Dreary Quotes - Page 3

• A lot of bands have the enthusiasm kicked out of them by playing really dreary pub venues that just churn bands through.

  Alex Kapranos

  Band, Enthusiasm, Pubs

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• I am, I must confess, suspicious of those who denounce others for having too much sex. At what point does a healthy amount become too much? There are, of course, those who suffer because their desire for sex has become compulsive; in their case the drive (loneliness, guilt) is at fault, not the activity as such. When morality is discussed I invariably discover, halfway into the conversation, that what is meant are not the great ethical questions but the rather dreary business of sexual habit, which to my mind is an aesthetic rather than an ethical issue.

  Edmund White

  Sex, Loneliness, Ethical Questions

  "States of Desire: Travels in Gay America". Book by Edmund White, 1980.

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• The trails of the world be countless, and most of the trails be tried; You tread on the heels of the many, till you come where the ways divide;And one lies safe in the sunlight, and the other is dreary and wan,But you look aslant at the Lone Trail, and the Lone Trail lures you on.

  Robert W. Service

  Lying, Looks, World

  Robert William Service, “The Lone Trail”

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• The Christian is the person who sees every time and every situation, however dreary and repetitive, as God sees it - a fresh creation from his hand, demanding its own response in perhaps a wholly new and creative way. Under God he is free over it. He has won through to a purchase over events; he has risen with Christ.

  Evelyn Underhill

  Christian, Hands, Creative

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• When the world is mad, a mathematician may find in mathematics an incomparable anodyne. For mathematics is, of all the arts and sciences, the most austere and the most remote, and a mathematician should be of all men the one who can most easily take refuge where, as Bertrand Russell says, "one at least of our nobler impulses can best escape from the dreary exile of the actual world."

  G. H. Hardy

  Art, Science, Men

  G. H. Hardy (2012). “A Mathematician's Apology”, p.143, Cambridge University Press

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• Yonder cloud That rises upward always higher, And onward drags a laboring breast, And topples round the dreary west, A looming bastion fringed with fire.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Fire, Clouds, West

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson (2014). “In Memoriam”, p.51, Broadview Press

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• [I]n the gloomy month of February.... The Deserts of Arabia are not more dreary and inhospitable than the streets of London at such a time.

  Washington Irving

  Arabia, Desert, London

  Washington Irving (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Washington Irving (Illustrated)”, p.3203, Delphi Classics

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• Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys.

  Theodore Roethke

  Reason, Shed

  Theodore Roethke (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.145, Anchor

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• I think other people's depression is frightfully dreary, don't you?

  Julian Fellowes

  Depression, Thinking, People

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• . . .this prayer I make, Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart that loved her; 't is her privilege, Through all the years of this our life, to lead From joy to joy: for she can so inform The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold Is full of blessings.

  William Wordsworth

  Nature, Kindness, Prayer

  William Wordsworth (1992). “Favorite Poems”, p.24, Courier Corporation

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• I have always considered The Merry Wives one of the worst plays, if not altogether the worst, that Shakespeare has left us. The wit for the most part is dreary or foolish; the tone is coarse and farcical; and the characters want the fine distinctive touches he so well knew how to give. If some luckless wight had written such a comedy in our time, I should like to see what the critics would say to it?

  George Henry Lewes

  Character, Play, Giving

  John Forster, George Henry Lewes (1896). “Dramatic Essays”

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• Renounce and give up. What did Christ say? "He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." Again and again did he preach renunciation as the only way to perfection. There comes a time when the mind awakes from this long and dreary dream-the child gives up its play and wants to go back to its mother. Renunciation is not asceticism. Are all beggars Christ? Poverty is not a synonym for holiness; often the reverse.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Mother, Dream, Jesus

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “Jnana Yoga: The Yoga of Knowledge”, p.30, editionNEXT.com

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• But 'why then publish?' There are no rewards Of fame or profit when the world grows weary. I ask in turn why do you play at cards? Why drink? Why read? To make some hour less dreary. It occupies me to turn back regards On what I've seen or pondered, sad or cheery, And what I write I cast upon the stream To swim or sink. I have had at least my dream.

  Lord Byron

  Dream, Writing, Play

  Lord Byron (2015). “Don Juan”, p.420, Xist Publishing

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• If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong. I do not say "give them up," for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  People, Giving, Vices

  Robert Louis Stevenson (2015). “Across The Plains”, p.139, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• It reminded him that time was short, but that beautiful endings could still be found at the end of cold, dreary days.

  Jamie Ford

  Beautiful, Cold, Ends

  Jamie Ford (2011). “Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet”, p.73, Allison & Busby

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• An uncertain evil causes anxiety because, at the bottom of one's heart, one goes on hoping till the last moment that it may not be true; a certain evil, on the other hand, instills, for a time, a kind of dreary tranquillity.

  Alberto Moravia

  Heart, Hands, Evil

  Alberto Moravia (2011). “Contempt”, p.75, New York Review of Books

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• Once upon a midnight dreary

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Midnight

  "The Raven" l. 1 (1845)

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• If you were the wall, what would you rather be? Dreary and dull, or alive with paint?" "Walls can't think!" "That doesn't stop them from caring.

  Brandon Sanderson

  Wall, Caring, Thinking

  Brandon Sanderson (2012). “The Emperor's Soul”, p.111, Tachyon Publications

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• Freedom is not a reward or a decoration that you toast in champagne. On the contrary, it's hard graft and a long-distance run, all alone, very exhausting. Alone in a dreary room, alone in the dock before the judges, and alone to make up your mind, before yourself and before the judgement of others. At the end of every freedom there is a sentence, which is why freedom is too heavy to bear.

  Albert Camus

  Running, Distance, Long

  Albert Camus (2006). “The fall”, Penguin Modern Classics

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• So the story of man runs in a dreary circle, because he is not yet master of the earth that holds him.

  Will Durant

  Running, Men, Circles

  Will Durant (2012). “Story of Philosophy”, p.85, Simon and Schuster

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• The old church tower and garden wall Are black with autumn rain And dreary winds foreboding call The darkness down again

  Emily Bronte

  Wall, Rain, Autumn

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• Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As if some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--Only this and nothing more.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Sad, Rap, Doors

  "The Raven" l. 1 (1845)

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• She would allow him to comfort her. And perhaps, someday, she would listen patiently if a dark, dreary night found him well in his cups and he drunkenly confessed to still feeling scores of wounds that weren’t his own, but those of men under his command.

  Tessa Dare

  Dark, Night, Men

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• I am wary of the whole dreary deadening structured mess that we have built into such a glittering top-heavy structure that there is nothing left to see but the glitter, and the brute routines of maintaining it.

  John D. MacDonald

  Glitter, Maintaining, Structure

  John D MacDonald (1985). “Deep Blue Goodbye”, Fawcett

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• It is not hard work that is dreary; it is superficial work.

  Edith Hamilton

  Hard Work, Superficial, Hard

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