Common Quotes - Page 18

• There is nothing man desires more than a heroic life: there is nothing less common to men than heroism.

  Jacques Maritain

  Men, Desire, Heroism

  "True Humanism". Book by Jacques Maritain (p. xi), 1938.

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• We have no Common Vipers in the United States, but we have worse.

  Will Cuppy

  United States, Vipers, Footnotes

  "The Common Viper". "How to Become Extinct". Book by Will Cuppy, 1941.

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  Two things people throughout history have had in common are hatred and humour. I am proud that I have been able to use humour to lessen people's hatred.

  Richard Pryor

  Two, People, Hatred

  2004 InThe Scotsman, 5 Jun.

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• The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from every-day life. Relatively few are free enough from the spell of the daily routine to respond to rappings from outside, and tales of ordinary feelings and events, or of common sentimental distortions of such feelings and events, will always take first place in the taste of the majority; rightly, perhaps, since of course these ordinary matters make up the greater part of human experience.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Rap, Imagination, Feelings

  H.P. Lovecraft, Digital Papyrus (2016). “H.P. Lovecraft: The Ultimate Collection (160 Works Including Early Writings, Fiction, Collaborations, Poetry, Essays & Bonus Audiobook Links)”, p.1681, eBookIt.com

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• All my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Law, Cosmos, Fundamentals

  H. P. Lovecraft (2013). “The Classic Horror Stories”, p.453, OUP Oxford

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• The British Empire has advanced to a new conception of autonomyand freedom, to the idea of a system of British nations, each freely ordering its own individual life, but bound together in unity byallegiance to one Crown, and co-operating in all that concerns the common weal.

  George VI

  Ideas, Unity, Together

  1927 Opening, as Duke of York, the first Australian Parliament to assemble in Canberra, 9 May.

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• The fundamental fact in the lives of the poor in most parts of America is that the wages of common labor are far below the benefits of AFDC, Medicaid, food stamps, public housing, public defenders, leisure time and all the other goods and services of the welfare state.

  George Gilder

  America, Benefits, Leisure

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• A true community consists of individuals - not mere species members, not couples - respecting each others individuality and privacy while at the same time interacting with each other mentally and emotionally - free spirits in free relation to each other - and co-operating with each other to achieve common ends. Traditionalists say the basic unit of "society" is the family; "hippies" say the tribe; noone says the individual.

  Valerie Solanas

  Couple, Hippie, Community

  "SCUM Manifesto". P. 7, 1967.

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• Philosophy that satisfies its own intention, and does not childishly skip behind its own history and the real one, has its lifeblood in the resistance against the common practices of today and what they serve, against the justification of what happens to be the case.

  Theodor Adorno

  Philosophy, Real, Practice

  Theodor W. Adorno (2012). “Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords”, p.6, Columbia University Press

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• After 9-11, the President had a historic opportunity to unite Americans and the world in common cause. Instead, by exploiting the politics of fear, instigating an optional war in Iraq before finishing a necessary war in Afghanistan and instituting policies on torture, detainees and domestic surveillance that fly in the face of our values and interests, President Bush divided Americans from each other and from the world.

  Joe Biden

  War, Opportunity, Iraq

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• When external and internal forces hostile to the development of socialism try to turn the development of a given socialist country in the direction of the restoration of the capitalist system, when a threat arises to the cause of socialism in that country ... this is no longer merely a problem for that country's people, but a common problem, the concern of all socialist countries.

  Leonid Brezhnev

  Country, Socialist Countries, People

  Speech at the 5th Congress of the Polish United Workers Party (12 November 1968), quoted in "The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Foreign Policy" by Matthew J. Ouimet, 2003.

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• The very common error of young or unconfident cooks is to keep putting more of their own personal ideology into a plate until there's so much noise that you really can't even hear a tune. You can say more in an empty space than you can in a crowded one.

  Mario Batali

  Errors, Space, Cooking

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• Unfortunately, all life on earth - the only life we know - represents, for all its current variety, the results of a single experiment , for every earthly species evolved from the common ancestry of a single origin. We desperately need a repetition of the experiment (several would be better, but let's not be greedy!) in order to make a judgement. Mars represents our first real hope for a second experiment - the sine qua non - for any proper answer for the question of questions.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Real, Order, Judgement

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.353, Harvard University Press

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• No more harmful nonsense exists than [the] common supposition that deepest insight into great questions about the meaning of life or the structure of reality emerges most readily when a free, undisciplined, and uncluttered (read, rather, ignorant and uneducated) mind soars above mere earthly knowledge and concern.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Reality, Ignorant, Mind

  "I Have Landed". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, "No Science Without Fancy, No Art Without Facts", p. 48, May 14, 2002.

