Serious Business Quotes

• Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.

  Peter Ustinov

  Funny, Laughter, Creativity

  Peter Ustinov (1969). “The wit of Peter Ustinov”

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• Remember that life is neither pain nor pleasure; it is serious business, to be entered upon with courage and in a spirit of self-sacrifice.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Life, Pain, Sacrifice

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• Joy is the serious business of heaven.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Marriage, Joy

  C. S. Lewis (1984). “The Business of Heaven: Daily Readings from C. S. Lewis”, p.13, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• One finds many companions for food and drink, but in a serious business a man's companions are very few.

  Theognis of Megara

  Business, Men, Cooking

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• Life is too short to make an over-serious business out of it.

  Lin Yutang

  Life, Too Short, Life Is Too Short

  Yutang Lin (1936). “The Little critic: essays, satires and sketches on China (first series: 1930-1932)”

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• I guess there are no real strict rules [in comedy], but I just learn to apply my philosophy about comedy which is, it's a serious business and the result needs to be funny, not the process.

  Christoph Waltz

  Philosophy, Real, Needs

  Source: screenrant.com

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• There's an argument for saying that brave men deserve what they get, but it's a serious business forcing cowards to stand in harm's way.

  K.J. Parker

  Men, Brave, Coward

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• There is no secret to a long marriage - it's hard work...It's serious business, and certainly not for cowards.

  Ossie Davis

  Hard Work, Long, Secret

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• Some people think that mathematics is a serious business that must always be cold and dry; but we think mathematics is fun, and we aren't ashamed to admit the fact. Why should a strict boundary line be drawn between work and play? Concrete mathematics is full of appealing patterns; the manipulations are not always easy, but the answers can be astonishingly attractive.

  Ronald Graham

  Education, Fun, Math

  Ronald L. Graham, Donald Ervin Knuth, Oren Patashnik (1989). “Concrete mathematics: a foundation for computer science”, Addison Wesley Publishing Company

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• Women are but the toys which amuse our lighter hours---ambition is the serious business of life.

  Walter Scott

  Ambition, Toys, Hours

  Walter Scott (1845). “Ivanhoe: A Romance”, p.376

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• Now remember, kids, the internet is serious business.

  Isaac Asimov

  Kids, Remember, Internet

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• Nobody has to tell me that this is a serious business. I'm not fighting one man. I'm fighting a lot of men, showing a lot of 'em, here is one man they couldn't defeat, couldn't conquer. My mission is to bring freedom to 30m black people

  Muhammad Ali

  Fighting, Men, People

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• I regard the theatre as a serious business, one that makes or should make man more human, which is to say, less alone.

  Arthur Miller

  Men, Theatre, Should

  Arthur Miller (2016). “The Collected Essays of Arthur Miller”, p.112, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• This is serious business, sex, violence, and rock and roll.

  John Mellencamp

  Sex, Rocks, Rock And Roll

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• The voice of flattery affects us after it has ceased, just as after a concert men find some agreeable air ringing in their ears to the exclusion of all serious business.

  Seneca the Younger

  Men, Air, Voice

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• Dance and game are frivolous, unimportant down here; for "down here" is not their natural place. Here, they are a moment's rest from the life we were placed here to live. But in this world everything is upside down. That which, if it could be prolonged here, would be a truancy, is likest that which in a better country is the End of ends. Joy is the serious business of Heaven.

  C. S. Lewis

  Country, Games, Joy

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.26, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The relativism which is not willing to speak about truth but only about ‘what is true for me’ is an evasion of the serious business of living. It is the mark of a tragic loss of nerve in our contemporary culture. It is a preliminary symptom of death.

  Lesslie Newbigin

  Loss, Culture, Nerves

  Lesslie Newbigin (2013). “The Gospel in a Pluralist Society: SPCK Classic”, p.36, SPCK

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• I confess I was surprised to find that so many men spent their whole day, ay, their whole lives almost, a-fishing. It is remarkable what a serious business men make of getting their dinners, and how universally shiftlessness and a groveling taste take refuge in a merely ant-like industry. Better go without your dinner, I thought, than be thus everlastingly fishing for it like a cormorant. Of course, viewed from the shore, our pursuits in the country appear not a whit less frivolous.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Country, Men, Lakes

  Henry David Thoreau (2008). “Cape Cod: Illustrated Edition of the American Classic”, p.165, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• William Blake really is important, my cornerstone. Nobody ever told me before he did that childhood was such a damned serious business.

  Maurice Sendak

  Childhood, Important, Blake

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• For me, religion is serious business - a farrago of authoritarian nonsense, misogyny and humble pie, the eternal enemy of human happiness and freedom.

  Katha Pollitt

  Humble, Pie, Enemy

  Katha Pollitt (2007). “Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture”, p.29, Modern Library

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• An annuity is a very serious business.

  Jane Austen

  Serious

  Sense and Sensibility vol. 1, ch. 2 (1811)

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• Do you call it doubting to write down on a piece of paper that you doubt? If so, doubt has nothing to do with any serious business. But do not make believe; if pedantry has not eaten all the reality out of you, recognize, as you must, that there is much that you do not doubt, in the least. Now that which you do not at all doubt, you must and do regard as infallible, absolute truth.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Believe, Writing, Reality

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1958). “Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance)”, p.188, Courier Corporation

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• Poetry is a serious business; literature is the apparatus through which the world tries to keep intact its important ideas and feelings.

  Mary Oliver

  Ideas, Poetry, Feelings

  Mary Oliver (1994). “A Poetry Handbook”, p.108, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I'm working at trying to be a Christian and that's serious business. It's like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy—it's serious business. It's not something where you think, Oh, I've got it done. I did it all day, hotdiggety. The truth is, all day long you try to do it, try to be it, and then in the evening if you're honest and have a little courage you look at yourself and say, Hmm. I only blew it eighty-six times. Not bad.

  Maya Angelou

  Christian, Mother, Buddhist

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• There's plenty of room for humor in politics, God knows, but it's a serious business.

  Al Franken

  Rooms, God Knows, Plenty

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