Dull Quotes - Page 13

• The enemy is the tyranny of the dull mind.

  Tom Robbins

  Mind, Enemy, Tyranny

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• Intelligent, thinking people could take things like this in their stride, just as they took the larger absurdities of deadly dull jobs in the city and deadly dull homes in the suburbs. Economic circumstances might force you to live in this environment, but the important thing was to keep from being contaminated. The important thing, always, was to remember who you were.

  Richard Yates

  Jobs, Home, Intelligent

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• The normal is that which nobody quite is. If you listen to seemingly dull people very closely, you'll see that they're all mad in different and interesting ways, and are merely struggling to hide it.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Struggle, People, Mad

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• See this pebble?" "Yes." "Take it." Eragon did and stared at the unremarkable lump. It was dull black, smooth, and as large as the end of his thumb. There were countless stones like it on the trail. "This is your training." Eragon looked back at him, confused. "I don't understand." "Of course you don't," said Brom impatiently. "That's why I'm teaching you and not the other way around. Now stop talking or we'll never get anywhere.

  Christopher Paolini

  Confused, Teaching, Talking

  Christopher Paolini (2014). “The Inheritance Cycle Complete Collection: Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, Inheritance”, p.187, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• you are on the freeway threading through traffic now, moving both towards something and towards nothing at all as you punch the radio on and get Mozart, which is something, and you will somehow get through the slow days and the busy days and the dull days and the hateful days and the rare days, all both so delightful and so disappointing because we are all so alike and so different.

  Charles Bukowski

  Moving, Different, Dull Days

  Charles Bukowski, “Gamblers All”

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• The man running toward me is not a man, he is a boy. A shaggy-haired boy with a crease between his eyebrows. Will. Dull-eyed and mindless, but still Will. He stops running and mirrors me, his feet planted and his gun up. In an instant, I see his finger poised over the trigger and hear the bullet slide into the chamber, and I fire. My eyes squeezed shut. Can't breathe. The bullet hit him in the head. I know because that's where I aimed it.

  Veronica Roth

  Running, Eye, Gun

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• If I had followed my better judgment always, my life would have been a very dull one.

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Judgment, Has Beens, Ifs

  Edgar Rice Burroughs (2012). “Llana of Gathol”, p.44, eStar Books

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• Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he’s been robbed. The fact is that most putts don’t drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to just be people, most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. Life is like an old-time rail journey—delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.

  Jenkin Lloyd Jones

  Life, Beautiful, Running

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• I felt overstuffed and dull and disappointed, the way I always do the day after Christmas, as if whatever it was the pine boughs and the candles and the silver and gilt-ribboned presents and the birch-log fires and the Christmas turkey and the carols at the piano promised never came to pass.

  Sylvia Plath

  Christmas, Disappointment, Fire

  Sylvia Plath (2008). “The Bell Jar”, p.65, Faber & Faber

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• I'm trying to figure out how someone could live in a brothel for a month and not notice. You must be terribly dull-witted." Tessa glared. "If it helps at all, it seemed to be quite a high-class establishment. Nicely furnished, fairly clean..." "Sounds as if you've visited your fair share of brothels," Tessa said, sourly. "Making a study of them?" "More of a hobby," said Will, and smiled like a bad angel.

  Cassandra Clare

  Angel, Class, Trying

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• It's strange how the human mind swings back and forth, from one extreme to another. Does truth lie at some point of the pendulum's swing, at a point where it never rests, not in the dull perpendicular mean where it dangles in the end like a windless flag, but at an angle, nearer one extreme than another? If only a miracle could stop the pendulum at an angle of sixty degrees, one would believe the truth was there.

  Graham Greene

  Lying, Believe, Mean

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• I hate the uneducated and the ignorant. I hate the pompous and the phoney. I hate the jealous and the resentful. I hate the crabbed and mean and the petty. I hate all ordinary dull little people who aren't ashamed of being dull and little.

  John Fowles

  Hate, Jealous, Mean

  John Fowles (1980). “The collector”, Dell Pub Co

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• Happily for me, ninety-nine percent of all human life is spent simply repeating the same old actions, speaking the same tired clichés, moving like a zombie through the same steps of the dance we plodded through yesterday and the day before and the day before. It seems horribly dull and pointless-but it really makes a great deal of sense. After all, if you only have to follow the same path every day, you don't need to think at all. Considering how good humans are at any mental process more complicated than chewing, isn't that the best for everybody?

