"Dull" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gently. "I am dull of wit, I know. And you have often laughed at my superstitions and old family beliefs, whether religious or otherwise. They are strange—I admit that. And I shall die in the Church, and take my chances on the future, for I have ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... see it till all was done, then she was led triumphantly in. It was pretty—and queer—perhaps queerer than pretty. The walls were green-gray, the carpet gray-green, the furniture pale yellow, almost white, with brass handles and hinges, and lines of dull red tiles set into the wood. Every picture on the walls had a meaning, Miss ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... the beauty, "I do like him, exceedingly,—what I have seen of him. He will do—for a month or so. People are frequently quite charming at first, like fresh bouquets,—but dull and tame enough when the dew ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... while the unhappiness of the past seemed to have faded from her mind. She spoke little of Paris, less of the dull pension, and never of Pasquale. She bore towards him an animal's silent animosity against a human being who has done it an unforgettable injury. On the other hand, as I have since discovered, she was slowly developing, and had begun ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... said Mrs. Makely, "is that I like to have my husband belong to his club. It's a nice place for him in summer; and very often in winter, when I'm dull, or going out somewhere that he hates, he can go down to his club and smoke a cigar, and come home just about the time I get in, and it's much better than worrying through the evening with a book. He hates books, poor Dick!" ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... there be any music here, I trust it will not fail, like notes Of May-birds, when the warning year Abates their summer-wearied throats. Shame on us, if we drudge once more As dull and ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... in the cabal of "The Importants," of whose jargon he had retained some smattering, which, together with some expressions he had perfectly acquired from Madame de Vendome, formed a language that would have puzzled a Cato. His speech was short and stupidly dull, and the more so because he obscured it by affectation. He thought himself very sufficient, and pretended to a great deal more wit than came to his share. He was brave enough in his person, and outdid the common Hectors by being so upon ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... this dull-witted young lord, "I shall count the hours until you go to Spain. You will send me some 'touru', for I am very fond ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... books of minute investigation were every month being published by the dozens in the Fatherland. There was not a professor who could resist the temptation of constructing from the simplest detail an enormous volume written in a dull, involved style. The people, therefore, appreciating that these near-sighted authors were incapable of any genial vision of comradeship, called them Sitzfleisch haben, because of the very long sittings which their works represented. That was what this cousin ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Durandal shines as he falls on his foeman's head; the sunshine is all round them in the day, and the night passes quickly; sparks fly from the weapons as they strike one another, and light up the very shadows with a dull flash. Take again La Rose de l'Infante. Everything round the little princess is bright: 'le profond jardin rayonnant et fleuri,' 'un grand palais comme au fond d'une gloire,' 'de clairs viviers,' 'des paons etoiles.' The very grass, too, seems to ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... started, with words of protest trembling on his lips; but, as his look turned on his little sister, as she now leaned drowsily against the girl's knees, he stifled them unspoken, while a spasm of pain crossed his worn face. With a dull nod of acquiescence he held out his arms to receive the child, whom Rose had lifted and wrapped in a blanket from her little bed that had been ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... by caring more for all children because she loves one so deeply. Even lovers, after the first absorption of newly-discovered joy, must learn to share their happiness and the happiness of their home with others if it is not to grow hard and dull. And friends may easily estimate the worth of their friendship by the measure with which it has humanized their relations ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... by enabling the investigator to know nature under a fresh aspect that electricity rises to its highest office. The laboratory routine of ascertaining the conductivity, polarisability, and other electrical properties of matter is dull and exacting work, but it opens to the student new windows through which to peer at the architecture of matter. That architecture, as it rises to his view, discloses one law of structure after another; what in a first ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... two letters from Madge, and had answered them with a line. She gave rather generously of her correspondence and her letters were never dull. In the last one she had asked him to join her on ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... dusty automobile whose driver, a boy of eighteen or twenty, with a torn hat, eyed her with dull curiosity. ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... I kept my promise," he said. "There is not a week that we don't drive half-a-dozen miles, and sometimes a dozen, to take part in a dull dinner." ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... of his life and principles. But meanness will not be baulked of its victims. The hatred of all excellence which made Caligula try to put down the memory of great men rages, though less openly, in the minds of many. They delight to degrade human life into that dull and barren plain "in which every molehill is a mountain, and every thistle a forest-tree." Great men are as small in their eyes as they are said to be in the eyes of their valets; and there are ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... Negroes are taking but a small part in their creation, glory and profit. If there are men among us who can be the means of bringing better conditions to the great Negro masses, and who can weed out the slow, dull, plodding process of evolution, they should not be denied the opportunity. The masses seem to be hedged about by a wall of indifference. Negroes have such little respect for their own kind that the thing is becoming proverbial. Now they pretend otherwise ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... her champion had dimmed a little by evening, however. Walter had seemed so very quiet and dull the rest ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... what your mind imagines of the warm, reddish tints of the Brown Mountains of Cervantes, where the shepherds and shepherdesses of that pastoral scene passed their happy, sunny hours. The same deep feeling of repose is shown in all the half-developed objects of the hill-side, in the dull, sleepy tint of the summer air, and in the warm, motionless haze that wraps sky, land, tree, water, and cloud. It is quite wonderful by how few tints and touches, by what almost shadowy and indistinct forms, a whole world of poetry can be breathed into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... before me in all its ugliness—The Thing born not of hate but of the mere love of excitement in people wearied by the dull routine and the reliable, plodding respectability of that countryside. The crime of Amos had been a great help in its way but as a topic it was worn out and would remain so until ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... spent half a dozen hours apart. We lived in the country, winter and summer, seeing but three or four people. I had a succession of tutors, and a library to browse about in; I assure you I am a tremendous scholar. It was a dull life for a growing boy, and a duller life for a young man grown, but I never knew it. I was perfectly happy." He spoke of his father at some length, and with a respect which I privately declined to emulate. Mr. Pickering had been, to my sense, a frigid egotist, unable to conceive of any ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... glow around Gaddon began to color. From a weird phosphorescent whiteness it changed to a dull but intense yellow. And with the change, a strange feeling crept ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... my boy," said Josh, with his grave good humor of the great man tolerating the antics of a mountebank, "you'll appreciate it wasn't the subject that was dull, but the ears. For the day'll come when everybody'll be thinking and talking about me most ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... noblemen, and furious, hard-drinking country gentlemen. If these were, in a sense, the more conspicuous types, there were other types very different and very admirable. Apart from the great mass of the people, living their dull daily lives, doing their dull daily tasks, quiet, ignorant, unconscious that they {21} could or should ever have any say in the disposition of their existences, there were both in town and country plenty ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... glory, was spread in its most vivid hues beneath his feet. Still he could not perceive the body of the sun, although the light behind him was dazzling; but the cloud of haze lying dense in that deep dell that separates the hill from the rocks of Salisbury, and the dull shadow of the hill mingling with that cloud made the dell a pit of darkness. On that shadowy cloud was the lovely rainbow formed, spreading itself on a horizontal plain, and having a slight and brilliant shade of all the colours of the heavenly bow, but all of ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... times but shyness probably had something to do with that. In spite of a certain self-possession he was diffident in most company, but, though he may have been subject to those spells when words do not rise and the mind seems wrapped in a kind of dull cloth which everyone dumbly stares at, instead of looking through—he would easily get off a rejoinder upon occasion. When a party of visitors came to Walden and some one asked Thoreau if he found it lonely there, ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... The result of this attitude of the preacher is to make the pulpit studiously, and even eagerly, attractive and interesting. This virtue has its corresponding fault. The American preacher of to-day is little in danger of being dull; his peril lies at the other extreme. His temptation is rather to the feebleness of extravagant statement, and to an overstrained and theatric rhetoric such as some persons find so attractive in the discourses of Dr. Talmage, and others ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... and that it was as much as his place was worth to venture even to knock at the door. So, yawning heavily, he dozed on his bench in the hall,—woke with a start and dozed again,—while the clock slowly ticked away the minutes till with a dull clang the hour struck One. Then on again went the steady and wearisome tick-tick of the pendulum, for a quarter of an hour, half an hour,—and three- quarters,—till the utterly fatigued valet was about to knock down a few walking-sticks ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... with that eloquence and with that melody of voice which few could bear unmoved; and even the dull ear and the hard heart of the official who heard him were for one brief moment moved as by the pathos of a song sung by some ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... said: "People, you have recovered from the errors which led you astray; you have recalled your kings and your priests," they replied: "We have nothing to do with those prattlers." And when some one said: "People, forget the past, work and obey," they arose from their seats and a dull rumbling could be heard. It was the rusty and notched saber in the corner of the cottage chimney. Then they hastened to add: "Then keep quiet, at least; if no one harms you, do not seek to harm." Alas! they ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... reproof that was preparing. What was my agreeable surprise to see the old gentleman standing at the stile, with his hands in his pockets, surveying the whole scene with evident satisfaction! And how dull I must have been, not to have known till my friend the grandfather (who, by- the-bye, said he had been a wonderful cricketer in his time) told me, that it was the clergyman himself who had established the whole thing: that it was his field they played ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... in a rather thick voice. "You know that it's pretty dull here, except in these September days. You must make the most of them. Have you had ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... so something whistled past my ear, so closely as almost to touch it—and struck with a dull thud upon the ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... for already there was a throng before the door. The music had started up, and half a block away you could hear the dull "broom, broom" of a cello, with the squeaking of two fiddles which vied with each other in intricate and altitudinous gymnastics. Seeing the throng, Marija abandoned precipitately the debate concerning the ancestors of her coachman, and, springing from ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... the winter of affliction and adversity, that it may grow up stronger, and produce a better harvest in the end. As an abstract truth, how clear this is! But, at the first chilling blast, how the spirit sinks; and when the sky grows dull and ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... words, but, like the torment of dropping water, they had their effect at last. The girl sat up in bed again, her fingers pressed to her temples, her eyes staring, listening, listening. Yes—they were the same eternal taps and words. With the dull desperation of fatigue, she got out of bed and ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... than others, and at last I got into a very dull one, about the vine, and it had a good deal of Greek in it, and ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... as something overbeautiful for daily use, even more than as something dull, inactive, over-prudent; if vice, on the other hand, is conceived as easy, brilliant, gay, gallantly reckless, in opposition to the too ethereal or merely stupid and prosaic aspects of life (though in reality seldom do the dissipated and those who prey on the vices of mankind possess ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... out, but it was dead. The old man gazed on it, helplessly weeping, for some time and then got a large piece of brown paper in which he wrapped up the body of his favourite; he tied it neatly with a piece of string and, placing it in his cart, went homeward with a heavy heart. The day was dull, the gutters were full of cabbage stalks and the air resounded ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... it. It is the worst kind of policy to be constantly blaming, chiding them, and positively cruel, bordering on criminality even, to suggest to them that they are mentally deficient or peculiar, that they are stupid and dull, and that they will probably never amount to ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... its predecessors, lifted the inert body on its crest, and flung it contemptuously high up upon the shore. Then the waters swept back and left the two children shivering alone on the strand: behind them were the dull, dead heaps of sea-weed, and at their feet a black mass of clothing. The children clung together in silent awe. Neither of them had ever seen a dead body. Hitherto death had been an abstraction, but now they felt themselves face ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... sound to reach me in reply was the low metallic hum of the live wire between his ear and mine. And then, as I sat gazing distractedly at my four safe walls, with the receiver still pressed to my head, there came a single groan, followed by the dull and dreadful crash of a human body falling ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... Indian another glance when she had taken but a step. He grunted and held up something in his hand—something that shone with a dull yellow light. It was a small, oval, gold locket which she had always worn in her bosom. She sprang and ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... Dull eyes and a greenish tinge of the whites of the eyes point toward digestive disturbances due to an oversupply of food. The green color comes from bile thrown into the blood when the liver is overworked. The ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... hear, between the thunder of the big bombs, the dull report of exploding cordite. Meanwhile the dark sky was resplendent with the red glow ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... pleaded. A fragile thing, her lightest wish was heeded. Would she pluck roses? they must first be shorn, By careful hands, of every hateful thorn. And loving eyes must scan the pathway where Her feet may tread, to see no stones are there. She'll grow dull here, in this secluded nook, Unless you aid me in the pleasant task Of entertaining. Drop in with your book— Read, talk, sing for her sometimes. What I ask, Do once, to please me: then there'll be ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... am by no means going to leave you to the reading of cyclopA|dias. The vice of cyclopA|dias is that they are dull. What is done for this passage of Macaulay in the lists above is only preliminary. It could be easily done in three hours' time, if you went carefully to work. And when you have done it, you have taught yourself a good deal about your ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... once. If you went back it's just possible that into the fellow's dull mind might steal a ghost of suspicion. I'm ready to take my turn now, though I hate the damned inactivity. I am a presumed illiterate. I struggle over the printed page—and with me loafing in his office he would chat away over his ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... and the number of the civilized, who return to the forests in order to become Cimarronese, is, on the other hand, very inconsiderable indeed—still smaller than in Luzon, as the natives, from the dull, almost vegetating life which they lead, are not easily brought into such straitened circumstances as to be compelled to leave their village, which, still more than in Luzon, is all the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... have a good memory Air of science calculated to deceive the vulgar And scarcely a woman; for your answers are very short Bad habit of talking very indiscreetly before others Beaumarchais sent arms to the Americans Because he is fat, he is thought dull and heavy Can make a Duchess a beggar, but cannot make a beggar a Duchess Canvassing for a majority to set up D'Orleans Clergy enjoyed one-third the national revenues Clouds—you may see what you please in ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... down—as a matter of fact, he and his wife had invested nearly a thousand pounds of their hard-earned savings in their relation's hotel, the Villa du Lac. If Madame Bailey really wanted to leave salubrious, beautiful Paris for the summer, why should she not go to Lacville instead of to dull, puritanical, stupid Switzerland? ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... men. Of my own free will I give you wit, (O man so sorely in need of it!) And happiness; and the flame that hath dwindled On this dull hearth shall be rekindled. But this you must swear: To will, and to dare, To seek the spirit and slay the sense; And for this hour To give me power To lead you in silent obedience, Though I bade you fall ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... dull-green lattices, little gateways with roses, white enamel with cute little diamond panes of glass for windows, inviting bowers of artificial flowers and dim yellow lights. It makes you feel like a sybarite just to see it. It's a cosmetic ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... these remarks of hers, here and there. She had a very bright, alert way in talking, and now she added, easily, a sentence or two to the effect that it would be a dull world if we all held precisely the same views. She did the thing well, and in a few minutes I found myself chatting away with her in the most friendly manner. She managed with the utmost deftness to remove all ground for my embarrassment regarding my position. She talked for a while ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... that it would have been very easy for me to open the coffin with any sort of a tool. I looked about me and saw a hatchet and a couple of spades lying near the fence. I took one of the latter, put its flat end between the boards—the old coffin fell apart with a dull crackling protest. ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... my object to write a summary of the literature of antiquity. It would be as dull as a catalogue, or a dictionary, or a compendium of universal history for the use of schools in a single volume. And it would be as profitless. My aim is simply to show that the old civilization can boast of its ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... a valiant warrior, and was an admirable second to an enterprising leader; but he was altogether without initiative, and, except when excited by danger, was dull and silent. Although all esteemed him and honoured him for his strength and bravery, they felt that he would be a poor substitute indeed for the ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... in former days. These Janissaries were a strange, distorted resemblance of the knights themselves, for they were bound in a strict brotherhood of arms, and were not married, so as to care for nothing but each other, the Sultan, and the honor of their troop. They were not dull, apathetic Turks, but chiefly natives of Circassia and Georgia, the land where the human race is most beautiful and nobly formed. They were stolen from their homes, or, too often, sold by their parents when too young to remember their Christian baptism, and ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it! The thing would be ridiculous! We have no time nor inclination to break in green hands, besides, we've got help enough at present; it's almost our dull season." ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... slender annual growing to a height of 2 feet. The stems are creeping below, erect above, and with roots in the lower internodes of the decumbent part of the stem, smooth, dull green or partly purplish. ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... placed over the region of the heart, certain sounds are heard, which recur with great regularity. First is heard a comparatively long, dull sound, then a short, sharp sound, then a pause, and then the long, dull sound again. The first sound is caused mainly by the tricuspid and mitral valves, and the second is the result of sudden closure ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... might be the blood pounding through his ears, so strange and uncanny it seemed. Then, all at once there came a puff, as if a long breath had been drawn, like one lifting a heavy weight, and then a dull thud. A brief silence and more scratching in soft ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... cordiality, and entered into a long discourse with them, promising them the assistance of himself and order, and received from them a profusion of thanks. After a time Murtagh, observing, in a jocular tone, that consulting was dull work, proposed a game of cards, and the leaders, though somewhat surprised, he went to a closet, and taking out a pack of cards, laid it upon the table; it was a strange dirty pack, and exhibited ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... occasion far away to the north) seemed to watch over me. For all these reasons I venture to claim the indulgence of the public and the kindness of my friends, for these recollections of days in South Africa, in which shade and sunshine have been strangely mingled, and which to me have never been dull. To sum up, I have always found that life is what you make it, and have often proved the truth of the saying, "Adventures to ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... others advance. Let me not, therefore, be understood as expecting any immediate results, were it in my power to bring these matters promptly and prominently before the nation. I fully know I should not be heard, were the attempt made; for nothing is more dull than the ear of him who believes himself already in possession of all the knowledge and virtue of his age, and peculiarly entitled, in right of his possessions, to the exclusive control of human affairs. The most that I should expect from them, were all the facts published to-morrow, ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... you, Vandal guns of dull intent! We lacked till now our Beauty's monument Twice hallowed o'er ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... Or would you stare out upon the world into which you were contemptuously tossed with dull, hating, revengeful eyes, suspicious of all men, hopeless of good, but resolved to get even, so far as you might, by plying the evil trades which your life of slavery had taught you? Would you behave like Christ upon the Cross, or like an ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... an instant's compunction. "It does—it does indeed," he assured her. "It concerns Miss Elfrida Bell very much, in a way. Ah!" he went on impatiently, as she still sat silent, "why are you so unnaturally dull, Janet? I've finished that young woman's portrait, and it is more—satisfactory—than I ever in my life dared hope that any ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... over, the Lord our God will send for her, by that angel that taketh no bribe to delay execution of His mandate.' And then I knew his meaning: my darling was to die. But the steps of the angel were very slow. The autumn came and went. The child seemed languid and dull, and the Lord King offered a chasuble of samite to the blessed Edmund of Pontigny ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... unusually strong. The brightness of the fire seemed subdued. It was like a huge bonfire smothered by some great covering, penetrated by different, widely separated points of flame. These corners of flame flew up, curling in the wind, and then died down. Thus the scene was constantly changing from dull light to dark. There came a moment when a blacker shade overspread the wide area of flickering gleams and then obliterated them. Night enfolded the scene. The moon peeped a curved yellow rim from under broken clouds. To all appearances ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... and I bought it very cheap at a pawnbroker's, and there was—he, he, he!—a tarnished shilling in the waistcoat pocket. To think that the pawnbroker shouldn't have known there was a shilling in it! I knew it! I felt it when I was examining the quality. Oh, what a dull dog of a pawnbroker! It was a lucky suit too, this bottle-green. The very day I put it on first, old Lord Mallowford was burnt to death in his bed, and all the post-obits fell in. I'll be married in the bottle-green. Peg. Peg ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... I have been dull to-day, haunted by the thought of how much there is that I would fain know, and how little I can hope to learn. The scope of knowledge has become so vast. I put aside nearly all physical investigation; to me it is naught, or only, at moments, a matter of idle curiosity. This ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... he saw a woman, who had entered bearing some articles of food for his morning's repast. In a moment Russell descended from the lofty heights of imagination to the dull realities of a cold world, and, in plain language, began to feel rather sheepish at being discovered in such a frame of mind. Nay, this very frame of mind, this new sense of personal dignity as general, made his ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... however, was slight, owing to lack of practice and experience. She moved over to the bed, trying first to force her own darting rays into the opaque, dull cloud surrounding the other; then seeking a better way-for this had no results—-she slipped somehow inside the mist, getting behind it, down at the very source. From here she forced her own light through, mixing her beams of coloured radiance with the ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... picture I have seen, is a dull-faced, shallow boy, smooth-haired, and provincial; he had no money nor employment, except that he clerked for a druggist a while, until he knew Wilkes Booth, who looked at him only once, and bought his ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... no answer, but glided out of the room and slid away to her own apartment. She bolted the door and drew her curtains close. Then she threw herself on the floor, and fell into a dull, slow ache of passion, without tears, without words, almost without thoughts. So she remained, perhaps, for a half-hour, at the end of which time it seemed that her passion had become a sullen purpose. She arose, and, looking cautiously round, went to the hearth, which was ornamented ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... misses of Albion see nothing in the dull inhabitants of their brumous isle, which can compare with the ardour and vivacity of the children of the South. We bring our sunshine with us; we are Frenchmen, and accustomed to conquer. Were it not for this affair of the heart, and my determination ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Karl. I understand, and I will be good. I will be better than Hannah. I will be better than yourself, than the saints, even. I will admire all things. Behold the ravishing country! The wonder of that sky! Not Italy, not Spain has such a dull gray color! The beauty of the dirty streets! The charm of the crowded street-cars! Only five cents a ride, sitting upon the laps of others! I will no longer sew on Sunday. I will never ask for beer. I will eat every morning ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... on it a skeleton; a dull, grey sky, in which an Eagle soars, full-fed, it seems, from the flesh ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... chains and lozenges and balls of white and blue, purple and pink lightning, followed by the deafening crash and roll of thunder, the dreadful roaring of the mighty wind, and the torrents of plashing rain. At times was heard in the distance the dull gurgling of the swollen river, interrupted by explosions, as slips of earth-bank fell headlong into the stream. But once more the Jogi raised his arm and all was still: nature lay breathless, as if awaiting the ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... projected from the midrib, so that a cross section would be nearly in the form of [Symbol: )O( turned 90 degrees.]. In an orange leaf presenting this appearance the lower surface of one lamina was, as usual, dull in colour, while the upper surface of the subjacent lamina was likewise dull; hence the impression might arise that this was an instance of the adhesion of two leaves back to back, but the petioles were not twisted, as they must have been had two leaves thus ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... meant it in his Martyrdome? Where is the Classis, and the Assembly, the Lay-elder; all that geare of Scottish discipline, and the fine new Trinkets of Reformation? Were not all these taken out of their hand, while now they were in the height of their pride and triumph? And their dull Generall made to serve the execution of their Sovereign, and then to be turn'd off himself, as a property no more of use to their designes? Their riches and their strength in which they trusted, and the Parliament which they even idoliz'd, ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... should think. They are relics of the grandeur of Genoa's palmy days—the days when she was a great commercial and maritime power several centuries ago. These houses, solid marble palaces though they be, are in many cases of a dull pinkish color, outside, and from pavement to eaves are pictured with Genoese battle scenes, with monstrous Jupiters and Cupids, and with familiar illustrations from Grecian mythology. Where the paint has yielded ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... much better it was to hang in the cold wind upon the pier, to go down with Bob Bain among the roots of the staging, to be all day in a boat coiling a wet rope and shouting orders—not always very wise—than to be warm and dry, and dull, and dead-alive, in the most comfortable office. And Wick itself had in those days a note of originality. It may have still, but I misdoubt it much. The old minister of Keiss would not preach, in these degenerate times, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a credulity about the action of drugs, a belief in their supreme control and exactness of effect which amounts to superstition, and fills many of us with amazement. This form of idolatry is at times the dull-witted child of laziness, or it is a queer form of self-esteem, which sets the idol of self-made opinion on too firm a base to be easily shaken by the rudeness of facts. But, if you watched these men, you would find them changing their idols. Such too profound belief ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... streets And the red sun on the houses, And the books read A million times ago. Come, we must go far Away from the city. Let us lie down In this gentle meadow. Let us raise, threatening yet helpless Against the mindless, large, Deadly blue, shiny skies, The fleshless, dull eyes, The cursed ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... know. None of them knows. I am wiser than all the rest, for I have learned what a soul is. Eyes cannot see it—fingers cannot feel it, but he who possess it knows that it is there for it fills his whole breast with a great, wonderful love and worship for something infinitely finer than man's dull senses can gauge—something that guides him into paths far above the plain of soulless beasts ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... vacuums, as you know, We, therefore, will descend below, And fill, with dainties nice and light, The vacuum in your appetite. Besides, good wine and dainty fare Are sometimes known to lighten care; Nay, man is often brisk or dull, As the keen stomach's ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... The abbot began by depreciating the beauty of the building, remarking that Michelangelo's figures in the Sacristy did not interest him, and on his way up the stairs, he chanced to look out of a window and caught sight of Brunelleschi's dome. When the dull ecclesiastic began to say that this dome did not merit the admiration which it raised, the exasperated Tasso, who was loyal to his friends, could stand no more. Il Lasca recounts what happened: "Pulling the abbot backward with force, he made him tumble down the staircase, and he took good ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... loomed swiftly larger, he shut off the space-control, and set the coils for full charge, while the ship entered the planet's atmosphere in a screaming dive, still at a speed of better than a hundred miles a second. But this speed was quickly damped as the ship shot high over broad oceans to the dull green of land ahead in the daylit zone. Observations made from various distances by means of the space-control, thus going back in time, show that the planet had a day of approximately forty hours, the diameter was nearly nine thousand ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... whispered, pointing to the dull glow of dead bodies burning somewhere near, and