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More "Soberness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 Thompson, as ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... ignored how much there was in it and how far he would have to go in order to get hold of what there was to get—supposing there was a chance at all. These perplexities checking his elation imparted to his tone a soberness well in keeping with ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... 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 ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... spirit from thy own 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 ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... looked with great interest at the young Onondaga, being impressed by the dignity of his manner and the soberness of his speech. ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... 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 excuses for itself; and how temper turns angrily upon ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Master Stuyvesant his dreary speeches! (I go not further, for then should it cost me sixpence: but Master Stuyvesant hath no authority over me, so I may say what I will of him for two pence.) But it seemeth me, for all her soberness and her killing looks, that Mistress Helena is something diverted with my speeches, else had she not put so many in. But I ought not to have said what I did, quotha, touching Father's nose! Ought I not, forsooth? ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... drunkenness, and denoted a wild and 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," said he; "ye ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... of true statesmen, embracing 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 of a nationality for future generations, and for the world; ...
— Government and Rebellion • E. E. Adams
... pains of the men of Thule be blotted in oblivion; for though they lack all that can foster luxury (so naturally barren is the soil), yet they make up for their neediness by their wit, by keeping continually every observance of soberness, and devoting every instant of their lives to perfecting our knowledge of the deeds of foreigners. Indeed, they account it a delight to learn and to consign to remembrance the history of all nations, deeming it as great a glory to set forth the excellences of others as to ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... of what the Declaration of 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 a government of some other form. Those ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... apart, M. Huysman has 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 or seek to communicate with Spirits ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... have appeared interesting 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 it happened that when confronting ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... on him quickly, and for a single swiftly passing instant the velvety eyes were deep wells of soberness with an indefinable underdepth of sorrow in them. Griswold had a sudden conviction that for the first time in his knowing of her he was looking into the soul of the real ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... 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 ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... dreadful step, but it must be done. She was face to face with the fact that the children were lost, and the chance of finding them that night was now small indeed. With a few inquiries she found her way to the police-station, and there she told her story—told it with a grim soberness on her face that might have passed for unconcern with those stupid people, who think that what they cannot read ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... girl's forgiveness when soberness returned, and she told him that she was greatly distressed because of his changed manner. For a long time past there had been a distressing series of misconceptions on her part, and of inconsistencies on his. She could not explain how ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... have revealed to her that she had already a woman's life-work on her hands. And the confusion was not over, and the work only begun. She had perhaps a dim sense of this. However, she was young; and the soberness was certainly mixed with gladness. For was she not going to school, and so, on the way to do something of the work Pitt was doing, in mental furnishing and improvement? I think, gladness had ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... In this brief tribute to the memory of Gen. WILLIAM H.F. LEE I should be unworthy of the friendship which it was my privilege to claim did I indulge in anything else than the language of soberness and truth. In him there was no manner of affectation; he pretended to be nothing but such as he was, and it is certain that if he had been giving directions to his biographer he would have laid down ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... said: I am not mad, most noble Festus; but utter words of truth and soberness. (26)For the king knows well concerning these things, to whom also I speak boldly; for I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden from him; for this has not been done in a corner. (27)King Agrippa, believest thou the prophets? ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... this 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 this, as ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... that 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 they could boast themselves even of one ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... here came an unexpected developement. As soon as he had got back his wind, the mild Hamilton turned on his fellow passenger like a very fury, hitting, kicking, swearing, and almost gnashing with his teeth; and Cranze, stricken to a sudden soberness by his ducking, collected himself after the first surprise, and returned the ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... came nearer, the young philosopher could not avoid observing him with interest. He was apparently very aged. Long locks of white hair streamed on his shoulders and mingled with the hair of a beard equally as white. His robe was arranged with careful soberness, and in his hand he carried a staff, though his erect and firm figure did not seem to need its support. In his clear, bright eye, his ruddy cheek and benign expression, appeared intelligence, health and goodness, all the beauty of a green old age, all the charm of the fully ripened ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... trees and fences, and they stood in all their unsoftened blackness and nakedness, bleak and stern. The high grey sky threatened a fresh fall of snow in a few hours; it was just now a lull between two storms; and Fleda's spirits, that sometimes would have laughed in the face of nature's soberness, to-day sank to its own quiet. Her pace neither slackened nor quickened till she reached aunt Miriam's house ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... in 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, that is all that he has learned to recognise. The tumultuary and grey tide of life, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Wilmot; "there was a just, well-weighed sense and soberness in his plans that put me in mind of her ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... cottage thrown in, and a garden where one can grow vegetables. It wouldn't be half bad," said Mary, with a soberness which impressed Ralph ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... never ceased to 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, D.N.," would show the dawn of a return to nature. Then boutades of ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... indeed, 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 ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... consider the gospels, will see that there is a peculiar calm, a soberness and modesty about them, very different from what we should have expected to find in them. Speaking, as they do, of the grandest person who ever trod this earth, of the grandest events which ever happened upon this earth—of the events, indeed, ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... stipulate with the people, & until he does, he is no legal Governor; without this, if he undertakes to rule he is a USURPER." - These sentiments have given great disgust to the Governor & Council, and the publisher, it is said, is to be prosecuted: But if he has spoken the words of truth and soberness, why should he be punished? Is there any man in the community that can procure harm in a process of law, to him who speaks necessary and important truths? If there be such a man, mark him for a Tyrant. Is there any man whose ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... think themselves wise? Marry, I never saw a fool yet who thought himself other than wise! For as it is one spark of soberness left in a drunken head when he perceiveth himself to be drunk and getteth himself fair to bed, so if a fool perceive himself a fool that point is no folly but ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... unfamiliar to me, and I found to my dismay that 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 the control of the Liberal party had, ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... hundred millions of dollars; but it 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 use the following ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... up, 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. ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... alone 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, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... 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 ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... nation—demoralizing public opinion, wasting public resources, and entangling the country in quarrels alike endless and aimless; and all this with a labouring after melodramatic stage effect, and a regardlessness of consequences perfectly unprecedented." We were, in the words of truth and soberness, fast losing our moral ascendency in Europe—by a series of querulous, petty, officious, needless, undignified interpositions; by the exhibition of a vacillating and short-sighted policy; by appearing (novel position ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... 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 course of phenomena ...
— The Einstein Theory of Relativity • H.A. Lorentz
... drink,—a single drink. When Sandy was going home about eleven o'clock, three sheets in the wind, such was the potent effect of the single drink and those which had followed it, he was scared almost into soberness by a remarkable apparition. As it seemed to Sandy, he saw himself hurrying along in front of himself toward the house. Possibly the muddled condition of Sandy's intellect had so affected his judgment as to vitiate any conclusion he might draw, but Sandy was quite sober ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... convinced myself that the definition of mind at which we have just arrived is, in its exactness and soberness, the only one which permits psychology to be distinguished from the sciences nearest to it. You know that it has been discovered in our days that there exists a great difficulty in effecting this delimitation. The definitions ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... Argum. in Epist. ad Philem. And elsewhere he affirmeth,—"Nor hath the grace of the Holy Ghost without cause left unto us these histories written, but that he may stir us up to the imitation and emulation of such unspeakable men. For when we hear of this man's patience, of that man's soberness, of another man's readiness to entertain strangers, and the manifold virtue of every one, and how every one of them did shine and become illustrious, we are stirred up to the like zeal." Chrys. in Gen. xxx. ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... that procure them this homage It is in 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
... 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. ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... 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 ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... there surprised him. He had few opportunities for 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 ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... you my word that when I've been bloody well done in and had an absolute needle of funk I had only to think of Kathleen to buck me up. Hem. Now gentlemen, you may think I'm drunk (loud cries of No!) but I want to say in truth and soberness that any man who thinks he's got Kathleen for bondwoman—hem—has me ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... cockerels fight; anxious to be shaking props under a table, and above all to see the "striped pig." He especially is the creature of the occasion. He empties both his pockets and his character into the stream, and swims in such a day. He dearly loves the social slush. There is no reserve of soberness ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... that Daniel refined our tongue, yet he decided that Daniel had the thinking and languaging parts of a poet's outfit but lacked the higher creative gift. We shall find Daniel at his best, not when in prosaic soberness he sings ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... dearie, when I know by your eyes that YOUR soberness is put on like a garment and you're really aching to do something wild and young again. Well, I feel encouraged. Somehow, a talk with you always does have that effect on me. Now, when I go to see Barbara Samson, it's just the opposite. She makes ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 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, or the importation of Africans for the cultivation of our lands, did they ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... 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 ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... 