"Commonality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... deepest human experience." It teaches that "The Kingdom of God is within you," and that internal perfection must first be sought; but then it goes on, hand in hand with Culture, to spread perfection in widest commonalty. "Perfection is not possible, while the individual remains isolated." "To promote the Kingdom of God is to increase and hasten one's own happiness." Finally, Perfection as Culture conceives it, is a harmonious expansion ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... beauty, love and hope, And melancholy fear subdued by faith, Of blessed consolations in distress, Of moral strength and intellectual power, Of joy in widest commonalty spread—"[374] ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... easy to convince the world of a passion between the sexes which is simply animal; nor is art much needed to help out the proof. Happily the human love, in which body and soul play in varying degrees their parts, and each an honoured part, is in widest commonalty spread. But the love that is wholly spiritual seems to some a supernatural thing, and if it be not discredited as utterly unreal (which at certain periods, if literature be a test, has been the case), it is apt to appear as a thing phantom-like, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... vnder the Commissions Seale, He sollemnly had sworne, that what he spoke My Chaplaine to no Creature liuing, but To me, should vtter, with demure Confidence, This pausingly ensu'de; neither the King, nor's Heyres (Tell you the Duke) shall prosper, bid him striue To the loue o'th' Commonalty, the Duke ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... on my hands. What he has done to me is typical of Brown and all his works. He is unclean and clever, a frightful combination. Consider the class of readers he has! The majority of the people who read Brown, read only Brown. His readers are the great commonalty of America, the source, once, of all that was best in our life. Brown tells them nasty stories, not about people alone, but about systems; systems of money, systems of work, systems of government. And because nasty stories are always luscious reading, and because it is easier to believe evil ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... that whatever of god-like essence was muffled in the hulk of his composition was quickened by the truly unearthly beauty of that pale face with its mystic smile and the sweet eyes that seemed to see sights denied to the commonalty. I think Messer Simone was in love with Beatrice very much as I might have been, out of very wonder at a thing so rare and fair and unfamiliar. I was never, as I have said, in love with Folco's daughter; my tastes are simpler, more carnal; give me an Ippolita in my affectionate hours, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... given to this way of speaking, and, as the consequence of that, abound with proverbs, many of which are very expressive, quick, and home to the purpose; and, indeed, this humour prevails universally over the whole nation, especially among the better sort of the commonalty, none of whom will discourse with you any considerable time but he will affirm every assertion and observation with a Scottish proverb. To that nation I owe my birth and education; and to that manner of speaking I was used from ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... teachers its one university-bred schoolmaster, popularly chosen, and well paid, and suited to assist in transplanting to the higher places of society those select and vigorous scions that from time to time spring up from the stock of the commonalty. The waking dream of running down the ignorance and misery of a sinking country by an array of starveling teachers in the train of any one denomination—itself, mayhap, sufficiently attenuated by the demands of purely ecclesiastical objects—must ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... but of defeat and falls, through the discipline of repentance, to holiness and the blessedness which comes with it. The Red Cross Knight, St. George of England, whose name Georgos, the Ploughman, is dwelt upon, apparently to suggest that from the commonalty, the "tall clownish young men," were raised up the great champions of the Truth,—though sorely troubled by the wiles of Duessa, by the craft of the arch-sorcerer, by the force and pride of the great powers of the Apocalyptic Beast and Dragon, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... thus indicated the nature of the great contest in language between the conventional and the idiomatic. Idioms are just what their name implies. They are the commonalty of language,—private, proletarian words, who do the work, "dum alteri tulerunt honores." They come to us from all handiworks and callings, where you will always find them at their posts. Sharp, energetic, incisive, they do the hard labor of speech,—that of carrying heavy loads of thought and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... These are the Red Maids, who walk the earth in scarlet gowns, set off by white aprons: they owe the bright hues of their existence to Alderman Whitson, who died in 1628, leaving funds to the mayor, burgesses and commonalty of the city of Bristol, "to the use and intent that they should therewith provide a fit and convenient dwelling-house for the abode of one grave, painful and modest woman of good life and conversation, and for forty poor women-children (whose parents, being freemen and burgesses ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... wondered about the cost involved in recovering roofs with these tiles, a woman worker who overheard me promptly said that, reckoning tiles and labour, the cost was 60 or 70 sen per 22 tiles. In the old days tiled porticoes were forbidden to the commonalty. They were allowed only to daimyos who also used exclusively the arm rests which every visitor to an inn may now command. Besides arm rests I have frequently had kneeling cushions of the white brocade formerly used only for ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... may be noticed. Formerly, the Lord Mayor of London was elected by the whole of the commonalty. All the citizens assembled at Paul's Cross, and there, sometimes with tumult and sometimes with fighting, they elected their mayor for the next year. But since every man in the City was compelled to belong to his own Company, to speak of the commonalty meant ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... remonstrance was vain. The boroughs were commanded to surrender their charters. Few complied; and the course which the King took with those few did not encourage others to trust him. In several towns the right of voting was taken away from the commonalty, and given to a very small number of persons, who were required to bind themselves by oath to support the candidates recommended by the government. At Tewkesbury, for example, the franchise was confined to thirteen persons. Yet even this number was too large. Hatred and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the commonalty still hung upon every motion of the blacksmith and the miller, but by the people of quality the cudgelers were for the moment quite forgot. The head of the house of Jaquelin hurried over the grass to the coach door. "Ha, Colonel Byrd! When we heard that you were staying overnight at Green ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... sat at the thwarts, for there was no breeze that day in the narrow firth. Then came the chief warriors in short fur jackets, splendid in glittering helms and byrnies, and each with his thrall bearing his battle-axe. Followed the fighting commonalty with axe and spear. Last came Ironbeard, stern as ever, and Biorn with his heart torn between eagerness and regret. Only the children, the women, and the old men were left in Hightown, and they stood on the shingle watching ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... tales from all the sewers of London, and it was plain to him that all the commonalty cried shame upon their King. He screamed and twisted there in his chair at the last, and when he was come out into the darkness he fell upon his companion, and beat him so ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... him, aged 15, not having wherewithal to live, or finding proper masters: "because he was obliged to serve those who gave him necessaries, during two years found no one to teach him a word in the things he learned." —Opus Tertium, cap. xx. In 1214 the Commonalty of Oxford agreed to pay 52s. yearly for the use of poor scholars, and to give 100 of them a meal of bread, ale, and pottage, with one large dish of flesh or fish, every St Nicholas day.—Wood's An. i. 185. Wood's Annals (ed. Gutch, v. i. p. 619-20) also notes ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... were about to move off, to the amazement of the company and the few onlookers who, notwithstanding the weather, stood around to represent the commonalty, Miss Horn herself, solitary, in a long black cloak and somewhat awful bonnet, issued, and made her way through the mourners until she stood immediately behind the hearse, by the side of Mr Cairns, the parish minister. The next moment, Watty Witherspail, who had his station at the further ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... as all the little sovereigns of Germany are. In the first, there appears an air of commerce and plenty. The streets are well-built, and full of people, neatly and plainly dressed. The shops are loaded with merchandise, and the commonalty are clean and cheerful. In the other you see a sort of shabby finery, a number of dirty people of quality tawdered (sic) out; narrow nasty streets out of repair, wretchedly thin of inhabitants, and above half of the common ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... Among the commonalty of Britain, within a very few years past, rifle-clubs and matches have been brought greatly into vogue under government encouragement. Austria, tu infelix this time, having served unwillingly as an experimental target, with the most distinguished and gratifying success to the experimenters, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... we have granted for us and our heirs, as well to archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and other folk of holy Church, as also to eaarls, barons, and to all the commonalty of the land, that *for no business from henceforth will we take such manner of aids, tasks, nor prises but by the common consent of the realm,* and for the common profit thereof, saving the ancient aids ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... worthy elders* him before, *ancestors And obedient, aye ready to his hand, Were all his lieges, bothe less and more: Thus in delight he liv'd, and had done yore,* *long Belov'd and drad,* through favour of fortune, *held in reverence Both of his lordes and of his commune.* *commonalty ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... friends with the people in the little villas. My! I've often thought how I would relish a tea-party at the Watsons'! Your father used to have a saying about it being better to be at the head of the commonalty than at the tail of the gentry, and I know it's true. Mrs. Duff-Whalley of The Towers would be a big body at the Miss Watsons' tea-parties, and I know fine I'm only tolerated at the Tweedies' and the Olivers' ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... Holy Cross.—Founded in the year 1392 by the "Bailiffs and Commonalty" of the town of Birmingham (answering to our aldermen and councillors), and licensed by the Crown, for which the town paid L50, the purpose being to "make and found a gild and perpetual fraternity of brethren ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... sunshine lighting up all the glow and colour of the picture, the scarlet coats, the rich bay and brown of the horses, the verdant background of lawn and shrubberies. Two huge marquees had been erected for the commonalty—one for the school-children, the other for the villagers. There were long tables in the billiard-room for the farming class; and for the quality there was the horse-shoe table in the dining-room, as at Roderick's birthday dinner. But on this occasion the table was decorated ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... grease; then with brown ragouts belaboured with onions; then with a smoking pilaff of rice: several of which dishes I can pronounce to be of excellent material and flavour. When the gentry had concluded this repast, it was handed to a side table, where the commonalty speedily discussed it. We left them licking their fingers as we hastened away upon the second part of ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... eight years. The country was ravaged to the very walls of Durham and Carlisle, and only those districts which bought off the invaders were spared. The title which had been bestowed upon Wallace by a comparatively small number was now ratified by the commonalty of the whole of Scotland; and associated with him was the young Sir Andrew Moray of Bothwell, whose father had been the only Scotch noble who had fought at Stirling, and it is notable that in some of the documents of the time Wallace gives ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... life—must either be fibred, vitalized, by regular contact with out-door light and air and growths, farm-scenes, animals, fields, trees, birds, sun-warmth and free skies, or it will certainly dwindle and pale. We cannot have grand races of mechanics, work people, and commonalty, (the only specific purpose of America,) on any less terms. I conceive of no flourishing and heroic elements of Democracy in the United States, or of Democracy maintaining itself at all, without the Nature-element forming a main part—to be ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... soon established, and Mr. Cobden-Sanderson stepped up on to the platform and in a few pleasantly sententious phrases introduced Mr. Crane as one who had always been 'the advocate of great and unpopular causes,' and the aim of whose art was 'joy in widest commonalty spread.' Mr. Crane began his lecture by pointing out that Art had two fields, aspect and adaptation, and that it was primarily with the latter that the designer was concerned, his object being not literal fact but ideal beauty. With the unstudied and accidental effects of Nature the designer had ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... present. These scenes give occasion to the author to introduce many of the proverbial sayings of the people, which are curious and characteristic. Their strictures on the dress and appearance of the knights and nobles, are in keeping with the freedom of the habits of the day, when the commonalty, however oppressed in some particulars, were allowed ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... created two Monitors for Putting Out at one royal sweep. She managed the nightly eviction with such gay expedition that it almost felt like ten minutes ago when the place, except for the pride-swollen monitors, was cleared. While these officers watched the commonalty clumping reluctantly upstairs toward the umbrella-rack, the Liberry Teacher paced sedately around the shelves, giving the books that routine straightening they must have before seven struck and the horde rushed in again. It was really her relieving officer's work, but the Liberry Teacher felt that ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... his ardent desires into execution. But he and the constituted order were not without friends and supporters. He had, as his opponents saw, a number of "wicked and pernicious counsellors, aides and assistants against the commonalty in these our cruel commotions." Moreover—and a great moreover is that!—it was everywhere bruited that he had sent to England, to the King, "for two thousand Red Coates." Perhaps the King—perhaps England—will take his view, and, not consulting the good of Virginia, send ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... a tremendous big place, with millions and hundreds of trees, and first you come to the Figs, but you scorn to loiter there, for the Figs is the resort of superior little persons, who are forbidden to mix with the commonalty, and is so named, according to legend, because they dress in full fig. These dainty ones are themselves contemptuously called Figs by David and other heroes, and you have a key to the manners and customs of this dandiacal section of the Gardens when I ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... as broadly divided into two periods: the first of nine hundred, the second of five hundred years, the separation being marked by what was called the 'Serrar del Consiglio; that is to say, the final and absolute distinction of the nobles from the commonalty, and the establishment of the government in their hands, to the exclusion alike of the influence of the people on the one side, and the authority of the doge on the other. Then the first period, of nine hundred years, presents us with the most interesting spectable of a people struggling out of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... the steps and beats the church door with his fist).The house of God is closed this Whitsun Eve. The reverend clergy will grant no audience with the Lord to-day, and so the worshipful commonalty will have to go home and go to bed without any mass. Look here, good folk! Here you have a door—mere wood, of course, but that matters little, as it is lined with copper. Just take a look at this door! If I say that the Lord is living within—this being His house; and if I say ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... one of the great meeting places of mankind. Here—I speak of Utopian London—will be the traditional centre of one of the great races in the commonalty of the World State—and here will be its social and intellectual exchange. There will be a mighty University here, with thousands of professors and tens of thousands of advanced students, and here great journals of thought and speculation, mature and splendid books of philosophy and science, and ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... subject. After reciting the past services of his family in maintaining the imperial connection, he declared himself the organ of several thousands of his Majesty's liege subjects, "as well the nobles as the clergy, the gentry, and the commonalty of the kingdom." He dwells on the peculation and extravagance of the administration, under "the Duumvirate" of the Viceroy and the Primate, which he compares with the league of Strafford and Laud. He denounces more especially Lord George Sackville, son to Dorset, for his intermeddling ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... as if the last burden had been rolled from its heart, and assurance were at length perfect, Paris bursts forth anew into extreme jubilee. The Basoche rejoices aloud, that the foe of Parlements is fallen; Nobility, Gentry, Commonalty have rejoiced; and rejoice. Nay now, with new emphasis, Rascality itself, starting suddenly from its dim depths, will arise and do it,—for down even thither the new Political Evangel, in some rude version or ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... encroachments than to revive departed institutions. But though in most of the Grecian states were two distinct orders, and the Eupatrids, or "Well-born," were a class distinct from, and superior to, that of the commonalty, we should err in supposing that the separate orders made the great political divisions. As in England the more ancient of the nobles are often found in the popular ranks, so in the Grecian states many of the Eupatrids ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... His grandfather was a small landed proprietor, but he had to sell Spence's mains, and the name was changed to Chirnside. So (as my father used to say) he was sprung from the tail of the gentry; while my mother was descended from the head of the commonalty. The Brodies had been tenant farmers in East Lothian for six or seven generations, though they originally came from the north. My grandfather Brodie thought abrogation of the Corn Laws meant ruin for the farmers, who had taken 19 years' leases at ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... fruitful issues. Time, kind inevitable Time, dulled the paralysing horror of his sister's death, and softened the memory of all that long torture of publicity, legal investigation, and the like, which had followed it. The natural healing 'in widest commonalty spread,' which flows from affection, nature, and the direction of the mind to high and liberating aims, came to him also as the months and years passed. His wife's death, his sister's tragedy, left indeed indelible marks; but, though scarred ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the old Eastern tale of "The Fish and the Ring," invented some thousands of years since. It has survived to our own day, and is still related and believed by the commonalty to the east of London. In the church at Stepney is a tomb to the memory of Lady Rebecca Berry, who died 1696, in whose coat-of-arms a fish and an annulet appear. She has hence been supposed the heroine of a once popular ballad, the scene of which is laid in Yorkshire; it is entitled, "The Cruel ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... recognized by their leavings, such as crumbs and worm holes. They dig clean passages, they slash and crumble without a slimy trail, they are the pinkers. The others, the liquefiers, are the chemists; they dissolve their food by means of reagents. All are the grubs of flies and belong to the commonalty of the Muscidae. Many are their species. To distinguish them from one another by rearing them in order to obtain the perfect stage would involve a great expenditure of time to little profit. We will describe them by the general name ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... Tallagio non concedendo, That no tallage or aid shall be levied by the king or his heirs in this realm, without the good will and assent of the archbishops, bishops, earls, barons, knights, burgesses, and other the freemen of the commonalty of this realm; and, by authority of parliament holden in the five and twentieth year of the reign of King Edward III., it is declared and enacted, That, from thenceforth, no person shall be compelled to make any loans to the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... taste: but it is noteworthy how few even of the elite acquired and retained that lively and generous love of literature which would have enabled them to sow seeds of the divine fire far and wide—"of joy in widest commonalty spread." Considering the intensity with which the classics have been studied in the old universities and public schools of the United Kingdom, the fine flower of scholarship achieved, the sure touch of style and criticism, one cannot help being amazed at the low standard of literary ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... supervision of weights and measures jointly with the Mayor, who had hitherto borne full sway in matters of police. The third battle was in 1357. This was the famous riot of St. Scholastica's day—satis periculosa—which resulted in the excommunication of the Mayor, while he and the commonalty of the town of Oxford were laid under an interdict by John, Bishop of Lincoln. The Mayor, who was a vintner and drawn into the quarrel through it having arisen in his tavern, is stated in one account to have been originally in the service ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... fun; and there are also what may be classed as Humorous Ballads proper (or improper as the case may be), which reflect more plainly and frankly, perhaps, than any other department of our literature, the customs, character, and amusements of the commonalty, and have exercised an important influence on the national poets and ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... who is king both of Denmark and England; and thou requirest great support under thee, if it is to succeed. It is not unlikely, in my opinion, that thou wilt get good support from the people, as the commonalty always loves what is new; and it went so before, when Olaf Trygvason came here to the country, that all rejoiced at it, although he did not ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... grant of crown domains, to be sold again for hundreds of thousands of francs. Truly there was but one thing that could match the flaunting wastefulness of the reigning favourites at court, and that was the hard condition, the intolerable poverty, of the despised commonalty. ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... at Charleston, in South Carolina, on the 5th of November, 1779, of a family distinguished in the history of that State and of the country, being a branch of a family of the baronet rank in the titled commonalty of England. Like most young men of the South in his position at that period, he was sent to New England to receive his school and college education. His school days were passed at Newport, in Rhode Island, under the charge of Mr. Robert Rogers. He entered Harvard College in 1796, and graduated in ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... Doge of Venice was Paolo Lucio Anafesto, elected by the tribunal of commonalty, tribunals, and clergy, at Heraclea, in 697. The period of the subjection of the ecclesiastical to the ducal and patrician powers followed. The "Council of Ten" was established in 1335, and the last Doge elected was Lodovico Manin in 1789, who ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... Bristol, and, as that is not my purpose, I shall proceed to other matters, not, however, till I have strongly recommended to every one, who is in any way connected with that city, to read the book published by John Cranidge, A.M. in the year 1818, entitled, "A Mirror for the Burgesses and Commonalty of the City of Bristol; in which is exhibited to their view, a part of the great and many interesting benefactions and endowments, of which the city has to boast, and for which the CORPORATION are responsible, as the stewards and trustees thereof: correctly transcribed from ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... inferiority, minority, subordinacy; shortcoming, deficiency; minimum; smallness &c. 32; imperfection; lower quality, lower worth. [personal inferiority] commonalty &c. 876. V. be inferior &c. adj.; fall short of, come short of; not pass, not come up to; want. become smaller, render smaller &c. (decrease) 36, (contract) 195; hide its diminished head, retire into the shade, yield the palm, play second fiddle, be upstaged, take a back seat. Adj. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... embroidered waistcoats, white wigs, and gold-laced hats, stepping with grave courtesy beside ladies in flowered satin gowns, and hoop-petticoats of majestic circumference; while behind followed a liveried slave or bondsman, bearing the psalm- book, and a stove for his mistress's feet. The commonalty, clad in homely garb, gave precedence to their betters at the door of the meetinghouse, as if admitting that there were distinctions between them, even in the sight of God. Yet, as their coffins were borne one after another through the street, ...
— A Bell's Biography - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... have won more cannon and more small arms. They rake the loyalist Swiss and Germans with a murderous fire. The foreign troops fight to the last. They are killed or overwhelmed as the victorious commonalty take possession of the Square. Danton who has directed the proletariat is ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... spoke My chaplain to no creature living but To me should utter, with demure confidence This pausingly ensu'd: 'Neither the King nor's heirs, Tell you the Duke, shall prosper. Bid him strive To gain the love o' the commonalty. ...
— The Life of Henry VIII • William Shakespeare [Dunlap edition]
... give the rein at once to gallantry and charity, pleased him most; while I favoured that which had first occurred to me on the night of our sally, and held the unknown to be a clever rascal, who, to serve his ends, political or criminal, was corrupting the commonalty, and drawing people into ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... all. They were generally at the same time erected into a commonalty or corporation, with the privilege of having magistrates and a town-council of their own, of making bye-laws for their own government, of building walls for their own defence, and of reducing all their inhabitants ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... should appease them, if possible, by fair words, and by a show of granting what they ask; for if we once attempt to put them down by force, and should not be able to go through with it, we shall only make matters a great deal worse. The commonalty of London and of all England would then join them, and the nobles and the government will be swept away entirely ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of the commonalty may be named Thomas Heywood, one of the most moral play writers of his time, who has sometimes been called the prose Shakspeare, and Decker, a voluminous writer, who cooperated in several plays of more celebrated men, especially ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Pastrycooks and Turners looking across at the Weavers and Curriers and Money-Changers, and the "Men of Tours." Beneath the throne of the Mother of God, there was no distinction of gifts; and above it the distinction favoured the commonalty. ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... dwelt was near the Gordon estate of Balmoral. We had played with each other as boys, for the feudal system of the clans was communal and democratic. It was, to take one illustration, customary for the sons of chiefs to have foster-brothers adopted from the commonalty, companions in peace time, comrades and ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... remember the fate that befell the queen's favourites when Edward threw off his tutelage and took the reins of power into his own hands. Such is ever the fate of favourites; neither nobles nor the commonalty love upstarts, and more than one will, I foresee, erelong draw upon themselves the enmity of the king's uncles and other nobles for the influence they have gained over the mind of the young king. I should wish you, then, to make as many acquaintances as you can, for none ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... events as to see that period, fix them on as broad and independent a basis as possible. Among the many wise adages which have been treasured up by our Scottish ancestors, this is one of the best, Better be the head o' the commonalty, than the tail ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Benjamin Franklin, some six years after, in that remarkable sheet found among his papers, and called "Declaration of those Rights of the Commonalty of Great Britain, without which they cannot be free." The leading propositions ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... it was ordered that "a Mass of the Holy Ghost should be celebrated with solemn music in the chapel annexed to the Guildhall, to the end that the same commonalty by the grace of the Holy Spirit might be able peacefully and amicably to nominate two able and proper persons to be mayor of the City for the ensuing year, the same Mass, by the ordinance of the Chamberlain for the time being, to be solemnly chanted by the finest singers, ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... I shall make is this, Marriage in Most Countrys is Deemed Sacred, and here there are many honourable and I believe happy Matches, But to see among the Commonalty a Man take a Woman without so much Ceremony as Jumping over a Broom Stick at the time of their Agreement, to see her Content herself to be his Slave to work hard to maintain him & his Babs & then to Content herself with a flogging if she ...
— Log-book of Timothy Boardman • Samuel W Boardman
... God's people.'' It was not so often that justice exacted the extreme penalty from a young woman of rank and beauty. With "dreadful objects so familiar'' in the way of public executions, it was likely enough that pity in the commonalty was "choked with custom of fell deeds.'' Something out of the way in the nature of a dreadful object-lesson might stir the hearts of the populace and make them conscious of the ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... unconsciousness of his mission. A genius for opposition pushes him to the front and flashes in speech and print. He is content probably to put up with the leadership of the Lower House, assured that, with the Conservative commonalty at his back, his talents will soon win for him a complete ascendancy. Meanwhile it is proved to demonstration that none of the acting chiefs are fit for the post. Sir Richard Cross and Mr. W. H. Smith, "great as are many of their qualities, do not entirely possess those that are necessary ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... summer 1792, additional and more expensive decorations having been introduced, the price of admission was raised to two shillings. I cannot approve of this. The company may be more select; but a number of the honest commonalty are, I fear, excluded from sharing in elegant and innocent entertainment. An attempt to abolish the one-shilling gallery at the playhouse has been ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... arrangements of syntax. And in proportion as the democracy of intelligence extends—a friend of mine, who is a doctor, tells me that complaints formerly reserved to what is called aristocracy (though what that word means in plain English I don't know) are equally shared by the commonalty—tic-douloureux and other neuralgic maladies abound. And the human race, in England at least, is becoming more slight and delicate. There is a fable of a man who, when he became exceedingly old, was turned ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wretched world, like as Christ prophesied, Have the overhand: in me it is verified. Pray for me, good people, I beseech you heartily, That the Lord above on my poor soul have mercy. Farewell noblemen, with the clergy spiritual, Farewell men of law, with the whole commonalty. Your disobedience I do forgive you all, And desire God to pardon your iniquity. Farewell, sweet England, now last of all to thee: I am right sorry I could do for thee no more. Farewell once again, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... own affairs. The good bishop of that time acquiesced in the arrangement, but his successors were not content to be princes in name only, and strove hard to obtain a real influence over the citizens. Being for the most part men of unscrupulous disposition, they did not hesitate to rouse commonalty and aristocracy against each other, hoping to step in and reap the benefits of such internecine warfare as might ensue. And, indeed, the continual strife was not conducive to the prosperity of the burghers, but rather tended to sap their independence, ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... of this distemper might be, no doubt, the quantity of wretched fresh and salt fish consumed by the commonalty at all seasons as well as in Lent, which our poor now would hardly be ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... own ignorant though confident guess, moreover, is, that you would, in all senses of the word, succeed there; I think, also rather confidently, we could promise you an audience of British aristocracy in London here,—and of British commonalty all manner of audiences that you liked to stoop to. I heard an ignorant blockhead (or mainly so) called —- bow-wowing here, some months ago, to an audience of several thousands, in the City, one evening,—upon Universal Peace, or some other field of balderdash; which ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... though often of feminine words, as the central Arbor, will indicate either real masculine strength (quereus, laurus), or conditions of dominant majesty (cedrus), of stubbornness and enduring force (crataegus), or of peasant-like commonalty and hardship (juncus); softened, as it may sometimes happen, into gentleness and beneficence (thymus). The occasional forms in 'er' and 'il' will have ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... attendance at the Pnyx seems to have been introduced about 390 B.C. The original payment was probably only one obol, and then from time to time increased. It was a sign of the relative decay of political interest in Athens when it became needful thus to reward the commonalty ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... however, he submitted to all his sister's caprices, never grumbled because her dress and her maid formed a considerable item beyond her own little income of sixty pounds per annum, and consented to lead with her a migratory life, as personages on the debatable ground between aristocracy and commonalty, instead of settling in some spot where his five hundred a-year might have won him the definite dignity of a ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... trouble lies, not in the harm professionising does to schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, but in the harm it does 'in widest commonalty spread' among men and women who, as Literature was written for them, addressed to them, ought to find in it, all their lives through, a retirement from mean occupations, a well of refreshment, sustainment in the daily drudgery of life, solace in calamity, an inmate by ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... maintains a train of prating pettifoggers, prowling sumners[255], smooth-tongued bawds, artless[256] empirics, hungry parasites, newscarriers, janglers[257], and such like idle companions, that delude the commonalty. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... chaotic days of contending parties, when the maddened outcry of the "people" was just being heard and listened to, it might be as well not to make an enemy of this young man, who, with a few more, stood as it were midway in the gulf, now slowly beginning to narrow, between the commonalty and the aristocracy. He stayed some time longer, and then bowed himself away with a gracious condescension worthy of the Prince of Wales himself, carrying with him the shy, gentle Lord Ravenel, who had spoken scarcely ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... no longer control the movement. A considerable number of the commonalty of Basle and the majority of the council, were already on the side of radical Reformation. About a year after Erasmus, Johannes Oecolampadius, whose first residence at Basle had also coincided with his (at that time he ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... but when we see two contiguous or neighboring peoples making use of the same conventional signs of a complicated nature, down even to the most minute details, and those of a character not comprehensible by the commonalty, we have proof at least of a very intimate relation. I cannot attempt in this place to discuss the question of the identity or non-identity of the Maya, Toltec and Aztec nations, nor the relations ...
— Notes on Certain Maya and Mexican Manuscripts • Cyrus Thomas
... possessed by the prophet Sulaiman or Solomon, and since Solomon transmitted only to those who are highly favoured by Providence. This appears to be the true name of God, which is too awful and potent to be known or used by the commonalty; hence Allah, really an epithet, is used instead. It was in virtue of engraving the great name on his ring that Solomon possessed dominion over men and genii, and over the winds and birds and beasts. The uttering of Solomon's own name casts out demons, cures the sick, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... The commonalty occupy quarters over in the west, beginning at the point of termination of an awning, stretched, it would seem, for the accommodation ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... one, some one; soul, living soul; earthling; party, head, hand; dramatis personae[Lat]; quidam[Lat]. people, persons, folk, public, society, world; community, community at large; general public; nation, nationality; state, realm; commonweal, commonwealth; republic, body politic; million &c. (commonalty) 876; population &c. (inhabitant) 188. tribe, clan (paternity) 166; family (consanguinity) 11. cosmopolite; lords of the creation; ourselves. Adj. human, mortal, personal, individual, national, civic, public, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... schoolmasters who will teach us to our heart's content. We see how easily their social organization adapts itself to a state of warfare. They breed a superior order of men for leaders, an ignorant commonalty ready to follow them as the vassals of feudal times followed their lords; and a race of bondsmen, who, unless this war changes them from chattels to human beings, will continue to add vastly to their military strength in raising their food, in building their fortifications, ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and seems as if it lay in the hollow of a large hand. The Union Village may be seen, a manufacturing place, extending up a gorge of the hills. It is amusing to see all the distributed property of the aristocracy and commonalty, the various and conflicting interests of the town, the loves and hates, compressed into a space which the eye takes in as completely as the arrangement of a tea-table. The rush of the streams comes up the hill somewhat like ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... charged for the great spoil of churches and chapels; defacing ancient tombs and monuments, and pulling down the bells in parish churches, and ordering only one bell in a steeple, as sufficient to call the people together, which set the commonalty almost into a rebellion." ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 43, Saturday, August 24, 1850 • Various
... of teasing their sisters, of taking their pleasure by going a-bird-nesting, and of cutting switches for themselves from the osier-beds, maugre the laws of the realm. Moreover, they list not to learn naught, wherefore the Papal Nuncio (called of the commonalty, M. le Cure) threateneth them with excommunication, since that they neglect the sacred canons of grammatical construction for the construction of other canon, deadly engines made of the ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... an ecclesiastical aristocracy. The highest rank was occupied by the priests and their assessors, the Levites; after them, sometimes disputing the first place, came the doctors learned in the sacred law; below them the commonalty; and still lower in the social scale were the people of Samaria, who accepted the current Jewish religion only in part, and who were regarded by the blue-blood ecclesiastical aristocrats with contempt, indeed almost as outcasts. ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... was sorry that twenty Christians had not been murdered and that this Indians had only avenged the death of his uncle who, it was alleged, had been slain by the Dutch twenty-one years before. Whereupon all the commonalty were called together by the Director to consider this affair, who all appeared and presently twelve men delegated from among them answered the propositions, and resolved at once on war should the murderer be refused; that the attack should be made on [the Indians] in the autumn ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... limitation to the power of the early Teutonic kings. "Concerning smaller matters", says Tacitus,[31] "the chiefs deliberate; concerning greater matters, the whole nation; but in such wise that even those things which are in the power of the commonalty are discussed in detail by the chiefs. They come together, unless any sudden and accidental emergency have arisen, on fixed days determined by the new or full moon; for these times they deem the most fortunate for the transaction of ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... courageous, eat meat every day of his life. "All courageous animals are carnivorous, and greater courage is to be expected in a people, such as the English, whose food is strong and hearty, than in the half-starved commonalty of ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... was first brought hither it was frequently reported among the Commonalty that he was kept close Prisoner, which report caused the people of that Town, those of Charles-city, Henrico, and New-Kent Countries, being in all about the Number of eight hundred, or a thousand, to rise and march thitherwards in order to his rescue; whereupon ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... Oxford contain the first attempt to effect this, by enacting that thrice every year the newly formed royal Council should meet together with twelve men elected by the Commonalty of England, and consult on the affairs of the kingdom.[39] There is no doubt that these twelve belonged to the nobles and were to represent them: the decisive point lies in the fact that it was not a number of nobles summoned by the King, but a committee of the Estates chosen ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... yawning, and adopted without alteration. But, when it was proposed that the Catechisms and the Directory should be taken into consideration, the ill humour of the audience broke forth into murmurs. For that love of long sermons which was strong in the Scottish commonalty was not shared by the Scottish aristocracy. The Parliament had already been listening during three hours to dry theology, and was not inclined to hear any thing more about original sin and election. The Duke of Hamilton said that the Estates had already done all that was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... said, "That if the lords and gentlemen would accustom themselves, from their tender years, to the service and fear of God, they would live with greater Christianity in their riper age: and if persons of quality came once to give good examples of religion, the commonalty, who form themselves according to their model, would not fail to regulate their manners; and therefore the reformation of all degrees in the kingdom consisted chiefly in the virtuous ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... if ever, start with a complete ideal. Certainly we have no national ideals, no principles of progress peculiar to ourselves in Ireland, which are a common possession of our people. National ideals are the possession of a few people only. Yet we must spread them in wide commonalty over Ireland if we are to create a civilization worthy of our hopes and our ages of struggle and sacrifice to attain the power to build. We must spread them in wide commonalty because it is certain that democracy ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... provinces of Caesar. He went minutely into finances; and would have his sheep sheared, not flayed. His eyes and hands were everywhere, to bring about the Brotherhood of Man. There is, perhaps, evidence in the Christian Evangels: where we see the Jewish commonalty on excellent good terms with the Roman soldier, and Jesus consorting freindily with Tiberius' centurions and tax-gatherers; but the Jewish national leaders as the enemies of both—of the Romans, and of the democratic Nazarene. If this emperor's ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... a fighting animal, and that in the days of the ring there was a recognised code of rules which regulated his conduct at times when the combative instinct was not to be restrained. We observe that our commonalty now use the knife in quarrel, and we regret the death of that rough principle of honour which once imposed itself upon the worst of rowdies. But there is little doubt that the feeling of the community at large is overwhelmingly against us, and it is for this reason that I am dubious ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... Jains say that the carving above the saint's head is not an umbrella but a cobra's hood. Even after it had ceased to be the exclusive appanage of the king, the umbrella was a sign of noble rank, and not permitted to the commonalty. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... through them. Though they kept themselves socially aloof from the populace, they set a moral standard for them and guided them by their example. I admit Bushido had its esoteric and exoteric teachings; these were eudemonistic, looking after the welfare and happiness of the commonalty, while those were aretaic, emphasizing the practice of virtues for ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... introduced as pleading before the king in behalf of the commonalty, who had been driven by the extortions of Wolsey into some illegal excesses. In this scene, which is true to history, we have her upright reasoning mind, her steadiness of purpose, her piety and benevolence, placed in a strong light. The unshrinking dignity with which she ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... secured against oppressive and partisan decisions on the part of the magistrates, and against party fraud in the taking of the auspices and in the regulation of the calendar. There was now political equality between the nobility and the commonalty. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... then, that in one way and another the King and his seneschals accumulated good store of wine by the end of the festival, when they shared it among the populace in a great carouse; nor were they held too strictly to account for the justice of particular fines by which the whole commonalty profited. ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... retired life, and caused several cells to be made in the house, where in a short time he established a numerous society of dervises. He soon came to be publicly known by his virtue, through which he acquired the esteem of many people, as well of the commonalty as of the chief of the city. In short, he was much honoured and courted by all ranks. People came from afar to recommend themselves to his prayers; and all who visited him, published what blessings they ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... as guide, and since she knew the world of ease and the world of necessity and could walk alike with the aristocratic and the commonalty—and remain equally herself—she sat amused, watching him as he watched the rest. The twinkle that sought to flash into her eye flashed only in her mind, but the play of keen humor and wit quaintly expressed sparkled ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... Sunday, when the people of the Kopparberg were at church, Gustavus again appeared at the head of fifteen hundred Dalesmen. He spoke to the people after divine service, and now the miners likewise swore fidelity to his cause. Thereupon the commonalty of the mining districts and the Dalesmen wrote to the commons of Helsingland, requesting that the Helsingers might bear themselves like true Swedish men against the overbearing violence and tyranny of the Danes. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... regarded visages deformed by vice, and listened to accounts of chicanery that was continually embroiling the ignorant. These locusts will probably diminish as the people become more enlightened. In this period of social life the commonalty are always cunningly attentive to their own interest; but their faculties, confined to a few objects, are so narrowed, that they cannot discover it in the general good. The profession of the law renders a set of men still shrewder and more selfish than the rest; ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... nothing. When they died they ceased to be. Even mummification, usually supposed to have been general, was not for them. Down to an epoch relatively late it was a privilege reserved to priests and princes. When the commonalty were embalmed it was with the opulent design that, in a future existence, they should serve their masters as they had in this. Embalming was a preparation for the Judgment Day. Of that the people knew nothing either. It was even unlawful that ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus |
