Earnest Quotes

Men who are in earnest are not afraid of consequences.

Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.

More than half of modern culture depends upon what one shouldn't read.

I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.

When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.

A man who marries without knowing Bunbury has a very tedious time of it.

Oh! I don't think I would like to catch a sensible man. I shouldn't know what to talk to him about.

If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.

Well, in the first place girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don't think it right.

Yes; poor Bunbury is a dreadful invalid. Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shillyshallying with the question is absurd.

When people talk to me about the weather, I always feel they mean something else.

In married life three is company and two none.

I'll bet you anything you like that half an hour after they have met, they will be calling each other sister. Women only do that when they have called each other a lot of other things first.

To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view.

It is not the truth that a man possesses, or believes that he possesses, but the earnest effort which he puts forward to reach the truth, which constitutes the worth of a man

The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one's clean linen in public.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!

Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business.

I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.

Really, if the lower orders don't set a good example, what on earth is the use of them?

The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain.

I've now realised for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.

An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant as the case may be.

In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.

The ministers, who preached at these revivals, were in earnest. They were zealous and sincere. They were not philosophers. To them science was the name of a vague dread - a dangerous enemy. They did not know much, but they believed a great deal.

Did you fall in love with her?" "I care about her. A lot." "You're not supposed to marry someone if you don't fall in love with her." "Well, love is a choice, too." Holly shook her head. "I think it's something that happens to you." Mark smiled into her small, earnest face. "Maybe it's both," he said, and tucked her in.

There are two men in Tolstoy. He is a mystic and he is also a realist. He is addicted to the practice of a pietism that for all its sincerity is nothing if not vague and sentimental; and he is the most acute and dispassionate of observers, the most profound and earnest student of character and emotion.

To be strong, and beautiful, and go round making music all the time. Yes, she could do that, and with a very earnest prayer Polly asked for the strength of an upright soul, the beauty of a tender heart, the power to make her life a sweet and stirring song, helpful while it lasted, remembered when it died.

I should have remembered that when one is going to lead an entirely new life, one requires regular and wholesome meals.

Guns have metamorphosed into cameras in this earnest comedy, the ecology safari, because nature has ceased to be what it always had been - what people needed protection from. Now nature tamed, endangered, mortal - needs to be protected from people.

True patriotism springs from a belief in the dignity of the individual, freedom and equality not only for Americans but for all people on earth, universal brotherhood and good will, and a constant and earnest striving toward the principles and ideals on which this country was founded.

When I look at him, I don't see the cowardly young man who sold me out to Jeanine Matthews, and i don't hear the excuses he gave afterward. When I look at him, I see the boy who held my hand in the hospital when our mother broke her wrist and told me it would be all right. I see the brother who told me to make my own choices, the night before the Choosing Ceremony. I think of all the remarkable things he is--smart and enthusiastic and observant, quiet and earnest and kind.

There is a policy in manner. I have heard one, not inexperienced in the pursuit of fame, give it his earnest support, as being the surest passport to absolute and brilliant success.

We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.

I wasn't a hippie and I wasn't even a bohemian. I was extremely earnest and serious.

Self Esteem::"It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. I knew a man of simple habits and earnest character who never put out his hands nor opened his lips to court the public, and having survived several rotten reputations of younger men, honor came at last and sat down with him upon his private bench from which he had never stirred."

Lincoln?” she (Beth) asked. “Yes?” “Do you believe in love at first sight?” He made himself look at her face, at her wide-open eyes and earnest forehead. At her unbearably sweet mouth. “I don’t know,” he said. “Do you believe in love before that?” Her breath caught in her throat like a sore hiccup. And then it was too much to keep trying not to kiss her.

They were simple, earnest people, those early Victorians, and had not yet learnt the trick of avoiding disturbing thoughts and sights.

Elinor was to be the comforter of others in her own distresses, no less than in theirs; and all the comfort that could be given by assurances of her own composure of mind, and a very earnest vindication of Edward from every charge but of imprudence, was readily offered.

There is neither encouragement nor room in Bible religion for feeble desires, listless efforts, lazy attitudes; all must be strenuous, urgent, ardent. Flamed desires, impassioned, unwearied insistence delight heaven. God would have His children incorrigibly in earnest and persistently bold in their efforts. Heaven is too busy to listen to half-hearted prayers or to respond to pop-calls. Our whole being must be in our praying.

By persistently remaining single a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation.

For the past thirty years or so, much American poetry has been marked by an earnestness that rejects the comic. This has nothing to do with seriousness. The comic can be very serious. The trouble with the earnest is that it seeks to be commended. It seeks to be praised for its intention more than for what it is saying.

Lord of the springtime, Father of flower, field and fruit, smile on us in these earnest days when the work is heavy and the toil wearisome; lift up our hearts, O God, to the things worthwhile-sunshine and night, the dripping rain, the song of the birds, books and music, and the voices of our friends. Lift up our hearts to these this night and grant us Thy peace. Amen.

My advice to those who are about to begin, in earnest, the journey of life, is to take their heart in one hand and a club in the other.

Extension work is not exhortation. Nor is it exploitation of the people, or advertising of an institution, or publicity work for securing students. It is a plain, earnest, and continuous effort to meet the needs of the people on their own farms and in the localities.

The English did not come to America from a mere love of adventure, nor to truck with or convert the savages, nor to hold offices under the crown, as the French to a great extent did, but to live in earnest and with freedom.

To the parents, basically, of the dreamers, which was DAPA. I understand, of course, the concern that a lot of folks have had with the number of deportations. But there again, I believe that the president [Barack Obama] has made an earnest attempt to address those issues.

It is true not all has been accomplished that the earnest advocates would desire, but a start has been made.

Abuse is always wrong. Some try to excuse it. Most perpetrators have a sense of entitlement, thinking their actions are justified. Ironically, their victims may also believe they deserve to be mistreated. Some will even defend their abuser, citing his or her earnest apologies afterward. But abuse in any form, for any reason, wounds both spouses. It's always sinful, and few things destroy trust in a marriage as quickly. Regardless of childhood pain or marital conflict, mature spouses learn to set limits so anger doesn't become abuse by frequency, degree, or duration.

I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice.