Dulness Quotes & Sayings

This particular book felt familiar, like an old friend. The characters drew me into their world, and I blocked out mine for the rest of the afternoon. — Rebecca Raisin

I was 8 years old in the spring of 1945 when my family fled Silesia to escape the Russian army. On our way, we passed through Dresden. A few days later, it was firebombed. The fire was so bright that night that one could read a newspaper from the light, though we were many kilometers away. — Gunter Blobel

It was her choice. In a world where so many choices weren't hers, it was a wonderful thing. — Melissa Marr

Nature seems to delight in disappointing the assuduities of art, with which it would rear dulness to maturity, and to glory in the vigor and luxuriance of her chance productions. She scatters the seeds of genius to the winds, and though some may perish among the stony places of the world, and some may be choked by the thorns and brambles of early adversity, yet others will now and then strike root even in the clefts of the rock, struggle bravely up into sunshine, and spread over their sterile birthplace all the beauties of vegetation. — Washington Irving

I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present. — W. Somerset Maugham

The future was getting here faster than I'd expected. — Maggie Stiefvater

A lively blockhead in company is a public benefit. Silence or dulness by the side of folly looks like wisdom. — William Hazlitt

Blushing, palpitations, a bad conscience
this is what you get if you haven't sinned. — Karl Kraus

To-day man is, and to-morrow he will be seen no more. And being removed out of sight, quickly also he is out of mind. O the dulness and hardness of man's heart, which thinketh only of the present, and looketh not forward to the future. Thou oughtest in every deed and thought so to order thyself, as if thou wert to die this day. — Thomas A Kempis

You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves ... .On the other hand, if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make him a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness, all his dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also; and we know the height of it only when we see the clouds settling upon him. — John Ruskin

The life of a man of virtue and talent, who should die in his thirtieth year, is, with regard to his own feelings, longer than that of a miserable Priest-ridden slave, who dreams out a century of dulness. The one has perpetually cultivated his mental faculties, has rendered himself master of his thoughts, can abstract and generalize amid the lethargy of every-day business;--the other can slumber over the brightest moments of his being, and is unable to remember the happiest hour of his life. Perhaps the perishing ephemeron enjoys a longer life than the tortoise. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

In mortals there is a care for trifles which proceeds from love and conscience, and is most holy; and a care for trifles which comes of idleness and frivolity, and is most base. And so, also, there is a gravity proceeding from thought, which is most noble; and a gravity proceeding from dulness and mere incapability of enjoyment, which is most base. — John Ruskin

Lord, end my winter, and let my spring begin. I cannot with all my longings raise my soul out of her death and dulness, but all things are possible with thee. I need celestial influences, the clear shinings of thy love, the beams of thy grace, the light of thy countenance, these are the Pleiades to me. I suffer much from sin and temptation, these are my wintry signs, my terrible Orion. Lord, work wonders in me, and for me. Amen. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

What is most appealing about young folks, after all, is the changes, not the still photograph of finished character but the movie, the soul in flux. — Thomas Pynchon

but he had a great respect for money, and much overrated its value as a means of doing even what he called good: religious people generally do -- with a most unchristian dulness. We are not told that the Master made the smallest use of money for his end. When he paid the temple-rate, he did it to avoid giving offence; and he defended the woman who divinely wasted it. — George MacDonald

Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general discontent with the universe as a trap of dulness into which their great souls have fallen by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous self and an insignificant world may have its consolations. Lydgate's discontent was much harder to bear; it was the sense that there was a grand existence in thought and effective action lying around him, while his self was being narrowed into the miserable isolation of egoistic fears, and vulgar anxieties for events that might allay such fears. — George Eliot

Poet, forger of ideals, dreamer among the possibilities of life, prophet of the millenium, do you get impatient with the prosaic life around you
the dulness, and the earthliness, and the brutishness of men? Fret not. Go forward into the realm which stretches before you; climb the highest mountain you can reach, and plant a cross there. The nations will come up to it some day. Work for immortality if you will; then wait for it. If your own age fail to recognize you, a coming age will not. — J.G. Holland

It may be that it is this very dulness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and welcome. Nevertheless, there can be but few of us who had never known one of these rare moments of awakening when we see, hear, understand so much
everything
in a flash
before we fall back again into our agreeable somnolence. — Joseph Conrad

Oddities only strike ordinary people. Oddities do not strike odd people. This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while odd people are always complaining of the dulness of life. This is also why the new novels die so quickly, and why the old fairy tales endure for ever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central. Hence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately, and the book is monotonous. You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world. — G.K. Chesterton

You're not going to have a 1.000 batting average, but the way you get votes is, you just push and you push. I'm not afraid to do that. — Tim Kaine

She [Comedy] it is who proposes the correcting of pretentiousness, of inflation, of dulness, and of the vestiges of rawness and grossness to be found among us. She is the ultimate civilizer, the polisher, a sweet cook. — George Meredith

I have a household of good books, and reading tends to take for me the place of experience - or rather to become itself experience concentrated. You will say this is a dull picture, but I cultivate dulness in a world grown too noisy. — Henry James

Though he sought simplicity, he dread dulness. Dimly conscious that he was dull himself, he craved the stimulus of a quicker mind; yet he feared a dull wife less than a brilliant one, for with the latter how could he maintain his superiority? — Edith Wharton

Who can prove Wit to be witty when with deeper ground Dulness intuitive declares wit dull? — George Eliot

It may be argued again that dissatisfaction with our life's endeavor springs in some degree from dulness. We require higher tasks, because we do not recognise the height of those we have. — Robert Louis Stevenson

We thought he was weird. He thought we were weird. It was great. It was what multiculturalism ought to be" -Archer — Richard Peck

The great quality of Dulness is to be unalterably contented with itself. — William Makepeace Thackeray

I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief. — Immanuel Kant

All I can say is sometimes home gets burned into your occipital lobe, and it can't leave you, and there's always that longing. — James Gray

To recognize that "I am the one who chooses" and "I am the one who determines the value of an experience for me" is both an invigoraring and a frightening realization. — Carl R. Rogers

It was before him again in its completeness
the choice in which she was content to rest: in the stupid costliness of the food and the showy dulness of the talk, in the freedom of speech which never arrived at wit and the freedom of act which never made for romance. — Edith Wharton

Rarely use Venery but for Health or Offspring; Never to Dulness, Weakness, or the Injury of your own or another's Peace or Reputation. — Benjamin Franklin

How horrid all this is!" said he. "Such weather makes every thing and every body disgusting. Dulness is as much produced within doors as without, by rain. It makes one detest all one's acquaintance. What the devil does Sir John mean by not having a billiard room in his house? How few people know what comfort is! Sir John is as stupid as the weather. — Jane Austen

Dulness! whose good old cause I yet defend,
With whom my muse began, with who shall end. — Alexander Pope

He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dulness in others. — Samuel Johnson

Our government should speak a common language with the American people - plain English. — Alan Siegel

Luminous quotations, also, atone, by their interest, for the dulness of an inferior book, and add to the value of a superior work by the variety which they lend to its style and treatment. — Christian Nestell Bovee

A generation before, it had been sagebrush and coyotes; a generation later, it was a burgeoning movie town. But for that brief idyllic time in 1910, Hollywood looked like the perfect place for a successful writer to settle down, build his dream house, and maybe do some gardening. — Kage Baker

Peter was dull; he was at first Dull; - Oh, so dull - so very dull! Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed - Still with his dulness was he cursed - Dull -beyond all conception - dull. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

The majority of us scarcely see more distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than the faultiness of our own arguments, orthe dulness [sic] of our own jokes. — George Eliot

It is often to be observed, that as in digging for precious metals in the mines, much earthly rubbish has first to be troublesomely handled and thrown out ; so, in digging in one s soul for the fine gold of genius, much dulness and common-place is first brought to light. Happy would it be, if the man possessed in himself some receptacle for his own rubbish of this sort: but he is like the occupant of a dwelling, whose refuse cannot be clapped into his own cellar, but must be deposited in the street before his own door, for the public functionaries to take care of. — Herman Melville