Dull Quotes - Page 9

• ...some people might think our lives dull and uneventful, but it does not seem so to us. ...it is not travel and adventure that make a full life. There are adventures of the spirit and one can travel in books and interest oneself in people and affairs. One need ever be dull as long as one has friends to help, gardens to enjoy and books in the long winter evenings.

  D.E. Stevenson

  Book, Adventure, Winter

  D. E. Stevenson (1978). “Listening Valley”

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• The rest of the journey passed uneventfully, if you consider it uneventful to ride fifteen miles on horseback through rough country at night, frequently without benefit of roads, in company with kilted men armed to the teeth, and sharing a horse with a wounded man. At least we were not set upon by highwaymen, we encountered no wild beasts, and it didn't rain. By the standards I was becoming used to, it was quite dull.

  Diana Gabaldon

  Country, Horse, Rain

  Diana Gabaldon (2015). “The Outlander Series 8-Book Bundle: Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, Drums of Autumn, The Fiery Cross, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, An Echo in the Bone, Written in My Own Heart's Blood”, p.71, Dell

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• It was not the house that grew dull, but I that grew dull in it. My wife was better than all women, and yet I could not feel it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Wife, House, Grew

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.382, Simon and Schuster

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• You may want to keep a commonplace book which is a notebook where you can copy parts of books you think are in code, or take notes on a series of events you may have observed that are suspicious, unfortunate, or very dull. Keep your commonplace book in a safe place, such as underneath your bed, or at a nearby dairy.

  Daniel Handler

  Notebook, Thinking, Bed

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• I always think of books as being like people. Even the dull ones are worthy of decent respect, but you don't have to seek them out and spend time with them.

  Orson Scott Card

  Book, Thinking, People

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• With the truth so dull and depressing, the only working alternative is wild bursts of madness and filigree.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Depressing, Alternatives, Madness

  Hunter S. Thompson (2011). “Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist”, Simon and Schuster

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• We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away.

  Alan Moore

  Perception, World, May

  "Watchmen". Comic book series by Alan Moore, 1986 - 1987.

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• Can you sacrifice a few? When those few are the best? Deny the best its right to the top--and you have no best left. What are your masses but millions of dull, shriveled, stagnant souls that have no thoughts of their own, no dreams of their own, no will of their own, who eat and sleep and chew helplessly the words others put into their brains? And for those you would sacrifice the few who know life, who are life? I loathe [Andrei] your ideals because I know no worse injustice than the giving of the undeserved. Because men are not equal in ability and one can't trust them as if they were.

  Ayn Rand

  Dream, Sleep, Sacrifice

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• It has been discovered that with a dull urban population, all formed under a mechanical system of State education, a suggestion or command, however senseless and unreasoned, will be obeyed if it be sufficiently repeated.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Suggestions, Population, Urban

  Hilaire Belloc (2002). “An Essay on the Restoration of Property”, p.35, IHS Press

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• A letter doesn't communicate by words alone. A letter, just like a book, can be read by smelling it, touching it and fondling it. Thereby, intelligent folk will say, 'Go on then, read what the letter tells you!' whereas the dull-witted will say, 'Go on then, read what he's written!

  Orhan Pamuk

  Book, Intelligent, Touching

  Orhan Pamuk (2011). “My Name Is Red”, p.44, Faber & Faber

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• Happiness is often presented as being very dull but, he thought, lying awake, that is because dull people are sometimes very happy and intelligent people can and do go around making themselves and everyone else miserable. He had never found happiness dull. It always seemed more exciting than any other thing and capable of as great intensity as sorrow to those people who were capable of having it.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Lying, Intelligent, Found Happiness

  ERNEST HEMINGWAY (1970). “ISLANDS IN THE STREAM”

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• Poor dull Concord. Nothing colorful has come through here since the Redcoats.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Poor, Colorful

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• I do not say that all lawyers are bad, but I do maintain that the general tendency is bad: standing up in a court for whichever side has paid you, affecting warmth and conviction, and doing everything you can to win the case, whatever your private opinion may be, will soon dull any fine sense of honour. The mercenary soldier is not a valued creature, but at least he risks his life, whereas these men merely risk their next fee.

