Commonplace Quotes - Page 7

• With little here to do or see Of things that in the great world be, Sweet Daisy! oft I talk to thee For thou art worthy, Thou unassuming commonplace Of Nature, with that homely face, And yet with something of a grace Which love makes for thee!

  William Wordsworth

  Sweet, Art, Grace

  1802 'To the Daisy', stanza 1 (published 1807).

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• The more intelligence one has, the more people one finds original. Commonplace people see no difference between men.

  Blaise Pascal

  Men, Differences, People

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• I want to be great, or nothing. I won't be a commonplace dauber, so I don't intend to try any more.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Trying, Want, Talent

  Louisa May Alcott (2015). “Little Women Collection: Little Women, Little Men, Eight Cousins and More”, p.394, Xist Publishing

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• What the ordinary person means by a 'miracle' is some gross distortion or suspension of the laws of nature... but life itself strikes him as commonplace, when in truth a blade of grass or a neuron in the brain is a greater miracle.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Mean, Law, Miracle

  Sydney J. Harris (1976). “Best of Sydney J. Harris”

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• The universal subjugator, the commonplace.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Unity, Universal

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• L'absence diminue les mediocres passions, et augmente les grandes,comme le vent eteint les bougies, et allume le feu. Absence diminishes commonplace passions, and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and kindles fire.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Passion, Fire, Wind

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• No matter through what realms of the fantastic you may travel, you arrive inevitably at the commonplace.

  William John Locke

  May, Matter, Fantastic

  William John Locke (1906). “The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne: A Novel”

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• We live in an age of miracles so commonplace that it can be difficult to see them as anything other than part of the daily texture of living

  Tom Chatfield

  Miracle, Age, Texture

  Tom Chatfield, The School of Life (2012). “How to Thrive in the Digital Age”, p.3, Pan Macmillan

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• The acceptance of ambiguity implies more than the commonplace understanding that some good things and some bad things happen to us. It means that we know that good and evil are inextricably intermixed in human affairs; that they contain, and sometimes embrace, their opposites; that success may involve failure of a different kind, and failure may be a kind of triumph.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Failure, Mean, Acceptance

  Sydney J. Harris (1986). “Clearing the ground”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Usually when I drank too much, I could guess why I did so, the objective being to murder a state of consciousness that I didn't have the courage to sustain--a fear of heights, which sometimes during the carnival of the 1960s accompanied my attempts to transform the bourgeois journalist into an avant-garde novelist. The stepped-up ambition was a commonplace among the would-be William Faulkners of my generation; nearly always it resulted in commercial failure and literary embarrassment.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Ambition, Height, Too Much

  "The war on drugs and alcohol is a war against human nature" by Lewis Lapham, www.theguardian.com. December 10, 2012.

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• My curiosity was in no way cruel. Deviations from the commonplace attracted me strongly, as they still do; and to me the hermaphrodite and the living skeleton were interesting for the same reason as was Creatore, or the resplendent Guardsmen of the bands - because such people did not often come my way, and I hoped that they might impart some great revelation to me, some insight which would help me to a clearer understanding of the world about me.

  Robertson Davies

  Skeletons, Interesting, People

  "I Remember Creatore". Essay by Robertson Davies, 1948.

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• A Wise man knows that much of what he says and does is commonplace and trivial. His thoughts are not all solemn and sacred in his own eyes. He is able to laugh at himself and is not offended when others make him a subject whereon to exercise their wit.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Wise, Eye, Exercise

  John Lancaster Spalding (1901). “Aphorisms and Reflections: Conduct, Culture and Religion”

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• Truths that startled the generation in which they were first announced become in the next age the commonplaces of conversation; as the famous airs of operas which thrilled the first audiences come to be played on hand-organs in the streets.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Hands, Air, Age

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1888). “Longfellow's Days: The Longfellow Prose Birthday Book : Extracts from the Journals and Letters of H. W. Longfellow”

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• Life seems so vulgar, so easily content with the commonplace things of every day, and yet it always nurses and cherishes certain higher claims in secret, and looks about for the means of satisfying them.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Life, Mean, Nurse

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.80, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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• Each generation thinks it invented sex; each generation is totally mistaken. Anything along that line today was commonplace both in Pompeii and in Victorian England; the differences lie only in the degree of coverup - if any.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Sex, Lying, Thinking

  Introduction to "Cliff and the Calories" in "Expanded Universe" by Robert A. Heinlein, (p. 355), 1980.

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• Culturally, it is commonplace for African women to work.

  Richard Attias

  African Women

  "The Promise of Africa’s Women" by Richard Attias, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 7, 2013.

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• If mankind were all intellect, they would be continually changing, so that one age would be entirely unlike another. The great conservative is the heart, which remains the same in all ages; so that commonplaces of a thousand years' standing are as effective as ever.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Heart, Years, Age

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1875). “Passages from the English Note-books of Nathaniel Hawthorne”, p.66

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• What is terrible is that after every one of the phases of my life is finished, I am left with no more than some banal commonplace that everyone knows.

  Doris Lessing

  Life, Phases, Terrible

  Doris May Lessing (1994). “The Golden Notebook”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• A dim consciousness of infinite mystery and grandeur lies beneath all the commonplace of life . There is an awfulness and a majesty around us, in all our little worldliness .

  Albert Pike

  Lying, Littles, Majesty

  Albert Pike “Morals and Dogma : Scottish Rite in Freemasonry”, Lulu.com

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• Only the poet has any right to be sorry for the poor, if he has anything to spare when he has thought of the dull, commonplace rich.

  William Bolitho

  Sorry, Poetry, Dull

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• Congress is, after all, not a body of laymen unfamiliar with the commonplaces of our law. This legislation was the formulation of the two Judiciary Committees, all of whom are lawyers, and the Congress is predominately a lawyers' body.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Law, Two, Body

  "Callanan v. United States, 364 U.S. 587". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. January 9, 1961.

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• Good habits are developed in the workshops of our daily lives. It is not in the great moments of test and trial that character is built. That is only when it is displayed. The habits that direct our lives and form our character are fashioned in the often uneventful, commonplace routine of life.

  Delbert L. Stapley

  Character, Routine, Trials

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• I realize it's commonplace for parents to say to their child sternly, 'I love you, but I don't always like you.' But what kind of love is that? It seems to me that comes down to, 'I'm not oblivious to you - that is, you can still hurt my feelings - but I can't stand having you around.' Who wants to be loved like that? Given a choice, I might skip the deep blood tie and settle for being liked. I wonder if wouldn't have been more moved if my own mother had taken me in her arms and said, 'I like you.' I wonder if just enjoying your kid's company isn't more important.

  Lionel Shriver

  Mother, I Like You, Hurt

  Lionel Shriver (2011). “We Need to Talk about Kevin”, p.143, Counterpoint Press

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• Fantasy is escapism, but wait... Why is this wrong? What are you escaping from, and where are you escaping to? Is the story opening windows or slamming doors? The British author G.K. Chesterton summarized the role of fantasy very well. He said its purpose was to take the everyday, commonplace world and lift it up and turn it around and show it to us from a different perspective, so that once again we see it for the first time and realize how marvelous it is. Fantasy - the ability to envisage the world in many different ways - is one of the skills that make us human.

  Terry Pratchett

  Escaping, Doors, Skills

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• Language is the soul of intellect, and reading is the essential process by which that intellect is cultivated beyond the commonplace experiences of everyday life.

  Charles Scribner IV

  Reading, Aquariums, Soul

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