Earnest Quotes

“My dog, Willy, died a few years ago, but one of my great memories of him is watching him play in the front yard of our house at dusk. He was a puppy then, and in the early evenings he would contract a case of the zoomies. He ran in delighted circles around us, yipping and jumping at nothing in particular, and then after a while, he'd get tired, and he'd run over to me and lie down. And then he would do something absolutely extraordinary: He would roll over onto his back, and present his soft belly. I always marveled at the courage of that, his ability to be so absolutely vulnerable to us. He offered us the place ribs don't protect, trusting that we weren't going to bite or stab him. It's hard to trust the world like that, to show it your belly. There's something deep within me, something intensely fragile, that is terrified of turning itself to the world. I’m scared to even write this down, because I worry that having confessed this fragility, you know now where to punch. I know that if I’m hit where I am earnest, I will never recover.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“They were both in their own ways earnest; they both wanted to achieve some worthy end or other, change the world for the better. Such alluring, such perilous ideals!”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“She was right: school was lonely. The eighteen and nineteen year olds didn't socialize with the younger kids, and though there were plenty of students my age and younger [...] their lives were so cloistered and their concerns so foolish and foreign-seeming that it was as if they spoke some lost middle-school tongue I'd forgotten. They lived at home with their parents; they worried about things like grade curves and Italian Abroad and summer internships at the UN; they freaked out if you lit a cigarette in front of them; they were earnest, well-meaning, undamaged, clueless. For all I had in common with any of them, I might as well have tried to go down and hang out with the eight year olds at PS 41.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“In order to maintain a modicum of sanity needed to continue the vigorous fight for survival, we busy ourselves with repressing and then remembering that our ultimate fate is death. Living vigorously necessitates sparring with the forerunning concept of death. At times, it seems necessary to refuse acknowledging the tragic brevity of our existence while we greedily chase our innermost dream of experiencing and voicing the ecstasy of life. We dual constantly between the conflicting emotions wrung from expressing our enthusiasm for life, and capitulating to the dire ramifications of growing despondency given our keen awareness that we are operating under a death sentence. We begin in earnest and gladness, but we must be ever vigilant to avoid unraveling in despondency and madness.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“It's so frustrating that everybody rags on eighties music, when there's a lot of terrific stuff out there," he said. "There's no irony to it. It's not afraid to just be happy or enthusiastic or earnest. Or to have melody. Sure, you can blame it for being naive, but isn't that refreshing next to the whiny navel-gazing that came after it?”
― Amanda DeWees, The Shadow and the Rose

“Theobald had proposed to call him George after old Mr Pontifex, but strange to say, Mr Pontifex over-ruled him in favour of the name Ernest. The word 'earnest' was just beginning to come into fashion, and he thought the possession of such a name might, like his having been baptised in water from the Jordan, have a permanent effect upon the boy’s character, and influence him for good during the more critical periods of his life.”
― Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh

“Earnest people," she said, as if that should mean something to me. "You're just so repulsively honest that you can't fake feelings when you have to.”
― Meredith Russo, If I Was Your Girl

“Sometimes we pray earnestly, other times we only make a slight mention of a thing and with great expectation, we await the answers to our request. Yet, we are blown away at the fulfillment of the very thing for which we pulled on heaven. You know why? In those moments we see the magnanimity of GOD's unfailing mercy to undeserving men like us.”
― TemitOpe Ibrahim

“Fanya kazi kwa bidii leo, kuokoa kesho yako kesho.”
― Enock Maregesi

“This generation is earnestly waiting for you, for a change”
― Sunday Adelaja

“Character is no longer shaped by only two earnest, fumbling experts. Now all the world’s a sage.”
― McLuhan Marshal