Dull Quotes - Page 26

• It can be said with complete confidence that any scientist of any age who wants to make important discoveries must study important problems. Dull or piffling problems yield dull or piffling answers. It is not enough that a problem should be "interesting".

  Peter Medawar

  Science, Yield, Discovery

  "Advice to a young scientist".

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• Typhoons are a sort of violent whirlwinds. Before these whirlwinds come on... there appears a heavy cloud to the northeast which is very black near the horizon, but toward the upper part is a dull reddish color. The tempest came with great violence, but after a while, the winds ceased all at once and a calm succeeded. This lasted... an hour, more or less, then the gales were turned around, blowing with great fury from the southwest.

  William Dampier

  Clouds, Color, Wind

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• Day was breaking at Plashwater Weir Mill Lock. Stars were yet visible, but there was dull light in the east that was not the light of night. The moon had gone down, and a mist crept along the banks of the river, seen through which the trees were the ghosts of trees, and the water was the ghost of water. This earth looked spectral, and so did the pale stars: while the cold eastern glare, expressionless as to heat or colour, with the eye of the firmament quenched, might have been likened to the stare of the dead.

  Charles Dickens

  Nature, Stars, Eye

  Charles Dickens (1873). “A Cyclopedia of the Best Thoughts of Charles Dickens”, p.317

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• Taxonomy (the science of classification) is often undervalued as a glorified form of filing-with each species in its folder, like a stamp in its prescribed place in an album; but taxonomy is a fundamental and dynamic science, dedicated to exploring the causes of relationships and similarities among organisms. Classifications are theories about the basis of natural order, not dull catalogues compiled only to avoid chaos.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Order, Causes, Albums

  Stephen Jay Gould (1990). “Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History”, p.98, W. W. Norton & Company

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• If the mind is open the individual will soon perceive the preciousness of a truth which initially appeared rather dull to him but now is illumined by the spirit's light.

  Watchman Nee

  Christian, Light, Mind

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• You see the lighted windows and what you want to think is that there may be many interesting stories behind them, but what you know is that really there are just dull, dull souls, mere consumers of food, who think their instincts are emotions and their tiny lives of more account than a whisper of wind.

  Terry Pratchett

  Thinking, Wind, Interesting

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• It is certainly a wonderful, a brain-staggering conception... that our own stellar universe may be but one of hundreds of thousands of similar universes... Familiarity with these mighty concepts most certainly does not breed contempt, does not dull our awe at the mightiness of the universe in which we play so small a part. It is very doubtful if any of those who are seriously studying the heavens ever lose their feeling of reverence for this supremely wonderful universe and for Whoever or Whatever must be behind it all.

  Heber Doust Curtis

  Play, Space, Heaven

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• The writing in mathematics text is not only laconic to a fault; it is cold, monotonous, dry, dull, and even ungrammatical... The books are not only printed by machines; they are written by machines.

  Morris Kline

  Book, Writing, Faults

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• [H]istory is a melodrama on the theme of parasitism, characterized by scenes that are exciting or dull, as the case may be, and many a sudden stagetrick.

  Max Nordau

  History, May, Scene

  Max Nordau (1911). “The Interpretation of History”

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• The wren and the nightingale sound nothing alike, but think how dull the world would be without the songs of both birds.-Miss Kanagawa

  Kirby Larson

  Song, Thinking, Bird

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• Coaches should realize that the only way to conquer drudgery is by getting through it as efficiently as they can. A dull job slackly done becomes twice as dull, whereas a dull job performed as efficiently as possible becomes half as dull. Effort appears to be the main art of living.

  Harold Nicolson

  Sports, Art, Jobs

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• What a dull world if we knew all about geese!

  Aldo Leopold

  World, Geese, Ifs

  Aldo Leopold (1968). “A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There”, p.25, Oxford University Press

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• I read a book lately by Nietzsche and he says religion is just to dull the senses of the people. I agree.

  Bobby Fischer

  Book, People, Agree

  "Portrait of a Genius As a Young Chess Master". Interview with Ralph Ginzburg, harpers.org. January 1962.

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• To science, not even the bark of a tree or a drop of pond water is dull or a handful of dirt banal. They all arouse awe and wonder.

  Jane Jacobs

  Awe And Wonder, Water, Tree

  Jane Jacobs (2007). “Dark Age Ahead”, p.65, Vintage

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• Peoples lives, in Jubilee as elsewhere, were dull, simple, amazing, unfathomable-deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum. . . . What I wanted [to write down] was every last thing, every layer of speech and thought, stroke of light on bark or walls, every smell, pothole, pain, crack, delusion, held still and held together-radiant, everlasting.

  Alice Munro

  Wall, Pain, Writing

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• If you can't see the bright side, why ya just need to polish the dull one.

  Shelley Shepard Gray

  Needs, Sides, Polish

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• We are cold to others only when we are dull in ourselves.

  William Hazlitt

  Inspirational, Cold

  William Hazlitt, Edward Bulwer Lytton Baron Lytton, Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, Charles Lamb (1836). “Literary Remains of the Late William Hazlitt: With Notice of His Life”, p.222

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• A thrumming of piano-strings beyond the gardens and through the elms. At length the melody steals into my being. I know not when it began to occupy me. By some fortunate coincidence of thought or circumstance I am attuned to the universe, I am fitted to hear, my being moves in a sphere of melody, my fancy and imagination are excited to an inconceivable degree. This is no longer the dull earth on which I stood.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Music, Moving, Garden

  Henry David Thoreau (1960). “H. D. Thoreau, a Writer's Journal”, p.91, Courier Corporation

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• Dull magic is a collection of tricks: great magic should sting.

  Derren Brown

  Magic, Should, Tricks

  "On Deception". Book by Harry Houdini, foreword, 2009.

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• I grew up on a suburban street with lace curtains and dull neighbours, so I made up stories to tell my friend, in which they became serial killers and burglars. She told her mother, who then told mine.

  Nina Bawden

  Mother, Made Up Stories, Serial Killer

  Interview With Hephzibah Anderson, www.theguardian.com. November 11, 2006.

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• Entertainers and sports figures achieve fame and wealth but find the world empty and dull without the solace and stimulation of drugs.

  Mario Cuomo

  Sports, Drug, World

  Commencement Address at Iona College on June 03, 1984. "Lend Me Your Ears Great Speeches in History". Book by William Safire, 1992.

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• Upon occasion we should go as far as intoxication.... Drink washes cares away, stirs the mind from its lowest depths.... But in liberty moderation is wholesome, and so it is in wine.... We ought not indulge too often, for fear the mind contract a bad habit, yet it is right to draw it toward elation and release and to banish dull sobriety for a little.

  Seneca the Younger

  Drinking, Wine, Sobriety

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• It is difficult not to wonder whether that combination of elements which produces a machine for labor does not create also a soul of sorts, a dull resentful metallic will, which can rebel at times.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Technology, Soul, Rebel

  Pearl S. Buck (2013). “My Several Worlds: A Personal Record”, p.71, Open Road Media

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• Thick February mists cling heavily To the dead earth and to each leafless tree, And closer down upon the hilltops draw, Dull forecasts there of bright, sure-coming spring; Yet the heart gathers hope and strange delight From this dear, unlovely, wished-for sight Of leaden-misted twilights lengthening.

  Emma Lazarus

  Spring, Twilight, Heart

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• And when you get an eminent journal like Time magazine complaining, as it often has, that to the young writers of today life seems short on rewards and that what they write is a product of their own neuroses, in its silly way the magazine is merely stating the status quo and obvious truth. The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads.

  William Styron

  Silly, Writing, Today Life

  "Conversations with William Styron".

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