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Common Quotes

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Common Quotes

“The most common of all antagonisms arises from a man's taking a seat beside you on the train, a seat to which he is completely entitled.”

Men Common Train Arise Seats Entitled Monarchy Antagonism Beside You

Author:Robert Benchley

“No men can act with effect who do not act in concert; no men can act in concert who do not act with confidence; no men can act with confidence who are not bound together with common opinions, common affections, and common interests.”

Men Action Together Interest Common Opinion Effects Bounds Affection Concerts Common Interests

Author:Edmund Burke

“The common root, of course, comes out of Africa. That's the pulse.The African pulse. It's all the way back from . . . the old slave chants and up through the blues, the jazz, and up through rock. And it's all got the African pulse.”

Way Courses Common Rocks Roots Jazz Slave Pulse

Author:Duke Ellington

“John Locke invented common sense, and only Englishmen have had it ever since!”

Common Common Sense Englishmen

Author:Bertrand Russell

“There is something in the eloquence of the pulpit, when it is really eloquence, which is entitled to the highest praise and honour. The preacher who can touch and affect such an heterogeneous mass of hearers, on subjects limited, and long worn thread-bare in all common hands; who can say any thing new or striking, any thing that rouses the attention, without offending the taste, or wearing out the feelings of his hearers, is a man whom one could not (in his public capacity) honour enough.”

Men Long Enough Feelings Hands Common Attention Subjects Taste Highest Mass Capacity Praise Honour Preacher Thread Preaching Worn Entitled Eloquence Pulpit Offending

Author:Jane Austen

“How many thousands of [lives] are there every year that comes cast away, (in all civilized countries at least)--and consider'd asnothing but common air, in competition of an hypothesis.”

Years War Country Politics Common Air Competition Casts Nationalism Civilized Hypothesis Cast Away

Author:Laurence Sterne

“There is a plain distinction to be made betwixt pleasure and happiness. For tho' there can be no happiness without pleasure--yet the converse of the proposition will not hold true.--We are so made, that from the common gratifications of our appetites, and the impressions of a thousand objects, we snatch the one, like a transient gleam, without being suffered to taste the other.”

Made Happiness Pleasure Common Objects Taste Thousand Impression Distinction Appetite Propositions Gratification Transient Converses Gleam Pleasure And Happiness

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Laurence Sterne (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Laurence Sterne (Illustrated)

“Surely, 'tis one step towards acting well, to think worthily of our nature; and as in common life, the way to make a man honest, is, to suppose him soso here, to set some value upon ourselves, enables us to support the characterof generosity and virtue.”

Thinking Men Way Wells Character Values Common Acting Steps Support Virtue Honest Goodness Charity Generosity Common Life

Author:Laurence Sterne

“Poetry, at all times, exercises two distinct functions: it may reveal, it may unveil to every eye, the ideal aspects of common thingsor it may actually add to the number of motives poetic and uncommon in themselves, by the imaginative creation of things that are ideal from their very birth.”

May Two Eye Poetry Imagination Common Numbers Creativity Creation Poet Birth Exercise Aspect Ideals Function Add All Time Motive Poetic Imaginative Uncommon

Author:Walter Pater

“The base of all artistic genius is the power of conceiving humanity in a new, striking, rejoicing way, of putting a happy world ofits own creation in place of the meaner world of common days, of generating around itself an atmosphere with a novel power of refraction, selecting, transforming, recombining the images it transmits, according to the choice of the imaginative intellect. In exercising this power, painting and poetry have a choice of subject almost unlimited.”

Source: The Renaissance

“As the tragic writer rids us of what is petty and ignoble in our nature, so also the humorist rids us of what is cautious, calculating, and priggish--about half of our social conscience, indeed. Both of them permit us, in blessed moments of revelation, to soar above the common level of our lives.”

Moments Social Levels Common Half Our Lives Conscience Tragedy Blessed Revelations Tragic Permit Soar Petty Cautious Humorists Calculating Ignoble

Book:The Personal Art: Reading to Good Purpose

Source: The Personal Art: Reading to Good Purpose

“Common sense should tell us that reading is the ultimate weapon--destroying ignorance, poverty and despair before they can destroyus. A nation that doesn't read much doesn't know much. And a nation that doesn't know much is more likely to make poor choices in the home, the marketplace, the jury box and the voting booth...The challenge, therefore, is to convince future generations of children that carrying a book is more rewarding than carrying guns.”

Source: The Read-aloud Handbook

“My view on issues is based on common sense, and my experience as a mother of four children, as a sole parent, and as a businesswoman running a fish and chip shop.”

Children Running Mother Parent Views Common Issues Four Fishes Common Sense Shops Sole Chips Fish And Chips

Author:Pauline Hanson

“The truth is, that common-sense, or thought as it first emerges above the level of the narrowly practical, is deeply imbued with that bad logical quality to which the epithet metaphysical is commonly applied; and nothing can clear it up but a severe course of logic.”

Firsts Courses Levels Common Quality Clear Truth Is Logic Practicals Common Sense Logical Severe Metaphysical Epithet

Book:The Essential Peirce, Volume 1: Selected Philosophical Writings? (1867–1893)

Source: The Essential Peirce, Volume 1: Selected Philosophical Writings? (1867–1893)

“Any child born into the hugely consumptionist way of life so common in the industrial world will have an impact that is, on average, many times more destructive than that of a child born in the developing world.”

World Way Children Born Common Impact Average Population Developing Destructive

Book:Earth in the Balance: Forging a New Common Purpose

Source: Earth in the Balance: Forging a New Common Purpose

“By directing our sentiments, passions, and reason toward the common human plight, imagination grants us the advantages of a moralexistence. What we surrender of innocent love of self is exchanged for the safeties and pleasures of belonging to a larger whole. We are born dependent, but only imagination can bind our passions to other human beings.”

Source: Adolescence: The Farewell to Childhood

“I love, cherish, and respect women in my mind, in my heart, and in my soul. This love of women is the soil in which my life is rooted. It is the soil of our common life together. My life grows out of this soil. In any other soil, I would die. In whatever ways I am strong, I am strong because of the power and passion of this nurturant love.”

Way Mind Heart Soul Together Life Is Dies Passion Strong Grows Common My Heart My Soul Soil Cherish Rooted Life Together Respect Women I Am Strong Common Life

Author:Andrea Dworkin

“The dignity of a physician requires that he should look healthy, and as plump as nature intended him to be; for the common crowd consider those who are not of this excellent bodily condition to be unable to take care of themselves.”

Should Looks Care Common Conditions Healthy Dignity Medicine Crowds Take Care Excellent Physicians

Author:Hippocrates

“The mere fact of leaving ultimate social control in the hands of the people has not guaranteed that men will be able to conduct their lives as free men. Those societies where men know they are free are often democracies, but sometimes they have strong chiefs and kings.they have, however, one common characteristic: they are all alike in making certain freedoms common to all citizens, and inalienable.”

Source: An Anthropologist at Work

“It is an imprudence common to kings to listen to too much advice and to err in their choice.”

Choices Politics Common Too Much Advice Kings Monarchy

Author:Pierre Corneille

“Your Christians, whom one persecutes in vain, have something in them that surpasses the human. They lead a life of such innocence,that the heavens owe them some recognition: that they arise the stronger the more they are beaten down is hardly the result of common virtues.”

Humans Christian Heaven Results Common Christianity Virtue Stronger Arise Recognition Innocence Vain Beaten Persecution

Author:Pierre Corneille

“Its important to remember that we evolved. Now, I know thats a dirty word for some people, but we evolved from common ancestors with the gorillas, the chimpanzee and also the bonobos. We have a common past, and we have a common future.”

People Knows Important Past Remember Common Dirty Ancestor Chimpanzees Gorillas Dirty Words Bonobos

Author:Louise Leakey

“That we can come here today and in the presence of thousands and tens of thousands of the survivors of the gallant army of Northern Virginia and their descendants, establish such an enduring monument by their hospitable welcome and acclaim, is conclusive proof of the uniting of the sections, and a universal confession that all that was done was well done, that the battle had to be fought, that the sections had to be tried, but that in the end, the result has inured to the common benefit of all.”

Wells Ends Done Today Results Common Battle Benefits Universal Army Endure Proof Welcome Survivor Confession Sections Monument Virginia Descendants Well Done Uniting Gallant Acclaim

Author:William Howard Taft

“We assume a common sense as the necessary condition of the universal communicability of our knowledge, which is presupposed in every logic and every principle of knowledge that is not one of skepticism.”

Common Principles Knowledge Conditions Logic Universal Assuming Common Sense Skepticism

Author:Immanuel Kant

“A quick and sound judgment, good common sense, kind feeling, and an instinctive perception of character, in these are the elements of what is called tact, which has so much to do with acceptability and success in life.”

Kind Character Feelings Sound Common Elements Judgment Perception Common Sense Success In Life Politeness Tact Sound Judgment

Author:Charles Simmons

“What the study of history and artistic creation have in common is a mode of forming images.”

Art Artist Common History Study Creation Artistic Artistic Creation

Book:Dutch civilisation in the seventeenth century, and other essays

Source: Dutch civilisation in the seventeenth century, and other essays

“I shall always feel respect for every one who has written a book, let it be what it may, for I had no idea of the trouble which trying to write common English could cost one—And alas there yet remains the worst part of all correcting the press.”

Feels Writing Trying May Book Ideas Common Written Trouble Worst Cost Remains Presses No Idea Alas Correcting

Book:The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: 1837-1843

Source: The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: 1837-1843

“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”

“The Imagination that is raised in man (or any other creature imbued with the faculty of imagining) by words, or other voluntary signs, is that we generally call Understanding; and is common to Man and Beasts.”

Men God Government Understanding Imagination Common Imagine Creatures Raised Beast Faculty Covenant

Author:Thomas Hobbes

“Do you come to a philosopher as to a cunning man, to learn something by magic or witchcraft, beyond what can be known by common prudence and discretion?”

Men Common Known Magic Philosophical Philosopher Cunning Prudence Witchcraft Discretion Cunning Man

Book:Philosophical Essays: On Morals, Literature, and Politics

Source: Philosophical Essays: On Morals, Literature, and Politics

“Reasoning from the common course of nature, and without supposing any new interposition of the Supreme Cause, which ought always to be excluded from philosophy; what is incorruptible must also be ingenerable. The soul, therefore, if immortal, existed before our birth: And if the former existence noways concerned us, neither will the latter.”

Ifs Soul Philosophy Courses Causes Common Existence Ought Birth Concerned Supreme Former Immortality Reasoning Latter Immortal Excluded Supposing

Book:The Philosophical Works of David Hume ... Containing Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Essays on the Immortality of the Soul, Suicide ... &c. A New Edition

Source: The Philosophical Works of David Hume ... Containing Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Essays on the Immortality of the Soul, Suicide ... &c. A New Edition

“The great subverter of Pyrrhonism or the excessive principles of scepticism is action, and employment, and the occupations of common life.”

Action Common Principles Employment Occupation Skepticism Scepticism Common Life

Book:Essays and Treatises on Philosophical Subjects

Source: Essays and Treatises on Philosophical Subjects

“There is, indeed a more mitigated scepticism or academical philosophy, which may be both durable and useful, and which may, in part, be the result of this Pyrrhonism, or excessive scepticism, when its undistinguished doubts are corrected by common sense and reflection.”

May Philosophy Results Common Doubt Reflection Common Sense Skepticism Scepticism

Book:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding ; [with] A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh ; [and] An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature

Source: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding ; [with] A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh ; [and] An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature

“Let us become thoroughly sensible of the weakness, blindness, and narrow limits of human reason: Let us duly consider its uncertainty and endless contrarieties, even in subjects of common life and practice.... When these topics are displayed in their full light, as they are by some philosophers and almost all divines; who can retain such confidence in this frail faculty of reason as to pay any regard to its determinations in points so sublime, so abstruse, so remote from common life and experience?”

Source: Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)

“I claim that relativity and the rest of modern physics is not complicated. It can be explained very simply. It is only unusual or, put another way, it is contrary to common sense.”

Way Simple Common Modern Claims Complicated Contrary Physics Common Sense Unusual Another Way Relativity Modern Physics

Book:Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics

Source: Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics

“I regard (parenting) as the hardest, most complicated, anxiety-ridden, sweat-and-blood-producing job in the world. Succeeding requires the ultimate in patience, common sense, commitment, humor, tact, love, wisdom, awareness, and knowledge. At the same time, it holds the possibility for the most rewarding, joyous experience of a lifetime, namely, that of being successful guides to a new and unique human being.”

Source: The new peoplemaking

“Families and societies are small and large versions of one another. Both are made up of people who have to work together, whose destinies are tied up with one another. Each features the components of a relationship: leaders perform roles relative to the led, the young to the old, and male to female; and each is involved with the process of decision-making, use of authority, and the seeking of common goals.”

Source: The new peoplemaking

“Believing that fundamental conditions of the country are sound and there is nothing in the business situation to warrant the destruction of values that has taken place on the exchanges during the past week, my son and I have for some days been purchasing sound common stocks. We are continuing and will continue our purchases in substantial amounts at levels which we believe represent sound investment values.”

Believe Country Past Values Sound Levels Common Business Situation Taken Week Conditions Son Amount Destruction Fundamentals Investment My Son Continuing Warrants Purchasing

Author:John D. Rockefeller

“I do not accept that we cannot find a common sense way to preserve our traditions, including our basic second amendment freedoms and the rights of law abiding gun owners, while at the same time reducing the gun violence that unleashes so much mayhem on a regular basis.”

“Peace is not just the absence of war. True peace depends upon creating the opportunity that makes life worth living. And to do that, we must confront the common enemies of human beings: nuclear weapons and poverty; ignorance and disease.”

Humans War Opportunity Human Beings Common Enemy Poverty Ignorance Depends Disease Creating Weapons Absence Nuclear Nuclear Weapons Worth Living Life Worth Living True Peace Common Enemy

Author:Barack Obama

“There is nothing wrong with our country, there is something wrong with our politics...When this country is operating off a common ground, nobody can stop us. But when we're divided, then we end up having a whole lot of self-inflicted problems.”

Ends Self Country Whole Problem Common Our Country Divided Common Ground Self Inflicted

Author:Barack Obama

“We Americans are not an inherently more violent people than folks in other countries. We're not inherently more prone to mental health problems. The main difference that sets our nation apart is what makes us so susceptible to so many mass shootings is that we don't do enough, we don't take the basic commonsense actions to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people. What's different in America is it's easy to get your hands on a gun.”

“I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine.”

Father Justice Common Healing Liberty Rich Mines Blessing Independence Distance Prosperity Enjoyed Glorious This Day Rejoice Fourth Sunlight Pale Inheritance July Stripes

Author:Frederick Douglass

“Recently in Washington, unfortunately, we have seen examples of the wrong kind of leadership -- when politicians choose scorched earth over common ground, when they operate in what I call the 'evidence-free zone,' with ideology trumping everything else.”

“Life has this in common with prizefighting: if you've received a belly blow, it's likely to be followed by a right to the jaw.”

Ifs Common Trouble Blow Belly

Author:Carolyn Heilbrun

“Under capitalism the common man enjoys amenities which in ages gone by were unknown and therefore inaccessible even to the richest people.”

People Men Age Enjoy Common Gone Capitalism Common Man Inaccessible Amenities

Book:Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, The

Source: Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, The

“The sky was clear - remarkably clear - and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse.”

Body Stars Common Clear Sky Pulse Twinkling Twinkling Stars

Book:FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD (British Classics Series): Historical Romance Novel

Source: FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD (British Classics Series): Historical Romance Novel

“Eating wheat, like ice climbing, mountain boarding, and bungee jumping, is an extreme sport. It is the only common food that carries its own long-term mortality rate.”

Source: Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health

“Organizing around a common interest is a fundamental part of democracy. We should no more try to take away the right of individuals to collectively bargain than we should try to take away the right to a secret ballot.”

Should Trying Individual Interest Common Secret Democracy Fundamentals Bargains Ballots Common Interests Collective Bargaining

Author:Michael Bloomberg

“Music is one of the closest link-ups with God that we can probably experience. I think it's a common vibrating tone of the musical notes that holds all life together.”

Thinking Together Common Music Is Notes Musical Tone Links Closest Life Together Musical Notes

Author:Marvin Gaye