Common Life Quotes - Page 2

• Forget what you learned about poetry in school. (That it's complex, opaque, a problem to be solved in 1500 words by tomorrow.) Poetry is the last preserve of honest speech and the outspoken heart. It holds the cadence of common life. It has a passion for truth and justice and liberty; it is a buoy to people in ordinary trouble: to a friend whose life has gone skidding into the meridian, who has been struck by bad news, who is frying eggs and hash browns and has whiny child clinging to his pant leg.

  Garrison Keillor

  Children, Heart, School

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• When we call something unfair or indecent or unconscionable or evil, when we speak of mercy and pity and compassion, those words have meaning, regardless of our particular faith or moral philosophy. They appeal to common standards we all are expected to understand and accept, standards without which we could not live any common life at all.

  Matthew Scully

  Philosophy, Compassion, Evil

  Matthew Scully (2011). “Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy”, p.296, Souvenir Press

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• Philosophy is a more intense sort of experience than common life is, just as pure and subtle music, heard in retirement, is something keener and more intense than the howling of storms or the rumble of cities.

  George Santayana

  Retirement, Philosophy, Cities

  George Santayana (1934). “Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana”, p.143, Рипол Классик

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• Scientists are supposed to live in ivory towers. Their darkrooms and their vibration-proof benches are supposed to isolate their activities from the disturbances of common life. What they tell us is supposed to be for the ages, not for the next election. But the reality may be otherwise.

  Simon LeVay

  Reality, Ivory Tower, Age

  "Queer Science: The Use and Abuse of Research into Homosexuality". Book by Simon LeVay, Cambridge: MIT Press. p. 9, 1996.

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• What is needed is the development in men of that particular type of skill which will enable them to make social use of knowledge already in their possession; enable them to apply simple, sometimes self-evident, truths to the guidance of their common life.

  Norman Angell

  Simple, Men, Self

  Sir Norman Angell (1943). “Let the People Know”

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• Devotion signifies a life given, or devoted, to God. He therefore is the devout man, who lives no longer to his own will, or the way and spirit of the world, but to the sole will of God, who considers God in everything, who serves God in everything, who makes all the parts of his common life, parts of piety, by doing everything in the name of God, and under such rules as are conformable to His glory.

  William Law

  Life, Men, Names

  William Law, P. G. Stanwood (1978). “A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life ; The Spirit of Love”, p.47, Paulist Press

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• The only thing you will get from common sense, is a common life. Be uncommon and have uncommon sense.

  Bryant H. McGill

  Life, Common Sense, Uncommon

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• We must seek the loving-kindness of God in all the breadth and open-air of common life.

  George A. Smith

  Kindness, Loving Life, Air

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• Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share in a common life.

  Michael Sandel

  Perfect, Democracy, Doe

  Michael J. Sandel (2012). “What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets”, p.225, Macmillan

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• It often falls, in course of common life, that right long time is overborne of wrong.

  Edmund Spenser

  Fall, Long, Common

  Edmund Spenser (1715). “The Works of Mr. Edmund Spenser”, p.86

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• Let us learn to accept ourselves-accept the truth that we are capable in some directions and limited in others, that genius is rare, that mediocrity is a portion of almost all of us, but that we can contribute from the storehouse of our skills to the enrichment of our common life.

  Joshua L. Liebman

  Acceptance, Skills, Genius

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• In all determinations of morality, this circumstance of public utility is ever principally in view; and wherever disputes arise, either in philosophy or common life, concerning the bounds of duty, the questions cannot, by any means, be decided with greater certainty, than by ascertaining, on any side, the true interests of mankind. If any false opinion, embraced from appearances, has been found to prevail; as soon as farther experience and sounder reasoning have given us juster notions of human affairs, we retract our first sentiment, and adjust anew the boundaries of moral good and evil.

  David Hume

  Determination, Philosophy, Mean

  David Hume (2010). “Moral and Political Philosophy”, p.221, Simon and Schuster

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• The time has come when scientific truth must cease to be the property of the few, when it must be woven into the common life of the world.

  Louis Agassiz

  Life, Truth, Woven

  Louis Agassiz (1870). “Methods of Study in Natural History”, p.42

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• When we fully understand the brevity of life, its fleeting joys and unavoidable pains; when we accept the facts that all men and women are approaching an inevitable doom: the consciousness of it should make us more kindly and considerate of each other. This feeling should make men and women use their best efforts to help their fellow travelers on the road, to make the path brighter and easier as we journey on. It should bring a closer kinship, a better understanding, and a deeper sympathy for the wayfarers who must live a common life and die a common death.

  Clarence Darrow

  Pain, Journey, Men

  Clarence Darrow (1995). “Why I Am an Agnostic and Other Essays”

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• In mathematical analysis we call x the undetermined part of line a: the rest we don't call y, as we do in common life, but a-x. Hence mathematical language has great advantages over the common language.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Life, Math, Lines

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• The practice of the Christian life consists of the discernment of (the seeing and hearing), and the reliance upon (the reckless and uncalculating dependence), and the celebration (the ready and spontaneous enjoyment) of the presence of the Word of God in the common life of the world.

  William Stringfellow

  Christian, Practice, World

  William Stringfellow (1999). “A Private and Public Faith”, p.56, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• I want relations which are not purely personal, based on purely personal qualities; but relations based upon some unanimous accord in truth or belief, and a harmony of purpose, rather than of personality. I am weary of personality. Let us be easy and impersonal, not forever fingering over our own souls, and the souls of our acquaintances, but trying to create a new life, a new common life, a new complete tree of life from the roots that are within us.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Life, Relationship, Roots

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• For the church is not a human society of people united by their natural affinities but the Body of Christ, in which all members, however different, (and He rejoices in their differences and by no means wishes to iron them out) must share the common life, complementing and helping one another precisely by their differences.

  C. S. Lewis

  Mean, Iron, Differences

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “Collected Letters Volume Three: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963”, p.68, HarperCollins UK

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• When brothers agree, no fortress is so strong as their common life.

  Antisthenes

  Brother, Strong, Sibling

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• The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.

  Jane Addams

  Inspiring, Peace, Equality

  Jane Addams (2012). “Twenty Years at Hull-House: With Autobiographical Notes”, p.76, Courier Corporation

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• Creating harmony amidst diversity is a fundamental issue of the twenty-first century. While celebrating the unique characteristics of different peoples and cultures, we have to create solidarity on the level of our common humanity, our common life. Without such solidarity, there will be no future for the human race. Diversity should not beget conflict in the world, but richness.

  Daisaku Ikeda

  Unique, Creating, Issues

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• I love, cherish, and respect women in my mind, in my heart, and in my soul. This love of women is the soil in which my life is rooted. It is the soil of our common life together. My life grows out of this soil. In any other soil, I would die. In whatever ways I am strong, I am strong because of the power and passion of this nurturant love.

  Andrea Dworkin

  Strong, Passion, Heart

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• The poor and the low have their way of expressing the last facts of philosophy as well as you. "Blessed be nothing," and "The worse things are, the better they are," are proverbs which express the transcendentalism of common life.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Philosophy, Blessed, Way

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.129, Courier Corporation

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• The faith of a church or of a nation is an adequate faith only when it inspires and enables people to give of their time and energy to shape the various institutions - social, economic, and political - of the common life.

  James Luther Adams

  Faith, People, Giving

  James Luther Adams (1976). “On being human religiously: selected essays in religion and society”, Beacon Press (MA)

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• Let us become thoroughly sensible of the weakness, blindness, and narrow limits of human reason: Let us duly consider its uncertainty and endless contrarieties, even in subjects of common life and practice.... When these topics are displayed in their full light, as they are by some philosophers and almost all divines; who can retain such confidence in this frail faculty of reason as to pay any regard to its determinations in points so sublime, so abstruse, so remote from common life and experience?

  David Hume

  Determination, Practice, Light

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.4014, Delphi Classics

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