Dull Days Quotes

Whether one is twenty, forty, or sixty; whether one has succeeded, failed or just muddled along; whether yesterday was full of sun or storm, or one of those dull days with no weather at all, life begins each morning! ~ Leigh Mitchell Hodges

But when first the two black dragons sprang out of the fog upon the small clerk, they had merely the effect of all miracles – they changed the universe. He discovered the fact that all romantics know – that adventures happen on dull days, and not on sunny ones. When the cord of monotony is stretched most tight, it it breaks with a sound like song. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Active happiness is not a common state. Active unhappiness is better than dull days. Katherine was seldom in an intermediate stage. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

Adventures happen on dull days, and not on sunny ones. When the chord of monotony is stretched most tight, then it breaks with a sound like song. ~ G.K. Chesterton

A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day. ~ Bill Watterson

You were the one who brightened up the dull days, Gram, Hadleigh thought now. You, with your love and your laughter and with that magical smile of yours. ~ Linda Lael Miller

The camera is a remarkable thing, you think, with its ability to transform the mundane into an immortal moment able to travel through time, reappear days or months or years after its actually occurrence. Every second of our existence is alive with possibility, but we don't see it until we hit rewind, until we freeze the frame. It is sad that so many things, all suffused with meaning, escape the unaided eye. ~ Greg Bottoms

In days that follow, I discover that anger is easier to handle than grief. ~ Emily Giffin

The real cost of living is dying, and we're spending days like millionaires: a week here, a month there, casually spunked until all you have left are the two pennies on your eyes. ~ Caitlin Moran

So butterflies make us remember, don't they...That life is good no matter what. Because just like the caterpillar, the best days are ahead od us... ~ Karen Kingsbury

You know we just don't recognize the most significant moments of our lives while they're happening. Back then I thought, well, there'll be other days. I didn't realize that that was the only day. ~ Moonlight Graham

.. The slaughter lasted the best part of two days. When it was over, the crusade leaders went in solemn procession to the church of the Holy Sepulchre to give thanks to God' !! ~ Geoffrey Hindley

Lately she can read a novel in two hours. She has always been an avid reader, but these days she can read much faster. The colors, the conversations, everything is much more vibrant and inclusive, as if opening a book releases genies trapped inside. The scenes and people between their covers sometimes seem more vivid than real life, with their sunny, pearl-toothed characters, the witty conversation, the handsome stranger squeezed into a subway car or knocking about on the street. Sometimes, when she finishes a book at record speed, Dana feels a slight letdown, as if a good friend has hung up the phone in the middle of a conversation. ~ Susan H. Crawford

Alexandros points to the bronze sculpture of Socrates. "His society didn't collapse because of an outside aggressor. It collapsed from within, from the complete breakdown of communication between citizens, and the breakdown of loving sentiment for one another. They ganged up and got rid of Socrates because he was an uncomfortable reminder of the glory days of ancient Athens, when /demokratia/--'people power'--reigned and citizens worked toward a greater good. He epitomized the fact that you're meant to stay open to all views, to all human experiences, because that's how you deepen your love for people and of wisdom. That amazing man sacrificed his life in the name of classic Athenian values of excellence and honor and compassion, so one day they might live on. And they did, here in America, for more than two centuries. I'm worried my beloved America is becoming as loveless as ancient Athens in its days of decline. ~ Christopher Phillips

I have a habit of getting very obsessive about one thing, but it usually lasts no more than three days. ~ Lizzy Caplan

Where was the use, originally, in rushing this whole globe through in six days? It is likely that if more time had been taken in the first place, the world would have been made right, and this ceaseless improving and repairing would not be necessary now. But if you hurry a world or a house, you are nearly sure to find out by and by that you have left out a towhead, or a broom-closet, or some other little convenience, here and there, which has got to be supplied, no matter how much expense or vexation it may cost. ~ Mark Twain

Americans make more trash than anyone else on the planet, throwing away about 7.1 pounds per person per day, 365 days a year. Across a lifetime that rate means, on average, we are each on track to generate 102 tons of trash. Each of our bodies may occupy only one cemetery plot when we're done with this world, but a single person's 102-ton trash legacy will require the equivalent of 1,100 graves. Much of that refuse will outlast any grave marker, pharaoh's pyramid or modern skyscraper: One of the few relics of our civilization guaranteed to be recognizable twenty thousand years from now is the potato chip bag. ~ Edward Humes

There is something tenderly appropriate in the serene death of the old ... When the duties of life have all been nobly done; when the sun touches the horion; when the purple twilight falls upon the past, the present, and the future; when memory, with dim eyes, can scarcely spell the blurred and faded records of the vanished days-then, surrounded by kindred and by friends, death comes like a strain of music. The day has been long, the road weary, and the traveler gladly stops at the welcome inn. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

In the best days of our republic Americans were fiercely proud of the fact that rich and poor met on such equal terms in so many ways, and without the slightest trace of hostility. ~ Robert W. Welch, Jr.

Oh, don't get me started! I love fantasy, I read it for pleasure, even after all these years. Pat McKillip, Ursula Le Guin and John Crowley are probably my favorite writers in the field, in addition to all the writers in the Endicott Studio group - but there are many others I also admire. In children's fantasy, I'm particularly keen on Philip Pullman, Donna Jo Napoli, David Almond and Jane Yolen - though my favorite novels recently were Midori Snyder's Hannah's Garden, Holly Black's Tithe, and Neil Gaiman's Coraline.

I read a lot of mainstream fiction as well - I particularly love Alice Hoffman, A.S. Byatt, Sara Maitland, Sarah Waters, Sebastian Faulks, and Elizabeth Knox. There's also a great deal of magical fiction by Native American authors being published these days - Louise Erdrich's Antelope Wife, Alfredo Vea Jr.'s Maravilla, Linda Hogan's Power, and Susan Power's Grass Dancer are a few recent favorites.

I'm a big fan of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, and Anthony Trollope - I re-read Jane Austen's novels in particular every year.Other fantasists say they read Tolkien every year, but for me it's Austen. I adore biographies, particularly biographies of artists and writers (and particularly those written by Michael Holroyd). And I love books that explore the philosophical side of art, such as Lewis Hyde's The Gift, Carolyn Heilbrun's Writing a Woman's Life, or David Abram's Spell of the Sensuous.

(from a 2002 interview) ~ Terri Windling

Men, it seemed to me in those days, were uniquely honored by the stories that erupted in their lives, whereas women were more likely to be smothered by theirs. ~ Carol Shields

My role as Ewan McGregor's girlfriend in the film 'Incendiary' ended up on the cutting-room floor, but at least I had two brilliant days of acting with Ewan. ~ Natalie Dormer

While I respect suicidal tendencies on most days, you'd do well to remember who you're addressing and, more to the point, what I can do to you. No one says you have to go back to Tartarus in one piece. (Acheron) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

The reason we are at the ballpark is to win that day's game, and we don't need to be concerned with anything else during the time we are in uniform. It makes things a lot simpler, a lot easier. ~ Todd Helton

I am in my old room once more, for a little, and I am caught in musing - - how life is a swift motion, a continuous flowing, changing, and how one is always saying goodbye and going places, seeing people, doing things. Only in the rain, sometimes, only when the rain comes, closing in your pitifully small radius of activity, only when you sit and listen by the window, as the cold wet air blows thinly by the back of your neck - only then do you think and feel sick. You feel the days slipping by, elusive as slippery pink worms, through your fingers, and you wonder what you have for your eighteen years, and you think about how, with difficulty and concentration, you could bring back a day, a day of sun, blue skies and watercoloring by the sea. You could remember the sensual observations that made that day reality, and you could delude yourself into thinking - almost - that you could return to the past, and relive the days and hours in a quick space of time. But no, the quest of time past is more difficult than you think, and time present is eaten up by such plaintive searchings. The film of your days and nights is wound up tight in you, never to be re-run - and the occasional flashbacks are faint, blurred, unreal, as if seen through falling snow. Now, you begin to get scared. You don't believe in God, or a life-after-death, so you can't hope for sugar plums when your non-existent soul rises. You believe that whatever there is has got to come from man, and man is pretty creative i ~ Sylvia Plath

One thing that tells me a company is in trouble is when they tell me how good they were in the past. Same with countries. You don't want to forget your identity. I am glad that you were great in the fourteenth century, but that was then and this is now. When memories exceed dreams, the end is near. The hallmark of a truly successful organization is the willingness to abandon what made it successful and start fresh."
In societies that have more memories than dreams, too many people are spending too many days looking backward. They see dignity, affirmation, and self-worth not by mining the present but by chewing on the past. And even that is usually not a real past but an imagined and adorned past. Indeed, such societies focus all their imagination on making that imagined past even more beautiful than it ever was, and then they cling to it…, rather than imagining a better future and acting on that. ~ Thomas L. Friedman

Don't scorn your life just because it's not dramatic, or it's impoverished, or it looks dull, or it's workaday. Don't scorn it. It is where poetry is taking place if you've got the sensitivity to see it, if your eyes are open.
Philip Levine, describing what he learned from William Carlos Williams, via NPR ~ Philip Levine

In those days [1935] I would read what the opposition papers got out, and I'd say to myself, 'What I'm doing just isn't good enough.' ~ Sylvia Porter

...the notion of the classroom as an intellectual community gets lost when conference rooms by the principal's office are turned into data rooms - rooms in which walls, floor to ceiling, are covered with test scores of every child in the school - and "Days Until the TEST" banners greet students and parents as they enter the school. That, at the very least, suggests the school is more interested in making sure students pass a test than in creating an intellectual community. ~ Kylene Beers & Robert E. Probst

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

These two great organisations of the English-speaking democracies, the British Empire and the United States, will have to be somewhat mixed up together in some affairs for mutual and general advantage. I do not view the process with any misgivings. I could not stop it if I wished. Let it roll on full flood, inexorable, irresistible, benignant, to broader lands, and better days. ~ Winston Churchill

A bit of research can save you hours, days of time correcting mistakes that you never had to make in the first place. ~ John Patrick Hickey

But no one frees himself from being in love in three days. ~ Isabelle Adjani

I wish I could love people as you do, Molly!'
'Don't you?' said the other, in surprise.
'No. A good number of people love me, I believe, or at least they think they do; but I never seem to care much for any one. I do believe I love you, little Molly, whom I have only known for ten days, better than any one. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

I'm an anxious person. What I like best is to smoke cigarettes and listen to music. A perfect day for me is a day with coffee, cigarettes, and music, to quote Jim Jarmusch. ~ Claire Denis

Good days are not memorable but bad experiences always in our memory ~ Osunsakin Adewale

Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent. ~ Virginia Woolf

Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days. ~ Lewis Carroll

That's how I am! eyes peeled, scientific! first things first! the big ones! the small ones! ... if they're going to behead you ... for example! ... you don't take your eyes of the guillotine! ... look, the blade's dull!
-Executioner! you shout, hey, you lazy fucker! don't you have anyone sharpening that thing?
And the executioner scurries off, shit-assed and sheepish! ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

A hero," Max said.
"A weirdness-haunted victim of circumstance who spends his days looking for things."
Max grinned. "That's what I just said. ~ Tom Holt

You owe me this. You made me get rid of my assassin and now I have no control over those creatures that - "
That you created," he added, interrupting her angry tirade. "Don't forget the important part here. The Dark-Hunters wouldn't exist at all had someone, and for the sake of your missing intellect let me clarify that, you, not stolen powers from me that could bring back the dead. I didn't need the Dark-Hunters to help me fight against the Daimons and protect the humans. I was doing fine on my own. But you wouldn't have it. You created them and made me responsible for their lives. It's a responsibility that I take most seriously, so excuse me for banning you from killing them because you have reverse PMS."
She scowled. "Reverse PMS?"
Yeah, unlike a normal woman, you're cranky twenty-eight days out of the month. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Don't give up, don't loose hope, don't settle for less and keep finding answers. Better days ahead. Get out of those mess! Get those things out of your head! ~ Adedayo Olabamiji

A Half-Blood of the eldest gods, Shall reach sixteen against all odds
And see the world in endless sleep
The Hero's soul, cursed blade shall reap
A single choice shall end his days
Olympus to preserve or raze. ~ Rick Riordan