Dull Quotes - Page 17

• Be anything you want to be, but don't be dull.

  Frank Robinson

  Writing, Want

  39 Copy quote

• The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction.

  Oscar Wilde

  Writing, Novelists, Fiction

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.838, GENERAL PRESS

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have never heard a dancer asking for advice about how to stay focused on her footwork, or a painter complaining about the dull day-to-day task of painting. What task worth doing isn't worth daily effort? Do you think Michelangelo was having fun the whole time he was on his back painting the Sistine Chapel's ceiling?

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Fun, Writing, Thinking

  Teenreads Interview, www.teenreads.com. September 2006.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• When the novice photographer starts taking pictures, he carries his camera about and shoots everything that interests him. There comes a time when he must crystallize his ideas and set off in an particular direction. He must learn that shooting for the sake of shooting is dull and unprofitable.

  Alexey Brodovitch

  Photography, Ideas, Sake

  9 Copy quote

• You need have no dull hours if you are a sincere lover of books.

  Grenville Kleiser

  Book, Reading, Needs

  Grenville Kleiser (1917). “Inspiration and Ideals: Thoughts for Every Day”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• To call ourselves a Microcosme, or little world, I thought it onely a pleasant trope of Rhetorick, till my neare judgement and second thoughts told me there was a reall truth therein: for first wee are a rude masse, and in the ranke of creatures, which only are, and have a dull kinde of being not yet priviledged with life, or preferred to sense or reason; next we live the life of plants, the life of animals, the life of men, and at last the life of spirits, running on in one mysterious nature those five kinds of existence, which comprehend the creatures not onely of world, but of the Universe.

  Thomas Browne

  Running, Live Life, Animal

  4 Copy quote

• I feel more confident and more satisfied when I reflect that I have two professions and not one. Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the other. Though it's disorderly it's not so dull, and besides, neither really loses anything, through my infidelity.

  Anton Chekhov

  Tired, Night, Two

  Letter to A. S. Suvorin, 11 Sept. 1888

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• When the moon shall have faded out from the sky, and the sun shall shine at noonday a dull cherry red, and the seas shall be frozen over, and the icecap shall have crept downward to the equator from either pole . . . when all the cities shall have long been dead and crumbled into dust, and all life shall be on the last verge of extinction on this globe; then, on a bit of lichen, growing on the bald rocks beside the eternal snows of Panama, shall be seated a tiny insect, preening its antennae in the glow of the worn-out sun, the sole survivor of animal life on this our earth - a melancholy bug.

  William Jacob Holland

  Life, Animal, Moon

  8 Copy quote

• It is against their own insoluble problem of being human that the dull and base in humanity are in revolt in anti-Semitism. Judaism, nevertheless, together with Hellenism and Christianity is an inalienable component of our Christian Western civilization, the eternal "call to Sinai" against which humanity again and again rebels.

  Hermann Rauschning

  Christian, Civilization, Humanity

  "The Beast From the Abyss". Book by Hermann Rauschning, pp. 155-156, 1941.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Marriage is a long, dull meal with dessert served at the beginning.

  Oscar Wilde

  Long, Meals, Dessert

  64 Copy quote

• More than the diamond Koh-i-noor, which glitters among their crown jewels, they prize the dull pebble which is wiser than a man, whose poles turn themselves to the poles of the world, and whose axis is parallel to the axis of the world. Now, their toys are steam and galvanism.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wisdom, Science, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.37

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every time I write a song, it's different. I'm all about the rhythm of the words and the melody. Musically, you gotta have a throbbing pulse going. But as far as what it's all about, there's a million ways to go. You have to invent a new code for every song. Then you have to break it. It's like Scrabble or a crossword puzzle on steriods. I could talk about the process for days. But it's never dull and there's no one way in.

  Dan Bern

  Song, Writing, Pulse

  9 Copy quote

• What a dreadful thing it must be to have a dull father.

  Mary Mapes Dodge

  Fathers Day, Father

  Mary Mapes Dodge (2012). “Hans Brinker”, p.163, Simon and Schuster

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• To divide one's life by years is of course to tumble into a trap set by our own arithmetic. The calendar consents to carry on its dull wall-existence by the arbitrary timetables we have drawn up in consultation with those permanent commuters, Earth and Sun. But we, unlike trees, need grow no annual rings.

  Clifton Fadiman

  Birthday, Wall, Years

  Clifton Fadiman (1955). “Party of One: The Selectd Writings of Clifton Fadiman”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.

  Mark Twain

  War, Moon, Men

  Mark Twain (2010). “Mark Twain's Civil War”, p.21, University Press of Kentucky

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Travel compels you to discover your spiritual side by elimination: Without all the rituals, routines and possessions that give your life meaning at home, you're forced to look for meaning within yourself Indeed, if travel is a process that helps you 'find yourself', it's because it leaves you with nothing to hide behind - it yanks you out from the realm of rehearsed responses and dull comforts, and forces you into the present. Here, in the fleeting moment, you are left to improvise, to come to terms with your raw, true self.

  Rolf Potts

  Spiritual, Home, Self

  23 Copy quote

• Knicks and dull edges are abominations, so use knives and hatchets for nothing but they were made for.

  Horace Kephart

  Knives, Use, Made

  Horace Kephart (1922). “Camping”

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• A cheese may disappoint. It may be dull, it may be naive, it may be oversophisticated. Yet it remains cheese, milk's leap toward immortality.

  Clifton Fadiman

  Food, Cheesy, Cooking

  Any Number Can Play (1957) p. 105

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• An actor has many lives and many people within him. I know there are lots of people inside me. No one ever said I'm dull.

  Shirley MacLaine

  People, Actors, Said

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I`ve had few dull moments [in my life] and not too many sad and defeated ones. In saying this I am by no means overlooking the rough and rocky years I`ve lived through. But I was not brought up thinking life would be easy. I always expected to work hard for my money and to get nothing I did not earn. And the bad years, it seems to me, were so few that only a dyed-in-the-wool grouch who enjoys feeling sorry for himself would complain.

  Buster Keaton

  Sorry, Hard Work, Mean

  Buster Keaton, Charles Samuels (2015). “My Wonderful World Of Slapstick”, p.8, Pickle Partners Publishing

  49 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hollywood parties not only confuse me, but they often disillusion me. The disillusion comes when I meet a movie star I’ve been admiring since childhood. I always thought that movie stars were exciting and talented people full of special personality. Meeting one of them at a party I discover usually that he (or she) is colorless and even frightened. I’ve often stood silent at a party for hours listening to my movie idols turn into dull and little people.

  Marilyn Monroe

  Stars, Party, Idols

  Marilyn Monroe, Ben Hecht (2006). “My Story”, p.153, Rowman & Littlefield

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am not an alcoholic. I'm a social catalyst. People pay me to illustrate for other partygoers the chemical process involved in transforming from one persona into another drunker, more fun one. It's a matter of going from dull point A to exciting point B. And I'm a raving success at it. So successful that sometimes I wind up at Mysterious Point C.

  Josh Kilmer-Purcell

  Fun, Successful, Wind

  4 Copy quote

• Well I thought my razor was dull until I heard his speech, and
  that reminds me of a story that's so dirty I'm ashamed to think of
  it myself.

  Groucho Marx

  Dirty, Thinking, Stories

  Groucho Marx (2000). “The Essential Groucho: Writings By, For, and about Groucho Marx”, Vintage

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• When you are doing a show, it can get really dull. You are sitting so long while they set up the lights, then you say a couple of lines, then they tear down the lights again. At least stunts are something that uses your physical energy a great deal.

  Yvonne Craig

  Couple, Light, Long

  "R.I.P. Yvonne Craig, TV's Batgirl and Star Trek guest star" by Mike Vanderbilt, www.avclub.com. August 19, 2015.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Were I to write what I know, the book would be too sensational to print, but were I to write what I think proper, it would be too dull to read.

  Ina Coolbrith

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  5 Copy quote