Commoners Quotes

• Like a wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. And all that we were, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment.

  Harlan Ellison

  Memories, Wind, Names

  "Paladin of the Lost Hour". Novelette by Harlan Ellison, 1985.

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• A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.

  Samuel Butler

  Gold, Virtue

  Samuel Butler (2016). “The Way of All Flesh”, p.75, Samuel Butler

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• Everyone calls himself a friend, but only a fool relies on it; nothing is commoner than the name, nothing rarer than the thing.

  Jean de La Fontaine

  Names, Fool, Rely

  "The Wordsworth Book of Humorous Quotations". Book by C. Robertson, 1998.

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• Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.

  W. H. Auden

  Food, Cooking, Murder

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• I am not a reluctant peer but a persistent commoner

  Tony Benn

  Peers, Politics, Persistent

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• There are ever two ways of striving to fill one's place in the world: one is by seeking to prove one's self useful; the other, by striving to render one's self useless. The first way is the commoner and the more attractive; the second is the rarer and more noble.

  Henry Clay Trumbull

  Two, Self, Useless

  Quoted by Richard Foster in "Renovare perspective", Vol. 7, No. 2, April 1997.

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• We have hitherto considered only two possibilities: that the received opinion may be false, and some other opinion, consequently, true; or that, the received opinion being true, a conflict with the opposite error is essential to a clear apprehension and deep feeling of its truth. But there is a commoner case than either of these; when the conflicting doctrines, instead of being one true and the other false, share the truth between them.

  John Stuart Mill

  Opposites, Two, Errors

  Source: www.usconstitution.net

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• There is nothing like oratory, it is a skill that can turn a commoner into a king.

  Winston Churchill

  Kings, Skills, Oratory

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• So long as there are nobles and commoners, the wealthy and the poor, those with power will be heard, and those without ignored. That's the world.

  Tamora Pierce

  Long, World, Ignored

  Tamora Pierce (2014). “Protector of the Small Quartet”, p.487, Random House Books for Young Readers

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• I'm just some commoner trying to work in acting.

  Sheridan Smith

  Trying, Acting

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• The most fortunate of men, Be he a king or commoner, is he Whose welfare is assured in his own home.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Kings, Home, Men

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Charles E. Passage (1980). “Goethe's plays”, Frederick Ungar

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• John Paul II spoke to the commoner and to the king, to the tyrant and to the democrat in that same language of freedom.

  Chris Matthews

  Kings, Tyrants, Language

  Source: www.nbcnews.com

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• Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look

  Julius Caesar

  Looks, Cassius, Obesity

  Julius Caesar act 1, sc. 2, l. 191 (1599) See Plutarch 2

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• Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils - no, nor the human race, as I believe - and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.

  Plato

  Kings, Plato, Philosophy

  Plato (2015). “The Republic”, p.206, First Avenue Editions

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• [John] Adams's perception of Europe, and especially France, was clearly different than [Tomas] Jefferson's. For Jefferson, the luxury and sophistication of Europe only made American simplicity and virtue appear dearer. For Adams, by contrast, Europe represented what America was fast becoming - a society consumed by luxury and vice and fundamentally riven by a struggle between rich and poor, gentlemen and commoners.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Struggle, Europe, Luxury

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

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• Bravely you jog along with the rope of class distinction drawing closer, close, tighter, tighter around you... I see it and know it, but I cannot help you... I am only an unnecessary, little, bush commoner, I am only a - woman.

  Miles Franklin

  Art, Women, Class

  Miles Franklin (2009). “My Brilliant Career”, p.463, The Floating Press

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• The first principle of my own philosophy is that wisdom is meant for anyone who wishes to reach for it. It is the servant of commoner and king alike and should never be regarded with awe.

  L. Ron Hubbard

  Kings, Philosophy, Wish

  L. Ron Hubbard (1976). “Scientology, a New Slant on Life”, p.271, Bridge Publications, Inc.

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• Aristocrats might shrug, but commoners, dreading any collapse of the social order, wanted the rules of behavior to be observed.

  Robert Silverberg

  Order, Might, Behavior

  "The Emperor and the Maula". Short story by Robert Silverberg, 2007.

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• There's no such thing as a free lunch.

  Milton Friedman

  Lunch Break, Economics, Ecological Crisis

  1973 Lecture. The phrase is thought to have been coined anonymously, perhaps referring to the 19c US tradition of supplying food in bars to patrons buying drinks.

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• What is known as success assumes nearly as many aliases as there are those who seek it. Like love, it can come to commoners as well as courtiers. Like virtue, it is its own reward. Like the Holy Grail, it seldom appears to those who don't pursue it.

  Stephen Birmingham

  Like Love, Holy Grail, Rewards

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• Be a good man to Allah and a bad man to yourself (desires); and be one of the commoners among the people

  Ali ibn Abi Talib

  Wisdom, Islamic, Men

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• When meeting royalty, it is very important, no matter how excited you are, not to vomit on them. Instead, vomit on the nearest commoner.

  Stephen Colbert

  Important, Matter, Excited

  Twitter post from Apr 08, 2011

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• It will be said that the joy of mental adventure must be rare, that there are few who can appreciate it, and that ordinary education can take no account of so aristocratic a good. I do not believe this. The joy of mental adventure is far commoner in the young than in grown men and women. ...It is rare in later life because everything is done to kill it during education.

  Bertrand Russell

  Education, Believe, Adventure

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Why Men Fight: A Method of Abolishing the International Duel”, p.95, Lulu Press, Inc

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• In recent years it has become impossible to talk about man's relation to nature without referring to "ecology"...such leading scientists in this area as Rachel Carson, Barry Commoner, Eugene Odum, Paul Ehrlich and others, have become our new delphic voices...so influential has their branch of science become that our time might well be called the "Age of Ecology".

  Rachel Carson

  Men, Voice, Years

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• Nothing, however, can be more arrogant, though nothing is commoner than to assume that of Gods there is only one, and of religions none but the speaker’s.

  Virginia Woolf

  Arrogant, Assuming, Speakers

  Virginia Woolf, Michael H. Whitworth (2014). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.102, Oxford University Press, USA

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