"Serious-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... impress of differing social forces, a new type. Its faults do not prevent us from seeing that the spirit expressed in this juvenile literature is that of a new nation feeling its own way, and making known its purpose in its own manner. While we smile at sedulous endeavors of the serious-minded writers to present their convictions, educational, religious, or moral, in palatable form, and to consider children always as a race apart, whose natural actions were invariably sinful, we still read between the lines that these writers ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... crowd, goes shouting past. One wishes the House would notice it. But no one does. There is always just the House Itself and that hush or ring of silence around it, all England listening, all the little country papers far away with their hands up to their ears and the great serious-minded Dailies, and the witty Weeklies, the stately Monthlies, and Quarterlies all acting as ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... used in the days of the Tower of Babel, when no two families spoke alike. They read that sort of thing as fast as a night-hawk will whir. 'Tis all learning there—nothing but learning, except religion. And that's learning too, for I never could understand it. Yes, 'tis a serious-minded place. Not but there's wenches in the streets o' nights... You know, I suppose, that they raise pa'sons there like radishes in a bed? And though it do take—how many years, Bob?—five years to turn a lirruping hobble-de-hoy chap ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... remove or increase his inhibitions, make clearer his choice. But that will is an entity, existing by itself and pulling at levers of conduct without itself being organic, need not be entertained by any serious-minded ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... strike that ever happened to a serious-minded sex. Because you know your sex, as a sex, is a trifle destitute of ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... was greatly respected and admired, and his reputation for wealth and wisdom got him much renown at most supper-tables: the younger gentlemen voted him stoopid, a feller of no idears, and a fogey, in a word: but not one of them would not say amen to the heartfelt prayer which some of the most serious-minded among the gentlemen uttered, "When I die may I cut up as well as ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... changed from that of serious-minded discussion of a theft and its treatment, to care-free chatter about an evening of fun. Even Marjorie put aside her trouble for the time and entered ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... obtained a firm foothold in American cities. People looked on it with suspicion, as a sign of some inward and spiritual naughtiness, and regarded the frock-coat with its full skirts as the only garment in which a serious-minded man, with a proper sense of his origin and destiny, and correct feelings about popular government, could make his appearance in a lady's parlor. Why, nobody could tell, for there was a time, not very far back, when the frock-coat was itself an innovation. Of late—that is, within, perhaps, twenty ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... 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? ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... of speech and manner. People generally dislike familiarity, joking, and horse-play. It is well to assume that the customer is serious-minded, that he means business and nothing else. Needless to say, the telling of long stories, or personal experiences, has no legitimate place in ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... moral welfare, one must presume—fallen in love with him. Between Jane's virtues and Annie's three hundred golden sovereigns Hezekiah had not hesitated a moment. Golden sovereigns were solid facts; wifely virtues, by a serious-minded and strong-willed husband, could be instilled—at all events, light-heartedness suppressed. The two men, Hezekiah urged by his own ambition, Solomon by his wife's, had arrived in London within a year of one another: Hezekiah to open a grocer's shop in Kensington, which those ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... A serious-minded little fellow in the class said, "Teacher, don't you think that when Jesus opened his mouth, and began to speak to his disciples, it must have been like taking the stopper out of a scent bottle?" I cannot tell whether this boy had ever read the words of Solomon ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... while in the middle eighteenth century the novel-writing was tentative and hardly more than an avocation, at the end of the nineteenth, it had become a fine art and a profession. It did not occur to Richardson, serious-minded man that he was, that he was formulating a new art canon for fiction. Indeed, the English author takes himself less and less seriously as we go back in time. It was bad form to be literary when Voltaire visited Congreve and found ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... several-years-old copy of the Congressional Record, containing the speeches made before Congress at that time, and in addition to being heavy, it was more than dull. Whitey couldn't understand how Dan found it "absorbin'." Dan certainly must be a serious-minded person, despite his fat. And yet, from over near the bunk house, Whitey heard loud laughter coming from several men. He reflected hopefully that perhaps the hands were not so ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... monotony of old scenes and familiar faces; and partly because one day while in "town" he had listened attentively to a desert nomad, or "drifter," who had told a tale of a country where water was to be the magic which would open the gates of fortune to the eager and serious-minded. ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... had ceased, Ruddie, who seemed a serious-minded youth, began a story of an uncle of his who had contracted blood-poisoning from the dye in his stockings. What ultimately happened to the uncle Clint never discovered, for the others very rudely broke in on Ruddie's ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... 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 ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... travel with 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
... Philosophy and Government, and kindred subjects. He was a leading figure in the Political Science Club, and intent in his pursuit of philosophy. Often he could be seen walking back and forth in a room in the old Bacon library, set apart for the more serious-minded students, with some philosophical book in hand; every line of his face expressing deep concentration, the occasional light in his eye clearly betraying the moment when he was feeling ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... that such a journey would be without charm. I really intend going. My aunt has given me her town house, and wants me to come over in order to take the property. Besides, I always go to Warsaw for the races. Who would believe that my aunt, a grave, serious-minded lady, devoted to the management of the estate, to prayer and benevolent schemes, had such a worldly weakness as horse-racing. It is her one passion. Maybe the knightly instincts which women inherit as well as men, find an outlet ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... John, and Lambert, and one sister, Margaret, devoted, like her brothers, to her art. There is a suggestion that they belonged to a small village of Limburg called Eyck, and repaired to Bruges in order to pursue their art. Hubert was thirty years older than John, and it is said that he was a serious-minded man as well as an ardent painter, and belonged to the religious fraternity of our Lady of Ghent. He died in 1426. John, though of so much consideration in his profession as to be believed to be 'the Flemish Painter' sent ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... an earthy skin; his thin mouth and thin, long nose, and the great protuberance of his frontal bones, gave him an uncouth look. He was cold and precise in his manner, a bloodless man, without passion; but he had a curious vein of frivolity which disconcerted the serious-minded among whom his instincts naturally threw him. He was studying theology in Heidelberg, but the other theological students of his own nationality looked upon him with suspicion. He was very unorthodox, which frightened them; and his ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... and in keeping with the place; silent poets, long haired, pale, and always writing; serious-minded lawyers, lunching alone, and fat merchants ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith |
