Top 1200 Importance Of Being Earnest Quotes & Sayings

I think the word 'earnest' kind of has a negative connotation on some level. I think one of the things that's happened is that being cynical is somehow conflated with being sophisticated. I think that's problematic, to say the least.

This is to be observed of the Bishop of London, that, though apparently of a spirit somewhat austere, there is in his idiosyncrasy a strange fund of enthusiasm, a quality which ought never to be possessed by an Archbishop of Canterbury, or a Prime Minister of England. The Bishop of London sympathies with everything that is earnest; but what is earnest is not always true; on the contrary error is often more earnest than truth.

When you're being earnest, people think you're being sarcastic, and when you're being sarcastic, they think you're being earnest. The moral in all this, of course, is that people should never attempt to communicate.

I was writing an earnest novel about cruises in the Caribbean and I just started writing 'Bridget Jones' to get some money, to finance this earnest work, and then I chucked it out.

It is always interesting to see people in dead earnest, from whatever cause, and earthquakes make everybody earnest.

The first professional play I ever saw was The Importance Of Being Earnest, and I just fell in love.

The Chinese government attaches importance to, and protects, human rights. We have incorporated these lines into the Chinese constitution, and we also implement the stipulation in real earnest. I think for any government, what is most important is to ensure that its people enjoy each and every right given to them by the constitution.

When you're being earnest, people think you're being sarcastic and when you're being sarcastic, they think you're being earnest. The moral in all this, of course, is that people should never attempt to communicate.

There is a policy in manner. I have heard one, not inexperienced in the pursuit of fame, give it his earnest support, as being the surest passport to absolute and brilliant success.

I do think that being the second [female Supreme Court Justice] is wonderful, because it is a sign that being a woman in a place of importance is no longer extraordinary.

I will take an earnest person over a hip person every day, because hip is short-term, earnest is long-term.

Not only did I cross-dress at 10, playing Rosalind in 'As You Like It,' I also found myself in a cross-dressed part at 60, when I played Lady Bracknell in 'The Importance of Being Earnest.'

When he speaks to you he speaks with an earnest vibe and an earnest energy.

The importance of prayer rises in proportion to the importance of the things we should give up in order to pray

You take yourself to be limited, but you are not. Discover this. Stay silent and attentive. Be earnest about it. Just be aware of your being here and now. Reality will find you.

What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary error is often more earnest than truth.

The prime purpose of being four is to enjoy being four - of secondary importance is to prepare for being five.

If I find myself being too earnest and sentimental and hyperbolic and simplistic, which is definitely a tendency I have, then I bring in this perverse henchman.

Thanks to the greatly improved possibility of communication, we overrate its importance. Even stronger, we underrate the importance of isolation.

What matters in the end in literature, what is always there, is the truly good. And- though played out forms can throw up miraculous sports like The Importance of Being Earnest or Decline and Fall- what is good is always what is new, in both form and content. What is good forgets whatever models it might have had, and is unexpected; we have to catch it on the wing.

Honesty is one part of eloquence. We persuade others by being in earnest ourselves.

I am aware of the technical distinction between ‘less’ and ‘fewer’, and between ‘uninterested’ and ‘disinterested’ and ‘infer’ and ‘imply’, but none of these are of importance to me. ‘None of these are of importance,’ I wrote there, you’ll notice – the old pedantic me would have insisted on “none of them is of importance”. Well I’m glad to say I’ve outgrown that silly approach to language

The great reason why we have so little good preaching is that we have so little piety. To be eloquent one must be in earnest; he must not only act as if he were in earnest, or try to be in earnest, but be in earnest.

I started doing regional theater. My first job was "The Importance of Being Earnest" at Dallas Theater Center.

It's not that Millennials don't believe some things are serious. We'll make 'It Gets Better' videos or perform comedy for disaster relief. But sum up our lives in a phrase? The Importance of Never Being Too Earnest.

I've now realised for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.

We realize the importance of light when we see darkness. We realize the importance of our voice when we are silenced. In the same way when we were in Swat, we realized the importance of pens and books when we saw the guns.

With Sleater-Kinney, we have a lot of earnest fans, and we were an earnest band.

A sensational event was changing from the brown suit to the gray the contents of his pockets. He was earnest about these objects. They were of eternal importance, like baseball or the Republican Party.

Why is one a slave to thought ? Why has thought become so important in all our lives -thought being ideas, being the response to the accumulated memories in the brain cells? Perhaps many of you have not even asked such a question before, or if you have you may have said, "it's of very little importance- what is important is emotion." But I don't see how you can separate the two. If thought does not give continuity to feeling, feeling dies very quickly. So why in our daily lives, in our grinding, boring, frightened lives, has thought taken on such inordinate importance?

