"Commonplace" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and a man who has done so must be stupid indeed if he can't say something that shall be both interesting and profitable. As man to man the doctor felt every inch the earl's equal, and more, for he discovered that the earl was commonplace in intellect, and informed only in one or two beats; nor did it require strained attention to take in the meaning of his lordship's talk, so that Dr. Brunton could listen and at the same time think of the many instances—which only of late had stuck to his memory—of ladies ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... of fashion and the mould of form," in very truth "the observed of all observers," surely to-night he should be happy! For the soaring pinions of youth have borne him up and up at last, into the empyrean, far, far above the commonplace; the "Coursing Hound," with its faded sign and weatherbeaten gables, has been lost to view long and long ago (if it ever really existed), and to-night he stands above the clouds, his foot upon the topmost pinnacle; and ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... common man. He lived a common life, among common men and women. He died a common death. His own methods of teaching were what a Saturday reviewer, had he to deal with the case, would undoubtedly term vulgar. The roots of Christianity are planted deep down in the very soil of life, amid all that is commonplace, and mean, and petty, and everyday. Its strength lies in its simplicity, its homely humanness. It has spread itself through the world by speaking to the hearts, rather than to the heads of men. If it is still to live and grow, it must be helped along by such methods as these peasant players ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... dismal without, my worthy friend and neighbour, PHORMIO, sometimes gives me a call—and we have a rare set-to at my old favourite volumes—the 'Lectiones Memorabiles et Reconditae' of WOLFIUS[172]—a commonplace book of as many curious, extraordinary, true and false occurrences, as ever were introduced into two ponderous folios. The number of strange cuts in it used to amuse my dear children—whose parent, from the remembrance of the past, still finds a pleasing recreation in looking at them. So much, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... not romance, if I were you," replied the doctor; "you will find, I fear, a very grovelling and commonplace reality. Felipe, for instance, I have seen. And what am I to say? He is very rustic, very cunning, very loutish, and, I should say, an innocent; the others are probably to match. No, no, senor commandante, you must seek congenial ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the boat I met Dugald Shaw in commonplace fashion at the table, a sudden, queer, altogether unprecedented shyness seized me. I sat looking down at my plate with the gaucherie of ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... front face and profile seen from right and left, all these poses shown on the same picture, some snapshots and various camera studies. Desmond shook his head in despair. He was utterly unable to detect the slightest resemblance between himself and this rather commonplace looking type ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... tourists were in the place, and we were all gazing steadfastly at the immortal Virgin, when a pretty, fresh-colored young American girl entered the room. Every man's head twisted away from the masterpiece of art, and every man's eyes stared at the commonplace stranger, because she was alive! I was much amused, and could not help thinking of ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... darkness and storm of winter seas. There, indeed, in these "wave-beaten" ships, as in the watching fleets of the English Admirals outside Toulon and Brest, while Napoleon was marching triumphantly about Europe, lies the root fact of the war. It is a commonplace, but one that has been "proved upon our pulses." Who does not remember the shock that went through England—and the civilised world—when the first partial news of the Battle of Jutland reached London, and we were told our own losses, before we ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... justice, of the swift, last scene; the curtain falls; and now the yearning sympathies of the hearers break out into sound, and the actor comes before the footlights to receive his meed of praise. How commonplace it is to read that such a one was called before the curtain and bowed his thanks! But sit there; listen to the applauding clamor of two thousand voices, be yourself lifted on the waves of that exultation, and for a moment you forget how soon all this will be hushed forever, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... nearer to the point where we can enter this realm of medicine. Everything depends on the right point of entrance. That an influence on the inner life of man may be beneficial for his health is a commonplace truth to-day for everybody. Every serious discussion of the question has to consider which influences are appropriate, and in which cases of illness the influence on inner life is advisable. The popular treatises usually start ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... window, looking and listening. Happen what might, be the 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 ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... you, young men! I, who have long since ceased to belong to you, maintain—and I have also expressed my conviction in these addresses—that you are yet more capable of every thought transcending the commonplace, and are more easily aroused to all that is good and great, because your time of life still lies closer to the years of childish innocence and of nature. Very differently does the majority of the older generation regard this fundamental trait in you. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... violent tone he could adopt on occasions, and tries to distract his son's attention by appealing to his ambition. He asks him to decide whether he wishes to become "a commonplace artist whom the world will forget, or a celebrated capellmeister of whom posterity will read years after in books,—whether, infatuated with a pretty face you one day breathe your last on a straw sack, your wife and children in a state of starvation, or, after ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... had never before been seen at Hanney's—that was freely admitted by all. Men pitied absent miners all over the State, and wondered why this delightful lingering, long-drawn-out system of slaughter was not more popular than the brief and commonplace method of the revolver. The Webfoot rapturously and softly quoted the good ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... little sculduddery after dinner, which it is perfectly licit for him to do, and which (although I am not very fond of it myself) appears to be entirely an affair of taste. Your father, I scarcely like to remind you, since it is so trite a commonplace, is older than yourself. At least, he is MAJOR and SUI JURIS, and may please himself in the matter of his conversation. And, do you know, I wonder if he might not have as good an answer against you ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the problems presented by the apparent discord between the truths of faith and the facts of human life—a discord which is felt in every age by the observant and thoughtful, but which in our age is a commonplace on the lips of even the most superficial. But an age takes its tone from the many who are the children of the past, rather than from the few who are the parents of the future. Mother Juliana's book could hardly have ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... crescent-shaped carriage-way and the wall bordering the road was filled with rather unkempt shrubbery, laurels and rhododendrons for the most part, from amid which arose several big trees. In the blaze of the afternoon sun the place looked commonplace enough with estate agents' bills pasted in the dirty windows, and it was difficult to conceive that it had been the scene of the mysterious crime of which at that hour all London was talking and which later was to form a subject of debate ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... Jack heard again from his father. It was a commonplace message enough. Sent merely to keep the ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... fantastic pagodas and minarets, and, crowning all, the walls and towers of the Grand Palace, flash with countless charming tricks of light, and compose a scene of more than magic novelty and beauty. So oriental fancy and profusion deal with things of use, and make a wonder of a commonplace. ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... Constantinople had slackened my fibre. Now, as the sharp wind buffeted us, I felt braced to any kind of risk. We were on the great road to the east and the border hills, and soon we should stand upon the farthest battle-front of the war. This was no commonplace intelligence job. That was all over, and we were going into the firing-zone, going to take part in what might be the downfall of our enemies. I didn't reflect that we were among those enemies, and would probably share their downfall ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... to exclaim in words of pleasure and welcome, when his attention was arrested by the strange expression upon the thin, eager face—an expression so strange that it checked the commonplace words of greeting that sprang naturally to Cuthbert's lips, and he waited in silence ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... civil and military household who had to receive his direct orders or enjoyed the right of "paying their court at these privileged hours." At Saint Helena, Napoleon boasted that at the Tuileries he had suppressed in the matter of etiquette "all that was real and commonplace, and had substituted what was merely nominal and decorative." "A king," he said, "is not a natural product; he is a result of civilization. He does not exist nakedly, but only ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... big hand on my shoulder, looked into my eyes, and drew out of me my story. I forget what he said, it was brief and perhaps commonplace, but I went out to walk the streets that night, full of hope and courage. Before leaving that night I approached the little man at ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... To them, among other matters, the secret of unhappy marriages was as simple as can be. It was in nothing more or less than the excessive "familiarity" of ordinary married life, and the lack of personal freedom allowed both parties to the contract. Thus love grew commonplace, and the unhappy ones to weary of each other by excessive and enforced association. This was obvious enough, and the remedy as obvious,—separate bedrooms, and a month's holiday in each year to be spent apart (notoriously all people of quality had separate bedrooms, and see how happy ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... by Supreme Wisdom in the production of what is most immortal and most precious in the world of thought, as well as of what is most useful and beautiful in the world of matter, there is one which cannot fail to arise before the most actual and commonplace imagination. This is, the great apparent care exhibited by nature in the preparation of the nidus—or matrix, if we may so style it—in which the genius of the great man is to be perfected and elaborated. Nature creates nothing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... very greatly. I was worn out with the filth and greed and foolishness of many of these men. They were commonplace citizens, turned into stampeders ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... need salves or instructions, or charms against enchantments, and, least of all, arms and armor, on a foray of any kind—even against fire-spouting dragons, and devils hot from perdition, let alone such poor adversaries as these I was after, these commonplace ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... were lovely, innocent eyes; and oh! it was a sweet, sweet mouth! But the eyes never wavered, and the mouth had no trace of weakness in its dainty curves. You have reckoned without your host, John Arthur. It is no commonplace school-girl with whom you have to deal. Madeline Payne possesses a nature all untried, yet strong for good or evil. Intense in love or hate, fearless to do and dare, she will meet the fate you bring upon her—but woe to those who have compassed ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... superiority and stoicism which accompanied the pang and pain of it. But in England, where everybody bathed—or at any rate had water in their rooms and splashed and said ah! ah! and oh! oh!—he regarded the morning bath as commonplace, and had often to be ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... and a bold," says he, "but I am not so sure that you are doing yourself justice. I would have you to consider whether you would not do better, ay, and safer, to serve me instead of serving so commonplace a rascal as Mr. Harris. Consider of it," he concluded, dealing the man a gentle tap upon the shoulder, "and don't be in haste. Dead or alive, you will find me an ill man to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of a commonplace young man," Vixen said, when she talked him over with her mother on the day of his arrival ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... signify to receive a box on the ear? Commonplace metaphor replies: "It is to see ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... admit that if the essay upon criticism does not show deep thought, it shows singular skill in putting old truths. Pope undeniably succeeded in hitting off many phrases of marked felicity. He already showed the power, in which he was probably unequalled, of coining aphorisms out of commonplace. Few people read the essay now, but everybody is aware that "fools rush in where angels fear to tread," and has ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... attractive as a mass of light, is not really good. Its patterns are trivial, its paintings and statues commonplace; and I personally have the feeling that it would have been more fitting had Giotto's marble been supplied rather with a contrast than an imitation. As it is, it is not till Giotto's tower soars above the facade that one can rightly ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... the cut discourteous from his future father-in- law might have been the most commonplace of incidents,—Lessingham evinced not a trace of discomposure. So far as I could judge, he took no notice of the episode whatever, behaving exactly as if nothing had happened. He merely waited till Mr Lindon was well off the steps; then, turning ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... tone had the cheery fraternal ring of commonplace sincerity. "That's what I turned round for. I says, that girl's lost, I says. There's places down here that's dangerous, and she don't ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... that, in a melancholy sort of way, he offers her his hand, which she, the artful little hussy of a Becky Sharp, with considerable affectation of coyness, accepts, and down goes the Curtain upon as unsatisfactory and commonplace a termination to a good Melodrama as any Philistine of the Philistines could possibly wish. It would have been a human tragedy indeed had poor Gooseberry poisoned himself, and the girl whose life he had saved had arrived just too late, only to die of a broken ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... their dead till the third day; they could not afford real cypress trees, but must use cheaper substitutes, if anything at all. They could not afford all the processionists and paraphernalia of the undertaker, but must be satisfied with four commonplace bearers, who hurried away the corpse in the evening, not on a couch but in a cheap box, and carried it out to the common necropolis beyond the Esquiline Gate. Seldom could they afford the fuel to burn the ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... ultimate settlement and an initiative from the Western Hemisphere that will lead to a world congress. There are the two most hopeful sources of that great proposal. It is the tradition of British national conduct to be commonplace to the pitch of dullness, and all the stifled intelligence of Great Britain will beat in vain against the national passion for the ordinary. Britain, in the guise of Sir Edward Grey, will come to the congress like a family solicitor among the Gods. What is the good of shamming about ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... For was not the world full of men and women who groaned, not merely under poverty and cruelty, weakness and sickness, but under dullness and stupidity, hugged in the paralyzing arms of that devil-fish, The Commonplace, or held fast to the rocks by the crab Custom, while the tide of moral indifference was fast rising to choke them? Was there no prophet, no redemption, no mediator for such as these? Were there not thousands of women, born with a trembling impulse towards the ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... respectable business men of the day. Being yet a young man, just scanning forty, he is one among the extraordinary men of the times. Born, like the most of colored men in this country, in obscurity, of poor parents, raised without the assistance of a father, and to a commonplace business, without the advantages of schools, by his own perseverance, he qualified himself to the extent that gave him an inclination to traffic, which he did for several years on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, investing his gains in real estate, until he ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... only knows. Perhaps I shall not be able to bear it long alone, but the thought of returning to Switzerland so very soon is unpleasant to me. Tell me, dearest Franz, have you quite given up your idea of going to Paris? Our meeting there would be much pleasanter than at the commonplace Basle. Are you so much tied by time and space? Of course the hope of seeing you once more this year regulates all my plans; and if you offer me an opportunity for the end of September, I should be a precious fool not to make use of it. See you again therefore I ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... varied surroundings it would be surprising indeed if the author, with his faculty of making even the commonplace attractive, did not tell an intensely interesting story of adventure, as well as give much information in regard to the distant countries through which our friends pass, and the strange peoples with whom they are brought in contact. This book, and indeed the whole ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... wounded girl silently differed, for she had read in the man's eyes and voice a great deal more than belonged to the commonplace character of a forest-ranger. That first vision of his ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... question of talent, but of name; I am sure that he is not even decorated. Your father had other friends, more successful, more commonplace, ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... mother, but it was clear that it was Henrietta he came to see. Another dance, another call, and meetings at friends' houses, and wherever she was he wanted to be beside her. It was an exquisitely happy month. He was a commonplace young man, but what did that matter? There was nothing in Henrietta to attract anyone very superior. And perhaps she loved him all the more because he was not soaring high above her, like all her previous divinities, but walking side by side ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... nothing, but looked around. She saw nothing that was familiar. A neat wayside station, with the usual platform, was nearest; and beyond this arose trees which concealed the view on one side, while on the other there were fields and hedges, and one or two houses in the distance. It was a commonplace scene, in a level sort of country, and Lady Dudleigh, after one short survey, thought no more about it. It was just ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... two wooden box covers in the closet," promptly responded Cyn. "That is right, and see, here is room also for the coffee—pardon me, I had almost said commonplace coffee-pot!" ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... musical drawl. Her father, after the few words of introduction had been spoken, strolled away to speak to some acquaintances, and Immelan and the Prince discussed with measured politeness one of the commonplace subjects of the moment. Naida and her companion became ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... say how my climate is improved. The neighbourhood much the same as all other neighbourhoods. Red wine and white, soup and fish, commonplace dulness and prejudice, bad wit and good-nature. I am, after my manner, making my place perfect, and have twenty-eight ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... and New York, and the encores that called her back in Cairo and Calcutta, if he could have seen the flowers that choked the wheels of her carriage in St. Petersburg and the diamonds that were showered upon her in Brazil, even his commonplace heart must ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... vexation. If he had been profuse in his thanks she would have had an opportunity of cutting him short with some commonplace comment. ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... Trott" is a name for a clown or commonplace character. Miss Burney ('Diary', 1904, i. 222) says of Dr. Delap:— 'As to his person and appearance, they are much in the 'John-trot' style.' Foote, Chesterfield, and Walpole use the phrase; Fielding Scotticizes it into ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... clear before I fell asleep; and when I first awoke, fresh from 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, not to ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... the composer's idea. Take, for instance, the well-known change which every soprano who sings the role of Leonora introduces in the Miserere scene of Il Trovatore. The passage occurs four times in succession, and as printed becomes commonplace and monotonous. ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... cushag were swishing against his riding-breeches and her print dress. "I must tell her now," he thought. In the narrow places she went first, and he followed with a lagging step, trying to begin. "Better prepare her," he thought. But he could think of no commonplace leading up to what he ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... beautiful one as is evident. We ought to keep alive the memories that make the place romantic. It would be a pity if utilitarian axe and fire were to spoil the beauty of Te Puke Tapu. There is plenty of other good land to be had. No need for us to covet this, fertile as it is; no need to make a commonplace farm out of that picturesque old battle-ground. May it long remain just as it is now—a lovely natural monument to ancient Maori valour, a quiet undisturbed resting-place for the warrior dead, the patriot ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... responsibility. She held tightly her hands and leaned back, awaiting the precious moment when the oracle would speak, when this modern magician of art would display his cunning. But he was fatuously commonplace ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... beautiful, and clever a girl born in any department of France may be on entering life, if, like Dinah Piedefer, she marries in the country and remains there, she inevitably becomes the provincial woman. In spite of every determination, the commonplace of second-rate ideas, indifference to dress, the culture of vulgar people, swamp the sublimer essence hidden in the youthful plant; all is over, it falls into decay. How should it be otherwise? From their earliest ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... Calthea did not forget her intention of treating Lanigan Beam as a person between whom and herself there could be nothing of a connecting order which could be set up as something of an obstructing order between herself and any one else. She therefore took his hand, made a few commonplace remarks about his return, and then, excusing herself, approached Mrs. Cristie, who was just about to alight from the phaeton, and gave her the invitation to drive to Romney. That lady hesitated a few moments, and then, remembering some shopping she would like ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... written (we love to be precise in matters concerning orthography) in a neat, round, clerk-like hand, which, like Mr. Winterblossom's character, in many particulars was most accurate and commonplace, though betraying an affectation both ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... clump of ancient and lofty ash-trees, behind which rose the. Buxieres domicile. This magnificent grove of trees, and a monumental fence of cast-iron, were the only excuse for giving the title of chateau to a very commonplace structure, of which the main body presented bare, whitewashed walls, flanked by two small towers on turrets shaped like extinguishers, and otherwise resembling very ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... no words of comfort in the bewildered glimpse at his sorrow and agitation. Richard spoke with calmness and good sense, and his replies, though brief and commonplace, were not without effect in lessening the excitement and despondency which the poor doctor's ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... business end of his suggestion had been the last thing in his mind. He managed to voice a commonplace protest, and Hilmer, taking his place at ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... portions which floated slowly along, separating more and more, the dull grey growing rapidly silvery, then golden, and the gold becoming suffused with soft light. So beautiful was the scene that, while Archie gazed thoughtfully at its beauty, even commonplace, powder-besmirched Peter sat with his lips apart, staring hard, and then, forgetting himself and their risky position, with its need for concealment, he ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... are commonplace books of quotable passages, so called because an Italian grammarian, Marius Nizolius, born at Bersello in the fifteenth century, and one of the scholars of the Renaissance in the sixteenth, was one of the first producers of such volumes. His contribution ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... was not worth your while to come to hear them, nor mine to speak them; but if we would lay them to heart, and realise how true it is about every step of our earthly course that 'ye have not passed this way heretofore,' we should complain less than we do of the weariness and prosaic character of our commonplace lives, and feel that all was mystical and great and awful; and yet most blessed in its ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... there to be encountered a man who has altogether proved a failure. But if he has done so, he will be found to be a man whose nature is of a more thoughtful, a more truly existent, a more clear-sighted cast than that of his fellows—a man who at least can look beyond the boundaries of the trite and commonplace, and whose mentality has a greater capacity for attaining spiritual fulfilment, and is more desirous of doing so, than the mentality of his compeers. That is to say, in such a man one can always detect a striving for space, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... commonplace and old-fashioned Responsibilities all her Life and now cruel Circumstances compelled her to spend Hours in servile Attentions ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... forgotten the experience, and she knew it would have been a severe shock to her innocent self-love and self-gratulation, if any one had hinted to her that there was a doubt of her captive's honesty. She was roused from her reverie by a message from Miss MacDowlas. It was only a commonplace sort of message. There were some orders to be left at the poulterer's and fruiterer's, and some bills to be paid in town, and, these affairs being her business, Miss MacDowlas had good-naturedly ordered the carriage for her, as she had a long ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... writer. The verses are constructed with considerable regard for technique. Now and then there is a false quantity, an unpleasant sequence, or a heavy effect, but such blemishes are comparatively infrequent. There is much that is trivial, commonplace, and prosaic in these productions of the common people, but now and then one comes upon a phrase, a verse, or a whole poem which shows strength or grace or pathos. An orator of the late period, not without vigor, writes ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... exquisite work of art, such as a fine cameo, or a natural rarity, such as a black pearl, is a more distingue possession than a large brilliant which any rich and tasteless vulgarian can buy as easily as yourself. Of all precious stones, the opal is one of the most lovely and least commonplace. No vulgar woman purchases an opal. She invariably prefers the more showy ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... "No, not a commonplace! Hitherto, for instance, if I were told, 'love thy neighbour,' what came of it?" Pyotr Petrovitch went on, perhaps with excessive haste. "It came to my tearing my coat in half to share with my neighbour and we both were left half naked. As a Russian proverb has it, 'Catch several ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... air of The Star Spangled Banner. Some of the notes may have gone wrong, there may have been errors of time and emphasis, but the old tune, then young, was there. Every man lying on the floor, every one of whom was born in the States, knew it, and every heart leaped. Elsewhere it might have been a commonplace thing to do, but there in the night and the storm, surrounded by enemies, on a vast and lonely frontier it was an inspiration. Every Texan in the valley who heard it would know that it was the call of a friend asking for help, and he ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... However, for the commonplace national enterprise the common run will do very well. Any populace imbued with a reasonable measure of patriotism will serve as ways and means to warlike enterprise under competent management, even ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... due alone to mere environment. The ordinary man, with ordinary natural gifts, found in Western pioneer communities a development essentially the same as he would have found under colonial Virginia or Puritan New England: a commonplace life, varying only with the changing ideas and customs of time and locality. But for the man with extraordinary powers of body and mind; for the individual gifted by nature with the genius which Abraham Lincoln possessed; the pioneer condition, with its severe training in self-denial, ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... why should the King of Prussia sacrifice his power and prerogative? The question is really as absurd as it would be to ask, why is not an English Parliament content with the power enjoyed by the Prussian Parliament? It was a commonplace of the time, that the continued conflict shewed a want of statesmanship; so it did, if it is statesmanship always to court popularity and always to surrender one's cause when one believes it to be right, even ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... you passed here—quiet, eventless years—with a commonplace mother and a dull, proud father. At ten, your mother went to her grave. At twelve, the late Sir Noel followed her. At thirteen, you, a lonely orphan, were removed from this house to London in the charge of a guardian that you ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... grand old town, coming upon it thus at its best; and I was glad that fate had driven me into my own land en automobile. Even though, in following Carmona to watch over the girl we both loved, I might have to keep often to the beaten track made commonplace by tourists, the way would never be really commonplace, as to sightseers who take the ordinary round ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... free to do what she pleased, to go and come at will! She wasn't born to be a princess; she wasn't commonplace enough; she enjoyed life too well. Ah, if only she might live and act like those English cousins of hers with whom she went to school! They could ride man-fashion, hunt man-fashion, shoot, play cards and bet at the races man-fashion, and nobody threatened ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... to keep it, to live in a commonplace apartment with her companion, her cook, and a man-servant, rather than sell that inestimable jewel. There was a reason for it; a reason she was not afraid to disclose: the black pearl was the gift ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... commonplace in the telling," he responded, "as I am not good at story-telling. Well, to begin with, this friend of mine loves a fair and beautiful young girl who is very poor. A wealthy suitor, a dissipated roue, had gained the consent of ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... croaking of innumerable frogs, sounding like the rapid whirr of wooden rattles and lasting continuously for a period of several minutes, and then ceasing abruptly, as though at a signal, to recommence as abruptly a few minutes later. These sounds were commonplace enough, and after an hour or two to allow the ear to become accustomed to them, would of themselves have been soothing and conducive to somnolence rather than the reverse, but they were constantly being broken into by others so ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... businessmen for business ends; and there is no tabu of axiomatic gentility or of certified pedigree to hedge about this working syndicate of business interests. So that it is all nearer by one remove to the disintegrating touch of the common man and his commonplace circumstances. The businesslike regime of these democratic politicians is as undeviating in its advocacy and aid of enterprise in pursuit of private gain under shelter of national discrimination as the circumstances will permit; ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... to the same owner had become great friends. Ponto and Dick, we will call them, though I am not quite certain as to their names. Ponto's leg being broken, he was kept a close prisoner. His friend Dick, instead of whining out a few commonplace expressions of sympathy,—"Dear me, I'm so sorry; well, I hope you will soon get better," and then scampering off to amuse himself with other dogs in the village, or to run after the cows, or to go out hunting,—came and sat down ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... had two curates to do the rough work for him—clerical charwomen, so to speak—would make her the happiest of womankind. Mr. Holland was rector of St. Chad's, Battenberg Square, and he was thought very highly of even by his own curates, who intoned all the commonplace, everyday prayers in the liturgy for him, leaving him to do all the high-class ones, and to repeat the Commandments. (A rector cannot be expected to do journeyman's work, as it were; and it is understood that ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... herself she should be considering Dodge; her sympathy even for him was submerged in her own extraordinary injury. However, she recovered from her first gasping shock, and made an utterly commonplace remark. Never had her sense of isolation been stronger. "I must admit," her husband continued, "that I looked for some small display of concern. I give you my word there are moments when I think Pleydon himself cut you out of stone. He ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... me, without doubt, that it is no other reason (than that of reverence to her mother's name). Strange enough, this pupil of mine is unique in her speech and deportment, and in no way like any ordinary young lady. But considering that her mother was no commonplace woman herself, it is natural that she should have given birth to such a child. Besides, knowing, as I do now, that she is the granddaughter of the Jung family, it is no matter of surprise to me that she is what she is. Poor girl, her mother, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... thoughts. Pondering upon it, her fancy led her to exaggerate Drake into the likeness of some Egyptian god, that sits with huge hands resting upon massive knees, and works out its own schemes behind indifferent eyes. The sight of him, and the sound of commonplace words from his mouth, would at times make her laugh at the conception and restore her to her former familiarity with him. But the fancy returned to her, and, each time, added a fresh layer to the colour of her thoughts. She came now and again to betray a positive ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... Armytage did get hold of her, in what we must now call the Lover's Walk! Yes, she has yielded, to her father's great satisfaction and perhaps to her mother's, for she will be more comfortable in looking forward to a commonplace life for her than in the dread of modern aberrations. But Gillian is very funny, very much ashamed of having given in, and perfectly determined to go to her college and finish her education, which she may as well do while ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... Bracy, you quite startled me, my lad; I was taken by surprise, and I looked at it from the commonplace point of view. I've had time to think of it now from the scientific side. Tell me, can you control yourself when those fits come on? I mean, this involuntary ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... remembers the stately ruins as much more extensive in his youth than they now are, and as the good people of St.-Amand have very recently allowed the local architect to put up, under the very shadow of the exquisitely beautiful belfry still standing, one of the most dismal and commonplace brick school-houses I have seen in France, it is to be presumed that a few more years will see everything pulled down, and replaced, perhaps, by a miniature reproduction in steel and iron of the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... that it was a three story house I passed lightly over the fact that it was only eighteen feet wide! Similarly, in speaking of "our country home" I did not explain to all my friends that it was merely an ugly old farmhouse on the edge of a commonplace village. I stated the truth in each case but ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... little millefleurs-scented billet lay, unknown to its writer as to him, the turning-point of his life! God help us! what avail are experience, prescience, prudence, wisdom, in this world, when at every chance step the silliest trifle, the most commonplace meeting, an invitation to dinner, a turn down the wrong street, the dropping of a glove, the delay of a train, the introduction to an unnoticed stranger, will fling down every precaution, and build a ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... or when, later, in 1626, Manhattan Island, estimated to contain 22,000 acres, was purchased from the Indians for $24, paid in beads, buttons and trinkets, and the Block House was built, with cedar palisades, on the site of the Battery, it is, of course, commonplace to say that they who had come hither could scarcely have had the least conception of what a career they thus were commencing for two great cities. But it is not so wholly commonplace to say that those who saw this ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... like it? I wonder! Or think you it's stupid To send such a commonplace gift as a Purse? Do you sigh for the tinsel, and gauze, and the Cupid, And the wonderful sentiments written in verse? Well, suppose I had sent them. You'd murmur, "How pretty!" Then not see them again as you put them away. Shall I candidly tell you I thought ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various
... will prize, what men will treasure. Peter Marchdale, for example, prizes, treasures, (and imagines that he will always prize and treasure), the perfectly conventional, the perfectly commonplace little document, of which the foregoing is ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... saith, There is a lion in the way, and I shall be devoured in the streets." But when the necessity pleaded is not in the nature of things, but in the vices of him who alleges it, the whining tones of commonplace beggarly rhetoric produce nothing but indignation; because they indicate a desire of keeping up a dishonourable existence, without utility to others, and without dignity to itself; because they aim at ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... constructive genius, two or three leading spirits eminent for shrewdness and tact, a dozen or more excellent critics representing various conflicting interests, and a rank and file of thoroughly respectable, commonplace men, unfitted for shining in the work of the meeting, but admirably competent to proclaim its results and get their friends and neighbours to adopt them. And in such an assembly, even if it be such as we call ideally perfect, we must allow ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... they were alone. "You have been foolish; very foolish." He had a trick of repeating himself, conceiving, no doubt, that the commonplace achieves distinction by repetition. ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... delighted, but I think the men— Captain Grantly especially—think it's rather mad to go to so much trouble when you might have your dinner comfortably at home. Male creatures are like that, so practical and commonplace, not a bit enthusiastic and sensible like school-girls. We used to keep awake until one o'clock in the morning, and sit shivering in dressing-gowns, eating custard, tarts and sardines, and thought it was ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and her commonplace gray eyes fell to the ground. She took up the poker and began to trace a pattern on the floor: it was as intricate as her own fate just now. She was a little heroine, however, and her noble thoughts redeemed all plainness from her face ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... distinguish myself in any way, nor (though I think I was rather liked than otherwise) make any great or lasting friendships; on the other hand. I did not in any way disgrace myself, nor make a single enemy that I knew of. Except that I grew our of the common tall and very strong, a more commonplace boy than I must have seemed (after my artistic vein gad run itself dry) never went to a public school. So much for ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... brighter period. I shall not expatiate on the works of the 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 of plenty, has poured the names and authorities ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... angrily. Of course he must know that he had been splendid, up there behind the rocks. And now to be unconscious of it! But that was only a pose, she decided. Yet what made him so stupidly commonplace, and so dense? She hated to be robbed of her enthusiasm for an artistic bric-a-brac of emotion; and here he was, like some sordid mechanic who would not talk shop ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... are not watchful, and prevent the affair with timely interference, a scandal will grow out of it, and you know well that it would be a welcome opportunity for our Weimar Philistines (as the Jena students call commonplace gossips) to cry 'Murder,' and howl about the immoral example of geniuses, which Wolfgang Goethe ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... if she would allow herself to be pitied; but any expression of sympathy seemed repugnant to her. Any one so utterly lonely, so absolutely without interest in existence, he had never seen or thought to see; and yet he could not bring himself to like her, or to say more than the mere commonplace utterances of society. Though he was her clergyman, and bound by the sacredness of his office to be specially tender to the bruised and maimed ones of his flock, he could not get her to acknowledge her maimed condition ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... that no further thought of school or message crossed his mind from the moment that the highest white steading of Craig Ronald sank out of view, until his compulsory return. Andra had shut out from his view so commonplace and ignominious facts ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... seem more ideal and more magnificent than a star "trembling on the hand of God" when newly created, or trembling on the verge of everlasting darkness, when its hour had come. A slipper seems a very commonplace object; but how interesting the veritable slipper of Empedocles, who flung himself into Etna, whose slipper was disgorged by the volcano, and as a link, connecting the seen with the unseen, the grassy earth with ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... to hold a brush; for years in my teens I had studied painting under the best teachers of technique in Italy. For two or three years I had done really good work, with the divine afflatus thrilling through every vein. And last year I had painted rather a commonplace picture and it had been hung on the line in the Academy, and so my friends all said I really was an artist now, and I modestly accepted the style and ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... moments of torture in companionship with Him for a life of earthly bliss. But—that fatal BUT—did He ever live, did He still live, did He love her, did He know how much she loved Him? Thus it has always been. There is an impulse in man which drives him to faith; the commonplace world does not satisfy him; he is forced to assume a divine object for his homage and love, and when he goes out into the fields ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... great idealists, whether they be poets, artists, students, thinkers, or what not? Only this, that they see the unattained burning ever so clearly before them that all the attained seems as nothing in their eyes. And so life is saved from commonplace, is happily stung into fresh effort, is redeemed ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of physical energy, but a strange rousing of all their mental faculties. Prosaic, they become poetical—the poetry may be unutterable, but it is there; commonplace, they become eccentric; severely practical, they become dreamers and loiterers upon the hillside. The sea, the wood, the meadow cannot compete with the mountain in egging on the mind of man to incredible efforts of expression. The songs, the rhapsodies, the poems, the aesthetic ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... sense, this new question of the Academy is commonplace, and fit at best to exercise a rhetorisian's skill. But the Academy, which must continue till the end in its ignorance of the revolutionary significance of its oracles, has drawn aside the curtain in its commentary. What, then, so profound ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... at length he spoke it was to give utterance to the trite commonplace of which he ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... for which men struggle with each other, there is one thing, out of the sphere of struggle, which indivisibly belongs to every man, and that one thing is the whole universe! Be not baffled by the appearance of transcendental mysticism in this maxim, as the ancient inquirer was by the appearance of commonplace in his, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... that buoys up the incompetent is the most difficult of all vagaries to account for. Rarely do twenty-four hours pass without examples of this exasperating weakness appearing on the surface of those shallows that commonplace people so naively ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... was half pulling him toward the door. Moreover, there was much sense in what the Alsatian said. It was a commonplace that he could be of more service to Julie alive than dead, and the man's insistence deciding him, he crept with the Alsatian into the hall. They stood a few minutes in the dark, listening, but no sound came. Evidently ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... not a panel in the old wainscoting but what, if it were endowed with the powers of speech and memory, could start from the wall and tell its tale of horror—the romance of life, sir, the romance of life! Commonplace as they may seem now, I tell you they are strange old places, and I would rather hear many a legend with a terrific-sounding name than the true history of one old ...
— The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick - A Lecture • Frank Lockwood
... her as much as before; she wasn't happy; and her people began to talk to him about a divorce—naturally they had been against her marrying him all along. He said—as they and she pleased. Then, one night about a year ago, he took the train to Niagara—of course it was a very commonplace thing to do—and two days afterwards he was found, thrown up by the whirlpool; you know, where ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... landscape that day—something of its brilliancy, color, and charm. The water seemed sluggish, the sky-tones dull, the meadows flat and commonplace. ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of the master's mate in this perilous venture—a tough sea-dog who was ready for anything, provided it was out of the commonplace. This business, I promised him, would ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... was only more conspicuous than that of the Maharajah of Burdawan because the former wore the many-folded turban and brocaded dress of his Sikh ancestry, whereas the latter, like most Bengalees of the upper classes, has adopted the much more commonplace broadcloth of the West. The bold, hawk-like features of Malik Umar Hyat Khan of Tiwana in the Punjab were as characteristic of the fighting Pathan from the North as were the Rajah of Mahmudabad's more delicate features of the Mahomedan aristocracy of the erstwhile ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... gives a reason which cannot be controverted, namely, that by the time the other foreign publics had fully awakened to the existence of Ibsen, he himself had so far outgrown the phase of his development marked by Pillars of Society, that the play already seemed commonplace and old-fashioned. It exactly suited the German public of the eighties; it was exactly on a level with their theatrical intelligence. But it was above the theatrical intelligence of the Anglo-American public, and... below that of the French public. This is of course an exaggeration. What ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... beside his own, is unfortunately mutilated. It is a mere trunk, without legs or arms (fig. 192); yet enough remains to show that the figure represented a good type of the Egyptian middle-class matron, commonplace in appearance and somewhat acid of temper. The "Kneeling Scribe" of the Gizeh collection (fig. 193) belongs to the lowest middle-class rank, such as it is at the present day. Had he not been dead more than ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... Sophie seemed stupid and commonplace that morning. Aaron had a headache, (that theologic thorn, I know,) and Sophie must go and sit beside him, and hold the thread of his Sunday's discourse to paper, whilst with wrapped brow and vision-seeing eyes he told her what his people ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... corncob while Mr. Merrick stared at him in thoughtful silence. As a matter of fact, Uncle John was pleased with the fellow. A whimsical, irrational, unconventional appeal of this sort went straight to his heart, for the queer little man hated the commonplace most cordially. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... adopted your advice. No art, no ideal,—nothing loftier than Commonplace for me now. If I were to paint again, I positively think YOU would purchase my pictures. Make haste and finish your breakfast, man; I wish to consult you. I have come to England to see after my affairs. My ambition ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... to the previous account of Omar's death-bed; but I have left it as it stands in the text, as it would be a hopeless task to endeavour to restore this chaos of insipid anecdote and devotional commonplace to ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... Quinisext, A. D. 692, Canon 2. In the West the canons were of importance as having been used by Dionysius Exiguus in his collection. That the Canon of Holy Scripture was settled at this council is a traditional commonplace in theology, but hardly borne out by the facts. The council only drew up one of the several imperfect lists of sacred books which appeared in antiquity. The following canons show the influx of heathenism into the ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... neither magic nor religion belongs, but to which physical science, the knowledge of how to deal mechanically with material things, does belong wholly, is the workaday world, the region of normal, commonplace, calculable happenings. With our telescopes and microscopes we see farther and deeper into things than does the savage. Yet the savage has excellent eyes. What he sees he sees. Consequently, we must duly allow for the fact that there is for him, as well ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... ready to agree with him, intending thereby a free-handed two days at the fair. As has been intimated, his manner of life before marriage had not been irreproachable, but he had been glad of an opportunity to put an end to the mildly riotous and coarse bouts which disfigured his otherwise commonplace existence. He had no intention now of misbehaving himself, but he felt the need of being enlivened. His companion was a man who delighted in what he called a lark, and whose only method of insuring a lark was by starting in with whiskey and keeping it up. That had been also Babcock's ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... pointless, inexpressive melody of the Dutchman appears now again, but so transformed as to be scarce recognizable. Compare the musical illustration (o) on page 119 with (a) at the end of this chapter. The type of tune is the same, but the first is commonplace and not quite worthy of the situation in which it occurs; the second has a glorious, though dignified, swing, and thoroughly expresses the words of welcome which Wolfram addresses to the errant Tannhaeuser. Compare Daland's song in the Dutchman with Wolfram's description of how Elisabeth ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... proposed to allege: first, the known enmity of recent date between the two parties, believed to have reference to some business dispute; and, secondly—here counsel dropped his voice to a very low key—he was sorry to suggest it; but the evidence bore it out—mere vulgar love of gain—the commonplace thirst after filthy lucre. They would bring witnesses to show that when Mr. Montague Nevitt was last seen alive, he was in possession of a pocket-book containing a very large large sum in Bank of England notes of high value; from the moment of his ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... part is in most cases approximately indicated in that most attractive volume of his entitled, "Travels in the Air," by diagrams giving a sectional presentment of his more important voyages; but a little commonplace consideration may take ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... the various inventions which he had ever seen, or had ever passed in his mind. These ideas are infused into his design, without any conscious effort; but if he be not on his guard, he may reconsider and correct them, till the whole matter is reduced to a commonplace invention. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the careful student of school literature to compare the following selection, which I have written myself with great care, and arranged with special reference to the matter of choice and difficult words, with the flippant and commonplace terms used in the average ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... the law of gravity or the fact that water will freeze at a certain temperature. Then the question of the Bible. The Unitarian position in regard to the origin, the method of composition, the authenticity and the authority of Biblical books, is a commonplace of scholarship. There is no rational question in regard to it any more. Next, the question of the origin and nature of Jesus the Christ. The naturalness of his birth, the naturalness of his death, his pure humanity, are made clearer ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... grandmother, the children, the bright cotton shirts and skirts, the wondrous fireplace, the spinning-wheel and weaving-frame—yes, it all seemed too picturesque, too full of colour, and too well grouped to be an event in our commonplace every-day life. Yet this was merely a peep at a Finnish home, in which just such a scene is enacted every day—a home but little off the beaten tracks, and only a short distance from steamboats and trains. The way to understand anything of a land or its people is to leave the tourist ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... powers of evil! To a fate as much worse than death as the soul and the mind are higher than the body! Was he really face to face with that? Was this house, so quiet, so peaceful, so commonplace, in reality the theatre of one of those manifestations of Satan's power which were the horror of the age? His senses affirmed it, and yet he doubted. Such things were, he did not deny it. Few men ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... happen?" asked Allerdyke, staring about him at the scene of the tragedy, and thinking how very ordinary and commonplace everything looked. "I suppose there'd be people about, though the street, at this end, anyway, isn't as busy as ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... sensibility burnt itself out, as it generally does; and when children, and the weak health which comes with them, and the cares of a household, and money difficulties were absorbing her little powers, Elsley Vavasour began to fancy that his wife was a very commonplace person, who was fast losing even her good looks and her good temper. So, on the whole, they were not happy. Elsley was an affectionate man, and honourable to a fantastic nicety; but he was vain, capricious, over-sensitive, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... Others will discriminate. They will accept the healing miracles, and reject the feeding of the multitude. To some the walking on the water will be a legendary exaggeration of a swim, ending in an ordinary rescue of Peter; and the raising of Lazarus will be only a similar glorification of a commonplace feat of artificial respiration, whilst others will scoff at it as a planned imposture in which Lazarus acted as a confederate. Between the rejection of the stories as wholly fabulous and the acceptance of them as the evangelists themselves meant them to be accepted, there will be many ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... to appreciate," he made answer. "I am merely a commonplace mortal who found in him something uncommon. The appreciation is mine entirely—the appreciation of the youth, the vitality ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... commonplace when I first began hearing about her that I let her slip through my fingers. She was just a little seamstress who had a "vairee" odd way of speaking; it was quite a long time before I realized that everybody who spoke about her was unconsciously trying to ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke |
