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Soberness   Listen
Soberness

noun
1.
The state of being sober and not intoxicated by alcohol.  Synonym: sobriety.
2.
A manner that is serious and solemn.  Synonyms: graveness, gravity, sobriety, somberness, sombreness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Soberness" Quotes from Famous Books



... where he happened to be professor of Greek; 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

... granted to him an infinity of virtues, and naturally fine qualities—such as sensitiveness, generosity, frankness, humility, charity, soberness, greatness of soul, force of wit, manly pride, and nobility of sentiment; but, at the same time, they do not sufficiently clear him of the faults which directly exclude the above-mentioned qualities. The moral man does not sufficiently appear in their writings: they do not sufficiently ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... to waver tearfully 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... debasement here must be felt to the extremities of the national body. Temperance here will eventually expel, by its strong pulsations, the last remnant of the burning blood of drunkenness from the system, and carry soberness and health to every member of ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... out to them to remove their 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 observed ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond

... possesseth him of spurning at piety and soberness; he inconsiderately followeth a herd of wild fops, he affecteth to play the ape. What more than this can he say ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... prince!" said Howard, as, some few hours later, he leisurely climbed into the phaeton beside Stafford. "I have noticed with inward satisfaction that as we approach the moment of meeting with your puissant parent, the Sultan, an air of gravity and soberness has clouded that confoundedly careless, devil-may-care countenance of yours. I say with inward satisfaction, because, with my usual candour, I don't mind admitting that I am shivering in my shoes. The shadow of the august presence is already falling on me, and as ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... said they, 'speaks words of truth and soberness, and he asks nothing more than the justice that ought not to be denied to the meanest man ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar

... without expatiation on the greatness of Christ's character and works and the wickedness of his enemies, as is the way of all excited enthusiasts. What Paul said to Festus applies in its full force to them and their writings: "I am not mad, most noble Festus, but speak forth the words of truth and soberness." If any one will condemn them as visionary, it must be on the sole ground that all belief in the supernatural is visionary—a position that ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... 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, to be true. ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee

... that's the latest," declared Bob, throwing himself into a chair, his face a puzzling mixture of soberness and satisfaction. "Say, Frank, I want to say one thing with all my heart—President Elliott is a bang-up good old man. I've been ashamed, near crying, sorry, glad, mad, and just about all knocked out in the last five minutes. Oh, that measly Banbury mob! And oh, ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster

... the artist said. Then, with a painful feeling of tightness about the throat, and a soberness of tone which he could not prevent, he added,—"That is a reason why I have always felt that I was one of those comparatively rare persons whom wealth would adorn, if somebody would only show me an ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... speak the 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 point with the maxims and practices that ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... A new soberness began to sit on all. The wide reaches of desert with which they here were in touch appalled their hearts more than anything they yet had met. The grassy valley of the Platte, where the great fourfold tracks of the trail cut through a waving sea of green belly deep to the oxen, had seemed easy ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... seven years 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 Edward's time, made the noblemen's daughters ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... the University 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 and ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... power 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 ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey

... most noble 'doubter,' but speak the words of truth and soberness. Mr. Willcoxen was married privately, when and where I said, to a beautiful, fair-haired lady, whose name heard in the ritual was Marian. And my husband, Olly Murray, was the secret witness of ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... certain individuals have over others of the same sex and species solely in respect of reproduction,"[27] the female choosing to pair with the more attractive male, or the stronger male prevailing in a contest for the female. Wallace[28] advanced the opposite view, that the female owes her soberness to the fact that only inconspicuous females have in the struggle for existence escaped destruction during the breeding season. There are fatal objections to both these theories; and, taking his cue from Tylor,[29] Wallace himself, in a later work, suggested what is ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... N. temperance, moderation, sobriety, soberness. forbearance, abnegation; self-denial, self-restraint, self-control &c. (resolution) 604. frugality; vegetarianism, teetotalism, total abstinence; abstinence, abstemiousness; Encratism[obs3], prohibition; system of Pythagoras, system of Cornaro; Pythagorism, Stoicism. vegetarian; Pythagorean, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... benefits enjoyed in this regard by the Jewish race to the soberness of their lives. This position is, however, not altogether tenable, if by that we mean abstemiousness; they are extremely temperate, but not abstemious. Tissot, Cornaro, Lessius, Hufeland, Humphry, Sir Henry ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... 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.

... see the soberness with which Dalgard listened to that. The star ship had not lifted, that message had found its way south, passed along by hopper and merman. But the scout doubted if the explorers were waiting for the return of Raf. He believed that they would not ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... see the perfect reasonableness of this. Restraint, soberness, the matured thought, the unselfish 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 with a black police—and ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... vain to attempt to keep 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, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... 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

... 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 with CHRIST ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte

... 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

... cases, 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 ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch

... PACY, a 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 ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... "ladies, you surprise me; our conventions are not as public as the ballroom where I saw you all dancing last night. As to modesty, it may be a question, in many minds, whether it is less modest to speak words of soberness and truth, plainly dressed on a platform, than gorgeously arrayed, with bare arms and shoulders, to waltz in the arms of strange gentlemen. And as to the press, I noticed you all reading, in this morning's papers, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... must, Naida," and the deep ringing soberness of his voice startled the girl into suddenly uplifting her eyes to his face. What she read there instantly changed her mood ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... to Holdsworth. The minister had at more than one time spoken of him to me with slight distrust, principally occasioned by the suspicion that his careless words were not always those of soberness and truth. But it was more as a protest against the fascination which the younger man evidently exercised over the elder one more as it were to strengthen himself against yielding to this fascination—that the minister ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... 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 ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... of these do you think you can furnish Mrs. Anthony with in a year?" Juliet inquired, her lips forcing themselves to soberness, but the laughter lingering ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond

... believing that he 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 ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter

... to say concerning the style of Rashi's Responsa. In the setting forth and the discussion of the questions under consideration, his usual qualities are present - precision, clearness, soberness of judgment. But the preambles - sometimes a bit prolix - are written after the fashion prevailing among the rabbis of the time, in a complicated, pretentious style, often affecting the form of rhymed prose and always in a poetic jargon. With this exception, the Responsa do not betray the ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... Plato, as to plead that his view of education and studies is in the general, as it seems to me, sound enough, and fitted for all sorts and conditions of men, whatever their pursuits may be. "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."[120] I cannot consider that a bad description of the aim of education, and of the motives which should govern us in the choice of studies, whether we are preparing ourselves for a hereditary ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... 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

... attempt at correspondence, guessing least of all that that tress lay on a heart still 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

... India was to furnish the occasion for another popular explosion different in character from, but no less formidable than, the explosion which followed the Partition of Bengal, the facts which it marshalled and the conclusions which it drew from them with judicial soberness have never been seriously challenged. It found that the long series of crimes of which it recorded the genesis and growth had been "directed towards one and the same objective, the overthrow by force of British rule in India," and nothing revealed more clearly the ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... had warm interest 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 just after the great war ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... different pursuits and professions, educated in different parts of the world, and drawn together by grand national events,—statesmen born in the age when liberty had its first grand revival, and was guarded by soberness of thought, and tried by every variety and extent of sacrifice—by men who had no professional, exclusive interest to provide for, but who expected to fight and die for their convictions, who sought only to lay the foundation ...
— Government and Rebellion • E. E. Adams

... which they 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 ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams

... may be passed over: but, as a certain great philosopher told us, in 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 will form ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... at last, murmuring dithyrambic phrases; and if you suppose that in the soberness of daylight he renounced his harebrained project, it is certain that you have never lived ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... buildings are a handsome piece of architecture; but it is not in these features, nor in the Morrab Gardens, in spite of their subtropical vegetation, that the charm of the town lies. That charm is a certain homely friendliness in the aspect of the place, the bustle, the soberness and geniality of its people. Further, Penzance is a good place to get away from—which sounds like a left-handed compliment, but has really quite other meaning; it is a fine centre for the ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... have the appearance of gold; and as many of the leaves as the said Smith hath translated, we did handle with our hands; and we also saw the engravings there-on, all of which has the appearance of ancient work and of curious workmanship. And this we bear record with words of soberness, that the said Smith has shewn unto us, for we have seen and hefted, and know of a surety that the said Smith hath got the plates of which we have spoken. And we give our names unto the world, to witness that which we have seen, ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair



Words linked to "Soberness" :   sober, sombreness, temporary state, serious-mindedness, earnestness, sincerity, somberness, gravity, graveness, stuffiness, stodginess, drunkenness, seriousness



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