"Dulled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... through the trackless forest, and the carrier pigeon to recover his mate and dwelling place from the distance of hundreds of miles away. In civilized men, however, the habit of the home and street and the disuse of the ancient freedom has dulled, and in some instances almost destroyed, all sense of this shape of the external world. The best training to recover this precious capacity will now be ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... Clay saw in a flash while his bus crossed Broadway on its way to the Avenue. His eyes had become accustomed to this brilliance in the weeks that had passed since his descent upon New York, but familiarity had not yet dulled the wonder of it. ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... and ballads, not understanding that, from the first moment wherein nature foresaw the birth of Bastien-Lepage, she has only granted great creative power to men whose faces are contorted with extravagance or curiosity or dulled with some protecting stupidity. ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily—how calmly I can tell you the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... looking fearfully about. Instinctively she felt that her accusation was unjust. Not even that had dulled the hunted look in his face. "Perhaps—perhaps if it were that of which you suspect me, we could patch it up. I don't know. But, Constance, I—I must leave for the west on the first train in the morning." He did not pause to notice her startled look, ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... of an oppressd race! I love the languid patience of thy face: And oft with gentle hand I give thee bread, And clap thy ragged coat, and pat thy head. But what thy dulled spirits hath dismay'd, 5 That never thou dost sport along the glade? And (most unlike the nature of things young) That earthward still thy moveless head is hung? Do thy prophetic fears anticipate, Meek Child of Misery! thy future fate? 10 The starving meal, and all the thousand aches 'Which ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and they become blunted and dulled; leave your higher tastes uncultivated and they die; let your affections feed on anything unworthy and ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... which is made to adhere more closely by the action of the heat, or from matter communicated from the flame of the lamp, or from the air itself. It often happens that a polished plate of platina, when heated by the spirit-lamp and a blowpipe, becomes dulled and clouded on its surface by something either formed or deposited there; and this, and much less than this, is sufficient to prevent it from exhibiting the curious power now under consideration (634. 636.). Platina also has been said to ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... flesh is oftentimes the greatest impediment that the spirit hath, because of its lumpishness and earthly quality. How willing would the spirit be, how nimble and active in the ways of obedience, if it were not retarded, dulled, and clogged with the heavy lump of our flesh! "The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak," saith Christ, Matt. xxvi. 41. Truly I think the great remissness, negligence, weakness, fainting of Christians, in their race of Christianity, arise ordinarily from ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... "Because I do not want to live with a man or be his wife is not very good proof that the institution is wrong. It may be that I want to keep Clara for myself. I think more of her than of any one else I've ever met. How can I think straight about her marrying some man and becoming dulled to the things that mean most to me?" she asked herself. One evening, when the women were walking from Kate's apartment to the Woodburn house, they were accosted by two men who wanted to walk with them. There was a small park nearby and Kate led the ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... aberrations; an ear might be curving around a lip or an eye leering strangely in the middle of a chin. But there were ways of looking into the glass which practice had discovered, and usage had long ago dulled the terrors of its vagaries. Looking into this glass Mrs. Makebelieve would comment minutely upon the two faces therein, and, pointing to her own triumphantly genuine nose and the fact that her husband's nose had ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... in showing a torpid face lighted now by a speciously amiable expression. The carpets had dulled his steps and the preoccupation of the two sisters had kept them from noticing the noise of his carriage-wheels on entering the court-yard. The countess, in whom the habits of social life and the freedom in which her husband had left her had developed both wit and ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... a dulled voice she spoke in, quite unlike her usual eager way of giving information. She, poor thing, was terribly afraid he would ask her why they did not seem acquainted with her, and it would have been ...
— Hooking Watermelons - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... references to his travels and to his adventures, of which he spoke with the indifference of a man accustomed to danger, his unassuming manner, his frank ways—everything about him awakened her interest. She had supposed that in two years the very faculty of being interested by a man would be dulled if not destroyed; she found to her annoyance that though she had seen Mr. Juxon only twice she could not put him out of her thoughts. She was, moreover, a nervous, almost morbid, woman, and the natural result of trying to forget his existence ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... a reaction—a time when one settled back on one's bench, the first tearing edge of the appetite dulled. It was at this time that Tom Hatfield, ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... reasoning and philosophy; there its voice is the voice of malice, folly, inhumanity, irrationality, and prejudice. Distrust it again in things that suppose much knowledge or a fine taste. The multitude is ignorant and dulled. Distrust it in morality; it is not capable of strong and generous actions; it rather wonders at such actions than approves them; heroism is almost madness in its eyes. Distrust it in the things of sentiment; ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... parties met, the ears of the hermit, albeit somewhat dulled by age, became aware of the tramp of armed men, and at once he drew the girls hastily aside into the bushes; but the bushes at that part happened to be not very thick, and part of Ada's dress, which was a gay one with a good ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... marvel. But if not, let it be ascribed rather to your own want of skill than to a defect of Nature. But in this position, or mode of placing, I deem the virtues of this stone to be properly conserved, and I believe that in other positions or parts of the sky its virtue is dulled, rather than preserved. By means of this instrument at all events you will be relieved from every kind of clock (horologium), for by it you will be able to know the Ascendant at whatever hour you will, and all other dispositions of the heavens which Astrologers ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... rotten things—such is the exact picture in contemporary novels. I do not know what profit there is in literature like that, but I do know that the devil has not lost anything, because through this channel flows a river of mud and poison, and the moral sense became so dulled that finally they tolerated such books which a few decades ago would have brought the author to court. To-day we do not wish to believe that the author of "Madame Bovary" had two criminal suits. Had this book been written ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... little is told us, but little needed to be told. We have followed Romola thus far with dulled intelligence of mind and soul if we cannot picture it clearly and certainly for ourselves. Love that never falters, patience that never questions, meekness that never fails, truth clear and still as the light ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... dulled a bit by protective State and Federal farm programs, are putting a premium on specialization, ever larger farms, and an "agribusiness" approach, with high capital and operating expenses. Their effect on many family farms in the Basin's mountain regions, places with limited ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... to the shell he had the night before pulled from the water and stowed in safety. Its rounded dome was dulled where it had been battered, but there was no break in the surface. He ran his hands anxiously over the curve to make sure. Then, very slowly, he came back to the mess of broken wood and snipped hide. And he was sure, only too sure, of one thing. He, himself, had ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... Helplessly innocent, across the field: He let it run, and blessed it as it ran. At noon returning, something drew his feet Into the barn. Entering, he gazed and stood. Through the rent roof alighting, one sunbeam, Blazing upon the straw one golden spot, Dulled all the yellow heap, and sank far down, Like flame inverted, through the loose-piled mound, Crossing the splendour with the shadow-straws, In lines innumerable. 'Twas so bright, The eye was cheated with ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... though he is alive in the flesh, he is dead to all heed of criticism) my poor old poaching friend, Zephaniah Diggs, who, between his hare-snaring and his gin-drinking, has got his powers of sympathy quite dulled and his powers of action in any great movement of his class hopelessly impaired. But examples of this defect belong, as I have said, to a bygone age rather than to ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... plodded on, my step heavy, my head bowed, wearied alike in heart and body. My temples throbbed with the heat of the sun, my eyes were dulled, my throat caked by the swirling dust. At a cross- roads a Federal picket halted me, and I aroused sufficiently to hand him the paper which entitled me to safe passage through the lines. He was a man well along in years, with thoughtful eyes and kindly face, and I spoke ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... obtuse, stolid, loggerheaded, inapt, doltish, beetle-headed, blockish, sluggish; apathetic, unfeeling, insensate, callous; blunt, obtuse, dulled, pointless; dim, faint; tedious, uninteresting, prosaic, stupid, wearisome, jejune, depressing; lifeless, torpid, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... than a tremendous cannonade began, the balls describing great semicircles in the air, ere they fell, to scatter death and ruin on the devoted city. The spectacle was grand beyond description, for while the distance at which we lay dulled and subdued the sound of the artillery to a hollow booming like far-off thunder, the whole sky was streaked by the course of the shot, and, at intervals, lighted up by the splendor of a great fire, as the red shot fell into and ignited ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... Arno's hallowed brim, Nor scorned by Santa Croce's neighboring fames, Haply not mindless, wheresoe'er he be, Of violets that to-day I scattered over him, He, too, is there, After the good centurion fitly named, Whom learning dulled not, nor convention tamed, Shaking with burly mirth his hyacinthine hair, Our hearty Grecian of Homeric ways, Still found the surer friend where least he ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... He had dulled down a little now; not much, but still you could notice that he hadn't that luminous look in his eyes that he had while Satan was in him. He nearly got it back, though, for a moment when Marget came and praised ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... he roared. "What does this mean?" and he stared from the face of the alcalde to the faces of the two boys, into whose dulled eyes had suddenly leaped a great light at the sight of ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... home these great truths to the feelings of those who had lived insensible to them lay the chief value of his preaching. He awakened men to believe that there was freshness and reality in things which they had by use become dulled to. There are no doubt minds which rise to the truth most naturally and freely without the intervention of dogmatic expressions, and to these such expressions, as they are a limit and a warning, are ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... Shirley shielded his face beneath a drooping spray of artificial blooms from the top of their wallbower. Several young men were approaching them, and the criminologist noted with relief that they evidenced their afternoon libations even so early. Eyes dulled with over-stimulus were the less analytical. Chance was favoring him. The newcomers were garbed in that debonair and "cultured" modishness so dear to the hearts of magazine illustrators. Faces, weak with sunken cheek lines, strong in creases of selfishness, darkened by the brush strokes of nocturnal ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... sentimentalist. There arose the less cause why he should be, perhaps, since Mr. Harley was sure of being popular with himself in spite of any conduct that could be his. His ideals were not lofty, his moral senses not keen, and what original decent point the latter might have once possessed had long been dulled away. True, Mr. Harley was shaken of an ague of fear; but his tremblings were born of the practical. He was agitated by thoughts of what havoc, in his own and in Senator Hanway's affairs of politics and business, naming him formally ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... an hour later when another bell rang, this time the bell of the front door; but again no answer came to the imperative summons. And now the bell rang on, so continuously, so persistently, that at last its sound penetrated the dulled hearing of the man who huddled in a corner of the big couch, mind and body alike dazed and incapable of making any effort to understand the meaning of this ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... somewhat of life by which their minutest parts are separately moved. When the sight of the eye is so gross that many such creatures, with innumerable particulars in each, appear to it as an obscure speck, and yet those who are sensual think and judge by that sight, it is clear how dulled their minds are, and therefore what thick darkness they are in concerning ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... this dining room, with its plants and old pictures and quaint homeliness, leave the little Phipps' cottage, leave its owner.... The dazzling visions of sands and sphinxes, of palms and pyramids, suddenly lost their dazzle. The excitement caused by the reading of the letter dulled and deadened. The conviction which had come upon him so often of late returned with redoubled vigor, the conviction that he had been happy where he was and would never be as happy anywhere else. Egypt, ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... ring set with sapphires seemed to be, after all, the satisfactory solution of Ann Veronica's difficulties. It was like pouring a strong acid over dulled metal. A tarnish of constraint that had recently spread over her intercourse with Capes vanished again. They embarked upon an open and declared friendship. They even talked about friendship. They went to the Zoological Gardens together ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... those emotions which the layman feels when he hears of the wonderful power of the telescope. Not to say anything so harsh as that "familiarity breeds contempt," we must admit that when an operation of any sort becomes a matter of daily business, the sentiments associated with it necessarily become dulled. Now, however, I was filled with the consciousness that I was looking at the stars through the most powerful telescope that had ever been pointed at the heavens, and wondered what mysteries might be unfolded. The night was of the finest, and I remember, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... the pine-tree of Sydney's ambush. The mud daubing between the logs shone bright through the hazy spring atmosphere, and a thick white smoke, betokening a handful of chips newly tossed upon the fire, ascended slowly into the air as if eager to explore the dulled blue sky above. ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... the vasty Infinite, However dulled by earth, each human mind Holds somewhere gems of beauty and of light Which, seeking, thou ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... platitude might pass unchallenged. But a vague desire for the emphasis and glamour of literature having brought in the word "mother," has yet failed to set the sluggish imagination to work, and a word so glowing with picture and vivid with sentiment is damped and dulled by the thumb-mark of besotted usage to mean no more than "cause" or "occasion." Only for the poet, perhaps, are words live winged things, flashing with colour and laden with scent; yet one poor spark of imagination might save them ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... colours, or put bread into the artist's mouth. Haydon could only live by renewed borrowing, for which method of support he endeavours, without much success, to excuse himself. Once in the clutches of professional money-lenders, he confesses that 'the fine edge of honour was dulled. Though my honourable discharge of what I borrowed justified my borrowing again, yet it is a fallacious relief, because you must stop sooner or later; if you are punctual, and if you can pay in the long-run, why incur the debt at all? ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... the prosperous ship-broker was unusually agitated. The old woman's news had touched a chord which, though dulled and slackened by the heat and dust of seventeen years of busy, anxious life, still vibrated strongly, and awakened memories that had long slept in the chambers of his brain, especially one pale Madonna face, with its soft, tear-trembling ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... relative matter. Haven't you seen girls of four-and-twenty who have nibbled and been nibbled at ever since they were sixteen, but who have neither caught anything nor been caught? They are old, if you like, but Lyddy was forty and still young, with her susceptibilities cherished, not dulled, and with all the "language of passion fresh and rooted as the lovely leafage about ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... spiritual forces directed to one point. Later, in the period of homelessness and dispersion, it was chiefly religious consciousness that cemented Jewry into a whole, and replaced the severed political bond as well as the dulled racial instinct, which is bound to go on losing in keenness in proportion to the degree of removal from primitive conditions and native soil. In our days, when the liberal movements leavening the whole of ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... come," says Carol, somewhat harshly, but Eleanor's blinded senses, dulled under the influence of her love, heed not ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... not going to dwell on this retribution, inflicted on Joash, or on that which comes to us if we are like him, through a loud-voiced conscience, and a memory which, though it may be dulled and hushed to sleep at present, is sure to wake some day here or yonder. But I beseech you to ask yourselves what your outlook is. 'Be not deceived, God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.' Is that all? ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... not anticipated much enjoyment in Canton, having read of the dirt and smells, but we had not expected to be deafened at our very entrance, and I think for the time being it dulled the consciousness of this wonderful spectacle of a floating independent city just at the door of a city whose name ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... was sorry, Oh, so sorry, that she had sent the man she loved to an exhausting day of thought and work with an aching pain in his heart and his mental powers dulled. She had taken all joy and hope out of his life and left him to fight his way through the hard, noisy, cruel hours with anxiety and ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... faint haze dulled the palms away on the other side; from the wharf, where ships were loading up with rubber, ivory, palm-oil, and bales of gum copal, the roar and rattle of steam-winches went across the water, far away across the glittering water, where the red flamingoes were flying, ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... me just as it was, Just as it was When first its prospects gave me pause In wayward wanderings, Before the years had torn old troths As they tear all sweet things, Before gaunt griefs had torn old troths And dulled old rapturings. ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... Michael on the side of inhumanity. Scorn for her was gone from him now; and so changed was he that his very servants could not read him. Was it remorse, or actually some long-latent affection, reawakened under the shadow of impending loss, that had brought the haggard lines about his mouth, and dulled the fires of those terrible eyes? Sophia herself asked that question of the darkness, as she lay the long night through, watching for what she dreamed of as ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... as he crouched there. He wanted to feel decisive; but the weary walk, heavily-laden as he was, had dulled his brain a little, and he could not come to a conclusion as to whether it would not be best to take the initiative and attack at once, trusting to their sudden appearance and the shots they could be creating a panic; for it was not likely that the enemy would imagine ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... banks of the great river were gray and mysterious under the effulgence of a top-heavy yellow moon. The search-light on the peak pierced out the fact that a low, swirling mist was creeping up from the river's dulled surface. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... run, and blessed it as it ran. Returned at noon-tide, something drew his feet Into the barn: entering, he gazed and stood. For, through the rent roof lighting, one sunbeam Blazed on the yellow straw one golden spot, Dulled all the amber heap, and sinking far, Like flame inverted, through the loose-piled mound, Crossed the keen splendour with dark shadow-straws, In lines innumerable. 'Twas so bright, His eye was cheated with a spectral smoke That rose as from a fire. He had ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... these hoofs they finally disappeared round a corner. It was only when they were gone that I realised how silent and deserted the streets had become. Not a soul afoot, not a door ajar, not a dog—nothing. It might have been a city of the dead. After all the roar of rifle and cannon which had dulled the hearing of one's ears for so many days there was something awesome, unearthly and disconcerting in this terrified silence. What had ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... had talked herself into a more emotional mood than she had yet shown to Trent. Her words flowed freely, and her voice had begun to ring and give play to a natural expressiveness that must hitherto have been dulled, he thought, by the shock and self-restraint of the past few days. Now she turned swiftly from the window and faced him as she went on, her beautiful face flushed and animated, her eyes gleaming, her hands moving ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... their preparations. Things got done all right, but the fine edge of enthusiasm had dulled. Jig Hollins flung his usual remarks, with their derisive undertone, around for a couple of weeks. Then he came into the shop with a girl who had a pretty, rather blank face, and a mouth that could ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... in that place a little, and for that little while the joy of his life was dulled and overworn; and the days before his wandering on the mountain seemed to him free and careless and happy days that he could not but regret. He was ashamed, moreover, that this so unquenchable grief should come but of him, and the pleasure of his ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... through the wide-flung windows. The atmosphere of the long, low room, in which over a hundred girls closely huddled together, were working, was sickly with the smell of cloth. There was no conversation. The click of the machines seemed sometimes to her partially dulled senses like the beating out of their human lives. It seemed impossible that the afternoon would ever end. The interval for tea came and passed—tea in tin cans, with thick bread and melting butter. ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... yet dulled the edge of his enjoyment; now, as ever, it soothed and tranquillised him to turn from the noisy crowded streets into this quiet spot with its gray old buildings, its patch of grass, and the broad wide steps up and down which men, hurrying ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... that any book should afford recreation except a story-book. Many of you are just reaching the period when, at the end of your prescribed curriculum, the whole field and compass of literature lies outspread before you; when, with faculties trained and disciplined, and the edge of curiosity not dulled or worn with use, you may enter at your leisure into the intellectual heritage of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... servants in our pain If she have fought with Death and dulled his sword; If she have given back our sick again. And to the breast the waking lips restored, Is it a little thing that she has wrought? Then Life and Death and Motherhood ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... characters of your sex, acting in real life the part of the best Wife, the best Daughter, the best Sister, and the best Friend." That this splendid praise was as sincere as it was generous need not be doubted. No breath of slander, even in that slanderous age, seems ever to have dulled the reputation of the queen of comedy, and "better romp than any I ever saw in nature"—to quote Dr Johnson ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... recalling snatches of books he had read and one or two scientific reports of such cases. He climbed into bed and blew out his candle. His drowsiness thickened. In his dulled mind one recollection remained—the picture of Howells coldly challenging him with his level smile to make a secret entrance of the old bedroom in a murderous effort to escape the penalty of the earlier crime. And Howells had been right. His death would give Bobby a chance. The destruction ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... under all of them lay all that remained on earth of prison tragedies; for even if a prisoner die a natural death in prison, he dies with a broken heart and poisoned mind, abandoned, in gray despair, friendless, shut out from sky and freedom, hearing with dulled ears the clanging of steel gates, seeing the blank walls, deprived of the sympathetic words and glances of friends—a miserable, unknown death. Silence and obliteration close over ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... not stir, and for five seconds Blair blinked his dulled eyes in wordless surprise; then his fist came down upon the cottonwood board with ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... and the practical decorator in dealing with a customer should discover at the outstart the character of that nerve sense. Some natures respond to the normal colors, barbaric colors. Some respond to the softer tints and are disturbed by the sharper tones. A dulled sense requires sharp contrasts; a quickened sense is satisfied with the soft gray tones. Apart from any question of propriety or environment the individual taste for color must be determined before the individual taste ...
— Color Value • C. R. Clifford
... dulled, creeping, semi-detached facet of his mind, Charlie noted that the running figures still floated above the ...
— Flamedown • Horace Brown Fyfe
... fallen? Can it be That thou, North wind, that from thy mountains bringest Their spirit to our plains, and thou, blue sea, Who on our rocks thy wreaths of freedom flingest, As on an altar,—can it be that ye Have wasted inspiration on dead ears, Dulled with the too ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... the depth of this defect, he looked at me askance: "And the best of the joke," said he, "is that he thinks himself quite a poet." For to him the struggle of the engineer against brute forces and with inert allies was nobly poetic. Habit never dulled in him the sense of the greatness of the aims and obstacles of his profession. Habit only sharpened his inventor's gusto in contrivance, in triumphant artifice, in the Odyssean subtleties, by which wires are taught to speak, and iron hands to weave, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that is very active in some people," he added with a laugh, "and when it is overworked it often goes wrong, like any other machinery. That is the reason why men who have loved many women make a mistake in marrying; the intuitive faculty is both dulled and coarsened by that time. They are still susceptible to charm, ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... and rouse in him his pride and love for himself, or, at any rate, for his talent. I used to insist on his hearing me read sometimes those disconnected lines that his own brain, dulled by ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... did not alter his mind and return. He was quite a different sort of man from one who altered his mind; that she was at last despairingly forced to admit. And then she left off hoping, and settled down to a mechanical routine of existence which in some measure dulled her grief; but at the expense of all her natural animation and the sprightly wilfulness which had once charmed those who knew her, though it was perhaps all the while a factor in ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... time his vision seemed dulled and that part of his mind, trained to the quick analysis of sudden situations groped but feebly through a haze of shock to understand what had happened. Orienting himself he found he was gripping a brace of the open-mounted motor on one of the Waste ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... the brine on a child's lips! Nowadays, I can take holiday when I will, and go whithersoever it pleases me; but that salt kiss of the sea air I shall never know again. My senses are dulled; I cannot get so near to Nature; I have a sorry dread of her clouds, her winds, and must walk with tedious circumspection where once I ran and leapt exultingly. Were it possible, but for one half-hour, to plunge and bask in the sunny surf, to roll on the silvery sand-hills, to leap ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... already brought forgetfulness before their feet grow icy with the first step into the dark water. To meet on Lethe-side is to meet, maybe; but with a sad unrecognising meeting. To lie together in oblivion, with sightless eyes, and dulled hearts and listless hands,—that was not ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... something left behind; I take up fear with my chisel, fear lies 'twixt me and my plane, And I wake in the merry morning to a new unwonted pain. That's fear: I shall live it down—and many a thing besides Till I win the poor dulled heart which the workman's jacket hides. Were it not for the Hope of Hopes I know my journey's end, And would wish I had ne'er been born ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris
... insensibility of their world. How incredible! But at last she could see that he had preserved her spirit, her secret self, from destruction. He had cheated death of her fineness. The delicate perfection of her youth would never perish, never be dulled by old age or corrupted in death. It had inspired and entered into Pleydon's being, and he had lifted it on the pedestal rising between the ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... alone did the former teacher use the time of her pupils for her own ends, but, even more, she dulled their interest, and the damage thus inflicted cannot be estimated. Many a child has deserted the school because the teacher made school life disagreeable. She was the wet blanket upon his enthusiasm and chilled him to the marrow when he failed to go forward upon her traditional track. The teacher ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... slowly. "It came near smashing me, Jimmie. It seemed so unnecessary; so hideously out of tune with everything. I thought at the time that I should never get over it and be myself again, and I still think so, though the passing years have dulled the sharp edges of the hurt. There never was another girl like her, and there never will ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... Oriental rugs; woodwork and walls were dark-green, as were the long, low, open bookcases, above which a large foliage tapestry was hung. On the other walls were modern paintings with antique frames of dulled gold, while a Louis XVI inlaid desk stood across one corner, and there was an old Italian oval table of black wood, with great, gold birds, as pedestal and legs, at which we dined simply, using fine old silver, and foreign pottery. This room was responsible ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... of latent energies bids fair to furnish the solution of a vast number of perplexing educational problems. Certain it is that our pupils of to-day are not overburdened with work. They are sometimes irritated by too many tasks, sometimes dulled by dead routine, sometimes exhilarated to the point of mental ennui by spectacular appeals to immediate interest. But they are seldom overworked, or even worked to within a healthful degree of ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... a great comfort to a person to know exactly how to feel and what to say in every new contingency, but whether the zest of life is not dulled by this ability is a grave question, for it leaves no room for surprise and little for emotion. O ye belles of Newport and of Bar Harbor, in your correct and conventional agreement of what is proper and agreeable, are you wasting your sweet lives by rule? ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... not notice his evasion; she was not interested in his view of the mountains. What she instinctively resented, even in her dulled state, was his impersonal attitude toward herself. She was not used to it from any man. She did not understand it. She wondered, without any particular interest in the matter, but still following her instinctive and customary mode of thought, if ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... both of wordes and sentences. These Making of // faultes, taking once roote in yougthe, be neuer, or Lattines // hardlie, pluckt away in age. Moreouer, there is marreth // no one thing, that hath more, either dulled the Children. // wittes, or taken awaye the will of children from learning, then the care they haue, to satisfie their masters, in making of latines. For, the scholer, is commonlie beat for the making, when the master were more worthie to be ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... A slight smile dulled the irony of this, but the Governor, evidently concerned for the maintenance of amity, introduced the art of the Aztecs, to which he brought his ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... di Gaeta, which looked even more beautiful than before, in the eyes of all but one, whose senses were blinded and dulled by dejection, lassitude, and sickness. When I felt myself passively led along the shore, placed where the eye might range at freedom over the living and rejoicing landscape—when I heard myself repeating mechanically ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... of the ballroom (she waltzes surprisingly well). She was out of breath, her eyes were dulled, her half-open lips were scarcely able to whisper the indispensable: ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... five blocks from the edifice of worship, while Merle appeared as one born to Sunday clothes and shined shoes and a new hat, the Wilbur twin would be one to whom Sabbath finery was exotic and unwelcome. The flawless lustre of his shoes would be dulled, even though he walked sedately the safe sidewalk; his broad collar and blue polka-dotted cravat would be awry, one stocking would be down, his jacket yawning, all his magnificence seeming unconquerably alien. Winona did him the justice to recognize ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... November, 1867, witnessed a strange and memorable scene in the great English city of Manchester. Long ere the grey winter's morning struggled in through the crisp frosty air—long ere the first gleam of the coming day dulled the glare of the flaming gas jets, the streets of the Lancashire capital were all astir with bustling crowds, and the silence of the night was broken by the ceaseless footfalls and the voices of hurrying throngs. Through the long, dim streets, and past the tall rows ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... mules and a good driver, to join the command. We bade the Sixth Cavalry people once more good-bye, but I was so nearly dead by this time, with the heat, and the fatigue of all this hard travelling and packing up, that the keener edge of my emotions was dulled. Eight days and nights spent in travelling hither and thither over those hot plains in Southern Arizona, and all ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... dulled Gay's appetite and Trudy's had been taken quite away by Beatrice's proposed visit. Besides, they put the latest jazz record on their little talking machine, which helped substitute for a decent meal. They danced a little while and then Trudy planned what ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... erection in the neighbouring harbour. Its floor was littered with snaky coils of india-rubber tubing; enormous boots with leaden soles upwards of an inch thick; several diving helmets, two of which were of brightly polished metal, while the others were more or less battered, dulled, and dinted by hard service in the deep. The walls were adorned with large damp india-rubber dresses, which suggested the idea of baby-giants who had fallen into the water and been sent off to bed while their ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... buck against the muzzleloader in off-hand shooting. But, in common with a thousand other old graybeards, I feel that the fire, the fervor, the steel, that once carried me over the trail from dawn until dark, is dulled and deadened within me. ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... left once more alone to darkness and to that dulled and dogged state of mind when a man thinks that Misery must have done her worst, and is almost glad to think so. He turned and walked slowly towards the stile; she had told him no hour, and he was determined, whenever ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dawned cold and dim, and along the eastern sky gray marbled masses of cloud with dun, stratified bases, built themselves into the likeness of vast teocallis to Tonatiuh, over whose apex the struggling rays fell red and presageful. Dulled by the stained glass windows, the light that filled the semi-circular chapel at "The Lilacs", was chill and sombre, until the fair sacristan held a taper over the tall wax candles on each side of the altar, whence a mellow radiance soon streamed ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... name had an influence on the weather, I don't know. Perhaps it did rain some years, but, as I remember, County Fair time seems to have had a sky perfectly cloudless, with its blue only a little dulled around the edges where it came close to the ground and the dust settled on it. Things far off were sort of hazy, but that might have been the result of the bonfires of leaves we had been having evenings after ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... and near midnight, we pushed out again. My vigilance and susceptibility were rather sharpened than dulled by the waiting; and the features of the night had also deepened and intensified. Night was at its meridian. The sky had that soft luminousness which may often be observed near midnight at this season, and the "large ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... Tom, dulled and stunned, took the story in gradually, and got used to it as he went along. He came and slept at night in the tutor's room, and felt how much worse things might have been had it not been for the stalwart protector who ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... else in my heart, although at that time I did not dare even to let my inmost thoughts dwell upon it, which in some way dulled the pain of the blow that had fallen upon me, and reconciled me to the parting which in one sense must now be eternal. The longer I pondered the more deeply did that look of horror which I had seen in the eyes of Joyful Star burn into ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... liberty and light that is neither mine nor his, but is the heritage of the soul of man! Working-men, working-men—comrades! open your eyes and look about you! You have lived so long in the toil and heat that your senses are dulled, your souls are numbed; but realize once in your lives this world in which you dwell—tear off the rags of its customs and conventions—behold it as it is, in all its hideous nakedness! Realize it, realize it! Realize that out upon the plains of Manchuria tonight two hostile armies are ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... of Paris. If the stone was not always of the first water, and if the setting was always strange and overdone, at least it shone in artificial light, and that was all it was meant to do. They were intelligent, keen, though short-sighted observers—their eyes had been dulled by centuries of the life of the counting-house—turning the magnifying-glass on human sentiments, enlarging small things, not seeing big things. With a marked predilection for finery, they were incapable of depicting anything but what seemed to their upstart snobbishness the ideal of polite ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... came. The sport of kings was going merrily on. Neither night nor storm stopped it and men were still being ground by thousands into cannon food. But John had now a feeling of detachment. Three days of continuous battle had dulled his senses. They might fight on as they pleased. It did not concern him, for tonight at least. He was going to look out ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to deaden the sound of the gong, with my hands beneath the covering I pressed upon the jewelled eyeballs. I had not gazed upon the blue diamonds since the day when I had restored the two stones shown to the banian merchant in Lahore. As the wheels now clicked and the muffled bell commenced its dulled clangor, the uneasy thought came to my mind that perhaps the treasure had in the interval been spirited away by some devilish jugglery. But when at last silence fell, and I whipped the cloth aside, there ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... the gulch came a low groan mingled with his breathing, it was not such a sound as comes from fully conscious lips, but rather that of a brain dulled into coma. His lids drooped over his eyes, hiding the pupils; and his cheeks were pallid, with outstanding veins ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... appetite to recommence their banquet; others were so gorged, that they could not walk away. With their wings trailing in the mud, and their beaks separated, as if gasping for breath, their brilliant eye dulled from repletion—there they remained, emitting an effluvium so offensive that the numerous skeletons, and the mingled remains of mortality, were pleasing compared to such disgusting specimens ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... later H.M.S. Minotaur passed down the lines between the ships, and soon after disappeared over the eastern horizon. The fleet had been sailing with carefully screened lights, and now precautions were to be doubled, no dynamos to be run, and navigation lights to be further dulled by several thicknesses of signal flags across the glass. Various small happenings left the troops with a sort of impression that there might be something in the wind. When, therefore, early one tropic morning the three remaining men-o'-war moved nervously ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... and set the car for the third time on that known road. As I reached the crest of the Downs I felt the soft air change, saw it glaze under the sun; and, looking down at the sea, in that instant beheld the blue of the Channel turn through polished silver and dulled steel to dingy pewter. A laden collier hugging the coast steered outward for deeper water and, across copper-coloured haze, I saw sails rise one by one on the anchored fishing-fleet. In a deep dene behind me an eddy of sudden ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... days) used to sit and think out his villainies or issue his odious orders. At this moment I thought I saw the ghosts of all the Mauprats passing before me, with their bloody hands and their eyes dulled with wine. I got up and was about to yield to the horror I felt by taking to flight, when suddenly I saw a figure rise up in front of me, so distinct, so recognisable, so different in its vivid reality from the chimeras that had just besieged me, that I fell ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... Ralph's character better than to suppose he would easily consent to any diminution without good and sufficient reason being given; or without some promise of compensating advantages in the future for the present sacrifice asked from him. But perhaps Mr. Wilkins, dulled as he was by wine thought he could allege a good and ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... and stepped back into the entrance to the drift to avoid falling stone, while the younger man attacked the edge beneath the bowlder, inch by inch, trying to find some place where he could pick through to daylight. At last, his arm wearied and the point of his prospecting hammer dulled, ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... of the company, with perhaps the sole exception of Prosper. As a dish containing a number of brown glistening spheres of baked dough was brought in, the men's eyes shone in sympathetic appreciation. Yet that epicurean light was for a moment dulled as each man grasped a sphere, and then sat motionless with it in his hand, as if it was a ball and they were ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... by Telemachus's order had a seat and a mess assigned him in the door-way, and he had his eye ever on the lances. And it moved gall in some of the great ones there present, to have their feast still dulled with the society of that wretched beggar as they deemed him, and they reviled and spurned at him with their feet. Only there was one Philaetius, who had something a better nature than the rest, that spake ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... frolic, he entered into either with a zest that made of them events to be remembered. He glanced across to where his father stood beside the table toying with a jade ink-well, and noted the unwonted droop of the shoulders and the unfamiliar gaze of the gray eyes in which the look of arrogance had dulled almost to softness—a pathetic figure, standing there in his own house—alone—unloved—a stranger ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... the story to be true. It cannot be said that he was grateful to Yeager, but the edge of his resentment against him was dulled. ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... has been planned with the strong sense of the fitness of things, being a veritable old-time Chateau, whose curves and cupolas, turrets and towers, even whose tones of gray stone and dulled brick harmonize with the sober quaint architecture of our dear old Fortress City, and looks like a small bit of Mediaeval Europe perched upon ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... dulled to all tragedy had gone to the boat's side and was hauling in Grimalson's futile line. He brought ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... certainly had power to move the hearts of many; but it would be hard to say when it had most power, or upon whom. Doubtless, the majority of those who had ears to hear in the big old fashioned city heard not, use having dulled their faculties; or if, perchance, the music reached them it conveyed no idea to their minds, and passed unheeded. It was but an accustomed measure, one more added to the myriad other sounds that make ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... at the head of the park, for a tramp round it, in the gloom of the girdle of lights, to recover his deadened relish of the thin phantasmal strife to win an intangible prize. His dulled physical system asked, as with the sensations of a man at the start from sleep in the hurrying grip of steam, what on earth he wanted to get, and what was the substance of his gains: what! if other than a precipitous intimacy, a deep crumbling over deeper, with a little woman ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... inclination to falter in one whose conduct has hitherto been above reproach, will stoop and pick up out of the gutter a blighted and tarnished reputation and protect and defend it against all slights, and devote his life to the attempt to restore lustre to the unclean thing dulled by the touch of many fingers. In her days of prosperity Commander de Jars and the king's treasurer had both fluttered round Mademoiselle de Guerchi, and neither had fluttered in vain. Short as was the period necessary ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of his recent fatigue were not yet dulled, but his cuirass sat lightly upon him, the sound of the dangling saber at his side smote pleasantly his ear, and the black Mecklenberg under him was strong and active. To return to Madame's chateau in the guise of a conqueror was a most engaging ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... Agha Khan in 1875: "Like his ancestor, the Old One of Marco Polo's time, he keeps his court in grand and noble style. His sons, popularly known as 'The Persian Princes,' are active sportsmen, and age has not dulled the Agha's enjoyment of horse-racing. Some of the best blood of Arabia is always to be found in his stables. He spares no expense on his racers, and no prejudice of religion or race prevents his availing himself of the science and skill of an English trainer ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... insanity to sign the certificate. Did you overhear her in the next room?" And, seating himself at his table, he looked at me through his glasses with those keen penetrating eyes that age had not dimmed or time dulled. ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... involved. Trifling and simple as all this may seem to the reader of this narrative, it serves a definite purpose. It reveals to a no uncertain degree the eagerness with which these castaways reached out hungrily for the slightest morsel that would satisfy the craving of active minds dulled by the constant, never-absent thought of self; minds charged with thoughts that centred on something thousands of miles away; minds that seldom if ever worked in harmony with ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... stern, one hand supporting her chin, her eyes wide open, listening intently to the whispering of her heart that seemed to swell at last into a song of extreme sweetness. Listening to that song she husked the rice at home; it dulled her ears to the shrill bickerings of Bulangi's wives, to the sound of angry reproaches addressed to herself. And when the sun was near its setting she walked to the bathing-place and heard it as she stood on the tender grass of the low ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... artists. He owed something, perhaps, to his material; for terra-cotta has the charm of improvisation. The hand, obedient to the brain, has made it in one moment what it is, and no slow hours of labour at the stone have dulled the first caprice of the creative fancy. Work, therefore, which, if translated into marble, might have left our sympathy unstirred, affects us with keen pleasure in the mould of plastic clay. What prodigality of thought and invention has been lavished on the terra-cotta ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... heart. He had grown taciturn because he was always contradicted. The want of congenial company and fellows-in-misfortune gradually dulled his brain; his nerves went to pieces; he neglected his appearance and took ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... the absorption in this new interest dulled my perception of external matters. So at least Sam hinted to me one night after the ladies had retired. Mott was at the wheel, a game of solitaire in the smoking room claimed Yeager. Blythe and I were tramping the ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... relax, though he considered the dangers of cross-examination almost entirely passed. In this he was mistaken, for no sooner was the keen edge of Mrs. Belden's hunger dulled than her curiosity sharpened. ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... appeared with what, to Johnny, seemed uncanny swiftness, and squatted, grinning and sinister, in a relentless half circle, the book slipped unheeded to the floor with a clatter that failed to rouse the painter, whose ears were dulled to all else than the pitiful blat of a shivering, panic-stricken calf whose nose sought his mother's side for her comforting ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... there is little doubt, his love for his sister owed much of its devotedness and fervour. In a mind sensitive and versatile as his, long habits of family intercourse might have estranged, or at least dulled, his natural affection for her;—but their separation, during youth, left this feeling fresh and untried.[56] His very inexperience in such ties made the smile of a sister no less a novelty than a charm to him; and before the first gloss of this newly awakened sentiment had time to wear off, they ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... meant to produce that consciousness and that sorrow: but conscience may be dulled or silenced. It cannot be anyhow induced to call evil good, but it may be mistaken in what is evil. The gnomon is true, but a veil of cloud may ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... who with her absence darkened their air did not return. They grew weary, and sat down on the rocky floor, for wait they would—indeed, wait they must. Each set his lamp by his knee, and watched it die. Slowly it sank, dulled, looked lazy and stupid. But ever as it sank and dulled, the image in his mind of the Lady of Light grew stronger and clearer. Together the two lamps panted and shuddered. First one, then the other went out, leaving for a moment a great, red, evil-smelling snuff. Then all was the ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald |
