Dull Quotes - Page 18

• They discovered that even in the face of pain that seems unbearable, even in the face of pain that wrings the last drop of blood out of your heart and leaves its scrimshaw tracery on the inside of your skull, life goes on. And pain grows dull, and begins to fade

  Poppy Z. Brite

  Pain, Heart, Discovery

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• However good you may be you have faults; however dull you may be you can find out what some of them are, and however slight they may be you had better make some - not too painful, but patient efforts to get rid of them.

  John Ruskin

  Pain, Effort, May

  John Ruskin (2006). “Sesame and Lillies: Three Lectures”, p.9, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I find it dull when my heart meets my mind

  Laura Marling

  Heart, Mind, My Heart

  Song: My Manic and I, Album: Alas I Cannot Swim, 2008

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• Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust, or flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death?

  Thomas Gray

  Dust, Voice, Honor

  1751 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, l.41-4.

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• A book may be very amusing with numerous errors, or it may be very dull without a single absurdity.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Book, Errors, May

  Oliver Goldsmith (1806). “The Vicar of Wakefield”, p.13

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• History has to live with what was here,
  clutching and close to fumbling all we had -
  it is so dull and gruesome how we die,
  unlike writing, life never finishes.

  Robert Lowell

  Writing, Dies, Writing Life

  Robert Lowell (2017). “New Selected Poems”, p.145, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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• Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.

  Blaise Pascal

  Mind, Mathematical, Intuitive

  Blaise Pascal (2010). “Thoughts, Letters & Minor Works”, p.8, Cosimo, Inc.

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• An empty canvas, apparently really empty, that says nothing and is without significance – almost dull, in fact – in reality, is crammed with thousands of undertone tensions and full of expectancy. Slightly apprehensive lest it should be outraged.

  Wassily Kandinsky

  Reality, Facts, Canvas

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• If You Want To Rebel Against Society, Don’t Dull The Blade

  Ian MacKaye

  Rebel, Want, Blades

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• History no longer shall be a dull book. It shall walk incarnate in every just and wise man. You shall not tell me by language and titles a catalogue of the volumes you have read. You shall make me feel what periods you have lived.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Book, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.25, Graphic Arts Books

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• For a lot of people, poetry tends to be dull. It's not read much. It takes a special kind of training and a lot of practice to read poetry with pleasure. It's like learning to like asparagus.

  Thomas M. Disch

  Practice, People, Training

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• Dull, inert cities, it is true, do contain the seeds of their own destruction and little else. But lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration, with energy enough to carry over for problems and needs outside themselves.

  Jane Jacobs

  Cities, Littles, Energy

  Jane Jacobs (2016). “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, p.343, Random House

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• Society was nothing but a long, dull dinner party conversation in which one was forced to speak to one's partner on both the left and the right.

  Ann Patchett

  Party, Long, Dinner

  Ann Patchett (2011). “State of Wonder”, p.216, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• If you went through life refusing all the bait dangled in front of you, that would be no life at all. No changes would be made and you would have nothing to fight against. Life would be dull as ditchwater.

  Alan Sillitoe

  Fighting, Bait, Would Be

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• Educational bureaucracies dull a child's questing sensitivity.

  Frank Herbert

  Children, Educational, Bureaucracy

  Frank Herbert (1987). “Chapterhouse: Dune”, p.109, Penguin

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• Then what shall I write? I can't just write that this happened then this happened then this happened to boring infinitum. I'll let my journal grow just like the mind does, just like a tree or beast does, just like life does. Why should a book tell a tale in a dull straight line? Words should wander and meander. They should fly like owls and flicker like bats and slip like cats. They should murmur and scream and dance and sing.

  David Almond

  Book, Writing, Cat

  David Almond (2013). “My Name is Mina”, p.7, Hachette UK

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• There are dozens of young poets and fictioneers most of them a little insane in the tradition of James Joyce, who, however insane they may be, have refused to be genteel and traditional and dull.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Insane, Dozen, May

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• Upon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one's business, to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements from being still worse; and that the pastor's sermons, however dull they might seem at the time of taking, yet had a voodooistic power which 'did a fellow good-- kept him in touch with Higher Things.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Past, Church, Elements

  Sinclair Lewis (2013). “Babbitt”, p.298, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Good Lord, I don't know what 'rights' a man has! And I don't know the solution of boredom. If I did, I'd be the one philosopher that had the cure for living. But I do know that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, as ever admit it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Fun, Nice, Believe

  Sinclair Lewis (2015). “Babbitt”, p.62, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• Africa is mystic; it is wild; it is a sweltering inferno; it is a photographer's paradise, a hunter's Valhalla, an escapist's Utopia. It is what you will, and it withstands all interpretations. It is the last vestige of a dead world or the cradle of a shiny new one. To a lot of people, as to myself, it is just 'home'. It is all these things but one thing - it is never dull.

  Beryl Markham

  Home, People, Justice

  Beryl Markham (2012). “West with the Night”, p.14, Open Road Media

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• To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die.

  Oscar Wilde

  Inspirational, Life, Courage

  Quoted in Hesketh Pearson, Oscar Wilde, His Life and Wit (1946)

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• She's one of those third year girls who gripe my liver... You know, American college kids. They come over here to take their third year and lap up a little culture... They're officious and dull. They're always making profound observations they've overheard.

  Gene Kelly

  Girl, Kids, College

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• Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force.

  Stephen King

  Success, Cutting, Knives

  Stephen King (2011). “Danse Macabre”, p.88, Simon and Schuster

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• My candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Halloween, Eye, Light

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1823). “Frankenstein: ; Or, The Modern Prometheus”, p.97, DOSER Reads

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• Love is the kind of illness that does not spare the intelligent or the dull.

  Albert Camus

  Love, Intelligent, Doe

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