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Sober-minded   Listen
adjective
Sober-minded  adj.  Having a disposition or temper habitually sober.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sober-minded" Quotes from Famous Books



... Arum, or Jack-in-the-Pulpit (as it is called in Mr. Whittier's delightful collection of child-poems[30]), appears in "We and the World," where Dennis, the rollicking Irish hero, unintentionally raises himself in the estimation of his sober-minded Scotch companion Alister, by betraying that he "can speak with other tongues," from his ability to converse with a squaw in French on the subject of the bunch of Arums he had gathered, and was holding in ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... the 'merely verbal generalisation of Condillac.' James Mill, however, admired Condillac and his successors. In his article upon education, Mill traces the association theory to Hobbes, Locke, and Hume, the last of whom, he says, was succeeded by the two 'more sober-minded' philosophers, Condillac and Hartley; while he especially praises Erasmus Darwin, Helvetius, and Cabanis. Mill, therefore, may be regarded as an independent ally of the ideologists whose influence upon ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... this chill with the warmth of church socials at home. She felt disappointed and dreadfully alone. Her sober-minded room-mate was bobbing like a pigeon before Professor Grind, enthusiastically telling him "how much inspiration she got from his courses;" Katherine Graham was lost in a swirl of upper class-men. The Freshman had half turned toward the ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field

... and my friend at the head of the Judiciary Committee[17] has a bill on the subject now before the Senate, which, with some amendments to it, I propose to support, with all its provisions, to the fullest extent. And I desire to call the attention of all sober-minded men at the North, of all conscientious men, of all men who are not carried away by some fanatical idea or some false impression, to their constitutional obligations. I put it to all the sober and sound minds at the North as a question of morals and a question of conscience. What right have they, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... for hours in the westward vista, began to define itself in peaks and high, bald shoulderings of wind-swept mesas. Here was something definite and tangible for the stirring underman to lay hold upon. Blount, the sober-minded, the self-contained, found a curious transformation working itself out in quickened pulses and exhilarating nerve-tinglings. Boston, the Law School, the East of the narrow walk-ways and the still narrower rut of custom and convention, were fading into ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... side of this body politic the surgeon was a thorn as sharp as any one of his scalpels. He was a hard-headed, sober-minded Scotchman, who had been elected to represent a group of his countrymen living in the eastern part of the village, and whose profession, the five supposed, indicated without doubt his entire willingness to see through a cart-wheel, especially when the hub was ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith

... and might not be presented, was a deliberately planned rebuff, and therefore not in any sense excusable. She could have avoided it by telling Willard before leaving home that she did not care to meet the Count. To make a scene at Mrs. Howlett's was not a thing which a sober-minded, self-contained woman would have done; it was bad form to behave so rudely to one of Mrs. Howlett's guests, and was so inconsiderate of Willard and unreasonable in other ways ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs

... will always differ. Dr. Neale's enthusiasm carried him so far that he was persuaded and sought to persuade others of the existence of liturgical quotations in the writings of St. Paul. This hypothesis is at the present time generally rejected by sober-minded scholars. Perhaps "the personal equation" enters equally into the conclusions of those who assign a very late origin to the liturgies, pushing them along as far as the sixth or seventh century. If one happens ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... some of the priests in the provinces, whom the most rigid abstinence in eating and drinking, and plainness of apparel, and eyes always cast on the ground, recommend to the everlasting Deity and His true worshippers as pure and sober-minded men. ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... the actual; but surely it must help him to a comprehension of the dramatic apparatus itself, and of the manner in which it is worked, if he were to view its action from in front as well as from behind, or at least allow himself to hear what sober-minded spectators can tell him upon ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... all pretence at courtesy without further ceremony, "permit me to say that if you don't marry my grandson, you'll be a bigger fool than I take you for. And in my opinion, a sober-minded woman like you who will see to his comfort and be faithful to him is more likely to make him happy than any of your ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... This sober-minded maneuver was actually carried out. The little corvette sailed steadily down the middle of the lane; the great merchantman went pitching and rolling across her bows; thus they kept together, though their rates of sailing were ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... seem not unlikely to lawyers or students of the law, possibly their own men of business. This is no mere theory or guesswork. There has been too much conjecture about the early history of Gray's Inn, and the sober-minded topographer is warned off at the outset by a number of inconsistent assertions as to the early existence here of a school of law. Dugdale tells us that the manor was granted to the Priory of Shene in the reign of ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... distinctions, and was tolerant, if not liberal, to marriageable men. These she could hope to reform at some future time: and she had, moreover, a just idea of the weakness of man's nature. But being a woman, and a staid and sober-minded woman, she could never understand the power of temptation upon her own sex, or the commonest impulses of high spirits. Perhaps she was a little deficient in charity: but, as we have seen, it was chiefly toward her female friends, and since none can bear severe judgment ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... the inn garden, they went to look at the memorials relating to Saint John Gualberto, founder of the monastery. She listened to the picturesque history of his life, death, and miracles, but was not to be rendered sober-minded by any such thing. In the midst of Gerald's instructive account of the holy abbot's endeavors to purify the monastic orders from the stain of simony, her hand clutched his, and doing a delicate cake-walk she compelled him along with her, announcing, "The Hornet and the Bumble-bee went walking ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... plenty of amusement. Old New York did not suffer. Laura Keene thrilled them with the "Hunchback," and many another personation. Matilda Heron was doing some fine work in Milman's "Fazio," and the play of "The Stranger" held audiences spell-bound. Then there were lectures for the more sober-minded people; and you heard youngish men who were to be famous afterward. Spirit-rappings had fallen a trifle into disfavour; and phrenology was making converts. It was the proper thing to go to Fowler's ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas

... a generous and unoccupied young man, to lend a hand in any reasonable scheme for helping people to live together on better terms than the common. The Brook Farm scheme was, as such things go, a reasonable one; it was devised and carried out by shrewd and sober-minded New Englanders, who were careful to place economy first and idealism afterwards, and who were not afflicted with a Gallic passion for completeness of theory. There were no formulas, doctrines, dogmas; there was no interference ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... reader that an immense number of persons, both infidels and Protestants, especially in sober-minded England and Scotland, treat every professed Catholic miracle as a portion of the vast gigantic system of deliberate fraud and villany which they conceive to be the very life of Catholicism. From the Pope ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... does my wife, so does my eldest daughter. You did no more than to throw out the general idea, but I feel quite confident this occurred in Paris. I confess I thought the notion evidently chimerical, and as such spoke of it in my family. I always set you down as a sober-minded, common-sense sort of a fellow, and thought it a high flight for a painter to make to go off on the wings of the lightning. We may be mistaken, but you will remember that the priority of the invention was a question ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... "you have betrayed a facility of belief in this American history, that has surprised me in one with so high a reputation for prudence and caution. This sudden revival of the dead may answer for the credulous lovers of marvels, but it would hardly do for a jury of twelve sober-minded and sworn men. Admitting the whole of this gentleman's statement to be true, however, you will not deny the late Sir Wycherly's right to make a will, if he only devised his old shoes; and, having this right, that of naming his executor necessarily ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Mercy live, and not die, and let not her works be few. And to the boys he said, Do you fly youthful lusts, and follow after godliness with them that are grave and wise; so shall you put gladness into your mother's heart, and obtain praise of all that are sober-minded. So they thanked the Porter, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Sober-minded and farseeing men, in England and elsewhere, believe that, despite the ravage of her men and trade, ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson

... nature give me pain. All day long I sully sheet after sheet of paper and beguile the tedious hours with the half-faded recollections of my childhood. What I am writing will be burned. I should be ashamed that pages, tear-stained and dream-haunted, should fall beneath the eyes of grave, sober-minded folk. What would they see in them? Naught but ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France

... extravagant indulgence of passion, bordering upon insanity; and it follows, that their language must outstrip the modesty of nature. Propriety of diction in the drama is relative, and to be referred more to individual character than to general rules: to make a tyrant sober-minded is to make a madman rational. But this discretion must be used with great caution by the writer, lest he should confound the terrible with the burlesque. Two great actors, Kynaston and Booth, differed in their style of ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... cried out for war with England, and only the calm resolution of Washington averted such a catastrophe. John Jay was presently despatched to England to negotiate the "Treaty of Amity and Commerce," but it required all the weight of the sober-minded portion of the population to secure its ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... could desire," said the old lady, returning to the subject: "he is a dear, good, sober-minded lad as need be. But I will not disguise from you, Mr Marshall, that I am in some disease of ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... of our culture? That is a most vital question for any society. It includes the question whether the society has a discord in itself as to its own ideal of the type of men it wants to produce. In the upper strata of the masses, amongst the educated, industrious, sober-minded people of good incomes, there exists the best family life. The children live constantly with their parents, and the latter watch over the health, manners, and morals of the children unceasingly from birth to maturity. The same parents make great sacrifices for the education of their children, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... appearance of this female, and the mixture of frenzy and enthusiasm in her manner, seldom failed to produce the strongest impression upon those whom she addressed. Her words, though wild, were too plain and intelligible for actual madness, and yet too vehement and extravagant for sober-minded communication. She seemed acting under the influence of an imagination rather strongly excited than deranged; and it is wonderful how palpably the difference, in such cases, is impressed upon the mind of the auditor. This ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... without the head being affected was considered as one of the manly virtues. The games of foot-ball on Sundays, with the challenges to the neighbouring parishes, were resumed, bringing in an influx of riotous strangers to fill the public-houses, and make the more sober-minded inhabitants long for good Mr. Grimshaw's stout arm, and ready horsewhip. The old custom of "arvills" was as prevalent as ever. The sexton, standing at the foot of the open grave, announced that the "arvill" would be held at the Black Bull, or whatever ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... asking; sunburnt, freckle-faced, tousle-headed, barefooted little devils who, when my back was turned, would do handsprings over my cushions, landing on the mattress, or break the pole the first day out, leaving me high and dry on some island out of calling distance; but full-grown, sober-minded, steady men, who could pole all day or sit beside me patiently while I worked, hand me the right brush or tube of color, or palette, or open a bottle of soda without spilling half of it—that kind ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... he is passing along with the even flight of a sober-minded crow, and you are quietly admiring the salmon lining of his wings, he shoots rattling into the air, and, as you stare after him, drops back as suddenly as he rose. He does this apparently because the spirit moves him, as a boy slings a ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... take your meaning," answered Cyrus; "your father, you would have me think, has been changed in this one day from a fool into a wise and sober-minded man?" ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon

... Scriptures were not dictated by an infallible intelligence;' nor 'the writers each and all divinely informed as well as inspired'. 'They refer to other documents, and in all points express themselves as sober-minded and veracious writers under ordinary circumstances are known to do.' To make the Bible itself 'the subject of a special article of faith, is an unnecessary ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... Mrs. Harmon, who had been taking time, and might therefore be supposed to have given the matter her weightier consideration, "it is, in fact, just what one might expect. He has always been so steady and sober-minded. It is n't as if he had had a greater variety of interests and more social inclination and—wilder, you know. He was entirely devoted to his mother; and he has n't the resources and flexibility to make so complete a change ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... a purpose.—But expostulations addressed to those who, desponding of this aid, despond therefore of the object itself.—Incitement to individual exertion.—Reference to the sublimest Example.—Imputation of extravagant hope.—Repelled; first, by a full acknowledgment how much the hopes of sober-minded projectors of improvement are limited by what they see of the disorder in the essential constitution of our nature; and next, by a plain statement, in a series of particulars, of what they nevertheless judge it rational to expect from a general extension of good education.—Answer ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... for many days, and the games and sports were to come at the end. Romulus sent messengers to all the surrounding country to proclaim the programme of these entertainments, and to invite every body to come; and he adroitly arranged the details in such a manner that the chief attractions for grave, sober-minded and substantial men should be on the earlier days of the show, and that the latter days should be devoted to lighter amusements, such as would possess a charm for the young, the light-hearted and the happy. It was among this last class that ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... little pause, and then Elinor, with one of those changes which are so perplexing to sober-minded people, suddenly turned to him, holding ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... of the possibility of obtaining command of an unlimited ascensional force has suggested, to certain enthusiastic partisans of M. Petin's theory and plans, a long perspective of astounding visions, from which sober-minded Englishmen would, in all probability, turn away with derision. These enthusiasts have evidently adopted the language of Archimedes, and are ready to exclaim: "Give us a fulcrum, and," with hydrogen gas as our lever, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various

... hostility of the eastern volunteers, the downright enmity of Fremont's company and the alien habits of the Mexican population, the sober-minded members of the Battalion must have been compelled to keep their own society very largely while in the pueblo of Los Angeles, or, to give it its Spanish appellation, "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula." Still, some ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock

... well-known writers in the preceding chapter. German newspapers, it is true, prove that the national unity so loudly acclaimed was no empty word; moreover, they show conclusively that grumblers and half-hearted enthusiasts were not lacking. It would probably be more correct to describe them as "sober-minded patriots." These elements had, however, to use a colloquialism, ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith

... invited. To dance with the cadets! I knew only three of them; however, I supposed that I might dance with those three. I had an impression that amusements of this kind were rather found in the houses of the gay than the sober-minded; but this was peculiar, to help the cadets' dance, Mrs. Sandford said. I thought Mr. Thorold wished I would come. I wondered Preston had not mentioned it. He, I knew, was very fond of dancing. I mused till the people ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... that very strong prejudices are entertained by many of our most intelligent, sober-minded, and sincere Christians against revivals. It is both unjust and untruthful to allege that their real objection is against all vital godliness and genuine Christianity. Such persons as those we allude to love both, and desire the advance of truth ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod

... dance and roar as he did on that eighteenth of November, 1558. All over England, men went wild with joy. The terrible weight of the chains in which she had been held, was never truly felt until they were thus suddenly knocked from the shackled limbs. Old, calm, sober-minded people—nay, grave and stern, precise and rigid— every manner of man and woman—all fairly lost their heads, and were like children in their frantic glee that day Men who were perfect strangers were seen in the streets shaking hands with ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt

... I'm sure," rejoined the amateur chairman. "As his business manager I am responsible for him, after a fashion. I was glad to see Loring to-night—glad he has come back. Kent defers to him more than he does to any one else; and Loring is a solid, sober-minded sort." ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde

... on Poetry.—The French Revolution stirred the young English poets profoundly. They proclaimed the birth of a new humanity of boundless promise. The possibilities of life again seemed almost as great as in Elizabethan days. The usually sober-minded Wordsworth exclaimed:— ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... that time sarcastically tells of two sisters highly educated in domestic arts who spend so much time making cushions and "sets of hangings" that they had never learned to read and write! A sober-minded old lady, grieved by frivolous nieces, begs the Spectator "to take the laudable mystery of embroidery into your serious consideration," for, says she, "I have two nieces, who so often run gadding abroad that I do not know when to ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster

... boat again, rowed to Billingsgate, and Johnson and Beauclerc determined, like "mad wags," to "keep it up" for the rest of the day. Langton, however, the most sober-minded of the three, pleaded an engagement to breakfast with some young ladies; whereupon the great moralist reproached him with "leaving his social friends to go and sit with a set of wretched ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... somewhat grandiose and melodramatic tone of some portion of the narrative, it is singularly out of harmony with the real tone of that famous assemblage,—an assemblage of Anglo-Saxon lawyers, politicians, and men of business, who were probably about as practical and sober-minded a company as had been got together for any manly undertaking since that ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... delighted in, incidents, personalities, of barbarous strength—Esau, in all his phases—the very rudest children or "our great and powerful mother, nature." As Plato had said, "'twas to no purpose for a sober-minded man to knock at the door of poesy," or, if truth were spoken, of any other high matter of doing or making. That was consistent with his sympathetic belief in the capability of mere impetuous youth as such. Even those unexpected traits in ordinary people which seem to hint at larger ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater

... confess," said Mrs. Witherspoon, slowly rocking herself, "that I don't see anything to laugh at. Miss Miller is an exceedingly nice girl, I'm sure, but I don't think she is at all suited to my son. She giggles at everything, and Henry is too sober-minded for ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read

... Shakespeare had changed the scene in which it is cast for a more northern clime, we may doubt whether the art of Shakespeare himself could have reconciled us at once to the suddenness and the strength of Juliet's passion. And, even as it is, perhaps there are few of our rational and sober-minded islanders who would not honestly confess, if fairly questioned, that they deem the romance and fervour of those ill-starred lovers of Verona exaggerated and over-drawn. Yet, in Italy, the picture of that affection born of a night—but "strong as death"—is one to which the veriest commonplaces ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... rather sober-minded now, demurred to this. She would have preferred gardening a little, or sitting quietly with her mother under the mulberry-tree; but Phillis, who was in a wild mood, overruled all her objections, and by and by the battle began, and the shuttlecocks ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... habitation, where the stage—very necessarily—epitomizes the tendencies of the times, and, if occupied by a real literature in every sense, is the self-expression of a great community. As late as 1886 a sober-minded author on Scandinavian literature was able to say, with some justice, 'Iceland lacks all conditions for a dramatic literature.' And the situation has not changed essentially since. Whatever has been done in that line in recent times is to all ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various

... The sober-minded professor did not, however, push his investigation to the point to which it was carried by a gallant soldier, from whose mouth a particular friend of the author received the following circumstances of a ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... Reformers,''—sundry long-haired men and short-haired women, who thought it their duty to stir good Christian people with blasphemy, to deluge the founders of the Republic with blackguardism, and to invent ever more and more ingenious ways for driving every sober-minded man and woman out of the anti-slavery fold. More than once in those days I hung my head in disgust as I listened to these people, and wondered, for the moment, whether, after all, even the supremacy ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... of the former volumes in these two "Rover Boys Series," Dick, Tom and Sam Rover will need no special introduction. For the benefit of others, however, let me state that the sober-minded and determined Dick was the oldest of the three, with the fun-loving Tom coming next and sturdy Sam being the youngest. They were the sons of one Anderson Rover, who, when not traveling, made his home at Valley Brook Farm, in New York State, living there with his brother Randolph ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield

... to that idea. This sort of thing was quite new to me; for you must remember that I was fresh from school at the time, and had never seen anything of the kind before, my father being an exceptionally quiet and sober-minded individual, associating only with men of similar temperament to himself. With my new companions, however, 'respectability' was voted old-fashioned and out of date, sobriety of conduct a bore. They were fine, dashing, high-spirited young fellows, fearing nothing ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... little bit of a flirt. It is the way with all such girls, you know. I am sure it was with my sister, but, as in her case, marriage is the only cure. You need not be in the least uneasy, I assure you. All will right itself, though a good deal may go on that startles sober-minded people like us. I could condole with you on the charge, but you will find it the only way not to seem to thwart her. Violet thought it best to laugh, and talk of ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... punishment of the guilty. But if taken in conjunction with the whole Bible, we must infer that they are hyperbolical expressions, used to impress strongly on our minds the general principle of love and forgiveness, and that, so far as possible, we over come evil with good. Can any sober-minded man suppose, for a moment, that we are commanded to encourage the attacks of the wicked, by literally turning the left cheek when assaulted on the right, and thus induce the assailant to commit more wrong? Shall we invite the thief and the robber to persevere in his depredations, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... The more sober-minded Mahommedans of Lucknow and elsewhere are much scandalized at the habit which has grown up among them, in the cities of India, of commemorating every event, whether of sadness or of joy, by brilliant illuminations and splendid processions, to amuse the idle populations of such cities. ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... countenance it; he demands that a faith in God should he put on some other foundation, which foundation, unhappily, his countrymen, as yet unskilled in transcendental metaphysics; cannot apprehend; he withdraws his sympathy from the so trite and sober-minded belief of an industrious, experimental, ratiocinating generation, and cares not if they have a God at all, if they can only make his existence evident to themselves from some commonplace notion of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... Yes, my young friend, you may quote poets, you may startle me by remarks on the nothingness of human fame and human love, derived from the precepts of heathen poets, and yet not understand with what compassion, and, in the judgment of most sober-minded persons, with what contempt, a human being who practises ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... grand dinner; and everybody knew what that meant. "Short tongue and long throat," was his lordship's motto in the discharge of all public business, and "Bottle to the gentleman on my left!" was the practical form of his eulogies. In a small space like this, there would be no chance for a sober-minded guest to escape his searching eye, and Blyth Scudamore (appointed to represent the officers of the Leda, and therefore the hero of the evening) felt as happy as a dog being led to be drowned, in view of this liquid ordeal. For Blyth was a temperate and moderate young man, neither such a savage as ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... good humor. No attempt was made to call out the night crew: by tacit consent its members were allowed to mingle freely with their fellows and plan for the morrow's departure. Some, envious of the crowd from Omar which had profited by an early start, were anxious to be gone at once, but the more sober-minded argued that the road to White River was so long that a day's advantage would mean little in the end, and the advance party would merely serve to break trail ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... awakening circumstance, I could have had the good fortune to have met with sober-minded and religious people, I have no doubt but I might have had at this time much less to answer for; but that not being the case, the force of habit and example renewed its dominion over me, and I became nearly ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... was a puzzle to the sober-minded lady. A few days after Anne entered the home, she was sent into the office to be reproved. Slim and erect in her short blue frock, she stood before the superintendent. Miss Farlow looked at the slip of paper from ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin

... Russian anarchism in that it was directed against alien rulers of another faith and another civilisation. That it created a widespread feeling of apprehension and even of detestation amongst the great majority of peaceful and sober-minded Indians cannot be doubted, and especially amongst those who watched with alarm the ravages it was making amongst the younger generation. But few had the courage to carry reprobation to the length of assisting Government in ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... I must mention the conclusion arrived at by The Speaker. This sober-minded and extremely British review declared that his animating motive was "the strong rock of equity, or abstract justice," inasmuch as, by principally directing his attention to motorists, he was avenging The Speaker's quarrel with a class which this journal held in particular abhorrence. Naturally, ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster

... next, they are burdened, perhaps I should say cursed, with the most violent, anti-cosmopolitan Press anywhere existent. A set of fire-eaters appear to control the New York section, of it, and in the judgment of many sober-minded Americans, with some of whom I have myself spoken, the late war was wholly due to their ceaseless, incessant clamour, and that, given a few months' patience, the Cuban people might have by plebiscite been able ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... days passed, during which the plot ripened amidst the gossip of the quidnuncs. To those of his more sober-minded counsellors, who spoke for the Chancellor, the King professed much kindness for him, but "he had made himself odious to the Parliament, and was no more capable to do him service." The Lady, Arlington, and Bab May still honoured him by their fervent denunciation, and by their sure prediction ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... London Press has either denounced spiritualism altogether, or gushed singly over individual mediums, presumably according to the several proclivities of the correspondents. Of Miss Annie Eva Fay, however—is not the very name fairy-like and fascinating?—I read in one usually sober-minded journal that "there is something not of this earth about the young lady's powers." Another averred that she was "a spirit medium of remarkable and extraordinary power." Others, more cautious, described the "mystery" as "bewildering," the "entertainment" as "extraordinary and incomprehensible," ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... "gentle, not contentious," which sets aside much that distinguishes the masculine nature. In fact, with the exception of the qualification "apt to teach," before forbidden, the entire list of the necessary qualities of a bishop is that of womanly characteristics. Temperate, sober-minded (i. e., not given to trifling speech), orderly, given to hospitality, no brawler, no striker (this supposedly refers to pugilistic tendencies), but gentle, not contentious. ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... Conservatism became in their eyes a sort of religious principle from which they could not deviate without peril of treason to their faith. This was an exceedingly common feeling; among none more so than with that general bulk of steady sober-minded people of the middle classes without whose consent changes, in which they would feel strongly interested, could never be carried out. The extreme end of the last century was not a time when Church legislation, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... see him again. To this young and attractive woman, full of the joy of living, hardly more than a girl, yet married to a much older man, sober-minded, stolid and uncongenial to her, and buried in this dull and lonely station, Wargrave had appealed instantly. Youth calls to youth, and she hailed his advent into her monotonous life as a child greets the coming ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... seven times. (4) Good works or good things, the keyword of the epistles and used seven times. (5) Sound doctrine occurs seven times in this form or as sound in the faith, uncorruption in doctrine, sound speech or doctrine of God. (6) Sober-minded occurring six times, at least in thought. These last three constitute the Epistle's ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell

... strikes humorously upon the ear of memory. It is impossible to say why, for he was the humblest, the simplest, and the most serious of all God's living creatures, sadly lacking in all those elements that suggest the humorous. It is certain, moreover, that in 1850 the sober-minded citizens of the little Georgian village of Hillsborough were not inclined to take a humorous view of Free Joe, and neither his name nor his presence provoked a smile. He was a black atom, drifting hither and thither without an owner, blown about by ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris

... bookseller,[418] I warrant, has published a thumping catalogue at each of these places. Ha!—here I have you, sober-minded Lysander! You are as arrant a book-madman as any of those renowned bibliomaniacs whom you celebrated yesterday evening!—Yet, if you love me, take me with you! My ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... Ellis ranch. A ranch is like a man: it has something that belongs to it, that don't belong to no other ranch, same as I have just the same number of eyes and noses and so forth that you drew on your ticket, yet you ain't me no more'n I'm you. This was a kind of sober-minded concern; it was a thoughtful sort of a ranch, where everybody went about his work quiet. I guess it was because the boys was mostly old-timers, given to arguing about why was this and how come that. Argue! Caesar! It was a regular debating society. Wind-river Smith ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips

... yet in spite of all, Meletus, you will have it that by such habits I corrupt the young. We know, I fancy, what such corrupting influences are; and perhaps you will tell us if you know of any one who, under my influence, has been changed from a religious into an irreligious man; who, from being sober-minded, has become prodigal; from being a moderate drinker has become a wine-bibber and a drunkard; from being a lover of healthy honest toil has become effeminate, or under the thrall of ...
— The Apology • Xenophon

... old, hardly more than five feet tall, but solid and muscular, with no particular charm of face or manner, no special dignity of carriage, he was only a common sort of pleb, modest, good-natured, respectful, companionable but sober-minded, observant but undemonstrative, willing but not ardent, trusty but without high ambitions,—the kind of boy who might achieve commendable success in the academy, or might prove unequal to its requirements, without giving cause of surprise to ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen

... Next day, as he was riding through his parish, some mischievous youth succeeded in fastening a bunch of furze to his horse's tail—a trick which, had the animal been skittish, might have exposed the worthy pastor's horsemanship to too severe a trial, but which happily had no effect whatever on the sober-minded and respectable quadruped which he bestrode. On, therefore, he quietly jogged, utterly unconscious of the addition that had been made to his horse's caudal region, until, as he was passing some cottages, he was arrested by the shrill ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... things in the gossiping history of English Letters. But the coxcombry of Harvey and the felicitous impertinence of Nash have sometimes diverted attention from the actual state of the case. William Webbe (a very sober-minded person with taste enough to admire the "new poet," as he calls Spenser) makes elaborate attempts not merely at hexameters, which, though only a curiosity, are a possible curiosity in English, but at Sapphics which could never (except as burlesque) be tolerable. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... dined out one day, and had brushed against some of the greatest men of the age, and felt himself brightened by the collision. He sat beside the most benevolent, the most enlightened, and the most sober-minded of political economists, on the one hand; on the other by the most brilliant of French conversationalists. He—Francis Hogarth, the obscure bank clerk, who had had no name, no position, and, he used ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... for the information and counsel I could gather for them from a tolerably extensive experience. This subject will, I trust, be welcome to all of you who are interested in the stage as an institution which appeals to the sober-minded and intelligent; for I take it that you have no lingering prejudice against the theatre, or else I should not be here. Nor are you disposed, like certain good people, to object to the theatre simply as a name. These sticklers for principle would never enter a playhouse for ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving

... reaction and collapse. This method is now discredited, and in the more important American universities it has become impossible. Religious truth, to secure the attention of the modern race of students in the better American institutions, is presented, not by "sensation preachers," but by thoughtful, sober-minded scholars. Less and less avail sectarian arguments; more and more impressive becomes the presentation of fundamental religious truths. The result is, that while young men care less and less for the great mass of petty, cut-and-dried sectarian formulas, they approach the deeper questions ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... what you shall be!" an oracle that made me shrug my shoulders as soon as I had got outside the door. Few of us know what we are to come to certainly, but for all that had happened yet, I had good hopes of living and dying a sober-minded Protestant: there was a hollowness within, and a flourish around "Holy Church" which tempted me but moderately. I went on my way pondering many things. Whatever Romanism may be, there are good Romanists: this ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... and Lawless can settle it between you: you are a pair of eccentric geniuses, and know how you like to manage your own affairs better than a sober-minded man such ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... Malayan Loup Garou to the native mind is a fact and not a mere belief. The Malay knows that it is true. Evidence, if it be needed, may be had in plenty; the evidence, too, of sober-minded men, whose words, in a Court of Justice, would bring conviction to the mind of the most obstinate jurymen, and be more than sufficient to hang the most innocent of prisoners. The Malays know well how Haji Abdallah, the native of the little state of Korinchi in Sumatra, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... now," he continued musingly. "As sober-minded a woodchuck as ever burrowed a bank. From his earliest days he took life seriously, and never seemed to think it worth his while to play as the other wild youngsters do. Yet in spite of himself he ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts

... old Greek thought, alike:—the "World of Ideas," existent only because, and in so far as, they are known, as Plato conceived; the "creative, incorruptible, informing mind," supposed by Aristotle, so sober-minded, yet as regards this matter left something of a mystic after all. Might not this entire material world, the very scene around him, the immemorial rocks, the firm marble, the olive-gardens, the falling water, be themselves but reflections ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater

... this district the rowdy and tough element naturally congregated, and it was an every day occurrence to see drunken brawls, cutting and shooting scraps, and suicides; everything, in fact, that would be disgusting and annoying to the sober-minded citizen. It was an every night occurrence for ambulance calls to come from this district, where some unfortunate had been stabbed or shot down, or an inmate of one of the disorderly houses had committed or made ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various

... Hamilton in conclusion, "that those whom I call the sober-minded men of the country, look up to you with solicitude on the present occasion. If happily you should be the instrument of still rescuing the country from the dangers and calamities of war, there is no part of your life, sir, which will produce to you ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... Mr. Langhope expressed a decent amount of regret, and the subject was dropped as if by common consent. Cicely, however, was not so easily silenced. Poor Bessy's uncertain fits of tenderness had produced more bewilderment than pleasure in her sober-minded child; but the little girl's feelings and perceptions had developed rapidly in the equable atmosphere of her step-mother's affection. Cicely had reached the age when children put their questions with as much ingenuity as persistence, ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... was a distant ideal, a certain undefined and cloudlike creature; and, up to this time, he had been waiting to meet her, without taking any definite steps towards that end. To say the truth, John Seymour, like many other outwardly solid, sober-minded, respectable citizens, had deep within himself a little private bit of romance. He could not utter it, he never talked it; he would have blushed and stammered and stuttered wofully, and made a very poor figure, ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe



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