Earnestness Quotes - Page 3

• BEG, v. To ask for something with an earnestness proportioned to the belief that it will not be given.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Belief, Given, Asks

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.19, 谷月社

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• Earnestness can go wrong in hip hop. On this album, it goes very right.

  Sage Francis

  Hip Hop, Albums, Hips

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• The best convent for a woman is the seclusion of her own home. There she may find her vocation and fight her battles, and there she may learn the reality and the earnestness of life.

  Elizabeth Prentiss

  Home, Fighting, Reality

  Elizabeth Prentiss (1871). “Stepping Heavenward. By the author of 'The flower of the family'.”, p.235

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• In all earnestness I asked myself what kind of world I had stumbled into.

  Carl Jung

  World, Kind

  Carl Gustav Jung, Meredith Sabini (2002). “The Earth Has a Soul: The Nature Writings of C.G. Jung”, p.33, North Atlantic Books

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• Great grief prays with great earnestness. Prayer is not a collection of balanced phrases; it is the pouring out of the soul. What is love if it be not fiery? What are prayers if the heart be not ablaze? They are the battles of the soul. In them men wrestle with principalities and powers...
  ”The prayer that prevails is not the work of lips and fingertips. It is the cry of a broken heart and the travail of a stricken soul.

  Samuel Chadwick

  Prayer, Grief, Heart

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• Taking sides is the beginning of sincerity, and earnestness follows shortly afterwards, and the human being becomes a bore.

  Oscar Wilde

  Sides, Sincerity, Bores

  Oscar Wilde (2000). “Oscar Wilde - The Major Works”, p.9, OUP Oxford

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• The way of awakening and freedom requires that we ask ourselves, with all of the earnestness, honesty, and humility at our command, just this one fundamental question: 'Am I willing to live this moment with as much attention and affection as possible, or am I going to do something else?'

  Scott Morrison

  Life, Honesty, Humility

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• I have this wholesome disposition in a lot of my characters. A certain earnestness.

  Matt Lauria

  Character, Disposition, Certain

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• The truths which are represented in England and Western countries generally, are those which refer to force of character, earnestness of purpose, conscientious strictness, noble charity, practical duty, whilst the truths which I find peculiarly developed in India - developed to a greater extent than anywhere else, - and in the Eastern countries generally, are those which have reference to sweetness of communion, sweetness of temper, meekness and resignation unto God.

  Keshub Chandra Sen

  Country, Character, India

  Parting words at Southampton, September 17, 1870.

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• One is healthy when one can laugh at the earnestness and zeal with which one has been hypnotized by any single detail of one's life.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Laughing, Healthy, Details

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2011). “The Will to Power”, p.202, Vintage

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• Taking fun as simply fun and earnestness in earnest shows how thoroughly thou none of the two discernest.

  Piet Pieterszoon Hein

  Fun, Two, Shows

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• Art is based on a strong sentiment of religion,--on a profound and mighty earnestness; hence it is so prone to co-operate with religion.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Art, Strong, Profound

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1853). “Goethe's Opinions on the World, Mankind, Literature, Science, and Art”, p.76

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• I feel like in American fiction we're moving out of a period of intense irony, and I'm very glad about that. I feel like irony is fine for its own sake but shouldn't be the sole reason to write a book. It has been an ironic world view: that's the best way I can describe it. I'm a fan of earnestness. I feel like there's a new wave of earnestness and I'd be happy if I'm some small part of that.

  Lauren Groff

  Book, Moving, Writing

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• You make adjustments according to the specifics of the character.It's something I feel like a lot of my comedic heroes have always done. It's not even necessarily vulnerability, always, but it's an earnestness, a genuine desire to actually do the right thing, but then still make really misguided, stupid decisions along the way.

  Ed Helms

  Stupid, Hero, Character

  Interview with Keith Phipps, www.avclub.com. June 3, 2009.

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• Let true Christians then, with becoming earnestness, strive in all things to recommend their profession, and to put to silence the vain scoffs of ignorant objectors.

  William Wilberforce

  Christian, Silence, Ignorant

  William Wilberforce (1835). “A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes in this Country Contrasted with Real Christians”, p.314

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• A regular council was held with the Indians, who had come in on their ponies, and speeches were made on both sides through an interpreter, quite in the described mode,--the Indians, as usual, having the advantage in point of truth and earnestness, and therefore of eloquence. The most prominent chief was named Little Crow. They were quite dissatisfied with the white man's treatment of them, and probably have reason to be so.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Native American, Men, White Man

  Henry David Thoreau (1974). “The correspondence of Henry David Thoreau”, Greenwood Pub Group

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• I'm sure Sting's a lovely guy. It's just that nobody wants to be seen as that holier-than-thou thing. That over-earnestness is a bit of a problem with people in bands and celebrities or whatever.

  Jarvis Cocker

  People, Guy, Lovely

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• Even where there is talent, culture, knowledge, if there is not earnestness, it does not go to the root of things.

  James Freeman Clarke

  Roots, Doe, Culture

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• You're constantly, in human culture, trying to balance between uplifting, heartfelt, sincere, earnestness that empowers and enlightens people, and the sarcastic cynicism that comes from just people's acquired bitterness over experiences.

  Seth Green

  Uplifting, Sarcastic, People

  "Seth Green Talks ‘Yellowbird’, Animation, & Pop Culture Nostalgia". Interview with Andy Crump, screenrant.com. April 6, 2015.

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• In this Epistle, the Apostle seeks, with great earnestness, to confirm the Christian converts in the belief of that Gospel, which he had so faithfully preached.

  John Strachan

  Christian, Belief, Converting

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• [Freud's] sense of reality is less clouded by wishful thinking than is the case with other people and [he combines] the qualities of critical judgment, earnestness and responsibility.

  Albert Einstein

  Responsibility, Reality, Thinking

  Albert Einstein (2017). “Einstein on Peace”, p.274, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• We should seek to free the moral life from the embarrassments and entanglements in which it has been involved by the quibbles of the schools and the mutual antagonisms of the sects; to introduce into it an element of downrightness and practical earnestness; above all, to secure to the modern world, in its struggle with manifold evil, the boon of moral unity, despite intellectual diversity.

  Felix Adler

  Struggle, School, Diversity

  "Life and Destiny". Book by Felix Adler, 1903.

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• I have long discovered that geologists never read each other's works, and that the only object in writing a book is a proof of earnestness.

  Charles Darwin

  Book, Writing, Long

  Charles Darwin, Frederick Burkhardt, Sydney Smith (1985). “The Correspondence of Charles Darwin”, p.338, Cambridge University Press

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• There's not a lot of room for un-ironic emotion in contemporary culture. I think that irony is an important tool in dealing with the world as we find it. It's a tool of protection, but it can also be a tool of incision to get to some truth. But along the way maybe we've lost some of what I think of as the power of straightforward emotion and earnestness and seriousness.

  John Green

  Thinking, Ironic, Important

  "Q&A: John Green & Nat Wolff on ‘Paper Towns’ Themes, Inside Jokes, Nicknames". Interview with Seth Kelley, variety.com. July 19, 2015.

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• I don't think of myself as particularly earnest. I have long bouts of cynicism and skepticism. So much of my early life was full of uncertainties. It still is. My "Buddha book" expresses that. Perhaps that's what created this impression of earnestness.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Book, Thinking, Long

  Interview with Sarah Fay, staging.believermag.com. March 2007.

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