Seriousness Quotes - Page 8

• You got a lot of ladies to get through. You’re still young. First love’s the sweetest, but it doesn’t last.” “Not ever?” I ask. Grandad looks at me with a seriousness he reserves for moments when he wants me to really pay attention. “When we fall that first time, we’re not really in love with the girl. We’re in love with being in love. We’ve got no idea what she’s really about—or what she’s capable of. We’re in love with our idea of her and of who we become around her. We’re idiots.

  Holly Black

  Girl, Fall, First Love

  Holly Black (2012). “Black Heart”, p.66, Simon and Schuster

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• Our attachments are our temple, what we worship, no? What we give ourselves to, what we invest with faith. . . . Attachments are of great seriousness. Choose your attachments carefully. Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care.

  David Foster Wallace

  Attachment, Giving, Care

  David Foster Wallace (2011). “Infinite Jest”, p.83, Hachette UK

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• When I was twelve, I was interviewed by a doctoral candidate in education and asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said that I either wanted to be a philosopher or a clown, and I understood then, I think, that much depended on whether or not I found the world worth philosophizing about, and what the price of seriousness might be.

  Judith Butler

  Thinking, Twelve, World

  Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature and Critical Theory Judith Butler (2004). “Undoing Gender”, p.234, Routledge

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• I hate everything that does not relate to literature, conversations bore me (even if they relate to literature), to visit people bores me, the sorrows and joys of my relatives bore me to the very soul. Conversation takes the importance, the seriousness, the truth, out of everything I think.

  Franz Kafka

  Hate, Thinking, People

  "I am a memory come alive: autobiographical writings".

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• Remember where you came from, where you’re going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place. You're going to die a horrible death, remember. It's all good training, and you'll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind. Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less-advanced life-forms, and they'll call you crazy.

  Richard Bach

  Crazy, Remember Where You Came, Laughing

  "Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah". Book by Richard Bach, 1977.

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• Jews and homosexuals are the outstanding creative minorities in contemporary urban culture. Creative, that is, in the truest sense: they are creators of sensibilities. The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony.

  Susan Sontag

  Two, Creative, Culture

  Susan Sontag (2014). “A Susan Sontag Reader”, p.177, Macmillan

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• The aura of the theocratic death penalty for adultery still clings to America, even outside New England, and multiple divorce, which looks to the European like serial polygamy, is the moral solution to the problem of the itch. Love comes into it too, of course, but in Europe we tend to see marital love as an eternity which encompasses hate and also indifference: when we promise to love we really mean that we promise to honor a contract. Americans, seeming to take marriage with not enough seriousness, are really taking love and sex with too much.

  Anthony Burgess

  Love, Marriage, Sex

  "You've Had Your Time, Being the Second Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess". Book by Anthony Burgess, 1990.

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• Of Course God does not consider you hopeless. If He did, He would not be moving you to seek Him (and He obviously is)... Continue seeking Him with seriousness. Unless He wanted you, you would not be wanting Him.

  C. S. Lewis

  Moving, Doe, Hopeless

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950 - 1963”, p.127, Harper Collins

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• Love is a serious mental disease.

  Plato

  Love, Plato, Romance

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• The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious.

  Lester Bangs

  Art, Mistake, Firsts

  Lester Bangs (2013). “Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll”, p.115, Anchor

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• humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Doors, Handle, Stills

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• The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away.

  Christopher Tolkien

  Philosophical, Impact, Overwhelmed

  "Why JRR Tolkien's Son Hates What Peter Jackson Has Done" by Devin Faraci, Birth.Movies.Death, birthmoviesdeath.com. January 9, 2013.

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• My whole effort here is to keep you as non-serious as possible, for the simple reason that meditation, all kinds of meditation, can make you too serious and that seriousness will create a spiritual disease and nothing else. Unless a meditation brings you more laughter, more joy, more playfulness, avoid it. It is not for you.

  Rajneesh

  Spiritual, Laughter, Simple

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• Many get the repute of being witty but thereby lose the credit of being sensible. Jest has its little hour, seriousness should have all the rest.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Witty, Should Have, Credit

  Baltasar Gracian, Baltasar Gracián y Morales (2004). “The Art of Worldly Wisdom”, p.44, Shambhala Publications

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• They gutted the book, making an action movie for 15-25 year olds. Tolkien became...devoured by his popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of the time. The gap widened between the beauty, the seriousness of the work, and what it has become is beyond me. This level of marketing reduces to nothing the aesthetic and philosophical significance of this work.

  Christopher Tolkien

  Book, Philosophical, Years

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• Angelo is a brilliant jazz talent. His receptivity, seriousness, his ability to execute ideas simple or complex, combined with his love and feel for the substance of jazz reveal why he is an exceptional artist.

  Mulgrew Miller

  Artist, Simple, Ideas

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• Dullness is the coming of age of seriousness.

  Oscar Wilde

  Age, Coming Of Age, Dullness

  Oscar Wilde, Isobel Murray (1999). “The Soul of Man, and Prison Writings”, p.10, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Strict seriousness was far more dangerous than any joke.

  Saul Bellow

  Dangerous, Strict, Jokes

  Saul Bellow (2015). “Ravelstein”, p.1, Penguin

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• The fact that some governments, churches and numerous corrupted individuals have tried to reduce such behavior from criminal offence to personal privilege dose not change the nature nor the seriousness of the practice. This woe is pronounced upon those who would pervert standards of mortality and decency. They seek man’s approval of that which God had condemned. They have been successful in getting legislation passed to make such perversion legal and acceptable by society.

  Spencer W. Kimball

  Successful, Men, Practice

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• Can't you ever be serious?' I said, mortified. 'It's difficult,' he said. 'There's so little in life that's worth it.

  Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  Littles, Serious, Krishna

  Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (2009). “The Palace of Illusions: A Novel”, p.167, Anchor

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• Introversion- along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness- is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology. Introverts living in the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man's world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are. Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we've turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.

  Susan Cain

  Cousin, Disappointment, Class

  Susan Cain (2012). “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking”, p.12, Penguin UK

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• Authentic faith leads us to treat others with unconditional seriousness and to a loving reverence for the mystery of the human personality. Authentic Christianity should lead to maturity, personality, and reality. It should fashion whole men and women living lives of love and communion. False, manhandled religion produces the opposite effect. Whenever religion shows contempt or disregards the rights of persons, even under the noblest pretexts, it draws us away from reality and God.

  Brennan Manning

  Fashion, Live Life, Reality

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• Before we go, I gotta know: If mind-reading abilities are real, there's something else I wondered if fiction got right about vampires-" "Ask me if I sparkle and I'll kill you where you stand," Bones cut him off with utmost seriousness.

  Jeaniene Frost

  Real, Reading, Cutting

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• Unmitigated seriousness is always out of place in human affairs.

  George Santayana

  Affair, Humans

  George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana”

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• Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness. The symbol of art is seen again in the magic flute of the Great God Pan which makes the young goats frisk at the edge of the grove. All modern art begins to appear comprehensible and in a way great when it is interpreted as an attempt to instill youthfulness into an ancient world.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Art, Men, Magic

  "The Dehumanization of Art and Ideas about the Novel". Book by José Ortega y Gasset. Chapter "Art a Thing of No Consequence", 1925.

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