"Dully" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spryly into a wagon which stood near-by. But he soon saw that he needn't have gone to that trouble. For Snowball plainly had no more butts left in him for the time being. He stood still in a dazed fashion and stared dully about him. The heavy oaken swing seat had been no soft mark to hit, sailing swiftly through the air with eighty pounds of ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... be, he wondered dully, before the coxswain in charge of the Blanco Encalada's steam-launch became anxious about his long absence, and instituted inquiries, or returned to the flagship with the news? Admiral Williams was ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... what makes me tax you with a dull letter, I feeling so dully; and, dear, it is with dismay I have to tell you that the letter you addressed under cover to Mr. Russell has never reached us. Till your last communication (this moment received), I had hoped that the contents of it might have been less important than O.-papers ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... bosom. When it re-appeared something flashed dully in the dim light. At the same time, with a cat-like spring, he was out of his chair and ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... of affairs it happened once that, as I was leaning out of my window gazing dully into vacancy, the lady's-maid from the castle came tripping across the road. When she saw me she came and stood just outside the window. "His Grace returned from his travels yesterday," she remarked, hurriedly. "Indeed!" I said, surprised, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... from hour to hour, from day to day, dully and in a brooding spirit, for release from a situation which must in time embitter her ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... as he trotted to his position he looked curiously at the first finger of his left hand. It bore the imprint of a shoe-cleat, and pained dully. He tried to stretch it, but could not. Then he shook his hand. The finger wobbled crazily. ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... she said bitterly, seeing her hopes lie broken at her feet, but not caring much yet. Only, she knew dully that she would care by and by, care to the sharpest point of agony. "Well, so much for our friendship! I'm sorry. I would have done a good deal for my part of it, but there's a limit, isn't there? And friendship can't be all on one side. I'm afraid, if you want Miss MacDonald in your ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... rolled dully down the clouded window-panes and spattered off the English-ivy leaves below the sill. They quivered up and down on pale stems—bright, waxed leaves, as shining as though they had ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... color of old, old ivory. Her nose was like a great strong beak, and on it the skin was stretched very tightly, so that her nose shone dully when the candle was lit. Her eyes were big and as black as pools of ink and as bright as the eyes of a bird. Her hair also was black, it was as smooth as the finest silk, and when unloosened it hung straightly down, shining about her ivory ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... "Yes," he said dully, "we were bound for the Dark Moon. The Patrol couldn't stop us, nor the beasts that have paralyzed the flying service of the earth; but you have done it. We will turn back at once, and return ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... of despair he threw him prone upon the dungeon floor and held his peace, no longer gnawing on his thongs or beating on the rock. A single moonbeam straggled through the slatted window, and by its light he saw a spider spinning out a web. Then, looking dully around, he saw the dungeon was hung thick with other webs, foul with the dust of years. Great festoons of the cobweb film shrouded his prison walls. As up and down the hairy creature swung itself upon its thread, the hopeless eyes of ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... with an outstretched hand as he moved stumblingly until he laid hold on a chair, into which he sank helplessly. It suddenly smote upon his consciousness that he felt very old and broken. He marveled dully over the sensation—it was wholly new to him. Then, soon, from a long way off, he heard the strident voice of the Inspector remorselessly continuing in the vile, the impossible accusation.... And that grotesque accusation was hurled against his only son—the boy whom ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... kind face. Only this! How glad it would have made her three weeks ago to have his sanction for the thing she was so reluctant to attempt, which it was so much her duty to do, which Jock urged with so much pertinacity, and which her father from his grave enjoined. If it affected her but dully now, whose was the fault? Not Tom's, who was so generously ready to yield to her, although he disapproved. When he retired behind his newspaper once more with a kind smile at her, to end the matter, ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... thrust, and it found its mark even as the girl glanced slily at her victim. Maren's full mouth twitched and she looked dully away to the fort gate. Dupre gave Francette an ungallant push. "Begone!" he ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... getting under way, and make the desperate attempt to reach shore unseen before the crew could lift anchor, and set sail. This possibility came to me, yet I continued to cling there, dazed and helpless, staring dully down, lacking both physical and mental energy to put the wild scheme into execution. God, no! that would be the craven act of a coward. Better far to stay, and kill, or even be killed, than to be forever cursed by my own conscience. The fellow might ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... heap of pigmies swiftly scattered. The man-bird from Mars was in the room. To Darl he was a blurred blueness from which glittered those two jet beads of eyes. As from a distance he heard a rumble, its meaning beating dully to him. "Not so easy, Thomas, not so easy. I want that signal, and by Tana, ...
