Top 100 Solemn Quotes
#1. The death of something living is the price of our own survival, and we pay it again and again. We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep.
Barbara Kingsolver
#2. The bell strikes One. We take no note of time But from its loss. To give it then a tongue Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke, I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright, It is the knell of my departed hours.
Edward Young
#3. The situation is very slightly solemn and thus embarrassing, as are all such situations when after the initial lovemaking, the lovers confront a future they are suddenly required to take on.
Milan Kundera
#4. How few, since the foundation of the world, have found themselves in a position environed with public perils so numerous, oppressed with responsibilities so high and solemn, as yourself!
Robert Dale Owen
#5. It is," I said. "And it's not even difficult. But I need your promise on the River Styx." "What?" Dionysus cried. "You don't trust us?" "Someone once told me," I said, looking at Hades, "you should always get a solemn oath." Hades shrugged. "Guilty.
Rick Riordan
#6. With warning hand I mark Time's rapid flight,
From Life's glad morning to its solemn night;
Yet, through the dear Lord's love, I also show
There's light above me by the shade I throw.
John Greenleaf Whittier
#7. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors - the dreams of our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of our people.
Chief Seattle
#8. Sat mindless and eternal on the kitchen floor, stony of head and solemn, playing with my fingers. Time streamed in full flood beside me on the kitchen floor; time roared raging beside me down its swollen banks; and when I woke I was so startled I fell in.
Annie Dillard
#9. Stern people dislike rhetoric, and unfortunately it's usually stern people who are in charge: solemn fools who believe that truth is more important than beauty.
Mark Forsyth
#10. I am as a speck of dust in the sun, and not even so much, in this solemn, mysterious, unknowable universe.
Andrew Carnegie
#11. It was a mystery ... whether the solemn, silent man possessed more than human wisdom and stillness of spirit, or whether his mental powers had deserted him.
Hermann Hesse
#12. No man can well doubt the propriety of placing a president of the United States under the most solemn obligations to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution.
Joseph Story
#13. This life is not given to us as a pastime. There was a solemn purpose in our creation, in the life that God has given to us. Let us study what that purpose is, that we may progress and obtain eternal life.
George Albert Smith
#14. Those little children have not yet any understanding to desire His blessing; but when they are presented to Him, He gently and kindly receives them, and dedicates them to the Father by a solemn act of blessing.
John Calvin
#15. A burning itch to know is higher than a solemn vow to pursue truth. To feel the burning itch of curiosity requires both that you be ignorant, and that you desire to relinquish your ignorance.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
#16. It is strange that there are times when I feel the stars are not at all solemn: they are secretly gay.
Katherine Mansfield
#17. A person who is really saved by Grace does not need to be told that he is under solemn obligations to serve Christ. The new life within him tells him that. Instead of regarding it as a burden, he gladly surrenders himself, body, soul, and spirit, to the Lord.
Charles Spurgeon
#18. A judge can't have any preferred outcome in any particular case. The judge's only obligation - and it's a solemn obligation - is to the rule of law.
Samuel Alito
#19. Art and Entertainment are the same thing, in that the more deeply and genuinely entertaining a work is, the better art it is. To imply that Art is something heavy and solemn and dull, and Entertainment is modest but jolly and popular, is neo-Victorian idiocy at its worst.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#20. Mahlke couldn't joke. He sometimes tried. But everything he did, touched or said, became solemn, significant, monumental;
Gunter Grass
#21. When fiction rises pleasing to the eye, men will believe, because they love the lie; but truth herself, if clouded with a frown, must have some solemn proof to pass her down.
Charles Churchill
#22. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma ... and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes.
John Adams
#23. Magic is not always serious or solemn.
It is a joyous celebration and merging with the life-force.
Scott Cunningham
#24. Christians ought to carry written in our hearts the solemn truth of how short is our opportunity to witness for Christ and live for Him.
Billy Graham
#25. Suddenly, one day, there was this thing called parenting. Parenting was serious. Parenting was fierce. Parenting was solemn. Parenting was a participle, like going and doing and crusading and worrying.
Nora Ephron
#26. This room was chill, because it seldom had a fire; it was silent, because remote from the nursery and kitchen; solemn, because it was known to be so seldom entered.
Charlotte Bronte
#27. Rarely has any people enjoyed greater prosperity than we are now enjoying. For this we render heartfelt and solemn thanks to the Giver of Good; and we seek to praise Him -not by words only -but by deeds, by the way in which we do our duty to ourselves and to our fellow men.
Theodore Roosevelt
#28. Germany is prepared to agree to any solemn pact of non-aggression, because she does not think of attacking but only acquiring security.
Adolf Hitler
#29. Of all sound of all bells ... most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year.
Charles Lamb
#30. I remembered when my oldest brother married Malgosia, and suddenly the two of them stopped running around with us and started sitting with the parents: a very solemn kind of alchemy, one that I felt shouldn't have been able to just sneak up on me.
Naomi Novik
#31. absurd, but they all looked so grave that she did not dare to laugh; and, as she could not think of anything to say, she simply bowed, and took the thimble, looking as solemn as she could.
Lewis Carroll
#32. The Imperium made a solemn vow that if another Pulsar were to be born into our world," he continues, "that they would protect them at all costs in the hopes that a legend would arise again.
Giselle Simlett
#33. What is modern art but the attempt to pinpoint vague, incorporeal, inexpressible sensations? What is modern art, I would add, but the most solemn pile of nonsense that ever appeared on Earth?
Italo Calvino
#34. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of human ity.
Jawaharlal Nehru
#35. I stood checked for a moment - awe, not fear, fell upon me - and whist I stood, a solemn wind began to blow, the most mournful that ever ear heard. Mournful! That is saying nothing. It was a wind that had swept the fields of mortality for a hundred centuries.
Thomas De Quincey
#36. There is nothing like the dead cold hand of the past to take down our tumid egotism and lead us into the solemn flow of the life of our race.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#37. And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
T. S. Eliot
#38. Let me make a solemn pledge before all of you, before the whole world and before God, that I will devote all my energy and all I possess in my power to serve the people of Nigeria and humanity.
Olusegun Obasanjo
#39. What is our life but a succession of preludes to that unknown song whose first solemn note is sounded by death?
Alphonse De Lamartine
#40. These words were utter'd in a pensive mood, Even while mine eyes were on that solemn sight:
William Wordsworth
#41. Together greet life's solemn real, Together own one glad ideal, Together laugh, together ache, And think one thought - "Each other's sake," And hope one hope - in new-world weather, To still go on, and go together.
Nancy Horan
#42. Students today are a pretty solemn lot. One of the really notable achievements of the twentieth century has been to make the young old before their time.
Robertson Davies
#44. How he lies in his rights of a man! Death has done all death can. And absorbed in the new life he leads, He recks not, he heeds Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike On his senses alike, And are lost in the solemn and strange Surprise of the change.
Robert Browning
#45. Too many people confuse being serious with being solemn.
John Cleese
#46. While the laughter of joy is in full harmony with our deeper life, the laughter of amusement should be kept apart from it. The danger is too great of thus learning to look at solemn things in a spirit of mockery, and to seek in them opportunities for exercising wit.
Lewis Carroll
#47. I believe the most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people. If America shows uncertainty and weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch.
George W. Bush
#48. You will reciprocally promise love, loyalty and matrimonial honesty. We only want for you this day that these words constitute the principle of your entire life and that with the help of divine grace you will observe these solemn vows that today, before God, you formulate.
Pope John Paul II
#49. THEY FOUGHT TOGETHER AS BROTHERS-IN-ARMS. THEY DIED TOGETHER AND NOW THEY SLEEP SIDE BY SIDE. TO THEM WE HAVE A SOLEMN OBLIGATION.
Chester W. Nimitz
#50. She stretched out her arm and locked her little finger around mine to signify the most solemn vow a six year old could make. 'I won't tell anyone. Pinky-promise.
Tammy Blackwell
#51. If I faint, pull me out. No Lannister has ever drowned in his bath and I don't mean to be the first." "Why should I care how you die?" "You swore a solemn vow.
George R R Martin
#52. Those who hear this solemn call of life and respond with the corresponding supply receive progress in life.
Sunday Adelaja
#53. Jesper Llewellyn Fahey, that is enough!" Colm roared. (...)
Inej cocked her head to one side. "Jesper Llewellyn Fahey?"
"Shut up," said Jesper. "It's a family name."
Inej made a solemn bow. "Whatever you say, Llewellyn.
Leigh Bardugo
#54. A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
Mark Twain
#55. O blessed Saviour, give me grace like Thee, to make Religion my first, and chiefest care, and devoutly to observe, all solemn times, and all holy Rites, which relate to Thy worship.
Thomas Ken
#56. You can't dance cheerfully. Dancing is too important. It can be wild or solemn or gay or lewd or art for art's sake, but it can't be cheerful.
Rex Stout
#57. Everything has two sides - the outside that is ridiculous, and the inside that is solemn.
Olive Schreiner
#58. Roark looked at him and understood. Roark inclined his head in agreement; he could acknowledge what Cameron had just declared to him only by a quiet glance as solemn as Cameron's.
Ayn Rand
#59. Trochee trips from long to short; From long to long in solemn sort Slow Spondee stalks.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
#60. By her stare, this woman settled a solemn awe upon my heart, and I was frightened by the degree to which I felt humbled and by the intensity with which I felt loved, and I had to look away.
Dean Koontz
#61. When you see a thing like that, a thing that becomes a newsreel, you begin to feel you are a carrier of some solemn scrap of history.
Don DeLillo
#62. With chaste affections man and wife In solemn wedlock it entwines. Love's laws most trusty comrades bind. How happy is the human race, 30 If Love, by which the heavens are ruled, To rule men's minds is set in place!
Boethius
#63. It is a solemn thing to find oneself drawn out in prayer which knows no relief till the soul it is burdened with is born. It is no less solemn afterwards, until Christ is formed in them.
Amy Carmichael
#64. They stood in the noon of that strange and solemn splendor, as if it were the light that is to reveal all secrets, and the daybreak that shall unite all who belong to one another
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#65. Saw the sun rise. A lovely apricot sky with flames in it and then solemn pink. Heavens, how beautiful...I feel so full of love to-day after having seen the sun rise.
Katherine Mansfield
#66. Lymond, released, flung his head back and, viewing his winnings, gave them solemn dispensation to descend for the space of the dance. He asked for and obtained some chalk, and set to marking his and Mat's property where the cross was most obvious and the whim most appreciated.
Dorothy Dunnett
#67. As the world stood on the brink of war in August 1914, the local paper of a small town in the west of Ireland took a stand: 'We give this solemn warning to Kaiser Wilhelm: The Skibbereen Eagle has its eye on you.
Robert Hutton
#68. It is a solemn thing, and no small scandal in the kingdom, to see God's children starving while actually seated at the Father's table.
A.W. Tozer
#69. Praise to our Father-God,
High praise in solemn lay,
Alike for what His hand hath given,
And what it takes away.
Lydia Sigourney
#70. I bear solemn witness to the fact that NATO heads of state and of government meet only to go through the tedious motions of reading speeches, drafted by others, with the principal objective of not rocking the boat.
Pierre Trudeau
#71. I realised that I really disliked him, and I knew exactly why: he didn't know the difference between being solemn and being serious.
John Cleese
#72. Since the forthcoming write-up of my Ph.D. dissertation was much in my mind, it was the work of a moment to begin a solemn dissertation containing all the stigmata of academic turgidity about a substance which dissolved in water 1.12 seconds before you added the water.
Isaac Asimov
#73. I know we're gathered here for a very solemn occasion. Poor Great-Uncle Frankie has gone the way of the dodo bird, soon to rot in peace. Um, I mean, rest in peace.
- Dak
James Dashner
#74. From the solemn gloom of the temple children run out to sit in the dust, God watches them play and forgets the priest.
Rabindranath Tagore
#75. Of all God's gifts to the sighted man, color is holiest, the most divine, the most solemn.
John Ruskin
#76. The clock tick-tocked, solemn and profound. It might have been the dry pulse of the decaying house itself, after a while it whirred and cleared its throat and struck six times.
William Faulkner
#77. By solemn vision and bright silver dream
His infancy was nurtured. Every sight
And sound from the vast earth and ambient air
Sent to his heart its choicest impulses.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
#78. You like Superman?"
I shrugged, "He lacks the boyish charm of Spiderman, but he's alright."
"I'm like Superman."
I rolled my eyes. "This should be good. And who am I? Louis Lane?"
A solemn shake of his head, and then his hands were tangling in my hair. "You're kryptonite.
Adrianne Brooks
#79. The oath of renunciation and allegiance is a solemn vow taken by thousands of immigrants each year to become a United States citizen. The oath is the fundamental statement of allegiance to the United States, and this allegiance is what unites America.
Jim Ryun
#80. It should be pursued as in the presence of God, and under the solemn sanctions created by a lively sense of his omniscience, and of our accountability to him for the right use of the faculties which he has bestowed.
Simon Greenleaf
#81. If cities were built by the sound of music, then some edifices would appear to be constructed by grave, solemn tones,
others to have danced forth to light fantastic airs.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#82. The joining of the whole congregation in prayer has something exceedingly solemn and affecting in it.
Karl Philipp Moritz
#83. Why were men so caught up with their honor, their solemn word, their promises?
Half the time the promises were never asked of them in the first place.
And yet the wars that were fought over such things, the hearts broken and the lands ruined..!
Tad Williams
#84. At no time, at no place in solemn convention assembled, through no chosen agents, had the American people officially proclaimed the United States to be a democracy. The Constitution did not contain the word or any word lending countenance to it ...
Charles A. Beard
#85. There was something solemn in it- but love and religion would destroy that, whatever it was, the privacy of the soul.
Virginia Woolf
#86. Of all sorts of flattery, that which comes from a solemn character and stands before a sermon is the worst-complexioned. Such commendation is a satire upon the author, makes the text look mercenary, and disables the discourse from doing service.
Jeremy Collier
#87. Nothing ever happens but once in all this world. What I do now I do once for all. It is over and gone, with all its eternity of solemn meaning.
Thomas Carlyle
#88. The parents sat round watching, and in their crass faces - faces not harsh or evil, only blunted by ignorance and mean virtues - you could see a solemn approval, a solemn pleasure in the spectacle of sin rebuked.
George Orwell
#89. The Nobel Prize, so long regarded in our science as the highest reward a man's work can earn, must bring to its recipient a most solemn sense of his debt to his fellow scientists and those of the past.
Edward M. Purcell
#90. They but appear a solemn People, - worshipping Laughter, rather, as a serious, indeed holy, Force in Nature, never to be invok'd idly.
Thomas Pynchon
#91. I've been writing more songs in my head," he said, "about being a ghost and a shade." His face turned smooth and solemn. "How I'd die all over again just to touch you.
Jeri Smith-Ready
#92. Young Sam looked solemn for a moment and then said, I think I'll let Mr. Whistle do the being scared and then it won't bother me.
Terry Pratchett
#93. The adventure was too high, its circumstance too solemn, for any emotion save a severe delight. pg. 31
C.S. Lewis
#94. I have achieved the 'sacred' pilgrimage to Ktaadn MT - exceeding all my expectations so far that I am sort of helpless with words. I feel as if I have seen God for the first time, and find him so nonchalantly solemn.
Marsden Hartley
#95. I had excellent opportunity to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendor of the brilliant church festivals. As was only natural, the abbot seemed to me, as the village priest had once seemed to my father, the highest and most desirable ideal.
Adolf Hitler
#96. I do want an expensive honeymoon. Not because I'm extravagant, but because a honeymoon is a solemn, important thing ... a symbol. And it ought to be done
well, adequately.
Arnold Bennett
#97. Your touch has still its ancient power, No word from You can fruitless fall; Hear, in this solemn evening hour, And in Your mercy heal us all.
Henry Twells
#98. I bet you're the type of guy not afraid of anything, huh?"
"Oh, no, there are things that terrify me."
"Like what?"
"Muppets," came his solemn reply.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
#99. The abuse of alcohol," Mr. Parrish said in a solemn, preacher-like voice, as he reached for his glass, "is the one thing that puts Man above the animal.
Irwin Shaw
#100. The Word of God is too sacred a thing, and preaching too solemn a work, to be toyed and played with.
William Gurnall
