Earnest may refer to:
People:
- Earnest Byner (born 1962), former National Football League (NFL) running back
- Charles Earnest Moody (1891–1977), American gospel song writer and performer
- Earnest Elmo Calkins (1868-1964), early advertising innovator
- Earnest Graham (born 1980), NFL running back
- Earnest Gray (born 1957), former NFL wide receiver
- Earnest Hooton (1887-1954), American physical anthropologist
- Earnest Jackson (born 1959), former NFL running back
- Earnest Mudzengi, Zimbabwean politician
- Earnest Rhone (born 1953), former NFL linebacker
- Les Earnest (born 1930), American computer scientist
Ships:
- Earnest class destroyer, a destroyer class of the British Royal Navy
- HMS Earnest (1896), a destroyer in the class
Famous quotes containing the word earnest:
“You said that my manner in that book was not serious enough—that I made people laugh in my most earnest moments. But why should I not? Why should humor and laughter be excommunicated? Suppose the world were only one of God’s jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one?”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The New Hampshire girls who came to Lowell were descendants of the sturdy backwoodsmen who settled that State scarcely a hundred years before.... They were earnest and capable; ready to undertake anything that was worth doing. My dreamy, indolent nature was shamed into activity among them. They gave me a larger, firmer ideal of womanhood.”
—Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)
“They have been foolish enough to put at the end of all this earnest the old joke of a diploma. Let every sheep keep but his own skin, I say.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)