Solemn Quotes

• I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.

  Abraham Lincoln

  God, Memories, Father

  Letter to Lydia Bixby, 21 Nov. 1864.

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• Of all sound of all bells... most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year.

  Charles Lamb

  New Year, Holiday, Years

  Charles Lamb, Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd (1857). “The Works of Charles Lamb: Complete in One Volume. With a Sketch of His Life, by Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, D.C.L.”, p.345

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• If we do not do the impossible, we shall be faced with the unthinkable.

  Murray Bookchin

  Impossible, Petra, Unthinkable

  "The Ecology of Freedom". Book by Murray Bookchin, p. 107, 2005.

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• Everything has two sides - the outside that is ridiculous, and the inside that is solemn.

  Olive Schreiner

  Reality, Two Sides, Ridiculous

  Olive Schreiner (2009). “The Story of an African Farm”, p.276, The Floating Press

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• Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us.

  Pope Francis

  Needs, World, Nonsense

  "The Pope: how the Church will change". Interview with Eugenio Scalfari, www.repubblica.it. October 1, 2013.

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• We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

  William Shakespeare

  Life, Good Night, Dream

  'The Tempest' (1611) act 4, sc. 1, l. 148

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• The solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Pride, Sacrifice, Civil War

  Letter to Lydia Bixby, 21 Nov. 1864.

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• From the solemn gloom of the temple children run out to sit in the dust, God watches them play and forgets the priest.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  God, Running, Children

  Rabindranath Tagore, Mohit Kumar Ray (2007). “Poems”, p.576, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

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• We scientists, whose tragic destination has been to help in making the methods of annihilation more gruesome and more effective, must consider it our solemn and transcendent duty to do all in our power in preventing these weapons from being used for the brutal purpose for which they were invented.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Purpose, Weapons

  Albert Einstein (2016). “The Albert Einstein Collection: Essays in Humanism, The Theory of Relativity, and The World As I See It”, p.25, Open Road Media

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• He was a solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.

  Mark Twain

  Sarcastic, Waiting, Vacancy

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• A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Owl, Serious

  Ernest Hemingway (2014). “The Hemingway Collection”, p.2301, Simon and Schuster

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• Never take a solemn oath. People think you mean it.

  Norman Douglas

  Mean, Thinking, Keeping Promises

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• The thing that distinguishes social systems from physical or even biological systems is their incomparable (and embarrassing) richness in special cases. Generalizations in the social sciences are mere pathways which lead through a riotous forest of individual trees, each a species unto itself. The social scientist who loses this sense of the essential individuality and uniqueness of each case is all too likely to make a solemn scientific ass of himself, especially if he thinks that his faceless generalizations are the equivalents of the rich vareity of the world.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Thinking, Tree, Individuality

  "Evidences for an Administrative Science: A review of the Administrative Science Quarterly, volumes 1 and 2". Administrative Science Quarterly. Volume 3, No. 1, p. 14, 1958.

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• There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse.

  William James

  Religious, Attitude, Snickers

  William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.42, Booklassic

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• While the laughter of joy is in full harmony with our deeper life, the laughter of amusement should be kept apart from it. The danger is too great of thus learning to look at solemn things in a spirit of mockery, and to seek in them opportunities for exercising wit.

  Lewis Carroll

  Respect, Laughter, Exercise

  Lewis Carroll (2008). “The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll”, p.352, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

  William Shakespeare

  Life, Dream, Sleep

  'The Tempest' (1611) act 4, sc. 1, l. 148

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• In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are.

  Gore Vidal

  Thinking, Race, America

  Gore Vidal, Richard Peabody, Lucinda Ebersole (2005). “Conversations with Gore Vidal”, p.52, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• You will reciprocally promise love, loyalty and matrimonial honesty. We only want for you this day that these words constitute the principle of your entire life and that with the help of divine grace you will observe these solemn vows that today, before God, you formulate.

  Pope John Paul II

  Anniversary, Loyalty, Honesty

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• As long as the Southern colleges have revivals on their campuses and students get converted to Methodism and join the YMCA and are accepted as gentlemen, it will be impossible to think of the South as civilized...The educated folk of the Old South took theology lightly, and religion to them was hardly more than a charming ritual, useful on solemn occassions.

  H. L. Mencken

  College, Thinking, Ymca

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• I bear solemn witness to the fact that NATO heads of state and of government meet only to go through the tedious motions of reading speeches, drafted by others, with the principal objective of not rocking the boat.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Reading, Government, Speech

  Pierre Elliott Trudeau, C. David Crenna (1987). “Lifting the Shadow of War”, McClelland & Stewart

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• Each has its lesson; for our dreams in sooth, come they in shape of demons, gods, or elves, are allegories with deep hearts of truth that tell us solemn secrets of ourselves.

  Henry Timrod

  Dream, Heart, Secret

  Henry Timrod (2007). “The Collected Poems of Henry Timrod: A Variorum Edition”, p.38, University of Georgia Press

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• In the best of times, our days are numbered anyway. So it would be a crime against nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were designed in the first place: the opportunity to do good work, to enjoy friends, to fall in love, to hit a ball, and to bounce a baby.

  Alistair Cooke

  Love, Life, Friendship

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• We, the generation that faces the next century, can add the solemn injunction ''If we don't do the impossible, we shall be faced with the unthinkable.

  Petra Kelly

  Add, Generations, Next

  Petra Karin Kelly, Glenn D. Paige (1992). “Nonviolence Speaks to Power”, Matsunaga Inst for Peace

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• To pray is to let God into our lives. He knocks and seeks admittance, not only in the solemn hours of secret prayer. He knocks in the midst of your daily work, your daily struggles, your daily grind. That is when you need Him most.

  Ole Hallesby

  God, Letting Go, Religious

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• One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Writing, Done, Authority

  "The Rolling Stones". Book by Robert A. Heinlein, 1952.

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