#solemn

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests. ↗

— Gore Vidal

#against #city #confuse #decadent #destroying

Students today are a pretty solemn lot. One of the really notable achievements of the twentieth century has been to make the young old before their time. ↗

— Robertson Davies

#been #before #century #lot #make

Each has its lesson; for our dreams in sooth, come they in shape of demons, gods, or elves, are allegories with deep hearts of truth that tell us solemn secrets of ourselves. ↗

— Henry Timrod

#deep #demons #dreams #each #elves

America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. ↗

— Frederick Douglass

#binds #false #future #herself #past

Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night. ↗

— George Eliot

#coarse #effect #faces #funeral #grating

My friends, history, history calls us to this time and to this place. A solemn choice rests with us - where do we go from here? Do we move slowly and incrementally? Or do we seize the challenge of our time and tackle the great issues of our day. ↗

— Thomas Vilsack

#challenge #choice #day #friends #go

Childhood is frequently a solemn business for those inside it. ↗

— George Will

#childhood #frequently #inside #solemn #those

America is an idea. And it's the solemn responsibility of each 'temporary' president to protect and nurture that noblest of all ideas - with integrity. This man, Mitt Romney, has shown - not through his experience, but through his actions and words - that he is unqualified to carry out that responsibility. ↗

— Jennifer Granholm

#america #carry #each #experience #his

A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl. ↗

— Ernest Hemingway

#bloody #buzzard #confounded #even #hawk

One of the many problems with the American left has been its image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#been #boring #dull #image #left