"Seriousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it under his hand.' GARRICK. 'He wrote to me in violent wrath, for having refused his play: "Sir, this is growing a very serious and terrible affair. I am resolved to publish my play. I will appeal to the world; and how will your judgement appear?" I answered, "Sir, notwithstanding all the seriousness, and all the terrours, I have no objection to your publishing your play; and as you live at a great distance, (Devonshire, I believe,) if you will send it to me, I will convey it to the press[749]." I never heard more of it, ha! ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... laugh broke forth. He stopped again to puff and blow a little, from his toil up the steep steps. Then all at once, as the rough music of his clicking sabots and the playful taps of his cane ceased, the laugh on his mobile lips melted into seriousness. He lifted his cane, pointing to the cemetery just above us, and to the gravestones looking down over the hillsides ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... by the weight of her incomprehensibleness. Such a moment comes at all times to every man, whatever his dealings with a woman may be. Mr. Arthur stood leaning on the railing, looking out at the black water and thinking how little she understood of the seriousness of his position, or the meaning that such an uplifting of his financial status conveyed to a man. She did not even know what he was about to propose. It would steady her considerably when she heard that; she would ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... to a new order of existence, that I began to melt even the rigid prepossessions of that mass of granite, or iron, or whatever is most intractable—the Jew. I could perceive his countenance changing from a smile to seriousness; and, as I declaimed, I could see his hollow eye sparkle, and his sallow lip quiver, with impressions not ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... soon to reveal the seriousness of this mistake. It was far more important to strike at Paris through Brittany than to occupy even the richest of the French West Indies. For a triumphant advance of the Bretons and Vendeans must not only have lessened the material resources ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... almost everywhere, and he had haunted her at afternoon and evening parties; he had supped in Arlington Street after the opera; he had played cards with Lesbia, and had enjoyed the felicity of winning her money. His admiration was obvious, and there was a seriousness in his manner of pursuing her which showed that, in Lady Kirkbank's unromantic phraseology, 'the man ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... caricature and the verses with his customary seriousness, going so far as to indite a "Letter to The Anti-Jacobin Reviewers," which was printed in Birmingham in 1799. Therein he defended Lamb with some vigour: "The person you have thus leagued in a partnership of infamy with me is Mr. Charles Lamb, a man who, so far from being a democrat, would be the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... this preposterous plan when he was mercifully released by death. Her intention of sending the children away to acquire a culture and finish Hampton did not afford,—George to Silliston Academy, Amy to a fashionable boarding school,—he had not opposed, yet he did not take the idea with sufficient seriousness to carry it out. The children remained at home, more or less—increasingly less—in the charge of an elderly woman ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... and frowned wholly disapprovingly on the strikers. It was a curious age, so near and yet so far, when the ordered frame of things was still unbroken, and violence a child's dream, and poetry and art were taken with immense seriousness. Those of us who can remember it should do so, for it will not return. It has given place to the age of melodrama, when nothing is too strange to happen, and no one is ever surprised. That, too, may pass, but probably will not, for it is primeval. The ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... mental lime-light through Ivan's dreams. His existence, in the boyish imagination, was more adventurous than that of any hero of Scheherazade. And perhaps the greatest charm of all was the fact that, in all seriousness, Ivan believed his father actually capable of most of the deeds he arranged in ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... take what he gives. There is no escaping 'orders.' Even I know that!" said Moya. A slight shiver passed over her as she spoke, laughing off as usual the touch of seriousness in ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... the wonder of the thing!" he cried. "The man pervades London, and no one has heard of him. That's what puts him on a pinnacle in the records of crime. I tell you, Watson, in all seriousness, that if I could beat that man, if I could free society of him, I should feel that my own career had reached its summit, and I should be prepared to turn to some more placid line in life. Between ourselves, ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... far from being talkative. His silence seemed to be the joint result of modesty and unpleasing remembrances. His features were characterized by pathetic seriousness, and his deportment by a gravity very unusual at his age. According to his own representation, he was no more than eighteen years old, but the depth of his remarks indicated a much greater advance. His name was Arthur Mervyn. He described himself as having passed ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... Viscount's conduct ever since I have had the honour of a seat in this House, and the noble Viscount will excuse me if I state the reason why I have often opposed him. The reason is, that the noble Viscount treats all these questions, and the House itself, with such a want of seriousness that it has appeared to me that he has no serious, or sufficiently serious, conviction of the important business that so constantly comes before this House. I regard the noble Viscount as a man who has experience, ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... which when put in movement has destroyed and overthrown everything. The author of this great history knows better than anyone else his faults and his weaknesses, but he can do himself this justice—that he has always kept the moderation, the seriousness, the austerity, which an account of affairs of State demands, and that he has never departed from the gravity which is suitable to ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... constancy might have been impaired, and its chief might be willing, as had been Elphinstone and the Eltchi, to listen to terms. Anyhow there could be no harm in making a proffer based on the old lines. So the Afghan leader proposed to General Roberts, apparently in all seriousness, that the British army should forthwith evacuate Afghanistan, encountering no molestation in its march; that the British General before departing should engage that Yakoub Khan should return to Afghanistan as its Ameer; and that ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... the elders to celebrate the rites of marriage, and he wooed Thyra, the daughter of Ethelred, the king of the English, for his wife. She surpassed other women in seriousness and shrewdness, and laid the condition on her suitor that she would not marry him till she had received Denmark as a dowry. This compact was made between them, and she was betrothed to Gorm. But on the ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... widening, and improving at an age when another man would have written himself out. His gravity in narrating the most preposterous tale, his sympathy with every one of his absurdest characters, his microscopic imagination, his vein of seriousness, his contrasts of pathos, his bursts of indignant plain speaking about certain national errors, make Mark Twain an author of the highest merit, and far remote from the mere buffoon. Say the "Jumping Frog" is buffoonery; perhaps it is, ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... smiled over her painting. But after a bit she looked up with a seriousness, nay, a bitterness, in her siren's ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you know what this means, Hans," answered Tom, who was bound to have a little fun in spite of the seriousness of ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... pay the copious fruitage with a sylvan song. So 'tis with thee, whoe'er on thee shall look, First leaf of this beginning modest book. Slender thou art, God knowest, And little grace bestowest, But in thy train shall follow after, Wit, wisdom, seriousness, in hand with laughter; Provoking jests, restraining soberness, In their appropriate dress; And I shall joy to be outdone By those who brighter trophies won; Without a grief, That I thy slender promise have begun, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... speak in all seriousness. You still believe in equality, and yet you do the work of the corporations, and the corporations, from day to day, are busily engaged in burying equality. And you call me a socialist because I deny equality, because I affirm just what you live up to. The Republicans are foes to equality, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... had leaned toward Marechal. Her face reflected the seriousness of her thoughts. Her lovely eyes implored. The young man asked himself how this charming girl could belong to ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... poor dog," replied Vanslyperken, bursting into tears. Strange and almost ridiculous as was the appeal, there was a seriousness and pathos in Vanslyperken's words and manner which affected those who were present like a gleam of sunshine: this one feeling, which was unalloyed with baser metal, shone upon the close of a worthless and wicked life. Sir Robert ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... jaw opened and shut with the seriousness of a bank vault. The deep-set and cold blue eyes stared fixedly from under dark brows. Jason stared back just ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... unreasonableness and untenableness. In addition to this, he has written a great number of books, in all of which Reason shines forth in all its peculiar excellence, and as the poor Doctor meant what he said in all seriousness, he was, so far, deserving of respect. But the great joke consisted precisely in this, that the Doctor invariably cut such a seriously absurd figure when he could not comprehend what every child comprehends, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... fact that the Christian religion was openly preached throughout China enabled that sovereign to wrest from the Chinese the jealously-guarded secret of silk-making. He sent two monks to Pekin, who alternately preached seriousness and studied sericulture, and who brought away silkworms' eggs ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... Barton returned to her mending, after a long talk with her husband, her jolly face wore an expression of seriousness that was unusual, and she failed to notice that Amy's hands were idle and her work was lying untouched in her lap as she sat looking wistfully far away across the sunlit meadows ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... something in the naive seriousness with which these matters of empiricism, to us of so small importance, are regarded by the good monk, which may at first tempt the reader to a smile. It is, however, to be kept in mind that some such mode of introduction was customary ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Very often the seriousness of a child's offence is greatly exaggerated. We must not waste our ammunition on these small matters; if we use our strongest terms of disapproval for the many little everyday