"Uninteresting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very uninteresting to read about wicked people. I do not feel the least inclination to give you any account of Tarquin and Tullia. On the contrary, I quite enjoyed talking of the good Numa ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... is seen in this light; and how much this must lessen that affectionate regard to the learners which alone can sweeten the bitter labor of instruction, and convert the whole business into unwelcome and uninteresting task-work, many preceptors that I have conversed with on the subject are ready, with a sad heart, to acknowledge. From this inconvenience the settled salaries of the masters of this school in great measure exempt them; while the happy custom of choosing masters (indeed every officer of the establishment) ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... spent the nights alone in the Cathedral as calmly as if he had been in the upper cloister, quite accustomed to the grave-like silence. In order not to sleep, he read by the light of his lantern any books he could get in the Claverias, uninteresting treatises on history in which Providence played the principal role; lives of the saints, amusing from their simple credulity, bordering on the grotesque; and that family Quixote of the Lunas', that he had so often spelt out when ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... as a specimen of the games of chance played by the Romans at cards. Of the more innocent games, Briscola, Tresette, and Scaraccoccia are the favorites among the common people. And the first of these may not be uninteresting, as being, perhaps, the most popular of all. It is played by either two or four persons. The Fante (or Knave) counts as two; the Carallo (equal to our Queen) as three; the Re (King) as four; the Three-spot as ten; and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... cackling, struggling fowls, who tried to leap over each other's backs. Wilfred seemed busy at some hutches where some rabbits twitched their noses at cabbage leaves. Mysie proceeded to minister to some black and rust-coloured guinea- pigs, which Dolores thought very ugly, uninteresting, ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... person, and a disgrace to our sex," said Hoffland. "To tell a young lady that the manner in which she proposes appearing at a ball is uninteresting, sounds like Ernest." ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... or Dolly Pettingill, were two eight year-olds. Dolly stuttered badly, but was gradually getting over it, for no one was allowed to mock him and Mr. Bhaer tried to cure it, by making him talk slowly. Dolly was a good little lad, quite uninteresting and ordinary, but he flourished here, and went through his daily duties and pleasures ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... school, but I hadn't the brains, so I toiled away in the store from early morning until late at night. Teaching school was easier. He used to say that if the sluggard did actually go to the ant he would probably find him a most uninteresting creature to talk to. I guess Hendry was right. I do know that he had little of the virtue of the ant, but he was one of the most interesting men I ever heard talk. When I was behind the counter it was my main pleasure to listen to him, perched on a chair in front ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... on the following day, and the Address was moved and seconded; but there was no debate. There was not even a full House. The same ceremony had taken place so short a time previously, that the whole affair was flat and uninteresting. It was understood that nothing would in fact be done. Mr. Gresham, as leader of his side of the House, confined himself to asserting that he should give his firmest opposition to the proposed measure, which was, ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... knowledge of the difficulty of my task. My honest and neglected friend, Ingulphus, has furnished me with many a valuable hint; but the light afforded by the Monk of Croydon, and Geoffrey de Vinsauff, is dimmed by such a conglomeration of uninteresting and unintelligible matter, that we gladly fly for relief to the delightful pages of the gallant Froissart, although he flourished at a period so much more remote from the date of my history. If, therefore, my dear friend, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... bald skull. The situation of this hill is not precisely known. It was certainly on the north or northwest of the city, in the high, irregular plain which extends between the walls and the two valleys of Kedron and Hinnom,[2] a rather uninteresting region, and made still worse by the objectionable circumstances arising from the neighborhood of a great city. It is difficult to identify Golgotha as the precise place which, since Constantine, has been ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... spite of yourself and of them, you become interested in uninteresting people, annoyed at their follies, and sympathetic with their trifling sorrows and joys. This is Mrs. ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... earliest days were passed; scenes from which I departed when I was a child, and which I did not revisit until I was a man. This is no uncommon chance, but one that befalls some of us any day; perhaps it may not be quite uninteresting to compare notes with the reader respecting an experience so familiar and a ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... carelessness that brings errors in construction and an entire lack of clearness and elegance in expression. Even the older pupils can learn more from writing upon simple subjects where the material is easily obtained and is in itself interesting than from the usual difficult and uninteresting subjects. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... bonhomie which so endeared Sir John Macdonald to the multitude. I do not think that Sir John's pre-eminence in that direction ever gave Sir Alexander much concern. My impression is that he regarded the multitude as an assemblage of more or less uninteresting persons, necessary only at election times; and if Sir John could succeed in obtaining their votes, he was quite welcome to any incidental advantages that he might extract from the process. It was alleged by Sir Richard Cartwright that in the year 1864 a movement was started in the Conservative ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... the authorized English version is a great work of literary art, and the continental versions are comparatively artless. To read a dull book; to listen to a tedious play or prosy sermon or lecture; to stare at uninteresting pictures or ugly buildings: nothing, short of disease, is more dreadful than this. The violence done to our souls by it leaves injuries and produces subtle maladies which have never been properly studied by psycho-pathologists. Yet we are so inured to it in school, where practically all the ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... her travelling companion from San Francisco, having proved to be talkative and uninteresting, Elsie Marley was more than content to find herself alone after the change had been made and her train pulled out of Chicago. It was characteristic of the girl that she did not even look out of the window to see the last of Mrs. Bennet, who, having waited on the platform until the ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... is Mrs. Grant. She is a sweet old thing; but she never says anything but good of anybody and so she is a very uninteresting conversationalist. ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was a conscientious man, but he was getting old, and the disputations of obstinate or foolish clients were becoming troublesome to him. Moreover, the case concerning which his clerk was prosing along in the style of a chapel demagogue engaged in extemporary prayer, was an extremely uninteresting one, and he thought hazily of his lunch. The hour for that meal was approaching,—a fact for which he was devoutly thankful. For after lunch, he gave himself his own release from work for the rest of the day. He left it all to his subordinates, and ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... a long and intensely uninteresting conversation about the maladies to which chickens are subject. He was verbose and reminiscent. He took me over his farm, pointing out as he went Dorkings and Cochin Chinas which he had cured of diseases generally fatal, with, as far as I could ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... stones, a moss-grown roof, and blank window spaces, whence both glass and sash had long departed. It was ruined, but not a ruin—a typical Californian substitute for what are known to guide-bookers abroad as "monuments of the past." With scarcely a glance at this uninteresting structure Jaralson moved on into the ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... happened to the world, not because of men and women and the priests and pundits, but in spite of them. Part of the reason can be given by him who knows history enough, and commands almost unlimited leisure and page; but that would only be the uninteresting part that we could easily dispense with. The college girl has happened to the world, as ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... pleasant chat. She was charming. At first she was apt to touch on James a shade too frequently, but before long I succeeded in diverting our conversation into less uninteresting topics. ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... a rough deal burial case stood upon two stools; tapers were flickering upon the floor; the fumes of burning punk freighted the air and clouded the vision; the place was clean enough, for it was perfectly bare, but it was eminently uninteresting. Close at hand stood a second burial case, an empty one, with the cover standing against the wall; a few hours more and it would find a tenant—he who was dying in rags and filth in the room adjoining. This was the native hospital of the quarter, and the mother of the child ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... they take the lead of the Periodical Works of our day, (and some of these are extremely beautiful,) while their literary worth is even of superior order. Although they are matter-of-fact works—as in history and biography—they are not mere compilations of dry details and uninteresting lives; but they are so interspersed with new views, and the facts are so often re-written, that the whole have the appearance of original works. Excellent principles, and economy of cost are, likewise, two important points of their recommendations; for many works which have already appeared ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various
... expected of prisoners themselves; and so, with the funds furnished me from the British Government, the camp captain was compelled to pay a number of the poorer prisoners to perform this work. Secretaries Ruddock and Kirk of our Embassy undertook the uninteresting and arduous work of superintending these payments as well as of our other financial affairs. This work was most trying and they deserve great credit for their self-denial. By arrangement with the British Government, I was also enabled to pay the poorer ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... Yankee cast a damper on his enthusiasm by exclaiming, in a pet, "Oh! dumn your singing! keep quiet, and pull away!" This we now did, in the most uninteresting silence; until, with a jerk that made every elbow hum, the root dragged out; and most inelegantly, we all landed upon the ground. The doctor, quite exhausted, stayed there; and, deluded into believing that, after so doughty a performance, we would be allowed ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... numerical preponderance of books published in Germany, it is doubtful if the German reader has quite such a catholic feast before him as the reader of French. There is a mass of German fiction probably as uninteresting to a foreigner as popular English and American romance. And German compared with French is an unattractive language; unmelodious, unwieldy, and cursed with a hideous and blinding lettering that the German is too patriotic to sacrifice. There has been in Germany a more powerful ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... against it altogether. This is a true index to the whole man. When the question was raised, in 1846, he was in a blustering hurry to take ground for it. He sought to be in advance, and to avoid the uninteresting position of a mere follower. But soon he began to see glimpses of the great Democratic ox-gad waving in his face, and to hear indistinctly a voice saying, 'Back! Back, sir! Back a little!' He shakes ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... females in the bloom of youth, whose well-proportioned limbs and symmetry of figure might have formed a model for the sculptor's chisel. In personal appearance the females are, except in early youth, very far inferior to the men. When young, however, they are not uninteresting. The jet black eyes, shaded by their long dark lashes, and the delicate and scarcely formed features of incipient womanhood give a soft and pleasing expression to a countenance that might often be called ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... of peasants in lively-coloured costumes, giving a brilliancy and life to the scene, which is not found in the other parts of the remarkably dull town of Louis XIV. Rochefort is the third important port in France; but as nothing can be so uninteresting to me, who do not understand these details, as to look on fortifications, and the bustle of a port when there is no sea to repay one—and Rochefort is only on the Charente, four leagues from the sea—I did not attempt ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... her fellow-passengers and judged them uninteresting, she divided her attention between the fleeting landscape at her side, a box of fruit creams, which she was consuming with grave perseverance, and the contents of a pocket-portfolio, which she appeared to be slowly sorting and weeding out. To everything ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... possessed no beauty of scenery, though the country around it was in truth as uninteresting as any country could be, it had many delights of its own. The house itself was as excellent a residence for a country gentleman of small means as taste and skill together could construct. I doubt whether prettier rooms were ever seen than the drawing-room, ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... from porch to stairway. He went up to the first landing, not knowing why, then roamed aimlessly through, wandering from room to room, idly, looking on familiar things as though they were strange—strange, but uninteresting. ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... a lady of about fifty; she had been with them now for nearly a year, and what she paid for the drawing-room and best bedroom behind it, quite covered the rent of the shabby little house. Miss Mitchell was Charlotte Home's grand standby; she was a very uninteresting person, neither giving nor looking for sympathy, never concerning herself about the family in whose house she lived. But then, on the other hand, she was easily pleased; she never grumbled, she paid her rent like clockwork. She now startled Lottie by coming instantly forward and telling ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... were uninteresting, and Grace stayed in-doors a great deal. She became quite a student, reading more than she had done since her marriage But her seclusion was always broken for the periodical visit to Winterborne's grave with Marty, which was kept up with pious strictness, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... any importance, I will let you know them. I am much mortified by receiving half a dozen Irish papers together this morning without a word from you, as the speculations on your side of the water are by no means indifferent, or uninteresting here. ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... gave the stenographer. What we made for the paper is entirely uninteresting and need not ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... listless eyes had sparkled with roguish merriment, when the shrivelled, tight-drawn lips had pouted temptingly; but spinsterhood does not sweeten the juices of a woman, and strong country air, though, like old ale, it is good when taken occasionally, dulls the brain if lived upon. A narrow, uninteresting woman I found her, troubled with a shyness that sat ludicrously upon her age, and that yet failed to save her from the landlady's customary failing of loquacity concerning "better days," together with an irritating, if ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... the unfamiliar sheets—they seemed to him to be smaller, more numerous, and different in type from the papers of the times before—and he found himself confronted with innumerable pictures about things so strange as to be uninteresting, and with tall columns of printed matter whose headings, for the most part, were as unmeaning as though they had been written in a foreign tongue—"Great Speech by Mr. Caterham"; "The ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... not writing anything of that kind. But please don't let us talk about my work. I am sure it's very uninteresting except to me. I feel very grateful to you for your kind and delightful offer, but I can't accept ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... I ran over to Ireland to see my parents. On my return I seemed to miss the charming companion of my journey over the same ground three years previously. Two uninteresting men were in the carriage: a typical German professor on tour, and communicative; and a typical English gentleman, uncommunicative. As the journey was a long one the German smoked, ate and drank himself to ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... upturned to the moon in another and yet more bitter war, aftermath of this with Mexico. The tall stock was still in evidence at that time, and the ruffled shirts gave something of a formal and old-fashioned touch to the assembly. Such as they were, in their somewhat varied but not uninteresting attire, the best of Washington were present. Invitation was wholly by card. Some said that Mrs. Polk wrote these invitations in her own hand, though this we ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... intended to come to maturity. Under this artificial, though necessary system, the trees lose all individuality, and they never regain it because they are all more or less controlled when growing, and so become uninteresting copies ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... You notice how uninteresting Terence and Kathleen's conversation was getting. They kept on with it, however, dull as it was. They turned and went up over the hill to the blockhouse, and then down the steep path on the other side and back along the north end of the Park. "Do you come ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... and uninteresting. On the veranda of the Rose villa Corrie was waiting to meet the returning two, upon the ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... one moment to reflect on the character of these new deities of whom I have been speaking: Hercules, Castor, Minerva, Diana. It must be confessed that, as compared with the great deities of the calendar, they are uninteresting; with the exception, perhaps, of Hercules, they do not seem to have any real religious significance. They are local deities brought in from outside, and have no root in the mind of the Roman people as we have so far ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... case was decided at the Privy Council on Saturday last, and was not uninteresting. The Chancellor, Lord President, Graham, John Russell and Grant, Sir Edward East, the Master of Rolls, Vice-Chancellor, Lord Amherst, and Lord Wellesley were present (the latter not the last day). Lushington was for the appeal, and Home and Starkie against. The former made two very able ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... rather uninteresting. Owing to the dense French colonization there the natives have nearly all disappeared or become quite degenerate. We spent our time in visits to the different French planters and then sailed for ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... after a certain time, or beyond a certain degree, becomes either uninteresting or intolerable, and the musician is obliged to break it in one or two ways: either while the air or passage is perpetually repeated, its notes are variously enriched and harmonized; or else, after a certain number of repeated passages, an entirely new passage is introduced, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... that history repeats itself, that the pineal body was a useless, wastefully space consuming vestige of a once important structure. That was the view in that century of grandly inaccurate assertions, the nineteenth. Not that they relegated it with that statement to the limbo of the dull and the uninteresting. Quite the contrary. They conferred upon it a distinguished romance and mystery by identifying it as the last heir and vestigial remnant of a third eye, situated in the back of the head, which may still be observed in certain reptiles. ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... the pack has been comparatively uninteresting from the zoologist's point of view, as we have seen so little of the rarer species of animals or of birds in exceptional plumage. We passed dozens of crab-eaters, but have seen no Ross seals nor have we been able to kill a sea leopard. ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... peace;" but contained in addition several provisions respecting the manner of election, and the duration of parliament and the composition of the magistracy, which may not be uninteresting to the reader even at the present day. It proposed that a parliament should meet every year, to sit not less than a certain number of days, nor more than another certain number, each of which should be fixed ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... doctor went on quietly and deliberately, "that everything in this world is insignificant and uninteresting except the higher spiritual manifestations of the human mind. Intellect draws a sharp line between the animals and man, suggests the divinity of the latter, and to some extent even takes the place of the immortality ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... she said presently. 'Oh yes, I was saying that you were not tiresome although you are engaged to be married. You are not even quite uninteresting, although you are healthy and happy! All the same, I am going to try and persuade you and Peter to have the ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... might flash into anger now and then and do something rash—something that I should be sorry for later on, but which in my secret heart I should be glad I had done. Oh, I get so tired of being just a plain, goody-goody little woman who will always do the right thing in the most uninteresting way; a woman about whom there is no delightful uncertainty; a woman on whom you can always reckon just as you would on the figure 4 or 6 or any other number in mathematics. I am like such a figure—a fixed quantity, and that is why I, Charlotte Grayson, am just a ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... of our stay in Chicago as a whole would be uninteresting, and I would not weary the reader with them. Hal improved so rapidly that on the fourth day after our arrival, he was carried in comparative comfort to Mr. Hanson's residence, and placed for a few days in a pleasant chamber to gather strength for our journey home. One little ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... of travel to describe this part of the journey somewhat as follows: "Skirting the low and uninteresting shores of Africa we at length reached," etc. Low and uninteresting shores! Through the glasses we made out distant mountains far beyond nearer hills. The latter were green-covered with dense forests whence rose mysterious smokes. Along the shore we saw an occasional cocoanut plantation ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... iron beds, two chiffoniers, two chairs, a trunk bearing the initials "J. A. B." and a washstand. The floor was bare save for three rugs, one beside each bed and one in front of the washstand. The two windows had white muslin curtains and a couple of uninteresting pictures hung on the walls. He dropped the curtain at the door, placed his suit case on a chair and opened it. For the next few minutes he was busy distributing its contents. To do this it was necessary to light the gas in the bedroom and as it flared up, its ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the little quay while my father and the crew were hoisting sail. For a moment I questioned if I should not be happier in the bow of the Curlew, than tramping half a score of miles over rough uninteresting moorland on the chance of capturing a seal; but in the end I was satisfied in keeping to the plan arranged by my companions. I waited only to see the boat bend over in the fresh breeze as she sailed outward to the ships; then, armed with my harpoon and a knobbed ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... to observe the aesthetic demoralisation into which I now fell through having daily to deal with such a work. I gradually lost my dislike for this shallow and exceedingly uninteresting composition (a dislike I shared with many German musicians) in the growing interest which I was compelled to take in its interpretation; and thus it happened that the insipidness and affectation of the commonplace melodies ceased to concern me save from the ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... the morning, Mary dusted other rooms in which all the furniture seemed dead or asleep and, therefore, quite uninteresting. ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... fill up the number of human consumers or producers; but he interests nobody but the economist and the statistician, who take the heap of sand as a whole into consideration, without troubling themselves about the uninteresting uniformity of the individual grains. The crowd counts only as a massive elementary force—why? because its constituent parts are individually insignificant: they are all like each other, and we add them up like the molecules of water in a river, gauging them ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... close upon four o'clock when he left the tavern, and then began for the indefatigable Mr. Howard one of the most wearisome and uninteresting chases, through the mazes of the London streets, he ever remembers to have made. Up Notting Hill, down the slums of Notting Dale, along the High Street, beyond Hammersmith, and through Shepherd's ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... leaning up against the trunk of the willow and looked out upon the plain, over which a uniform hum could be heard, the profoundly reassured activity of a sunny work-day. This made him sad and discouraged. He had a disagreeably distinct feeling that he himself was uninteresting and commonplace. The girls fell in love with others, unusual experiences existed for others; and even his sleek, pale-blond hair, his round face, his light-blue eyes seemed to cause him woe. And suddenly a very remote ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... to the highly civilised statement of scientific fact. I think the machine, which is the intelligent and respectable end, should be preserved, if still it exists, at South Kensington or in the Louvre, along with the earlier monuments of the Christian slope. As for that uninteresting and disreputable end, official nineteenth-century art, it can be studied in a hundred public galleries and in annual exhibitions all over the world. It is the mouldy and therefore the obvious end. The spirit that came to ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... Batuta crossed the Arabian Desert a second time, and took up his residence in Mecca for the space of three years. His account of the voyage along the eastern coast of Africa, as far south as Quiloa, is brief and uninteresting; but on his return he visited Oman, of which province he gives us the first authentic account. From the Pearl Islands in the Persian Gulf, he bent his way once more across Arabia to Mecca, whence he crossed ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... the Barnacle fowl, it may be an addendum, not uninteresting to your correspondent "W.B. MacCabe," to add to his extract from Giraldus another from Hector Boece, History of Scotland, "imprentit be Thomas Davidson, prenter to the Kyngis nobyll grace [James VI.]." He observes, that the opinion of some, that the "Claik geis growis on treis be the nebbis, is ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... in his carved chair in the Jacobean dining-room. He felt strangely old and dull. The portraits of beautiful women by Lawrence and Reynolds and Raeburn, which had often seemed like real company to him, looked remote and uninteresting. He fancied something cold and almost unfriendly in their expression, as if they were staring through him or beyond him. They cared nothing for his principles, his hopes, his disappointments, his successes; they belonged to another world, in which he had ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... reflect that though, after we die, we cease to be familiar with ourselves, we shall nevertheless become immediately familiar with many other histories compared with which our present life must then seem intolerably uninteresting. ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... foster children were some animals which he had had as pets, whose habits he had carefully studied. One was a Gila monster from the plains of Arizona, another was a horned owl, the third was a rat, and the fourth was an opossum. If you can imagine more uninteresting subjects than these you are more imaginative than myself, and yet he thrilled me and held three thousand people in breathless interest. Oh, my brethren, if I believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and as a Savior able not only to ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... to Rhoneland's too frequent. But whatever may have passed between him and Kate, and even if they did occasionally meet in the street and stop to speak, and sometimes to hold conversations which were neither short nor uninteresting to themselves, that is a matter between themselves with which we have nothing to do. Certain it is, however, that as Ned cooled off in his intimacy with Rhoneland, he appeared to rise in the old man's estimation; and he grew ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... plan is not closely followed in the new additions and suburbs. This uniformity in plan, combined with the level ground and the style of buildings first erected, gave to the city an extremely monotonous and uninteresting appearance, but with its growth in wealth and population, greater diversity and better taste in architecture ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... had been coupled with Maxime Dalahaide's. She had a good voice and a pretty enough face, but she would not have succeeded in Paris, people whispered, if Maxime had not helped her. I had spoken to him of this girl, and he had denied caring for her. She was a very ordinary, uninteresting creature, apart from her beauty, he said; but she had been friendless and in hard luck, and as he was half English himself, he had done what he could to aid a lonely and deserving young countrywoman, that was all. ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... than to agree with Doctor Johnson, that Miranda's slumbers were perfectly to be accounted for without the coat. Mr. Collier does not seem to know that a deeper and heavier desire to sleep follows upon the overstrained exercise of excited attention than on the weariness of a dull and uninteresting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... this work, the object of the author has been to render the knowledge of Plants entertaining and useful, not only to Botanists, but to those who have hitherto deemed it a difficult and uninteresting science. He has endeavoured to ascertain of what countries the vegetables now cultivated are natives, the earliest accounts of their cultivation, and how far they have improved by attention, or degenerated by neglect; also ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... so, my own mother. I am not ill, only lazy, and that you were not wont to encourage; my eyes would close, spite of all my efforts. But why should you have the uninteresting task of watching ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... sail between low and uninteresting shores brought us from the mouth of the Willamette to Fort Vancouver, on the Washington-Territory side of the river. Here we debarked for the night, making our way, in an ambulance sent for us from the post, a distance of two minutes' ride, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... elevate. Garrick give Strength and Majesty to the Scene. Let us soften at the keen Distress of a Belvidera; let our Souls rise with the Dignity of an Elizabeth; let us tremble at the wild Madness of a Lear;[F] but let us not Yawn at the Stupidity of uninteresting Characters. ...
— Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, Written by Mr. David Malloch (1763) • James Boswell, Andrew Erskine and George Dempster
... an inch during the year. The rainfall is about 130 inches annually. It is most abundant in January, February and March, and at the change of the monsoon, and there is enough all the year round to keep vegetation in beauty. Here, on uninteresting cleared land with a featureless foreground and level mangrove swamps for the middle distance, it must be terribly monotonous to have no change of seasons, no hope of the mercury falling below 80 degrees in the daytime, or of a bracing wind, or of ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... them in readiness for my arrival. The men have been selecting sweethearts instead; thus I must wait here tomorrow, that being the "Soog" or market day, when I shall purchase my camels and milch goats. The banks of the river very uninteresting—flat, desert, and mimosa bush. The soil is not so rich as on the banks of the Blue Nile—the dhurra (grain) is small. The Nile is quite two miles wide up to this point, and the high-water mark is not more than five feet above the present level. The banks shelve ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... all, don't think of coming out to this place which makes you miserable, and where you can't work. What a queer menage you must be at the Abbey now! You and the Star who has risen from the ocean—she ought to have been called Venus—tete-a-tete, and the, I gather, rather feeble and uninteresting old gentleman in bed upstairs. I should like to see you when you didn't know. Why don't you invent a machine to enable people at a distance to see as well as to hear each other? It would be very popular and bring Society ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... a burnt-sacrifice on the altar; until we reach the present time, when, although the manner of its worship has changed, the old idolatry remains in spirit the same. One or two anecdotes illustrative of the passion for gold worship may not prove uninteresting. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... bicycle skirt, and on the shelf there is a pile of bedding. There is no trap door leading into either subterranean or overhead apartments. In fact, there is nothing else, except a chair. It's very uninteresting." ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... appeared for thirty or forty or fifty years, it would be interesting to watch the gradual changes of aspect from the age of twenty, or even of thirty or forty, to that of threescore and ten. The face might be an uninteresting one; still, as sharing the inevitable changes wrought by time, it would be worth looking at as it passed through the curve of life,—the vital parabola, which betrays itself in the symbolic changes of the features. ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... footways, which are always so well worth threading out in England, leading the pedestrian into picturesque and characteristic scenes, when the highroad would show him nothing except what was commonplace and uninteresting. Now the gables of the old manor-house appeared before them, rising amidst the hereditary woods, which doubtless dated from a time beyond the days which Middleton fondly recalled, when his ancestors had walked beneath their shade. On each side of them were thickets and copses of fern, amidst which ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... there is to my uninteresting history. I came here as a candidate for this church. For the first time in my whole life I was beginning to taste real happiness. But no sooner had I taken my first breath of independence than I saw I must fight to hold the ground I had ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... do. It is, or should be, sufficient that Le Cousin Pons is a very agreeable book, more pathetic if less "grimy," than its companion, full of its author's idiosyncracy, and characteristic of his genius. It may not be uninteresting to add that Le Cousin Pons was originally called Le Deux Musiciens, or Le Parasite, and that the change, which is a great improvement, was due to ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... a long, gently rising, but hitherto uninteresting road, brings the posting traveller suddenly upon the rich, well-wooded, beautifully undulating vale of Fordingford, whose fine green pastures are brightened with occasional gleams of a meandering river, flowing through the centre of the ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... excite his attention and give him pleasure, and thus make lighter the difficult task of learning to read. The ruggedness of this task has often been increased by the use of disconnected sentences, or lessons as dry and uninteresting as finger exercises on the piano. It is a sign of promise that the demand for reading matter of interest to the child has come from teachers. I have endeavored to meet this requirement in ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... know; and if it might be wrong, and isn't, it's a score to you; and if it might be wrong, and is—as so often happens—well, you know yourself, adventures sometimes turn out wrong that you didn't think were going to, but seldom, or never, the uninteresting kind, and——" ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... impatiently. The boys always seemed to get a great deal of fun out of Weaver Jimmie's tempestuous love-affair, but he found it very uninteresting. He slipped under the table, clambered upon the bench beside Hamish, and stuck his curly head between the book and the young man's face; for he had long ago discovered this to be the only effectual means of bringing Hamish back to actualities. Such a proceeding would not have been safe with ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... notes which I received from him at this time,—some of them relating to our joint engagements in society, and others to matters now better forgotten,—I shall select a few that (as showing his haunts and habits) may not, perhaps, be uninteresting. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... this is written, illustrates this rule, first by doing nothing to increase the number of houses, second by smiting the greedy landlord on the hip, third by investigating the profiteering builders and working men. For a constructive policy deals with remote and uninteresting factors, while a greedy landlord, or a profiteering ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... home and live in this exposed manner, if they were not compelled to do so. Second, he desired to find out why people who had the privilege of living in large cities came of their own accord into the uninteresting country, anyhow. Even when explanations were offered, the problem seemed still ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... her children, who, starting thence, have found name and fame elsewhere. The scope of the present work will not allow of anything move than a few brief notes, and those entirely of local bearing, but a history of the Birmingham stage would not be uninteresting reading. ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... copied quite generally into our own leading newspapers, it may be fairly presumed that most of my readers are familiar with the prominent incidents in his long and honorable public career. As a speaker he is decidedly prosy, with a hesitating utterance, a monotonous voice, and an uninteresting manner. Yet he is always heard with respectful attention by the House, in consideration of his valuable public services, his intrinsic good sense, and his unselfish patriotism. On the question at issue, he took ground midway between Lord Palmerston ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... that good chance was denied to the young couple, doubtless in order that this story might be written, in which numbers of their wonderful adventures are narrated—adventures which could never have occurred to them if they had been housed and sheltered under the comfortable uninteresting forgiveness of Miss Crawley. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... force of character, were weak and wandering, or stared blankly at the judge; her over-sized head, broad at the base, terminating in the scantiest possible light colored braid in the middle of her narrow shoulders, was as hard and uninteresting as the wooden spheres that topt the railing against which she sat. The jury, who for six weeks had had her described to them by the plaintiffs as an arch, wily enchantress, who had sapped the failing reason of Jim Byways, revolted to a man. There was something so appallingly gratuitous ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... they are allowed to combat until one has become victorious over all the rest. Why? Because the object is only to replace the last queen. Now, provided that among the worms reared as queens, only one succeeds, the fate of the others is uninteresting to the bees, whereas, during the period of swarming, it is necessary to preserve a succession of queens, for conducting the different colonies; and to ensure the safety of the queens, it is necessary to avert ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... will not be uninteresting to observe how far the influence of a great commander may extend. St. Vincent and Pownoll, who were brought up under Boscawen, and received their lieutenant's commissions from him, contributed materially to form ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... contemplation of those supreme wonders of the universe which mathematical astronomy has laid open. The grammar of a language is defined to be the art of reading and writing that language with propriety. The study of its elements is dry and uninteresting; and, while the teacher dwells with care upon the merits of the text, he should also lift the veil from that which is hidden, and lead his pupils to appreciate those riches of learning which the knowledge of a language may confer ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... doctor had sent him to a specialist. Today the specialist, after various laboratory tests, had told him most disconcerting things about the state of very necessary, but hitherto wholly uninteresting, organs of ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... Fellows saw it, and her method was to classify her acquaintances according to their systems, to keep them in their proper bundles, and to give every one the treatment he or she was accustomed to receive. And since all things British are now changing and passing away, it may not be uninteresting to record the classification Mrs. Garstein Fellows adopted. First she set apart as most precious and desirable, and requiring the most careful treatment, the "court dowdies "—for so it was that the dignity and quiet good taste that radiated ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... object—contemptible indeed in itself, but truly important and attractive as the means of gratifying those I love. No other consideration could induce me to spend another day of my life in objects in themselves uninteresting, and which afford neither instruction nor amusement. They become daily more disgusting to me; in some degree, perhaps, owing to my state of health, which is much as when I left New-York. The least fatigue brings a ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... 1820, contain "A History of the Confederation." The course of public opinion on a most important point—the nature of the connexion which ought to be maintained between these United States—may be in some degree perceived in the progress of this instrument, and may not be entirely uninteresting to the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall |
