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Humdrum   Listen
adjective
Humdrum  adj.  Monotonous; dull; commonplace. "A humdrum crone."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Humdrum" Quotes from Famous Books



... a hovel!' I muttered with rage as the equipages and coarse splendours of the West End rolled insolently by. 'Died in a hovel!—and this London, this vast, ridiculous, swarming human ant-hill, whose millions of paltry humdrum lives were not worth one breath from those lips—this London spurned her, left her to perish alone in ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... there now on the model stand, gazing dreamily from his busy hands to his lean, intent features, it occurred to her that this day had not been a sample of their usual humdrum relations. From the very beginning of their business relations he had remained merely her employer, self-centered, darkly absorbed in his work, or, when not working, bored and often yawning. She had never come to know him any better than ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers

... there playing cricket. It's too long a story to tell you now, but I was in much the same fix that you were in to-night, and it was my only way out. I never meant it for anything more; but I'd tasted blood, and it was all over with me. Why should I work when I could steal? Why settle down to some humdrum uncongenial billet, when excitement, romance, danger and a decent living were all going begging together? Of course it's very wrong, but we can't all be moralists, and the distribution of wealth is very wrong to begin with. Besides, you're not at it all ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... Muley Cow and Spot the dog were in the back pasture one day, where the Muley Cow had strayed. And as Johnnie paused to pick a few blackberries he thought what a humdrum place Pleasant Valley was, anyway, and how he would like to go off where there were real buffaloes, and ...
— The Tale of the The Muley Cow - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey

... don't mean that! I was thinking of your adventures. Father told me he found you living with some old friends on a big fruit-growing estate near a small town, and I supposed it had been all rather lonely and humdrum, until that quiet little game a few weeks ago made me realize that you must have seen a bit of the strenuous side down there. That would be the life ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... Bill fairly burned with desire to go off and do something great. His soul was on fire with patriotic ardor. How could he stay quietly in Woodstock, and lead a humdrum life, when the soldiers of the tyrant were threatening all the Americans held most dear? But his friends at home did not encourage his practical patriotism. He was told that he must stay at home, and work on the farm, and get ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... dark shadows of the hills take form, perspective, and finally colour, knowing that there is another whole day begun, bright with chance and interest, and free from all cares. All cares—for who can be worried about the little matters of humdrum life when he may be dead before the night? Such a one was with us yesterday—see, there is a spare mug for coffee in the mess—but now gone for ever. And so it may be with us to-morrow. What does it matter that this ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... Nevill was an incongruous element in the Daintree household. In that quiet humdrum country clergyman's life she was as much out of her proper place as a bird of paradise in a chicken yard, or a Gloire de Dijon rose in a field ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... provincial town. But its voice speaks in its music, often bitterly sad and sweetly regretful, and there is little hint of sunshine or careless merrymaking there. Bach is steeped in cloister gloom, with frequent moments of religious ecstasy. Haydn is generally cheerful in a humdrum sort of way, but when his real feelings begin to speak, not even Mozart is sadder. They were human beings with greedy, desiring souls in them, these men and women of the dead eighteenth century, not delicate painted figures on screens and panels, and none but actors would be ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman

... I was perplexed conveys no idea of the mental chaos created by these extraordinary statements, for into my humdrum suburban life Nayland Smith had brought fantasy of the wildest. I did not know what ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... from a humdrum, comfortable, conventionally ordered life into a career of insane adventure is a step that is radical; but it can be exhilarating, and I proved the fact that day. To dwell on present danger was to forget the past ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... death with alarm. What is he to do in this land of ghosts? there is no place for him. Imagine the commonplace liver of a humdrum existence being received into ghostland. He enters nervous, shy, feeling again the new boy at school. The old ghosts gather ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome

... detection. Now I am myself vain enough to cherish the hope of bequeathing something to posterity; I see no reason for resigning my right to that inventive freedom which others enjoy; and, as I have no truth to put on record, having lived a very humdrum life, I fall back on falsehood—but falsehood of a more consistent variety; for I now make the only true statement you are to expect—that I am a liar. This confession is, I consider, a full defence against all imputations. My subject is, then, what I have neither seen, ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... about, you may be sure there are others not far away, for, except in the nesting season, its habits are distinctly social, its friendliness extending to the humdrum brown creeper, the chickadees, and the nuthatches, in whose company it is often seen; indeed, it is likely to be in almost any flock of the winter birds. They are a merry band as they go exploring the trees together. The kinglet can hang upside down, too, like the other acrobats, many ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... my own part, to Hickman's whining, creeping, submissive courtship, that I now expect nothing but whine and cringe from him: and am so little moved with his nonsense, that I am frequently forced to go to my harpsichord, to keep me awake, and to silence his humdrum. Whereas Lovelace keeps up the ball with a witness, and all his address and conversation is one ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... have killed all that. Everyone now seeks distinction in the Metropolis. County society has become a byword for the old-fashioned and the humdrum, for bad living, bad manners, and bad taste. No one would now dream of embarrassing his estate to secure a merely local renown. Hence the decay of the shrievalty. The modern high-sheriff looks upon his obligatory office as a duty rather than an honour. He contents himself with the cheap ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward

... and Corporal Peter Brock, he is egregiously mistaken, and his knowledge of human nature is not worth a fig. If they had not been two prominent scoundrels, what earthly business should we have in detailing their histories? What would the public care for them? Who would meddle with dull virtue, humdrum sentiment, or stupid innocence, when vice, agreeable vice, is the only thing which the readers ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... far as regards the story, it brings about only one death and one bankruptcy, which might either of them have happened in a hundred other ways. Otherwise the tale runs on, with little exception, in that humdrum course of daily monotony, out of which some people coin materials to act, and others excuses to doze, just as ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... when he was four until he was thirteen Buddy's life contained enough thrills to keep a movie-mad boy of to-day sitting on the edge of his seat gasping enviously through many a reel, but to Buddy it was all rather humdrum ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower

... to perfect happiness. To pass away in a flame of fire after one has enjoyed the highest earthly joys, and is yet surrounded by them in death. Ah! that is to die like a god—far better such a death than a long, stupid, humdrum existence. Eternal, undying love rises like a flaming brand to the heavens above, in defiance of mankind's sentence—do you not think such an ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner

... fierce, defiant, Greedy, grumpy, grizzly giant In the pages of a picture-book, and he Sometimes screamed, in sudden rages, "I must jump out from these pages, For this life's a much too humdrum one for me! Fiddle-dee! Yes, this life's a quite too ...
— Child Songs of Cheer • Evaleen Stein

... Vienna, where they remained till 1775, when they retired to Venice, Faustina's birthplace. Two years before this Dr. Burney visited them at their handsome house in the Landstrasse in Berlin, and found them a humdrum couple—Hasse groaning with the gout, and the once lovely Faustina transformed into a jolly old woman of seventy-two, with two charming daughters. As he approached the house with the Abate Taruffi, Faustina, seeing them, came down to meet them. Says the Doctor: ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris

... to that feeling which takes possession of one before any change of place, a feeling experienced by all melancholy, dreaming people and unknown to those of energetic, sanguine temperaments, who always rejoice at any break in the humdrum of their daily existence, and welcome a change of abode with pleasure. Nejdanov was so lost in his meditations that his thoughts began quite unconsciously to take the form of words. His wandering sensations began to arrange ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... below the surface. From Somerset House we pursued our way through Temple Bar, but missed it, and therefore entered by the passage from what was formerly Alsatia, but which now seems to be a very respectable and humdrum part of London. We came immediately to the Temple Gardens, which we walked quite round. The grass is still green, but the trees are leafless, and had an aspect of not being very robust, even at more ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... subjection, and to kindle aspirations toward a better life. It is doubtful, even, if he did not indulge in an artful compliment or two to the dashing Miss Sophie, the point of which lay in a cleverly covered contrast of herself with the humdrum manners of the fair ones of Ashfield. Yet, to tell truth, he is not wholly untouched by certain little rallying, coquettish speeches of Miss Sophie in respect to Adele, who, in her open, girl-like way, has very likely told the full story ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... quivering with eagerness. This was like a picnic in the humdrum life of the farm hand. Except when the circus came to town, or there was a Harvest Home day, poor Felix knew little beyond the eternal grind of getting up before dawn, and ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy

... down to the humdrum but profitable task of laying the foundations for the great metropolis of the Farther Southwest. Since then, an occasional sporadic case of triggerfingeritis has developed in El Paso, usually in an acute form; but never once since the night Stoudenmayer ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... gardeners," Burnet Landreth explains, "may be termed experimental farmers, men tired of the humdrum rotation of farm processes and small profits, men looking for a paying diversification of their agricultural interests. Their expenses for appliances are not great, as they have already on hand the usual stock of farm tools, requiring only one or two seed drills, a small ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... and dignity which one always finds in living within one's income. Frugality, exactitude in business, faithfulness to all engagements, great or small, punctuality, that economy of time, are usually set down among the minor moralities of life, more humdrum than heroic; but under how many circumstances and conditions do they reveal themselves as cardinal virtues, as things on which depend the comfort and dignity of life! It seems that these things were so impressed on the mind and heart of the young Victoria by her careful, ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood

... records above, he made friends with that chivalric champion of a resurrected South, Henry Grady; here also he obtained fugitive glimpses of a struggling and briefless lawyer, who, like Page, was interested more in books and writing than in the humdrum of professional life, and who was then engaged in putting together a brochure on Congressional Government which immediately gave him a national standing. The name of this sympathetic ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... Thomas. Sir Thomas is very ill, and so also is Lady Fitzgerald; but I do not feel the same interest about them that I do about you. And they are such humdrum, quiet-going people. As for Herbert, I'm afraid he'll turn out ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... day's work, noticed her radiance with a wearily sympathetic smile—the Young Doctor, coming in briskly from his round of calls, was aware of her pink cheeks and her sparkling eyes. All at once he realized that Rose-Marie was a distinct addition to the humdrum life of the place; that she was like a sweet old-fashioned garden set down in the gardenless slums. He started to say something of the sort before he remembered that a quarrel lay, starkly, ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster

... a cause of almost open war, and the whole neighborhood declared they would have nothing more to say to the Lambs. It is true that Mrs. Lamb, when she had no engagements with her quality acquaintance, would give little humdrum tea-junketings to some of her old cronies, "quite," as she would say, "in a friendly way;" and it is equally true that her invitations were always accepted, in spite of all previous vows to the contrary. Nay, the good ladies would sit and be delighted ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... "Would it not have been better if Mr. Gilmour had taken more care of himself and lived longer?" I would answer: "I don't know. His life was beautiful, and I would not alter it if I could. A few years of such service as he gave Christ are worth a hundred years of humdrum toil. We need the inspiration of such a life as his. Heaven, too, is the richer for such a man and such a life. The pearly gates opened wide, I have no doubt, to receive him. Angels and men gave him glad welcome, and what ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... impressions of slavery, when a lad; then the hopelessness of abject servitude and consciousness of unrequited toil had its impress on the brow of the laborer. Now cheerfulness, a spirit of industry, enterprise, and fraternal feeling replaced the stagnant humdrum of slavery. Nor was progress observable only among the freedmen. Many evidences of kindness and sympathy were shown and expressed by former owners for the moral and mental advancement of their former bondsmen, which, to a great degree, ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... is not matter of surprise that I should be for ever in excitements of one kind or another. From my childhood up, my temper was of a restless and unquiet character—I was always a peevish, a fretful and discontented person. I looked with scorn and contempt upon the humdrum ways of those about me, and longed for perpetual change, and wild and stirring incidents. My passions, always fretful and excitable, were never satisfied except when I was employed in some way which enabled ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... to the spot where it had occurred, his power of imagination was such as enabled him to look clearly along extensive lines of possible action in Europe, America, and the East. For there is a poetic as well as a commonplace side to business; and the man of business genius lights up the humdrum routine of daily life by exploring the boundless region of possibility wherever it may ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... on Thursday, and I shall be able to go on with my humdrum work, and that makes me forget ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... York to Rio Janeiro was without accident or any thing to vary the usual monotony. We soon settled down to the humdrum of a long voyage, reading some, not much; playing games, but never gambling; and chiefly engaged in eating our meals regularly. In crossing the equator we had the usual visit of Neptune and his wife, who, with a large razor and a bucket ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... will live with us for many years. See, they are running along the platform as the train steams out. 494 they shout, and bravely and with smiling face he calls out in return 494, and off they go, he to the work of his life, and we to the more humdrum but perhaps not less ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers

... that means to a boy of twenty-five who's doing clerk work at seventy-five a month. Why, it would take him maybe ten years to save a thousand, and here he's made it in a single morning. Think you can keep him out of speculation then? First thing you know he's thrown up his honest, humdrum position—oh, I've seen it hundreds of times—and takes to hanging round the customers' rooms down there on La Salle Street, and he makes a little, and makes a little more, and finally he is so far in that he can't pull out, and then some billionaire fellow, who has the ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... "steel kings" or "railroad manipulators"; nearly all the industrial giants of ante-bellum times—as distinguished from the socially prominent whose wealth was inherited—had heaped together their accumulations in humdrum trade. Perhaps Peter Cooper, who had made a million dollars in the manufacture of isinglass and glue, and George Law, whose gains, equally large, represented fortunate speculations in street railroads, faintly suggest the approaching era; yet the fortunes which are really typical are those of William ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick

... ignoramuses—that I have never written a moral tale, or, in more precise words, a tale with a moral. They are not the critics predestined to bring me out, and develop my morals:—that is the secret. By and by the "North American Quarterly Humdrum" will make them ashamed of their stupidity. In the meantime, by way of staying execution—by way of mitigating the accusations against me—I offer the sad history appended,—a history about whose obvious moral there can be no question whatever, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... cottage-gone, for Sophy, in waking, to find, as she had found before, farewell lines, that commended hope and forbade grief. "It was," he wrote, "for both their sakes that he had set out on a tour of pleasant adventure. He needed it; he had felt his spirits droop of late in so humdrum and settled a life. And there was danger abroad—danger that his brief absence would remove. He had confided all his secrets to Lady Montfort; she must look on that kind lady as her sole guardian till he return—as return he surely would; and then they would live happy ever afterwards ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... squad—too easily identified—who have been drafted again and again into service only to be in the way of every skilled manoeuvre, only to be mustered out as raw recruits at the very end of life. And, finally, there is a miscellaneous crowd of our faculties scattered far and near at their humdrum peaceful occupations; so that if a quick call for war be heard, these do but behave as a populace that rushes into a street to gaze at the national guard already marching past, some of the spectators not even ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... whose constitution improved as he grew older, until he eventually became the hardiest, most enduring and bravest of his company, which included the most intrepid men of the age, had no love for the humdrum profession of law. He desired to go to Italy and take service with Gonsalvo de Cordova, who is remembered, when he is remembered at all, as "The Great Captain"; but sickness prevented. {118} Following that, his thoughts turned, ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... into the humdrum ways of many contented husbands, and forget to pay the compliment, and ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... thought, and in time arrived at such delicacies of execution, he became discontented with the humdrum tools then current. "Then learn to make your own, boy," cried Joseph Little, joyfully; and so initiated him into the whole mystery of hardening, forging, grinding, handle-making, and cutlery: and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... beauty and passion ridiculous—the outspoken truthful old rake and the ever-forgiving wife. Who shall say wherein pathos lies? And yet it seems to be something more than a mere hack-writer's word, after all. The strangest acts of life sometimes go off in such an oddly quiet humdrum way, and then all at once there is the little quiver in the throat, when one least expects it—and the sad-eyed, faithful, loving angel has passed by quickly, low and soft, his gentle wings just brushing the still waters of our ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford

... great, her breath was halting. Yet her eyes continued open and full of life, amid her pale, yellow, waxy mask. And those eyes seemed to fix themselves despairingly on the past, on all that which soon would be no more: the little clockmaker's shop hidden away in a populous neighbourhood; the gentle humdrum existence, with a toiling husband who was ever bending over his watches; the great pleasures of Sunday, such as watching children fly their kites upon the fortifications. And at last these staring eyes gazed vainly into the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... time, and the eagerness for society grows dull with neglect. Those who have started out with the firmest determination to avoid the rock on which their fathers have split, give up the struggle at last, and settle down to a humdrum, uninteresting, and uninterested performance of ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring

... I felt when, four years ago, you, or your firm rather, did me the honour of publishing a book to which I attached, and continue to attach, a good deal of importance. Here I am harvesting my wild oats; and that deed done, I expect to feel what a regular but rather humdrum sinner must feel as he returns from Confession. Quit of my past, I shall be ready to turn over a new leaf. I shall be able, if I please, to approach life from a new angle and try my luck in unexplored countries, so far, that is, ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... few had spawned, the season with them being a little later than on the stream we had left, perhaps because the water was less cold. Neither had the creek here any such eventful and startling career. It led, indeed, quite a humdrum sort of life under the roots and fallen treetops and among the loose stones. At rare intervals it beamed upon us from some still reach or dark cover, and won from us ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... her, the contrast of her friend's safe and sheltered life. No care for her; no anxiety about ways and means; no need to work for money; and no need to fear for anybody dear to her. Christina's father was her guardian, not she his; he might be a very humdrum man, and no doubt was, but his daughter had no cause to be ashamed for him; had not the burden of his life and character on her own shoulders to take care of. A swift, keen feeling of this contrast would come over Dolly; but she put it away as instantly, ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... that Alexander should come over from Hanover and join him at Bath, which was done. Next they wanted to rescue their sister Caroline from her humdrum existence, but this was a more difficult matter. Caroline's journal gives an account of her life at this time that is instructive. Here are a few ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... of travel, he could not endure the thought of a quiet humdrum life in the little cave at Kyllene, and he besought the King to send him on ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... receive no reply of any sort from him for three or perhaps four months. This would be on the eve of the Transit; and what likelihood was there that a young man, full of ardour for that spectacle, would forego it at the last moment to return to a humdrum domesticity with a woman who was no ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... education, and though fairly well instructed, he had never attended college. In his own opinion, he ought to see something of the world, and have his youthful fling. Later on, when he got ready to settle down, if Blanche were still in the humor, they might marry, and sink to the humdrum level of other old married people. The fact that Blanche Leary was visiting his mother during his unexpectedly long absence had not operated at all to hasten his return to North Carolina. He had been having a very good time at Clarence, and, at the distance of several ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... however, she discovers that this is insufficient. It must be said to her credit that her energies find the outlet of a passive sorrow inadequate. She burns to prove that one who is misunderstood and despised cannot only find useful work to do, but can do it better than her humdrum domestic sisters. Unfortunately, however, she overlooks the obvious and easy duties of her home. She scans the remote corners of the world. Her bruised spirit flutters about the bye-ways of charitable effort, and at length she establishes herself as a visitor, a distributer of tracts ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various

... life, the two golden visits which she had paid to Italy, the introduction into a milieu of clever, gifted people all struggling to make the most of their talents, had been such an immense change from the placid, humdrum existence which had preceded it, that it still held for her an almost dreamlike charm of novelty, and this was intensified at the present moment by her return to Crailing to find everything going on just in the ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... shelter the activities of the three became localized. They ranged less widely, for there was always the necessity of returning to their own tree at nightfall. A river flowed near by. Game and fruit were plentiful, as were fish also. Existence had settled down to the daily humdrum of the wild—the search for food and the sleeping upon full bellies. They looked no further ahead than today. If the youth thought of his past and of those who longed for him in the distant metropolis ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... husband to join her in her Sabbath devotions, assured that he would claim an invalid's privilege to stay at home. He had very rarely attended the parish church with his wife, affecting to despise such humdrum and conventional worship. He had just that thin smattering of modern science which enables shallow youth to make a merit of disbelief in all things beyond the limit of mathematical demonstration. He had skimmed Darwin, and spoke lightly ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... Casino the Grandmother seemed to be expected, for no time was lost in procuring her former place beside the croupier. It is my opinion that though croupiers seem such ordinary, humdrum officials—men who care nothing whether the bank wins or loses—they are, in reality, anything but indifferent to the bank's losing, and are given instructions to attract players, and to keep a watch over the bank's interests; as also, that for such services, these officials are awarded ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... that I find here are the finest flavored in the world," declared the yellow hen, "and there are plenty of them. So here I shall end my days; and I must say, Dorothy, my dear, that you are very foolish to go back into that stupid, humdrum world again." ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... a long, sleepy, particularly humdrum day at school. Shirley sits trying to concentrate on a history text-book, but her mind will wander, despite her really noble efforts to distinguish the Valerian Laws from the ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various

... meditative. "My faith!" he commented, with brightening eyes. "It sounds almost too good to be true! And I've been growing afraid that the world was getting to be a most humdrum and uninteresting planet!... Miss Calendar, I am a widower of so many years standing that I had almost forgotten I had ever been anything but a bachelor. I fear my house contains little that will be of service to a young lady. Yet a room is at your disposal; the parlor-maid shall show you the way. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... sweet little monkeys of his own, would say to me with a grave face—"Aunt Fanny! I'm surprised at you! What do you mean by such conduct? What has become of that big room in your heart, which you keep brimful of love for babies and little bits of children? Do you want them to sit humdrum on rainy days, when they are tired of playing with dolls, and tops, and kittens, and have no story book for their kind mammas to read to them? This will never do, Aunt Fanny. Please to begin ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... had been received into the intimacy of the king's newly found liberty, and those same rakes and libertines felt highly flattered at being chosen by his highness for his companions in an enterprise which at least was something out of the beaten track of the rather humdrum amusements of the Louvre. Why the king particularly wanted to visit the fair of Neuilly on that particular day of that particular spring-time, none of those that were in the secret of the adventure professed to know or even ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... a hard blow to poor Sellers to see the work on his darling enterprise stop, and the noise and bustle and confusion that had been such refreshment to his soul, sicken and die out. It was hard to come down to humdrum ordinary life again after being a General Superintendent and the most conspicuous man in the community. It was sad to see his name disappear from the newspapers; sadder still to see it resurrected at intervals, shorn of its aforetime ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... of the thread of life, was the eldest of the three. She held in her hand a distaff, wound with black and white woollen yarn, with which were sparingly intermixed strands of silk and gold. The wool stood for the humdrum everyday life of man: the silk and gold marked the days of mirth and gladness, always, alas! too few ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... not run over us. Just look at her," he went on, turning again to me, "isn't she a beauty? Why, she's almost as handsome, and as big too, as the Mercedes! D'ye mean to tell me that such a hull as that would ever be employed in the humdrum trade of carrying palm-oil? Why, it would be nothing short of a waste of skilful modelling! No, sorr, she was built for a slaver, and a slaver she is, or I'll eat this hat of mine, puggaree and all, ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... Savinien, bitterly; "there's the sore point. Now look here; my friend, do you think that an organization like mine is made to bend to the trivialities of a copying clerk's work? To follow the humdrum of every-day routine? To blacken paper? To become a servant?—me! with what I ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... seems to have thrown himself with special gusto into the character of a heartless reprobate. He must have felt a certain piquancy in writing down the most atrocious sentiments in his own respectable parlour. He would show that the quiet humdrum old tradesman could be on paper as sprightly and audacious as the most profligate man about town. As quiet people are apt to do, he probably exaggerated the enormities which such men would openly avow; he fancied that the world beyond his little circle was a wilderness of wild beasts who could ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... engaged him to write it, but he never will. If I lived near him I could gradually get the material out of him; but at a distance I cannot get him even to write rough notes. On the other hand, we literary people are quite humdrum people in our ways of life, and our autobiographies would generally ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... not withstand the witchery of the gentleman's superb tenor voice, with its high culture and feeling; because even into that humdrum refrain he put a pathos and longing ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond

... for—the modern rage for sensational novels. Those who read them so greedily are conscious, poor souls, of capacities in themselves of passion and action, for good and evil, for which their frivolous humdrum daily life gives no room, no vent. They know too well that human nature can be more fertile, whether in weeds and poisons, or in flowers and fruits, than it is usually in the streets and houses of a well-ordered and tolerably sober city. And because the study of ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... adopted as the "campaign mascot." At the street meetings his little cap was often heavy with nickels and quarters when he helped take collections. Kansas had often stood in the lime-light, but while the women avoided the humdrum, all spectacular methods were discouraged and they won by keeping their efforts ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... forms of departed heroes and withered maidens. To quote the substance of Goethe's criticism:[7] Amid such influences and surroundings, occupied with fads and studies of this sort, lacking all incentive from without to any important activity and confronted by the sole prospect of having to drag out a humdrum existence, men began to reflect with a sort of sullen exultation upon the possibility of departing this life at will, and to find in this thought a scant amelioration of the ills and tedium of the times. This disposition was so general that "Werther" itself exerted a powerful influence, ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun

... for a minute. She set her wine-glass down and toyed with the stem. Then she looked up at him under her eyelashes with that old daring look of hers, and repeated: "And love, Peter. But real love, not stodgy humdrum liking, Peter. I want the love that's like the hot sun, and the wide, tossing blue sea east of Suez, and the nights under the moon where the real world wakes up and doesn't go to sleep, like it does in the country in the cold, hard North. Do you know," she went on, "though ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... this method Hannah, who could only have been developed by forces applied from without, was painstaking, humdrum, and limited; while Rebecca, who apparently needed nothing but space to develop in, and a knowledge of terms in which to express herself, grew and grew and grew, always from within outward. Her forces of one sort and another had seemingly ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the spirit of greatness finds ample play in daily duties. The success of the year does not depend on whether you can do things that shall amaze men to-day or make your name known forever, but upon whether into all the things you do, lowly, humdrum, commonplace as they may seem to be, the daily duties of home or shop or store, the care of the baby, or the running of a typewriter, there shall enter ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope

... connection with himself. Mere beauty, he knew, would have left him cold, if it had not stirred within him the resentment aroused by a promise unfulfilled; intellectual gifts alone would have wearied and antagonised; evident virtue would have seemed humdrum and uninspiring. It was this delicious appeal of the woman to the man that had ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... and jolly it had been for the greater part! It had been a great piece of folly and a great piece of fun, travelling about with a lovely woman like Roselle Dates; it was a situation which half the men he knew would have envied him. Coming as it did after a humdrum period of domesticity, where a man could not afford either folly or fun, the danger signals had been flying all ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton

... attitude fell upon him like a chill, for she had never written or said a word to him that might not have passed between any two college friends. Such thoughts occupied him, until finally, as often fortunately happens in our mental crises, a humdrum, domestic voice, the supper bell, called him, and leaving his garments strewn about the room, he ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... drifted. Jennie continued her work with Mrs. Bracebridge. Sebastian fixed himself firmly in his clerkship in the cigar store. George was promoted to the noble sum of three dollars, and then three-fifty. It was a narrow, humdrum life the family led. Coal, groceries, shoes, and clothing were the uppermost topics of their conversation; every one felt the stress and strain of trying to ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... dear sir, you can't be serious in what you say. Bonaparte's marshals are great men, who act under the guidance of an omnipotent master-spirit. Your Wellington is the most humdrum of commonplace martinets, whose slow, mechanical movements are further cramped ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... Speaking generally, they were young men, sometimes of good family, who found life in the older towns and settlements prosaic and uninteresting, and when {11} they went to the interior did not care to be tied down to the humdrum existence of the trading forts. Instead of requiring the Indians to bring their furs down to some fort, these enterprising rovers of the forest went into the Indian country. Sometimes they took light trading goods with them to barter with the redskins ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee

... furnished by man's total experience, the sum of his sensations, impressions, emotions, and the events in which he is concerned. But experience crowds in upon him at every point, without order and without relation; the daily round of living is for most men a humdrum thing. Yet it is just this rudimentary and undistinguished mass of experience which is transmuted into literature; by the alchemy of art the representation of that which is without interest becomes interesting. And ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes

... opened in humdrum prosperity and national self-satisfaction. Jefferson could look upon a country in which he held a position rivalled only by that of a European monarch or an English prime minister. The principles of Republican equality, of States' rights, ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith

... Mankind is reconstructed not by proclamations, or legislation, or military occupation, but by time, growth, education, religion, thought. At that time, then, the nation drove down the stakes of its idealism in government far beyond the point it was able to reach in the humdrum activities of everyday existence. A reaction was inevitable; it was inevitable and perfectly natural that there should be a widespread questioning as to whether all Negroes, or indeed any Negroes, should properly be admitted to full ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... death—nothing interested me—living the most commonplace, humdrum, unromantic existence imaginable. Teas and dances, dances and teas, clubs and theatres, theatres and clubs, motors and yachts, yachts and motors. It was horrible, and I can't help thinking it was all my dear old governor's fault. He had ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie

... know why I always seem waiting for something big to come and satisfy my life. I remember when first Hugh spoke to me, and we were engaged, I hoped I should be perfectly satisfied and happy, but in some ways he has disappointed me. He is so—so humdrum and easily pleased, and wrapped up in his profession. I wish he were more intellectual. I do love him, of course I do, but he hasn't filled my life as I thought he would. He doesn't understand some of my thoughts about things. I often wonder why I can't be as easily pleased ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre

... were always a dear good chap yourself, but your prospects were not quite dashing enough for your festive Violet. I believe in a merry time even if it is a short one. But if I had really wanted to settle down in a humdrum sort of way, you are the man whom I should have chosen out of the whole batch of them. I hope what I say won't make you conceited, for one of your best points used to ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle

... for life at the Flemings was a little bit humdrum for her, though her aunt and cousins were very kind whenever they had time to remember ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells

... not seem to get on. Men who have managed the finances of a nation often have not been able successfully to control their own; and more than once we have had the spectacle of one who could do the thinking for a world failing in the humdrum duties of a citizen and neighbor. Coleridge tried various things, among others a secretaryship that took him to Malta, but the lack of system in his habits and his absent-mindedness made him the prey and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... favorite theory with those who attempted to explain the phenomena of History was the Great-Man-Theory. This theory was that once in a while through infinite mercy a great man was sent to the earth who yanked humanity up a notch or two higher, and then we went along in a humdrum way on that level, or even sank back till another great man was vouchsafed to us. Possibly the finest flower of this school of thought is Carlyle's Heroes and Hero Worship. Unscientific as this theory was, it had its beneficent effects, for those heroes or great men served as ideals, and ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte

... a world wonderful, and that the most amazingly radiant thing in it was what had happened to her and Bob Dillon. She pitied everybody else in the universe. They were so blind! They looked, but they did not see what was so clear to eyes from which the veil had been stripped. They went about their humdrum way without emotion. Their hearts did not sing exultant paeans that throbbed out of them like joy-notes from a meadow-lark's throat. Only those who had come happily to love's fruition understood the meaning of life. June was ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine

... at his christening is shown off in a splendid robe, very much belaced and embroidered, and it is to be feared that it is a day of disturbance for him. Babies should not be too much excited; a quiet and humdrum existence, a not too showy nurse, and regular hours are conducive to a good constitution for these delicate visitors. The gay dresses and jingling ornaments of the Roman nurses are now denounced by the foreign doctors as being too exciting to the little eyes that are looking ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... to have been of a more serious cast than it really was. The oral circulation of romance literature must have been enormous. The spun-out, dreary poems which now make such difficult reading are infinitely more entertaining when read aloud: the voice gives life and character to a humdrum narrative, and the gestour would know how to make the best of incidents which he knew from experience to be specially interesting to an audience. Such yarns would be most attractive to ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage

... a witches' one. He talked now out of Marco Polo and he clad what that traveler had said in more gorgeous attire. He meant nothing false; his exalted imagination saw it so. He was painter of great pageants, heightening and remodeling, deepening and purifying colors, making humdrum and workaday over to his heart's desire. The Venetian in his book, and other travelers in their books, had related wonders enough. These grew with him, it might be said—and indeed in his lifetime was often said—into wonders without a foot upon earth. But if one took as figures and symbols ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... crew never left the ship, except for bringing heavy goods and taking off hides; and though we were always in the water, the surf hardly leaving us a dry thread from morning till night, yet we were young, and the climate was good, and we thought it much better than the quiet, humdrum drag and pull on board ship. We made the acquaintance of nearly half California; for, besides carrying everybody in our boat,— men, women, and children,— all the messages, letters, and light packages went by us, and, being known by our dress, we ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... lamp. "All round. North, east, south and west. Land or sea. Adventures, Perry, are for the adventurous. Now, here we are, three able-bodied fellows fairly capable of looking after ourselves in most situations, tired of the humdrum life of Summer resorts. What's to prevent our spending a couple of months together and finding some adventures? Of course, we can't go to Africa and shoot lions and wart-hogs—whatever they may be,—and we can't fit out an ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour

... looking back on the humdrum days of the beginnings of the stamp trade, what opportunities do they not seem to have missed! Could they but have foreseen the present-day developments, a few unconsidered trifles, valued at a few pence in those days, put away in a bottom drawer, would ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell

... lean, wiry, brown, silent man. He had a weary look, and a very steady, attentive eye. It was rumoured that he was tired of the humdrum life among the people in our parts, and longing to go back and wander off on the tramp again in the wild places of the East. Except what he said to Miss Rachel about her jewel, I doubt if he spoke six words or drank so much ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... fellow's boyhood days there are necessary periods of waiting; not idle waiting, mind you. The "prodigal son" couldn't stand it, you remember. "Dad, give me what is coming to me, and let me get away from the humdrum life of the farm. I want to see life!" and he picked his fruit green and ate it. That poor fellow got an awful stomach-ache—and it was the worse ache of emptiness ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith

... straightening of broad shoulders and a characteristic uptilt of square, cleft chin, the lines smoothed away miraculously, a touch of red crept into his lean cheeks, an eager, boyish gleam of expectation flashed into the clear gray eyes that rested caressingly on the humdrum, sleepy picture before him. ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... shall actually become ours, and, passing into our lives, will there produce all these graces which the Apostle goes on to enumerate. The condition is nothing recondite, nothing hard either to understand or to practise, but it is simply that commonplace, humdrum virtue of diligence. If we will put it forth, then the gifts that God has given, and which are not really ours unless we put it forth, will pass into the very substance of our being, and unfold themselves according to the life that is in them; even the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... Rodney Temple fell in love with. What's the matter with you, over here, that you all grow old at a minute's notice, so to speak? I never saw such a lot of frumps as the women who used to be my own contemporaries. Rodney and I were very good friends once. If I could only have settled down in humdrum old Waverton—but we'll let bygones be bygones, and ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... to a great extent become the pastime of King Moneybags. And there is no place for ancient crusaders like Old Man Curry, so he has taken the remnants of his stable and gone back to the farm or merged into the humdrum and neutral tinted landscape which always designates the conventional ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... assisted his wife to her room and soon left her in an unusually contented frame of mind to develop strategy for the coming party. Mrs. Allen's nerves utterly incapacitated her for the care of her household, attendance upon church, and such humdrum matters, but in view of a great occasion like a "grand crush ball," where among the luminaries of fashion she could become the refulgent centre of a constellation which her fair daughters would make around her, her spirit rose to the emergency. When it ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... life, as indeed she was with herself in general. Because you and I are epicures or dainty feeders, it does not follow that Hodge is miserable with his homely meal of bread and bacon. Madam Warrington had a life of duties and employments which might be humdrum, but at any rate were pleasant to her. She was a brisk little woman of business, and all the affairs of her large estate came under her cognisance. No pie was baked at Castlewood but her little finger was in it. She set the maids to their spinning, she ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... capital'.[27] His combativeness did him no immediate harm, for, in December 1561, he was elected Professor of Theology at Salamanca.[28] He was obviously not disposed to hide his light under a bushel, nor to perform his academic duties in a spirit of humdrum routine. Whatever he did, he did with all his might, and his strenuous versatility made him conspicuous in University life. In 1565 he was transferred from the theological chair to the chair of Scholastic Theology and Biblical Criticism, in ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly

... and have made up my mind what I will do, and you shall not dissuade me. I will go to New Spain with you. That will be glorious—far better than the humdrum life of sitting at home—and ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major

... took place at Tadousac during my residence there. The winter became severe and stormy, confining us much to the house, and obliging us to lead very humdrum sort of lives. Indeed, the only thing that I can recollect as being at all interesting or amusing— except, of coarse, the society of my scientific and agreeable friend, Mr Stone, and his amiable family—was a huge barrel-organ, which, like the one that I had found at Oxford ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne

... wanes; the children are grown; Fun and frolic no more he knows; Robert of Lincoln's a humdrum crone; Off he flies, and we sing as he goes: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink; When you can pipe that merry old strain, Robert of Lincoln, come back ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... and for a while it was a humdrum time. Nothing happened. The edge of excitement had become blunted. The streets were not so crowded. The working class did not come uptown any more to see how we were taking the strike. And there were not so many automobiles running around. The repair-shops and garages were closed, and whenever ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London

... than upset your cherished plans, he would gladly consent to settle down in Sidmouth for life. I honoured him for his filial spirit; but, frankly, I think he was wrong. An eagle is not made to live in a hen coop, nor a spirited lad to settle down in a humdrum village; and I own that, although I regret the manner of his going, I cannot look upon it as an unmixed evil, that the force of circumstances has taken him out of the course marked out for him, and that he will have an opportunity ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty

... still domestic, of one man one house—this remains the real vision and magnet of mankind. The world may accept something more official and general, less human and intimate. But the world will be like a broken-hearted woman who makes a humdrum marriage because she may not make a happy one; Socialism may be the world's deliverance, but it is ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... administrative technique to have been surmounted and a wise, disinterested executive to be in supreme control of our business life. Let us suppose all this, and ask only the question: How would this executive treat the humdrum case of wool and mutton? How would it decide the number of ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

... anything so peaceful. And then domestic comfort is often so sure that nothing but its own virtue could have purchased such an exemption from the ills of life. The Warren had been a few months ago a pattern of humdrum peacefulness. The impatience that sometimes lit up a little fire in Mrs. Warrender's eyes was so out of character, so improbable, that any one who suspected it believed himself to have been deceived; for ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... well, that Mae Madden, naughty, idle, and silly, may be, after all, not so stupid; but get me good, industrious and wise, and it will take all of my time when I'm not asleep to keep so. No, there'll be nothing to say about me any more. I'll be as humdrum as—" ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason

... course of true love should have run smooth for them, if ever. But know you not that the gods envy no small thing, nor are angry at any humdrum happiness of common men? Know you not that the god of war spares the coward and slays the brave? That in the race for fortune Jove often trips the swiftest runners and lets the dull plodder creep past the winning post alone? Know you not that whom ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... humdrum, treadmill life, and believe I'm destined to better things. If I could only get a good position in the army or navy, the world would hear from me. They say money opens every door, and mother must open some good ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... smiled at him, and suddenly, for the first time in all his humdrum existence, Romance gripped Mr. Daney. He was riotously happy—and courageous! He thrust a finger under the girl's chin and tilted it in a most familiar manner, at the same time pinching it with ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... social wreckage[C] thrown upon the strand there; or possibly it would mean an isolated post out on the frontier, or down in the equally heroic field of the mountains of the South. He might leave some of you just where you are, in a commonplace, humdrum spot, as you think, when your visions had been in other fields. He might make you a seed-sower, like lonely Morrison in China, when you wanted to be a harvester like Moody. Here is the real battlefield. The ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon

... unhappy relations of poets with their wives. Shakspere, Milton, Dryden, Byron, Shelley, and many another poet was less happy in this respect, and I am not sure how far the belief in Crabbe's powers as a poet has been affected by the fact that he lived on the whole a happy, humdrum married life. The public has so long been accustomed to expect ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter

... the very numbering of the streets, with its tangle of numerals which at first makes an English head reel. The detail is merely a symbol; and when he is used to it he can see that it is, like the most humdrum human customs, both worse and better than his own. '271 West 52nd Street' is the easiest of all addresses to find, but the hardest of all addresses to remember. He who is, like myself, so constituted as necessarily to lose any piece of paper he has particular reason to preserve, ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... A busy, anxious, humdrum winter, for, as Harry said, "it was hard times for every one." Mr. Dean grew gray with the weight of business cares about which he never spoke; Mrs. Dean, laboring under the delusion that an invalid was a necessary appendage to the family, installed herself in the ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... time for him to go, Sandy heaved a sigh of regret. For two hours he had been beguiled by Ricks's romances, and now he had to go back to the humdrum duties at the depot, and receive a sound rating for his ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... I am not in a talking humour," she answered. "My head aches, and I shall be glad to get to bed. It was a stupid, humdrum evening" ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... "you are a queen, if ever there was one. And that you should think of such a simple thing when we had all given up! They would not have touched Umballa. Kit, Kit, whatever will you do when you return to the humdrum life at home?" ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... of the sweetest companions in the world. She has married a respectable man, though of small fortune. I thank God she is off the stage.' What is this but to say, 'Better the most humdrum of existences with the most "respectable of men," than to ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell

... had done their utmost to prepare the prince for being spoiled: the dreadful dullness of papa's Court, its stupid amusements, its dreary occupations, the maddening humdrum, the stifling sobriety of its routine, would have made a scapegrace of a much less lively prince. All the big princes bolted from that castle of ennui where old King George sat, posting up his books and droning over his Handel; ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... followed by travel abroad in lieu of the wider advantages which the eastern college is supposed to afford. I was much impressed by the recent return of my sister from a year in Europe, yet I was greatly disappointed at the moment of starting to humdrum Rockford. After the first weeks of homesickness were over, however, I became very much absorbed in the little world which the boarding school in any form always offers ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... would!" declared the farmer energetically. "I tell you I believe circus is born in you, and you can't help it. You don't have much of a life at home. You're not built for humdrum village life. Get out; grow into something you fancy. No need being a scamp because you're a rover. My brother was built your sort. They pinned him down trying to make a doctor of him, and he ran away. He turned up with a little ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness

... Rupert alone was to win the coveted distinction. He grew to be a fine boy and was eaten at Hammersmith, where his plump but delicate roe gave the greatest satisfaction. It was not eaten in the ordinary humdrum way, but was thickly spread on a piece of buttered toast, generously peppered, and devoured. And when his "wish" was placed on the kitchen-range, swelled rapidly and burst with a loud report, his cup ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various

... always a double pleasure to find a plodding, humdrum-seeming man with a poet's heart in his breast; and a little of the same delighted surprise is felt by every one, I imagine, when he learns for the first time that our little brown creeper is a singer. What life could possibly be more prosaic than his? Day after day, year in ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey

... of warfare, and has been judged altogether deficient in a wide outlook on events and in those masterly conceptions which mark the great warrior.[263] But nations are sometimes ruined by lofty genius, while at times they may be saved by humdrum prudence; and Barclay's common sense had no small share ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... time I have thanked you for telling me those things! What interest lay in those few words! You have taken thought for that thing belonging to you called Claudine? This imbecile would never have opened my eyes; he thinks that everything I do is right; and besides, he is much too humdrum, too matter-of-fact to have any ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac

... which would not alter our ordinary manner of living, which would not give us any pleasures, privileges, or advantages of any kind which we did not now possess, we must break up our delightful life at the cot and rill, and go back to the humdrum ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton

... drab, making my fellows who had not taken the plunge seem purposeless and immature. Either they were out of tune, or I was—and I thought, of course, that they were. What freshness could I bring to an existence of peace when my gears would not mesh with its humdrum machinery! ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... steady work to do with exhortations to increasing love? Not much, apparently; but may not the link be, 'Do not suppose that your Christianity is to show itself only in emotions, however sweet; the plain humdrum tasks of a working man's life are quite as noble a field as the exalted heights of brotherly love.' A loving heart is good, but a pair of diligent hands are as good. The juxtaposition of these two ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... mightier than all lightnings. The Spirit, which is the 'Spirit of love,' is therefore 'the Spirit of power.' The true type of Christian character, which the gospel has brought into being, looks modest, inconspicuous and humdrum, by the side of the more brilliant and vulgar beauties of the world's ideals. Just as the iridescent hues on a dove's neck, and the quiet blue of its plumage, look modest and Quaker-like beside gaudy parroquets and other bedizened birds, so the Christian type ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... of people being middle-aged, and steady, John, and pretend that we are a humdrum couple, going on in a jog-trot sort of way, it's only because I'm such a silly little thing, John, that I like, sometimes, to act a kind of Play with Baby, and ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... the young Hugos after this tragical episode, where they were oddities among the humdrum tradesmen's sons. Victor, thoughtful and taciturn, rhymed profusely in tragedies, "printing" in his books, "Chateaubriand or nothing!" and engaging his more animated brother to flourish the Cid's sword ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... the reputation he had gained in the vicinity gave weight to his words; and "The Band" subsided into the most humdrum farmers of the region. Rita had ample information of his safety, for it soon became known that he had killed two of the most active and daring of the guerillas and captured three others; and she worshipped the hero of her girlish fancy all ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... passage as the following Carlos only expresses what must then have passed through Goethe's own mind: "And to marry! to marry just when life ought to come into its first full swing; to settle down to humdrum domestic life; to limit one's being, when one has not yet done with half of one's roving; has not completed half of one's conquests!" Out of Goethe's own heart, also, must have come these words of Clavigo: "She [Marie] has vanished, clean vanished from my heart!... That man is so fickle a being!" ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown

... new acquirement, take courage in the fact that six of our number are reaping the benefits even thus early. Wait patiently; do not let the work end with to-night, and become discouraged because of the same old humdrum duties. Remember that in filling the old post honorably, you are doing the work assigned by the Master who in His own season will send what is for your best good. Add to your store of knowledge from day to day, and be able ...
— Silver Links • Various

... fumbling with his sheet of music while he predicted that only when he were "laid within the church-yard cold and grey" would his lady begin to pity him, seemed to the Duke rather ridiculous; but not half so ridiculous as the Warden. This fictitious love-affair was less nugatory than the actual humdrum for which Dr. Dobson had sold his soul to the devil. Also, little as one might suspect it, the warbler was perhaps expressing a genuine sentiment. Zuleika herself, belike, was in ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... are swept in upon us. For the Sciences, which are more matter of fact and tangible, the Nobel Prize is functioning more or less as Mr. Nobel intended, but certainly in Literature it will have to be classed as one more of our humdrum regular millionaire arrangements for patting successful people expensively on the back. It acts twenty years too late, falls into line with our usual worldly ornamental D.D., LL.D. habit, and has become, so far as Literature is concerned, a mere colossal, kindly, doddering Old Age Pension ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... second in front of an archaic Apollo of no great merit—because it reminded her of the unknown; and she wished with all her might something new and swift and rushing might come into her humdrum life. ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn

... the boy to himself. "Anything for a change. I do get so tired of this humdrum steaming here and steaming there, and going into port to fill up the coal-bunkers. Being at sea isn't half so jolly as I used to think it was, and it is so cold. Wish we could get orders to sail to one of those beautiful countries in the East Indies, or to South America—anywhere ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn



Words linked to "Humdrum" :   unglamorous, monotonous, dull, prosaic, commonplace, sameness



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