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Common Quotes

“It seems that the ancient Medicine Men understood that listening to another's story somehow gives us the strength of example to carry on, as well as showing us aspects of ourselves we can't easily see. For listening to the stories of others - not to their precautions or personal commandments - is a kind of water that breaks the fever of our isolation. If we listen closely enough, we are soothed into remembering our common name.”

IfsMenGivingWellsKindEnoughStoriesSeemsRememberNamesWaterCommonBreakExampleListeningUnderstoodAspectMedicineAncientIsolationCommandmentsFeverPrecaution
Author:Mark Nepo
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“Nothing shall warp me from the belief that every man is a lover of truth. There is no pure lie, no pure malignity in nature. The entertainment of the proposition of depravity is the last profligacy and profanation. There is no skepticism, no atheism but that. Could it be received into common belief, suicide would unpeople the planet.”

MenLastsLyingBeliefCommonAtheismPlanetsLoversPureSuicideEntertainmentEvery ManSkepticismPropositionsDepravityWarp
Book:The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul.”

MenDoeArtSoulCountryDesireHouseCommonTroubleSeaQuietMountainMarkShoreRetiringRetreatThyself
Book:Stoic Six Pack: Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Golden Sayings, Fragments and Discourses of Epictetus, Letters from a Stoic and The Enchiridion
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“Where any work can be done conformably to the reason which is common to gods and men, there we have nothing to fear; for where we are able to get profit by means of the activity which is successful and proceeds according to our constitution, there no harm is to be suspected.”

MenMeanReasonDoneAbleCommonSuccessfulActivityConstitutionProfitHarm
Book:Stoic Six Pack: Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Golden Sayings, Fragments and Discourses of Epictetus, Letters from a Stoic and The Enchiridion
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“His hypothesis goes to this - to make the common run of his readers fancy they can do all that can be done by genius, and to make the man of genius believe he can only do what is to be done by mechanical rules and systematic industry. This is not a very feasible scheme; nor is Sir Joshua sufficiently clear and explicit in his reasoning in support of it.”

MenBelieveDoneRunningCan DoCommonSupportClearHe ManIndustryReaderGeniusFancyReasoningSchemesHypothesisSystematicExplicit
Book:Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners
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“In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America; and there can be no greater proof of its utility and of its conformity to human nature than that its influence is powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.”

MenWorldHumansSoulCountryStatesEarthChristianAmericaNationsFeltReligiousUnitedCommonUnited StatesGreaterInfluenceHuman NatureAuthorityProofHypocrisyEnlightenedConformitySovereignUtility
Book:Democracy in America: Book One
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“Men and women ... do you not realize that the State is the worst enemy you have? It is a machine that crushes you in order to sustain the ruling class, your masters. Like naïve children you put your trust in your political leaders. You make it possible for them to creep into your confidence, only to have them betray you to the first bidder. But even where there is no direct betrayal, the labour politicians make common cause with your enemies to keep you in leash, to prevent your direct action. The State is the pillar of capitalism, and it is ridiculous to expect any redress from it.”

MenFirstsChildrenStatesActionPoliticalOrderCausesRealizingCommonLeaderEnemyClassWorstMastersPoliticianMen And WomenCapitalismDirectMachinesBetrayalRidiculousCrushLabourBetrayRulingCreepsPillarsWorst EnemyPolitical LeadersLeashesRedressDirect Action
Author:Emma Goldman
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“There is a fundamental similarity between the persecution of individuals who engage in consenting homosexual activity in private, or who ingest, inject, or smoke various substances that alter their feelings and thoughts - and the traditional persecution of men for their religion... What all of these persecutions have in common is that the victims are harassed by the majority not because they engage in overtly aggressive or destructive acts... but because their conduct or appearance offends a group intolerant to and threatened by human differences.”

MenHumansFeelingsIndividualDifferencesCommonGroupsActivityVictimFundamentalsMajorityVariousAppearanceTraditionalSmokeSubstanceDestructiveAggressiveThreatenedHomosexualPersecutionSimilarity
Author:Thomas Szasz
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“Among the words that can be all things to all men, the word "race" has a fair claim to being the most common, most ambiguous and most explosive. No one today would deny that it is one of the great catchwords about which ink and blood are spilled in reckless quantities. Yet no agreement seems to exist about what race means.”

MenMeanSeemsTodayCommonRaceBloodFairsAll ThingsClaimsDenyAgreementQuantityInkRecklessAmbiguousExplosives
Book:Race: a study in superstition
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“God hath given to mankind a common library, His creatures; to every man a proper book, himself being an abridgment of all others. If thou read with understanding, it will make thee a great master of philosophy, and a true servant of the divine Author: if thou but barely read, it will make thee thine own wise man and the Author's fool.”

IfsMenBookPhilosophyGivenUnderstandingCommonWiseMankindDivineMastersFoolCreaturesLibraryEvery ManTheeServant
Book:Enchiridion Institutions, Essays and Maxims, political, moral & divine. Divided into four centuries. By Francis Quarles
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“You, your families, your friends and your countries are to be exterminated by the common decision of a few brutal but powerful men. To please these men, all the private affections, all the public hopes, all that has been achieved in art, and knowledge and thought and all that might be achieved hereafter is to be wiped out forever. Our ruined lifeless planet will continue for countless ages to circle aimlessly round the sun unredeemed by the joys and loves, the occasional wisdom and the power to create beauty which have given value to human life.”

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Author:Bertrand Russell
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“As the Deity has given us Greeks all other blessings in moderation, so our moderation gives us a kind of wisdom which is timid, in all likelihood, and fit for common people, not one which is kingly and splendid. This wisdom, such as it is, observing that human life is ever subject to all sorts of vicissitudes, forbids us to be puffed up by the good things we have, or to admire a man's felicity while there is still time for it to change.”

PeopleMenGivingHumansKindStillsLife IsGivenCommonSubjectsFitBlessingGood ThingsAdmireHuman LifeGreekModerationObservingDeitiesSplendidLikelihoodFelicityVicissitudes
Author:Solon
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“I'm always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have in common. If you see it, black and white people, both sides look to see the differences, they don't look at what they have together. Men and women, and old and young, and so on. And this is a disease of the mind, the way I see it. Because in actual fact, men and women have much more in common than they are separated.”

PeopleIfsMenWayMindLooksFactsTogetherYoungSidesBlackDifferencesWhiteCommonDiseaseMen And WomenDividesBlack And WhiteBoth SidesAstounded
Author:Doris Lessing
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“Fine sense and exalted sense are not half so useful as common sense. There are forty men of wit for one man of sense; and he that will carry nothing about him but gold, will be every day at a loss for want of readier change.”

MenWantLossCommonHalfFineGoldWitCommon SenseFortyOne ManExalted
Book:The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq., in Verse and Prose: With a Selection of Explanatory Notes
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“Nothing is more common than energy in money-making, quite independent of any higher object than its accumulation. A man who devotes himself to this pursuit, body and soul, can scarcely fail to become rich. Very little brains will do; spend less than you earn; add guinea to guinea; scrape and save; and the pile of gold will gradually rise.”

MenLittlesSoulBodyEnergyCommonBrainRichFailingObjectsHigherGoldIndependentAddPursuitMaking MoneyAccumulationGuineaBecome Rich
Book:Self-help: With Illustrations of Charakter, Conduct and Perseverance
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“Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, 2,460 years ago, until the ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race. It is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization; and scarcely a century has passed since nations, that knew the meaning of the term, resolved to be free. In every age its progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food.”

MenYearsHas BeensAgeNextStrongNationsTermNaturalPoorCommonRaceLibertyEnemyProgressCenturyCrimeIgnoranceCivilizationYears AgoFruitDeedsSeedsLustEaseMotiveMatureDelicateSuperstitionsHarvestConquestGood DeedsCravingPoor ManPretextStrong ManAthensSowingNatural Enemies
Author:Lord Acton
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“Man is made of the wholly common, and custom is his nurse; woe then to them who lay irreverent hands on his old house-furniture, the dear inheritance from his forefathers: For time consecrates, and what is gray with age becomes religion.”

MenMadeHandsAgeHouseCommonLaysDearCustomsGrayNurseWoeFurnitureInheritanceForefathersIrreverentOld Houses
Book:The Works of Frederick Schiller: Top Classic of German
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“Whether we are Christians or Muslims or nationalists or agnostics or atheists, we must first learn to forget our differences. If we have differences, let us differ in the closet; when we come out in front, let us not have anything to argue about until we get finished arguing with the man. If the late President Kennedy could get together with Khrushchev and exchange some wheat, we certainly have more in common with each other than Kennedy and Khrushchev had with each other.”

IfsMenFirstsChristianTogetherPresidentDifferencesForgetCommonFrontsHe ManLateAtheistFinishedArguingClosetsWheatGet TogetherPresident Kennedy
Author:Malcolm X
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“Reelfoot is, and has always been, a lake of mystery.In places it is bottomless. Other places the skeletons of the cypress-trees that went down when the earth sank, still stand upright so that if the sun shines from the right quarter, and the water is less muddy than common, a man, peering face downward into its depths, sees, or thinks he sees, down below him the bare top-limbs upstretching like drowned men's fingers, all coated with the mud of years and bandaged with pennons of the green lake slime.”

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Author:Irvin S. Cobb
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“Life is always uncertain, and common prudence dictates to every man the necessity of settling his temporal concerns, while it is in his power, and while the mind is calm and undisturbed.”

MenLifeMindLife IsCommonConcernCalmEvery ManSettlingUncertainPrudence
Book:Recollections and private memoirs of Washington by his adopted son George Washington with a memoir of the author by his daughter; and illustrative and explanatory notes by Benson J. Loosing: With illustrations
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“The time for the kingdom may be far off, but the task is plain: to retain our share in God in spite of peril and contempt. There is a war to wage against the vulgar, the glorification of the absurd, a war that is incessant, universal. Loyal to the presence of the ultimate in the common, we may be able to make it clear that man is more than man, that in doing the finite he may perceive the infinite .”

MenMayWarAbleCommonClearShareTasksUltimateUniversalInfiniteKingdomsAbsurdPerceiveSpiteContemptLoyalVulgarFinitePerilIncessantGlorification
Book:Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays
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“What we really need the poet's and orator's I help to keep alive in us is not, then, the common and gregarious courage which Robert Shaw showed when he marched with you, men of the Seventh Regiment. It is that more lonely courage which he showed when he dropped his warm commission in the glorious Second to head your dubious fortunes, negroes of the Fifty-fourth. That lonely kind of courage (civic courage as we call it in times of peace) is the kind of valor to which the monuments of nations should most of all be reared.”

MenNeedsShouldKindHelpingNationsCommonAlivePoetLonelyFortuneWarmGloriousFiftyFourthMonumentCivicsValorDubiousOratorsGregarious
Book:Essays in Religion and Morality
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“Men who profess a state of neutrality in times of public danger, desert the common interest of their fellow subjects; and act with independence to that constitution into which they are incorporated. The safety of the whole requires our joint endeavours. When this is at stake, the indifferent are not properly a part of the community; or rather are like dead limbs, which are an encumbrance to the body, instead of being of use to it.”

MenStatesWholeUseBodyInterestCommunityCommonSubjectsDangerConstitutionSafetyFellowsIndependenceDesertStakesIndifferentLimbsJointsEndeavourNeutralityCommon Interests
Book:The Works of Joseph Addison
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“Among the idle rich, boredom is one of the most common causes of unhappiness. People who have difficulty in earning their living may suffer greatly, but they are not bored. Wealthy men and women become bored when they depend upon the theater for their enjoyment instead of making their own lives interesting.”

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Author:Andre Maurois
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“No man of common sense will value a woman the less, for not giving herself up at the first attack, or for not accepting his proposal without enquiring into his person or character; on the contrary, he must think her the weakest of all creatures in the world, as the rate of men now goes; in short, he must have a very contemptible opinion of her capacities, nay, even of her understanding, that having but one cast for her life, shall cast that life away at once, and make matrimony like death, be a leap in the dark.”

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Book:Moll Flanders
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“It gave me a great notion of the credit of our present government and administration, to find people press as eagerly to pay moneyas they would to receive it; and, at the same time, a due respect for that body of men who have found out so pleasing an expedient for carrying on the common cause, that they have turned a tax into a diversion.”

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Author:Gertrude Stein
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