What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.

Berkeley , Hume, Kant , Fichte , Hegel , James , Bergson all are united in one earnest attempt, the attempt to reinstate man with his high spiritual claims in a place of importance in the cosmic scheme.

I'll take an earnest person over a hip person every day, because hip is short-term, earnest is long term.

You can be as earnest and ridiculous as you need to be, if you don't attempt it in isolation. The ridiculously earnest are known to travel in groups. And they are known to change the world.

I think you learn something from everybody that you've worked with. I really learned how to behave on set through the people that I worked with, like the importance of being on time and the importance of being professional. I don't bring my cell phone on set; I leave it in my trailer.

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

I would hope that nothing that I write would ever seem earnest because I subscribe absolutely to Franz Nietzsche's claim when he says, "Ah, earnestness, the sure sign of a slow mind." Earnest people are always a bit on the thick side in my experience.

If you want to sin, sin wholeheartedly and openly. Sins too have their lessons to teach the earnest sinner, as virtues the earnest saint. It is the mixing up of the two that is so disastrous. Nothing can block you so effectively as compromise, for it shows lack of earnestness, without which nothing can be done.

I'm a fairly unaffected human being. I'm easy to talk to, I hope. I'm not too bothered about the clothes I'm wearing. I've been misquoted in interviews as to appear earnest. Which I am not.

Every single case of inherited defect, every malformed child, every congenitally tainted human being brought into this world is of infinite importance to that poor individual; but it is of scarcely less importance to the rest of us and to all of our children who must pay in one way or another for these biological and racial mistakes.

In life, the only thing of importance is a radical, total, and definitive change. The rest, frankly, is of no importance at all.

The only difference between us is that I am aware of my natural state, while you are bemused.... We discover it by being earnest, by searching, enquiring, questioning daily and hourly, by giving one's life to this discovery.

When one lives with problems of importance, the prostitute is ideal. You pay, and whether or not you fail is of no importance. She doesn't care.

I've seen the most remarkable thing. It's in the New York Public Library. They've got the original typescript of 'The Importance of Being Earnest' - all four acts of it.

I started doing regional theater. My first job was 'The Importance of Being Earnest' at Dallas Theater Center.

I got a lot of flak; in Texas, football is not only the social thing you must do, but you do it also to prove your manhood. They all couldn't conceive of why I'd want to stop to do 'The Importance of Being Earnest.'

Fasting is calculated to bring a note of urgency and importance into our praying, and to give force to our pleading in the court of heaven. The man who prays with fasting is giving heaven notice that he is truly in earnest.

People underestimate the importance of dilligence as a virtue. No doubt it has something to do with how supremely mundane it seems. It is defined as "the constant and earnest effort to accomplish what is undertaken."... Understood, however, as the prerequisite of great accomplishment, diligence stands as one of the most difficult challenges facing any group of people who take on tasks of risk and consequence. It sets a high, seemingly impossible, expectation for performance and human behavior.

(...) being right all the time acquires a huge importance in education, and there is this terror of being wrong. The ego is so tied to being right that later on in life you are reluctant to accept that you are ever wrong, because you are defending not the idea but your self-esteem. (...) this terror of being wrong means that people have enormous difficulties in changing ideas.

I've only auditioned for one non-culturally specific role. I went through drama school and studied classic texts and played lead roles in 'Measure for Measure' and 'The Importance of Being Earnest' alongside a very culturally diverse group of acting students. But as soon as we graduate and enter the industry, all of those roles fall away.

We are not apt to think of the importance of events as they transpire with us, but we feel the importance of them afterwards.

Being a mountain boy, I have always understood the importance of trees, animals and nature for a human being.

I've just always been a reader. My grandmother just expressed the importance of literacy, if I said that correctly. She just always expressed the importance of being able to write and being able to read.

Act in earnest and you will become earnest in all you do.

One can not start by saying that our earthly destiny has or has not importance, for it depends upon us to give it importance.

'The Importance of Being Earnest' is important, but it says nothing about anything.

I love David Suchet. I'm obsessed with Poirot. Then I saw him in 'The Importance of Being Earnest,' where he did Lady Bracknell, and he was amazing - he did it like a dinosaur, like a velociraptor.

I just preach the importance of reading, the importance of learning and challenging yourself to be the best you can be in life, whatever it is you do.

Nowadays I'd describe myself as earnest, terribly earnest. I'm the person who wants everybody in the room to feel important and happy.

My father liked to moralize, and so do I. But he was in earnest, while I am embarrassed and pretend that I am merely being witty.