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More "Uninteresting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... writer cannot know the exact words, or where the exact words are unimportant, or lengthy and uninteresting, the Third Person is preferable.* Thus, where Essex is asking Sir Robert Cecil that Francis Bacon may be appointed Attorney-General, the dialogue is (as it almost always is in Lord Macaulay's writings) in ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... poverty and discomfort, we must take care not to fling ourselves into something far more infuriating to a normal human being—and that is boredom. The prospect of a carefully inspected sanitary life, tethered to some light, little, uninteresting daily job, six or eight hours of it, seems to me—and I am sure I write here for most normal, healthy, active people—more awful than hunger and death. It is far more in the quality of the human spirit, and still more what we all in our hearts ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... and began to reach after something beyond it. The element of color begins to mingle with his work, and in the first efforts to reconcile his intense feeling for it with his careful form, several anomalies begin to be visible, and some unfortunate or uninteresting works necessarily belong to the period. The England drawings, which are very characteristic of it, are exceedingly unequal,—some, as the Oakhampton, Kilgarren, Alnwick, and Llanthony, being among his finest works; others, as the ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... born. Habits of the expensive King, hours of rising, modes of dressing, and so forth, are to be found in Pollnitz; [Pollnitz, Memoiren zur Lebens-und Regierungs-Geschichte der Vier letzten Regenten des Preussischen Staats (Berlin, 1791). A vague, inexact, but not quite uninstructive or uninteresting Book: Printed also in FRENCH, which was the Original, same place and time.] but we charitably omit them all. Even from foolish Pollnitz a good eye will gather, what was above intimated, that this feeble-backed, heavy-laden ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... through the pack has been comparatively uninteresting from the zoologist's point of view, as we have seen so little of the rarer species of animals or of birds in exceptional plumage. We passed dozens of crab-eaters, but have seen no Ross seals nor have we been able to kill a sea leopard. To-day we see very few penguins. ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... be uninteresting to mention here, that there are no quarantines and no choleras in ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... was as unwilling as unable to adorn the plainness of truth by the colouring of imagination. My life and fortune have been extremely chequered, and my adventures various. Even those I have related are considerably abridged. If any incident in this little work should appear uninteresting and trifling to most readers, I can only say, as my excuse for mentioning it, that almost every event of my life made an impression on my mind and influenced my conduct. I early accustomed myself to look for the hand of God in the minutest occurrence, ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... Casembe has a heavy uninteresting countenance, without beard or whiskers, and somewhat of the Chinese type, and his eyes have an outward squint. He smiled but once during the day, and that was pleasant enough, though the cropped ears and lopped hands, with human skulls at the gate, made me ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... with those originally presented to him, and if he be a person of slow comprehension, or happens to lose any part of the dialogue, announcing the changes, the whole becomes unintelligible confusion. In this respect, and in discarding a number of uninteresting characters, the plan of Dryden's play must be unequivocally preferred to that of Shakespeare in point of coherence, unity, and simplicity. It is a natural consequence of this more artful arrangement of the story, that Dryden contents himself with the concluding scene of Antony's ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... the plain history of the transaction. I should be ashamed to request that you would communicate it to the Honorable Court of Directors, whose time is too valuable for the intrusion of a subject so uninteresting, but that it is become a point of indispensable duty; I must therefore request the favor of you to lay it, at a convenient time, before them. In addressing it to you personally, I yield to my own feelings of the respect which is due to them as a body, ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... man of remarkable political capacity, and he was a poor, ineffective, and even uninteresting speaker, except when the audacity of his statements, and his prophecies, and the tumult of interruptions and laughter that they created, lent a certain Parliamentary interest to his orations. He had an immense amount of that sort of courage which, in the colloquial language ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... through the door of the cellar. Later on he had given the prisoner a vivid and realistic description of the way in which men are hanged, but Neal had made no sign of hearing a word that was said to him, so the occupation grew uninteresting. Now he whistled a few of his favourite airs, speculating on the amount of the fifty pounds reward offered for Neal's capture which would fall to his share, and estimating his chances of taking some of the other United Irishmen ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... Shanghai with its factories and chimneys and great sheds called "godowns" with galvanised iron roofs. It is a disappointing place, but as we go farther on we see a public promenade and some clean, well-built stone houses. The Europeanised part of the city is, however, uninteresting, and we don't care to go into the native part by ourselves, so our chief amusement is watching the Chinese coolies loading and unloading the ship. Notice, they never push things on trollies, as ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... translated into an epic poem, by the side of Achilles? Clarissa, the divine Clarissa, is too interesting by half. She is interesting in her ruffles, in her gloves, her samplers, her aunts and uncles—she is interesting in all that is uninteresting. Such things, however intensely they may be brought home to us, are not conductors to the imagination. There is infinite truth and feeling in Richardson; but it is extracted from a caput mortuum of circumstances; it does not evaporate of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... mining engineer, but he did not dodge getting a few credits from well-known "snap" courses, and he got through other required, but, to his mind, superfluous ones without doing much more work on them than necessary. He had a disconcerting habit of starting in on a course and then if he found it uninteresting or unpromising as a contributor to the special education he was interested in, of simply dropping out of the class without consultation or permission. But he did dig hard into what he thought really ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... to the compliment without elation. He seemed preoccupied, and Noel, finding him uninteresting, ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... Bezobiedoff, with whom he appeared to be very much taken up. Bezobiedoff was a small, slight fellow, with a face pitted over with smallpox, freckled, effeminate hands, and a huge flaxen moustache much in need of the comb. He was invariably dirty, shabby, uncouth, and uninteresting. To me, Dimitri's relations with him were as unintelligible as his relations with Lubov Sergievna, and the only reason he could have had for choosing such a man for his associate was that in the ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... hand; and maybe you won't pick up a trifle in such good company." It may be added, that Mr. Croker was for many years one of the registrars of the Royal Literary Fund. And now, in drawing this slight sketch of Mr. Croker's life to a close, the writer hopes that it may not be an uninteresting ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... more dependent on the unconscious or uncontrolled stimulation of the phantasy that shapes the symbol), the choice from among the many possibilities can surely not fall upon such images as are unsympathetic or uninteresting to the mind. Even if we consciously make comparisons we think of an example mostly from a favorite and familiar sphere; when something "occurs" to us there is already evidenced some part of an unconscious complex. ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... this subject, it may not be uninteresting to my readers to receive some desultory anecdotes that I have heard concerning one or two of the leading monsters, by whom the horrors upon which ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 7 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... a more picturesque and striking character than is to be met with in any other part of the north of France. It is situated 40 miles from Paris, on the great road to Rome, and the appearance of the country through which this road runs, is for the most part flat and uninteresting. It runs through a continued plain, in a straight line between tall rows of elm trees, whose lower branches are uniformly cut off for firewood to the peasantry; and exhibits, for the most part, no other feature than the continued riches of agricultural produce. At the ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Scott no doubt was interested in her, probably he would propose to her, and if he did, probably she would accept him, with all his money, his starting eyes, and his red nose! How dull and uninteresting life is," she said. "I wonder what we ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... with the steadiness of a well-broken steed. No holding on was required, as we ran between the two ranges of mountains which guard the Sound, and along the edge of a salt-water creek, which seemed to be pushing its investigations inland. Barring the scenery the ride became uninteresting by its very safety. The line for the most part is based upon the living rock, and there were no exciting skims over treacherous bogs, no reasonable chance of running off the line, no ups and downs ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... a man, I should say about sixty years old, a most uninteresting age, and a homely, weather-beaten fellow too, when you stopped to look at him. His suit was pepper-and-salt, and he was just like his suit. Good as gold, I have no doubt, a roomer of whom his landlady could say: "He comes and he goes and is ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... has been is best left to Mr. Laurie, the leading authority upon his life. What the schools were before his time is almost too dreary a picture to attempt to draw. Everything was hopelessly haphazard, almost hopelessly uninteresting. Only in the schools of the Jesuits was anything approaching skill employed to stimulate the learner. If a child did not advance, the teacher held himself no way responsible. The lad was adjudged a dullard and left to remain in his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... failure," and that "the disaster to many who stay in the schools is greater than to those who are shoved out." To the same point Hanus tells[39] us that "during the school period aversion and evasion are more frequently cultivated than power and skill, through the forced pursuit of uninteresting subjects." A pupil who acquires the habit of failing and the attitude of accepting it as a necessary evil may soon give up trying to win and become satisfied to accept himself as less gifted, or even to accept life in general as necessarily a matter of repeated failures. In ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien
... the publisher's price for them, the critic's opinion of them, are meagre facts for the biographer; and if the man of genius be a man of quiet, sequestered life, the record of it will be only the more uninteresting to the reader. It is only when something painful has been suffered, something eccentric done and misunderstood and denounced or derided, that the biography rouses the languid interest of the public. Indeed, so imperfect and false are the plan and style of the literary biographies, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... things when you travel by rail consists mostly on getting half a glimpse, beginning to exclaim, "Oh, look there!" then plunging into the black gulf of a tunnel, and not coming out again until after the best bit has carefully disappeared behind an uninteresting, fat-bodied mountain. But travelling by motor-car! Oh, the difference! One sees, one feels; one is never, never bored, or impatient to arrive anywhere. One would enjoy being like the famous brook, ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... confess it; our adversaries in the discussion have a signal advantage over us. They can, in a few words, present an incomplete truth; which, for us to show that it is incomplete, renders necessary long and uninteresting dissertations. ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... In the former subdivision of this voyage a sufficient sample has been given of dry nautical detail of courses, bearings, winds, and soundings, and it does not seem necessary to insert the minute uninteresting detail of the return voyage to Bantam, which was along the coast of China, Cochinchina and Camboja, nearly ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... wanderings of Ulysses and AEneas had made them real? And what would Cousin Eleanor's yard have been without Honora? Whatever there was of romance and folklore in Uncle Tom's library Honora had extracted at an early age, and with astonishing ease had avoided that which was dry and uninteresting. The result was a nomenclature for Aunt Eleanor's yard, in which there was even a terra incognita wherefrom venturesome travellers never returned, but were transformed into ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... indifference; what did he care whether the rape had been frost-bitten or not, that the duties in England were raised, or that exchange was higher? But among the letters he found two which were not uninteresting—one from his Viennese, the other from his Stamboul agent. The contents greatly rejoiced him. He put them both away, and from that moment the apathy began to disperse which had hitherto possessed him. He gave his orders ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... cut, well made, and completely undistinguished. It was a standard suit. White piping on the V of the vest added a flavor of law and learning. His shoes were black laced boots, good boots, honest boots, standard boots, extraordinarily uninteresting boots. The only frivolity was in his purple knitted scarf. With considerable comment on the matter to Mrs. Babbitt (who, acrobatically fastening the back of her blouse to her skirt with a safety-pin, ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... to say about my hero and heroine, but must first deal with other characters, not wholly uninteresting ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... exposing themselves to rain or sun; through Rovereto, noted for its silk-culture and for its old, old houses, superb examples of the domestic architecture of the Middle Ages, with faded frescoes on their quaint facades; and so up the rather monotonous and uninteresting valley of the Adige until, just as the sun was sinking behind the Adamello, whose snowy flanks were bathed in the rosy Alpenglow, we came roaring into Trent, the capital and center of the Trentino, which, together with Trieste and its adjacent territory, composed ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... if you have the one sort of knowledge, it seems to me you must want to have the other. Unless, where both are alike uninteresting; which I cannot suppose ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... upon our courtship, I am inclined to think it must have been uninteresting to a third party; but there is no denying the fact that to us it was most soothing, and well calculated to ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... the Channel in the very prose of the day. Nothing in the world is more uninteresting than eleven o'clock. It is the hour of mediocrity under the best conditions; but eleven o'clock on a shingly beach, in a half-hearted summer, is a very common thing. Twelve has a dignity always, and everywhere its name ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... won't. I'm ever so tired, and people who are fussed about are dreadfully uninteresting. Do start for your walk, Frances, or you won't be in time to ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... must away. Boston and New York have had their stories told frequently enough-and, in reality, there is not much to tell about them. The world does not contain a more uninteresting accumulation of men and houses than the great city of New York: it is a place wherein the stranger feels inexplicably lonely. The traveller has no mental property in this city whose enormous growth of life has struck scant roots into the great heart ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... that the preceding work will not be found altogether uninteresting. To elder persons it will recall scenes and characters familiar to their youth; and to the rising generation the tale may present some idea of the manners ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... witness-stand; and it is only on account of the effect which this and other occurrences of like nature had in bringing about the final event of our history, that we take the trouble to narrate matters so trifling and uninteresting; for it appeared that every incident of the kind was carefully registered in the memory of the Erinnys of this devoted household, whence it came out magnified and distorted into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... good from this reading, but the reverse. The poet's state of mind was too like my own. His was the lament of a man who had worn out all pleasures, and who seemed to think that life, to all who possess the good things of it, must necessarily be the vapid, uninteresting thing which I found it. His Harold and Manfred had the same burden on them which I had; and I was not in a frame of mind to desire any comfort from the vehement sensual passion of his Giaours, or the sullenness ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... narrative of his extraordinary career in that part of the world where the services of the ship I commanded were required, I am not without a hope that the accompanying pages may be found worthy of your approval, and not altogether uninteresting to my country. ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... the elements of German and French drew someone's attention to it in my sixteenth year. I was not quick, but I passed for being denser than I was because of the myopic haze that enveloped me. But this is not an autobiography, and with the cold and shrouded details of my uninteresting school life I will ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... said Major Flint. "Perhaps a hundred years hence—the date I have named in my will for their publication—someone may think them not so uninteresting. But all this toasting and buttering and grilling and frying your friends, and serving them up hot for all the old cats at ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... westward to Terranova. As he disposed his travelling-bags in a corner of the compartment, and settled himself for the short journey, he felt a kind of irrational surprise at the fact that there had been no changes during his absence. The city was just as dirty and uninteresting as when he had left, the beggars were just as ragged and importunate, the street coaches were just as rickety. It required an effort to realize that ten months is, after all, a very short time, for it seemed ten years since he had sailed away. It had been a difficult period ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... statue at Cambridge always informs the visitor that it only requires to be black to render it a deception. He was inclined to tolerate anything that displayed ingenuity without violating possibility, yet he could never endure such extraneous and uninteresting matter as the shot, the barrel of powder, and the bent chamber of a piece of artillery in the monument to Lord Shannon, in Walton Church, which, with much to commend in the two figures, has a profusion of objects, and a grey ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... man who was in love with a beautiful woman, and who allowed her beauty to compensate him for many other things. When she failed to understand what he said to her he smiled and looked at her and forgave her at once, and when she began to grow uninteresting, he would take up his hat and go away, and so he never knew how very uninteresting she might possibly be if she were given time enough in which to demonstrate the fact. He never considered that, ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... of uniform cloud spread over the evening sky. It was that season when the last leaf had just fallen from the scant and stunted ash. The scene surely was a common scene; the season and the hour little calculated to kindle lawless thought; it was a tame uninteresting assemblage of objects, such as would drive the imagination for refuge in serious and sober talk, to the evening fireside, and the dessert of winter fruits and wine. The effect which it produced on me was not such as could have been expected. I suddenly remembered to have seen that exact ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... compelled by the Authorities to walk only amidst the high peaks and sometimes monotonous solitudes of the legitimate drama. The Two Gentlemen of Verona, which was chosen for this term's performance, is, if the truth must be told, an uninteresting stage-play. The story is of the slightest; there is scarcely a genuinely dramatic incident from beginning to end. The audience wearies of a succession of pretty pictures and sentimental soliloquies or dialogues, mouths begin to gape, and the attention wanders. Is this sacrilege? If it be, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various
... carbonic oxide and oxygen with varying proportions of aqueous vapor. I therefore thought a description of the more convenient methods lately devised as lecture experiments for showing the influence of water on the combustion of carbonic oxide would not be uninteresting to the Section. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... of potential dissent—was not there the stuff in the actual conditions from which a finer artist than he could ever hope to be, now that the first glow of his prime was past, might fashion an image of our decadence, or our arrest, so grandly, so perfectly dull and uninteresting, that it would fix all the after-ages with the sovereign authority of a masterpiece? Here, he tremblingly glowed to realize, was opportunity, not for him, indeed, but for some more modern, more divinely inspired ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... may observe that the leading writer of this school goes back at least a hundred years for the field of his best stories. The eighteenth century, whose politics, philosophy, and literature seemed to Carlyle's somewhat bookish conception to be flat, prosaic, and comparatively uninteresting, was in truth for Englishmen pre-eminently the age of energetic activity, which touched the high level of romantic enterprise at two points, the Scottish rebellions and the exploits of famous buccaneers. Mr. Stevenson has reopened, with great skill and success, these mines of literary ore ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... When the "Clouds" of Aristophanes was exhibited before the assembled deputies of the towns of Attica, these personages, as AElian tells us, were unanimously of opinion, that the character of an unknown person, called Socrates, was uninteresting upon the stage; and Seneca has given the substance of an authentic letter of Epicurus, in which that philosopher declares that nothing hurt him so much, in the midst of all his happiness, as to think that Greece,—"illa nobilis Graecia,"—so far from knowing him, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... the curious eye takes the scenery in detail; and first, what fantastic variety in the heights and shapes of the chimney-pots! Some all level in a row, uniform and respectable, but quite uninteresting; others, again, rising out of all proportion, and imperatively tasking the reason to conjecture why they are so aspiring. Reason answers that it is but a homely expedient to give freer vent to the smoke; wherewith Imagination ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... my remarks on the concertos run counter to those made by W. von Lenz. The F minor Concerto he holds to be an uninteresting work, immature and fragmentary in plan, and, excepting some delicate ornamentation, without originality. Nay, he goes even so far as to say that the passage-work is of the usual kind met with in the compositions of Hummel and his successors, and that the cantilena in the larghetto is in the ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... her, and it was discouraging to find that the realisation of her wish was as yet bringing her very little pleasure. She felt awkward and terribly shy in their company, and she had an uneasy consciousness that they looked upon her as a poor sort of creature, and very uninteresting—what, in short, she said sadly to herself, for she was already picking up some of their expressions—they would have called ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... romantic, but unvaried; the river running between mountains of the most craggy and barren aspect, where there was nothing to diversify the scene but now and then the sight of a bear, and the flights of wild fowl. So uninteresting a passage leaves me nothing farther to say, than that this, and the following night, we slept on the banks of the river, under our marquee, and suffered very much from the severity of the weather, and the snow, which still remained on ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... establishing or changing line, the various methods of providing, as circumstances might require, for the employment of all, or only part of a regiment or brigade, or for the employment of supports and reserves, all these evolutions had to be added. It would be uninteresting to all but the practical military reader, and unnecessary, as well, to enter into a minute ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... conversation was the kind of conversation that a nice girl invariably uses in putting at ease a jackie whom she has just met at a war recreation dance. Nothing could have been more commonplace or unoriginal, but to Tyler Kamps the brilliance of a Madame de Stael would have sounded trivial and uninteresting in comparison. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... their influence upon his own community life. When, on the other hand, these are introduced to him in too technical a form, he is not able, in his present stage of learning, to discover this connection, and the so-called knowledge remains in his experience, if it remains at all, as uninteresting, non-significant, and non-digested information. In the elementary school at least, therefore, knowledge should not be presented to the child in such a technical and abstract way that it will seem to have no ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... strength of feeling on either side. One of her uncles, a well-to-do farmer, died and left her seventy thousand francs, which helped to clear off the loan. From that day my life has been nothing but happiness and prosperity. Nothing is more utterly uninteresting than a happy man, so let us say no more on that head, and return to the ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... exceedingly modern in her tastes. She did not like recitative in music, and preferred Wagner and Tschaikowsky to Bach and Verdi. She loved to be stirred up, she said. She liked Beethoven, yes, but he was too mathematical. As for Handel, he was uninteresting in the extreme; and so she ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... brought into full relief this powerful head. He wore the well-known cassock of black cloth, fastened round his waist by a black cloth belt with a brass buckle, which became thenceforth the distinctive dress of all Calvinist ministers, and was so uninteresting to the eye that it forced the spectator's attention upon the ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... to his breakfast, at which the Professors found him somewhat taciturn. Indeed they set him down as one of the dullest and most uninteresting ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... but she said nothing; she hung her head again; and Marion, after a pause, went on to question her about an endless string of matters concerning themselves and other people, past doings and present prospects, till little Rolf, soothed by the uninteresting soft murmur of voices, fairly forgot bread and butter and himself in a sound sleep, his head ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... and more pleasant to think of the bright fire and the cheerful room that awaited me. Nor was the idea of the table, perhaps already beginning to glitter with crystal and silver, altogether uninteresting to me. For I ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... London I ran over to Ireland to see my parents. On my return I seemed to miss the charming companion of my journey over the same ground three years previously. Two uninteresting men were in the carriage: a typical German professor on tour, and communicative; and a typical English gentleman, uncommunicative. As the journey was a long one the German smoked, ate and drank himself ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... watched the contortions of the acrobats, which apparently he enjoyed more than to her seemed reasonable. But, as with herself, it was the boy Moxy that chiefly attracted him, though the show of physical prowess was far from uninteresting to him; and although what she saw through the smoky illumination of the dip was not attractive to her, the question remains whether it was really the man himself she saw, or only an appearance made up of candle gleam and gloom, complemented ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... time at Wadham presented a curious spectacle. Huddled together were soldiers, courtiers, ladies beautiful, gay, and famous in many ways, severe Divines and College Heads, to whom such surroundings were unfamiliar and perhaps not uninteresting: masques and revels were frequent; Christ Church meadow and the grove at Trinity were the resort of a brilliant throng, more brilliant even than the gatherings which fill Oxford at Commemoration time in our more sober age. ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... theories about life, and their intricate relations to myself, and cast about carefully for something upon which I might with safety and good results practice upon. Most of my friends were tame, uninteresting, and none of them just then my lovers. I resorted to many of the little airs and tricks of social trade. I soon found myself doing quite a brisk little business in a quiet way; quite quiet, for I still wore light mourning and, of course, was not going out; we all thought it best to pay the ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... assistance of any idea that presented itself. Ovid, not content with catching the leading features of any scene or character, indulged himself in a thousand minutiae of description, a thousand puerile prettinesses, which were in themselves uninteresting, and took off greatly from the effect of the whole; as the numberless suckers and straggling branches of a fruit-tree, if permitted to shoot out unrestrained, while they are themselves barren and useless, diminish ...
— English Satires • Various
... servility, waits on us at a supper which he is too polite to share, and presents us with a prayer at our bedside. Bou-Kteun, situated halfway up the "Red Plateau," guards the pass called the Gates of Iron. It is an uninteresting village, the official house being alone respectable amidst a town of huts. As the amin accompanies us a little way outside the burgh, we remark, among the young orchards, stumps of olive and fig trees sawn away at the base. The amin shows them with sad satire, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... giving a brilliancy and life to the scene, which is not found in the other parts of the remarkably dull town of Louis XIV. Rochefort is the third important port in France; but as nothing can be so uninteresting to me, who do not understand these details, as to look on fortifications, and the bustle of a port when there is no sea to repay one—and Rochefort is only on the Charente, four leagues from the sea—I did not attempt ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... are unpleasant reflections: I would rather, before leaving the plains of Lombardy, give my country-women one reason for detaining them so long there: it cannot be an uninteresting reason to us, when we ref left that our first head-dresses were made by Milaners; that a court gown was early known in England by the name of a mantua, from Manto, the daughter of Teresias, ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... time enough and to spare, but everything was delayed and confused. I had thought of going back by Dieppe and Newhaven; but a storm was blowing, and I knew that meant a longer sea-passage, so I went to Calais, thus riding through one of the most uninteresting parts of France. It was five o'clock on Christmas Eve when we arrived at this little French seaport, and then it took us two hours to cross the straits, although we happened to be on one of the ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... hear from my sisters, and you from her, I have no doubt, my very scanty account of a very uninteresting voyage. I see everywhere signs of a change really extraordinary in the last few years. I can tell no stories of sudden conversions, striking effects, &c. But I know that in twenty, thirty, perhaps forty places, where a year or two ago no white man could land without some little uncertainty ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... walked back to the van, carrying the wire and letting the coils go wide, and, as noiselessly as possible, made a loop in the loose end and slipped it over the hooks on the end of the pole. ("Unnecessary detail!" my contemporaries will moan, "Overloaded with uninteresting details!" But that's because they haven't got the details—and it's the details that go.) Then Harry skipped back to his horse, jumped on, gathered up the bridle reins, and used his spurs. There was a swish and a clang, a ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... heart-pump, though if we neglect it we die. We are therefore driven to the conclusion that when we have carried selection as far as we can by rejecting from the list of eligible parents all persons who are uninteresting, unpromising, or blemished without any set-off, we shall still have to trust to the guidance of fancy (alias Voice of Nature), both in the breeders and the parents, for that superiority in the unconscious self which will be the true ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... was in no mood for Teddys. He realized that he was committed to the path across the fields, an uninteresting walk at the best ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... Boat Race, and on the left the great reservoirs and the bend of the river behind which lay Mortlake, the finish of the boat-race course. Each morning, when I rose and dressed, I looked out upon the wide and somewhat uninteresting vista, racking my brains how to further proceed with my campaign against the great intriguer who could, by his immense ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... of her force of character, were weak and wandering, or stared blankly at the judge; her over-sized head, broad at the base, terminating in the scantiest possible light colored braid in the middle of her narrow shoulders, was as hard and uninteresting as the wooden spheres that topt the railing against which she sat. The jury, who for six weeks had had her described to them by the plaintiffs as an arch, wily enchantress, who had sapped the failing reason of Jim Byways, revolted to a man. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... wainscotting and shelves were removed there piece by piece from the old library at the back, which faced north and had rather an uninteresting outlook towards the woods. This rather gloomy chamber he caused to be newly panelled with wood enamelled white, and presented it to his wife for her own use with a "God bless you, my darling, I hope you may have ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... marched down the banks of a large stream, supposed to be the Etowa, which empties into the Coosa. For five days they continued their march through an uninteresting country, almost destitute of inhabitants, until, having traversed, as they supposed, about ninety miles, they came in sight of a ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... begin an entirely new life in a perfectly different milieu, and certainly more difficult for a Frenchwoman of the bourgeoisie than any other. They live in such a narrow circle, their lives are so cramped and uninteresting—they know so little of society and foreign ways and manners that they must be often uncomfortable and make mistakes. It is very different for a man. All the small questions of dress and manners, ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... inquiries for the Marquise de Chargeboeuf and other matters really uninteresting but about which politeness assumes that we are keenly interested, it dawned on Monsieur d'Hauteserre that the old gentleman had come to warn his young relatives against imprudence. He remarked that times were changed and no one could tell what ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... than upon the future; that he read much history, and felt specially drawn to certain periods whose spirit he understood instinctively as though he had lived in them; and that he found all religions uninteresting because, almost without exception, they start from the present and speculate ahead as to what men shall become, instead of looking back and speculating why men have ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... and there are many low tides when it is not safe or even possible to cross the causeway. Perhaps at any time those who see the rock from a distance can best appreciate its charm. From Marazion to Penzance there are three miles of flat, uninteresting road—perhaps the dullest bit of coast-road in all Cornwall, were it not for ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... opinion that he might have thought of it had he not been chiefly concerned at the moment with the idea of getting home to his mother. As it was, the clothing with romance of incidents otherwise bald and uninteresting had fallen ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... worth while to expand this summary by an attempt to apportion its contents among the Arnstadt-Muehlhausen period, the Weimar period, the Coethen period (chiefly remarkable for instrumental music and comparatively uninteresting in its easy-going choral music), and the last period (1733-1750) in which, while the choral works became at once more numerous and more terse (e.g. Jesu, der du meine Seele) the instrumental music, though never diffuse, shows an increasing preference for designs on a large scale. (Compare, for ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... lived in the country, then he came to Paris to live; for, the family fortunes having dwindled, he had to look for a position. For several years he was a clerk in the Ministry of Marine, where he turned over musty papers, in the uninteresting company of ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... proceedings. I sat beside her by virtue of my office as page. Among other things, she proposed that any one who had to pay a forfeit should tell his dream; but this was not successful. The dreams were either uninteresting (Byelovzorov had dreamed that he fed his mare on carp, and that she had a wooden head), or unnatural and invented. Meidanov regaled us with a regular romance; there were sepulchres in it, and angels with lyres, and talking flowers and music wafted from afar. Zinaida ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... the witnesses before the Military Commission, a few remarks may not be uninteresting. It has been observed by the reader who has carefully perused the foregoing statement, that there were two distinct elements which made up the great conspiracy, viz: The Copperheads, or Sons of Liberty, and Knights of the Golden Circle, and the rebel ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... gentlemen," he added, speaking to the whole company, "I assure you that my sufferings have been of a nature so extraordinary as would deprive the greatest miser of his love of riches; and as an opportunity now offers, I will, with your leave, relate the dangers I have encountered, which I think will not be uninteresting to you." ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... task of the people was to clear the forests and bring the soil under cultivation. Greenfield was, therefore, in part an agricultural town and in part a lumber town. Like most small towns, it was slow-moving and uninteresting. The scenes most frequented were ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... passed by with but slight notice; to him they were absolutely valueless and uninteresting. Betty Bruce had certainly caught his attention by her public punishment, and he had been taken aback by that sharp little pinch of hers. Hitherto he had had nothing to do with girls but he supposed immediately that that was their ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... acting as teller in a bank, or sitting upon the bench of a court, or looking to the inexpressibly trivial details of some process of manufacturing, or writing imbecile articles for a newspaper, or managing a tramway, or administering ineffective medicines to stupid and uninteresting patients—a man so engaged during all his hours of labour, which means a normal, typical man, is surely not one to be oppressed unduly by the dull round of domesticity. His wife may bore him hopelessly as mistress, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... this treatment more uninteresting than that attention he had lavished on her on the former occasion; perhaps she had not so long to tarry. As he still watched her she turned again, and made her way swift and straight toward the rocky point. Caius ran, following, upon the shore, ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... of the valuable services of Mr Morgan, the manager for Messrs Vivian, in our walks round the works, although it is not our intention to give a technical description of copper-smelting.[4] Such a course would be alike uninteresting to the reader and unsatisfactory to ourselves. A consecutive description, however brief, of what we saw, would, in like manner, carry us far beyond our limits; and we therefore purposely confine ourselves to whatever is popularly interesting ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... one moment to reflect on the character of these new deities of whom I have been speaking: Hercules, Castor, Minerva, Diana. It must be confessed that, as compared with the great deities of the calendar, they are uninteresting; with the exception, perhaps, of Hercules, they do not seem to have any real religious significance. They are local deities brought in from outside, and have no root in the mind of the Roman people as we have so far been studying it. They seem to indicate the growth of a population in which ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... walls he was leaving. But no such contradiction came. Instead, he appeared to read confirmation there of the landlord's plain and unembittered statement. The dull blue paper with its old-fashioned and uninteresting stripes seemed to have disfigured the walls for years. It was not only grimy with age, but showed here and there huge discoloured spots, especially around the stovepipe-hole high up on the left-hand side. Certainly he was a dreamer to doubt such ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... work, the object of the author has been to render the knowledge of Plants entertaining and useful, not only to Botanists, but to those who have hitherto deemed it a difficult and uninteresting science. He has endeavoured to ascertain of what countries the vegetables now cultivated are natives, the earliest accounts of their cultivation, and how far they have improved by attention, or degenerated by neglect; also the ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... old lady is Mrs. Grant. She is a sweet old thing; but she never says anything but good of anybody and so she is a very uninteresting conversationalist. ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... long intervals between their dates, make such a mass of worthless literature. This diary-keeping is a very foolish habit, after all. Why do I keep this record of a most commonplace existence? For my own edification and improvement? Scarcely, since I very rarely read these uninteresting entries; and I very much doubt if posterity will care to know that I went to the office at ten o'clock on Wednesday morning; that I couldn't get a seat in the omnibus, and was compelled to take a Hansom, which cost me two shillings; that I dined tete-a-tete with my mother, and ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Malay Bay, in which nothing worthy of note was found. It affords good anchorage during the easterly monsoon on a muddy bottom in from four to five fathoms, but its shores are low and its beaches rocky, and so uninteresting, that we returned to our previous anchorage ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... he looked down at her, was surprised at his own excitement. His heart was beating, his hand trembling—before this plain, ordinary, unattractive girl! Unattractive physically—but not uninteresting. One of the most interesting human beings whom he had ever met, simply because she was utterly unlike any one else. He felt shame before her, because he knew that she would believe every word that he said. In that she was simple, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... of the cramped blind alley of life to which they led. Dull stairs destined to be mounted by dull people: how many thousands of insignificant figures were going up and down such stairs all over the world at that very moment—figures as shabby and uninteresting as that of the middle-aged lady in limp black who descended Gerty's flight as ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... Intellectual Life, wisely suggests: "A married couple are clearly aware that, in the course of a few years, their society is sure to become mutually uninteresting unless something is done. What is that something? Every author who succeeds, takes the trouble to renew his mind by fresh knowledge, new thoughts. So, is it not at least worth while to do as much to ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... a fresh discussion among themselves; and, as it seemed as interminable as it was uninteresting, Reding took an opportunity to wish his host a good night, and to slip away. He never had much leaning towards the evangelical doctrine; and Freeborn and his friends, who knew what they were holding a great deal better than the run of ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... abominably. There is no good reason for appealing. Still," he continued, "we can but try to get the sentence revoked. This is what I have noted down." He took up several sheets of paper covered with writing, and began to read rapidly, slurring over the uninteresting legal terms and laying particular stress on some sentences. "To the Court of Appeal, criminal department, etc., etc. According to the decisions, etc., the verdict, etc., So-and-so Maslova pronounced guilty of having caused the death through poison ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... uninteresting length of highway with grim satisfaction. It was the inaccessibility and general lack of popular attractions which had led him to select Nepaug as a summering place. Mosquitoes and sand-fleas abounded; but one need ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... the house is a muddle of muck and mire, and still there is so much to do that we look forward to some far distant futurity, when all that we are now suffering will be over, and we may look back upon it as upon some strange yet not altogether uninteresting nightmare! ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... think you are a good judge on that subject, Nick," remarked his niece judiciously. "In fact, even Dr. Wyndham knows better than that. I assure you the antipathy is quite mutual. He regards everyone who isn't desperately ill as superfluous and uninteresting. He was absolutely disappointed the other day because, when I slipped on the stairs, I ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... has been so very uninteresting, wife," said my husband grimly; for his fun is always so ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... kept swerving far into the Netherlands, so, gently pulling it by the thumb towards Paris, I used as much force as I thought decorous, to induce it to advance in a straight line; however, finding my efforts ineffectual, I ventured with respectful astonishment, to ask, 'Why travel by so uninteresting a route'? ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... obviously handled by men who knew what they were about, and we soon afterwards definitely learned (what we had long suspected) that there were French and German experts behind them. The remainder of the day was dusty, stormy, and uninteresting. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... putting it upon the ground that he had been unfortunate and had a claim to their charity. I happened to see him in the office of the popular hotel in Podgeville, when he was more than usually clamorous for patronage. He accosted nearly every man in the room with a dull, uninteresting volume in his hand, and for which he asked a respectable price. At last he set down his basket, and commenced a kind of snivelling harangue to his little audience. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... beauty declares that "the secret of ugliness consists not in irregular outline, but in being uninteresting. We love any forms, however ugly, from which great qualities shine. If command, eloquence, art, or invention exists in the most deformed person, all the accidents that usually displease, please, and raise esteem and wonder higher. Beauty without grace is the head without the body. Beauty ...
— Why go to College? an Address • Alice Freeman Palmer
... only represents one aspect of their realism, and indeed in this they do little more than continue the characteristics of what we know as the 'Fabliaux' of the Middle Ages. The quality of the new art lies just in this, that there is nothing in human life which is uninteresting or insignificant to these great artists, that they are bound by no traditions, hampered by no conventions. They had begun as artists of romance, and the romantic sentiment of life never ceased to interest and move them, but they had learned to go ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... quite uninteresting—a person whom we would not care to know. He posed as a poet and, to this end, wore, even at the club, "a mysterious blue cloak, with a canine skin collar"; imagine this of a warm evening—May 12—in a stuffy room in Huggin Lane! ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... have some news to tell, and my journal will no longer be so dry and uninteresting. The prince royal, accompanied by the prince palatine, arrived yesterday about one o'clock. Indeed I am quite confused by the palatine's overwhelming kindness; he received me as if I had been his daughter, and there ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... choosing a husband, it seems that you've always got to decide between something tame and uninteresting, like a gold-fish, and something wild and fascinating, ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... understanding, written by a man of parts, for the use of men of parts. Weak minds will not like it, even though they do not understand it; which is commonly the measure of their admiration. Dull ones will want those minute and uninteresting details with which most other histories are encumbered. He tells me all I want to know, and nothing more. His reflections are short, just, and produce others in his readers. Free from religious, philosophical, political and ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... believe, very little to see there, and of that little, I saw nothing,—being too ill and too low for the slightest exertion. The only pleasurable feeling I can remember was excited by our approach to the Alps, after traversing the flat, fertile, uninteresting plains of Lombardy. The peculiar sensation of elevation and delight, inspired by mountain scenery, can only be understood by those who have felt it: at least I never had formed an idea of it till I ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... in writing these rapid and imperfect recollections, I find that should I attempt to write up all the details that I would not only weary you, but that these memoirs would soon become monotonous and uninteresting. I have written only of what I saw. Many little acts of kindness shown me by ladies and old citizens, I have omitted. I remember going to an old citizen's house, and he and the old lady were making ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... extremely clever; I wish I knew her better. I have been to one dance and one or two dinners lately, but to tell you the truth, dear H——, the old people naturally treat me after my years, as a young person, and the young people (perhaps from my self-conceit) seem to me stupid and uninteresting, and so, you see, I do not like society. Cecilia Siddons is out of town at present, and I have not seen her for some time. You may have heard that the theatre has gained a lawsuit against Sinclair, the celebrated singer, by a reversal of the former ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... that he would be beyond conversational radius. She liked to talk to the strange and lonely man, but she preferred to be alone with him when she did so. Neither of them had yet descended to the level of trifles; and Elsa had no wish to share with persons uninteresting and uncompanionable her serious views of life. Sometimes she wondered if, after all, she was not as old as the ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... seat at the wheel, he made no effort to start the car, but sat slowly drawing on his heavy gloves, and staring abstractedly at the dull, uninteresting stretch of street before him, where a dismal spring wind was stirring chaff and papers about the subway entrance, and surface cars were grinding and ringing ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... extraordinary value, for explanation and prevision, of those mathematical and mechanical modes of conception which science uses, was a result that could not possibly have been expected in advance. Weight, movement, velocity, direction, position, what thin, pallid, uninteresting ideas! How could the richer animistic aspects of Nature, the peculiarities and oddities that make phenomena picturesquely striking or expressive, fail to have been first singled out and followed by philosophy as the more promising ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... my intention to defend humility on practical grounds. Practical grounds are uninteresting, and, moreover, on practical grounds the case for humility is overwhelming. We all know that the 'divine glory of the ego' is socially a great nuisance; we all do actually value our friends for modesty, freshness, and simplicity of heart. Whatever may be the reason, ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... meetings of her father's friends at their house, the conversation was uninteresting, if not disgusting; for it was about goods and merchandise, money and speculation, occasionally interrupted by politics, which were to her of as little interest. How different was the demeanour, the address, ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... yet ill-known country. Carl was unspeakably disconcerted. He was thinking that, to him, Gertie was set aside from the number of women who could appeal physically, quite as positively as though she were some old aunt who had for twenty years seemed to be the same adult, plump, uninteresting age. Gertie's solid flesh, the monotony of her voice, the unimaginative fixity of her round cheeks, a certain increasing slackness about her waist, even the faint, stuffy domestic scent of her—they all expressed to him her lack of humor and fancy and ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... (upon which fact the matter of giving, or not giving, seemed to turn). He threw him a piece of money, saying, as he did so, "look out, my friend, or that quarter will get you into the calaboose." Next morning it so happened that your grandfather was called to that useful, but uninteresting place, to bail out a colored servant, who was prone, occasionally, to get into scrapes, which subjected him to temporary imprisonment, when, whom should he find there, safely ensconced in one of the cells, ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... been speaking to the accused. An uninteresting story. He just keeps on denying—that's all. He agreed to be interrogated without me. [Laughing] I won't hide from you that I advised him to persist in his method. Well, then, au revoir. If he wants an advocate later on, let me know—I'll send ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... be found in his union with this particular woman. This illusion to a man deeply in love becomes so dazzling that if it cannot be attained, life itself not only loses all charm, but appears to be so joyless, hollow, and uninteresting as to make him too disgusted with it to be afraid of the terrors of death; this is why he sometimes of his own free will cuts his life short. The will of a man of this kind has become engulfed in ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... persuasion of his regard for Elinor perhaps assisted her penetration; but she really felt assured of his worth: and even that quietness of manner, which militated against all her established ideas of what a young man's address ought to be, was no longer uninteresting when she knew his heart to be warm and his ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... said, and hauled the things up, and got them inside. The photographs would be absolutely dull and uninteresting, but that wouldn't matter to Coppinger. He rather preferred them that way. One has to be careful about halation in photographing these dark interiors, but there was a sort of ledge like a seat by the side of each ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... the eloquent and pathetic style altogether, and only gives the unlucky prisoner's narrative in the baldest and most unimaginative style. How is a jury to listen to such a fellow? they ought to condemn him, if but for making such an uninteresting statement. Why not have helped poor Peytel with some of those rhetorical graces which have been so plentifully bestowed in the opening part of the act of accusation? He might ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not be inappropriate to the occasion, or altogether uninteresting,' said Mr Toots with a delighted face, 'to observe that my wife is a most extraordinary woman, and would do this much better than myself—allow my friend Feeder to be ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... autumn, the sun shining straight down one of the wide clean stony streets of the city, with a warmth which he had not been able to impart to the air, a company of school-girls, two and two in long file, mostly with innocent, and, for human beings, rather uninteresting faces, was walking in orderly manner, a female grenadier at its head, along the pavement, more than usually composed, from having the sun in their eyes. Amongst the faces was one very different from the rest, a countenance almost solemn and a little sad, of still, regular features, in ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... journey to Carford, but it took them over twelve rather uninteresting miles and put them down just at the commencement of a very beautiful stretch of country where open uplands alternated with wooded coombes, and where the stone-roofed villages were ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... the northern wilderness was unvaried by any event worthy of record, and the details would be uninteresting to the reader. Suffice it to say that, just as the fourth day was closing in, they struck a small stream, which pursued a short distance, brought them directly upon the village for which they ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... enough of the nobleness of such a life to fill her with a certain enthusiasm, and make her feel a day blank and uninteresting if she could not make her ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unpatriotic comparisons because there were weedy little sign-board advertisements by the rail side instead of the broad hoardings that deface the landscape in our land. But the north of France is really uninteresting country, and after a time Fanny reverted to Hare's Walks and Helen initiated lunch. Miss Winchelsea awoke out of a happy reverie; she had been trying to realise, she said, that she was actually going to Rome, but she perceived at Helen's suggestion that she was hungry, and they lunched out of their ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... to exercise their memory, we must put them in situations where they may be immediately rewarded for their exertion. We must create an interest in their minds—nothing uninteresting is long remembered. In a large and literary family, it will not be difficult to invent occupations for children which may exercise all their faculties. Even the conversation of such a family, will create in their minds a desire ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... curious among the perusers of the Mirror, it may not be uninteresting to know that a beautiful impression may be taken on paper of the reticulated web of the field-spider, by sprinkling it finely with any dark-coloured liquid, and placing the paper intended for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... unpleasant quarter, devoted to manufactures, his vehicle bore him out of Hollingford, and then along a flat, uninteresting road, whence at moments he had glimpses of the river Holling, as it flowed between level fields. Presently the country became more agreeable; on one hand it rose gently to wooded slopes, on the other opened a prospect over a breezy common, yellow with gorse. At the ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... and not uninteresting study in psychology. He has no great talent, but he is not without some ability; in his youth he was an industrious plodder and fond of study. He has read much but absorbed little; he is well educated in the narrow sense of the schoolmaster, but he has no philosophic background; his is the ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... he sauntered through the city, meeting some old friends, who all seemed changed and singularly uninteresting. They were all engaged or married, and could talk of nothing but matrimony, and their prospects of advancement in the Government service. One had an influential uncle who had been a chum of the present minister of finance; ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... fields where the blue-fringed gentian blooms with the pink bell-heather, and the bridal torch nods from the brook-side, bending its stately head to the west wind that sweeps ever in from the sea with touch as soft as of a woman's hand? Flat and uninteresting? Yes, if you will. If one sees only the fields. My children saw them and longed back to the hills of Long Island; and in their cold looks I felt the tugging of the chain which he must bear through life who exiled himself from the land of his birth, however near to his heart that of his choice ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... not a bit better or worse than everywhere else; so I shall find out what can be done by the best intentions and a fabulous faith in me. So much I am confident in saying, that the performance would not be uninteresting to you, and therefore I invite you quite seriously, after receipt of this letter, to get leave for a week, trust yourself to the railway, and visit me at Zurich. The first performance takes place Wednesday, April 21st, and between that and May 1st there will be two repetitions. ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... the history of England. The older historians stop when they come to the year 1284, and sometimes give a hasty outline of a few rebellions up to 1535. They then give the Welsh a glowing testimonial as a law-abiding and loyal people, and find them too uninteresting to write ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards
... that would be fun," Peace commented candidly, still holding the unopened volume in her hand, thinking it was another uninteresting story-book. "I don't like writing any better than ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... It is not uninteresting to watch the Epeira at dinner. I light upon one, the Banded Epeira, at the moment, about three o'clock in the afternoon, when she has captured a Locust. Planted in the centre of the web, on her resting-floor, she attacks the venison at ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... Is he songless, sooty, uninteresting, vulgar? Not if you live on a roof. He may be all of this, a pest even, in the country. But upon my roof, for weeks at a stretch, his is the only bird voice I hear. Throughout the spring, and far into ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... the effect of the joker in a pack of cards. Push back the flap over Jack's face and you will see a club like a policeman's billy. Along this club the inconspicuous flowers are borne. Later, in the fall, the fruit forms, and inside, instead of rather uninteresting flowers, are bright red berries. So Jack ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... anything be more dull than the life of an actor in a repertory theatre? Daily rehearsals in a dingy and draughty theatre and nightly performances in half-rehearsed plays!... "Give me the life of a bank clerk for real gaiety," he murmured. "An actor's just a drudge ... and a dull drudge, too! Very uninteresting people, actors!... Why the devil did ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... with "useful knowledge." The important note (ii. 45) upon the normal English mispronunciation of the J in Jerusalem, Jesus, Jehovah, a corruption whose origin and history are unknown to so many, and which was, doubtless, a surprise to this Son of King "We," is damned as "uninteresting to the reader of the Arabian Nights." En revanche, three mistakes of mine ("p. 43" for "p. 45" in vol. ii., index; "King Zahr Shah" for "King Suleyman Shah," ii. 285, and the careless confusion of the Caliphs Al-Muntasir and Al- Mustansir, ii. 817, note i.) were corrected ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... is that people often are so modest; they think that their own experience is so dull, so unromantic, so uninteresting. It is an entire mistake. If the dullest person in the world would only put down sincerely what he or she thought about his or her life, about work, love, religion and emotion, it would be a ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... was delayed and confused. I had thought of going back by Dieppe and Newhaven; but a storm was blowing, and I knew that meant a longer sea-passage, so I went to Calais, thus riding through one of the most uninteresting parts of France. It was five o'clock on Christmas Eve when we arrived at this little French seaport, and then it took us two hours to cross the straits, although we happened to be on one of the fast-sailing ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... exhausted earth still keeps for the holiday-maker. 'Tis a sad but sober fact, that the most of men lead flat and virtuous lives, departing annually with their family to some flat and virtuous place, there to disport themselves in a manner that is decent, orderly, wholly uninteresting, vacant of every buxom stimulus. To such as these a suggestion, in all friendliness: why not try crime? We shall not attempt to specify the particular branch — for every one must himself seek out and find the path his nature best fits him to follow; but the general ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... Later on he had given the prisoner a vivid and realistic description of the way in which men are hanged, but Neal had made no sign of hearing a word that was said to him, so the occupation grew uninteresting. Now he whistled a few of his favourite airs, speculating on the amount of the fifty pounds reward offered for Neal's capture which would fall to his share, and estimating his chances of taking some of the other United Irishmen for whom the Government had offered ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... see what has been going forward in the old parsonage this long weary year. Not much that is noteworthy, I fear. The chronicle of a year's sickness and unhappiness, would be rather uninteresting, so I must get on as quick ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... it was evident that he had recovered his spirits, and was well on the road to recovery. After some general talk on uninteresting topics, he began ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... is an Epithalamium composed for a drama which his friend Williams was writing. Students of the poetic art will find it not uninteresting to compare the three versions of this Bridal Song, given by Mr. Forman. (Volume 4 page 89.) They prove that ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... this work, the object of the author has been to render the knowledge of Plants entertaining and useful, not only to Botanists, but to those who have hitherto deemed it a difficult and uninteresting science. He has endeavoured to ascertain of what countries the vegetables now cultivated are natives, the earliest accounts of their cultivation, and how far they have improved by attention, or degenerated by neglect; also the various uses made of ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... to write a book entitled: "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow." How much is buried in the wreckage of yesterday—how uninteresting today is and how little is to be done—our burden we shift to the strong, young shoulders of tomorrow; tomorrow of the big heart, who in kindness hides our sorrows and whispers only of hope. I ended by writing,—this—which I have called "Chit-Chat," thus classifying the book, knowing that such a ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... of King Arthur" was a fascinating book, and Missy was amazed that, up to this very summer, she had passed by the rather ponderous volume, which was kept on the top shelf of the "secretary," as uninteresting-looking. Uninteresting! ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... body seemed somehow to have faded out of him. Perhaps he had been bleached. As he leant over the taffrail, gazing down with open mouth and vacant stare at the water, I took a good long look at him. He interested me much—because he was so exceptionally uninteresting; a pallid, anaemic, indefinite hobbledehoy, with a high, narrow forehead, and sketchy features. He had watery, restless eyes of an insipid light blue; thin, yellow hair, almost white in its paleness; and twitching hands that played nervously all the time with a shadowy moustache. This ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... one perfect resource for men or women in this situation. It lies in God. Other people always seem dull and uninteresting to those who want supremely one special person. But God is not uninteresting. He has to be sought. He is not found by the careless or the cowardly. But those who seek Him earnestly do find Him, and as a sense of His love and His reality steals into the heart healing begins at once. He restores ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... of an unjustly neglected Father, by specifying the MSS. which contain his Work. Dry enough to ordinary readers, these pages will not prove uninteresting to the critical student. An enumeration of all the extant Codices with which I am acquainted which contain VICTOR OF ANTIOCH'S Commentary on ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... in this volume, which were collected in the Philippines during the years from 1908 to 1914, have not appeared in print before. They are given to the public now in the hope that they will be no mean or uninteresting addition to the volumes of Oriental Maerchen already in existence. The Philippine archipelago, from the very nature of its geographical position and its political history, cannot but be a significant field to the student of popular stories. Lying as it does at ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... cantabile, and which required more fulness of tone in the execution; and we can understand why even so conservative a critic as Louis Ehlert should exclaim, apropos of Chopin's "entirely new pianoforte life," "How uninteresting is the style of any previous master (excepting Beethoven) compared with his! What a litany of gone-by, dead-alive forms! What a feelingless, prosaic jingle! If anyone should, without a grimace, assure me sincerely that he can play pianoforte pieces by Clementi, Dussek, Hummel, and Ries, with ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... the body active, it is because they rejoice in its force, and when they draw it inactive, it is because they rejoice in its repose. But Michael Angelo and Raphael invent for it ingenious mechanical motion, because they think it uninteresting when it is quiet, and cannot, in their pictures, endure any person's being simple-minded enough to stand upon both his legs at once, nor venture to imagine anyone's being clear enough in his language to ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... I can't get over," responded the young lady addressed, "is that these alkali plains, which have been described as so dreary and uninteresting, should prove to be in reality one of the most wonderfully impressive and beautiful regions in the world. What awful fibbers or what awfully dull people they must have been whose descriptions have so misled the public! It is perfectly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... standards were far below those of our own times are wholly unsuited to the mind of childhood, and should be left until maturity has given the mental perspective by which to interpret them. Other parts of the Bible prove dry and uninteresting to children, and are of no immediate spiritual significance to them. Still other parts, which later will be full of precious meaning, are beyond the grasp or need of the child in his early years and should ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... was not quite what many had anticipated, perhaps, and Cornish was looking forward with undisguised pleasure to the moment when he could rid himself of these persons whom Joan had gaily designated as "rather gruesome," and whom he frankly recognized as sordid and uninteresting. He did not even look, as Joan had looked, to the wives and children who were to follow as likely to prove ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... experiences, it comes out looking like dark-colored sand or coarse brown sugar. It is not interesting, and no one who saw it for the first time would ever fancy that it was going to turn into something beautiful. It is dumped into freight cars and trundled off to the smelting furnaces. But however uninteresting it looks, it is well worth while to follow these cars to see what happens to it at the smelters. First of all, even before it goes into the smelting furnace, it must be roasted. There is usually sulphur combined with the copper, and roasting ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... Epi was rather uninteresting. Owing to the dense French colonization there the natives have nearly all disappeared or become quite degenerate. We spent our time in visits to the different French planters and then sailed for Malekula, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... natural love for books, and constant access to her grandfather's well-stocked library, had read many more, and with much more thought, than most children of her age, so that Mr. Travilla found her a not uninteresting companion, and was often surprised at the intelligence shown by her ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... Herodotus.] The very truth, and mere facts of history, reaching Herodotus through such a haze of remote abstraction, and suffering a sort of refraction at each translation from atmosphere to atmosphere, whilst continually the uninteresting parts dropped away as the whole moved onwards, unavoidably assumed the attractions of romance. And thus it has happened that the air of marvellousness, which seems connected with the choice and preferences of Herodotus, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Batuta crossed the Arabian Desert a second time, and took up his residence in Mecca for the space of three years. His account of the voyage along the eastern coast of Africa, as far south as Quiloa, is brief and uninteresting; but on his return he visited Oman, of which province he gives us the first authentic account. From the Pearl Islands in the Persian Gulf, he bent his way once more across Arabia to Mecca, whence he crossed the Red Sea to ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... obliged to discover his own views, he can detail opposite arguments forcibly and luminously, and he is allowed the use of those oratorical powers in which, after all, his great strength lay. In those subjects, on the other hand, which are uninteresting because they are familiar, he may pause or digress before the mind is weary and the attention begins to flag; the reader is carried on by easy journeys and short stages, and novelty in the speaker supplies the want of novelty in ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... Delphiniums, Salvias, and perennial Lobelias in the mixed border. The stately spikes of this flower also associate well with shrubs, and help to enliven a bed of Rhododendrons at a period of the year when the latter is uninteresting. Roots may be planted in any soil from November to March; and, as they are perfectly hardy, they can be left in the open ground all the year without the least misgiving as to their safety. A strong root will produce a succession of flower-spikes, and this tendency will ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... from the caprices of their lords and masters, and hence inspired no veneration. The wives and daughters of the rich tyrannized over their servants, decked themselves with costly ornaments, and were merely gilded toys, whose society was vapid and uninteresting. The wives and daughters of the poor were drudges and menials, without attraction or influence; noisy, quarrelsome, garrulous women, who said the least when ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... thinking that they are serving an idea or the people, as their heads are always stuffed with thoughts of their daily bread, of wood for the fire, of bad roads, of illnesses. It is a hard-working, an uninteresting life, and only silent, patient cart-horses like Mary Vassilyevna could put up with it for long; the lively, nervous, impressionable people who talked about vocation and serving the idea were soon weary of it ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... one or two blocks in silence. They were now in the suburb of Schwabing, far out by the western end of the Englischergarten. The street was very uninteresting and comparatively deserted. ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... working incessantly. The staff passed quickly, however, and riding on about a mile forded the tributary stream of the Jandol, and reached the camp at Kotkai about noon. Thence we proceeded on the following day to Ghosam, but as the road is uninteresting, and I am beginning to think the reader will readily excuse further description, we need not toil along it in the dust and the heat. The narration of the daily movements of troops, unmarked by variety of incident, is dull and wearying. ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... Adolphus mounted into the seventh heaven. He came home and did not tell his wife where he had been. This silence was significant. As a rule, if he but visited the tailor or had his hair cut, he told everybody all about it. He had really no idea that some things were uninteresting. I do not mean to say that this trait ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... many pleasantries by which we were diverted and amused. Idle fancies these indeed, and such as sterner judgments may deem trifling or absurd, yet not uninteresting, since many of them evidently afford vestiges of classic times and manners, transmitted through the course of ages; nor unuseful, since they tend to smooth and adorn the rugged way of life, and to strew its flinty ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... we say? Is it necessary to add that, the two principals in the business being well pleased, everybody else was satisfied? We think not. But it may not be uninteresting to state that, from that auspicious day, a regular system of annual visitation was established between Bawbylon and the Braes of Yarrow, which held good for many a year; one peculiarity of the visitation being that the Bawbylonians ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... into details of uninteresting daily occurrences, I may here give a general account of such circumstances regarding the natives as have not previously been alluded to or insufficiently described. It would be difficult to state the peculiarities of this portion of the Papuan* Race (including also the inhabitants ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... made one ask whether the workman had learned something of epicurean philosophy. He had the same excited love of tattling as a thoughtless girl, and the animal love of enjoyment of a sailor after a long voyage. His ordinary life seemed to him so uninteresting, so dull, that he tried to give color and charm to it by taking as many holidays as possible, and making his work more agreeable with gambling and drinking, and going for loafing excursions about the neighborhood. Visits to wine ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... yet the aspect of it is changed for us daily. You see violets and roses often, and are not tired of them. True! but you did not often see two roses alike, or, if you did, you took care not to put them beside each other in the same nosegay, for fear your nosegay should be uninteresting; and yet you think you can put 150,000 square windows side by side in the same streets, and still be interested by them. Why, if I were to say the same thing over and over again, for the single hour you are going to let ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... always was in fancying myself necessary,' said Theodora, gaily, though there was a trembling in her voice; and when she went up to her own room, she hid her face in her hands, and felt as if life was very dreary and uninteresting, and as if it was a miserable exile to be sent into the country just now, to have to force cheerful conversation for her mother, and to be wearied with Helen's wild spirits. 'But have I not deserved everything? And after ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was in some way connected with Mr. Floyd, whose reputation was national, and she went on reviving reminiscences of him while we strolled about. She addressed me with such unhesitating talkativeness that I succumbed at once, and became an easy prey. What she said was quite uninteresting, besides being rambling in a degree which hindered my getting the smallest idea of her meaning; but her own enjoyment of her loquaciousness never once faltered, and she discoursed as fluently as an eighteenth-century poet, and without any more idea of the grace ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... cousins. (By the way, was ever a man so brave as to say the cut wasn't all right, when the barber held that hand-glass behind his head? And what would the barber say if he did?) No, this shop was antiseptic, and uninteresting. There was not even a picture ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... hours a day acting as teller in a bank, or sitting upon the bench of a court, or looking to the inexpressibly trivial details of some process of manufacturing, or writing imbecile articles for a newspaper, or managing a tramway, or administering ineffective medicines to stupid and uninteresting patients—a man so engaged during all his hours of labour, which means a normal, typical man, is surely not one to be oppressed unduly by the dull round of domesticity. His wife may bore him hopelessly as mistress, just ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... better, he believed. But he did not say. Unknown to himself, he had reached that stage which Mr Pennycuick came to when he began courting Sally Dimsdale, who had made him such a good and faithful (and uninteresting) wife. ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... I. 46. "Tame and elegant, uninteresting and polite, the mingled mass of communicated ideas has power neither to offend nor instruct..... All vigor of thought seems excluded from expression..... Where there is much polish of character there is little argument."—Cabinet des Estampes. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and sang little French chansonettes so sweetly, and got herself up in such a charming manner, giving so much "chic" and style even to the simplest of toilettes, was just the person to take upon herself the task of amusing the uninteresting invalid. ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... well enough to ride to Miss Martha's in a carriage, escorted by Madam Delia and by Anne, "that dull, uninteresting child," as Miss Amy had reluctantly described her, "so different from this graceful Adelaide." This romantic name was a rapid assumption of the soft-hearted Miss Amy's, but, once suggested, it was as thoroughly-fixed as if a ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... go out into another river: a bright spot breaks upon us—a lumber station with new, fresh-looking piles of sawed lumber. The banks of this stream are just as low, marshy and uninteresting as the one we have passed through, and more crooked. There are perhaps a few more trees—some oaks, and we observed a tree with its crimson and yellow autumn foliage, backed by a clump of pines, looking beautiful against the dark ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... imitations of Negro melodies made by ears that caught the jingle but not the music, the body but not the soul, of the Jubilee songs. It is thus clear that the study of Negro religion is not only a vital part of the history of the Negro in America, but no uninteresting part ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Paris two days after; and a journey of three days, through an uninteresting country, brought us to the little town of Granville, on the sea-coast, in the channel. We remained at this delightful place some days; and our letters being regularly forwarded to us, brought us intelligence from England. ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... were three hours in which to decide ... and Moussa Isa commenced to draw, pausing, from time to time, to smile meaningly at the Brahmin, and to lick his chops suggestively. Anon he rested from his highly uninteresting and valueless labours, laid his pencil on the desk, and gazed around in search of inspiration in the matter of the best method of ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... devilish will, his life presents a total picture of sordid vice, differing only from pothouse dissipation and school-boy cruelty in point of size. And this of a truth is the Nemesis of evil. After a time, mere tyrannous caprice must become commonplace and cloying, tedious to the tyrant and uninteresting to the student of humanity; nor can I believe that Caligula failed to perceive this ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... form in which it was afterward detailed from the witness-stand; and it is only on account of the effect which this and other occurrences of like nature had in bringing about the final event of our history, that we take the trouble to narrate matters so trifling and uninteresting; for it appeared that every incident of the kind was carefully registered in the memory of the Erinnys of this devoted household, whence it came out magnified and distorted into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... universal and indiscriminate, provided only that he knows what to do with it, had not dawned on the general mind. On the other hand, Lady Louisa was right in objecting to the finale,—it has been admitted that Scott was never good at a conclusion,—and personally I have always thought George Staunton uninteresting throughout. But how much does this leave! The description of the lynching of Porteous and the matchless interview with Queen Caroline are only the very best of such a series of good things that, except just at the end, it may be said to be uninterrupted. ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... to inform him that all he could get out of the Dewdrop was (a very incomprehensible sentiment to a sleepy bird), that he was a tear wept by the Sky when it lost the Sun; and he was bound in all sincerity to add, that it seemed rather a dull and uninteresting ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... DOGE AND SENATE OF VENICE, Oct. 1657:—A rather long letter, and not uninteresting. First the Protector congratulates the Venetians on their many victories over the Turks, not only because of the advantage thence to the Venetian State, but also because of the tendency of such successes to "the liberation of all Christians under Turkish ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... of the Civil War we enter on a time of confused struggles, a time tedious and uninteresting in its outer details, but of higher interest than even the war itself in its bearing on our after history. Modern England, the England among whose thoughts and sentiments we actually live, began, however dimly and darkly, ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... and had to do all the uninteresting things, such as unpacking the spoons and forks, and taking the paper wrappings off the tumblers, while the others laid out the provisions and quarrelled over the best arrangement. But it was fun when we all sat down and began to eat. The Japanese lanterns were tied to the trees overhead, ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... way, may be made to serve a variety of useful purposes of a dramatic or semi-dramatic nature. They may safely be cast for the unpleasant or uninteresting characters of the nursery drama. They form convenient targets for the development of their brothers' marksmanship; and they make excellent horses for their brothers to drive, and, it may be added, for their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... lae—makes an admirable vowel-sound and syllable on which to begin training the voice. The vowel-sound alone is too open. An absolutely pure tone can be produced upon it, but it will lack color. It will be a pure tone, but otherwise uninteresting. With the consonant added, it obtains color and gains interest. Voice is indebted in an amazing degree to the consonants. Sing the phrase "I love you," and put the emphasis on "you," which, for practical purposes, is a pure vowel-sound. ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... house in Pennyfields which closely resembled that which we had left in Wade Street, in that it was flatly uninteresting, dirty and commonplace, we paused. There was no sign of life about the place and no lights showed at any of the windows, which appeared as dim cavities—eyeless sockets in the gray face of the building, as dawn proclaimed the birth ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... foliage, and the trees were festooned with a large, blue Thunbergia of great beauty. It is eight miles from the landing at Teluk Kartang to Taipeng, where the British Residency is. The road crosses uninteresting level country, but every jolt brings one nearer to the Hijan mountains, which rise picturesquely from the plain to a height of over three thousand feet. In the distance there is an extraordinary "butte" or isolated hill, Gunong Pondok, a landmark for the whole region, and on ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... abstract from the treasury report on the finances of the United States, up to the 1st January, 1831, may not be uninteresting. ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... possessed with a passionate desire to learn the game of ping-pong. When all the world was playing table-tennis eight or ten years ago, King viewed the game with disgust. He thought it utterly childish, uninteresting, and admirably illustrative of all the idiotic qualities that go to make up a fad. But for the last six months, King said, he frequently wakes at night and sits up in bed and yearns with all his soul for a ping-pong set. He was, of course, ashamed to speak ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... quick but uninteresting. Dick acknowledged that he had a faint idea of staying in Rome, but saw a friend who advised him not to. He had taken the reins and driven for a great part of the way, while Pietro had gone inside and slumbered ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... eye could reach, the castaways saw no signs of life, not a sail, not a smoke, not a gull, not even the ripple of a wave; nothing but gaudy, motionless markings from one flat horizon to the other, dead traceries that swiftly became uninteresting, then monotonous, then disagreeable, then maddening in the aching eyes ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... inquire whence she came, the invariable reply (generally preceded by that peculiarly intoned French "Ah!" signifying, "Why, you certainly ought to know!") was "Grand Anse." ...Ah! c'est de Grande Anse, a! And if any commonplace, uninteresting type showed itself it would be signalled as from somewhere else—Gros-Morne, Capote, Marigot, perhaps,—but never from Grand Anse. The Grande Anse girls were distinguished by their clear yellow or brown skins, lithe light figures and a particular grace in ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... very curious," said Gerald, whose attention began to revive as he saw a possible column to be compiled on the details of the case that had seemed so uninteresting to ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... of life was invariably a sentimental one, so the aunts were to him merely middle-aged women—uninteresting, and useful only so far as their efforts contributed to render the lives of young people easy and pleasurable. In abrupt and passing impressions he concluded that Aunt Mary was bright and pleasant, but tediously voluble, given to wasting that time which he would have liked to spend talking to the ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... the table, and with a sudden flush, took up a letter that lay there among two or three uninteresting-looking epistles. ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... hands of dutiful politeness, in addressing Mademoiselle de Seilles, likewise upon the beauty of the night; and the French lady, thinking—too conclusively from the breath on the glass at the moment, as it is the Gallic habit—that if her dear Nesta must espouse one of the uninteresting creatures called men in her native land, it might as well be this as another, agreed that the night ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... than any of the author's novels; it is based far less than any other on personal experience. Unfortunately such thorough-going invention was not suited to Smollett's genius. The result is, that while uninteresting as a novel of contemporary manners, Fathom has an interest of its own in that it reveals a new side of its author. We think of Smollett, generally, as a rambling storyteller, a rational, unromantic man of ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... lessons to hate, stones to throw, apples to steal, fights to fight. I take my word that by the time I was nine or ten the whole tragic episode had gone out of my head. Meeting Mary Matheson on the street, where she came but rarely, she was precisely as mysterious and precisely as uninteresting as any other grown-up. And if I saw Joshua Blake (who, pulling himself by the bootstraps out of drink and despair, had gone into Mr. Dow's law-office and grown as hard as nails)—if I saw him, I say, my only romantic thought of him was the fact that I had broken his wood-shed ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... had quit the altogether uninteresting wharf. The Robert O he had seen many times from a distance, and once of twice near at hand lying at the cribs and piers, but this was his first chance to explore. Accordingly he dropped down to her deck, and, with the natural instinct to see as far ahead as possible, marched immediately ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... a disgrace to our sex," said Hoffland. "To tell a young lady that the manner in which she proposes appearing at a ball is uninteresting, sounds like Ernest." ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... Sweetbriar. In fact, I had tried to come to look over the fields just to kill time when I nearly killed myself and fell down upon you. Do you suppose he could have sent the prospector?" Again Everett brought Uncle Tucker back to the uninteresting topic of what might lay under the fields, the top of which he ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... scope, no less than the whole history of England based on original documents. But though excelling as a collector of materials, and as a laborious, conscientious and accurate transcriber, he had little power of generalization or construction, and died without publishing anything except an uninteresting tract, The Primitive Practice for Preserving Truth (1645), and some speeches. His Journals of all the Parliaments during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, however, a valuable work, was published in 1682. His large collections, including transcripts from ancient records, many of the originals ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... latter is remarkable for its entire homeliness in the general treatment of the subject; the entertainment being represented like any large supper in a second-rate Italian inn, the figures being all comparatively uninteresting; but we are reminded that the subject is a sacred one, not only by the strong light shining from the head of Christ, but because the smoke of the lamp which hangs over the table turns, as it rises, into a multitude of angels, all painted in grey, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... for her on the pavement outside the grimy little office. Mr. Debenham was there, and a clerk he had brought with him as witness. The ceremony was brief and uninteresting; she became Mrs. Doughton before she quite realized ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... check his tendency to condemn all he beheld, yet I could not in truth otherwise than acknowledge that it was as uninteresting as it was possible to be, of which every one must be aware who has travelled from ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... of the legislature of 1785, he is careful to give other information in a letter to Jefferson, which is not uninteresting as written ninety-eight years ago, ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... by the circumstance that nearly fifteen months had passed since I had been in a large town; and, after Majorca, Ballarat seemed to me like a capital. After wandering about the streets for half an hour, I looked into the Court-house, where an uninteresting case of drunkenness was being heard. I next went into the adjoining large building, which I found to be the Public Library. The commodious reading-room was amply supplied with books, magazines, and newspapers; and here I amused myself for an hour in reading a new book. ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... edifice which ran into one line with the Palace of the Tuileries. Turn round the corner of the Pavilion to examine the south or river front of the connecting gallery—one of the finest parts of the whole building, but far less known to ordinary visitors than the cold and uninteresting northern line along the Rue de Rivoli. The first portion, as far as the gateways, belongs originally to the age of Henry IV., but it was entirely reconstructed under Napoleon III., whose obtrusive N appears in many places on ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... me coming out of the perfumery, and my doom was sealed. They announced that they would show me the way to the confectionery. I might have refused to enter the perfumery. But, having entered, there was no way of escaping the confectionery. I resigned myself to the inevitable. It was by no means uninteresting, however,—the half hour spent watching violets, orange blossoms and rose petals dancing in cauldrons of boiling sugar, fanned dry on screens, and packed with candied fruits in wooden boxes for America. And I had followed the flowers of Grasse to ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... She longed to throw herself in his arms, cry that she was tired of taking care of silly, uninteresting babies (though as a matter of fact when she wasn't tired she loved them all, the cross as well as the good-natured ones), and tell him the whole story about the lost ring. But there was her promise to Sarah. A promise was a promise—Hugh himself had ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... island called Nkuesi, opposite a remarkable saddle-shaped mountain, and found that we were just on the 17th parallel of latitude. The sail down the river was very fine; the temperature becoming low, it was pleasant to the feelings; but the shores being flat and far from us, the scenery was uninteresting. We breakfasted on the 27th at Pita, and found some half-caste Portuguese had established themselves there, after fleeing from the opposite bank to escape Kisaka's people, who were now ravaging all the Maganja ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... entirely disenchanted. She thought it was all very ugly and uninteresting. She smiled in order to gratify the Lorilleuxs, but she was annoyed and troubled at the profound silence they preserved in regard to her marriage, on account of which she had called there that evening. These people treated her ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... February, 1828, and I speak of the town as it was then; several small churches have been built since, whose towers agreeably relieve its uninteresting mass of buildings. At that time I think Main street, which is the principal avenue, (and runs through the whole town, answering to the High street of our old cities), was the only one entirely paved. The troittoir is of brick, tolerably well ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... cultivated by hand; for at that time there was but little farm machinery. The greatest single task of the people was to clear the forests and bring the soil under cultivation. Greenfield was, therefore, in part an agricultural town and in part a lumber town. Like most small towns, it was slow-moving and uninteresting. The scenes most ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... a singular one,—Selphar. It always savored too nearly of brimstone to please me. I used to call her Sel, "for short." She was a good, sensible, uninteresting-looking girl, with broad face, large features, and limp, tow-colored curls. They used to hang straight down about her eyes, and were never otherwise than perfectly smooth. She proved to be of good temper, which is worth quite as much as brains ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... "hoped she should do her duty." Some portions of this duty, now explained to her, were sufficiently to her taste; others sounded very uninteresting. These were the usual services expected from a lady's maid two ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... abruptly towards the face of a precipice and seemed to terminate in a small shallow cave. Any one following the path out of mere curiosity would have naturally imagined that the cave was the termination of it; and a very poor termination too, seeing that it was a rather uninteresting cave, the whole of the interior of which could be seen at a single glance from ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... was to be coaled by outside labor. We took no stock in the latter rumor till an officer voiced it—then we believed. Our clean blues were furbished up, lanyards scrubbed, and money counted. We understood that there was little to see at Key West; that it was a dull and uninteresting place. Still it was land, and we had not set foot ashore for almost ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... with the family history and step by step trace the history of the patient from earliest childhood or infancy through the various stages and phases of activity and development up to the very moment of examination. This may at times appear quite dull, quite uninteresting and entirely unnecessary to certain patients. For this reason and also for many other reasons, which I shall not enumerate at this point it is at times well to resort to dream analysis. And in analyzing dreams it is well to remember a fact, with which I believe all ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... more gushing persons, the slightly ludicrous air which attached to the modest boast of somebody that he was "the third best authority in England on gray shirtings." On the other hand, the critic of this kind will not be able to neglect the uninteresting with the serene nonchalance of some of his fellows. He will sometimes have to look back on days and months and years of laborious reading and say to himself, "Were it not well for us, as others use, to take all this for granted?" ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Miss Prince, the younger, for her aunt's sake, and had made up his mind that he would be very attentive to her, no matter how displeasing and uninteresting she might be: it was sure to be a time of trial to his old friend, and he would help all he could to make the visit as bearable as possible. Everybody knew of the niece's existence who had known the Prince family at all, and though ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the temple uninteresting, and the cemetery an abomination of desolation. Spaces once occupied by graves had been turned into potato-patches. Between were tombs leaning at all angles out of the perpendicular, tablets made illegible by scurf, empty ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... was never brought to a glorious completion by the Madigans, even though they skipped uninteresting and difficult parts, and, like the early Elizabethans, permitted no intermission between acts. It was very often laughed to death. At times it became a saturnalia of extravagant action, and it frequently ended in ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... to have had enough of most things,—perhaps too much. If your countrymen are uninteresting, you may possibly wish to meet some of your countrywomen. I've been abroad enough to know that you have never ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... experiences, of life in its higher revealings. It may have been a companionship for a season with one above us in experience or attainment, that has lifted us up for a little time into exalted thoughts and feelings, after which it is hard to come back again to the old plodding round, and to the old, uninteresting companionships. It may have been a visit to some place or to some home, with opportunities, refinements, inspirations, privileges, above those which we can have in our own narrower surroundings and plainer home ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... pavements, of frescoed walls and ceilings, and carved mantelpieces. They were entered from a quiet street which showed hardly a sign of life. There were lions couchant guarding the entrances. The walls on that side showed mostly blank, uninteresting windows. With an odd pride the great houses showed only their duller aspects to ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... 1000, so long as the people made their own saints and legends, their daily life was not to them uninteresting. Their nightly Sabbaths were only a slight relic of paganism. They held in fear and honour the Moon, so powerful over the good things of earth. Her chief worshippers, the old women, burn small candles to Dianom—the Diana of yore, whose other names were Luna and Hecate. The Lupercal (or wolf-man) ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... Grundy? Why, because love is popular; because nine-tenths of the people who read smile to see the first and faintest hint of the tender passion in what they read; because a story without love is like bricks without straw; because a life without it is a life no doubt comfortable to lead, but uninteresting to hear. Love is your only democrat; Ethelinda in Fifth Avenue, glittering with the clear splendor of diamonds, and rustling like a white-birch-swamp with pale silks, gleaming through the twilight before an ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... often summoned from the nursery when visitors came; so were Minna and Louie her elder sisters, but all the ladies wanted to talk to Etta. Minna and Louie had by this time, at nine and eleven, advanced to the ugly, uninteresting stage, and they owed Henrietta a grudge because she had annexed the petting that used to fall to them. They had their revenge in whispering interminable secrets to one another, of which Etta could hear stray sentences. "Ellen says she knows Arthur was very naughty, because ... But ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... of the country was so uninteresting and monotonous, covered more or less with snow, that the voyagers became tired of looking at it, and turned their attention to various pursuits within the cabin. Becoming tired of music, they read, played ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... life was invariably a sentimental one, so the aunts were to him merely middle-aged women—uninteresting, and useful only so far as their efforts contributed to render the lives of young people easy and pleasurable. In abrupt and passing impressions he concluded that Aunt Mary was bright and pleasant, but tediously voluble, given to wasting that time which he would have liked to spend ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... time make his fortune. As the choir-boys came racing down stairs after service, pulling off their dingy robes as they ran, Lavinia tried to pick out the little angel, but gave it up in despair, for a more uninteresting set of bullet-headed, copper-coloured sprigs ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... to fatigue—and we sigh, recalling a passage in Anne's letters, recording how, when rheumatism, coughs, and influenza made an hospital of Haworth Vicarage during the visitations of the dread east wind, Emily alone looked on and wondered why anyone should be ill—"she considers it a very uninteresting wind; it does not affect her nervous system." We know her, too, by her kindness to her inferiors. A hundred little stories throng our minds. Unforgotten delicacies made with her own hands for her servant's friend, yet-remembered visits of Martha's little cousin to the kitchen, where Miss Emily ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... God's law was—that we have concluded it would not be necessary at the present session of Congress to take any further steps in the business. We have thought, however, that tho' constituting but a small part of the United States, yet it might not be uninteresting to the committee, to know how much in accordance with our views are the sentiments expressed in their report and to assure them for ourselves, and those whom we represent, that we shall at all times consider them engaged in the ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 3: New-England Sunday - Gleanings Chiefly From Old Newspapers Of Boston And Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... interesting and uninteresting critics of life, is just the difference between those who have refused to let themselves be thus carried away, on the stream of their fatality, and those who have not refused. That is why in all the really arresting writers and artists there is something equivocal and disturbing ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... hours we are obliged to stop in a poor inn, and to take a bed with four others in the same room. These are the miseries of travelling; delays upon the road, especially being confined a day or two in some little uninteresting spot—so far, however, I have been pretty fortunate, and should not complain, but like all poor unreasonable mortals, the more we have, the more we wish to have. The last stage or two very hilly, covered as usual with forest. This I believe is the character of the country ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... she went on reviving reminiscences of him while we strolled about. She addressed me with such unhesitating talkativeness that I succumbed at once, and became an easy prey. What she said was quite uninteresting, besides being rambling in a degree which hindered my getting the smallest idea of her meaning; but her own enjoyment of her loquaciousness never once faltered, and she discoursed as fluently as an eighteenth-century poet, and without any more idea of the grace of finishing within a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... namely, to lead them to discover new truth and new beauty in old, familiar objects. It may be true that "familiarity breeds contempt" and there is always a danger that the objects with which children have associated in early life may be passed by as uninteresting while they go in search of something "new ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... work which is his and to ignore that part which belongs to others. Why should any critic of poetry spend time and attention on that part of a man's work which is unpoetical? Why should any man be interested in aspects which are uninteresting? The business of a critic is to discover the importance of men and not their crimes. It is true that the Greek word critic carries with it the meaning of a judge, and up to this point of history judges have had to do ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... was not her fault that she did not understand games, and was quite unable to act the part of any other character than her own. If she did make the attempt, she failed so miserably that Ruth had to tell her what to say, which made it so flat and uninteresting that she found it better to play alone. But she often became weary of this; and there were times when she was tired of her toys, and tired of Nurse Smith, and did not know what in the ...
— The Kitchen Cat, and other Tales • Amy Walton
... of society. He would fain be agreeable if it were possible. He would enjoy the moment if he could. But it is clearly his conviction that he is bound to get through a certain amount of altogether uninteresting conversation, and then to get himself out of the room with as little awkwardness as may be. Unless there be a pretty girl, and chance favour him with her special companionship, he does not for a moment suppose that any social ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... as now conversations and discussions about women's rights, the relations of husband and wife and their freedom and rights, though these themes were not yet termed questions as they are now; but these topics were not merely uninteresting to Natasha, she positively did not ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... postilion, as you see; yet, as I have seen a thing or two and heard a thing or two of what is going on in the world, perhaps what I have to tell you connected with myself may not prove altogether uninteresting. Now, my friends, this manner of opening a story is what the man who taught rhetoric ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... to be the owls, sir, a bird very frequent in this locality. They make a sort of harsh, hooting howl, sir. I have sometimes wondered," said Webster, pursuing a not uninteresting train of thought, "whether that might be the reason of ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... would please children here, as children are entertained with stories full of prodigies; their experience not being sufficient to cause them to be so readily startled at deviations from the natural course of life[58]. The machinery of the Pagans is uninteresting to us[59]: when a Goddess appears in Homer or Virgil, we grow weary; still more so in the Grecian tragedies, as in that kind of composition a nearer approach to Nature is intended. Yet there are good reasons for reading ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... up the river we explored a part of the city where the buildings are of a different character from those we saw yesterday. Nofuhl considers them the dwellings of the rich. In shape they are like bricks set on end, all very similar, uninteresting, ...
— The Last American - A Fragment from The Journal of KHAN-LI, Prince of - Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy • J. A. Mitchell
... to my book, "Alps and Sanctuaries." {9} I propose to confine myself here to the ten or a dozen chapels containing life-sized terra-cotta figures, painted up to nature, that form one of the main features of the place. At a first glance, perhaps, all these chapels will seem uninteresting; I venture to think, however, that some, if not most of them, though falling a good deal short of the best work at Varallo and Crea, are still in their own way of considerable importance. The first chapel with which we need concern ourselves is numbered ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... the coast is rather dull and uninteresting, although the sands are fine, until we reach Blyth, at the mouth of the little river of the same name. This town is growing rapidly in size and importance; the export of coal has greatly increased since the harbour was so much improved by Sir ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... Berkshire," or he pronounced it Barkshire. With all due deference to the taste of the author of "Vathek," and his admiration of this picture, which he compared to a Wouvermann, it is in my eyes a very uninteresting scene, though certainly strictly natural. "I don't in general like Lee's pictures," he said, "but that is an exception." In the corresponding recess is a fine sea piece by Chambers. On the opposite side of the room are rows of the most valuable books, which almost reach the ceiling. I hinted ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... she answered, and the colour rose in her face. "I am quite in earnest. Nobody ever painted anything better than your Cupid and Psyche. Raphael's is dull and uninteresting ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... has been comparatively uninteresting from the zoologist's point of view, as we have seen so little of the rarer species of animals or of birds in exceptional plumage. We passed dozens of crab-eaters, but have seen no Ross seals nor have we been able to kill a sea leopard. To-day we see very few penguins. I'm afraid there ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... with varying proportions of aqueous vapor. I therefore thought a description of the more convenient methods lately devised as lecture experiments for showing the influence of water on the combustion of carbonic oxide would not be uninteresting to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... long-standing antipathy as he cast about for some common ground of interest in the little reception-room of the house shared by Bernard Graves and his mother. It seemed to the waiting caller a drab and lifeless home, uninteresting in its appointments, and out of keeping with the wealth known to have been inherited by the widow and her son. The young man's study was visible down the vista of a series of low-ceiled apartments, ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... Seth,) of the Hebrews, a name containing the initial and terminal letters of the Egypto- Phoenico-Hebrew Alphabet and the "Abjad" of the Arabs. Those curious about its connection with the name of Allah (El), the Zodiacal signs and with the constellations, visions but not wholly uninteresting, will consult "Unexplored ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... slightly ludicrous air which attached to the modest boast of somebody that he was "the third best authority in England on gray shirtings." On the other hand, the critic of this kind will not be able to neglect the uninteresting with the serene nonchalance of some of his fellows. He will sometimes have to look back on days and months and years of laborious reading and say to himself, "Were it not well for us, as others use, to take all this for granted?" But to say ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... apologizing for his choice in publishing a grammar without forms of praxis, (that is, without any provision for a stated application of its principles by the learner,) describes the whole business of Parsing as a "dry and uninteresting recapitulation of the disposal of a few parts of speech, and their often times told positions and influence;" urges "the unimportance of parsing, generally;" and represents it to be only "a finical and ostentatious ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Vera made her uninteresting purchases first, in the basement, and then she went up-stairs to the special Christmas department, which certainly was wonderful: a blaze and splendour of electric light; a glitter of gilded iridescent toys and knick-knacks; a smiling, excited, pushing multitude of faces, young and old; and the ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... arrived for her. She had had no letter from any one for weeks. Yet, when she saw the direction, she flung it from her. It was from Mrs. Elton, whom she disliked, because she found her utterly uninteresting and very stupid. ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... conclude the prospect altogether uninteresting, even ugly; but certainly Christina Barclay did not think it such. The girl was more than well satisfied with the world-shell in which she found herself; she was at the moment basking, both bodily and spiritually, ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... Harraz I discharged my camels, and endeavoured to engage a boat to convey us to Khartoum, thus to avoid the dusty and uninteresting ride of upwards of a hundred miles along its flat and melancholy banks; but there was not a vessel of any kind to be seen upon the river, except one miserable, dirty affair, for which the owner demanded fourteen hundred piastres for a passage. We ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... read when he had a free choice, were sporting stories with a strong racing and betting interest But in camp in the wilderness no sporting stories were obtainable. The one novel which remained to the mess dealt with the sex problem, a subject originally profoundly uninteresting to Maitland, who had a healthy mind He read it, however, as a remedy for insomnia. It proved effective. A couple of chapters sent him to sleep every night, so the book lasted a ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... formidable at home, as we have said, in only a time of revolution, when the very foundations of society would be unfixed, and opinion set loose, to pull down or reconstruct at pleasure. But it is surely not uninteresting to mark how, in the course of events, that very law of England which, in the view of the Frenchman, has done the Highland peasant so much less, and the Highland chief so much more than justice, is bidding fair, in the case of Sutherland at least, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... the book has a value. It is fairly well printed, is adequately illustrated, and is readable. Although much of the information given is not now uninteresting it will in the course of time serve ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... Morrel. Thus all my opinions—I will not say public, but private—are confined to these three sentiments,—I love my father, I respect M. Morrel, and I adore Mercedes. This, sir, is all I can tell you, and you see how uninteresting it is." As Dantes spoke, Villefort gazed at his ingenuous and open countenance, and recollected the words of Renee, who, without knowing who the culprit was, had besought his indulgence for him. With the deputy's knowledge ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... from the sign-board of the Bull Inn at Buckland near Dover, may not be an uninteresting addition to your list of poetical ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... divisions of panelling, in unequal portions, and of the same simple character as that in the aisles. The upper halves of the three central panels are filled with niches with rich canopies, each canopy being divided into three parts. The east end below the windows is now chiefly filled with uninteresting monuments of the later archbishops. There is no doubt that the aisles of the choir and the whole of the retro-choir could be better without the greater part of the monuments in them. The magnificent ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... admired, were given in detail, after the true historic method. We all take a great interestin reading every particular relating to the lives of notorious tyrants and great sinners; we like to know what clothes they wore, and how they swore. But the lives of great and good men and women are very uninteresting; some young ladies even, when travelling by train, prefer, as I observe, French novels inspired by Cloacina to the "Lives ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... and some on horseback. Of the latter I formed part. The road leads along the aqueduct by Chapultepec, and through Tacubaya, and is the high-road that goes to Toluca. The first part, after passing Tacubaya, is steep, bleak, and uninteresting. Plantations of maguey and occasional clumps of Peruvian trees are the only vegetation, and Indian huts the only traces of human life. But after a tedious ascent, the view looking back upon Mexico, with all her churches, lakes, and mountains is truly ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... Pancras. The part which lies to the north of Theobald's Road was formerly called Gray's Inn Lane. In 1879-80 the east side was pulled down, and the line of houses set back in the rebuilding. These consists of uninteresting buildings, with small shops on the ground-floor. On the west there are the worn bricks of Gray's Inn. At the corner of Clerkenwell Road is the Holborn Town-Hall, an imposing, well-built edifice of brick and stone, with square clock-tower, surmounted by a smaller ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... portion of it," because I print but 48 out of the 96 pages of the original. These contain, however, all that is of general interest; all that pertains to the ancient history of the nation. The remainder is made up of an uninteresting record of village and family incidents, and of a catalogue of births, baptisms and marriages. The beginning of the text as printed in this volume, starts abruptly in the MS. after seventeen pages of such trivialities, and has no ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... himself a quiet time of thought before going to sleep. He needed to be awake and think at night this way, so that he might not lose entirely the thread of his own life, of the life he would take up again some day if he lived through it. He brushed away the thought of death. It was uninteresting. He didn't care anyway. But some day he would want to play the piano again, to write music. He must not let himself sink too deeply into the helpless mentality of the soldier. He must ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... condescend to coquet, so sure she was of his abject slavery to her whims; and, moreover, as must be confessed with regret, so unforgiving was she in her heart toward his blank eye. She merely consented to make him useful, much as she might a convenient and altogether doting but uninteresting grandmother. To all the other members of the camp—except the Boss, whom she regarded with some awe—she would make baby-love impartially and carelessly. But it was Red McWha whose notice ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... highlands or along the seacoast; grows in almost any soil, but thrives best in sandy or gravelly moist loams; valuable among other trees for color-effects and occasional picturesqueness of outline; mostly uninteresting and of uncertain habit; subject to the loss of the lower limbs, and not readily transplanted; very seldom offered in quantity by nurserymen; obtainable from collectors, but collected plants are seldom successful. Usually propagated ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... friend of his named Bezobiedoff, with whom he appeared to be very much taken up. Bezobiedoff was a small, slight fellow, with a face pitted over with smallpox, freckled, effeminate hands, and a huge flaxen moustache much in need of the comb. He was invariably dirty, shabby, uncouth, and uninteresting. To me, Dimitri's relations with him were as unintelligible as his relations with Lubov Sergievna, and the only reason he could have had for choosing such a man for his associate was that in the whole University there was no worse-looking student than Bezobiedoff. Yet ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... transmuted into artistic conventions, and the things that Life has not are invented and fashioned for her delight. But wherever we have returned to Life and Nature, our work has always become vulgar, common and uninteresting. Modern tapestry, with its aerial effects, its elaborate perspective, its broad expanses of waste sky, its faithful and laborious realism, has no beauty whatsoever. The pictorial glass of Germany is absolutely detestable. We are beginning to weave possible carpets in England, but ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... in his wood-cutting that I always admired was that, when the more amusing part of the operation—which is cutting the tree down—was over, he invariably took personally his full share of the comparatively uninteresting work of sawing up the trunk, and disposing in an orderly manner of the branches. He also took great pains to cut his trees as close to the ground as possible, so as not to sacrifice the good timber at the butt, or leave a tall or ragged stump to disfigure ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... be 'out' meant forgetting self; and life's climax is at every minute of the day—she understood, that is, the growth of the soul, due to acceptance of what every minute brings, however practical, dull, uninteresting. By recreating the commonest things, she found a star in each. And her world was made up of neighbours—for 'every letter that one writes ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... every one at all acquainted with the business of instruction, must have taught him that the study of grammar, important as it is to every class of learners, is almost invariably a dry and uninteresting study to young beginners, and for the very obvious reason, that the systems in general use in the schools, are far beyond the comprehension of youth, and ill adapted to their years. Hence it is, that their lessons ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... to the table with more changes of color than veteran lancers betray in charging infantry. It was the roulette table she chose. That seems a law of her sex. The true solution is not so profound as some that have been offered. It is this: trente et quarante is not only unintelligible, but uninteresting. At roulette there is a pictorial object and dramatic incident; the board, the turning of the moulinet, and the swift revolutions of an ivory ball, its lowered speed, its irregular bounds, and its final settlement in one of the many holes, numbered and colored. Here the female understanding ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... wonder that with her heart, and hopes and thoughts in the world, she should have been unable to appreciate, or even to discover the hidden happiness of her quiet cloistered home. No wonder that the days should have seemed long the observances wearisome, the duties monotonous, and uninteresting. But, oh! the wondrous power of prayer which draws down grace from heaven to refresh the soul, as the mountains attract the moisture-laden clouds to fertilize the earth! Separated in person from ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... seen from this window certainly could not be called a very pleasant prospect. A broad street with low houses of cold gray stone is perhaps as uninteresting a form of street as any to be found in the world, and such was the street Robert looked out upon. Not a single member of the animal creation was to be seen in it, not a pair of eyes to be discovered looking out at any of the windows opposite. The sole motion was ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... D class a lesson in History. She was herself well prepared with the lesson, but she allowed the pupils too long a time to think and guess. A chronology lesson is apt to be dry and uninteresting; and unless the teacher calls upon the pupils in rapid succession, thus keeping them wide awake, the interest will flag, and even good pupils will be inattentive. One of the pupils, after gaping two or three times, indulged in short naps during the recitation; ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... Wrentham the growing perception of a larger world than that in which we lived, and moved, and had our being. One of the historic sites of East Anglia is Framlingham, a small market town, lying a little off the highroad to London, a few miles from what always seemed to me the very uninteresting village of Needham Market, though at one time Godwin, the author of 'Caleb Williams,' preached in the chapel there. There is now a public school for Suffolk boys at Framlingham, and it may yet make a noise in the world. Framlingham in our time has given London Mr. Jeaffreson, ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... But in his poem of 'La Giostra,' written to commemorate the victory of Giuliano de' Medici in a tournament and to celebrate his mistress, he gave a new and richer form to the metre which Boccaccio had already used for epic verse. The slight and uninteresting framework of this poem, which opened a new sphere for Italian literature, and prepared the way for Ariosto's golden cantos, might be compared to one of those wire baskets which children steep in alum water, and incrust with crystals, sparkling, artificial, beautiful with colours not their ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... "You think me very uninteresting, I dare say. Young ladies who do not dance are generally so considered. Allow me to present you to some of my friends ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... 29th January, 1834; and I well recollect his first essay at addressing it. It was upon the discussion of a legal question. He was evidently very nervous when he rose, for the colour quite deserted his cheek. His manner was cold, dry, and formal, and sufficiently uninteresting, and uninviting. We were all, however, soon struck by the book-like precision of his language, the clearness and closeness of his reasoning, and the extent of his legal knowledge. He spoke for about ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... us, and from what I was told by others personally concerned, and from a paper of information which Rasay was so good as to send me, at my desire, I have compiled the following abstract, which, as it contains some curious anecdotes, will, I imagine, not be uninteresting to my readers, and even, perhaps, be of some use ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... deliver up his daughter; and, while the negociations were thus protracted, the death of the Maid of Norway effectually crushed a scheme, the consequences of which might have been, that the distinction betwixt England and Scotland would, in our day, have been as obscure and uninteresting as that of the realms of the ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... speaking to the whole company, "I assure you that my sufferings have been of a nature so extraordinary as would deprive the greatest miser of his love of riches; and as an opportunity now offers, I will, with your leave, relate the dangers I have encountered, which I think will not be uninteresting to you." ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... she who requested Scott to write a poem on the legend of the goblin page, Gilpin Horner, and this Scott attempted,—and, so far as the goblin himself was concerned, conspicuously failed. He himself clearly saw that the story of this unmanageable imp was both confused and uninteresting, and that in fact he had to extricate himself from the original groundwork of the tale, as from a regular literary scrape, in the best way he could. In a letter to Miss Seward, Scott says,—"At length the story appeared so uncouth that I was fain to put it into the mouth of my ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... were the appurtenances belonging to a face that might have proved no uninteresting study to the physiognomist, albeit it would have puzzled one not a little, methinks, to have formed a satisfactory conclusion therefrom, so full of contradictions did it seem. A mass of waving hair fell around a brow high and well-developed, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... hands there is no thought of preservation—destruction is the only object. We know not who are the guilty ones. Perhaps there is some stuck-up Mayor or Prefect who would think himself a great man if he could make Le Mans as ugly and uninteresting as the dreary modern streets of Rouen or of Paris itself. It is at all events certain that M. Haussmann was not long ago seen in Le Mans, and such a presence at such a time is frightfully ominous. At any rate the facts which can be seen by the traveller's own eyes are beyond ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... and uninteresting," yawned Maud. "Ah, here comes tea. By the way, father would like you to go to his study afterwards. Poor Rose, I expect he has some ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... rode three torrid miles up a narrow green slit in the hills for a scant ten minutes of talk with a most uninteresting person, whose sole claim to notice seemed to be that he had gone and fenced the wrong water hole over back of Horsefly Mountain, where we have a summer range. The talk was quick and pointed and buttressed with a blue-print map, and the too-hasty fencer was left ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... can be ventured upon, one upon education is perhaps the most tiresome. Most willingly would I pass it over, not only for the reader's sake, but for mine own; for his—because it cannot well be otherwise than dry and uninteresting; for mine—because I do not exactly know how to ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... on these details, which to many will be dry and uninteresting, because they supply a kind of guide to the changes which must ultimately take place in the tax laws of this country, and because, further, they furnish an answer to all those objections which periodically disturb ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... ever known. I took to her directly; and without conceit I may be permitted to say that I think she took quite as readily to me. We became immense friends. She was at such pains to be agreeable to an uninteresting old woman like myself that I feel convinced she has a good heart. I confess I was charmed with her. It is not only that she is strikingly handsome, but her whole bearing and her style are so distinguished that she might be descended from a ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... considered in those days an extremely charming and picturesque spot. Seen through modern eyes these plains of the left bank of the Rhine with their fields, vineyards, sandy wastes and stunted pine-woods are intensely uninteresting, and one fails to comprehend why an emperor should have chosen Ingelheim as a country-seat, when he needed only to cross the river, or to proceed down stream for a few hours in order to build his palace in a region of imperishable natural beauty. If, however, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... a long and intensely uninteresting conversation about the maladies to which chickens are subject. He was verbose and reminiscent. He took me over his farm, pointing out as he went Dorkings and Cochin Chinas which he had cured of diseases generally fatal, with, as far as I could ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... nobody ever heard of in the heat of the midsummer." Poor Mrs. Grundy! We could well afford to laugh merrily at her scornful expostulations; for while she was repeating platitudes to overdressed and uninteresting people at Oldport, we should be making sunny play of life with men and women whose thoughts were free as the wind, and whose hearts were fresh as the dew and the stars. And often when our talk had ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... a great deal about the condition of the colored people in Louisiana, I decided that it would not be uninteresting to have an authentic statement of that condition by some person fully capable of furnishing the desired information. I therefore addressed a letter to the Hon. Theophile T. Allain, a colored member of the Louisiana Legislature for Sweet ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... that the New England standard of excellence as applied to woman has been a mistaken one; and, in consequence, though the girls are beautiful, the matrons are faded, overworked, and uninteresting; and that such a state of society tends to immorality, because, when wives are no longer charming, men are open to the temptation to desert their firesides, and get into mischief generally. He seems particularly to complain of your calling ladies who do nothing the 'fascinating lazzaroni ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... inaugural address as "an uninteresting sample of the standard reform brand of artificial milk for political infants." The press, however, was enthusiastic, and substantial people everywhere spoke of it as having the "right ring," as being the utterance ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... town, the number and variety of the Campanili, the flat-roofed houses scattered near the lake, and the hills covered with foliage, presented a most delightful scene. With the lake itself we were disappointed, the mountains struck us as being rather uniform and uninteresting; the shape of the lake also is not so beautiful as that of either Como or Maggiore, ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... exceptions are lovers and journalists. A lover is one who deludes himself; a journalist is one who deludes himself and other people. The born journalist comes into the world with the fixed notion that nothing under the sun is uninteresting. He says: "I cannot pass along the street, or cut my finger, or marry, or catch a cold or a fish, or go to church, or perform any act whatever, without being impressed anew by the interestingness of mundane phenomena, and without experiencing a desire to share ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... he does not, like most other wanderers, furnish us with a journal of every day's proceedings. He was too well aware that many, perhaps most, days on a journey are monotonous or uninteresting; and that many of the details of a traveller's progress are wholly unworthy of being recorded, because they are neither amusing, elevating, nor instructive. He paints, now and then, with all the force of his magical pencil, the more brilliant or characteristic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... many generations, none, of course, could be more delectable—none more suitable. While charming the sense, they have awakened imagination and developed poetic fancy in thousands who otherwise might have blundered into old age proving stolid and uninteresting men and women. They are, for this reason, part and parcel of every properly-balanced life, and the healthy and happy mind can never let ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... you may think this a very uninteresting chapter—a mere dialogue over the tea-cups, I take leave to present it to you as quite the most dramatic and most central of our humble tale. The events that lend it this distinguished character were happening hundreds of miles from Radley's room, in places ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... the worst are, after all, the best. It portrays the exceptional, and mistakes the scum-covered bayou for the great river. The French dramatists seem to think that the ceremony of marriage sows the seed of vice. They are always conveying the idea that the virtuous are uninteresting, rather stupid, without sense and spirit enough to take advantage of their privilege. Between the greatest French plays and the greatest English plays of course there is no comparison. If a Frenchman had written the plays of Shakespeare, ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... in February, 1828, and I speak of the town as it was then; several small churches have been built since, whose towers agreeably relieve its uninteresting mass of buildings. At that time I think Main street, which is the principal avenue, (and runs through the whole town, answering to the High street of our old cities), was the only one entirely paved. The troittoir is of brick, tolerably well laid, but it is inundated by ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... by which you make society plays. ROBERTSON does it to perfection. He is the patent refrigerator. And the man who did "The Two Roses" has plagiarized his process and reproduced his results. I don't know whether the idea is to interest people in what is uninteresting, or to uninterest people in what is interesting. But ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... approach Canseau the landscape becomes flat and uninteresting; but distant ranges of mountains rise up against the evening sky, and as we travel on towards their bases they attract the eye more and more. Ear-rings is not very communicative. He does not know the names of any of them. Does not know how high they are, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... a late hour to dissipate the faith placed in signs and tokens, we are persuaded that a more intimate knowledge of this insect will not prove uninteresting to our readers.[3] ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... want you to know this: for if I have been anything to you, you have been a great deal to me. I have never met with much sympathy from those of my own age: I have found them narrow and unyielding, and they found me dull and uninteresting. They had passed through few experiences and knew nothing about failure or success, and some of them did not even understand the earnestness of endeavour, and laughed at me when I spoke of a high ideal. So I withdrew into myself, and should probably have grown still ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... more complicated issues than are implied in the words beautiful and ugly. The real and the unreal, the interesting and the uninteresting, the significant and the insignificant, the suggestive and the meaningless, the arresting and the commonplace, the exciting and the dull, the organic and the affected, the dramatic and the undramatic, are only some ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... a more complete knowledge of any subject in which you may be interested, we desire to state most emphatically that your wages increase with your intelligence." This is not only ungrammatical, it is uninteresting. Contrast it with the sentence taken from a letter from another correspondence school: "You earn more as you learn more." It is short, emphatic, thought producing. The idea is clearly etched ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... general conditions of work: "These general conditions are the loneliness of the life, the lack of opportunities for making friends and securing recreation and amusement in safe surroundings, the monotonous and uninteresting nature of the work done as these untrained girls do it, the lack of external stimulus to pride and self-respect, and the absolutely unguarded state of the girl, except when directly under the eye ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... quicker, easier and better. New methods will suggest themselves from time to time, so, by planning and systematizing, you will get rid of the drudgery part, and there will be a constant incentive present to beat your past record. You must get rid of the feeling that it is uninteresting drudgery and slavery. A woman who looks upon her work in that light is not deserving of any better fate, and she will not get much further. If you are one of these perverse individuals who resent advice; ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... old soldier was fired with indignation when he thought of the terrible consequences which often resulted from such thoughtless or wanton proceedings. The loss to settlers is often appalling. The prairies, which in the day-time seem dry, dull, and uninteresting, give place at night to the lurid play of the fire fiend, and the heavens and horizon seem like a furnace. It is a grand, yet awful sight. Cheeks blanch as the wind sweeps its volume towards the ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... group of animals, with all their beauty of form, color, and movement, and peculiarly interesting from their singular modes of growth, remains comparatively unknown except to the professional naturalist. It may, therefore, be not uninteresting or useless to my readers, if I give some account of the appearance and habits of these animals, keeping in view, at the same time, my ultimate object, namely, to show that they are all founded on the same structural elements and have the same ideal significance. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... a monstrously short and wildly uninteresting epistle to the American Dando; but perhaps you don't know who Dando was. He was an oyster-eater, my dear Felton. He used to go into oyster-shops, without a farthing of money, and stand at the counter eating natives, until the man who opened them ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... two men to select camels and to have them in readiness for my arrival. The men have been selecting sweethearts instead; thus I must wait here tomorrow, that being the "Soog" or market day, when I shall purchase my camels and milch goats. The banks of the river very uninteresting—flat, desert, and mimosa bush. The soil is not so rich as on the banks of the Blue Nile—the dhurra (grain) is small. The Nile is quite two miles wide up to this point, and the high-water mark is not more than five feet above the present level. The banks shelve gradually like ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... their withdrawal, he became aware that the space back of the front row was packed with smaller books and pamphlets. This discovery surprised him for a moment, but what he saw in there looked rather uninteresting. Nevertheless he reached in and pulled out a small green pamphlet that happened to be nearest at hand. Idly he glanced at the legend printed ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... he could not refuse, though the Phillips were about as uninteresting as vanity and ignorance could make them. He agreed, but it was with short grace. He was angry when ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... readers who have visited the French metropolis, I shall desist from further recital. The following outline of those receptacles of vice, French Gaming Houses, from facts which I collected on the spot, aided by authenticated resources, may not prove uninteresting. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... went on with a long succession of dances with her various partners. They were all polite and courteous young men, some attractive and agreeable, others shy, and some dull and uninteresting. Patty complacently accorded another dance to any one she liked, and calmly refused it to less desirable partners,— pleading an engagement with Cameron as ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... songless, sooty, uninteresting, vulgar? Not if you live on a roof. He may be all of this, a pest even, in the country. But upon my roof, for weeks at a stretch, his is the only bird voice I hear. Throughout the spring, and far into the summer, I watch the domestic affairs in the eaves-trough. During the winter, at nightfall, ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
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