Earnestness Quotes
More Earnestness Quotes
When the history of Oregon comes to be written the mind of the historian will be impressed by the earnestness and sincerity of character the unobtrusive, unostentatious conduct of those who formed its population from the first reclaiming of the wilderness the pioneer epoch to the more refined advancement into social and political existence.
George Law Curry— "Governor George L. Curry Legislative Message, 1857", Oregon State Archives, Oregon Secretary of State, Oregon Provisional and Territorial Records, 1857, Calendar No. 9376.
The object of education is not merely to enable our children to gain their daily bread and to acquire pleasant means of recreation, but that they should know God and serve Him with earnestness and devotion.
hermann adler— p.78-9 (Quoted in Joseph H. Hertz, The Pentateuch and Haftorahs (One-volume edition))
Behold now, bhikkhus, I exhort you: All compounded things are subject to vanish. Strive with earnestness!
— translated by Sister Vajira & Francis Story
Scatter money in a crowd, how they scramble for it; offer bread to the starving, how greedily they seize it; throw a rope to the drowning, how he eagerly grasps it! With like eagerness and earnestness may the Spirit of God help you to lay hold on Christ.
thomas guthrie— P. 592. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
God's truth is too sacred to be expounded to superficial worldliness in its transient fit of earnestness.
frederick william robertson— P. 285. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
Up with the banner of your new Lord, Jehovah Jesus! Raise it in firm decision, with quiet earnestness and with humble prayer; keep it with unflinching fortitude, and be ready to die rather than dishonor it.
william mackergo taylor— P. 80. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
We should seek to free the moral life from the embarrassments and entanglements in which it has been involved by the quibbles of the schools and the mutual antagonisms of the sects; to introduce into it an element of downrightness and practical earnestness; above all, to secure to the modern world, in its struggle with manifold evil, the boon of moral unity, despite intellectual diversity.
felix adler— Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
Frivolity without gaiety and earnestness without seriousness a most unattractive combination.
anthony daniels— It’s This Bad(Spring 2006)
The life of God the life which the mind apprehends and enjoys as it rises to the absolute unity of all things may be described as a play of love with itself; but this idea sinks to an edifying truism, or even to a platitude, when it does not embrace in it the earnestness, the pain , the patience , and labor , involved in the negative aspect of things.
georg wilhelm friedrich hegel— Variant translation: The life of God and divine cognition may well be spoken of as a disporting of Love with itself; but this idea sinks into mere edification, and even insipidity, if it lacks the seriousness, the suffering, the patience, and the labor of the negative.
Death cannot explain itself. The earnestness consists precisely in this, that the observer must explain it to himself.
— Pap VI B 120:13 1845
The demands which the difficult work of love makes upon our development are more than life-size, and as beginners we are not up to them. But if we nevertheless hold out and take this love upon us as burden and apprenticeship, instead of losing ourselves in all the light and frivolous play, behind which people have hidden from the most earnest earnestness of their existence then a little progress and alleviation will perhaps be perceptible to those who come long after us; that would be much.
Rainer Maria Rilke— Letter Seven (14 May 1904)
The truths which are represented in England and Western countries generally, are those which refer to force of character, earnestness of purpose, conscientious strictness, noble charity, practical duty, whilst the truths which I find peculiarly developed in India – developed to a greater extent than anywhere else, - and in the Eastern countries generally, are those which have reference to sweetness of communion, sweetness of temper, meekness and resignation unto God.
keshub chunder sen— Parting words at Southampton on 17th September 1870.
I do not say the mind gets informed by action, bodily action; but it does get earnestness and strength by it, and that nameless something that gives a man the mastership of his faculties.
— William Mountford, p. 5. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
Behold now, bhikkhus, I exhort you: All compounded things are subject to vanish. Strive with earnestness!
— translated by Sister Vajira & Francis Story
Scatter money in a crowd, how they scramble for it; offer bread to the starving, how greedily they seize it; throw a rope to the drowning, how he eagerly grasps it! With like eagerness and earnestness may the Spirit of God help you to lay hold on Christ.
— P. 592. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
The presence of irony does not necessarily mean that the earnestness is excluded. Only assistant professors assume that.
— Søren Kierkegaard, in Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments
Prayer is not eloquence, but earnestness; not the definition of helplessness, but the feeling of it; not figures of speech, but compunction of soul.
— Hannah More, p. 458. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
To be able to practise five things everywhere under heaven constitutes perfect virtue...gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness.
confucius— Confucius, Analects, fifth century B.C.
Patience is only one faculty; earnestness the devotion of all the faculties. earnestness is the cause of patience; it gives endurance, overcomes pain, strengthens weakness, braves dangers, sustains hope, makes light of difficulties, and lessens the sense of weariness in overcoming them.
christian nestell bovee— Christian Nestell Bovee, Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862), Volume I, p. 161.
Without earnestness no man is ever great, or does really great things. He may be the cleverest of men; he may be brilliant, entertaining, popular; but he will want weight. No soul-moving picture was ever painted that had not in it depth of shadow.
Peter bayne— (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, pg. 205 (1895))
The Hypocrites - they think they are over-reaching God, but He will over- reach them: When they stand up to prayer, they stand without earnestness, to be seen of men, but little do they hold God in remembrance;(They are) distracted in mind even in the midst of it,- being (sincerely) for neither one group nor for another whom God leaves straying,- never wilt thou find for him the way. O ye who believe! Take not for friends unbelievers rather than believers: Do ye wish to offer God an open proof against yourselves?
— Original: ?
— The Qur'an (?), Sura 4:144
The auspices for philosophy are bad if, when proceeding ostensibly on the investigation of truth, we start saying farewell to all uprightness, honesty and sincerity, and are intent only on passing ourselves off for what we are not. We then assume, like those three sophists [Fichte, Schelling and Hegel], first a false pathos, then an affected and lofty earnestness, then an air of infinite superiority, in order to impose where we despair of ever being able to convince.
Arthur Schopenhauer— E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 22
