Earnestness Quotes - Page 4

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

  Matt Lauria

  Character, Disposition, Certain

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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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• 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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• Here's the thing about earnestness. Our culture discounts it; but people are yearning for it.

  Jeffrey Zaslow

  People, Culture, Yearning

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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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• 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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• 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 admired the earnestness of these people, many of whom had joined Greenpeace and marched for noble things in their youth. But I didn’t share their hatred of the establishment. After all, the establishment had given me so many of my favorite things: Nick at Nite, the New York Knicks, Stephen King, Taco Bell, Green Day. The list went on and on.

  Simon Rich

  Kings, New York, People

  "Ridiculously Rich: The Rumpus Interview With Simon Rich". Interview with Maureen Miller, therumpus.net. June 9, 2010.

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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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• Some happy talent, and some fortunate opportunity, may form the two sides of the ladder on which some men mount, but the rounds of that ladder must be made of stuff to stand wear and tear; and there is no substitute for thorough-going, ardent, and sincere earnestness.

  Charles Dickens

  Inspirational, Opportunity, Men

  Charles Dickens (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Charles Dickens (Illustrated)”, p.4820, Delphi Classics

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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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• 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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• [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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• 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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• 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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• Art rests on a kind of religious sense, on a deep, steadfast earnestness; and on this account it unites so readily with religion.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Religious, Art, Kind

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• Eventually I came across another passage. This is what it said: I am not commanding you, but I want to treat the sincerity of your love by comparing it to the earnestness of others. The words made me choke up again, and just as I was about to cry, the meaning of it suddenly became clear. God had finally answered me, and I suddenly knew what I had to do.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Love, Age, Want

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• Holding this soft, small living creature in my lap this way, though, and seeing how it slept with complete trust in me, I felt a warm rush in my chest. I put my hand on the cat's chest and felt his heart beating. The pulse was faint and fast, but his heart, like mine, was ticking off the time allotted to his small body with all the restless earnestness of my own.

  Haruki Murakami

  Heart, Cat, Hands

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Oct 29, 2015

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• I was inspired more by early Bette Midler. I do wear a fancy dress and very high heels - and extra high hair. My goal is to obliterate all earnestness.

  Ana Gasteyer

  Hair, High Heels, Goal

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• The tea party saved the Republican Party. In a broad sense, the tea party rescued it from being the fat, unhappy, querulous creature it had become, a party that didn't remember anymore why it existed, or what its historical purpose was. The tea party, with its energy and earnestness, restored the GOP to itself.

  Peggy Noonan

  Party, Political, Historical

  "Tea Party Movement Rescued the GOP" by Peggy Noonan, www.realclearpolitics.com. October 22, 2010.

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• The cynic makes fun of all earnestness; he makes fun of everything and everyone who feels that something can be done. . . . But in his heart of hearts he knows that he is a defeated man and that his cynicism is merely an expression of the fact that he has lost courage and is beaten.

  George Edgar Vincent

  Courage, Fun, Heart

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• 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.

  Stephen Dobyns

  Past, Years, Serious

  Stephen Dobyns (2011). “Next Word, Better Word: The Craft of Writing Poetry”, p.59, Macmillan

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• Cultivate a sympathetic heart, humility in dealings, and selflessness in action. If these are practiced with earnestness and sincerity, then you will win the race of life.

  Baba Hari Dass

  Heart, Humility, Winning

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• My own will and desires were now very much broken, and my heart was with much earnestness turned to the Lord, to whom alone I looked for help in the dangers before me.

  John Woolman

  Broken Heart, Desire, Helping

  John Woolman (2013). “journal”, p.91, Lulu.com

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• Earnestness is good; it means business. But fanaticism overdoes, and is consequently reactionary.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Mean, Reactionaries, Fanaticism

  Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1892). “Brilliants: selected from the works of C.H. Spurgeon”

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