Commonplace Quotes - Page 5

• In this commonplace world every one is said to be romantic who either admires a fine thing or does one.

  Alexander Pope

  Romance, Doe, World

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• Science as an intellectual exercise enriches our culture, and is in itself ennobling. ... Though to the layman, the world revealed by the chemist may seem more commonplace, it is not so to him. Each new insight into how the atoms in their interactions express themselves in structure and transformations, not only of inanimate matter, but particularly also of living matter, provides a thrill.

  Henry Taube

  Exercise, Science, Intellectual

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• Science is wonderful at destroying metaphysical answers, but incapable of providing substitute ones. Science takes away foundations without providing a replacement. Whether we want to be there or not, science has put us in the position of having to live without foundations. It was shocking when Nietzsche said this, but today it is commonplace; our historical position-and no end to it is in sight-is that of having to philosophise without 'foundations'.

  Hilary Putnam

  Science, Sight, Historical

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• [Before the time of Benjamin Peirce it never occurred to anyone that mathematical research] was one of the things for which a mathematical department existed. Today it is a commonplace in all the leading universities. Peirce stood alone-a mountain peak whose absolute height might be hard to measure, but which towered above all the surrounding country.

  Julian Coolidge

  Country, Science, Mountain Peaks

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• No society ever seems to have succumbed to boredom. Man has developed an obvious capacity for surviving the pompous reiteration of the commonplace.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Men, Boredom, Capacity

  John Kenneth Galbraith (1998). “The Affluent Society”, p.16, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• No one can write a best seller by trying to. He must write with complete sincerity; the clichés that make you laugh, the hackneyed characters, the well-worn situations, the commonplace story that excites your derision, seem neither hackneyed, well worn nor commonplace to him. ... The conclusion is obvious: you cannot write anything that will convince unless you are yourself convinced. The best seller sells because he writes with his heart's blood.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Writing, Heart, Character

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• Prune what is turgid, elevate what is commonplace, arrange what is disorderly, introduce rhythm where the language is harsh, modify where it is too absolute.

  Quintilian

  Writing, Language, Introducing

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• In books, the proportion of exceptional to commonplace people is high; in reality, very low.

  Aldous Huxley

  Book, Writing, Reality

  "The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley".

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• I blame myself for not often enough seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Somewhere in his journals, Dostoyevky remarks that a writer can begin anywhere, at the most commonplace thing, scratch around in it long enough, pry and dig away long enough, and lo!, soon he will hit upon the marvelous.

  Saul Bellow

  Writing, Long, Ordinary

  Saul Bellow, Gloria L. Cronin, Ben Siegel (1994). “Conversations with Saul Bellow”, p.138, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Surprise quality can be achieved in many ways. It may be produced by a certain stimulating geometrical relationship between elements in the picture or through the human interest of the situation photographed or by calling our attention to some commonplace but fascinating thing we have never noticed before or it can be achieved by looking at an everyday thing in a new interesting way.

  Alexey Brodovitch

  Photography, Everyday Things, Interesting

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• Language is the soul of intellect, and reading is the essential process by which that intellect is cultivated beyond the commonplace experiences of everyday life.

  Charles Scribner IV

  Reading, Aquariums, Soul

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• Good habits are developed in the workshops of our daily lives. It is not in the great moments of test and trial that character is built. That is only when it is displayed. The habits that direct our lives and form our character are fashioned in the often uneventful, commonplace routine of life.

  Delbert L. Stapley

  Character, Routine, Trials

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• The habit of expression leads to the search for something to express. Something remains as a residuum of the commonplace itself, if one strikes out every commonplace in the expression.

  Henry Adams

  Expression, Habit, Strikes

  Henry Adams (2015). “The Education of Henry Adams”, p.89, Booklassic

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• I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do but to wait. I do not think we will have to wait for long.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Stars, Thinking, Fire

  Arthur C. Clarke (2012). “Expedition to Earth”, p.195, RosettaBooks

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• No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Country, Writing, Simple

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1983). “Novels”, p.854, Library of America

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• My professional life has been a constant record of disillusion, and many things that seem wonderful to most men are the every-day commonplaces of my business.

  Harry Houdini

  Men, Records, Wonderful

  Harry Houdini (2007). “Miracle Mongers and Their Methods: A Complete ExposT”, p.6, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I can think of numberless males, from Bonnard to Callahan, who have photographed their lovers and spouses, but I am having trouble finding parallel examples among my sister photographers. The act of looking appraisingly at a man, making eye contact on the street, asking to photograph him, studying his body, has always been a brazen venture for a woman, though, for a man, these acts are commonplace, even expected.

  Sally Mann

  Eye, Men, Thinking

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• The inspired scribbler always has the gift for gossip in our common usage he or she can always inspire the commonplace with an uncommon flavor, and transform trivialities by some original grace or sympathy or humor or affection.

  Elizabeth Drew

  Sympathy, Gossip, Grace

  Elizabeth Drew (1964). “The Literature of Gossip”

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• It takes the passage of time before an image of a commonplace subject can be assessed. The great difficulty of what I attempt is seeing beyond the moment; the everydayness of life gets in the way of the eternal.

  George A Tice

  Photography, Way, Moments

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• The insular arrogance of the English character is a commonplace joke.

  Goldwin Smith

  Character, Arrogance, Corny

  Goldwin Smith (1881). “Lectures and Essays”, New York : Macmillan

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• An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does he gets beyond his hearers.

  William Hazlitt

  Doe, Public Speaking, Orators

  William Hazlitt (1845). “Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners”

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• The air is an extremely dangerous, jealous and exacting mistress. Once under the spell most lovers are faithful to the end, which is not always old age. Even those masters and princes of aerial fighting, the survivors of fifty mortal duels in the high air who have come scatheless through the War and all its perils, have returned again and again to their love and perished too often in some ordinary commonplace flight undertaken for pure amusement.

  Winston Churchill

  War, Jealous, Fighting

  Sir Winston Churchill, Andrew Scotland (1965). “Churchill on men and events: a selection from "Thoughts and adventures" and "Great contemporaries"”

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• Eschew the ordinary, disdain the commonplace. If you have a single-minded need for something, let it be the unusual, the esoteric, the bizarre, the unexpected.

  Chuck Jones

  Ordinary, Needs, Esoteric

  Chuck Jones (1999). “Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist”, p.23, Macmillan

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• To me, nostalgia is nothing more than a mindless plundering of the past for the commonplace.

  Mel Torme

  Music, Past, Jazz

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• It is an accepted commonplace in psychology that the spiritual level of people acting as a crowd is far lower than the mean of each individual's intelligence or morality.

  Christian Lous Lange

  Spiritual, Mean, People

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