#earnestness

That religious earnestness forever tends toward fright and hence towards brittleness and inquisition is clear enough in mythology and history. ↗

— Thomas Howard

#earnestness #enough #forever #fright #hence

Have an earnestness for death and you will have life. ↗

— Abu Bakr

#earnestness #life #will #you

To practice five things under all circumstances constitutes perfect virtue; these five are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness. ↗

— Confucius

#constitutes #earnestness #five #generosity #gravity

People take things at face value on social media. Earnestness is the assumption. ↗

— Mindy Kaling

#earnestness #face #face value #media #people

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

We want deeper sincerity of motive, a greater courage in speech and earnestness in action. ↗

— Sarojini Naidu

#courage #deeper #earnestness #greater #motive

And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too. ↗

— Khaled Hosseini

#gullibility #honesty #think

Earnestness can ferment into sentimentality. ↗

— Marc Webb

#ferment #into #sentimentality

My own will and desires were now very much broken, and my heart was with much earnestness turned to the Lord, to whom alone I looked for help in the dangers before me. ↗

— John Woolman

#before #broken #dangers #desires #earnestness