Commonplace Quotes

• As a rule, said Holmes, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Literature, Faces, Mysterious

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1892). “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”, p.43

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• To make mistakes is human; to stumble is commonplace; to be able to laugh at yourself is maturity.

  William Arthur Ward

  Inspirational, Laughter, Attitude

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• Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

  Charles Mingus

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Music

  Charles Mingus' statement in Mainliner Magazine (July 1977); later quoted in Olivia Bertagnolli "Creativity and the writing process" (p. 182), 1982.

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• Making the simple complicated is commonplace.

  Charles Mingus

  Creativity, Simple, Plain Language

  Charles Mingus' statement in Mainliner Magazine (July 1977); later quoted in Olivia Bertagnolli "Creativity and the writing process" (p. 182), 1982.

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• We can escape the commonplace only by manipulating it, controlling it, thrusting it into our dreams or surrendering it to the free play of our subjectivity.

  Raoul Vaneigem

  Dream, Play, Subjectivity

  Raoul Vaneigem, Donald Nicholson-Smith (2012). “The Revolution of Everyday Life”, p.3, PM Press

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• Standing ovations have become far too commonplace. What we need are ovations where the audience members all punch and kick one another.

  George Carlin

  Needs, Ovation, Corny

  George Carlin (2002). “Napalm & Silly Putty”, Hyperion

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• Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting.

  Gertrude Stein

  Interesting, Corny, Imitation

  Quoted in Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin My Autobiography (1964).

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• Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature.

  Jean Cocteau

  Jobs, Light, Done

  "A Call to Order". Book by Jean Cocteau, 1926.

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• Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.

  Cecil Beaton

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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• As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is, the less mysterious it proves to be.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Book, Mysterious, Language

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1892). “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”, p.43

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• The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved.

  Jack Kerouac

  Hippie, Yawning, People

  On the Road pt. 1, ch. 1 (1957)

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• My advice is really this: what we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application-not far far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech-and learn them so well that words become works.

  Seneca the Younger

  Teaching, Writing, Happy Life

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• Because the only people for me are the mad ones.

  Jack Kerouac

  Hippie, Yawning, People

  On the Road pt. 1, ch. 1 (1957)

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• Originality is never embraced as quickly as the commonplace.

  Franklyn Ajaye

  Originality

  Franklyn Ajaye (2002). “Comic Insights: The Art of Stand-up Comedy”

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• The conviction that everything that happens on earth must be comprehensible to man can lead to interpreting history by commonplaces.

  Hannah Arendt

  Knowledge, Men, Earth

  Hannah Arendt (1973). “The Origins of Totalitarianism”, p.8, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We look for visions of heaven and we never dream that all the time God is in the commonplace things and people around us.

  Oswald Chambers

  God, Dream, People

  Oswald Chambers (2011). “The Quotable Oswald Chambers”, p.276, Discovery House

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• Wherever souls are being tried and ripened, in whatever commonplace and homely way, there God is hewing out the pillars for His temple.

  Phillips Brooks

  Soul, Way, Pillars

  Phillips Brooks, John Cotton Brooks (1910). “Sermons: The candle of the Lord, and other sermons”

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• Look up . . . and see them.
  The teaching stars,
  beyond worship
  and commonplace tongues.

  Dorothy Dunnett

  Stars, Teaching, Looks

  Dorothy Dunnett (1999). “The Game Of Kings: The Lymond Chronicles Book One”, p.194, Penguin UK

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• Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident.

  Eric Hoffer

  Self, Miracle, Corny

  Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

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• There is no tongue that flatters like a lover's; and yet, in the exaggeration of his feelings, flattery seems to him commonplace. Strange and prodigal exuberance, which soon exhausts itself by flowing!

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Feelings, Tongue, Lovers

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• That is almost the whole of Russian literature: the phenomenal coruscations of the souls of quite commonplace people.

  D. H. Lawrence

  People, Soul, Literature

  D.H. Lawrence (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)”, p.8753, Delphi Classics

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• On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Art, Book, Eight

  Arthur Conan DOYLE (2010). “Les Aventures de Sherlock Holmes”, p.690, Omnibus

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• For obvious reasons, I never told you about my notebook, with a cover as green as mansions long ago, which I use as a commonplace book, a phrase which here means 'place where I have collected passages from some of the most important books I have read.

  Daniel Handler

  Notebook, Mean, Long Ago

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• You may want to keep a commonplace book which is a notebook where you can copy parts of books you think are in code, or take notes on a series of events you may have observed that are suspicious, unfortunate, or very dull. Keep your commonplace book in a safe place, such as underneath your bed, or at a nearby dairy.

  Daniel Handler

  Notebook, Thinking, Bed

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• ... it is a commonplace that men like war. For peace, in our society, with the feeling we have then that it is feeble-minded to strive except for one's own private profit, is a lonely thing and a hazardous business. Over and over men have proved that they prefer the hazards of war with all its suffering. It has its compensations.

  Ruth Benedict

  Lonely, Peace, War

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