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Dull   Listen
adjective
Dull  adj.  (compar. duller; superl. dullest)  
1.
Slow of understanding; wanting readiness of apprehension; stupid; doltish; blockish. "Dull at classical learning." "She is not bred so dull but she can learn."
2.
Slow in action; sluggish; unready; awkward. "This people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing." "O, help my weak wit and sharpen my dull tongue."
3.
Insensible; unfeeling. "Think me not So dull a devil to forget the loss Of such a matchless wife."
4.
Not keen in edge or point; lacking sharpness; blunt. "Thy scythe is dull."
5.
Not bright or clear to the eye; wanting in liveliness of color or luster; not vivid; obscure; dim; as, a dull fire or lamp; a dull red or yellow; a dull mirror.
6.
Heavy; gross; cloggy; insensible; spiritless; lifeless; inert. "The dull earth." "As turning the logs will make a dull fire burn, so changes of study a dull brain."
7.
Furnishing little delight, spirit, or variety; uninteresting; tedious; cheerless; gloomy; melancholy; depressing; as, a dull story or sermon; a dull occupation or period; hence, cloudy; overcast; as, a dull day. "Along life's dullest, dreariest walk."
Synonyms: Lifeless; inanimate; dead; stupid; doltish; heavy; sluggish; sleepy; drowsy; gross; cheerless; tedious; irksome; dismal; dreary; clouded; tarnished; obtuse. See Lifeless.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dull" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... asserting that the Government should be required to bring over consignments of perfectly trained Indian cooks, and thus trim the balance between dining room and kitchen; and to the other Mrs. Gradinger, a gaunt, ill-dressed lady in spectacles, with a commanding nose and dull, wispy hair, was proclaiming in a steady metallic voice, that it was absolutely necessary to double the school rate at once in order to convert all the girls and some of the boys as well, into perfectly ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters

... copy-holder, his page. Cerizet's intelligence naturally interested David; he won the lad's affection by procuring amusements now and again for him, and comforts from which he was cut off by poverty. Nature had endowed Cerizet with an insignificant, rather pretty little countenance, red hair, and a pair of dull blue eyes; he had come to Angouleme and brought the manners of the Parisian street-boy with him. He was formidable by reason of a quick, sarcastic turn and a spiteful disposition. Perhaps David looked less strictly after him ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... with something like excitement to the window. 'Twas but seldom he had chance to tell his story, and 'twas a thing he dearly loved to do, life being but a dull thing at the Cow at Wickben, and few travellers passing that way. A pair so friendly and gay and ready to hearken to his chatter as these two he ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... indignant 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... heard footsteps approaching, Then came a peculiar dull thump, As if some one was heavily striking An ax in the top of a stump; And then, in another brief moment, There came a light tap on the door, When quickly I undid the fast'ning, And in ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... and independence, which aided Nat so much in his studies, enabled him to perform this act. An irresolute, dull, stupid, inefficient youth, would not have braved the current of feeling that had set against the girls. In this way it is, that the leading elements of character hitherto discussed assist a youth in all circumstances. ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer

... apprehension in the mother's voice did not dull the gleam in Thorpe's eyes. He even began a smile in the shadows of his ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... along the harbor-road in the direction of the palace, and the jostling crowd respectfully made way for them to pass. The gleams of festal splendor seemed interwoven with the laborious bustle on the quay like scraps of gold thread in a dull work-a-day garment. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... "If people cannot travel in drawing-rooms, why do they travel at all?" The safety of his nine hundred dollars worried him; he knelt up to look in the inside pocket of his jacket, and bumped his head, a dull, solid bump. Pale golden stars, shaped like the enlarged pictures of snow-flakes, streamed across his consciousness. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... past and gone. Somehow the sun does not seem to shine so brightly as it used; the trackless meadows of old time have shrunk and dwindled away to a few poor acres. A saddening doubt, a dull suspicion, creeps over me. Et in Arcadia ego,—I certainly did once inhabit Arcady. Can it be I ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... large. Confinement and hard labour is what most of them need; for the majority of them in this particular Siberian prison are not revolutionists, offenders against the government, sent there for some petty or trumped-up charge, but cold-blooded murderers, fiendishly cruel assassins, wife-beaters, dull, degraded brutes. But the regime, as our novelist describes it, does not improve them; the officers are as brutal as the men, and the floggings do not make for spiritual culture. One cannot wish, after reading the book, ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... on one side, and by the final terrace running to the basement wall on the other. Here and there along the wall gigantic brazen pots sat, filled with evergreens, whose color seemed to have gradually dropped down and entered into the marble beneath them. The bronze had stained with rich, dull green each pedestal and irregular sections of the marble ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland

... entrusted to his care. "Now," said he to himself, "will I repose At least this burthen on a brother's breast." His brother stood before him. He, amazed, Reared suddenly his head, and thus began: "Is it thou, brother! Tamar, is it thou! Why, standing on the valley's utmost verge, Lookest thou on that dull and dreary shore Where many a league Nile blackens all the sand. And why that sadness? when I passed our sheep The dew-drops were not shaken off the bar; Therefore if one be wanting 'tis untold." "Yes, ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor

... without replying. The fire within him had burned to ashes. He was cold and dull and dispirited. He had failed. He would have been willing to sit and brood, and wait for God to answer his prayer.—But his waiting was not to be an inert lingering in the place where ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... and so had an overcurious sentry who peeped just an inch too far above a parapet. A shell had burst in a trench, knocking the telephone connection out of gear and half burying a squad of sleepers under a lot of earth. Otherwise, things were drowsily dull. ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune

... said as much for me, but I reflected that I had not been two hundred years old to begin with, and consoled myself as I could in my consciousness that I was really not so young by twenty odd years as I once was. Yet I think it must be a dull and churlish nature which would wish to refuse the gentle contemporaneity offered by the unaging antiquity at Hampton Court. I should at this moment be glad to share the youthful spirit of the sunken garden which I passed on my way to the famous vine, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... contain neither more nor less than five acts? Or hath any one living attempted to explain what the modern judges of our theatres mean by that word low; by which they have happily succeeded in banishing all humour from the stage, and have made the theatre as dull as a drawing-room! Upon all these occasions the world seems to have embraced a maxim of our law, viz., cuicunque in arte sua perito credendum est: for it seems perhaps difficult to conceive that any one should have had enough of impudence to lay down dogmatical rules in any art ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... had not needed to take any precautions against hearing anything that was said. The dull roar of the fire all about them effectually silenced every other sound. Then, without warning, high above the noise of the fire, came the shrill, ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher

... long, dull hours wore on—how long and how dull only prisoners know. But noon came at last, and with it came Sarah, carrying a second tray. Mollie was on the watch for the door to open. She had some vague idea of making a ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming

... faithful, but I fear a dull guide, conducted my reader from the lowly cottage in Prillisk, where I first drew my breath, along those tangled walks and green lanes which are familiar to the foot of the peasant alone, until I enter ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... play makes Jack a dull boy. And it is this same lack of play that produces so many dull men and women; for the spirit of play is the spirit of youth and spontaneity and joy. Yet work and play have so much in common that it seems unfortunate indeed that all of us have not learned to retain our youth ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... don't know when this letter will go. I shall send it by the first ship that returns to France, and keep on writing till then. It is pleasant, I know, to hear particulars about the people one loves, and I thought that my mother and you, my dearest and most beloved, would be glad to read all these dull details. We heard Mass on Easter Day. All the week before, it was impossible, because the ship rolled so that I could hardly keep my legs. If I had dared, I think I should have had myself lashed fast. I shall not soon forget ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... 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 me? ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... perhaps it may have been the original of those caricatures of our compatriots by which French comic artists have sought to avenge Waterloo. It was stiff, haughty, contemptuous. It had prominent front teeth, a high nose, a long upper lip, a receding jaw; it had dull, cold, stupid, selfish green eyes, like a pike's, that swerved neither to right nor left, but looked steadily over peoples' heads as it stalked along in its pride ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... the great attraction of the season! And his mind was filled visions of overflowing houses and showers of gold. Alas! if the representations went beyond the single one of Vautrin, they did not exceed twenty; and his share of profits was insignificant. The play is not dull to read, with its flavour of Moliere's comedies, and the keenness of Balzac's observation. But its colour and poesy do not compensate for the diffuseness of the plot and ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... acquainted the Wazir with all the kindness and good turns which the Stoker had done him; and he found that the wight had waxed fat and burly with rest and good fare, so that his neck was like an elephant's throat and his face like a dolphin's belly. Moreover, he was grown dull of wit, for that he had never stirred from his place; so at first he knew not the King by his aspect. But Zau al-Makan came up to him smiling in his face, and greeted him after the friendliest fashion, saying, "How ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... fender-stool of dull red velvet, her hands clasped about her knees, her head raised in expectation. A dress of softly flowing white silk, and a single row of pearls at her throat, intensified her fragile freshness, as of a lily of the field, ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... no threat, impatience, or acting in her voice, but he recognized the same dull desperation he had once heard in it, and her eyes, which a moment before were quick and mobile, had become fixed and set. He had no idea of trying to penetrate the foolish secret of her name and relations; he had ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... the maze passed from me. I had but been stunned by the fall from my horse, and now seemed little the worse, save for sickness and dull weight of weariness. I had been an hour or two thus, as it would seem, for now the Danish host was gone, and only a few men sought for friends on that hillside, as Thrand had sought for me. My horse was dead, slain by the spear thrust that made him rear. It was that one which Earl Wulfnoth ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler

... her a spoke or two in silence; his eye, as it skirted from the needle to the luff of the foresail, passed the man by without speculation. But Huish was really dull, a thing he could support with difficulty, having no resources of his own. The idea of a private talk with Herrick, at this stage of their relations, held out particular inducements to a person of his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... always wanted to do something of the kind," says Auntie. "True, I may not look like that sort of a person, and I suppose that I do lead rather a dull, commonplace existence. Not from choice, however. Once I was ship-wrecked in the Mediterranean, and I found it a thrilling experience. Also I once spent nearly a week on a snow-bound train in the Rockies; I would ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford

... marked the spot where the crumbling adobe walls of the casa had returned to the parent soil that gave it. The channel was deepened, the lagoon was drained, until one evening the magic mirror that had so long reflected the weary waiting of the Blue Grass Penelope lay dull, dead, lusterless, an opaque quagmire of noisome corruption and decay to be put away from the sight of man forever. On this spot the crows, the titular tenants of Los Cuervos, assembled in tumultuous congress, coming and going in ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... light of two brilliant flashes illuminated the night for a moment: then two deafening reports, that could be produced only by a weapon of heavy calibre. So easy to pick out the dull thunder roar from those other crackling splutterings that followed ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... upward, forgot time and danger, while she reveled in the wonder of the forestland. Birds and squirrels fled before her; whistling and wheezing of alarm, or heavy crashings in the bushes, told of frightened wild beasts. A dull, faint roar, like a distant wind, suggested tumbling waters. A single birch tree, gleaming white among the black trees, enlivened the gloomy forest. Patches of sunlight brightened the shade. Giant ferns, just tinging with autumn colors, waved tips ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey

... of the forest and stood knee deep in discoloured ferns, listening. The sombre beech-woods spread thick on either hand, a wilderness of crossed limbs and meshed branches to which still clung great clots of dull ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... of His holiness.' Is not that God's way of glorifying us before heaven's glory? When a blunt knife is ground upon a wheel, the sparks fly fast from the edge held down upon the swiftly-revolving emery disc, but that is the only way to sharpen the dull blade. Friction, often very severe friction, and heat are indispensable to polish the shaft and turn the steel into a mirror that will flash back the sunshine. So when God holds us to His grindstone, it is to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... solace only in making his mind a blank. Sullen, dull, he watched the sunset, watched the bellying cumulus clouds mimic the Grand Canyon. He had to see the Grand Canyon! He would!... He had turned the corner. His clammy heart was warming. He was slowly coming to understand that he was actually free ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... Margrave. He had heard with surprise, and still greater joy, that Lord Elmwood had once more shut his doors against his daughter. In this her discarded state, he no longer burthened his lively imagination with the dull thoughts of marriage, but once more formed the idea ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... she exclaimed. "And it was you who first showed me the way. Who showed me how common and dull and unambitious I had been all my life? Think what leaving here would mean to me. What would Miss Dusante think? I had almost arranged to take dancing lessons of her. Think of Mr. Holway. Is there a young man like him in Trumet? Think ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln

... novel effect was shown some time ago in the Vitagraph Company's production of Arthur Stringer's story, "Mortmain." Just as Mortmain was put under ether the scene proper faded out, giving place to a dull blur in which the faces of the doctor and his attendants were brought right up to the lens of the camera and then withdrawn for several feet, the action being extremely rapid, and being repeated several times, by means of the ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... intensely calm and still character that invariably accompanies intense frost, so that the merry jingle of the sleigh-bells that struck on Mr. Kennedy's listening ear continued to sound, and grow louder as they drew near, for a considerable time ere the visitors arrived. Presently the dull, soft tramp of horses' hoofs was heard in the snow, and a well-known voice shouted out lustily, "Now then, Mactavish, keep to the left. Doesn't the road take a turn there? Mind the gap in the fence. That's old Kennedy's only fault. He'd rather risk breaking ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... man from that of the Ballads: as different as the conservative Wordsworth of later years was from the radical youth who praised the French Revolution of 1791. As a whole, The Excursion is accurate, philosophic, and very dull, so that few readers have the patience to complete its perusal, while many enjoy its ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... flushed cheeks and sparkling black eyes proof of an excitement all too great for one in her frail health. She had the unusual gift of relating in an easy, simple way what she read; and many a book far too abstruse and dull for my boyish taste became an absorbing story from her lips. One of her chief characteristics was the love of flowers. I can scarcely recall her when a flower of some kind, usually a rose, was not within her reach; and only periods of great ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... her. But as she drowsed she thought of the article he had written about her Margaret, and it was the desire to read it again that awoke her. Stretching out her hand, she took it from the table at her bedside and began reading. He liked the dull green dress she wore in the first act; and the long braids of golden hair which he admired were her own. He had mentioned them and the dark velvet cape, which he could not remember whether she wore or carried. As a ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... to a fourth year of exile and of school. Her mind was at once made up. Since the morning—how long ago it seemed!—an ardent wish to return to England had begun to glow in her imagination. She wanted her real life to begin. These dull, monotonous school-days were only a prelude which had gone on long enough. Therefore she said, with brief consideration, that her choice would be to ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... alongside of him. But there,—it's all over now! I wouldn't have let on a word to you only I couldn't bear to take YOUR THANKS for it, and I couldn't bear to have you thinking me a brute for dodgin' them." He stopped, walked to the fire, leaned against the chimney under the shallow pretext of kicking the dull embers into a blaze, which, however, had only the effect of revealing his two glistening eyes as he turned back again and came towards her. "Well," he said, with an ineffectual laugh, "it's all over now, it's all in the ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... must be known thoroughly—that is his first care; the movement of her mind is to be watched at work in all the ardour and the poverty of her imagination. How she creates her makeshift romances, how she feeds on them, how they fail her—it is all part of the picture. And then there is the dull and limited world in which her appetite is somehow to be satisfied, the small town that shuts her in and cuts her off; this, too, is to be rendered, and in order to make it clearly tell beside the figure of Emma it must be as distinct and individual, ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock

... enable it to act in all the occurrences of life, in the way in which our reason enables us to act. Again, by means of these two tests we may likewise know the difference between men and brutes. For it is highly deserving of remark, that there are no men so dull and stupid, not even idiots, as to be incapable of joining together different words, and thereby constructing a declaration by which to make their thoughts understood; and that on the other hand, there ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes

... in the prospect of meeting you in Paris; yet I fear that you will find it dull. All that I hear from the great town shows me that never, at least during the last two hundred years, has intellectual life been ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville

... it from her. No! She must find another way. There must be a way out if she were only quick enough to see it—some way by which she could cover up his disgrace so that none should know of it. There was a way—surely there was a way! Ronnie's dull stare became intolerable. She went ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... scene that the island presented, slumbering langorously under the brilliant rays of the tropical moon, more enchanting in some respects than when viewed in the garish light of the sun; and so strong was the enticement of its beauty upon me that, but for the dull cramping influence of the doctrines accepted by the settlers upon which to frame the guiding rules of their lives, I could without very much difficulty have reconciled myself to the idea of a sojourn there for ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... been for many generations of boys a book even more terrible than Caesar's Commentaries or the Aeneid of Virgil—the dull thud of a mysterious cudgel upon the shoulders of youth which you bore as ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... stopped immediately in front of the place, where the scratching noise continued to grow worse and worse, and said in a strong solemn voice, such as I had never before heard from his lips, "Daniel, Daniel! what are you doing here at this hour?" Then there was a horrible unearthly scream, followed by a dull thud as if a heavy weight had fallen to the ground. "Seek for pardon and mercy at the throne of the Almighty; that is your place. Away with you from the scenes of this life, in which you can nevermore have part." And as the old gentleman uttered these words ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... of how to proceed. The first three slices came off readily enough, though they were somewhat ragged, and Irving was aware that Westby was surveying his operations with a critical interest. The knife seemed to grow more dull, the meat more wobbly, more tough, the bone got more and more in the way; the maid who was passing the vegetables was waiting, all the boys except the three who had been helped first were waiting, coldly critical, anxiously ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier

... the most cheerful things in this world. Some one has remarked "that to be well-dressed gives a feeling of satisfaction that religion fails to give;" but to us, to sit before a blazing wood fire on a dull, cold evening, gives a feeling of comfort and delight which surpasses anything we know of. What charming companionship in a wood fire! Better than the company of ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various

... coachmaker's shop, and the little balcony upon which I had stood with my grandfather, and railed in a boyish tenor at Mr. Hood. The sun cast sharp, black shadows. And it being the middle of the dull season, when the quality were at their seats, and the dinner-hour besides, the town might have been a deserted one for its stillness, as tho' the inhabitants had walked out of it, and left it so. I made my way, Banks behind me, into Church ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... irrelevant episodes would be less reprehensible were it not that such episodes are for the most part either dull or a fresh excuse for bombast or (worse still) a display of erudition.[296] He devotes no less than 170 lines in the first book to a description of the prodigies that took place at Rome on the outbreak of the Civil War, and of the rites performed ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... that lay on a narrow ledge that served for a table. 'How long, O Lord, how long?' were the words that caught his eye in the open Psalms; and, startled as if at unauthorized prying, he looked up at the dull screened and spiked window above his head, till he knew by the sounds that the worst of the uncontrollable passion had spent itself, and then he came back with the towel dipped in water, and cooled the flushed heated face as a sister might ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... very early in the morning. From the streets, far below, a dull rumbling was drifting in at the small, dim windows. On the couch, behind some faded curtains, a man turned and yawned, grunted and rubbed his eyes. The noise of the heavy timber, stone, and merchandise wagons hastening out of the city before daybreak,[25] jarred the room, and made ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... thought Gluck, "that my brothers never ask anybody to dinner. I'm sure, when they have such a nice piece of mutton as this, it would do their hearts good to have somebody to eat it with them." Just as he spoke there came a double knock at the house door, yet heavy and dull, as though the knocker had been tied up. "It must be the wind," said Gluck; "nobody else would venture to knock ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... station he had a foreboding of the truth. "Aunt Mary is dead?" ... "Not dead yet, but unconscious, and there is no hope. This morning when Susan was in the breakfast-room, waiting for her sister, she heard a stamping overhead, followed by a dull, heavy thud, and on rushing upstairs found Mary stretched on the floor and moaning, but unconscious. She has been put to bed and attended by doctors; but there is nothing to be done, and they say that she does not suffer." Mournfully my husband ascended alone, in the dark ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... her smile and found utterance upon her lips. I could have died at her word, happy to know it was her pleasure. Yet, as I know now, all the love-making between us was no more than play to her; she merely sought to amuse herself with my passion through a dull season. No, not quite all, for back of her smiles lurked a purpose so dark, so diabolical, 'twas not strange I failed to fathom it. 'Tis hard to associate crime with such young womanhood, to feel that evil thoughts lurk behind eyes soft with love and lips breathing tenderness. Yet behind the ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... I suppose," he told her, and his voice was dull and tired. After a minute he looked up at her impatiently. "Is it fun to stand and watch a man—What do you want, anyway? It ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower

... With a loud wail I threw myself upon the corpse. The people came running round us, but as soon as the dreaded cry 'The pestilence! the pestilence!' was heard, they scattered and flew apart in terror. At the same moment I was seized by a dull numbing pain, and my senses ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... everlasting misery into that pit that has no bottom; yea, it turneth again, and, as with a hammer, it riveteth every fearful thought and apprehension of the soul so fast that it can never be loosed again for ever and ever. Alas! now the conscience can sleep, be dull, be misled, or batter, no longer; no, it must now cry out; understanding will make it, memory will make it, fancy or imagination will make it. Now, I say, it will cry out of sin, of justice, and of the terribleness of the punishment that hath swallowed him up that has lost ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... and adventured into democracy, Milt was in the garage. He wore union overalls that were tan where they were not grease-black; a faded blue cotton shirt; and the crown of a derby, with the rim not too neatly hacked off with a dull toad-stabber jack-knife. ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... moreover, of German extraction) regarded herself as a woman of sentiment; she lived in constant fear of something, never seemed to have had quite enough to eat, and wore tight velvet gowns, a turban, and dull bracelets of hollow metal. Varvara Pavlovna, the only daughter of Pavel Petrovitch and Kalliope Karlovna, had just passed her seventeenth birthday when she came out of the * * * Institute, where she had been considered, if not the greatest beauty, certainly the cleverest girl ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff

... Esop, though a Phrygian, rose, And ev'n derived from Scythian snows; If Anacharsis could devise By wit to gain th' immortal prize; Shall I, who to learn'd Greece belong, Neglect her honour and her song, And by dull sloth myself disgrace? Since we can reckon up in Thrace, The authors that have sweetest sung, Where Linus from Apollo sprung; And he whose mother was a muse, Whose voice could tenderness infuse To solid rocks, strange monsters quell'd, And ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... Mr. Barbour, "to get rid of a dull home, you are determined to fly in the face of fate, and are going to Washington after a husband. Ah! Miss Ellen, beware of these young men that have nothing but their whiskers and their epaulettes. Let me tell you of a young friend of mine, who would marry the man ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman

... both ends meet, and there were drilled into his character many good lessons of plain commonsense—a rather unusual equipment for a poet, but still one that should not be waived or considered lightly. At the village school William was neither precocious nor dull, neither black nor white: his cosmos being simply a sort of slaty-gray, a condition of being which attracted no special attention from either his schoolfellows or his tutors. From the village school he went to Marlborough Academy, where by patient grubbing he fitted himself ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... broad arches across the track. The still summer air was heavy with the resinous smell of the great forest. Here and there a tawny brook prattled out from among the underwood and lost itself again in the ferns and brambles upon the further side. Save the dull piping of insects and the sough of the leaves, there was silence everywhere—the sweet ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... of the bureau had many pretty silver ornaments, but they were dull and shabby, and Margaret had to get the silver polish and a bit of chamois and make them shine before they could go on the fresh bureau-cover the aunt put on, and she was given a bit of velvety stuff to tuck in a corner of a drawer, ready to use every day or two, ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton

... feel a sort of all-overishness, a kind of lassitude and sleepiness, with a slight headache, and a dull pain which appears to be creeping up ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne

... valuable was lost. The insurance companies paid me enough to replace every damage, and the office was renewed better than before. The Lord sends me business enough to pay for my debts, yet others are dull. I cannot tell why it is, except that I always pray for my business, and ask the Lord to bless it for the good of others, and that the means which come from it may be used for his cause. When I stop giving, business stops coming. ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various

... red and green hills, was dull and warm till the cool morning easter, which usually set about eight a.m., began to blow. The effect of increasing altitude showed itself in the vegetation. We now saw for the first time the Kidd (Astragalus), ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... departure. He heard his feet move heavily to the gate, and the dull clang of the latter closing behind him. Then, after a protracted pause, there came the ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... sigh of relief, and he went on in a new voice, a dull, business-like voice if I may so ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... gave them the lie by arranging a first-class murder straight away,' said George, with a shrug. 'But why everybody should be in such a state I can't see. The palace is like an undertaker's establishment when business is dull. The only person who seems at all ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... the chief, followed by his two attendants, stepped within. The door was closed again. Then Little Black Fox signed to Wanaha for a light. The squaw took the oil-lamp from a shelf and lit it, and the dull, yellow rays revealed the ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... dear Bristles. In spite of all efforts to assume an intellectual expression, the donkey, depend upon it, preponderates—the long visage, the dull eyes, the crooked legs—it is impossible to perceive any grace in such a wretched animal. I can't help thinking that if it had been a young girl you had brought me—say, a sleeping nymph—full of youth and beauty, 'twould have been a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... and woods, All still and silent—far and near! Only the Ass, with motion dull, Upon the pivot of his skull Turns round his long left ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... He began to like this. A young man must find pleasure in sitting alone near a pretty young girl, and talking with her about herself and himself, no matter how plain and dull her speech is; and Staniford, though he found Lydia as blankly unresponsive as might be to the flattering irony of his habit, amused himself in realizing that here suddenly he was almost upon the terms of window-seat flirtation with a girl whom ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells

... safety so much disturbed his repose, that if he did but drop into an instant's slumber he started from it in a vague fright. So the small hours of the morning wore on and brought the dull, drizzly, wintry daylight. ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... omit all facts that are non-essential: To Havre we were bound, and passengers there were four of us, Three men and a lady—not an individual more of us. The month was July, the weather warm and hazy, The sea smooth as glass, the winds asleep or lazy. Dull times of course, for the sea, though favorable to the mind's expansion, Yet keeps the body confined to a very few feet of stanchion. Our employments were nought save eating, drinking and sleeping, Excepting the lady, who a diary was keeping. She was a very pleasant person ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... broad-minded statesman. His sermons on special occasions, as at Thanksgiving and on public anniversaries, were noted for their directness and power in dealing with the greater moral questions before the people. On the other hand, there was a saying then current, "Dull as Dr. Bacon when he's nothing but the Gospel to preach"; but this, like so many other smart sayings, was more epigrammatic than true: even when I heard him preach religious doctrines in which I did not at all believe, he seemed to me to show ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... cold, and, notwithstanding the exertion of riding, Sim's teeth 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 blew smartly from ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... sense characteristic—it illustrated, that is to say, the best side of his character. "Believe me," were the words of the dying King, "that I have always been a religious man." It may be admitted, in justice to William, that according to his generally dull and often confused and hazy lights he did always recognize the standard, higher than that of mere expediency, or political compromise, or personal convenience, set up to regulate the conduct even ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... reigned—creeping in upon us with such pictures as we painted under the reign of West, and such houses as we built under the reign of Nash, till the English eye required to rest on that which was constrained, dull, and graceless. For the last two score of years it has come to this, that if a man go in handsome attire he is a popinjay and a vain fool; and as it is better to be ugly than to be accounted vain I would not counsel a young friend to leave the beaten ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... sea—it is the same. I look around, and perceive men and women moving mechanically about me; I even take part in their proceedings, and seem to float along the tardy current upon which they swim, and become a part—an insignificant portion—of the dull and stagnant scene; and yet, often and often, in the busiest moment, when commonplace has its strongest hold upon me, and I feel actually interested in the ordinary pursuits of my fellow-beings, of a sudden, a great curtain seems to fall ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... Perhaps a concert given by the duchess, a charity bazaar, or some festivity from which Mora had left him out because of the scandal caused by his last adventure. And his anxiety augmented when, after crossing the court of honor amid the tumult of slamming carriage-doors and a constant, dull rumbling on the gravel, he had ascended the steps and found himself in the vast reception-room filled to overflowing with a great throng who were allowed to pass none of the inner doors, but whose anxious steps centred about the ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... run to commonplace, so had morals; and so too had religion. Despondent writers of the day even complained that British courage had died out. There was little sign to the common eye that under a dull and languid surface, forces were at work preparing a new life, material, moral, and intellectual. As yet, Whitefield and Wesley had not wakened the drowsy conscience of the nation, nor the voice of William Pitt roused it ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... the early miniature "heads" of her Majesty in the little dull red stamp! These myths ranged from the panic that the adhesive gum caused cancer in the tongue, to the romance that a desperate young lady was collecting a huge supply of used stamps for the purpose of papering a room of untold dimensions. This feat was the single stipulation ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... have gone if he had had any idea what a wonderful service it was going to be. If he had even dreamed that Jesus would be there, of course he would not have missed it; but he expected the meeting to be a very dull affair. He felt confident that whoever else was there that there would be no Christ. He expected that Peter and James and John and the rest would meet there and talk of a glorious past that had gone forever. He would have said, "Yes, I know what they will say. They will ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell

... at once he was conscious of the flashing of two lights and the dull rattle of wheels coming through the deep sand of ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn

... scarf knotted about his hips. The high priest dismissed the subject of the sacrilege from his mind, now that his nephew was dead. The people of Memphis who knew Kenkenes mourned with Mentu; the festivities were dull without him, and there were some, like Io and the Lady Senci, who went into retirement and ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... asked to take part in such a quarrel. He could not himself even act to the best advantage unless he knew the truth . . . he took the letter from the envelope and held it before the lamp, the paper fluttering as though in a breeze from the trembling of his hand. Leonard looked on, the dull glare of his eyes brightening with malignant pleasure as he beheld the other's concern. He owed him a grudge, and by God he would pay it. Had he not been struck—throttled—called a liar! . ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... inserting itself in everything near it, as if it were fire. The effects of philosophy, however, are different according to the difference of inclinations in men. If indeed it lights on one who loves a dull and inactive sort of life, that makes himself the centre and the little conveniences of life the circumference of all his thoughts, such a one does contract the sphere of her activity, so that having only made easy and comfortable the life ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... just making out where his cousin sat when there was a flash like sheet-lightning running along the upper part of the canvas, reaching from end to end. He felt himself thrust violently back, as he seemed to be struck with something heavy and soft; then there was a deep, dull report, as of thunder, and all was dark, while from where the marquee had stood there came wild shrieks, cries for help, and a strange babel of sounds, which, issuing from beneath what in the darkness looked like a chaotic sea, were for the most ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn

... tied up in the bush. One of them I could get with perfect safety. I ran round the end of the store and into the thicket, keeping on soft grass to dull my tread. There, tied up to a merula tree, were two of the finest beasts I had seen in Africa. I selected the better, an Africander stallion of the blaauw-schimmel, or blue-roan type, which is famous for speed and endurance. Slipping his bridle from the branch, I led him a little way ...
— Prester John • John Buchan

... prevent her. He did several things and he ordered Peter and Ann to do a good many others, but all of them felt glad the False Hare was not there to compliment them on their seamanship. At last there came a dull shock and a jar, and the Merry Mouser ran her nose into a sand-bar, quivered all ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels

... thousand thanks," the voice cried, passionately. "To be looked upon as 'dead,' to be near to the rascal who smiles to think that I am in my grave.... And everything so dull and prosaic on the surface! Yes, I have friends who will aid me in the business. Some day I may be able to thank you face to face, to tell you how I managed to see ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... new 'sound' books that I have met are just what my mother and sister like—either dull, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... was not at all as I had pictured it. We were now on those great plains which stretch unbroken to the Rocky Mountains. The country was flat like Holland, but far from being dull. All through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, or for as much as I saw of them from the train and in my waking moments, it was rich and various, and breathed an elegance peculiar to itself. The tall corn pleased the eye; the trees were graceful in themselves, and framed ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson

... lived and still live who write for what they call fame! —For my part I write for more substantial food—beef and mutton are the objects of my ambition." —Reynold's Preface to Begone Dull Care.] ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... I disgust you with this very dull narration, but believe me punished in the misery that occasions it. You will conclude that during this time I must have been at more expense than I could afford. Indeed the most parsimonious could not have avoided it. The printer deceived me, and my little business has had every delay. ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger

... hall-table; there was something unconquerable, sumptuous, genial, undaunted yet about the man. He had the courtesy of a prince, this poor American who had lived by the exercise of his sharper wits on his neighbor's dull ones, if report said rightly. And yet Anderson, as he sat opposite Carroll, and they were both smoking in a comrade-like fashion, doubted. There was something in the man's face which seemed to belie the theory that he was a calculating knave. His face was keen, but not cunning, ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... must run," Mrs. Lawrence recalled herself to say suddenly. "But why won't you and Miss Lord run up to see Chrissy for a few moments, Miss Brown? The poor kiddy is frightfully dull. And you'll be here in the morning as usual, Miss Lord? That's ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... clouds had now spread over the horizon—except to the southward, where it was still clear, and from which a short sharp gust of wind came every now and then, filling out the loose folds of the courses, and then, as it died away, letting them flap against the masts with a heavy dull sound as of distant thunder, an occasional streak of pale lightning darting across the sky to the north-west, where the heavens were most obscured, as if to bear ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... young nobleman had been, I confess, some of the loosest; and perhaps the truth is, I DID neglect the brat. He was of so wild, savage, and insubordinate a nature, that I never had the least regard for him; and before me and his mother, at least, was so moody and dull, that I thought instruction thrown away upon him, and left him for the most part to shift for himself. For two whole years he remained in Ireland away from us; and when in England, we kept him mainly at Hackton, never caring to have the uncouth ungainly lad in the genteel company in the capital ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... were still popular, though they were celebrated in books which have long been forgotten. Everyone who has studied the Troy legend of the Middle Ages knows how great a share in the popularization of the legend belongs to the Sicilian lawyer, Guido delle Colonne, who summarized, in the dull style of a Latin chronicle, and without acknowledgment, the brilliant Roman de Troie which the French poet, Benoit de Sainte-More had written for Queen Eleanor of England. Guide's matter-of-fact compilation had an enormous vogue; ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh

... farmer was a sensible man, as straight on the level of dull intelligence as other men; but so credulous was he in regard to the riches possessed by his wife's brother, that a very little tempted him to childish exaggeration of the probable amount. Now that Anthony himself furnished the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... to me, I turned over various leaves till I came to another engraving; a new source of wonder—a low sandy beach on which the furious sea was breaking in mountain-like billows; cloud and rack deformed the firmament, which wore a dull and leaden-like hue; gulls and other aquatic fowls were toppling upon the blast, or skimming over the tops of the maddening waves—"Mercy upon him! he must be drowned!" I exclaimed, as my eyes fell upon a poor wretch who appeared to be striving to reach the shore; he was upon his legs ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... contempt, best adapted to the nature of the feelings Razumov suffered from at the time. He was boiling with rage, as though he had been grossly insulted. He walked as if blind, following instinctively the shore of the diminutive harbour along the quay, through a pretty, dull garden, where dull people sat on chairs under the trees, till, his fury abandoning him, he discovered himself in the middle of a long, broad bridge. He slowed down at once. To his right, beyond the toy-like ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... swooned away. His system, weakened by overwork, succumbed, nervous prostration followed, and on November 4 he died. Sudden death had carried off his grandfather, father, mother and favorite sister; and he had a presentiment that his end would come about in the same way. During the dull half-sleep preceding death he spoke but once, and then to Cecile in answer to her inquiry how he ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb

... entirely in white, having soon discarded the dress of their former masters; and it was a pretty sight to see them turning out of the gates on the occasion of a sortie, their arms glittering, pennons flying, and their whole appearance presenting a gay contrast to the dull, ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths

... dull October evening, Down the leaf-strewn forest road, To the Castle, past the drawbridge, Came the hunters with ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof

... peevish and uncontrolled, and he bowed slightly and left her. It was too bad, but there was nothing to do. Once or twice in his brilliant career he had felt that same heavy hopelessness, realized, to his disgust, that the patient's dull misery was creeping over him, too, and that he had no ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... the reader that the Picts were never exterminated, and form to this day a large proportion of the folk of Scotland: occupying the eastern and the central parts, from the Firth of Forth, or perhaps the Lammermoors, upon the south, to the Ord of Caithness on the north. That the blundering guess of a dull chronicler should have inspired men with imaginary loathing for their own ancestors is already strange: that it should have begotten this wild legend seems incredible. Is it possible the chronicler's error was merely nominal? that what he told, and what the people proved ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the guns, which on some days roared very loudly, and made the wooden huts shake and tremble, although one got used to that, after a fashion. The hospital was very close to the war, so close that no one knew anything about the war, therefore it was very dull inside the enclosure, with no news and no newspapers, and just quarrels and monotonous work. As for the hedge, at such points as the prickly thorn gave out or gave way, stout stakes and stout boarding took ...
— The Backwash of War - The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an - American Hospital Nurse • Ellen N. La Motte

... shower of rain fell about three o'clock A.M.; it detained us in our camp until five, when we embarked. Why should I relate to you our dull progress through fields of rice—through intricate channels, and amidst myriads of ducks and wild water fowl. This day has been hot, beyond any experience on the journey. I sank back in my canoe, in a state of apathy ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... all the other youths of his age. He went to evening parties and learned to dance a quadrille and a polka. On holidays he came home drunk, and always suffered greatly from the effects of liquor. In the morning his head ached, he was tormented by heartburns, his face was pale and dull. ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... can hold off for to-night," she said. "Sometimes things get kind of dull—you know, when there's nothing doing, and this keeps me lively. How old ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... lovable race that fight like fiends, argue like children, reason like women, obey like men, and jest like their own goblins of the rath through rebellion, loyalty, want, woe, or war. The underground work of a conspiracy is always dull and very much the same the world over. At the end of six months - the seed always falling on good ground - Mulcahy spoke almost explicitly, hinting darkly in the approved fashion at dread powers behind him, and advising nothing more nor less than mutiny. Were they not dogs, evilly ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling

... might have got anxious about our little Sta, who is with me and the nurse at Hymettus. But I'm glad it was only a lark. I shouldn't wonder," he added, with a laugh, "although she always declares she isn't one of those 'doting, idiotic mothers,' that she found it a little dull without the boy, for all she thought it was better for ME to take him somewhere ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte

... with an occasional attendance at a ball or archery meeting, thought his fair companion an enthusiast, a perfect heroine of romance, though he did not tell her so. She possibly considered him somewhat dull and phlegmatic. Jack's notion of duty was to gain as much professional knowledge as possible; to obey the orders he might receive, and to carry them out to the best ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... to be appeased. She raises her claw-like hand, pointing a crooked finger at the lovers, and with a clash of brazen sound and the dull thrumming of drums the whole scene dissolves into absolute darkness. When the darkness lifts once more, the stage is empty save for a pure white swan which sails slowly down the lake and disappears. . . . Followed a solo dance by Ravinski in ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... barbarism; this is the land of the green valley and barren mountain, of the boundless plain and the broken sierra, now of Elysian gardens of the vine, the olive, the orange, and the aloe, then of trackless, vast, silent, uncultivated wastes, the heritage of the wild bee. Here we fly from the dull uniformity, the polished monotony of Europe, to the racy freshness of an original, unchanged country, where antiquity treads on the heels of to-day, where Paganism disputes the very altar with Christianity, where indulgence and luxury contend with privation and poverty, where a want ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... up their dull, blunt beating, and the crowd of young and less important bucks came from the outer circle nearer to the council. Cheschapah set the pot in the midst of the flat camp, to be the centre of the dance. None of the old chiefs said more to him, but sat apart with the empty cup, having words ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... There are two ways of using it. One way it's a deadly poison. The other makes those who take the stuff stupid. But even so it's dangerous. I've seen one or two victims of that experiment who didn't come back to their senses, but remained dull and melancholy, caring for nothing ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... A dull throbbing beat at my ears, a vibration just too low to be sound. I looked about for its source. It came from my left—a concrete building, low lying, about a hundred yards long by as many feet wide. At the further end a squat smokestack broke the flat line of the roof. Guards, many guards, ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... tired, like the rest of you, of this dull camp life," said the old drummer; "and seeing you pack your knapsack has stirred a little youthful blood in my veins which I didn't suppose was there. I'm off for the war with the rest of you, my boy;" and he poked a coal from the fire to light his cigar, hiding ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... add very much. I will only say, therefore, that the "sensation" produced in me by this novel is one of the most disagreeable I ever experienced. The characters are, for the most part, inordinately dull, preposterously conceited, and insufferably brutal. As for Dick Heldar, the hero, no more disagreeable and hateful bully-puppy ever thought and talked in disconnected gasps through ninety-seven pages. The catastrophe moves no pity. Mr. KIPLING seems to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various

... half of this delirious story has now been delivered to the reader. It seems a pity to reduce the other half to a cold synopsis. Pity! it is more than a pity, it is a crime; for to synopsize McClintock is to reduce a sky-flushing conflagration to dull embers, it is to reduce barbaric splendor to ragged poverty. McClintock never wrote a line that was not precious; he never wrote one that could be spared; he never framed one from which a word could be removed without damage. Every sentence that this master has produced may ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... in despair any attempt at looking natty and had now no ambition for herself but to have something "decent" to go out in. Once it was her ambition also to have a "I room." She had scraped and saved and pared in dull times for this "room" and when once Joe had a long run of steady work she had launched out into what those who know how workingmen's wives should live would have denounced as the wildest extravagance. A gilt framed mirror and a sofa, four spidery chairs and a round table, a wonderful display ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... the strangers went on to the ancient dull little town of Lancaster, and drove to the castle, where the keys were presented, and an address read under John O'Gaunt's gateway. The tower stairs were mounted for the view over Morcambe Bay and the English lake country on the one ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler

... were lengthening in the Corral where the supper fires were gleaming. Across the low bluff the imprisoned sun was sending a dull red glow along the waters ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter

... degeneracy the aristocratic rule had now sunk, it had once been a great political system; the sacred fire, by which Italy had been conquered and Hannibal had been vanquished, continued to glow—although somewhat dimmed and dull—in the Roman nobility so long as that nobility existed, and rendered a cordial understanding between the men of the old regime and the new monarch impossible. A large portion of the constitutional party submitted at least outwardly, and recognized the monarchy so far as to ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... with 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

... camels as they knelt down before her father's but to rest before the journey into the yellow plains of sand beyond. She saw the seller of sweetmeats go by calling—calling. She heard the droning of the children in the village school behind the hut, the dull clatter of Arabic consonants galloping through the Koran. She saw the moon—the full moon-upon the Nile, the wide acreage of silver water before the golden-yellow and yellow-purple of the Libyan ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... and wandered on a little towards the farther end of the room. There was a sofa there. He leaned heavily on the back of it, with his left hand—then roused himself, and returned to the middle of the room. I could now see his eyes. They were getting dull and heavy; the glitter in them ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... the sieve. Then she went back into the bedroom, and pulled down the green slat curtains with a shaking hand. Twice her father called her to bring his sermons, but she only answered, "Yes, father!" in dull acquiescence, and did not move. She was benumbed, sunken in a gulf of shame, too faint and cold to save herself by struggling. Her poor innocent little fictions made themselves into lurid writings on her brain. She had called him hers while another woman held his vows, and she ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... not touched, but he was scared by Hope's solemnity, and went to his own corner muttering, and as he crouched there there came over his dull brain what in due course follows the horrible meal he had made—a ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... bloodthirsty anecdotes that one wonders how other countries exist without the excitement of the vendetta. Then the intercourse with noted murderers and assassins makes a mere ordinary man whose hands are not stained with the blood of his fellow-beings seem dull and tame. Our eagerness pleased our friend and we adjourned to the ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... agree, but he's dull," answered Dyck. "For an Irishman, he's dull—and he's a tyrant, too. I suppose I deserve that, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... bricks is very thick and solid; it adheres strongly to the clay, and even when brought to our comparatively humid climates it preserves its brilliancy. It is not so with bricks from Khorsabad and Nimroud, which rapidly tarnish and become dull when withdrawn from the earth that protected them for so many centuries. Their firing does not seem ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... upbraidings: Unquiet meals make ill digestions; Thereof the raging fire of fever bred; And what's a fever but a fit of madness? Thou say'st his sports were hinder'd by thy brawls: Sweet recreation barr'd, what doth ensue But moody and dull melancholy,— Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair,— And, at her heels, a huge infectious troop Of pale distemperatures and foes to life? In food, in sport, and life-preserving rest, To be disturb'd would mad or man or beast: The consequence is, ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... running like mad. The single little light seemed twinkling and hazy and he brushed his streaming face with his sleeve so that he might see it the more clearly. But it looked dull, more like a little patch of brightness than a shining light. Either it ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... her hands in her lap, staring. Mrs. Ridding, her mind blocked by aspic, wasn't receiving impressions. She gazed with heavy eyes straight in front of her. There she saw cars. Many cars. All stopped at this particular spot. With a dull sensation of fathomless fatigue ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim



Words linked to "Dull" :   slow, dense, dumb, lackluster, blunt, dreary, obtuse, matte, dullness, thudding, change, cloud, stupid, muffle, alter, dullard, edgeless, bovine, unsaturated, modify, spiritless, dampen, nonresonant, soft, weaken, drab, unpolished, cloudy, unreverberant, uninteresting, colorless, desiccated, commercial enterprise, deadened, lusterless, sharp, dull-purple, monotonous, lacklustre, tiresome, bright, unsharpened, sluggish, humdrum, desensitize, business, pall, luminousness, mat, dim, matted, deadening, wearisome, mute, lively, inactive, blunted, desensitise, desiccate, benumb, sharpen, soften, luminosity, subdued, flat, softened, insensitive, numb, lustreless, muffled, ho-hum



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