"Soberness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thinkers—Carlyle, Quinet, John Sterling, Arthur Clough, Tyndall, Herman Grimm—words concerning Emerson glowing as those of Margaret Fuller, Hawthorne, Curtis, Lowell, and other American authors; but if such tributes from individual minds are universally felt in America alone, to be simplest truth and soberness, it is because Emerson cannot be seen detached from the cumulative tendencies summed up in him, and from the indefinable revolution in which they found, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... As she looked she drew one hand wearily across her forehead, tucking back a vagrant strand of dusky hair. MacRae watched her a moment. The quick, pleased smile that leaped to his face faded to soberness. ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... beyond a doubt that sixteen men were certainly he. It was somewhat tantalizing that at least half of these men, when accused of the crime, openly avowed their guilt and said they would do it again. Prescott, who was left out of all these calculations, owing to the gravity and soberness of his nature, read the accounts with mingled amusement and vexation. There was nothing in any of them by which he could be identified, and he decided not to inquire how the story reached the newspapers, being satisfied in his own mind ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... an endurance against disease that does not belong to any other portion of the civilized communities amongst which its members dwell. We do not have far to go to find many causes for this high vitality. The causes are simply summed up in the term "soberness of life." The Jew drinks less than the Christian; he takes, as a rule, better food; he marries earlier; he rears the children he has brought into the world with greater personal care; he tends the aged more thoughtfully; he ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... incident in the life of the greatest of apostolic missionaries. It was in the presence of Festus and Agrippa that Paul had poured forth those few burning utterances which to Festus seemed like madness, but which Paul himself declared to be words of truth and soberness. Then it was that the Jewish prince, Agrippa—far better instructed and seeing deeper into Paul's mind than the heathen Festus, yet still unconvinced—broke in upon the conversation with the words which in the English translation ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... loneliness Sandy accepted an invitation to go with Josh and have a drink,—a single drink. When Sandy was going home about eleven o'clock, three sheets in the wind, such was the potent effect of the single drink and those which had followed it, he was scared almost into soberness by a remarkable apparition. As it seemed to Sandy, he saw himself hurrying along in front of himself toward the house. Possibly the muddled condition of Sandy's intellect had so affected his judgment ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... say concerning the style of Rashi's Responsa. In the setting forth and the discussion of the questions under consideration, his usual qualities are present - precision, clearness, soberness of judgment. But the preambles - sometimes a bit prolix - are written after the fashion prevailing among the rabbis of the time, in a complicated, pretentious style, often affecting the form of rhymed prose and always in a poetic jargon. With this exception, the Responsa ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... embracing different pursuits and professions, educated in different parts of the world, and drawn together by grand national events,—statesmen born in the age when liberty had its first grand revival, and was guarded by soberness of thought, and tried by every variety and extent of sacrifice—by men who had no professional, exclusive interest to provide for, but who expected to fight and die for their convictions, who sought only to lay the foundation ...
— Government and Rebellion • E. E. Adams
... that the more extreme the opinions, the warmer was their reception by these representative Liberals. They would hardly listen to their old leaders, who had grown grey in fighting the battles of Liberalism. They treated with contumely any words of soberness or moderation. They applauded even speakers who were palpably selfish and insincere. As I listened to that debate, my eyes were opened, and I realised the fact that a great revolution had been suddenly and silently wrought, and ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... millions should everlastingly perish because they make light of their Savior and salvation, and prefer the vain world and their lusts before them. I have delivered my message, the Lord open your hearts to receive it. I have persuaded you with the word of truth and soberness; the Lord persuade you more effectually, or else all this ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... publicity being, according to their republican notions, essential to the completeness of every important transaction.' Thus the Chorus represented idealised public opinion: not of course, the shifting, hasty public opinion of the moment—to that it was a conservative check, and it calmed to soberness and charity—for it was the matured public opinion of centuries; the experience, and usually the sad experience, of many generations; the very spirit ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... of the sun and hear The voice of Jesus saying to him 'Saul,' Why persecutest thou me?' And did not Festus, Before whom Paul stood speaking for himself, Call Paul a mad man? Even while he spake Such words as none but men inspired can speak, As well as words of truth and soberness, Such ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... evenly his mood of irresponsible insouciance that the soberness with which he announced that it was his sister who was to join them at dinner sent Archie's thoughts darting away at a new tangent of speculation. He had so accommodated himself to the idea that the Governor was a man without ties, or ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... brought round to knowledge which no syllogism would have conveyed to him. His own experience is so vivid, he is so superlatively conscious of himself, that if, day after day, he is allowed to hector and hear nothing but approving echoes, he will lose his hold on the soberness of things and take himself in earnest for a god. Talk might be to such an one the very way of moral ruin; the school where he might learn to be ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... voice—Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad." [140:2] But the apostle's self-possession was in nowise shaken by this blunt charge. "I am not mad, most noble Festus," he replied, "but speak forth the words of truth and soberness;" and then, turning to the royal stranger, vigorously pressed home his argument. "King Agrippa," he exclaimed, "believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest." [140:3] The King, thus challenged, was a libertine; and at this very time was believed to be living ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... cackle about books," said Jephson; "these columns of criticism to every line of writing; these endless books about books; these shrill praises and shrill denunciations; this silly worship of novelist Tom; this silly hate of poet Dick; this silly squabbling over playwright Harry. There is no soberness, no sense in it all. One would think, to listen to the High Priests of Culture, that man was made for literature, not literature for man. Thought existed before the Printing Press; and the men who wrote the best ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... southeastward corner and led away to the trader's store, south of the post. Tradition had it that the track was worn by night raiders, bearing contraband fluids from store to barracks in the days before such traffic was killed by that common sense promoter of temperance, soberness and chastity—the post exchange. Along that bluff line, from the storehouse toward the hospital, invisible, doubtless, from either building or from the bluff itself, but thrown in sharp relief against that rectangular inlet of starry sky, two black figures, crouching and bearing ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... which they will never obtain, and that is, happiness independent of God. Some tell us that they mean to make the most of life, and to be happy while they live; therefore, begone, reflection! religion is not for the spring-tide of youth; mirth and merry days are for the young; soberness and the russet garb of autumn belong to the decline of life, which certainly to them, they think, is far off;—as though every material necessary for their last, long sleep, may not at this moment be in the ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... thing in the world. Against this Shelley fought with all his might; his error was to hate it so intensely as to fail to see the few grains of gold, the few principles of kindness, of honesty, of consideration, of soberness, that it contains. He paid dearly for his error, in the consciousness of the contempt and infamy which were heaped upon his quivering spirit. But he did undoubtedly love truth, beauty, and purity. One has to get on the right side of his ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... soberness began to sit on all. The wide reaches of desert with which they here were in touch appalled their hearts more than anything they yet had met. The grassy valley of the Platte, where the great fourfold tracks of the trail cut through a waving sea of green belly deep to the oxen, had seemed easy ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... Bushie, regarding his black chum with great soberness, "didn't you tell me if ever I saw a painter I must skeer him away by ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... Nevertheless, Jean saw in an absent-minded way that Mlle. Fouchette, for whom he had never entertained even that casual respect accorded by the Anglo-Saxon to womanhood in general, spoke the words of sense and soberness. His intolerant nature, that would never have brooked such freedom from a friend, allowed everything from one who was too insignificant to excite resentment or even reply. In the same fashion Jean was touched ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... gold; and as many of the leaves as the said Smith hath translated, we did handle with our hands; and we also saw the engravings there-on, all of which has the appearance of ancient work and of curious workmanship. And this we bear record with words of soberness, that the said Smith has shewn unto us, for we have seen and hefted, and know of a surety that the said Smith hath got the plates of which we have spoken. And we give our names unto the world, to witness that which we have seen, and we lie not, God bearing ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... surrendered her State sovereignty to the central Government, and consented that that central Government should have the power to coerce a State. But, if this power does not exist, if this sovereignty has not been surrendered, then, who can deny the words of soberness and truth spoken by your candidate this evening, when he has pleaded to you the cause of State independence, and the right of every community to be judge of its own domestic affairs? This is all we have ever asked—we of the South, I mean—for I stand before you as one of those who have ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... sportive undine, who wreaths the unmanageable stone into weird and quaint forms, seemingly from no other motive than pure delight in the exercise of overflowing power. Everything is playful, airy, and fantastic; there is no spirit of soberness; no reference to any ulterior end; nothing from which food, fuel, or raiment can be extracted. These chasms have been scooped out, and these pillars have been reared, in the spirit in which the bird sings, or the kitten plays with ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... country in quarrels alike endless and aimless; and all this with a labouring after melodramatic stage effect, and a regardlessness of consequences perfectly unprecedented." We were, in the words of truth and soberness, fast losing our moral ascendency in Europe—by a series of querulous, petty, officious, needless, undignified interpositions; by the exhibition of a vacillating and short-sighted policy; by appearing (novel position for Great Britain) "willing to wound, but yet afraid to strike;" by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... am speaking words of soberness," said he, with an earnestness which carried conviction even to those wild spirits. "I tell you that I have an inward confidence that I shall win this prize which was proclaimed to-day, that my name will be associated with the proudest fame ever reared in Dantzic. Oh, the nights and ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... edifying; and so may be passed over: but, as a certain great philosopher told us, in very humble and simple words, that we are not to expect to gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles, we may, at least, demand, in all persons assuming the character of moralist or philosopher—order, soberness, and regularity of life; for we are apt to distrust the intellect that we fancy can be swayed by circumstance or passion; and we know how circumstance and passion WILL sway the intellect: how mortified vanity will form excuses for itself; and how temper turns ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... perfect reasonableness of this Restraint, soberness, the matured thought, the unselfish a act, they are necessities of the barbarous state, the life of dangers. Dourness is man's tribute to unconquered nature. But man has conquered nature now for all practical purposes—his political affairs are managed ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... then, for the King's availe, Was in his stead then set by ordinance, For which the Prince and he fell at distance. With whom the King took part, in great sickness, Again[st] the Prince with all his excellence. But with a rety of lords and soberness The Prince came into his magnificence Obey, and hole with all benevolence Unto the King, and fully were accord Of all matters of which ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... quickly, and for a single swiftly passing instant the velvety eyes were deep wells of soberness with an indefinable underdepth of sorrow in them. Griswold had a sudden conviction that for the first time in his knowing of her he was looking into the soul of the real ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... scene. Like your jug of cold water among the wine-flasks, it leaves you unelated among the elated ones. No, no. This austerity won't do. Let me tell you too—en confiance—that while revelry may not always merge into ebriety, soberness, in too deep potations, may become a sort of sottishness. Which sober sottishness, in my way of thinking, is only to be cured by beginning at the other end of the horn, to ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... bell and filling the rocks with gentle melodies. You can trace the lines of these cattle paths, running like threads all along the sides of the mountains. We went in the same road that we had gone in the morning. How different it seemed, in the soberness of this afternoon light, from its aspect under the clear, crisp, sharp ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sight, That great barking dogs do not most bite. And oft it is seen that the best men in the host Be not such that use to brag most. If ye will avoid the danger of confusion, Print my words in heart, and mark this conclusion: Such gifts of God, that ye excel in most, Use them with soberness, and yourself never boast; Seek the laud of God in all that ye do: So shall virtue and honour come you to. But if you give your minds to the sin of pride, Vanish shall your virtue, your honour away will slide. For pride is hated of God above, And meekness soonest obtaineth ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... secret motives, the tour was projected as a scheme of amusement, and the details were discussed between Charles and Rashe with great animation, making the soberness of Hiltonbury appear both tedious and sombre, though all the time Lucy felt that there she should again meet that which her heart both feared and yearned for, and without which these pleasures would be but shadows of ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... phenomenon never ceased to surprise her; she could not recollect that she had been tired before, and this must be the end of all things. She would fly to the country; to Dorsetshire, to Norfolk, to Haslemere, to what she called "the soberness of Ascot." Then would come letters describing the bliss of rural calm. "Here I am! Just in time to save my life. For the future, no clothes and early hours." That lasted a very short while. Then a letter signed ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... humour possesseth him of spurning at piety and soberness; he inconsiderately followeth a herd of wild fops, he affecteth to play the ape. What more than this can ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... his best biography. While working with his hands, Jacob Behmen's whole life was spent in the deepest and the most original thought; in piercing visions of GOD and of nature; in prayer, in praise, and in love to GOD and man. Of Jacob Behmen it may be said with the utmost truth and soberness that he lived and moved and had his being in GOD. Jacob Behmen has no biography because his whole life was hid with CHRIST ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... I am not mad, most noble Festus; but utter words of truth and soberness. (26)For the king knows well concerning these things, to whom also I speak boldly; for I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden from him; for this has not been done in a corner. (27)King Agrippa, believest thou the prophets? I know that ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various |
