Quotes & Sayings About Dull Minds

Everything written with vitality expresses that vitality; there are no dull subjects, only dull minds. — Raymond Chandler

We lawyers do not write plain English. We use eight words to say what could be said in two. We use arcane phrases to express commonplace ideas. Seeking to be precise, we become redundant. Seeking to be cautious, we become verbose. Our sentences twist on, phrase within clause within clause, glazing the eyes and numbing the minds of our readers. The result is a writing style that has, according to one critic, four outstanding characteristics. It is (1) wordy, (2) unclear, (3) pompous, and (4) dull. — Richard C. Wydick

Baseball is only dull to dull minds — Red Barber

The idea that seeing life means going from place to place and doing a great variety of obvious things is an illusion natural to dull minds. — Charles Horton Cooley

Baseball is a dull game only for those with dull minds. — Red Smith

Baseball is dull only to dull minds. — Red Barber

The language itself is what gets me interested in writing. It's weird to me that words exist. Never a dull moment with words. They're a layer between our minds and the physical reality around us, obviously, but the layer seems like it's always in flux, like an asteroid belt, constantly moving. — Aaron Belz

Even in the early nineteenth century, people like Goethe had little good to say about grumbling, coarsely behaved nationalist romantics of the Arndt or Jahn variety. By contrast, Germany's greatest author enjoyed the witty company of intelligent Jews. "As a rule they are more keenly curious and apt to contribute than any German nationalist," Goethe wrote. "Their ability to understand things quickly and analyze them in depth, as well as their native wit, makes them a much more receptive audience than you can find among the real and true Germans with their slow and dull minds. — Gotz Aly

Consistency is the playground of dull minds. — Yuval Noah Harari

Then quote Hall-of-Fame announcer Red Barber: "Baseball is dull only to dull minds. — Zack Hample

Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical. — Blaise Pascal

Now I will be anything else you please, except dull. You may say I have been dull already? As I am an honest woman, I don't agree with you. There are some people who bring dull minds to their reading - and them blame the writer for it. I say no more. — Wilkie Collins

Thus it happens that your true dull minds are generally preferred for public employ, and especially promoted to city honors; your keen intellects, like razors, being considered too sharp for common service. I — Washington Irving

Children could be taught to hear and feel music in their minds rather than just with their ears; how to make them feel music as a thing of movement rather than a dull, lifeless subject; how to awaken a child's sensitivity. — Tetsuko Kuroyanagi

Creative minds are uneven, and the best of fabrics have their dull spots. — H.P. Lovecraft

When I was younger," Kikomi said, "I would get into debates with my brothers and their friends. They could seldom win, for their minds were dull, and they did not apply themselves to their work. But often, when it was clear that I had the better argument, they would laugh and say 'It's impossible to argue with such a pretty girl,' and thereby deny me my victory. Life has not changed much since then. — Ken Liu

A subtle-witted man is like an arrow, which, rending little surface, enters deeply, but they whose minds are dull resemble stones dashing with clumsy force, but never piercing. — Magha

Sonnet to Liberty
NOT that I love thy children, whose dull eyes
See nothing save their own unlovely woe,
Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know, -
But that the roar of thy Democracies,
Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies, 5
Mirror my wildest passions like the sea, -
And give my rage a brother - ! Liberty!
For this sake only do thy dissonant cries
Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings
By bloody knout or treacherous cannonades 10
Rob nations of their rights inviolate
And I remain unmoved - and yet, and yet,
These Christs that die upon the barricades,
God knows it I am with them, in some things. — Oscar Wilde

Religion is the master of creating dull and dim minds! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

If I so do my best, may this story be recorded and printed and zipped and zapped into hands and eyes and ears and minds and hearts everywhere, and may it no longer be my story but belong to each reader who drinks it in, to make them bigger or smaller as needed; to fill in those tiny holes and smooth over the rough places; to make them sigh and laugh and dream and wonder; to pass a lonely afternoon or enliven a dull evening; to in every regard do just what a story is supposed to do, which is become whatever each reader needs most at that moment. — Shannon Hale

The sharpest minds often ruin their lives by overthinking the next step, while the dull win the race with eyes closed. — Bethany Brookbank

And my own affairs were as bad, as dismal, as the day I had been born. The only difference was that now I could drink now and then, though never often enough. Drink was the only thing that kept a man from feeling forever stunned and useless. Everything else just kept picking and picking, hacking away. And nothing was interesting, nothing. The people were restrictive and careful, all alike. And I've got to live with these fuckers for the rest of my life, I thought. God, they all had assholes and sexual organs and their mouths and their armpits. They shit and they chattered and they were dull as horse dung. The girls looked good from a distance, the sun shining through their dresses, their hair. But get up close and listen to their minds running out of their mouths, you felt like digging in under a hill and hiding out with a tommy-gun. I would certainly never be able to be happy, to get married, I could never have children. Hell, I couldn't even get a job as a dishwasher. — Charles Bukowski

Not that I love thy children, whose dull eyes see nothing save their own unlovely woe, Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know ... — Oscar Wilde

He remembers the philosophers dead with detail, and how they honed their trade into the grave for the sake of their livelihoods. Incapable of audacity, they pleasured themselves with a maze constructed of nothing but dead-ends. They were so petrified they might happen upon the truth, might come to know something for certain, that they deployed some of their best minds to obliterate it, scattering its shards into infinity. But they were only trying to keep the dream alive, after all, fighting to keep the questions outnumbering the answers, picking away at the odd dropped stitch in an otherwise ever-tightening blanket of sacrosanct precision. They fought hard, if unwittingly, against the encroaching dullness of complete knowledge, but ultimately paid the price of becoming as dull as their enemy - at least the chemical truths of literature sometimes bothered to wear a suit and tie. — Gary J. Shipley