“Being solemn has almost nothing to do with being serious, but on the other hand, you can't go on being adolescent forever, unless you are in the performing arts, and anyhow most people can't tell the difference. In fact, though Americans talk a great deal about the virtue of being serious, they generally prefer people who are solemn over people who are serious.
In politics, the rare candidate who is serious, like Adlai Stevenson, is easily overwhelmed by one who is solemn, like General Eisenhower. This is probably because it is hard for most people to recognize seriousness, which is rare, especially in politics, but comfortable to endorse solemnity, which is as commonplace as jogging.
Jogging is solemn. Poker is serious. Once you grasp that distinction, you are on your way to enlightenment.”
"Why Being Serious Is Hard" (p.17)
So This Is Depravity (1980)
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Russell Baker 40
writer and satirst from the United States 1925–2019Related quotes
(17 April 2014) http://on.rt.com/vqds8o
2011 - 2015
“I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.”
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest
“People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”
talk at Creative Think seminar, 20 July 1982 https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Creative_Think.txt
1980s
“I’m dead serious about being nonsensical.”
Edward Ruscha in: " Me, you, us: Anthony d'Offay and others on ARTIST ROOMS http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/me-you-us," at tate.org.uk. 1 May 2009
"The Scapegoat for Strife in the Black Community" http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420807/slavery-didnt-cause-todays-black-problems-welfare-did (7 July 2015), National Review
2010s
A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated (1894)
“We are growing serious, and,
Let me tell you, that's the very next step to being dull.”
Act IV, sc. vi.
The Drummer (1716)