— The Great Dome on Mercury • Arthur Leo Zagat
... the soliloquy in II. ii. he accuses himself of being 'a dull and muddy-mettled rascal,' who 'peaks [mopes] like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of his cause,' dully indifferent to his cause.[51] So, when the Ghost appears to him the second time, he accuses himself of being tardy and lapsed in time; and the Ghost speaks of his purpose being almost blunted, and bids him not to ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... man's eyes did not brighten. He looked at her respectfully, but dully. She drew him to the car and repeated the question. He only grinned foolishly and kept on shaking ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... Pete's head snapped back and forth. He lost all sense of time, direction, and place. He was jolted and jarred by a grunting cyclone that flung him up and sideways, met him coming down and racked every muscle in his body. Pete dully hoped that it would soon be over. He was bleeding at the nose. His neck felt as though it had been broken. He wanted to let go and fall. Anything was ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... leaped out, no second wasted in parley. Men gathered up the injured mechanician and hurried him away. Mr. Rose looked on as if at a stage scene which did not interest him, and dully resumed his narrative. ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... time, gentlemen," said he, "to explain my purpose in decoying you from your amusements. I trust you did not find the evening hang very dully on your hands; but my object, I will confess it, was not to entertain your leisure, but to help myself in an unfortunate necessity. You are all gentlemen," he continued, "your appearance does you that much justice, and I ask for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ornamentation: a suit of armour, a gloomy candlestick of prodigious stature, and a thin Italian cabinet surmounted by an urn whose unexposed contents might readily have suggested something more sinister than the dust of antiquity. The door to the library was open. Fitful red shadows flashed dully from the fireplace across the room, creeping out into the hall and then darting back again as if afraid to venture. The waning sunlight struggled through a curtained window at the top of the stairs. There was dusk in the ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... balking a blundering charge from the young man in the billycock. The young man threw himself impatiently on a hall chair. Flambeau looked at a Persian illumination on the wall; Father Brown, who seemed in a sort of daze, dully eyed the door. In about four minutes the door was opened again. Atkinson was quicker this time. He sprang forward, held the door open for an instant, and called out: "Oh, I say, Quinton, ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... shooting, poison, or other sudden device was a matter with which Herr Windt could have the least possible concern. Renwick sank into a chair and smoked a pipe, trying to think what he could do, listening dully meanwhile to the Austrian's dictated messages to the wire, delivered rapidly and with a ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... help of the dry, dismal old fellow whom I had seen in earlier days at the house. I had come, now, to a better professional knowledge of him. He was a man of probity, and of some ability, but a deliberate; impossible to hurry, and not easy, as it seemed, even to interest. Under him matters dragged dully through the courts, and others' nerves were worn to shreds. I remember how surprised I was one day on hearing that he had picked ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... instinct had prompted me to finish it. I had worked at it far into the night, until I marveled that the ancient occupants of the surrounding rooms did not enter a combined protest against the clack-clacking of my typewriter keys. And now that it was gone I wondered, dully, if I could feel Von Gerhard's departure ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... men opened a briefcase and removed a large, dully gleaming band. Apparently, it was made of plastic, or some light alloy, for he handled it as though it ...
— Final Weapon • Everett B. Cole
... day passed rather dully. Rain was falling from early morning; Lemm wore a scowl, and kept more and more tightly compressing his lips, as though he had taken an oath never to open them again. When he went to his room, Lavretsky took up to bed with him ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... the house on which their rooms were located, Jack and his guest were unable to see anything of the fire, as the hangar lay in an opposite direction. But the moment they emerged outdoors, the blaze showed dully against the sky above an intervening grove ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... thereby quite invigorated; it almost served instead of the breakfast which he had not yet taken. But thousands of people travelling in the opposite direction in horse-omnibuses and in a few motor-buses seemed to regard the fact of their being abroad at that hour as dully normal. They had fought, men and girls, for places in the crammed vehicles; they had travelled from far lands such as Putney; they had been up for hours, and the morning, which was so new to George, had lost its freshness for them; they were well used to the lustrous summer glories ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... pray for his brothers whom he does see, and whose sins and temptations he knows, will pray but dully, my friend Aufugus, for his brothers whom he does not see, or for anything else. And he who will not labour for his brothers, the same will soon cease to pray for them, or love them either. And then, what is written? "If a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how will ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... crop flea-bitten, give you the marks of the beast. I begin with his head, which is ever in clouts, as if the nightcap should make affidavit that the brain was pregnant. To what purpose doth the Pia Mater lie in so dully in her white formalities; sure she hath had hard labour, for the brows have squeezed for it, as you may perceive by his buttered bon-grace that film of a demicastor; 'tis so thin and unctuous that the sunbeams mistake it for a vapour, and are like to cap him; ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... that words were too much trouble to shape. He nodded dully. Pryor had been right about Hannibal. The big mule had not only taken his own passage across the Tennessee as a matter-of-course proceeding, but had shouldered and urged along three horses as he went. And twice ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... lifted, and two bloodshot eyes regarded her dully through a matted lock of hair that lay stiffly plastered against his forehead. With a curious, stealthy movement, one hand twisted back to his side and fumbled there for an instant. Then the ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... words broke dully into his slumbers; wearily he opened his eyes. August Naab bent ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... He was wondering dully whether any of these men had ever felt the same degree of desperate anxiety about the future as he ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... his desk and looked down at the back of the top card. "Heart," I said dully. I hit ten in a row for him. The spade was on top four ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett
... this sort of cloud we passed the picturesque Pedragulha, and the little port of Benefica, formed by a creek of the Rio. By the time we reached Praya Pequena, where a good deal of produce is embarked for the city, the clouds had closed dully in, and the grand mountain mists had lost their character. Still we went on, leaving the bay entirely: and first we passed the Venda Grande, where every necessary for horse or man travelling, is to be sold; then the Capon do Bispo, a pretty village, which the rain clouds made me long to stop ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... Collector," he said, and nodded many times, at first as if proud of his sagacity, but afterwards dully—as though his interest had died out and he would have ceased nodding but had forgotten the way. "Yes; my gran'-darter told me. She's in service at the Bowling Green, Port Nassau; but walks over on Lord's Days to cheer up her mother and tell the news. ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... work; and the impassive earth returned dully to its former resting-place. Dusk came on, but Rankin did not look about him until the mound was neatly rounded; then he turned to where he had left the little boy so bravely erect. But the small figure was not standing now; instead, it was prone on the ground ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... weak," said the other man, dashing his hand from his eyes; "I am weak and half starved. It would be better for all concerned if I blew out my brains. The twentieth, the twentieth!" he repeated, dully. "Curse her!" he burst forth; "as there's a God above us, I'll have revenge. Aye, I'll return to the chateau, Madame, that I will, but at the head of ten thousand men!... The twentieth! She will never forgive me; she will think I, too, deserted ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... back and drew her closer, without answering, until her eyes also were able to look around the sharp edge of rock. Far away, it seemed a long distance up that narrow tunnel, a lantern glowed dully, the light so dim and flickering as to scarcely reveal even its immediate surroundings; yet from that distance, her eyes accustomed to the dense gloom, she could distinguish enough to quicken her breathing and cause her to clutch the ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... "Think so," she replied dully. "It's a hard, hammering, brazen sort of place when you're living in it from hand to mouth. Not but what we don't get along all right," she added, a ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... could hear their horses clattering up the street. Across the way Nadine stood weeping. A few women with glazed, resigned eyes, stood listlessly round her. Behind me, I heard the first shell crash dully into the far end of the town. It seemed to me I could not just go off. So I went across to Nadine and muttered "Nous reviendrons, Mademoiselle." But she would not look at me, so I jumped on my bicycle, and with a last glance round at the wrecked, ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... the pain is eased. On the other hand, the adagio of some of Beethoven's sonatas and Gluck's Iphigenie en Tauride are full of melancholy, and therefore provoke spleen ... it is then cold within, the sky is grey and overcast with clouds, the north wind moans dully...." (Memoires, I, 246).] ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... said dully. "There isn't any hope. Dick will never be better—and even if his memory were to come back—oh, Anne, it would be worse, even worse, than it is now. This is something you can't understand, you happy bride. ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of the passage were as solid as rock, and they responded dully to the stroke of the hammer. I sounded them on both sides, retracing my steps to the stairway, becoming more and more impatient at my ill-luck or stupidity. There was every reason why I should know ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... great Redoubt dealt not with odd thousands of years; but with very millions; aye, away back into what they of that Age conceived to be the early days of the earth, when the sun, maybe, still gloomed dully in the night sky of the world. But of all that went before, nothing, save as myths, and matters to be taken most cautiously, and believed not by men of sanity ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... said, dully. "Well, you've taken my last holiday from me. I'll write to her tonight, ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... girls and for the boys; so that a Marquesan brother and sister meet again, after their education is complete, a pair of strangers. It is a harsh law, and highly unpopular; but what a power it places in the hands of the instructors, and how languidly and dully is that power employed by the mission! Too much concern to make the natives pious, a design in which they all confess defeat, is, I suppose, the explanation of their miserable system. But they might see in the girls' school at Tai-o-hae, under the brisk, housewifely sisters, a different picture ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... up and dies out.... Who is that coughing yonder so hoarsely and dully? Curled up in a ring, my aged dog, my sole companion, is nestling and quivering at my feet.... I feel cold.... I am shivering ... and they are ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... partly risen, leaning on my elbow, and looking about—into nothingness. Then feeling seemed slowly to be coming back to the rest of me. My head was no longer isolated. It was part of a heavy something that lay inert on the ground, and was beginning to feel numbly—to ache dully. Then I found that I could move one of my legs, then the other, and eventually, with a mighty effort, I could almost raise myself. But, for the moment, I had ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... and crowded shops, but it did not seem possible to him that there could be any relief from any source for the sorrow that had befallen him. It seemed too awful, and as impossible to mend as it would be to bring the crushed plaster into shape again. He considered dully that his uncle would miss him and wait for him, and that his anger would increase with every moment of his delay. He felt that he could never return to ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... had only just time to go over my part and drive to the theater. My dear, delightful Portia! The house was good, but the audience dull, and I acted dully to suit them; but I hope my last dress, which was beautiful, consoled them. What with sham business and real business, I have had ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... her head. "I must do it myself," she said dully. "My mother must have rented Sunnyside without telling my stepfather, and—Miss Innes, did you ever hear of any one being wretchedly poor in the ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... need of regenerating grace here; but even his puerile thought may prove it had already begun. A longing for purity and salvation, however dully expressed, is a longing for Christ, and the hitherto self-satisfied existence of this favored young man was being crossed by contrary streams and currents that had changed its contented flow, and stirred up deeper soil than had ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... struck by that,' said Z., 'when conversing with Narvaez. He had been talking sensibly but rather dully in French, I begged him to talk Spanish, which I understand though I cannot speak. The whole man was changed. It was as if a curtain had been drawn up from between us. Instead of hammering at commonplaces, he became pointed, ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the deadened roar of the explosion still sounded dully in his ears. His boots crunched on the plaster as he walked across the room and groped for the door. He had some trouble in pulling it open. It stuck so fast that he thought it was locked; then he remembered with a cold shiver of fear that the door had been unlocked all the time he had stood ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... It might have been the formidable hiss of a coiling rattlesnake that she heard, but she felt no fear. She was too much stunned, too near exhaustion to be alarmed by anything, and she did not look a second time. She merely settled back on the pine boughs, and again looked dully up at the pale, cold stars that cared so little for her ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... disclosures, I felt that to deserve so inhuman a punishment my crime must have been black indeed. Shoes on their trees; articles of silk underwear; brushes, combs, gloves, cards, boxes of cigarettes, an extra flask; some light literature. And so on and so on, ad nauseam, till I grew dully apathetic, and roused only to praise Allah when we left ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... dully. He looked around him at the natural meadow sloping gently up from the river-bank to the grassy hills behind, a rich field ready to the farmer's hand and crying for tilth, and he said to himself, "This is ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... The hills in the still, sparkling moonlight looked as if chiselled out of iron, and the veldt lay spread out all white and misty; but what one thought most of was the presence of these dark-faced, slouch-hatted irregulars, sitting free and easy in their saddles, with the light gleaming dully on revolver and carbine barrel. A fine thing is your first ride with a troop ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... details that she must be sure to remember. There were those borrowed books she mustn't forget to return. Her scissors were in Cornie's room. Miss Gilmer had her best basketry patterns. There were so many things that finally she made a memorandum of them, dully wondering as she did so how she could think of them at all. One would have supposed that the awful disaster that was continually in her thoughts would have blotted out these little commonplace trivial concerns. But they ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... with white, they rode, emerging by and by on downs, becoming dully green above, as the sun touched them, but white below. Suddenly, in passing a hollow, overhung by two or three yew-trees, they found themselves surrounded by masked horsemen. The servant on her horse was felled, she herself snatched off and a kerchief covered her face, ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... so ominous that she hastily did as he bid, wondering dully whether at last her day ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... ridiculous to be flying the stars with a bad hangover, but Kieran had one. His head ached dully, he had an unpleasant metallic taste in his mouth, and his former ebullience had given way to a dull ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... belated guns rattled dully in the street, passing up the river to join in the retreat. The horsemen supporting it filed by like phantoms, and many of them, weatherbeaten men, shed tears in the darkness. From the river came a dazzling ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... other forms of art, his pacific and militant moods. Nor are these moods, of necessity, incompatible. War may become the price of peace, and peace may so decay as inevitably to bring about war. Of the dully unresponsive pacificist and the jingo patriot, quick to anger, the latter no doubt is the more dangerous to the cause of true freedom, yet both are "undesirable citizens." He who believes that peace is illusory and spurious, unless it be based upon justice and liberty, will be proud to battle, ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... ask Mr. Dunstan for the thirty-nine thousand dollars he promised to loan you, when the lands were ready for you?" she asked dully. ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... hours a great throng of people gathered around the dully smoldering mass of fire-pitted rock, the upper half of which protruded from the Earth where it had buried itself, like a huge, roughly outlined hemisphere. And then, when the crowd had assumed its greatest proportions, the meteor, with a mighty, Earth-shaking ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... shabby shoulders and waited, her eyes, her expression, her very attitude indifferent, yet dully watchful. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... promised Robin's mother—I'd make up to the child for her being lame—the way she would have, if she'd lived. And I've failed. Why, only last night she went to bed hungry." There followed a moment of tense silence, then the man went on dully, in a tone that implied yielding. "I suppose I may know all the ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... she shook her delicate head the superb red-gold mass came tumbling about her face and shoulders. Under its glimmering splendour, and through it, she stared seaward out of wide, preoccupied eyes; and in her breast, stirring uneasily, a pulse, intermittent yet dully importunate, persisted. ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... So far, he thought dully, they hadn't done too much to him. He was short several teeth, and there were some broken fingers and toes, and maybe a floating kidney. The other bruises, lacerations, and burns would heal all right if ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson
... street and on the farm. The events of the past year had taught him—and he rubbed his eyes at the realisation—that England was not an "effete monarchy," evilly-disposed towards a Republic as such,[K] and dully resentful of bygone humiliations by land and sea, but a brotherly-minded people, remembering little (perhaps too little) of those "old, unhappy, far-off things," willing to be as helpful as the rules of neutrality permitted, and eager ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... travelling dully over the group of us, as if he expected somewhere to find help. At the same time he was not in the least thinking of us. He looked straight at me for a full minute before he ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... question. However, I'm sure of this"—I was fingering the ring as I spoke. The reproduction of our friends had faded, now, leaving that dully glowing pale blue light once more. "This ring is absolutely real; it's no hallucination. It performs as well in broad daylight as in the night; no special conditions needed. It's neither a ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... angry, he remained there, while the crowds surged by, his gaze dully fixed on the pavement. For a time he saw nothing, and then at last he was conscious that a rose—a crushed and wilted rose, thrown down by some careless pedestrian—was lying almost at his feet. Somehow, it brought him a sense of calm and sweetness; it seemed a symbol, ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... saw in her. Now he saw what Charlie saw and perhaps more also. She had more than dignity,—she had style. And she femininely challenged. She was like a breeze oil the French shore to a British barque cruising dully in the Channel. She welcomed the sight of Mr. Prohack, and her greeting of him made a considerable change in the managerial attitude towards the unassuming Terror of the departments. The manager respectfully informed Lady ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... it's too late to catch her," she said dully. "There have been a dozen trains to the city—we don't even know what city.—Oh, I've done this, I've done this!" She was speaking to herself, ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... now. He was, in all things essential, Dickens's contemporary. And accordingly the married woman and her child are humiliated by his pencil; not grossly, but commonly. For him she is moderately and dully ridiculous. What delights him as humorous is that her husband—himself wearisome enough to die of—is weary of her, finds the time long, and tries to escape her. It amuses him that she should furtively spend money ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... to read myself to sleep with it. I was under obligations to old Cal and I wanted to do him justice, but the thing was impossible. I fathomed a sort of a plot. It dealt in fratricide with a touch of adultery; a Great Moral Purpose loomed in the background. It would have been a dully readable novel but for that; as it was, it was intolerable. It was amazing that Cal himself could put out such stuff; that he should have the impudence. He was not a fool, not by any means a fool. It revolted me ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... body, and so discouragement or depression, or "loss of grip" results, or the flame continues to shine brightly with whatever little sustenance it receives, and so encourages the body to greater effort for it; or sinks into embers, glowing steadily though dully; or it burns wildly, recklessly—it becomes what we call "wild fire," that has no direction and no purpose save to burn up everything it ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... dully in her. Yet she seemed then, as she always appeared to be, free from any action that should set the machine of penalty going against herself. She was inexorable, but she had never, knowingly, so much as slashed the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to view, where the deck had been torn away, was revealed the vessel's hold packed full, apparently, of yellow walrus ivory and among the tusks there glittered dully bars of what seemed ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... can be some faithful men remaining even in an age of general apostasy, and on making my way to the door of the dwelling (which lay in the roof of the temple) I gave the call, and presently it was opened to me. The man who stood before me, peering dully through the gloom, had at least remained constant to his vows, and I made the salutation before him with a feeling ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... and again was still. It was that Washington girl then. She answered dully, groping for words, for she ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... passed dully, a cold rain preventing us from keeping out in the air, my thoughts have been dwelling on a story told when we were off Detroit, this morning, by a fellow-passenger, and whose moral beauty ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the man across the table as if he had suddenly gone mad before her eyes. She was frightened; she heard distant voices—the cook speaking to Jed—she wanted to call out; meant to—but instead she asked dully: ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... had made in visiting their rabbit snares. In the fast gathering darkness the boy concealed himself in a bunch of willows which commanded a view of the door and window of the tiny cabin that lay half-buried in the snow. It was an old cabin evidently, rechinked by the free traders. The light shone dully through the little square window pane of greased paper. The Indian had already been admitted and Connie could see dim shadows move across the pane. The great wolf-dog crept close and, throwing his arm about the animal's neck, the boy cuddled close against the ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... Shade of Him who Counsel can bestow, Still pleas'd to teach, and yet not proud to know; Unbias'd or by Favour or by Spite; Nor dully prepossess'd, nor blindly right; Tho learn'd, well-bred; and, tho well-bred, sincere; Modestly bold, and humanely severe; Who to a Friend his Faults can sweetly show. And gladly praise the Merit of a Foe. Here, there he sits, his chearful Aid to lend; ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... stimulant, and whispered to Buntingford to let her rest a little. He sat there beside her motionless, for half an hour or more, unconscious of the passage of time, his thoughts searching the past, and then again grappling dully with the extraordinary, the incredible statement that he possessed a son—a living but, apparently, an idiot son. The light began to fail, and Miss Alcott slipped in noiselessly again to light a small lamp out of sight of the patient. "The doctor will soon be here," ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... dully thought that he couldn't see her, of course, and then suddenly knew that he must. After all, there didn't seem to be much use in saving for the sake of saving when all the saving you could possibly do didn't bring you one ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... gloaming of the third day following, Aunt Annie went down to the broad flat boat that lay so still at the water's edge. Something black was knocking dully against it. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... knowing what this remark meant, and caring less, answered with a cold stare, though inwardly he cursed the man for his fatuous impertinence. That done, he relapsed dully into his own thoughts, which were all of the house he had scurried from, terrified by Peter's cry, ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... decision; and in the next moment it was out of his power to decide. For Rufe, in desperation now, met the boarders at the rail, backed by his half-dozen crazed adherents, and murderous steel glittered dully against the ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... sore as a result of his battle with Jabe. His jaw ached dully from its encounter with Jim Spurling's fist. But worse than any physical pain was the smart of ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... Rohscheimer stared, dully. There were times when he suspected Haredale of being studiously rude to him. He preserved a gloomy silence throughout the rest of the period occupied by his toilet, and in silence ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... while they broke away the looser pieces of green rock, glowing dully, and filled their ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... "see the wonders of the world abroad" rather than live "dully sluggardiz'd at home," wearing out "youth with shapeless idleness." But all these reasons are at once superfluous and peculiar. The audience needs no persuasion to believe that a young man is eager ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... very cold, "I'm interfering. I am going to spoil your chances, Decherd. Sit down." The man thus accosted involuntarily sank back into a seat. Then a sudden rage caught him, and he half-started up again. This time he saw something blue gleaming dully in the idle hand which hung between ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... to leak out that Hiram White was courting her the whole community took it as a monstrous joke. It was the common thing to greet Hiram himself with, "Hey, Hiram; how's Sally?" Hiram never made answer to such salutation, but went his way as heavily, as impassively, as dully as ever. ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... dully uncomfortable in the company of this very dainty little creature, who was always dressed in delicate, light fabrics, and seemed to have many possessions. And Miss Betterton had a well-bred manner of putting the stranger outside the little social game. So ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... and fell suddenly into a settled silence. The hard lines about his lips deepened; his eyes, cast to the ground, glowed dully; and in every feature Lucy read the despair that was gnawing at his heart. And with it there was something more—a tacit rebuke to her for having brought ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... of the pyre, David crawled to the edge and glanced over. Far down, on the slope at the foot of the scarp, was a tiny figure dancing and bellowing with rage. The Scientist had returned and discovered the ruins of his blind. David watched him dully. No need to worry about him any more. How harmless he looked now, ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... rewarded; the man opened his eyes and stared dully up at him. For some time he lay there motionless. Then, with a wild light of terror in his eye, he struggled to his feet and attempted to flee. His wabbly legs would not support him. He tumbled to the earth, only to try it again. Rover ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... yellow gleam of the dying day was gone, and a sickly, pallid moon glimmered dully among drifts of scudding black clouds. An icy blast wailed up from the sea, and the rocking trees were like dryad specters in writhing agony. The distant Beech Walk looked black and grim and ghostly in the ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... this night that he was trotting home, with a jug of beer in his numb red hands, was terribly cold and dreary. The good burghers of Hall had shut their double shutters, and the few lamps there were flickered dully behind their quaint, old-fashioned iron casings. The mountains indeed were beautiful, all snow-white under the stars that are so big in frost. Hardly anyone was astir; a few good souls wending home from vespers, a tired post-boy who blew a shrill blast from his tasseled horn as he pulled up his sledge ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... men will honor me — The wistful ones and wise, Who know the ruth of victory, The joy of sacrifice. I may be rich, I may be gay, But all the crowns grow old — The laurel withers and the bay And dully rusts ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... His lordship responded but dully to her animated chat. He is never less urbane than when hungry, and I took pains to have his favourite soup served quite almost at once. This he fell upon. I may say that he has always a hearty manner of attacking his ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... was called, Even by ourselves—that which springs Out of the years for all flesh, first or last, Commonplace, scrawled Dully on days that go past. Yet, all the while, it upbore us like wings Even in hours overcast: Aye, though this best thing of things, "Nought" it ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... dully repeated. "Go 'long Cheapside, turn to the left pas' St. Paul's, and you'll be in Ludgate 'ill. After ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... Come, you shake the head at so long a breathing;I warrant thee, Claudio, the time shall not go dully by us; I will, in the interim, undertake one of Hercules' labours; which is, to bring signior Benedick and the lady Beatrice into a mountain of affection, the one with the other. I would fain have it a match; and I doubt not but to fashion it, if you three will but minister such assistance ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... consciousness. Her head ached and her muscles were cramped, because she had crumpled down as she stood, so that she regained her feet falteringly and went with difficulty over to a chair before the mirror of her dressing-table. For awhile she sat gazing dully into her own reflected eyes. Under them were dark rings. Her cheeks were pale and her whole face was stricken with the bleak hopelessness of heartbreak. Her gaze fell on a framed photograph, just before her, and she ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... In the road, staring dully at the girls as they came up, were two women and a boy about seventeen years old, as ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart
... the ever-present molder and decay. This office, he could easily see, had been both spacious and luxurious, but now it offered a sorry spectacle. In the dust over by a window something glittered dully. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... taken a number of beatings, but always given better than he had received. His arms were akimbo, his feet planted as firmly as if he were a particularly stubborn brand of tree. He glared down at them, his face expressive of anger, hatred—and, Forrester thought dully, a complete lack of respect for ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... can try again if I rest," I thought, and meanwhile drifted out until the roar of the breakers came but dully to my ears—out where the water was ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... with. Presents and loans—to that was limited the financial wisdom of the slums, the high as well as the low; to that were limited the springs which Bonaparte knew how to set in motion. Never did Pretender speculate more dully upon the ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... The two words struck dully on the aching brain. Suppose! Andy sat up and gazed wildly into the dense underbrush. "Could it be?" But no; the idea was ...
— Then Marched the Brave • Harriet T. Comstock
... street was cleared and the sexton was about to lock up, the girl slipped out of the church and down to her own little house. In the friendly shelter of her room she took off her gay attire and laid it away, and then sat down at the window and looked dully out. For her, the light of day had ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... rattled and rolled away from him. He stopped, freezing in his tracks, looking downward, trying to pierce the dully glowing gloom. The thing he had kicked was a ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... slowly to the window and stared out into the fog. When he faced about an automatic shone dully in his hand. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... deceived in the man's nature but for one passage, in which his perfidy appeared too plain. Here was the passage; of which, after what he knows of the brothers' meeting, the reader shall consider for himself. Mr. Henry sitting somewhat dully, in spite of his best endeavours to carry things before my lord, up jumps the Master, passes about the board, and claps ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sunk from every gleam Of hope, they lie and dully dream; Men once, but men no more, that Love Their ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... Chancellor in brisk speech that led to one or two interludes of angry interruption across the Table. When he made an end of speaking, debate relapsed into former condition of languor. Talk dully kept up ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... beside her husband, who lay on his improvised couch in the sitting-room, and she looked up dully when her son came in. 'They've killed 'im this ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... and louder the trumpet-calls rang out to one another in answering voice, imperatively calling off the attacking forces. Impelled to retire by this constant clamour, all the Chinese soldiery must have retreated, except a few straggling snipers, who remained for a few minutes longer, dully and methodically loosing off their rifles at our barricades. Ten or fifteen minutes passed, and then, as if the growing solitude were oppressing them, these last snipers desisted, and, coolly rising and disclosing their brightly coloured tunics and sombre turbans, they sauntered ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... There was neither window nor door on this side, a fact which he was evidently aware of, for, without hesitation, but with movements as silent as any Indian, he crept round to the front, and sidled to the window. Here there was a light shining dully, but no means of obtaining a view of the interior. He moved on, and, crouching at the doorway, listened intently. A few seconds satisfied him. Wanaha was inside; she was awake, for he heard her moving about. He knew at once that ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... Carey stood still and stared at her, and now she noticed the flush on his face and the unnatural expression in his eyes. She understood at once what was the matter and repented of her action. But it was too late to draw back. Carey stared dully for an instant, as if he scarcely knew who she was. Then, with a lurch, he came closer to her, and, with a wavering movement, tried to find her hand, ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... The minutes passed slowly in the silence, counted by beats of their hearts. Yet their mother was not far away. They heard the noise of the dried purau-leaves as they were placed on the grass. They distinguished the sound of the breadfruit as they rolled dully upon the large leaves, and then the silvery sound of cups filled with pape miti and the miti noanoa from which a pleasant aroma arose. They heard also the freeing of the cocoanuts from their hairy covering ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... the valley below me. I had never before looked down upon clouds. I thought of the cloud that had covered me in the valley below, and dully watched the clouds spread ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... her go," Marcia consented. "But she was no trouble, and she is no relief." She sat looking dully at the little girl after the Westerner had gathered her up into his lap. "Should I have liked to tell her," she said, as if thinking aloud, "how we were really going to meet her father, and that you were coming with me to be my witness against him in a court,—to put him down and ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... closed, my aunt released my coat sleeve, but she said nothing. She sat staring dully at the orchestra. What, I wondered, did she get from it? She had been a good pianist in her day, I knew, and her musical education had been broader than that of most music teachers of a quarter of a century ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... He swung open the door and climbed out stiffly. Although he wouldn't have confessed it for any reason, his leg had been aching dully for hours. ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... not heed him. In amazement in abject admiration, his eyes were fastened upon the beautiful and radiant vision presented by Winnie Keep. But he also still preserved sufficient presence of mind to nod his head dully. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... staring dully at the river, while Dr. Brotherton, with his frock-coat split to the collar, was fishing fragments of his medicine ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... the deception for ever, that you must find me out in time. But I had a wild hope that by then we should be so close to one another that you might find it in your heart to forgive. But I was wrong. I see it now. There are some things that no man can forgive. Some things," she repeated, dully, "which no man ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... ridge which Molly had tried to reach there came the pounding of hoofs, heavier than any of these that had passed. The cattle were stampeding directly down wind and before the fire. Dully, Molly heard the lowing, heard the far shouts of human voices. Then, it seemed to her, she heard a rush of other hoofs coming toward her. Yes, something was pounding down the slope toward her wagon, toward her. Buffalo, ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... two more of this sort of thing and then Mr. Thomas' signature. Galusha stared at the letter dully. This—this was what he and Martha Phipps had awaited so long! This was the outcome of his brilliant idea which was to save the Phipps' home... and its owner's peace of mind... and ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Taylor droned a familiar camp-meeting hymn, Mullendore opened his eyes and looked at her dully: ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... continuous whispering irritated Calvin Gray. When it persisted, minute after minute, he opened his eyes, asking himself, dully, why it was that people couldn't let a fellow sleep. He lay, for some time, trying to recognize his unfamiliar surroundings; oddly enough, he could not discover the origin of that low-pitched murmur, since there was nobody in his bedroom. Evidently he had slept too hard, for his eyes ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... the task. He delighted in it. He gloated over his victim, and his eyes flamed dully, as he swung the whip or club and listened to White Fang's cries of pain and to his helpless bellows and snarls. For Beauty Smith was cruel in the way that cowards are cruel. Cringing and snivelling himself ...
— White Fang • Jack London |
