seriousness

Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.

I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled "Science Fiction" . . . and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.

Moral stimulation is good but moral complacency is the most dangerous habit of mind we can develop, and that danger is serious and everpresent.

We are growing serious, and let me tell you, that's the next step to being dull.

It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious. Prostitutes know this too.

Life is serious, but art is fun.

Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women from laughing at them.

I am going to explain to you why we went to war. Why mankind always does to war. It is not social or political. It is not countries that go to war, but men. It is like salt. Once one has been to war, one has salt for the rest of one's life. Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women from laughing at them.

Gardening is a labour full of tranquility and satisfaction; natural and instructive, and as such contributes to the most serious contemplation, experience, health and longevity.

He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. . . . He was naturally learn'd; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. . . . He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating in to clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some occasion is presented to him.