  Jeff Lindsay

  Moving, Tired, Thinking

  Jeff Lindsay (2011). “Double Dexter: Dexter Morgan (6)”, p.36, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• I'm very happy by myself - I'm lucky in that way - if I've got enough to read and something to write about and a bit of alcohol for me to add an edge, not to dull it.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Writing, Alcohol, Lucky

  "Christopher Hitchens - Q&A (2010) lyrics". Interview with Brian Lamb, lyrics.az. 2010.

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• She bought seeds and raided nurseries and mulched and composted and spent full days with her hands full of earth, coaxing life our of the dry, dull grass my father had spent years pushing a mower over.

  Sarah Dessen

  Father, Hands, Years

  Sarah Dessen (2004). “That Summer”, p.32, Penguin

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• November is the most disagreeable month in the whole year," said Margaret, standing at the window one dull afternoon, looking out at the frostbitten garden. "That's the reason I was born in it," observed Jo pensively, quite unconscious of the blot on her nose.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Garden, Years, Noses

  Louisa May Alcott (2012). “Little Women and Little Men”, p.248, Graphic Arts Books

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• The thing that impressed me then as now about New York… was the sharp, and at the same time immense, contrast it showed between the dull and the shrewd, the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the wise and the ignorant… the strong, or those who ultimately dominated, were so very strong, and the weak so very, very weak - and so very, very many.

  Theodore Dreiser

  Wise, Strong, New York

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• People’s lives, in Jubilee as elsewhere, were dull, simple, amazing, and unfathomable – deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum.

  Alice Munro

  Simple, People, Kitchen

  "Lives of Girls and Women". Book by Alice Munro, 1971.

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• I am cruel and I am selfish, but this need I have inside me, this need for you and no other, is stronger than anything else I've ever encountered. I doubt two years of lockup would dull it in the slightest.

  Gena Showalter

  Selfish, Years, Two

  Gena Showalter (2010). “The Darkest Pleasure”, p.254, HQN Books

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• Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom we know nothing. Romances are never as pure as those we imagine during long train journeys, as we secretly contemplate a beautiful person who is gazing out of the window – a perfect love story interrupted only when the beloved looks back into the carriage and starts up a dull conversation about the excessive price of the on-board sandwiches with a neighbour or blows her nose aggressively into a handkerchief.

  Alain de Botton

  Beautiful, Falling In Love, Journey

  Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.40, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• If reassurances could dull pain, nobody would ever go to the trouble of pressing grapes.

  Scott Lynch

  Pain, Reassurance, Trouble

  Scott Lynch (2006). “The Lies of Locke Lamora”, p.122, Spectra

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• Every day is important for us because it is a day ordained by God. If we are bored with life there is something wrong with our concept of God and His involvement in our daily lives. Even the most dull and tedious days of our lives are ordained by God and ought to be used by us to glorify Him.

  Jerry Bridges

  Bored, Important, Daily Life

  Jerry Bridges (2014). “Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts”, p.106, Tyndale House

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• And then of course the music sprang up, lousy rock as bold and dull as a giant potato. "Love this song," Todd said, like it was unusually brave to like what was number one on the radio.

  Daniel Handler

  Song, Rocks, Numbers

  Daniel Handler (2012). “Why We Broke Up”, p.70, Egmont UK

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• You know what I do? I listen to other people, stumbling about with their half thoughts and half sentences and their clumsy feelings that they can't express, and it hurts me. So I go home and burnish it and polish it and weld it to a rhythmic frame, make the dull colors gleam, mute the garish artificiality to pastels, so it doesn't hurt any more: that's my poem. I know what they want to say, and I say it for them.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Hurt, Home, Color

  Samuel R. Delany (1969). “Babel-17”, Macmillan Reference USA

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• Not all is certainty in our world, Karigan. If it were there'd be no opportunity for faith; and then it would be a very dull existence.

  Kristen Britain

  Opportunity, Our World, Would Be

  Kristen Britain (2007). “The High King's Tomb: Book Three of Green Rider”, p.467, Penguin

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