
“To do a dull thing with style-now that's what I call art.”
Variant: It's better to do a dull thing with style than a dangerous thing without it.
Source: The Less Deceived (1955), Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album
“To do a dull thing with style-now that's what I call art.”
Variant: It's better to do a dull thing with style than a dangerous thing without it.
“Accept a miracle instead of wit,—
See two dull lines with Stanhope's pencil writ.”
Lines written with the Diamond Pencil of Lord Chesterfield; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“If everybody likes you, you're pretty dull.”
“So living Nature, not dull Art,
Shall plan my ways and rule my heart.”
Nature and Art http://www.newmanreader.org/works/verses/verse5.html, st. 12 (1868).
Song We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line
Song lyrics
“A book is like a man — clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly.”
On Publishing
Writers at Work (1977)
Context: A book is like a man — clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.
“American critics are like American universities. They both have dull and half-dead faculties.”
Address to New York Cultural League (6 May 1969)