  Patrick O'Brian

  Men, Winning, Risk

  Patrick O'Brian (2004). “The Complete Aubrey/Maturin Novels”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I found that many gifted people are so afraid of writing a poor story that they cannot summon the nerve to write a single sentence for months. The thing to say to such people is: "See how *bad* a story you can write. See how dull you can be. Go ahead. That would be fun and interesting. I will give you ten dollars if you can write something thoroughly dull from beginning to end!" And of course, no one can.

  Brenda Ueland

  Fun, Writing, People

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• Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy - that's the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.

  John Steinbeck

  Memories, Thinking, Long

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.51, Penguin

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• The master was an old Turtle--we used to call him Tortoise--' Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn't one?' Alice asked. We called him Tortoise because he taught us,' said the Mock Turtle angrily; 'really you are very dull!' You ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple question,' added the Gryphon; and then they both sat silent and looked at poor Alice, who felt ready to sink into the earth.

  Lewis Carroll

  Simple, Turtles, Taught Us

  Lewis Carroll (2016). “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland”, p.57

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• Was Mrs. Wilcox one of the unsatisfactory people- there are many of them- who dangle intimacy and then withdraw it? They evoke our interests and affections, and keep the life of the spirit dawdling around them. Then they withdraw. When physical passion is involved, there is a definite name for such behaviour- flirting- and if carried far enough, it is punishable by law. But no law- not public opinion, even- punishes those who coquette with friendship, though the dull ache that they inflict, the sense of misdirected effort and exhaustion, may be as intolerable. Was she one of these?

  E. M. Forster

  Passion, Flirting, Law

  E. M. Forster (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)”, p.585, Delphi Classics

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• She carried the burn of the sun on her body. It was for all of those wasted, dull years.

  J.M.G. Le Clézio

  Years, Body, Sun

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• A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.

  John Steinbeck

  Beautiful, Clever, Book

  "Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Fourth Series". Book edited by George Plimpton. Chapter "On Publishing", 1977.

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• If you aren't giving people something to talk about, you've become too dull.

  Sue Monk Kidd

  People, Giving, Ifs

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• We seemed to be trapped in an episode of One Life To Waste. It's all very dull.

  Cassandra Clare

  Waste, Magnus Bane, Episodes

  Cassandra Clare (2009). “City of Ashes”, p.153, Simon and Schuster

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• We must eschew anything trivial. We must embrace all that is frivolous.... Trivial things take up all your time and dull your senses, whereas frivolity is meaningful, profound, worth living and dying for.... If we devote our lives to frivolity, the world will be a far, far better place. Humanity will be better able to fulfill its primary goal, that of having a good time.

  Cynthia Heimel

  Meaningful, Profound, Goal

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• But say what you will, 'tis better to be left than never to have been loved. To pass our youth in dull indifference, to refuse the sweets of life because they once must leave us, is as preposterous as to wish to have been born old, because we one day must be old.

  William Congreve

  Sweet, Wish, One Day

  William Congreve (1706). “The Way of the World: A Comedy. As it is Acted at the Theatre in Lincolns-Inn-Fields, by His Majesty's Servants. Written by Mr. Congreve”, p.13

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• Morning drew on apace. The air became more sharp and piercing, as its first dull hue: the death of night, rather than the birth of day: glimmered faintly in the sky. The objects which had looked dim and terrible in the darkness, grew more and more defined, and gradually resolved into their familiar shapes. The rain came down, thick and fast; and pattered, noisily, among the leafless bushes.

  Charles Dickens

  Morning, Rain, Night

  Charles Dickens (2016). “Oliver Twist”, p.173, Pan Macmillan

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• Heaven, as conventionally conceived, is a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though plenty of people have described a day at the seaside.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Death, Religious, People

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “George Bernard Shaw: Collected Articles, Lectures, Essays and Letters: Thoughts and Studies from the Renowned Dramaturge and Author of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Pygmalion, Arms and The Man, Saint Joan, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion”, p.534, e-artnow

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