be in earnest

To walk staunchly by the best light one has, to be strict and sincere with oneself, not to be of the number… who say and do not, to be in earnest – …. this discipline has been nowhere so effectively taught as in the school of Hebraism….

“That was said sarcastically,” Mr. Trump claimed, though his remarks appeared to be in earnest at the time.

Showing Ashbery sprawled on a leather sofa in gray slacks and tan sport jacket, with an expression somewhere between ease and irritation, Porter’s painting seems to be in earnest pursuit of a fidelity to mundane appearances, which was out of date even by the ’50s.

In a speech in Seoul on Wednesday, Vincent Brooks, the U.S. four-star general who is the top military commander in South Korea, said North Korea seemed to be “in earnest,” and the talks appeared to be productive—contrasting them with previous meetings that he called “more theatrical than productive.”

He certainly seems to be in earnest.