Seriousness Quotes - Page 11

• It is time to ask: are we Aborigines a serious people? … Do we have the seriousness necessary to maintain our languages, traditions and knowledge? … The truth is that I am prone to bouts of doubt and sadness around these questions. But I have hope. Our hope is dependent upon education. Our hope depends on how serious we become about the education of our people.

  Noel Pearson

  Sadness, People, Doubt

  Noel Pearson (2009). “Quarterly Essay 35 Radical Hope: Education & Equality in Australia”, p.11, Black Inc.

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• Just because I've got blonde hair and haven't been to Bosnia doesn't mean I'm a bimbo. I am still a serious journalist.

  Jill Dando

  Mean, Hair, Blonde

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• However absurd it may seem, I do in all seriousness hereby declare that I am animated mainly by philanthropic motives. I desire to do good to my fellow creatures, even to the Cui bonos.

  Oliver Heaviside

  Science, Desire, May

  "Electrical Papers". Book by Oliver Heaviside, Vol. I; Preface, p. vii, 1892.

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• If a serious statement is defined as one that may be made in terms of waking life, poetry will never rise to the level of seriousness. It lies beyond seriousness, on that more primitive and original level where the child, the animal, the savage, and the seer belong, in the region of dream, enchantment, ecstasy, laughter. To understand poetry we must be capable of donning the child's soul like a magic cloak and of forsaking man's wisdom for the child's.

  Johan Huizinga

  Dream, Laughter, Children

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• You can deny, if you like, nearly all abstractions: justice, beauty, truth, goodness, mind, God. You can deny seriousness, but not play.

  Johan Huizinga

  Play, Justice, Mind

  Johan Huizinga (1971). “Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture”, p.9, Beacon Press

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• Baseball has traditionally possessed a wonderful lack of seriousness. The game's best player, Babe Ruth, was a Rabelaisian fat man, and its most loved manager, Casey Stengel, spoke gibberish. In this lazy sport, only the pitcher pours sweat. Then he takes three days off.

  Thomas Boswell

  Sports, Baseball, Men

  Thomas Boswell (1984). “Why Time Begins on Opening Day”, Doubleday Books

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• Historically, filmmakers always fall in love with every frame, but now that even neophytes are given final cut, this love affair carries with it serious economic implications.

  Peter Bart

  Falling In Love, Cutting, Serious

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• Achieving the summit of a mountain was tangible, immutable, concrete. The incumbent hazards lent the activity a seriousness of purpose that was sorely missing from the rest of my life. I thrilled in the fresh perspective that came from the tipping the ordinary plane of existence on end.

  Jon Krakauer

  Perspective, Missing, Mountain

  Jon Krakauer (2011). “Into Thin Air: A personal account of the Everest disaster”, p.24, Pan Macmillan

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• For such is the fate of parody: it must never fear exaggerating. If it strikes home, it will only prefigure something that others will then do without a smile--and without a blush--in steadfast virile seriousness.

  Umberto Eco

  Home, Fate, Parody

  Umberto Eco (1995). “How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays”, p.11, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I had learned a little about writing from Soldier's Pay - how to approach language, words: not with seriousness so much as an essayist does, but with a kind of alert respect, as you approach dynamite; even with joy, as you approach women: perhaps with the same secretly unscrupulous intentions.

  William Faulkner

  Writing, Language Words, Joy

  William Faulkner (2011). “Essays, Speeches & Public Letters”, p.296, Modern Library

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• You should not take old people who are already dead seriously. It does them injustice. We immortals do not like things to be taken seriously. We like joking. Seriousness, young man, is an accident of time. It consists, I don't mind telling you in confidence, in putting too high a value on time. I, too, once put too high a value on time. For that reason I wished to be a hundred years old. In eternity, however, there is no time, you see. Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.

  Hermann Hesse

  Taken, Men, Years

  Hermann Hesse (1980). “Six Novels: With Other Stories and Essays”

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• The journey is part of the experience - an expression of the seriousness of one's intent. One doesn't take the A train to Mecca.

  Anthony Bourdain

  Travel, Journey, Expression

  "A Cook's Tour". Book by Anthony Bourdain, 2001.

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• I've got about ten things to say to you right now. But at least nine of them would make me sound like a psycho.” In spite of the seriousness of the situation, I nearly smiled. “What’s the tenth thing?” I asked his shirtfront. He paused, considering it. “Never mind,” he grumbled. “That one would make me sound like a psycho, too.

  Lisa Kleypas

  Mind, Sound, Nine

  Lisa Kleypas (2015). “The Travis Family Series, Books 1-3: Blue-Eyed Devil, Smooth Taking Stranger and Sugar Daddy”, p.281, St. Martin's Press

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• Seriousness is no more a guarantee of truth, insight, authenticity or probity, than humour is a guarantee of superficiality and stupidity.

  Stephen Fry

  Stupidity, Guarantees, Authenticity

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• Finally he said that if men drink the blood of God yet they do not understand the seriousness of what they do. He said that men wish to be serious but they do not understand how to be so. Between their acts and their ceremonies lies the world and in this world the storms blow and the trees twist in the wind and all the animals that God has made go to and fro yet this world men do not see. They see the acts of their own hands or they see that which they name and call out to one another but the world between is invisible to them

  Cormac McCarthy

  Lying, Men, Animal

  Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.331, Pan Macmillan

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• The first thing the boy Garion remembered was the kitchen at Faldor's farm. For all the rest of his life he had a special warm feeling for kitchens and those peculiar sounds and smells that seemed somehow to combine into a bustling seriousness that had to do with love and food and comfort and security and, above all, home. No matter how high Garion rose in life, he never forgot that all his memories began in that kitchen.

  David Eddings

  Memories, Home, Boys

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• The seriousness of ecological degradation lays bare the depth of man's moral crisis... Simplicity, moderation, and discipline as well as the spirit of sacrifice must become a part of everyday life.

  Pope John Paul II

  Sacrifice, Men, Discipline

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• For a game it is too serious, for seriousness too much of a game.

  Moses Mendelssohn

  Games, Chess, Too Much

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• It is happily and kindly provided that in every life there are certain pauses, and interruptions, which force consideration upon the careless, and seriousness upon the light, points of time where one course of action ends and another begins.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Happy Life, Light, Action

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• I like serious films, the moneymaking blockbusters that don't make any kind of sense and John Carpenter films.

  Pam Grier

  Serious, Kind, Film

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• O, my Jesus, I understand well that, just as illness is measured with a thermometer and a high fever tells us of the seriousness of the illness; so also, in the spiritual life, suffering is the thermometer which measures the love of God in a soul.

  Mary Faustina Kowalska

  Spiritual, Jesus, Soul

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• I never played much golf as a kid. I caddied quite a bit but never got serious into golf until about age 15.

  Lee Trevino

  Sports, Kids, Golf

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• Acquire and store a reserve of food and supplies that will sustain life. ... As long as I can remember, we have been taught to prepare for the future and to obtain a years supply of necessities. I would guess that the years of plenty have almost universally caused us to set aside this counsel. I believe the time to disregard this counsel is over. With events in the world today, it must be considered with all seriousness.

  L. Tom Perry

  Believe, Years, Long

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• If art were to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.

  John Lennon

  Music, Art, Men

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• To put yourself into a situation where a mistake cannot necessarily be recouped, where the life you lose may be your own, clears the head wonderfully. It puts domestic problems back into proportion and adds an element of seriousness to your drab, routine life. Perhaps this is one reason why climbing has become increasingly hard as society has become increasingly, disproportionately, coddling.

  Al Alvarez

  Mistake, Climbing, Routine Life

  "Our enduring desire to court deadly risk" by Peter Beaumont, www.theguardian.com. July 14, 2012.

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