"Commonplace" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... article which I wrote for McClure's, I made comment on the essential mystery of the poet's art, a conjury which is able to transmute a perfectly commonplace landscape into something fine and mellow and sweet; for the region in which Riley spent his youth, and from which he derived most of his later material, was to me a depressing land, a country without a hill, a river or a lake; a commonplace country, flat, unkempt ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... and noteworthy feature of these sermons is, we certainly think, their freshness—freshness of thought, treatment, and style; nowhere do we meet pulpit commonplace or hackneyed phrase—everywhere, on the contrary, it is the heart of the preacher pouring out to his flock his own deep convictions, enforcing them from the 'Treasures, old and new,' ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... proceeded from their association with Scottish music. The melodies of Scotland can never die. In the best of these compositions there is a pathos and a feeling which must preserve them, however simple in their construction, from being vulgar or commonplace. Mendelssohn did not disdain taking Scottish airs as themes for the exercise of his profound science and his exquisite taste. It must, I think, be admitted that singing of Scottish songs in the perfection ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... dialects,—the colonel himself supplying the needed data and then thanking the auburn gentleman for the information so charmingly that for the moment that worthy tradesman began to wonder why he had not long before risen from the commonplace level of canned vegetables to the more sublime plane of wines ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... cause of the impostor. Perkin Warbeck remained in Ireland about a year, when he was invited to France and, for a while, became the centre of the disaffected Yorkists there. He was a very poor specimen of the genus impostor, and seems even to have been destitute of the commonplace quality of courage. ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... Scott's romances, as we have all read Hume's "History of England," but how often do we read them, how zealously, with what sympathy and understanding? I am told that the last discovery of modern culture is that Scott's prose is commonplace; that the young men at our universities are far too critical to care for his artless sentences and flowing descriptions. They prefer Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Mallock, and the euphuism of young Oxford, just as some ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... sat down by the side of my couch, and, with the usual passion of women after strong excitement, burst into exclamations and tears. What I could collect from her broken narrative, was little more than the commonplace of national misery in that fearful time. She had been a servant in the family of the nobleman whose daughter I had saved from death. She had been the nurse of the young countess; and all the blessings that sorrow and gratitude ever gathered together, could not be exceeded by the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... hurt dignity. "You have no feeling for romance," she said. "Your horizon is most commonplace." Then, struck by a sudden fear, she added, "But you surely will not be unpleasant enough to tell Aunt Therese what I have confided ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... the grasping of a higher kind of reality than has as yet presented itself to it. As Eucken says: "Religion proves itself a kingdom of opposites. When it steps out of such opposites, it destroys without a doubt the turbidity and evanescence of ordinary commonplace life, and separates clearly the lights and shadows from one another. It sets our life between the sharpest contrasts, and engenders the most powerful feelings and the most mighty movements; it shows the dark abyss in our nature, ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... socialized production were of enormous educational and scientific value. They were, to use a mining expert's term, "hand specimens" of human welfare of the utmost value to promoters. They made factory legislation possible; they initiated the now immense co-operative movement; they stirred commonplace imaginations as only achievement can stir them; they set going a process of amelioration in industrial conditions that will never, I believe, cease again until the ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... flock of purple finches is near, and so greedy and busy are they that you may approach within a few feet. These birds are unfortunately named, as there is nothing purple about their plumage. The males are a delicate rose-red, while the females look like commonplace sparrows, streaked all over ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... man plying his twine-shuttle in front of the door. The fact that he was Emmett's father and ignorant of the secret which Richard shared, made an object of intense interest out of an otherwise unattractive and commonplace old man. Now that interest grew vast and overshadowing as the children approached ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the pretensions of men! There was his son lying all but dead, and the man was still unconvinced of the folly he had been guilty of. I could hardly bear the sight of his composure. I shall hate the name of Science till the day I die. Give me nothing but commonplace unpretending people! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... drawn ever farther into a confused whirl of lights, tones and colors. Her impulsive and sensuous nature, struggling hitherto with the drab commonplace of everyday events and people, was fascinated. It was almost as she had visioned it in her soul; full of lights, music, thrilling accents, ecstatic swoons, strong colors, and stormy and overpowering emotions, breaking with the ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... and when at length he spoke it was to give utterance to the trite commonplace of which ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... stay with the mare," he said. "In three days at least she will be rested enough to go on, and then I can easily overtake you. We don't want to lose her." He tried to hide the depth of his feeling with commonplace words. "It wouldn't be sensible, when we ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... real reason why this simple remark should have caused a halt in the conversation, but it did. Miss Preston said, "Oh, indeed!" rather hurriedly, and her next speech was concerning the height of a particularly big wave. Mr. Hazeltine answered this commonplace somewhat absent-mindedly. He acted like a man to whom a startling idea had suddenly occurred. Just then they heard Captain Eri ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Sir William doled out creme de menthe. There was no conversation—only tedious words. The little party was just commonplace and dull—boring. Yet Sir William, the self-made man, was a study. And the young, Oxford-like Major, with his English diffidence and his one dark, pensive, baffled eye was only waiting ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... Revolution. Dead literalism had crept into the pulpits, and conventional conformity too often did duty for conviction among the people. It was a condition which could not endure in communities where religion was still the chief intellectual and emotional refuge from the daily routine of commonplace duties. Thus it happened that both in the older settlements, where for the unlettered the dull round of life was rarely broken either by real or fictitious adventure, and in those newer regions where primitive conditions brought the primal passions readily to the ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... announcement; and yet, subjected to even the most superficial analysis, Mr. Montgomery's sensations were not in the least attributable to the thought of tea. Tea in the sense intended by Phil was wholly commonplace,—a combination of cold meat, or perhaps of broiled chicken, with hot biscuits, and honey or jam, or maybe canned peaches with cream. Considered either as a beverage or as a meal, tea contained no thrill; and yet perhaps the thought of tea at Miss Rose Bartlett's ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... his pipe back to his lips—keenly alive to the fact that the exigency of the moment demanded a little polite exchange of commonplace. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... as is naturally to be expected, applied in practice to nothing but valuable objects—for things common and ever recurring give no impulse to such speculations—the objects thus contemplated were ennobled, because they were raised above the multitude of the commonplace. At the same time the theory of original and copy could not fail to become a starting-point for new speculations, as soon as the contrast between the spiritual and material began to assume importance among ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... instinct of harmony; no single instrument dominates, but every member is an artist in his way, adding his touch of melody or color in the fitting place. She aims, perhaps unconsciously, at a poetic ideal which shall express the best in life and thought, divested of the rude and commonplace, untouched by sorrow or passion, and free ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... to Pamela, though so many years lay between them, a hundred petty cares fell on her girlish shoulders, and tried her patience greatly with their weight, sometimes. And in the hard family struggle for everyday necessities there was too much of commonplace reality to admit of much poetry. The wearisome battling with life's needs had left the mother, as it leaves thousands of women, haggard, careworn, and not too smooth in disposition. There was no romance about her. She had fairly forgotten her girlhood, it seemed to lie so far behind; and even ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... together and dropped them. "I spoke to you, sir, because I believed you wouldn't say anything so commonplace as that. When one sees a man soberly shuffling a pack of cards in a place like ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... stage of romance, and the subject of dazzling pictures, is one of the most commonplace towns I have ever been in. It has its one big street—the Nevski Prospect—where people walk and shop as they do in Oxford Street, and it has a few cathedrals and churches, which are not very wonderful. The roadways are a mass of slush and are seldom swept; and there are tramways, ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... China, and brought him home chessmen, queer toys, porcelain vases, embroidered skullcaps, and all kinds of fine things. He gave him such grand descriptions of foreign countries and costumes, that Gaspar was not at all satisfied to live in a small village, where the people dressed in the most commonplace way. At school he was always covering his slate with pictures of Turks wearing turbans as large as small mosques, or Chinese with queues several yards long, and shoes that turned up to their knees. Then ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... boy!" she said. "What an artist you are! And how difficult it is for us commonplace, matter-of-fact people to understand the artistic temperament. Here you go, almost turning my steady old head by your rapture over what seemed to you perfection of sound which has reached you through the ear; just as, again ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... character novelists of the latter half of the past century. The style of Captain Marryatt is fresh, vigorous, and racy—"native and to the manner born,"—abounding in lively anecdote, but never straying into caricature—with just enough of the romance of life to keep the incidents afloat from commonplace, and probability above-board. This and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various
... decided to "egg" Bud on. By the time the crowd had reached the course, and the first, more commonplace races were over, the other half of his money was in the hands of the stake-holder, who happened on this day to be Jerry. And the odds varied from four to one up ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... is also magic in the arrangement of the menus, in the combinations of food, in the very names of the confections and in the little Gallic touches that, simple though they are, transform commonplace dishes into ...
— Twenty-four Little French Dinners and How to Cook and Serve Them • Cora Moore
... two cannot be regarded as equals in their relation to his life, and it would be a great mistake to impute to either any important influence upon his genius. We may catch some fleeting echoes of Keats's melody in 'Pippa Passes'; it is almost a commonplace that some measure of Shelleyan fancy is recognizable in 'Pauline'. But the poetic individuality of Robert Browning was stronger than any circumstance through which it could be fed. It would have found nourishment in desert air. With his first ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... authors who have hitherto said no word to imply that the common people possess a heart and soul. We asked ourselves whether, in these days of equality in which we live, there are classes unworthy the notice of the author and the reader, misfortunes too lowly, dramas too foul-mouthed, catastrophes too commonplace in the terror they inspire. We were curious to know if that conventional symbol of a forgotten literature, of a vanished society, Tragedy, is definitely dead; if, in a country where castes no longer exist and aristocracy has no legal status, the miseries of the ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... to decipher. The dress of the Chinese, their strange customs, their difficult language, and their apparently impenetrable mask-like faces appeal to the fancy and throw a veil of mystery around even the commonplace. ...
— Pung Chow - The Game of a Hundred Intelligences. Also known as Mah-Diao, Mah-Jong, Mah-Cheuk, Mah-Juck and Pe-Ling • Lew Lysle Harr
... out a shabby, pigskin card-case and a stump of lead pencil, at which latter he looked with what seemed to me much more interest than was deserved by so commonplace ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... trust might be to him in those fearsome days to come, he so dreaded a rebuff—he, who had been the courted of women and the admired of men ever since he could remember,—that he failed to respond to her welcome and the simple congratulations she felt forced to repeat. He could neither speak the commonplace, nor listen to it. This was his crucial hour. He must find support here, or yield hopelessly to the maelstrom in ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... literary style of the future the English language will not endure very long. As for the poem itself, the best that one can say of it is that it is a triumph of conscientious industry. From an artistic point of view it is a very commonplace production indeed, and we must protest against such blank ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... my dream, it had appeared as patent as Arithmetic; but somehow it did not seem to me quite so obvious now. Though my Wife entered the room opportunely just at that moment, I decided, after we had exchanged a few words of commonplace conversation, ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... great fame, excited the ambition of the young artists. An Irishman and a Corkman had gone out from them, and amazed men by the grandeur and originality of his works of art. He had thrown the whole of the English painters into insignificance, for who would compare the luscious commonplace of the Stuart painters, or the melodramatic reality of Hogarth, or the imitative beauty of Reynolds, or the clumsy strength of West, with the ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... fellow! was drowned on his second cruise. The six lieutenants who came from England were now no longer living, and out of eighteen midshipmen only another and myself were in existence. The lieutenants who had superseded those who died were rather commonplace characters. The discipline of the ship was totally changed. The first lieutenant was a disappointed officer and a complete old woman, and the ship ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... all the blame for the discrepancy between himself and the universe on the universe. He has the right key, only the miserable locks won't fit it. Having formed a very clear conception of the best possible world, he looks down patronizingly upon the commonplace people who are trying to make the best out of this imperfect world. Having large possessions in Utopia, he lives the care-free life of an absentee landlord. His praise is always for the dead, or ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... In her way she was as remarkable as the Governor himself. Her arrival had greatly stirred Mrs. Leary, who, deprived of Sally's services, served the table. Archie was struck by the fact that with only the exchange of commonplace remarks the two women, born into utterly different worlds, seemed to understand each other perfectly. He had merely told Mrs. Leary that the Governor's sister was coming and warned her against letting fall any hint of her knowledge ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... moment he would be dashed into eternity, and yet a medley of incongruous and commonplace thoughts darted through his mind with inconceivable rapidity. Innumerable scenes of his past life glanced before him, but more distinct than any, sharp and clear as though revealed by a flash of lightning, shone the wonderful eyes that had ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... of Rudyard Kipling's work and it is a constant feature of it, is the comradeship between commonplace soldiers of no high moral or spiritual attainment, and yet it is the strongest force in their lives, and on occasion makes heroes of them. We feel that their faithfulness to each other is almost ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... not offer her my sympathy. Her tears were piteous to me, and I wanted to take her to my heart, and tell her how sorry I was for her; but to do that would have been to take advantage of her moment of weakness, and that I could not—must not do. So I let her go from me with merely a few commonplace expressions of regret that she had received disturbing news, while all the time my heart was aching in unison with hers, and I kept her with me ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... the sensible woman of Glenfern. She had attained this eminence partly from having a little more understanding than her sisters, but principally from her dictatorial manner, and the pompous decisive tone in which she delivered the most commonplace truths. At home her supremacy in all matters of sense was perfectly established; and thence the infection, like other superstitions, had spread over the whole neighbourhood. As sensible woman she regulated the family, which she took care to let everybody see; she was conductor of her nieces' ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... substance; it is only through an unremitting never-discouraged care for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can be made to plasticity, to colour, and that the light of magic suggestiveness may be brought to play for an evanescent instant over the commonplace surface of words: of the old, old words, worn thin, defaced by ages of ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... jotted paragraphs, memoranda, and scraps of writing—poems I believe some of them were—but I had seen enough. It seemed as if I had stumbled unawares on the pathetic, brave, and lonely heart of the little man. I'm a commonplace creature, I'm afraid, insensible to many of the deeper things in life, but every now and then, like all of us, I come face to face with something that thrills me. I saw how this little, red-bearded pedlar was like a cake of yeast in the ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... is shewn in the neighbourhood of a little wood not far from Tibur. Some Elegies ascribed to him, and a prose Epistle apparently written to commend himself to Mecaenas, have been handed down to us; but I believe that neither of them are genuine works of his; for the Elegies are commonplace, and the Epistle is wanting in perspicuity, a fault which cannot be imputed to his style. He was born on the sixth of the ides of December [27th December], in the consulship of Lucius Cotta [973] and Lucius Torquatus; ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... but little to say to each other during the meal. Their efforts at conversation were perfunctory, commonplace, an unusual state of affairs of which neither ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... commonplace enough, they carried a sincere message, and Cortlandt saw by the faces about him that the others were pleased. His own gaunt features turned more sallow than ever. The memory of what he had heard on the porch of his own house a few afternoons ago, of what he ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... it, a commonplace one, almost vulgar, you might say. And yet what a change of view produced by it, what a dislocation of judgment! I was like a man riding through a strange country, in a storm, at night. It is dark, he cannot see, he has never seen the country, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... states which for want of better terms we call mind and matter. Action may be regarded as a kind of middle term between mind and matter; it is the throe of thought and thing, the quivering clash and union of body and soul; commonplace enough in practice; miraculous, as violating every canon on which thought and reason are founded, if we theorise about it, put it under the microscope, and vivisect it. It is here, if anywhere, that body or substance is guilty of the contradiction in terms of combining with that which is ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... Kiddie. "But it ain't an explanation. It's too far-fetched altogether, an' it contradicts the theory that there were no inhabitants in these wildernesses all that time ago. If you'd thought a bit longer, you might have hit upon the true an' very commonplace explanation. Y'see, the stones haven't even been in the lake long enough to get a growth of weeds and moss on 'em. As a matter of fact, they've been there only a very few winters—since the time when the name 'Kiddie' was more appropriate to me than it is now. There was a big frost; the lake was ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... any body in California will ever make as nice butter as this pretty Swede; certainly, every other dairy I saw seemed to me commonplace and uninteresting, after I had seen hers. I don't doubt that the young man who has had the art to persuade her to love him ought to be hanged, because butter-making is far more important than marrying. Nevertheless, I wish him ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... work has thus far shown no hint of the bitter psychology of Edgar Degas. His nudes are pagan, child women full of life's joy, animal, sinuous, unreasoning. His genre tableaux are personal enough, though in the most commonplace themes, such as Dejeuner and The Box—both have been exhibited in New York—the luminous envelope, the gorgeous riot of opposed tones, the delicious dissonances literally transfigure the themes. In his second manner his affinities to Claude Monet and impressionism are more marked. His ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... of the lady's kindness. Her commonplace excuse was a true excuse—she had a headache; and she asked leave to retire ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... very heart of the ravening fire,—crushed, shrivelled out of existence in one wild, rushing rapture—that is what Love must be to me! One cannot prolong passion over fifty years, more or less, of commonplace routine, as marriage would have us do. The very notion is absurd. Love is like a choice wine of exquisite bouquet and intoxicating flavor; it is the most maddening draught in the world, but you cannot drink it every day. No, my ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... that men, who boast of possessing supernatural intelligence, should be unwilling to yield the palm of knowledge to philosophers who have only their ordinary, faculties; still I should be surprised if I found them teaching any new speculative doctrine, which was not a commonplace to those Gentile philosophers whom, in spite of all, they stigmatize as blind; for, if one inquires what these mysteries lurking in Scripture may be, one is confronted with nothing but the reflections of Plato or Aristotle, ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza
... heretical at the time when it was made, is now little more than a commonplace. We have long recognized that Pope's Homer is not the real Homer; it is scarcely an exaggeration to say, as does Mr. Andrew Lang, "It is almost as if he had taken Homer's theme and written the poem himself."[458] Yet it is surprising to see how nearly the eighteenth-century ambition, "to ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... given in the woman's closer connection with the home, and in the idea that "she raises herself by the recognition of her motherhood." But the facts are capable of an entirely different interpretation. It will be my aim to give a quite simple, and even commonplace, explanation of the rise of mother-descent and mother-right in place of the ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... sacred to herself. She gave her confidence to nobody—not even to Gay. She had been happy in her love dreams, happier perhaps than if they had become realities. Her roaming life had not brought romance to her until she met Lancelot Vane. The sweetheartings of others had always seemed sordid and commonplace. Had Vane been presumptuous she would have had nothing to say to him, but she was drawn towards him because he was drifting to his ruin and she yearned to save him. That she should see him no more deadened her heart and numbed her brain. So ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... about him. Perhaps it was his faculty for doing the unexpected. Most women desire to meet a man who is possessed of a distinctive individuality, who lends continual interest to them by his departure from the trite and commonplace. What Stephen might say or do was an entirely unknown quantity until it had actually taken place, and this attracted her on the instant, whether she was conscious of it or not. His manner, too, was affable, and gave him an air at once pleasing and good-natured. He never flattered, yet ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... era (F. Lauchert, "Geschichte des Physiologus," Strasbourg, 1889, 8vo). To the "Physiologi" succeeded in the Middle Ages "Bestiaries," works of the same sort, which were also very numerous and very popular. A number of commonplace sayings or beliefs, which have survived up to our day (the faithfulness of the dove, the fatherly love of the pelican), are ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... General Methods 13 Concrete Material 15 Topics and material must suit the season; matter suited to the child; use of the commonplace; order of development of lesson; problems in observation; note-books ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... world and life have in a sense become commonplace to our experience, it is but in an external torpor; the true sentiment slumbers within us; and we have but to reflect on ourselves or our surroundings to rekindle our astonishment. No length of habit ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... broad and ugly man, approaching middle age; of a commonplace cut of features, of poor birth, of mean fortunes, of small account in the scheme of things; but he had an eye for beauty; he had a soul; and his eye was filled with a beauty completely satisfying his conception; and with his soul he worshipped the ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... take it argues an utter absence of humour and a total ignorance of Irish conditions at the time the tract was written. But history has justified Swift, and it is to his writings, rather than to the many works written by more commonplace observers, that we now turn for the true story of Ireland's wrongs, and the real sources of her continued attitude of hostility towards ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... profession; the easier the labour also, the better the profession; the less restriction that might be laid on a man in his pleasurable enjoyment of the world, the better the profession. This was Sir Lionel's view of a profession, and it must be acknowledged that, though his view was commonplace, it was also common sense; that he looked at the matter as a great many people look at it; and that his ideas were at any rate sufficiently intelligible. But George Bertram's view was different, and much less easy of explanation. He had an idea that in choosing a profession he should ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... press, not merely to those who attend the new jury courts established in the present reign, but to every one. And what do we read almost daily? Of things beside which the present case grows pale, and seems almost commonplace. But what is most important is that the majority of our national crimes of violence bear witness to a widespread evil, now so general among us that it is difficult to ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... very commonplace outward self let this suffice. As for my record, I am a doctor of the old school. Think of it! When I was a student at Bart.'s the antiseptic treatment was quite a new thing, and administered when at all, by help of a kind of engine on wheels, out of which disinfectants were dispensed ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... umbrellas. And he moved on in the rain with careless serenity, with the tranquil ease of someone successful and disdainful, very sure of himself—a man with lots of money and friends. He was tall, well set-up, good-looking and healthy; and his clear pale face had under its commonplace refinement that slight tinge of overbearing brutality which is given by the possession of only partly difficult accomplishments; by excelling in games, or in the art of making money; by the easy mastery over ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... the rails, keeping time to the rhythm of the unanswerable voice within her breast: "Why are you here? Why are you here?" And then Rugby; and the awful ordeal of meeting Gerald, his entry into the compartment, the rearrangement of seats, and their excruciatingly painful attempts at commonplace conversation in the publicity of the carriage! (She had felt that that part of the enterprise had not been very well devised by Gerald.) And at last London; the thousands of cabs, the fabulous streets, the general roar, all dream-surpassing, ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... particular for being dedicated in English "To the Ladies of the Codrington Family." To these ladies he says "that he was unavoidably flung into a singularity, by being obliged to write an epistle dedicatory void of commonplace, and such an one was never published before by any author whatever; that this practice absolved them from any obligation of reading what was presented to them; and that the bookseller approved of it, because it would make people stare, was absurd enough and perfectly right." ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... the last few years. When it came to the actual start, however, he felt all the gene of the business—the formation and control of his staff, the separation from friends, and the residence far from the "light and life" of Rome, among officials who were certainly commonplace and probably corrupt, and amidst a population, perhaps acute and accomplished, but certainly servile and ill content, and in some parts predatory and barbarous. At the best, they would be emphatically provincial, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... whether it be in science or in art or in plain everyday living, we are told to go from the circumference to the center, from the known to the unknown, from simplest facts to those which would otherwise seem complex. And whether the life we are living is quiet and commonplace, or whether it is full of change and adventure, to be of the greatest and most permanent use, a life must have as its habitual background plain every-day ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... a man, but a system,' once said, in her most impressive tones, Madame de Stael to Sir James Mackintosh, across a dinner-table. 'Magnificent!' murmured Sir James. 'But what does she mean?' whispered one of those helplessly commonplace creatures who, like the present writer, go about spoiling everything. 'Mass! I cannot tell!' was the frank acknowledgment and apt Shakspearian quotation of Mackintosh. Emerson's meaning, owing to his non-sequacious style, is often very difficult to apprehend. ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... have a general current, and also an episode or two; and the episodes of a commonplace life are often rather startling; in like manner this tale is not a specimen, but an episode of Lord Ipsden and Lady Barbara, who soon after this married and lived like the rest of the beau monde. In so doing, they passed out of my hands; such as wish to know how viscounts ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... of immoral conduct which spread into sexual orgies perpetrated in several private homes during the absence of parents, and in several second rate Hutt Valley theatres, where familiarity between youths and girls was rife and commonplace. ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.
... of ingenuity, various acquirements, and agreeable manners, Mr Skinner was held in much estimation among his contemporaries. Whatever he read, with the assistance of a commonplace-book, he accurately remembered, and could readily turn to account; and, though his library was contained in a closet of five feet square, he was abundantly well informed on every ordinary topic of conversation. He was fond of controversial discussion, and wielded both argument ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... contrary to his taste; fond of pleasure; and, amidst all his personal courage, ran a certain vein of irresolution, which rendered it easy for a cool and determined mind to awe or to persuade him. I cannot help thinking, too, that, clever as he was, there was something commonplace in the cleverness; and that his talent was of that mechanical yet quick nature which makes wonderful boys but mediocre men. In any other family he would have been considered the beauty; in ours ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... no plot in this story, but its charm and power consist in a vivid description of common life, minute but not exaggerated, which enlists our sympathy with suffering and misfortune, deeply excites our interest in commonplace people living out their weary and monotonous existence. This was a new departure in fiction,—a novel without love-scenes or happy marriages or thrilling adventures or impossible catastrophes. But there is great pathos in this homely tale of sorrow; with no attempts at philosophizing, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... attempt class drill on petty town and county offices, would be simply burlesque of the whole subject." But, suppose one were to say, with an air of ineffable scorn, that petty experiments on terrestrial gravitation and radiant heat, such as can be made with commonplace pendulums and tea-kettles, have nothing whatever to do with the grand and noble subject of Physical Astronomy! Science would not have got very far on that plan, I fancy. The truth is, that science, ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... there was no liveried footman to meet me at the station. Mrs. Blythe is one of the social leaders of Riverville and has a lovely home. But this city isn't large enough to justify any one's keeping a social secretary. He said so. It's just a big, commonplace, hustling manufacturing town like a hundred others in the middle West. I didn't like to ask any personal questions about Mrs. Blythe of Orphant Annie. (That's the name I couldn't help giving the young reporter in my own mind. He was introduced as Mr. Sandford ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... hand. She had not expected it and I fear that the action was observed, for when I took my leave of Miss Cumberland shortly after, I was struck by her expression. I had never seen such a look on her face before, nor can I conceive of one presenting a more extraordinary contrast to the few and commonplace words with which she bade me good evening. I could not forget that look. I continued to see those pinched features and burning eyes all the way home where I went to get my grip-sack, and I saw them all the way to the station, though my thoughts were with her sister and the joys ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... kind of talk, mother. There had to be some commonplace conversation to induce that familiarity which made love talk possible. So I told her how the ash would grow anywhere—even at the seaside, where all trees lean from the sea—except the ash. Sea or no sea, it stands straight up. Even the oak will shave up on the side of the wind, ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... colours were dry, but you have common sense, and I hope at least I can persuade you to see this. You won't rally the working men of England to your standard under that motto. That's why their leaders are ignorant and commonplace men. They know very well that it's to the pockets of their hearers they must appeal. A shilling a week more now is what they want, not to have their children born to a better life, and their children's children move on the upward plane. Human nature isn't like that, ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Burton (Arabian Nights, S.N., iii. 440) gives the following resume of the conflicting legends: "Jam-i-jamshid is a well-known commonplace in Moslem folk-lore; but commentators cannot agree whether 'Jam' be a mirror or a cup. In the latter sense it would represent the Cyathomantic cup of the Patriarch Joseph, and the symbolic bowl of Nestor. Jamshid may be translated either 'Jam the bright,' or ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... me your name," he said, feeling that if this remarkable young lady possessed anything so commonplace as a name, the knowledge of it might place him on a ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... and looked at him. After all, it is only a step from tragedy to commonplace. He was deathly pale, but calm and composed. He had conquered himself just in time. Another moment, and she felt assured that she would have known all. Never mind! it should come, she told herself. The end ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... street."[132] Despite the pomposity, Gibbon's style is correct, and the exact use of words is a marvel. It is rare, I think, that any substitution or change of words will improve upon the precision of the text. His compression and selection of salient points are remarkable. Amid some commonplace philosophy he frequently rises to a generalization as brilliant as it is truthful. Then, too, one is impressed with the dignity of history; one feels that Gibbon looked upon his work as very serious, and thought with ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... crazy, and I am not joking," replied the girl, "and I think Rupert would suit me very well. You see, I think a great deal more of Rupert than I do of Mr. Hemphill, although the latter gentleman has excellent points. He is commonplace, and, above everything else, I want a commonplace husband. I want some one to soothe me, and quiet me, and to give me ballast. If there is anything out of the way to be done I want to do it myself. I am sure he is in love with me, for his anxious efforts to make me believe that the frank ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... stolen glances, of hidden meanings in the common phrases and daily courtesies of social life. It was so delightful for each to feel that other existence bound up in its own, to look down from their enchanted mountain, with pity not devoid of contempt on the commonplace dwellers on the plain, undeterred by proofs more numerous perhaps on the hills of Paphos than in ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... of Eternity, child and heir of all the Past Times with their good and evil, and parent of all the Future, is ever a "New Era" to the thinking man; and comes with new questions and significance, however commonplace it look: to know it, and what it bids us do, is ever the sum of knowledge for all of us. This new Day, sent us out of Heaven, this also has its heavenly omens;—amid the bustling trivialities and loud empty noises, its silent monitions, which if we cannot read and obey, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... thought, of course, is of the commonplace book. Well, have you ever kept one, or, to be more accurate, tried to keep one? Personally, I believe in the commonplace book so long as we don't expect too much from it. Its two dangers are (1) that one is apt to make far too many and too minute ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... end of it what it might, this situation was deliciously strong of the Tristrams. They were redeeming their characters; they had not settled down into the ordinary or been gulfed in the slough of the commonplace. Unexpected appearances and midnight interviews of sentimental moment were still to be hoped for from them. There was not yet ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... He gulped as though a wave had gone over him. But he remembered his father. Beyond doubt his father had heard. He glanced down to him, and what he saw was worth a year of commonplace experience. The father had heard, yet he sat at ease, his knees crossed and his gaze out forward on the boat's course. Watson—but what could Watson matter then? Hugh's eyes burned big on Hayle, his voice deepened, ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... one else had conceived of flying conversation. In all the literature of ancient days, there is not a line that will apply to the telephone, except possibly that expressive phrase in the Bible, "And there came a voice." In these more privileged days, the telephone has come to be regarded as a commonplace fact of everyday life; and we are apt to forget that the wonder of it has become greater and not less; and that there are still honor and profit, plenty of both, to be won by ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... wish, could dance, run, and leap; to be forced with such hideous precipitation to leave the warm breath of June and undergo the lonely change, merging with the shadow; to be flung from the exquisite and commonplace day of sunshine into the appalling adventure that should not have been his for years—and hurled into it by what hand!—ah, bitter, bitter price for a harlequinade! And, alas, ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... sailor, though so familiar—perhaps commonplace—to us, seemed so just and full of wisdom to the unsophisticated natives, and were uttered in such an off-hand cheery tone, that a powerful effect was created, and the whole party at once followed the seaman, who, by this display of coolness, firmness, and trustfulness in a higher power, established ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... liberties with strangers, the guests of the margravine. I met him crossing an inner court next day. He interrupted me in the middle of a commonplace remark, and to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... away down the street. It was as though the old stately street—and surely the Street of Other Days might be its name—had been waiting for her all her life, waiting for her to turn that corner leading from the commonplace station, waiting to greet her like the ghost of some friend of childhood. Surely she knew it! Like the recollection of a dream once dreamed, it lay before her with its walled gardens, its vaguely familiar houses, its ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... conjunction these two events were to influence the destinies of Europe. In themselves they were trivial enough, since it was as much a commonplace that an old gentleman should die as that Henry of Bearn should fall in love. Love had been the main relaxation of his otherwise strenuous life, and neither the advancing years—he was fifty-six at this date—nor the recriminations of Maria de' Medici, his long-suffering ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... Mudros Harbour, of the great April landing at Helles, of the Eski Line, the River Clyde, the Gully Ravine, and Asiatic Annie. We felt very near the trenches, when they thus tossed fabled names about in commonplace conversations. They never used the name "Gallipoli," but always "The Peninsula." We made ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... covered with buildings and crowded with people, would not strike many observers as a promising field for scientific exploration; but it is the peculiarity of genius to read instruction where others can find only a blank, or a record of commonplace character. Cuvier discovered in the geological construction and the fossil remains of the Paris basin, elements for the solution of the most critical scientific questions, relative not only to that locality, but to the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... was this because each man saw in the great demagogue only the particular virtue or vice for which he was looking, the reflection of personal preferences or aversions? It seemed to her suddenly that the Governor, whom she had thought commonplace, towered an immense vague figure in a cloud of misinterpretation and misunderstanding. His followers believed in him; his opponents distrusted him; but was this not true of every political leader since ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... part to overcome the dulness and sameness that brood over the "land of Mizraim." Where nature is most tame and commonplace, man is tempted to his highest flights of audacity. As in the level Babylonia he aspired to build a tower that should "reach to heaven" (Gen. xi. 4), so in Egypt he strove to startle and surprise by gigantic works, enormous undertakings, enterprises that might have seemed wholly ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... a conclusion that everybody might be expected to come to it. But as we have determined to dematerialize him, his disappearance would bring suspicion upon us, and we might get into trouble if he should be considered a mere commonplace person. So we decided to speak out plainly, say what we had done, and what we were going to do, and thus put ourselves at the head of the spirit operators of the world. But we are not yet ready to do anything or to make our announcements, and if he had held his tongue ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton
... and filling a glass carried it to Wogan. The liquor was brandy. Wogan drank it as though it had been so much water. He was in that condition of fatigue when the most extraordinary events seem altogether commonplace and natural. But as he felt the spirit warming his blood, he became aware of the great difference between his battered appearance and that of the old gentleman with the rich dress and the white linen who stooped so hospitably above him, and ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... safe commonplace, "I guess there's some harm in 'most everything. It's 'cordin' to the way you take it." Then one of her quick changes came upon her. The self that played at life when real life failed her, and so kept youth alive, awoke to shine in her eyes and flush her pretty cheek. She looked about the ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... down to the keyboard, it was apparent that the tall, pale, handsome young lady was not a little tremulous and anxious. Indeed, it was a very good thing for the composer that she had got Lionel Moore to sing the song; for the quite trivial and commonplace character of the music was in a large measure concealed by the fine and resonant quality of his rich baritone notes. The chorus was not much of a success—Lady Sybil's promised accomplices seemed to have found their courage fail them at the critical moment; but as for the martial ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... fault of the aneroid barometer, my dear. We were very comfortable and commonplace until that came along and revealed anomalies. The secret lies, I suppose, in the trend of the strata, which is generally north and south. You see the ridges cropping out all through the desert; and there's a good deal of lava oozing over them, too. They probably ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... take place according to unchanging rules. To this region of familiar steadiness and customary regularity they gave the name of Nature. But, at the same time, their infantile and untutored reason, little more, as yet, than the playfellow of the imagination, led them to believe that this tangible, commonplace, orderly world of Nature was surrounded and interpenetrated by another intangible and mysterious world, no more bound by fixed rules than, as they fancied, were the thoughts and passions which coursed through their minds and seemed to exercise ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... will endeavor to attract and appeal to all those who oppose encroachment on public and individual life. It will appeal to those who strive for something higher, weary of the commonplace; to those who feel that stagnation is a deadweight on the firm and elastic step of progress; to those who breathe freely only in limitless space; to those who long for the tender shade of a new dawn for a humanity ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... die the same day, Socrates' grief would in no way resemble the grief of Thersites. Misfortune or happiness, it seems, must be chastened ere it knock at the door of the sage; but only by stooping low can it enter the commonplace soul. ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... road and taking the right turn, and the carriage rolled on again. There was a little pause then, till Faith broke it. A rich preparatory colour rose in her cheeks, and the subject of her words would certainly have laughed to see how gravely, with what commonplace demureness, the question ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... our heroes discovered in due time, was a poetical way of expressing what in commonplace language would be called, "kicking up ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... Hawthorne's romance. In the preface to the Marble Faun Hawthorne wrote: "No author without a trial can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor any thing but a commonplace prosperity in broad and simple daylight." And yet it may be doubted whether any environment could have been found more fitted to his peculiar genius than this of his native town, or any preparation better ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... Nan was oblivious to everything, but the mere delight of what she was doing, and he did not think it worth while to remind her that this was not the Steamer, and that if she wished to be inconspicuous, as she had suggested, she would better limit herself strictly to a commonplace gait. Instead he bent toward her, and said in a quick, low undertone, "I'll bet a quarter you've forgotten how to cut ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... keeping with the golden furniture and the rich tapestries was the great fireplace containing an almost commonplace crane and kettle, and bordered by irregular areas of smoked wood and stone, indicating that the ventilation of the room needed looking ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... by this time in that state of exaltation in which the impossible looks quite natural and commonplace. His tears were still wet on his pale cheeks, but they had ceased to fall. He ran out of the court-yard by a little gate, and across to the huge Gothic porch of the church. From there he could watch ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... He was commonplace in his talk, and Chesterfield would have had no patience with him; his dignity of character lay in his uprightness rather than in his formal manner. Members of his government often reviewed him plainly in his presence. Yet he divined the true course, while ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... quarter of a century. His name was Louis Joseph Papineau. He was at that time only twenty-six years of age, but already his tall, well-built form, his fine features and commanding presence, marked him out as a born leader of men. He possessed an eloquence which, commonplace as it now appears on the printed page, apparently exerted a profound influence upon his contemporaries. 'Never within the memory of teacher or student,' wrote his college friend Aubert de Gaspe, 'had a voice so eloquent filled the halls of the seminary of Quebec.' In ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... of Necker to excite strong enthusiasm and violent objurgation; but in fact he was little more than commonplace. An ambitious man, he wanted to make a reputation, to build up the royal credit, to found a national debt, like that of England. Did he really believe that such a debt would pay its own interest, without additional taxes, or did he rely on economy of expenditure and good administration, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... continued to tell stories and to compose poems. No doubt the Icelanders have thus wasted on poetical fantasies and visionary daydreams much of the energy that they might otherwise have used in life's real battle. But the greyness of commonplace existence became more bearable when they listened to tales of the heroic deeds of the past. In the evening, the living-room (bastofa), built of turf and stone, became a little more cheerful, and hunger was forgotten, while a member of the household read, or sang, ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... of the ridiculous lengths to which the national defence cranks will go in their hatching of alarmist reports, a rumour was actually spread in Fleet Street at an early hour this morning that this commonplace accident to the telegraph wires was caused by an invading German army. This ridiculous canard is reminiscent of some of the foolish scares which frightened our forefathers a little more than a century ago, when the Corsican terrorized Europe. But our rumour-mongers ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... work somewhere, —I will not say "earning money," for they do that as it is in such great monasteries as that of Kieff, but lightening the burden of the peasants, impossible as that is under present conditions, or making themselves of some commonplace, practical ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic. Of all these varied cases, ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... slipped into the "stamped addressed envelope enclosed" and sent back to amateur photoplaywrights, one of the greatest mistakes that the young writer makes in his choice of titles is in making them commonplace and uninteresting. When an editor takes out a script and reads the title, "The Sad Story of Ethel Hardy," would he be altogether to blame if he did put the script back into the return envelope utterly unread, as so many editors are accused of doing yet really ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... I sat looking listlessly about me, for the room, while handsomely furnished, had an appearance entirely commonplace. ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... other in despair, and it was terrible to each, in this dire emergency, to meet only the beautiful eyes of perfect strangers, instead of the merry, friendly, commonplace, twinkling, jolly little eyes of its ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... to my little play. Pretty prologue, isn't it?—but commonplace. The play proper isn't! The same conditions affect men differently. When I learned what I have told—after the first awful five minutes—I don't like to think of them, even now!—I became the most deliberate man on the face of this earth peopled with sinners. Sometimes, they say, the whole ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... erected into a moral code. Tens of thousands of us can put the finger on a bit of exaggeration, or a false light in the local colour, or a slip in perfect realism. The result is a photographic accuracy of detail, a barren monotony of commonplace, and the cramping of real inventive genius. It is the penalty of giving ourselves up ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... effects arise from truth. The tale must hold the mirror and show an image of life. It must select and combine facts which will suggest emotion but the facts must be a true expression of human nature. The tale, whether it is realistic in emphasizing the familiar, the commonplace, and the present, or romantic in emphasizing the strange, the heroic, and the remote, must be idealistic to interpret truly the facts of life by high ideals. If the tale has this basis of truth the child will gain, through his handling of it, a body of facts. This ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... Claudia unbent a little from her hauteur and condescended to address a few commonplace remarks to him. But at length her eyes flashed ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... was still a realm of faery to her. It was an unending experience of miracles, commonplace to the men, but wonder-work to her. She had not known what "pneumatic" or "hydraulic" really meant. The acetylene flame-knife, the incomprehensible ability of levers to give out so much more power than was put in them, dazed her. Nothing in the Grimms' ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... slightest words the Queen-mother gives sense and wit; her daughter-in-law's speeches and actions are of the simplest, most commonplace kind. Were it not for the King, she would pass her life in a dressing-gown, night-cap, and slippers. At Court ceremonies and on gala-days, she never appears to be in a good humour; everything seems to weigh her down, ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... exhilaration derived only in part from the champagne. Although they told each other many things, as on a former occasion, it was not what they said that mattered. Each was intensely absorbed in the other's personality; what counted was mutual attraction, which invested every commonplace with vibrant inner meanings. They forgot the life about them; it was as though they were marooned upon a tiny island in the midst of ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... is the art which enables commonplace mediocrity to look like genius. 5. In 1685 Louis XIV. signed the ordinance that revoked the Edict of Nantes. 6. The thirteen colonies were welded together by the measures which Samuel ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... she turns aside for a whole chapter to defend her method of depicting accurately, minutely, in the simplest detail, the feelings, motives, actions and surroundings of very commonplace and uninteresting people. Her reasons for this method in novel-writing apply to all her works, and are worthy of the author of Adam Bede ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... years later with "The Bench-Legged Fyce," and which was known in his day to hundreds of students at the college on account of his surpassing lack of beauty, rejoiced originally in the honest name of Fido, but my brother rejected this name as commonplace and unworthy, and straightway named him "Dooley" on the presumption that there was something Hibernian in his face. It was to Dooley that he wrote his first poem, a parody on "O Had I Wings Like a Dove," a song ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... commoners. This man was clothed in flowing white vestments, and they were just the thing for him; they comported well with his great stature and his kingly port and dignity. European clothes would have degraded him and made him commonplace. I know that, because they do that with everybody ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and easiest they value least, and this was so with Powers. His portrait busts were, in a sense, mere pot-boilers; he lavished himself upon his ideal figures. But these are now ranked as unimaginative and commonplace. ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... of the drama is made to speak in the vernacular dialect. The hero, on the other hand, and all the higher male characters, speak in Sanskrit; and as if to invest them with greater dignity, half of what they say is in verse. Indeed the prose part of their speeches is often very commonplace, being only introductory to the lofty sentiment of the poetry that follows. Thus, if the whole composition be compared to a web, the prose will correspond to the warp, or that part which is extended lengthwise in the loom, while the metrical portion will answer to the cross-threads ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... said "funny thing"; and it is just that service which the friendly busman renders to me, as it appears to my mind, that Frank Reynolds performs for the community at large. It is precisely those commonplace "funny things," whether they be persons, scenes, incidents, conversations, or casual remarks, that happen under our very noses, which he excels in depicting; and it is precisely the commonplace familiarity of them ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson
... in her closet, who was talking to me on the old subject, matrimony, I saw Pamela's commonplace book, as I may call it; in which, by her lady's direction, from time to time, she had transcribed from the Bible, and other good books, such passages as most impressed her as she read—A method, I take it, my dear" (turning to me), "of great service to you, as it initiated you into writing ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... let Time have his own way in the settlement of our disputes. It is a commonplace how much he is able to do with some of our troubles, such as loss of friends or wealth; but we do not sufficiently estimate his power to help our arguments. If I permit myself to dispute, I always go beyond what is necessary for my purpose, and my continual iteration and insistence ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... aught in common with it open and expand before its influences as plants start at the touch of spring. It is not so much the words uttered that produce this effect, as the pleasant and kindly way in which they are said; for this throws a grace and an attractive charm about the most commonplace objects ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... luxury, every astral lamp and every boot, every teakettle and every woman's dress, shines out so invitingly and so finished. There is also a peculiar charm in the art of arrangement, in the contrast of colors, and in the variety of the English shops; even the most commonplace necessities of life appear in a startling magic light through this artistic power of setting forth everything to advantage. Ordinary articles of food attract us by the new light in which they are placed; even uncooked fish lie so delightfully dressed that the rainbow gleam of their ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Byzantine Greeks, who, by the assiduous study of the ancients, have deserved, in some measure, the remembrance and gratitude of the moderns. The scholars of the present age may still enjoy the benefit of the philosophical commonplace book of Stobaeus, the grammatical and historical lexicon of Suidas, the Chiliads of Tzetzes, which comprise six hundred narratives in twelve thousand verses, and the commentaries on Homer of Eustathius, archbishop of Thessalonica, who, from his horn ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... underwood of shrubs, and great ferns like princes' feathers, and gay beds of flowers, blue and pink and yellow, with butterflies flitting about them, and trailers that climbed and dangled from bough to bough—a poor, commonplace bit of copse, I dare say, in the world's eyes, but to me a fairy wilderness of beautiful forms, mysterious gleams and shadows, teeming with manifold life. As I stood looking wistfully over the gate, alternately at the inviting ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... and empty technic which one finds in the higher varieties of men. Even in the pursuits which, by the custom of Christendom, are especially their own, women seldom show any of that elaborately conventionalized and half automatic proficiency which is the pride and boast of most men. It is a commonplace of observation, indeed, that a housewife who actually knows how to cook, or who can make her own clothes with enough skill to conceal the fact from the most casual glance, or who is competent to instruct her children in ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... what it was so important that he wanted to say to me, he evaded me and continued to chatter on about commonplace things. Finally I insisted upon knowing why he had wanted me to come, and he replied that the reason for it had already been fulfilled, that he had nothing more to say, and that I could go as soon as I wanted to. He appeared quite calm, but he must have been very nervous. For as ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... primary and the word used to express it but secondary. Wherefore, an author should be judged rather by the thoughts which the words express than by the words themselves. If, moreover, the finesse of the writer is such that he can perceive certain shades of meaning, not evident to the more commonplace beholder, how can he make them clear without deviating from the regular forms of expression? A man who understands his language may have poor thoughts, but cannot express his thoughts poorly. "Venons maintenant a l'application de tout ce que j'ai dit. Vous accusez un auteur d'avoir un style precieux. ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... had inspired her with a desire to be as self-reliant. "I'm going to set about living in earnest, as she has; though I think it will be harder for me than for her, because she stands alone and has a career marked out for her. I'm nothing but a commonplace sort of girl, with no end of relations to be consulted every time I wink and a dreadful fortune hanging like a millstone round my neck to weigh me down if I try to fly. It is a hard case, Uncle, and I get low in my mind when I think about it," sighed Rose, oppressed ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... and a commonplace conversation kept up till the servants were got rid of. She then told Mr. Oldfield how she had been refused admittance to Sir Charles at Bellevue House, a plain proof, to her mind, they knew her husband ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... there seemed to be always something still to say, and we found it hard to part from our charming friends; realising, too, that this was the end of our holiday, and that before us lay merely the toil and bustle of a return to commonplace, everyday life. At last, though, the final fag-end of a cheroot was thrown away, the last hand-grips given, and ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... blind, the more accidental, so to speak, the process of differentiation may be; the more it is shown that the struggle for existence drives the wheels of progress along the {37} lines of least resistance by the most commonplace of mechanical necessities, in the same proportion must a law be posited behind all this process, a reason in nature which gathers up the beginning and the ending. The protoplasmic cell which the imagination of evolutionists places ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... it's ideal too; and what you want to do is to cultivate the ideal. You'll find the books full of my kind of grasshopper, and scarcely a trace of yours in any of them. The thing that you are proposing to do is commonplace; but if you say that it isn't commonplace, for the very reason that it hasn't been done before, you'll have ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... asked, smiling at her vehemence. "It is not a confession of weakness. I had the determination, it is true. I could—I should have done something, but my deeds would have lacked the one thing needful to lift them above the commonplace—at least for me. You are the inspiration. With you here beside me, I feel that I can take up this work with ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... liked to be surrounded by those who sympathised with his pursuit; and his pursuit was politics, and politics on a great scale. The commonplace career of official distinction was at his command. A great peer, with abilities and ambition, a good speaker, supposed to be a Conservative, he might soon have found his way into the cabinet, and, ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... told the heartbreaking and commonplace story: her terrified awakening in the face of the man's infamy, her remorse, her madness; and she also described Alice's admirable conduct: the girl suspecting her mistress's despair, forcing a confession from her, writing to Lupin and contriving this ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... unless it had a foreground of riders hurtling here and there, and of perspiring men around a camera tripod. At the Sawtooth ranch, after she was able to be up, she had seen cowboys, but they had lacked the dash and the picturesque costuming of the West she knew. They were mostly commonplace young men, jogging past the house on horseback, or loitering down by the corrals. They had offered absolutely no interest or "colour" to the place, and the owner's son, Bob Warfield, had driven her over to the ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... Aanrud's own childhood. If I have been able to give a rendering at all worthy of the original, readers of Lisbeth Longfrock will find that the whole story breathes a spirit of unaffected poetry not inconsistent with the common life which it depicts. This fine blending of the poetic and commonplace is another characteristic of ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud
... were Hanoverian rather than English, and all court favours were bestowed as fast as possible upon their countrymen. They had neither the bearing nor manner which men associate with royalty, nor the graces and power of attraction which distinguished the Stuarts. Commonplace and homely in manner, in figure, and in bearing, they were not men whom their fellows could look up to or respect; their very vices were coarse, and the Hanoverian men and women they gathered round them were hated by ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty |
