"Sobriety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of wages is but one element of this improvement. The very mainspring of the prosperity of the great masses of the British working classes is to be found in their increased sobriety, and in the habits of thrift and providence that have followed the spread of education. The statistics of the Friendly Societies, the Industrial and Provident Societies, the Building Societies, the savings-banks, and of countless other institutions, created by voluntary working-class ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... obliged to encourage the circulation of the glass; their mirth grows more turbulent and obstreperous; and before their merriment is at end, I am sick with disgust, and, perhaps, reproached with my sobriety, or by some sly insinuations insulted ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... apprehension in man counselling sobriety and moderation, a fear born of expediency distinct from conscience, which is ethical; though it seems to be closely connected with conscience acting, as it does, by warnings and prohibitions. The story ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... inebriated condition. His friends, however, deeming it possible that their chance of appreciating my liberality depended upon his condition being such as he could answer questions with some sort of intelligence, proceeded to shake and pummel him into something approaching sobriety. In one of his lucid intervals I inquired whether he felt equal to telling me in what direction the gentleman who had given him the shilling had ordered the cabman to drive him. He turned the question over and over in his mind, and then ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... corpse also, under a beautiful oriental plane tree, which I mean to plant next November, and cultivate con amore, to the last year of my existence. So far, I am, indeed an epicure, but in all other things, I am the most moderate of men. I might vie with Pythagoras for sobriety, and even with the great Scipio for continence."—Poor Foscolo! these dreams were far, very far from being realized. Within a short time after, his cottage, and all its beautiful contents, came to the hammer, and were distributed. A wealthy gold-smith now inhabits ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... Christ. Under such guidance, and deeply impressed by the fact that in the copying of a few books they were saving learning and knowledge from perishing, and thereby offering a service most acceptable to God, the copying in the scriptorium went on in sobriety from day to day. Thus were produced those improved copies of books which mark the beginning of a new age in the conserving and transmission of learning. Alcuin's anxiety in this regard was not undue, for the ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... and helpful accession to his character of honesty, uprightness, and self-respect, or by their conservation; or which should be the natal time for the benign rule over him of contentment, charity, and sobriety, or for the dominance of a seemly morality. That, likewise, might be deemed idle expectancy, which would foresee, as a result of the changed order of things, now being prospectively considered, a season in the Indian's ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... disgraces of a jail, and the miseries of indigence.—But I see the dispute is now terminated, and the money is to be drank; if you'll dine with us you shall be welcome; if not, you may die in your sobriety, and be d—ned." ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... smothered statement on his lips (his vocabulary was scant and stiff, the vocabulary of pleading explanation, often found too complicated by the witty,) retired once more to his room sometimes indeed for hours, to think it all over again; but had never failed of sobriety or propriety or punctuality or regularity, never failed of one of the virtues his imputed indifference to which had been the ground of his discipline. It was very extraordinary, and of all the stories I know is I think the most beautiful—so ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... resolution never to drink again, we lent him some money—a very little—with which to keep along a few days, on which he got drunk immediately, and did fall into the hands of the police, and was sent to jail as before. This, in fact, was his regular round: into jail, out of jail; a little spell of sobriety, "an accidental fall", which occurred as soon as he could get a drop of liquor, and into jail again for thirty or sixty days, according to the degree of resistance he gave the police—who always, by their own account, simply tried to get him to go home, and, by his, insulted him—and ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... eventually reach man's estate, therefore, ordinarily pass through a temporary archaic phase corresponding to the permanent spiritual level of the fighting and sporting men. Different individuals will, of course, achieve spiritual maturity and sobriety in this respect in different degrees; and those who fail of the average remain as an undissolved residue of crude humanity in the modern industrial community and as a foil for that selective process of adaptation which makes for ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... moderation, lenity &c. 740; temperateness, gentleness &c. adj.; sobriety; quiet; mental calmness &c. (inexcitability) 826[obs3]. moderating &c. v.; anaphrodisia[obs3]; relaxation, remission, mitigation, tranquilization[obs3], assuagement, contemporation[obs3], pacification. measure, juste milieu[Fr], golden mean, <gr/ariston metron/gr>[Grk]. moderator; lullaby, sedative, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... excellent gentleman in the service of the government. His administration was marked by a sincere desire to do justice to all under him, a feature that was sadly deficient in too many officers of the time that is spoken of. He was a perfect example of sobriety, and his case certainly was a commendation of the excellence of education of the academy at West Point, of which he ...
— Frontier service during the rebellion - or, A history of Company K, First Infantry, California Volunteers • George H. Pettis
... first two or three visits to his son-in-law, Costigan maintained a strict sobriety, content to make up for his lost time when he got to the Back-Kitchen, where he bragged about his son-in-law's clart and burgundee, until his own utterance began to fail him, over his sixth tumbler of whiskey-punch. ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the comparison of incompatibles, e. g. a row of birds likened to a garden of nymphs; and from forced allegories, the favourite figure of contemporary Europe. Again, the rhetorical Hindu style differs greatly from the sobriety, directness and simplicity of the Arab, whose motto is Brevity combined with precision, except where the latter falls into "fine writing." And, finally, there is a something in the atmosphere of these Tales which is unfamiliar to the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... campaign of public education in military affairs. In all these he played the part which he had played for our little party of patriotic Pro-Boers. He was a man of action in abstract things. There was supporting his audacity a great sobriety. It is in this sobriety, and perhaps in this only, that he is essentially French; that he belongs to the most individually prudent and the most collectively reckless of peoples. There is indeed a part of him that is romantic and, ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... distinguished by a decorous observance of the proprieties which should mark any reference to those who had the dignity of Rome's [249] friendship, or the privilege of her august protection. Observations, therefore, regarding individuals of rank in these alien countries had the same sobriety and deference which marked allusions to born Romans of analogous degree. Such magnanimity, we grieve to say, is not characteristic of the race which now replaces the Romans in the colonizing leadership of the ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... laugh during the greater part of Gwen's confidence, but this last announcement startled him into sobriety. A very faint misgiving stirred in his soul. What if—but no; it was preposterous. ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... characteristics of Greek art. An archaic and almost forbidding severity, with heavy proportions and more strength than grace, marks the earliest Greek buildings of which we have any fragments remaining. Dignity, sobriety, refinement, and beauty are the qualities of the works of the best period. The latest buildings were more rich, more ornate, and more slender in their proportions and to a ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... of virtue. All the inmates were industrious, and cleanly, and happy. Sobriety, neatness, quietness, characterised the whole family. No railings, no idleness, no indulgence of passion, were permitted. Every child, ever young, had its appointed engagements; every hand was busy. Knitting, spinning, reading, writing, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... for a shepherd; if he knows the value of money he knows the value of lambs, and if he has contracted the habit of being careful with his own money he will be apt to be so with yours also. But in justice to the improvident, it must be owned they are often admirable men save in the one point of sobriety. ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... enough to make us acquainted with their characteristic qualities. That period had not yet passed away, though it was already passing, when gentlemen did not willingly leave the dinner-table in a state of absolute sobriety. Colonel Dod and my uncle had learned in Bengal, under the coercion of the climate, habits of temperance. But the others (though few, perhaps, might be systematic drinkers) were careless in this respect, and drank under social excitement quite ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... of the manner of Churchmen's lives by their discourses, certainly one would take them for models of sobriety. But there is a great deal of difference between preaching and practising. This distinction is very solid, and daily experience confirms it. And if those gentlemen would do themselves justice, how many amongst them might say ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... made me feel lonely, since I was neither masked, nor disguised, nor yelling, nor in any other way in harmony with the bedlam element of life. But I was not sad. I was merely in a state of sobriety. I had just returned from my second West Indies voyage. My eyes were still full of tropical splendour, my memory of my experiences, lawful and lawless, which had their charm and their thrill; for they had startled me a little and had amused me considerably. ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... often useful in an organized state of society; though it depends on the lead. By way of counter-balance, we have a certain impatience of restraint. Granting this, you can see that when the general tone of a place is one of sobriety and order, people who have not much love for either find it more or less easy to conform. But, if you set them a different example, one that slackens restrictions instead of imposing them, they'll ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... of meat and drink to be had; but on the present occasion, Ludovic bustled about to procure some better wine than ordinary; observing that the old Lord was the surest gear in their aught, and that, while he preached sobriety to them, he himself, after drinking at the royal table as much wine as he could honestly come by, never omitted any creditable opportunity to fill up the ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... anxious eyes for Caradoc, but did not see him. Smith was probably stuck away in some hole, senseless with poison, his effort at sobriety frustrated, his moral courage shattered, his weeks of painful ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... been far finer originally, and their color seems secure. There is nothing in the range of landscape art equal to them in their way, but the full character and capacity of the painter is not in them. Grand as they are in their sobriety, they still leave much to be desired; there is great heaviness in their shadows, the material is never thoroughly vanquished, (though this partly for a very noble reason, that the painter is always thinking of and referring to nature, and indulges in no artistical conventionalities,) ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... ought to redress them to the utmost of his power; which can be effected by one method only, that is, by a reformation of manners; for, as all political evils derive their original from moral, these can never be removed, until those are first amended. He, therefore, who strictly adheres to virtue and sobriety in his conduct, and enforces them by his example, does more real service to a state, than he who displaces a minister, or dethrones a tyrant: this gives but a temporary relief, but that exterminates the cause ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... Academy. "What's in a name?" In the charitable hope that there is a chance of this purchaser being toned down in the course of time, after the same manner that pictures are, and, by that process, display more sobriety, we most humbly offer to Mr. B. our modest judgment upon his selection (not upon his choice, but upon the thing chosen). That it is a landscape we gloomily admit; but that it represents "Evening" we steadily deny. The exact period of the day, after much puzzling and deliberation, we cannot ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various
... too—and I am against that." My friend has there put his finger upon a sharp little dilemma. If alcohol is a bad thing, then prohibition is a good thing. But if temperance is a good thing, then prohibition is a bad thing. You cannot be temperate in the use of alcohol if you have none. Nor is sobriety a virtue in you if you lock up the wine-cellar and throw the keys down the well. Very well; then will you do without alcohol or without temperance? There is the choice; and I ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... groups of practical exhortations in this passage, of which the first deals with the Christian as a reproving light in darkness; the second, with the Christian life as wisdom in the midst of folly; and the third with Christian sobriety and inspiration as the true exhilaration in contrast with riotous drunkenness. Probably such intoxication was prevalent in Ephesus in connection with the worship of 'Diana of the Ephesians,' for Paul was not the man to preach vague ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... Jack and Olympia passed as prisoners of war. It was generally believed that the brother and sister were occult agents of the Federal power, negotiating with the Davis Cabinet, and Jack's whimsical sobriety of speech and manner, contrasting with his former high animal spirits, carried out the notion of his being a ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... excess, and the use of injurious things, as alcohol and tobacco. It prescribes temperance and sobriety. ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... beginning to make visible inroads on the sobriety of some of the soldiers, and the propriety of putting an end to the debauch occurred ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... From wondering sobriety Jewel's lips broke into a gleeful smile. "I don't have to," she cried triumphantly. "She is one! Anyway, she has demonstrated everything a ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... has occasionally thrown in." His greatest impediment is want of water, being obliged to fetch all he uses more than half a mile. He sunk a well, and found water, but it was brackish and not fit to drink. If this man shall continue in habits of industry and sobriety, I ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... Girdlestone as he stood leaning over the quarter rail, while the old sea-dog, sextant in hand, was taking his midday observations. The captain had been on his good behaviour since the unexpected advent of his employers, and he was now in a wonderful and unprecedented state of sobriety. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... opening of the sixteenth century, whereas the best parodies belong to a much earlier date, the fourteenth century. Such parodies, in which sacred things are the subject of harmless jest, are purely medieval in spirit, as well as in date. Exaggerated praises of wine were a foil to the sobriety of the Jew, the fun consisting in this conscious exaggeration. The medieval Jew, be it remembered, drew no severe line between sacred and profane. All life was to him equally holy, equally secular. So it is not strange that we find included in sacred Hebrew hymnologies wine-songs ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... cometh to Me shall never hunger," and "seek and ye shall find," precious words that never yet disappointed any one; and though tears might often fall that nobody knew of, and she might not be so merry as her friends would have liked to see her; though her cheerfulness was touched with sobriety, they could not complain; for her brow was always unruffled, her ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... Stolberg, descended from the Earl of Ailesbury into whose arms Charles II. fell under the stroke of his fatal illness. The ill-matched pair were married on Good Friday, April 17, 1772. At first Charles behaved with more sobriety and good humor than usual. A child of the marriage was expected, at least by the Scotch Jacobites, in 1773. There is a legend that a child was actually born, was intrusted to Captain John Carter Allen, was brought up by him as his own, and this infant, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... thorough and rapid change. The real people, the men of the commercial and artisan classes and the rank and file of the army, are amongst the best people I have ever known. Their religion enjoins them to sobriety, and as a race they are brave, truthful and kindly, and I never met one authentic instance in which an act of cruelty was chargeable to the men of the regular forces. The hordes of Bashi-Bazouks, of Smyrniotes ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... observer the girl in question would have seemed the least fitted in age, sobriety of deportment, and administrative capacity to fill the situation thus proposed for her, but Mrs. Byers was not an ordinary observer, and her auditor ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... to a supper and a temperate glass of hot Wassail; that the voice of Fame had been heard in that land, declaring my ability to make hot Wassail; that if I were permitted to hold the feast, I should be found conformable to reason, sobriety, and good hours; in a word, that I could be merry and wise myself, and had been even known at a pinch to keep others so, although I was decorated with no badge or medal, and was not a Brother, Orator, Apostle, Saint, or Prophet of any denomination whatever. In the end I prevailed, to ...
— The Seven Poor Travellers • Charles Dickens
... inhabitants and the Creoles are noted for hospitality, generosity, and sobriety; but they are extremely deficient in energy, patriotism, enterprise, and independence of character. The women have black eyes and hair, and fine teeth: they are of dark colour, full habit of body, and have, in general, bad figures. ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... unselfishness rule over each. Avoid habitual fault-finding, scolding, etc., as you would perdition itself. Many men tremble as they cross their threshold into the presence of scolding wives. Let husband and wife cultivate habits of sobriety, and specially avoid drunkenness in every form. What a dreadful spectacle it is to see a husband transformed into a demon, tottering homeward to a broken-hearted wife, whose noble, self-sacrificing ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... its Norman naves, its tall slender Gothic choir, its strange Italian western tower, and almost more fantastic central spire. All these are noble churches, sharing with those of our own land a certain sobriety and architectural good sense which is often wanting in the churches of France proper. In Normandy as in England, you do not see piles, like Beauvais, begun on too vast a scale for man's labour ever to finish; you do not see piles like Amiens, where all external proportion is sacrificed to ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... powerfully, expressively given. Somehow or other he did not take in this country, and quitted it, leaving behind him very beautiful studies strangely undervalued, and sold for little. The fact is, he was too true to the solemnity and sobriety of nature to please a public led away by gaudy display and meretricious colouring. Yet was he a man of more genius—in landscape—than any nine out of ten of our best artists that have, these last ten years, attempted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... were reckoned imperfect by the Apostles. These accusations apply to all the prophecies of the Old and New Testaments. The argument for them needs whatever excuse it can find, in the delirium of the prophets who were transported out of their sobriety, in the double sense in which they are quoted in the New Testament, or in the remarkable variety of interpretation. In fact, there is a moral objection to them, to say nothing of their historical character. They would favor fatalism, take ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... tailor, a shoe maker, was just as interesting in his way to Peter as any one or anything else, if not a little more so. He respected their lines, their arts, their professions, and above all, where they had it, their industry, sobriety and desire for fair dealing. He believed that millions of men, especially those about him were doing the best they could under the very severe conditions which life offered. He objected to the idle, the too dull the swindlers and thieves as well as the officiously ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... impassioned, declamatory eloquence. In this type of satire, evil is designedly painted in exaggerated colours, that disgust may more readily be aroused by the loathsomeness of the picture. As a natural consequence, sobriety, moderation, and truth to nature no longer are esteemed so indispensable. In this style Juvenal has had many imitators, but no superiors. His satires represent the final development the form underwent in achieving the definite purpose of exposing and chastising in a systematic manner the ...
— English Satires • Various
... two things worth doing, every day. Be scrupulously polite and kind, rather than witty or entertaining. Cherish cleanliness, sobriety, frugality and contentment. Cultivate sweetness of disposition and tranquillity of mind. Think before speaking, and so reduce your causes of regret. Seek peace and be peaceable for lis litem generat. Begin at home, let home always find you faithfully on duty. Care carefully ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... the Psychical Research Society and had the advantage of reading all their reports. The world owes a great deal to the unwearied diligence of the Society, and to its sobriety of statement, though I will admit that the latter makes one impatient at times, and one feels that in their desire to avoid sensationalism they discourage the world from knowing and using the splendid work which they are doing. Their semi-scientific terminology ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to the two prelates and the princess; all looked at Rodin with anxious curiosity. Instead of answering he walked up to the sideboard, and, contrary to his habits of stoical sobriety, and in spite of his repugnance for wine, he examined the decanters, and said: "What ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... lenity &c 740; temperateness, gentleness &c adj.; sobriety; quiet; mental calmness &c (inexcitability) 826 [Obs.]. moderating &c v.; anaphrodisia^; relaxation, remission, mitigation, tranquilization^, assuagement, contemporation^, pacification. measure, juste milieu [Fr.], golden mean, ariston metron [Gr.]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the time they reached the shop, Mavis had quite emerged from the sobriety of her demeanour to become an approximation ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... fiery elan been seen on the sides of the Pike; and with it the young dog combined a strange sobriety, an admirable patience, that justified, indeed, the epithet. "Owd." Silent he worked, and resolute; and even in those days had that famous trick of coaxing the sheep to do his wishes;—blending, in short, as Tammas put it, the brains of a man with ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... the great restaurants built out over the sea on piers, where there was perpetual dancing to the braying of a brass-band, the cotillon had no fire imparted to its figures by the fumes of the bar. In fact it was a very rigid sobriety that reigned here, governing the common behavior by means of the placards which hung from the roof over the heads of the dancers, and repeatedly announced that gentlemen were not allowed to dance together, or to carry ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... strong, but it is even worse to fail to take into account the strength of the forces that tell for good. Hysterical sensationalism is the very poorest weapon wherewith to fight for lasting righteousness. The men who, with stern sobriety and truth, assail the many evils of our time, whether in the public press, or in magazines, or in books, are the leaders and allies of all engaged in the work for social and political betterment. But ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... Vincent, finishing his mutton, and pushing his plate from him, "my two young friends—for Carlton is not much older than Mr. Sheffield—may you learn a little more judgment. When you have lived to my age" (viz. two or three years beyond Carlton's) "you will learn sobriety in all things. Mr. Reding, another glass of wine. See that poor child, how she totters under the gooseberry-pudding; up, Mr. Sheffield, and help her. The old woman cooks better than I had expected. How do you get your ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... the poor man I spoke of before; but about this time, he also turned a most devilish Ranter, and gave himself up to all manner of filthiness, especially uncleanness: he would also deny that there was a God, angel, or spirit; and would laugh at all exhortations to sobriety; when I laboured to rebuke his wickedness he would laugh the more, and pretend that he had gone through all religions, and could never light on the right till now. He told me also, that in a little time I should see all professors turn to the ways of the Ranters. ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... this peculiarity attached to it, that a slight state of intoxication very often enhances the remembrance of past times and scenes, whereby all the circumstances connected with them are recalled more distinctly than they could be in a state of sobriety; on the other hand, the recollection of what one said or did while in a state of intoxication is less clear than usual, nay, one does not recollect at all if one has been very drunk. Therefore, intoxication ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... it is that we had a fine day," he said, endeavoring to give the impression that they had been talking with becoming sobriety of light topics. He hoped his wife's raised voice had not been ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... dream, nor would care the value of this pebble for its realization, were that possible. And what more do you want of it? It has given you a theme for poetry. Let that content you. But now I ask you to be, at last, a man of sobriety and earnestness, and aid me in an enterprise which is worth all our strength, and the strength of a thousand mightier ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... her in this Olympic intelligence, while he combines it with a practical wisdom far profounder, with a survey and fulness of knowledge incomparably wider and more various, with a tone tempered to the last sobriety, for the whole of actual life, which no man of the world ever surpassed, and no seer ever equalled. And thus I must abide in my opinion, that he has given us the one prose epic of the world, up to this date. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... little virtue of the circumstances of his exalted birth. He was wont to address his father's memory with a sobriety that lent to the fact of his illegitimacy a portentous air of seriousness, and he made no secret of the fact that he was the friend and the confidential correspondent of the present Earl of Clandennie. In his intercourse with the several Colonial governors he assumed an attitude of ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... emotional rather than contrapuntal. A climax of tremendous power is attained. The second movement omits the piano for a beautiful adagio. The third is an hilarious allegro, and the finale is an even gayer presto, with movements of sudden sobriety, suddenly swept away. Foerster calls this Quartette "far inferior" to a second one, opus 40. This, however, I have not seen; but I do not hesitate to call opus 21 ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... justified in pleading against him the ignorance or the obscurity or the uncertainty of the point preceding, and of that preceding this, and so forth, up to the most evident principle. So we must admit a sort of sobriety in the use of reason. When step by step I have brought a man to some evident proposition, I shall cease to dispute. I will listen no longer to a man who goes on to deny the existence of bodies, the rules of logic, the testimony of the senses, the difference between good and ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... Bulldog, "for the credit of the school and to please the Count. If I see ony laddie playing tricks I'll do my part to teach him sobriety, and if I see one copying from another, out he goes. Ye have one hour from this meenut, make the most o't," and the ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... behaviour for the coxcombs that swarm round your bar, and make you so vain of your blown carcass.' And indeed, I believe the insolence of this creature will ruin her master at last, by driving away men of sobriety and business, and making the place a ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... his character is largely the result of polygamy. His weaknesses are only what might be expected; and as for the hens, I have considerable respect for the patience, sobriety, and dignity with which they endure an institution particularly offensive to all women. In their case they do not even have the sustaining thought of its being an article of religion, so they are ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... advancement of the polite and useful arts, and in the stability of our free institutions; that he was especially much gratified in the great improvements of the face of the country, because he was himself a farmer; that he felt happy to observe such decided proofs of industry, sobriety and prosperity.—He begged the citizens to be assured of his affectionate and grateful recollection of their reception of him; he thanked them for all they had manifested towards him, for the kind expressions; which had been offered him by the committee, ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... presently tells a story which reads as though it might have been told by Plutarch of some Greek or Roman sage. Much as we must approve of Dr. Darwin's habitual sobriety, we shall most of us be agreed that a few more such stories would have been cheaply purchased by a corresponding number of lapses on ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... explains Colin Camber's lapse from sobriety. It is legitimate to suppose that his wife, who was a Cuban, had been intimate with Menendez before her meeting with Camber. Perhaps she had broken the tie at the time of her marriage, but this is ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... the day he was compelled to call on an aunt who lived in the still prosperous outskirts of Paddington. It was one of his good days and, in spite of his sobriety, he had himself in very good control when he ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... that Peter realized what it meant to have the backing of a great and powerful organization, with stately offices and money on hand for all emergencies, even when they arose by telegraph. He took a new vow of sobriety and decency, so that he might always have these forces of law ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... of mounting guard, to which it subjects the wearer, is now a serious and troublesome duty.—To finish my observations, and my contrast, no Specie whatever is to be seen; and the people, if they still idolize their new form of government, do it at present with great sobriety—the Vive la nation! seems now rather the effect of habit than of feeling; and one seldom hears any thing like the spontaneous and enthusiastic sounds ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... my pupil in the airt o' sobriety!—aweel, the young judge rises to deliver the sentence of the coort. Silence!" thundered Christie. A lad and a lass that were ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... smoothing her apron, and settling her countenance to a wonderful demureness and sobriety, the little rascal tripped away. She ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... Hollanden, with the sobriety of graves in his voice. "You are gone.—Hi!" he cried, "there is Lucian ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... Dr. Hammond, in a postscript to the last letter of Dr. Sanderson's, says, "God can reconcile his own contradictions, and therefore advises all men, as the Apostle does, to study mortification, and be wise to sobriety." And let me add farther, that if these fifty-two Ministers of Sion College were the occasion of the debates in these letters, they have, I think, been the occasion of giving an end to the Quinquarticular Controversy: for none have since undertaken to say more; but seem to be so wise, as to ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... changed all that now." Sobriety has become the successor of suppers; the great ocean of moral encroachment has not left us one little island of refuge. Miserable supper-lovers that we are, like the native Indians of America, a scattered and daily ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a great privilege to have a little brother like Daniel. You must be careful to set before him a good example of honesty and sobriety. He will be a man some day, and if properly trained he may be a useful factor in the uplifting and refining of the world. I love little children," she went on rapturously, looking at Jimmy as if he wasn't there at all, "and I would ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... hardships of garrison life; and he was feeling more and more sharply that pinch of genteel poverty which is the hardest of all to bear. But if he never laughed, this martyr of the soul never ceased to smile. His perpetual sufferings did not affect his gentle sobriety of conversation. Those whose privilege it was to see Vauvenargues during these last years of his brief existence are united in their report of his magnanimity. Voltaire wrote, "I have always found him the most unfortunate of human beings ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... Only three of the tales have hitherto been found in other Asiatic storybooks. The Turki version, according to M. Jaubert, who gives an account of the MS. and a translation of one of the tales in the Journal Asiatique, tome x. 1827, is characterised by "great sobriety of ornament and extreme simplicity of style, and the evident intention on the part of the translator to suppress all that may not have appeared to him sufficiently probable, and all that might justly ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... turned with rapid speech to his host. Alonzo Brava addressed Mexia, who roused himself to a fair appearance of sobriety. "Worthy Don Pedro, all here, on both sides, have heard somewhat of this story. I understand that the English hidalgo concerned is dead. Don Luiz de Guardiola is in Spain. We all know that a simple ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... raised his head with a grin. He was a good-looking, long-limbed youth with a notable blue eye, and a glance of mirthful sobriety. "No, thanks," he drawled. The others gathered from his tone that a joke was coming, and pricked up their ears accordingly. "No, thanks. You forget that Sarge Lambert up at the Crossing is my senior. When ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... the lady. He leaned forward as if to speak to her across the middle division of the bench. But he reconsidered, and turning his back to her, sat down and drew an evening paper out of his pocket. He was so little like that glittering figment, the peer of popular imagination, that the careless sobriety of dress and air in the person of this third occupant of the capacious double bench struck an even less arresting note than the frank wretchedness ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... that perhaps is worth making. It is significant of human experience that the race instinctively demands, in most of the poetry that it cares to take along with it as permanent baggage, a certain honourable sobriety of mood. Consider Mr. Burton E. Stevenson's great "Home Book of Verse," that magnificent anthology which may be taken as fairly indicative of general taste in these matters. In nearly 4,000 pages ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... does not; and it happens to display exactly the characteristics which are most wanting in criticism, biographical and literary, at the present day. If any one at the outset desires a definition, or at least an enumeration of those characteristics, I should say that they are sobriety of style and reserve of feeling, coupled with delicacy of intellectual appreciation and aesthetic sympathy, a strong and firm creed in matters political and literary, not excluding that catholicity of judgment which men of strong belief frequently lack, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... his way, composed his senses in sleep, without having pretty effectually steeped them in the liquor of the neighboring hills; a habit that was of far more general use among men of his class in that age than in this of ours, which seems so eminently to be the season of sobriety. ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... consideration that many of the class were good citizens, patterns of industry, sobriety, and irreproachable conduct, there were difficulties of a practical character in the way of those who advocated the bill. The free colored population of Charleston alone pay taxes on $1,561,870 worth of property; ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... that was?" Upon learning that it was Morgan's, he expressed himself much pleased, and said that he would use it to "take that battery." When informed of this truly gratifying compliment, the men bore themselves with becoming sobriety, and as they formed for the charge, which we were told would be immediately ordered, they indulged in no unseemly or extravagant expressions of joy. Indeed, it is an historical fact, that while we were ready enough to go, we were not so sanguine ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... the wagonette. Sobriety was not an essential of the feat. The horse knew the way, drew clear of the town without accident, and jogged into the long winding road which stretched across the moors. The shadows deepened into night, and Mr. Crows lighted a solitary lamp in ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... pose. A modicum of old Benjamin West's tendency to the grandiose would have done Abbey no harm; but if his imagination balked at the higher flights often attained by Gustave Dore, and sometimes by Elihu Vedder, yet there is a charm in his sobriety, there is something which compels our respect in the workmanlike method, in the evidences of thoroughness which appeared in all he wrought. Some of his Shakespeare figures linger in the memory like that of Iago as played by Edwin Booth, or that of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... the first Latinists of our time, and one of the most accomplished writers in Latin and Italian prose and verse; as a man, he possesses the simplicity of character which almost always accompanies greatness, together with a healthy sobriety of temper, habit and individual taste rarely found in those beings whom we might call 'motors' among men. It is commonly said that the Pope has not changed his manner of life since he was a simple bishop. He is, indeed, a man who could ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... voluntary efforts are very little better than a shadow, vanishing smoke, and spent steam, to illuminate, elevate, warm, cheer, and encourage the wandering, dark-eyed vagabonds roving about in our midst into paths of usefulness, honesty, and sobriety. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... Communion of the Incarnate Dead with the Unconscious Living. Important Fact, without trifling Fiction, by HIM." I have not the pleasure of knowing HIM; but certainly I must concede to HIM, that he writes like a man of extreme sobriety upon his extravagant theme. He is angry with Swedenborg, as might be expected, for his chimeras; some of which, however, of late years have signally altered their aspect; but. as to HIM, there is no chance ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... way in a golden howdah on Akbar, the biggest elephant in captivity and the very archetype of sobriety ever since his escapade with Tom Tripe's rum. Akbar was painted all over with vermilion and blue decorations, and looked as if butter would not melt ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... deed as much as if he were not a usurper and never had overthrown a nominal republic. But we cannot agree with those who say that the liberation of Italy was the pure and simple purpose of the war. He means that Austria shall not have Italy, and his sobriety of judgment enables him to understand that France cannot have it. That country is to belong to the children of the soil, who, with ordinary wisdom and conduct, will be able to prevent it from again relapsing under foreign rule. The Emperor understands ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... mail, and this procrastinating post- office! Can't they take a lesson upon that subject from me? Some people have called me procrastinating. Yet you are witness, reader, that I was here kept waiting for the post-office. Will the post-office lay its hand on its heart, in its moments of sobriety, and assert that ever it waited for me? What are they about? The guard tells me that there is a large extra accumulation of foreign mails this night, owing to irregularities caused by war, by wind, by weather, ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... Lucile, trying vainly to straighten the corners of her laughing mouth into some semblance of the sobriety that befitted so great an occasion. "Oh, I never get enough of anything!" This last a protest ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... my hardship between her and the Highlandman's horse. Jenny Geddes trode over me with such cautious reverence, that matters were not so bad as might well have been expected; so I came off with a few cuts and bruises, and a thorough resolution to be a pattern of sobriety for the future. ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... chair in which he had been left, with that calm and unbending gravity of eye and features which were then thought indispensable to a fitting sobriety of spirit. But the stranger had disappeared. There were two or three outlets by which the room, and even the house, might be quitted, without the knowledge of those who had so long waited for admission; and the first impression led the family to expect the re-appearance ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... manner, also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety: not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... certain'ty, and swaying their great heads gently from side to side as they went. Lois was so much amused at her guests' situation, that she had some difficulty to keep her features in their due calmness and sobriety. Mrs. Lenox eyed the oxen, then the contents of ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... friends, for that great—I had almost said, that crowning grace and virtue of moderation, what St. Paul calls sobriety and a sound mind. Let us pray for moderate appetites, moderate passions, moderate honours, moderate gains, moderate joys; and, if sorrows be needed to chasten us, moderate sorrows. Let us long violently after nothing, or wish too eagerly to rise in life; and be sure that what ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... was born at Mecca, a city of Arabia, in 571; and died in 631, at Medina, a city situated between Arabia Felix and Arabia Deserta. His creed maintains that there is but one God, and that Mahomed is his Prophet; it enjoins the observance of prayers, washings, almsgiving, fasting, sobriety, pilgrimage ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... "double, double, toil and trouble," which is the elementary vexation of the drill-master,—that they more rarely mistake their left for their right,—and are more grave and sedate while under instruction. The extremes of jollity and sobriety, being greater with them, are less liable to be intermingled; these companies can be driven with a looser rein than my former one, for they restrain themselves; but the moment they are dismissed from drill, every tongue is relaxed and every ivory tooth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... their mean accomplishments of "honesty, sobriety, humility," and on the precipice of reprobating such qualities,—which, however beneficial to the soul, gave no hope of preservation to the body,—they were prevented from this profanation by the ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... elected, and had received a complimentary letter from the vicar thanking him for the fine example he had set for others. No, dear old Will, though he liked his glass of beer as well as anybody, would often go a whole week on tea and coffee; and she thought what a merit his sobriety had been. Merely considered as economy, it was a blessing. It is always the drink, and never the food, that runs away ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... five principal ones, to wit: first, science, which comprises prudence and wisdom; secondly, temperance, comprising sobriety and chastity; thirdly, courage, or strength of body and mind; fourthly, activity, that is to say, love of labor and employment of time; fifthly, and finally, cleanliness, or purity of body, as well in ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... aspirations of the drunkard to be delivered from the vice that easily besets him. In his sober moments, they come thick and fast, and during his sobriety, and while under the lashings of conscience, he wishes, nay, even longs, to be freed from drunkenness. It may be, that under the impulse of these aspirations he resolves never to drink again. It may be, that amid the ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... given by the Hon. Irving M. Scott, a leading business man of San Francisco. Speaking with the care and sobriety the occasion demanded, Mr. Scott made the following statement, which the writer believes will also be the ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... showed to him he was expected, and at his request he was conducted to the Bey's presence, and by him, again to the apartment where his daughter was reposing.—The pretended Jew followed his guide with the most profound sobriety, handling sundry vials and jars he had brought with him, and upon which the Bey looked with not a little interest and respect, as he strove to decipher the cabalistic lines ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... frequent occasions to reprove her niece for the exuberance of her spirits, before there was a certainty that their expectations were to be realized. But the slight smile that hovered around the lips of the virgin contradicted the very sobriety ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... conducted himself with greater sobriety than he had manifested before his trial; but his temper was obstinate, and his mind lamentably ignorant: and being totally unacquainted with religious considerations, he exhibited very imperfect signs of real penitence, and but little anxiety ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews |
