"Sober-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Whoever heard of a calculating, sober-minded, creepy bug coming out on a night like this and scaring you away before you're right settled down. Bugs have ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... man," or in the highest product of our culture? That is a most vital question for any society. It includes the question whether the society has a discord in itself as to its own ideal of the type of men it wants to produce. In the upper strata of the masses, amongst the educated, industrious, sober-minded people of good incomes, there exists the best family life. The children live constantly with their parents, and the latter watch over the health, manners, and morals of the children unceasingly from birth to maturity. The same parents make great sacrifices for the education of their children, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Visire declared himself to be distinctly anticlerical but ready to respect all creeds; he asserted that he was a sober-minded reformer. Paul Visire and his colleagues desired reforms, and it was in order not to compromise reform that they proposed none; for they were true politicians and knew that reforms are compromised the moment they ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... "He is too sober-minded for our flights," said Margaret. "I know the feeling of it, Ethel dear; but you know if he did see that some of your plans might not answer, it is no reason you should not try to do something at once. You have not told me ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... beguile the tedious hours with the half-faded recollections of my childhood. What I am writing will be burned. I should be ashamed that pages, tear-stained and dream-haunted, should fall beneath the eyes of grave, sober-minded folk. What would they see in them? ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France
... should he put on some other foundation, which foundation, unhappily, his countrymen, as yet unskilled in transcendental metaphysics; cannot apprehend; he withdraws his sympathy from the so trite and sober-minded belief of an industrious, experimental, ratiocinating generation, and cares not if they have a God at all, if they can only make his existence evident to themselves from some commonplace notion of design ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... Keene thrilled them with the "Hunchback," and many another personation. Matilda Heron was doing some fine work in Milman's "Fazio," and the play of "The Stranger" held audiences spell-bound. Then there were lectures for the more sober-minded people; and you heard youngish men who were to be famous afterward. Spirit-rappings had fallen a trifle into disfavour; and phrenology was making converts. It was the proper thing to go to Fowler's and have your head examined, and get a chart, which sort of settled you until ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... a little more sober-minded!" laughed Hsi Jen. "What's the good of coming out with ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... New Spirit on Poetry.—The French Revolution stirred the young English poets profoundly. They proclaimed the birth of a new humanity of boundless promise. The possibilities of life again seemed almost as great as in Elizabethan days. The usually sober-minded ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... of work to which they would otherwise have been trained, they are ripe for every revolt. That is the material upon which the leaders of unrest have most successfully worked, and it is only recently that some of the more sober-minded Bengalees of the older generation have begun to realize the dangers inherent in such a system. When in 1903 Lord Curzon brought in his Universities Bill to mitigate some of the most glaring evils of the system, there was a loud and unanimous outcry in Bengal that ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... been filled three or four times over with aethers. It is only when we remember the extensive and mischievous influence on science which hypotheses about aethers used formerly to exercise, that we can appreciate the horror of aethers which sober-minded men had during the 18th century, and which, probably as a sort of hereditary prejudice, descended even to John Stuart Mill. The disciples of Newton maintained that in the fact of the mutual gravitation of the heavenly bodies, according ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... he continued musingly. "As sober-minded a woodchuck as ever burrowed a bank. From his earliest days he took life seriously, and never seemed to think it worth his while to play as the other wild youngsters do. Yet in spite of himself he was ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... are among our own humble classes. Yes, my young friend, you may quote poets, you may startle me by remarks on the nothingness of human fame and human love, derived from the precepts of heathen poets, and yet not understand with what compassion, and, in the judgment of most sober-minded persons, with what contempt, a human being who ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... enchains the minds of those who enjoy her favour by the semblance of delusive good, the other delivers them by the knowledge of the frail nature of happiness. Accordingly, thou mayst see the one fickle, shifting as the breeze, and ever self-deceived; the other sober-minded, alert, and wary, by reason of the very discipline of adversity. Finally, Good Fortune, by her allurements, draws men far from the true good; Ill Fortune ofttimes draws men back to true good with grappling-irons. Again, should it be esteemed a trifling boon, thinkest ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... loved each other; and when that discovery was made, they acted upon it with laudable promptitude. They became engaged; and were subsequently married. And from that day the Finnish Hyde in Jonas was downed and reduced to permanent subjection. He never raised his head again. The more sober-minded, industrious, and sensible Norse Jekyll took command and steered with a steady hand, in fair weather and foul, and often through dangerous waters, the barque Jonas Lie, which came to carry more and more passengers the longer it ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... allowed to mingle freely with their fellows and plan for the morrow's departure. Some, envious of the crowd from Omar which had profited by an early start, were anxious to be gone at once, but the more sober-minded argued that the road to White River was so long that a day's advantage would mean little in the end, and the advance party would merely serve to break trail ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... often rapt with admiration of their own writings, and know not where again to find the track through which they performed so fine a Career; which also is in them called fury and rapture. And as Plato says, 'tis to no purpose for a sober-minded man to knock at the door of poesy: so Aristotle says, that no excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness; and he has reason to call all transports, how commendable soever, that surpass our own judgment and understanding, madness; forasmuch ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... indifference as he could assume; "you have betrayed a facility of belief in this American history, that has surprised me in one with so high a reputation for prudence and caution. This sudden revival of the dead may answer for the credulous lovers of marvels, but it would hardly do for a jury of twelve sober-minded and sworn men. Admitting the whole of this gentleman's statement to be true, however, you will not deny the late Sir Wycherly's right to make a will, if he only devised his old shoes; and, having this right, that of naming his executor necessarily accompanied it. Now, sir, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... that it is a reality. Yet what in fact is there? and why should the gift of tongues in Corinth, as described by Paul, be treated with more respect than in Newman Street, London? I could find no other reply, than that Paul was too sober-minded: yet his own description of the tongues is that of a barbaric jargon, which makes the church appear as if it "were mad," and which is only redeemed from contempt by miraculous interpretation. In the Acts we see that this phenomenon pervaded all the Churches; ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... of frenzy and enthusiasm in her manner, seldom failed to produce the strongest impression upon those whom she addressed. Her words, though wild, were too plain and intelligible for actual madness, and yet too vehement and extravagant for sober-minded communication. She seemed acting under the influence of an imagination rather strongly excited than deranged; and it is wonderful how palpably the difference in such cases is impressed upon the mind of the auditor. This may account for the attention with which her strange and ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... sober-minded old man suggested that the land should be given to them as an association, and that only those that took part in cultivating ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... as well have bestowed his bad pun on a rabbit, for Grummidge was essentially dense and sober-minded. ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... took a house in the Close for the winter months, and there a very sober-minded and conventional courtship of Lucy took place by Sir Edmund Nutley, a worthy and well-to-do gentleman settled on the borders of Parkhurst Forest, in ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... This sober-minded maneuver was actually carried out. The little corvette sailed steadily down the middle of the lane; the great merchantman went pitching and rolling across her bows; thus they kept together, though their rates of ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... sensible fashion in which Nash laughed at it, are among the best known things in the gossiping history of English Letters. But the coxcombry of Harvey and the felicitous impertinence of Nash have sometimes diverted attention from the actual state of the case. William Webbe (a very sober-minded person with taste enough to admire the "new poet," as he calls Spenser) makes elaborate attempts not merely at hexameters, which, though only a curiosity, are a possible curiosity in English, but at Sapphics which could never (except as burlesque) be tolerable. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... could not induce Halifax to join in "the quest of Throppes wife"; it savoured too much of quixotry for sober-minded Halifax. ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... well-recognized menace to the community, largely because there is something peculiarly distasteful and distressing in personal acquaintance with its victims; a distaste and distress that sometimes leads to actual nervous collapse. A distinguished Englishman has recently written "that sober-minded people who, from motives of pity, have looked the hideous evil full in the face, have often asserted that nothing in their experience has seemed to threaten them so nearly with ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... must be broken up at least into an Iliad and an Achilleid, by different rhapsodists; and though Colonel Muir stands stoutly on the other side, the restoration of the unity of Homer may, even with us sober-minded thinkers, take ten times the years it took to capture Troy; while with the German Mystics and Mythists, the controversy may last till they have to open their bewildered and bewildering eyes upon ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... Arum, or Jack-in-the-Pulpit (as it is called in Mr. Whittier's delightful collection of child-poems[30]), appears in "We and the World," where Dennis, the rollicking Irish hero, unintentionally raises himself in the estimation of his sober-minded Scotch companion Alister, by betraying that he "can speak with other tongues," from his ability to converse with a squaw in French on the subject of the bunch of Arums he had gathered, and was holding in ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... assumption of the possibility of obtaining command of an unlimited ascensional force has suggested, to certain enthusiastic partisans of M. Petin's theory and plans, a long perspective of astounding visions, from which sober-minded Englishmen would, in all probability, turn away with derision. These enthusiasts have evidently adopted the language of Archimedes, and are ready to exclaim: "Give us a fulcrum, and," with hydrogen gas as our lever, "we will ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... true, prove that the national unity so loudly acclaimed was no empty word; moreover, they show conclusively that grumblers and half-hearted enthusiasts were not lacking. It would probably be more correct to describe them as "sober-minded patriots." These elements had, however, to use a colloquialism, ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... seriousness with which she spoke, Heideck could not help smiling as he answered: "What a wonderful picture of the world and its affairs is sometimes drawn in a pretty woman's little head! It is really fortunate that we sober-minded men do not allow our heart to run away with our head so easily. Otherwise we should come badly off, for you yourselves would certainly be the first to turn away from us with contempt, if we tried to ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... remarkable agreement with the first to Timothy in both subject-matter and style. With the exception of what relates to widows and the demeanor of women in the public assemblies, it contains the same general precepts, with additional exhortations that young men be sober-minded, and that the Cretan Christians obey magistrates and be meek and gentle in their deportment. With these counsels the apostle interweaves, as in the first epistle to Timothy, exhortations to Titus of a personal character, and animating notices of God's grace in the gospel and of the ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... garden, they went to look at the memorials relating to Saint John Gualberto, founder of the monastery. She listened to the picturesque history of his life, death, and miracles, but was not to be rendered sober-minded by any such thing. In the midst of Gerald's instructive account of the holy abbot's endeavors to purify the monastic orders from the stain of simony, her hand clutched his, and doing a delicate cake-walk she compelled ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... lady Margaret accorded her cousin were of a sort more fitted to please a less sedate and sober-minded damsel than Dorothy, who was fashioned rather after the model of a puritan than a royalist maiden. Pleased with his address and his behaviour to herself as she could hardly fail to be, she yet felt a lingering mistrust of him, which sprang quite as much ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... dismemberment, and self-destruction. But when he does condescend and comes close to the mind and the heart of man as they now are in all men, even Butler becomes as outspoken, and as eloquent, and as full of passion and pathos as if he were an evangelical Puritan. Self-love, Butler startles his sober-minded reader as he bursts out—self-love rends and distorts the mind of man! Now, you are a man. Well, then, do you feel and confess that rending and distorting to have taken place in you? Butler is a philosopher, and Goodwin is a preacher, but you ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... during fifteen months of hard labour, by the learned Palisot de Beauvois, author of the "Flore d'Oware?" The "Reviewer" of Douville (p. 177) as sensibly declares that cannibalism "has hitherto continually retired before the investigation of sober-minded, enlightened men," when, after a century or two of intercourse with white traders, it still flourishes on the Bonny and New ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... years old, hardly more than five feet tall, but solid and muscular, with no particular charm of face or manner, no special dignity of carriage, he was only a common sort of pleb, modest, good-natured, respectful, companionable but sober-minded, observant but undemonstrative, willing but not ardent, trusty but without high ambitions,—the kind of boy who might achieve commendable success in the academy, or might prove unequal to its requirements, without giving cause of surprise ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... are an abomination to which no gentleman can lend his countenance. They are a shabby and mangy compromise for mustachios, and are principally sported by the genus of clerks, who, having strong hirsute predilections, small salaries, and sober-minded masters, hang a tassel on the chin instead of a vallance ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... system. The small number of our Church[28] is to be regretted, as well as that the organization of its ministry is not adapted to supply the present wants of the dispersed population in this new country; but you will readily admit that the sober-minded of the province are disgusted with the accounts of the disgraceful dissensions of the Episcopal Methodist Church and its separatists, recriminating memorials, and the warfare of one Church with another. The utility of an Establishment ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... to gallivanting, like the rest," he observed with coarse pleasantry. "I'd thought you were a staid and sober-minded woman for your years, but it seems that you are of a ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... for hitherto the London Press has either denounced spiritualism altogether, or gushed singly over individual mediums, presumably according to the several proclivities of the correspondents. Of Miss Annie Eva Fay, however—is not the very name fairy-like and fascinating?—I read in one usually sober-minded journal that "there is something not of this earth about the young lady's powers." Another averred that she was "a spirit medium of remarkable and extraordinary power." Others, more cautious, described the "mystery" as "bewildering," the "entertainment" as "extraordinary and incomprehensible," ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... he is passing along with the even flight of a sober-minded crow, and you are quietly admiring the salmon lining of his wings, he shoots rattling into the air, and, as you stare after him, drops back as suddenly as he rose. He does this apparently because the spirit moves him, as a boy slings a stone at the sky, ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... hardly remind the reader that an immense number of persons, both infidels and Protestants, especially in sober-minded England and Scotland, treat every professed Catholic miracle as a portion of the vast gigantic system of deliberate fraud and villany which they conceive to be the very life of Catholicism. From the Pope to the humblest priest who says Mass and hears confessions in an ugly little chapel in ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... have watched the world, how unwholesome for a man's soul any trade or occupation is which offers the chance of making a rapid fortune. It has hurt the souls of too many merchants and manufacturers ere now. Good and sober-minded men there are among them, thank God, who can resist the temptation, and are content to go along the plain path of quiet and patient honesty; but to those who have not the sober spirit, who have not the fear of God before their eyes, the temptation is too terrible to withstand; and ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... surprising that a sedate, sober-minded, slightly bald-headed, middle-aged Templar Knight, "used only to war's alarms [laughter] and not to woman's charms," should be at a loss what to say on an occasion like this, or to do justice to such a subject? It is delightful to have the ladies here. Like ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... no quiet drinking of a glass of wine in the parlour to which Cotherstone and his cronies retired. Whenever its door opened Cotherstone's excited tones were heard in the big room, and the more sober-minded of the men who listened ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... some of the young ones are indeed able enough to spout poetry and quote old authors, and too fond they are of doing so; nevertheless, as I have said to you before, most of the local preachers are sober-minded, sterling Christian men, and a few of them have eminent capabilities. Had Penrose been a younger man, he would probably have entered the ministry, but being above forty, with an uncommonly large family, he thinks it his duty to remain as he is, ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... Ellis ranch. A ranch is like a man: it has something that belongs to it, that don't belong to no other ranch, same as I have just the same number of eyes and noses and so forth that you drew on your ticket, yet you ain't me no more'n I'm you. This was a kind of sober-minded concern; it was a thoughtful sort of a ranch, where everybody went about his work quiet. I guess it was because the boys was mostly old-timers, given to arguing about why was this and how come that. Argue! Caesar! It ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... the eastern volunteers, the downright enmity of Fremont's company and the alien habits of the Mexican population, the sober-minded members of the Battalion must have been compelled to keep their own society very largely while in the pueblo of Los Angeles, or, to give it its Spanish appellation, "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula." Still, some of them tried to join in the diversions of the ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... astonishing, that any sober-minded person should allow himself to be shaken in his religious convictions by the alleged results of a science so unformed and imperfect, as geologists themselves acknowledge their favorite science to be. "The dry land upon our globe occupies ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... histories and literatures, but were content to lead the life that was sweet in its glow and warmth of color, its light, its shadows, its bending trees, and arching skies. A strong full-blooded race, sober-minded, dignified, rationally happy with their lot, Giorgione portrayed them with an art infinite in variety and consummate in skill. Their least features under his brush seemed to glow like jewels. The sheen of armor and rich robe, a bare forearm, a nude back, or loosened hair—mere ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... thing too," said the purple-visaged dowager wrathfully. "Privileges indeed! Fine privileges, if honest, sober-minded Christians are to learn the way to Heaven from heathens and idolaters. You are all just as bad as those people Saint Paul speaks of, who were always running after some new thing. I'm happy to say my Bible and my Church are good enough for me. I don't want a new religion ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... whose feelings still never overstep certain limits, and who are therefore known as men full of feeling, but sober-minded. ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... shines in a lowly cell; In the homes of poverty, smoke-begrimed, With the sober-minded she loves to dwell. But she turns aside From the rich man's house with averted eye, The golden-fretted halls of pride Where hands with lucre are foul, and the praise Of counterfeit goodness smoothly sways; And wisely she guides in the ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... no better method of reducing the showy nettlesome paces of youth to the sober jog-trot of middle-age than the restraining influence of the right kind of yokefellow. The qualities Phil most needed in a wife were those possessed by a sober-minded, unimaginative, placid girl of conventional mould. Such maidens are not unknown in rural England, and Miss Heredith had not much difficulty in picking upon one in the county sufficiently well-born to mate with ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... found two other volumes (you had three), the "Arcadia," and "Daniel," enriched with manuscript notes. I wish every book I have were so noted. They have thoroughly converted me to relish Daniel, or to say I relish him, for, after all, I believe I did relish him. You well call him sober-minded. Your notes are excellent. Perhaps you've forgot them. I have read a review in the "Quarterly," by Southey, on the Missionaries, which is most masterly. I only grudge it being there. It is quite beautiful. Do remember my Dodsley; and pray do write; or let some of you write. Clarkson ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... took boat again, rowed to Billingsgate, and Johnson and Beauclerc determined, like "mad wags," to "keep it up" for the rest of the day. Langton, however, the most sober-minded of the three, pleaded an engagement to breakfast with some young ladies; whereupon the great moralist reproached him with "leaving his social friends to go and sit with a set of ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... of passion, bordering upon insanity; and it follows, that their language must outstrip the modesty of nature. Propriety of diction in the drama is relative, and to be referred more to individual character than to general rules: to make a tyrant sober-minded is to make a madman rational. But this discretion must be used with great caution by the writer, lest he should confound the terrible with the burlesque. Two great actors, Kynaston and Booth, differed in their style of ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... another thing to know what to do with your independence. It is one thing to come to your majority and another thing to know what you are going to do with your life and your energies; and one of the most serious questions for sober-minded men to address themselves to in the United States is this: What are we going to do with the influence and power of this great Nation? Are we going to play the old role of using that power for our aggrandizement and material benefit only? You know what that may mean. It ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... things crowded themselves into a few brief years! It is not easy to curtail these boyhood adventures of Sam Clemens and his scapegrace friends, but one might go on indefinitely with their mad doings. They were an unpromising lot. Ministers and other sober-minded citizens freely prophesied sudden and violent ends for them, and considered them hardly worth praying for. They must have proven a disappointing lot to those prophets. The Bowen boys became fine river-pilots; Will Pitts was in due ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... apart from the representations of the "books" they abjure as special "revelations," there is any thing in the history of the world which will justly a sober-minded man in coming to any positive conclusion as to this promised "progress" this infidel millennium, either the one way or the other. The chief facts, apart from such special information, would certainly point the other way. Look at the condition of the immense majority of the race in every age,—so ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... must infer that they are hyperbolical expressions, used to impress strongly on our minds the general principle of love and forgiveness, and that, so far as possible, we over come evil with good. Can any sober-minded man suppose, for a moment, that we are commanded to encourage the attacks of the wicked, by literally turning the left cheek when assaulted on the right, and thus induce the assailant to commit more wrong? ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... life. She knew too well the origin of his disquietude to hope for its removal. In a little while, she descended and joined her family in the sitting-room, where the soft astral diffused its pleasant light, and greeted her sober-minded husband with loving smiles and cheerful words. And he was deceived. Not for an instant imagined he, after looking upon her face, that she had passed through a painful, though brief conflict, and was now possessed ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... universities it has become impossible. Religious truth, to secure the attention of the modern race of students in the better American institutions, is presented, not by "sensation preachers," but by thoughtful, sober-minded scholars. Less and less avail sectarian arguments; more and more impressive becomes the presentation of fundamental religious truths. The result is, that while young men care less and less for the great mass of petty, cut-and-dried sectarian formulas, they approach the deeper questions ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Romulus sent messengers to all the surrounding country to proclaim the programme of these entertainments, and to invite every body to come; and he adroitly arranged the details in such a manner that the chief attractions for grave, sober-minded and substantial men should be on the earlier days of the show, and that the latter days should be devoted to lighter amusements, such as would possess a charm for the young, the light-hearted and the happy. It was among this last class that he naturally expected to find the maidens whom ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... probably appear to the reader sufficiently romantic; though the historian intimates that he had heard three other narratives different from it, and that all were more full of marvels, as well as in wider circulation, than his own, which he had borrowed from some unusually sober-minded Persian informants. In what points the other three stories departed from it we do ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... "Be sober-minded: "Speak thou the things which become sound doctrine: "In all things showing thyself a pattern of good works: in doctrine shewing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity; "Sound speech that can not be condemned; that he that is of the contrary ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... hand and turned away. Dick was very sober-minded as he climbed into his cockpit. He knew to the full how much depended upon himself and Luke Evans. Already the shouts of the insurgents were to be heard at the ends of the barriers, commanded by the machine-guns, and patrolled by ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... hypotheses) which had dawned on the contemplations of the two opposed great masters of the old Greek thought, alike:—the "World of Ideas," existent only because, and in so far as, they are known, as Plato conceived; the "creative, incorruptible, informing mind," supposed by Aristotle, so sober-minded, yet as regards this matter left something of a mystic after all. Might not this entire material world, the very scene around him, the immemorial rocks, the firm marble, the olive-gardens, the falling water, be themselves but reflections in, or a creation of, that one indefectible mind, wherein ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... Whether the sober-minded collector whose pride is the well-being of his books is justified in adding a frontispiece and, say, half-a-dozen good engravings to a book that he appreciates, is a moot question. Doubtless the correct view is that books should not be meddled ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... meantime military government was established in Yloilo, the town was policed, trade resumed its normal aspect, the insurgents in the Island gradually increased, but the Philippine Republic in Panay was no more. It was clear to all the most sober-minded and best-educated Ylongos that Aguinaldo's government was a failure in Panay at least. The hope of agreement on any policy was remote from its very initiation. Visayos of position, with property and interests at stake, were convinced that absolute ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... conditions of the society of which they are only the abnormal and irregular growths. What people mean, when they talk of an increase in the number of men who marry beneath them, is that men otherwise sensible and respectable and sober-minded perpetrate the irregularity in something like cold blood, and with a measure of deliberation. Whether observers who have formed this opinion are right, or are only anticipating their own apprehensions and alarms, is difficult to ascertain. ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... Good works or good things, the keyword of the epistles and used seven times. (5) Sound doctrine occurs seven times in this form or as sound in the faith, uncorruption in doctrine, sound speech or doctrine of God. (6) Sober-minded occurring six times, at least in thought. These last three constitute the ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... merry, so the stern Puritan thought, and the ballad-singer sang profane songs, and the maidens danced with light-footed step, and it was all very wrong because they were breaking the Sabbath; and the ale was strong, and sometimes people drank too much, so the critics said. But all reasonable and sober-minded folk were not opposed to them, and in reply to some inquiries instituted by Archbishop Laud, the Bishop of Bath and ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... not take boys and girls long to find out that realization is not always equal to anticipation. Especially is this so with thoughtful, sober-minded boys ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... I could desire," said the old lady, returning to the subject: "he is a dear, good, sober-minded lad as need be. But I will not disguise from you, Mr Marshall, that I am in some ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... no impulsive Italian, but a sober-minded Englishman of sturdy good sense, and Ambrose was reasonable enough to listen and only drop in a few groats which he knew ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... this awakening circumstance, I could have had the good fortune to have met with sober-minded and religious people, I have no doubt but I might have had at this time much less to answer for; but that not being the case, the force of habit and example renewed its dominion over me, and I became nearly ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... see him again. To this young and attractive woman, full of the joy of living, hardly more than a girl, yet married to a much older man, sober-minded, stolid and uncongenial to her, and buried in this dull and lonely station, Wargrave had appealed instantly. Youth calls to youth, and she hailed his advent into her monotonous life as a child greets the coming of a playfellow. ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... that a person in this state is no object of contempt. He may be vulgar, ignorant, visionary, extravagant; but he will do and suffer things which it is for her interest that somebody should do and suffer, yet from which calm and sober-minded men would shrink. She accordingly enlists him in her service, assigns to him some forlorn hope, in which intrepidity and impetuosity are more wanted than judgment and self-command, and sends him forth with ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... applied himself so assiduously to Champagne-cup that his sober-minded helpmate (the only person who took much notice of his proceedings) was filled with an uncomfortable wonder. At last, during a pause in the general conversation, he addressed Royston abruptly—there was a strange huskiness in his voice, and his ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... take your meaning," answered Cyrus; "your father, you would have me think, has been changed in this one day from a fool into a wise and sober-minded man?" ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... land which they sought to subdue. They had come into the wilderness with their families in search of a home where they could educate their children and worship God as they pleased. They were earnest, sober-minded men, actuated in all things by deep religious principle, and never disloyal ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... purpose.—But expostulations addressed to those who, desponding of this aid, despond therefore of the object itself.—Incitement to individual exertion.—Reference to the sublimest Example.—Imputation of extravagant hope.—Repelled; first, by a full acknowledgment how much the hopes of sober-minded projectors of improvement are limited by what they see of the disorder in the essential constitution of our nature; and next, by a plain statement, in a series of particulars, of what they nevertheless judge it rational to expect from a general extension of good ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... confess," said Mrs. Witherspoon, slowly rocking herself, "that I don't see anything to laugh at. Miss Miller is an exceedingly nice girl, I'm sure, but I don't think she is at all suited to my son. She giggles at everything, and Henry is too sober-minded for that sort of ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... imperial tomb; drinking and dancing are, no doubt, very good things in their season, even in a hot climate, but they are sadly out of place in a sepulchre, and never fail to shock the good feelings of sober-minded people when given there. Good church music gives us great pleasure, without exciting us to dancing or drinking; the Taj does the same, at least to the sober-minded. [W. H. S.] The regulations now in force prevent any unseemly ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... several parts. 'The Scriptures were not dictated by an infallible intelligence;' nor 'the writers each and all divinely informed as well as inspired'. 'They refer to other documents, and in all points express themselves as sober-minded and veracious writers under ordinary circumstances are known to do.' To make the Bible itself 'the subject of a special article of faith, is an ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... want no ointment.[168] Let Mercy live, and not die, and let not her works be few. And to the boys he said, Do you fly youthful lusts, and follow after godliness with them that are grave and wise; so shall you put gladness into your mother's heart, and obtain praise of all that are sober-minded. So they thanked the Porter, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... last scrambling, feverish settling on the last lands, was sorely wasteful of human enterprise and human happiness. It was much like the spawning rush of the salmon from the sea. Many perish. A few survive. Certainly there never was more cruel injustice done than that to the sober-minded Eastern farmers, some of them young men in search of cheaper homes, who sold out all they had in the East and went out to the dry country to farm under the ditch, or to take up that still more hazardous occupation—successful sometimes, though ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... propriete c'est le vol." We merely say, in our defence, that it is a shame in "E. V. K.," be he who he may, to hide his talent in a napkin, or keep it for his friends alone. It is just such men and such poets as he that we most need at present, sober-minded and sound-minded and well-balanced, whose genius is subject to their judgment, and who have genius and judgment to begin with—a part of the poetical stock in trade with which many of our living writers are not largely ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... Neale's enthusiasm carried him so far that he was persuaded and sought to persuade others of the existence of liturgical quotations in the writings of St. Paul. This hypothesis is at the present time generally rejected by sober-minded scholars. Perhaps "the personal equation" enters equally into the conclusions of those who assign a very late origin to the liturgies, pushing them along as far as the sixth or seventh century. If one happens to have ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... it equally ridiculous to pose as an Italian lover in English clothing; and Peggy turned up her eyes and said she could not really abandon herself to her part if her costume were inappropriate. Even Esther, the sober-minded, sided with the rest, so the vicar laughed and gave way, only too pleased to sanction anything which helped the object which he ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... become more hasty of speech, to become less grave, to become less humble and meek, less patient, is to be correspondingly losing the power of God, and is called backsliding. There are those to-day who have been claiming to be sanctified for some years, and they are no more patient nor sober-minded nor sound in speech, no more humble, nor have more faith than they had the first year of their experience. In all probability they are backslidden and have naught but an empty form. By diligence, careful watching and incessant prayer, the soul can reign triumphant. ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... evidence of that drive through the cheering streets of London was deemed conclusive and during that afternoon and the next morning the crowds increased and the excitement grew until sober-minded observers who had seen the celebrations of the Queen's Jubilee and the Diamond Jubilee and knew something of the millions then gathered together were dismayed at the prospect of the massed multitudes of Coronation ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... of the notable places in our town; and the stories in circulation touching the Allen family, now almost extinct, were so strongly tinctured with romance, that sober-minded people generally received them with a large ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... Samuel Dexter said of New England, there was hardly a man rich enough to own a carriage, and few so poor as not to own a horse; for men thus to ape those revolutionary ways, which meant so much in Paris, may have seemed at the moment, to sober-minded people, more fantastic than harmful. It was harmful, however, insomuch as it substituted sentiment for common sense, and made enthusiasm, not reason, the guide of conduct. A character was given to political conflict which obtained for years to come. There was, it is true, a certain manliness ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... a puzzle to the sober-minded lady. A few days after Anne entered the home, she was sent into the office to be reproved. Slim and erect in her short blue frock, she stood before the superintendent. Miss Farlow looked at the slip of paper from the pupil teacher: "Anne Lewis; disorderly; ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... forth sarcastic insinuations and bitter diatribes from all the Conservative journals. There seems to be an intensity of exasperation, arising from the ancient prejudice against poets. A poet treating of politics! Let him keep to rhymes, and leave the serious business of life to us practical men, sober-minded men—men not led away by our imaginations—men not moved to absurdities by sentiment—solid, sensible, moderate men! Let him play with capricious hand on the chords which are resonant to his will; but let him ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... now be noticed pushing their vulgar way along, who, though born and bred in the middle classes, and disfigured by many of the very faults Mr. Arnold deplored, yet make it a test of their membership, an 'open sesame' to their dull orgies, that all decent, sober-minded folk, who love virtue, and, on the whole, prefer delicate humour to sickly lubricity, should ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... convenience of the encroaching Anglo-Saxon. For the accession of Canada, time is implicitly relied upon—the idea of conquest in that quarter being out of the question—and thus it is that even sober-minded men are beginning to believe that the time is not far off when the glowing prophecies of the most sanguine will be realized, that the boundaries of the republic would yet be the Isthmus, the North Pole, and the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... of this body politic the surgeon was a thorn as sharp as any one of his scalpels. He was a hard-headed, sober-minded Scotchman, who had been elected to represent a group of his countrymen living in the eastern part of the village, and whose profession, the five supposed, indicated without doubt his entire willingness ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... significance of certain popular beliefs and superstitions, a careful study of the relations of certain facts to each other,—whether that of cause and effect, or merely of coincidence,—is a task not unworthy of sober-minded and well-trained students of nature. Such a series of investigations has been recently instituted, and was reported at a late meeting held in the rooms of the Boston Natural History Society. The results were, mostly ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... The sober-minded professor did not, however, push his investigation to the point to which it was carried by a gallant soldier, from whose mouth a particular friend of the author received the following ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... the magic bonbon was still powerful enough to control the poor senator, who stood upon the rear seat of the carriage and danced energetically all the way home, to the delight of the crowd of small boys who followed the carriage and the grief of the sober-minded citizens, who shook their heads sadly and whispered that "another good man had ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... sarcastically tells of two sisters highly educated in domestic arts who spend so much time making cushions and "sets of hangings" that they had never learned to read and write! A sober-minded old lady, grieved by frivolous nieces, begs the Spectator "to take the laudable mystery of embroidery into your serious consideration," for, says she, "I have two nieces, who so often run gadding abroad that I do not know when to ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... Hamilton in conclusion, "that those whom I call the sober-minded men of the country, look up to you with solicitude on the present occasion. If happily you should be the instrument of still rescuing the country from the dangers and calamities of war, there is no part of your life, sir, which will produce to you more real ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... the women, and by degrees, according to the licentiousness of their thought, we would enjoy our pleasure. Soon the women found that they had no more occasion to go out for their dalliance; and even the sober-minded girls among them became involved. They did not dare to say anything, for fear of the scandal; and also I had a drug which I applied during the night to their faces, stupefying them so that they allowed me to do as ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... become apparent to one or two more practical and sober-minded in the party, that certain portions of the "Blazing Star" tunnel (owing, perhaps, to the exigencies of a flattering annual dividend) were economically and imperfectly "shored" and supported, and ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... the bar presided over by the predecessors of the modern barmaids—grumbled at in a Spectator as "idols," who there received homage from their admirers, and who paid more attention to customers who flirted with them than to more sober-minded visitors. They are described by Tom Brown as "a charming Phillis or two, who invited you by their amorous glances into their smoaky territories." Admission cost little. There you ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson |
