Commonplace Quotes - Page 9

• To a commonplace man of limited intellect, for instance, nothing is simpler than to imagine himself an original character, and to revel in that belief without the slightest misgiving.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Character, Men, Belief

  Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Xaver Winterhalter (2017). “The Idiot (English German edition illustrated): Der Idiot (Englisch Deutsch ausgabe illustriert)”, p.1109, Clap Publishing, LLC.

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• To cease to wonder is to fall plumb-down from the childlike to the commonplace—the most undivine of all moods intellectual. Our nature can never be at home among things that are not wonderful to us.

  George MacDonald

  Fall, Home, Intellectual

  George MacDonald (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)”, p.13217, Delphi Classics

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• At its best, fantasy rewards the reader with a sense of wonder about what lies within the heart of the commonplace world. The greatest tales are told over and over, in many ways, through centuries. Fantasy changes with the changing times, and yet it is still the oldest kind of tale in the world, for it began once upon a time, and we haven't heard the end of it yet.

  Patricia A. McKillip

  Lying, Heart, Once Upon A Time

  Patricia A. McKillip (2016). “Dreams of Distant Shores”, p.266, Tachyon Publications

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• Wealth is commonplace but wisdom is rare. I beg you to remember that wealth without wisdom can often end in disaster.

  Dan Brown

  Remember, Wealth, Disaster

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• A blade of grass is a commonplace on Earth; it would be a miracle on Mars. Our descendants on Mars will know the value of a patch of green. And if a blade of grass is priceless, what is the value of a human being?

  Carl Sagan

  Miracle, Would Be, Mars

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.309, Ballantine Books

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• We pull on to the road, where our only company are the wandering cattle, who have become commonplace as traffic lights. Lethargic and listless, they look like they've been roaming the roads of Guinea since the dawn of time. And no doubt they will continue to long after we're gone.

  Tom Hiddleston

  Light, Long, Doubt

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• No new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Horror, Torture, Terrible

  H. P. Lovecraft (2016). “H. P. LOVECRAFT äóñ The Ultimate Horror Collection: 60 Occult & Supernatural Mysteries in One Volume: The Greatest Spine-Chilling and Blood-Curdling Stories of Terror & Macabre: The Call of Cthulhu, The White Ship, The Dunwich Horror, At The Mountains Of Madness, The Whisperer in Darknessäó_”, p.154, e-artnow

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• How I waited for you! How I longed for you! he stammered. "I thought of you all the time. I saw you all the time. Your smile was everywhere." He lowered his voice and added, "Sometimes when people were talking commonplaces and your name happened to be mentioned, It would go through my heart like an electric current.

  Henri Barbusse

  Heart, Talking, Names

  Henri Barbusse (2009). “The Inferno”, p.213, The Floating Press

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• It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery. The most commonplace crime is often the most mysterious because it presents no new or special features from which deductions may be drawn. This murder would have been infinitely more difficult to unravel had the body of the victim been simply found lying in the roadway without any of those outré and sensational accompaniments which have rendered it remarkable. These strange details, far from making the case more difficult, have really had the effect of making it less so.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Mistake, Lying, Special

  Study in Scarlet (1888) ch. 7

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• After all, the commonplaces are the great poetic truths.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Truth, Poetic, Great Poet

  Robert Louis Stevenson (2015). “The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays (Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer, containing Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, Catriona and A Child's Garden of Verses”, p.2184, e-artnow

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• When friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and commonplace, these only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow.

  Washington Irving

  Cheer, True Friend, Real

  Washington Irving (1840). “The Works of Washington Irving”, p.192

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• It is a commonplace of modern technology that problems have solutions before there is knowledge of how they are to be solved.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Technology, Problem, Modern

  John Kenneth Galbraith (2001). “The Essential Galbraith”, p.63, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Funerals and weddings were commonplace, and nothing could have been so interesting to them as the coming of the end of the world ... unless it had been a first-class circus.

  Edward Eggleston

  Class, Interesting, Funeral

  Edward Eggleston (1872). “The End of the World: A Love Story”, p.59

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• In my plays I want to look at life at the commonplace of existence as if we had just turned a corner and run into it for the first time.

  Christopher Fry

  Life, Running, Play

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• Commonplace though it may appear, this doing of one's duty embodies the highest ideal of life and character. There may be nothing heroic about it; but the common lot of men is not heroic.

  Samuel Smiles

  Hero, Character, Men

  Samuel Smiles (1872). “Character”, p.2

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• Suffering is by no means a privilege, a sign of nobility, a reminder of God. Suffering is a fierce, bestial thing, commonplace, uncalled for, natural as air. It is intangible; no one can grasp it or fight against it; it dwells in time - is the same thing as time; if it comes in fits and starts, that is only so as to leave the sufferer more defenseless during the moments that follow, those long moments when one relives the last bout of torture and waits for the next.

  Cesare Pavese

  Mean, Fighting, Air

  Cesare Pavese (2017). “This Business of Living: Diaries 1935-1950”, p.211, Routledge

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• Be patient and sympathetic with the type of mind that cuts a poor figure in examinations. It may, in the long examination which life sets us, come out in the end in better shape than the glib and ready reproducer, its passions being deeper, its purposes more worthy, its combining power less commonplace, and its total mental output consequently more important.

  William James

  Philosophy, Educational, Passion

  William James (2013). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.70, Courier Corporation

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• In proportion as our own mind is enlarged we discover a greater number of men of originality. Commonplace people see no difference between one man and another.

  Blaise Pascal

  Appreciation, Men, Differences

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• Commonplaces never become tiresome. It is we who become tired when we cease to be curious and appreciative.

  Norman Rockwell

  Appreciation, Tired, Curious

  Norman Rockwell, Maureen Hart Hennessey, Anne Knutson, High Museum of Art, Norman Rockwell Museum at Stockbridge (1999). “Norman Rockwell: pictures for the American people”, Harry N. Abrams

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• It is a commonplace of American life that immigrants have made our country great and continue to make a very important contribution to the fabric of American life. But...under the pressures we face today, we can't afford to lose control of our borders, or to take on new financial burdens, at a time when we are not adequately providing for the jobs, the health care, and the education of our own people. Therefore, immigration must be a priority for this administration.

  William J. Clinton

  Country, Jobs, People

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• Who would wish to be among the commonplace crowd of the little famous - who are each individually lost in a throng made up of themselves?

  John Keats

  Wish, Crowds, Littles

  John Keats (2009). “Selected Letters of John Keats: Revised Edition”, p.328, Harvard University Press

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• I am one who has always been interested only in the edges of the body and the spirit, the outlying regions of the body and the outlying regions of the spirit. The depths hold no interest for me; I leave them to others, for they are shallow, commonplace. What is there, then, at the outer most edge? Nothing, perhaps, save a few ribbons, dangling down into the void.

  Yukio Mishima

  Depth, Body, Ribbons

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• A love affair is like a short story--it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning was easy, the middle might drag, invaded by commonplace, but the end, instead of being decisive and well knit with that element of revelatory surprise as a well-written story should be, it usually dissipated in a succession of messy and humiliating anticlimaxes.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Stories, Elements, Might

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• Motherhood is a hallowed place because children aren’t commonplace. Co-laboring over the sculpting of souls is a sacred vocation, a humbling privilege. Never forget.

  Ann Voskamp

  Children, Motherhood, Soul

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• When you love something, whether it's jam and cheese sandwiches or wearing your pyjamas as pants, you forget that it was ever anything other than commonplace.

  Elisha Lim

  Cheese Sandwiches, Jam, Pants

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