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 ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... His brother Thomas then, for the King's availe, Was in his stead then set by ordinance, For which the Prince and he fell at distance. With whom the King took part, in great sickness, Again[st] the Prince with all his excellence. But with a rety of lords and soberness The Prince came into his magnificence Obey, and hole with all benevolence Unto the King, and fully were accord Of all matters of ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... 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 ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... 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 with a black police—and ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... southeastward corner and led away to the trader's store, south of the post. Tradition had it that the track was worn by night raiders, bearing contraband fluids from store to barracks in the days before such traffic was killed by that common sense promoter of temperance, soberness and chastity—the post exchange. Along that bluff line, from the storehouse toward the hospital, invisible, doubtless, from either building or from the bluff itself, but thrown in sharp relief against that rectangular inlet of starry sky, two black figures, crouching and bearing some long, ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... 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, that is all that he has learned to recognise. The tumultuary ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 with ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... come into contact with him at Wittenberg, 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 ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the sun and hear The voice of Jesus saying to him 'Saul,' Why persecutest thou me?' And did not Festus, Before whom Paul stood speaking for himself, Call Paul a mad man? Even while he spake Such words as none but men inspired can speak, As well as words of truth and soberness, Such as ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... exposition of what the Declaration of 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 a government ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... let me show the facts (and believe 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 history ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... secret motives, 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 be but shadows of enjoyment. Yet that they were not including ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... passages of 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 ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... regarded as a sort of shopman, fell into full narration of all the 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 ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... these grave issues; that 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
... having learnt this 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
... 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 will ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... up in the heart—treasures of charity, piety, temperance, and soberness. These treasures a man takes with him beyond death when he leaves this world." ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... 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 serve for the whole, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... 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 he meets the one woman and she ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... after these calamitous losses, the state was re-established in all its former strength and prosperity; because the soberness of our ancestry had not yet become infected with the luxury and softness of a more effeminate way of life, and had not learnt to indulge in splendid banquets, or the criminal acquisition of riches. But both the highest classes and the lowest living in harmony, and imbued with one ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... of solemnity 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
... heartily in supernatural causes. I 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 their simple life they take their instincts ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... 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 who wrote the best hundred books never read them. Books have their place in the world, but they ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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
... good examples of Godliness, soberness, and righteousness in the performance of every duty due ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... to Lettice, whose delicate bloom showed fresh and fair against the black and white of her new costume. She had pinned a little bunch of sweet violets into her jacket, and they harmonized excellently well with the grave tranquillity of her face and the soberness of her dress. ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... ever wrote, And I consent you take it for your text, Your only one, till sides and benches fail. No: he was serious in a serious cause, And understood too well the weighty terms That he had ta'en in charge. He would not stoop To conquer those by jocular exploits, Whom truth and soberness assailed in vain. ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... 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 ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... beautiful girl, and his battered, wrinkled, unpleasantly beefy face, exhausted by sleepless nights and the jolting of the train, wore a look of tenderness and of the deepest sadness, as though in that girl he saw happiness, his own youth, soberness, purity, wife, children; as though he were repenting and feeling in his whole being that that girl was not his, and that for him, with his premature old age, his uncouthness, and his beefy face, the ordinary happiness of a man and a passenger was as far away ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... means a tumble, and a 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 ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... rebellion was raised in the capital city of Yunnan and the people exhorted to shed their blood. Everything pointed to the fact that this rising was to be very different from the abortive July outbreak of 1913. There was a soberness and a deliberation about it all which impressed close observers with a sense of the ominous end ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... lightning, you see, was afraid of a man, and so like a d——d sneak, it went twisting about to scorch women and little children!' . . . BLACKWOOD has proclaimed in a late number, the 'Characteristics of English Society,' in language of truth and soberness, which goes explicitly to confirm the reports of nearly all American and other 'foreigners' who have visited England. We subjoin an extract contrasting English with ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... alone, but for 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
... smashing of the jug was part of the ceremony of worshipping him. It left him unhappy at first, but sober. After awhile, the unhappiness disappeared, but the soberness remained. From now on, he would act as ...
— Divinity • William Morrison
... swift and eager about the Maid, and pointed, so that she see quickly the wonder and safe Mightiness of that which did be our Refuge for all our life to come, if but that we to win unto it. And the Maid to look with a great and earnest soberness and a lovely gladness and utter soul and heart interest, unto that Place that bare me, and where I to have come from, and ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... not 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 have left the city had ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... wiseacre, only makes one a discomfort to himself, and a blot upon the scene. Like your jug of cold water among the wine-flasks, it leaves you unelated among the elated ones. No, no. This austerity won't do. Let me tell you too—en confiance—that while revelry may not always merge into ebriety, soberness, in too deep potations, may become a sort of sottishness. Which sober sottishness, in my way of thinking, is only to be cured by beginning at the other end of the horn, to tipple ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... though, as he supposed, temporary, made him think of 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
... regarded as friends, but persons in whom her youth found no sympathy. It was natural, therefore, that when time to some extent had healed the wound she had suffered and she suddenly found herself in the society of a young and enthusiastic man, something of the enforced soberness of her manner should unbend, showing her character in a new light. She herself enjoyed the change, hardly knowing why; she enjoyed a little passage of arms with John, and it amused her more than she could have expected to be young again, to annoy him, to break the peace and heal it again in five ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... most bite. And oft it is seen that the 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 of God above, And meekness ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... the saddest of faces. Mrs. Raften said, "Come, Sam, and shake hands with Yan." Sam came sheepishly forward, shook hands in a flabby way, and said, in drawling tones, "How-do," then retired behind the stove to gaze with melancholy soberness at Yan, whenever he could do so without being caught at it. Mr. and Mrs. Raften were attending to various matters elsewhere, and Yan was left alone and miserable. The idea of giving up college to go on a farm had been a hard one for ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... things 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 imagination run ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... edifying; and so 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 excuses for itself; and how temper turns angrily ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not absorbed in the life as a vital, moving, and spiritual power, he places also amongst the chaff for burning. This world is a serious world, and human life and business are also serious matters,—not to be trifled with, nor cheated by shams and hypocrisies, but to be dealt with in all truth, soberness, and sincerity. No one can thus deal with it who is not himself possessed of these qualities, and the result of a life is the test of what virtue there is in it. False men leave no mark. It is truth alone which does ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... 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, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... tie on the outside as a sample. That was his nearest approach to dishonesty. He was 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
... opposition to the 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 not to ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... us shall be our food; Faith in him our drink shall be; Hopeful, joyful, let us drink Soberness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... 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 spirit of ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... from its elasticity, to common flannel, that I could not help knitting one for you. If I say that I have thought as many affectionate thoughts to you, while knitting it, as it contains stitches, I fancy I speak nothing but truth and soberness—for I love you now with the love I have returned on my heart from Abby, who no longer is in want of earthly friends. Dear little baby thought I was knitting for her special pleasure, for her bright eyes would always follow the needles as she lay upon my lap, and she would smile now and then as ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... Governor was very fond of a fine style; he liked rounded periods, or, as Lord Melbourne had expressed it, "epigrammic" flights, so well, that he could hardly make his pen write the words of truth and soberness on such occasions. Mr. Boswell read several extracts from Sir Francis' despatches to Lord Glenelg, which were in direct opposition to the extracts read by Mr. Macdonald. A gentleman whispered to me that anything (no matter what) could be proved from Sir Francis' writings and sayings. ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... the text for example, not as describing what we are when we are full of sin; nor yet as mere exaggerated language, which must be brought down to the level of our present reality. Let us consider it as containing the words of truth and soberness; not one jot or one tittle needs to be abated; it must not be lowered to us, but we rather raised to it. It is a truth, it is the word of God, it is the seal of our assurance: it is that which good men of old would have welcomed with the deepest joy; which, ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... 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 gratification ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... to see Phoebe an' my son in the arternoon. Us be gwaine to call un Vincent William Blanchard, arter you an' me, Miller; an' if it had been a gal, us meant to call un arter mother; an' I do thank God 'bout the wee bwoy in all solemn soberness, 'cause 'tis the fust real gude thing as have falled to us since the gwaine of poor Chris. 'Twill be a joy to my mother an' a gude gran'son to you, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... undertaking. He ignored how much there was in it and how far he would have to go in order to get hold of what there was to get—supposing there was a chance at all. These perplexities checking his elation imparted to his tone a soberness well in keeping with ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... 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 Choses ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... nature which would else fail. And to this intent shall every Christian man clothe and feed his body; that it may the better serve his Lord, in whatsoever he does. In the morning, thou shalt go to thy meat, with soberness and measure; care for thy self in thy meat-time; and after meat, make thou praising to thy Lord that He has fed thee, and also before meat, and for all the good deeds that He has done to thee. First, or ever thou goest to meat, thou shalt mourn as ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... said Bushie, regarding his black chum with great soberness, "didn't you tell me if ever I saw a painter I must skeer him away by ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... quite unfamiliar to me, and I found to my dismay that 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 the ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... flutings of birds deep within a glade sifted with golden light, fragrant with white fragrance. They had their other seasons: their summer hours of angry flash and swift downpour; their autumn days of still depths and soberness, and autumn nights of long, quiet rainfalls when no one knew. One season they lacked: Gabriella's ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... developement. As soon as he had got back his wind, the mild Hamilton turned on his fellow passenger like a very fury, hitting, kicking, swearing, and almost gnashing with his teeth; and Cranze, stricken to a sudden soberness by his ducking, collected himself after the first surprise, and returned the blows with ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... To what purpose should I show you the breakers where my vessel struck? Do you suppose you will steer exactly in my path? But what soberness is this? you are not among breakers yet; you are simply 'tired of living';" and Uncle John's smile was too genial to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... God; we therefore faithfully promise for ourselves, our 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
... would have conveyed to him. His own experience is so vivid, he is so superlatively conscious of himself, that if, day after day, he is allowed to hector and hear nothing but approving echoes, he will lose his hold on the soberness of things and take himself in earnest for a god. Talk might be to such an one the very way of moral ruin; the school where he might learn to be at ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 and Geraldine. The one had both more smiles and more ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unfortunate weakness. How many of us know these 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 ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... mark the younger girl; it looked as if Barbara had attractive qualities that were not hers. Lister, for example, was not a brute like Cartwright, but it was plain that Barbara had attracted him. Grace approved his soberness and frank gravity; and then she pulled herself up. She must not be jealous ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... nasty tendency to the brain. Therefore (the more confused I get, the more I lean on Thus's and Hences and Therefores) you must not be down upon me, most noble Festus, altho' this letter should smack of some infirmity of judgment. I speak the words of soberness and truth; and would you were not almost but altogether as I am, except this swelling. Lord, Lord, if we could change personalities how we should hate it. How I should rebel at the office, repugn under the Ulster coat, and repudiate ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... But Neeland's soberness was of volatile quality; before he arrived at his stateroom he had recovered his gaiety of spirit. He glanced ironically at the closed door of Golden Beard as he fitted his key into his ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... he entered Razumov's room late in the evening it was with an unaccustomed soberness of ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... 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 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 as records authentic in the history of our country. When we of the South demanded the slave-trade, or the importation of Africans ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... competition foreboded its defeat. But where could it now find an ally to save it from its own mistake? What I have next to say is spoken with no emotion but regret. Our meeting to-day is, as it were, at the grave, in the presence of eternity, and the truth must be uttered in soberness and sincerity. In a great republic, as was observed more than two thousand years ago, any attempt to overturn the state owes its strength to aid from some branch of the government. The Chief Justice of the United ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... 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 humility ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... statesmen, embracing 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 of a nationality for future generations, ...
— Government and Rebellion • E. E. Adams
... I 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 from playfulness ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... than to those who uttered the burning words. He was in a situation to feel the full force of the great sacrifice which the soldier makes for his country. He devoted himself, heart and soul, to the cause; and what was but an idle sentiment in the mind of the flowery speech-makers, was truth and soberness to him who was to meet the foe at the cannon's mouth and at the ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... Margaret thoughtfully. And then, to take advantage of her companion's comparative soberness through the stirring of her feelings,—"Hennie, do you think we ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... 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. And ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... 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
... grave; dry, but seeming 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 on him from her lofty character, the pure jewel proffered ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... face to face with the fact that the children were lost, and the chance of finding them that night was now small indeed. With a few inquiries she found her way to the police-station, and there she told her story—told it with a grim soberness on her face that might have passed for unconcern with those stupid people, who think that what they ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... opinion 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 he bore fatigue and hardship. Next to the Admiral ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... as potentially hostile, it is impossible to compute within a hundred millions of dollars; but it 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 Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... the one side were the monarchy and the 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 ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... 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
... 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, and we lie not, God bearing ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... More affirms that, before the days of Wycliffe, there was an English version of the Scriptures, "by good and godly people with devotion and soberness well and reverently read."(152) ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... had Massachusetts surrendered her State 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 those who have always ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... be able to give you the like," cried the ambassador. "Be seated, holy and worthy fathers. And though I have reddened eyes, speak to me as if I were in perfect soberness; for when I am drunk my mind is improved even. Is this not ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... wasting public resources, and entangling the country in quarrels alike endless and aimless; and all this with a labouring after melodramatic stage effect, and a regardlessness of consequences perfectly unprecedented." We were, in the words of truth and soberness, fast losing our moral ascendency in Europe—by a series of querulous, petty, officious, needless, undignified interpositions; by the exhibition of a vacillating and short-sighted policy; by appearing (novel position for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Demosthenes teach anything, if the rounded period of history whose darkness 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 character is a reverent people; ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... 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 ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
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