Commonplace Quotes - Page 5

• The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage. That is a commonplace truth, but one to which my studies are always bringing me back. It is the central point in my conception. I see it at the end of all my reflections.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Reflection, Law, Moral

  "De la supériorité des mœurs sur les lois". Oeuvres complètes, Volume VIII, p. 286., 1831.

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• I could not for my soul distinguish ever the distinction between "religious anger" and "commonplace anger", "religious killing" and "commonplace killing", "religious slandering and irreligious", and so forth.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Religious, Anger, Soul

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “Swami Vivekananda on Himself”, p.156, Advaita Ashrama

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• The concern is over what will happen as strong encryption becomes commonplace with all digital communications and stored data. Right now the use of encryption isn't all that widespread, but that state of affairs is expected to change rapidly.

  Dorothy E. Denning

  Strong, Communication, Data

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• Water reflects everything it encounters. This is so commonplace that we think water is blue, when in fact it has no color.... But the water, the glorious water everywhere, has taught me that we are more than what we reflect or love. This is the work of compassion: to embrace everything clearly without imposing who we are and without losing who we are.

  Mark Nepo

  Thinking, Compassion, Blue

  Mark Nepo (2000). “The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have”, p.150, Conari Press

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• I believe that in the future meditation could be as commonplace in schools and society as eco-awareness is now. It interests me that an ancient cure may be the solution to a modern problem.

  Paul McCartney

  Believe, School, Meditation

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• Like the bat, the Sufi is asleep to 'things of the day' - the familiar struggle for existence which the ordinary man finds all-important - and vigilant while others are asleep. In other words, he keeps awake the spiritual attention dormant in others. That 'mankind sleeps in a nightmare of unfulfillment' is a commonplace of Sufi literature

  Idries Shah

  Spiritual, Struggle, Sleep

  Idries Shah (1964). “The Sufis”, Anchor Books

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• The poetry and transgression that was so much of surrealism's anarchic force has been recruited into mainstream culture. It has been made commonplace by television and magazine merchandising, by computer games and Internet visuals, by film and MTV, by the fashion shoot.

  Graham Joyce

  Fashion, Mtv, Games

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• Life is either a reproducible, almost commonplace manifestation of matter, given certain conditions, or a miracle. Too many steps are involved to allow for something in between.

  Christian de Duve

  Miracle, Matter, Steps

  Christian De Duve (1995). “Vital Dust: Life As a Cosmic Imperative”, Basic Books

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• A designer…has the true responsibility to give his audiences not what they think they want, for this is almost invariably the usual, the accustomed, the obvious, and hence, the unspontaneous.  Rather, he should provide that quality of thought and intuition which rejects the ineffectual commonplace for effectual originality.

  Lester Beall

  Responsibility, Thinking, Giving

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• Through TV and moving pictures a child may see more violence in thirty minutes than the average adult experiences in a lifetime. What children see on the screen is violence as an almost casual commonplace of daily living. Violence becomes the fundamental principle of society, the natural law of humanity. Killing is as common as taking a walk, a gun more natural than an umbrella. Children learn to take pride in force and to feel ashamed of ordinary sympathy. They are encouraged to forget that people have feelings.

  Fredric Wertham

  Children, Moving, Pride

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• If you don't see the Internet as an opportunity, it will become a threat. In two or three year's time, the Internet will become as commonplace in the office as the telephone.

  Tony Blair

  Opportunity, Years, Two

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• Someday hopefully it won’t be necessary to allocate a special evening to celebrate where we are and how far we’ve come…someday women writers, producers and crew members will be so commonplace, and roles and salaries for actresses will outstrip those for men, and pigs will fly.

  Sigourney Weaver

  Men, Pigs, Special

  "'Women In Hollywood' draws stars". www.hollywoodreporter.com. October 7, 2008.

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• This is one of the goals of the Jewish way of living: to experience commonplace deeds as spiritual adventures, to feel the hidden love and wisdom in all things.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Spiritual, Adventure, Goal

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1976). “God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism”, p.49, Macmillan

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• Chinese landscape paintings often include tiny figures - as if to emphasize the grandeur of nature of which humankind is one small part. Think of the world in these terms, as larger in scale than the human. This is a healthy corrective to the commonplace view that people own the land, which exists to serve their purposes. Think big and live small.

  Barbara Ann Kipfer

  Thinking, Views, Land

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• God never intended His people to be ordinary or commonplace. His intentions were that they should be on fire for Him, conscious of His divine power, realizing the glory of the cross that foreshadows the crown.

  Smith Wigglesworth

  Fire, People, Ordinary

  Smith Wigglesworth (2013). “Smith Wigglesworth on Manifesting the Divine Nature: Abiding in Power Every Day of the Year”, p.15, Destiny Image Publishers

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• They were upon their great theme: "When I get to be a man!" Being human, though boys, they considered their present estate too commonplace to be dwelt upon. So, when the old men gather, they say: "When I was a boy!" It really is the land of nowadays that we never discover.

  Booth Tarkington

  Boys, Men, Land

  Booth Tarkington (2013). “The Essential Booth Tarkington Collection”, p.2630, eBookIt.com

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• It is the treating of the commonplace with the feeling of the sublime that gives to art its true power.

  Jean-Francois Millet

  Art, True Power, Giving

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• In our time the blasphemies are threadbare. Pessimism is now patently, as it always was essentially, more commonplace than piety. Profanity is now more than an affectation - it is a
  convention. The curse against God is Exercise I in the primer of minor poetry.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Exercise, Pessimism, Conventions

  "The Defendant". Book by G. K. Chesterton, 1901.

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• It is the gift of all poets to find the commonplace astonishing, and the astonishing quite natural.

  Margery Sharp

  Poet, Natural, Astonishing

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• Romance is the truth of imagination and boyhood. Homer's horses clear the world at a bound. The child's eye needs no horizon to its prospect. The oriental tale is not too vast. Pearls dropping from trees are only falling leaves in autumn. The palace that grew up in a night merely awakens a wish to live in it. The impossibilities of fifty years are the commonplaces of five.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Horse, Children, Fall

  Robert Aris WILLMOTT (1851). “Pleasures,objects and advantages of literature”, p.60

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• It seems to me divorce is so common now. It ought to be more institutionalized. It's like a head-on collision every time. It's supposed to be a surprise but it's commonplace.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Divorce, Common, Surprise

  Source: business.highbeam.com

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• Success in business is seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power which is untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of commonplace capacity.

  William Hazlitt

  Business, Self, Owing

  William Hazlitt (2008). “Liber Amoris and Related Writings”, Carcanet Press

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• It is no easy matter to say commonplace things in an original way.

  Horace

  Matter, Way, Easy

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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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• 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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