"Soberness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the soberness with which Dalgard listened to that. The star ship had not lifted, that message had found its way south, passed along by hopper and merman. But the scout doubted if the explorers were waiting for the return of Raf. He believed that they would not have left the city had they not thought the pilot ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... Massachusetts 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 ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... and to think of the Puritan congregations as like assemblies of Quakers, solemn, staid, and uniform and dull of dress; but I can discover in historical records nothing to indicate simplicity, soberness, or even uniformity of apparel, except the uniformity of fashion, which was powerful then as now. The forbidding rules and regulations relating to the varied and elaborate forms of women's dress—and of men's attire as well—would never have been issued unless such prohibited apparel had been common ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... and Fairy began planning momentous things for her graduation, a little soberness came into the parsonage life. The girls were certainly growing up. Prudence had been married a long, long time. Fairy was being graduated from college, her school-days were over, and life was just across the threshold—its ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... blossoms with the over jubilant winds of that very love. I would therefore behold you folded in the atmosphere of the Love eternal. My lady, if I were to talk of your beauty, I should but offend you, for you would think I raved, and spoke not the words of truth and soberness. But how often have I not cried to the God who breathed the beauty into you that it might shine out of you, to save my soul from the tempest of its own delight therein. And now I am like one that has caught an angel in his net, and fears to come ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... settled and rooted was I in these things, that they became as a second nature to me; the which, as I have also with soberness considered since, did so offend the Lord, that even in my childhood he did scare and affrighten me with fearful dreams, and did terrify me with fearful visions. For often, after I have spent this and the other day in sin, I have in my bed been greatly afflicted, while ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... incredulity, indignant scorn, upheld the assailed lady; but as proof after proof was hurled at her, reinforced by the grave soberness of the clergyman and the weeping sympathy of the young woman, her firmness gave way, and she swooned in her aunt's arms. We should have more peremptorily interfered but for our unfortunate client's deprecatory gestures. She seemed determined to hear ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... 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 ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 hundred books never read them. Books have their place in ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... at correspondence, guessing least of all that that tress lay on a heart still living and throbbing for her. All this had made her a little forget her haste to assert her liberty of action by returning to the pedlar; but, behold, when she came back to the hall, it had resumed its pristine soberness, and merely a few lingering figures were to be seen, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... earl,' said they, 'speaks words of truth and soberness, and he asks nothing more than the justice that ought not to be denied to the meanest man ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... 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 ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... I must, Naida," and the deep ringing soberness of his voice startled the girl into suddenly uplifting her eyes to his face. What she read there instantly changed her mood from playfulness to ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... alone with conscience, alone with God, how does the matter stand? The challenge of such a life and conviction as Canon Aylwin's is a searching one. It bids one look deep into one's self, it calls one to truth and soberness. What I seem to see is that he and I both approach Christianity with a prepossession, with, as he says, "a philosophy." His is a prepossession in favour of a system of interference from without, by Divine or maleficent powers, for their own ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... as boisterous as the boys proposed to make it. They had their frolic, to be sure, as Sid Parmalee or Tip Watson will tell you, but an incident occurred which took the edge off their enjoyment, and gave them the cue of soberness. ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... 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, ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... (and believe me, gentlemen, I am not here the advocate of the North, but am here the firm friend and lover of the South and her institutions, and for this reason I speak thus plainly and faithfully for yours, mine, and every other man's interest, the words of truth and soberness,) let me show the facts, I say, of which I wish you to judge, and I will only state facts which are clear and undeniable, and which now stand as records authentic in ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... was doing good work. It was not the "Face of a Girl," now. It was the face of a baby: smiling, laughing, even crying, sometimes; at other times just gazing straight into your eyes with adorable soberness. Bertram still went into Boston twice a week for treatment, though the treatment itself had changed. The great surgeon had sent ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... earnest leaflets, was perplexing; for they came, not from the class of religionists who usually deal in such productions, but from distinguished University scholars, picked men of a picked college; and from men, too, who as a school were the representatives of soberness and self-control in religious feeling and language, and whose usual style of writing was specially marked by its severe avoidance of excitement and novelty; the school from which had lately come the Christian Year, with ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... its defeat. But where could it now find an ally to save it from its own mistake? What I have next to say is spoken with no emotion but regret. Our meeting to-day is, as it were, at the grave, in the presence of eternity, and the truth must be uttered in soberness and sincerity. In a great republic, as was observed more than two thousand years ago, any attempt to overturn the state owes its strength to aid from some branch of the government. The Chief Justice of the United States, without any necessity or occasion, volunteered to come to the rescue ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... hasten to seal this letter and wake Eppelein that he may give it to the post-rider. I am weary of tearing up many sheets of paper, but if I were to read through in all soberness that I have written half drunk, this letter would of a certainty go the way of many others written by me to you, and to my beloved, faithful, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... great feast, [6118]Vino saepe suum nescit amica virum. Noah (saith [6119]Hierome) "showed his nakedness in his drunkenness, which for six hundred years he had covered in soberness." Lot lay with his daughters in his drink, as Cyneras with Myrrha,—[6120]quid enim Venus ebria curat? The most continent may be overcome, or if otherwise they keep bad company, they that are modest of themselves, and dare not offend, "confirmed by [6121]others, grow impudent, and confident, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... see, was afraid of a man, and so like a d——d sneak, it went twisting about to scorch women and little children!' . . . BLACKWOOD has proclaimed in a late number, the 'Characteristics of English Society,' in language of truth and soberness, which goes explicitly to confirm the reports of nearly all American and other 'foreigners' who have visited England. We subjoin an extract contrasting English ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... 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 enjoyment. Yet that they ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the last movement also receives but scanty and qualified praise. On the other hand, he raves about the E minor Concerto, confining himself, however, to the first movement. The second movement he calls a "tiresome nocturne," the Rondo "a Hummel." A tincture of classical soberness and self-possession in the first movement explains Lenz's admiration of this composition, but I fail to understand the rest of his ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... passive head in perfect conformity with her own. Looking at their figures, Alda's air of fashion made her appear the eldest, and Wilmet might have been a girl in the schoolroom; but comparing their faces, Wilmet's placid recollected countenance, and the soberness that sat so well on her white smooth forehead and steady blue eyes, might have befitted many more years than eighteen. There were not nearly so many lights and shades in her looks as in those of Alda and Geraldine. The one had ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... entangling the 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Marry, I never saw a fool yet who thought himself other than wise! For as it is one spark of soberness left in a drunken head when he perceiveth himself to be drunk and getteth himself fair to bed, so if a fool perceive himself a fool that point is no folly but a ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... 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 ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... a sudden happy consciousness of her long-forgotten social graces. It was agreeable to find herself attracting this young Charlotte Wynn, whose mother had been among her closest friends, and in whom something of the soberness and softness of the earlier manners had survived. But the little colloquy, broken up by the announcement of luncheon, could of course result in nothing more definite than this ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... the latest," declared Bob, throwing himself into a chair, his face a puzzling mixture of soberness and satisfaction. "Say, Frank, I want to say one thing with all my heart—President Elliott is a bang-up good old man. I've been ashamed, near crying, sorry, glad, mad, and just about all knocked out in the last five minutes. Oh, that measly Banbury ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster |
