"Duller" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... being Sunday, proves even duller than usual. Mr. Amherst, with an amount of consideration not to be expected, retires to rest early. The others fall insensibly into the silent, dozy state. Mr. Darley gives way to a gentle snore. It is the gentlest thing imaginable, ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... culmination. Of its rapid growth in power and acuteness, he only had evidence when he listened to her in conversation with men and women of large acquirements and polished tastes. Alone with him, her mind seemed to grow duller every day; and if he applied the spur, it was only to produce a start, not a ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... months; and this without any change in their character. By degrees, however, under their influence, an alteration takes place slowly in the child's disposition. It loses its cheerfulness and brightness, its face assumes a heavy look, it becomes fretful, and its intelligence grows duller. ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... "Let me enjoy my own conviction, "Not watch my neighbour's faith with fretfulness, "Still spying there some dereliction "Of truth, perversity, forgetfulness!" Better a mild indifferentism, "Teaching that both our faiths (though duller "His shine through a dull spirit's prism) "Originally had one colour! "Better pursue a pilgrimage "Through ancient and through modern times "To many peoples, various climes, "Where I may see saint, savage, sage "Fuse their respective ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning
... that there was but one duller person than the Queen in her Kingdom, and that was the royal Consort, George, Prince of Denmark. Happy was it for England that of the seventeen children born into this royal household, not one survived. The succession, in the absence of Anne's heirs, was pledged to George, Elector of Hanover, ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... gods' bright nectar, Disencrowned of its foam; Duller, deader far the empty, Barren hearthstone of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... absence of art, and be prepared if we want art, to give up many things, and in many ways to change the conditions of life. Perhaps there are those who will understand me when I say that that necessary change may make life poorer for the rich, rougher for the refined, and, it may be, duller for the gifted—for a while; that it may even take such forms that not the best or wisest of us shall always be able to know it for a friend, but may at whiles fight against it as a foe. Yet, when the day comes that gives us visible token ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... west—at the side of the setting sun—the sky looks white, changing to yellow. In the north and south, it is a dull yellow, which gets yellower. In the east, it is a dirty yellow, which changes slowly into a dull purple. All these yellows are duller at the horizon than a little way above. The purple in the east looks gray at the sky-line but shades into ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... more or less of the humour of the hour, the Rover, to all appearance, was quite unconscious of all that was going on before his face. It is true, that at times he raised his eyes to the active beings who clung like squirrels to the ropes, or suffered them to fall on the duller movements of the men below; but it was always with a vacancy which proved that the image they carried to the brain was dim and illusory. The looks he cast, from time to time, on Mrs Wyllys and her fail and deeply interested pupil, betrayed ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... ornithologists as only varieties), and a dove—all analogous to, but distinct from, American species. Fourthly a swallow, which though differing from the Progne purpurea of both Americas, only in being rather duller coloured, smaller, and slenderer, is considered by Mr. Gould as specifically distinct. Fifthly there are three species of mocking-thrush—a form highly characteristic of America. The remaining land-birds form a most singular ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... walk from Colonel Mildmay's official quarters, and conveniently near Eugene's school; it was very much in the minds of the teachers who now replaced the Misses Scarlett's institution as regarded the girls; it was not duller as to outlook and surroundings than had to be at Barmettle, for it faced St Wilfred's Church, one of the oldest and most interesting structures in the modern town, which had once been a pleasant straggling north-country village; and last, ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... gapperi wrangeli, C. g. stikinensis differs as follows: dorsal stripe slightly wider and brighter; sides slightly duller (lacking the olivaceous wash of C. g. wrangeli); all cranial measurements taken averaging smaller except height of skull, which is approximately the same; alveolar length of upper tooth-row and length of incisive foramina notably shorter; auditory ...
— Comments on the Taxonomy and Geographic Distribution of North American Microtines • E. Raymond Hall
... rash, and vain (The rippling water murmurs still), Stephen is somewhat duller of brain, Slower of speech, and milder of will; Stephen must toil a living to gain, Plough and harrow and gather the grain; Brian has little enough to maintain The station in life which he needs must fill; Both are fearless and kind and frank, But we can't win all gifts under ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... had enjoyed herself quite genuinely, and with her quick social perceptions had gathered a great deal from the visit, much of which she imparted to her drowsing husband on the train. She mapped out for his duller masculine apprehension the social hierarchy of Bunker's. Mrs. Bunker patronized Mrs. Billman, invited her to her best dinners and to her opera box, because she was striking in looks and had made a place for herself in "interesting circles" in the great ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... him and those who think with him to endure hunger; thirst, cold, heat, and all the misfortunes which Heaven may send. . . . . . Our enemies spare neither their money nor their labor; will ye be colder and duller than your foes? Let, then, each church congregation set an example to the others. We read that King Saul, when he would liberate the men of Jabez from the hands of Nahad, the Ammonite, hewed a yoke of oxen in pieces, and sent them as tokens over ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sat for a moment silent there came the sound of approaching hoof-beats, and presently the cracking and popping of the feet of a galloping horse fell into a duller crunch on the hard ground before the door, and a loud ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... him, perhaps he thought, for that want of fortune and connexions, which raised duller spirits above him. Vain, loquacious, inconsiderate, and daring, he assumed the dictatorship of a coffee-house, and obtained easy conquests, which he mistook for glorious ones, over the graver fellows, who had for many a year awfully petrified ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... his advance. To gain an end of this kind a general should not merely bring up all the troops from the rear, falling back for them if necessary, but should take care that none can be cut off by the enemy in his front. A decisive victory by Sir C.F. Clery or by Sir Redvers Duller, who may feel this action to be so important as to justify his presence, would leave no doubt as to the issue of the war. An indecisive battle would postpone indefinitely the relief of Ladysmith and leave the future of the campaign ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... plate-warmer that never could get any comfort out of the wretched old cramped grate yonder. Don't you know in such houses the grey gloom that hangs over the stairs, the dull-coloured old carpet that winds its way up the same, growing thinner, duller, and more threadbare as it mounts to the bedroom floors? There is something awful in the bedroom of a respectable old couple of sixty-five. Think of the old feathers, turbans, bugles, petticoats, pomatum-pots, spencers, white satin shoes, false fronts, the old flaccid boneless ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... think Oxford must be just cut out for cardinals," said Miss Charlotte; "can anything be duller than the President's parties? I can fancy Dr. Bone a cardinal, as he ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... celestial powre The duller earth it quickneth with delight, And life-full spirits privily doth powre Through all the parts, that to the looker's sight ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... and scarcely noted him. She remembered. But the world was duller, then, and the outlook grey. And then, too, her still, green eyes had not yet wandered beyond far horizons, nor had her heart been cut adrift to follow her fancy when the tides stirred it from its mooring—carrying it away, away through deeps ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... children should ever have to find their parents in the wrong; dreadful to have occasion to be ashamed of them. She knew, if her case proved such a one, it would be only one of a great many; she had read of such things, although chiefly among another class of people who were of coarser habits and duller natures, and if they fell had less distance to fall to get to the lowest level of society. But her father!—Dolly cowered with her head down upon the back of a chair, and a cry in her heart calling upon his name. Her father? could she have to blush for him? All her nature revolted against ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... he so often uses his hands instead of a spade. This is a sign that Dering will never get on in the world. His mind is in the same condition as his fingers, working back to clods. He will get a rise of one and sixpence in a year or two, and marry on it and become duller and heavier; and, in short, the clever ones ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... one, I know not whom, but some citizen of Amiens I suppose, you can see nothing but the graceful spire; it is of wood covered over with lead, and was built quite at the end of the flamboyant times. Once it was gilt all over, and used to shine out there, getting duller and duller, as the bad years grew worse and worse; but the gold is all gone now; when it finally disappeared I know not, but perhaps it was in 1771, when the chapter got them the inside of their cathedral whitewashed from ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... was something so purely ideal in those massive branches, stripped of leaves and laden down with crystalline spray, while the wind swayed them heavily about, and the moonlight flooded them through and through, that even a duller man than Chester must ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... comfort of muslin and nankeen. Macaulay is vehement in his dislike of "those great formal dinners, which unite all the stiffness of a levee to all the disorder and discomfort of a two-shilling ordinary. Nothing can be duller. Nobody speaks except to the person next him. The conversation is the most deplorable twaddle, and, as I always sit next to the lady of the highest rank, or, in other words, to the oldest, ugliest, and proudest woman in the company, I am worse off ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... mental age was either exceptionally bright or exceptionally dull. Those who tested between 96 and 105 I Q were never seriously misplaced in school. The very dull children, however, were usually located from one to three grades above where they belonged by mental age, and the duller the child the more serious, as a rule, was the misplacement. On the other hand, the very bright children were nearly always located from one to three grades below where they belonged by mental age, and the brighter the ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... returned home with the money—all in twenty-dollar pieces as she had desired—in an ecstasy of delight. For half of that night she sat up playing with her money, counting it and recounting it, polishing the duller pieces until they shone. Altogether there were twenty twenty-dollar ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... heads a blank,' said Felix, 'and Edgar's good taste ought to be trusted in his own home, for his own sisters. Even you might stretch a few points to keep him happy and occupied with Cherry. Besides, I believe we do live a duller life than can be really good for any one. It can't be right to shut up all these young things all their ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ... of being, in any way, directly or indirectly, the means of ruffling your smooth path by so much as one of my flint-stones!—In the meantime you do not tire me indeed even when you go later for sooner ... and I do not tire myself even when I write longer and duller letters to you (if the last is possible) than the one I am ending now ... as the most grateful (leave me ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... after his habit, he dreamt he took the tissue paper from one of the buttons, and found its brightness a little faded, and that distressed him mightily in his dream. He polished the poor faded button and polished it, and, if anything, it grew duller. He woke up and lay awake, thinking of the brightness a little dulled, and wondering how he would feel if perhaps when the great occasion (whatever it might be) should arrive, one button should chance to be ever so little short of its first glittering freshness, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... words—(if I may call them words)—are very few; yet, to judge by their emotional effect, they must signify a great deal. Possibly they mean things myriads of years old,—things relating to odors, to exhalations, to influences and effluences inapprehensible by duller human sense,—impulses also, impulses without name, bestirred in ghosts of dogs by the ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... is the rarest and most exquisite: Most spherical, divine, angelical; But since your duller ears cannot perceive it, May it please your lordship to withdraw yourself Unto this neighbouring grove: there shall you see How the sweet treble of the chirping birds, And the soft stirring of the moved leaves, Running delightful descant to the sound Of the base ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... dozen or more butterflies and moths which winter in the perfect state, the most common and the most handsome is the "Camberwell beauty" or "mourning cloak," Vanessa antiopa L., a large butterfly whose wings are a rich purplish brown above, duller beneath, and broadly margined with a yellowish band. It is often found in winter beneath chunks which are raised a short distance above the ground, or in the crevices of old snags and fence rails. It is then apparently lifeless, with the antennae resting close along the back, above which the wings ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... person are blue and yellow, along with white, black and the grays. His color circle reduces to a straight line with yellow at one end and blue at the other. Instead of the color circle, he has a double saturation series, reaching from saturated yellow through duller yellows to gray and thence through dull blues to saturated blue. What appears to the normal eye as red, orange or grass green appears to him as more or less unsaturated yellow; and what appears to the normal eye as greenish blue, ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... no doubt that thinking Englishmen are prepared to go to almost any extent to cultivate and keep the friendship of the United States, just as duller-witted Englishmen declare that the United States ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... agreed. "An owl gives a duller, slower hoot.... It really is like a signal, a hundred yards or so ahead of us.... Smugglers, of ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... the thunder storm is gradually abating. The lightning flashes less and less often. The thunder sounds duller, just like a satiated beast—oooooo-oooooo ... The clouds scurry away. The first rays of the blessed sun have peeped ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... of criminals, Lombroso and Ottolenghi have asserted that they are duller than those of ordinary people. The assertion is based on a collection made by Lombroso of instances of the great indifference of criminals to pain. But he has overlooked the fact that the reason is quite ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... thy loose raptures, Donne, shall meet with those That do confine Tuning unto the duller line, And sing not but in sanctified prose, How will they, with sharper eyes, The foreskin of thy fancy circumcise, And fear thy wantonness should now begin Example, that hath ceased to be sin! And that fear fans their ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... it is impossible to combine accurate research with the ecstasy of pure literature, be it so. Herodotus will be read with joy and laughter and sometimes with tears when some of our modern historians have been superseded by persons even duller than themselves. ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... replied, shrugging his shoulders as he glanced around; "I find military life duller than I expected. And since this is the first night I have spent ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... friend, the Duchesse de Longueville, who is now living in strict retirement, writes me the most exquisite letters; and from her I hear all that happens in that country which I sometimes fancy is more my own than the duller climate where my lot is now cast. Fifteen years at the French Court have made me in heart and mind almost a Frenchwoman; nor can I fail to be influenced by my maternal ancestry. I find it difficult sometimes to remember ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... this made Richard nervous and uneasy. He had a great dislike to spectators of Latin lessons; he never had forgotten an unlucky occasion, some years back, when his father was examining him in the Georgics, and he, dull by nature, and duller by confusion and timidity, had gone on rendering word for word—enim for, seges a crop, lini of mud, urit burns, campum the field, avenae a crop of pipe, urit burns it; when Norman and Ethel had first warned him of the beauty of his ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... the old man, seeing in this a chance to call at the cabin, where, beneath the reception that might have been offered an interloper, even a duller wit than his might have divined a secret cordial welcome. "I reckon I better find time to step over that way an' ax is there anything I can do to ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... am best acquainted among them all with the dull reviewer, who is neither good nor useful. The excellent books he has poisoned as though by opiates! The dull books he has made duller! No one has cause to love him unless it be the authors of weak books, who thank their dull critics for exposing them in reviews so tedious that no one discovers ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... perfectly still for twenty years, contemplating the Infinite; but it reduced Sam to an almost imbecile state of boredom. He tried counting sheep. He tried going over his past life in his mind from the earliest moment he could recollect, and thought he had never encountered a duller series of episodes. He found a temporary solace by playing a succession of mental golf-games over all the courses he could remember, and he was just teeing up for the sixteenth at Muirfield, after playing Hoylake, St. Andrews, ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... even despair can exhilarate. One minute! three minutes! six minutes! The boat began to lighten, and no fresh wave swamped us. Five minutes more, and she was fairly clear. Then, suddenly, above the awful shriekings of the hurricane came a duller, deeper roar. Great Heavens! It was ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... but with one greene leafe on it, would haue answered her: my very visor began to assume life, and scold with her: shee told mee, not thinking I had beene my selfe, that I was the Princes Iester, and that I was duller then a great thaw, hudling iest vpon iest, with such impossible conueiance vpon me, that I stood like a man at a marke, with a whole army shooting at me: shee speakes poynyards, and euery word stabbes: if her breath were as terrible as terminations, there were no liuing neere her, she would infect ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... once more; And halloweth in the dance anew, while round the altars shout The Cretans and the Dryopes, and painted Scythian rout: He steps it o'er the Cynthus' ridge, and leafy crown to hold His flowing tresses doth he weave, and intertwines the gold, And on his shoulders clang the shafts. Nor duller now passed on AEneas, from his noble face such wondrous glory shone. 150 So come they to the mountain-side and pathless deer-fed ground, And lo, from hill-tops driven adown, how swift the wild goats bound ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... be called, that it might be in some measure conveyed to those of duller mind, but by some ordinary word? And what, among all parts of the world can be found nearer to an absolute formlessness, than earth and deep? For, occupying the lowest stage, they are less beautiful than the other higher parts are, transparent all and shining. Wherefore ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... offered their lives, that the black stain of slavery might be removed from the land. As we looked at the stretches of grass and flowers which shone in their midst, at the myriads of leaves upon the trees, the birds, the bees, and at the butterflies— winged blossoms hovering over duller hued plants—we thought how soon the tide of this joyous life around us would begin to ebb. Soon the frost would dull the grass, tint the leaves with rainbow hues and cause the flowers to fade. The birds would take wing and leave the place ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... wife, of course," returned the prince. "She will lend a sympathetic ear to all plans and proposals; her ingenious imagination will suggest ideas that might escape my grosser mind; her brilliant fancy will produce combinations that my duller brain would never think of; her hopeful spirit will encourage me to perseverance where accident or disaster has a tendency to demoralise, and her loving spirit will comfort me should failure, great or small, be permitted to overtake me. All this, I admit, sounds very selfish, but you asked ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... from the delights of a two-shilling quartern-loaf. For ourselves, we have plenty of work cut out for us, in this our abiding place. The fewer the books which are published, the more we shall have to draw upon our own genius; and the duller the season, the more vivacious must we be to put our readers in spirits. But we have consolation approaching in the shape of amusing work. Immediately that parliament is up, the newspapers will begin to lie, "like thunder," Tom Pipes would say. What mysterious murders, what heart-rending ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... servants to see that they made no balks in handling the body and getting it out; when they came with fresh clean towels, she sent back for the other kind; and when they had finished wiping the floor and were going, she indicated a crimson fleck the size of a tear which their duller eyes had overlooked. It was plain to me that La Cote Male Taile had failed to see the mistress of the house. Often, how louder and clearer than any tongue, does dumb ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... visit Ellen. She was on her way home through the Park, and she had meant to get there before dark, but it was a little later than she had thought, and she saw the red in the sky before her getting darker and duller every minute. As she walked along she saw two other girls of about her own age, whom she knew, in front of her. She overtook them and the three walked on together, though the others could scarcely keep ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... an officer's uniform, and almost universally turns its back upon intellect. He put not his faith in princes, and of titles says: "Formerly titles were inherited by men who could not write; they now are conferred on men who will not let others. Theirs may have been the darker age; ours is the duller. In theirs a high spirit was provoked; in ours, proscribed. In theirs the bravest were pre-eminent; in ours, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... and Tachiras. They are fair to good body without acidity; make a duller roast than Cucutas, but contain fewer quakers. They are used for blending with Bourbon Santos. Boconos are light in color and body. They are of two classes; one a round, small to medium, bean; and the other larger and softer. Their flavor is rather neutral, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... suffering, dying, and that he was not near to help, to assist, to assuage. He forgot that they were penniless, homeless; all was lost in a boundless pity, and he listened to the footsteps growing sharper as they approached, and duller as they went. At last the sound of the latchkey was heard in the lock, and Dick started to his feet. It was ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... all round grew duller and heavier in the fading light, and the wind-blown rain struck keenly on ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... been more unintelligible to the furnace-tenders, whose presence they soon forgot entirely. Kirby drew out a newspaper from his pocket and read aloud some article, which they discussed eagerly. At every sentence, Wolfe listened more and more like a dumb, hopeless animal, with a duller, more stolid look creeping over his face, glancing now and then at Mitchell, marking acutely every smallest sign of refinement, then back to himself, seeing as in a mirror his filthy body, his more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... available gold of a mine scarcely yet worked at all." He himself, a few days later, writes to Hillard, "I have come to feel that it is not good for me to be here. I am in a lower moral state than I have been—a duller intellectual one. So let me go; and, under God's providence, I shall arrive at something better." It would not be long before he would be looking back to the last three years, and saying, "The life of the Custom ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... face that he knew, or she only feared in her conscience that he knew, that she spoke of some of her husband's gifts. She stopped, and reddened again. If he had not known it before, he would have known it then, though he had been a much duller ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... limited, governed, crippled or expanded, by the mood of the moment, and a performance, which might have roused him to a high pitch of enthusiasm at another time, now seemed dull and tedious. But duller and more tedious still was the night that followed. And when morning came, how was he to consume the hours between breakfast and two o'clock? He must go somewhere; must keep on his feet; must give his restless limbs free action. He bethought him of St. Paul's and ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... in fact, a very dilute acetic acid, but of no commercial value. During the process of "sweating" the cotyledons of the cocoa-bean, which are at first a purple colour and very compact in the skin, lose their brightness for a duller brown, and expand the skin, giving the bean a fuller shape. When dry, a properly cured bean should crush between the ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head
... in its course when it is nearest to being consigned to rest for ever. Even such is the course of a narrative like that which you are perusing. The earlier events are studiously dwelt upon, that you, kind reader, may be introduced to the character rather by narrative than by the duller medium of direct description; but when the story draws near its close, we hurry over the circumstances, however important, which your imagination must have forestalled, and leave you to suppose those things which it would be abusing your patience ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... R. megalotis is similar to that described for R. humulis by Layne (1959:69-71). The subadult pelage is thicker, longer and brighter than juvenal pelage and closely resembles the pelage of adults; it differs from adult pelage dorsally in being somewhat duller and in having less ...
— Geographic Variation in the Harvest Mouse, Reithrodontomys megalotis, On the Central Great Plains And in Adjacent Regions • J. Knox Jones
... of the rapids, which at first sounded so loud, grew duller and fainter as they penetrated the wood until it became like the moaning of the distant ocean. The men spoke in guarded undertones and were able to hear each other plainly, while eyes and ears were on the alert, for the first ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... our warm colors, if the cool tints that are produced by blue are wanting; for, without that, the work will appear heavy, as it is the contrast between blue and the warm colors that produces a balance of color. Blue mixed with yellow makes a very brilliant green, with gold a duller green, with magenta a purple. In landscapes it is used in skies and the middle distances, but not in the foreground, unless mixed with yellow. Blue can be mixed with rose or magenta for sunset skies. ...