vexations, we shall be left quite ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... Gibraltar was delighted: he had heard himself called general, and "vuestra excellencia" half a dozen times at least; and that too by a gentleman, whose modest deportment and language convinced him of his seriousness. He instantly acceded to their request, and would, at that moment perhaps, have given them his house, if he thought they could store it away on deck, or get it down the main hatchway. Still it seemed ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... to talk about it, and they say such things!" The good woman blushed, and assumed an air of great seriousness. "The young man may be well enough, but then the Toodlebugs are only ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... Aristophanic comedy is very simple. The protagonist undertakes in all apparent seriousness to give a local habitation and a body to some ingenious fancy, airy speculation, or bold metaphor: as for example, the procuring of a private peace for a citizen who is weary of the privations of war; or the establishment ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... mine shoes—he iss unloose, und der lacing is dingle-dangling. It might trip me!" explained the good-natured German actor, in all seriousness. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... delightful reading, because it combines such fantastic and inventive fables as surpass even the happiest efforts of our nonsense writers with a beautiful openness of mind which we see oftener in children than in sages,—which is, in fact, the seriousness of those who are truly learning, and are not too conscious of what has ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... arose at a time when the spiritual snobbery of the meek and lowly was not pressing the simile about the camel and the eye of the needle. It leads to charming manners and to delicate amenities. It is the opposite of the code of Gallantry, for while the code of Chivalry takes everything with a becoming seriousness, the code of Gallantry takes everything with a wink. If one should stoop to pick flaws with the Chivalric ideal, it would be to point out a certain priggishness and intolerance. For, while it is all very well for one to cherish the delusion that he is God's vicar on earth and to ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... to send Jane to instruct the novices in their English prayers. She would proceed to her task with all seriousness; but sometimes chose the most ridiculous, as well as irreverent passages, from songs, and other things, which she had before somewhere learnt, which would set us, who understood her, laughing. One of her rhymes, ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... of his condescension is not so well recognized as it deserves to be. Indeed, condescension may not seem to be an appropriate term for the passionate devouring of romance that one can see going on any day in the trolley-cars, or the tense seriousness with which some readers regard certain novelists whose pages have a message for the world. True, the term will not stretch thus far. But it is condescension that has made the trouble, as I shall try to prove; for all of us, even the tense ones, do patronize that ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... best," grumbled Sam. "It's all worst!" And then Tom laughed, in spite of the seriousness of ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... was enigmatical to Rainey, but there was no mistaking Lund's tremendous seriousness and, duly impressed, Rainey promised to carry out ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... But in all seriousness, why should indefinite and unlimited variation have been regarded as a more probable account of the origin of Adaptation? Only, I think, because the obstacle was shifted one plane back, and so looked rather less prominent. The abundance of Adaptation, we all grant, is an immense, ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... Prime Minister, with his remarkable insight, at once notes the seriousness of the situation. He sees the danger to the peace of the world in German depression. Germany oppressed does not mean Germany subjected. Every year France becomes numerically weaker, Germany stronger. The horrors of war will be forgotten and the maintenance of peace will depend on the creation ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... absurd performance was gone through with all seriousness—making us wild with suggestions of good things to ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... never be sufficiently grateful to Frau von Trautenau for her kindness, showed every possible favor to Adele. This young lady's naturally vivacious and merry disposition, which was not at all subdued by the calm seriousness which surrounded her, proved a great source of amusement to Carmen. She gladly reciprocated the warm affection lavished upon her by the petted heiress, and every letter which reached Wolmershain teemed with the ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... in one of his essays, expressed the opinion that of all the English poets "the one who, but for a stroke of madness, would have become our English Horace was William Cowper. He had the wit," he added, "with the underlying moral seriousness." As for the wit, I doubt it. Cowper had not the wit that inevitably hardens into "jewels five words long." Laboriously as he sought after perfection in his verse, he was never a master of the Horatian phrase. Such phrases of his—and there are not many of them—as have passed into the common ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... down through the green aisle of the forests, with the musing seriousness in them that was like the child-angels of ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... of pained seriousness, and her voice became responsively vibrant as she leaned forward with answering gravity in ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... him, keeping her glance on his. For a still second a strange seriousness, having no place in the scene, held them. She was conscious of perplexity in his face, he of something wistful and questioning in hers. She ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... and composed by some great artist, a lover of contrasts, an inexorable logician, whose invisible hand traces human character unvaryingly, and whose mournful irony unfailingly depicts side by side, in strong relief, the grotesqueness of folly and the seriousness of death. How many perished on account of this misery? Probably more than ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... long years during which the smuggling went on, add also the duties which ought to have been paid on tobacco and spirits, even if you omit to include the amount which should have accrued from lace and other commodities, and you may begin to realise the seriousness of the smuggling evil as viewed by ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... may advise the reader to take with him a certain little guide-book, written in English by a very courageous Italian, which I chanced to find in Naples. Though it treats of the tragical facts with seriousness, it is not with equal gravity that one reads that sixteen years before the Vesuvian eruption "the region had been shaken by strong sismic movements, which induced Pompei inhabitants to forsake precipitately their habitations. ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... counted, but at every opportune and inopportune moment it was drawn out of her pocket, until at last it grew quite frayed at the edges, and, though scarcely a word it contained was confided to the others, Betty read it again and again with compressed lips and frowning brows, and an air of seriousness that ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... boy reader, in all seriousness I shall tell you what I mean by a "plant-hunter." I mean a person who devotes all his time and labour to the collection of rare plants and flowers—in short, one who makes this occupation his profession. These ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... Franklin, when he was but a boy, there came often problems upon which he pondered with all the melancholy seriousness of youth, and as he grew to young manhood he found always more problems to engage his thoughts, to challenge his imagination. They told the boy that this earth was but a part of a grand scheme, a dot among the myriad stars. He was not satisfied, but asked always where was the ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... however, that the efforts of Free-thought critics should have no background of seriousness. Wit without reason, says Heine, is but a sneeze of the intelligence. But has not wit ever been the keenest weapon of the great emancipators of the human mind? Not the mere plaything of an idle mind in an idle hour, but the coruscating blade to pierce the weak places of folly and imposture. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... of restatements of the older law, and then by a group of criticisms of current religious practice. The sermon closed with warnings against complacent censoriousness in judging other men's failures, and a solemn declaration of the vital seriousness of "these sayings of mine." The righteousness required by this new law is not only more exacting but unspeakably worthier than the old, being more simply manifested in common life, and demanding more intimate filial fellowship with the ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... intended for a tremendous joke were it not that the tone is so serious. We are accustomed to think of youth as light-hearted: but look at a serious child,—there is nothing more serious in the world. Lyly was twenty-six years when he first published. Much of the seriousness in his romance is the burden of twenty-six years' experience of life, a burden greater perhaps than he ever ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... all the Brodricks instantaneously lost their seriousness and sanity. He was captured and established as the centre of the group. And, in the great act of adoration of the Baby, Levine was once more united to his ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... one of those who go about the world for three score years and ten, with their night-caps pulled over their eyes—and ears—you don't believe a word of this. And when you are told with all seriousness that there is room for more wonderful and comforting transmutations, of the baser earth just under your window, or just round the corner, than was ever dreamed of by the wisest of those who have grown old among furnaces and crucibles and retorts; wearing their lives away in a search ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... mortal sorrow, and knowing nothing but the pure delight of the other's presence. Then, at last, their talk became less enraptured; the vision of Olympus faded little by little; the stern reality confronted them in all its seriousness. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... that woman," said he with a quaintly deliberate seriousness. "That's the finest woman in ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... held a pair of scissors in his hand, when Hebert approached him, holding his razor, said, "Take care, you scamp; if you cut me, I will stick my scissors into your stomach." This threat, made with an air of pretended seriousness, but which was in fact only a jest, such as I have seen the Emperor indulge in a hundred times, produced such an impression on Hebert, that it was impossible for him to finish his work. He was seized with a convulsive trembling, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... teaching in the rural or "district" schools to pay the expenses of the other terms, and the majority of the graduates were of these classes of men, often adults on entering, so that the class gathered seriousness as ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... pet project of the King—the conforming of the Scottish Church to Episcopacy. James Melville, speaking in his own mild way, was listened to with patience by the Primate; but when Scott began to enter into the subject in a characteristically Scottish fashion, with great seriousness and elaboration, Bancroft's patience failed him; and interrupting his discourse, smiling and laying his hand on his shoulder, the Primate said, 'Tush, man! Tak heir a coupe of guid seck.' And therewith filling the cup, he made them both drink, and after a little ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... comparatively recent period, testimony to miraculous interpositions which would now be laughed at by a schoolboy was accepted by the leaders of thought. St. Augustine was certainly one of the strongest minds in the early Church, and yet we find him mentioning, with much seriousness, a story that sundry innkeepers of his time put a drug into cheese which metamorphosed travellers into domestic animals, and asserting that the peacock is so favoured by the Almighty that its flesh will not decay, and that he has tested it and knows this to be a fact. With such a disposition ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... had consulted Sissy upon the limits to be observed in the forthcoming public oral examination in geography. And she had enlightened him as to what would be considered quite "fair." This treaty, into which she entered with the seriousness of an ambassador to an unfriendly power arranging a settlement of a disputed question, had a character so sacred in her eyes that its violation by the master in the course of the afternoon came upon ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... room whither both Norman and Etheldred wished to go, though they dared not hint at their desire. At last Richard came to them, as they were wandering in the garden, and, with his usual stillness of manner, shaded with additional seriousness, said, "Would you like to come into ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... influence of the sparkling wine he had taken, rested his elbows on the table, and with his cheeks clutched in his bony fingers, and his eyes starting from his head with his concentrated efforts to speak with becoming seriousness, he cried as if he were publishing ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... until about 300 B.C. that even primary schools began to develop. What education was needed was imparted in the home or in the field and in the camp, and was of a very simple type. Certain virtues were demanded—modesty, firmness, prudence, piety, courage, seriousness, and regard for duty—and these were instilled both by precept and example. Each home was a center of the religious life, and of civic virtue and authority. In it the father was a high priest, with power of life and death over wife and children. He alone conversed with the gods and prepared the ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... "Lohengrinize" again after his long abstention from opera; and Siegfried's Death (first sketched in 1848, the year before the rising in Dresden and the subsequent events which so deepened Wagner's sense of life and the seriousness of art) gave him exactly the libretto he required for that outbreak of the old operatic Adam in him. So he changed it into Die Gotterdammerung, retaining the traditional plot of murder and jealousy, and with it, necessarily, his original second act, in ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... strange that Viola herself, even in childhood, and yet more as she bloomed into the sweet seriousness of virgin youth, should fancy her life ordained for a lot, whether of bliss or woe, that should accord with the romance and reverie which made the atmosphere she breathed. Frequently she would ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... dee wi' that bairn o' yours; and we hae him to fen for noo as weel's oorsels! No 'at I hae the least concern aboot the bonny white raven, only we maun consider him like the lave!" "It's little he'll want for a whilie, father!" answered Maggie. "—But noo," she went on, in a tone of seriousness that was almost awe, "lat me hear what ye're thinkin:—what kin' o' a mither could she be that left her bairn theroot i' the wide, eerie nicht? and what for could she ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... crimes. Long periods of imprisonment, inhuman punishments, and the frequent use of the death penalty were characteristic of this attitude toward crime. Curiously enough, punishments were imposed according to the seriousness of the crime committed, without regard to the character and needs of ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... if the ideal of fine literature be the expression of beautiful and richly suggestive thoughts in a style elevated by the imagination, and by a sense of rhythmical harmony, Bishop Butler's place is not among men of letters. His profound sense of the seriousness of life limited his range; but as a thinker, what he lost in versatility he probably gained in depth. The Analogy is a striking instance of a great work wholly without imagination, while full of ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... Beaconsfield said, "I observe those of my friends who married for love—some of them beat their wives, and the remainder are divorced," he knew that he was uttering a piece of mockery which would have been blasphemous had it been set down in all seriousness. He meant to say that headlong marriages—marriages contracted in purblind passion—always end in misery. No marriage can bring a spark of happiness unless cool reason guides the choice of the contracting parties. A hot-headed stripling ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... his pictures in the Luxembourg, where it hangs still, with another sent two years after, "Raffaelle and Michael Angelo in the Vatican." This is perhaps the best of his works at the Luxembourg, all being inferior; but it has a certain dry gaudiness of color, and a want of seriousness of design, which render it unfit to be considered a master-work. One unquestionably preferable, the "Arresting of the Princes at the Palais Royal by order of Anne of Austria," found its way to the Palais ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... without anxiety. This is a true picture of my mind; and it must be true, because drawn for you, whom I would not deceive, and could not, if I would. Your question on my being writing drew it forth, though with more seriousness than the report deserved—yet talking to one's dearest friend is neither wrong nor out of season. Nay, you are my best apology. I have always contented myself with your being perfect, or, if your modesty ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... the prosecution was likely to be conducted by Sydney Campion, he took the news quietly, though it was a very serious matter for him. He did not doubt its seriousness, but his heart had already fallen so low that it could scarcely sink lower. He saw at once that the motive of Lettice's brother in angling for this brief (as Alan concluded that he must have done) was to protect the interests of Lettice; and so far, the fact was a ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... communities are substantially better off than other segments of the population, often approaching European standards, whereas indigenous groups suffer the poverty and unemployment typical of the poorer nations of the African continent. The outbreak of severe rioting in February 1991 illustrates the seriousness of socioeconomic tensions. The economic well-being of Reunion depends heavily on continued financial ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... first edition of this book. Looking back upon that experience I am delighted to affirm that not only The New Republic constituency but the world of the college and the university where I moved at that time, while at loss for a policy, were not only willing but eager to take the films with seriousness. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... resides in very great measure in that literary world, as it is called, to which I have been referring. This is not satisfactory, if, as no one can deny, its teaching be so offhand, so ambitious, so changeable. It increases the seriousness of the mischief, that so very large a portion of its writers are anonymous, for irresponsible power never can be any thing but a great evil; and, moreover, that, even when they are known, they can give no better guarantee for the philosophical truth of their principles than their popularity at the ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... far unknown to astronomy or not, is quite another matter. Thanks to that splendid instrument of yours, I have found a something in a part of the heavens where no comet, not even a star, has even been seen yet, and, speaking in all seriousness, I may say that this discovery contradicts all calculations as to the orbits and velocities of any known comet. That is what I have been thinking ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... advantages which he had gained thereby, pointing out the prudence he had shown in securing himself against detection, even by yourself, to whom he now reveals the secret, only in order that he may be able to deny it at any time; and suppose he were then to affirm, in all seriousness, that he has fulfilled a true human duty; you would either laugh in his face, or shrink back from him with disgust; and yet, if a man has regulated his principles of action solely with a view to his own advantage, you would have nothing whatever to object against this mode ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... to resign from the party. I am going to throw my weight on the other side," Peter spoke with all the seriousness of youth. "The girl has shown me what a beastly, selfish lot the politicians are, and I am going back to denounce them, if they won't change. But I want to ask you something, Doctor—you won't think I am cheeky, will you? She gave me absolutely no hope—but girl's sometimes change ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... they might come and talk about me again. It was odd that, although I never fancied it of the sun, I thought I could make the moon follow me as I pleased. I remember once my eldest brother giving me great offence by bursting into laughter, when I offered, in all seriousness, to bring her to the other side of the house where they wanted light to go on with something they were about. But I must return to my dream; for the most remarkable thing in it I have not yet told you. In one corner of the ceiling there ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... will find the atmosphere exceedingly thin and cold, I assure you," said Miss Burton, with something like seriousness in her tone. "I must remind you, Mr. Van Berg, that even Jack Bunsby did not give his opinions till they were asked, and I will take some toast, if you please, ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... you are beginning to talk like my old nurse. It is well enough to fight, but it should be for amusement, and not with such seriousness. I have only succeeded in making you dull. You were ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... life becomes a danger to him. What happens to him, comes to him through life, but its events lose their sting if he ceases to set unconditioned value on life. In that case his innocence is restored to him. It is as though he were from the so-called seriousness of life able to return to his childhood. The adult takes many things seriously with which a child merely plays, but one who really knows, becomes like a child. "Serious" values lose their value, looked at from the standpoint of eternity. Life then seems like a play. ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... to maintain toward me that terrible seriousness of manner which reveals your majesty's just anger. I feel I have offended you, sire; but I wish to explain to you how it was that I have not offended ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... before the coming spring was abandoned. There was one motto, "Retrenchment," and it was echoed from all sides with all manner of fun and mock solemnity; but those who were in the inner circle doubtless felt, more than the youngsters did, the seriousness of matters. A more strict account of everything was kept; indeed it seemed that the time spent in keeping all the various items, was out of proportion to the work done. I shall not soon forget, in this connection, the joke of "the Parson," E. Capen, who, holding up a pair ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... 1810): "I never heard a harsher voice, one so inflexible. When he smiled, it was only with the mouth and a portion of the cheeks; the brow and eyes remained immovably sombre,... This compound of a smile with seriousness had in it something terrible and frightful."—On one occasion, at St. Cloud, Varnhagen heard him exclaim over and over again, twenty times, before a group of ladies, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Staff" looked with surprise at Gabriel; his strange seriousness alarmed him and the prolonged silence in which he appeared to be arranging his thoughts without knowing where ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... your pardon!" he says, still speaking with unnecessary seriousness, as it seems to me, "I really had ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... prominence, consideration, mark, materialness. import, significance, concern; emphasis, interest. greatness &c. 31; superiority &c. 33; notability &c. (repute) 873; weight &c. (influence) 175; value &c. (goodness) 648; usefulness &c. 644. gravity, seriousness, solemnity; no joke, no laughing matter; pressure, urgency, stress; matter of life and death. memorabilia, notabilia[obs3], great doings; red-letter day. great thing, great point; main chance, "the be all and the end all" [Macbeth]; cardinal ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... the fashion of the Founder of knighthood, even Christ, "who came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister." King Arthur served. Play battles stung him not to prowess, but, as Lancelot saw, in the actual battle, the hero was not Lancelot, but Arthur. May be a too deep seriousness was in him. I think it probable. He had been more masterful in wielding men had he been colored more by laughter and jest. We must not take ourselves, nor yet the world, with too continuous seriousness. There are intervals between ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... by all. The teachers regarded her as an industrious, dutiful, and talented scholar; her associates looked upon her as a sincere, openhearted, cheerful companion. Unlike Mrs. Newell, who was sedate and grave, exhibiting a seriousness almost beyond her years, Miss Hasseltine was ardent, gay, and active. She loved amusement and pleasure, and was found seeking enjoyment in all the avenues of virtuous life. One of her schoolmates, speaking of her, ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... lines were read with great seriousness and their profound meaning went to the hearts of the hearers. Its gravity was counterbalanced by the next prophecy which gave hope of immediate fulfilment. Across the screen passed a procession of Club members, the first carrying a plate full of something ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... question, M'seur," replied the half-breed with grim seriousness. "Perhaps it is your turn. I ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... began my heart again to ache, and fear I might meet with a disappointment at last. Wherefore I began with all seriousness to examine my former comfort, and to consider whether one that had sinned as I had done, might with confidence trust upon the faithfulness of God, laid down in those words, by which I had been comforted, and on which I had leaned ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... such a friend of your father's. He was on that long Indian campaign with him in Arizona, and I've heard him talk of him by the hour. And last week"—here she lowered her voice so that only Allison and Kitty heard, and were thrilled by the sweet seriousness of it. "Last week he took me out to Arlington to carry a great wreath of laurel. When he'd laid it on the grave, he stood there with bared head, looking all around, and I heard him say, in a whisper, 'No one in all Arlington has won his laurels more bravely than you, my captain.' ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... man," my neighbor said, "and do not appear to realize the seriousness of our situation. Where have you been, that you have not heard this matter discussed, and do not understand that the moon is certain to come into collision with the earth in a ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... a heart-warming thing to hear. For Gervais was taking the situation with a seriousness that was as terrifying as it was stupid. When I looked into his dogged eyes I could not but think the end of me might be near. But Yeux-gris's laugh said the very notion was ridiculous; I was innocent of all harmful intent, and they were ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... in a century. Six months later an industrial crisis broke out; the share fell to six hundred thousand francs. But Leon refused to be alarmed, for he maintained an obstinate faith in the mine. When the great strike broke out he would not be persuaded of its seriousness, and refused to admit any danger, until he saw his daughter struck by a stone and savagely assaulted by the crowd. Afterwards he desired to show the largeness of his views, and spoke of forgetting ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... and the attempt I made to show him only a kind of glad seriousness, I could not help it if I blushed. Also I could not help it if, while going upstairs and telling him what had happened to the house-party, I said he was doomed to the disappointment of having nobody except myself for company, ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... seriousness, and went on to say: "Lucky, if I gotta get out of this country the way I got into it I'm going to let you bury me in Dawson. Look at them rapids ahead of us! Why, the guy that laid out this river ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... jurisdiction is less extensive. It covers, in the main, cases of high treason against the Confederation, crimes and misdemeanors against the law of nations, political crimes and misdemeanors of such seriousness as to occasion armed federal intervention, and charges against officers appointed by a federal authority, when such authority makes application to the Federal Court. In cases falling within any one of these categories the Court ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... submissiveness of the natives is now seen to have been ill founded. Causes of discontent were rife among them, which, at first obscure, became subsequently clear. Two of these causes were already known at the time of my visit, though their seriousness was under-estimated. In Mashonaland the natives disliked the tax of ten shillings for each hut, which there, as in the Transvaal Republic,[48] they have been required to pay; and they complained that it was apt to fall heavily on the industrious Kafir, because the idle one escaped, having ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... treated it as a child's affair, and, in accordance with his usual policy in family matters, had simply told Clara and Bess to discontinue their visits at the old neighbour's. But now that he heard the story from the lips of his own daughter, he saw the seriousness of it, and crowding back all his former pride and hatred of the elder Caxton, he promised Clara to see James the ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... with the freest of my neighbors, I perceive that, whatever they may say about the magnitude and seriousness of the question, and their regard for the public tranquillity, the long and the short of the matter is, that they cannot spare the protection of the existing government, and they dread the consequences to ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... Elizabeth. From this minute on I wash my hands of the private affairs of the McKaye family. My job is managing your father's financial affairs. Believe me, the next move in this comedy-drama is a wedding—if Donald asks her in all seriousness to marry him—that is, if he insists on it. He may insist and then again he may not, but if he should, I shall not attempt to stop him. He's free, white and twenty-one; he's my boss and I hope I know my place. Personally, I'm willing ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... flippant mood, mentioned a fashionable watering-place on the South Coast. I pleaded the seriousness of my question. ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... of that wretched young man: not that he knew any thing about him—not that he had read one line of his dangerous and poisonous works; Heaven forbid that he should: but what could be expected from such a youth, and such frightful, such lamentable, such deplorable want of seriousness? Pen formed the subject for a second sermon at the Clavering chapel of ease: where the dangers of London, and the crime of reading and writing novels, were pointed out on a Sunday evening to a large and warm congregation. ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... likely to be seriously injured, because the most conspicuous thing in nut growing is the taking advertisement of the firm whose bad trees have been referred to by Dr. Metcalf. I think we do not appreciate the seriousness of the situation. The firm Dr. Metcalf referred to is selling trees that are diseased in places where they are sure to die quickly. Other men are similarly selling trees, with less skillful advertising, perhaps, but probably no less diseased. Most of these ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various
... take that; I looked at its fair and kind donor, and—there was Miss Curzon! As I raised the glass to my lips, I glanced across its brim, and again the same depression of the slender figure—the same expression and mixture of fixed seriousness! ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... that I would write an opera comique in the same manner as an opera seria? There must be as little learning and seriousness in an opera buffa as there must be much of these elements in an opera seria; but all the more of playfulness and merriment. I am not responsible for the fact that there is a desire also to hear comic music in an opera seria; the difference is sharply drawn here. I find ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... its attitude to the seriousness of life, animated Sir George Grey, even as he spoke. Affairs in England seemed critical, and he would stay on to watch them, since any hint might be of import. In London there beat the heart of the Empire, and he would keep his ear ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... one that Sunday night Katharine lay in bed, not asleep, but in that twilight region where a detached and humorous view of our own lot is possible; or if we must be serious, our seriousness is tempered by the swift oncome of slumber and oblivion. She saw the forms of Ralph, William, Cassandra, and herself, as if they were all equally unsubstantial, and, in putting off reality, had gained a kind of dignity which rested upon each impartially. Thus rid of any uncomfortable warmth of partisanship ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf |
