Commonplace Quotes
The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.
I don't know what people find or like in me, I'm hopelessly commonplace!... Current appreciation of my work is a bit highbrow, I've always considered myself a popular artist.
Wherever souls are being tried and ripened, in whatever commonplace and homely way, there God is hewing out the pillars for His temple.
It seems to be a general rule that sciences begin their development with the unusual. They have to develop considerable sophistication before they interest themselves in the commonplace.
The offhand decision of some commonplace mind high in office at a critical moment influences the course of events for a hundred years.
Another symptom of progress toward the Singularity: ideas themselves should spread ever faster, and even the most radical will quickly become commonplace.
In the most commonplace, tiresome, ridiculous, malicious, coarse, crude, or even crooked people or events I had to seek out rare things, good things, comic things, and I did so.
Finally, the scariest thing about abuse of any shape or form, is, in my opinion, not the abuse itself, but that if it continues it can begin to feel commonplace and eventually acceptable.
The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring it home.
The more intelligence one has, the more people one finds original. Commonplace people see no difference between men.
Wine has lit up for me the pages of literature, and revealed in life romance lurking in the commonplace.
At a certain age, death becomes familiar to you-or a loss becomes familiar-the tragedies that are more commonplace in life.
Who would wish to be among the commonplace crowd of the little famous - who are each individually lost in a throng made up of themselves?
To the average mind popular music would mean compositions vulgarly conceived and commonplace in their treatment. That is absolutely false.
It is a commonplace that Racine is untranslatable. This is not because his verse is difficult, but because it is not.
In very truth it is the unattained which gives zest to the commonplace and brims the cup of our daily life with keenest joy.
To me, nostalgia is nothing more than a mindless plundering of the past for the commonplace.
The whole story of human history is: The blasphemy of today is the commonplace of tomorrow.
Commonplace though it may appear, this doing of one's duty embodies the highest ideal of life and character. There may be nothing heroic about it; but the common lot of men is not heroic.
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.
Do not be fooled by its commonplace appearance. Like so many things, it is not what outside, but what is inside that counts.
Only the poet has any right to be sorry for the poor, if he has anything to spare when he has thought of the dull, commonplace rich.
The true poetry of life: the poetry of the commonplace, of the ordinary man, of the plain, toil-worn woman, with their loves and their joys, their sorrows and their griefs.
Critical sobriety is out of the question so long as this master of terror-in-the-commonplace exerts his spell.
In proportion as our own mind is enlarged we discover a greater number of men of originality. Commonplace people see no difference between one man and another.
Dreams or illusions, call them what you will, they lift us from the commonplace of life to better things.
I want to be great, or nothing. I won't be a commonplace dauber, so I don't intend to try any more.
They made small effort to cover their raw souls with the mantle of commonplace words.
In this climate - with belief in guardian angels and creationism becoming commonplace - making fun of religion is as risky as burning a flag in an American Legion hall.
In books, the proportion of exceptional to commonplace people is high; in reality, very low.
My imagination would never have served me as it has, but for the habit of commonplace, humble, patient, daily, toiling, drudging attention
The world is full of abandoned meanings. In the commonplace I find unexpected themes and intensities.
Commonplace minds usually condemn what is beyond the reach of their understanding.
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.
It seemed incredible to me, that physical courage should be so commonplace and revered, while moral courage . . . is so rare and despised.
Death, which we are accustomed to consider an evil, really acts for us the friendliest part, and takes away the commonplace of existence.
