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Serious-minded   /sˈɪriəs-mˈaɪndəd/   Listen
Serious-minded

adjective
1.
Acting with or showing thought and good sense.  Synonym: thoughtful.



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"Serious-minded" Quotes from Famous Books



... grown up under the prosperous rule of the Protector, and his boyhood had been spent in the guardianship of a most watchful and serious-minded mother. He had been somewhat over-cosseted and apron-stringed, it may be, in that tranquil atmosphere of the rich widow's house; but not all Lady Warner's tenderness could make her son a milksop. Except for a period of two years in London, when he had lived under the roof of the great Republican, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... consulted on a matter of great consequence. Two young nephews of Joseph Nuessler, Godfrey Baldrian and Rudolph Kurz, had asked permission to spend the weeks before their examinations—both were students of theology—at Rexow. Should they be invited to come? Godfrey was all right, a serious-minded youth, but Rudolph, although a good sort of a fellow, was frivolous, he had even fought a duel in Rostock for the sake of a merchant's pretty daughter. Was there any danger of Lina and Mina falling in love? "Braesig," Joseph said, "you see it might quite well happen, and what are we ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... are not wholly indifferent," said Robinette, as though she were stopping to consider. "I think every serious-minded person must be proud to inherit fine qualities and to pass them on. Surely it isn't enough to give old blood to the next generation—it must be good blood. Yes! the right stock certainly ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Lady Liljecrona was a serious-minded and dutiful woman who liked industrious and capable folk like Katrina of Ruffluck. She had sympathy for her and wanted to show it. But Katrina continued to ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof

... who were both serious-minded men, though not much enlightened, agreed heartily with Mr Martin; and Ben learned many an important lesson from listening from time to time to ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston

... if prominent, indicates a serious-minded person, religiously inclined, slow to reach a conclusion, very prudent, free in the expression of opinions, but ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... for observation served but to confirm my conviction that I was confronted with a man who had one great and separate secret hidden within the impenetrable recesses of a contrite heart. He said little about St. Cuthbert's or the morrow, his most significant observation being to the effect that the serious-minded of the kirk were looking forward to my appearance ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... sooner is the sinfulness of waste observed than its connections with moral delinquencies of country people becomes clear. In the improvement of rural morality due to the sifting of country people during the farmer period, it becomes evident that among a people so serious-minded some delinquencies still remain. The immoralities that still lurk and fester in the country are due very largely to waste. This waste of human things is parallel to the waste ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson

... Judy, who loved these discussions with her serious-minded friend. "How would you like to engage for all your life in the ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed

... which she always managed to find time for, even when she did not get up as early as on this occasion. For her age, and perhaps because of her mother's death, which still seemed recent to Janice, she was rather serious-minded. Yet she was no prig, and she loved fun and was as alert for good times as any girl of ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long

... fifteen years that it has obtained a firm foothold in American cities. People looked on it with suspicion, as a sign of some inward and spiritual naughtiness, and regarded the frock-coat with its full skirts as the only garment in which a serious-minded man, with a proper sense of his origin and destiny, and correct feelings about popular government, could make his appearance in a lady's parlor. Why, nobody could tell, for there was a time, not very far back, when the frock-coat was itself an innovation. Of late—that is, within, perhaps, ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... the infinite care never to let anything pass unexplained, with which he presented to the public the result of his investigations, are impressing more and more serious-minded scientists, but the examination of his evidential data demands arduous work and presupposes ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud

... convened, and The Sun sent the Paducah party to help cover the proceedings. Upon arriving at Portsmouth, Cobb cast his experienced eye over the situation, discovered that the story was already well covered by a large coterie of competent, serious-minded young men, and went into action to write a few columns daily on subjects having no bearing whatsoever on the conference. These stories were written in the ebullition of youth, inspired by the ecstasy which rises from the possession of a steady job; a perfect ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... young man who had recently left Oxford, and who had come out to Beni-Mora only a week before to see his mother, who was going through the sulphur cure. He was what is generally called a 'serious-minded young man'; intellectual, inclined to grave reading and high thinking, totally devoid of frivolity, a little cold in manner and temperament, one would have sworn; in fact, a type of a very well-known kind of ...
— Desert Air - 1905 • Robert Hichens

... he took his last drink. To these outings the girls bring, in a woven, hickory basket, a dinner for two. The baskets are auctioned, the proceeds are given to some church charity, and the purchaser and the girl have dinner together. They are often expensive parties to a serious-minded mountain swain who can not surrender the day's privileges to a rival or will not yield his dignity and rights to fun-makers who enliven the biddings by making the basket, brought by "his girl," cost at least as much as a ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan

... might not hear him, and whispered: "There it is that the Hebrews have so much more heart than we in such things. Miserable fellows though they are, so many of them, yet, when I have gone through their whole land with the caravans, the chances have been that any serious-minded man spoke of no God but ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... and his advisers preached, just as in the decadent days before the French Revolution the court, bored with licentiousness, gaily welcomed the morality-painting of the young Greuze. And to the more serious-minded, such as Horemheb seems to have been, the movement must have appealed in its imperial aspect. The new god Aton was largely worshipped in Syria, and it seems evident that Akhnaton had hoped to bind together the heterogeneous nations of ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... Verinder properties had found a note addressed to him in one of the sacks of quartz taken from Kilmeny. The message, genial to the point of impudence, had hoped he had enjoyed his little experience as a hold-up. To Bleyer, always a serious-minded man, this levity had added insult to injury. Just now the very mention of the highgrader's name was a red rag to his temper. It was bad enough to be bested without being jeered at by the man who had set ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine

... been what one may call serious-minded, Mr. Starkey. As a boy I liked reading, and I've always had a book at hand for my leisure time—the kind of book that does one good. Just now I'm reading The Christian Year. And since my daughters married—well, as I tell you, Mr. Starkey, I've done pretty well in business—there's really no ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... had had her way—nay, more; Chester, at the very last, had gone to great trouble in order that she might not be cheated over her purchase. Best of all, Bill—Sylvia always called the serious-minded young lawyer "Bill"—had lived to admit that Mrs. Bailey had made a good investment after all, for her pearls had increased in value in the two years ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... plunged into the vortex of West-End society, where she revolved among other jewelled matrons for the season, telling herself and her intimates that this sacrifice of inclination was due to his lordship's position. Lady Denyer was not the less serious-minded because she was seen at every aristocratic resort, and wore low gowns with very short sleeves, and a great display of ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... spoke once. On the very day I was assured of my appointment as general manager for the County Down Railway I discarded the tall silk hat and the black morning coat, which for some time had been my usual business garb, as it was of many serious-minded aspiring young business men in Glasgow. Mr. Galloway asked me the reason of the change, which he was quick to observe. "Well," said I, "I have secured my position, so it's all right now." Never since, except in ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow

... said Mrs. Banks, "what her rancher would say if he saw his handsome wife now. So much admiration from an old lover is not good for the peace of mind of even a serious-minded author—and such a fascinating man as Bruce! Look how well they look together! I wonder if she is mentally comparing her big, sunburned cattleman with Bruce, and thinking of what a different life she would have led if she ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung

... floors of the bank to the upper story. Here, in a small, heavily rugged room behind a broad mahogany table, they met Mr. John Gardiner, then the "trust officer" of the Washington Trust Company. He was a heavy, serious-minded, bald man of middle age, and Adelle at once made up her mind that she liked him far less than the judge. The trust officer did not rise on their entrance as the judge always had risen; merely nodded to them, motioned to some chairs against the wall, and continued writing on a memorandum ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... should cultivate dignity of speech and manner. People generally dislike familiarity, joking, and horse-play. It is well to assume that the customer is serious-minded, that he means business and nothing else. Needless to say, the telling of long stories, or personal experiences, has no legitimate place in the ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser

... following in the gaping loiterers of the circus side-show, the pumpkin-and-prize-pig country fair, or the tawdry booth at Coney Island. The credulous, wonder-loving scientist, however, still abides with us and, while his serious-minded brothers are wringing from Nature her jealously guarded secrets, the knowledge of which benefits all mankind, he gravely follows that perennial Will-of-the-wisp, spiritism, and lays the flattering unction to his soul that he is investigating "psychic phenomena," when in reality he is ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... is psychologically wrong. It cheapens the organization in the eyes of non-members and thereby defeats its own end. Instead of attempting to cajole freshmen into joining, we shall endeavor to attract the serious-minded men on the campus by the quality of our programs and the variety of our activities. With the strong men in, the others will follow, and in this way our membership will be one ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... 'History' would have been a valuable contribution to literature at any time, and is, in fact, an admirable text-book upon a subject that is at present engrossing the attention of a large number of the most serious-minded people, and it is no small compliment to the sagacity of its distinguished author that he has so well gauged the requirements of the times, and so adequately met them by the preparation of this volume. It remains to be ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... instrument of political power, and therefore subjected her personal affections to the public interest. She began to cast her eyes upon Britannicus, the son of Messalina, who was now becoming a young man and who seemed to be more serious-minded than Nero. It was even muttered that she thought of giving her own son's place to the son of Messalina, when suddenly, in 55, Britannicus died at a dinner at which Nero was present. Was he poisoned by Nero, as Tacitus says? Although there is no lack of obscurities and ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero

... face to face with these serious-minded gentlemen, began to reflect that this foot-race was not a thing ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach

... attorneys he expended the capacity for admiration which, as his life was arranged, found no other outlet; and, belonging to the generation before golf and bridge and tennis had brought games within the range of serious-minded adults, he had the same intent curiosity about the outcome of a legal contest that another man might have felt in the outcome of a Newport tournament. His wife had long ago learned, so she said, that any attempt to catch his mental eye while an interesting trial ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... attention to a significant fact in the history of recent Christian work in Japan. Although the serious-minded Japanese is first attracted to Christianity by the character of its ethical thought—so much resembling, also so much surpassing that of Confucius, it is none the less true that monotheism is another powerful source of attraction. I have been repeatedly told by Christians ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... comes occasionally, but he always arrives very late, just in time for dinner, and is off again with my father in the morning before I am awake. And then he is a serious-minded man now, is Monsieur Georges. He works at the factory, and business cares often bring ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... laughter had ceased, Ruddie, who seemed a serious-minded youth, began a story of an uncle of his who had contracted blood-poisoning from the dye in his stockings. What ultimately happened to the uncle Clint never discovered, for the others very rudely broke in on Ruddie's reminiscences and the conversation became general and varied. The boy ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... Fall of Rome approached Chadwick's Landing more intimate groups formed. The air was mild, the sun warm and inviting, and the water an obvious and understandable blue. Some serious-minded excursionists sat well forward on their camp-stools discussing ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... had in numerous styles. One contains the novels of Mackenzie, Fielding, Smollett, Walpole, Dickens, Thackeray, and Scott, and is bound in tree-calf: another, better adapted to the serious-minded (especially to young women), is made up of the novels of Maria Edgeworth, Miss Jane Porter, Miss Burney, and the Rev. E. P. Roe. This style can be had for fifty dollars. But the Novelists' folding-bed is manufactured ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field

... something like her predecessor, Duchess Eleanora, a serious-minded sort of woman, with no pretensions to beauty or ability, not at all the sort of sovereign for that gay and dissolute court. The beau monde took themselves off to the Orte Oricellari—to pay their devotions to ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley

... upon the enemy, as did Gillray, Captain Bairnsfather turns his—good-humouredly always—on his fellow-warriors. This habit of ours of making fun of ourselves has come by now to be fairly well understood by even the most sensitive and serious-minded of our continental friends and neighbours. It hardly needs nowadays to be pointed out that it is a fixed condition of the national life that wherever Britons are working together in any common object, whether in school, college, ...
— Fragments From France • Captain Bruce Bairnsfather

... imagination to the real world, it unfolds an inexhaustible supply of parodies of mankind. Creations of its fantasy are the Scaramouches, Crispins and Harlequins, grinning silhouettes of man, types altogether unknown to serious-minded antiquity, although they originated in classic Italy. It is the grotesque, lastly, which, colouring the same drama with the fancies of the North and of the South in turn, exhibits Sganarelle capering about Don Juan and Mephistopheles ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... man the great congregation rose to their feet. It was a scene profoundly impressive, and with these serious-minded, sober people, one that indicated ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... of things natural have their own point of view, individual, unconventional, whimsical, if you please,—very different, at all events, from that of clearer-witted and more serious-minded men; and the inhabitants of Sanford will doubtless take it as a compliment, and be amused rather than annoyed, when I confess that I found their city a discouragement, a widespread desolation of houses and shops. If there is ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... that while in the middle eighteenth century the novel-writing was tentative and hardly more than an avocation, at the end of the nineteenth, it had become a fine art and a profession. It did not occur to Richardson, serious-minded man that he was, that he was formulating a new art canon for fiction. Indeed, the English author takes himself less and less seriously as we go back in time. It was bad form to be literary when Voltaire visited Congreve and found a fine gentleman where he sought a writer of genius: complaining ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... young wife and children came, bringing new brightness and joy to the serious-minded warden. With ever increasing interests, he passed on from youth to middle life, and from middle life to old age. Then his son married, and again the patter of little feet filled the old home and made music in the ears of Grandfather Coster, whom ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden

... can be claimed for the various claviers or keyboard instruments that came into use. Dance music found in them a congenial field, thus causing many serious-minded people to regard them as dangerous tempters to vanity and folly. In the year 1529, Pietro Bembo, a grave theoretician, wrote to his daughter Helena, at her convent school: "As to your request to be allowed ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore

... raised by the class of facts already elicited through this investigation are of supreme importance, and it becomes the duty of every serious-minded enquirer who has had experience of this kind to give the result of his investigations to the public, and thus aid those searching for the underlying cause of all such phenomena. Therefore after considerable hesitation, and with some inward shrinking from an obvious duty, I have concluded to take ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... lad, outgrew the country schools, just as he outgrew his clothes. He was a hardworking, serious-minded, intelligent boy. Then the girls, both bright, reached the next to the last grade in the country school. And Tom Jennings and Martha Jennings his wife determined that each of them should have a college education. So Tom worked very hard and Martha saved very closely. And the fall day came ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux

... After Christianity had begun to make converts among the more serious-minded and better-educated citizens of the Roman Empire, the need for more than rudimentary instruction in the principles of the church life began to be felt. Especially was this the case in the places where Christian workers came in contact with the ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... sit together in union of will and soul concentrating as above-indicated the better. Practise alone if you can find no earnest and serious-minded ones to ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji

... off, looking round half timidly in Ruth's face, for it was reversing the usual roles to find herself laying down the law as to right and wrong to the serious-minded elder sister. Would Ruth be annoyed—shocked—disapproving? It appeared that she was not, for the troubled lines had gradually smoothed away from her ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... were needed, the curious predilections of the serious-minded among our novel-readers would supply it. For not all Americans take the novel too lightly; some take it as heavily as death. To the school that tosses off and away the latest comer is opposed the ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... proved to be a several-years-old copy of the Congressional Record, containing the speeches made before Congress at that time, and in addition to being heavy, it was more than dull. Whitey couldn't understand how Dan found it "absorbin'." Dan certainly must be a serious-minded person, despite his fat. And yet, from over near the bunk house, Whitey heard loud laughter coming from several men. He reflected hopefully that perhaps the hands were not so solemn ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart

... sincere because their environment called for an honest attitude. Having left the comforts of their old homes, traveled hundreds and thousands of miles, entered the wilderness, and endured the privations of the frontier, they were serious-minded. They came for a purpose and, therefore, were always about, doing something. Even to this day, their ideals of thrift and "push" and frugality ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh

... reflecting the light. She did not possess the large grace of abstract beauty. There was nothing statuesque, nothing majestic, about her, but a kind of mild perfection, a fitness and harmony which called forth the approval of the more serious-minded portion of humanity as well as the admiration of the younger ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... provides entertainment of that sort at frequent intervals. For the more serious-minded the extensive Raffles Museum and Library is centrally and ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese

... the Tower of Babel, when no two families spoke alike. They read that sort of thing as fast as a night-hawk will whir. 'Tis all learning there—nothing but learning, except religion. And that's learning too, for I never could understand it. Yes, 'tis a serious-minded place. Not but there's wenches in the streets o' nights... You know, I suppose, that they raise pa'sons there like radishes in a bed? And though it do take—how many years, Bob?—five years to turn a lirruping hobble-de-hoy chap into a solemn preaching ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... pavement outside wondering what he should do. Then it occurred to him that he belonged to a club—a grave, decorous place where the gay pop of a champagne cork had been known to produce a scandalized silence in the luncheon-room, and where serious-minded members congregated to scowl at one another's unworthiness from behind newspapers. A hansom conveyed him thither. In the hall he struggled over two telegrams which had caused him most complicated thought ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... no longer very young, "boys will be boys," but there never was anything rude or vulgar in their conversation, and I hardly ever heard an offensive remark among them. Most of my friends came from Balliol, and were serious-minded men, many of them occupied and troubled by religious, philosophical, and ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... Hopkins, and had been sent to Germany and Austria by his grandfather when he was twenty-seven, to work under the advanced scientists of Vienna and Berlin. At twenty-nine he came back to New York, a serious-minded, purposeful man, wrapped up in his profession and heterodoxically humane, to use the words of his grandfather. The first day after his return he confided to his grim old relative the somewhat unprofessional opinion that hopelessly afflicted members of the human ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon

... listen to me—I am serious-minded, and do not commit follies, like you fellows. Crepe masks are not being worn this season. Believe me, if you loiter at a street corner with a crepe mask on, some passer-by will regard you, he may even wonder what you are doing there. It ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... dumma vantron. Note Fritiof's frequent sarcastic references to the religious beliefs and practices of his day. In later cantos (15-24) he appears as a serious-minded and "orthodox" man. ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner

... A serious-minded little fellow in the class said, "Teacher, don't you think that when Jesus opened his mouth, and began to speak to his disciples, it must have been like taking the stopper out of a scent bottle?" I cannot tell whether this boy had ever read the words of Solomon or not; but ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton

... was supposed to be too lazy to put into his mouth or take out of his mouth himself. The procession had banners bearing various devices and went around to take leave of the President and the different professors, giving them cheers at their houses. President Everett, who was a serious-minded person, was much offended by the whole proceeding. He sent for some members of the class and remonstrated; told them he had been obliged to apologize to his English servant-girl for such an exhibition. I believe our class was the last ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... swept over the older woman. It must be a cruel fate to be ashamed of one's surroundings. Mrs. Lenox herself was one of those serious-minded persons who regard their opportunities as responsibilities. She waged constant warfare with the dominion of externals, and believed with all her heart that the life was more than raiment; but a momentary doubt assailed ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... round upon the miserable group, feeling shocked and helpless. He had gone there to see if he could be of use. How was it possible to help people who behaved like this! He was a widower, but had no children of his own. If he had been more fortunate in that respect what serious-minded, well-conducted boys and girls they would have been: not squeaking over misfortune, but standing up to it when it came; looking about them, open-eyed, for ways of making money, marrying money, and getting on. The children of William Day and their ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann

... laughing. Afterwards, when talking about that voyage, he used to say:—"The poor fellow had scared me. I thought I had seen the devil." The cook had been seven years in the ship with the same captain. He was a serious-minded man with a wife and three children, whose society he enjoyed on an average one month out of twelve. When on shore he took his family to church twice every Sunday. At sea he went to sleep every evening with his lamp turned up full, a pipe in his mouth, ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... shouting past. One wishes the House would notice it. But no one does. There is always just the House Itself and that hush or ring of silence around it, all England listening, all the little country papers far away with their hands up to their ears and the great serious-minded Dailies, and the witty Weeklies, the stately Monthlies, and Quarterlies all acting ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... the winter 1799-1800. My father had left Spire at Nice with the greater part of his baggage. He now took on Col. Sacleux as his chief-of-staff, an admirable man, a good soldier, with a very pleasant personality, if somewhat solemn and serious-minded. He had as his secretary a young man by the name of Colindo, the son of a banker, Signor Trepano of Parma, whom he had picked up after a series of adventures too long to relate here, who became my very ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... the meeting changed from that of serious-minded discussion of a theft and its treatment, to care-free chatter about an evening of fun. Even Marjorie put aside her trouble for the time and entered heartily into ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell

... camp to meet the general depression and stagnation. They were brown, ragged, long-haired, and for the most part silent with dismay. Some of them celebrated their escape by getting drunk, but mainly they were too serious-minded to waste time or substance. Some of them had expended their last dollar on the trail and were forced to sell their horses for money to take them out of the country. Some of the partnerships went to pieces for other causes. Long-smouldering dissensions ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... ladder struggled eight serious-minded individuals herded by the second mate. They were armed to the teeth, and thoroughly equipped with things I had seen in German catalogues, but in whose existence I had never believed. A half-dozen sailors eagerly helped them with their multitudinous ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... has discussed it in meetings and in clubs. It has been a favorite topic of discussion at correct teas. The scientist is giving it reverent and profound attention. Even the minister, seeking to keep abreast of the times, proclaims it from the pulpit. And everywhere, serious-minded women and men, those with the vision, with a comprehension of present and future needs of society, are working to bring this message to those who have not yet realized its immense ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... with her pupils, of whom she had a good many, and in whose tuition her daughter assisted her. She was quite a recognized townswoman, and though the dancing branch of her profession was perhaps a trifle worldly, she was really a serious-minded lady who, being obliged to live by what she knew how to teach, balanced matters by lending a hand at charitable bazaars, assisting at sacred concerts, and giving musical recitations in aid of funds for bewildering happy savages, and other such enthusiasms of this enlightened ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... cottages, and overcrowding the poor. Of course that kind of thing comes easy enough when you are thirty-five and lame, but poor Stanor is only twenty-four, and as handsome as paint. It's difficult to be serious-minded at twenty-four, and patient with ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey

... before me is numbered the sixth, and its date is 1764; which represents a demand for a new edition every nine months or so, over a space of four years. They may, perhaps, have succeeded, too, in partially reconciling a certain serious-minded portion of the public to the author. Sterne evidently hoped that they might; for we find him sending a copy to Warburton, in the month of June, immediately after the publication of the book, and ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... entered the service as an enthusiastic youth. In a few brief years he had grown to a serious-minded man. A six-footer, deep-chested, broad of shoulders, he had the physical ability to enforce the decrees and orders of his superiors while the general terms of boundaries were being formulated. Patiently and firmly he worked ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... parasitical aria attributed to Bertoni was written by Gluck in the first place in 1764 for a soprano. He wove this into his opera Aristo in 1769. This is also true of the trio, Tendre Amour, which precedes the finale in the last act. A serious-minded analyst might be tempted to admire the profound psychology of the author in mingling doleful accents with expressions of joy, but he would have his labor for his pains. The trio was taken from ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... for a moment, and, besides, you're too serious. A girl should never engage herself to a serious-minded man unless ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... epidemic—a sort of spiritual measles. Though I must say, I hadn't expected you to catch it. And just a word of warning, Katie. You've always been so unique as a trifler that one rather hates to see you swallowed up in the troop of serious-minded young women. I was talking to Darrett the other day—charming fellow, Darrett—and he held that your charm was in your brilliant smile. I told him I hadn't thought so much about the brilliant smile, but that I knew a good deal about a certain impish grin. ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... distinguished sports are reserved for the men. What do you think of my serious-minded father? He is down for the 'egg and spoon' race. So are Franz Heller and Mr. Winthrop Latham. I mean to ask your two men friends, Mr. Post and Mr. Ewing, to enter, too. It's great sport. The men have to run across the track carrying a raw egg in a desert spoon. The man who first gets ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane

... friend of his; a very amusing young fellow and not so serious-minded as Philip, but a ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... The serious-minded man who is disgusted with spiritualistic charlatans and their commercial humbug is naturally inclined here, too, at once to offer the theory that all is fraud and that a detective would be the right man to investigate the case. When the newspapers discovered ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... problem. He had to choose between authorities. He had to select between information and information. He had to differentiate for himself between what Bill told him and what his Uncle Andy told him. He was a serious-minded child, who had already passed through that most painful period of doubt as to Santa Claus and the Fairies, and had not yet reached the period of certainty about everything. He was capable of both belief and doubt. So, naturally, he ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts

... smiling when she entered the building in which was located a club to which she belonged. It was a serious-minded club of clever women, and most people had been amused when Polly Street joined it. Nobody expected serious-minded things of Polly, though here and there someone was willing to admit that she was "clever enough in ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall

... A serious-minded miss, you'd say, Not given much to school-girl follies. She still sometimes will slip away To spend a half-hour ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various

... of Louisbourg were all embarked for France, and the town was at last in full possession of the victors. The serious-minded among them—and there were few who did not bear the stamp of hereditary Puritanism—now saw a fresh proof that they were the peculiar care of an approving Providence. While they were in camp the weather ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... the bank president to the baker, from the member of congress for whom he had voted to the barber, from the hotel proprietor to the bartender. The negroes of the town, feeling that their race was humiliated in Pop, began to hold aloof from him. No serious-minded person who learned of his delusion gave it a ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens

... But the old spirit was no longer the same. The light-hearted mirth had gone. Indeed, Rosebud was a child no longer. She was a woman, and it would have surprised these folk to know how serious-minded the last two days had ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... side, because of her appearance, which was repulsive, she became, about 1791, at the age of twenty-two, a member of Felix Grandet's household at Saumur, where she remained the rest of her life. She always showed gratitude to her master for having taken her in. Brave, devoted and serious-minded, the only servant of the miser, she received as wages for very hard service only sixty francs a year. However, the accumulations of even so paltry an income allowed her, in 1819, to make a life investment of four thousand francs with ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... satirical poems in Pravda and other revolutionary papers had reached the heights of popularity to which they have since attained. In the old days before the revolution in Petrograd he used to send his poems to the revolutionary papers. A few were published and scandalized the more austere and serious-minded revolutionaries, who held a meeting to decide whether any more were to be printed. Since the revolution, he has rapidly come into his own, and is now a sort of licensed jester, flagellating Communists and non-Communists alike. Even in this assembly he had ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome

... But how inaccessible is virtue, with a past of unforgiven sin! The height of our ideal of redemption is conditioned upon the depth of our realization of sin. To the shallow, redemption is an easy-going process, a way of healing the scratches which the world makes. To the deep and serious-minded, redemption involves the regeneration of the race. Only the ransomed can truly work, love, ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... neglected his tasks until his final year, and though he had then begun to work more seriously, his late effort had not entirely atoned for the neglect of the preceding years. An only son and not rigidly trained in his home, he had not formed the habits of study which his more serious-minded room-mate, Foster Bennett, possessed. But almost every one who met the young student was drawn to him by the fascination of his winning ways, and realized at once the latent possibilities for good or ill that were his. His success would depend much upon his surroundings, and though Will was sublimely ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson



Words linked to "Serious-minded" :   serious



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