laughing till her teeth flashed ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... such cases were dull. No really dramatic moments. The book-keeping of The Orb and all the rest of them was certainly a burlesque revelation but the public did not care for revelations of that kind. Dull dog that de Barral—he grumbled. He could not or would not take the trouble to characterize for me the appearance ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... him, with a kind of solemn yet eager scrutiny. "I was afraid," she said, after some hesitation, speaking still in a dull monotone, whose strangely sorrowful accents were marked and impressive, and in a voice whose tone was constrained and stiff, but yet had something in it which deepened the General's perplexity—"I was afraid that perhaps you might have witnessed some marks of agitation ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... tutor now at Tracy Park for Jack, but Maude had been transferred to Arthur's care. This was wholly due to Jerry, who alone could have induced him to let Maude share her instruction. Arthur did not care for Maude. She was dull, he said, and would never learn her lessons. But Jerry coaxed so hard that Arthur consented at last, and when Jerry had been with him about three years, Maude became his pupil, and that of Jerry as well, for nearly every day when the lessons were over the two little girls ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... in the middle of a long dull winter the change to Culversham was received by Jane with whole-hearted joy. Miss Abingdon's large staff of servants, all elderly and all over-paid, combined with their mistress to welcome Miss Erskine ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... deep, dull red; his small eyes seemed to recede into his head, and grow deeper and more cunning. He did not speak at all for a moment or two, and when he did, the flush was succeeded by a more ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... so dull and lifeless, Margaret. He cannot understand our impatience." Out of the corner of my eye I saw her crimson to the roots of her hair at this vicious insult. "Off, my man," he added to me, "or I'll prick your bull's hide." ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... all was now the main question, and it was discussed between them for a long time, till the shades of evening came upon them, and the dull dingy chambers became almost dark as they sat there. Mr. Die at first conceived that it would be well that Herbert should stick to the law. What indeed could be more conducive to salutary equanimity in the mind of a young man so singularly circumstanced, than the study of Blackstone, ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... broke out very soon; and three of the little band died on the first day. This rate mounted higher and higher, and at last smallpox broke out. So dismal was the prospect that the men sank into a dull despair. ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... enabled to see a real value in those things which others disregard and overlook. He perceives a difference in cases where inferior capacities see none; as the fine ear for music can distinguish an evident variation in sounds which to another ear more dull seem to be the same. This example will also apply to the eye in ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... stared as he rushed to and fro, hardly heeding the piles of luggage with which railway servants seek to break the dull monotony of a platform promenade. There was French blood in Tressamer: short, dark, thick-necked, yet far from stout in figure, he possessed the strain of sombre passion which runs through the blood of the Celtic races. He could no more ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... this vital point sink home. Only the same dull silence came in reply, and this continued taciturnity seemed to irritate Hovey. When he spoke again, his voice was cold ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... were few and with all due deference to them, extremely dull. At least I could not understand them because in them there did not seem to be anything to understand, and I am quite certain that they did not understand me. More, when they came to learn that I was radical in my views and had written certain "dreadful" and somewhat socialistic ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... buzzed outside on the sunny threshold of the door, making a sleepy sound like the winding of a rustic horn in the golden stillness, as they went forward on tiptoe between the dull red walls of the hall of the Victory, and came into the room beyond, where the Hermes stood alone but for the little ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... the Linnet it appears to sight, And like the Linnet sings from morn till night. A reddish spot upon his rump is seen, Short is his bill, his feathers always clean: When other singing birds are dull or nice, To sing again ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... remained till dinner. He was a servant in the house. He must not forget that. He had been worse things than this, and still he had not forgotten. He had felt the blush of shame, yet he had remembered, and white anger had embossed the dull scars; it was impossible that ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... months. The Iroquois were beginning to let us wander about alone. Chouart there had sewed his thumb up, where an old squaw had hacked at it with a dull shell. The padre's nails, which the Indians tore off in torture, had grown well enough for him to handle a gun. One day we were allowed out to hunt. Chouart brought down three deer, the padre two moose, and I a couple of bear. That night the warriors came ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... leaving Rome, Lucille had complained of a dull headache and chills at night. In France Mrs. Harris was fearful that the summer trip to Italy was not wise, but Leo and her family thought the yacht voyage to Naples would be charming. On the morning of the third day at Marino, Lucille was unable to leave her bed. Leo ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... doctrine deserves to be refuted first), because it stands near to our Vedic system, is supported by somewhat weighty arguments, and has, to a certain extent, been adopted by some authorities who follow the Veda.—But now some dull-witted persons might think that another objection founded on reasoning might be raised against the Vedanta, viz. on the ground of the atomic doctrine. The Sutrakara, therefore, extends to the latter objection the refutation of the former, considering that by the conquest of the most dangerous adversary ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... replied; and then my new friend trotted off, swinging half-a-dozen books at the end of a strap, and I sat at the window wishing that I too could go to school and have a strap to put round my books and swing them, for my life seemed very dull. ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... crest. The roller broke just as it reached the wreck, expending its full force upon her already shattered hull; the black mass was seen to heel almost completely over in the midst of the wildly tossing foam, there was a dull report, almost like that of a gun, a piercing shriek, which rose clearly above the howling of the gale and the babel of the maddened waters, and when the wreck again became visible it was seen that she ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... had a great many people on board, and she was already an hour behind time. The dangerous fog kept the suspense at high pressure; but as the time passed, the excitement gave place to a feeling of dull oppression. Fog is the seaman's worst enemy, and there were many unpleasant possibilities. On the best supposition the ship had gone inshore too far north or south, and now lay somewhere out at sea hooting and heaving the lead, without daring to move. One could imagine ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... notwithstanding God in his wisdome hath permitted to be reuealed from time to time a certaine obscure and misty knowledge, by little and little to allure the mindes of men that way (which els will be dull enough in the zeale of his cause) and thereby to prepare vs vnto a readinesse for the execution of his will against the due time ordeined, of calling those pagans ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... pray; For though you pine your life away With dull complaining breath, Or speed with song and wine each day, Still, still ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... discovery of man's darkness. We have three ways of creeping towards that glorious light of God. First, his own works are like some visible appearances of that invisible and incomprehensible God, and in these we know him, but not what he is in himself. Consider how dark and dull we are in piercing into the hidden natures of things, even below us, as beasts and plants. We behold some effects flow from them, but from what principle these do flow, that we know not. How much less can we apprehend any thing suitable of the divine Majesty, that is infinitely above us, from ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... evening, the magpie was perched upon a projecting bough of her oak, and the cat, who thought the cottage particularly dull that day, had come out for ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... the difference in human types or talents are considerably wasting their time. If they can understand how two coins can count the same though one is bright and the other brown, they might perhaps understand how two men can vote the same though one is bright and the other dull. If, however, they are still satisfied with their solid objection that some men are dull, I can only gravely agree with them, that some men ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... thought of all the stormy days, That fill some lives that tread less favoured ways, How little sunshine through their shadows gleamed, My own dull life had much the brighter seemed; If I had thought of all the eyes that weep Through desolation, and still smiling keep, That see so little pleasure, so much woe, My own had laughed more often long ago; If I had thought how leaden was the weight Adversity lays ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... Away with dull thoughts! Raise your brooding eyes To yonder unclouded azure skies; Look round on the earth, robed in bridal white, All glittering and flashing with diamonds bright, While o'er head, her lover and lord, the sun, Shines brightly as e'er ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... thet when they can't take pleasure in extry smartness in a child, why, they make it up in tracin' resemblances. I suppose they's parental comfort to be took to in all kinds o' babies. I know I've seen some dull-eyed ones thet seemed like ez ef they wasn't nothin' for 'em to ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... gets home to Bill Hatfield's, Bill takes one look at the pup, breaks the big rasp on Dick's head, throws the forehammer at him, an' bids him go back to Jedge Chinn an' tell him that he, Bill, will sally over the first dull day an' p'isen his cattle an' burn his barns. Dick takes the basket full of dog on his arm, an' goes p'intin' for Jedge Chinn. Nacherally, Dick stops at Hickman's tavern so as to mollify his feelin's with that red-eye. ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... her! When she came on in her boy's clothes she was perfectly wonderful. She wore a moss-coloured velvet jerkin with cinnamon sleeves, slim brown cross-gartered hose, a dainty little green cap with a hawk's feather caught in a jewel, and a hooded cloak lined with dull red. She had never seemed to me more exquisite. She had all the delicate grace of that Tanagra figurine that you have in your studio, Basil. Her hair clustered round her face like dark leaves round a pale rose. As for her acting—well, ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... gathered in the library, and everybody was deadly dull. Aunt Selina said she had been reared to a strict observance of the Sabbath, and she refused to go to bed early. The cards and card tables were put away and every one sat around and quarreled and was generally nasty, except Bella and Jim, who had gone into ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... is burning before the "holy pictures," we feel that these poor tillers of the soil, ignorant and uncouth though they too often are, may be raised at times by lofty thoughts and noble aspirations far above the low level of the dull and hard lives which they ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... had joined him there that I heard what had alarmed his quicker senses. There was a noise somewhere within the house. A door slammed in the distance. Then a confused, dull murmur broke itself into the measured thud of heavy footsteps rapidly approaching. They were in the passage outside the room. They paused at the door. The door opened. There was a sharp snick as the electric light was turned on. The door closed once more, and the pungent reek of a strong ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Ray Lankester, and whether in each case some malicious fiend has not palmed off a counterfeit upon me that differs toto caelo from the original. I felt exactly the same when I read Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister"; I could not believe my eyes, which nevertheless told me that the dull diseased trash I was so toilsomely reading was a work which was commonly held to be one of the great literary masterpieces of the world. It seemed to me that there must be some other Goethe and some other Wilhelm Meister. ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... rocking-horse met his gaze. He looked at it so long that his eyes blinked. Older people would have said that just then the old horse creaked—as old things have a way of doing. But children understand these things better than old folks who have grown dull. Basil knew quite well that the old horse had sighed, and he asked ...
— Tom, Dot and Talking Mouse and Other Bedtime Stories • J. G. Kernahan and C. Kernahan
... treaty with England lies at the threshold of all your business. The American Government never did two more foolish things than when it signed that Treaty and recalled Mr. Monroe, who was the only man could do them any service." Mr. Ellsworth put on the dull gravity of a Judge, and was silent. I added, "You may perhaps make a treaty like that you have made with England, which is a surrender of the rights of the American flag; for the principle that neutral ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... day Caesar was no better; his dinner was ordered to be served upstairs, and the governor paid him a visit as before. He found his prisoner so dull and bored with his own company, that he offered to come and share his supper. Caesar accepted the offer with ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... and their scorn of gain. Your period of dream—'twas but a breath— Is closed in the indifference of death. Sealed in your silences, to you alike If hands are lifted to applaud or strike. No more to your dull, inattentive ear Praise of to-day than curse of yesteryear. From the same lips the honied phrases fall That still are bitter from cascades of gall. We note the shame; you in your depth of dark The red-writ testimony cannot mark On every honest cheek; ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... me Is sum of something; which to term in gross, Is an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractis'd: Happy in this, she is not yet so old But she may learn; and happier than this, She is not bred so dull but she can learn; Happiest of all, is that her gentle spirit Commits itself to yours to be directed, As from her lord, her governor, her king." MERCHANT ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... in the direction of Marylebone, and stopped at last at a dull, yellow-washed house, which bore on its door a very dingy brass plate, inscribed in red letters, 'M. et Mdlle. Tirard. Salon de Danse.' Ernest opened the door without ringing, and turned down the passage towards the salon. 'Remember,' he said, turning to Harry Oswald by ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... crowd that had collected to see all these foreign soldiers go by, a sight so new and strange, listened uneasily to a dull sound which got nearer and nearer. The earth visibly trembled, the glass shook in the windows, and behind the king's escort thirty-six bronze cannons were seen to advance, bumping along as they lay on their gun-carriages. These cannons were eight ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a little disappointed that he returned so unexpectedly and shabbily, for they had read in the newspapers that he was a great ruler, which, however, was strange enough, for they knew in their own minds that he was dull of intellect, and in truth had a ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... whispered, "let me go back with you, uncle. I don't care how dull it is—I shall not be any trouble to grandmother while she is ill. Do let me go back—I ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... begin with an assumption, and I would rather begin with God and reason down, than begin with a piece of dirt and reason up. The difference between the Christian theory and the materialistic theory is that the Christian begins with God, while the materialist begins with dull, inanimate matter. I know of no theory suggested as a substitute for the Bible theory that is as rational and as ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... was not yet born; and what should issue from that dull ghastly unrevealing fog on the horizon, he did not care. Thither the tide setting eastward would carry him, and his future must be born. All he cared about was to leave the empty garments of his dead behind him—the ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... as he now secured would have ham strung or otherwise maimed its victim and left her wallowing helpless. But the dull teeth merely barked the leg's tough skin. And a spasmodic jerk ripped it ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... earth began to move faintly back and forward, and a dull, distant, subterraneous noise continued without interruption. The first powerful shock occurred on the 23d of December. During the whole month of January, 1841, heavy thunder prevailed, but without any motion of the earth. On February 11th, we ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... conception—the keynote—must be one that is sufficient alike for the every-day mood, for the exalted hours, and for the emergencies. That keynote is given in this truth: that there is no moment so dull or so hard but one can ask himself, What is the best the situation allows? and conform to that; can open his eyes to some beauty close at hand; can enter sympathetically ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... smiled gently. "Why, of course, Mathew. I know you'll look after Maggie. It will be a change for her. She's been having rather a dull time here, I'm afraid." ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone, Drew Priam's curtains in the dead of night, And would have told him, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... not come, however, and she grew more uneasy as the time slipped by, while the wail of the wind grew louder and the stove crackled more noisily, until at last one of the little girls rose with a cry, and she fancied she heard a dull beat of hoofs. It grew plainer until she was sure of it, but soon after that the sound ceased abruptly, and she could not hear the rattle of flung down logs which she had expected. This struck her as curious, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... than all, One sacred spot his own he loved to call; Save at mid-day, half-hidden by the gloom; The people call it The White Maiden's Tomb: For there she stands; her folded hands are pressed Together, and laid softly on her breast, As if she waited but a word to rise From the dull earth, and pass to the blue skies; Her lips expectant part, she holds her breath, As listening for the angel voice of death. None know how many years have seen her so, Or what the name of her who sleeps below. And here the child would come, and strive to trace, Through the dim twilight, the pure ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... a dull sort of way where they were being taken. I learned later that they were flung one and two at a time into the Seine, while their savage ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... all sides. For hundreds of square miles the country was under water, and Vincennes was in the centre of a great shallow lake. It was freezing water, too, for this was no longer the warm spring time, as it had been in the march to Kaskaskia, but dull and drear February. Yet the brave colonel knew that he must act quickly if he was to act at all. Hamilton had only eighty men; he could raise twice that many. He had no money to pay them, but a merchant in St. Louis offered to lend him all he needed. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... infancy is leaning upon established arts, just as the infant learns to walk alone by first depending upon support. The use of color in painting developed slowly, being supported for centuries by the strength of drawing or subject. The landscapes of a century ago were dull, for color was employed hesitatingly and sparingly. The colors in the portraits of the past merely represented the gorgeous dress of bygone days. But the painter of the present shows that color is ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh |
