"Sober" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... degradation of a man she once had loved with all the force of her virgin soul. Roberts, the butler, aided by the other servants, smuggled their intoxicated master up to his room, where he remained until sober, when he went back to his club only ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... good. Pop's all right when he's sober, and he'll be sorry for this. I oughter kep' my eyes open. Ma told me to. I could easy ha' dodged him if I'd been thinkin'. But—but that's all ma had in the house and ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... priest Who, lacking cunning or good common sense, Got caught in flagrante and out of pence. Then in high glee the Devil filled a cup And drank a brimming bumper to the pope: Then—"Here's to you," he said, "sober or drunk, In cowl or corsets, every monk's a punk. Whate'er they preach unto the common breed, At heart the priests and I are well agreed. Justice is blind we see, and deaf and old, But in her scales can hear ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... Southey but surely with no authority from Apollo. They have the merit of a traditional piety, which, to our mind, if uttered at all, had been less objectionable in the retired closet of a diary, and in the sober raiment of prose. They do not clutch hold of the memory with the drowning pertinacity of Watts; neither have they the interest of his occasional simple, lucky beauty. Burns, having fortunately been rescued by his humble station ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... among the elderly ladies of the Revolution. It has, indeed, been regarded, and humorously described by the senior Weller, as the indispensable comforter and friend of advanced female life. Dr. Johnson was as noted for his fondness for tea as for his other excesses at the table. Many sober minds make coffee and tea the pis a tergo of their daily intellectual labor; just as a few of greater imagination or genius seek in opium the spur of their ephemeral efforts. In the United States, the young ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... Maenad would be magnificent if he could keep sober enough to finish her,' said Lenain; 'it is his last chance; he will go under altogether if he fails; he is almost done ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wires like flies on a fly-paper; I've been as good as dead meself an 'undred times. I've killed a dozen men. It's nothin'. 'E's safe, if 'e don't get my blood up. If 'e does, nobody's safe; not 'im, nor anybody else; not even you. I'm speakin' sober. ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... dress. Indeed, his general appearance, full of "thoughtful grace and quiet dignity," impressed every honest observer most favourably. We can imagine Baron Stockmar watching keenly in the background to catch every furtive glance and remark, permitting himself to rub his hands and exclaim, with sober ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... later said that Leander fell into bad company. For, the fiddle being forbidden in the sober Laurelia's house, he must needs go elsewhere to show his gift and his growing skill, and he found a welcome fast enough. Before he had advanced beyond his stripling youth, his untutored facility had gained a rude mastery over the instrument; ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... the divorce court was part of the machinery of the Wrath of God against women who unknowingly committed bigamy, and ought to be availed of by injured husbands. So, instead of having a relapse, he pulled himself together, left the hospital, and got placidly drunk, and concluded, when he became sober, not to ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... to crystallise, as it could but do with the scanty stream which the commonplace world supplied. Amongst other things they spoke of the middle ages: some praised that period as far more interesting, far more poetical than our own too sober present; indeed Councillor Knap defended this opinion so warmly, that the hostess declared immediately on his side, and both exerted themselves with unwearied eloquence. The Councillor boldly declared the time of King Hans to be ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... (and it is fair to say that the main purpose of his book was frankly avowed by its appearance as a member of a series entitled Femmes Galantes), a somewhat more sober account, definitely devoted in part to the novels, has appeared.[217] But even this is not exhaustive from our point of view. The collected editions (of which that of 1702, in 10 vols., said to be the best, is the one ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... think, to show clearly that the Neals did not originate among the aborigines of the New World, whatever may be supposed to the contrary. And so, in a word, the whole sum and substance of all I know about my progenitors, male and female, is, that they were always a sober-minded, conscientious, hard-working race, with a way and a will of their own, and a habit of seeing for themselves, and judging for themselves, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... few minutes they appeared in the wake of the servant. Both were quietly dressed in sober riding suits; but there the resemblance ended. One of the pair was a very tall man, with fair hair cut short all round his head, and a pair of large blue-grey eyes that had a trick of seeming to look through and beyond the objects upon which they were bent, and a thoroughly English type of feature; ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... which alcoholic liquors bring about. The liquor imbibed increases the amount of urine, and the state of blunted consciousness makes the call to empty the bladder less appreciated. The intoxicated person is also liable to falls, and is not so likely to protect himself in falling as a sober person. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... leaves was their color. They seemed to have a general groundwork of blue, but here and there other colors glinted at times through the blue—gorgeous yellows, turning to pink, purple, orange and scarlet, mingled with more sober browns and grays—each appearing as a blotch or stripe anywhere on a leaf and then disappearing, to be replaced by some other color of a different shape. The changeful coloring of the great leaves was very beautiful, but it was bewildering, as well, ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... in which the long-drawn effort of Greece to educate a corrupt and barbaric world seemed only to lead to the corruption or barbarization of the very ideals which it sought to spread. This sense of failure, this progressive loss of hope in the world, in sober calculation, and in organized human effort, threw the later Greek back upon his own soul, upon the pursuit of personal holiness, upon emotions, mysteries and revelations, upon the comparative neglect of this transitory and imperfect world for the sake of some dream-world far off, which shall ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... them both to the Tower, whither they are to go this afternoon. I down into the Hall, and there the Lieutenant of the Tower took me with him, and would have me to the Tower to dinner; where I dined at the head of his table, next his lady,' who is comely and seeming sober and stately, but very proud and very cunning, or I am mistaken, and wanton, too. This day's work will bring the Lieutenant of the Tower L350. But a strange, conceited, vain man he is that ever I met withal, in his own praise, as I have heretofore observed of him. Thence ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... have to use Ann again to convince the governor of his right to act. It had been far easier to explain his interest in Cronk to Mrs. Vandecar than to this quiet, powerful man opposite. The brown-flecked gray eyes looked unusually sober and truth-demanding. ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... for their lively and charming gayety was innocence itself; besides, there were two of them, what could they expect from me? they went everywhere about the neighborhood to seek for wine, but none could be procured, so pure and sober are the peasants in those parts. As they were expressing their concern, I begged them not to give themselves any uneasiness on my account, for while with them I had no occasion for wine to intoxicate me. This was the only gallantry I ventured ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... making beasts of themselves. Wouldn't they think with me it was insulting him to let a drunkard have a hand in doing a thing to his memory? So I would manage their collection on condition they agreed that whoever took more than his decent pint a day—or whatever else sober men among them chose to fix it at—should have his money returned on the spot. Poor fellows, they cheered and said I was in the right, but whether they will keep ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... coquettishly). Mother of God! He must be drunk again. These Americans have no time for love when they are sober. (Aloud and coquettishly.) Let me go, Diego. Don Jose is coming. He has sent for you. He takes his supper to-night on the corridor. Listen, Diego. He must not see you thus. You have been drinking again. I will keep you from him. I will say ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... bring forth such fruit. It may, however, be over-stimulated, and the extravagancies of dress and manner which Broadway and Fifth Avenue, the opera, or any fashionable assembly of young people display in America, are universally and justly condemned by sober thought as falling only a few grades ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... you can understand, sir: if you fancy for one instant that religions scruples, or any other kind, will interfere with my fighting now or at any time, you are most damnably mistaken, sir, as you will find as soon as you are sober enough to receive a message." And with that he turned and left the room. The next morning Blake was out with a note, as everybody knew would be the result, and poor Crane tied a wet towel around his head and sent for Wilkins and Heath and others, and they all ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... take it! Still the girls are out," Said Muggins, bedward groping, "'T is twelve o'clock, or thereabout, And all the doors are open! I'll lock the doors another night, And give to none admission; Better to be abed and tight Than sober at Division!" ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... William and the Werewolf, 1832, one of the Roxburghe Club Publications. This letter, which was by the hand of Mr Herbert of Petworth, contains all that was known on this subject before Grimm; but when Grimm came he was, compared with all who had treated the subject, as a sober man amongst drunkards. ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... himself off as a sober-minded man above human weaknesses; so he only shrugged his broad shoulders, smoothed his short-cropped head, and said: "I acknowledge the necessity; but do not intend to allow it to occupy too large ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... plenty of German mixture in our nation—taking the term in its very wide and comprehensive ethnology. Now, Tacitus describes the ancient stout and valiant Germans as 'making gaming with a die a very serious occupation of their sober hours.' Like the 'everlasting Negro,' they, too, made their last throw for personal liberty, the loser going into voluntary slavery, and the winner selling such slaves as soon as possible to strangers, in order not to have to blush for such a victory! If the 'nigger' ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... after which there was a grand reception for several hours. Then, when the last guest had departed, Rose retired to her own room, appearing shortly afterwards at the family dinner-table in her pretty travelling dress, looking very sweet and engaging, but sober and thoughtful, as were also her father and brothers; while Mrs. Allison's eyes were constantly filling with tears at the thought of losing ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... curiosity or a desire to meddle, so after a while I gave out that I was prospecting that part of Arizona, and in the mornings I would take a horse and ride out into the desert. I loved it, too; it was so big and spacious and silent and hot. One day I met Whitney on the edge of town. He was sober, as he always was when he had to be; he was a masterful brute, in his way. He stopped me and asked if I had found anything, and when I laughed he didn't laugh back. 'There's gold here,' he said. 'Lots of gold. Did you ever hear ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... her marge with foam— Your thoughts must sometimes from your island roam, To centre on the sober face ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... cawcawee,—jest like what them ducks say, only, the way he made it seound, was soft and meller and doleful-like. I liked to hear him sing that, only he was so solemn arter it, and would set and fetch up great long sythes. And once I asked him what made him so sober and take on so, arter singin' it. He said, Micah, my good lad, when I war a young man, I had a little French wife, that could run like a hind and sing like a wild bird. Well, she died. The very last thing she sung, was, that 'ere song. When I see how he felt, ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... made explanations and pointed to the round bullet hole in the floor and the smash in the panel of the passage upon which the still vicious missile had spent the residue of its energy. All the faces were grave and earnest: they were the faces of sober, blond, blue-eyed men accustomed to obedience and an orderly life, to whom this waste, wet, painful thing that had been a comrade came almost as strangely as ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... beasts, roaring and making a terrible din and bellowing; or again he became a dragon, adder, or basilisk. But that fair and right noble athlete kept his soul in quietness, for he had made the Most High his refuge: and, being sober in mind, he laughed the evil one to scorn, and said, "I know thee, deceiver, who thou art, which stiffest up this trouble for me; which from the beginning didst devise mischief against mankind, and art ever wicked, ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... alledged for Intemperance; since Nature is content with very few things? Why should any one over-do in this kind? A Man is better in Health and Strength, if he be temperate. We enjoy ourselves more in a sober and temperate Use ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... plainly brushed from her forehead; her lips were thin, and her mouth, perhaps, in general inexpressive, but when she was eager in conversation it would show itself to be animated with curves of wondrous energy; and, quiet as she was in manner, sober and demure as was her usual settled appearance, she could talk, when the fit came on her, with an energy which in truth surprised those who did not know her; aye, and sometimes those who did. Energy! nay, it was occasionally a concentration of passion, which left ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... in Harry's throat. The vision of the sober figure on Little Sorrel, leading his brigades to victory, came before him, but it was a ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a pause while the two men looked at the eager face, smiled, and grew sober, as the question awoke memories ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... even as he works that no sword he can forge but will break in the lad's strong hands. "The best sword I ever forged, which in the hands of a giant would stand stiff, the insignificant stripling for whom it was shaped he whacks and snaps it in two, as if I had made him a child's plaything!" It is sober fact to Mime that he cannot use Siegfried for his purposes until he have equipped him with a sword. "A sword there is," he continues his meditation, "which he could not break. The fragments of Nothung he never could ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... spoke. "Methinks, Mr Louvaine, it were pity to snatch the crust from an hungry man. Go you now with your brother, until he make an end of his supper; then return here in time to make up accounts and close. If this gentleman be the steady and sober man that his looks and your words promise, you can bring him hither to ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... title-page of the original edition of the Advancement of Learning you will find some curious whales. But quitting all these unprofessional attempts, let us glance at those pictures of leviathan purporting to be sober, scientific delineations, by those who know. In old Harris's collection of voyages there are some plates of whales extracted from a Dutch book of voyages, A. D. , entitled A Whaling Voyage to Spitzbergen in the ship Jonas in the Whale, Peter Peterson of Friesland, master. ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... and ran his fingers through his hair. His feet were planted widely apart, and his face was sober enough for any funeral now. At last ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... same time; till only the pure gold of God's righteousness is left, seven times tried in the fire, incorruptible, and precious in the sight of God and man. Such people need not regret—they will not regret—all that they have gone through. It has made them brave, made them sober, made them patient. ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... over my right shoulder, "but you will be the forbearing, gentle wife, who promised to endure all, knowing his infirmity, before you breathed your wedded vows. You are loved beyond the sober reality of common life. Your prayer is granted. You dare not murmur. You have held out your cup for the red wine. There is fire in its glow. You cannot turn it into water now. There is no divine wanderer on earth to reverse the ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... of women now, sober-faced matrons and grave-eyed girls, yet all wore the same expression, not alone of anger, nor fear, nor ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... parents must co-operate. The normal father, we are told, will object if his son brings home opinions other than his own. But, in sober truth, if the son brings home the same opinions as the fathers have always held, we are in a poor way. It was the fathers and the grandfathers who brought the world to its present pass. It is the sons who, starting with new principles from new beginnings, ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... busiest moment, when commonplace has its strongest hold upon me, and I feel actually interested in the ordinary pursuits of my fellow-beings, of a sudden, a great curtain seems to fall around, and enclose me on every side; and, instead of the staid and sober visages of the throng, vague and shadowy faces gleam around me, and magnificent eyes, bright and dreamy, glance and flash before me like the figures on a phantasmagoria. In such moments, there comes over me a happy consciousness that this is the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... supported by solid and sober institutions, founded upon law as built upon a rock; and the structure solid and sober which sustains it, if Liberty has fled, is but a shapeless and unsightly mass that is no longer worthy of respect as a structure, to be torn apart until ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... one has been successfully hit by a strong argumentum ad hominem, or biting personal remark. In any case there is no danger of the disputants coming to blows. No class of men in the world are more good-natured and pacific than the Russian peasantry. When sober they never fight, and even when under the influence of alcohol they are more likely to be violently affectionate than disagreeably quarrelsome. If two of them take to drinking together, the probability is that in a few minutes, though they may never have seen each other ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... English aristocrat and lady, a Seattle lawyer, sober, thoughtful and of middle age, who had been introduced to me by a friend upon sailing, and who kindly kept me in sight when we changed steamers or trains on the trip without specially appearing to do so; a nice old gentleman going to search for the body of his son lost in the Klondyke River a few ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... our beaters on the skirts of Dallington to watch both them and the deer. When De Aquila's great horn blew we went forward, a line half a league long. Oh, to see the fat clerks, their gowns tucked up, puffing and roaring, and the sober millers dusting the under-growth with their staves; and, like as not, between them a Saxon wench, hand in hand with her man, shrilling like a kite as she ran, and leaping high through the fern, all for joy of the sport.' 