Dullness Quotes - Page 4

• I felt shame - I see this clearly, now - at the instinctive recognition in myself of an awful enfeebling fatalism, a sense that the great outcomes were but randomly connected to our endeavors, that life was beyond mending, that love was loss, that nothing worth saying was sayable, that dullness was general, that disintegration was irresistible.

  Joseph O'Neill

  Loss, Outcomes, Awful

  Joseph O’Neill (2012). “Netherland”, p.27, HarperCollins UK

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• No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Determination, Degrees, Critics

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• The enchantment of the sky, ever changing beauty almost ignored. Beyond words, without fixed form, not to be understood, or stated. It ravished away dullness, worry, even pain. It graces life when nothing else does. It is the first marvel of the day. Even when leaden grey it is still a friend, withdrawn for a time.

  Florida Scott-Maxwell

  Pain, Sky, Worry

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• What we call doubt is often simply dullness of mind and spirit, not the absence of faith at all, but faith latent with the lives we are not quite living, God dormant in the world to which we are not quite giving our best selves.

  Christian Wiman

  Self, Giving, Doubt

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• It is part of the pholosophic dullness of our time that there are millions of rational monsters walking about on their hind legs, observing the world through pairs of flexible little lenses, periodically supplying themselves with energy by pushing organic substances through holes in their faces, who see nothing fabulous whatever about themselves.

  Martin Gardner

  Monsters, Energy, Lenses

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• The book designer strives for perfection; yet every perfect thing lives somewhere in the neighborhood of dullness and is frequently mistaken for it by the insensitive.

  Jan Tschichold

  Book, Perfect, Designer

  Jan Tschichold, Robert Bringhurst, Hajo Hadeler (1991). “The form of the book: essays on the morality of good design”, Hartley & Marks Publishers

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• An efficiency-regime cannot be run without a few heroes stuck about it to carry off the dullness - much as plums have to be put into bad pudding to make it palatable.

  E. M. Forster

  Running, Hero, Pudding

  "What I Believe". Essay by E. M. Forster, "The Nation", July 16, 1938.

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• He lay back for a little in his bed thinking about the smells of food . . . of the intoxicating breath of bakeries and dullness of buns. . . . He planned dinners, of enchanting aromatic foods . . . endless dinners, in which one could alternate flavour with flavour from sunset to dawn without satiety, while one breathed great draughts of the bouquet of old brandy.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Sunset, Thinking, Smell

  EVELYN WAUGH (1958). “VILE BODIES & BLACK MISCHIEF”

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• The zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It is simply the Dharma gate of repose and bliss, the practice-realization of totally culminated enlightenment. It is the manifestation of ultimate reality. Traps and snares can never reach it. Once its heart is grasped, you are like the dragon when he gains the water, like the tiger when she enters the mountain. For you must know that just there (in zazen) the right Dharma is manifesting itself and that, from the first, dullness and distraction are struck aside.

  Dogen

  Heart, Reality, Dragons

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• There are no rules in filmmaking. Only sins. And the cardinal sin is dullness.

  Frank Capra

  Movie, Inspiring, Sin

  Recalled on his death in People, 16 Sep 1991.

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• It is only in times of great and grievous dullness that the believer regards prayer as a duty, and not as a privilege.

  Adolph Saphir

  Prayer, Privilege, Duty

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• Mystery is the wine of this universe. It makes us dizzy and makes us feel happy! Man needs enigma so that he can get rid of the dullness of the reality!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Wine, Reality, Men

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• Let my lips avoid vain repetition as I lift my voice in praise, O Lord. Distract me from my distractions, awaken me from the dullness of mind, and transform habit and routine into vibrant times of worship.

  Jack W. Hayford

  Voice, Mind, Routine

  Jack W. Hayford (1992). “The Heart of Praise: Daily Ways to Worship the Father with Psalms”

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• I envy Pete Sampras's dullness. I wish I could emulate his spectacular lack of inspiration.

  Andre Agassi

  Inspiration, Envy, Wish

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• There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them - as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Novelty, Sitting, Afternoon

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• (Canada) - the most parochial nationette on earth ... I have been living in this sanctimonious icebox ... painting portraits of the opulent Methodists of Toronto. Methodism and money in this city have produced a sort of hell of dullness.

  Wyndham Lewis

  Cities, Canada, Portraits

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• There is a special blessing in old clothes, and that aside from their comfort, for which especially they are to be cherished. They confer a kind of anonymity on one who wears them gladly; all their bright places rubbed to a uniform dullness, they achieve an appearance so nearly nondescript that only a close scrutiny could learn that ever they held shape at all.

  Maude Meagher

  Blessing, Clothes, Special

  Maude Meagher (1931). “Fantastic Traveller”

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• Every day a sharp tool, a powerful destroyer, is necessary to cut away dullness, lobotomy, buzzing, belief in human beings, stagnancy, images, and accumulation. As soon as we stop believing in human beings, rather know we are dogs and trees, we'll start to be happy.

  Kathy Acker

  Dog, Powerful, Believe

  Kathy Acker (1989). “Blood and Guts in High School”, p.37, Grove Press

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• Wine, like the rising sun, possession gains,
  And drives the mist of dullness from the brains,
  The gloomy vapor from the spirit flies,
  And views of gaiety and gladness rise.

  George Crabbe

  Wine, Views, Brain

  George Crabbe (1855). “Poetical Works: Preface to the Tales”, p.383

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• I've never known a Philadelphian who wasn't a downright 'character'; possibly a defense mechanism resulting from the dullness of their native habitat.

  Anita Loos

  Character, Cities, Philadelphia

  Anita Loos (1974). “Kiss Hollywood good-by”, Viking Adult

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• Dullness is a kind of luxury.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Luxury, Kind

  Bharati Mukherjee (2007). “Jasmine”, p.10, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The camel carries on his dreary circular task with his usual slow and pompous step and head poised superciliously, as if it were a ritual affair above the comprehension of the vulgar; and no doubt he comforts himself for the dullness of life by a sense of virtue, like many other formalists beside him.

  Freya Stark

  Doubt, Usual, Comfort

  Freya Stark (1964). “The Journey's Echo: Selections”

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• In the ancient recipe, the three antidotes for dullness or boredom are sleep, drink, and travel. It is rather feeble. From sleep you wake up, from drink you become sober, and from travel you come home again. And then where are you? No, the two sovereign remedies for dullness are love or a crusade.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Home, Sleep, Two

  D.H. Lawrence (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)”, p.9406, Delphi Classics

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• If you don't dare, you are doomed to dullness.

  Shirley Conran

  Dare, Doomed, Ifs

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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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