Commonplace Quotes

• As a rule, said Holmes, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Literature, Faces, Mysterious

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1892). “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”, p.43

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• To make mistakes is human; to stumble is commonplace; to be able to laugh at yourself is maturity.

  William Arthur Ward

  Inspirational, Laughter, Attitude

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• Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

  Charles Mingus

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Music

  Charles Mingus' statement in Mainliner Magazine (July 1977); later quoted in Olivia Bertagnolli "Creativity and the writing process" (p. 182), 1982.

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• Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting.

  Gertrude Stein

  Interesting, Corny, Imitation

  Quoted in Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin My Autobiography (1964).

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• Standing ovations have become far too commonplace. What we need are ovations where the audience members all punch and kick one another.

  George Carlin

  Needs, Ovation, Corny

  George Carlin (2002). “Napalm & Silly Putty”, Hyperion

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• Making the simple complicated is commonplace.

  Charles Mingus

  Creativity, Simple, Plain Language

  Charles Mingus' statement in Mainliner Magazine (July 1977); later quoted in Olivia Bertagnolli "Creativity and the writing process" (p. 182), 1982.

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• Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature.

  Jean Cocteau

  Jobs, Light, Done

  "A Call to Order". Book by Jean Cocteau, 1926.

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• We can escape the commonplace only by manipulating it, controlling it, thrusting it into our dreams or surrendering it to the free play of our subjectivity.

  Raoul Vaneigem

  Dream, Play, Subjectivity

  Raoul Vaneigem, Donald Nicholson-Smith (2012). “The Revolution of Everyday Life”, p.3, PM Press

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• Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.

  Cecil Beaton

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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• As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is, the less mysterious it proves to be.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Book, Mysterious, Language

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1892). “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”, p.43

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• The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved.

  Jack Kerouac

  Hippie, Yawning, People

  On the Road pt. 1, ch. 1 (1957)

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• My advice is really this: what we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application-not far far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech-and learn them so well that words become works.

  Seneca the Younger

  Teaching, Writing, Happy Life

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• Because the only people for me are the mad ones.

  Jack Kerouac

  Hippie, Yawning, People

  On the Road pt. 1, ch. 1 (1957)

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• Originality is never embraced as quickly as the commonplace.

  Franklyn Ajaye

  Originality

  Franklyn Ajaye (2002). “Comic Insights: The Art of Stand-up Comedy”

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• The conviction that everything that happens on earth must be comprehensible to man can lead to interpreting history by commonplaces.

  Hannah Arendt

  Knowledge, Men, Earth

  Hannah Arendt (1973). “The Origins of Totalitarianism”, p.8, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Look up . . . and see them.
  The teaching stars,
  beyond worship
  and commonplace tongues.

  Dorothy Dunnett

  Stars, Teaching, Looks

  Dorothy Dunnett (1999). “The Game Of Kings: The Lymond Chronicles Book One”, p.194, Penguin UK

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• We look for visions of heaven and we never dream that all the time God is in the commonplace things and people around us.

  Oswald Chambers

  God, Dream, People

  Oswald Chambers (2011). “The Quotable Oswald Chambers”, p.276, Discovery House

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• Wherever souls are being tried and ripened, in whatever commonplace and homely way, there God is hewing out the pillars for His temple.

  Phillips Brooks

  Soul, Way, Pillars

  Phillips Brooks, John Cotton Brooks (1910). “Sermons: The candle of the Lord, and other sermons”

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• Where everything is possible miracles become commonplaces, but the familiar ceases to be self-evident.

  Eric Hoffer

  Self, Miracle, Corny

  Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

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• Me, I've seen 45 years and I've only figured out one thing. That's this: if a person would just make the effort, there's something to be learned from everything. From even the most ordinary, commonplace things, there's always something you can learn. I read somewhere that they said there's even different philosophies in razors. Fact is, if it weren't for that, nobody'd survive.

  Haruki Murakami

  Philosophy, Years, Effort

  "Pinball, 1973". Book by Haruki Murakami, September 1985.

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• I always find it kind of embarrassing, kind of funny, and kind of exciting. In New York I'm recognized a lot, although nobody says anything. You know, they stare at you just a second too long. But in Paris it's not as commonplace to be recognized.

  Marc Jacobs

  New York, Paris, Long

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• It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring—with immense, even startling power.

  Raymond Carver

  Writing, Insightful, Stories

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories”, p.25, Vintage

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• It has always seemed to me. ever since early childhood, amid all the commonplaces of life, i was very near to a kingdom of ideal beauty. Between it and me hung only a thin veil. I could never draw it quite aside, but sometimes a wind fluttered it and I caught a glimpse of the enchanting realms beyond-only a glimpse-but those glimpses have always made life worthwhile.

  Lucy Maud Montgomery

  Wind, Childhood, Kingdoms

  Lucy Maud Montgomery (2014). “The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career”, p.25, Simon and Schuster

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• To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Men, Ignorant, Corny

  Jorge Luis Borges, Donald A. Yates, James East Irby (1964). “Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings”, p.114, New Directions Publishing

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• Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Mind, Literature, Littles

  Thousand and One Epigrams (1911) p. 133

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