Dullness Quotes - Page 2

• It is never a good practice to continue to sleep after sunrise. We should not think of staying in bed once we are awake; it increases laziness and dullness. Those who cannot decrease the amount of sleep quickly may do it in gradual stages. Those who do regular spiritual practice do not need much sleep.

  Mata Amritanandamayi

  Spiritual, Sleep, Thinking

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• Yet, even for us, there is left some loveliness of environment, and the dullness of tutors and professors matters very little when one can loiter in the grey cloisters at Magdalen, and listen to some flute-like voice singing in Waynfleete's chapel, or lie in the green meadow, among the strange snakespotted fritillaries, and watch the sunburnt noon smite to a finer gold the tower's gilded vanes, or wander up the Christ Church staircase beneath the vaulted ceiling's shadowy fans, or pass through the sculptured gateway of Laud's building in the College of St. John.

  Oscar Wilde

  Lying, College, Oxford

  Oscar Wilde (1999). “De Profundis: The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Writings”, p.231, Wordsworth Editions

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• We shall awaken from our dullness and rise vigorously toward justice. If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion.

  Hildegard of Bingen

  Falling In Love, Passion, Justice

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• What will happen once the authentic mass man takes over, we do not know yet, although it may be a fair guess that he will have more in common with the meticulous, calculated correctness of Himmler than with the hysterical fanaticism of Hitler, will more resemble the stubborn dullness of Molotov than the sensual vindictive cruelty of Stalin.

  Hannah Arendt

  Men, Sensual, Stubborn

  Hannah Arendt (1968). “Totalitarianism: Part Three of The Origins of Totalitarianism”, p.49, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• When you look at the whole package of energy, the food you eat should match the story you want to live, which means: as fresh as possible, without dullness, repetition, and routine. As colorful as possible, giving delight to the eyes; food is a rainbow brought down to earth. As cheerful as possible, maximizing moments of happiness and pleasure.

  Deepak Chopra

  Mean, Eye, Rainbow

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• I am convinced that the human heart hungers for constancy. In forfeiting the sanctity of sex by casual, nondiscriminato ry "making out" and "sleeping around," we forfeit something we cannot well do without. There is dullness, monotony, sheer boredom in all of life when virginity and purity are no longer protected and prized.

  Elisabeth Elliot

  Sex, Sleep, Heart

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• Those who have mastered etiquette, who are entirely, impeccably right, would seem to arrive at a point of exquisite dullness.

  Dorothy Parker

  Manners, Etiquette, Exquisite

  Dorothy Parker (1970). “A month of Saturdays: thirty-one famous pieces by "Constant Reader"”

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• Fashions smile has given wit to dullness and grace to deformity, and has brought everything into vogue, by turns, but virtue.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Fashion, Grace, Virtue

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• The dullness of certain people is sometimes a sufficient security against the attack of an artful man.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Men, People, Sometimes

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• The commonplace needs no defence,Dullness is in the critic's eyes,Without a licence life evolvesFrom some dim phase its own surprise;Under these yellow-twinkling elms,Behind these hedges trimly shorn,As in a stable once, so hereIt may be born, it may be born.

  William Plomer

  Eye, Yellow, Needs

  William Plomer (1973). “Collected poems”

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• And some cease feeling
  Even themselves or for themselves.
  Dullness best solves
  The tease and doubt of shelling

  Wilfred Owen

  War, Feelings, Doubt

  Wilfred Owen (1965). “The Collected poems of Wilfred Owen”, p.37, New Directions Publishing

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• Art daunts us with its cold exacting dullness, kitsch gratifies us (with cosy democratic largesse).

  Mike Curran

  Art, Kitsch, Cold

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• Nothing can shock a brave man but dullness.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Bravery, Shock

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.121, Penguin

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• The people from the suburbs are bringing along their suburban values: cleanliness, orderliness, safety - dullness, in other words. As a result, urban areas are being hollowed out. Just look at Times Square in New York. No more sex shops, no drugs, no homeless people. The area is clinically clean and incredibly dull.

  Rem Koolhaas

  New York, Sex, Squares

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• What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dullness of communication, compared with the simple altar-like structure and silent heart-language of the old sundials! It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost everywhere vanished? If its business-use be superseded by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance.

  Charles Lamb

  Christian, Business, Communication

  Charles Lamb (1943). “A complete Elia: The essays of Elia, together with The last essays of Elia”

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• I write the way you might arrange flowers. Not every try works, but each one launches another. Every constraint, even dullness, frees up a new design.

  Richard Powers

  Flower, Writing, Design

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• Dullness is the first requisite of a good husband.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Husband, Firsts, Good Husband

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• Not the children of the rich or of the powerful only, but of all
  alike,
  boys and girls, both noble and ignoble, rich and poor, in all cities
  and
  towns, villages and hamlets, should be sent to school.
  Education is indeed necessary for all, and this is evident if we
  consider
  the different degrees of ability. No one doubts that those who are
  stupid
  need instruction, that they may shake off their natural dullness. But
  in
  reality those who are clever need it far more, since an active mind, if
  not occupied with useful things, will busy itself with what is useless,
  curious, and pernicious.

  John Amos Comenius

  Girl, Powerful, Children

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• Our minds must relax: they will rise better and keener after rest. Just as you must not force fertile farmland, as uninterrupted productivity will soon exhaust it, so constant effort will sap our mental vigour, while a short period of rest and relaxation will restore our powers. Unremitting effort leads to a kind of mental dullness and lethargy.

  Seneca the Younger

  Effort, Mind, Relaxation

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• Although the primitive in art may be both interesting and impressive, as portrayed in American fiction it is conspicuous for dullness alone. Drab persons living drab lives, observed by drab minds and reported in drab writing.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Art, Writing, Interesting

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• As in digging for precious metals in the mines, much earthy rubbish has first to be troublesomely handled and thrown out; so, in digging in one's soul for the fine gold of genius, much dullness and common-place is first brought to light.

  Herman Melville

  Creativity, Light, Soul

  Herman Melville (2016). “Pierre; or The Ambiguities”, p.327, Herman Melville

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• There is no room for the impurities of literature in an essay.... the essay must be pure--pure like water or pure like wine, but pure from dullness, deadness, and deposits of extraneous matter.

  Virginia Woolf

  Wine, Water, Literature

  Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.14, Oxford University Press

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• The cloud is driven by statistics, and even in the worst individual cases of personal ignorance, dullness, idleness, or irrelevance, every person is constantly feeding data into the cloud these days. The value of such information could be treated as genuine, but it is not. Instead, the blindness of our standards of accounting to all that value is gradually breaking capitalism.

  Jaron Lanier

  Ignorance, Irrelevance, Clouds

  Jaron Lanier (2014). “Who Owns the Future?”, p.11, Simon and Schuster

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• Absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is, let alone the dullness of it and the pomposities of it.

  Samuel Beckett

  Men, Vices, Virtue

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• The head of dullness, unlike the tail of the torpedo, loses nothing of the benumbing and lethargizing influence by reiterated discharges.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Tails, Influence, Torpedoes

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