Dull Quotes - Page 8

• It would be, for me, mere pointless pleasure, an illusion of order for this one frail, foolish, flicker-flash in the long dull fall of eternity.

  John Gardner

  Fall, Order, Long

  John Gardner (2010). “Grendel”, p.110, Vintage

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• When I remember that dizzy summer, that dull, stupid, lovely, dire summer, it seems that in those days I ate my lunches, smelled another's skin, noticed a shade of yellow, even simply sat, with greater lust and hopefulness - and that I lusted with greater faith, hoped with greater abandon. The people I loved were celebrities, surrounded by rumor and fanfare; the places I sat with them, movie lots and monuments. No doubt all of this is not true remembrance but the ruinous work of nostalgia, which obliterates the past, and no doubt, as usual, I have exaggerated everything.

  Michael Chabon

  Summer, Stupid, Past

  "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh". Book by Michael Chabon, 1988.

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• Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.

  Isaac Asimov

  Wise, Philosophy, Numbers

  Isaac Asimov (1991). “Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor: A Lifetime Collection of Favorite Jokes, Anecdotes, and Limericks with Copious Notes on how to Tell Them and why”, p.9, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• And there, in that phrase, the bitterness leaks again out of my pen. What a dull lifeless quality this bitterness is. If I could I would write with love, but if I could write with love I would be another man; I would never have lost love.

  Graham Greene

  Lost Love, Writing, Men

  Graham Greene (1951). “The End of the Affair”, London Heinemann [1951]

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• I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood. Don't degrade me into the position of giving you useful information. Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

  Oscar Wilde

  Knowing, Giving, Misunderstood

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.971, Wordsworth Editions

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• Most of life is so dull it is not worth discussing, and it is dull at all ages. When we change our brand of cigarette, move to a new neighborhood, subscribe to a different newspaper, fall in and out of love, we are protesting in ways both frivolous and deep against the not to be diluted dullness of day-to-day living.

  Truman Capote

  Love, Moving, Fall

  Truman Capote (2012). “Summer Crossing: A Novel”, p.113, Modern Library

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• How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Life, Shining, Age

  'Ulysses' (1842) l. 6

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• People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other.

  Wendell Berry

  Lonely, Hate, Drug Use

  Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.61, Counterpoint

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• The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest species of literary exertion, and that novel reading was a dangerous luxury and an utter waste of time.

  Wilkie Collins

  Reading, Writing, Years

  Wilkie Collins (2014). “My Miscellanies”, p.60, The Floating Press

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• There was a dull pang of regret because it was not the kiss of love which had inflamed her, because it was not love which had held this cup of life to her lips.

  Kate Chopin

  Regret, Kissing, Cups

  Kate Chopin (1899). “The Awakening”, p.219

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• Be helpless, dumbfounded, Unable to say yes or no. Then a stretcher will come from grace to gather us up. We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty. If we say we can, we’re lying. If we say No, we don’t see it, That No will behead us And shut tight our window onto spirit. So let us rather not be sure of anything, Beside ourselves, and only that, so Miraculous beings come running to help. Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute, We shall be saying finally, With tremendous eloquence, Lead us. When we have totally surrendered to that beauty, We shall be a mighty kindness.

  Rumi

  Running, Zero, Kindness

  Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi, “Zero Circle”

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• You travel with a whetstone on your arm? (Kiara) You don’t ever want to kill someone with a dull knife. It takes too long to sever their arteries, or puncture organs, and it makes it even messier than normal. (Nykyrian)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Knives, Long, Want

  Sherrilyn Kenyon (2009). “Born Of Night: Number 1 in series”, p.93, Hachette UK

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• Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade.

  William Shakespeare

  Friendship, Real Friends, Adoption

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 1, sc. 3, l. 58

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• Not that happiness is dull. Only that it doesn't tell well. And of our consuming diversions as we age is to recite, not only to others but to ourselves, our own story.

  Lionel Shriver

  Age, Stories, Wells

  Lionel Shriver (2011). “We Need to Talk about Kevin”, p.17, Counterpoint Press

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• She handed him a glass of water and two Aleve gelcaps. “They’re anti-inflammatories. They will dull the pain a little bit and keep down swelling and redness. Swallow the pills, don’t chew.” “Well, I thought I’d stick them into my nose and impersonate a walrus, but if you insist, I’ll swallow them.

  Ilona Andrews

  Pain, Glasses, Two

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• Creative minds are uneven, and the best of fabrics have their dull spots.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Inspirational, Life, Creative

  H. P. Lovecraft (2013). “The Classic Horror Stories”, p.414, OUP Oxford

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• Habit is a compromise effected between the individual and his environment, or between the individual and his own organic eccentricities, the guarantee of a dull inviolability, the lightning-conductor of his existence.

  Samuel Beckett

  Lightning, Guarantees, Compromise

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• Does not man lack the force at the very point where he needs it most? And when he soars upward in joy, or sinks down in suffering, is not checked in both, is he not returned again to the dull, cold sphere of awareness, just when he was longing to lose himself in the fullness of the infinite.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Joy, Suffering

  Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1990). “Sammlung”, Burns & Oates

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• The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.

  Albert Einstein

  Personality, Creative, Political

  Albert Einstein (2011). “The World As I See It”, p.15, Open Road Media

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• With a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.

  Edith Wharton

  Ignorance, Hypocrisy, Together

  Edith Wharton (2010). “The Age of Innocence”, p.36, Bibliolis Books

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• Toska - noun /ˈtō-skə/ - Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness. "No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Spiritual, Sadness, Sick

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• She had gradually changed her name. "Jane" was too dull. Last year, she'd added a "y", becoming Jayne, which had more personality.

  Caroline B. Cooney

  Years, Names, Personality

  Caroline B. Cooney (2009). “The Face on the Milk Carton”, p.2, Laurel Leaf

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• I certainly must,' said she. 'This sensation of listlessness, weariness, stupidity, this disinclination to sit down and employ myself, this feeling of everything's being dull and insipid about the house! I must be in love; I should be the oddest creature in the world if I were not.

  Jane Austen

  House, Stupidity, Feelings

  Jane Austen (2014). “Emma”, p.188, Lulu.com

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• Look at Charlie Brown's face. Would you please hold still a minute Charlie Brown? I want Linus to study your face. Now this is what you call a failure face, Linus. Notice how it has failure written all over it. Study it carefully Linus. You rarely see such a good example. Notice the deep lines, the dull vacant look in the eyes. Yes, I would say this is one of the finest examples of a failure face that your liable to see for a long while.

  Charles M. Schulz

  Eye, Long, Lines

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• I think she is going to find you too old... Yes that was it, the moment she said it I knew it was true, and the revelation caused me no surprise, it was like the echo of a dull, not unexpected shock. The age difference was the last taboo, the final limit, all the stronger for the fact that it remained the last and had replaced all the others. In the modern world you could be a swinger, bi, trans, zoo into S&M, but it was forbidden to be old.

  Michel Houellebecq

  Zoos, Thinking, Echoes

  Michel Houellebecq (2006). “The Possibility of an Island”, p.148, Vintage

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