Famous quotes containing the word dull:
“Go, throng each other’s drawing-rooms,
Ye idols of a petty clique:
Strut your brief hour in borrowed plumes,
And make your penny-trumpets squeak:
Deck your dull talk with pilfered shreds
Of learning from a noble time,
And oil each other’s little heads
With mutual Flattery’s golden slime.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“Great Negative, how vainly would the Wise
Enquire, define, distinguish, teach, devise,
Didst thou not stand to point their dull Philosophies?
Is, or is not, the two great Ends of Fate,
And, true or false, the Subject of Debate,
That perfect, or destroy, the vast Designs of Fate,”
—John Wilmot, 2d Earl Of Rochester (1909–1969)
“Any effort in philosophy to make the obscure obvious is likely to be unappealing, for the penalty of failure is confusion while the reward of success is banality. An answer, once found, is dull; and the only remaining interest lies in a further effort to render equally dull what is still obscure enough to be intriguing.”
—Nelson Goodman (b. 1906)