Dull Quotes - Page 35

• Dull winter will re-appear.

  Horace

  Winter

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• There are both dull correctness and piquant carelessness; it is needless to say which will command the most readers and have the most influence.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Influence, Authorship, Command

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• A dull axe never loves grindstones, but a keen workman does; and he puts his tool on them in order that it may be sharp. And men do not like grinding; but they are dull for the purposes which God designs to work out with them, and therefore He is grinding them.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Men, Order, Discipline

  Henry Ward Beecher (1866). “Royal truths”, p.195

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• Miserable is the fate of writers: if they are agreeable, they are offensive; and if dull, they starve.

  Mary Wortley Montagu

  Fate, Offensive, Miserable

  Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1825). “The Works of the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Including Her Correspondence, Poems, and Essays, Form Her Genuine Papers”, p.541

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• We meet With few utterly dull and stupid souls: the sublime and transcendent are still fewer; the generality of mankind stand between these two extremes: the interval is filled with multitudes of ordinary geniuses, but all very useful, and the ornaments and supports of the commonwealth.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Stupid, Two, Support

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• A trite word is an overused word which has lost its identity like an old coat in a second-hand shop. The familiar grows dull and we no longer see, hear, or taste it.

  Anais Nin

  Hands, Identity, Coats

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• A dull speaker, like a plain woman, is credited with all the virtues, for we charitably suppose that a surface so unattractive must be compensated by interior blessings.

  A. P. Herbert

  Blessing, Unattractive, Virtue

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• Nature, as it grows again toward earth, is fashioned for the journey, dull and heavy.

  William Shakespeare

  Journey, Age, Earth

  William Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson (écrivain) (1801). “The Plays of William Shakspeare”, p.71

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• Though now this grained face of mine be hid
  In sap-consuming winter's drizzled snow,
  And all the conduits of my blood froze up,
  Yet hath my night of life some memory,
  My wasting lamps some fading glimmer left,
  My dull deaf ears a little use to hear.

  William Shakespeare

  Memories, Winter, Night

  William Shakespeare (2003). “The Comedy of Errors”, p.174, Oxford University Press, USA

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• During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was - but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Country, Book, Autumn

  Edgar Allan Poe (1927). “Tales by Edgar Allan Poe”, p.128, Dimitrios Spyridon Chytiris

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• Democracy is an interesting, even laudable, notion and there is no question but that when compared to Communism, which is too dull, or Fascism, which is too exciting, it emerges as the most palatable form of government.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Government, Interesting, Democracy

  Fran Lebowitz (2011). “The Fran Lebowitz Reader”, p.188, Vintage

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• Most meetings are too long, too dull, too unproductive - and too much a part of corporate life to be abandoned.

  Lois Wyse

  Long, Too Much, Abandoned

  Lois Wyse (2011). “Company Manners: How to Behave in the Workplace in the 90s”, p.126, Crown Business

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• Tis chiefly taste, or blunt, or gross, or fine,
  Makes life insipid, bestial, or divine.
  Better be born with taste to little rent
  Than the dull monarch of a continent;
  Without this bounty which the gods bestow,
  Can Fortune make one favorite happy?
  No.

  John Armstrong

  Littles, Taste, Blunt

  John Armstrong, Samuel Johnson (1822). “The Poems of Armstrong and Johnson”, p.89

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• Discipline and constant work are the whetstones upon which the dull knife of talent is honed until it becomes sharp enough, hopefully, to cut through even the toughest meat and gristle.

  Stephen King

  Cutting, Knives, Discipline

  Stephen King (2011). “Danse Macabre”, p.89, Simon and Schuster

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• Talent is a dreadfully cheap commodity, cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work and study; a constant process of honing. Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force.

  Stephen King

  Work, Cutting, Successful

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

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• O, pleasant is the welcome kiss
  When day's dull round is o'er;
  And sweet the music of the step
  That meets us at the door.

  Joseph Rodman Drake

  Music, Sweet, Kissing

  JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE (1836). “THE CULPRIT FAY”, p.89

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• The dull flat falsehood serves for policy, and in the cunning, truth's itself a lie.

  Alexander Pope

  Lying, Cunning, Policy

  Alexander Pope (1824). “The Works of Alexander Pope: With Notes and Illustrations by Himself and Others. To which are Added, a New Life of the Author, an Estimate of His Poetical Character and Writings, and Occasional Remarks”, p.254

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• Computers force us into creating with our minds and prevent us from making things with our hands. They dull the skills we use in everyday life.

  Clifford Stoll

  Hands, Skills, Creating

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• Once you know what women are like, men get kind of boring. I'm not trying to put them down, I mean I like them sometimes as people, but sexually they're dull.

  Rita Mae Brown

  Mean, Men, People

  Rita Mae Brown (2014). “Rubyfruit Jungle”, p.159, Bantam

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• Recreation is intended to the mind as whetting is to the scythe, to sharpen the edge of it, which otherwise would grow dull and blunt,--as good no scythe as no edge.

  Joseph Hall

  Mind, Scythes, Blunt

  Joseph Hall (1839). “The Works of Joseph Hall: Latin theology with translations”, p.174

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• As I got warmed up, and felt perfectly at home in talk, I heard myself boasting, lying, exaggerating. Oh, not deliberately, far from it. It would be unconvivial and dull to stop and arrest the flow of talk, and speak only after carefully considering whether I was telling the truth.

  Bernard Berenson

  Lying, Home, Would Be

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• Evil is dull, that is the worst of it.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Evil, Worst

  Katherine Anne Porter (2008). “Katherine Anne Porter: Collected Stories & Other Writings”, p.921, Library of America

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• Religious bigotry is a dull fire - hot enough to roast an ox, but with no lambent, luminous flame shooting up from it.

  Sara Coleridge

  Religious, Flames, Fire

  Sara Coleridge Coleridge (1873). “Memoir and Letters”, p.260

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• the test of a cook is how she boils an egg. My boiled eggs are fantastic, fabulous. Sometimes as hard as a 100 carat diamond, or again soft as a feather bed, or running like a cooling stream, they can also burst like fireworks from their shells and take on the look and rubbery texture of a baby octopus. Never a dull egg, with me.

  Nancy Mitford

  Running, Baby, Food

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• Art and Entertainment are the same thing, in that the more deeply and genuinely entertaining a work is, the better art it is. To imply that Art is something heavy and solemn and dull, and Entertainment is modest but jolly and popular, is neo-Victorian idiocy at its worst.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Art, Entertainment, Heavy

  Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.232, Ultramarine Publishing

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