Commonplace Quotes - Page 6

• In this climate - with belief in guardian angels and creationism becoming commonplace - making fun of religion is as risky as burning a flag in an American Legion hall.

  Wendy Kaminer

  Fun, Angel, Atheism

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• A commonplace of political rhetoric has it that the quality of a civilization may be measured by how it cares for its elderly. Just as surely, the future of a society may be forecast by how it cares for its young.

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan

  Elderly, Civilization, Political

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1987). “Family and Nation: The Godkin Lectures, Harvard University”, Harcourt

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• The office of the leisure class in social evolution is to retard the movement and to conserve what is obsolescent. This proposition is by no means novel; it has long been one of the commonplaces of popular opinion.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Mean, Class, Long

  Thorstein Veblen (2012). “The Theory of the Leisure Class”, p.130, Courier Corporation

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• Commonplace people have an answer for everything and nothing ever surprises them. They try to look as though they knew what you were about to say better than you did yourself, and when it is their turn to speak, they repeat with great assurance something that they have heard other people say, as though it were their own invention.

  Eugene Delacroix

  People, Trying, Looks

  "The Journal of Eugene Delacroix: A Selection". Book edited by Hubert Wellington, translated by Lucy Norton, Cornell University Press, February 25, 1852 (p. 152), 1980.

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• Did any great genius ever enter the world in the wake of commonplace pre-natal conditions? Was a maker of history ever born amidst the pleasant harmonies of a satisfied domesticity? Of a mother who was less than remarkable, although she may have escaped being great? Did a woman with no wildness in her blood ever inform a brain with electric fire? The students of history know that while many mothers of great men have been virtuous, none have been commonplace, and few have been happy.

  Gertrude Atherton

  Mother, Men, Fire

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• Lying, stealing, and cheating are commonplace.

  Joseph B. Wirthlin

  Cheating, Lying, Stealing

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• I hate the word 'ought' - it always implies something dull, cold, and commonplace. The 'ought nots' of life are its pleasantest things.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  Hate, Dull, Cold

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1837). “Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides ...”, p.88

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• And common is the commonplace, And vacant chaff well meant for grain.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Common, Grain, Wells

  'In Memoriam A. H. H.' (1850) canto 6

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• It is commonplace that a problem stated is well on its way to solution, for statement of the nature of a problem signifies that the underlying quality is being transformed into determinate distinctions of terms and relations or has become an object of articulate thought.

  John Dewey

  Quality, Way, Problem

  John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, Paul Kurtz (2008). “The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1929-1930”, p.249, SIU Press

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• You cannot gauge the intelligence of an American by talking with him; you must work with him. The American polishes and refines his way of doing things-even the most commonplace-the way the French of the 17th century polished their maxims.

  Eric Hoffer

  Talking, America, Gauges

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

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• For anyone addicted to reading commonplace books . . . finding a good new one is much like enduring a familiar recurrence of malaria, with fever, fits of shaking, strange dreams . . . .

  M. F. K. Fisher

  Dream, Reading, Book

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• I have not much faith in women in fiction.... Women are so horribly subjective and they have such scorn for the healthy commonplace. When a woman writes a story of adventure, a stout sea tale, a manly battle yarn, anything without wine, women, and love, then I will begin to hope for something great from them, not before.

  Willa Cather

  Women, Writing, Wine

  Willa Cather (1993). “Willa Cather”

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• No longer do we accept the 'sublimation model' according to which 'the function of art is to sublimate or transform experience, raising it from ordinary to extraordinary, from commonplace to unique, from low to high'.

  Rosalind E. Krauss

  Art, Unique, Poetry

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• Eschew the ordinary, disdain the commonplace

  Chuck Jones

  Ordinary, Esoteric, Disdain

  Chuck Jones (1999). “Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist”, p.23, Macmillan

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• Rock bottom is an inability to cope with the commonplace that is so extreme it makes even the grandest and loveliest things unbearable...Rock bottom is everything out of focus. It's a failure of vision, a failure to see the world as it is, to see the good in what it is, and only to wonder why the hell things look the way they do and not some other way.

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Rocks, Focus, Vision

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• The commonplace expression that life is nothing but a play is verified above all in this: the world speaks absolutely consistently in one way and acts absolutely consistently in another.

  Giacomo Leopardi

  Expression, Play, World

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• No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Mind

  W. Somerset Maugham (2013). “The Essential W. Somerset Maugham Collection”, p.1397, eBookIt.com

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• It is a commonplace that Racine is untranslatable. This is not because his verse is difficult, but because it is not.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Difficult, Verses

  Kenneth Rexroth, Bradford Morrow (1989). “More Classics Revisited”, p.54, New Directions Publishing

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• Science fiction that's just about people wandering around in space ships shooting each other with ray guns is very dull. I like it when it enables you to do fairly radical reinterpretations of human experience, just to show all the different interpretations that can be put on apparently fairly simple and commonplace events. That I find fun.

  Douglas Adams

  Fun, Gun, Simple

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• Every commonplace or trite observation is not a truism.

  Charles Lamb

  Observation, Truism

  Charles Lamb (2008). “The Life, Letters, and Writings of Charles Lamb”, p.159, Cosimo, Inc.

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• No age or condition is without its heroes . The least incapable general in a nation is its Cæsar, the least imbecile statesman its Solon , the least confused thinker its Socrates , the least commonplace poet its Shakespeare .

  George Bernard Shaw

  Confused, Hero, Age

  George Bernard Shaw (1968). “Four Plays by Bernard Shaw”, Pocket Books

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• Every intellectual effort sets us apart from the commonplace, and leads us by hidden and difficult paths to secluded spots where we find ourselves amid unaccustomed thoughts.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Effort, Intellectual, Path

  "What is Philosophy?". Book by José Ortega y Gasset, p. 15, 1964.

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• The nineteenth century, utilitarian throughout, set up a utilitarian interpretation of the phenomenon of life which has come down to us and may still be considered as the commonplace of everyday thinking. ... An innate blindness seems to have closed the eyes of this epoch to all but those facts which show life as a phenomenon of utility

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Eye, Thinking, Everyday

  "History as a System". Book by Jose Ortega y Gasset, 1962.

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• It would be a piece of ingenuousness to accuse the man of today of his lack of moral code. The accusation would leave him cold, or rather, would flatter him. Immoralism has become a commonplace, and anybody and everybody boasts of practising it.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Men, Would Be, Pieces

  "The Revolt of the Masses". Book by José Ortega y Gasset. Chapter XV: "We Arrive At The Real Question", 1929.

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• [I]t is necessary to insist upon this extraordinary but undeniable fact: experimental science has progressed thanks in great part to the work of men astoundingly mediocre, and even less than mediocre. That is to say, modern science, the root and symbol of our actual civilization, finds a place for the intellectually commonplace man and allows him to work therein with success.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Men, Civilization, Roots

  Jose Ortega Y Gasset (1960). “the Revolt of the Masses”

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