— Crayon Portraiture • Jerome A. Barhydt
... been heading north, he had it in him to have swum out to her through the surf and the sharks, and chanced being picked up. He was sick of this savage Africa which lay behind him. The sight of those two lights, the bright white, and the duller red, let him know how ravenous was his hunger to see once more a white man and a white man's ship, and to feel the sway of a deck, and to smell the smells of oil, and paint, and Christian cookery, from which he had been for such a weary tale of ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... been plain to a far duller plotter that they should be fully clear of Hunston before he explained the situation to her ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... everything must vary from year to year according to the suggestions of the children or their apparent needs. One extra step we have found necessary, and that is to spend some time over a desert island or Robinson Crusoe stage. Some children can do without it, but all enjoy it, and the duller children find it difficult to imagine a time when "you could buy it in a shop" does not fit all difficulties. They can easily grasp the idea of sailing away to a land "where no man had ever been before," and playing at desert island has always been ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... at Brighton, To darken your fame; Black Sundays at Hounslow, To add to your shame. Black balls at the club, Show Lord Hill's growing duller: He should change your command To the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... colonists as "blauw wildebeest" (blue wild-ox). It is of a bluish colour—hence the name, and "brindled," or striped along the sides. Its habits are very similar to those of the common gnoo, but it is altogether a heavier and duller animal, and still more eccentric and ungainly ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... abused Algernon for his abuse of common Queen's English in his epistles: but here was a letter in comparison with which his own were doctorial, and accordingly he fell upon it with an acrimonious rapture of pedantry known to dull wits that have by extraordinary hazard pounced on a duller. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... hanker for a touch of colour, So to relieve their sombre air; For me, I like my clothes to be much duller Than what the nigger minstrels wear; I hold by sable, drab and grey; I do not wish to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... lonely dwelling. For me, now, the horizon was bounded by the barren circle of wiry, unprofitable grass, patched over with furze bushes and scarred by the profusion of Nature's gaunt and granite ribs. A duller, wearier waste I have never seen; but its dullness was its ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not be a good story-teller or an effective dramatist. They imagine that if they are cultivated and clever, can write what is delusively called a "brilliant style," and are familiar with the masterpieces of Literature, they must be more competent to succeed in fiction or the drama than a duller man, with a plainer style and slenderer acquaintance with the "best models." Had they distinctly conceived the real aims of Literature this mistake would often have been avoided. A recognition of the aims would have pressed on their attention a more distinct appreciation ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... of Cinnamon. If you intend to give it the taste of Raspes, then adde more barm, to make it work well, and during that time of working, put in your Raspes (or their Syrup) but the fruit gives a delicate Colour, and Syrup a duller Tincture. Drink not that made after the first manner, till six moneths, and it will endure drawing better then wine; but Bottleled, it is more spirited ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... people used to say sometimes complacently, that certain things or certain people were "as dull as East Parish." Kate and I grew curious to see that part of the world which was considered duller than Deephaven itself; and as upon inquiry we found that it was not out of reach, one ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... been to London," says she, a little hurriedly, as if to cover his last words and pretend she hasn't heard them, "you will find our poor Ireland duller than ever. At Christmas it is not so bad, but just now, and in the ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... him that morning and dismissed for the season to find such work as he could in the city, Auld Jock did not question the farmer's right to take Bobby "back hame." Besides, what could he do with the noisy little rascal in an Edinburgh lodging? But, duller of wit than usual, feeling very old and lonely, and shaky on his legs, and dizzy in his head, Auld Jock parted with Bobby and with his courage, together. With the instinct of the dumb animal that ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... is infinitely more serious than the risk involved in his being creative in the wrong direction, there is little either for us or for our children to hope for, as the years go on, except to grow duller together. We do not like this growing duller together very well, perhaps, but we have the feeling at least that we have been educated, and when our children become at last as little interested in the workings of their minds, as parents and teachers ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... makes a ready servant. Accordingly, with his tunic ungirdled on his portly stomach, his easy slippers on his feet, a small wand in his hand, wherewith he now directed the gaze, and now corrected the back, of some duller menial, he went from chamber to chamber of ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... disappeared for ever. Now all was bustle, hurry, and confusion, the getting and sending of telegrams, quick dispatches by railway, the watching of markets at a distance, rapid combinations that bewildered Gourlay's duller mind. At first he was too obstinate to try the newer methods; when he did, he was too stupid to use them cleverly. When he plunged it was always at the wrong time, for he plunged at random, not knowing what to do. He had ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... debates in the Houses of Parliament are constantly growing smaller and smaller in our newspapers. Perhaps this is partly because the speeches are growing duller and duller. I think in some degree the two things act and re-act on each other. For fear of the newspapers politicians are dull, and at last they are too dull even for the newspapers. The speeches in our time are more careful ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... not impossible, because we have no sufficient evidence in individual cases of slight sexual difference, to determine whether the male alone has acquired his superior brightness by sexual selection, or the female been made duller by need of protection, or whether the two causes have acted. Many of the sexual differences of existing species may be inherited differences from parent forms, which existed under different conditions and had greater or less need ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... lines, and carefully and wisely topped the black brow; and as they did so the Boer rifles spoke from a line of kopjes that lay behind the first. Then our fellows dropped to cover, and sent an answer back that a duller foe than the Boers would not have failed to understand. The Mauser bullets splashed on the rocks, and spat little fragments of lead in all directions; but few of them found a resting-place under those thin yellow jackets. By-and-by the shells began ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... old, that "no mattock plunges a golden edge into the ground, and no nail drives a silver point into the plank," it is also true that, under the stimulus of the larger expenditure which the added supplies of gold make possible, the duller metal has taken a fineness, a brightness and hardness, with ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... to conceive a duller place than Saint Germains was when he held his Court there; and yet there was scarcely in all Europe a residence more enviably situated than that which the generous Lewis had assigned to his suppliants. The woods were magnificent, the air clear and salubrious, the prospects extensive ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... contemptuous dislike; then they looked upon them as a country squire would regard a junior branch which has emigrated and has thriven by emigration; and now they are welcomed in Society because they amuse and startle and stir up the duller depths. But however warm may be private friendship between Englishmen and Anglo-Americans there is no public sympathy nor is any to be expected from the present generation. "New England does not understand Old England and never will," the reverse ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Inquiring what each customer required, Politely talking weather, fit to drop, With swollen ankles, tired.... But he was tired Now. Every bone was aching, and had ached For fourteen days and nights in that wet trench— Just duller when he slept than when he waked— Crouching for shelter from the steady drench Of shell and shrapnel.... That old trench, it seemed Almost like home to him. He'd slept and fed And sung and smoked in it, while shrapnel ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... systematic treatise. Pope, indeed, was flattered to have a scholar of such recognized authority as Warburton to interpret his works, and permitted him to print a commentary upon the 'Essay', which is quite as long and infinitely duller than the original. But the true nature of the poem is indicated by its title. It is not an 'Art of Poetry' such as Boileau composed, but an 'Essay'. And by the word "essay," Pope meant exactly what Bacon did,—a tentative sketch, a series ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... amusement in the court; learned counsel settled their robes becomingly and leant forward to listen. They were in for a humorous speech, and the prisoner would get off with a light sentence. But the grim smile waxed duller, and it was clear that lordship was determined to make the law a terror to evil-doers. Lordship drew attention to the fact that during the course of their investigations the police had discovered that the prisoner had been living for some considerable time with the man Evans, during ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... saying, "is more of a pumpkin than I thought. I measure men's dulness by the devices they trust in for deceiving others. Your dullest animal of all is he who grins and says he doesn't mind just after he has had his shins kicked. If I were a trifle duller, now," he went on, smiling as the circle opened to admit Tito, "I should pretend to be fond of this Melema, who has got a secretaryship that would exactly suit me—as if Latin ill-paid could love better Latin that's better paid! Melema, you are a pestiferously clever fellow, very much in ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all this was visible; and which was doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a great extinguisher for a cap, which it ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... for the first time; then it froze; and the trees in the Tuileries are now showing the white lines of their branches against a dreary sky. The daylight seems all the duller by comparison with the glitter of the snow-covered ground.... I slowly follow the little black path made by the sweepers; I receive an impression of solitude; the streets are very still; it is as though sick ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... presence, her readings alone, rendered vividly luminous the many mysteries of the transcendentalism in which we were immersed. Wanting the radiant lustre of her eyes, letters, lambent and golden, grew duller than Saturnian lead. And now those eyes shone less and less frequently upon the pages over which I pored. Ligeia grew ill. The wild eyes blazed with a too—too glorious effulgence; the pale fingers became of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... she recalled her own actions, speeches, and demonstrations in his presence, exaggerated by the groundless fear that he had guessed into the deepest springs of her feelings, then she felt those drops of blood congeal. Even if the apothecary had been duller of discernment than she supposed, here was Aurora on the opposite side of the table, reading every thought of her inmost soul. But worst of all was 'Sieur Frowenfel's indifference. It is true that, as he had directed upon her that gaze of recognition, there was ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... over, and duller than ever," said Lillie. "I think a little spirt of gayety makes it seem duller ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to fish if there are no fish to catch. There's nothing duller than sitting all day and catching nothing,' put in Horatia. 'What's your ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... little Italian lady who had married a Frenchman who proved to be a rake and a brute and the torment of her life. Her husband had spent all her money, and then, lacking the means of obtaining more expensive pleasures, had taken, in his duller hours, to beating her. She had a blue spot somewhere, which she showed to several persons, including Bellegarde. She had obtained a separation from her husband, collected the scraps of her fortune ...
— The American • Henry James
... my appetite is sharper than a scythe; but my indigestion is duller than a whetstone," said the mate, to whom a feast was always prophetic of ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... My duller sense of hearing had discovered nothing. I rose and took my hat to quiet her. At the same moment the door of the room opened suddenly and softly. Mr. Van Brandt came in. I saw in his face that he had some vile motive of his own for ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... it was not Meyrick's facts exactly that had brought this about. Robert thought them imperfect, only half true. Rather was it the spirit of love, of infinite forbearance in which the simpler, duller nature had declared itself that had appealed to him, nay, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... your severe judgments and unreasonable expectations may be productive of unceasing discomfort to yourself and all around you. Your friends plainly see that you expect too much from them, that you are annoyed when their duller perceptions can discover no grounds for your annoyance, that you decline their offers of service when they are not made in exactly the refined manner your imagination requires. Your annoyance may seldom or never express itself in words, but it is nevertheless perceptible in the ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... more suspicious and at the same time very much more humble-minded than Glenn. But suspicion faded and failed before his honest passion. His agitation, his eagerness, his face that altered so swiftly, so glowingly, whenever she appeared, would have told the truth to one duller than Nancy. If Mrs. MacGregor could have suspected that anybody could fall in love with Anne Champneys, she must have seen the truth, too. But she didn't. She was serenely blind to what was happening under ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... passed. From the house of De La Garcia the other division of Texans began to fire, the sharp lashing of their rifles sounding clearly amid the duller crash of musketry and cannon from the Mexicans. The Texans in the lower part of the Veramendi house were also at work with their rifles. Every man was a sharpshooter, and, whenever a Mexican came from behind a barricade, he was picked off. But the Mexicans ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the ordinary process of scouring. Every one at all experienced in this art will remember that it is not always an easy matter for him, by scouring, to bring his plate to the desired lustre. All his efforts become unavailing; the more he rubs, the duller the surface of his plate appears; and although he renews his cotton repeatedly, still he is obliged to content himself with ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... he hath never fed of the dainties bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal—only sensible in the duller parts; ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... the moon shines bright—blue, too, now that I think of it.—You are good enough to ask if I've had a happy trip. Happy!... Weeks of moping from dull place to duller, months ditto staring one in the face, and for this present—the rural villa of one's estimable cousins, with the sun and the stars for company. Really does it seem such a trifle to you to be plucked ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... mind, with their powerful sesame, and you have to open your heart's door and take them in. Prophet of earth and heaven, the air, the clouds, the birds and trees, the rocks and waters, translatin' the marvellous words so our duller eyes and ears ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... "Nothing duller could be imagined." Momentarily he lost his self- restraint. "You have something inimitable, supremely valuable, and you are dreaming like a rabbit. If you must be a mother, be that one on the screen, for the thrilling of millions ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... trying to make a reality of it and spin into the warp and woof of the tapestry time had already woven this thread of new color. But so startling was it in hue that it refused to blend, standing out against the duller tones of the past with appalling distinctness; and never was it more irreconcilable than when the familiar confines of the little fishing hamlet by the sea were reached and those who struggled to harmonize it saw it in contrast with this background ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... and scabs in trees; Your arts of flexing them for claps, And purging their infected saps; 50 Recov'ring shankers, crystallines, And nodes and botches in their rinds, Have no effect to operate Upon that duller block, your pate? But still it must be lewdly bent 55 To tempt your own due punishment; And, like your whymsy'd chariots, draw, The boys to course you without law; As if the art you have so long Profess'd, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... moment she stood looking around her, as though perplexed and preoccupied. There was sunlight on the glade and on the ripples, but the daylight seemed to have become duller to her. ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... self-conscious of an individuality that instinctively assumes the hopelessness of a recognition by duller intellects. Leaning to resentment through misguided vanity, it falls 'all oblique.' What is the cure for this? I answer, the teaching of a divine egotism. The subject must be led to a pure devotion to self. What he wishes to respect he ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... you must be patient. Hold! I will make you and Monsieur Sidney gentlemen of my bed-chamber, which will give you the entree of the Louvre; and if you cannot get her out of it without an eclat, then you must be a much duller fellow than half my court. Only that it is not their ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... soft and sweet colour It courted me then, Till evasions seemed wrong, Till evasions gave in to its song, And I warmed, till living aloofly loomed duller Than life ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... usually ripe, artificial gardens and fishponds on the tops of houses, all things opposite to the vulgar sort, intricate and rare, or else they are nothing worth. So busy, nice, curious wits, make that insupportable in all vocations, trades, actions, employments, which to duller apprehensions is not offensive, earnestly seeking that which others so scornfully neglect. Thus through our foolish curiosity do we macerate ourselves, tire our souls, and run headlong, through our indiscretion, perverse will, and want of government, into many needless ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... successors or strained upon occasion, is out of my knowledge. When pamphlets unpleasing to the ministry were presented as libels, he would order the offensive paragraphs to be read before him, and said it was strange that the judges and lawyers of the King's Bench should be duller than all the people of England; and he was often so very happy in applying the initial letters of names, and expounding dubious hints (the two common expedients among writers of that class for escaping the law) that he discovered much more than ever the authors intended, as many of them or ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... at another; each has his favourite fancy; pure and open light there is none; every one philosophises out of the cells of his own imagination, as out of Plato's cave; the higher wits with more acuteness and felicity, the duller, less happily, but with equal pertinacity. And now of late, by the regulation of some learned and (as things now are) excellent men (the former license having, I suppose, become wearisome), the sciences are confined to certain and prescribed authors, and ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... face than well-known rapids. The others were a finer breed, the true and daring coureurs de bois, or pioneers of the bush, who went west in comparatively light canoes, each carrying not more than a ton and a half, who hunted their own game, risked a fight with the Indians, and were to the duller 'pork eaters' what a charger is to a cart-horse or a frigate to a barge. The regulation portage load was one hundred and fifty pounds, and many a man was known to carry this weight the whole ten miles ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... soft-glowing under the touch of the rosy-fingered goddess. These are the things I shall never see again; things, indeed, so perfect in memory that I should dread to blur them by a newer experience. My senses are so much duller; they do not show ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... himself, but causes cheerfulness around him. The officers of his own ship, and those of the rest of the squadron, are of course great acquisitions to the parties at Rio; but I see little of them: my dull house, and duller self, offering nothing inviting except to the midshipmen of my old ship, who visit me very constantly. I have bought a small horse[115] for the sake of exercise, and sometimes accompany the boys on their evening rides. Last night I went with two of them to the Praya Vermelha; and finding ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... we find this line of Electors representing in Europe the Puritan mind of England in a somewhat duller, but less dangerous, form; receiving what Protestantism could teach of honesty and common sense, but not its anti-Catholic fury, or its selfish spiritual anxiety. Pardon of sins is not to be had from Tetzel; neither, the Hohenzollern mind advises with itself, from even Tetzel's master, for ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... his pictures rested temporarily under a cloud, and he was rarely to be found in the spacious gallery. In London, Victor Nevill enjoyed life with as much zest as his conscience would permit; Madge Foster dragged through weary days and duller evenings at Strand-on-the-Green; and the editor of the Illustrated Universe wondered what had become of his bright young war-artist since the one brief visit ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... the wilds of Australia, India, Asia, Africa, or the jungles of South America—nor could semi-tropical species endure the captivity of a few weeks or even days, when captured in the West Indies, Mexico, or Florida. Only our duller-coloured, smaller, and hardier native species tolerated capture ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... composed and smoothly varnished the history, the duller it will be found; while the more personal revelations it contains, the more engaging. Most readers today, for example, prefer Bernal Diaz del Castillo's True History of the Conquest of New Spain to Solis's History of the Conquest ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... faithful work in the store he had won out at last. Looking back, he saw his own progress toward this hill of elation no longer as a sometimes sordid and always gray decade of worry and failing enthusiasm and failing dreams, years when the moonlight had grown duller in the areaway and the youth had faded out of Olive's face, but as a glorious and triumphant climb over obstacles which he had determinedly surmounted by unconquerable will-power. The optimistic self-delusion ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... awfully dull when you do get to the top, or what's called the top—being a client caretaker with the routine law business of a few big corporations and rich estates going through your office like grist through a mill. I can't imagine anything duller than that. That's supposed to be the big reward, of course. That's the bundle of hay they dangle in front of your nose to keep you trotting straight along without trying to see around ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... falling behind the wall. The toads crawled from under the plantain leaves, and hopped across the broad stone before the kitchen door, and the irreverent cat, with whom I sympathized, raced like mad in the grass. Growing duller, I went to the cellar door, which was in the front entry, opened it, and stared down in the black gulf, till I saw a gray rock rise at the foot of the stairs which affected my imagination. The foundation of the house was on the spurs of a great granite bed, ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... 'sect'; third (with a 'moreover,' as if an afterthought), that he had profaned the Temple. It was more clever than honest to put the real cause of Jewish hatred last, since it was a trifle in Roman eyes, and to put first the only thing that Felix would think worth notice. A duller man than he might have scented something suspicious in Jewish officials being so anxious to suppress insurrection against Rome, and probably he had his own thoughts about the good faith of the accusers, though he said nothing. Paul takes ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... in the bag To sleep the sleep of Rip Van Winkle, Removed from sunshine's golden flag And duller daylight's smallest twinkle? Well have you earned your rest; but yet, Although disturbance seem uncivil, Unless your cheeks and chin be wet With oil, your beauteousness will ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... I'm sorry to say. You see, I started at a moment's notice. Things are duller than a ditch in the City, but I'd no chance to make any arrangements for a stay. But I'll tell you what. If you're stopping on here and like to send me an invitation for a week or two, I'd come like a shot. I'll take a ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... of amusements, each noisier and duller than the one before. Now in the theatre, now in the open, they played a stupid but obscene vaudeville piece, and vicious topical songs were sung (a thunder of applause); an animated chansonnette-singer screeched and pulled about with her naked, excessively ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... variety with yellow berries which are not quite so handsome as the red, though very attractive. R. humilis differs from laevis in having hairy leaves, those of laevis being quite smooth. It also differs in the duller red color of the berries, laevis being much the prettier. Both are natives of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... the tide of wine and wassail fast gaining on the dry land of sober judgment. The company grew merrier and louder as their jokes grew duller. Master Simon was in as chirping a humour as a grasshopper filled with dew; his old songs grew of a warmer complexion, and he began to talk maudlin about the widow. He even gave a long song about the wooing of a widow, which he informed me he had gathered from an excellent black-letter ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... immediately the boy began to revive. He opened his eyes; they warmed him, chafed his limbs, and at last he began to walk and to speak. He was the same as before, only thinner, paler, and more languid; his eyes heavy and sunken, his movements slower and less free, his mind duller and more stupid. At the end of a year, the demon that had animated him quitted him with a great noise; the youth fell backwards, and his body, which was foetid and stunk insupportably, was dragged with a hook ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... notable as affording the first sign that Fielding was now leaving party politics for the wider, and much duller, field of Constitutional liberty. A man might die for the British Constitution; but to be witty about it would tax the resources of a Lucian. And, accordingly, in place of that gay young spark Mr Pasquin, ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... confined us to the house. Gloriana had borrowed a sewing-machine from a neighbour, and worked harder than ever, inflaming her eyes and our curiosity. We speculated daily upon her past, present and future, having little else to distract us in a life that was duller than a Chinese comedy. We waxed fat in idleness, but the ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... tediousness work a more dire mischief than in the teaching of ethics. It is bad to have students forever shun the best books because of poor instruction in literature; the damage is worse when it is the subject of moral obligation which they associate with only the duller hours of their college life. Not that the aim of a course in ethics is to afford a number of entertaining periods. The object rather is to help our students realize that here is a subject which seeks to interpret for them the most important problems of their own lives present and to come. Where ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... phrase? 310 Ah! fled for ever, as they ne'er had been; Razed from the book of fame; or, more provoking, Perchance some hackney hunger-bitten scribbler Insults thy memory, and blots thy tomb With long flat narrative, or duller rhymes, With heavy halting pace that drawl along; Enough to rouse a dead man into rage, And warm with red resentment the wan cheek. Here the great masters of the healing art, These mighty mock defrauders of the tomb, 320 Spite of their juleps and catholicons, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... slowly. She did not speak spontaneously, and her replies were very slow in coming. She had to be urged considerably before she would speak and, as a rule, she did not answer. On one occasion she was for a day totally inactive and looked duller. That day and on a few other occasions she wet the bed. There was at times an appearance of dull bewilderment. When, soon after admission, asked whether she felt cheerful or downhearted, she said "downhearted," but this was the only time. Often she answered ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... Duller eyes than his had discerned that the constitutional conflict between the Directory and the Councils could not be peaceably adjusted. The framers of the constitution had designed the slowly changing Directory as a check on ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... partiality (if we may say so) of conflagration-light which gives to it the character of impressive power with which we are all so familiar—the intense lights being here cut sharply off by equally intense shadows, and then grading into dull reds and duller greys. The sun, on the other hand, bathes everything in its genial glow so completely that all nature is permeated with it, and there are no intense contrasts, no absolutely black and striking shadows, except in caverns and holes, ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... over all the changes that had happened to him since those old, far-away days when he was a boy, in the pleasant, fresh, healthy homestead at the foot of the Wrekin. He felt all of a sudden how very old he was; a poor, infirm, hoary old man. His sight was growing dim even, and his hearing duller every day; he was sure of it. His limbs ached oftener, and he was earlier wearied in the evening; yet he could not sleep soundly at nights, as he had been used to do. But, worst of all, his memory was not half as good as it had been. Sometimes, of late, he had caught himself ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... here, I simply don't know what to do; I really can't read and swing the whole day long, and Dora has become as dull as she used to be; that is, even duller, for not only does she not quarrel, but she won't talk, that is she won't talk about certain things. She is perfectly crazy about the baby of the young couple in the mezzanin; he's 10 months old, and I can't ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... great rock which jutted out from the wooded tangle into the margin of Lake Forsaken, with lesser sentinel rocks about it, she sat cross-legged until she glanced up at last to see that the west was kindling, and that she must start back to the duller realities of home. She had been interrupted by no break in the silence except the little forest twitter of birds and now and then the cool splash where a bass leaped ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... the Ohio penitentiary remarks that not only in the prison of that state, but in others, depraved appetites and corrupt habits, which have led to the commission of crime, are usually found with the ignorant, uninformed, and duller part of mankind. Of 276 at one time in that institution, nearly all were below mediocrity, and 175 are represented as grossly ignorant, and, in point of education, scarcely capable of transacting ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew |
