Common Quotes - Page 33

• Woman has this in common with angels, that suffering beings belong especially to her.

  Honore de Balzac

  Women, Angel, Suffering

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• Spirituality is best manifested on the ground, not in the air. Rapturous day-dreams, flights of heavenly fancy, longings to see the Invisible, are less expensive and less expressive than the plain doing of duty. To have bread excite thankfulness and a drink of water send the heart to God is better than sighs for the unattainable. To plow a straight furrow on Monday or dust a room well on Tuesday or kiss a bumped forehead on Wednesday is worth more than the most ecstatic thrill under Sunday eloquence. Spirituality is seeing God in common things, and showing God in common tasks.

  Maltbie Davenport Babcock

  Dream, Monday, Heart

  Maltbie Davenport Babcock (1901). “Thoughts for Every-day Living from the Spoken and Written Words of Maltbie Davenport Babcock”

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• Love may exist without jealousy, although this is rare: but jealousy may exist without love, and this is common; for jealousy can feed on that which is bitter no less than on that which is sweet, and is sustained by pride as often as by affection.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Jealousy, Sweet, Pride

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”, p.60

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• All earlier pluralist societies destroyed themselves because no one took care of the common good. They abounded in communities but could not sustain community, let alone create it.

  Peter Drucker

  Community, Care, Destroyed

  "The New Pluralism". Leader to Leader, No. 14, 1999.

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• There is to me a daintiness about early flowers that touches me like poetry. They blow out with such a simple loveliness among the common herbs of pastures, and breathe their lives so unobtrusively, like hearts whose beatings are too gentle for the world.

  Nathaniel Parker Willis

  Flower, Heart, Simple

  Nathaniel Parker Willis (1829). “Fugitive Poetry”, p.62

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• O, when the heart is, full, when bitter thoughts come crowding thickly up for utterance, and the poor common words of courtesy are such a very mockery, how much the bursting heart may pour itself in prayer!

  Nathaniel Parker Willis

  Prayer, Heart, Utterance

  Nathaniel Parker Willis, Henry Llewellyn Williams (1832). “Poems of Nathaniel Parker Willis ...”, p.36

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• Common people, whether lords or shop-keepers, are slow to understand that possession, whether in the shape of birth or lands or money or intellect, is a small affair in the difference between men.

  George MacDonald

  Men, Differences, Land

  George MacDonald (2015). “The Complete Novels of George Macdonald (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, Lilith, David Elginbrod, Malcolm, Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood, Wilfrid Cumbermede and many more”, p.4192, e-artnow

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• As to the pure all things are pure, so the common mind sees far more vulgarity in others than the mind developed in genuine refinement.

  George MacDonald

  Mind, Genuine, Refinement

  George MacDonald (2015). “The Complete Novels of George Macdonald (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, Lilith, David Elginbrod, Malcolm, Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood, Wilfrid Cumbermede and many more”, p.5197, e-artnow

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• Imagination, where it is truly creative, is a faculty, and not a quality; it looks before and after, it gives the form that makes all the parts work together harmoniously toward a given end, its seat is in the higher reason, and it is efficient only as a servant of the will. Imagination, as it is too often misunderstood, is mere fantasy, the image-making power, common to all who have the gift of dreams.

  James Russell Lowell

  Dream, Giving, Imagination

  James Russell Lowell (1888). “The English Poets Lessing: Rousseau”

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• Nature seems to have taken a particular care to disseminate her blessings among the different regions of the world, with an eye to their mutual intercourse and traffic among mankind, that the nations of the several parts of the globe might have a kind of dependence upon one another and be united together by their common interest.

  Joseph Addison

  Taken, Eye, Blessing

  Joseph Addison (1837). “The Works of Joseph Addison: The Spectator, no. 1-314”, p.114

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• There is more of turn than of truth in a saying of Seneca, "That drunkenness does not produce but discover faults." Common experience teaches the contrary. Wine throws a man out of himself, and infuses dualities into the mind which she is a stranger to in her sober moments.

  Joseph Addison

  Wine, Men, Mind

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• There is a kind of grandeur and respect which the meanest and most insignificant part of mankind endeavor to procure in the little circle of their friends and acquaintance. The poorest mechanic, nay, the man who lives upon common alms, gets him his set of admirers, and delights in that superiority which he enjoys over those who are in some respects beneath him. This ambition, which is natural to the soul of man, might, methinks, receive a very happy turn; and, if it were rightly directed, contribute as much to a person's advantage, as it generally does to his uneasiness and disquiet.

  Joseph Addison

  Ambition, Men, Circles

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1819). “The Spectator”, p.20

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• That fine part of our construction, the eye, seems as much the receptacle and seat of our passions as the mind itself; and at least it is the outward portal to introduce them to the house within, or rather the common thoroughfare to let our affections pass in and out.

  Joseph Addison

  Passion, Eye, House

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• In the common run of mankind, for one that is wise and good you find ten of a contrary character.

  Joseph Addison

  Wise, Running, Wisdom

  Joseph Addison (1858). “Works, Including the Whole Contents of Bp. Hurd's Edition: Withletters and Other Pieces Not Found in Any Previous Collection; and Macaulay's Essay on His Life and Works”, p.191

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• This is the magnanimity of authorship, when a writer having a topic presented to him, fruitful of beauties for common minds, waives his privilege, and trusts to the judicious few for understanding the reason of his abstinence.

  Charles Lamb

  Understanding, Mind, Topics

  Charles Lamb (1864). “Eliana: Being the Hitherto Uncollected Writings of Charles Lamb”, p.25

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• When the dust of death has choked a great man's voice, the common words he said turn oracles, the common thoughts he yoked like horses draw like griffins.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Death, Horse, Men

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Illustrated)”, p.867, Delphi Classics

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• Is it not a thing divine to have a smile which, none know how, has the power to lighten the weight of that enormous chain which all the living in common drag behind them?

  Victor Hugo

  Weight, Divine, Chains

  Victor Hugo (1874). “Toilers of the Sea”, p.20

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• Economics anxiety may be even more common than the often identified 'math anxiety,' for unlike math, which has its personal uses, economics is seen as a mysterious set of forces manipulated from above.

  Gloria Steinem

  Math, Anxiety, Use

  Gloria Steinem (2012). “Moving Beyond Words: Essays on Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking the Boundaries of Gender”, p.355, Open Road Media

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• The most common characteristic of women's history is to be lost and discovered, lost again and rediscovered, lost once more and re-rediscovered - a process of tragic waste and terrible silences that will continue until women's stories are a full and equal part of the human story.

  Gloria Steinem

  History, Silence, Waste

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• To write a genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation, who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.

  William Hazlitt

  Writing, Choices, Style

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1270, Delphi Classics

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• All the arts, which have a tendency to raise man in the scale of being, have a certain common band of union, and are connected, if I may be allowed to say so, by blood-relationship with one another.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Art, Men, Blood

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• It is a common saying that many pecks of salt must be eaten before the duties of friendship can be discharged.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Friendship, Salt, Duty

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, De Amicitia, XIX, 1922.

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• Death is an equall doome
  To good and bad, the common In of rest.

  Edmund Spenser

  Death, Good And Bad

  Edmund Spenser (1805). “The Works of Edmund Spenser”, p.257

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• We are all bound thither; we are hastening to the same common goal. Black death calls all things under the sway of its laws.
  [Lat., Tendimus huc omnes; metam properamus ad unam. Omnia sub leges mors vocat atra suas.]

  Ovid

  Death, Law, Goal

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• It is common to overlook what is near by keeping the eye fixed on something remote.

  Samuel Johnson

  Eye, Fixed

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