Philip Roth Quotes

I'm a very serious person. Unfortunately, sometimes.

I always took things very seriously. Always have done.

I tend to deal with things in a very serious manner.

Too many people confuse being serious with being solemn.

Seriousness is the deepest pleasure we have.

Although I may express myself with some degree of pleasantry the purport of my words is entirely serious.

I take things too seriously.

To think of shadows is a serious thing.

I've got a serious-looking head.

Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.

I do have this reputation for being a serious person.

Joking apart, now let us be serious.

It is a curious fact, but a fact it is, that your witty people are the most hard-hearted in the world. The truth is, fancy destroys feeling. The quick eye to the ridiculous turns every thing to the absurd side; and the neat sentence, the lively allusion, and the odd simile, invest what they touch with something of their own buoyant nature. Humor is of the heart, and has its tears; but wit is of the head, and has only smiles - and the majority of those are bitter.

When comedy fails, seriousness begins to leak back in.

If there's anything I hate it's the word humorist-I feel like countering with the word seriousist.

Deemest thou laborOnly is earnest?Grave is all beauty,Solemn is joy.

Even when I'm being funny, I'm deadly serious.

The universe does not jest with us, but is in earnest.

Can't you ever be serious?' I said, mortified. 'It's difficult,' he said. 'There's so little in life that's worth it.

Seriousness is not Calvinistic, it's not a renunciation, it's the very opposite of that.

No man can be merry unless he is serious.

Why is it so hard to be serious, so easy to be too serious?

The trouble with men of sense is that they are so dreadfully in earnest all the while.

Let us not play at kittly-benders. There is a solid bottom everywhere.

Desire is no light thing.