"Soberness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with conscience, alone with God, how does the matter stand? The challenge of such a life and conviction as Canon Aylwin's is a searching one. It bids one look deep into one's self, it calls one to truth and soberness. What I seem to see is that he and I both approach Christianity with a prepossession, with, as he says, "a philosophy." His is a prepossession in favour of a system of interference from without, by Divine or maleficent powers, for their own ends, with the ordinary sequences of nature—which ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... continental soldier attached to his division, who said after seeing British soldiers marching bootless and fighting foodless, he placed the British army "foremost among European armies." So say they all! The German prisoner in Ceylon spoke words of truth and soberness when he said our private soldier is in some ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... in some way—not-withstanding her plain dress—or rather, possibly, in consequence of it, for she was a girl characterized by earnestness and soberness of mien, with which simple drapery accorded well. Her face flushed, too, at the slight awkwardness of the meeting, and she passed him with her eyes bent on the candle-flame that she carried just below her nose. Thus ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... idiotic and epileptic Smerdakov—for Dostoevski must have his idiot and his fits, and they make an effective combination—is an absolutely original character out of whose mouth come from time to time the words of truth and soberness. The old monk at the head of the chapter is marvellous; he would find a natural place in one of Ibsen's early historical dramas, for he is a colossal pontifical figure, and has about him the ancient air of authority. If one really doubted the genius ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... me, gentlemen, I am not here the advocate of the North, but am here the firm friend and lover of the South and her institutions, and for this reason I speak thus plainly and faithfully for yours, mine, and every other man's interest, the words of truth and soberness,) let me show the facts, I say, of which I wish you to judge, and I will only state facts which are clear and undeniable, and which now stand as records authentic in the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... would undoubtedly reach an aggregate not much short of that of the year of largest preparations and largest operations during the rebellion. Does this seem extravagant, impossible? Words of truth and soberness on such a subject surely might be expected from a commission comprising such men as Gens. Sherman, Harney, Augur, and Terry of the regular army of the United States. Yet these officers united in a report rendered to the President on the 7th of January, 1868, in which they ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... of old colleagues, numerous relatives and youthful companions, he esteemed their good opinion. Exempt from vexatious or burdensome taxes, tolerably well off, owning at least his own office, he was above sordid preoccupations and common necessities. Used to old fashioned habits of simplicity, soberness and economy, he was not tormented by a disproportion between his income and expenses, by the requirements of show and luxury, by the necessity of annually adding to his revenue.—Thus guided and free, the instincts of vanity and generosity, the essence of French character, took the ascendant; ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... rooted was I in these things, that they became as a second nature to me; the which, as I also have with soberness considered since, did so offend the Lord, that even in my childhood he did scare and affright me with fearful dreams, and did terrify me with dreadful visions; for often, after I had spent this and the other day in sin, I have in my bed been greatly afflicted, while asleep, with the apprehensions ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... contained five songs, of which the ecstatic "'Twas April" reached the largest popularity. Possibly the smallest sale was enjoyed by "Herbstgefuehl." Many years have not availed to shake my allegiance to this song, as one of the noblest songs in the world's music. It is to me, in all soberness, as great as the greatest of the Lieder of Schubert, Schumann or Franz. In "Herbstgefuehl" (or "Autumn-mood") Gerok's superb poem bewails the death of the leaves and the failing of the year, ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... on one foot and shoe on the other, just as it was all over, with the impatient inquiry, "W-w-what is it all about?" On an explanation of the affair being made, the next question he asked, in all earnestness, soberness and simplicity, was "W-h-o-i-c-h came out ahead?" The personal appearance and manner of the General, and the absurd question, uttered in a vehement and stammering way, touched a ludicrous spot in the minds of the spectators so permanently that should you ask one of ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... young men are year by year growing older. Experience and age together are giving a soberness and a steadiness otherwise unattainable. In the schools, in the government, in politics, and in the judiciary, and in the churches, men of years and of training in the new order are becoming relatively numerous, and erelong they will be in the majority. We may expect to see Japan ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... of Cambridge, England, a court consisting of the Master and Fellows of a college, who sit in the Combination Room, and pass sentence on any young offender against the laws of soberness ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... had a testimony for himself, and was not dependent upon another; that they had the gift of tongues, the interpretation of those tongues, the power of healing the sick by the laying on of hands, prophesying, casting out devils and evil spirits. All of which he declared, with words of soberness, ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... hollow, where a little stream crossed—the place Tusk usually turned off after leaving Tom's house, and the scene of an earlier struggle. He got out of the buggy and carefully scanned the ground, flashing the same electric torch which had played a part here once before; smiling, despite his soberness, when he came to a patch of violently torn up sod ten feet from the spot where, evidently, Jane's horse had fallen. Here, he knew, Mac had made his gallant stand, desisting only after his instinct told him Jane ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... known to man. The historian appreciates the truth of this just as the fictionist recognises and is governed by the opposite of it, each according to his lights. In recording the actual, the authentic, the definite, your chronicler may set down in all soberness things which are utterly inconceivable; may set them down because they have happened. But he who deals with the fanciful must be infinitely more conventional in his treatment of the probabilities and the possibilities, else the critics will say he has let his ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... very humble and simple words, that we are not to expect to gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles, we may, at least, demand, in all persons assuming the character of moralist or philosopher—order, soberness, and regularity of life; for we are apt to distrust the intellect that we fancy can be swayed by circumstance or passion; and we know how circumstance and passion WILL sway the intellect: how mortified vanity ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the heart pure unless the head is furnished with ideas Would ye, O my sisters, really possess modesty, ye must remember that the possession of virtue, of any denomination, is incompatible with ignorance and vanity! Ye must acquire that soberness of mind which the exercise of duties and the pursuit of knowledge alone inspire, or ye will still remain in a doubtful, dependent situation, and only be, loved while ye are fair! The downcast eye, the rosy blush, the retiring grace, are all proper in their season; but ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... "Yes, in all soberness, I warn you," said I, fixing my gaze upon him, and holding his eyes until they fell to the floor. "Mr. Wallingford is not the man to permit any one to use language about him, such as you have indulged in. If you make use of another opprobrious epithet, I will communicate ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... pressure of its inexorable physical environment; the relations of mind to body, of man's poor will to this tangled tyrannous life—it was along these old, old lines his thought went painfully groping; and always at intervals it came back to the squire, pondering, seeking to understand, a new soberness, a new ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... plates and bring them generous portions of "John's Delight," a dessert which Molly declared was "first cousin to a Christmas plum pudding," and over which she was tempted to smack her lips in earnest, not pretence. A momentary soberness touched her merry face, however, when the hostess ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... the facts (and believe me, gentlemen, I am not here the advocate of the North, but I am here the friend, the firm friend and lover of the South and her institutions, and for this reason I speak thus plainly and faithfully for yours, mine, and every other man's interest, the words of truth and soberness), of which I wish you to judge, and I will only state facts which are clear and undeniable, and which now stand in the authentic records of the history of our country. When we of the South demanded the slave trade, ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... inhabitants, with all the accompaniments of wealth and culture, and now (in 1859) the most quiet and well-governed city of its size in the United States. But it has been through its season of Heaven-defying crime, violence, and blood, from which it was rescued and handed back to soberness, morality, and good government, by that peculiar invention of Anglo-Saxon Republican America, the solemn, awe-inspiring Vigilance Committee of the most grave and responsible citizens, the last resort of the thinking and the good, taken to only when vice, fraud, and ruffianism have intrenched ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... affairs" lasted some two or three days, and only when the Captain had not a farthing left of the three roubles or five roubles given him by his grateful customer did he say: "You came! Do you see? Now that we have drunk everything with you, you fool, try again to regain the path of virtue and soberness. It has been truly said that if you do not sin, you will not repent, and, if you do not repent, you shall not be saved. We have done the first, and to repent is useless. Let us make direct for salvation. Go to the river and work, and if you think you cannot ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... pomps and vanities of this wicked world." A person to whom this means nothing is one to whom, in the end, nothing has meaning. He has not conceived a highest good, no ultimate goal is within his horizon, and it has never occurred to him to ask what he is living for. With all his pompous soberness, the worldly man is fundamentally frivolous; with all his maxims and cant estimations he is radically inane. He conforms to religion without suspecting what religion means, not being in the least open to such an inquiry. He judges art like a parrot, without having ever stopped ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... followers, and all others under us, both in public, and in our particular families, and personal carriage, to endeavour to keep ourselves within the bounds of Christian liberty, and to be good examples to others of all godliness, soberness, and righteousness, and of every duty we owe to God ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... in its successors. They knew Downs, had known him ever since his younger days when, a trig young Irish-Englishman, some Londoner's discharged valet, he had 'listed in the cavalry, as he expressed it, to reform. A model of temperance, soberness, and chastity was Downs between times, and his gifts as groom of the chambers, as well as groom of the stables, made him, when a model, invaluable to bachelor officers in need of a competent soldier servant. In days ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... the name of the Lord at all times with great dread of his majesty on your hearts, and in great soberness and truth. To do otherwise is to profane the name of the Lord, and to ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... sovereignty to the central Government, and consented that that central Government should have the power to coerce a State. But, if this power does not exist, if this sovereignty has not been surrendered, then, who can deny the words of soberness and truth spoken by your candidate this evening, when he has pleaded to you the cause of State independence, and the right of every community to be judge of its own domestic affairs? This is all we have ever asked—we of the South, I mean—for I stand before you as one of ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... Tom's wonted soberness dissolved under this familiar, friendly treatment, and he said with characteristic blunt frankness, "I'm glad you came. You're just like I thought you were. I hoped all ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... [6118]Vino saepe suum nescit amica virum. Noah (saith [6119]Hierome) "showed his nakedness in his drunkenness, which for six hundred years he had covered in soberness." Lot lay with his daughters in his drink, as Cyneras with Myrrha,—[6120]quid enim Venus ebria curat? The most continent may be overcome, or if otherwise they keep bad company, they that are modest of themselves, and dare not offend, "confirmed by [6121]others, grow ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... frolicsome child, or a sportive undine, who wreaths the unmanageable stone into weird and quaint forms, seemingly from no other motive than pure delight in the exercise of overflowing power. Everything is playful, airy, and fantastic; there is no spirit of soberness; no reference to any ulterior end; nothing from which food, fuel, or raiment can be extracted. These chasms have been scooped out, and these pillars have been reared, in the spirit in which the bird sings, or the kitten plays with the falling ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... makes it necessary to present our readers with a prospectus setting forth our aims and objects. Our plan is to publish a paper monthly, devoted to the interests of woman. Our purpose is to speak clear, earnest words of truth and soberness in a spirit of kindness. To discuss the rights, duties, sphere, and destiny of woman fully and fearlessly. So far as our voice shall be heard, it will be ever on the side of freedom. We shall not confine ourselves ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... tyrannical thing in the world. Against this Shelley fought with all his might; his error was to hate it so intensely as to fail to see the few grains of gold, the few principles of kindness, of honesty, of consideration, of soberness, that it contains. He paid dearly for his error, in the consciousness of the contempt and infamy which were heaped upon his quivering spirit. But he did undoubtedly love truth, beauty, and purity. One has to get on the right side of his sins and indulgences, his grotesque political ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... courses that tend to take away the privilege of the same. 4th, Uprightness towards ourselves, in everything relating to the real good of our own souls and bodies; by walking in all the duties of soberness, temperance, and moderation; for as others are to have their due, so ourselves are ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... not mere "curb-stone rhetoric"; I speak the words of soberness and truth. Would that they in whose blood the "narrowing lust of gold" has begun to burn might be sobered by them! In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, and of all the noblest of the sons of men, let us deny and defy the sordid traditions of mammon; let us make it plain that ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... Chrysanthemums, russet, saffron and orange, glowed like the efflorescence of an enchanted forest; belts of red begonia purpling to wine-colour ran like smouldering flame among the borders; and above this outspread tapestry the house extended its harmonious length, the soberness of its lines softened to grace ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... without the color and clearness that the ether theories and the other models may be able to give, and even, we can feel it this way, just because of the soberness induced by their absence, Einstein's work, we may now positively expect, will remain a monument of science; his theory entirely fulfills the first and principal demand that we may make, that of deducing ...
— The Einstein Theory of Relativity • H.A. Lorentz
... of his military abilities. At first he was looked upon somewhat doubtfully in our camp, seeing that he did not keep a long face, but was ready with a jest and a laugh with high and low, and that he did not affect the soberness of costume favoured by our party; but that soon passed off, when it was seen how zealous he was in the cause, how ready to share in any dangerous business; while he set an example to all, by the cheerfulness with which ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... doing so. Their very form, as short earnest leaflets, was perplexing; for they came, not from the class of religionists who usually deal in such productions, but from distinguished University scholars, picked men of a picked college; and from men, too, who as a school were the representatives of soberness and self-control in religious feeling and language, and whose usual style of writing was specially marked by its severe avoidance of excitement and novelty; the school from which had lately come the Christian Year, with its ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... contempt of human life, which is the dark side of their character. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that different persons give totally opposite accounts of them—one praising them for their soberness, civility, and good-nature; another abusing them for their deceit, treachery, and cruelty. The old traveller Nicolo Conti, writing in 1430, says: "The inhabitants of Java and Sumatra exceed every other people in cruelty. They regard ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... too much used either to carelessness or to pomposity. The sermon made his brother and sister ashamed of their fears. It was an exposition of the Gospel for the day, practical and earnest, going deep, and rising high, with a clearness and soberness, yet with a beauty and elevation, such as Norman and Ethel had certainly not expected—or, rather, they forgot all their own expectations and Richard himself, and only recollected their own hearts and ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... responsibility which it involves, and I realize that its accuracy will shortly be tested by the report of experts who are now examining the accounts. But it will be found that I have spoken the words of truth and soberness. When the Ring absconded I was asked by William C. Havemeyer, then the Mayor of New York, to become a trustee, in order to investigate the expenditures, and to report as to the propriety of going on with the work. This duty was performed without fear ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... can. No man drinks for pure love of liquor. My father never loved it, and God knows what he was trying to forget. For that's the substance of it all, to forget. When you start out to the point of forgetfulness, you must keep it up; regret comes back threefold with soberness. It seems silly and weak for a man who has been buffeted as I have, who is supposed to gather wisdom and philosophy as a snowball gathers snow as it rolls down hill, to try to drown regret and disappointment in liquor. A man never knows how weak he is till ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... do you think you can furnish Mrs. Anthony with in a year?" Juliet inquired, her lips forcing themselves to soberness, but the ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... cult of antithesis, the pursuit of effect, he sacrificed directness and plainness with not less consistency than complacency. In that tissue of 'apocalyptic epigram' which to him was style there was no room for truth and soberness. His Patmos was a place of mirrors, and before them he draped himself in his phrases like Frederick in the mantle of Ruy Blas. That this grandiosity was unnatural and unreal was proved by the publication of ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... calling upon my wife in the soft spirit of afternoon friendliness, but with her usual martial determination. She marched into my room swinging her stick . . . but no—I mustn't exaggerate. It is not my specialty. I am not a humoristic writer. In all soberness, then, all I am certain of is that she had a stick ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... maintained so evenly his mood of irresponsible insouciance that the soberness with which he announced that it was his sister who was to join them at dinner sent Archie's thoughts darting away at a new tangent of speculation. He had so accommodated himself to the idea that the Governor was ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... lesson and made it his own, passed by the lady in all soberness and quietness, taking no more notice of her than if she had been one of those dames painted on canvas by the late King's painter, Sir Anthony Van Dyck, which, truth to tell, she mightily resembled. The haughty fair one seeing ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... was doing good work. It was not the "Face of a Girl," now. It was the face of a baby: smiling, laughing, even crying, sometimes; at other times just gazing straight into your eyes with adorable soberness. Bertram still went into Boston twice a week for treatment, though the treatment itself had changed. The great surgeon had sent him to ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... innovateth greatly, but quietly, and by degrees scarce to be perceived."[26] Without descending to the puerile ostentation of panegyric, on that of which all mankind confess the excellence, I may observe, with truth and soberness, that a free government not only establishes an universal security against wrong, but that it also cherishes all the noblest powers of the human mind; that it tends to banish both the mean and the ferocious vices; that it improves the national character ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... the more extreme the opinions, the warmer was their reception by these representative Liberals. They would hardly listen to their old leaders, who had grown grey in fighting the battles of Liberalism. They treated with contumely any words of soberness or moderation. They applauded even speakers who were palpably selfish and insincere. As I listened to that debate, my eyes were opened, and I realised the fact that a great revolution had been suddenly and silently wrought, and that ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... Yates's having a pleasant journey, as he walked with him to the hall-door, were given with genuine satisfaction. Mr. Yates had staid to see the destruction of every theatrical preparation at Mansfield, the removal of everything appertaining to the play: he left the house in all the soberness of its general character; and Sir Thomas hoped, in seeing him out of it, to be rid of the worst object connected with the scheme, and the last that must be inevitably reminding him ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... perhaps unfairly, against Bulstrode, and had so often decided against it—he had so often said to himself that his assertions would not change people's impressions—that Dorothea's words sounded like a temptation to do something which in his soberness he ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... cackle about books," said Jephson; "these columns of criticism to every line of writing; these endless books about books; these shrill praises and shrill denunciations; this silly worship of novelist Tom; this silly hate of poet Dick; this silly squabbling over playwright Harry. There is no soberness, no sense in it all. One would think, to listen to the High Priests of Culture, that man was made for literature, not literature for man. Thought existed before the Printing Press; and the men ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... that soberness trouble him long. For the main point now was that no one made a move to fight further, which was what he had expected. He had flung them the challenge, knowing that he was possessed of their knife, and suspecting that it was their only weapon. The belief ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... best men in the host Be not such that use to brag most. If ye will avoid the danger of confusion, Print my words in heart, and mark this conclusion: Such gifts of God, that ye excel in most, Use them with soberness, and yourself never boast; Seek the laud of God in all that ye do: So shall virtue and honour come you to. But if you give your minds to the sin of pride, Vanish shall your virtue, your honour away will slide. For pride is hated ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... and makes soberness, duty, and hard work the habit of entire communities, we have a social fact of first-class importance; for the human animal is naturally lazy, sluggish, and inclined to live for today. The capacity to subordinate immediate gratification for a future ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... ruffian life. They were little in unison with the external appearances of the mansion, and blasted all the hopes I had formed of meeting under this roof with gentleness and hospitality. To talk with this being, to attempt to reason him into humanity and soberness, was useless. I was at a loss in what manner to address him, or whether it was proper to maintain any parley. Meanwhile, my silence was supplied by the suggestions of his own distempered fancy. "Ay," ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... Sir,—The words of soberness and truth were spoken with reference to the sinking of the Kowshing in the letter from Professor Westlake which you printed on Friday last. Ignorance dies hard, or, after the appearance of that letter and of your remarks upon it, one might have expected that leading articles would be less ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... listen to the thread-bare doctrines of the Bible, much to his personal discomfort. Your minister exercises a censorship over the consciences of his members from which I prefer to be excused. In fine, I can say that nothing is developed there but a long face and a sanctimonious soberness." ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... living and throbbing for her. All this had made her a little forget her haste to assert her liberty of action by returning to the pedlar; but, behold, when she came back to the hall, it had resumed its pristine soberness, and merely a few lingering figures were to be seen, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... proved quite recently that he is in mortal earnest by his preface to a historical treatise on "Satanism and Magic," the work of a literary disciple, Jules Bois. In a criticism, which for general soberness and lucidity does not leave much to be desired, he there affirms that a number of persons, not specially distinguished from the rest of the world by the mark of the beast in their foreheads, are "devoted in secret to the operations of Black Magic, communicate ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... he wrote the first Protestant work in dogmatic theology, entitled "Loci Communes," and drew up the "Augsburg Confession"; the sweetness of temper for which he was distinguished, together with his soberness as a thinker, had a moderating influence on the vehemence of Luther, and contributed much to the progress of the Reformation; he was the Erasmus of that movement, and combined the humanist with the Reformer, as George Buchanan did in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... staidness of deportment which I could but ill conform unto, and I was not sorry when they took leave. My Uncle Rawson need not fear my joining with them; for, although I do judge them to be a worthy and pious people, I like not their manner of worship, and their great gravity and soberness do little accord with my natural ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a surety that the work is true. And we also testify that we have seen the engravings which are upon the plates; and they have been shown unto us by the power of God, and not of man. And we declare with words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon; and we know that it is by the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld and bear record that these things ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... events of a highly-worked parish,—all about the choral festival, and the guilds, and the choir, and the temperance work. A great deal of it was a strange language to May, but she half-disapproved of it, as entirely unlike the 'soberness' of Bridgefield ways, and like the Redcastle vicar, whom her father commonly called 'that madman.' Still, she had a practical soul for parish work, and could appreciate the earnestness that manifested itself, and the exertions made for people of the classes ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which had hung about the men for days, and which lifted from time to time only temporarily, now silenced them again. Indeed, had there been anybody present to observe, he doubtless would have been impressed most of all with the unwonted soberness of the wagon's occupants, a gravity strangely at variance with the ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... be true and just in all his dealings, to bear no malice or hatred in his heart, to keep his hands from picking and stealing, and his tongue from evil speaking, lying and slandering, to keep his body in temperance, soberness and chastity. Not to covet or desire other men's goods, but to learn and labor truly to get his own living and to do his duty in that state of life unto which it should please God to call him. We know this was the rule of his life. The Father of his Country found his solace, inspiration ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... the sake of the tired-looking washerwoman he had seen bending over the tubs. This was an occupation she had to resort to only in her husband's times of indulgence, for he was a wage earner in his days of soberness. ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... tell how, to set it right. He had frightened and subdued the passionate wife, and quenched the growing tendencies to evil, which made her temper worse than it was by nature, and had won her back to soberness and some kind of peace, changing the unhappy house into one of comparative comfort and cheerfulness. Most people like those best to whom they have been kind, whom they have served or benefited, and in this way Mr. May was fond of Cotsdean, who in his turn had been ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... and prophetic language of your own great statesman I have but a few words to add. They shall be those of truth and soberness. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... beauty and charm were praised on all sides, Jim beamed like a proud boy. As for Julia, every day brought to her notice something new to admire in this wonderful lover of hers: his scowl as he fixed his engine, the smile that always met hers, the instant soberness and attention with which he answered any question as to his work from the older doctor—all this was delightful to her. And when he took her to luncheon, his careless big fingers on the ready gold pieces and his easy nod to the waiter were not lost upon Julia. She ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... dominion which the Divine Providence had put into our hands, instead of troubling our understandings with speculations concerning the unity of empire and the identity or distinction of legislative powers, and inflaming our passions with the heat and pride of controversy, it was our duty, in all soberness, to conform our government to the character and circumstances of the several people who composed this mighty and strangely diversified mass. I never was wild enough to conceive that one method would ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... surprise her; she could not recollect that she had been tired before, and this must be the end of all things. She would fly to the country; to Dorsetshire, to Norfolk, to Haslemere, to what she called "the soberness of Ascot." Then would come letters describing the bliss of rural calm. "Here I am! Just in time to save my life. For the future, no clothes and early hours." That lasted a very short while. Then a letter signed "Your recluse, ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... dream, Mr. Gear, but truth and soberness," said I. "A dream does not last through eighteen centuries, and raise half a world from barbarism to civilization. A dream does not carry mothers through such sorrows as this with outlooking anticipations ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... all fled and dispersed at my eye, and I went home in triumph, escorted by my friend, and some well-meaning young Christians, who, however, had not learned to deport themselves with soberness and humility. But my ascendancy over my enemies was great indeed; for wherever I appeared I was hailed with approbation, and, wherever my guilty brother made his appearance, he was hooted and held in derision, till he was forced to hide his disgraceful head, ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... a thoroughly good man, but burdened and grave. I do not know that I ever heard him laugh, and he seldom, if ever, smiled. He worked hard, was faithful to every duty, and no doubt loved his family; but soberness was inbred. He read the Cultivator, the Christian Register, and the almanac. After the manner of his time, he was kind and helpful; but life was hard and joyless. He was greatly respected and was honored by a period of service as ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... after her father's death, she never in all that time looked upon that rich attire and precious jewels but once, and that against her will. And that there never came gold or stone upon her head, till her sister forced her to lay off her former soberness, and bear her company in her glittering gayness. And then she so wore it, as every man might see that her body carried that which her heart misliked. I am sure that her maidenly apparel which she used in king ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... see the perfect reasonableness of this Restraint, soberness, the matured thought, the unselfish a act, they are necessities of the barbarous state, the life of dangers. Dourness is man's tribute to unconquered nature. But man has conquered nature now for all practical purposes—his political affairs are managed by Bosses ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... assented Margaret thoughtfully. And then, to take advantage of her companion's comparative soberness through the stirring of her feelings,—"Hennie, do you ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... speak the words of truth and soberness," she answered, her face rising in color and her eyes brightening. "What great difference is there between a drinking-saloon, where liquor is sold, and a gentleman's dining-room, where it is given away? The harm is great in both—greatest, ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... great beauty, is a book which I should be sorry indeed to place in the hands of any young lady; and one against which I would forewarn every young man, who is not prepared to run the risk of sacrificing, at the shrine of genius, Christian faith, and Christian soberness, and Christian purity. ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... temperature for me, Mr. James: how should I do in England? I fear not at all. Am I very sorry? I am sorry about seven or eight people in England, and one or two in the States. And outside of that, I simply prefer Samoa. These are the words of honesty and soberness. (I am fasting from all but sin, coughing, THE BONDMAN, a couple of eggs and a cup of tea.) I was never fond of towns, houses, society, or (it seems) civilisation. Nor yet it seems was I ever very fond of (what is technically called) God's ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fine face, of the older New England type, clean-shaven and strong-featured,—a type that is fast passing away. He might have been a Cumberland dalesman, such were his dignity, and self-possession, and English soberness of manner. His large frame was built for hard work, for lifting great weights and pushing his plough through new-cleared land. We felt at home together, and each knew many things that the other did of earlier days, and of losses that had come with time. ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Independence means, and we have him saying that the people of America are equal to the people of England. According to his construction, you Germans are not connected with it. Now, I ask you in all soberness if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if confirmed and indorsed, if taught to our children, and repeated to them, do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to transform this government into ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... will never obtain, and that is, happiness independent of God. Some tell us that they mean to make the most of life, and to be happy while they live; therefore, begone, reflection! religion is not for the spring-tide of youth; mirth and merry days are for the young; soberness and the russet garb of autumn belong to the decline of life, which certainly to them, they think, is far off;—as though every material necessary for their last, long sleep, may not at this moment be in the warerooms and shops; as though they could boast themselves even ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... imitates a row of machicolations. Carven chimneys and tall dormer windows, covered with imagery, rise from the roofs; turrets on brackets, of elegant shape, hang with the greatest lightness from the angles of the building. The soberness of the main lines, the harmony of the empty spaces and those that are filled out, the prominence of the crowning parts, the delicacy of all the details, constitute an enchanting whole." And then the Abbe speaks of the admirable staircase which adorns the north front, and which, with its ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... serious conversation with her. There was always some butterfly or another flitting about, and when Philip showed by his manner that he was not pleased, Ruth laughed merrily enough and rallied him on his soberness—she declared he was getting to be grim and unsocial. He talked indeed more with Alice than with Ruth, and scarcely concealed from her the trouble that was in his mind. It needed, in fact, no word from him, for she saw clearly enough what was going forward, and knew her sex well ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... out of the civil wars, Tom o' Bedlams did travel about the country; they had been poor distracted men, that had been put into Bedlam, where recovering some soberness, they were licentiated to go a begging; i.e., they had on their left arm an armilla, an iron ring for the arm, about four inches long, as printed in some works.[179] They could not get it off; they wore about their necks a great horn of an ox in a string ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... and listen to me. I speak the words of truth and soberness, and you must hear them. I say if in these days of intimate association with Lady Vincent your love for Claudia Merlin has revived, ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... an air of resolution, like a man with a task before him, who mutters, 'Well, it's got to be done, and I'll do it.' At a hazard, he was two- or three-and-thirty, but below his neck he looked older. He was dressed like everybody, but his costume had, somehow, an effect of soberness beyond his years. It was decidedly not smart, and smartness was the dominant ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... had been laughing, Daisy had been trying to get command of herself and to get her throat clear for talking; there had been a very uncomfortable thick feeling in it at first. Now she answered with simple dignity and soberness, ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... merchant of Leystoff aforesaid (a man who carried himself with much soberness during the trial, from whom proceeded no words either of passion or malice though his children were so greatly afflicted), sworn and examined, deposeth. That his younger daughter Deborah, upon Thursday the 10th of October last, was suddenly taken with a lameness in her legs, so that ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... not—such footcloths and all gauds apart, Loud from the trump of Fame my name is blown; Best gift of heaven it is, in glory's hour, To think thereon with soberness: and thou? Bethink thee of the adage, Call none blest Till peaceful death have crowned a life of weal. 'Tis said: I fain ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... magnificent castle, girt with seven lofty walls, and further defended with a river, which they all passed as if it had been dry ground. Seven gates conducted them into a meadow of fresh green, the resort of a race whose eyes moved with a deliberate soberness, and whose whole aspects were of great authority, their voices sweet, and their speech seldom.[8] Dante was taken apart to an elevation in the ground, so that he could behold them all distinctly; and there, on the "enamelled green," [9] were pointed out to him the great spirits, by ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... as ourselves who will continue to disagree. In such cases it is obvious that we can use the word "proof" only loosely; and we speak of right or of expediency rather than of truth. This distinction is worth bearing in mind, for it leads to soberness and a seemly modesty in controversy. It is only in barber-shop politics and sophomore debating clubs that a decision of a question of policy takes its place among ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... of spurning at piety and soberness; he inconsiderately followeth a herd of wild fops, he affecteth to play the ape. What more than this ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... Quai du Rosaire, grand groupings of pinnacle, tower, and gable, more delightful even, in perfection of combination and in mellow charm of colour, than those "domes and towers" of Oxford whose presence Wordsworth confessed, in a very indifferent sonnet, to overpower his "soberness of reason." "In Brussels," he says elsewhere in his journal, "the modern taste in costume, architecture, etc., has got the mastery; in Ghent there is a struggle; but in Bruges old images are still paramount, and an air of monastic ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... regarded their high calling as a profession, with social claims and ecclesiastical rights; and even as such had so little respect for it that they talked of it themselves as the cloth? How could such a man as Mr Cairns, looking down from the height of his great soberness and the dignity of possessing the oracles and the ordinances, do other than contemn the enthusiasms and excitements of ignorant repentance? How could such as he recognize in the babble of babes the slightest indication of the revealing of truths ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... books are his best biography. While working with his hands, Jacob Behmen's whole life was spent in the deepest and the most original thought; in piercing visions of GOD and of nature; in prayer, in praise, and in love to GOD and man. Of Jacob Behmen it may be said with the utmost truth and soberness that he lived and moved and had his being in GOD. Jacob Behmen has no biography because his whole life was hid ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... same time by its own words would guard us against the abuses and excesses in which in the Roman Catholic Church this practice, followed without restraint and indulged in with less and less of caution and soberness, unhappily ended; abuses against which also we cannot ourselves now be too constantly and ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... thoughts, and then thou wilt feel the principle of God, to turn thy mind to the Lord God, from whom life comes; whereby thou mayest receive His strength, and power to allay all blustering storms and tempests. That is it which works up into patience, into innocency, into soberness, into stillness, into stayedness, into quietness, up to God with His power. Therefore be still awhile from thy own thoughts, searching, seeking, desires, and imaginations, and be stayed in the principle of God in thee, that it may raise thy mind up to God, and stay it upon God; ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... marriage, towards which he was also led, as so many men are, by a sort of disgust for the emotions of gallantry, those fairy flowers of the soul. There comes a vital moment to most of us when social life appears in all its soberness. ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... things the most admirable and the most to be desired. What noble thoughts have they not concerning education? "An intelligent man," says Plato, "will prize those studies which result in his soul getting soberness, righteousness, and wisdom, and will less value the others." The culture of the mind is made a kind of religion, in the spreading of which the personal influence of the teacher is not less active than the truths he sets forth. Bonds of affection bind ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... with those protections, which I have always possessed, the goodwill also of the men in power. I should, to the best of my belief, have followed this same line of policy even if I had had you here. For I well know the reasonableness and soberness of your judgment: I know your mind, while warmly attached to me, to be without a tinge of malevolence to others, but on the contrary as open and candid as it is great and lofty. I have seen certain persons conduct themselves towards you as you might have seen the same persons conduct themselves ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... to keep sober, more than Evan had done the previous day, and told the time. He dressed with his back to the young man, indulging the while in inward bursts of merriment. The soberness of Evan's countenance made it all the more difficult for his friend to ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... laid up in the heart—treasures of charity, piety, temperance, and soberness. These treasures a man takes with him beyond death when he leaves ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... over him, and her charm. His little boyhood had been heavy with sorrow and soberness; she had lightened it by her gaiety and good nature. Eve had taken her orphaned state philosophically. Her parents had died before she knew them. Her Aunt Maude was rich and gave her everything; she was queen of her small domain. Richard, on the other hand, ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... art-critic is nothing if not a person to be educated, with or against the grain; and when he encounters him in the ways of error, he leaps upon him joyously, scalps him in print before the eyes of men, kicks him gaily back into the paths of truth and soberness, and resumes his avocation with that peculiar zest an act of virtue does undoubtedly impart. Indeed, Mr. Whistler, so far from being the critic's enemy, is on the contrary the best friend that tradesman has ever had. For his function is to make ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... the tour was projected as a scheme of amusement, and the details were discussed between Charles and Rashe with great animation, making the soberness of Hiltonbury appear both tedious and sombre, though all the time Lucy felt that there she should again meet that which her heart both feared and yearned for, and without which these pleasures would ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Wilmet's passive head in perfect conformity with her own. Looking at their figures, Alda's air of fashion made her appear the eldest, and Wilmet might have been a girl in the schoolroom; but comparing their faces, Wilmet's placid recollected countenance, and the soberness that sat so well on her white smooth forehead and steady blue eyes, might have befitted many more years than eighteen. There were not nearly so many lights and shades in her looks as in those of Alda ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... soberness I cared as little for the housemaid as for David Hume. The interests of youth are rarely frank; his passions, like Noah's dove, come home to roost. The fire, sensibility, and volume of his own nature, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... may be forced to load it up for protection. But maybe rock salt will do instead of shot," said Cap'n Ira, still with soberness. "A feller has got a right to protect himself and ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... truth in soberness; it should seem a little hard, since the old Whiggish principle hath been recalled of standing up for the liberty of the press, to a degree that no man, for several years past, durst venture out a thought which did not square to a ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... he lights up teaches anything, they teach the vitality and the imperious moment of the appeal, in times of danger and temptation, to the fathers and to the great past, to the history and the teachings which in times of soberness have ever had the nation's highest honor. No nation which is virtuous and vital will ever be slave to the past; at the command of virtue and of vision it will snap precedent like a reed. But every people of seriousness, stability, and ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... quiet and well-governed city in the United States is San Francisco. But it has been through its seasons of heaven-defying crime and violence and blood; from which it was rescued and handed back to soberness and morality and good government by that peculiar invention of Anglo-Saxon republican America—the solemn, awe-inspiring Vigilance Committee of the most grave and respectable citizens; the last resort of the thinking and the good, taken only when vice, fraud, and ruffianism ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... little perceptible change in the American officer and soldier, now that the work was about actually to begin. A little more soberness was apparent. Everyone was still simple, natural, matter-of-fact. But that night, doubtless, each man dreamed his dream. The West Point stripling saw in his empty shoulder-straps a single bar, as the man above him saw two tiny bars ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... quietly on, not with the undue energy which shows some hidden excitement but with a steady step and thoughts most abstractedly busy. She made no sort of remark, unless in answer to her companion, and then with very quiet look and voice. Her changeful face had settled into a depth of soberness. Perhaps it was because of noticing this that his manner grew more gently careful of her; in trifles shown, to be sure, but the touch of a hand and the tone of a word will tell all that as well as much greater things. Evidently he read her and was not angry with her; not even though the way was long ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... he had never in his life wanted anything before, to have his fling. He wanted his birthright of experience. He had cut himself off from all the gentle ways of his inheritance and lived like a very Ishmael through no fault of his own. Now, it seemed to him that before he settled down to the soberness of marriage, he must take one hasty, heady, compensating draft of life, of the sort of life he might have had. He would go East, go at once; he would fling himself into a tumultuous bath of pleasure, and then he would come back to Sheila and lay a great gift of gold ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... answer? A. Most Eminent, I now declare, in truth and soberness, that I hold no enmity or hatred against a being on earth, that I would not freely reconcile, should I find him in a ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... believers. I know them well, for my humble functions lead me into daily and hourly intercourse with them. Look to them if you purpose to give your hand to a Christian and make your home with him. There, my child, you will see all the blessings of the Saviour's teaching, love and soberness, pitifulness to the poor and a real heart-felt eagerness to forgive injuries. I have seen a Christian bestow his last crust on his hapless foe, on the enemy of his house, on the Heathen or the Jew, because they, too, are men, because our neighbor's woes should be as our own—I have seen them taken ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... but the words of truth and soberness, Mr. Bacon. These, no man should shrink from hearing. Seven years ago, your farm was the most productive in the neighborhood, and you in easy circumstances. What has produced the sad change now visible to all eyes? What has taken from you the ability to manage your affairs as prosperously ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... of murmurs rose up to greet him. The men were sullen, and they snarled openly at him. But he could see that already the thing had gone further than the more law-abiding spirits had thought to see it go. A sudden soberness had fallen upon many of them, and with it a cooler sanity. They broke into quick talk everywhere up and down the line. He could see that no longer at least were they united against him. He could see that the argument between Peters and the Lark was strong, heated. And he hoped ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... a gloomy summer for all of us. The industry and patience with which Hope bore her trial, night and day, is the sweetest recollection of my youth. It brought to her young face a tender soberness of womanhood—a subtle change of expression that made her all the more dear to me. Every day, rain or shine, the old doctor had come to visit his patient, sometimes sitting an hour and gazing thoughtfully in his face, occasionally asking a question, or telling a ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... and soberness it is a marvel and a shame that so many sane people who profess to have passed beyond the habits of the wilderness will not give the attention required by these unexacting fruits. The man who has learned to write his name can learn to raise them successfully. The ladies ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... the life of the greatest of apostolic missionaries. It was in the presence of Festus and Agrippa that Paul had poured forth those few burning utterances which to Festus seemed like madness, but which Paul himself declared to be words of truth and soberness. Then it was that the Jewish prince, Agrippa—far better instructed and seeing deeper into Paul's mind than the heathen Festus, yet still unconvinced—broke in upon the conversation with the words which in the English translation have well nigh passed into ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... teachers, lecturers, novelists, story-writers, militants, dramatists, social workers, and magazine editors should copiously impart all they know, or assume they know, to the world. The lack of restraint, the lack of balance, the lack of soberness and common sense were never more apparent than in the obsession of sex which has set us all ababbling about matters once excluded from the ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... contact is politically developed, is bent on justice, is accustomed to look for safe results from the people's laws, is at present more than ever inclined to trust direct legislation, and, on the whole, is in a state of calmness, soberness, ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan
... He quickly noticed my fears, and comprehended them. Stretching towards me his hand, with an air of increasing mildness: "Take it," said he: "Fear not for thy own sake, nor for mine. The cup is gone by, and its transient inebriation is succeeded by the soberness ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... raving! I speak the words of truth and soberness—very sad soberness, too! Believing as you do that Frederic was once the cause of much sorrow to you and to one you loved, and having no reason to care one iota for me, but rather to distrust me, you nevertheless obey my call upon you for service, as if I had every right to make it. ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... and so they made their way from the rathskeller into the sunlight. The Polo Club occupied a magnificent modern building in a prominent location. They passed in at a door which was opened by a man in uniform, ostentatious in its soberness; at the end of a room, rich in rugs and paintings, they encountered another man, stout ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... 24. And as he thus spake for himself, Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad. 25. But he said, I am not mad, most noble Festus; but speak forth the words of truth and soberness. 26. For the king knoweth of these things, before whom also I speak freely: for I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden from him; for this thing was not done in a corner. 27. King Agrippa, believest thou the prophets? I know that thou ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... over very seriously," he said with much soberness. "I have refused everybody's advice so far, and have taken only my own. I have begun to believe that I am not the wisest person in the world; also I have come to believe that there are more ways to lose money than there are to make money; also I've ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... in their heavy fulness. He could not doubt her love of him; and although chafing at the idea that she swayed him absurdly—beyond the credible in his world of wag-tongues—he resumed his natural soberness, as a garment, not very uneasily fitting: whence it ensued—for so are we influenced by the garb we put on us—that his manly sentiment of revolt in being condemned to play second, was repressed by the refreshment breathed on him from her lofty ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... my clothes. The costumes which I suffered her to select were marvels of Parisian art and New York adaptiveness. She sought too, by frequent allusions to my increased personal beauty, to arouse my vanity and induce me to throw off the pall of soberness that had settled upon my spirit. When this failed, she had recourse to an opposite policy, and repeated to me the remarks she overheard in coming out of church and elsewhere concerning me. Many of my acquaintances, she said, were of the opinion ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... exceptionally brilliant lawyers, doctors, politicians and journalists who bear a charmed reputation based exclusively upon their inebriety, and who take good care not to imperil it by too long a relapse into the mortifying self-revelations of soberness! And what wrong has been done to the honored name of humor by these pretentious rascals! We do not love Falstaff because he is drunk; we do not admire Becky Sharp because she is wicked. Drunkenness and wickedness are things easy of imitation; yet all the sack in Christendom could not ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... a cottage thrown in, and a garden where one can grow vegetables. It wouldn't be half bad," said Mary, with a soberness which impressed ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... suppose nothing could shake Mrs. Patton's faith in warnings. There is no end of absurdity in it, and yet there is one side of such lives for which one cannot help having reverence; they live so much nearer to nature than people who are in cities, and there is a soberness about country people oftentimes that one cannot help noticing. I wonder if they are unconsciously awed by the strength and purpose in the world about them, and the mysterious creative power which is at work with them on their familiar farms. In ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... publicity being, according to their republican notions, essential to the completeness of every important transaction.' Thus the Chorus represented idealised public opinion: not of course, the shifting, hasty public opinion of the moment—to that it was a conservative check, and it calmed to soberness and charity—for it was the matured public opinion of centuries; the experience, and usually the sad experience, of many generations; the very ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... tumble means that a hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of cattle, with hoofs like chopping knives, will run over him and make him look and feel and become as dead as a cancelled postage stamp; his troubles, his joys, his soberness in camp, his drunkenness in town, and his feuds and occasional "gun plays" are not to be disposed of in a preface. One cannot in such cramped space so much as hit the high places in ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... soberness—Is it likely, considering the stubborn conservatism of age, that these dames, well seasoned in the habit, will leave it off directly, or the impenitent old grandsire abate one jot or tittle of his friskiness in the near future? Is it a reasonable hope? Is the outlook from the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... certain pleasing gift of formality. Something made them do all these things in a finer way than most country people would have done them. As I looked up and down the tables there was a good cheer, a grave soberness that shone with pleasure, a humble dignity of bearing. There were some who should have sat below the salt for lack of this good breeding; but they were not many. So, I said to myself, their ancestors may have sat in the great hall of some old French house in the Middle Ages, when ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... and reverently to all my Betters; to hurt no Body by Word or Deed; to be true and just in all my Dealings; to bear no Malice nor Hatred in my Heart; to keep my Hands from Picking and Stealing, and my Tongue from Evil-Speaking, Lying, and Slandering; to keep my Body in Temperance, Soberness, and Chastity; not to Covet nor Desire other Men's Goods, but to learn and labour truly to get mine own Living; and to do my Duty in that State of Life unto which it shall please God to ...
— The A, B, C. With the Church of England Catechism • Unknown
... hierarchy, with their principles of order, subordination, and obedience; substantially at one in purpose, since both wished to keep the colony within manageable bounds, domesticate it, and tame it to soberness, regularity, and obedience. On the other side was the spirit of liberty, or license, which was in the very air of this wilderness continent, reinforced in the chiefs of the colony by a spirit of adventure inherited ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman |
