#earnest

Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain. The pain may be pain to other people or pain to one's self — it makes little difference; for when the strenuous mood is on one, the aim is to break something, no matter whose or what. Nothing annihilates an inhibition as irresistibly as anger does it; for, as Moltke says of war, destruction pure and simple is its essence. This is what makes it so invaluable an ally of every other passion. The sweetest delights are trampled on with a ferocious pleasure the moment they offer themselves as checks to a cause by which our higher indignations are elicited. It costs then nothing to drop friendships, to renounce long-rooted privileges and possessions, to break with social ties. Rather do we take a stern joy in the astringency and desolation; and what is called weakness of character seems in most cases to consist of the inaptitude for these sacrificial moods, of which one's own inferior self and its pet softnesses must often be the targets and the victims. ↗

— William James

#earnestness #anger

Earnestness is stupidity sent to college. ↗

— P. J. O'Rourke

#earnestness #sent #stupidity

It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, but we have just begun. Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today. ↗

— Barack Obama

#begun #better #bit #blood #children

The dangers which threaten us are twofold: First, from the Confederate forces, composed of men whose earnest convictions and reckless bravery it is idle to deny. ↗

— Robert Dale Owen

#composed #confederate #convictions #dangers #deny

I have rarely seen the face of a mechanic in the action of creation which was not fine, never one which was not earnest and impressive. ↗

— Thomas Nelson Page

#creation #earnest #face #fine #i

Let a man be but in earnest in praying against a temptation as the tempter is in pressing it, and he needs not proceed by a surer measure. ↗

— Robert South

#earnest #man #measure #needs #praying

It's so easy in these cabaret venues to get earnest. ↗

— Ana Gasteyer

#earnest #easy #get #these #venues

Have you noticed that whatever sport you're trying to learn, some earnest person is always telling you to keep your knees bent? ↗

— Dave Barry

#bent #earnest #keep #knees #learn

They were both in their own ways earnest; they both wanted to achieve some worthy end or other, change the world for the better. Such alluring, such perilous ideals! ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#earnest #ideals #change

Well, I don't like your clothes. You look perfectly ridiculous in them. Why on earth don't you go up and change? It's perfectly childish to be in mourning for a man who is actually staying a whole week with you in your house as a guest. I call it grotesque. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#jack #oscar-wilde #the-importance-of-being-earnest #change