Dull Quotations

Technique! The very word is like a shriek of outraged Art. It is the idiot name given to effort by those who are too weak, too weary, or too dull to play the game. The mighty have no theory of technique.

A neurotic can perfectly well be a literary genius, but his greatest danger is always that he will not recognize when he is dull.

There's no such thing as a life that is not normal, or, there's no such thing as a life that is not abnormal. We all have amazing lives; we all have very dull lives.

The duty of a toastmaster is to be so dull that the succeeding speakers will appear brilliant by contrast.

The dull routine of our daily job takes on a new significance, assumes a beauty and importance undreamt of before, if we consider it from the angle of service to God.

Offence is important; that's how you know you care about things. Imagine a life where you're not offended. So dull.

There's nothing surprising about me. I'm dull. I am a fan of the New York subway. I love it.

I think about my audience when I write, to some extent. Thinking of writing for young adults, I try to keep the stories moving, never a dull moment, to hold their interest.

Somebody must always be doing something new, or life would get very dull.

Being dull and boring is far more tragic than being tacky.

You can have meaning, accomplishment, engagement and good relationships, even if you are dull on the positive affect side.

I never was on the dull, tame shore, But I loved the great sea more and more.

Nobody likes to hear it, because it's dull, but the reason you win or lose is darn near always the same - pitching.

Suddenly, at about ten o'clock, a dull thud sounded somewhere far away from us, and simultaneously we saw a small white round cloud about half a mile ahead of us where the shrapnel had exploded. The battle had begun.

I always get sick of these conversations where people are so obsessed with pixels, with high definition, and even with technology in general. I find it just dull and heartless. And so I wanted to use only the worst machines.

We've let the blade of our innocence dull over time, and it's only in innocence that you find any kind of magic, any kind of courage.

The British cinema had been very dull and conformist.

The trouble with telling a good story is that it invariably reminds the other fellow of a dull one.

I tend to find characters who lack vulnerability dull.

Much of the stress and emptiness that haunt us can be traced back to our lack of attention to beauty. Internally, the mind becomes coarse and dull if it remains unvisited by images and thoughts that hold the radiance of beauty.

Too many church services start at eleven sharp and end at twelve dull.

Revolution today is taken for granted, and in consequence becomes rather dull.

Soybeans really need an uplift, being on the dull side, but, like dull people, respond readily to the right contacts.

All work and no play make any forensic pathologist a dull boy.

American critics are like American universities. They both have dull and half-dead faculties.

I can't remember a time when I didn't love fashion. As a child, I was always particular about what I'd wear. I remember feeling most aggrieved that I had to put on a dull uniform to go to boarding school.

Fiction is life with the dull bits left out.

Without mysteries, life would be very dull indeed. What would be left to strive for if everything were known?

You can imagine the kind of dinner parties I had to go to at a young age... pretty dull.

I stupidly ignored education completely. I found it dull and I preferred to cause chaos and have fun. I regret this massively now.

What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out.

I am writing a book about the Crusades so dull that I can scarcely write it.

A Local Government Stationery Store is something to behold. It's like walking through the back of a cupboard into a really dull Narnia.

It is to be noted that when any part of this paper appears dull there is a design in it.

If human beings are perceived as potentials rather than problems, as possessing strengths instead of weaknesses, as unlimited rather that dull and unresponsive, then they thrive and grow to their capabilities.

I think some of the things I deal with Hopper probably has dealt with also, since it's somewhat the same environment and I have pretty strong reactions to what this country looks like. It looks pretty dull and spare, and you like this and dislike it and it's very complicated.

Worried about being a dull fellow? You might develop your talent for being irritating.

Display advertising and the movies, though they may dull the wits, certainly stimulate the eyes.

And though I might have learnt more wit and advanced my understanding by living in a Court, yet being dull, fearful and bashful, I neither heeded what was said or practised, but just what belonged to my loyal duty and my own honest reputation.

Are those 'terrible' machines really putting those people out of work? Or are they getting rid of a really dull job that we shouldn't be torturing people with?

The language has got to be fully alive - I can't bear dull, flaccid writing myself and I don't see why any reader should put up with it.

I find we are growing serious, and then we are in great danger of being dull.

We travellers are in very hard circumstances. If we say nothing but what has been said before us, we are dull and have observed nothing. If we tell anything new, we are laughed at as fabulous and romantic.

I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.

Some of those stories in local newspapers are just as dull and boring as the stories that I get from on-line services, which are basically sort of straight news.

When people think girl adventurers, they tend to think of a spunky, plucky tom-boy with a chip on her shoulder. I'm not saying that this makes for a dull character, but I think other types of adventurous girls exist. It's easy to fall into well-established tropes, believing that the tropes of a genre define the genre itself.

You've got to stay focused without being boring - because all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Skinny, but dull.

My son craves picture books about Transformers and Ninja Turtles and the Hulk; they show one fantastic creature smashing or zapping another into smithereens on page after page. They are dull and ugly and show no interesting stories or models of conflict resolution or character building.

I reveled in the most basic rules and techniques that are the foundation of professional cooking. For example, it is essential to use a sharp knife: the sharper the knife, the more fluid and precise your work and the less likely you are to get hurt. Dull knives are a danger - they slip far more often.

The faces I see in the modeling industry can get dull.

Harmonics are vibrations a fraction of the length of the vibrating string, which add higher-pitched and more complex content to the notes. With a dull instrument, the harmonics die out, but with a sustaining instrument, the harmonics continue to sound along with the fundamental note.

The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers.

I watch people who are not driven by creativity any more, and I think how dull it must be to produce the same kind of thing. If you don't feel you're reaching something new, then don't do it.

If you tell the truth you get into trouble, and that's why politicians are extremely dull.

The difference between art about death and actual death is that one's a celebration and the other's a dull fact.

If the individual is a unit in a corporate mass, his life is not merely brutish and short, but dull and mechanical.

The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.

Thoughtful lightness can make frivolity seem dull and heavy.

Heaven must be an awfully dull place if the poor in spirit live there.

My life's actually been quite dull; it's not all that glamorous.

The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.

I've always felt that my life's been at the right place at the right time; I feel like there's been some really dull moments, really high moments, really low moments, but it's always felt like everything's moved in the right direction; it always feels great, and everything feels right.

Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.

I don't want to do architecture that's dry and dull.

Making films can be absolutely fantastic, but it can also be incredibly dull. You spend the whole day sitting by yourself in your trailer and then you get called to deliver one sentence - then you're told to come back and do it again at 5:30 the following morning.

If I welcomed people into my lovely home every week in the pages of a magazine, they'd soon see how incredibly dull it is. It's important to maintain a bit of mystique.

The scene is dull. Tell him to put more life into his dying.

Quite honestly, if I were doing work related to a living being or historical being where there was visual or audio recordings available, I would find that extremely difficult because I don't know how you would avoid the process of mimicry. And mimicry, to me at any rate, is a very dull prospect.

It is respectable to have no illusions, and safe, and profitable and dull.

Life is always surprising to me. When you think it's going to get dull, it never really does.

Sometimes, I wonder where my place in this town called 'Hollywood' is - and that can give you a really dull headache.

Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.

A masterpiece... may be unwelcome but it is never dull.

Why do we never expect dull people to be rascals?

I don't plan to write another science book, but I don't plan not to. I do enjoy writing histories, and taking subjects that are generally dull and trying to make them interesting.

Habit converts luxurious enjoyments into dull and daily necessities.

American newspapers are dying mostly because they were so dull for so long, a whole generation gave up on them.

One of the many problems with the American left has been its image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring.

Most children tell themselves stories in which they figure as powerful figures, enjoying the pleasures not only of the adult world as they conceive it but of a world of wonders unlike dull reality.

When you think about such fine actors as Maggie Smith or Michael Gambon, they do all mediums. I think it would be quite sad and a bit dull just to have to stick to one. I like all of them.

Unknown to her the rigid rule, the dull restraint, the chiding frown, the weary torture of the school, the taming of wild nature down.

Unfortunately, marketing textbooks is like marketing fishing lures: the point is to catch fishermen, not fish. Thus many adopted textbooks are flashy to catch the eye of adoption committees but dull when read by students.

I've nothing against people who love truth. Apart from the fact that they make dull companions.

If you want a little fear and terror because your life is dull, get a future. Terrifying!

Mental health is seen as a massive drag to have to write about - worthy, dull. Something you should 'have' to read / write about.

Where life is colorful and varied, religion can be austere or unimportant. Where life is appallingly monotonous, religion must be emotional, dramatic and intense. Without the curry, boiled rice can be very dull.

One thing must be avoided at all costs: narrow-mindedness, pedantry, dull pettiness.

If you went through life refusing all the bait dangled in front of you, that would be no life at all. No changes would be made and you would have nothing to fight against. Life would be dull as ditchwater.

We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away.

There is scarcely anything so dull and meaningless as Bible doctrine taught for its own sake. Truth divorced from life is not truth in its Biblical sense, but something else and something less.

I think too many comic book covers are way too busy, crammed with far too much information, both visual and verbal, that just becomes a dull noise.

Soothing words can become just another drug we swallow to dull our pain.

Now, scholars can be very useful and necessary, in their own dull and unamusing way. They provide a lot of information. It's just that there is Something More, and that Something More is what life is really all about.

I think I like 'em better like that...divinely dull...just the quiet bearers of their own beauty, like the priestesses in a Panathenaic procession.

I think photography has made us see the landscape in a very dull way - that's one of its effects. It's not spatial.

Marriage is like a dull meal with the dessert at the beginning.

Do the dull things right so the extraordinary things will not be required too often.

Among many reasons for being stupid it may be urged, it is being like other people, and living like one's neighbours, and indeed without it, it may be difficult to love some neighbours as oneself: now seeing the necessity of being dull, you won't, I hope, take it amiss that you find me so ...

If I had followed my better judgment always, my life would have been a very dull one.

A large part of me is pure nebbish - plain, dull, uninteresting. There's a more flamboyant part, too. Obviously.