'Ah! How! Ah! How! How-ah! Sa-how-ah!' Puck bellowed without ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... a degree of martial ardour, unprecedented even in Ulster, in his opposition to Home Rule. Lord Dunseverick was one of the generals of the Ulster Volunteer Force. He had made several speeches which moved Belfast to wild delight and sober-minded men elsewhere to dubious shaking of the head. Enthusiasm in a cause is a fine thing, especially in the young, but when Lord Dunseverick's enthusiasm led him to say that he would welcome the German Emperor at the head of his legions as the deliverer of Ulster from the tyranny ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... heard," observed the merry-faced guest, "that moving about—changing from one seat into another—will check the effects of liquor; and I have known persons who have left a social party perfectly sober, become suddenly tipsy in the open air. How ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... in Charley's voice to indicate that he was getting sober. Bill Wrenn soused him under once more, so thoroughly that his own cuffs were reduced to a state of flabbiness. He dragged Charley out, helped him dry himself, and ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... realm, Ahasuerus turned to the Jewish sages, and requested them to pass sentence upon his queen. Their thoughts ran in this wise: If we condemn the queen to death, we shall suffer for it as soon as Ahasuerus becomes sober, and hears it was at our advice that she was executed. But if we admonish him unto clemency now, while he is intoxicated, he will accuse us of not paying due deference to the majesty of the king. They therefore resolved upon neutrality. "Since the destruction ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... plans by turbulent and worthless men, he restrained his valiant and indignant spirit, and brought himself to forbear and reason, and even to supplicate. His piety was genuine and fervent, and diffused a sober ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... a sober, elderly bird-gentleman to come home at night from a hard day's work and have his wife accuse him of idling ...
— The Tale of Jasper Jay - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... utmost deliberation. The clamor against this principle, is the clamor of those who wish to see the State revolutionized—it is the clamor of those turbulent spirits which delight in confusion and which pull down and destroy with a dexterity which they never shew in building up. Let the sober citizens of Connecticut look at the authors of this clamor—Let them view such men as Abraham Bishop, and eye the path which they have trodden from their youth, and then ask their own hearts, if they are not under some apprehension, lest if they should enlist ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast
... a large woman of a very uncertain age, arrayed in sober black, not at all like the usual ladies' maid. But she seemed so very respectful, and full of contrition at having annoyed such a "pretty lady," that Cora made no further assault upon her, but closed the door with unusual emphasis instead, and gave way once more to the wrath ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... read, to talk, to laugh when it is by. But it sends flowing through the mind a gentle current of sad and weary images and thoughts, which still have a beauty of their own; it tinges one's life with a sober greyness of hue; it heightens perception, though it prevents enjoyment. In such a mood one can sit silent a long time, with one's eyes cast upon the grass; one sees the delicate forms of the tender things that spring softly out of the dark ground; ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... In the starlight Caroline saw the lace cap droop forward, as the the old woman's head settled gently on her breast. Her hands lay clasped on the great volume; her deep-set eyes were closed. She read no more from the book, and the child, awed and sober, stole like a shadow behind the gray wall and left the quiet ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... that loomed so large in his imagination, was a house built of the soft stone of the country, mellowed by time. It looked dismal enough from the street, and inside it was extremely plain; there was the usual provincial courtyard—chilly, prim, and neat; and the house itself was sober, almost convent-like, but in ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... at his two companions, but seeing their sober faces, muttered something to himself and set about fixing the flapjacks. By this time he was firmly convinced that he had dreamed the whole occurrence, and on being pressed by the boys, told his "dream," relating ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... now working frightful ravages in their midst; and that only the forcible diffusion of Christianity can save the Empire from speedy and overwhelming ruin. An experience of eight years has taught me that, with all their faults, the Chinese are a hardworking, sober, and happy people, occupying an intermediate place between the wealth and culture, the vice ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... day some adolescent grace, Some right recognise or some duty trace; Mould a fair model for the realms of earth, Call moral nature to a second birth, Reach, renovate the world's great social plan, And here commence the sober sense of man, ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... a vast polyglot nation, has restored financial stability and pursued sober fiscal policies since the Asian financial crisis, but many economic development problems remain, including high unemployment, a fragile banking sector, endemic corruption, inadequate infrastructure, ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... really was a careless drunkard, and yet took so many cities and won so many battles, it is clear that if he had been sober and diligent he would have surpassed the most glorious achievements of any ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... the Atlantic itself, with nothing between us and America, but the round of the ridgy water, had excited me so that my wife's reproof, if reproof it was, was quite necessary to bring me to my usually quiet and sober senses. I laughed, begged old grannie's pardon, and set off to see Turner notwithstanding, leaving her to read and ponder ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... watch. "It's just half-past three now," he said. "I vote we run across to Gravesend and catch the train there. Old Whiskers can bring the boat back here after we've gone—if he's still sober." ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... faces foiled each other, sober city girl, pert town girl, bucolic country girl,—a hundred fundamental differences rampant between them, yet each fervid, adolescent young mouth tamed to the same monotonous, drolly exaggerated expression ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... innocent Wilford, whose wife declined to join in the gayeties, and in a plain white muslin, with only a pond lily in her hair, kept by her husband's side, notwithstanding that he more than once bade her leave him and accept some of her numerous invitations to join the giddy dance. This sober phase of Katy did not on the whole please Wilford as much as her gayer ones had done. Perfectly sure of her devotion to himself, he liked to watch her as she glided amid the throng which paid her so much homage. All he had ever dreamed of ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... Margaret fuller, one of whom was afterwards a clergyman and a chaplain in the Union Army. Mrs. Greene is referred to in an interesting article recently written by a graduate of the school, as one "for whom no need of praise could scarcely be excessive, as she was in sober truth a mother to every lad committed to ...
— Annals and Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain • Harriet Manning Whitcomb
... too grew sober and even earnest as Silver appeared, clad in white, her dress and hair wreathed with the trailing arbutus, the first flower of spring, plucked from under the vanishing snows. So beautiful her face, so heavenly its expression, that ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... were also handy with guns and built up a protective and investigative organization, it would fill a long-felt need and at the same time give him something beside Baldur honey-rum to take his mind off whatever he was drinking to keep from thinking about. If he only stayed sober half the time, that would be a fifty per ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... me, with delicate feminine tact, of my mother when she heard of a wager which I now remember with grave disapproval. This was to empty an immense number of bottles of the heavy Wurzburg Stein wine and yet remain perfectly sober. My opponent, who belonged to the Brunswick Corps, lost, but as soon after I was attacked by illness, though not in consequence of this folly, which had occurred about a fortnight before, he could not ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... much simpler for being among non-drinking people. Years ago I made a canoeing trip in northern Maine with two friends. Almost we were forced to rob the traditional cradle and grave to secure guides warranted sober—the only sort safe for a party of women; but in the East that question is scarcely considered, and personally I have never ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... live such sober, useful, busy lives that only the highest genius could make people read ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... young priest. He was running. As her dull gaze was about to fall again, it encountered for a moment the indignant blue eyes of a red-haired, hard-featured, but distinguished-looking young man, clad in sober gray. She knew him to be the American, Malcolm Sturges, the guest of the Governor. But her mind rapidly shed all impressions but the wretched horror of her own plight. In another moment she felt the shears at her neck, ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... Malayan Loup Garou to the native mind is a fact and not a mere belief. The Malay knows that it is true. Evidence, if it be needed, may be had in plenty; the evidence, too, of sober-minded men, whose words, in a Court of Justice, would bring conviction to the mind of the most obstinate jurymen, and be more than sufficient to hang the most innocent of prisoners. The Malays ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... a steady ship's company. As the doctor remarked to me: "You seem to have a most respectable lot of seamen." Not only were they consistently sober, but they did not even want to go ashore. Care was taken to expose them as little as possible to the sun. They were employed on light work under the awnings. And the humane doctor ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... in London to applaud an "entertainment by declamations and music, after the manner of the ancients" (1656). The press began timidly to venture on books of amusement, in a style of humour which seemed ribald and heathenish to the staid and sober covenanter. Something of the jollity and merriment of old Elisabethan days seemed to be in the air. But with a vast difference. Instead of "dallying with the innocence of love," as in England's Helicon (1600), or The Passionate Pilgrim, the sentiment, crushed and maimed by unwise repression, ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... says that about this time some of the Abenakis were killed or maltreated by Englishmen. It may have been so: desperadoes, drunk or sober, were not rare along the frontier; but Vaudreuil gives no particulars, and the only English outrage that appears on record at the time was the act of a gang of vagabonds who plundered the house of the younger Saint-Castin, where the town of Castine now stands. He was Abenaki ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... saw nobody at all idle, except the young children. The women were driving the trucks, and operating the street-cars, which were called "trams", and the elevators, which were called "lifts". Everybody's face was sober and drawn, but they lightened up when they saw the Americans, who had come so far to help them in their trouble. In the cake-shops, and the queer little "pubs" where rosy-cheeked girls sold very thin beer, they could ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... Uddhava and others, to prevent carelessness, Proclaimed throughout the city that nobody should drink. And all the Vrishnis and the Andhakas, well-knowing that they would be slain by Salwa if they behaved carelessly, remained sober and watchful. And the police soon drove out of the city all mimes and dancers and singers of the Anartta country. And all the bridges over rivers were destroyed, and boats forbidden to ply, and the trenches (around the city) were spiked with poles at the bottom. And the land around the city ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... heard nothing more of the anchor and rope for which I had been in treaty, I made all ready for sea. The ship's company had continued healthy and sober, and been served with fresh beef every day, from the time of our first coming to an anchor in the Road; we had also some beef, and a live ox, to carry out with us. We had now only one man upon the sick list, except a seaman, who had been afflicted with rheumatic pains ever ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence. It is not unlikely that Addison was first seduced to excess by the manumission which he obtained from the servile timidity of his sober hours. He that feels oppression from the presence of those to whom he knows himself superior will desire to set loose his powers of conversation; and who that ever asked succours from Bacchus was able to preserve himself from being enslaved by ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... is on Wentworth, I perceive," he said, softly; after a short pause, "now give up your dream for a little while and listen to this sober reality—sober to-day, at least," he added, with a light laugh. "By-the-way, talking of magnetism, do you know, Miss Harz, I think you are the most universally magnetic woman I ever saw? All the men fall in love with you, and the women don't hate ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... you have it, and that's what makes you so nice, but—I felt it from the first, and when you feel it you'll probably become spoiled, too, like the others." This amused Phillips, but the woman was in sober earnest. "I mean what I say. You're the kind who cause women to make fools of themselves—old or young, married or single. When a girl has ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... lengths and widths, some painted and others bare, the business part being in front, and arched over with a stout framework which was covered with a tight-fitting tarpaulin; while at the back a square little house, painted uniformly a sober green, and protected by a sloping roof of brown-coloured wood- work, and lighted by two little windows, served as parlour, bedroom, and kitchen to Ruby ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... more sober, more subdued, more restrained than they had been, and presently a little muzhik whose poll was swathed in a red handkerchief stooped and raised Silantiev's head. But almost as instantly he let it fall again, and, dipping his hands into ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... nights intensely studious. This egotism is not presumptuous—is not unreasonable. What man, after a temperate use of life, a series of thinking and acting regularly, without one single deviation from a sober and even tenor of conduct, ever plunged into the depth of crime precipitately, and at once? Mankind are not instantaneously corrupted. Villainy is always progressive. We decline from right—not ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for what I care," says he, and, pushing by me, walked down the hall to his own bedroom. I looked after him as he went, and to my surprise I saw that he walked as straight as a sober man. ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... Christmas, a couple of months after they had come to the hamlet, when one day Lars Peter was mad enough to quarrel with the inn-keeper. He was not even drunk and it was a thing unheard of in the hamlet for a sober man to give the inn-keeper a piece of his mind. But he had been more than stupid, every one ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the entrance of the banqueting hall, he thanked his conductor, and ran hastily with joyful eyes to Margaret. He came in sight of the table—she was gone. Peter was gone too. Nobody was at the table at all; only a citizen in sober garments had just tumbled under it dead drunk, and several persons were raising him to carry him away. Gerard never guessed how important this solemn drunkard was to him: he was looking for "Beauty," and let the "Beast" lie. He ran ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... affair was settled amicably, peaceably, and peacefully. 4. It was awfully amusing. 5. This 'ere knife is dull. 6. That 'ere horse has the heaves. 7. A direct quotation is when the exact words of another are copied. 8. I do not like too much sugar in my tea. 9. He seldom or ever went home sober. 10. The belief in immortality is universally held by all. 11. I am dreadfully glad to hear that. 12. This is a fearfully long lesson. 13. He said how that ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... on the French-Canadians. There were plenty of them. In the Buildings, on the streets, in the markets, in shops, they were all over. Some of the most charming people I know were French-Canadians. My landlady and her husband, quiet, sober devout ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... the party, he has never travelled quite the road we are going now, but the prospect of collecting a few new varieties of butterflies, moths, insects, and plants caused his eyes to light up with a wild gleam when he heard of the trip, and the yarns he spins of things unseen by the ordinary sober mortal are ever a joy to the listener, and make them whisper, se non e vero e ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... other occasion is the difference between the manners of a Protestant and Catholic community so strongly marked as on the Sabbath. In the former, a sober seriousness stamps the deportment of the people, even when they are not engaged in devotional exercises; in the latter, worldly pleasures and religious forms are pursued, as it were, at the same time, or follow each other in incongruous succession. We would not have the day made tedious, and ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... experience—much travel—considerable learning—and wonderful fluency. He had occupied high offices of state, and retired a patriarch amidst children and children's children, to that agreeable retreat which we mentioned as not far from The Hague, where we have often dreamed his sober and serious—but withal cheerful and happy, spirit, might still preside. His moralities are sometimes prolix, and sometimes rather dull. He often sweeps the bloom away from the imaginative anticipations of youth—and in that does little service. He will have ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... A distress came into the soldier's face, but Anna met it with a sober smile: "Don't be troubled, sir, you shall have them. Drive round into the basement, Ben, and unload." The drivers went. "You shall have them, sir, on your simple word ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... different sense—that "the individual dwindles," so that the prediction, which some of our readers may remember was once made by a First Lord of the Admiralty, seems not unlikely one day to become sober fact—that the time will come when we shall no longer require sailors, because all that our warships will need will be stokers and artillerymen. Whether this is a consummation to be desired we are not ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Briars, startled the nestled doves into a sad crooning, whipped mercilessly at the row of tall hollyhocks along the garden fence, flaunted the long spikes of jack-beans and carried their quaint fragrance to pour it over the bed of sober-colored mignonette, mixing it with the pungent zinnia odor and flinging it all over into the clover field across the briar hedge. The jovial old sun did his very best to light up the situation, but just as he would succeed in getting a ray ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... near London Bridge, is a house, or rather cellar, much resorted to by respectable citizens of "sober fame," induced chiefly by the powerful attraction of genuine wines, which may here be had either drawn immediately from the wood, and served in regular standard pewter measures, or in bottles, also of full measure, containing the pure beverage, of various age ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... spirit of French philosophy was uncongenial to this species of composition, and the age does not afford one remarkable historian. The fame of the Abbe Raynal (1718-1796) rests chiefly on his "History of the Two Indies." It is difficult to conceive how a sober man could have arrived at such delirium of opinion, and how he could so complacently exhibit principles which tended to overthrow the whole system of society. Scarcely a crime was committed during the revolution, with which this century closes, but could find its advocate ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... was both credulous and thirsty was evidenced by the fact that he let Barney come within reach of his gun. Instantly the drunken Austrian was transformed into a very sober and active engine of destruction. Seizing the barrel of the piece Barney jerked it to one side and toward him, and at the same instant he leaped for the throat of ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... bread; we've bought for her a stone, And a peaceful place in Pere-La-Chaise where she'll be well alone. She cost a king his crown, they say; oh, wouldn't she be proud If she could see the wreaths to-day, the coaches and the crowd! So follow, follow, follow on with slow and sober tread, For Marie Toro, gutter waif and queen of queens, ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... much it tells of the real man! How the statuesque myth and the priggish myth and the dull and solemn myth melt away before it! Wise and strong, a bearer of heavy responsibility beyond his years, daring in fight and sober in judgment, we have here the other and the more human side of Washington. One loves to picture that gallant, generous, youthful figure, brilliant in color and manly in form, riding gayly on from one little colonial town to another, feasting, dancing, courting, and making merry. For him ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... greatness of his country. He generously assisted the persecuted Protestants in the valleys of Piedmont, and refused to make treaties with hostile powers unless the religious liberties of the Protestants were respected. He lived at Hampton Court, the old palace of Cardinal Wolsey, in simple and sober dignity; nor was debauchery or riot seen at his court. He lived simply and unostentatiously, and to the last preserved the form, and perhaps the spirit, of his early piety. He surrounded himself with learned men, and patronized poets and scholars. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... they will discern the time of the presence of the great King. Furthermore he says to them: "Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day; we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober."—1 Thes. 5:5,6. ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... sober enough to realize he was in danger. It was an effort to reach over his shoulder and move the oxygen gauge back a notch. After a moment the flow levelled out and he felt his ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... original, very curious. Its four hundred thousand souls form a strange conglomerate of humanity. In its narrow, picturesque streets one is jostled by gayly dressed Greeks and cunning Jews, by overladen donkeys and by sober, mournful-looking camels. One half expects to meet Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, as we still look for Antonio and the Jew on the Rialto at Venice. Like Paris, Cairo is a city of cafes. During the evening and far into the night crowds of individuals of every nationality are seen ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... they o'erflow the cup. The busy Sun (and one would guess By 's drunken fiery face no less) Drinks up the sea, and, when he's done, The Moon and Stars drink up the Sun: They drink and dance by their own light; They drink and revel all the night. Nothing in nature's sober found, But an eternal health goes round. Fill up the bowl then, fill it high, Fill all the glasses there; for why Should every creature drink but I? Why, man of morals, tell ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Riley and Bok held a council of war and decided to slip out and buy some food, only to find that the front, basement, and back doors were locked and the keys missing! Field was very sober. "Thorough woman, that wife of mine," he commented. But his friends ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... character of such revolutions that we always see the worst of them at first. Till men have been some time free, they know not how to use their freedom. The natives of wine countries are generally sober. In climates where wine is a rarity intemperance abounds. A newly liberated people may be compared to a northern army encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. It is said that, when soldiers in such a situation first ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... scene and the season the visitor of the judge was sober and reflective as he strolled through the woods, gun in hand, little intent upon shooting. The quail whirred away from his feet; the funny little squirrel leaped up the tree-side and peeped around at him passing; but ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... much the same way as their European progenitors; they are generally sober and industrious; and although unacquainted with any particular form of religious worship, they evince, in their general deportment, a greater regard to the precepts of Christianity than many who call themselves Christians. They are entirely free from the ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... nothing can exceed the beauty of the inlay of precious stones with which it is adored, or the general poetry of the design, It is round the roof of this hall that the famous inscription runs: "If there is a heaven on earth, it is this, it is this ", which may safely be rendered into the sober English assertion that no palace now existing in the world possesses an apartment of such singular elegance as this' (Fergusson, ed. 1910, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... of others. Not all the attention that has been paid her since she was a child has made her take herself too seriously. Sometimes she gets started on a very solemn preachment. Then her teacher calls her an incorrigible little sermonizer, and she laughs at herself. Often, however, her sober ideas are not to be laughed at, for her earnestness carries her listeners with her. There is never the least false sententiousness in what she says. She means everything so thoroughly that her very quotations, her echoes from what ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... York for a little breathing spell at Atlantic City, where Mamma, who had a very small room at the top of a very large hotel, was enjoying a financially pinched but entirely carefree existence. Mary would have preferred sober and unpretentious boarding in some private family herself, but Mamma loved the big dining-room, the piazzas, the music, and the crowds of the hotel, and Mary amiably engaged the room next to hers. They had to climb a flight of stairs ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... sober cannot be right.-I'm not sure, if I were to know all, (and yet I'm afraid of inquiring after your ways) whether I should not have reason to wish you were brought home in wine, rather than to come in so sober, and so ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... forth, my song! and thrill, With sober joy, the troubled days; A nation's hymn of grateful praise May not ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... any way," I continued, "of showing that this experience of the race about which so much is said without the least attempt to show in what way it may, or does, become the experience of the individual, is in sober seriousness the experience of one single being only, who repeats on a great many different occasions, and in slightly different ways, certain performances with which he has already ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... nation on a new foundation! The very same principle was attempted to be acted on in the French Revolution by the "true sans-culottes." With us Sir Matthew Hale showed the weakness of the project, and while he drew on his side "all sober persons, stopped even the mouths ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... good sense, may miscarry. How many men are country curates, that might have made themselves aldermen of London by a right improvement of a smaller sum of money than what is usually laid out upon a learned education? A sober, frugal person, of slender parts and a slow apprehension, might have thrived in trade, though he starves upon physic; as a man would be well enough pleased to buy silks of one whom he could not venture to feel his pulse. Vagellius is careful, ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... your time, Miss, to submit with a grace, and to make your own terms with him:—else, I can tell you, were I Mr. Solmes, it should be worse for you: And who, Miss, of our sex, proceeded the saucy creature, would admire a rakish gentleman, when she might be admired by a sober one to the end ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... if he had been married to her. Yet has he his virtues, as well as his faults; for he is generous; nay, he is noble in his spirit; hates little dirty actions: he delights in doing good; but does not pass over a wilful fault easily. He is wise, prudent, sober, and magnanimous, and will not tell a lie, nor disguise his faults; but you must not expect to have him all ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... only jesting," said the novelist. "In sober earnest, I conjecture that you are married to her, like Athos to Miladi. As you stand there, with that grave air, ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... By the time he reached Westham the planter had consumed too much of the whiskey, and forgot to land at Westham. He rode his canoes, tobacco and all, over the Falls. Shortly thereafter he was fished from the waters downstream, wet and frightened, but sober. ...
— Tobacco in Colonial Virginia - "The Sovereign Remedy" • Melvin Herndon
... be so tragically universal, if it had not a good and necessary meaning. For one thing it should sober us, and make our lives full of serious, solemn purpose. It should teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. The man, who has no place for death in his philosophy, has not learned to live. The lesson ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... married an' moved away, an' my only sister was at service in London, so when Mona begged me to come to America with her an' Michael an' the little ones, I just jumped at the chance. Michael was a good fellow, sober an' industrious, but there was no work to be had at home and he had heard such wonders of the land across the sea. There, a man that was a man had no trouble in findin' work an' making a comfortable livin' for himself an' family. He wanted to leave Mona with his sister in Dublin, who offered ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... dancing was resumed with fresh vigor,—the waltzing of all other couples being quite eclipsed by that of Young New York and little Straw-Goods, who had effectually got rid of her tipsy persecutor ever since the ground-swell, and was keeping rather in the background of late, with a sober-minded lady whom she called "aunty." With the exception of the few who took to whiskey and bad company, all appeared contented, and the better for their sea-holiday. The very musicians played with greater spirit ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... know all that. The question now is, what can we do to help her? She is living now at this present moment, an orderly, sober life; but without occupation, or means, or friends. Will your wife let her come to her,—for a month or so, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... about them; and such first-hand knowledge in natural history is really the rarest and the most valuable of all. He saw little of his fellow- workmen. They were usually a drunken, careless lot; Edward was sober and thoughtful, and had other things to think of than those that they cared to talk about with one another. But he went out much into the fields, with invincible determination, having made up his mind that he would get to know all about the plants and beasties, however ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... patient he had lost. There was a kettle singing on the stove, and blowing off a happier steam than any engine ever blew on that railroad whose unmarketable stock had singed Dr. Renton's fingers. There was a yellow gleam flickering from the blazing fire on the sober binding of a good old Book upon a shelf with others, a rarer medical work than ever slipped at auction from Dr. Renton's hands, since it kept the sacred lore of Him who healed the sick, and fed the hungry, and comforted the poor, and who was also ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... old not in the endearing sense in which it is sometimes applied to intimates, but as a matter of sober fact. The Dunster in question was old. He had been an eminent colonial statesman, but had now retired from active politics after a tour in Europe and a lengthy stay in England, during which he had had a very good press indeed. The ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... the search, and sat me down Beside the brook, irresolute, And watched a little bird in suit Of sober olive, soft and brown, Perched in the maple branches, mute; With greenish gold its vest was fringed, Its tiny cap was ebon-tinged, With ivory pale its wings were barred, And its dark eyes were tender-starred. "Dear bird," ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... bigotry of every sect and party; but that mere restless love of new excitements, and that dull fear and suspicion of new truths, and even of old truths in new words, which beset the uneducated of every rank and class, and in no age more than in our own? And therefore I must ask, in sober sadness, how long would His influence last? It lasted, we know, in Judea of old, for some three years. And then—. But I am not going to say that any such tragedy is possible now. It would be an insult to Him; an insult to the gracious ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... either mad or drunk; but I will forgive you this time because you have obeyed. Go to bed, and don't forget to be either sober or sane when I ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... have to take our chance of that," remarked Johnson in a more sober tone; "but let it keep dark half an hour longer, and I don't care how much it lightens after that. Ah, tarnation! look ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... mature reflection, and practical observation, in regard to the duties of life, and the sources of human enjoyment. This is a task, however, which but few of the youthful are inclined to undertake. The most of them are averse to giving up their thoughts to sober meditation on the consequences which accrue from different courses of conduct, or to practical observation on the lessons taught by the experience of others. The Present!—the Present!—its amusements, its gayeties, its fashions, ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin |
