Commonplace Quotes - Page 11

• Truths that startled the generation in which they were first announced become in the next age the commonplaces of conversation; as the famous airs of operas which thrilled the first audiences come to be played on hand-organs in the streets.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Hands, Air, Age

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1888). “Longfellow's Days: The Longfellow Prose Birthday Book : Extracts from the Journals and Letters of H. W. Longfellow”

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• A Wise man knows that much of what he says and does is commonplace and trivial. His thoughts are not all solemn and sacred in his own eyes. He is able to laugh at himself and is not offended when others make him a subject whereon to exercise their wit.

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Wise, Eye, Exercise

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

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• My curiosity was in no way cruel. Deviations from the commonplace attracted me strongly, as they still do; and to me the hermaphrodite and the living skeleton were interesting for the same reason as was Creatore, or the resplendent Guardsmen of the bands - because such people did not often come my way, and I hoped that they might impart some great revelation to me, some insight which would help me to a clearer understanding of the world about me.

  Robertson Davies

  Skeletons, Interesting, People

  "I Remember Creatore". Essay by Robertson Davies, 1948.

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• Usually when I drank too much, I could guess why I did so, the objective being to murder a state of consciousness that I didn't have the courage to sustain--a fear of heights, which sometimes during the carnival of the 1960s accompanied my attempts to transform the bourgeois journalist into an avant-garde novelist. The stepped-up ambition was a commonplace among the would-be William Faulkners of my generation; nearly always it resulted in commercial failure and literary embarrassment.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Ambition, Height, Too Much

  "The war on drugs and alcohol is a war against human nature" by Lewis Lapham, www.theguardian.com. December 10, 2012.

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• The acceptance of ambiguity implies more than the commonplace understanding that some good things and some bad things happen to us. It means that we know that good and evil are inextricably intermixed in human affairs; that they contain, and sometimes embrace, their opposites; that success may involve failure of a different kind, and failure may be a kind of triumph.

  Sydney J. Harris

  Failure, Mean, Acceptance

  Sydney J. Harris (1986). “Clearing the ground”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Every commonplace or trite observation is not a truism.

  Charles Lamb

  Observation, Truism

  Charles Lamb (2008). “The Life, Letters, and Writings of Charles Lamb”, p.159, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Science fiction that's just about people wandering around in space ships shooting each other with ray guns is very dull. I like it when it enables you to do fairly radical reinterpretations of human experience, just to show all the different interpretations that can be put on apparently fairly simple and commonplace events. That I find fun.

  Douglas Adams

  Fun, Gun, Simple

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• It is a commonplace that Racine is untranslatable. This is not because his verse is difficult, but because it is not.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Difficult, Verses

  Kenneth Rexroth, Bradford Morrow (1989). “More Classics Revisited”, p.54, New Directions Publishing

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• Commonplace people have an answer for everything and nothing ever surprises them. They try to look as though they knew what you were about to say better than you did yourself, and when it is their turn to speak, they repeat with great assurance something that they have heard other people say, as though it were their own invention.

  Eugene Delacroix

  People, Trying, Looks

  "The Journal of Eugene Delacroix: A Selection". Book edited by Hubert Wellington, translated by Lucy Norton, Cornell University Press, February 25, 1852 (p. 152), 1980.

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• The office of the leisure class in social evolution is to retard the movement and to conserve what is obsolescent. This proposition is by no means novel; it has long been one of the commonplaces of popular opinion.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Mean, Class, Long

  Thorstein Veblen (2012). “The Theory of the Leisure Class”, p.130, Courier Corporation

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• A commonplace of political rhetoric has it that the quality of a civilization may be measured by how it cares for its elderly. Just as surely, the future of a society may be forecast by how it cares for its young.

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan

  Elderly, Civilization, Political

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1987). “Family and Nation: The Godkin Lectures, Harvard University”, Harcourt

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• You cannot gauge the intelligence of an American by talking with him; you must work with him. The American polishes and refines his way of doing things-even the most commonplace-the way the French of the 17th century polished their maxims.

  Eric Hoffer

  Talking, America, Gauges

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

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• It is commonplace that a problem stated is well on its way to solution, for statement of the nature of a problem signifies that the underlying quality is being transformed into determinate distinctions of terms and relations or has become an object of articulate thought.

  John Dewey

  Quality, Way, Problem

  John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, Paul Kurtz (2008). “The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1929-1930”, p.249, SIU Press

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• In this climate - with belief in guardian angels and creationism becoming commonplace - making fun of religion is as risky as burning a flag in an American Legion hall.

  Wendy Kaminer

  Fun, Angel, Atheism

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• Police thrillers are so widely read and police dramas so commonplace on television that many people think they have a good understanding of what a cop's world is like. But in truth that world is seldom revealed with anything approaching verisimilitude. We get it with The Wagon.

  Daniel Horan

  Drama, Thinking, People

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• It seemed incredible to me, that physical courage should be so commonplace and revered, while moral courage . . . is so rare and despised.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Moral, Incredibles, Should

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• Youth -- nothing else worth having in the world...and I had youth, the transitory, the fugitive, now, completely and abundantly. Yet what was I going to do with it? Certainly not squander its gold on the commonplace quest for riches and respectability, and then secretly lament the price that had to be paid for these futile ideals. Let those who wish have their respectability -- I wanted freedom, freedom to indulge in whatever caprice struck my fancy, freedom to search in the farthermost corners of the earth for the beautiful, the joyous and the romantic.

  Richard Halliburton

  Beautiful, Indulge In, Wish

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• The glamour of air travel - its aspirational meaning in the public imagination - disappeared before its luxury did, dissipating as flying gradually became commonplace.

  Virginia Postrel

  Air, Luxury, Imagination

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• The drama's altar isn't on the stage: it is candle-sticked and flowered in the box office. There is the gold, though there be no frankincense or myrrh; and the gospel for the day always The Play will Run for a Year. The Dove of Inspiration, of the desire for inspiration, has flown away from it; and on it's roof, now, the commonplace crow caws candidly.

  Sean O'Casey

  Running, Drama, Inspiration

  Sean O'Casey (2011). “Autobiographies III: Rose and Crown and Sunset and Evening Star”, p.413, Faber & Faber

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• It is presentation which lifts the card trick from the level of the commonplace puzzle to the status of an unforgettable and inexplicable mystery.

  Jean Hugard

  Magic, Cards, Levels

  Jean Hugard, Frederick Braué (2012). “Expert Card Technique”, p.573, Courier Corporation

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• It seems to be a general rule that sciences begin their development with the unusual. They have to develop considerable sophistication before they interest themselves in the commonplace.

  Ralph Linton

  Science, Development, Unusual

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• In today’s interconnected and globalized world, it is now commonplace for people of dissimilar world views, faiths and races to live side by side. It is a matter of great urgency, therefore, that we find ways to cooperate with one another in a spirit of mutual acceptance and respect.

  Dalai Lama

  Respect, Buddhist, Buddhism

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• It is a commonplace that the League of Nations is not yet-what its most enthusiastic protagonists intended it to be

  Hjalmar Branting

  League, Corny, Enthusiastic

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• Wine has lit up for me the pages of literature, and revealed in life romance lurking in the commonplace.

  Duff Cooper

  Wine, Romance, Literature

  Duff Cooper (2011). “Old Men Forget”, p.56, Faber & Faber

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• Why do most great pictures look uncontrived? Why do photographers bother with the deception, especially since it so often requires the hardest work of all? The answer is, I think, that the deception is necessary if the goal of art is to be reached: only pictures that look as if they had been easily made can convincingly suggest that beauty is commonplace.

  Robert Adams

  Art, Thinking, Goal

  Robert Adams (1989). “Beauty in photography: essays in defense of traditional values”

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