Browse 6954 quotes about Common.
“O, when the heart is, full, when bitter thoughts come crowding thickly up for utterance, and the poor common words of courtesy are such a very mockery, how much the bursting heart may pour itself in prayer!”
Source: Poems of Nathaniel Parker Willis ...
“Common people, whether lords or shop-keepers, are slow to understand that possession, whether in the shape of birth or lands or money or intellect, is a small affair in the difference between men.”
Source: The Complete Novels of George Macdonald (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, Lilith, David Elginbrod, Malcolm, Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood, Wilfrid Cumbermede and many more
“As to the pure all things are pure, so the common mind sees far more vulgarity in others than the mind developed in genuine refinement.”
Source: The Complete Novels of George Macdonald (Illustrated): The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, Lilith, David Elginbrod, Malcolm, Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood, Wilfrid Cumbermede and many more
“Imagination, where it is truly creative, is a faculty, and not a quality; it looks before and after, it gives the form that makes all the parts work together harmoniously toward a given end, its seat is in the higher reason, and it is efficient only as a servant of the will. Imagination, as it is too often misunderstood, is mere fantasy, the image-making power, common to all who have the gift of dreams.”
Source: The English Poets Lessing: Rousseau
“Nature seems to have taken a particular care to disseminate her blessings among the different regions of the world, with an eye to their mutual intercourse and traffic among mankind, that the nations of the several parts of the globe might have a kind of dependence upon one another and be united together by their common interest.”
Source: The Works of Joseph Addison: The Spectator, no. 1-314
“There is more of turn than of truth in a saying of Seneca, "That drunkenness does not produce but discover faults." Common experience teaches the contrary. Wine throws a man out of himself, and infuses dualities into the mind which she is a stranger to in her sober moments.”
“There is a kind of grandeur and respect which the meanest and most insignificant part of mankind endeavor to procure in the little circle of their friends and acquaintance. The poorest mechanic, nay, the man who lives upon common alms, gets him his set of admirers, and delights in that superiority which he enjoys over those who are in some respects beneath him. This ambition, which is natural to the soul of man, might, methinks, receive a very happy turn; and, if it were rightly directed, contribute as much to a person's advantage, as it generally does to his uneasiness and disquiet.”
Source: The spectator
“That fine part of our construction, the eye, seems as much the receptacle and seat of our passions as the mind itself; and at least it is the outward portal to introduce them to the house within, or rather the common thoroughfare to let our affections pass in and out.”
“In the common run of mankind, for one that is wise and good you find ten of a contrary character.”
Source: Works, including the whole contents of Bp. Hurd's edition: withletters and other pieces not found in any previous collection; and Macaulay's essay on his life and works
“This is the magnanimity of authorship, when a writer having a topic presented to him, fruitful of beauties for common minds, waives his privilege, and trusts to the judicious few for understanding the reason of his abstinence.”
Source: Eliana: Being the Hitherto Uncollected Writings of Charles Lamb
“When the dust of death has choked a great man's voice, the common words he said turn oracles, the common thoughts he yoked like horses draw like griffins.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Illustrated)
“Is it not a thing divine to have a smile which, none know how, has the power to lighten the weight of that enormous chain which all the living in common drag behind them?”
Source: TOILERS OF THE SEA
“Economics anxiety may be even more common than the often identified 'math anxiety,' for unlike math, which has its personal uses, economics is seen as a mysterious set of forces manipulated from above.”
Source: Moving Beyond Words: Essays on Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking the Boundaries of Gender
“The most common characteristic of women's history is to be lost and discovered, lost again and rediscovered, lost once more and re-rediscovered - a process of tragic waste and terrible silences that will continue until women's stories are a full and equal part of the human story.”
“To write a genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation, who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
“All the arts, which have a tendency to raise man in the scale of being, have a certain common band of union, and are connected, if I may be allowed to say so, by blood-relationship with one another.”
“It is a common saying that many pecks of salt must be eaten before the duties of friendship can be discharged.”
“Death is an equall doome
To good and bad, the common In of rest.”
Source: The Works of Edmund Spenser
“We are all bound thither; we are hastening to the same common goal. Black death calls all things under the sway of its laws.
[Lat., Tendimus huc omnes; metam properamus ad unam. Omnia sub leges mors vocat atra suas.]”
“It is common to overlook what is near by keeping the eye fixed on something remote.”
“Differences, we know, are never so effectually laid asleep as by some common calamity; an enemy unites all to whom he threatens danger.”
Source: The Rambler: In Four Volumes..
“It is very common for us to desire most what we are least qualified to obtain.”
Source: The Rambler: In Four Volumes
“It is wonderful what a difference learning makes upon people even in the common intercourse of life, which does not appear to be much connected with it.”
Source: Life of Johnson: Including Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and Johnson's Diary of a Journey Into North Wales
“Large offers and sturdy rejections are among the most common topics of falsehood.”
Source: The beauties of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: consisting of maxims and observations, moral, critical, and miscellaneous: to which are now added biographical anecdotes of the doctor, selected from the works of Mrs. Piozzi;--his Life, recently published by Mr. Boswell, and other authentic testimonies; also his will, and the sermon he wrote for the late Doctor Dodd
“The greatness of an artist or a writer does not depend on what he has in common with other artists and writers, but on what he has peculiar to himself.”
Source: Dreamthorp
“Large eyes were admired in Greece, where they still prevail. They are the finest of all when they have the internal look, which is not common. The stag or antelope eye of the Orientals is beautiful and lamping, but is accused of looking skittish and indifferent. "The epithet of 'stag-eyed,'" says Lady Wortley Montgu, speaking of a Turkish love-song, "pleases me extremely; and I think it a very lively image of the fire and indifference in his mistress' eye.”
Source: Men, Women, and Books: A Selection of Sketches, Essays, and Critical Memoirs, from His Uncollected Prose Writings
“To breed up the son to common sense is evermore the parent's least expense.”
“There is no figure more common in scripture, and none more beautiful, than that by which Christ is likened unto light. Incomprehensible in its nature, itself the first visible, and that by which all things are seen, light represents to us Christ. Whose generation none can declare, but Who must shine upon us ere we can know aught aright, whether of things Divine or human.”
“The world could not long ignore a holy church. The church is not despised because it is holy: it is despised because it is not holy enough. There is not enough difference between the people inside the church and those outside to be impressive. A church in which saints were as common as now they are rare would convict the world, if only by contrast. Sanctity cannot be ignored. Even a little bit is potent. So far from the gates of hell prevailing against it, it hammers on their triple steel.”
“The most disheartening tendency common among readers is to tear out one sentence from a work, as a criterion of the writer's ideas or personality.”
Source: Anarchism: Top Crime Collections
“Defend me, therefore, common sense, say
From reveries so airy, from the toil
Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing up.”
“And hast thou sworn on every slight pretence,
Till perjuries are common as bad pence,
While thousands, careless of the damning sin,
Kiss the book's outside, who ne'er look'd within?”
Source: Poetical works
“There is one way by which a strolling player may be ever secure of success; that is, in our theatrical way of expressing it, to make a great deal of the character. To speak and act as in common life is not playing, nor is it what people come to see; natural speaking, like sweet wine, runs glibly over the palate and scarcely leaves any taste behind it; but being high in a part resembles vinegar, which grates upon the taste, and one feels it while he is drinking.”
Source: The Works of Oliver Goldsmith: The bee. Essays. Unacknowledged essays. Prefaces, introductions, etc
“A treatment method or an educational method that will work for one child may not work for another child. The one common denominator for all of the young children is that early intervention does work, and it seems to improve the prognosis.”
“To build a twenty-first-century economy, America must revive a nineteenth-century habit--investing in the common, national economic resources that enable every person and every firm to create wealth and value.”
“One can hardly tell women that washing up saucepans is their divine mission, [so] they are told that bringing up children is their divine mission. But the way things are in the world, bringing up children has a great deal in common with washing up saucepans.”
Source: Simone De Beauvoir Today
“If today there is a proper American "sphere of influence" it is this fragile sphere called earth upon which all men live and share a common fate--a sphere where our influence must be for peace and justice.”
“No one sleeps in this room without the dream of a common language.”
Source: The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977
“Nature eschews regular lines; she does not shape her lines by a common model. Not one of Eve's numerous progeny in all respects resembles her who first culled the flowers of Eden. To the infinite variety and picturesque inequality of nature we owe the great charm of her uncloying beauty.”
“The Union has become not merely a physical union of states, but rather a spiritual union in common ideals of our people. Within it is room for every variety of opinion, every possible experiment in social progress. Out of such variety comes growth, but only if we preserve and maintain our spiritual solidarity.”
Source: Herbert Hoover: Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President
“When we do not know the truth of a thing, it is good that there should exist a common error which determines the mind of man, as, for example, the moon, to which is attributed the change of seasons, the progress of diseases, etc. For the chief malady of man is a restless curiosity about things which he cannot understand; and it is not so bad for him to be in error as to be curious to no purpose.”
Source: Pascal's Pensees
“Selfish interest is one of the most common obstructions to the advance of truth.”
Source: In His Image: By William Jennings Bryan
“Dorian Yates and I have nothing in common, physically speaking. He's a Volkswagen; I'm a Porsche.”
“The birds of the air die to sustain thee; the beasts of the field die to nourish thee; the fishes of the sea die to feed thee. Our stomachs are their common sepulchre. Good God! with how many deaths are our poor lives patched up! how full of death is the life of momentary man!”
Source: Enchiridion Institutions, Essays and Maxims, political, moral & divine. Divided into four centuries. By Francis Quarles
“The World's a Printing-House, our words, our thoughts,
Our deeds, are characters of several sizes.
Each soul is a Compos'tor, of whose faults
The Levites are Correctors; Heaven Revises.
Death is the common Press, from whence being driven,
We're gather'd, Sheet by Sheet, and bound for Heaven.”
“The grave is a common treasury, to which we must all be taken.”
“I am against censorship. I prefer the chaos of uncontrollable communication of all sorts to selective banning of certain materials. I do not think human beings can be trusted to be above politics and to promote the common good. One group's common good is another group's evil.”
Source: What Do Women Want?: Essays by Erica Jong
“But we should ask the question: Why should a writer be more than a writer? Why should a writer be a guru? Why are we supposed to be psychiatrists? Isn't it enough to write and tell the truth? It's not like telling the truth is common. Writers are the earthworms of society. We aerate the soil. That's enough.”
“when dancing is right, the movement possesss a logic common to us all, an inevitability that takes it beyond the personal and egocentric and makes of it classical art.”
Source: Push Comes to Shove
“What most of all enables a man to serve the public is not wealth, but content and independence; which, requiring no superfluity at home, distracts not the mind from the common good.”
Source: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans: Top Biography