Solemn Quotes

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.

The joining of the whole congregation in prayer has something exceedingly solemn and affecting in it.

There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse.

Perhaps the mistake I made at the start of my mandate is not understanding the symbolic dimension of the president's role and not being solemn enough in my acts. A mistake for which I would like to apologise or explain myself and which I will not make again. Now, I know the job.

Never take a solemn oath. People think you mean it.

A judge can't have any preferred outcome in any particular case. The judge's only obligation - and it's a solemn obligation - is to the rule of law.

In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are.

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.

Serious journalism need not be solemn.

Coming in solemn beauty like slow old tunes of Spain.

Tonight - by taking this solemn oath - I am no longer a private citizen but the Mayor of the City of Chicago.

That is, we believed, the supreme duty of the parent, who only was permitted to claim in some degree the priestly office and function, since it is his creative and protecting power which alone approaches the solemn function of Deity.

One sweetly solemn thought, comes to me o'er and o'er; I am nearer home today, than I ever have been before.

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.

When a government goes to war, particularly a democracy, it is the most solemn and awesome responsibility of our leaders - to decide to send our kids to go off and kill and die for us.

From the solemn gloom of the temple children run out to sit in the dust, God watches them play and forgets the priest.

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.

We, the generation that faces the next century, can add the solemn injunction "If we don't do the impossible, we shall be faced with the unthinkable."

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.

Everything has two sides - the outside that is ridiculous, and the inside that is solemn.

It should be pursued as in the presence of God, and under the solemn sanctions created by a lively sense of his omniscience, and of our accountability to him for the right use of the faculties which he has bestowed.

To the solemn graves, near a lonely cemetery, my heart like a muffled drum is beating funeral marches.

I, Philip Kearny, an old soldier, enter my solemn protest against this order for retreat.

It is fitting that yesteryear's swashbuckling newspaper reporter has turned into today's solemn young sobersides nursing a glass of watered white wine after a day of toiling over computer databases in a smoke-free, noise-free newsroom.

Let me make a solemn pledge before all of you, before the whole world and before God, that I will devote all my energy and all I possess in my power to serve the people of Nigeria and humanity.

While the laughter of joy is in full harmony with our deeper life, the laughter of amusement should be kept apart from it. The danger is too great of thus learning to look at solemn things in a spirit of mockery, and to seek in them opportunities for exercising wit.

I bear solemn witness to the fact that NATO heads of state and of government meet only to go through the tedious motions of reading speeches, drafted by others, with the principal objective of not rocking the boat.

Well, we know that eighteen years after that solemn declaration it was disregarded, and the Irish Parliament, which lasted for five hundred years, was destroyed by the Act of Union. Gentlemen, the Act of Union was carried by force and fraud, by treachery and falsehood.

One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.

I tell you the solemn truth, that the doctrine of the Trinity is not so difficult to accept for a working proposition as any one of the axioms of physics.