"Sobriety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... farewell, but it was some time before the waggon was under way, for the carter and one of the smiths were missing, and were only at noon found in an alehouse, both very far gone in liquor, and one with a black eye. Kit discoursed on sobriety in the most edifying manner, as at last he drove heavily along the street, almost the last in the baggage train of the king and queens—but still in time to be so included in it so as to save all difficulty at the gates. It was, however, very late in the evening ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... cherished enjoyment of all is drinking: Men, women, and children indulge, the last two sparingly. In Manboland the fame of a banquet is in direct proportion to the number of those who became drunk, sobriety being considered effeminate, and a refusal to drink ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... The sobriety and accuracy of Chinese historians is proverbial. I have dilated upon this in another work, and need add here only what I inadvertently omitted there—a point hitherto unnoticed or at least unremarked—that the very word for history in Chinese (shih) means impartiality ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... sounding, calls all that are found in The Fallow to come to the Feast, Let's guard 'gainst satiety—eat with sobriety— So shall our joys be increased. Soberly, soberly, soberly, O! We'll eat what ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... the picture in a puzzled way as if to make sure that the thing he felt—and the thing he didn't feel—were indubitably real, and then he rose with a curious sense of lightness and yet sobriety, and, straightening his shoulders as if a burden had fallen from them, he retraced his steps towards ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... history, as if they were bodiless and soulless creatures of pen and ink; mere names, not things. Picturesqueness he sternly avoids as the Delilah of the philosophic mind, liveliness as a snare of the careless investigator; and so, stopping both ears, he slips safely by those Sirens, keeping safe that sobriety of style which his fellow-men call by another name. Unhappy books, which we know by heart before we read them, and which a mysterious superstition yet compels many unoffending persons to read! What has not the benevolent reader had to suffer at the hands of the so-called impartial historian, ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Newmarket the night before, arrayed himself in spotless checks and walked to an eminence to see his half of the filly take her final canter: If she won he would be a cool three thou. in pocket—a poor enough recompense for the sobriety and patience of these weeks of hope, while they had been nursing her for this race. But he had not been able to afford more. Should he 'lay it off' at the eight to one to which she had advanced? This ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... other place would please me so well as the village of W, the home of my childhood and youth, and where my dear father is buried." He soon after made a journey to W, and was so much pleased with the thriving appearance of the village, and the industry and sobriety of the inhabitants, that he decided to seek there a home. Before he left his home, his wife requested him, should he decide upon removing to W, if possible to re-purchase their old home, knowing how much this would please her now aged mother. The purchase was soon completed, and ere he left ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... small, elastic, swarthy man, with an aspect as of a disinherited Indian Chief in European clothes. An unvanquishable enthusiasm, intensified to perfect sobriety, couched in his savage, self-possessed eye. He was elegantly and somewhat extravagantly dressed as a civilian; he carried himself with a rustic, barbaric jauntiness, strangely dashed with a superinduced touch of the Parisian salon. His tawny cheek, like a date, spoke of the tropic, ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... condition of servitude. So Johnny yielded the right of way. He lowered his little snub nose by a few degrees, took some of the gay smile out of his twinkling blue eyes, and waited with an upward glance of friendly yet deferential sobriety until Raymond ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... gatherings, and made them a scene of attraction for the entire nation. Thither the young and old of both sexes were accustomed to resort, and, assembled at their national forum, listened with profound attention and silence to each word spoken by their orators. "The unvarying courtesy, sobriety and dignity of their convocations led one of their learned Jesuit historians to liken them to the Roman Senate." [Footnote: W. C. Bryant's speech before the Buffalo Historical Society on the occasion of the re- interment of Red ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... words that never yet disappointed any one; and though tears might often fall that nobody knew of, and she might not be so merry as her friends would have liked to see her; though her cheerfulness was touched with sobriety, they could not complain; for her brow was always unruffled, her voice clear, her ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... we'd swallow them, though," subjoined the parson; "if we did, we'd not be long in a state of decent sobriety." ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the most part does not; and it happens to display exactly the characteristics which are most wanting in criticism, biographical and literary, at the present day. If any one at the outset desires a definition, or at least an enumeration of those characteristics, I should say that they are sobriety of style and reserve of feeling, coupled with delicacy of intellectual appreciation and aesthetic sympathy, a strong and firm creed in matters political and literary, not excluding that catholicity of judgment which ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... elderly gentleman, with white hair and mustache, and bowed somewhat with years. Short of breath and painfully weak in the legs, he was assisted from the carriage by a colored man, apparently about forty years old, to whom short side-whiskers and spectacles imparted an air of sobriety. This attendant gave his arm respectfully to the old gentleman, who leaned upon it heavily, but with as little appearance of dependence as possible. The servant, assuming a similar unconsciousness of the weight resting upon his arm, assisted the old gentleman ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... that Gravity, Preciseness, Solemnity, Sourness, formal Dress and Behaviour, Sobriety of Manners, keeping at a distance from the common Pastimes of the World, Aversion to Rites and Ceremonies in the publick Worship, and to Pictures, Images, and Musick in Churches; mixing Religion in common Conversion, using long Graces, practising Family-Worship, part of which ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... commission with which you honoured me, to engage, in the desired scrutiny, the wife of a 'particular friend,' who liveth almost over-against the house where she lodgeth, and who is a gentlewoman of 'character,' and 'sobriety,' a 'mother of children,' and one who ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... saying of Plato's that no one misses the truth by his own goodwill. The same may be said of honesty, sobriety, good nature, and the like. Remember this, for it will help ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... had done, and to reduce their examples to precepts. Aristides had been just before Socrates defined justice; Leonidas had given up his life for his country before Socrates declared patriotism to be a duty; the Spartans were a sober people before Socrates recommended sobriety; before he had even defined virtue Greece ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... then, of the whole matter is that scientific and literary fortunes are, like money fortunes, made more by saving than in any other way—more through the exercise of the common vulgar essentials, such as sobriety and straightforwardness, than by the more showy enterprises that when they happen to succeed are called genius and when they fail, folly. The streets are full of sovereigns crying aloud for some one to come and pick them up, only ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... their lives in the middle of a profound solitude. A little patch of Indian corn which they cultivate,—a few head of cattle, which, fed upon the perfumed pastures of the plains, produce beef of an exquisite flavour,— a sky always clear,—and, above all, a wonderful sobriety of living,— enable these dwellers of the desert steppes of Sonora to live, if not in a state of luxury, at least free from all fear of want. What desires need trouble a man who sees a blue sky always over his head, and who finds in the smoke of a cigarette of his own making, a resource against all ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... its founder. He was born at Mecca, a city of Arabia, in 571; and died in 631, at Medina, a city situated between Arabia Felix and Arabia Deserta. His creed maintains that there is but one God, and that Mahomed is his Prophet; it enjoins the observance of prayers, washings, almsgiving, fasting, sobriety, pilgrimage to Mecca, &c. ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... while to see Nettie's smile. She was not a child very given to expressing her feelings, and when pleasure reached that point with her, it was something to see such a breaking of light upon a face that generally dwelt in twilight sobriety. Her father drew her close, close within his arms; and without one word Nettie sat there, till, for very happiness and weariness, she fell asleep; and he carried her to ...
— The Carpenter's Daughter • Anna Bartlett Warner
... statement on his lips (his vocabulary was scant and stiff, the vocabulary of pleading explanation, often found too complicated by the witty,) retired once more to his room sometimes indeed for hours, to think it all over again; but had never failed of sobriety or propriety or punctuality or regularity, never failed of one of the virtues his imputed indifference to which had been the ground of his discipline. It was very extraordinary, and of all the stories I know ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... what a savage Indian is. What is a civilized Indian?—what a semi-civilized Indian? To what degree of industry, frugality, and sobriety can the Indian be brought? How well does he repay efforts and expenditures for his enlightenment and his advancement in the arts of life? How far does he hold his own when once fairly started on his course by the ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... teeth on every kind of prey. The drunken cobbler dies, of course: but spotless cleanliness and sobriety does not save the mother of seven children, who has been soaking her brick floor daily with water from a poisoned well, defiling where she meant to clean. Youth does not save the buxom lass, who has been filling herself, as girls will do, with unripe fruit: nor innocence ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... strength, for my mother and myself. To divide all my earnings into four parts—one for my daily expenses, one for my creditors, one for my friends, and one for my mother. To keep to principles of strict sobriety, and to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... opulent, so decorous, so entirely without grimace, so entirely without forced affectation of genius [forcirtes Genialthun], so entirely without that boastful boorishness which badly conceals the inner pusillanimity...He enchants by balsamic euphony, by sobriety and gentleness....There is only one I prefer. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... later to prove so damaging to the colony, was beginning to be felt. A new ordinance now prohibited the practice of going into the woods with liquor to meet the Indians and trade with them. This ordinance also enjoined sobriety upon the Indians and held them responsible for the drunkenness of their squaws, while the French were forbidden to drink with them. Hunting in the forest was only allowed by leave of the commandant ...
— The Great Intendant - A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672 • Thomas Chapais
... herself back to normal respiration. The relict of a leather-lunged Free Methodist preacher, she affected a garb of ostentatious simplicity. No godless pleats or tucks or gores or ruffles or sinful abominations of braid defaced the chaste sobriety of her black gown; buttons were tolerated merely as buttons, without vain thought of ornament; and the strange little bonnet, which she perched above hair whose natural coquetry of curl was austerely sleeked away, was of a composition so harshly ugly that more worldly-minded ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... opinions, on an impressionable lady awakening to curiosities? He was just a dunderhead, like any one of us—just as much as the most eminent feminine psychologist alive—which is saying a good deal. So he drove away disappointed, the sobriety of the chestnut's return trot through Morebury contrasting oddly with the dashing clatter of ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... himself that two years would not elapse before the Chinese and Japanese—sober, industrious, and excellent people—would be attracted there to settle. It was only a short voyage across the Pacific Ocean. Millions of those starving workmen who, in point of sobriety, industry, and capacity, were among the best in the world—workmen from every isle in the Pacific—men able to outwork the English, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... could get "fresh," as we call it, when in good company and excited by wit and mirth; but I never went to the length of being drunk; and, as I advanced in years, pride and cunning made me still more guarded. I perceived the immense advantage which sobriety gave me over a drunkard, and I failed not to ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... palfreys, muffled in their long black garments, and only relieved by their white scapularies, showing more like a funeral procession than aught else, and not quickening their pace beyond that which permitted easy conversation and easy digestion. The sobriety of the scene was indeed somewhat enlivened by the presence of Sir Piercie Shafton, who, to show that his skill in the manege was not inferior to his other accomplishments, kept alternately pressing and checking his gay courser, forcing him to piaffe, to caracole, to passage, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... One, who subdued all worldly desires; who lived an unselfish life, practiced the golden rule, harmed no living thing, and attained the highest aim of the soul, right knowledge, right conduct, temperance, sobriety, ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... little—with which to keep along a few days, on which he got drunk immediately, and did fall into the hands of the police, and was sent to jail as before. This, in fact, was his regular round: into jail, out of jail; a little spell of sobriety, "an accidental fall", which occurred as soon as he could get a drop of liquor, and into jail again for thirty or sixty days, according to the degree of resistance he gave the police—who always, by their own account, simply tried to get him to ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... generally adopted, would soon raise the price of labour by narrowing its supply, and those practising it would save money and acquire habits of sobriety, industry, and economy such as should ensure happy married life. Further, postponement of marriage would give both sexes a better opportunity to choose life-partners wisely and well; and the passion, instead of being extinguished by early sensuality, ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... suppressing a laugh during the greater part of Gwen's confidence, but this last announcement startled him into sobriety. A very faint misgiving stirred in his soul. What if—but no; it was preposterous. He thrust ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... drunkenness. Continual moderate drinking keeps the body so constantly under the influence of alcohol that a crowd of nervous difficulties and disorders may be transmitted even more surely than from the parent who has occasional sprees with long intervals of sobriety between. It is not only through the drinking father that injury is done to the children, but the mother may have a vitiated inheritance from her father and ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... it as a mart for his wares. Though it was only the product of a country town, it bore a resemblance to old London city places of business. These were wont to have a Dutch atmosphere of industry and sobriety, together with a fair share of the learning and refinement of the times hanging about them, so that their masters figured as honoured and influential citizens of the metropolis. Belonging to the category were the linen shop of a certain Alexander Pope's father, and the law-stationer's ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... wine—unless it were very sweet port—he cared little; but in the privacy of his own room, whilst smoking numberless pipes of rank tobacco, he indulged freely in spirits. The habit was unknown to his children, but for some years he had seldom gone to bed in a condition that merited the name of sobriety. ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... weren't afraid of what our wives would say about the $124 each had spent for the togs. At times our attitude toward our wives was not unlike that of drunken rabbits hunting brazenly for the dogs! But when we slipped into citizen clothes, sobriety and remorse covered us, and we shook sad heads. We wore the uniforms little about Paris; for our Sam Browne belts kept us returning salutes until our arms hurt. They couldn't break me of the habit of saluting with a newspaper or a package ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... than disposed to yield, to sudden impulse; a character, not of enthusiasm, but of duty; a mind, which, instead of increasing, by example and sympathy, any defects of your own—pardon the expression—should correct or compensate these by opposite qualities? And supposing that, with such sobriety and strength of character as I have described, there should be connected a certain slowness, formality, and coldness of manner, which might not at first be attractive to a man of your vivacity, let not this repel you: when once you have learned to consider ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... in the shimmer of the glad gold in this Eden, with a mingling of delicacy and significance which had in it something ethereal and mysterious, a hint of fairy-land. Far off, rising calmly in an immense slope, a slope that was classical in its dignity, profound in its sobriety, remote, yet neither cold nor sad, Etna soared towards the heaven, sending from its summit, on which the snows still lingered, a steady plume of ivory smoke. In the nearer foreground, upon a jagged crest of beetling ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... sagacious newspaper yields invaluable material for the historian; and my study of the Republican, from the repeal of the Missouri compromise in 1854 to the present, has heightened my respect for the breadth, sobriety, and moral insight with which it judged the ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... wrestling with the foul grinning devil that sat astride of him—how much more would that have been pitiful! And then, if one could have seen and have realized as the roots from which arose those inner workings, the hopes, the longings for a better life that filled his heart during the intervals of sobriety, if one could have sensed but one pang of that hell-thirst that foreran the mortal struggle that followed, as that again foreran the inevitable fall into his kennel of lust, and then, last and greatest, if those righteous neighbors of his who never sinned and never fell ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... the same August light; — the bright bend of the river — a sloop sail or two pushing lazily up; — the same blue of a summer morning overhead; — the little green lawn immediately at her feet, and the everlasting cedars, with their pointed tops and their hues of patient sobriety — all stood nearly as she had left them, how many years before. And herself — Elizabeth felt as if she could have laid herself down on the doorstep and died, for mere heart-heaviness. In this bright sunny world, what had she to do? The sun had gone out of her heart. ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... do business must above all be men of agreeable manners. In these countries many quite unworthy people have these: so a good man who lacks them is likely to be badly misjudged. They should have sympathetic personality and sufficient education, besides being men of sobriety and good character, and should be able to speak the language ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... effects in a recitative, but in this specimen it ought to be noted how sluggishly the disgruntled Leporello replies to the brisk question of Don Giovanni, how correct is the rhetorical pause in "you, or the old one?" and the greater sobriety which comes over the manner of the Don as he thinks of the murder just committed, and ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... to have had a respect for him, her successor still a greater, and Prince Henry greater than his father; the prince so valued our bard, that he made him his first Poet-Pensioner. He was not more celebrated for his poetry, than his extraordinary private virtues, his sobriety and sincere attachment to the duties of religion. He was also remarkable for his fortitude and resolution in combating adversity: we are further told that he was perfectly acquainted with the French, Italian, Latin, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... table-talk, his prejudices, against Baptists, his sweet nature, his views of style, a story of his. Wildbore, a vernacular one, how to escape. Wilkes, Captain, borrows rashly. Wind, the, a good Samaritan. Wingfield, his 'Memorial'. Wooden leg, remarkable for sobriety, never eats pudding. Woods, the. See Belmont. Works, covenants of, condemned. World, this, its unhappy temper. Wright, Colonel, providentially rescued. Writing, dangerous to reputation. Wrong, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... suddenly came to his senses and grabbed at him. The clutching hand fell short, and there was an agile foot-race down the corridor, fruitless for Kenneth, since the fugitive suddenly developed sobriety enough to run like a deer. Beaten in the foot-race, Kenneth went back for ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... a man of taste, for though he affected sobriety he had the choicest wines and the most delicious dishes on the table. A splendid salmon-trout was brought, which made him smile with pleasure, and seasoning the good fare with a jest, he said in Latin that we must taste it as it was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... seen him, but I know that he bears a splendid reputation for manliness, sobriety, and studiousness. He was something of a bookworm at college, I believe, and has developed a taste for literature. You see, I have heard much of him. Oh, I am sure something has happened to him, some misfortune! You see, ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... greater number, I fear, fall under the temptations of the prevailing immorality, and habits of drinking, not to be indulged with impunity in such a climate, hurry multitudes of them to speedy graves. What little sobriety and desire of improvement exists among the young men is chiefly confined, I ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... have been many and bitter. They have attacked his honesty, his sobriety, his intelligence, and his judgment, but very few of them have hitherto denied that he has a keen instinct for political strife. Only of late has this gift been doubted, but now eminent politicians question whether he did not make a capital ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... I was conscious of what I owed him. He was as mild as contrition and as copious as faith; he was never so fine as on a shy return, and even better at forgiving than at being forgiven. I dare say it was a smaller matter than that famous night at Wimbledon, the night of the problematical sobriety and of Miss Anvoy's initiation; but I was as much in it on this occasion as I had been out of it then. At about 1.30 ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... is life there is hope," answered the physician, with the compassionate air that had grown habitual, like his black frock-coat and general sobriety of attire. "I have seen wonderful recoveries—or rather a wonderful prolongation of life, for cure is, of course, impossible—in cases ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... restrained by the carefulness and sobriety of his speech, and also Odysseus had no private motive of anger but only spoke out on behalf of Greece,[448] whereas Achilles seemed rather vexed on his own account. And Achilles himself, though not sweet-tempered or mild of mood, but "a terrible man, and one ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... passes on calmly, its voices subdued to a lower and softened tone, as if fearful of breaking the repose of the day of rest. A stranger fresh from the gayly spent Sabbaths of the continent of Europe would be undoubtedly amazed at the decorum and sobriety of these ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... when called upon, showing their good-will sometimes in visiting the sick and needy, sometimes in engaging in the work of teaching, or accompanying the preachers when advisable, and bound by their engagement to set an example of sobriety and seriousness in their ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... Enjoyment League, or the Society of Art-Dodgers, or some such name. He even thought the houses should be painted in bright attractive colours. I pointed out to him that they should be uninviting and dull in appearance, and that a uniform sobriety, a suggestion of yearning and uplift, in every feature of the company's appeal would not only allow thousands of hypocrites, like Angela, to seek relief at our doors, but would actually confer on people like Hewetson and me a stamp ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... when our Griefs repair for Ease, The Remedy proves worse than the Disease. Where Reason we must lose to keep the Round, And drinking others Health's, our own confound: Whilst TEA, our Sorrows to beguile, Sobriety and Mirth does reconcile: For to this Nectar we the Blessing owe, To grow more Wise, as we ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... having experience of sheep and cattle and agricultural work from their earliest infancy; having, in fact, all the qualities most essential and useful to the pioneer farmer. They come of the right race, too, as all the world knows—colonists especially—for honesty, sobriety, and patient industry. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... Mr. Ware could fix upon a voyage. In the mean time Ricker remained on board as master of the brig; and for several days after our arrival in port his habits were correct and his conduct without reproach. Gradually, however, he strayed from the paths of sobriety. He was of a social turn; frank, honest cheerful, and liberal-minded. He possessed other valuable traits of character; was a good sailor and a skilful navigator, but he could not resist the fascinations of the ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... strong or weak in electing to go straight to perdition when Life had scourged him, he neither knew nor cared. He began to drink on the steamer, determined to forget for the present, at least; but the mental condition induced was far more agreeable than those moments of sobriety when he felt as if he were in hell with fire in his vitals and cold terror of the future in his brain. In New York, driven by his pride, he had made one or two attempts to recover himself, but the writing of unsigned editorials on subjects that interested him not at ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... light is not the way to make us hate it as we ought to do. Our Saviour never made light or a jest of sin; and I believe that the man who mimicked a drunkard and a hypocritical preacher had no love for either sobriety or holiness." ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... is changed every year, and the whole force is changed every two years, so that there is no continuity of policy at the post, and an administration that has grown familiar with conditions and that stands so far as it can for clean living and sobriety and decency and the protection of the native people, may be followed by one that is loftily ignorant of the situation, careless about offences against morality, and impatient ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... sloshing around over so wide a field, Mr. Talmage gave his hearers his truly valuable opinion of Mohammedanism. He admitted that it is a religion of cleanliness, sobriety and devotion; but the fact that its founder had four wives caused him to sweat in agony. Polygamy, according to Mr. Talmage, "blights everything it touches." Those who practice it are, he is quite sure, the enemies of womankind. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... courtesy are universal. An Italian crowd is always the best-behaved crowd in the world—partly, I take it, from the natural patience of the people, and the fact that nobody is ever in a hurry to move from the place in which he may happen to be; and partly as a consequence of the general sobriety. Even on such a night of saturnalia as this of the Befana very little drunkenness is to be seen. Although the crowd is so dense that every one's shoulder is closely pressed against that of his neighbor, there is a great deal of dancing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... master, just a plain fool; and there is hope of thee for that reason. Embrace me, brother, and taste this; but not too much,—it will intoxicate thee with sobriety. ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... on the whole sober and industrious; but when he breaks away from sobriety and industry he becomes a vicious element in the general organism. Yet his vices are of the surface, and do not destroy the foundations of his social and domestic scheme. A French Canadian pony ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... noise and interruptions. Otherwise, nothing disturbed the even current of an existence dedicated to solving questions of art. Albani mixed more freely in the world than Domenichino, enjoyed the pleasures of the table and of sumptuous living, but with Italian sobriety, and expatiated in those spheres of literature which supplied him with motives for his coldly sensual pictures. Yet he maintained the credit of a thoroughly domestic, soundly natured, and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... argument it was hard to determine whether she was more grieved at not having had stronger potations than pop on that fatal occasion, or at the implied aspersions upon her character for sobriety. Looking up, I saw that she was in one of the truck-teams. She had her one hand and arm strained against the rear of the sodden load, which she was urging forward with her hip. The load happened to be for our table, and as we dumped it out I asked her if there wasn't ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... there must be an end of Confidence between us, so far as that was concerned, and I would so far trouble myself about him no more. But when I came to reflect that this was but an outbreak among old friends, on an old occasion, after (I do believe) months of sobriety; that there was no concealment about it; and that though obstinate at first as to how little drunk, etc., he was very repentant afterwards—I cannot let this one flaw weigh against the general good of ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... intellectual conclusions they were not dissimilar. The views about the common people which Sir William Berkeley expressed with stupid brutality, they stated with punctual elegance. They were well mated for the purpose in hand, and they performed it with due deliberation and sobriety. It was not until five years after the grant was made that the constitution was written and sealed. It achieved an instantaneous success in England, much as a brilliant novel might, in our time; and the authors were enthusiastically belauded. The proprietors —Albemarle, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... at his friend's vehemence. He sympathised with it, but had an unyouthful sobriety in ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... Beginning as an ordinary mechanic, he applied himself diligently and conscientiously to his work, and gradually became trusted. More responsible duties were confided to him, and he strove to perform them to the best of his power. His industry, skilfulness, and steady sobriety, soon marked him for promotion, and he rose from grade to grade until he became Boulton and Watt's most trusted co-worker and adviser in all their mechanical ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... life is but intoxication;" and Selina, who during her brief inebriation had lived in an ecstasy as golden as our drab existence affords, had to experience the inevitable bitterness of awakening sobriety, when the dying down of the flames into sullen embers coincided with the frenzied entrance of Aunt Eliza on the scene. It was not so much that she was at once and forever disrated, broke, sent before the mast, and branded as one on whom no reliance could be placed, even with Edward ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... recognition of the wise laws she had given mankind. For many days before the solemn event, the women of high birth (who alone were entitled to celebrate it) had to abstain from all pleasures that appealed to the senses, even the most legitimate, and to live with the greatest sobriety. The presiding priest at the Thesmophoria was always chosen from the sacerdotal family of the Eumolpidae, the descendants of Eumolpus, the son of Posidon. At these feasts, the worship of Persephon was associated ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... a bad fellow, but you won't drink. Sobriety disturbs conversation. But when I speak of good and bad..." Philip saw he was taking up the thread of his discourse, "I speak conventionally. I attach no meaning to those words. I refuse to make a hierarchy of human actions and ascribe worthiness to some and ill-repute ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... nodded the orator gravely. After this interim of sobriety the dinner proceeded more and more noisily. The drink affected the different men in different ways. A flush appeared high on the cheek bones of Terry's lean face and an added dignity in his courtly manner. Brannan became louder and more positive. On Blatchford his potations had no appreciable ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... throngs of outwardly "moral" people with corroded hearts. Villages, churches, and all the quieter communities are notorious for this, the peculiarity having formed for a hundred and fifty years the stock-in-trade of novelists. Sobriety and continence being more or less in evidence the assumption is that all the requirements have been fulfilled. The community is "moral" notwithstanding the back-bitings, heart-burnings, slanders, cheatings, envies, hatreds, ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... Order, sobriety, and religion regulated his headquarters. Morning and evening prayers were scrupulously maintained, and the whole appearance of the place indicated that the renowned occupant was ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... feared was apoplexy. Mr. Rotherham had bled the patient, who was already a little better, and an express had been sent for a medical man. As a matter of course, the convives had left the table, and alarm was frightening the servants into sobriety. At Mrs. Dutton's earnest request, Wycherly immediately left the room again, forcing Galleygo out before him, with a view to get more accurate information concerning the baronet's real situation; both the mother and daughter feeling a real affection for Sir Wycherly; the ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... virtue. Those who in Sparta had the charge of the public halls or eating places called Phiditia were wont to bring forth two or three Helots drunken and full of wine, that the young men, seeing what drunkenness was, might learn to keep sobriety. But in human life there are many such examples of vice. For there is not any one sober to virtue; but we all stagger up and down, acting shamefully and living miserably. Thus does reason inebriate us, and with so much trouble ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... told him, speaking of me, that he would make me the darling of the House of Commons, so much he is satisfied concerning me. And this Cocke did tell me that I might give him thanks for it; and I do think it may do me good, for he do happen to be held a considerable person, of a young man, both for sobriety and ability. Then to discourse of business of his own about some hemp of his that is come home to receive it into the King's stores, and then parted, and by and by my wife and I to supper, she not being well, her flux being great upon ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... sensible wife, contributed their share to interest the party, and though they were unusually cheerful and social, there was an elevated tone of sobriety in all they uttered, which had its happy and ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... mothers to eat of, since it is they that continue still in a state of war against us, after they have undergone such miseries as these. And at the same time that he said this, he reflected on the desperate condition these men must be in; nor could he expect that such men could be recovered to sobriety of mind, after they had endured those very sufferings, for the avoiding whereof it only was probable ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... delighted audience shouted back "You're the man we want! Into Parliament you shall go, Davy-bach" and much else. So David restored the five villages to sobriety in life and faith, yet left them with a new enthusiasm kindled. Before he departed on his return to London and the grind of his profession, he had effected another change. Because he had spoken ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... exhorting, comforting, and strengthening him for the dread passage through which it was now too evident his soul must pass to eternity. It was with difficulty and pain, that Stanley could even then so cease to think of Marie, as to prepare himself with fitting sobriety and humility for the fate impending; but the warm sympathy of Father Francis, whose fine feelings had never been blunted by a life of rigid seclusion, won him to listen and to join in his prayers, and, gradually weaning his thoughts from their earthly resting, raised them to that heaven ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... and his eggs broken; moreover, he was apt to linger at stalls of books and broadsheets. As soon as Patience could venture to leave her brother, she was forced to go to market herself; and there was a staidness and sobriety about her demeanour that kept all impertinence at a distance. Poor Patience, she was not at all the laughing rustic beauty that Emlyn would have been at market. She would never have been handsome, and though she was ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... blindless windows, and listening to the distant voice of the reader in the refectory, monotonously exercised upon the "lecture pieuse." Thus must I soon again listen and wander; and this shadow of the future stole with timely sobriety across the radiant present. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Ellesmere at Martindale Castle. In a word, she was self-willed, obstinate, and coquettish as ever, otherwise no ill-disposed person. Her present appearance was that of a woman of the better rank. From the sobriety of the fashion of her dress, and the uniformity of its colours, it was plain she belonged to some sect which condemned superfluous gaiety in attire; but no rules, not those of a nunnery or of a quaker's society, can prevent ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... mothers—could remain through such an exhibition without rising in protest appeared to me an argument against female suffrage. A lady entered, the wife, so the programme informed me, of a Baron! All I can say is that a more vulgar, less prepossessing female I never wish to meet. I even doubted her sobriety. She sat down plump upon the baby. She must have been a woman rising sixteen stone, and for one minute fifteen seconds by my watch the whole house rocked with laughter. That the thing was only a stage property I felt was no excuse. The humour—heaven save the mark—lay ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... "that they are horrible and disgusting principally because women never go to them. All places where women are excluded tend downward to barbarism; but the moment she is introduced, there come in with her courtesy, cleanliness, sobriety, and order. When a man can walk up to the ballot-box with his wife or his sister on his arm, voting-places will be far more agreeable than now, and the polls will not be such bear-gardens that refined men will be constantly tempted to omit their ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... newly released slaves, and some freedmen of several years' standing but without military experience. They were eager to learn, and soon showed the same traits which distinguish the black regiments to-day,—loyalty to their officers and to their colors, sobriety and courage, and a notable pride in the efficiency of their corps. But if ever officers had to "father and mother" their soldiers they were the company officers of these regiments. The captains in particular had to be bankers, secretaries, advisers, and judges for their ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... that she conceived, and for the most part executed, her Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution[A], into which, as she observes, are incorporated most of the observations she had collected for her Letters, and which was written with more sobriety and cheerfulness than the tone in which they had been commenced. In the evening she was accustomed to refresh herself by a walk in a neighbouring wood, from which her old host in vain endeavoured to dissuade her, by recounting divers horrible robberies and murders ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... his compositions, and his ideas were simple as the early songs of France are simple, speaking of everyday things with simple heart and voice, and he painted frankly what he saw in precisely the way he saw it. We, who love richness and sobriety of tone, will never tire of Rousseau's beautiful blacks and greys, and probably no one has excelled them for delicacy of appreciation, and perfection of gradation. It will be long before the landscapes will be forgotten, it will be long before the exquisite ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... no specific intellectual difference (as there is actually none), is there any practical and moral difference? I use the two epithets as synonymous; for practical power may exist without acuteness of intellect: but it cannot exist without sobriety, patience, and courage, and sundry other virtues, which are 'moral' in every sense ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley
... throughout the nation in general and the capital in particular. For weeks and months subsequent to his majesty's triumphal entry, the town did not subside from its condition of excitement and revelry to its customary quietude and sobriety. Feasts by day were succeeded by entertainments at night; "and under colour of drinking the king's health," says Bishop Burnet, "there were great ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... stem to stern, ransacked their cargoes, broke open the tea-chests, and, pouring their contents into the sea, made the fishes a dish of tea, which is said to have had the same effect on them as on the rats and mice. This done with perfect coolness and sobriety, the party returned to their homes as orderly and silent as they had come; not the first movement towards a mob or tumult having been made by the people during the ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... these men. "Naruhodo! Has the Shiba Kirido[u]shi matter cropped up?" He hesitated—"The story is a long one, and a foolish one. To weary the honoured ears...." Matsuda Gemba caught him up with impatient gesture. "Answer the question, and truly. Nakagawa Miemon is noted neither for judgment nor sobriety." The man caught up the last phrase as a cue. Eagerly he spoke, the doors of the jail opening wide for exit—"So it is indeed. Wine never benefited man; much less a samurai. Hence, with Kahei and Sakurai Uji, it was decided to forswear wine forever. It was determined to make a pilgrimage ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... frame, while under the influence of this delusion, to account for the monuments discovered in Egypt. The sight of the pyramids, obelisks, colossal statues, and ruined temples, would fill them with such astonishment, that for a time they would be as men spell-bound—wholly incapable of reasoning with sobriety. They might incline at first to refer the construction of such stupendous works to some superhuman powers of the primeval world. A system might be invented resembling that so gravely advanced by, Manetho, who relates that a dynasty of gods originally ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... months while he was studying medicine. We set forth this afternoon in truly democratic fashion on top of a tram, on one of the double-deckers that they have over here, to Angela's great delight. A rather lively party we were, I must admit, despite the sobriety of our errand. ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... was a nursery of virtue. All the inmates were industrious, and cleanly, and happy. Sobriety, neatness, quietness, characterised the whole family. No railings, no idleness, no indulgence of passion, were permitted. Every child, ever young, had its appointed engagements; every hand was busy. Knitting, spinning, reading, writing, mending clothes, making shoes, were by the different ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... superficial. Men are the victims of their own career: it is absolutely impossible that leaders many of whom have indulged in virulence, in slanders, in cruelty, in oppression, should be suddenly credited with strict truthfulness, with sobriety, with respect for the rights of others. Even as it is, landlords are, in Mr. Sexton's eyes, criminals,[130] and he therefore cannot be trusted to act with fairness towards Irish landowners. Mr. Redmond holds that imprisoned dynamiters and other criminals should be released, whether guilty or ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... refused that Calling, exprest himself after this Manner: I can also bear my Testimony in the Presence of God, that tho' I lived in as much Reputation at the University, as any of my Colleagues or Companions, and was well reputed for Sobriety and Honesty, yet I never felt such a Living Sense of God, as when I heard the Servant of the Lord J. de Labadie: Adding, The first Day I heard him, ... it was to me as the Day of my Salvation;... Upon which I forsook the University, ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... exclaimed, with melancholy earnestness, "will you reject this young man? He has an amiable disposition, and high reputation for integrity and sobriety. He is already in easy circumstances, and is in a fair way of soon acquiring a brilliant fortune. He knows that you have a superior mind. He professes great esteem for you, and will be proud of following your advice. You might lead him in any way ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... fickle or hesitating patron, and the qualities he approved are nearly allied to virtue: he appreciated humanity, sobriety, industrious habits, and religious decorum. Respectable men, who did not question or cross his path, might usually calculate on his complaisance. But those who reckoned up his estates; numbered the benefits conferred on ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... Mrs. Besant have all in their own manner condemned non-co-operation conceived in connection with the Khilafat movement. All the three writings naturally discuss many side issues which I shall omit for the time being. I propose to answer two serious objections raised by the writers. The sobriety with which they are stated entitles them to a greater consideration than if they had been given in violent language. In non-co-operation, the writers think, it would be difficult if not impossible ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... dark-faced, surly brute of about fifty. He was hated by nearly every one on board, but as he was a splendid seaman and rigidly exact in the performance of his duties, he was an especial favourite of the captain's, who was never tired of extolling his abilities and sobriety, and holding him up as an example of a British seaman: and Hallam, like his captain, was a firm believer in ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... she was born whom I entirely love, Th' immortal gods her birth-rites forth to grace, Descending from their glorious seat above, They did on her these several virtues place: First Saturn gave to her sobriety, Jove then indued her with comeliness, And Sol with wisdom did her beautify, Mercury with wit and knowledge did her bless, Venus with beauty did all parts bedeck, Luna therewith did modesty combine, Diana chaste all loose desires did check, And like a lamp ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... Chatham, in the House of Lords, were in defence of his conduct on this occasion. He spoke with a calmness, sobriety, and dignity, well suited to the audience which he was addressing. A subsequent speech which he made on the same subject was less successful. He bade defiance to aristocratical connections, with a superciliousness to which the Peers were not accustomed, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... smile curved Bazarov's lips. 'Well, as regards the Mir,' he commented; 'you had better talk to your brother. He has seen by now, I should fancy, what sort of thing the Mir is in fact—its common guarantee, its sobriety, and other ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... contemporary references to the sobriety and morality of the colonists. The New York Tribune correspondent in 1857 was able to report that liquor was neither made nor sold in the colony and that drunkenness was unknown. There was no illegitimacy and there had been but one arrest for violation of the Canadian ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... finishing his mutton, and pushing his plate from him, "my two young friends—for Carlton is not much older than Mr. Sheffield—may you learn a little more judgment. When you have lived to my age" (viz. two or three years beyond Carlton's) "you will learn sobriety in all things. Mr. Reding, another glass of wine. See that poor child, how she totters under the gooseberry-pudding; up, Mr. Sheffield, and help her. The old woman cooks better than I had expected. ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... were too aristocratic and his preference for centralization was too pronounced to carry conviction to his hearers. The leading part in the convention fell, therefore, to James Madison, a young man somewhat less brilliant than Hamilton, but superior to him in sobriety and balance of powers. Madison used to be called the "Father of the Constitution," and it is true that the government under which we live is more his work than that of any other one man. From early ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... you, merry matron," Bardon answered, as soberly as he could, for indeed the sight of Mistress Satchell in her Sunday best and in her most coming-on humor was not of a nature to strengthen sobriety. Lord Fawley gasped as the virago swaggered towards his companions, and young Ingrow popped his handkerchief into his mouth and bit at it while he stared with eyes of nursery wonder at the dame. Radlett winked as if dazzled by the whimsical apparition, and Sir Rufus, familiar with ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... longing, a boat was rapidly pushed away from the larger craft, and the swift flash and fall of the oars kept time to the pulsing in the old man's breast. Again ensued that inglorious conflict between self-respecting sobriety of demeanour and long suppressed emotion, which ended only when the boat grated on the sand, and a blonde stalwart youth leaped ashore. The old man fell upon his neck with tears and murmured ejaculations of gratitude and welcome; but young impatient ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... spirituous liquors, agreed to four resolutions, importing, that the present high price of spirituous liquors is a principal cause of the diminution in the home consumption thereof, and hath greatly contributed to the health, sobriety, and industry of the common people: that, in order to continue for the future the present high price of all spirits used for home consumption, a large additional duty should be laid upon all spirituous ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... we remembered that History does not concern herself about material wealth,—that the life-blood of a nation is not that yellow tide which fluctuates in the arteries of Trade,—that its true revenues are religion, justice, sobriety, magnanimity, and the fair amenities of Art,—that it is only by the soul that any people has achieved greatness and made lasting conquests over the future. We believe there is virtue enough left in the North and West to infuse health into our body politic; we believe that America will reassume ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... sometimes in his conversations with his wife at the children's bed-time. And then Millet heard him go up-stairs, and it was some minutes before he came down again, and then in such a queer absent condition that if it had been any other man in the parish than Mr Robins, whose sobriety was unimpeachable, Millet would have said that he had had a ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... equal tendency to procure the love and esteem of mankind. There are few, who are not as jealous of their character, with regard to sense and knowledge, as to honour and courage; and much more than with regard to temperance and sobriety. Men are even afraid of passing for goodnatured; lest that should be taken for want of understanding: And often boast of more debauches than they have been really engaged in, to give themselves airs of fire and spirit. In short, the figure a man makes in ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... my Christmas still I hold, Where my great grandsire came of old, With amber beard and flaxen hair, And reverend apostolic air,— The feast and holy tide to share, And mix sobriety with wine, And honest mirth with thoughts divine; Small thought was his in after time E'er to be hitch'd into a rhyme, The simple sire could only boast That he was loyal to his cost; The banish'd race of kings revered, And lost his ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton |
