Common Quotes - Page 28

• The writer of these lines has nothing whatsoever to teach anyone; his words are just his contribution to our common discussion of what must inevitably be for us the most important subject which could be discussed by sentient beings.

  Wei Wu Wei

  Important, Lines, Teach

  Wei Wu Wei (2004). “Open Secret”, p.24, Sentient Publications

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• A two-speed Europe will not be a strong Europe. The idea of making decisions and policies in a narrow circle, disregarding smaller EU members, will make it hard to engage them to commit to a common policy, which will weaken the union.

  Georgi Parvanov

  Strong, Europe, Circles

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• It became easy for me to detach myself from the course of life, so that while my hands and mind were engaged in the common affairs of every day, my spirit maintained its attitude of communion with God.

  John G. Lake

  Attitude, Hands, Mind

  John G. Lake (2012). “Living In God's Power”, p.172, Whitaker House

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• Travel opens different eyes to different things, shows things we've never seen before, shows the world from entirely different angles. That's the power of drawing and the power of travel. They both make the familiar unfamiliar and vice versa. They show what we all have in common and what we may have missed thanks to preconceptions that may have marred our vision.

  Danny Gregory

  Eye, Drawing, Vision

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• Man is made of the wholly common, and custom is his nurse; woe then to them who lay irreverent hands on his old house-furniture, the dear inheritance from his forefathers: For time consecrates, and what is gray with age becomes religion.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Men, Hands, Nurse

  Friedrich Schiller (2015). “The Works of Frederick Schiller: Top Classic of German”, p.1260, 谷月社

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• We judge so superficially of things, that common words and actions spoke and done in an agreeable manner, with some knowledge of what passes in the world, often succeed beyond the greatest ability.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Judging, Done, World

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• The core of ethics runs deep in our species and is common to human beings everywhere. It survives the most appalling hardships and the most ruthless attempts to deprive human beings of their humanity. Nevertheless, some people resist the idea that his core has a biological basis which we have inherited from our pre-human ancestors.

  Peter Singer

  Running, Ideas, People

  Peter Singer (2011). “The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress”, p.27, Princeton University Press

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• I am of the level with common Astrologers; who, with an old paltry cant, and a few pot-hooks for planets to amuse the vulgar, have too long been suffered to abuse the world.

  Jonathan Swift

  Astrology, Long, Abuse

  Jonathan Swift (1856). “The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: Containing Interesting and Valuable Papers, Not Hitherto Published ... With Memoir of the Author”, p.253

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• If the street life, not the Whitechapel street life, but that of the common but so-called respectable part of town is in any city more gloomy, more ugly, more grimy, more cruel than in London, I certainly don't care to see it. Sometimes it occurs to one that possibly all the failures of this generation, the world over, have been suddenly swept into London, for the streets are a restless, breathing, malodorous pageant of the seedy of all nations.

  Willa Cather

  Breathing, Cities, This Generation

  "Willa Cather in Europe". Book by Willa Cather, 1956.

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• Anchorites used to ill-treat themselves in the way they did, so that the common people would not begrudge them the beatitude they would enjoy in heaven.

  Cesare Pavese

  People, Heaven, Way

  Cesare Pavese, Alma Elizabeth Murch (1961). “This Business of Living”, p.172, Transaction Publishers

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• Woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against "freedom of print," it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory. The nation ceases to be mindful of itself, it is deprived of its spiritual unity, and despite a supposedly common language, compatriots suddenly cease to understand one another.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Spiritual, Memories, Heart

  Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's Nobel lecture in literature delivered only to the Swedish Academy, www.nobelprize.org. 1970.

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• The trade of the petty usurer is hated with most reason: it makes a profit from currency itself, instead of making it from the process which currency was meant to serve. Their common characteristic is obviously their sordid avarice.

  Aristotle

  Reason, Currency, Characteristics

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• The sadistic person is as dependent on the submissive person as the latter is on the former; neither can live without the other. The difference is only that the sadistic person commands, exploits, hurts, humiliates, and that the masochistic person is commanded, exploited, hurt, humiliated. This is a considerable difference in a realistic sense; in a deeper emotional sense, the difference is not so great as that which they both have in common: fusion without integrity .

  Erich Fromm

  Hurt, Integrity, Emotional

  Erich Fromm (2014). “The Erich Fromm Reader: Readings Selected and Edited by Rainer Funk”, p.101, Open Road Media

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• Whether we are Christians or Muslims or nationalists or agnostics or atheists, we must first learn to forget our differences. If we have differences, let us differ in the closet; when we come out in front, let us not have anything to argue about until we get finished arguing with the man. If the late President Kennedy could get together with Khrushchev and exchange some wheat, we certainly have more in common with each other than Kennedy and Khrushchev had with each other.

  Malcolm X

  Christian, Atheist, Men

  "The Ballot or The Bullet". Malcolm X's speech at Cory Methodist Church in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964) as quoted in "Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements" edited by George Breitman, (pp. 23-44), 1965.

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• Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with; as if, observes our author himself, any originality but our own could be expected to content us! In fact all strange thing are apt, without fault of theirs, to estrange us at first view, and unhappily scarcely anything is perfectly plain, but what is also perfectly common.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Views, Firsts, Faults

  Thomas Carlyle, Henry Duff Traill (2010). “The Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.11, Cambridge University Press

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• When each citizen submits himself to the authority of law he does not thereby decrease his independence or freedom, but rather increases it. By recognizing that he is a part of a larger body which is banded together for a common purpose, he becomes more than an individual, he rises to a new dignity of citizenship. Instead of finding himself restricted and confined by rendering obedience to public law, he finds himself protected and defended and in the exercise of increased and increasing rights.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Exercise, Rights, Law

  "Freedom and its Obligations". Speech at Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, May 30, 1924.

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• It is a common fate -- a woman's lot -- To waste on one the riches of her soul, Who takes the wealth she gives him, but cannot Repay the interest, and much less the whole.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Women, Fate, Giving

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox (2016). “Complete Poetical Works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox (Delphi Classics)”, p.408, Delphi Classics

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• Nose-to-tail eating is not a bloodlust, testosterone-fueled offal hunt. It's common sense, and it's all good stuff.

  Fergus Henderson

  Common Sense, Stuff, Bloodlust

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• Reelfoot is, and has always been, a lake of mystery.In places it is bottomless. Other places the skeletons of the cypress-trees that went down when the earth sank, still stand upright so that if the sun shines from the right quarter, and the water is less muddy than common, a man, peering face downward into its depths, sees, or thinks he sees, down below him the bare top-limbs upstretching like drowned men's fingers, all coated with the mud of years and bandaged with pennons of the green lake slime.

  Irvin S. Cobb

  Men, Thinking, Lakes

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• Life is always uncertain, and common prudence dictates to every man the necessity of settling his temporal concerns, while it is in his power, and while the mind is calm and undisturbed.

  George Washington

  Life, Men, Mind

  George Washington (1860). “Recollections and private memoirs of Washington by his adopted son George Washington with a memoir of the author by his daughter; and illustrative and explanatory notes by Benson J. Loosing: With illustrations”, p.152

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• Forbear harping on what was of yore, for it is the common lot of mortals to sustain the ups and downs of fortune.

  Aesop

  Fortune, Ups & Downs, Mortals

  Aesop (2016). “Aesop's Fables - Complete Collection”, p.27, Lulu.com

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• The common man is impelled and controlled by interests; the superior, by ideas.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Men, Ideas, Interest

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

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• Unless we consent to lack the common things which men call success, we shall hardly become heroes or saints, philosophers or poets.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Hero, Men, Saint

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

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• It is a common error to imagine that to be stirring and voluble in a worthy cause is to be good and to do good.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Errors, Causes, Imagine

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

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• Alas, our rulers are not gods, but puny, fallible men, like the kings who constantly forget their parts, and we common men should be their prompters.

  Lin Yutang

  Kings, Men, Forget

  Lin Yutang, (2013). “Between Tears and Laughter”, p.11, Read Books Ltd

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