dulness

• “Perhaps one ought not to use the word dulness, because it may be misunderstood.”

  From a College Window

• “You are sometimes wearisome and wearied; you call your dulness melancholy.”

  The Lily of the Valley

• “Now I know that the idea of dulness or discomfort at Christmas is a very improper one, particularly in a story.”

  In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II Christmas Tales from 'Round the World

• “The most fatal form of vulgarity is described as dulness of heart and dulness of bodily sense, general stupidity being its material manifestation.”

  Art in England Notes and Studies

• “I suppose that many who now connect the very word history with the idea of dulness, would have been fond and diligent students of history if it had had fair access to their minds.”

  Friends in Council — First Series

• “The fine tact of these consummate men of the world derives a humoristic enjoyment in eccentricity of character, which never shows itself in any outward sign beyond the heightened pleasure they feel in what other folks might call dulness or mere oddity. ”

  Lord Kilgobbin

• “Rousseau imagined that the childhood of some men is accompanied by this seeming and deceitful dulness, which is the sign of a profound genius; and Roger Ascham has placed among "the best natures for learning, the sad-natured and hard-witted child;" that is, the thoughtful, or the melancholic, and the slow.”

  Literary Character of Men of Genius Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions

• “His book is lively without being flippant, and full of information without that dulness which is apt to be the evil demon of statistics.”

  The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864

• “There was medicine here for every kind of dulness -- not the gross cure which earthly wine effects, but so nicely proportioned to each specific need that one could regulate one's debauch to a hairbreadth, rising through all the gamut of satisfaction, from the staid contentment coming of that flask there to the wild extravagances of the furthermost vase.”

  Gulliver of Mars

• “The kind of dulness of which I speak is not inconsistent with a high degree, not only of practical, but even of mental, ability.”

  From a College Window

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