"Serious-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seemed less exciting than she had expected. Sometimes she thought it was the sight of that great house which had overwhelmed her: it was too vast, too venerable, too like a huge monument built of ancient territorial traditions and obligations. Perhaps it had been lived in for too long by too many serious-minded and conscientious women: somehow she could not picture it invaded by bridge and debts and adultery. And yet that was what would have to be, of course... she could hardly picture either Strefford or herself continuing there the life of heavy county responsibilities, dull parties, ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... young nephews of Joseph Nuessler, Godfrey Baldrian and Rudolph Kurz, had asked permission to spend the weeks before their examinations—both were students of theology—at Rexow. Should they be invited to come? Godfrey was all right, a serious-minded youth, but Rudolph, although a good sort of a fellow, was frivolous, he had even fought a duel in Rostock for the sake of a merchant's pretty daughter. Was there any danger of Lina and Mina falling in love? "Braesig," Joseph ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... parasitical aria attributed to Bertoni was written by Gluck in the first place in 1764 for a soprano. He wove this into his opera Aristo in 1769. This is also true of the trio, Tendre Amour, which precedes the finale in the last act. A serious-minded analyst might be tempted to admire the profound psychology of the author in mingling doleful accents with expressions of joy, but he would have his labor for his pains. The trio was taken from the opera Elena e Paride, where Gluck expressed strongly ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... (the first to be formed) has to itself—is a haven of peace after the Bear-garden. It is a pleasant room like the other, pretty with pictures and with flowers. And the little bright faces make it a happy place, for this class, though serious-minded, is exceedingly cheerful. There is the demure little Tingalu, the good child of the kindergarten, its hope and stay in troublous hours, and the quaint little trio, Jeya, Jullanie, and Sella—this last is called Cock-robin ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... doors, nor science study his wonders, and he must now seek a following in the gaping loiterers of the circus side-show, the pumpkin-and-prize-pig country fair, or the tawdry booth at Coney Island. The credulous, wonder-loving scientist, however, still abides with us and, while his serious-minded brothers are wringing from Nature her jealously guarded secrets, the knowledge of which benefits all mankind, he gravely follows that perennial Will-of-the-wisp, spiritism, and lays the flattering unction to his ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... still smiling when she entered the building in which was located a club to which she belonged. It was a serious-minded club of clever women, and most people had been amused when Polly Street joined it. Nobody expected serious-minded things of Polly, though here and there someone was willing to admit that she was "clever enough in ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... more conserve the nervous forces of any serious-minded young man, nothing which will give him so much of that composure of mind and necessary concentration of powers, as the resolution to do his best and let it go at that, whether the world applaud, or laugh, or rage. Be true to your deed, whatever it may have been, and if the deed was true, the end ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... me, and I hope to you, Art is a very serious thing, and cannot by any means be dissociated from the weighty matters that occupy the thoughts of men; and there are principles underlying the practice of it, on which all serious-minded men, may—nay, must— have their own thoughts. It is on some of these that I ask your leave to speak, and to address myself, not only to those who are consciously interested in the arts, but to all those also who have considered ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... observation served but to confirm my conviction that I was confronted with a man who had one great and separate secret hidden within the impenetrable recesses of a contrite heart. He said little about St. Cuthbert's or the morrow, his most significant observation being to the effect that the serious-minded of the kirk were looking forward to my appearance with ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... not wholly indifferent," said Robinette, as though she were stopping to consider. "I think every serious-minded person must be proud to inherit fine qualities and to pass them on. Surely it isn't enough to give old blood to the next generation—it must be good blood. Yes! the right stock certainly means something ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... right. She told me there was something about Angus. She'd seen that from the first. Even so, she said, she hadn't let him sweep her off her feet like he had meant to, but had forced him to give her time to do her packing and consider the grave step she was taking for better or worse, like every true, serious-minded woman ought to. ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the old spirit was no longer the same. The light-hearted mirth had gone. Indeed, Rosebud was a child no longer. She was a woman, and it would have surprised these folk to know how serious-minded the last two days ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... that's moa like a fatha to you than anything else, in his feelings"—the girls tittered, and some one shouted derisively—"It's true!"—"now there is a shoe, or call it a slippa, that I've rutha hesitated about showin' to you, because I know that you're all rutha serious-minded, I don't ca'e how young ye be, or how good-lookin' ye be; and I don't presume the'e's one among you that's eve head o' dancin'." In the mirthful hooting and mocking that followed, the shoeman hedged gravely from the extreme position he had taken. "What? Well, maybe you have ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... that these two men now found themselves in the dock with twelve serious-minded tradesmen sitting in solemn conclave to consider ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... hides all blood-boltered and their tails clubbed and clotted with mire, lying dead with stiff legs between overturned guns; dead men piled in heaps and living men huddled in panics—all of it. But when the major talked I saw only some serious-minded officers, in whiskers of an obsolete cut and queer-looking shirt collars, poring over maps round a table in a farmhouse parlor. When he chewed on the cud of the vanished past it certainly was ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... Many spoke acidly of the lengths to which childless females would go for lack of occupation. Droll fellows of a pretty wit giggled and asked who would mind the baby while the madam went out to vote. Serious-minded persons of both sexes disposed of the whole foolishness forever by saying (and wondering why nobody had ever thought of it before) that woman's place was the home. But few there were who perceived a symptom here; not even when the League grew with unintelligible rapidity, and croaking ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... of its leader we must for a moment linger, to note one or two of its traits. His splendid vitality overflowed at times in frolic and extravagance. He never lost the spirit of the boy. He would come into a group of his serious-minded teachers and say, "Oh! what's the good of saving souls if you can't have any fun?" and start a frolic or organize an all-day picnic. In his home he introduced "puss in the corner" and "the Presbyterian wardance" among the very elect. He ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... Fields in speaking of a certain ought-to-be-forgotten poem of Browning's. This class is large, and its annual growth in this country is probably an encouraging sign of the times. It indicates interest. Third—The serious-minded reader who alternately tackles Macaulay, Darwin, and Tom Jones with frequent and prolonged relapses—simply to rest his mind—into Mrs Wistar and Capt. King. This class is quite large, and though in too large a measure the victims of misplaced confidence in Sir John Lubbock and Frederick ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... a deep breath when he had finished. Marie clapped her hands. "That was a real fairy-tale!" she cried. Karl threw himself upon Peter and pummeled away at him, although that serious-minded lad was ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... a screen. A man in just such a rig attracted no end of comment in a fashionable hotel. The caricaturing effect of his trousers and coat were unspeakably comical. The wearer had a face as grave as an undertaker's and the air of a serious-minded college professor; but he had the nondescript look of a scarecrow composed of whatever available garments could be obtained from the cast-off wardrobe of summer boarders in ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... The serious-minded man who is disgusted with spiritualistic charlatans and their commercial humbug is naturally inclined here, too, at once to offer the theory that all is fraud and that a detective would be the right man to investigate the case. When the newspapers discovered ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... real world, it unfolds an inexhaustible supply of parodies of mankind. Creations of its fantasy are the Scaramouches, Crispins and Harlequins, grinning silhouettes of man, types altogether unknown to serious-minded antiquity, although they originated in classic Italy. It is the grotesque, lastly, which, colouring the same drama with the fancies of the North and of the South in turn, exhibits Sganarelle capering about Don Juan and ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... interrupted Judy, who loved these discussions with her serious-minded friend. "How would you like to engage for all your life in the immortal work of ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... that he was a confirmed rake. It is impossible for any one acquainted with Mozart's career and letters to accuse him of studious hypocrisy, and this accusation is necessary to support the theory that he was anything but a serious-minded toiler, and for his time and surroundings a well-behaved ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... and read her morning Bible chapter, which she always managed to find time for, even when she did not get up as early as on this occasion. For her age, and perhaps because of her mother's death, which still seemed recent to Janice, she was rather serious-minded. Yet she was no prig, and she loved fun and was as alert for good times as any girl ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... wandered off into all kinds of subjects, made jokes at which the boys laughed, and told funny stories. He imagined he was putting his hearers in good humour, and he took their cheers and stamping as signs of approval. But he little knew what the serious-minded were thinking about. They were slow of speech, but they were keen observers, and they were mentally comparing the two candidates before them. Farrington knew nothing of this. He was in a rollicking, fine humour. He felt pleased with the people for their apparent approval, ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... by a considerable leakage of conceit, came across the Dop Doctor? In a drink-saloon, in a music-hall, in a gaming-house or an opium-den, at any other of the places of recreation where, after consulting and visiting hours, that exemplary father and serious-minded Established Churchman, was to be found? It is enough that the bargain was proposed and accepted. Four sovereigns a week secured to De Boursy-Williams the stored and applied knowledge, the wide experience, and the unerring diagnosis of the rising young London practitioner, who had ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... similar circumstances? Was this act merely the result of womanly sympathy? For the life of me I could not determine. She was like two individuals, so swiftly did her moods change—one moment impressing me as a laughing girl, the next leaving me convinced she was a serious-minded woman. Just as I thought I knew, believed I understood, she would change into another personality, leaving me more bewildered than ever. Suddenly I thought again of Le Gaire, remembering his dark, handsome face, his manner of distinction, and there came to me mistily the words overheard during ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... Most serious-minded men at my age, I believe, become profoundly impressed with the futility of "it all." Unless we throw ourselves into something outside of our own personality, life is apt to impress us as a great mockery. I am afraid that at the bottom of it there lies ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... sure, Georges comes occasionally, but he always arrives very late, just in time for dinner, and is off again with my father in the morning before I am awake. And then he is a serious-minded man now, is Monsieur Georges. He works at the factory, and business cares often bring frowns to ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... guest of his house with the noble manner which comes to every serious-minded man who deals habitually in the high matters of life and death. I made his introductions to the Lady Ysolinde, and as readily and gracefully he returned his acknowledgments. For the rest I allowed Master Gerard's daughter ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... sailing in this world. There was a jack-tar once to England who had been absent on a whaling voyage for nearly three years, and he had hardly landed when he was ordered off to sea again, before he had time to go home and see his friends. He was a lamentin' this to a shipmate of his, a serious-minded man, like you. ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... outgrew the country schools, just as he outgrew his clothes. He was a hardworking, serious-minded, intelligent boy. Then the girls, both bright, reached the next to the last grade in the country school. And Tom Jennings and Martha Jennings his wife determined that each of them should have a college education. So Tom worked very hard and Martha saved ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... half-breed driver, who declared that last year a red-fox on the Slave stole a decoy duck and hunted with it for three seasons at the river-lip, placing it among the sedges and pouncing on the lured game. He was a serious-minded saturnine Scots-Slavi and told the story without moving ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron |
