dull quotes

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

- Dean Gooderham Acheson
  In the Observer, 21  Jun.

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

- Louis Stanton Auchincloss
  Pioneers and Caretakers:  A Study of Nine American Women Novelists.

He has all the qualities that go to the making of a leader of the Conservative Party. He is not stupid, but he is very dull. He is not eloquent, but he talks well. He is not honest, politically, but he is most evangelical.He has a Beckett little money, but not much. He always conforms to the party policy.

-Baron
  Commenting on Sir Samuel Hoare's appointment as Foreign Secretary.

I have the satiric temperament: when I am laughing at anyone I am generally rather amusing, but when I am praising anyone, I am always deadly dull.

- Sir (Henry) Max(imilian) Beerbohm
  In The Saturday Review, 28 May.

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

- Charles Robert Darwin
  The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol.1.

What a dull, insipid thing is a billet-doux written in cold blood, after the heat of the business is over!

- Sir George Etherege
  The Man of Mode or, Sir Fopling Flutter, act1, sc.1.

Dull. To make dictionaries is dull work.

- Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
  A Dictionary of the English Language.

But you are dull, nothing comes nimbly from you; you dance like a plumber's daughter and deserve two thousand pound in lead to your marriage, and not in goldsmith's ware.

-Thomas Middleton
  A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (published1630), act1, sc.1.

The age is dull and mean. Men creep, Not walk.

-John Greenleaf Whittier
  'Lines, Inscribed to Friends UnderArrest forTreason Against the Slave Power', stanza1.