not principles of honour; I have therefore, to try the power of dull Iron against gold, put him into Irons that Weigh 16 Pound. I thought it moderate enough, for I remember poor Doctor Oates[10] had a 100 weight of Iron on him when he was a prisoner in the late Raign. There never was a greater Lyar or Thief in the World than this Kidd; notwithstanding he assured ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... stanchions and clamped by 8-pieces. Northward the lights of Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square threw a copper-coloured glare above the black roofs, and southward by all the orderly lights of the Thames. A train rolled out across one of the railway bridges, and its thunder drowned for a minute the dull roar of the streets. The Nilghai looked at his watch and said shortly, "That's the Paris night-mail. You can book from here to St. Petersburg ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... it reached to the Company's store. In the door, looking toward the big cage, stood the young white man. He heard the snarling, the clashing of teeth, and his jaws set heavily and a dull flame burned in his eyes. His breath came ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... Bard composed this furious ode, As tired he dragg'd his way thro' Plimtree road![27:2] Crusted with filth and stuck in mire Dull sounds the Bard's bemudded lyre; Nathless Revenge and Ire the Poet goad 5 To pour his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... got about through Wild Rose,' he continued. 'She was immensely tickled when I told her. I'm afraid she must have been feeling rather dull all these days, ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... Prince's guilt has taken firm root in the dull minds of our police authorities. They have had every information with regard to Prince Semionicz's antecedents from Russia; his position, his wealth, have been placed above suspicion, and yet they suspect and go on suspecting him or his secretary. They have communicated with the police of every ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... was that beautiful apathetic Dorcas Brandon. Where is the laggard so dull as to experience no pleasing flutter at his heart in anticipation of meeting a perfect beauty in a country house. I was romantic, like every other youngish fellow who is not a premature curmudgeon; and there was something indefinitely pleasant in the consciousness ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... The whole upper floor of her new building is a spacious gymnasium, where her pupils exercise every day under the instruction of a skillful German; and on every Saturday morning they take lessons from the best dancing master in the city. The result is, she has no dull scholars complaining of headaches. All are alike happy in their ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... this weeping man approaches, supported by two friends, that comfort him with: "All right, Tom. You done noble," uttered in pacifying if not convincing tones? Heart-brokenly he cries: "I dull le ver' bes' I knowed, now di' n't I? Charley? Billy, I dub bes' I knowed how. An' nen he says to me—Oo-hoo-hoo-oooo-oo! He says to me: 'Come ou' that, ye cussed fool!' Oo-oooo-hoo-hoo-oo-oo! Smf! Lemme gi' amma ham hankshiff. Leg go my arm. Waw gi' amma hankshifp. ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... early numbers contained verses as grossly indecent as they were dull. Cave moreover advertised indecent books for sale at St. John's Gate, and in one instance, at least, the advertisement was ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... them out. Those idle words, neighbor, are past remedy. That turning back to the old pages produces anything but elation of mind. Would you not pay a pretty fine to be able to cancel some of them? Oh, the sad old pages, the dull old pages! Oh, the cares, the ennui, the squabbles, the repetitions, the old conversations over and over again! But now and again a kind thought is recalled, and now and again a dear memory. Yet a few chapters more, and then the last: after which, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Greenfield, Massachusetts, was a member of the House of Representatives. I knew him very well and he was a constant visitor at our home. He was celebrated for his flashes of wit, which sometimes stimulated undeveloped powers in others, and I have often seen dull perceptions considerably sharpened at his approach. Oliver Wendell Holmes speaks of his witty sayings in the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," and his conversational powers were so brilliant that they won the admiration of Thackeray. Robert ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... on the Maramec, a good day's tramp, and we did not expect to be back until nearly time for Madame Chouteau's dance. I think the matrons and the maidens expected to spend the day in going to church and in making visits, which seemed to me a dull way to spend Christmas, but ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... have given you. Norfolk! There is only one word between it and the plantations. At this time of the year, it is a clay pudding full of villages. Give me your arm, Dick; I shall play no more until my luck turns again. Losing cards are dull company indeed." ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... of assize, in an eloquent speech, put on one side all questions of witchcraft and diabolical compact, and bestial transformation, and boldly stated that the court had only to consider the age and the imbecility of the child, who was so dull and idiotic—that children of seven or eight years old have usually a larger amount of reason than he. The president went on to say that Lycanthropy and Kuanthropy were mere hallucinations, and that the change ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... trick of drawing herself up to every new proposal with an air of "What is that to us?" At this time Canada herself was in bad way. She had just completed her first big transcontinental. Times were dull. The Crown Colony of Newfoundland did not come begging admission to confederation. No political party could do that and live; for politics in Newfoundland are a fanatical religion. I have heard the warden of the penitentiary say that if it were not for politics he would never have any inmates. ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... every year in heavier mantles of hemlocks and cedars; but a shaded road winds now gravely by the river-side, and along it the city sends out those who are tired, worn out, and need to hear that message of the river. No matter how dull their heads or hearts may be, they never fail to catch something of its meaning. So quiet it is there, so pure, it is like being born again, they say. So, all the time, in the cool autumn-mornings, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... him was magical. He was sailor enough to love the swell of the waves and the rippling music of the water as it slipped under the anchored boat; he was fisherman enough to be thrilled by the chances of capture; he was artist enough to gloat over the beauty of the dull morning—the white gulls circling overhead, the black rocks sticking their spines above the gray sea, a phantom four-masted ship sailing straight toward ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... a merrymaking it was! Truly, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and in a country and at a time when all young people had to work almost as hard as their parents, the pioneer fathers and mothers encouraged the young folk to mix pleasure well with their tasks. Indeed, it was ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... the tragedy of a careless and supercilious coquetry which plays with the heart as the fisherman plays with the salmon? Read "Clara Vere de Vere." Would you know the dull heartache of a loveless married life, growing at times into an intolerable anguish which no marital fidelity can do much to medicate? Read "Auld Robin Gray." Who but a poet can interpret the pain of a parting between loving ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... first to last lounging about the wharf, overseeing the going away of our goods. Harris, so soon as I gave him key and street-number had posted to Reade Street to attend the silk's reception. Waiting for the coming back of the conveying dray was but a slow, dull business, and I was impatiently, at the hour I've named, walking up and down, casting an occasional glance at the big last trunk where it stood on end, a bit drawn out and separated from that common mountain of baggage wherewith the wharf was piled. One of the general inspectors, a man ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... and now, for all you know, his hand may be too strong. Poor, dishonest king! When you accepted this throne, which belongs to another, you fell as far as possible from moral ethics. And now you would be honest and be called dull, and dream, while your ministers profit and smile behind your back. I beg your Majesty's pardon, but you have always requested that ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... wet grounds, no more dikes and sluices, no more of these grazing cattle,—though they seemed, in their dull manner, to wear a more respectful air now, and to face round, in order that they might stare as long as possible at the possessor of such great expectations,—farewell, monotonous acquaintances of my childhood, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... said, "I should be an ungrateful wretch if I could not oblige you in so small a request. I promise not to disturb you, Zara; and do not think for one moment that I shall be dull. I have books, a piano, flowers—what more do I want? And if I like I can go out; then I have letters to write, and all sorts of things to occupy me. I shall be quite happy, and I shall not come near ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... Tuppence, her flagging spirits reviving. "And all expenses paid! But, oh, Tommy, I do like things to happen quickly. So far, adventure has succeeded adventure, but this morning has been dull as dull." ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... But, alas! he could catch nobody! The enemy was an airy, agile, artful, experienced creature who was never at the end of his inventions, and had nothing else to think of but how to make a fool of him; while he, with his dull henchman Alexander, was but a stupid, heavy animal, whose horns had to grow before he could butt with them. It was therefore with a very surly look that Master Boltay, standing outside his door one day, beheld ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... Viscount's usually direct gaze wavered and fell, while his pallid cheek flushed a dull red. He did not answer at once, but his sudden ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... curtain of the large bow-window, so common in the West Indian houses, and the rich moonlight, now unvexed by the dull glare of the taper, flowed into the apartment, bathing every object it touched with silvery radiance. Clara sat in the window, in the full glow of the light, leaning forward toward the open air, and I, with a beating heart, gazed upon her superb beauty. Shall I ever forget it? ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... said the same thing, when I told them I wanted to go over to England: "What on earth do you want there?" Though only a few hours' journey from England, they had never felt the least curiosity to see the country. "And London! It was said to be a very dull city; it was certainly not worth putting one's self out to go there." Or else it was: "If you are going to London, be careful! London is full of thieves and rascals; look well to ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... espousing the daughter of some irreproachable county family, and returning to his old home to live in frugal state for the rest of his life; driving to church in the old barouche, attending a succession of dull, country-house dinners; taking the chair at village meetings. He tried to imagine Cornelia spending long, peaceful years as the squire's wife, contentedly pottering about the village, superintending Dorcas meetings, and finding recreation in occasional garden ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... minute even the galloping hoofs had muffled their dull thunder in the darkness and distance. With wild dread spurring him on, the father was gone to the rescue of his children, leaving old Plummer and his faithful sergeant shocked and nerveless at ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... the dinghy, with Dominique and Pedro, had left the side of the yacht; the captain, by Frank's orders, set four men to work to paint the gig black, while others gave a coat of dull lead colour to the varnished oars. The order was received with much surprise by the men, who audibly expressed their regret at seeing their brightly varnished boat ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... summer afternoon; and a simple but striking little picture of a child brooding, with looks of silent but deep and sorrowful regret, over a handful of withered flowers, with glimpses of dark low hills and autumnal fields behind it, and a dull beclouded sky above. ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... the Judge, patient to the last degree, wades through the account-book. Meanwhile the hands of the clock have moved on. Instead of being a short case, this apparently simple matter has proved a long one, and already as the afternoon advances the light of the dull winter's day declines. The solicitors engaged in the 'horse case,' who retired to consult, hoping to come to a settlement, returned into Court fully an hour ago, and have since been sitting at the table ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... mighty army, yet I have more than once witnessed the fact, and remarked how, but a short distance from the line of our hurried march, the country lay untouched and uninjured; and though the clank of arms and the dull roll of the artillery may have struck upon the ear of the far-off dweller in his native valley, he listened as he would have done to the passing thunder as it crashed above him; and when the bright sky and pure air succeeded to the lowering atmosphere and the darkening storm, he looked ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... triumphantly in. It was pretty—and queer—perhaps queerer than pretty. The walls were green-gray, the carpet gray-green, the furniture pale yellow, almost white, with brass handles and hinges, and lines of dull red tiles set into the wood. Every picture on the walls had a meaning, Miss ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... rebellion. Her nerves had been so shaken that she sobbed behind her veil all the way to her destination. Paris, when she reached it, offered her almost nothing that could comfort or amuse her. That city is always empty and dull in August, more so than at any other season. Even the poor occupation of teaching her little class of music pupils had been taken away by the holidays. Her sole resource was in Modeste's society. Modeste—who, by the way, had never been ill, and who suffered from nothing ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... islanders has been on the page of history, these characteristics are very much at variance with the descriptions we have of the savages seen by the earliest European visitors, and especially by Captain Cook who thus describes those he saw at Adventure Bay in 1777: "Their colour is a dull black, and not quite so deep as that of the African negroes. It should seem also that they sometimes heighten their black colour by smoking their bodies, as a mark was left behind on any clean substance, such as white paper, when they handled ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... or two white clouds lit up with sunshine appeared drifting over from the southward, and that was the end. The old pensioner came to the door for his bread and cheese: 'The wind's in the south' he said, 'and I hopes she'll stay there' Five dull yellow spots on the hedge—gorse bloom—that had remained unchanged for so many weeks, took a fresh colour and became golden. By the constant passing of the waggons and carts along the road that had been so silent it was evident that the busy time of spring was here. There ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... carbine to his shoulder, took deliberate aim, and fired. Almost simultaneously with the report, the huge animal came tumbling down from the tree, and fell with a dull, dead plash upon the water. ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... was a large, dull woman, but had kept a touch of the beauty that had marked her when she was young. She was kind, conventional, and generally anxious to take the proper line. Cartwright was twelve years older, and since she was a widow and had three children when she married ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... grew minute by minute on the dull oblong of the blind, and minute by minute that horrible thing on the bed took something ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... those on an ordinary wild bush of this country. When cooked, the prickles soften down to the same consistence as the skin, which is rather thick. When ripe, they are easily peeled, and well repay the trouble, the spines being then much less obdurate than when green. The mature fruit is of a deep, dull, coppery red color, and in flavor is equal, if not superior, to any of the red varieties which I have eaten in England. I have often wondered whether cultivation might not remove the spines from the berries, or, that failing, whether a seedling could not be raised ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... your story, Hare," I repeated. "You are becoming metaphysical and therefore dull. The time is short and I want to ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... mile or two there was Jim riding steadily along the road, looking very dull and down-like, just the way he used to do when he was studying how to get round a job of work as he wasn't used to. He brightens up a bit when he sees me, and we both jumped off, and had a good shake-hands and a yarn. I told him about mother and Aileen, and how I'd left dad all ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... life easily, on the whole," said Lord Warburton. "And then you know we're very dull. Ah, we can be dull when ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... have his head "scratched" by the hour together, with a sharp-pointed comb, to relieve by external irritation the distressing sensation's, which he compared to those made, sometimes by a tightening ring, sometimes by a leaden cap, and sometimes (but this was in later life) by a dull boring instrument. Yet he was the centre of the family life, and of its merriment as well; and his strong social instincts and lively animal spirits made him full of animation and vivacity in society, although he was soon tired, and with a nervous restlessness ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... this short space to give a full account of this novel and interesting dinner party, but if any one supposes that there was a dull moment in ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... violently gesticulated, while one of them was observed driving a thick pole into the ground, at about fifty yards from the fire, around which the party and the prisoners squatted. Presently, at a sign from one of the Indians, supposed to be a chief named "Dull-Knife," four of the red-skins seized the Mexican and forced him towards the stake, where they stripped him to the skin, and then bound him to it with thick cords. The whole party then, without further ceremony, proceeded to torture the wretched man to death, as a punishment ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... Beersheba; and we're going to have a real jolly time, and we're going to forget dull care. It'll be quite the most delightful sport we've had since we came to Haddo Court. What I should love most would be to vault over the fence and go all by our lonesome selves. But we must have a maid—a horrid, stupid maid; only, of course, she'll walk behind, and she'll leave us alone ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... dear, that I am going to criticise you. I am no judge of sewing,—never set a stitch in my life. It must be a dull way of spending time. Can't you put ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... 'animated moderation.' He would say that such writings are never slow, are never excessive, are never exaggerated; that they are always instinct with judgment, and yet that judgment is never a dull judgment; that they have as much spirit in them as would go to make a wild writer, and yet that every line of them is the product of a sane and sound writer. The best and almost perfect instance of this in English is Scott. Homer was perfect in it, as far as we can judge; ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... well-bred! And there were the Ashleys—clever mother and three daughters, au-fait girls, racy and witty talkers; I forget whether they were last from Paris, Washington, or San Francisco. Family motto: "Don't be dull." All the Van Dams from New York, and the Sleiderheifers and Mulligrubs of New Jersey, were there for the season, some of them in cottages. These families are intimate, even connected by marriage, with the Bayardiers of South Carolina and the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... his customary seat on the bench in front of the shack, watching with listless, dull eyes the restless waves. He greeted the professor with his twisted smile, as the latter called to ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... in a university town, comes the advantage—if it be an advantage—of having spent one's youth there. Mr. Howells says that he must be a dull fellow who does not, at some time or other, hate his native village; and I must confess that I have not, at all stages of my life, held my present opinion of Andover. There have been times when her gentle indifference to the preoccupations of the world has stung me, ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... you're big enough to praise the work of a fellow craftsman when you recognize its value." And Koritz, the dull red showing under the olive of his cheeks, went back ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... "It would be a dull world, except for peculiar persons," observed the man on the settee philosophically. "I've seen very many peculiar persons lately by the simple process of coming here day after day. No, I'm not Mr. Livius' representative. I'm only a town-bound and ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of the babbling giant. He dropped his blanket fully back from his body and stood with his eyes boring forward at his foe, his arms crossed arrogantly over his naked, ridging trunk, proud, confident, superb, a dull-hued statue whose outlines none who ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... on still more quickly had it not been for the trouble in sharpening the drills. These were heated in the small blacksmith's fire Dias had brought. They were first placed in the fire, but this was not sufficiently hot to raise them beyond a dull red glow. When this was done a shovelful of glowing fragments was taken from the fire and placed on the hearth, and among these the small bellows raised the ends of the drills to a white heat, when of ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... ill-managed dinner of wits and scientific men I have often felt. There must be a mixture of nonsense with sense, or it will not amalgamate: all wits and no fools, all actors and no audience, make dinners dull things. The same men in their boots, as you say, are quite other people. "Two or three ladies, too"—we were delighted with your finding them useful as well ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... only like me about the eyes, and like—him—in the honey color of her hair. Hers is as brilliant and curly as mine is dull and smooth. And she's so big. So golden and burstingly big. I can't look at her without fairly gasping, 'can ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... a thrillingly familiar feminine voice calling "Kitty, kitty, kitty." He tried to move, a dull pain throbbed in his breast, and a groan escaped him. In a moment Helen appeared; the gray kitten was forgotten. She looked very anxious and solicitous—and also, Dan ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... bulkiest and most voluminous writings that proceeded from the cloisters or the universities, even the metaphysical disquisitions of the Nominalists and Realists, and the boundless subtleties of the contending schools of the "Divine Doctors," Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, fall under this description. Dull, dreary, unintelligible, and interminable as they are, they are still in reality works of fancy. They are the offspring, almost exclusively, of the imaginative faculty. It ought not to create surprise, to find that this faculty predominated in the minds ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... ancient eloquence, and fragrant flowers of poesy to enliven and perfume the dull cloister studies of the monks. It is not every library or reading society even of our own time that possess so many gems of old. But other treasures might yet be named which still further testify to the varied tastes and literary pursuits of these monastic bibliophiles; ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... Cordial Use, And thou may'st all the Doctors Slops Refuse. Hush then, dull QUACKS, your Mountebanking cease, COFFEE'S a speedier Cure for each Disease; How great its Vertues are, we hence may think, The Worlds third Part makes it their common Drink: In Breif, all you who Healths Rich Treasures Prize, And Court not Ruby Noses, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... am dull about many things," said Dorothea, simply. "I should like to make life beautiful—I mean everybody's life. And then all this immense expense of art, that seems somehow to lie outside life and make it no better for the world, pains one. It spoils my enjoyment ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... of course I am never dull at The Grange, and I don't know that I am so fond of Sarah. I do like her very much, but I shall see her in another month; so, if you like, I will ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... let us see your pleasant face this morning. Where were you last night? My company all complained about your absence. We were as dull as a funeral." ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... turned Normans to my comfort!" quoth Gurth; "expound that to me, Wamba, for my brain is too dull, and my mind too vexed, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... lower limbs, which indicated that the old fellow actually felt some disposition to dance. It soon passed away, though his grim, hard, wrinkled, dusky, grey countenance continued to gleam with a sort of dull pleasure for some time. There was nothing surprising in this, the indifference of the Indian to melody being almost as marked as the negro's ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... circus; but in the open country, if I happen to be passing, that coursing haply will distract me from some weighty thought, and draw me after it . . . and unless Thou, having made me see my weakness, didst speedily admonish me, I become foolishly dull." Secondly, when the knowledge of sensible things is directed to something harmful, as looking on a woman is directed to lust: even so the busy inquiry into other people's actions is directed to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... have been taught this more than I have been taught to play. And the music of the master-composers I always think of as beautiful and simple but hard to make it sound as it should. Often I have heard others say that the music of the masters is dull, and not beautiful, but that is really not what the people feel. It is difficult for them to play the music rightly. And again they cannot understand this: that art is often simple in, its truth, while those who look upon it are not! simple-hearted, as they regard ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper
... miles out. There we had breakfast or lunch of huge chops at 10.15. After that we took the road again, and did not call a halt of any length till we had put another twenty miles behind us. The day was fine but dull, and we were not troubled by the heat. At the fortieth milestone it began to appear doubtful whether we should all reach the journey's end. I have an entry in my diary: 'At 40 Robertson bad, I worse, Deanlet (i.e. Forbes) quite fit.' So at Foulmire, nine miles from Cambridge, ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... northeast. Here she came to the blind adobe wall of La Garita, whose olden purpose one still may read in the many bullet-holes in its brown sides. Here she paused, and as the evening shadows lengthened the dress and wall blended their dull tones together. ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... which opens this story, one might have stood upon the bridge and watched the lazy flowing of the river on whose dull green surface all the spans and bars were shadowed, and on the buttress seen the sunshine in ever changing, trembling glints of gold. Dead thistles were on the bank rustling in the breeze and the long tules by the water-side, some broken, others upright, waved ...
— A Napa Christchild; and Benicia's Letters • Charles A. Gunnison
... open—and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness—all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones; but I could see nothing else of the old man's face or person; for I had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... cry sank into a dull moan, and, setting a frail white arm across her eyes, she bowed her head upon it, as do weeping children, and fell to sobbing with that subdued despair that ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... [7]"There is no condition that could be promised to me for fighting and combating with thee," said Lugaid, "and there is no condition on which I would undertake it, but[7] they are persuading a brother of mine to come fight thee [8]on the morrow,[8] to-wit, a foolish, dull, uncouth youth, dealing stout blows. [9]They brought him into the tent of Ailill and Medb and he has engaged to do the battle and combat with thee.[9] [10]He is befooled about the same maiden.[10] And it is for this ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... [It is dull, and I need wholesome excitements and distractions; so I will go lightly excursioning along the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... does the Author of life endow a little mortal pilgrim in giving him at the outset of his career such a body as this! How miserable it is to look forward twenty years, when the same child, now grown a man, wakes in the morning with a dull, heavy head, the consequence of smoking and studying till twelve or one the night before; when he rises languidly to a late breakfast, and turns from this, and tries that,—wants a devilled bone, or a cutlet with Worcestershire sauce, to make eating possible; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... a box full of lovely roses, which I shared with the sons and Mrs. A. B—-. I see I have not mentioned before that I received yours and Mary's letter of 28th September, which came very soon after my birthday. This morning we went to a Presbyterian Church by mistake, but it was very dull and we soon went out and went to another close by, which turned out to be Ritualistic, but at any rate the music, and better still, the sermon, was very good,—"What think ye of Christ?" It was ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... much the worse for their queer adventure, although for some days they seemed dull and ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... the world could wish to read these hundreds of volumes? For all their beautiful bindings she had a conviction that the contents would be appallingly dull; and her eyes fled gladly to the more congenial scene outside the windows where the flowers danced gaily in the sunshine and a little skiff floated by on the shimmering river, like some magic boat gliding to ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... gallant rescue. As his holiday had progressed he had felt the need for some such old gentleman more and more; for only thus, he realised, could he capture the heart of the wayward Miss Spratt. But so far it had been a dull season; in a whole fortnight nobody had gone out of his way to oblige William, and to-morrow he must return to the City as unknown and as unloved as ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... tempering are in use. One is to heat the blade in the fire and to plunge it at a dull heat into water. The other is to lay the cold blade upon a flat bar of red-hot iron. This has the advantage that the degree of the effect upon the blade can be judged from the change of its colour as it absorbs ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... these stony hearts, those dull imaginations—not even this pretty picture, so simply drawn, of the wounded girl-soldier hanging her toy harness there in curious companionship with the grim and dusty iron mail of the historic defenders of France. No, there was nothing ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... Suddenly, however, a dull sound arose within a quarter of a mile from the city gate, as of some feeble attempt to blow a blast upon a trumpet. In five minutes more a louder blast was sounded close to the gate. Questions were joyfully put, and as joyfully answered. The usual ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Joanna's entreaties and persuasions. He could not withstand Jo when her blue eyes were all dull with tears, and her voice was hoarse and frantic. For some months now his marriage had seemed to him a wrong and immoral thing, but he rather sorrowfully told himself that having made the first false step he could not now turn round and come back, even if Ellen ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... for the heavy hush of the Rooms, for the closeness, and the rich perfumes, which mingling together seem like the smell of money piled on the green tables; he was in a mood for the dimmed light like dull gold, gold sifted into dust by passing ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... simply the society of old Miss Birdseye, of whom Olive saw more this winter than she had ever seen before. It had become apparent that her long and beautiful career was drawing to a close, her earnest, unremitting work was over, her old-fashioned weapons were broken and dull. Olive would have liked to hang them up as venerable relics of a patient fight, and this was what she seemed to do when she made the poor lady relate her battles—never glorious and brilliant, but obscure and wastefully heroic—call back the figures ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... shadows round the base of the tower, for his ears had already caught a faint, almost inaudible throbbing that seemed to grow from moment to moment. There certainly was a dull vibration in the air, a vibration like the distant hum of machinery. Suddenly old Edouard touched Bennie upon ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... Robin, that he seemed so modest? Was it because people's eyes—Mrs. Morrison's, Lady Shuttleworth's—had been so angry lately whenever they rested on her that his seemed so very kind? No; she did remember thinking them that, even being struck by them, when she saw him first in Kunitz. A dull red crept into her face when she remembered that day and what followed. "It isn't very snug," she said at last, trying to hide by a careful coldness of speech all the strange things she was feeling. "When it ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... that dull innocence been punished as it should? What say'st thou? Man is hard,—but woman? And thy tears, Who has been drinking? And into what ear so good Dost pour thy woes for it ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine
... made a Khitmah or perfection of the Koran and held a festival—in honour of the Shaykh Abd al-Kadir al-Jilani. And when the morrow dawned, the Consul gave his son ten thousand dinars, saying, "O my son, when thou comest to Baghdad, if thou find stuffs easy of sale, sell them; but if they be dull, spend of these dinars." Then they loaded the mules and, taking leave of one another, all the wayfarers setting out on their journey, marched forth from the city. Now Mahmud of Balkh had made ready his own venture for Baghdad and had moved his bales and set up his tents without the walls, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... all countries, in all ages, Carol admitted, have a tendency to be not only dull but mean, bitter, infested with curiosity. In France or Tibet quite as much as in Wyoming or Indiana these timidities are inherent ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... Ozhogin came in. I promptly went up to him, and began talking to him very unconstrainedly. I don't know how it was, but I stayed to dinner, and spent the whole evening with them; and next day the Ozhogins' footman, an elongated, dull-eyed person, smiled upon me as a friend of the family when he helped me ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... exceedingly good-looking fellow, dressed handsomely, always wore spurs, and had more manners than any other farmer within twenty miles; and, therefore, it is not to be wondered at that Lady Rooke somewhat encouraged these gratitude-visits. Her Ladyship often complained how dull and lonely she was, living without a protector in that old mansion, whose walls were covered with ghastly portraits of departed Rookes; and whose ancient casements rattled at night when the wind blew in its fitful fancies, and made the very stairs groan as it rushed ...
— Comical People • Unknown
... certain that they are pursued, as also who is the pursuer. She has heard the question asked by Aguara, recognising his voice; heard also the dull thud of his club as it descended on the skull of the unfortunate man; and now again hears the trampling of hoofs renewed and drawing nearer. She has still hold of Francesca's hand, and for a moment debates within herself what ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... people move to the city, because every city, great and small, has in the course of the year some events which bring all the people to the curbstone. Country life has few such times and therefore it is dull, because the richest experience of mankind is the experience of common social joy. The best recreation is acquaintance and conversation. The farmer's son spends many hours in silence. He wants someone to help him to talk, and to ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... months of my mother's existence, Peter was almost always on her bed, night and day; and during the final four weeks, when death was daily expected, he was sad and dull: which was attributed to the change in the habits of the family. Forty-eight hours before all was over, Peter crept into a corner under the bed, which had always been his place of refuge when in trouble; and we with difficulty prevailed on him to quit it, even when ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... be dull, when zuns do glow? Oh! no; look down the grove, Where zides o' trees be bright above; An' weaeves do sheen below; An' neaeked stems o' wood in hedge Do gleaem in streaeks o' light, An' rocks do gleaere upon the ledge O' yonder zunny ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... the man answered. "You have broken the hearts of thousands of suffering men and women—you who might have led them into the light, have forged another bolt in the bars which stand between them and liberty. So they must live on in the darkness, dull, dumb creatures with just spirit enough to spit and curse at the sound of your name. It was the greatest trust God ever placed in one man's hand—and you—you abused it. They were afraid of you—the aristocrats, and they bought you. Oh, we are not ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... were not silent either. We stood up against the squirrels, like giants, beat them with our swords, aimed our arrows at them, and shot at them with our pop-guns. But, alas! our swords were dull as wood; and before we could set our bows, they had thrashed us. I say nothing of the guns. What can you do with a pop-gun if the foe will not wait until you have taken aim at him? They rushed forward and knocked the guns out of our ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... of the ginger. It is a beast for Perseus. He is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him, but only in patient stillness while his rider mounts him. He is indeed a horse, and all other jades you may ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... due consideration. He was preparing to answer something in his own mind. The dull-faced girl was having a peculiar effect upon him. He ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... motioned to the clerk, and through the hushed silence of the court the dull voice droned out: "Anthony West, William Borkins, Lester Stark, Gustave Brellier, Miss Antoinette Brellier, Doctor Bartholomew...." And so on through the whole list. As each name was called the owner of it came forward and stood in front of ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... said Miss Kerr, "you would not like poor mama to have no one to read to her, would you? It is so dull for her all day on the sofa by herself. You would not ask me to leave her, ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland
... Vpon vneasie Pallads stretching thee, And huisht with bussing Night, flyes to thy slumber, Then in the perfum'd Chambers of the Great? Vnder the Canopies of costly State, And lull'd with sounds of sweetest Melodie? O thou dull God, why lyest thou with the vilde, In loathsome Beds, and leau'st the Kingly Couch, A Watch-case, or a common Larum-Bell? Wilt thou, vpon the high and giddie Mast, Seale vp the Ship-boyes Eyes, and rock his Braines, In Cradle of the rude imperious Surge, And in the visitation ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... brought to some certainty of Reine, and Trotting forth-right, then to the Treading forth of the large Rings. And here first examine your Horses Nature, before you choose your Ground, for, if his Nature be dull and sloathful, yet strong, then New-plow'd-Field is best; if Active, Quick, and Fiery, then Sandy-ground is to be preferred; in the most proper of which mark out a large Ring, of a Hundred Paces circumference. ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... eyes, with an air of a man who is going a long journey in a post-chaise. Mr. Baron Garrow dipped his pen into an invisible ink-pot, and scratched it on his desk. A long story began to drone from under the wig, an interminable farrago of dull nonsense, in a hypochondriacal voice; a long tale about piracy in general; piracy in the times of the Greeks, piracy in the times of William the Conqueror... pirata nequissima Eustachio, and thanking God that a case of the sort had ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... lady and who spoke our language fairly well, looked after us assiduously and provided us with occupation and amusement during the stay at the capital. One day he took us to see trotting matches, a very popular form of sport in Petrograd although it struck me as rather dull. We dined at different clubs, went to the Ballet one night, and another night were taken to the Opera where we occupied the Imperial box in the middle of the house. In those days Russian society thoroughly understood the art of welcoming a guest of the country, for the different ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... one who came to tea, and her eyes were heavy and dull, and she seemed like one in a dream. That night was a wretched one to both. When I went to the library to see if the windows were fastened for the night, Miss Elizabeth sat by the smouldering fire with her face buried in her hands. I shut the door softly and left ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... was shining brightly, bathing the whole wide landscape in its shimmering light. To the right lay the open country, broad plains with clumps of woodland, and the towers of castles pricking out from above the groves. A heavy bell was ringing in some monastery, and its dull booming came and went with the breeze. On the left, but far away, lay the glimmer of Paris. They were leaving it rapidly behind. Whatever his destination, it was neither the capital nor Versailles. Then he began to count the chances of ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hypate, in respect of the concupiscent; as mese to nete, in respect of the irascible; insomuch as it depresses and heightens,—and in fine makes a harmony,—by abating what is too much and by not suffering them to flatten and grow dull. For what is moderate and symmetrous is defined by mediocrity. Still more is it the end of the rational faculty to bring the passions to moderation, which is called sacred, as making a harmony of the ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... in the road and the entrance gate to the estate came into view. Up the well kept lane, beyond the rambling house of weathered shingles, stood a long, low barn and a silo, both of a dull red color. And on either side of the entrance gate were two broken willow trees, their tall tops partly removed, but most of the trunks still lying upon the ground where ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... so with your passionate incandescence. It is all well while it burns and scintillates in your emotional centres, without articulate and connected expression; but the minute you plunge it into the rhyme-trough it cools down, and becomes as dead and dull as the cold horse-shoe. It is true that if you lay it cold on the anvil and hammer away on it for a while it warms up somewhat. Just so with the rhyming fellow,—he pounds away on his verses and they warm up a little. But don't let him ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... sunbeams from cucumbers, eh?" drawled the magnate, inhaling cigarette smoke and blowing a thin cloud toward the wanton Bacchantes. He affected indifference, but his dull eyes brightened a trifle in his wan face, deep-lined by the savage dissipations of the previous night. "And you insist on dragging me out ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... see the gleam of water. It was a reservoir, he decided. Probably it constituted the water supply for a considerable section. And then, as he looked, he saw a flash — saw a great column of water rise in the air, and descend, like pictures of a cloudburst. A moment after the explosion, he heard a dull roar. And after the roar another sound. He saw the water fade out and disappear, and it was a moment before he realized what was happening. The reservoir had been blown up! And that meant more than the danger and the discomfort of an interrupted ...
— The Boy Scout Aviators • George Durston
... of the author of a one-act comedy is not over until, after several weeks of playing, his playlet has been so reshaped and altered by him that not a single dull spot remains. Individual lines must be condensed so that they are as short as they possibly can be made. The elimination of every unnecessary word or phrase is essential. Where a line that develops the plot can be altered so that it will still serve its purpose, ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... looking after my trees—getting the fruit out of the nuts in the same old way that they have done for unnumbered years—I shall grow all sorts of things in my garden, and I shall fish. There will be enough work to keep me busy and not enough to make me dull. I shall have my books and Eva, children, I hope, and above all, the infinite variety of the sea and the sky, the freshness of the dawn and the beauty of the sunset, and the rich magnificence of the night. I shall make a garden out of what so short a while ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... by hackney-coach to the Spittle, and heard a piece of a dull sermon to my Lord Mayor and Aldermen, and thence saw them all take horse and ride away, which I have not seen together many a day: their wives also went in their coaches. And indeed the sight was mighty pleasing. Thence took occasion to go back to a milliner's in Fenchurch-street, whose name I ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... represent Love and Purity and Beauty, and these figures, leaded to unalterable attitudes, were little more motionless than the two human beings upon whom fell the mottled faint light of the window. The colours were growing dull; evening ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... gained by mere diligence, if the head is dull. Philologist after philologist has swooped down on Homer in the mistaken belief that something of him can be obtained by force. Antiquity speaks to us when it feels a desire to do so, ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... 410 Such was the sudden conflict; equal rage To stain with gore the lance ruled every breast. Horrent with quivering spears the fatal field Frown'd on all sides; the brazen flashes dread Of numerous helmets, corselets furbish'd bright, 415 And shields refulgent meeting, dull'd the eye, And turn'd it dark away. Stranger indeed Were he to fear, who could that strife have view'd With heart elate, or spirit unperturb'd. Two mighty sons of Saturn adverse parts 420 Took in that contest, purposing alike To many a valiant Chief sorrow and pain. Jove, for ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... vision. He saw himself drilling into a safe. Then came a dull explosion and when the safe's door was torn from its hinges he saw himself upon his knees filling a large bag with the gold coins which poured out of the dynamited treasure box. Then he saw Joe and himself dressed in the best that money could purchase, speeding along aboard a Pullman to Rugby, ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... think best," Malone said, resigning himself to a very dull hour. He tried to picture Kettleman in the midst of a gang of juvenile delinquents. It was very hard ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... and child. It should make every mother a better woman and a better mother. It should make every child a truer, holier child. Every home should have its sacred friendships between parents and children. Thus something of heaven will be brought down to our dull earth; for, ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... and the riches within them hitherto concealed: whereof notwithstanding God in his wisdome hath permitted to be reuealed from time to time a certaine obscure and misty knowledge, by little and little to allure the mindes of men that way (which els will be dull enough in the zeale of his cause) and thereby to prepare vs vnto a readinesse for the execution of his will against the due time ordeined, of calling those ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... is troubling heaven! A strange dull glow Hangs like a half-quenched veil of fire between The blue sky and the earth; and the shorn stars Gleam faint and sickly through it. Day hath left No token of its parting, and the blush With which it welcomed the embrace of Night Has faded from ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... 6 m. N.W. of Wellington, with a station on the G.W.R. branch to Barnstaple. Population, 1417. It is a dull and uninteresting, but clean and comely little place. Of antiquities it has none, except traces, to the S. of the church, of a bishop's palace, built by John Drokensford in the 14th cent., some windows of which have found their way into neighbouring houses. The church is a tasteless building, ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... gate open, and stood looking up at him, a curiously picturesque-looking figure in the grey twilight. Her gown was like no other woman's; it was something between a Greek robe and a tea-gown, of a dull orange hue, and her dusky hair was tied up with a bow of ribbon of the same colour. Everything about her was strange; even the faint perfume which hung about her clothes, and which brought him sudden, swift memories of that moment when she had lain in his arms, and his lips had met hers. Paul ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... for a pound. The extra five hundred a year which seems to stand in the way of our complete happiness—when we receive it, we realise that our happiness really required a thousand. Fame is a wonderful and beautiful state, until we become famous and find out how dull it is and what a real blessing it is to be a person of only the least importance. Life, I can understand, is never so sweet as it is to those who, as it were, have just been sentenced to be hanged. Our ideals are always thrilling until one day we wake up to find them ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... candid, far from being a clever fellow, is one of the most barren rascals on record. Vampyre, whether drawn out or held in, is a poor creature, not a great creature—opaque, not luminous—in a word, by nature, a very dull dog indeed. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... in the least aware that he was such a man,' murmured Somerset, looking wistfully after the minister.... 'Whatever you may have done, I fear that I have grievously wounded a worthy man's heart from an idle wish to engage in a useless, unbecoming, dull, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... more or less, Through life the whole of my success; With my cigar I'm sage and wise,— Without, I'm dull as cloudy skies. When smoking, all my ideas soar, When not, they sink upon the floor. The greatest men have all been smokers, And so were all the greatest jokers. Then ye who'd bid adieu to care, Come here and ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... that never-flagging runner; while the quick and feeble breathing of the girl told how she was fast losing in the race with the all-omnipotent hours. On a small table stood two phials, in which were imprisoned dull-coloured liquids, powerless, despite their supposed potency, to stay the hunger of the disease so rapidly consuming the patient; and by their side was a plate of shrivelled fruit, the departing lusciousness of which ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... on the priests, were current for centuries before the Reformation. There were many anecdotes of this priest, all to his discredit, many of which were attributed, at a later day, to other unworthy monks. Among these, a very dull one is interesting, as connecting him with Eberhard, 'our bearded prince,' already referred to. Having begged of this truly noble man a benefice, Eberhard, who was aware of his character, replied: 'If I had a thousand vacant, you should not have the least ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... But the dull pain in my side soon brought back to me that clear, fresh morning on the bank of the Elk, and for a moment ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... and if the jobber does not take a price when there is a rise, and fairly in his power, he is a fool, for he will soon find out that the buyers will have no mercy upon the sellers when in their power. In all my experience, the above, in a dull day, or any other day, was the ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... their gloomy bosoms burn, And chiding, every hour, the slow-paced sun, Endure their woes till all his race was run No one to mark the sufferers with a tear No friend to comfort, and no hope to cheer, And like the dull, unpitied brutes repair To stalls as wretched, and as coarse a fare; Thank Heaven one day of misery was o'er, And sink to sleep, and wish to wake ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... a rather dull and stolid personage, accepted these mock apologies with such imperturbable gravity and sincerity that Haroun was ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... attention was once turned to such subjects as had been occupying Tom, to get hold of wild and violent beliefs and notions in those days than now. The state of Europe generally was far more dead and hopeless. There were no wars, certainly, and no expectations of wars. But there was a dull, beaten-down, pent-up feeling abroad, as if the lid were screwed down on the nations, and the thing which had been, however cruel and heavy and mean, was that which was to remain to the end. England ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... a monster is in love. Near to her close and consecrated bower, While she was in her dull and sleeping hour, A crew of patches, rude mechanicals, That work for bread upon Athenian stalls, Were met together to rehearse a play Intended for great Theseus' nuptial day. The shallowest thickskin of that barren sort Who Pyramus presented in their sport, Forsook ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... us home, you soft air-mothers, now our fathers the sunbeams are grown dull. Our green summer beauty is all draggled, and our faces are grown wan and wan; and the buds, the children whom we nourished, thrust us off, ungrateful, from our seats. Waft us down, you soft air-mothers, upon your wings to the quiet earth, that ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... his side, and looked along the grassy summit to the woods upon the opposite slope and to the distant mountains. Dull silver, immutable, perpetual, they reared themselves to meet the moonbeams. Between him and those stern and changeless fronts, pallid as with snows, stretched the gray woods. The moon shone very brightly, and there was ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... greatness. Compare with it the attempts of our painters a century ago to achieve the effects of the old masters by imitation when they should have been illustrating a faith of their own. Contemplate, if you can bear it, the dull daubs of Hilton and Haydon, who knew so much more about drawing and scumbling and glazing and perspective and anatomy and 'marvellous foreshortening' than Giotto, the latchet of whose shoe they were nevertheless not worthy to unloose. Compare Mozart's Magic Flute, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Wagner's ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... Charley poked the barbed end down into the hole. Down, down it went, fifteen, twenty feet, then struck with a dull thud. He began twisting the sapling over and over, then drew it slowly and gently up, but the end came into view with nothing adhering to it. Again and again was the fruitless operation repeated, and a look of disappointment had begun to settle on Charley's face when at last his harpoon ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... but there was a dull relief in his eyes. "Best I can do," he muttered, seeming about to depart, yet lingering. "I figure it out a good deal like this," he said. "I didn't KNOW my job was any strain, and I managed all right, but from what Gur—from what I hear, I was just up to the limit ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... At such times as the latter he may be approached quite near without much danger. Each day he also goes to a favorite wallowing place, where he rolls in the red dirt and emerges from this dirt bath a dull red rhino. In the rhino country dozens of these red dirt rolling places may be found, each one trampled smooth for an area of fifteen or twenty feet in evidence of the great number of times it has been used by one or more rhinos. This dirt ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... had any good reason for becoming a town, seems already at that time to have entered on the road to rapid decay. Offutt's speculations had failed, and he had disappeared. The brothers Herndon, who had opened a new store, found business dull and unpromising. Becoming tired of their undertaking, they offered to sell out to Lincoln and Berry on credit, and took their promissory notes in payment. The new partners, in that excess of hope which usually attends all new ventures, also ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... "Down with dull care, Miss Dexter; let us make a pact never to be bored—in Bloomsbury, or West Africa, or Park Lane. I suppose you found a great deal to do to ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... of course, because he thinks her perfection. But she may have dreadful taste and want the lace curtains and that nightmare of a pink rug Willard admired, and I dare say she'd rather have a new flaunting set of china with rosebuds on it than that dear old dull blue I picked up for a mere song down at the Aldenbury auction. I stood in the rain for two mortal hours to make sure of it, and it was really worth all that Willard has spent on the dining room put together. It will break my heart if she sets to work altering Eden. It's simply perfect as it is—though ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... moist cosmetics, and her color appears as if stained with crocodile's ordure; and now, in wild impetuosity, she tears her bed, bedding, and all she has. She attacks even my loathings in the most angry terms:—"You are always less dull with Inachia than me: in her company you are threefold complaisance; but you are ever unprepared to oblige me in a single instance. Lesbia, who first recommended you—so unfit a help in time of need—may she come to an ill end! when Coan Amyntas paid ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... soporiferous, somniferous, soporific, dormitive, narcotic, somnific, hypnotic; dormant, sluggish, lethargic, torpid, dull. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... for me. My mother sometimes wept when I was rebuked. Perhaps she was disappointed in me. But she had no power to make things better. I felt that I was a beast of burden, fed only in order that I might be useful; and the dull life irked me like an ill-fitting harness. There was ...
— The Sad Shepherd • Henry Van Dyke
... my dream that they went on until they came into a certain country, whose air naturally tended to make one drowsy, if he came a stranger into it. And here Hopeful began to be very dull, and heavy to sleep; wherefore he said unto Christian: I do now begin to grow so drowsy that I can scarcely hold open mine eyes; let us lie down ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... started to tell this Mr. Meyers he was glad to meet him, but caught himself and merely nodded. The man stared at him with neither interest nor curiosity in his dull blue eyes. The warden moved ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... that she remained the same size; to be sure, this is what generally happens when one eats cake, but Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll
... have no outside little friends, and so my friends live inside me. I make new ones now and then, when the old ones get dull, but I like the ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... round frequently to feast his eyes with the ever-changing landscape. Descending the mountain, the detachment seemed to be swallowed up in the steaming river, like the army of Pharaoh, and anon, with a dull sound, the bayonets glittered again from the misty waves. Then appeared heads, shoulders; the men seemed to grow up, and then leaping up the rocks, were lost ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... passage, and had stood along the whole of the weather-side of the group, to give notice to the whalers where to go; and she had notified the two brigs to go in to-windward, and to remain in Weather Bay, where all the rest of the dull crafts had been taken for safety; and then had come to-leeward to look for the governor. As the Abraham was barely a respectable sailer, it was not deemed prudent to take her too near the strangers; but, she might see how matters were situated to ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... day which opens this story, one might have stood upon the bridge and watched the lazy flowing of the river on whose dull green surface all the spans and bars were shadowed, and on the buttress seen the sunshine in ever changing, trembling glints of gold. Dead thistles were on the bank rustling in the breeze and the long tules by the water-side, some broken, others upright, waved gracefully, ...
— A Napa Christchild; and Benicia's Letters • Charles A. Gunnison
... thing to do. "Why," she replied, "I have never purchased a darning needle, to put the case strongly, without consulting Mr. S., and he does not think a new stove necessary." "What, pray," said I, "does he know about stoves, sitting in his easy-chair in Washington? If he had a dull old knife with broken blades, he would soon get a new one with which to sharpen his pens and pencils, and, if he attempted to cook a meal—granting he knew how—on your old stove, he would set it out of doors the next hour. Now my advice to you is ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... can be found in the movement for woman's emancipation. Yellow journalists and milk and water literateurs have painted pictures of the emancipated woman that make the hair of the good citizen and his dull companion stand up on end. Every member of the women's rights movement was pictured as a George Sand in her absolute disregard of morality. Nothing was sacred to her. She had no respect for the ideal ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... sensation of being under the paws of a beast, odious and fetid, savage and pitiless, overwhelmed her. That this was no trick of a moment but a calculated scheme to abase and possess her she now realized with a sort of dull horror. And on top of all he was, despite ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... natives in the pay of the merchants who had word with native sowars, saying that it is not well to be carried over sea to fight another's quarrels. All this the government knew, though, of course, thou art not the government, but only a soldier with a ready pistol and a dull wit." ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... old when he entered heder, at eleven he was already a yeshibah bahur—a student in the seminary. The rebbe never had occasion to use the birch on him. On the contrary, he held him up as an example to the dull or lazy pupils, praised him in the village, and ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... recognized her as the daughter of Ganser, a rich brewer of the upper East Side. He had placed himself deliberately beside her, and he at once began advances. She showed at a glance that she was a silly, vain girl. Her face was fat and dull; she had thin, stringy hair. She was flabby and, in the lazy life to which the Gansers' wealth and the silly customs of prosperous people condemned her, was already beginning to expand in the places where she ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... a sad mystery to me why rude and dull intelligences should sneer at, or denounce, these delightful fantastries, the very stuff of which dreams and love and poetry—the three ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... light of the stars when Ned reached the vicinity of Chimney rock, coming in from the slope to the north and moving with extreme caution. There was a dull glow in the dip back of the rock, the glow of ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... and bear an equal mind? Since you will drive me from you, I must go: But, O Monimia! when thou hast banish'd me, No creeping slave, though tractable and dull As artful woman for her ends would choose, Shall ever dote as I ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway
... forest, and in the midst stood an old lime-tree, beneath whose branches splashed a little fountain; so, whenever it was very hot, the King's youngest daughter ran off into this wood, and sat down by the side of this fountain; and, when she felt dull, would often divert herself by throwing a golden ball up in the air and catching it. And this was her ...
— The Frog Prince and Other Stories - The Frog Prince, Princess Belle-Etoile, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp • Anonymous
... Venus' children dear: For in the Fish* their lady sat full *Pisces And looked on them with a friendly eye. This noble king is set upon his throne; This strange knight is fetched to him full sone,* *soon And on the dance he goes with Canace. Here is the revel and the jollity, That is not able a dull man to devise:* *describe He must have knowen love and his service, And been a feastly* man, as fresh as May, *merry, gay That shoulde you devise such array. Who coulde telle you the form of dances So uncouth,* and so freshe ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... for some sticks and straw, and having filled the chimney with them, set a light to it. The fire crackled, and the smoke ascended like the dull vapor from a volcano; but still no prisoner fell down, as they expected. The fact was, that Andrea, at war with society ever since his youth, was quite as deep as a gendarme, even though he were advanced to the rank of brigadier, and quite prepared for the fire, he had climbed out ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... anxiously endeavored to accelerate, by putting to the lips of the slowly-reviving victim of his violence some cold water, in a tea-cup. He swallowed a little; and soon afterwards, opening his eyes, stared on Titmouse with a dull ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... runaways walked ashore to freedom. "The underground railroad is in fine working order," is the comment of The Journal. "Rarely does a collision occur, and once on the track passengers are sent through between sunrise and sunset." That time did not dull the terrors of the Fugitive Slave Act is shown by the fact that every fresh arrest would cause a panic in its neighborhood. At Chicago in 1861, almost on the eve of the Civil War, more than 100 Negroes left on a single train following ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... Rochambeau beckoned. Duty enthralled you. For France you had reckoned Her gift and your debt. Dull hearts could harden Half-gods could palter. For you never pardon If Liberty's altar You ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... blessed privilege to have hearts to feel the greatest enjoyment in tender love for others. See that you keep that love in constant exercise, or, like others of our best gifts, it may grow dull by disuse or abuse. The time may come when, deprived of your parents or brothers and sisters, you will bitterly mourn the sorrow you have caused by your evil ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... hair. His black clothes fitted him very closely, their extreme tightness suggesting that they had shrunken in the course of wearing, or that he had grown much plumper since he had come into possession of them; and their general worn and dull appearance gave considerable distance to the period of their first possession. But there was nothing worn or dull about the countenance of the man, upon which was an expression of mellow geniality which would have been suitably consequent ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... hidden away, like rude ancient frescoes, under the elaborate decorations of the Greek artists, who seized upon everything that came to hand, including the old deities themselves, to amuse themselves and win the admiration of their dull pupils at Rome. He who would appreciate the difficulty of getting at the original rude drawings must be well acquainted with the decorative activity ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... who knows whereof he speaks. His allu- sion to Christian Science in the following paragraph, [15] glows in the shadow of darkling criticism like a mid- night sun. Its manly honesty follows like a benediction after prayer, and closes the task of talking to deaf ears and dull debaters. ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... was capable of such an act, there could be no doubt that she meant what she said, and her tone carried conviction to Blake. He was silent for a long moment. When he replied, it was in a voice dull and heavy with despondency. "You don't realize what you're putting me ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... sent home to England before her husband's death, and after that event she had followed them; but there, though she was possessed of moderate wealth, she had no friends and few acquaintances, and after a little while she had found life to be rather dull. Her customs were not those of England, nor were her propensities English; therefore she had gone abroad, and having received some recommendation of this school at Le Puy, had made her way thither. As it appeared to ...
— The Chateau of Prince Polignac • Anthony Trollope
... has interrupted my journal for several weeks, and idleness has prolonged the chasm. The noting down the daily recurrence of uninteresting events is as dull as the ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... home. There was a blur over one of the dates, the little square that marked the twenty-fifth of December. It was a red-letter day on the calendar, but in Alec's bare little room a holiday that dragged its dismal length out toward dark, like a dull ache. ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... still now, my Lady," replied the dame, "the servants are all worn out with long attendance and fast asleep. Let my Lady go to her own apartments, which are bright and airy. It will be better for her than this dull chamber." ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... how she had kissed Dick flashed across her mind, but in an instant it was gone; and bending her head, she laid her lips to her husband's. It in no way disgusted her to do so; she was glad of the occasion, and was only surprised at the dull and obtuse anxiety she experienced. They then spoke of indifferent things, but the flow of conversation was often interrupted by complimentary phrases. While Ralph discoursed on his mother's nonsense in always dragging religion into everything, ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... for her board and lodging, with some collateral regulations as to occupation, needle-work, and the like,—she would not adhere to them. The change from a life of fevered, though most miserable, excitement, to one of dull, pleasureless, and utterly uninteresting propriety, is one that can hardly be made without the assistance of binding control. Could she have been sent to the mill, and made subject to her mother's softness as well as to her mother's care, there might have been room ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... peculiar folk as he passed from Warwickshire to London by way of Banbury or Oxford. He had stopped at inns in strange company of fools and knaves, pedlars, roisterers and swashbucklers. He had hobnobbed with dull-pated village ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... which I think when I push my king's man-at-arms two leagues forward. A game of chess is a romance sport when it is described in that dull official notation "P to K4 Kt to KB3"; a story should be woven around it. One of these days, perhaps, I shall tell the story of my latest defeat. Lewis Carroll had some such intention when he began Alice Through the Looking Glass, but he went at it half-heartedly. Besides, being a ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... complete his conquest, but that little he could not command. He had reached the point at which a man talks of the woman he loves or of himself, and of nothing else, and the depth of his passion seemed to dull his speech. A little more eloquence, a little more gentleness, a little more of that charm which Alexander possessed in such abundance, might have been enough to turn the scale. But they were lacking. The very intensity of what he felt ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... perpetrators of the deed drove off, leaving the luckless postboy to protest, loudly and vainly, to "the dull, cold ear of death," against the loathsome companionship. When the first market-gardener's cart passed by, most lustily did he call for help; but every effort to get free only tended to prolong his suspense. What could the carters ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... side of the foremost battle-ship, there rolled upward a cloud of white smoke, obscuring the funnels and the rigging, thinning out into the blue sky over the top-masts. After what seemed a long interval the low, dull roar of a cannon reached him, followed by the echo from the high hills of the island, and later by the fainter re-echo from the mountains on the mainland. This depressed De Plonville, for, if the ships were out for practice, the obscuring smoke around them would make the seeing of ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... to add, that by the anxious care of the physician, and a thousand ingenious contrivances, the senses of this human animal, with the exception of his hearing, which always remained dull and impassive, were gradually stimulated, and he was even able at length to pronounce two or three words. Here ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... his unselfish way, told one of the diarists, possibly Sir M.E. GRANT-DUFF, possibly Mr. G.W.E. RUSSELL—I forget whom—was to wrap up the sponge in a bath-towel and jump on it. Here, for the historical painter, is a theme indeed—something worth all the ordinary dull occasions which provoke his talented if somewhat staid brush: the great Liberal statesman, the promoter of Home Rule, the author of The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture, leaping upon the bath-towel that held his sponge. But no historical ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... and the twenty-five million rats of the metropolis were too numerous to furnish interest to spectators, and the Bourse was practically deserted, the traffic in shells sustained the starving mercantile instinct during a very dull period. But the effect on the nerves was deleterious. The nerves of everybody were like nothing but a raw wound. Violent anger would spring up magically out of laughter, and blows out of caresses. This indirect consequence ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... plane was a buzzing noise, which grew louder to a sharp drone as it seemed to increase in size, and became a dull monotonous roar as it dipped toward the waters of the stream. It floated downward, very gently, and circled as if regarding a certain spot critically, and resumed its onward flight. Again it circled, anxiously, now, as if the time ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... the piper advanced and the children followed; And when all were in, to the very last, The door in the mountain-side shut fast. Did I say all? No! One was lame, And could not dance the whole of the way; And in after years, if you would blame His sadness, he was used to say,— "It's dull in our town since my playmates left! I can't forget that I'm bereft Of all the pleasant sights they see, Which the piper also promised me; For he led us, he said, to a joyous land, Joining the town and just at hand, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Freeman that the night was passing and that the first dull light of day was creeping over ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... she said. "She made me take it. I promised." She turned her dull eyes slowly on Gueldmar. "It was Lovisa's fault. Ask Lovisa about it." She paused, and moistened her dry lips with her tongue. "Where is your crazy lad?" she asked, almost anxiously. "Did he come ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Then, self-deceived, they talk about a "wave," or "epidemic" of it. So far is this from the truth that one of the most noticeable characteristics of crime is the steady and unbroken monotony of its occurrence in certain forms. There is nothing so dull and unvarying as this tedious uniformity of repetition. The march of crime is never retarded, never accelerated. The criminals appear to be thoroughly well satisfied with their annual average, as shown by the periodical reports of their secretary, ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... "Dear heart, thou seemest dull tonight, and yet thou wert not so when we parted for the last fight. Thou didst thy best then to ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... "I am tired of this life. I want away. I want to push my fortune. What is there here for me? What future is there for me? I want to go to the States. I can get along there. This life is too dull and narrow, and all the young fellows ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... the shell at this point of observation, and no indication to mark the course it is taking; but in a few seconds the attentive observer with a good glass will see the cloud of smoke that follows its explosion, and then the report comes back with a dull boom. If it has done execution, the enemy may be seen carrying ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... else—on account of the joyousness of his soul. There was a contagious and a godlike hilarity in his broad, open brow, his frank, laughing eyes, and his mobile lips. He seemed to carry about with him a bracing moral atmosphere. The sight of him had the same effect on the dull man of ordinary life that the Himalayan air has on an Indian invalid; and yet Jack was head-over-heels in debt. Not a tradesman would trust him. Shoals of little bills were sent him every day. Duns without number plagued him ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... to North-East, during which the thermometer stood at 96 degrees; generally however we had a fresh sea-breeze from the north-west, with clear and fine weather; but towards the latter part of our visit we had some very cloudy dull days and a few showers of rain: this change hurried my departure; and we considered ourselves fortunate in embarking our provisions and bread ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... speech from Lord Harrowby, long and sensible; but heavily delivered and not wanted. A long speech from Lord Lansdowne, still less wanted, and very dull. ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... circumstances, was as painful as it was inevitable, and a rather extreme measure on Eve's part, no one will deny that it afforded relief on the main point. It seems to be the universal instinct of all Eve's sons and daughters that have followed since, that an expressive world is better than a dull one. An expressive world is a world in which all the men and women are getting themselves expressed, either in their experiences or in their arts—that is, in other ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... A dull, gloomy day; and with it came the inevitable leave-taking. The door closed behind me. For the last time I left my home and went alone down the garden to the beach, where the Fram's little petroleum launch pitilessly awaited me. Behind me lay all I held dear in life. And what before ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... "A dull thing," answered Ainley, promptly, with a sudden flash of the eyes. "I am with you there, Miss Yardely, but romance does not lie in mere barbarism, for most men it is ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... indicated by paleness, roundness of the form, softness of muscle, fair hair, sleepy, half-closed eyes, and a dull, sluggish, inexpressive face. In this temperament the brain and all other parts of the body appear to be slow, dull, and languid, and the whole body little else than one great manufactory of fat. These temperaments, however, are rarely found pure, but mixed or ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... was one, and one only, who attracted her. The others were well-meaning girls, but full of the frivolous purposes and pleasures which their tastes prompted and their dull life fostered. Dress, gossip, and wages were the three topics which absorbed them. Christie soon tired of the innumerable changes rung upon these themes, and took refuge in her own thoughts, soon learning to enjoy them undisturbed by the ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... humor and serious reasoning, such a speech as no one in that room, I suppose, had ever heard. Certainly it was a fine and dramatic bit of impromptu pleading. The weary committee, which had been tortured all day with dull, statistical arguments made by the mechanical device fiends, and dreary platitudes unloaded by men whose chief ambition was to shine as copyright champions, suddenly realized that they were being rewarded for the long waiting. They began to brighten and freshen, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... two months we admire the superb orb, sparkling in the azure illuminated with its radiance. Then of a sudden, its light fades, and diminishes in intensity, though the sky remains clear. Imperceptibly, our fine sun darkens; the atmosphere becomes sad and dull, there is an anticipation of universal death. For five long months our world is plunged in a kind of penumbra; all nature is saddened in ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... ones." And he then pointed at the beggar's retinue and laughed,—an unpleasant laugh, welded of contempt and amusement. The princess looked and shrank on her throne. He, the beggar man, was—was what? But his retinue,—that squalid, sordid, parti-colored band of vacant, dull-faced filth and viciousness—was writhing over the land, and he and they seemed almost crouching underneath the scorpion lash of one tall skeleton, that looked like Death, and the twisted woman whom men called Pain. Yet they all ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... to ourselves. There is a dear, old, retired, sea captain there, too, who takes people out in such a nice sail-boat. I shall keep Sally and the baby out on the water all day long. I am afraid you will find it very dull, Dr. Williams. Do you like the sea? Of course you will stay with us all the time. I don't mean in the least, that you are to come only once a day to see Sally, as you do here. You will be our guest, you understand. I dare say you will do more to cure Sally than all the sea-air and ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... saw the beautiful Helener, and likewise her husband Menelayus. And one day, Menelayus went out hunting, and left Paris and Helener alone, and Paris said: "Do you not feel dul in this palis?"[2] And Helener said: "I feel very dull in this pallice," and Paris said: "Come away and see the world with me." So they sliped off together, and they came to the King of Egypt, and he said: "Who is the young lady"? So Paris told him. "But," said the King, "it is not propper for you to ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... very much indeed, but she should not be piqued and feel injured if he excuses himself on the ground of having to take his sister out, or spend his evening with his parents. He will be all the better husband for this courtesy to his own relations. Of course his people may be very dull, possibly unpleasant, and in that case real friendship will be a labour, if not an impossibility; but, for the man's sake, they must be treated in such a way as not to hurt either his feelings or their own. The same, naturally, holds good ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... In rottenness of rest, These sleepy lips blood-suckled And satiate of thy breast, These dull wide mouths that drain thee dry and call ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... intimated what he proposed to do. But Fate decreed that he should be childless, that all religious independents might call him father. There is only one thing better than for a strong man to marry an absolutely dull woman. She teaches him by antithesis: he learns by contrast, and her stupidity is ever a foil for his brilliancy. He soon grows to a point where he does not mentally defer to her in the slightest degree, but goes his solitary ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... autumn was hot and dry. The foliage died fast, the leaves twisted and dried up and the brown grass stems fell lifeless to the earth. A long time they were without rain, and a dull haze of heat hung over the simmering earth. The river shrank in its bed, and the brooks ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... answered Rimrock dryly, and L. W. turned from bronze to a dull red. "I know the whole bunch of you, from the dog robber up, and this time I play my own hand. I was a sucker once, but the only friends I've got now are the ones that stayed with me when ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... to his companion, and from her again at Heimbert, and suddenly exclaimed, gnashing his teeth, "Ha, was it to be thus! I was not even to be allowed to die in the dull happiness of quiet solitude! I was to be first doomed to see my rival's success and my sister's shame!" At the same time he sprang to his feet with a violent effort and rushed forward upon Heimbert with ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... None of the beautiful things of the world were to be seen here, but only the things coarse and ugly. And wearily to and fro its sunless passages trudged with heavy steps a weary people, coarse-clad, and with dull, listless faces. And London, I knew, was the city of the gnomes who labour sadly all their lives, imprisoned underground; and a terror seized me lest I, too, should remain chained here, deep down below the fairy city that was already but ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... clung to his arm, but the snow was everywhere; it filled her eyes and took away her breath, the wind blew her skirts and impeded her steps, and in her state of nervous exhaustion she was very soon overcome. A dull stupor came over her, and, letting go her hold on the arm of her protector, she sank down ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... When the dull rumble of the sluiceway waters informed her that she was near the camp of the enemy she went more cautiously, and when she heard the voices of men she called, announcing that she desired to speak ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... I made a bargain with the man that I was bound to, that if he would give me four months in the winter of each year when the business was dull, I would clothe myself. I therefore went to Waterbury, and hired myself to Lewis Stebbins, (a singing master of that place,) to work at making the dials for the old fashioned long clock. This kind of business ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... the corner of the building when I heard the shriek of a shell coming nearer. I guessed it was pretty close, and without a moment's hesitation dropped in the mud and water of a small ditch, and not a moment too soon for with a dull thud the shell struck and burst hardly seven feet from me. Had I not fallen down these lines would never have been written. Picking myself up, I hurried on. Still the shells continued to drop, but fortunately at a greater distance. When I reached Croix Rouge, ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... of the fray. And this my work, Mezentius. Now prepare To king Latinus and his walls to fare. Let hope forestall, and courage hail the fray, So, when the gods shall summon us to bear The standards forth, and muster our array, No fears shall breed dull ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... this, however, there was still a dull ache in his heart, a feeling that something was wanting in his life. He had not forgotten Mary Bolitho. He knew he never should. Never since the day after the election had he seen her in Brunford, and ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... declaration that he is not uneasy at Pope's satire, that "no blockhead is so dull as not to be sore when he is called so; and (you'll excuse me) if that were to be your own case, why should we believe you would not be as uneasy ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... this night comes an order from Sir W. Coventry to stop the pay of the wages of that Yard, the Duke of Albemarle having related, that not above three of 1100 in pay there, did attend to do any work there. This evening having sent a messenger to Chatham on purpose, we have received a dull letter from my Lord Brouncker and Peter Pett, how matters have gone there this week; but not so much, or so particularly as we knew it by common talk before, and as true. I doubt they will be found to have been but slow men in this business; and they say the Duke ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... well as all my species, are most partial to perfumes, and I did not therefore fail to visit the representative of Signior Jean Marie Farina in his shop, No. 4568, a la rue haute a Cologne. Nothing struck me particularly in this town of Cologne. The streets are very narrow, and seemed dull enough. To be sure, the principal one, which is said to be a German league in length, is rather fine. The old convent of the Ladies of St. Ursula, is curious at least. They show you in it the bones of 11,000 virgins, who they say were murdered by the Huns at the time of their invasion, when ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... they followed crawled like a leisurely river between the freshly ploughed ridges, where the earth was slowly settling around the transplanted crop. In the distance, labourers were still at work, passing in dull-blue blotches between the rows of bright-green leaves that hung limply ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... Going into the cottage where the clergy were assembled and the visitors had arrived, including Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was to stand god-father, he suddenly announced that the baby "ought not to be christened at all." He announced this quietly, briefly, forcing out his words, and gazing with dull ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... with her, for her sake, if from no higher motive, to put away her sin. The woman seemed touched, and hiding her face in the child's neck, she wept. The little blue-eyed thing looked sadly weary of the dull walls, and Jennie longed to lead her away from the lonesome place to a home as bright as she had found. She stroked her silken hair, and caressed her as if she had been a sister, and giving her a few toys from her rich pocket, she hurried on to overtake her teacher ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... small room, but still snug and comfortable, and full of pretty things. Tea was laid on the little round table that would hardly hold five, as Nan once observed, thinking of Dick; and the evening's sunshine was stealing in, but not too obtrusively. Mrs. Challoner tried not to think it dull, and endeavored to say a word of praise at the arrangements Dulce pointed out to her; but the thought of Glen Cottage, and her pretty drawing-room, and the veranda with its climbing roses, and the shady lawn with the seat ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... have we seen Done at the Mermaid, heard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, As if everyone from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull life; then when there hath been thrown Wit able enough to justify the town For three days past; wit that might warrant be For the whole city to talk foolishly Till that were cancelled; and when that was gone, We left an air behind us, which alone Was able ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... sterling, in the shape of compensation: and what consolation is it to know, that a hogshead of sugar will now bring thirty pounds, which, a short time ago, was only worth twelve. Let any unprejudiced individual look at the return now before us, and say whether our prospects are not deplorably dull and obscure. If we take the four years immediately preceding the passing of Mr. Canning's resolutions, say 1819, 20, 21, and 22; we will find the average to be 105,858 hogsheads, and if from this we even deduct one fourth for the time now lost, there will be an average crop of 79,394 hhds., ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... or Raye, seems to be mentioned only once—viz., in Love's Labour's Lost, in the account of the preparations for the Pageant of the Worthies. Constable Dull proposes to accompany the dancing of the hay with a tabor, which may be taken as the common practice. Holofernes says Dull's idea is 'most dull,' like himself. The Hay was a Round country-dance—i.e., the performers stood in a circle to begin with, and then (in ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... catechisms, entomological primers, and tales of political economy—dismal trash, all of them; something half-way between stupid story-books and bad school-books; being so ingeniously written as to be unfit for any useful purpose in school and too dull for any entertainment ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... charming and admirable impersonation of our poet's Portia, which I witnessed to-night with a real delight. You have given me a new light on the character, and by your so pretty by-play in the Casket Scene have made bright in my memory for ever the spot which almost all critics have felt dull, and I hope to say this in a new ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... ship and his own career. He must have seen something to interest him in Netty Cahere's face—perhaps he caught a glance from the dark-lashed eyes—for he turned and looked at her again, with a sudden, dull light ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... sounds Wright's voice, as if in answer to my thought. I gather up all my remaining force, and charge. There is a flash across my eyes, and a dull shock against my chest. I reel and stagger, and forget where I am. I am being swept along in a torrent; the waters with a roar rush past me and over me. Every moment I get nearer and nearer the fatal edge—I am at it—I hang a moment on the ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... that Mr. Tertius had returned, for he let himself into the house with his own latch-key, and went straight into Herapath's study. There, if possible, everything was still quieter—the gloom of the dull November morning seemed to be doubly accentuated in the nooks and corners; there was a sense of solitude which was well in keeping with Mr. Tertius's knowledge of what had happened. He looked at the vacant chair in which he had so often seen Jacob Herapath ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... rooms in Studio Building, opening into each other by folding doors, which were never known to be shut. The walls were hung with old French tapestry, its rich, soft colors harmonizing exquisitely with some dull-red velvet draperies from Venice. Bits of armor, some of them very splendid, were disposed here and there, while a wealth of bric-a-brac enriched every nook and corner. In the doorway hung an old altar-lamp of silver, with a cup ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... to think he had saved the Byzantine. His next duty was to go to the relief of the little Princess. A dull fancy would have taught how trying the situation must have been to her; but with him the case was of a quick understanding quickened by solicitude. Taking Nilo with him, he made haste ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... me, however, that I could do nothing but remain still, and anticipate the reproof that was preparing. What was my agreeable surprise to see the old gentleman standing at the stile, with his hands in his pockets, surveying the whole scene with evident satisfaction! And how dull I must have been, not to have known till my friend the grandfather (who, by- the-bye, said he had been a wonderful cricketer in his time) told me, that it was the clergyman himself who had established the whole thing: that ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... names and addresses, and slouched away, his animosity gone, and only a dull, miserable lethargy sagging ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... that he was now to leave ships behind him he was mistaken, for the dining room proved to be quite as much of a museum as the library had been. Against the dull blue paper hung pictures of racing yachts, early American fighting ships, and nautical encounters on the high seas. The house was a veritable wonderland, and so distracted was the lad that he could ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... servants, and the school children sat crowded on the steps. It was not such a service as had been the custom of the Hurminster churches; and the singing, such as it was, depended on the thin shrill voices of the children, assisted by Lady Adela and the mistress; the sermon was dull and long, and altogether there was something ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Betty, in a tone characterized as "dull and hopeless," in stories. "Why, Grace Ford, if you have done anything else but eat—candy—ever since we started on this picnic, I'd like ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope
... choked off the rest of the sentence. Jed rubbed his eyes and sat up in his chair. For the first time since the captain's entrance he realized a little of what the latter said. Before that he had been conscious only of his own dull, aching, hopeless misery. ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... such times as this, when business is dull. I have noticed that men spend more money when they ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... in heaven. The spangled landscape glitters with drops of dew after the shower. The 'fleecy fools' show their coats in the gleams of the setting sun. The shepherds pipe their farewell notes in the fresh evening air. And is this bright vision made from a dead, dull blank, like a bubble reflecting the mighty fabric of the universe? Who would think this miracle of Rubens' pencil possible to be performed? Who, having seen it, would not spend his life to do the like? See how the rich fallows, the bare stubble-field, the scanty ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... ashamed to let her real feelings be known. So she kept on a show of indifference, all the while that her heart was fluttering. The "good-bye" finally said, the driver cracked his whip, and off rolled the stage. Gray turned homeward with a dull, lonely feeling, and Lucy drew her vail over her face to conceal the ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... their table, a bored look on her small, sharp face. "How are you?" she said nonchalantly. "I thought I'd come over here. Having tea alone is dull. Don't you think so?" ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... almost all he could do to breathe with such a weight upon him, but after a few moments' rest he tried to shout for help. His shouts were not very loud, and soon he had to stop. He lay breathing heavily and looking up at the pile of dull earth. ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... went on talkin' and the blacksmith was makin' a rod and he took it out of the forge and put it on the anvil and it sputtered sparks, and he pounded it around, and finally he took a chisel and cut off a piece, and I watched it grow from dull red till it got black and looked like a piece of licorice. So I went and picked it up. Gee! but it just cooked my fingers, and I yelled. "Thar's your lesson," says Lem—"remember it. Don't take hold of a hot thing till it gets cold. ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... seventy-five bushels of potatoes. Meantime his preaching had been enlivened with new illustrations and he was enabled to enforce, to the amazement of his hearers, new impressions with old truths. The Scripture teaching which had become dull and scholastic became live and modern, as he preached the Old Testament to a people who were recognizing the sacredness of land. His audiences began to increase. His influence on his people very shortly passed bounds and reserves. When at the end of the season ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... with dull eyes. "It is King Charles," she said, and stirred in her chair and gave a foolish laugh. "No, but he is like King Charles. But King Charles had so many sons. Who is he, Abbie? Why does he come? The ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... a silent prayer that the ship may cast the right way. Hurra! round she comes. The sails fill. She moves through the water. The boats with the hawser get alongside and are hoisted up, and the old "Ranger" stands out towards the open sea. Is there a soul on board so dull and ungrateful as not to return fervent thanks to a gracious superintending God for deliverance from the imminent danger in which ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... "Kind of dull I suppose you find it," he remarked pensively, looking out across the waste of lavender-grown marshes, sand hummocks piled with seaweed, and a far distant line of pebbled shore. "And yet, I don't know. ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Paschal Chronicle, which introduces this haughty message, during the lifetime of Theodosius, may have anticipated the date; but the dull annalist was incapable of inventing the original and genuine style ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... the sluice-boxes with bowed head he was thinking that the day was well suited to the ending of his roseate dreams. Failure is dull, drab, colorless, and in his heart he had little doubt that for some reason still to be explained, he had failed. Just how badly ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... twice as gay Just because of you, Louise! Which is going some, you say? In my dull, pedantic way I am fashioning my lay Just because I want ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... favourite dwelling-place of imagination, the character of the stream seems a type of the human mind: stormy, bounding, and impetuous, when wrapped up in the glorious feelings which belong to romantic countries; peaceful, dull, and monotonous, amid the less interesting lowlands. Yet, after indulging in such a fancy for a time, another reflection arises, which, if it be less pleasing and poetical, is, perhaps, more useful—that the impetuous course of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... stood out from the black background made him sway and clutch at the garments in the closet. For her robes radiated dull light, like a coal seen behind ashes. It was as though she were about to burst into flame. On her head gleamed a dull star; from it, the radiance of her robe fell away toward her feet in lesser light, like ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... myself as charmed with all these arrangements, for I thought it would be very dull for Lady Betty to be left behind at Gladwyn; and then I asked Giles what he ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the preparations, but invents the most beautiful decorations for the table,—and out of nothing—out of leaves and flowers so common that no one would have thought of culling them, yet so wonderfully arranged that every one exclaims at their picturesque effect? When you have dull guests,—guests that put me to sleep, or out of patience,—is it not Madeleine who amuses them? How many evenings, that would have been insufferably stupid, have flown delightfully, chased ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... upon the Catechism; but considering my age and great infirmities, it is not very probable I should continue this practice any longer. I am willing therefore, as a small monument of my care and affection for you, to print the last of these Lectures," &c.... What heart so dull as not to admit that men like this, (and there were many of them!) are quite good enough to redeem an age from indiscriminate opprobrium ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... chameleon-like change of colour exhibited by many Crabs occurs very strikingly in it. The carapace of a male which I have now before me shone with a dazzling white in its hinder parts five minutes since when I captured it, at present it shows a dull gray tint at the same place.) What may be the significance of these peculiar hairs,—whether they only keep foreign bodies from the branchial cavity,—whether they furnish moisture to the air flowing past them,—or whether, as their aspect, especially in the small Gelasimus, ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller
... gymnastic a purely military character. In marriage, his object is still to produce the finest children for the state. As in the Statesman, he would unite in wedlock dissimilar natures—the passionate with the dull, the courageous with the gentle. And the virtuous tyrant of the Statesman, who has no place in the Republic, again appears. In this, as in all his writings, he has the strongest sense of the degeneracy and incapacity of the ...
— Laws • Plato
... evening we drove to Casasano, an hacienda about three leagues from Cocoyoc, and passed by several other fine estates, amongst others, the hacienda of Calderon. Casasano is an immense old house, very dull-looking, the road to which lies through a fine park for cattle, dotted with great old trees, but of which the grass is very much burnt up. Each hacienda has a large chapel attached to it, at which all the workmen and villagers in the environs attend mass; a padre coming from a ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... repair.—Ramrod tubes often break off, and it is a very troublesome accident when they do so. I know of no contrivance to fasten them on again, except by using soft solder, the application of which will not in the least hurt the gun: ashes, at a dull red heat, must be heaped over the barrel to warm it sufficiently, before applying the solder. If the ramrod tubes have been lost, others made of ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... changed the whole country-side, and the sun was brighter and the braes greener and the air sweeter from the day she came. Our lives were common no longer now that we spent them with such a one as she, and the old dull grey house was another place in my eyes since she had set her foot across the door-mat. It was not her face, though that was winsome enough, nor her form, though I never saw the lass that could match ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... entrance where he would otherwise be debarred. Often the interest of a subject depends as much on the way it is presented as on the subject itself. One writer will make it attractive, another repulsive. For instance take a passage in history. Treated by one historian it is like a desiccated mummy, dry, dull, disgusting, while under the spell of another it is, as it were, galvanized into a virile living thing which not only pleases ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... fact is that, as regards the ass, we have only very sorry specimens of the animal in England; they are stunted and small, and, from want of corn and proper food, besides being very ill-treated, are slow and dull-looking animals. The climate of England is much too cold for the ass; in the south of France and the Mediterranean, where it is much warmer, the ass is a much finer animal; but to see it in perfection we must go to the Torrid Zone in Guinea, right ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... Fish* their lady sat full *Pisces And looked on them with a friendly eye. This noble king is set upon his throne; This strange knight is fetched to him full sone,* *soon And on the dance he goes with Canace. Here is the revel and the jollity, That is not able a dull man to devise:* *describe He must have knowen love and his service, And been a feastly* man, as fresh as May, *merry, gay That shoulde you devise such array. Who coulde telle you the form of dances So uncouth,* and so freshe countenances** *unfamliar ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... more, like partners who know that they may never meet again. The stories they told, before it was time for Wendy's good-night story! Even Slightly tried to tell a story that night, but the beginning was so fearfully dull that it appalled even himself, and ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... we have been bred up to it, and we wager upon it just as you Britons do on your fights between cocks. I never felt any hesitation about it before, because I had no particular personal interest in any of the combatants. After all, you know, life is dull in Rome for those who take no part in politics, who have no ambition to rise at the court, and who do not care overmuch for luxury. We have none of the hunting with which you harden your muscles and pass your time in Britain. Therefore it is that the sports of the arena are so popular with our class ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... been men with deeper insight; but, one would say, never a man with such abundance of thought: he is never dull, never insincere, and has the genius to make the reader care for ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... lark begin his flight, And singing, startle the dull Night From his watch-tower in the skies, Till the dappled Dawn doth rise; Then to come in spite of sorrow, And at my window bid good-morrow Through the sweetbrier, or the vine, Or the twisted eglantine; ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... sails and broken masts, driven and tossed by eternal whirlwinds, appear and vanish in the river's rush; but the old remain motionless above. The hot rain of stars forever falling there dies out with dull moan, while the glad waves and white foam laugh as the ruined wrecks toss helplessly in the strong winds; but the aged heed it not: they have grown into one with the rock of the past, they build air ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... baths has some one else to spend the evening with him. There is always a vast demolition of cold chickens, and cakes, and preserves, and then a little music, and a little conversation, and an immense deal of gossip. The general complaint is, that the place is rather dull; and, indeed, it must be owned, that formerly there were more facilities for spending a gay season than ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... sad little smile, and shook his head. Then first I seemed to understand a little. A dull flash ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... period; and at the Tuileries, and the houses of the French nobility, which he visited, Monsieur le Marquis de Farintosh excited considerable remark, by the use of some of the phrases which his young professor had taught to him. People even went so far as to say that the Marquis was an awkward and dull young man, of ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... kept Miss Belinda Bree from utterly wearing out at her dull work in the great warerooms, or now and then at days' seamstressing in families. It really keeps a great many ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Constantinople in 1762, ANDRE CHENIER was educated in France, travelled in Switzerland and Italy, resided as secretary to the French Ambassador for three weary years in England—land of mists, land of dull aristocrats—returned to France in 1790, ardent in the cause of constitutional freedom, and defended his opinions and his friends as a journalist. The violences of the Revolution drove him into opposition to the Jacobin party. In March 1794 he was ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... the usurer, is Shylock's grandson. The unjust judge, who declares that some men have no rights which others are bound to respect, is a later Jeffries on his bloody assizes, or dooming Algernon Sidney to the block once more for loving liberty; while he whose dull heart among the new duties of another time is never quickened with public spirit, and who as a citizen aims only at his own selfish advantage, is a later Benedict Arnold whom every generous ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... Gentlemen directors, with favourite abb'es and favourite mistresses, have almost overturned the thing in England. You will plead my want of interest to Mr. Smith(801) too: besides, we had Bufos here once, and from not understanding the language, people thought it a dull kind of dumb-show. We are next Tuesday to have the Miserere of Rome. It must be curious! the finest piece of vocal music in the world, to be performed by three good voices, and forty bad ones, from Oxford, Canterbury, and the farces! There is a new ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... shall grieve not, though the eye that seeth me Gazeth through tears that make its splendor dull; For oh! I sometimes fear when thou art with me, My cup of happiness is ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... excitement, of intense mental strain, and of unremitting bodily exertion, after speech-making and parades, music and bonfires, it must be something of a trial to face at once the mortification of defeat, the weariness of intellectual and physical reaction, and the dull commonplace of daily routine. Letters written at this period show that under these conditions Mr. Lincoln remained composed, patient, and hopeful. Two weeks after election he wrote thus to Mr. Judd, a member of the Legislature and Chairman of the Republican State ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... It was enough. Too late! She had failed. Her sacrifice, her atonement,—fruitless. She sank into a chair and buried her face in her hands, trying to think. But in her head was a dull chaos of sounds, echoes of her wild ride, and her body swayed as she sat. She had never fainted, but for a moment it seemed that she lost consciousness. She found herself presently staring through her fingers at the pattern in the gray aubusson carpet—and ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... comfortable office enough," said George, "and not particularly dull; but I have not had sufficient experience in it ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... is a seasonal trade, students are advised to take, in addition, lamp and candle shade making in the Novelty Department, or straw sewing in the Operating Department. They are thus provided with good trades during the months when their own trade is dull. ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... false teeth, and aped the giddy girl. But this was because of Mrs Head's impulsive welcome of me, and her grey hair. The hair was not so grey as I thought at first, seeing it with the lamp-light behind it: it was like dull-brown hair lightly dusted with flour. She wore it short, and it became her that way. There was something aristocratic about her face—her nose and chin—I fancied, and something that you couldn't describe. ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... learned anything at the asylum but work," she answered slowly, "just dull, hateful, routine work; doing the same things over again every day in the same way, cooking and washing dishes and scrubbing. I suppose I was being useful, but there isn't much fun in being useful when nobody cares or seems to be helped by what you do. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... wife, 'now, if you did as I tell you, we should have left this dull place long ago and gone ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... not so dull as not to see he was not wanted; but he was not yet used enough to social customs to know how to extricate himself dextrously from his false position, which his generally is who accosts people he is little ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... And the world is growing old; Love is low and faith is dull, Truth and right are bought, ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... of Mahomet and the annals of the caliphs. They enjoyed the advantage of reading, and sometimes correcting, the Arabic text; yet, notwithstanding their high-sounding boasts, I cannot find, after the conclusion of my work, that they have afforded me much (if any) additional information. The dull mass is not quickened by a spark of philosophy or taste; and the compilers indulge the criticism of acrimonious bigotry against Boulainvilliers, Sale, Gagnier, and all who have treated Mahomet with ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... her face was sweeter far Than aught I'd seen before— As simple as the cowslips are Upon the rushy moor: She seemed the muse of that sweet spot, The lady of the plain, And all was dull where she was not, Till ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... constituted the Mongol nation proper is very likely correct.... I. J. Schmidt (Ssanang Setzen, 380) derives the name Mongol from mong, meaning 'brave, daring, bold,' while Rashiduddin says it means 'simple, weak' (d'Ohsson, i. 22). The Chinese characters used to transcribe the name mean 'dull, stupid,' and 'old, ancient,' but they are used purely phonetically.... The Mongols of the present day are commonly called by the Chinese Ta-tzu, but this name is resented by the Mongols as opprobrious, though it is but an abbreviated form of the name Ta-ta-tzu, in which, according to Rubruck, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... reply, in effect, was "What make you here, you little Bulgar boy?" He maintained that, while not as "dull and cautious" as he had meant it to be, the speech referred to in no way bore out Mr. BUXTON'S assertions. Then he proceeded in characteristic fashion to knock together the heads of the pro-Bulgarians and the other Balkan theorists, and declared in conclusion that, while sharing the desire ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 153, November 7, 1917 • Various
... with murderous intent, had brought a gun-butt down upon his unprotected skull. Excitement was at all times as wine to him, so, promising to be at the rendezvous, he rode homeward faster than before, with a sense of anticipation which helped to dull the edge ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... is artificially stained, so that stones naturally unattractive by their dull grey tints come to be valuable for ornamental purposes. The art of staining the stone is believed to be very ancient. Possibly referred to by Pliny (bk. xxxvii. cap. 75), it was certainly practised ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... quick short glance each moment tow'rds him fled. How he, too, seemed to shun her speech and gaze, And yet he always lingered where she was; Though nothing in his aspect or his air Told that he knew she was in presence there; But an appearance of constrained distress, And a dull tongue of moveless silentness, And a down drooping eye of gloom and sadness, Oh! how unlike his former face of gladness. "'Tis plain! too plain! and I am lost," she cried; And in that thought her last good ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... did ought to be interesting to their fellow creatures, and yet, such is the weakness of human nature, that we all know folk so cruel dull in mind and body that an instinct rises in us to flee from 'em at sight and never go where there's a chance of running across 'em. It ain't Christian, but everybody knows such deadly characters none the less, and you might say without straining ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... gained by evading the forester. Sitting with his back to a small tree, he closed his eyes and folded his thick arms over his head. Of course, he would soon be found, and he would have to go back to the hunt. But this forester was a dull, soft fellow. He could be made to believe Flor's excuse that he had become lost for a time, and had been searching the woods ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... her. And presently the deck lashings would part under the battering of the surf and the deck load would go by the board. Half of it would drift out to sea, and the other half would pound on the beach and get filled with sand, which would dull the saws and planes of the carpenters when they came to cut it up. Also, the ship's cabin would be sure to go, and unless he had help he would have to abandon the vessel and she would lie there, submerged, at anchor, a menace to the navigation of ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... been doing, that the chatter and laughter are as great as upon the night preceding the breaking-up. In the morning, however, all this is changed. As they take their places at their desks and open their books, a dull, heavy feeling takes possession of the boys, and the full consciousness that they are at the beginning of another half year's work weighs ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... relief to take up a volume so absolutely free from stressfulness. The love-making is passionate, the humor of much of the conversation is thoroughly delightful. The book is as refreshing a bit of fiction as one often finds; there is not a dull ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... late on a winter evening; the mountains were covered with snow, but the moon shone brightly, and moonlight in Italy is like a dull winter's day in the north; indeed it is better, for clear air seems to raise us above the earth, while in the north a cold, gray, leaden sky appears to press us down to earth, even as the cold damp earth shall one day press ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... do. He forbade nakedness, as well as garments of hair and other uncomfortable costumes. The raiment which he prescribed consisted of three pieces of cloth of the colour called kasava. This was probably dull orange, selected as being unornamental. It would appear that in mediaeval India the colour in use was reddish: at present a rather bright and not unpleasing yellow is worn in Burma, Ceylon, Siam ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... which the gay brown carpet would mark him, he was down, the Fates were upon him—the disturbance, the disrobing, the darkness. Nevertheless, even as he was carried, sobbing, into the farther room, there went with him a consciousness that life would never again be quite the dull, purposeless, monotonous thing that it ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... part of his being and that which he shares with inferior creatures, to call any individual man an animal is to imply that the animal nature has undue supremacy, and so is deep condemnation or utter insult. The brute is the animal viewed as dull to all finer feeling; the beast is looked upon as a being of appetites. To call a man a brute is to imply that he is unfeeling and cruel; to call him a beast is to indicate that he is vilely sensual. We speak of the cruel father as a brute ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... terms of friendship, that every deed and word and look of her friendship might have been open to her husband,—or open to all the world? She could have done so. She told herself that that was not,—need not have been her great calamity. Whether she could endure the dull, monotonous control of her slow but imperious lord,—or whether she must not rather tell him that it was not to be endured,—that was her trouble. So she told herself, and again admitted Phineas to her intimacy in London. But, nevertheless, Phineas, had he ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... of the game, and they chase her and propitiate her; and she generally condescends to return, for solitary dignity is dull. If any of the seniors happen to see it, it is checked as much as possible, but oftener we hear of it in that very informing prayer, which is to her quite the event of the evening; for she takes to the outward forms of religion with great avidity, and the evening ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... What had they meant? By the internal combustion which had so suddenly lighted up the dark corners of his being, he saw with almost clairvoyant distinctness how it must have been. He saw her growing older, as he had grown older, but in the dull apathy of monotony. She had none of this great filling Labour wherewith to drug herself into day-dreams of a future. The seasons as they passed showed her the same faces, growing ever a little more jaded, as dancers ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... stories are long, and lazily told; and they overflow with the most lugubrious monotony. There is scarcely a relief throughout the volume, from Wordsworth's "majestic sonnet" on Sir Walter Scott, to Autumn Flowers, by Agnes Strickland; we travel from one end to the other, and all is lead and leaden—dull, heavy, and sad, as old Burton could wish; and full of moping melancholy, unenlivened by quaintness, or humour of any cast. Not that we mean to condemn the pieces individually; but, collectively, they are too much in the same vein: the Editor has ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... had never breathed before. We were standing in a flagged hall, looking up through a great well, past gallery after gallery, to a skylight covering the top of the roof. It was the sunshine filtering through the dull, thick, greenish glass which gave that cold, sad-colored light. Within the galleries I caught glimpses of men at work at desks; and over the railings lounged figures, peered faces, disheveled, sodden, disreputable; and sometimes near ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... the shadows are long on the grass, and of bright autumn afternoons, when it would be luxury to saunter in the neighbouring lanes; and of frosty winter days, when the sun shines in over the laurustinus at the window, while the fire burns with a different light from that which it gives in the dull parlours of a city. ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... room was lavishly adorned, hardly produced an impression of beauty. Marcia, looking slowly round her with critical eyes, thought suddenly of a bare room she knew in a Roman palace, some faded hangings in dull gold upon the walls, spaces of light and shadow on the empty matted floor, and a great branch of Judas tree in blossom lighting up a corner. The memory provoked in her a ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mound, which Stockdale at the same time adroitly skirted on the left; and a dull monotonous roar burst upon his ear. The hillock was about fifty yards from the top of the cliffs, and by day it apparently commanded a full view of the bay. There was light enough in the sky to show her disguised figure against ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... rapidly, and many of the trees shed their leaves. About this period is commonly felt the harmattan, a dry and parching wind, blowing from the north-east, and accompanied by a thick smoky haze, through which the sun appears of a dull red colour. This wind, in passing over the Great Desert of Sahara, acquires a very strong attraction for humidity, and parches up every thing exposed to its current. It is, however, reckoned very salutary, particularly to Europeans, who generally recover their health during ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... Horseleech, to be candid, far from being a clever fellow, is one of the most barren rascals on record. Vampyre, whether drawn out or held in, is a poor creature, not a great creature—opaque, not luminous—in a word, by nature, a very dull dog indeed. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... character), to work out the best of which it is capable. On the other hand, it is the object of Socialism, acting through political and economic machinery, to crowd out these varying attributes of human nature and reduce the individual to the mental status of a dull, unthinking animal. Of course human nature always has rebelled against this repression and always will do so in the final analysis. It is impossible for Socialism or any other system of uniform and outward repression to fetter the human soul and it inevitably ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... an early supper, and, hardly had the dishes been put away, when from the west, where there was a low-flying bank of clouds, there came a mutter of thunder. A little later there was a dull, red illumination amid ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton
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