"Common man" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... can't think what they wanted to take all the food for. And he was just a common man straight from prison. It's dreadful. I do hope they haven't picked up any awful language. Have you given Joan some quinine? Oh, Mrs. Murford's just rung up to see if Sadie's cloak has turned up. Will you send it round? I feel so upset ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... children, ladies and gentlemen. Every person joyful. The bands of armed men are perfectly polite. Mamma and aunt to-day walked through armed crowds alone, that were firing blank cartridges in all directions. Every person made way with the greatest politeness, and one common man with a blouse, coming by accident against her, immediately stopped to beg her pardon in the politest manner. There are few drunken men. The Tuileries is still being run over by the people; they only broke two things, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it occurred but yesterday. Bad as Abelard's character must seem to be to the careful reader—cruel as was his treatment of Heloise—he must have had depths of love and goodness of which the world knew not. Such a woman as Heloise could not have so adored any common man, nor a wonderful man who had a hard heart. She saw and knew the recesses of his heart, and pardoned his occasional acts of cruelty. Having known what there was of good and nobleness in his nature, she was willing to die, nay, to live in torture ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... philosophy and is perfectly intelligible to the most simple-minded. Here a bewildering number of mutually contradictory ways of life are urged upon us, not one of which can appeal in fulness and power to the common man. There do we find one clear way of salvation—the way of faith in Christ; and in order to walk in that way the power of the Divine Spirit is promised to every one, even to the humblest soul and to the greatest sinner, that he might accept the Christ and live in and ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... of frieze, and on his head a broad hat to shade his face; in his hand he carried a trident for spearing fish, and over his shoulder was a casting-net; but Danae could see that he was no common man by his stature, and his walk, and his flowing golden hair and beard; and by the two servants who came behind him, carrying baskets for his fish. But she had hardly time to look at him before he had laid aside his trident ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... think things through to the end, and have a solid reason for what he does. Such a man was Abraham Lincoln. He never could rest contented till he had worked the problem out clearly in his own head, and then had stated the answer in words that the common man could understand. Such an answer to the whole Secessionist argument, quite apart from the slavery question, he gave in one brief paragraph of his inaugural. "There is no alternative for continuing the government but acquiescence on the one side or ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... praise of this man. He is not a common man, not such a one as can be met with in every age. He is one of those geniuses who are doomed in their lifetime to endure the malice, the ridicule, and neglect of the world, and at their death to receive the praise and adoration of this same inconsistent world. I think there cannot be a stronger proof ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... a mastery of the business. To take the term created by the colleges in the same epoch, all the mediaeval bosses were Masters of Arts. The other grades were the journeyman and the apprentice; but like the corresponding degrees at the universities, they were grades through which every common man could pass. They were not social classes; they were degrees and not castes. This is the whole point of the recurrent romance about the apprentice marrying his master's daughter. The master would not be surprised at such a thing, any more than an M.A. would swell with aristocratic indignation ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... occasion to give the Gentleman's Pedigree, by what Methods some part of the Estate was acquired, how much it was beholden to a Marriage for the present Circumstances of it: After all, he could see nothing but a common Man in his Person, his ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Charlemagne was of these, and his name Karl, or Kerl, or peasant, and the fact that his title is the only one in the world compounded of greatness and the people in equal measure, is the pith of what the Germans brought to leaven the whole political world. He made the common man so great, that the world has consented to his unique and superlative baptismal title of Karl the Great, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... at that," Whamond went on, "and I says to her sternly, 'In worldly position,' I says, 'I'm a common man, and it's no for the like o' sic to sit in a minister's chair; but it has been God's will,' I says,' to wrap around me the mantle o' chief elder o' the kirk, and if the minister falls awa frae grace, it becomes my duty to ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... a tall man—more than six feet in height. He had a commanding presence and a noble air, which plainly said: "This is no common man." ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin
... egotism awoke—it never more than dozed. "Jimmie," said he, "it is violating no compact to tell you that I'm no common man. Other men have a similar opinion of themselves and are afraid to spit it out, but I'm bold as well as wise. I know that my opinion doesn't go for much, for I'm too good-humored, too approachable. The blitheness ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... majesty of the thought itself that no tinker's language can lower it or vulgarize it in his mind." The King James translators were most eager to say what the original said, and to say it so that the common man could well understand it, and yet so that it should not be vulgarized or cheapened by ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... would appear whether there was strength enough in the constitution to prevail over the disease; that all he had heard of the manner of the King's life, did unquestionably make him an unfavourable subject for such a struggle, but that if it was the case of any common man, he should have no hesitation in pronouncing even now that it would be very bad luck indeed if he did not recover, and that the chances were nine to one in his favour. You will easily suppose that this was said under the seal of confidence, and that a professional man would not choose ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... people call him Mavoom, but his white name is Rodd. He is a good master and no common man, but he has this fault, that at times he is drunken. Twenty years ago or more Mavoom, my lord, married a white woman, a Portuguese whose father dwelt at Delagoa Bay, and who was beautiful, ah! beautiful. Then he settled on the banks of the Zambesi and became a trader, building the house where he ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... enough To fill the ambition of a common man, That Chatham's language was his mother tongue, And Wolfe's great name compatriot with ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... convince a common man, that by sueing in Constantinople or Timbuctoo, he does an act which makes him responsible for the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... all further flight was out of the question. It is at such instants that my nature asserts itself. With dignity I advanced toward the tribunal. My jacket was torn, my hair was dishevelled, my head was bleeding, but there was that in my eyes and in my carriage which made them realise that no common man was before them. Not a hand was raised to arrest me until I halted in front of a formidable old man, whose long grey beard and masterful manner told me that both by years and by character he was the ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Cilicia, and many barbarians in like circumstances with the Greeks, Adiabenians, Assyrians, Gordyenians, and Cappadocians, whose native cities he had destroyed, and forced away the inhabitants to settle here. It was a rich and beautiful city; every common man, and every man of rank, in imitation of the king, studied to enlarge and adorn it. This made Lucullus more vigorously press the siege, in the belief that Tigranes would not patiently endure it, but even against his own judgment would come down in anger to force him away; in which ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the queen, Memucan was still lowest in the rank among the seven princes of Persia, yet, arrogant as he was, he was the first to speak up when the king put his question about the punishment due to Vashti an illustration of the popular adage: "The common man rushes to the front." (96) Haman's hostility toward Vashti dated from her banquet, to which the queen had failed to bid his wife as guest. Moreover, she had once insulted him by striking him a blow in the face. Besides, Haman calculated, if only Vashti's ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... Davis, leaving their firesides to sail with him, without other hope or motion; and silver bullets were cast to shoot him in a mutiny; the hard rude natures of the mutineers being awed by something in his carriage which was not like that of a common man. He has written the account of one of his northern voyages himself; one of those, by the by, which the Hakluyt Society have mutilated; and there is an imaginative beauty in it, and a rich delicacy of expression, which is a true natural poetry, called out in him by the first sight of strange lands ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... common man,—the clerk, the bartender, the policeman, the waiter, the tramp, that O. Henry chose for his characters. He loved to talk to chance acquaintances on park benches or in cheap lodging houses, to see life from their point of view. His stories are ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... said that industry was shorn of adventure for the common man. Adventure in industrial enterprise is the business man's great monopoly. His impetus is not due to his desire to create wealth but to exploit it, and he secures its creation by "paying men off." Commonly he is peevishly expectant that those he pays off will have a creative intention ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... servant of the world.... We two have to live like trusted servants who have been made guardians of a helpless minor. We have to put things in order and keep them in order against the time when Man—Man whom we call in America the Common Man—can ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... not, Mr Simple; and I think, moreover, that he who has more to lose than another will always strive more. Now a common man only fights for his own credit; but when a man is descended from a long line of people famous in history, and has a coat in arms, criss-crossed, and stuck all over with lions and unicorns to support the dignity of—why, has he not to fight ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... aspect of the Hot Country. Specially noticeable were the usual thickets of thorny, dry, and scraggy trees, seen even on the edge of the mesa. They are called guisachi, and in the vernacular of the common man the word has been utilised to designate a sharper. A man who "hooks on," as, for instance, a tricky lawyer, is called a guisachero. It is the counterpart of the "lawyer palm" among the shrubs ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... eyes that if they fought on the subject at all, they would fight in defence of the starch. "Cease to be slaves, in order that you may become cranks" is not a very inspiring call to arms; nor is it really improved by substituting saints for cranks. Both terms denote men of genius; and the common man does not want to live the life of a man of genius: he would much rather live the life of a pet collie if that were the only alternative. But he does want more money. Whatever else he may be vague about, he ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... Neither maid, wife nor widow is she—yet she is not, never has been, and never will be a woman without virtue. Ah, Donald, my son, she's a bonny lass! For all her fall, she's not a common woman and my son is not a common man—I wonder—Oh, 'tis lies, lies, lies, and she's heard them and knows they're lies. Ah, my son, my son, with the hot blood of youth in you—you've a man's head and heart and a will of your own—Aye, she's sweet—that she ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... common man to whose memory stands that tall monument at Botany Bay. It was erected at the cost of the French Government by the Baron de Bougainville, in 1825, and serves not only as a reminder of a fine character and a full, rich and manly life, but of a series ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... can they be?—I have not found that my generosity to my Rose-bud ever did me due credit with this pair of friends. Very hard, Belford, that credits cannot be set against debits, and a balance struck in a rake's favour, as well as in that of every common man!—But he, from whom no good is expected, is not allowed the merit of the good ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... that day Mr Sudberry and his boys learned a great deal about their new home from McAllister, whom they found intelligent, shrewd, and well-informed on any topic they chose to broach; even although he was, as Mr Sudberry said in surprise, "quite a common man, who wore corduroy and wrought in his fields like a mere labourer." After dinner they all walked out together, and had a row on the lake under his guidance; and in the evening they unexpectedly met Mr Hector Macdonald, who was proprietor of the estate on which the White House stood, and ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... to have worthless children. Ain't that so? And what sort of children do we want the most of? Well, in this way we wouldn't let your worthless fellow have any wife at all until he had brought forth fruit meet for repentance, and your common man only one; but I don't see but that it would be a real benefit to the State if your good, all-round man, as would be apt to have pious and clever children, had two or three or four families agrowing up to be an honour to him and to the Church, if it ain't against ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... Travers by reciting an incident of my factory life. Every afternoon the men in my father's department would bring in Brisbane's latest editorial to me ... and listen to me as I read it aloud. To have the common man buy a newspaper for its ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... condition, as sole lords and proprietors of a vast tract of continent, comprehending all the various soils and climates of the world, and abounding with all the necessaries and conveniences of life." Independence was the magic word which the common man believed would open wide the gates of prosperity. Yet within a year after the ratification of the Peace of Paris, American society was in the throes ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... Knights and obeyed a somewhat different code of manners from the common men. But in such respects the common man was just the same as his master. He, too, resembled a shy horse, easily frightened by a shadow or a silly piece of paper, capable of excellent and faithful service but liable to run away and do terrible damage when his ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... of the same year, when the Neapolitan troops invaded the Ecclesiastical States, he, with his present brother-in-law, another hopeful Roman Prince, Santa Cruce, headed the Roman sans-culottes in their retreat. To show his love of equality, he had previously served as a common man in a company of which the captain was a fellow that sold cats' meat and tripe in the streets of Rome, and the lieutenant a scullion of his mother's kitchen. Since Imperial aristocracy is now become ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... Hookey. No: he saw in the tall, pale, elegant, dark-haired student the victim of deep sensibility. From seeing him, he wondered, from wondering he loved him, from loving he adored him: he knew at once he was no common man. Having perused Byron's Manfred, he conceived him to be such another as that strange character; or he might be a second Lara; or, more, he might be, nay he was, a glorious genius, full of high imaginings. Little do we know what bright thoughts ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... lovely song. The seventh and youngest daughter of the King heard him, and she wondered who it was who could sing so deliciously. Then she put on her clothes, rolled up her hair, and came down to where the seemingly poor common man was lying singing. "Who are you? where do ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... one should pass from under the shadow of my house whither she is not welcome. Without my leave the prince named this woman as his queen, as he had the right to do; and without my leave he unnames her, as he has the right to do. Were the prince a common man, according to custom he should pay a fine of cattle to be held by me in trust for her whom he discards; but this is a matter that I leave to ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... paid less to his wife for a divorce,(63) and could assault another poor man more cheaply than could an amelu. There can be no doubt that the amelu was the "gentleman" or "nobleman," and the muskenu a common man, or poor man. But the exact force of ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... round the assembly, coming in front of the preacher—I at once recognised the pale and melancholy features of the afflicted Christian. I was surprised and delighted. He had convinced me, at the few interviews I had had with him, that he was no common man, and I had determined to obtain from him, if I should ever meet him again, all necessary knowledge of the Christian institutions and doctrine. Although I had learned much, in the mean time, from both Julia and the Hermit, still ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... clear expression—something to stir a doubt or awaken a feeling of concern. The eyes, that were deep and intense, had a shadow in them, and the curves of the mouth had suffering and passion and evidences of stern mental conflict in every line. This was no common man, no social drone, but one who in his contact with men was used to ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... Adam, bitterly; "you don't want to fight me—you think I'm a common man, as you can ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... speaking a loud trampling of feet was heard outside the great hall, and all the lackeys came tumbling in, pell-mell, without waiting to do their reverence, just as if the King had been any common man. ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... hesitated even now to widen the chasm which already he had opened and which yawned threateningly between the old faith and the new wisdom which yet was a wisdom more ancient than the world. He was but a common man, born of woman; no Krishna conceived of a Virgin Devaki, nor even a Pythagoras initiate of Memphis and heir of Zoroaster; and this night he distrusted his genius. What if he should beckon men, like a vaporous will-o'-the-wisp, out ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... and the lower classes. It is impossible to separate them sharply, for they shade into one another. Theoretically, in a democratic country like America there should be no class distinctions, but in colonial days birth and education had an acknowledged social position that did not belong to the common man, and in the nineteenth century a wealthy class came into existence that wrested supremacy from professional men and those who could rely alone on their intellectual achievements. It has never been impossible for individuals to push their way up the ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... She is a good girl, too, and a fine musician; but she has no family, and her alliance with my son would be a great drawback to his career. Her father was a grocer, I believe, or something of that sort; quite a common man, who married a third-class actress, Joy's mother. Mr Irving was in very comfortable circumstances at one time, but a stroke of paralysis rendered him helpless some four years ago. He died last year and left his widow and child in straitened circumstances. Mrs Irving ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... hold his own, and a democratic flavour, a touch of repudiation, was in the air. In such countries as Italy, Greece, the Alps, the Netherlands, and Great Britain, the two forces of the old order, the aristocrat and the common man, were in a state of unstable equilibrium through the whole period of history. A slight change[22] in the details of the conflict for existence could tilt the balance. A weapon a little better adapted to one class ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... influence than in the Science of Language. Even the earliest records show that the meaning of the names of persons, places, and common objects was then, as it has always been since, a matter of interest to mankind. And in every age the common man has regarded himself as competent without special training to explain by inspection (if one may use a mathematical phrase) the meaning of any words that attracted his attention. Out of this amateur ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... up silently at Richard's moon standing in wane toward the West. She hoped it was because of her having been premature in pleading so earnestly, that she had failed to move him, and she accused herself more than the baronet. But in acting as she had done, she had treated him as no common man, and she was compelled to perceive that his heart was at present hardly superior to the hearts of ordinary men, however composed his face might be, and apparently serene his wisdom. From that moment she grew critical ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Jews is largely nurtured by the dislike which the common people secretly harbor towards them until to-day as non-Christians.... The names "Non-Christian" and "Christ-killer" may often be heard from the lips of the Russian common man as abusive terms directed against the Jew. The attitude of our Church and of the law of the State towards the Jewish religion is different. For, while they designate the Jewish religion as a "pseudo-doctrine," ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... nearer; his handsome palfrey, furred cloak, rich gloves and boots, moreover his air of command, showed that he was no common man. ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... Richard Spooner. Matthias Attwood seceded, and went to London. Of Thomas, it is unnecessary to say one word to Birmingham people; his statue in our principal street shows that he was considered to be no common man. He was one of the first Members for Birmingham upon its incorporation, and was re-elected in 1837. Although he had been so great and successful as a popular political leader, he made no "way" ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... Blaunch those Prouinces? It is not so, thou hast mispoke, misheard, Be well aduis'd, tell ore thy tale againe. It cannot be, thou do'st but say 'tis so. I trust I may not trust thee, for thy word Is but the vaine breath of a common man: Beleeue me, I doe not beleeue thee man, I haue a Kings oath to the contrarie. Thou shalt be punish'd for thus frighting me, For I am sicke, and capeable of feares, Opprest with wrongs, and therefore full of ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the day of the common man. Do you glorify the common man? This is the day of the machine. When have you sung of the machine? The crusades are here again, not the Crusades of Christ but the Crusades of the Machine—have you found motive in them for ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... last youthful adventure. Now, I shall grow old and cold gracefully. One thing I wish to say before I resume my royalty; confidentially, I am not entirely displeased with the change. It seems to me difficult to fill the role of a common man. Men do not seem to love and trust each other fully; a man avenges himself on an innocent party for the wrongs another has committed. Besides, I do not rightly understand the politenesses of common life, and, therefore, received many reproaches. I believe, ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... committee. Slight sketch of procedure agreed upon, self appointed spokesman, and the deputation sets off. Walk all through Matafele, all along Mulinuu, come to the King's house; he has verbally refused to see us in answer to our letter, swearing he is gase-gase (chief-sickness, not common man's), and indeed we see him inside in bed. It is a miserable low house, better houses by the dozen in the little hamlet (Tanugamanono) of bushmen on our way to Vailima; and the President's house in process of erection just opposite! We are told to return to-morrow; I refuse; and at last we are very ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... says Dr. Codrington, "there is nothing to prevent a common man from becoming a chief, if he can show that he has the mana (supernatural ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... would love you if she thought you were just a common man, like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln; so, if you tell her you are poverty-stricken and prodigal, and it be true, then she will think that she had rather have a demi-god, poor as Job's turkey, ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... not return. I, the Princess of Egypt, cannot live as the wife of a common man who falls from a throne to set himself upon the earth, and smears his own brow with mud for a uraeus crown. When your prophecies come true, Seti, and you crawl from your dust, then ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... The gentleman and the magistrate were deferred to, but neither was regarded as sacrosanct; and when, in the regime of Berkeley, special privilege in alliance with official corruption seemed to be narrowing the chances of the common man, the insurgent spirit of frontier democracy, denying the validity of distinctions and demanding fair play, found militant expression in Bacon's Rebellion. The episode was an early instance of that struggle between rich and poor, between exploiter and exploited, of that ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... sovereigns were like that, and our sages taught that there should be 'Ne Wu Yuen Nu, Wai wu Kwang-tu' (in the harem no pining beauty, outside no man without a mate). It is the luxury of later ages that keeps a multitude of women in seclusion for the pleasure of a few men, and leaves the common man without a wife. We heartily approve the practice of Europe, but what ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... landed yet more frankly coming Than this fair company: and yet ye answer not The password of warriors, and customs of kinsmen. Ne'er have mine eyes beheld a mightier warrior, An earl more lordly, than is he, the chief of you; He is no common man; if looks belie him not, He is a hero bold, worthily weaponed. Anon must I know of you kindred and country, Lest ye as spies should go free on our Danish soil. Now ye men from afar, sailing the surging sea, Have heard ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... up and opened his palms, with a twinkling of pendant emeralds. 'I am royal,' he answered, with naive dignity, 'and the tiger is a royal beast. Kings know the ways of kings. If a king kills what is kingly, it owes him no grudge for it. But if a common man or a low caste man were to kill a tiger—who can say ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... nor by a common man; but it seemed that to the eyes of those keen hunters, the trail was as conspicuous as ever. I saw that, after searching a few seconds, they had taken it up, and were once more moving along, guided by ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... among them the greatest of all, Bolivar, one of those men who appear in the world at long intervals, selected by God to be the leaders of multitudes, to be performers of miracles, achieving what is impossible for the common man. They live a life of constant inspiration, as if they were not guided by their own frail judgment, but, like Moses, by the smoke and the flame of God through a desert, through suffering and success, through happiness and misfortune, until they might see before them the ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... life—the ordinary vie intime—on the other. Among the men and women of the new era that barrier was broken down. The religious was no longer a recognised class: religion was no longer a luxury for the few, or to be partaken of in sacred places and at fixed days and hours. The common man, if a Christian man at all, was to be so now in his common and daily life, living it out from day to day on the deepest principles and from the highest motives. And the Christian woman, having a similar and an equal vocation, undertook the like responsibilities. ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... reflection, that I never availed myself of his kind invitation. I say singular, for the extraordinary, under whatever form, had long had no slight interest for me: and I had discernment enough to perceive that yon was no common man. Yet I went not near him, certainly not from bashfulness, or timidity, feelings to which I had long been an entire stranger. Am I to regret this? perhaps, for I might have learned both wisdom and righteousness from those calm, quiet lips, and ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... loves?" said Nombe to me, studying Anscombe with her steady eyes after Heda had gone. "Well, he is no common man and brave, if idle; one, too, who may grow tall in the world, should he live, when he has learned to think. But, Macumazahn, if she met you both at the same time why did ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... or failure is the degree of satisfaction afforded to the common man. By the "common man" I do not mean the inferior man, but the man who has not specialised himself out of his common humanity. If there is any interest which an honest lawyer can share with an honest fisherman, a decent cockney with a decent Bedouin Arab, he does it ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... came that, when her mind was as full as it could be of Lucia and her affairs, it could give such concentrated attention to him and his. If he had been what the tortoiseshell eye-glass took him for, a common man, it ought to have been easy and natural to dismiss him. But she could not dismiss him. There was some force in him, not consciously exerted, which held her there on that conspicuous seat beside him under the gaze of the tortoiseshell eye-glass. Kitty was by no means ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... very place; only, you know, Roger, you must not think of smoking in the house. I am almost afraid having just a plain common man around, let alone a smoking-man, will upset Aunt Hannah. She is New ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... out-of-door bookstalls which in their very titles proclaimed the hideous tone of blasphemy which in France is gradually becoming universal,—but this did not affect his own sense of what was right and just. He was a very plain common man, but he held holy things in reverence, and instinctively felt that, if the world were in truth a bad place, it was likely to become much worse if all faith in God were taken out of it. And when he reached his plot of ground that morning, and set to work as usual, he was, for a non-reflective ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... know that if anyone lays a finger on Macumazana, who is my guest, he shall die, whether he be a common man or a prince and my son. Also, Cetewayo, I fine you twenty head of cattle, to be paid to Macumazana because of the unprovoked attack which your men made upon him when ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... replied Neighbor Hutchins, "for a queerer chap I never saw in my life. Somehow it makes me feel small to look at him. He's more than a common man." ...
— Biographical Stories - (From: "True Stories of History and Biography") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... assisted Shakespear. There is no impertinent display, no flaunting poetry; the writer immediately conceives how a thought would tell if he had to speak it himself. Mr. Knowles is the first tragic writer of the age; in other respects he is a common man; and divides his time and his affections between his plots and his fishing-tackle, between the Muses' spring, and those mountain-streams which sparkle like his own eye, that gush out like his own voice at the sight of ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... to you? You are not a common man; you are an inventor. Rouse all the powers of your mind. There must be some way. Think for me. THINK! THINK! or my blood will be on ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... The New Day is for each: For the hitherto Common Man, slave, For the Women, no longer a Thing, For the Child, now escaped from the animal lair. Dawn's here! (With Opportunity leading "captivity captive," (And the stars urging on to achievement, (And the Sun, breeding life ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... peculiarly representative of the poetry that can be true, without being wise in the manner that we shall come shortly to understand as the manner of philosophy. He is as desultory in his poet raptures as is the common man when he lives in his immediate experiences. The truth won by each is the clear vision of one thing, or of a limited collection of things, and not the broad inclusive vision of ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... himself off as just a common man," continued Miss Port, "that's goin' to spend the rest of his summer here with his family, he can't do it. He's first got to explain why he never came near that young woman and her two babies for the whole of last summer, and, so far as I've heard, ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... I am still the same. Had I not heard Theis last distemperd words, I would have sworne That in the making up of Barnavelt Reason had only wrought, passion no hand in't. But now I find you are lesse then a man, Lesse then a common man, and end that race You have so long run strongly like a child, For such a one old age or honours ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... removing his hat, who had no greeting for her, who had no semblance of courtesy. In looks, as in action, he made her think of a bull stamping cross-grained into a corral. She had heard of Bishop Dyer forgetting the minister in the fury of a common man, and now she was to feel it. The glance by which she measured him in turn momentarily veiled the divine in the ordinary. He looked a rancher; he was booted, spurred, and covered with dust; he carried a gun at his hip, and she remembered that he had been ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... has come first. In your equipment you are being paid in advance. David Starr Jordan has happily clothed the thought in these words: "It is in the saving of the few who serve the many that the progress of civilization lies. In the march of the common man, and in the influence of the man uncommon who rises freely from the ranks, we have all ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... who has formed a plan Beyond the pitch of common minds, she sailed, Mocked and deserted by the common man, Made half divine to me for ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... the both of the Long Island is only the lodging of the common man or 'Tuathanach,' and is consequently of small dimensions, and not remarkable for comfort. If the modern Highland proprietor or large farmer should ever be induced to lead a pastoral life, and adopt a Pictish architecture in his ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
... none the less wonderful; I thought you were a common man, a prince mayhap, come but from over the hills, but now something tells me you are more than that," and she lapsed into ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... ready;... this being over, I mount my horse and ride round my farms, which employs me until it is time to dress for dinner." A visitor at this time is authority for the statement that the master "often works with his men himself—strips off his coat and labors like a common man. The General has a great turn for mechanics. It's astonishing with what niceness he directs everything in the building way, condescending even to measure the things himself, that all ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... Bechamel, for all the world like a common man. "I'll chuck this infernal business! ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... the sense of inferiority was forgotten. Her freedom emboldened and improved her. She even began to consider her own judgment a safer guide in the affairs of every day than the example of her patroness. Had she not been right in declaring Cashel Byron an ignorant and common man when Lydia, in spite of her warning, had actually invited him to visit them? And now all the newspapers were confirming the opinion she had been trying to impress on Lydia for months past. On the evening of the assault-at-arms, the newsmen had shouted through the streets, "Disgraceful scene ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... I did display some energy. When I had swallowed one glass I rose up to leave. He no longer spoke of accompanying me, and with a sullen scowl, the scowl of a common man in an angry mood, the scowl of a brute whose violence is only slumbering, in the direction of his wife's ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... other by blood. A smear of blood—as if somebody had wiped blood off his fingers, you'll understand. But it was not that, not the blood, made me give my particular attention to the thing, which I'd picked off with my thumb and finger. It was that I saw at once that this was no common man's property, for there was a crest woven into one corner, and a monogram of initials underneath it, and the stuff itself was a sort that I'm unfamiliar with—it wasn't linen, though it looked like it, ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... much in love with her as most men when they take unto themselves wives. She was desirable—he had pleasure in her presence. He had that half of love which commonly passes for all—the passion; but he lacked the additional incentives which nerve the common man to face that fear which seems well-nigh as universal as the fear of death, I mean the fear of marriage—life's two fears: that is, he had no desire to increase his worldly possessions by annexing a dowry, or ambition of settling down and procuring a wife as part of his establishment. After all, how ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... of the street, or the image of the sky—so it is with almost all other things that we unkindly despise. Now, this farseeing is just the difference between the great and the vulgar painter; the common man knows the roadside pool is muddy, and draws its mud; the great painter sees beneath and behind the brown surface what will take him a day's work to follow, but he follows it, cost what it will. And if painters would only go out to the nearest common and take the ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... plays and shadow theatre are the "opera of the common man" and took a new development in Ming time, the wood-cut and block-printing developed largely as a cheap substitute of real paintings. The new urbanites wanted to have paintings of the masters and found in the wood-cut which soon became a multi-colour print a cheap mass ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... Wales, from low things to things more worthy his birth. It ends with the killing of Hotspur, by the Prince of Wales, on the battlefield at Shrewsbury. Hotspur is an uncommon man, whose uncommonness is unsupported by his father at a critical moment. Henry, Prince of Wales, is a common man, whose commonness props his father, and helps him to conquer. The play is about a son too brilliant to be understood, and a ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... the attack, they one and all refused, and immediately lay down their arms, upon which they were instantly surrounded, and made prisoners; and instead of Cromwell keeping his word with these poor fellows, he ordered every common man to be instantly hung upon the boughs of trees and elsewhere, and the officers to be committed to three separate jails in the West of England upon a charge of high treason, for making war against the troops of the Commonwealth, in order to depose ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... Triffitt, wildly smiting the crown of his deerstalker. "That's just it! What does it all mean, my dear! Gad!—this is—to use the common language of the common man, a fair licker! That that chap Burchill should march as bold as brass into those Herapath Flats, is—well, I couldn't be more surprised, Trixie, than if you were to tell me that you are the Queen of Sheba's grand-daughter! Not so much ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... man, human, mankind, a common man in distinction from chiefs. Samoan, New Zealand [sc. Maori], Tongan, tangata, ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... delight and recreation, namely, that which contains the songs of Ab Gwilym, for he would have nothing in his possession belonging to such a heartless scoundrel as Ab Gwilym must have been had he got up the scene above described. Any common man who would expose to each other and the world a number of hapless, trusting females who had favoured him with their affections, and from the top of a tree would feast his eyes upon their agonies of shame and rage, would deserve to be—emasculated. Had Ab Gwilym been so dead to every feeling ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... saw him at the stand to-day, good Malluch, Sheik Ilderim appeared to be a very common man. The rabbis in Jerusalem would look down upon him, I fear, as a son of a dog of Edom. How came he in possession of the Orchard? And how has he been able to hold it against ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... the wind; a beauty that might have moved her Barbarian destroyers to pity and remorse. 10. The manly or divine form of Hercules, [96] as he was restored to life by the masterhand of Lysippus; of such magnitude, that his thumb was equal to his waist, his leg to the stature, of a common man: [97] his chest ample, his shoulders broad, his limbs strong and muscular, his hair curled, his aspect commanding. Without his bow, or quiver, or club, his lion's skin carelessly thrown over him, he was seated on an osier basket, his right leg and arm stretched ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... he dislikes mentioning the fact or hearing it mentioned, the common man of science recognises no other end in life than protracted and agreeable existence. That is where he joins issue with the religious; it is also his excuse for being a eugenist. He declines to believe in any reality other than that of the physical universe. ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... which Charles subjected the exiled king; and in the Sanctuary, amidst homicides and felons, the wife of the earl's defeated foe gave birth to a male child, baptized and christened (says the chronicler) "as the son of a common man." For the Avenger and his children were regal authority and gorgeous pomp, for the fugitive and his offspring were the bread of the exile, or the refuge ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to pass, that none but peaceful bards had ever sat upon the mound. Never a warrior or a common man had risked sitting there. The general fear felt, and the awe inspired by the place, was ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... who love their country most among us. It is well to hold one's country to her promises, and if there are any who think she is forgetting them it is their duty to say so, even to the point of bitter accusation. I do not suppose it was the "common man" of Lincoln's dream that Lowell thought America was unfaithful to, though as I have suggested he could be tender of the common man's hopes in her; but he was impeaching in that blotted line her sincerity with the uncommon ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... swiftly, departing with his order. Tunis was conscious of a hoarse voice at his elbow. He glanced aside. His neighbor in the next chair was a little, common man, with a little, common face, on which ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... "You're a plain, common man," continued Ephraim, paying the highest compliment known to rural New England; "the people think a sight of you, or they wouldn't hev ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... as a good teacher, companion and warm friend, however, that Dr. Gourley will best be remembered by those who knew him well. His life and fire have sparked many another teacher, research worker and common man to greater effort and better achievement. A close associate closed a press notice of Dr. Gourley's ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... to rid this country of this anarchy. Your common man cannot live without a King, whether a real one or a fraud! Anarchy is ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... professor, the philosopher, the representative of all that was best in the life of the University; now, fresh from his own grapple with London and its life, what moved him most was the memory of the citizen, the friend and brother of common man, the thinker who had never shirked action in the name of thought, for whom conduct had been from beginning ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... common man, but he had an open, intelligent countenance, and his manner was most respectful. I motioned him to be seated. He selected a chair, and sat down on ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... then just a little edification, in a manner of speaking. But I'm a poor, common man, and have little enough gift, God help me!—and so I thought, as the Reverend Mr. Manders happened to be ...
— Ghosts • Henrik Ibsen
... Bratti is not a common man. He has a theory, and lives up to it, which is more than I can say for any philosopher I have the honour of shaving," answered Nello, whose loquacity, like an over-full bottle, could never pour forth a small dose. "Bratti means to extract the utmost possible ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... reverent Mr. Oldham, brother to Lord Wessex. But you needn't be afeard o' en on that account. He'll talk to 'ee like a common man, if so be you haven't had enough drink to ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... is, we can't go fast enough," he admitted. "Do you know why? Do you know the biggest burden we have to carry—the most determined enemy we have to fight? Well, sir, it's ignorance—the ignorance of the common man about his farm or his trade; the ignorance of the business man about outside things; the ignorance of the teachers who are supposed to enlighten us." He leaned forward again. "That sounds strong, ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... The common man is he who does not receive any special distinction: universities do not compete to do him honour, his name is but mentioned in a small circle. These are those of whom Dickens wrote. 'It is,' says Chesterton, 'in private life that we find the great ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... lit' bit; only shake his new coat till common man see it silk. He feel velly much flighten all a same, as if big-button mandalin ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... NECESSARILY seduce and constrain to sympathy, and thus to a doubling of the woe?... That which serves the higher class of men for nourishment or refreshment, must be almost poison to an entirely different and lower order of human beings. The virtues of the common man would perhaps mean vice and weakness in a philosopher; it might be possible for a highly developed man, supposing him to degenerate and go to ruin, to acquire qualities thereby alone, for the sake of which he would have to be honoured as a saint in the lower world into which he had ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... testing him with chances he didn't take. She had an intense desire he should know the type she really conformed to without her doing anything so low as tell him, and he had surely begun to know it from the moment he didn't seize the opportunities into which a common man would promptly have blundered. These were on the mere awkward surface, and their relation was beautiful behind and below them. She had questioned so little on the way what they might be doing that as soon as they were seated ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... fulfilled the prophets thereby?' That would have been a hard question for the king to answer. His conscience begins to be uncomfortable, and his dignity is wounded by this extremely rude person, who ventures to talk to him as if he were a mere common man. He has no better answer ready than a sarcasm; not a very forcible one, betraying, however, his penetration into, and his dislike of, and his embarrassment at, Paul's drift. His ironical words are no confession of being 'almost persuaded,' but a taunt. 'And do you really ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... Charlie said. "A man who would do as he has done, leave his kingdom, and work like a common man in dockyards, to learn how to build ships, and who rules his people as he does, must be a great man. I don't suppose he would do for us in England, because a king has no real power with us, and Peter would never put up with being thwarted in all ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... of a four-sided pyramid, and afterwards brought more or less into a true image of leaves, but deriving all its beauty from the botanical form. In the present instance only two leaves are set in each cluster; and the architect has been determined that the naturalism should be perfect. For he was no common man who designed that cathedral of Dunblane. I know not anything so perfect in its simplicity, and so beautiful, as far as it reaches, in all the Gothic with which I am acquainted. And just in proportion to his power of mind, ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... felt there was need to strike a blow for something righteous. And his faith in the righteousness of the Allied cause was still unfired. He saw no mission to compel justice, to exact retribution, only a clash of Great Powers, in which the common man was fed ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... through your lips, utters words you hardly comprehend, falsifies your thoughts, confounds your reason, and betrays your secrets. When this sublime madness possesses you, it elevates you—it transfigures you. It can suddenly convert a common man into a poet, a coward into a hero, an egotist into a martyr, and Don Juan himself ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... the Middle Ages, when crude grinding made impure flour, were the days of the oppressed peasant and the rich landowner, dark days of toil and poverty and war, of blight and drought and famine; when common man in his wretchedness and hunger cried ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... come back rich, I'll be your ould friend again as much as a common man may; and if I come back poor and disappointed and done for, I'll not claim you to disgrace you; and if I never come back at all, I'll be saying to myself in my dark hour somewhere, 'He'll spake up for you at home, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... its long duration; it has lasted for ages and is ingrained in their feelings and ideas. What if it be shown ever so clearly that it is unjust, unreasonable, yea, even unchristian!—that will not materially change the temper of the great masses of the people. The common man is rarely swayed by the force of arguments; the power of a principle, so weighty with the thinkers, is of no consequence to him. He belongs to the material world, and to make good his place in it is the aim toward which all his energies are bent. For things spiritual he has neither ...
— Zionism and Anti-Semitism - Zionism by Nordau; and Anti-Semitism by Gottheil • Max Simon Nordau
... my own age, whose anxiety during my father's illness rendered my visits more frequent than perhaps they would have been from my own. But my sister was right in her anxiety. My father grew worse, and in December he died. I will not eulogize one so dear to me. That he was no common man will appear from the fact of his unconventionality and justice in leaving his property to my sister, saying in his will that he had done all I could require of him, in giving me a good education; and that, men having means ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... themselves, was made of the soaked and beaten bark of several shrubs, such as the wauke, olona, hau, oloa. Fine varieties were even made of the kukui (Aleurites moluccana). In ancient times it was an offense punishable with death for a common man to wear a double ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... (as my poor husband used to tell me) what they call left-handed wives, and leave them behind when they go abroad, widowhood is widowhood, left-handed or right. And really, to be the left-handed wife of a foreign baron is nobler than to be married all round to a common man. You'll excuse my freedom, ma'am; but being a widow myself, I have pitied you from my heart; so young as you are, and having to keep it a secret, and (excusing me) having no money out of his vast riches because 'tis swallowed up by ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... and when the devil got to the turning or bend of the lane, he vanished! The devil was upon this occasion drest in a blue coat, plush waistcoat, leather breeches and boots, and talked and looked just like a common man, except as to a particular lock of hair which he had. "And how do you know then that it was the devil?"—"How do I know," replied the fellow,—"why, if it had not been the devil, being drest as he was, and looking as he did, why ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... his task so easy on this occasion. There was something in the personality of the man sitting opposite to him which seemed to make a narrative that had passed muster elsewhere sound here a mere vulgar impertinence, the wanton intrusion of a common man on things sacredly and justly ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to nothing," said the third. "There are many classes in a town, and that is about the lowest. It is nothing to be called 'Master.' You might be very superior yourself; but as a master mason you would be only what is called 'a common man.' I know of something better. I will be an architect; enter upon the confines of science; work myself up to a high place in the kingdom of mind. I know I must begin at the foot of the ladder. I can hardly bear to say it—I must begin as a carpenter's ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... colleges and universities in Illinois, the figures have more meaning to us. And when we reflect that the cost of a single shot from one of the great guns of that battleship would build a home for an American family, a comfortable home costing $1700, the common man realizes that the richest nation on earth cannot afford to go to war nor prepare ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... desert, his exultant joy in the mountain sunset, and his abounding health (which filled his heart with the buoyancy of a boy)—all these causes combined to revive emotions which his absorption in scientific investigation had set in the background—emotions which concern the common man, but which the deeply ambitious chemist, eager to discover the chemical molecular structure of the plasm, must put aside with ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... that is taken in the common man is not in what he is at the present moment, but in what he has shown himself capable of becoming. Give him a chance and all the graces may be his. The American idealist admits that many of his fellow citizens may be rather dreary brethren, ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... the most places on the sea-coast, but the most of them were ignorant of Christian law. In the upper ends of the valleys, and in the habitations among the mountains, the greater part of the people were heathen; for when the common man is left to himself, the faith he has been taught in his childhood is that which has the strongest hold over his inclination. But the king threatened the most violent proceedings against great or small, who, ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... With it all there was no hint of superciliousness: the eyes were too sad, too terribly wise in their own way for that; and his whole manner went far beyond modesty; it had all the pitiable self-consciousness of one that has fallen from the higher social plane. No common man, no matter what his fame and offences, could lose his self-respect as this poor gentleman had done. Anne, filled with a pity she had never known was in her, exerted herself to divert his mind from the gulf which had so long separated ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... their kind—that had rhymed their lying verses over the dead Prince of Wales who had hated his father, now rhymed their lying verses over the dead king who had hated his son. If George the Second had been a more common man, instead of being Elector of Hanover and King of England, one might have said of him frankly enough that he was a person about as little to be admired as a man well could be who was not a coward or in the ordinary sense of the term ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... mind. But Winfried's voice sank lower and a cloud of disappointment passed over his face as he replied: "Nay, miracles have I never wrought, though I have heard of many; but the All-Father has given no power to my hands save such as belongs to common man." ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... be the real and sufficient explanation of the paradoxical truth, on which so much stress is laid by Dr. Whewell, that a scientifically cultivated mind is actually, in virtue of that cultivation, unable to conceive suppositions which a common man conceives without the smallest difficulty. For there is nothing inconceivable in the suppositions themselves; the impossibility is in combining them with facts inconsistent with them, as part of the same mental picture; an obstacle of course only felt by those who know the facts, and are ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... thinking of it at all, he must bring his attention back to it by a violent wrench. In him, therefore, the faculty of voluntary attention receives abundant opportunity for cultivation in daily life. It is your despised business man, your common man of affairs, (so looked down on by the literary awarders of fame) whose virtue in this regard is likely to be most developed; for he has to listen to the concerns of so many uninteresting people, and to transact so much drudging detail, that the faculty in question is always kept in training. A genius, ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... Aragon gazed into the republican eyes of the Kentuckian with a glowing fire which was contrary to all rules and conventions of the divine right of kings. No common man should have been given such a glimpse of empire; but, in justice to the magic of such glances which come once from the eyes of every good woman, for some good man, in each lifetime, it must be acknowledged that their potent wizardry turns the commonplace, even the tawdry surroundings ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... taken his place. His reputation in France was already made, through his books and inventions and discoveries. To the corrupt and licentious court he was the personification of the age of simplicity, which it was the fashion to admire; to the learned, he was a sage; to the common man he was the apotheosis of all the virtues; to the rabble he was little less than a god. Great ladies sought his smiles; nobles treasured a kindly word; the shopkeeper hung his portrait on the wall; and the people drew aside in the streets that ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... the qualities and powers of other men in the street. He finds him, like himself, by birth a citizen, who, by very intelligible merits, arrived at such a commanding position, that he could indulge all those tastes which the common man possesses, but is obliged to conceal and deny; good society, good books, fast traveling, dress, dinners, servants without number, personal weight, the execution of his ideas, the standing in the attitude of a benefactor to all persons about him, the ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... willease, and had in his hand a small package wrapt in a woollen cover and buckled with a leathern strap. The other was the master; and my grandfather halted his horse to look at him as he passed, for he was evidently no common man nor mean personage, though in stature he was jimp the ordinary size. He was bent more with infirmities than the load of his years. His hair and long flowing beard were very grey and venerable, like those of the ancient patriarchs ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... acceptance of the favor of kindness he bestows to be a compliment to himself rather than to you. The delicate ingenuity with which he diminishes the nature or amount of his own kindness, proves that he is no common man, either in heart or intellect; and when all fails he will lie like Lucifer himself, and absolutely seduce you into an acceptance of his hospitality or assistance. I speak now exclusively of the peasantry. Certainly in domestic life there is no man so exquisitely affectionate ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... common man, vulgus, will speak ill of it; but my commilitiones, my comrades, will praise me to ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... what need have you to employ punishments? Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass—I the grass, when the wind passes ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... time had been lost in gratifying the family affection of the warrior, he again made the signal to proceed. As the Indians moved away in a body, and with a step that would have been inaudible to the ears of any common man, the same venerable-looking beaver once more ventured his head from its cover. Had any of the Hurons turned to look behind them, they would have seen the animal watching their movements with an interest and sagacity that might ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... money on schools; she must use less powder and buckshot and more law and equity; she must pay less attention to politics and more attention to the development of her magnificent resources; she must get off the "race line" hobby and pay more attention to the common man; she must wake up ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... I understand; words were put into his mouth. I have read of such things. God sometimes uses some common man ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... of any of them. Witness his effort at the reunion of the Catholic and Protestant Churches. After Leibnitz came Kant. He certainly was very much of a German. He owned, nevertheless, that he had learned from Rousseau to honor the common man who, not being a savant, possesses moral value far above the savant, who has no merit but science. And, starting from the principle that every person, so far as he is capable of moral value, is entitled to respect, he urged men to create not a universal and despotic ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... induced, from the just and pertinent answers he returned to the questions put to him, to regard him with great esteem. Finding by degrees that he possessed great variety and extent of information, he said to him, "From what I can understand, I perceive you are no common man; you have travelled much: would to God you had discovered some remedy for a malady which has been long a source of great ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... she likes gentlefolk and is fit to mix with them; and after all, Jo, I'm nothing but a pore common man." ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... in the influence of the moon to make the hair grow; his mystical something about seven and combinations of seven; his incessant repetition of the formula that he was obeying his God—were but human weaknesses that showed he had a side like an everyday common man. ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... dipping her little white hand into the water. He had scarcely eyes for Phebe; but he was conscious that she was there, for Hilda was speaking to her in a low voice which just reached him. "See," she said, "that man has one of my mother's books! And he is quite a common man!" ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... means that are, he tell me of what he has been. He must, indeed, have been that Voivode Dracula who won his name against the Turk, over the great river on the very frontier of Turkeyland. If it be so, then was he no common man, for in that time, and for centuries after, he was spoken of as the cleverest and the most cunning, as well as the bravest of the sons of the 'land beyond the forest.' That mighty brain and that ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... portent, that our Lord the Sun was a God no longer if He had not power or thought to guard His own sacrifice; and some cried that there was no God remaining now, and others would have it that there was a new God come to weigh on the country, which had chosen to take the form of a common man-eating bird. But a few began to shout that Phorenice stood for all the Gods now in Atlantis, and that cry was taken up till the stones of the great circle rang with it. Some may have made proclamations because they were convinced; many because the cry was new, and pleased ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... arrival of the St. Legers, a very interesting gentleman was spending a few days; he bore the common name of Chase, but he was no common man. Though still in the prime of life, he had traveled the world over, made himself conversant with all languages, manners, and customs, studied into all fanaticisms and all religions, and if he had ended in having faith in none, as such ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... only a common man afore the mast, so it's like impidence for me to offer to share the responsibility with a young gent like you. But being half as old again, I may say I know a little of what a man ought to do in a case like this; and I say ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... lost any notion that sincerity was possible, or of what sincerity was. How many Plausibilities asking, with unaffected surprise and the air of offended virtue, What! am not I sincere? Spiritual Paralysis, I say, nothing left but a Mechanical life, was the characteristic of that century. For the common man, unless happily he stood below his century and belonged to another prior one, it was impossible to be a Believer, a Hero; he lay buried, unconscious, under these baleful influences. To the strongest man, only with infinite struggle and confusion was it possible to work himself half-loose; and lead ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Italian thinks himself a Man of Honour; and yet when did you hear of an Italian, that ever fought a Duel? Is't not enough, that I am affronted, have my Mistress taken away before my Face, hear my self call'd, dull, common Man, dull Animal, and the rest?—But I must after all give him leave to kill me too, if he can—And this is your damn'd Honourable English way of shewing ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... such a shot was never fired before or since; that a gun was never pointed in such a way. Suppose I had been a common man, and contented myself with firing bang at the head of the first animal? An ass would have done it, prided himself had he hit his mark, and what would have been the consequence? Why, that the ball might have killed two elephants ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Riley, "The aristocrat may make verses whose perfect art renders them immortal, like Horace, or state high truths in austere beauty, like Arnold. But only the brother of the common man can tell what the common heart longs for and feels, and only he lives in the understanding and ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... in his place, and all was silence and attention. We need scarcely seek to describe him. His appearance was that of a very common man; and the anticipations of Colleton, as he was one of those persons apt to be taken by appearances, suffered something like rebuke. His figure was diminutive and insignificant; his shoulders were round, and his movements excessively awkward; ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... wise, Ion, and that you could truly call us so; but you rhapsodes and actors, and the poets whose verses you sing, are wise; whereas I am a common man, who only speak the truth. For consider what a very commonplace and trivial thing is this which I have said—a thing which any man might say: that when a man has acquired a knowledge of a whole art, the enquiry into good and bad is one and the same. Let us consider this ...
— Ion • Plato |
