Dullness Quotes

Dullness is the first requisite of a good husband. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

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

Our wickedness shall not overpower the unspeakable goodness and mercy of God; our dullness shall not overpower God's wisdom, nor our infirmity God's omnipotence. ~ John Of Kronstadt

Ah! The world is a new and a wide one to you,
But the world to your sweetheart is shut,
For a change never comes to the lonely Bush girl
From the stockyard, the bush, and the hut;
And the only relief from the dullness she feels
Is when ridges grow softened and dim,
And away in the dusk to the sliprails she steals
To dream of past meetings with him. ~ Henry Lawson

Either over neither, both over either/or, live-and-let-live over stand-or die, high spirits over low, energy over apathy, wit over dullness, jokes over homilies, good humor over jokes, good nature over bad, feeling over sentiment, truth over poetry, consciousness over explanations, tragedy over pathos, comedy over tragedy, entertainment over art, private over public, generosity over meanness, charity over murder, love over charity, irreplaceable over interchangeable, divergence over concurrence, principle over interest, people over principle. ~ Marvin Mudrick

Better not to feel too much until the crisis ends - and if it never ends, at least we'll have suffered a little less, developed a useful dullness, protected ourselves as much as we could with a little indifference, a little repression, a little deliberate blindness, and a large dose of self-anesthetics. The constant - and very real - fear of being hurt, the fear of death, of intolerable loss, or even of "mere" humiliation, leads each of us, the citizens and prisoners of the conflict, to dampen our own vitality, our emotional and intellectual range, and to cloak ourselves in more and more protective layers until we suffocate. ~ Toni Morrison

[I]t is really the ponderous books which I envy. How easy merely to put down everything you think or imagine. No holding back, no telling oneself that this does not belong, or that. No hewing to the line. No cutting. No fear of letting the interest die. No wastebasket. How wonderful. And how dull! ~ Mary Roberts Rinehart

Any relationship beyond acquaintanceship is composed of one to three qualities: passion, intimacy, and commitment. Simple friendship has one: intimacy. You can have other friends and you do not feel passionately about one another, or we are dealing with another animal. Most romantic relationships begin with a dollop of passion, often to the exclusion of anything else. The person in your arms is the best in the world, though you barely know him or her. You have never felt this way. Any gaps or deficits are temporarily puttied over by passion. When most people envision romantic love, this is where they stop. Romantic comedies but only rarely deal with washing your lover's dishes because they must be up early for work. No one wants to see the mundane when they can flip the channel to a desperate, emotionally-stunted frottage. The passion of infatuation triggers the release of addictive chemicals. We would rather get another hit than cope with the relative dullness of intimacy and commitment. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

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

Maybe the greatest gift marriage gives us is the chance to fantasize, to imagine that there's more to life than there actually is, and it accomplishes this by assuming responsibility for all the misery and dullness that we would otherwise equate with life itself. ~ John Jeremiah Sullivan

It's a sort of dull unhappiness that comes from isolation & blankness & monotony. It is quite different to the dullness & melancholia at home; I believe people have it sometimes in Kipling & it is, I think, in the air of the country. I went for a walk the other night by the side of the lagoon at sunset; the beauty of it was supreme with the bright green of the paddy fields, the masses of palms, the sky every shade of red & yellow, & the sea every shade of blue; but for all the brilliancy of colour there was a heavy melancholy over it all. ~ Leonard Woolf

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

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

All around, everywhere you look, is dullness and uncertainty. Even something born of beauty soon leads to boredom and banality, commonplace, the human ritual, the tedious rhythm of life. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

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

There are no rules in filmmaking. Only sins. And the cardinal sin is dullness. ~ Frank Capra

