Seriousness Quotes - Page 14

• I love the characters not knowing everything and the reader knowing more than them. There's more mischief in that and more room for seriousness, too.

  Anne Enright

  Character, Knowing Everything, Not Knowing

  "Anne Enright: 'I was always on the side. Like a salad'". Interview with Sean O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. April 30, 2011.

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• If one were required to increase the dramatic seriousness of his face in relation to the seriousness of the problems he had to confront, he would quickly petrify and become his own statue.

  Vaclav Havel

  Laughter, Faces, Problem

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• When comedy fails, seriousness begins to leak back in.

  Susan Sontag

  Comedy, Failing, Leaks

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• It would be nice to think that a censor could allow a genuine work of artistic seriousness and ban a titillating piece of sadism, but it would take a miracle to make such a distinction stick.

  Katharine Whitehorn

  Nice, Thinking, Miracle

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• There's not a lot of room for un-ironic emotion in contemporary culture. I think that irony is an important tool in dealing with the world as we find it. It's a tool of protection, but it can also be a tool of incision to get to some truth. But along the way maybe we've lost some of what I think of as the power of straightforward emotion and earnestness and seriousness.

  John Green

  Thinking, Ironic, Important

  "Q&A: John Green & Nat Wolff on ‘Paper Towns’ Themes, Inside Jokes, Nicknames". Interview with Seth Kelley, variety.com. July 19, 2015.

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• For girls and women, storytelling has a double and triple importance. Because the stories of our lives have been marginalized and ignored by history, and often dismissed and treated as 'gossip' within our own cultures and families, female human beings are more likely to be discouraged from telling our stories and from listening to each other with seriousness.

  Gloria Steinem

  Girl, Gossip, History

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• Every man has some favorite topic of conversation, on which, by a feigned seriousness of attention, he may be drawn to expatiate without end.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Attention, May

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.299

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• In all seriousness, I'm flattered and humbled to have been asked to reprise my role as Luke in the 'Veronica Mars' movie.

  Sam Huntington

  Roles, Mars, Luke

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Just as we are often moved to merriment for no other reason than that the occasion calls for seriousness, so we are correspondingly serious when invited too freely to be amused.

  Agnes Repplier

  Laughter, Serious, Reason

  Agnes Repplier (1924). “Under dispute”

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• Widowhood provided Mama with a higher form of being. In refusing to recover from my father's death she had discovered that her life was endowed with a seriousness her years in the kitchen had denied her. She remained devoted to this seriousness for thirty years. She never tired of it, never grew bored or restless in its company, found new ways to keep alive the interest it deserved and had so undeniably earned.

  Vivian Gornick

  Father, Tired, Years

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• Our Jewishness is not a creed, it is ourself, our totality. Indeed, it may be fairly said that the surest evidence of your lack of seriousness in religion is the fact that your religions are not national, that you are not compromised and dedicated, en masse, to the faith.

  Maurice Samuel

  May, Facts, Creeds

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• I remember myself, that when I was young, I had sometime the company of one ancient godly minister, who was of weaker parts than many others, but yet did profit me more than most; because he would never in prayer or conference speak of God, or the life to come, but with such marvelous seriousness and reverence, as if he had seen the majesty and glory which he talked of.

  Richard Baxter

  Prayer, Godly, Majesty

  Richard Baxter, William Orme (1830). “The Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter, with a Life of the Author, and a Critical Examination of His Writings”, p.256

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• We write not only for children but also for their parents. They, too, are serious children.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Children, Pregnancy, Writing

  "Stories for Children". Book by Isaac Bashevis Singer, 1984.

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• LAUGHTER is the very essence of religion. Seriousness is never religious, cannot be religious. Seriousness is of the ego, part of the very disease. Laughter is egolessness. Yes, there is a difference between when you laugh and when a religious man laughs. The difference is that you laugh always about others - the religious man laughs at himself, or at the whole ridiculousness of man's being. Religion cannot be anything other than a celebration of life.

  Rajneesh

  Religious, Laughter, Men

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• Sadness, seriousness are parts of a psychologically sick man - they need causes. So when you are feeling happy, don't start asking, "Why am I happy?" When you are feeling sad ask why you are sad. But strangely, it has become conventional to our minds that when we are sad we accept it as if it is our nature. And when we are joyous even we are surprised; deep inside we even start worrying: "What is happening to me?"

  Rajneesh

  Sadness, Men, Asking Why

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• I teach you joy, not sadness. I teach you playfulness, not seriousness. I teach you love and laughter, because to me there is nothing more sacred than love and laughter, and there is nothing more prayerful than playfulness. I don't teach you renunciation, as it has been taught down the ages. I teach you: Rejoice, rejoice, and rejoice again! Rejoicing should be the essential core of my sannyasins.

  Rajneesh

  Laughter, Sadness, Joy

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• If you find a saint who has no sense of humour, then he is not a saint at all. Impossible. His very seriousness says that he has not achieved. Once you have some inner experiences of your own you become very playful, you become very innocent, childlike.

  Rajneesh

  Saint, Impossible, Innocent

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• To laugh at others is egoistic; to laugh at oneself is very humble. Learn to laugh at yourself - about your seriousness and things like that. You can get serious about seriousness. Then instead of one, you have created two diseases. Then you can get serious about that also, and you can go on and on. There is no end to it; it can go on AD NAUSEAM.

  Rajneesh

  Humble, Two, Laughing

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• Neiman's book is written with considerable flair, as many critics have already noted, but it possesses a far rarer and more valuable quality: moral seriousness. Her argument builds a powerful emotional force, a sense of deep inevitability. . . . It is not often that a work of such dark conclusions has felt so hopeful and brave.

  Mark Kingwell

  Powerful, Book, Dark

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• Whether dualistic, qualified monistic, or monistic, they all firmly believe that everything is in the soul itself; it has only to come out and manifest itself. Therefore, this shraddha is what I want, and what all of us here want, this faith in ourselves, and before you is the great task to get that faith. Give up the awful disease that is creeping, into our national blood, that idea of ridiculing everything, that loss of seriousness. Give that up. Be strong and have this shraddha, and everything else is bound to follow.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Strong, Giving Up, Believe

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• Life is just a bowl of cherries, don't take it serious, its mysterious. Life is just a bowl of cherries, so live and laugh and laugh at love, love a laugh, laugh and love.

  Bob Fosse

  Love, Funny Life, Laughing

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• With the marketing pressures driving the book world today, it's much easier to get the author of a memoir on a television show than a serious novelist.

  David Halberstam

  Book, Marketing, Television

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• To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Running, Exercise, Risk

  "American right vows to settle score as Bush's nemesis turns up the heat" by Lawrence Donegan, Paul Harris, www.theguardian.com. June 26, 2004.

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• Freud articulated the standard opinion when he asked with supposed seriousness, 'What does a woman want?'... Today the question that is the yeast in the social dough is, 'What do men want?

  Sam Keen

  Men, Doe, Yeast

  Sam Keen (2010). “Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man”, p.5, Bantam

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• Every page must explode, whether through seriousness, profundity, turbulence, nausea, the new, the eternal, annihilating nonsense, enthusiasm for principles, or the way it is printed.

  Francis Picabia

  Nausea, Principles, Enthusiasm

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