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• The time for the kingdom may be far off, but the task is plain: to retain our share in God in spite of peril and contempt. There is a war to wage against the vulgar, the glorification of the absurd, a war that is incessant, universal. Loyal to the presence of the ultimate in the common, we may be able to make it clear that man is more than man, that in doing the finite he may perceive the infinite .

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  War, Men, Tasks

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1997). “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays”, p.11, Macmillan

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• Literature, properly so called, draws its sap from the deep soil of human nature's common and everlasting sympathies, the gathered leaf-mound of countless generations, and not from any top dressing capriciously scattered over the surface.

  James Russell Lowell

  Soil, Generations, Sap

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• It is quite too common a practice, both in readers and the more superficial class of critics, to judge a book by what it is not, a matter much easier to determine than what it is.

  James Russell Lowell

  Book, Practice, Class

  Jared Sparks, Edward Everett, James Russell Lowell, Henry Cabot Lodge (1849). “The North American Review”, p.212

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• A profound common sense is the best genius for statesmanship.

  James Russell Lowell

  Common Sense, Profound, Genius

  James Russell Lowell (1871). “My Study Windows”, p.132

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• I am not in the roll of common men.

  William Shakespeare

  Men, Conceit, Common Man

  'Henry IV, Part 1' (1597) act 3, sc. 1, l. [42]

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• We must frankly confess, then, using our empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices, that in the world that actually is, the virtues of sympathy, charity, and non-resistance may be, and often have been, manifested in excess. ... You will agree to this in general, for in spite of the Gospel, in spite of Quakerism, in spite of Tolstoi, you believe in fighting fire with fire, in shooting down usurpers, locking up thieves, and freezing out vagabonds and swindlers.

  William James

  Believe, Fighting, Fire

  William James (1985). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.284, Harvard University Press

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• What we really need the poet's and orator's I help to keep alive in us is not, then, the common and gregarious courage which Robert Shaw showed when he marched with you, men of the Seventh Regiment. It is that more lonely courage which he showed when he dropped his warm commission in the glorious Second to head your dubious fortunes, negroes of the Fifty-fourth. That lonely kind of courage (civic courage as we call it in times of peace) is the kind of valor to which the monuments of nations should most of all be reared.

  William James

  Lonely, Men, Needs

  William James, Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, Ignas K. Skrupskelis (1982). “Essays in Religion and Morality”, p.72, Harvard University Press

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• Men who profess a state of neutrality in times of public danger, desert the common interest of their fellow subjects; and act with independence to that constitution into which they are incorporated. The safety of the whole requires our joint endeavours. When this is at stake, the indifferent are not properly a part of the community; or rather are like dead limbs, which are an encumbrance to the body, instead of being of use to it.

  Joseph Addison

  Men, Safety, Community

  Joseph Addison (1868). “The Works of Joseph Addison”, p.194

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• A common civility to an impertinent fellow, often draws upon one a great many unforeseen troubles; and if one doth not take particular care, will be interpreted by him as an overture of friendship and intimacy.

  Joseph Addison

  Care, Trouble, Intimacy

  Joseph Addison (1721). “Remarks on several parts of Italy , &c in the years 1701, 1702, 1703. The Tatler. By Isaac Bickerstaffe, esq. The Spectator, no.1-89”, p.314

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• Though a man has all other perfections, and wants discretion, he will be of no great consequence in the world; but if he has this single talent in perfection, and but a common share of others, he may do what he pleases in his station of life.

  Joseph Addison

  Men, Perfection, World

  Joseph Addison (1837). “The Works of Joseph Addison: The Spectator, no. 1-314”, p.329

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• Among the idle rich, boredom is one of the most common causes of unhappiness. People who have difficulty in earning their living may suffer greatly, but they are not bored. Wealthy men and women become bored when they depend upon the theater for their enjoyment instead of making their own lives interesting.

  Andre Maurois

  Men, Boredom, People

  "The Art of Happiness". Book by Andre Maurois, 1971.

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