I was born in a village in the northeast, and it wasn't until I was quite big that I saw my first train. I climbed up and down the station bridge, quite unaware that its function was to permit people to cross from one track to another. I was convinced that the bridge had been provided to lend an exotic touch and to make the station premises a place of pleasant diversity, like some foreign playground. I remained under this delusion for quite a long time, and it was for me a very refined amusement indeed to climb up and down the bridge. I thought that it was one of the most elegant services provided by the railways. When later I discovered that the bridge was nothing more than a utilitarian device, I lost all interest in it.
Again, when as a child I saw photographs of subway trains in picture books, it never occurred to me that they had been invented out of practical necessity; I could only suppose that riding underground instead of on the surface must be a novel and delightful pastime.
I have been sickly ever since I was a child and have frequently been confined to bed. How often as I lay there I used to think what uninspired decorations sheets and pillow cases make. It wasn't until I was about twenty that I realized that they actually served a practical purpose, and this revelation of human dullness stirred dark depression in me. ~ Osamu Dazai

The names of virtues, with their precepts, were:
1.Temperance. Eat not do dullness; drink not to elevation.
2.Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3.Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4.Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5.Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
6.Industry. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7.Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8.Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9.Moderation. Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10.Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloths, or habitation.
11.Tranquillity. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12.Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
13.Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates. ~ Benjamin Franklin

The dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits. ~ William Shakespeare

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 flavor with flavor from sunset to dawn without satiety, while one breathed great draughts of the bouquet of brandy. ~ Evelyn Waugh

According to Shaivism, anupaya may also be reached by entering into the infinite blissfulness of the Self through the powerful experiences of sensual pleasures. This practice is designed to help the practitioner reach the highest levels by accelerating their progress through the sakta and sambhava upayas. These carefully guarded doctrines of Tantric sadhana are the basis for certain practices, like the use of the five makaras (hrdaya) mentioned earlier. The experience of a powerful sensual pleasure quickly removes a person's dullness or indifference. It awakens in them the hidden nature and source of blissfulness and starts its inner vibration. Abhinavagupta says that only those people who are awakened to their own inner vitality can truly be said to have a heart (hrdaya). They are known as sahrdaya (connoisseurs). Those uninfluenced by this type of experiences are said to be heartless. In his words:

"It is explained thus - The heart of a person, shedding of its attitude of indifference while listening to the sweet sounds of a song or while feeling the delightful touch of something like sandalpaste, immediately starts a wonderful vibratory movement. (This) is called ananda-sakti and because of its presence the person concerned is considered to have a heart (in their body) (Tantraloka, III.209-10).

People who do not become one (with such blissful experiences), and who do not feel their physical body being merged into it, are said to be heartless because t ~ Balajinnatha Pandita

Abstruse dullness is actually a much more effective shield than is secrecy. ~ David Foster Wallace

You can, I think, have a quiet and steady protagonist and not run the risk of terminal dullness as long as exciting things happen to them and around them, and crime is the ideal genre for making this come about. ~ Liz Williams

The only thing about 3-D is the dullness of the image. ~ Peter Jackson

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

Creativity is contagious. And so is banality. Criticism is an art in itself. Don't let the dullness around destroy the creativity within. T.S. Eliot said, "honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry." Good to remember ... ~ Elif Shafak

Her dullness made her own punishment. ~ Daphne Du Maurier

What kind of life can you have in a house without books? ~ Sherman Alexie

I am convinced that the human heart hungers for constancy. In forfeiting the sanctity of sex by casual, nondiscriminatory "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

I often sit over against myself, as before a stranger, and wonder how the unnameable active principle that calls itself to life has adapted itself even to this form. All other expressions lie in a winter sleep, life is simply one continual watch against the menace of death; - it has transformed us into unthinking animals in order to give us the weapon of instinct - it has reinforced us with dullness, so that we do not go to pieces before the horror, which would overwhelm us if we had clear, conscious thought - it has awakened in us the sense of comradeship, so that we escape the abyss of solitude - it has lent us the indifference of wild creatures, so that in spite of all, we perceive the positive in every moment, and store it up as a reserve against the onslaught of nothingness. Thus we live a closed, hard existence of the utmost superficiality, and rarely does an incident strike out a spark. But then unexpectedly a flame of grievous and terrible yearning flares up. Those ~ Erich Maria Remarque

One of the dumbest things you were ever taught was to write what you know. Because what you know is usually dull. Remember when you first wanted to be a writer? Eight or ten years old, reading about thin-lipped heroes flying over mysterious viny jungles toward untold wonders? That's what you wanted to write about, about what you didn't know. So. What mysterious time and place don't we know?
[Remember This: Write What You Don't Know (New York Times Book Review, December 31, 1989)] ~ Ken Kesey

The devil's name is dullness. ~ Robert E.Lee

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

The cool wind blew in my face and all at once I felt as if I had shed dullness from myself. Before me lay a long gray line with a black mark down the center. The birds were singing. It was spring. ~ Burl Ives

The number one problem in academia today is not ignorant students but ignorant professors, who have substituted narrow "expertise" and "theoretical sophistication" (a preposterous term) for breadth and depth of learning in the world history of art and thought ... Art is a vast, ancient interconnected web-work, a fabricated tradition. Overconcentration on any one point is a distortion. This is one of the primary reasons for the dullness and ineptitude of so much twentieth-criticism, as compared to nineteenth-century belles-lettres. ~ Camille Paglia

He said that most men were in their lives like the carpenter whose work went so slowly for the dullness of his tools that he had not time to sharpen them. Y ~ Cormac McCarthy

It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

To ask the power to reform itself, what a dullness! ~ Giordano Bruno

Jeremy Taylor, Charles I's personal chaplain, wrote a tract, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living, in 1650 that illustrates that not much has changed in over 360 years. He characterised drunkenness by: Apish gestures. Much talking. Immoderate laughing. Dullness of sense. Scurrility, that is wanton jeering or abusive language. A useless understanding. Stupid sleep. Epilepsies, or ~ Simon Wills

Here's a 165-year old but still fitting comment on public officials who are so sure they're right that they'll drive over a cliff rather than compromise:
"Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt – are not these the great qualities with which dullness takes the lead in the world?" William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair: a Novel without a Hero (1848).

The author's middle name really was "Makepeace." As the quote shows, he disliked those who would not. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

Like all good things, prayer requires some discipline. Yet I believe that life with God should seem more like friendship than duty. Prayer includes moments of ecstasy and also dullness, mindless distraction and acute concentration, flashes of joy and bouts of irritation. In other words, prayer has features in common with all relationships that matter. ~ Philip Yancey

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The Way of the Superior Man Quotes
The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida
The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to...
by David Deida
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Austerity means to eliminate the comforts and cushions in your life that you have learned to snuggle into and lose wakefulness. Take away anything that dulls your edge. No newspapers or magazines. No TV. No candy, cookies, or sweets. No sex. No cuddling. No reading of anything at all while you eat or sit on the toilet. Reduce working time to a necessary minimum. No movies. No conversation that isn't about truth, love, or the divine.

If you take on these disciplines for a few weeks, as well as any other disciplines that may particularly cut through your unique habits of dullness, then your life will be stripped of routine distraction. All that will be left is the edge you have been avoiding by means of your daily routine. You will have to face the basic discomfort and dissatisfaction that is the hidden texture of your life. You will be alive with the challenge of living your truth, rather than hiding form it.

Unadorned suffering is the bedmate of masculine growth. Only by staying intimate with your personal suffering can you feel through it to its source. By putting all your attention into work, TV, sex, and reading, your suffering remains unpenetrated, and the source remains hidden. Your life becomes structured e ~ David Deida

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

...above else I was afraid of dullness, peace. To achieve our inner peace, my father and I needed an outer unrest ~ Francoise Sagan

To experience conflicts knowingly, though it may be distressing, can be an invaluable asset. The more we face our own conflicts and seek out our own solutions, the more inner freedom and strength we will gain. Only when we are willing to bear the brunt can we approximate the ideal of being the captain of our ship. Spurious tranquillity rooted in inner dullness is anything but enviable. It is bound to make us weak and an easy prey to any kind of influence. ~ Karen Horney

Entitlement is a double- edged sword (or a double-jawed trap) for kids. On one edge it gives kids all that they don't need - indulgence, dullness, conceit, and laziness; and on the backswing, it takes from them everything they do need - motivation, inde- pendence, inventiveness, pride, responsibility, and a chance to really work for things and to build their own sense of fulfill- ment and self-esteem. ~ Richard Eyre

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

When he reached the doorman, he stopped.
"Did you see Miss Christian come in a few minutes ago?"
The doorman nodded. "Yes, sir. She got here just before you arrived."
Relief staggered him. He bolted for the elevator. A few moments later, he strode into the apartment.
"Kelly? Kelly, honey, where are you?"
Not waiting for an answer, he hurried into the bedroom to see her sitting on the edge of the bed, her face pale and drawn in pain. When she heard him, she looked up and he winced at the dullness in her eyes.
She'd been crying.
"I thought I could do it," she said in a raw voice, before he could beg her forgiveness. "I thought I could just go on and forget and that I could accept others thinking the worst of me as long as you and I were okay again. I did myself a huge disservice."
"Kelly…"
Something in her look silenced him and he stood several feet away, a feeling of helplessness gripping him as he watched her try to compose herself.
"I sat there tonight while your friends and your mother looked at me in disgust, while they looked at you with a mixture of pity and disbelief in their eyes. All because you took me back. The tramp who betrayed you in the worst possible manner. And I thought to myself I don't deserve this. I've never deserved it. I deserve better."
She raised her eyes to his and he flinched at the horrible pain he saw reflected there. Then she laughed. A raw, terrible sound that grated across his ears.
"A ~ Maya Banks

You cannot sell a man who isn't listening; word of mouth is the best medium of all; and dullness won't sell your product, but neither will irrelevant brilliance. ~ William Bernbach

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

It's extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it's just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome. ~ Joseph Conrad

I have often reread my early progress reports and seen the illiteracy, the childish naivete, the mind of low intelli­gence peering from a dark room, through the keyhole, at the dazzling light outside. In my dreams and memories I've seen Charlie smiling happily and uncertainly at what people around him were saying. Even in my dullness I knew I was inferior. Other people had something I lacked - something denied me. In my mental blindness, I had be­lieved it was somehow connected with the ability to read and write, and I was sure that if I could get those skills I would have intelligence too.

Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men. ~ Daniel Keyes

I wish I could be built so that stupidity and dullness wouldn't bother me as much, but I just can't help it. It may sound paradoxical, but with time one wishes to be a hermit instead of always being around people. - Doctor Doris Maza ~ Sarah Helm

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

Imagine a world full of Elizabeth Wakefields,' Lila said. 'Could you imagine a duller, more predictable place? I think I'd go crazy. ~ Francine Pascal

Beware the mediocrity that threatens middle age, its limitation of thought and interest, its dullness of fancy, its too external life, and mental thinness. ~ Margaret Fuller

The half-brained creature to whom books are other than living things may see with the eyes of a bat and draw with the fingers of a mole his dullard's distinction between books and life: those who live the fuller life of a higher animal than he know that books are to poets as much part of that life as pictures are to painters or as music is to musicians, dead matter though they may be to the spiritually still-born children of dirt and dullness who find it possible and natural to live while dead in heart and brain. ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

Sedentary people are apt to have sluggish minds. A sluggish mind is apt to be reflected in flabbiness of body and in a dullness of expression that invites no interest and gets none. ~ Rose Kennedy

Excess is part of my nature. Dullness is a disease. I really need danger and excitement. I'm never scared of putting myself out on a limb. ~ Freddie Mercury

...Puritanism has made life itself impossible. More than art, more than estheticism, life represents beauty in a thousand variations; it is indeed, a gigantic panorama of eternal change. Puritanism, on the other hand, rests on a fixed and immovable conception of life; it is based on the Calvinistic idea that life is a curse, imposed upon man by the wrath of God. In order to redeem himself man must do constant penance, must repudiate every natural and healthy impulse, and turn his back on joy and beauty.

Puritanism celebrated its reign of terror in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, destroying and crushing every manifestation of art and culture. It was the spirit of Puritanism which robbed Shelley of his children, because he would not bow to the dicta of religion. It was the same narrow spirit which alienated Byron from his native land, because that great genius rebelled against the monotony, dullness, and pettiness of his country. It was Puritanism, too, that forced some of England's freest women into the conventional lie of marriage: Mary Wollstonecraft and, later, George Eliot. And recently Puritanism has demanded another toll--the life of Oscar Wilde. In fact, Puritanism has never ceased to be the most pernicious factor in the domain of John Bull, acting as censor of the artistic expression of his people, and stamping its approval only on the dullness of middle-class respectability. ~ Emma Goldman

I need to somehow peel away the dullness and heighten my sensitivity and alertness. I need to start sucking the juice out of every single moment of the most precious gift ever to be had, "my life!" ~ Bryan Kest

It seemed to her that the dullness and the boredom of her childhood, her youth, were stored here in the room under the worn dusty red rugs, in the bloated brassware, amongst the dried grasses in the swollen vases, behind the yellowed photographs in the oval frames-everything, everything that she had so hated as a child and that was still preserved here as if this were the storeroom of some dull, uninviting provincial museum. ~ Anita Desai

That initial anger she had felt turned to sadness, and now it had become something else, almost a dullness of sorts. Even though she was constantly in motion, it seemed as if nothing special ever happened to her anymore. Each day seemed exactly like the last, and she had trouble differentiating among them. ~ Nicholas Sparks

Civility's nearly as dull as sobriety and I cannot - will not - be labelled dull. I have peper and piones, and a pound of garlik; a ferthing-worth of fenel-seed for fasting dayes, but dullness have I none: nor am I overfond of being discussed. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

And once more given to inaction,
Empty in spirit and alone,
He settled down – to the distraction
Of making other minds his own;
Collecting books, he stacked a shelfful,
Read, read, not even one was helpful:
Here, there was dullness, there pretence;
This one lacked conscience, that one sense;
All were by different shackles fettered;
And, past times having lost their hold,
The new still raved about the old.
Like women, books he now deserted,
And mourning taffeta he drew
Across the bookshelf's dusty crew. ~ Alexander Pushkin

What offends a great intellect in society is the equality of rights, leading to equality of pretensions, which everyone enjoys; while at the same time, inequality of capacity means a corresponding disparity of social power. So-called good society recognizes every kind of claim but that of intellect, which is a contraband article; and people are expected to exhibit an unlimited amount of patience towards every form of folly and stupidity, perversity and dullness; whilst personal merit has to beg pardon, as it were, for being present, or else conceal itself altogether. Intellectual superiority offends by its very existence, without any desire to do so. The ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Character is a lack of doubt, character is stubbornly persevering in an intention no matter how senseless it is, character is a lack of imagination, character is inborn dullness, character is the misfortune of humanity. ~ Tadeusz Konwicki

I wondered if what one normally calls "normal" was itself a sort of dullness, a deadening of sense and spirit, if not, indeed, a very closure of their doors. For myself, now, liberated, released, emergent from the dark night and abyss, there was an intoxication of light and love and health. ~ Oliver Sacks

It is the lowered head that makes her seem less noble than, say, a horse, or a deer surprised in the woods. More exactly, it is her lowered head and neck. As she stands still, the top of her head is level with her back, or even a little lower, and so she seems to be hanging her head in discouragement, embarrassment, or shame. There is at least a suggestion of humility and dullness about her. But all these suggestions are false. ~ Lydia Davis

Tolkien, then, was a philologist before he was a mythologist, and a mythologist, at least in intention, before he ever became a writer of fantasy fiction. His beliefs about language and about mythology were sometimes original and sometimes extreme, but never irrational, and he was able to express them perfectly clearly. In the end he decided to express them not through abstract argument, but by demonstration, and the success of the demonstration has gone a long way to showing that he did often have a point: especially in his belief, which I share, that a taste for philology, for the history of language in all its forms, names and place-names included, is much more widespread in the population at large than educators and arbiters of taste like to think. In his 1959 'Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford' (reprinted in Essays, pp. 224-40), Tolkien concluded that the problem lay not with the philologists nor with those they taught but with what he called 'misologists' – haters of the word. There would be no harm in them if they simply concluded language study was not for them, out of dullness or ignorance. But what he felt, Tolkien said, was:

"grievance that certain professional persons should suppose their dullness and ignorance to be a human norm; and anger when they have sought to impose the limitation of their minds upon younger minds, dissuading those with philological curiosity from their bent, encouraging those without this interest to believe that ~ Tom Shippey

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

Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Profundity easily turns into dullness and astuteness deteriorates into wit. Be guided by natural common sense and it will accommodate great and small. ~ Franz Grillparzer

Better to be caught in sudden, complete catastrophe than to be gnawed by the cancer of imagination. ~ Yukio Mishima

It was like being a prisoner on death row who survives month after month and becomes accustomed to the life, while he registers with an objective eye the horror of the new arrivals: registers it with the same numbness tha he brings to the murders and deaths themselves. All survivor literature talks about this numbness, in which life's functions are reduced to minimum, behavior becomes completely selfish and indifferent to others, and gassing and burning are everyday occurences. In the rare accounts by perpetrators , too, the gas chambers and ovens become ordinary scenary, the perpetrators reduced to their few functions and exhibiting a mental paralysis and indifference, a dullness that makes them seem drugged or drunk. ~ Bernhard Schlink

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

Every poet ... finds himself born in the midst of prose. He has to struggle from the littleness and obstruction of an actual world into the freedom and infinitude of an ideal. ~ Thomas Carlyle

He is a stem, a husk, barren and thin, withered by sun, erased by wind, emptied by seasons of dullness, marked by seconds of duty, scarred by regret only the faintest of lines dare to write out, which no one, not even him, can interpret anymore. People have told him a crow will reveal more than anything his face has to share. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

In its individual manifestation the character of a man's anima is as a rule shaped by his mother. If he feels that his mother had a negative influence on him, his anima will often express itself in irritable, depressed moods, uncertainty, insecurity, and touchiness. (If, however he is able to overcome the negative assaults on himself, they can serve to reinforce his masculinity.) Within the soul of such a man the negative mother-anima figure will endlessly repeat this theme: "I am nothing. Nothing makes any sense. With others it's different, but for me ... I enjoy nothing." These "anima moods" cause a sort of dullness, a fear of disease, of impotence, or of accidents. The whole of life takes on a sad and oppressive aspect. Such dark moods can even lure a man to suicide, in which case the anima becomes a death demon. She appears in this role in Cocteau's film Orphee. ~ C. G. Jung

Under the vague dullness of the gray hours, dissatisfaction seeks a definite object and finds it in the privation of an untried good. ~ George Eliot

Dullness is the coming of age of seriousness. ~ Oscar Wilde

The danger, when not seen, has the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy; and Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion. ~ Joseph Conrad

I am a knitting fool. It's a quiet pastime, and a productive one. It enables one to join in the conversation or switch one's brain off, according to the interest or the excruciating dullness of what is being discussed. And the product does keep people warm and comfortable. ~ Elizabeth Zimmermann

The hindrances to being psychic are a general dullness that develops from living in the material world, and being a material girl. ~ Frederick Lenz

The shortness of life, the dullness of the senses, the numbness of indifference and unprofitable occupations allow us to know but very little. And again and again swift oblivion, the embezzler of knowledge and the enemy of memory, shakes out of the mind, in the course of time, even what we knew. ~ Hilda Hilst

Yet it is also a tonic and an antidote to dullness to be with the Serbs. They possess the irresponsible gaiety that we traditionally connect with the Irish, with whom they have often been compared. Other less convenient sides of the Irish character are also typical in the Serbs, such as a cheerful contempt for punctuality in daily life and a ready willingness, arising clearly from politeness and good nature, to make promises that are not always fulfilled. But perhaps the most pronounced of these similarities is to be found in the songs of Serbia and Ireland. With both peoples the historic songs about the past are songs of sorrow, or noble struggles against overwhelming odds, of failure redeemed by unconquerable resolve. There is nothing strange in this combination of laughing gaiety and profound melancholy. It is often only those who are truly capable of the one emotion who also have the faculty for the other. ~ R.G.D. Laffan

I suppose it is the way with all men and women who reach middle age without the clear perception that life never can be thoroughly joyous: under the vague dullness of the grey hours, dissatisfaction seeks a definite object, and finds it in the privation of an untried good. Dissatisfaction ~ George Eliot

Before, they had laughed at me, despising me for my ignorance and dullness; now, they hated me for my knowledge and understanding. Why? What in God's name did they want of me? ~ Daniel Keyes

When our eyes are graced with wonder, the world reveals its wonders to us. There are people who see only dullness in the world and that is because their eyes have already been dulled. So much depends on how we look at things. The quality of our looking determines what we come to see. ~ John O'Donohue

We prefer a person with vivacity and high spirits, though bordering upon insolence, to the timid and pusillanimous; we are fonder of wit joined to malice than of dullness without it. ~ William Hazlitt

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

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

Naturally, I have no heroes: I am my heroes. I am my brothers and sisters. I feel myself joined by the soul with all beauty. My heart sings with every brave endeavour. With the strange wings of impossible butterflies, with every rock that breathes life into the world. I stand shoulder to shoulder with all denouncers of meanness. I honour spirit and faith and uphold the glorious amateur. I'm in love with desperate men with desperate hands, walking in second-hand shoes searching for God and hearing God and hating God. I'm a desperate man, buckled with fear, I am a desperate man who demands to be listened to, who demands to connect. I'm a desperate man who denounces the dullness of money and status. I'm a desperate man who will not bow down to accolade or success. I'm a desperate man who loves the simplicity of painting and hates galleries and white walls and the dealers in art. Who loves unreasonableness and hotheadedness, who loves contradiction, hates publishing houses and also I am Vincent Van Gogh, Hiroshige and every living artist who dares to draw God on this planet. ~ Billy Childish

Not to believe in love is a great sign of dullness. There are some people so indirect and lumbering that they think all real affection rests on circumstantial evidence. ~ George Santayana

With increasing age, dullness of mind and heart sets in. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Oh, how one wishes sometimes to escape from the meaningless dullness of human eloquence, from all those sublime phrases, to take refuge in nature, apparently so inarticulate, or in the wordlessness of long, grinding labor, of sound sleep, of true music, or of a human understanding rendered speechless by emotion! ~ Boris Pasternak

The things that we preceive as beautiful may be different, but the actual characteristics we ascribe to beautiful objects are similar. Think about it. When something strikes us as beautiful, it displays more presence and sharpness of shape and vividness of color, doesn't it? It stands out. It shines. It seems almost iridescent compared to the dullness of other objects less attractive. ~ James Redfield

For it was important to have things to tell which interested your friends. And Miss Hearne had always been able to find interesting happenings where other people would find only dullness. It was, she often felt, a gift which was one of the great rewards of a solitary life. And a necessary gift. Because, when you were a single girl, you had to find interesting things to talk about. Other women always had their children and shopping and running a house to chat about. Besides which, their husbands often told them interesting stories. But a single girl was in a different position. People simply didn't want to hear how she managed things like accommodation and budgets. She had to find other subjects and other subjects were mostly other people. So people she knew, people she had heard of, people she saw in the street, people she had read about, they all had to be collected and gone through like a basket of sewing so that the most interesting bits about them could be picked out and fitted together to make conversation. ~ Brian Moore

The secret of being a bore is to tell everything. ~ Voltaire

Security and safety were the reward of dullness. ~ Hanif Kureishi