Common Quotes - Page 38

• Alas, poor Yorick! How surprised he would be to see how his counterpart of today is whisked off to a funeral parlor and is in short order sprayed, sliced, pierced, pickled, trussed, trimmed, creamed, waxed, painted, rouged and neatly dressed - transformed from a common corpse into a Beautiful Memory Picture.

  Jessica Mitford

  Beautiful, Memories, Order

  Jessica Mitford (2011). “The American Way of Death Revisited”, p.43, Vintage

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• What you do is as important as anything government does. I ask you to seek a common good beyond your comfort; to defend needed reforms against easy attacks; to serve your nation, beginning with your neighbor. I ask you to be citizens: citizens, not spectators; citizens, not subjects; responsible citizens, building communities of service and a nation of character.

  George W. Bush

  Character, Government, Community

  First Inaugural Address, delivered 20 January 2001

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• For too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused, oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability. Oppression became common, but stability never arrived. We must take a different approach. We must help the reformers of the Middle East as they work for freedom, and strive to build a community of peaceful, democratic nations.

  George W. Bush

  Names, Long, Community

  United Nations General Assembly Address, delivered 21 September 2004, New York, NY

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• I would like to see ... an entirely different procedure which is that we vote on the budget and decide how much we are going to spend, first, the way any family does, and then fit our priorities into what we think we have to spend. Instead, what we do, is to do it incrementally, starting at the bottom, adding and adding and adding. ... Until we get the support of all the authorities in this House to decide, first, what we think this country can afford and then decide where the amount is going to be allocated, we will never have common sense in this House.

  Millicent Fenwick

  Country, Thinking, Common Sense

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• Neither saints nor angels have ever increased my faith in this enigma Life; but what are called 'common men and women' have increased it.

  Phyllis Bottome

  Angel, Men, Saint

  Phyllis Bottome (1943). “Survival”, Boston : Little, Brown

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• Oppression does not know the meaning of provincial boundaries. Aren't our energies better spent fighting the common enemy instead of each other?

  Benazir Bhutto

  War, Fighting, Enemy

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• Wisdom - meaning judgment acting on experience, common sense, available knowledge, and a decent appreciation of probability.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Wisdom, Appreciation, Common Sense

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• But if there is such a thing as social commitment in literature, I think it must manifest itself in a reader's awareness of the human condition, in the writer's touching some common nerve ending. I think this kind of social commitment, like a lady's slip, should be there but it must not show.

  Bel Kaufman

  Commitment, Thinking, Touching

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• We can sanctify ourselves in common things. We must do so.

  Janet Erskine Stuart

  Common Things, Sanctify

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• No republic ever yet stood on a stable foundation without satisfying the common people.

  Mercy Otis Warren

  People, Foundation, Republic

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• I have no sympathy whatever with those who would grudge our workmen and our common people the very highest acquisitions which their taste or their time or their inclination would lead them to realize.

  Thomas Chalmers

  Education, People, Acquisition

  William Hanna, Thomas Chalmers (1852). “Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Thomas Chalmers, D.D. LL.D.”, p.206

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• A Queen, or a Prime Minister's secretary may be shot at in London, as we know; and probably there is no person eminent in literature or otherwise who has not been the object of some infirm brain or another. But in America the evil is sadly common.

  Harriet Martineau

  Queens, America, Evil

  Harriet Martineau (2015). “Harriet Martineau's Autobiography (Vol. I: Abridged, Annotated)”, p.317, BIG BYTE BOOKS

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• In the United States, as elsewhere, there are, and have always been, two parties in politics ... It is remarkable how nearly their positive statements of political doctrine agree, while they differ in almost every possible application of their common principles.

  Harriet Martineau

  Party, Two, Political

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• You don't have to have a language in common with someone for a sexual rapport. But it helps if the language you don't understand is Italian.

  Madonna Ciccone

  Italian, Helping, Language

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• Motherhood, to be sure, receives a great deal of sentimental adulation, but only if it is committed in accordance with rules which have been prescribed by a predominantly masculine society. Per se it is accorded no respect whatever. When it results from a sexual relationship which has been duly sanctioned by organized society, it is holy, no matter how much it may transgress the rules of decency, health, or common sense. Otherwise it is a sin meriting social ostracism for the mother and obloquy for the child - an ostracism and obloquy, significantly enough, in which the father does not share.

  Suzanne La Follette

  Mother, Children, Father

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• Nothing is more common than for persons to hate those whom they have injured.

  Charlotte Lennox

  Hate, Persons, Injured

  Charlotte Lennox (1762). “Sophia”, p.136

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• my life has been wonderful. I have done what I felt like. I was given courage and I was given adventure and that has carried me along. And then also a sense of humor and a little bit of common sense. It has been a very rich life.

  Ingrid Bergman

  Gratitude, Adventure, Rich Life

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• The inward sighs of humble penitence
  Rise to the ear of Heaven, when peal'd hymns
  Are scatter'd with the sounds of common air.

  Joanna Baillie

  Humble, Hymns, Air

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• This is really the common mentality of prisoners: they read with great attention all the articles that deal with illnesses and send away for treatises and "be your own doctor" or "emergency treatments" and end up by discovering that they have at least 300 or 400 illnesses, whose symptoms they are experiencing.

  Antonio Gramsci

  Doctors, Attention, Emergencies

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• Virtue, without the graces, is like a rich diamond unpolished--it hardly looks better than a common pebble; but when the hand of the master rubs off the roughness, and forms the sides into a thousand brilliant surfaces, it is then that we acknowledge its worth, admire its beauty, and long to wear it in our bosoms.

  Jane Porter

  Hands, Long, Grace

  Sir Philip Sidney, Jane Porter (1807). “Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney: With Remarks”, p.104

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• We need to inject some old-fashioned American values and common-sense, practical thinking into our energy policy.

  Michael Bloomberg

  Thinking, Common Sense, Energy

  "Bloomberg Calls for National Energy Reforms" by Ray Rivera, www.nytimes.com. May 12, 2007.

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• I know that many Irish-born New Yorkers are caught in the trap of our federal immigration policies. If we are going to continue to attract the best and the brightest - and Ireland has more than its fair share - we need to inject some common sense into our immigration laws, and I'm doing my best to make that case in Washington.

  Michael Bloomberg

  Law, Common Sense, Immigration

  Michael Bloomberg's Speech At Breakfast Reception In Sligo, Ireland, www1.nyc.gov. August 22, 2006.

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• the fool is the one true cosmopolite - the one character common to all nationalities.

  Helen McCloy

  Character, Fool, Nationality

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• any pursuit of happiness contrary to the common good is doomed to failure.

  Alice Hegan Rice

  Happiness, Pursuit, Contrary

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• We waste a lot of time and a lot of talent trying to write for the common reader, whom we will never meet. Instead we should be writing for our ideal reader.

  Julia Cameron

  Writing, Trying, Waste

  "Becoming Intimate With Your Own Creative Impulses". Interview with Brad Crawford, www.writersdigest.com. March 11, 2008.

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