Serious Things Quotes & Sayings

I've spoken seriously, and I am very serious, but you know an awful lot of the work is meant to twist things to the point of almost absurdity. I don't want to celebrate absurdity, but I do mean to challenge a lot of premises. — Douglas Huebler

I commit to most things I do in life, so I don't really have any serious regrets. But I'll say this: There are plenty of people that I wish I could un-meet. It's kind of an L.A. syndrome. — Sasha Grey

Because of people like that guy in San Francisco who told me it changed his life, 'Teen Witch' is my most favorite thing I've ever done. I see how happy it makes people, and that makes me happy. The great thing is that no one realized it was going to become all these things when we were making it. We thought we were making a very serious movie. — Robyn Lively

Even Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, and Albert Einstein made serious mistakes. But the scientific enterprise arranges things so that teamwork prevails: What one of us, even the most brilliant among us, misses, another of us, even someone much less celebrated and capable, may detect and rectify. — Carl Sagan

I confess my own leisure to be spent entirely in search of adventure, without regard to prudence, profit, self improvement, learning, or any other serious thing. — Aldo Leopold

You need to understand that some comedy can have consequences. — Auliq Ice

Mass communication
wonder as it may be technologically and something to be appreciated and valued
presents us wit a serious daner, the danger of conformism, due to the fact that we all view the same things at the same time in all the cities of the country. (p. 73) — Rollo May

Putting a man in space is a stunt: the man can do no more than an instrument, in fact can do less. There are far more serious things to do than indulge in stunts ... I do not discard completely the value of demonstrating to the world our skills. Nor do I undervalue the effect on morale of the spectacular. But the present hullabaloo on the propaganda aspects of the program leaves me entirely cool. — Vannevar Bush

I only joke about really serious things, — Ali Smith

There are things done under the name of science which are ridiculous. But there is also stuff done which sounds funny but is really serious. — Margaret Geller

You are so full of light," I say after a moment. "You align with joy, and I with fear and fury. If you could see into my thoughts, you would surely turn away. So why would you stay with me, even if return to Kenettra and resume our lives?"

"You paint me as a saint," he murmurs. "But I aligned with greed solely to prevent that."

Even now, he can make my lips twitch with a smile. "I'm serious, Magiano."

"As am I. None of us are saints. I have seen your darkness, yes, and know your struggle. I won't deny it." He touches my chin with one hand. At this gesture, the whispers seem to settle, pushed away where I can't hear them. "But you are also passionate and ambitious and loyal. You are a thousand things, mi Adelinetta, not just one. Do not reduce yourself to that. — Marie Lu

One of the things I regret is that magazines now are so lifestyle-orientated that the opportunity to do bigger projects is gone. This is a serious misjudgment on the part of magazine editors. — Martin Parr

When you deal with a man, deal with his most valuable possession, his life. There's play and there's the deep flow. I like to take things to the deep flow of play, because everything is a game, serious and nonserious at the same time. So play life like it's a game. — Huey Newton

If the world goes crazy for a lovely fossil, that's fine with me. But if that fossil releases some kind of mysterious brain ray that makes people say crazy things and write lazy articles, a serious swarm of flies ends up in my ointment. — Carl Zimmer

The Christian who is not diligently involved in a serious study of Scripture is simply inadequate as a disciple of Christ. To be an adequate Christian and competent in the things of God we must do more than attend "sharing sessions" and "bless me parties." We cannot learn competency by osmosis. Biblically illiterate Christians are not only inadequate but unequipped. In fact, they are inadequate because they are not equipped. — R.C. Sproul

One must speak about serious things seriously. — Anton Chekhov

I suppose he could have changed," Neal said dryly. "I myself have noticed my growing resemblance to a daffodil." The other pages snorted.
Kel eyed her friend. "You do look yellow around the edges," she told him, her face quite serious. "I hadn't wanted to bring it up."
"We daffodils like to have things brought up," Neal said, slinging an arm around her shoulders. "It reminds us of spring. — Tamora Pierce

First of all I express sincerity. There's also that sense of humor, by which people sometimes learn to laugh about themselves. I mean, the situation is so serious that the people could go crazy because of it. They need to smile and realize how ridiculous everything is. A race without a sense of humor is in bad shape. A race needs clowns. In earlier days people knew that. Kings always had a court jester around. In that way he was always reminded how ridiculous things are. I believe that nations too should have jesters, in the congress, near the president, everywhere ... You could call me the jester of the Creator. The whole world, all the disease and misery, it's all ridiculous. — Sun Ra

What worries me, especially, is that public opinion over here is patting itself on the back every morning and thanking God for theAtlantic Ocean (and the Pacific Ocean). We greatly underestimate the serious implications to our own future ... Things move with such terrific speed these days, that it is really essential to us to think in broader terms and, in effect, to warn the American people that they, too, should think of possible ultimate results in Europe and the Far East. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

It's an odd thing to think about, but try imagining that your breakup is a disease. If you were told that you had a serious yet curable disease, would you go get hammered on a regular basis? Eat two bags of Oreos? Chain-smoke, pop, pills, get stoned, or fuck around? NO YOU WOULDN'T. You would take great care of yourself and cut all the unhealthy things out of your life. Because you love yourself, and even if you don't right now, WE DO. So put the (insert vice here) and start moving on. — Greg Behrendt

Then again we find that young girls in their hearts regard their domestic or other affairs as secondary things, if not as a mere jest. Love, conquests, and all that these include, such as dressing, dancing, and so on, they give their serious attention. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The Internet provides very serious challenges to our ability to keep from children the kinds of things that are destructive to them. — John Ashcroft

Prayer is a serious thing. We may be taken at our words. — Dwight L. Moody

In regards to being a fashion aficionado, there's a certain amount of taking yourself seriously in the professional world. The self-effacing person can't completely go down the serious road. But I design, and love when things are beautiful. — St. Vincent

We think too fast, even while walking or on the way, or while engaged in other things, no matter how serious the subject. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The difficulty of accurate recognition constitutes one of the most serious sources of friction in war, by making things appear entirely different from what one had expected. — Carl Von Clausewitz

If everything gets too serious for me on the album, I get kinda bored. I've got to have some kind of jovial things in there. — Earl King

To write a novel is fundamentally an act of impudence. To comb one's hair is also an act of impudence, especially when it's done to try to cover a scar running across the top of one's forehead. But combing one's hair is an act of minor impudence, whereas writing is a more serious affair. We mask reality, we hide our fears, we reinvent things that have been said, and above all, the people who said them. Writing a novel implies a certain perversity. It's not something one can do with a tortoiseshell comb. It is perhaps for that reason that they take away my pen at night. Not, as they pretend, to prevent me from accidentally stabbing myself in the throat with it- but to prevent me from killing anyone else. — Paco Ignacio Taibo II

The relatively new trouble with mass society is perhaps even more serious, but not because of the masses themselves, but because this society is essentially a consumers' society where leisure time is used no longer for self-perfection or acquisition of more social status, but for more and more consumption and more and more entertainment ... To believe that such a society will become more "cultured" as time goes on and education has done its work, is, I think, a fatal mistake. The point is that a consumers' society cannot possibly know how to take care of a world and the things which belong exclusively to the space of worldly appearances, because its central attitude toward all objects, the attitude of consumption, spells ruin to everything it touches. — Hannah Arendt

For it is a serious thing to have been watched. We all radiate something curiously intimate when we believe ourselves to be alone. — E. M. Forster

Always laugh when mediocre minds makes fun of you, for in your grieve, the ridicule is having an effect — Michael Bassey Johnson

Your poems are rather hard to understand, whereas your paintings are so easy. Easy? Of course - you paint flowers and girls and sunsets; things that everybody understands. I never met him. Who? Everybody. Did you ever hear of nonrepresentational painting? I am. Pardon me? I am a painter, and painting is nonrepresentational. Not all painting. No: housepainting is representational. And what does a housepainter represent? Ten dollars an hour. In other words, you don't want to be serious - It takes two to be serious. — E. E. Cummings

I'd like to think I'm a serious legislator and trying to get things done. — Rob Portman

Everything I'm saying shouldn't be taken so serious. I'm playing, but at the same token, I'm acknowledging that I'm not always the perfect man; I'm not always doing the right things. That's who I am. I'm working to be better. — Common

I think ... it is somehow very useful, and maybe even essential, for a fine artist to have to somehow make his peace on the canvas with all the things he cannot do. That is what attracts us to serious paintings, I think: that shortfall, which we might call 'personality,' or maybe even 'pain.' — Kurt Vonnegut

There are things you haven't thought of in centuries."
I waited for the joke, then realized he was serious. Apparently our break up had turned him into a raving lunatic. I should probably be flattered. "Really Alex, you don't have to act like an immature kid. It's fine if you want to see me again, but next time, just say so instead of making up asinine stories. — Angela Corbett

One of the best things I've read about that inexplicably, but endlessly, fascinating group of people, the so-called Serious Collectors of 78s. Petrusich burrows into not just their personalities but the hunger that unites and drives their obsessions. She writes elegantly, and makes you think, and most important manages to hang onto her skepticism in the midst of her own collecting quest. — John Jeremiah Sullivan

Who in hell bought a mug with blue butterflies on it!" I shouted, slamming it on the counter beside the stove. "We are serious people doing serious things! I don't have time for butterflies! — Kim Harrison

I am talking about self absorbtion. If you think about it, the human race is pretty self absorbed. Racism might be the symptoms of a greater disease, What I mean is, as a human, I am flawed in that it is difficult for me to consider others before myself. It feels like I have a fight against this force, this current within me that more often than not wants to avoid serious issues and wants to please myself, buy things for myself, feed myself, entertain myself, and all that. All I am saying is that if we , as a species could fix our self absorption, we could end a lot of pain in the world. — Donald Miller

Those who hope for purity and righteousness always try and destroy that which disturbs them. They think the disturbance comes from outside themselves. This is a serious problem. Wars, suicide bombings, and all sorts of other nasty things start from the premise that we can destroy "evil" outside ourselves without dealing with the evil within. — Brad Warner

Have to start taking things mildly seriously, now! Ugh! Just the word sends shivers down my spine. Serious. Seeeerious. Cereal-ous. Trix are for kids. College is not for kids. College is for grown-ups. — Sara Wolf

I've always been in serious relationships. I meet someone and date him for a long period. I don't sit there thinking, like, 'I wonder if I can seduce that guy.' I have other things in my mind. — Gisele Bundchen

Jocelyn: 'I've dated a few nice boys. Though if things got serious, I ended it. I didn't want to involve some poor guy in all the stuff I was carrying around.'

Noah: 'Excess baggage, you mean?'

Jocelyn: 'More like three suitcases, a couple of steamer trunks, and a carry-on. — Kate Kae Myers

This is one of the most serious problems with seeker-sensitive churches. I was talking to a pastor at a seeker-friendly church not long ago about his idea that prospective Christians needed to "feel welcome" and "accepted" before anything else: no "threats," no "judgmental baggage." I asked, "If you had a person living in sin come to your church, would you confront him?" He furrowed his brow and shook his head disapprovingly. "Oh, no! We'd want him to feel loved and welcome." My eyes widened. "How long would it be before you would actually say something about that?" "Maybe a year and a half, two years," he said, smiling. "Because then he would really feel a part of things." That was shocking to me. Is there some virtue in leaving a man in his sin for the sake of feeling accepted? "Well, that's the difference between your church and our church," I said finally. "Openly practicing sinners come to our church, and they either get saved or they don't come back. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

Ysandre has
destroyed more lives than you can begin to imagine, starting with her own.' Myrnin's eyes were dark and very, very serious. 'If
she wants Shane, let her have him. She'll be done with him soon enough. Amelie won't allow her to kill him.'
'I think she wants other things,' Claire said.
'Ah. Sexual, then. Or some version of it. Ysandre has always been a bit - odd.'
'How do I stop her?'
Myrnin slowly shook his head. 'I'm sorry. I can't help you. My only suggestion - which I'm quite certain you won't like - is to
let him deal with this in his own way. She'll leave him alive, and largely intact, unless he resists her.'
'You're right. I don't like it.'
'Complain to the management, my dear. — Rachel Caine

Some women, Commander Norton had decided long ago, should not be allowed aboard ship; weightlessness did things to their breasts that were too damn distracting. It was bad enough when they were motionless; but when they started to move, and sympathetic vibrations set in, it was more than any warm-blooded male should be asked to take. Some women, Commander Norton had decided long ago, should not be allowed aboard ship; weightlessness did things to their breasts that were too damn distracting. It was bad enough when they were motionless; but when they started to move, and sympathetic vibrations set in, it was more than any warm-blooded male should be asked to take. He was quite sure that at least one serious space accident had been caused by acute crew distraction, after the transit of a well-upholstered lady officer through the control cabin. — Arthur C. Clarke

One of the problems we have is that we cannot just be content to admire and enjoy, we have to possess and feel we own what we see. That can become for many of us an addiction which adds a complication to our life and takes away our peace of mind. Craving things becomes after a while a serious distraction and an obsession. — Joseph Girzone

In Darwin's time no serious attempt had been made to examine the manifestations of variability. A vast assemblage of miscellaneous facts could formerly be adduced as seemingly comparable illustrations of the phenomenon "Variation." Time has shown this mass of evidence to be capable of analysis. When first promulgated it produced the impression that variability was a phenomenon generally distributed amongst living things in such a way that the specific divisions must be arbitrary. When this variability is sorted out, and is seen to be in part a result of hybridisation, in part a consequence of the persistence of hybrids by parthenogenetic reproduction, a polymorphism due to the continued presence of individuals representing various combinations of Mendelian allelomorphs, partly also the transient effect of alteration in external circumstances, we see how cautious we must be in drawing inferences as to the indefiniteness of specific limits from a bare knowledge that intermediates exist. — William Bateson

With the utmost love and attention the man who walks must study and observe every smallest living thing, be it a child, a dog, a fly, a butterfly, a sparrow, a worm, a flower, a man, a house, a tree, a hedge, a snail, a mouse, a cloud, a hill, a leaf, or no more than a poor discarded scrap of paper on which, perhaps, a dear good child at school has written his first clumsy letters. The highest and the lowest, the most serious and the most hilarious things are to him equally beloved, beautiful, and valuable. — Robert Walser

Then there is the matter of the presidential untruths. The problem is not just that Barack Obama says things that are untrue but that he lies about what Barack Obama has said. He brags that he set red lines, but then he says it was the U.N. had set red lines. He boasts of pulling out every U.S. soldier from Iraq but then alleges that President Bush, the Iraqis, or Maliki did that. He claims that ISIS are Jayvees but then claims they are serious. But his prevarication too is habitual and was known in 2008 when it was discovered that he had simply misled the nation about his relationships with Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers. He had no desire, in the transparent manner of John Kerry, Al Gore, John McCain, or George W. Bush, to release his medical records or college transcripts. If Americans find their president ill-informed, there was no record that he was informed in 2008. His gaffes were far more frequent than those of Sarah Palin, who knew there were 50 states. — Anonymous

The American formula things are out there but they don't have any stories to tell - we have all the stories to tell - but they're all formula. — Yahoo Serious

Because it's one of those things I never expected in my lifetime," he told me. "Like a comet. Or world peace. I'm just used to you being single."
For some reason, that bothered me. "What, you don't think any guy would ever be interested in me?"
Actually," said Adrian, sounding remarkably serious, "I can imagine lots of guys being interested in you. — Richelle Mead

I don't like cleaning or dusting or cooking or doing dishes, or any of those things," I explained to her. "And I don't usually do it. I find it boring, you see."
"Everyone has to do those things," she said.
"Rich people don't," I pointed out.
Juniper laughed, as she often did at things I said in those early days, but at once became quite serious.
"They miss a lot of fun," she said. "But quite apart from that
keeping yourself clean, preparing the food you are going to eat, clearing it away afterward
that's what life's about, Wise Child. When people forget that, or lose touch with it, then they lose touch with other important things as well."
"Men don't do those things."
"Exactly. Also, as you clean the house up, it gives you time to tidy yourself up inside
you'll see. — Monica Furlong

I don't see any division between the comic and the tragic. I feel like I'm writing about serious things, and humour is one of my tools. It's not contrived, just part of my world, part of the way things are to me. — Miriam Toews

Ashlei was free to spout off how much she loved her savior because Jesus was not about to rear back and tell her He did not quite feel the same way, that He had died for the sins of the world just because it was fun and did not want things to be too serious. He was only thirty-three, after all, and might want to martyr himself for other people. — Thomm Quackenbush

You know," he (Tweedledee) added very gravely, "it's one of the most serious things that can possibly happen to one in a battle
to get one's head cut off." pg. 199 — Lewis Carroll

If the truth is boring, civilization is irksome. The constraints inherent in civilized living are frustrating in innumerable ways. Yet those with the vision of the anointed often see these constraints as only arbitrary impositions, things from which they-and we all-can be 'liberated.' The social disintegration which has followed in the wake of such liberation has seldom provoked any serious reconsideration of the whole set of assumptions-the vision-which led to such disasters. That vision is too well insulated from feedback. — Thomas Sowell

A father would do well, as his son grows up, and is capable of it, to talk familiarly with him; nay, ask his advice, and consult with him about those things wherein he has any knowledge or understanding. By this, the father will gain two things, both of great moment. The sooner you treat him as a man, the sooner he will begin to be one; and if you admit him into serious discourses sometimes with you, you will insensibly raise his mind above the usual amusements of youth, and those trifling occupations which it is commonly wasted in. — John Locke

I've always been serious that way, trying to evolve to a more conscious state. Funny thing about that,though. You tweak yourself,looking for more love, less lust, more compassion, less jealousy. You keep tweaking, keep adjusting those knobs until you can no longer find the original settings. In some sense,the original settings are exactly what I'm looking for-a return to the easygoing guy i was before my world got complicated, the nice guy who took things as they came and laughed so hard the blues would blow away in the summer wind. — Bill Withers

For years I've been interested in a fundamental question concerning what I call the psychology of evil: Why is it that good people do evil deeds? I've been interested in that question since I was a little kid. Growing up in the ghetto in the South Bronx, I had lots of friends who I thought were good kids, but for one reason or another they ended up in serious trouble. They went to jail, they took drugs, or they did terrible things to other people. My whole upbringing was focused on trying to understand what could have made them go wrong. — Philip Zimbardo

When you know to laugh and when to look upon things as too absurd to take seriously, the other person is ashamed to carry through even if he was serious about it. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Their talk, however, was the talk of sordid buccaneers: it was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage; there was not an atom of foresight or of serious intention in the whole batch of them, and they did not seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world. To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe. Who paid the expenses of the noble enterprise I don't know... — Jospeh Conrad

An age where you feel like you could love anyone, where you put everything on the line for the smallest of things. Eighteen. Adults say that it's an age where we laugh if a leaf tumbles by. But back then, we were more serious than any adult, more intense, and had our strength tested. 1997. That was how our eighteen was beginning. — Ryu Si-won

Investing is not nearly as difficult as it looks. Successful investing involves doing a few things right and avoiding serious mistakes. — John C. Bogle

Anthony Weiner deserves to be supported and hopefully he will be mayor of New York one day. I'm serious. He is a Democrat [who] actually fights for the things liberals and progressive and rational people care about. I don't know why he's being thrown under the bus. He hasn't done any - he hasn't broke any laws, — Janeane Garofalo

There are many things I think about that never get to the point of becoming serious. In other words, I try to talk myself out of writing, sometimes for many years, and when I run out of arguments, I write. — Aleksandar Hemon

do not know the answer. So I have returned to the things I do know. We are children of God. God is holy. He is merciful. But he is also just. He does not delight in punishing his own. So this . . . this indiscretion was serious in the eyes of God. More serious than we as his creatures might have made it to be. Had God ignored it, would one lie have grown into two? Multiplied many times over? What would the end have been? Total disregard for who God is? Would we, as his people, eventually lose all proper holy fear? — Janette Oke

It was part of the dichotomy of Alec that had caught Magnus unaware and left him fascinated - that Alec seemed old for his age, serious and responsible, and yet that he approached the world with a tender wonder that made all things new. Alec was a warrior who brought Magnus peace. — Cassandra Clare

Before I got divorced, I was personally unfamiliar with trial, or at least trial of serious, heart-wrenching proportions. I figured that life went smoothly if you tried hard, and if you messed up, or things weren't working out, you just tried harder. — Kristin Armstrong

Everybody should read fiction ... I don't think serious fiction is written for a few people. I think we live in a stupid culture that won't educate its people to read these things. It would be a much more interesting place if it would. And it's not just that mechanics and plumbers don't read literary fiction, it's that doctors and lawyers don't read literary fiction. It has nothing to do with class, it has to do with an anti-intellectual culture that doesn't trust art. — Percival Everett

You do that, and I take back every nasty thing I've ever said about you."
He grinned, his mood changing from serious to wicked in an instant. "Why? I'm all those things and more."
I shook my head. Ian was more proud of his depravity than anyone I'd met, but if he helped me pull Bones out from under four bespelled vampires and one demonically-enchanced vamp, I'd shower him with prostitutes and porn while swearing he was an angel. — Jeaniene Frost

There are some things so serious that you have to laugh at them. — Niels Bohr

Taking crazy things seriously is a serious waste of time. — Haruki Murakami

I am prepared to discuss the things that I believe we need to do not just to raise the debt limit. Raising the debt limit is the easiest thing. That's one vote away. The hard thing is to show the world we are serious about putting our spending in order so we can show people we'll able to pay our bills down the road. — Marco Rubio

I could never feel like that about any public issue. Sometimes I wish I could. For me, if I'm honest, politics is background, news, almost entertainment. Something you switch on and off, like the TV. What I really worry about, what I can't switch off at will is, oh, sex, or dying or losing my hair. Private things. We're private people, aren't we, our generation? We make a clear distinction between private and public life; and the important things, the things that make us happy or unhappy are private. Live is private. Property is private. Parts are private. That's why the young radicals call for fucking in the streets. It's not just a cheap shock-tactic. It's a serious revolutionary proposition. — David Lodge

We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality. — Oscar Wilde

Sounds to me like you're praying Violet, not wishing. When we wish, it's usually for something frivolous...Something not serious. Like what you want for your birthday. Prayers are for more serious things." -Mom — Brenda Woods

Pythagoras asks that we not let a friend go lightly, for whatever reason. Instead, we should stay with a friend as long as we can, until we're compelled to abandon him completely against our will. It's a serious thing to toss away money, but to cast aside a person is even more serious. Nothing in human life is more rarely found, nothing more dearly possessed. No loss is more chilling or more dangerous than that of a friend. — Thomas Moore

In societies reduced to blur and glut, terror is the only meaningful act. There's too much everything, more things and messages and meanings that we can use in ten thousand lifetimes. Inertia-hysteria. Is history possible? Is anyone serious? Who do we take serious? Only the lethal believer, the person who kills and dies for faith. Everything else is absorbed. The artist is absorbed, the madman in the street is absorbed an processed and incorporated. Give him a dollar, put him in a TV commercial. Only the terrorists stand outside. The culture hasn't figured out how to assimilate him. It's confusing when they kill the innocent. But this is precisely the language of being noticed, the only language the West understands. The way they determine how we see them. The way they dominate the rush of endless streaming images. — Don DeLillo

Wisdom is the understanding that God exist, and that he is the creator of all life and things in the universe and upon Earth. This is truth. When we realize mistakes we have made, we should make serious efforts to correct them. This also, is truth. — Ellen J. Barrier

The unluckiest of the Caribbean's sick came, in search of cures: a poor woman who, since childhood, had been counting the beats of her heart so long that she had run out of numbers to count; a Jamaican who, because of the tormenting sound the stars made, never slept; a sleepwalker who rose from bed at night, and in sleep undid all the things he had done in waking; and many other ailments too, less serious in nature. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

This message was repeated down the line until it was ringing in every guard's ears. Shots fired and nobody knew from where or by whom. And since none of the guards had guns, that meant one of the prisoners must. Maybe more than one. Now things, already serious, morphed — David Baldacci

Well, Hilda and I were married, and right from the start it was a flop. Why did you marry her? you say. Why did you marry yours? These things happen to us. I wonder whether you'll believe that during the first two or three years I had serious thoughts of killing Hilda. Of course in practice one never does these things, they're only a kind of fantasy one enjoys thinking about. Besides, chaps who murder their wives always get copped. However cleverly you've faked the alibi, they know perfectly well that it's you who did it, and they'll pin it onto you somehow.
When a woman's bumped off, her husband is always the first suspect -which gives you a little side glimpse of what people really think about marriage. — George Orwell

There is something about a mass-market Luxury Cruise that's unbearably sad. Like most unbearably sad things, it seems incredibly elusive and complex in its causes and simple in its effect: on board the Nadir - especially at night - I felt despair. The wor's overused and banalified now, despair, but it's a serious word, and I'm using it seriously. — David Foster Wallace

Beautiful people, things are to easy for them. They don't know how to survive in this world. Somebody's ugly, or even plain, normal-looking, that means they got to work twice as hard for things. For anything. Just to get peple to listen to 'em, or take 'em serious. So yeah. I don't trust beautiful people. — Cassandra Rose Clarke

You wish to rule the Dreaming City; you must excel in all its ways. Play with me, a single game of Lo Shen. If you best me, I will go into seclusion as you ask, and you will ascend to the Tower without the slightest argument, and without battle. No one will contest you, and you will rule as well as you are able. If you lose, however, you must disband your army, and take the vows of one of our Towers, enter it as a novice, and pledge yourself to our City for the rest of your days. In the Anointed City, this is the way disputes are settled. If you would rule us, you must behave as one of us. Show me that you are the rightful Papess. Show me that you exceed us in all things."
Ragnhild seemed to laugh, but no sound issued from her rosy mouth. Her eyes glittered like snowflakes catching the sun. "You cannot be serious. A single game to decide five hundred years of history?"
"Were it not that once my predecessor harmed you, I would simply kill you where you stand. — Catherynne M Valente

I know that of all the great shifts that have occurred in America
the freedom of slaves, the rights of women, the equality of gays and lesbians
none has happened easily, and certainly none has happened instantly and without serious attacks and backlash. But the reason we have these things is because the fair-minded people who came before us would not give up. In my life, I have seen elections stolen
either outright or through the electoral college. I have seen wars fought because there was no other way to get peace. I have seen the rich get richer and I have seen the poor get poorer. I have seen facts get harder and harder to hide
and easier and easier to manipulate. I have been angry and I have been frustrated and I have been ecstatic and I have been proven right and wrong and back again. I have given up on some things, but I have refused to give up on most things. And I can honestly say that all of it
all of it
seems to have led me to where we are, here and now. — David Levithan

A dirty joke is not, of course, a serious attack on morality, but it is a sort of mental rebellion, a momentary wish that things were otherwise. — George Orwell

There is no guarantee that life will be easy for anyone. We grow and learn more rapidly by facing and overcoming challenges. You are here to prove yourself, to develop, and to overcome. There will be constant challenges that cause you to think, to make proper judgments, and to act righteously. You will grow from them. However, there are some challenges you never need to encounter. They are those associated with serious transgression. As you continue to avoid such tragedy, your life will be simpler and happier. You will see others around you who don't make that choice, who do things that are wrong and evil and bring sadness. Thank your Father in Heaven that your pattern of life is different and that you have been helped to make choices guided by the Holy Ghost. That prompting will keep you on the right path. — Richard G. Scott

If we are faithful to God in little things, we shall gain experience and strength that will be helpful to us in the more serious trials of life. — Hudson Taylor

So many things that are so dramatic or exciting when you read about them actually happen so simply and quietly. We humans like to consider ourselves important to creation and to the world, and we expect that whenever death comes it should be with a crash of thunder and wild shouts or something, or with soft music around and people looking grave and serious. We always have it that way in the theatre because it makes us believe in our importance. Most of our life is a matter of dressing ourselves up to believe in just that, dressing ourselves in attractive clothes, in titles, in reputations. Actually, at base we all realize that we're just a frightened bundle of animals, still afraid of the unknown, and still afraid of thousands of things that can separate us from life, and trying to shield ourselves from our own smallness. — Louis L'Amour

You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. [A] crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before. — Ryan Holiday

Did Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews furnish structural material for Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon? It has been pointed out in these pages that there are many things in the former book that might well have suggested many major things in the other.Not a few things merely, one or two, or half dozen, but many; and it is this fact of many things of similarity and the cumulative force of them that makes them so serious a menace to Joseph Smith's story of the Book of Mormon's origin — B. H. Roberts

See, the thing is, I don't do flings. I don't mess around, I don't have affairs, I don't usually go out on a date with a person unless they're someone I think I could get serious about. I just don't operate that way, because I'm not very casual about my love life. Or my sex life. Those aren't separate things for me. — Elle Parker

One of the things about Scrubs is that it's about great friendships and ... as broad and as serious as we get it's always really about friendship. It's about getting through the challenging parts of your life with the help of your friends. — Zach Braff

I have serious things to do now. I have a living to give away. — George Eliot

The Old West, mysterious, serious, with great beauty at every vista and terrible things happening whenever any people appeared.) — Amy Bloom

Nothing is harder yet nothing is more necessary, than to speak of certain things whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable. The very fact that serious and conscientious men treat them as existing things brings them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born.
Spoken by Albertus Secundus in Das Glasperlenspiel — Hermann Hesse

I laugh all the time - at things, people, stuff, whatever. But, I don't laugh onstage because then it's serious business. — Steven Wright

One of the things you learn being in the public eye is that you have the ability to raise awareness about serious issues, and, in the process, really help people. — Mena Suvari