Solemn Quotes - Page 3

• A burning itch to know is higher than a solemn vow to pursue truth. To feel the burning itch of curiosity requires both that you be ignorant, and that you desire to relinquish your ignorance.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Ignorance, Ignorant, Curiosity

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• It would be beautiful to photograph the winners of everything from Nobel to booby prize, clutching trophy, or money or certificate, solemn or smiling or tear stained or bloody, on the precarious pinnacle of the human landscape.

  Diane Arbus

  Beautiful, Photography, Tears

  Diane Arbus (2003). “Diane Arbus: revelations”, Random House (NY)

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• It is therefore recommended... to set apart Thursday the eighteenth day of December next, for solemn thanksgiving and praise, that with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor.

  Samuel Adams

  Thanksgiving, Religious, Grateful

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• Ah! the year is slowly dying,
  And the wind in tree-top sighing,
  Chant his requiem.
  Thick and fast the leaves are falling,
  High in air wild birds are calling,
  Nature's solemn hymn.

  Mary Weston Fordham

  Fall, Air, Years

  Mary Weston Fordham, “Passing Of The Old Year”

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• It is a very solemn delusion when ministers think they are prospering, and yet do not hear of conversions.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Christian, Thinking, Ministers

  Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1988). “Spurgeon at His Best: Over 2200 Striking Quotations from the World's Most Exhaustive and Widely-read Sermon Series”, Baker Publishing Group

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• Though Americans talk a good deal about the virtue of being serious, they generally prefer people who are solemn over people who are serious. In politics, the rare candidate who is serious, like Adlai Stevenson, is easily overwhelmed by one who is solemn, like General Eisenhower. This is probably because it is hard for most people to recognize seriousness, which is rare, especially in politics, but comfortable to endorse solemnity, which is as commonplace as jogging.

  Russell Baker

  People, Jogging, Serious

  "So This Is Depravity". Book by Russell Baker, 1980.

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• Let me now warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party. The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another. In governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged.

  George Washington

  Wise, Party, Government

  George Washington’s "Farewell Address", oll.libertyfund.org. September 19, 1796.

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• Forgiving presupposes remembering. And it creates a forgetting not in the natural way we forget yesterday's weather, but in the way of the great "in spite of" that says: I forget although I remember. Without this kind of forgetting no human relationship can endure healthily. I don't refer to a solemn act of asking for and offering forgiveness. Such rituals as sometimes occur between parents and children, or friends, or man and wife, are often acts of moral arrogance on the one part and enforced humiliation on the other. But I speak of the lasting willingness to accept him who has hurt us.

  Paul Tillich

  Forgiveness, Hurt, Children

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• It is an author's most solemn obligation to honor truth. If the free and independent writer does not speak truth to power, who will?

  Edward Abbey

  Independent, Honor, Doe

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.36, RosettaBooks

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• Sometimes a musical phrase would perfectly sum up
  The mood of a moment. One of those lovelorn sonatas
  For wind instruments was riding past on a solemn white horse.
  Everybody wondered who the new arrival was.

  John Ashbery

  Music, Horse, Past

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”

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• Every thoughtful, well-meaning and conscientious human being
  should assume in time of peace,
  the solemn and unconditional obligation
  not to participate in any war, for any reason
  or to lend support of any kind, whether direct or indirect.

  Albert Einstein

  War, Thoughtful, Support

  Albert Einstein (2017). “Einstein on Peace”, p.133, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• Social Security is a solemn promise to kupuna like my 88-year-old mother that they can rely on the retirement they've earned. While I'm glad to see our seniors receive an increase for the second year in a row, I wish the cost-of-living adjustment could be larger. However, every little bit helps make a difference in these tough economic times.

  Mazie Hirono

  Senior, Mother, Retirement

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• I'm tired of being this solemn poet of the masses, the enigma shrouded in a mystery.

  Michael Stipe

  Tired, Mystery, Poet

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• There are those who ask what authority, what theological qualification, the Council intended to give to its teachings, knowing that it avoided issuing solemn dogmatic definitions backed by the Church's infallible teaching authority. The answer is known by those who remember the conciliar declaration of March 6, 1964, repeated on November 16, 1964. In view of the pastoral nature of the Council, it avoided proclaiming in an extraordinary manner any dogmata carrying the mark of infallibility.

  Pope Paul VI

  Teaching, Past, Views

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• A healthy man, with steady employment, as wood-chopping at fifty cents a cord, and a camp in the woods, will not be a good subjectfor Christianity. The New Testament may be a choice book to him on some, but not on all or most of his days. He will rather go a-fishing in his leisure hours. The Apostles, though they were fishers too, were of the solemn race of sea-fishers, and never trolled for pickerel on inland streams.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Bible, Faith, Book

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.96, Penguin

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• Deep, solemn optimism, it seems to me, should spring from this firm belief in the presence of God in the individual; not a remote, unapproachable governor of the universe, but a God who is very near every one of us, who is present not only in earth, sea and sky, but also in every pure and noble impulse of our hearts.

  Helen Keller

  Spring, Heart, Sea

  Helen Keller (2010). “The World I Live In and Optimism: A Collection of Essays”, p.93, Courier Corporation

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• Without sin, the universe is a Solemn Game: and there is no good game without rules.

  C. S. Lewis

  Games, Sin, Universe

  C.S. Lewis (2005). “A Preface to Paradise Lost”, p.78, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

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• In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.

  Abraham Lincoln

  War, Government, Hands

  Abraham Lincoln (2008). “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln”, p.261, Wildside Press LLC

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• You can't dance cheerfully. Dancing is too important. It can be wild or solemn or gay or lewd or art for art's sake, but it can't be cheerful.

  Rex Stout

  Art, Gay, Dancing

  Rex Stout (2010). “Champagne for One”, p.27, Crimeline

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• That is, we believed, the supreme duty of the parent, who only was permitted to claim in some degree the priestly office and function, since it is his creative and protecting power which alone approaches the solemn function of Deity.

  Charles Alexander Eastman

  Office, Creative, Parent

  Charles Alexander Eastman, Michael Oren Fitzgerald (2007). “The Essential Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa): Light on the Indian World”, p.9, World Wisdom, Inc

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• Sweet is the day of sacred rest;
  No mortal cares shall seize my breast;
  O may my heart in tune be found
  Like David's harp of solemn sound.

  Isaac Watts

  Sweet, Heart, Sound

  Isaac Watts (1821). “An arrangement of the Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs of the Rev. Isaac Watts”, p.419

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• Tis aye a solemn thing to me
  To look upon a babe that sleeps--
  Wearing in its spirit-deeps
  The unrevealed mystery
  Of its Adam's taint and woe,
  Which, when they revealed lie,
  Will not let it slumber so.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Lying, Sleep, Looks

  Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning “The Brownings' Correspondence: January 1838-December 1840, letters 602-783”

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• I can admire the solemn and stately language of worship that recognizes the greatness of God, but it will not warm my heart or express my soul until it has also blended therewith the joyful nearness of that perfect love that casts out fear and ventures to speak with our Father in heaven as a child speaks with its father on earth. My brother, no veil remains.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Brother, Children, Father

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• Solemn Australians think that an interest in design is a superficial and trivial interest. This is actually an improvement, they used to think it effeminate and vaguely immoral.

  Robin Boyd

  Thinking, Design, Architecture

  Robin Boyd, Australian Broadcasting Commission (1967). “Artificial Australia”

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• Don't think you have to be solemn to meditate. To meditate, well, you have to smile a lot.

  Nhat Hanh

  Thinking, Mindfulness, Wells

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