"Common" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... old; a self whose acts and ways she watched, sometimes with the held breath of fascination, sometimes with a return of shrinking or fear. That a man should not only appear but be so good was still in her eyes a little absurd. Perhaps her feeling was at bottom the common feeling of the sceptical nature. "We should listen to the higher voices; but in such a way that if another hypothesis were true, we should not have been ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not intrusion. My feet stand upon the highway. The road, Madame, is common to all. I can quote you Rex—What does Rex, cap. 27, para. 198, say? Via, says Rex, meaning the road; communis is common; omnibus to all, meaning thereby—but perchance ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... flighty. The old Dutch inhabitants, however, almost universally gave it full credit. Even to this day they never hear a thunder-storm of a summer afternoon about the Kaatskill, but they say Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of ninepins; and it is a common wish of all henpecked husbands in the neighborhood, when life hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out of Rip Van ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... the oath of abjuration, or support any conforming nonjuring teachers in their congregations? Did ever any conforming gentlemen, or common people, refuse to be arrayed, when the militia was raised, upon the invasion of the Pretender? Did any of them ever shew the least reluctance, or make any exception against their officers, whether ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... the children of Kings and Queens are animated by the same curiosities, and may act at times so like the children of the commonality. That Royalty again may be moved by the action or word of a child of common birth we have many pleasing proofs. One is pat. A late King of Prussia, while visiting in one of the villages of his dominion, was welcomed by the school children. Their sponsor made a speech for them. The King thanked them. Then, taking an orange from a plate, ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... surprised to see so many evidences of cultivated and refined taste in this remote corner of the world, where I had expected barely the absolute necessaries of life, or at best a few of the most common comforts. A large piano of Russian manufacture occupied one corner of the room, and a choice assortment of Russian, German, and American music testified to the musical taste of its owner. A few choice paintings and lithographs adorned the walls, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... hoped that Lord Salisbury's eyes may now be opened to the true state of the case, and that he may be able to convince Sir Wilfrid that common sense demands that England and Canada shall make a similar agreement with us to that which is just being prepared with ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 54, November 18, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... conceived this suspicion, everything went to foster it. They had distributed fire-arms among some of their men, a common precaution among the fur traders when mingling with the natives. This, however, looked like preparation. Then several of the partners and clerks and some of the men, being Scotsmen, were acquainted with the ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... up with the Brigade Staff on a common at the top of the succeeding hill, having been delayed by a puncture. Nixon, the S.O., told me that a battery of ours in position on the common to the south of the farm would open fire in a few minutes. The German guns would reply, but would be quickly ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... in fencing, and is always represented with his magic Excalibur named Chan-yao Kuai, 'Devil-slaying Sabre,' and in one hand holds a fly-whisk, Yuen-chou, or 'Cloud-sweeper,' a symbol common in Taoism of being able to fly at will through the air and to walk ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... gallery, to cure for ever the love of the ideal, and the desire to shine and make holiday in the eyes of others, instead of retiring within ourselves and keeping our wishes and our thoughts at home!—Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage, how little security have we when we trust our happiness in the hands of others! Most of the friends I have seen have turned out the bitterest enemies, or cold, uncomfortable acquaintance. Old companions are like meats served ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... the same way as to other natural resources as well. Thus it was the Forester's point of view, applied not only to the forest but to the lands, the minerals, and the streams, which produced the Conservation policy. The idea of applying foresight and common-sense to the other natural resources as well as to the forest was natural and inevitable. It works out, equally as a matter of course, into the conception of a planned and orderly development of all that ...
— The Training of a Forester • Gifford Pinchot
... these things would have happened if Baldos had never come to Edelweiss?" mused the princess. As though by common impulse, both of the Graustark women placed their ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... to single students and to those who nowadays, in happily increasing numbers, meet together for common study; and I congratulate those who belong to the Student Christian Movement upon this notable addition to the books published in connection with their ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... traces of its presence. In the western alley of the cloister is the old treasury, rich in records, and the vestries for canons, king's scholars, and choristers. The alley opens at the end into what is now called the crypt (see p. 85). This was undoubtedly the common hall of the monks. It is a spacious stone-vaulted chamber. The columns are low and massive, with simple moulded caps, from which the chamfered vaulting ribs diverge. Over the hall or crypt is the dormitory, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... to the flowers they had just picked, now comprised many other natives of the wood and hedgerow, such as the purple bugloss, the yellow iris, the star thistle, the common mallow; and, a convolvulus which was brilliantly pink, in contrast to his white brother before- mentioned. Besides these, Nellie had also gathered some sprays of the "toad flax" and "blue succory," a relative of the "endive" tribe, ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... other of the Yordas freaks was a fatuous and generally fatal one. For the slightest miscarriage they discharged their lawyer, and leaped into the office of a new one. Has any man moved in the affairs of men, with a grain of common-sense or half a pennyweight of experience, without being taught that an old tenter-hook sits easier to him than a new one? And not only that, but in shifting his quarters he may leave some ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Perrot derived from a considerable family of that name seated at Haroldstone in Pembrokeshire, his name and large estates; but his features, his figure, his air, and common fame, gave him king Henry VIII. for a father. Nor was his resemblance to this redoubted monarch merely external; his temper was haughty and violent, his behaviour blustering, his language always coarse, and, in the fits of rage to which he was subject, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... other hand, was by no means a feminist, but was a socialist. What probably brought the two men together—apart from their common likableness—was that each, in his way, refused to "go the whole hog." They sometimes threshed the thing out together, unable to decide on a programme, but always united at last in their agreement that things were wrong. Havelock ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... often semi-jocular, are common enough. The pastry-cooks and the grocers know a lot about the feminine side of this tragedy, at which so many folk smile. But those who, from personal experience, know the thing, would more likely smile in the face of Death himself, or joke ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... satisfied their curiosity, the elephants trooped into the forest which bounded the marshy plain southward, as if caravans were every-day things to them, whilst they—the free and unconquerable lords of the forest and the marsh—had nothing in common with the cowardly bipeds, who never found courage to face them in fair combat. The destruction which a herd makes in a forest is simply tremendous. When the trees are young whole swathes may be found uprooted and prostrate, which mark ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... the ewe bear twins, and there the goats; there the bees fill the hives, and there oaks grow loftier than common, wheresoever beautiful Milon's feet walk wandering; ah, if he depart, then withered and lean is the shepherd, ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... possessions and to tempt her by them. And the thing that we should do is to show her ourselves. We should say, 'If I were stripped of all my worldly goods what would there be in me for you to like?' My little wife and I had not one thing in common. And one day she left me. She found a man who gave her love for love. I had given her cars and flowers and boxes of candy and diamonds and furs. But she wanted more than that. She died—two years ago. I think she had been happy in those last years. I never really loved ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... Isn't it the luckiest thing that everyone hasn't the same likes? Just suppose everyone had been like my father and my mother and all the little girls were named Mary Rose? I think it's the most beautiful name in the entire dictionary, but Gladys Evans in Mifflin said it was common. She counted up and she knew seven Marys, with her grandmother and old Mrs. Wilcox, who's deaf and half blind, and four Roses. But there wasn't one Mary Rose!" triumphantly. "And that made all the difference in ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... the point, observing that he could not in conscience hold a situation to which a considerable salary was attached without performing the duties of it. Would that such political philosophy were more common in our days! From this time, Locke lived wholly in retirement, where he applied himself to the study of the Scriptures, till, in 1704, after nearly two years' declining health, he fell asleep. He was buried at Oates, where ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... (seals, walruses, etc.) is little represented in the Tertiary record. We saw, however, that the most primitive representatives of the elephant-stock had also some characters of the seal, and it is thought that the two had a common origin. ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... What is common in all these dreams is obvious. They completely satisfy wishes excited during the day which remain unrealized. They are simply ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... Yes, there were you—and there was I, Unshaved, and with erratic tie, And for that once I yearn'd to shun My social system's central sun. How could a sloven slave express The frank, the manly tenderness That wraps you round from common thought, And does not ask that you should know The love that consecrates you so. No; furtive, awkward, restless, cold, I basely seemed to set at naught That sudden bliss, undreamt, unsought. What must she think, my girl of gold? I dare ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... word buy, is not peculiar to the Hebrew. In the Syriac, the common expression for "the espoused," is "the bought." Even so late as the 16th century, the common record of marriages in the old German Chronicles ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... happens to have a big chest, strong arms, and plenty of mere fighting spirit, will never grasp him. Hardly better off will be he who takes him—as the story does give some handles for taking him—to be merely one of the too common examples of humanity who sin and repent, repent and sin, with a sort of Americanesque notion of spending dollars in this world and laying them up in another. Malory has on the whole done more justice to the possibilities of the Vulgate Lancelot ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... A common tray is produced, on which is placed an earthenware wine-cup. The sponsor drinks thrice, and hands the cup to the young man, who, having also drunk thrice, gives back the cup to the sponsor, who again drinks thrice, and then proceeds to tie ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... it, she flung the closed door wide and called her husband back into her thoughts—greeted the image of him passionately, in an almost palpable embrace. This hard thing that she was going to do, which had, to common-sense calculation, so many chances of disaster in it—this thing that meant sleepless nights, and feverishly active days, was an expression simply of her love for him; a sacrificial offering to be laid before the shrine ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... my good wife works herself half to death—loses the even balance of her mind—and, in consequence, makes herself and all around her unhappy. To indulge in an unamiable temper is by no means a common thing for Mrs. Sunderland, and this makes its occurrence on these occasions so much the harder to bear. Our last house-cleaning took place in the fall. I have been going to write a faithful history ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... 'Menaechmi' or the 'Amphitryon,' though Shakespeare had probably Latin enough for the purpose. The 'Comedy of Errors' was acted in December 1594. A translation of the Latin play bears date 1595, but this may be an example of the common practice of post-dating a book by a month or two, and Shakespeare may have seen the English translation in the work itself, in proof, or in manuscript. In those days MSS. often circulated long before they were published, like Shakespeare's own 'sugared ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... dismissed the hack, and talked stable matters with Cunningham, the coachman, and Fontenoy, the tiger, until his mother came—one of these lovely, trailing visions that are rare even in Paris, though common enough, ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... also which ancient peoples spoke throw light on their history. Comparing the words of two different languages, we perceive that the two have a common origin—an evidence that the peoples who spoke them were descended from the same stock. The science ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... were All Right. The third Well-Bred Young Man, whose Male Parent got his Coin by wrecking a Building Association in Chicago, then announced that they were Gentlemen, and could Pay for everything they broke. Thus it will be seen that they were Rollicking College Boys and not Common Rowdies. ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... held no ill-feeling against them on account of their refusal to assist his father. That was past history. But now they were to look into the future; they were all facing ruin if they did not combine in a common cause. So far as he was concerned their cattle might remain at the Rabbit-Ear until the drought ended, or until the stream went dry. And if Dunlavey fought them—well, he would be with them to ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... hurried along, I noticed that my new master spoke to no one, and that people looked at him coldly or wonderingly. At last we came to a common-looking house set back from the road, with a very high fence built around it and a heavy padlock on the front gate. There were great strong wooden shutters at every window. My master entered the house and set me down on the floor, then went to the door and locked ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... upon the imagination, in depicting the consequences of violating natural law! Suppose a preacher should give a plain, cold, scientific exhibition of the penalty which Nature exacts for the crime, so common among church-going ladies and others, of murdering their unborn offspring! It would appall the Devil. Scarcely less terrible are the consequences of the most common vices and meannesses when they get the mastery. Mr. Beecher has frequently ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Ovid, Amorum, I, 9, has 'Militat omnis amans et habet sua castra Cupido', and the idea is common. I have made no attempt to correct the tags of Latinity in this play. Mrs. Behn openly confessed she knew no Latin, and she was ill supplied here. I do not conceive that the words are intentionally faulty and grotesque. Lady Knowell is a ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... complex mixture of English common law, Roman-Dutch, Muslim, Sinhalese, and customary law; has not ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... tired to be very delicate. 'An',' s'I, 'you'll see a clean wrapper in the closet. Put it on.' Then I went to spread supper—warmed-up potatoes an' bread an' butter an' pickles an' sauce an' some cocoanut layer cake. It looked rill good, with the linen clean, though common. ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... at this time was the opposition of the Methodist party, who were considerably in the majority on the Reserve. As Indian land is held in common by all the members of the band, we were at one time in fear that we might be prevented from building. A petition was sent to Government, and correspondence entered into with the Indian Department, and in the end we were permitted to take possession of one ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... them. Even today Jim Silent and Jim Silent's crew isn't forgotten. Then don't look at me like that, Kate; no, I played straight all the time—-then I ran into Buck and he and I had tried each other out, we had at least one thing in common"—here he looked at Buck and they both flushed—"and we made a partnership of it. We've been ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... which fatigue began to render formidable, and the whip was becoming necessary to urge the lingering teams to their labour. At this moment, when, with the exception of the principal individual, a general lassitude was getting the mastery of the travellers, and every eye was cast, by a sort of common impulse, wistfully forward, the whole party was brought to a halt, by a spectacle, as sudden as ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... monomaniacs about something else. It isn't good enough. I want everything, and I'm going to get it—or have a good try for it. I'll never be a martyr if I can help it. And I believe I can help it. I believe I've got just enough common sense to save me from being a martyr —either to a husband or a house or family—or a cause. I want to have a husband and a house and a family, and a cause too. That'll be just about everything, won't it? ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... be evil or good; acts from spleen, and by simple caprice; is loveless; to be feared, deceived, tricked, as Caliban tricks Prospero,—so run the crude theological speculations of this man. He gets no step nearer truth. He walks in circles. He is shut in by common human limitations. Man can not dream about the sky until he has seen a sky, nor can he dream out God till God has been revealed. Caliban is no more helpless here than other men. His failure in theology is a picture of the failure of all men. God must show himself ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... complacently at the handsome furniture which surrounded him, the choice engravings which hung on the walls, and the full-length mirror in which his figure was reflected. "Ten years from now Frank Frost will be only a common laborer on his father's farm—that is," he added significantly, "if his father manages to keep it; while you, I hope, will be winning ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... "Edinburgh Review" (No. 231) has been hurried by his eagerness to vindicate Lord Macaulay. Moreover, this struck me to be as good a form as any for re-examining the subject in all its bearings; and now that it has become common to reprint articles in a collected shape, the comments of a first-rate review can no ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... process he performed by passing his hand deliberately from her head, along her back, to the very tip of her tail, which he retained each time in his grasp for a moment, ere he recommenced operations), "I highly disapprove of the absurd practice, so common with young men of the present day, of expressing their ideas in that low and incomprehensible dialect, termed 'slang,' which, in my opinion, has neither wit nor refinement to redeem its vulgarity, and which effectually prevents their acquiring that easy yet dignified mode of expression which should ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... to blow himself out of public life. He might have done that if some of those who called themselves his friends had been strong enough in their friendship to have so advised him. For even in the moments—and they were many—when he thought much of himself, "The Big Wind" had glimmerings of common sense. ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... had very few books, only three of her own outside of school books. "The markets did not afford the miracles common with the children of today," she adds. "Books are now so numerous, so cheap, and so bewildering in colour and make-up, that I sometimes think our children are losing their perspective and caring for none ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... according as they were allied to the Parliament or to the bastards, seemed to wait in fear what was to be proposed. Many others appeared deeply wounded because the Regent had not admitted them behind the scenes, and because they were compelled to share the common surprise. Never were faces so universally elongated; never was embarrassment more general or more marked. In these first moments of trouble I fancy few people lent an ear to the letters the Keeper of the Seals was reading. When they were ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... millionaire who will take up University Extension will leave a greater mark on the history of his country than even the pious founder of university scholarships and chairs. And even if individuals fail us, we have the common purse of the public or the ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... spoke, however, Joeboy laid his sandwich upon the shield beside him, and then began to fumble behind him in the band of his cut-down trousers, out of a leopard-skin pocket attached to which he drew a packet of common leather tied up with a ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... her face than beauty. It was so young and sweet and gay, and—when you looked hard at her—so sad, that I forgot I ought either to speak up or go away. Of who she was or how she came to be at La Chance, I had no earthly clue. I knew, of course, that it was she who had met me at the landing, and common sense told me she had taken me for some one else: but I had no desire to say so, or to go away either. And suddenly she looked up ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... we arrived at the foot of a high mountain, which was spread over with Iofty trees, without any underwood; and saw a pleasant looking country, covered with grass, and without that mixture of rocky patches in every acre or two, as is common in many other places: we ascended some distance, and erected our tents for the night. The river here is not more than twenty fathoms wide. In the night, when every thing was still, we heard distinctly ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... girls, and a sprinkling of older persons as well, hurried to ascertain what it could mean. Doubtless they were quick to sense the fact that something out of the common run must have occurred to ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... bottoms. You see, when dey wants to run away, dat stuff don't stick all on de shoes, it stick to de track. Den dey carries some of dat powder and throws it as far as dey could jump and den jump over it, and do dat again till dey use all de powder. Dat throwed de common hounds off de trail altogether. But dey have de bloodhounds, hell hounds, we calls 'em, and dey could pick up dat trail. Dey run my grandpa over 100 mile and three or four days and nights and found him under a bridge. What dey put on him was enough! I seen 'em whip runaway ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... if he was a judge in the Supreme Court. Yet, it's a shocking truth, the little upstarts don't know how to read like Christians, or spell half their words. The tip-top fashionable school-marms here are quite above teaching such common things as reading and spelling, and turn up their noses at any study that hasn't some "ology" or "phy" at ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... her and watched her pour out her tea and help herself with her little delicate hands. If he had been a common man, a peasant, his idea of courtesy would have been to leave her to herself, to turn away his eyes from her in that intimate and sacred act of eating and drinking. But Greatorex was a farmer, the descendant of yeomen, ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... ground is so valuable as in the neighbourhood of London, are an excellent contrivance. Mr Hunter has his hay-yard over his buffaloes' stables. The expense of vaulting does not exceed that of building and roofing common cow-houses; and the vaults have this essential advantage or preference, that they require no repairs." He then gives an account of some buffaloes which Mr Hunter had trained to work in a cart, and which became so steady and tractable, that they were often ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... has published several works anonymously—the first of which—"The Garland of Flora," was published in Boston in 1829. This was succeeded by a number of books for children, among which were "Conversations about Common Things," "Alice and Ruth," and "Evening Hours." She has also published a variety of tracts for prisoners, and has written many memorials to legislative bodies on the subject of the foundation and ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... a ]desirable marriage spoilt, all for want of a little common [sense and ]plain speaking, which one person at least in the [valley co]uld have supplied them with, had she not been ignored [and brow] beaten on all sides. She contained herself, however, [in his pres]ence, but the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... improvements distinguish this age and this people from all others. The genius of one American has enabled our commerce to move against wind and tide and that of another has annihilated distance in the transmission of intelligence. The whole country is full of enterprise. Our common schools are diffusing intelligence among the people and our industry is fast accumulating the comforts and luxuries of life. This is in part owing to our peculiar position, to our fertile soil and comparatively sparse population; but much of it is also owing ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... appeared hideous to others, offered the greatest charms to the saint, who desired to fly, as much as this mortal state would permit, whatever could interrupt his commerce with God. Here he often wanted the common necessaries and conveniences of life; but the greater the privation of earthly comforts was in which he lived, the more abundant were those of the Holy Ghost which he enjoyed, in proportion as the purity of his affections and his love of heavenly things were more perfect. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... are common until they get backed up by facts, Doctor, and then they's uncommon. The boys was tellin' me the news about Bassett and Campbell. I says I knew them birds wouldn't come to no good end. I ain't one to talk agin one of ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... found odd buttons, a theatre programme, a pawnbroker's card, two lost marshmallows, a book on the divination of dreams. In the last was a woman's black satin hair bow, which halted him, poised between ice and fire. But the black satin hair-bow also is femininity's demure, impersonal, common ornament, and ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... did they continue on; the two swayed first on the one side of the road, and then on the other, by the weight of the third, whom they almost carried between them. At last they arrived at a bridge built over one of those impetuous streams so common in the county, when, as if by mutual understanding, for it was without speaking, the two more sober deposited the body of the third against the parapet of the bridge, and then for some time were silently occupied in recovering their breath. One ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... beside her, holding her hand; but he did not know what to say; he did not know this woman—it seemed to him that he had never seen her before. What had he come to do in this house? Of what could he speak? Of the long-ago? What was there in common between him and her? He could no longer recall anything to mind in the presence of this grandmotherly face. He could no longer recall to mind all the nice, tender things so sweet, so bitter, that had assailed his heart, some time since, when he thought of the other, of little Lise, of the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... of armor bright, Shaft-proof and burnished, hard and cold, There beats, concealed from common sight, A ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... designate the inhabitant of a city, whose quiet and orderly life was passed in occupations of trade and industry; but such burghers were surely not to be found in the kingdom of Jerusalem; for the burghers sprang from the common people, of which the accounts of the Crusades made the chief portion of the army of the Crusaders to have consisted; and when we remember how little respect these showed for the princes in the army—that they once chose Godfrey Burel ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... the blame of this universal ignorance of it belong. He takes up this plain, simple subject, and becomes an intellectual aristocrat and a snob of exclusiveness from that time on, and, like the aristocrat of wealth, will have nothing further to do with the common people, cutting off all former connections by turning out a mass of intellectual mud that, only leisure and education can penetrate. And dear to him is the dignity of bulk, the dignity of paunch, using, as he does, twenty words where three would do better work. The living and the dead if ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... of the Canadas in 1841, a steady movement for the improvement of the elementary, public, or common schools continued for years, and the services of the Reverend Egerton Ryerson were engaged as chief superintendent of education with signal advantage to the country. In 1850, when the Lafontaine-Baldwin government ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... the German Protestant composers even now were not so very far behind the Netherland ones. The Catholic Church could no longer claim the great Albrecht Durer, and, if art ceased to create images of the saints, with which the childish minds of the common people practised idolatry, so much the better. The Infinite and Eternal was no subject for the artist. The humanization of God only belittled his infinite and illimitable nature. Earthly life offered art material enough. Man himself would be the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... wound. In the broad avenue leading to the main entrance new visions rose before him, made still more intense by the recollections of the coup d'etat evoked by the sight of Baudin's grave. At the right he saw the monument of Gottfried Cavaignac in the midst of the great common grave, into which all the nameless victims of the street fights were thrown in a horrible medley. This blood-stained bit of earth surrounds a circular border of flowers, in whose centre, above a low mound covered with stone slabs, rises a plain ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... the two physicians were separated by the waiting-room, which they used in common. Mrs. Schmidt, whom Frederick had met the day before, came over and, greeting him parenthetically, asked her husband to help her with the examination of one of her patients, a woman of about twenty-seven, ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... but their bitterness had become so great that either would prefer a bargain with the Democrats rather than with the other. The Hon. E. B. Washburne, representative in Congress from Illinois, made an opportune visit to St. Louis about this time, procured an interview with me at the house of a common friend, and led me into a frank conversation relative to this political question. I told him candidly that in my opinion the desired union of radicals and conservatives was impossible, for they ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... of an opportunity for plunder at the hands of the organization that now threatens. It is certain that the citizens of older New York have carried their pigs to a bad market. If history teaches anything, they will live to regret that they allowed urban pride to run away with common sense. ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... will go far toward the final settlement of the unhappy differences in Kansas. If frauds have been committed at this election, either by one or both parties, the legislature and the people of Kansas, under their constitution, will know how to redress themselves and punish these detestable but too common crimes without ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... at which the two Mima/m/sa-sutras were composed we are at present unable to fix with any certainty; a few remarks on the subject will, however, be made later on. Their outward form is that common to all the so-called Sutras which aims at condensing a given body of doctrine in a number of concise aphoristic sentences, and often even mere detached words in lieu of sentences. Besides the Mima/m/sa-sutras this literary ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... below and rounded on top, which are formed by local ascending currents of air. They were rare in the south and only formed over open water or mountains. Cirrus are the "mare's tails" and similar wispy clouds which float high in the atmosphere. These and their allied forms were common. Generally speaking, the clouds were due to stratification of the air into layers rather than ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... putting his hand to his sword, he was about to cry out and demand, in the name of justice, that instead of being punished, the prisoners should be released, when his companion grasped him by the arm, whispering, "Be calm, my friend; such events are so common in France, that we have grown accustomed to them. Hundreds have already died as these men are about to die; and we, their countrymen, have been compelled to look on without daring to raise our ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... to avoid the importunity of these antagonists they chanted a psalm, put into French verse by Clement Marot. Calvin, as we all know, had ordained that prayers to God should be in the language of each country, as much from a principle of common sense as in opposition to the Roman worship. To those in the crowd who pitied these unfortunate gentlemen it was a moving incident to hear them chant the following verse at the very moment when the king and court arrived and took ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... cruelty have placed them, and to transfer them to places of larger liberty and hopes of happiness and recovery. The chronic insane are entitled to our care, not to our neglect, and to all the comforts they earned while battling with us, when in their best mental estate, for their common welfare ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... are bizarre cafes, like the d'Harcourt, crowded at night with noisy women tawdry in ostrich plumes, cheap feather boas, and much rouge. The d'Harcourt at midnight is ablaze with light, but the crowd is common and you move on up the boulevard under the trees, past the shops full of Quartier fashions—velvet coats, with standing collars buttoning close under the chin; flamboyant black silk scarfs tied in a huge bow; queer broad-brimmed, black hats without ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... were of opinion that I should come to Dubois's Hospital. I should have preferred St. Louis's Hospital. I feel more at home there. Enfin!..." Is there in the martyrology of poets any passage sadder than these lines? Just think of a man so bereft of home and family, so accustomed to the common cot of the hospital, so familiar to hospital sights and sounds and odors, that he can associate home with the public ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... in these early years is very small. If boys are not discouraged they will play with dolls for choice, just as their sisters do, and may be just as charming with younger brothers or sisters. Nor is it by any means certain that this misleading of ourselves is the worst consequence of the common practice. It is possible that we lose opportunities for the inculcation of ideals which are of the highest value to the individual and the race. I am reminded of the true story of a small boy, well brought up, who, being jeered at in ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... create the right diction for the right situation and character. Now, his picture of the triple light of sunset in The Last Ride Together is almost intolerably beautiful, because such a scene fairly overwhelms the senses. I hear the common and unintelligent comment, "Ah, if he had only always written like that!" He would have done so, if he had been interested in only the beautiful aspects of this world. "How could the man who wrote such lovely music as ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... the payment of this bet. The circumstance I mean, however discreditable the plea, is the total inebriety of some of the party, particularly of myself, when I made this preposterous bet. I doubt not you will remember having yourself observed on this circumstance to a common friend the next day, with an intimation that you should not object to being off; and for my part, when I was informed that I had made such a bet and for such a sum,—the first, such folly on the face of it on my part, and the latter so out of my practice,—I certainly should have proposed ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... on the ground, took the lead at once in pushing on the work. To save fencing, material for which was hard to obtain, a tract of eight thousand acres was set apart and fenced for the common use, within which farmhouses could be built. The plan adopted for fencing in the city itself was to enclose each ward separately, every lot owner building his share. A stone council house, forty-five feet square, was begun, the labor counting as a part ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... a glamour about the man. Whatever he did or said had an indefinable, delightful significance; what he left undone was full of meaning. His mere presence ornamented and colored common moments so that they glowed, and remained in the memory with a rainbow light upon them. He was never hurried or flurried, any more than sun and sky and trees and tides are; and he was just as vital, and quite ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... for he planned what twenty lifetimes could not complete. He was indeed the endless experimenter—his was in very truth the Experimental Life. His incentive was self-development—to conceive was enough—common men could complete. To try many things means Power: to finish a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... thought to himself, "The young of the eagle does not catch flies. I shall never win over this soldier's son to our peaceful handicraft, but he shall not remain on the mountain among these queer sluggards, for there he is being ruined, and yet he is not of a common sort." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... share it may regard as disease or weakness, and which they themselves can neither defend nor inculcate. It is true they may call their opponents hard names if they choose; but their opponents can call them hard names back again; but in the absence of any common standard, the recriminations on neither side can have the least sting in them. Could, however, any argument on such a matter be possible, it is the devotees of impurity that would have the strongest case; for the pleasures of indulgence are admitted by both sides, while the ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... gained by straightforward integrity. But the conduct of Lake has left us no alternative, and whatever my opinion of that individual may be, he surely must be destitute of all those manly characteristics of a British seaman, as well as of the more generous feelings of our common nature, to be guilty, on a sick bed, of an action which might, for aught he knew or cared, produce the most serious consequences to his unfortunate countrymen in a savage land, by exposing them to the wretchedness of want, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... character. He had neither the qualities nor the defects of a conspirator; he may have aided with his money and his name popular movements, which would have taken place just the same without him, and which had another object than his elevation. It is still a common error to attribute the greatest of revolutions to some petty private manoeuvring, as if at such an epoch a whole people could be used as the ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... "It didn't make any difference. Common sense taught her that a chicken wasn't worth as much when it was one-third grown as when full grown, and she didn't care to sell ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... the tent shared in common by the officers. Ruggles, who had bitten the end from a cigar and had lighted the weed, now leaned over to whisper ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... he, "I do not speak the common cant of one in my unhappy situation. Before this dreadful accident happened, I had resolved to quit a life of which I was become sensible of the wickedness as well as folly. I do assure you, notwithstanding ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... have six penny worth of common feeling about you. The man is dying for your sake. If he were your enemy, instead of your true lover, you might pity him so much. Do you not wish ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... turnpike pay some money; perhaps it was a penny that they had to pay. They charged more for each wagon that passed. At last he came into Boston and it wasn't daylight yet. So he walked over to the Common and lay down under some bushes and ...
— The Sandman: His Sea Stories • William J. Hopkins
... the higher temperatures. As a damp sponge becomes wet when subjected to pressure, so warm vapor becomes hot when forced into less bulk, but in neither case does the quantity of moisture or the quantity of heat sustain any alteration. Common air becomes so hot by compression that tinder may be inflamed by it, as is seen in the instrument for producing instantaneous light by suddenly forcing ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... in condition, on account of deficient practice, to use the common utensils rightly; e. g., they will eat soup with a fork, and will put the fork against the cheek ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... Lo! The rustic church is trimmed with evergreen, and lighted for the marriage service. Curious lookers on are there; and with that perverse desire to test the might of their endurance, common with those who suffer, I too, am there, though I know that her image, as she stands at the altar, where I shall see her for the last time, through the days and nights of anguish sure to follow this, will ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... teasels, nettles, asters, etc.,—how they lift themselves up as if not afraid to be seen now! They are all outlaws; every man's hand is against them; yet how surely they hold their own! They love the roadside, because here they are comparatively safe; and ragged and dusty, like the common tramps that they are, they form one of the characteristic features ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... venture upon, even could he detect it. There is, at least, no flattery in my humble line of art. Now, here is a likeness which I have taken over and over again, and still with no better result. Yet the original wears, to common eyes, a very different expression. It would gratify me to have your judgment ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... for a mere trifle, to discharge a soldier, to buy a curry-comb—how could you hope to conceal a theft for any length of time? To say nothing of the newspapers, and the envious, and the people who would like to steal!—those women must rob you of your common-sense! Do they cover your eyes with walnut-shells? or are you yourself made of different stuff from us?—You ought to have left the office as soon as you found that you were no longer a man, but a temperament. If you have complicated your crime ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... by the smaller size of their brains. The largest ape brain is scarcely half the size of the smallest human brain. But anatomically they are nearly identical. All the structural features of the brain are common to both, and the details are largely filled out in the anthropoid apes, the convolutions being all present and the pattern of arrangement the same. The brain of the orang may be said to be like that of man in all respects except size and the greater symmetry ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... vicinage of Chapelizod—natural enemies, holding aloof one from another, and each regarding the other in a puzzled way, with a sort of apprehension and horror, as the familiar of that worst and most formidable of men—her husband—were this night stricken with a common fear and sorrow. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... way, must necessarily be fluctuating. Following the natural laws of thought, religious conceptions split into numerous local varieties, and it is the task of the scientist to seek, amid this variety of exterior forms, the common underlying idea, long forgotten by everyone else, and to ascertain what it was in its original purity, without ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... we became used to the new life, though it was hard to go hungry day after day, and bear the discomforts of the common room, shared by so many; the hard beds (we had little bedding of our own), and the confinement to the narrow limits of the yard, and the tiresome sameness of the life. Meal hours, of course, played the most important part, while ...
— From Plotzk to Boston • Mary Antin
... why you should forget common civility. I requested that you would not marry the young lady; but I never desired you to commit an act of rudeness. She is a very nice young person; and politeness is but a trifle, although marriage ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... a second that there would be any difficulty about this. He was hopelessly in the dark. Stocks, "common" or "preferred," bonds and debentures, floated through his mind. Even horses or pictures he would have had a clear opinion on, but in this field he was lost. He had never known, or cared to ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... would have been no comfort to me, as I leave any person of common prudence to imagine; for that scoundrel of a young Bullingdon (who was now growing up a tall, gawky, swarthy lad, and about to become my greatest plague and annoyance) would have inherited every penny of ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... resemblance establishes Peele as also the inspirer of the first book of The Faerie Queene through his Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes, with its knight and lady and dragon and magician, Sansfoy. Professor Mason, on the other hand, prefers to regard as mere coincidences those points which are common to both. By the outline given, the reader who has not Peele's comedy at hand will be assisted in making his own choice between ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... the usual white bread and savouries were brought to him, he flung them all downstairs, telling the cook that the day he really became Duke he would have his head off if he ever dared to send him anything again but the common fare. ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman
... within different States. There was no uniformity of action as to coming to a compromise between Conservative and Liberal, or Liberal and Social Democrat, or Centre and any other party, as against some supposed common enemy who was to be ousted from his insufficient majority by a subsequent alliance between otherwise discordant groups, or who wanted to have his insufficient majority increased to an absolute one by the addition of the ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... not found out all the excellencies you spoke of—I don't mean that," said Gwendolen; "but I think her singing is charming, and herself, too. Her face is lovely—not in the least common; and she is such a complete little person. I should think she will ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... some of these crests and devices (lions, tigers, dragons, griffins, and other emblems of ferocity), the English character of many of the names, and the Latin mottos, identical with some in common use in England, may give us a confused and not very dignified idea respecting their almost universal use by the middle classes in England. M. Taine, a well-known french writer, remarks that 'c'est loin du monde que nous pouvons jugez sainement des illusions dont nous environt,' and perhaps ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... rather exceptional use of the subjunctive for the imperative, though common with the verb ser. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... failing finances by relying on the spontaneous offerings of the faithful throughout the world. His appeal was not made in vain. The piety and zeal of the early ages appeared to have revived. The word of the common Father was received with reverence in the remotest lands. Offerings of "Peter's pence," as in days of apostolic fervor, were poured into the Papal treasury. In Europe, especially, the movement was so general ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... a superficial analogy to Anglo-Irish conditions, and may therefore have an attraction for those who shrink from giving Ireland financial independence. In the first place, it is possible to find Federal precedents for the payment out of the common purse of certain large items of Irish expenditure. There is no precedent for the payment of Police, but Old Age Pensions, for example, are paid in Australia by the Commonwealth, not by the States. The chief point of interest, however, is the ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... were not expected to appear at the very next choir practice. Miss Charlotte had a talk with her friend, which tempered her enthusiasm with common sense, with the result that the children had their voices tried and two or three lessons given them before they were expected to appear in public, with the result that poor Poppy, the only one who really longed to be in the choir, was the only one denied that honour. All ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... picturesque. There were several old and new native gunyahs, or houses, if such a term can be applied to these insignificant structures. Australian aborigines are a race who do not live in houses at all, but still the common instincts of humanity induce all men to try and secure some spot of earth which, for a time at least, they may call home; and though the nomadic inhabitants or owners of these Australian wilds, do not ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... In common with all cities of the extreme West, its growth has been very rapid within the last few years. The population of the city proper, together with that of the municipality of Oak Bay, immediately adjacent, ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 - A Concrete Water Tower, Paper No. 1173 • A. Kempkey
... mother, you never saw such ices. Only two kinds. And one a common little strawberry shop ice, ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... of Pera, led Into the narrow circuit of your walls. Each one, who bears the sightly quarterings Of the great Baron (he whose name and worth The festival of Thomas still revives) His knighthood and his privilege retain'd; Albeit one, who borders them With gold, This day is mingled with the common herd. In Borgo yet the Gualterotti dwelt, And Importuni: well for its repose Had it still lack'd of newer neighbourhood. The house, from whence your tears have had their spring, Through the just anger that hath ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... he bids me, and there is no need for me to think, for my brain bears no proportion to my bulk; and indeed, even in the matter of strength he bids fair to equal me, for he seems to me to grow taller and stronger every month; which is not surprising, seeing that you are, yourself, much beyond the common. In all this matter there is no credit due to me, save that I have, as faithfully as I could, carried out ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... not, with propriety here inquire, whether our common Father, who has declared himself to be "no respecter of persons," has endowed men with enlarged capacities for the attainment of that knowledge and wisdom, so requisite to the elevation of character,—for the express ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... fearfully painted. They, in this, come near to the tenderness of Bunyan; while the livelier pictures and incidents in them, as in Hogarth or in Fielding, tend to diminish that fastidiousness to the concerns and pursuits of common life which an unrestrained passion for the ideal and the sentimental ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... There are three common methods of covering jelly tumblers: (1) Dip a piece of paper in alcohol; place it on top of the tumbler as soon as the jelly is cold; put on the tin cover and force it down firmly. (2) Cut a piece of paper large enough to allow it to overlap the top ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... himself the same thing when he selected Daphne for a model, and her head reproduced what Proclus praised as the common possession of Daphne and Demeter. Truthful Myrtilus had also seen it. Perhaps his work had really been so marvellously successful because, while he was engaged upon it, his friend had constantly stood before his mind in all the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... mastering of life which makes all art great, and all artists into geniuses. It is the specializing on ideas which shuts the stream of its flow. I have felt the same gift for life in a still-life or a landscape of Cezanne's that I have felt in any of Whitman's best pieces. The element in common with these two exceptional creators is liberation. They have done more, these modern pioneers, for the liberation of the artist, and for the "freeing" of painting and poetry than any other men of modern time. Through them, painting and poetry have become literally free, and through ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... engineering breeds it—breeds this objective seeing and abstract reasoning—and to be possessed of it is to get more out of life than otherwise is possible. Which possibly accounts for the fact that engineers as a group seem to have a common-sense viewpoint of things, one that is frankly acknowledged and drawn upon when needed by men in other walks of life. Engineers are extremely practical-minded, and this makes for a certain outlook that will not permit of visionary scaring away from the common sense and the practical ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... distinctions of rank, education, and wealth are for the time voluntarily laid aside. You will see the son of the educated gentleman and that of the poor artisan, the officer and the private soldier, the independent settler and the labourer who works out for hire, cheerfully uniting in one common cause. Each individual is actuated by the benevolent desire of affording help to the helpless, and exerting himself to raise ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... doctrine of equality, if false when applied to the actual condition of men at their birth, is yet a state to which the institutions of society tend, under the influence of education and religion; that the common brotherhood of man, mocked by the tyrants which feudalism produced, is yet to be drawn from the Sermon on the Mount; that the blood of a plebeian carpenter is as good as that of an aristocratic captain of artillery; that public burdens which bear heavily on the poor should also ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord |
