It is the tendency of deep feeling to subdue the manner rather than to render it too energetic.

She couldn't avoid being serious about things she cared for, and happiness made her grave at the thought of all the things which might destroy it.

Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.

Taking sides is the beginning of sincerity, and earnestness follows shortly afterwards, and the human being becomes a bore.

Solemnity is the shield of idiots.

Taking fun as simply fun and earnestness in earnest shows how thoroughly thou none of the two discernest.

A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clearsighted awareness of the temporality and the ephemerality of everything human.

There is ever a slight suspicion of the burlesque about earnest, good men.

Every man is grave alone.

Earnest people are often people who habitually look on the serious side of things that have no serious side.

Oh, that ludicrous virile earnestness!

A serious life means being fully aware of the alternatives, thinking about them with all the intensity one brings to bear on life-and-death questions, in full recognition that every choice is a great risk with necessary consequences that are hard to bear.

There are people who think that everything one does with a serious face is sensible.