"Commonplace" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... commonplace,' remarked Sibyl. 'One would go off with a certain eclat. Very different from starting for the Continent in the ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... campaigns of Philippicus, in the years A.D. 584 and 585, were of the most commonplace character. He avoided any general engagement, and contended himself with plundering inroads into the Persian territory on either side of the Upper Tigris, occasionally suffering considerably from want of water and provisions. The Persians ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... Bjat-Bad to the south-east. For a short way it was vilely rat-eaten; presently it issued upon good, hard, stony ground; and, after four miles, it entered the Wady el-Marwt. This gorge, marked by the Jebel Wsil, a round head to the north, is a commonplace affair of trap and white clay; broad, rough, and unpicturesque. The sole shows many piles of dry stone, ruins of "boxes," in which the travelling Arab passes the night, whilst his camels are tethered outside. The watercourse heads ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... 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 for ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... 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, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... becomes quintessential when he speaks of the stage, as in that tiny masterpiece, On the Acting of Munden, which ends the book of Elia, with its great close, the Beethoven soft wondering close, after all the surges: 'He understands a leg of mutton in its quiddity. He stands wondering, amid the commonplace materials of life, like primeval man with the sun and stars about him.' He is equally certain of Shakespeare, of Congreve, and of Miss Kelly. When he defines the actors, his pen seems to be plucked by the very wires that work the puppets. And it is not merely because ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... sparse and straggling beard and mustache did not conceal a thin but kindly mouth; his eyes were keen and pleasant; his sharp nose and narrow jaw gave him very much the air of a priest, and this impression was helped by his commonplace dark clothes and soft black hat. He was a man of unusually conscientious, industrious and orderly mind, with little imagination. His father's household had been used to recruit its domestic establishment by means of advertisements in which it ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... the trouble to climb up to the heather, even the mines are dwarfed into insignificance. We will go up the steep road to the top of Sleights Moor. It is a long stiff climb of nearly 900 feet, but the view is one of the very finest in this country, where wide expanses soon become commonplace. We are sufficiently high to look right across Fylingdales Moor to the sea beyond, a soft haze of pearly blue over the hard, rugged outline of the ling. Away towards the north, too, the landscape for many miles is limited only by the same horizon of sea, so that we seem to be looking at a section ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me. What a pity such a gifted ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... The medal that he made for the World's Fair was rejected at Washington because it had on it a beautiful little nude figure of a boy—holding an olive branch—emblematical of young America. I think a commonplace wreath and some lettering ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... things:— How commonplace the precious ore! The shining vision sometimes springs The one man: From too much cheese ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... will not work except in silence; neither will virtue work except in secrecy" (History and Philosophy of Masonry, chap. xxi). But neither writer seems to realize the psychology and pedagogy of secrecy—the value of curiosity, of wonder and expectation, in the teaching of great truths deemed commonplace because old. Even in that atmosphere, the real secret of Masonry remains hidden to many—as sunlight ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... which, they cannot but feel, interests them nearly. Of all the cities in the British Islands, Edinburgh is the one which presents most advantages for the display of a noble building; and which, on the other hand, sustains most injury in the erection of a commonplace or unworthy one. You are all proud of your city; surely you must feel it a duty in some sort to justify your pride; that is to say, to give yourselves a right to be proud of it. That you were born under the shadow of its two ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... not crane his neck, however, to see Mr. and Mrs. Pouch depart. They were too commonplace entirely. He played the march with such doleful indifference that Eddie found the aisle as long as the distance from Marathon to Athens. Also he was trying to walk so that his ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... us much 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 this chapter by speaking of the "mental and moral" ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... fortunate, however, as a favourite child of knowledge should be, he will meet with suitable auxiliaries who will shorten and lighten his task; I mean so-called cynics, those who simply recognize the animal, the commonplace and "the rule" in themselves, and at the same time have so much spirituality and ticklishness as to make them talk of themselves and their like BEFORE WITNESSES—sometimes they wallow, even in books, as on their own dung-hill. Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach what is ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... it, and I do not think he could have repressed the flash in them to save his life. Every detail of the scene was of breathless interest to me, and as I watched to see if the captain took offence, I noticed that (though they were far less remarkable from being buried in a fat and commonplace countenance) his eyes, like Alister's, were of that bright, cold, sea-blue common among Scotchmen. He did not take offence, and I believe I was right in thinking that the boy's wasted hands struck him much as they had ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... go. He would secure an advance of three months of their wages as payment for their week or so of board; and they would desert penniless in New York to escape the return voyage. There was no remedy; it was almost a commonplace risk of their weary lives so commonplace a risk that of all those men, accustomed to peril and violence, there was none to rise and drive a fist into his sleek face. But, from the back of the room, one, nursing a crossed knee, with his pipe in ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... 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 when ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... 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 ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... Black pearl set in the richest casket! This commonplace, flourishing centre of cotton spinning, woollen, and cretonne manufacture, built in red brick, lies in the narrow, beautiful valley of the Lipvrette, as it is called from the babbling river of ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... take her hand, and thank her, as he would thank a man for doing him a service, however mistakenly. But something held him back from that folly. He wondered a little at her silence, and it was by way of breaking it before it should become embarrassing that he searched for something safe and commonplace ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... higher significance than could be grasped by a mere suckler of fools (nice fools, no doubt) and chronicler of small beer (however good the brew). She believed it, too. Love—great, solemn, immortal Love, passionate and suffering—was a thing unknown to comfortable, commonplace Rose, as doubtless to Peter also. They were dear, good people, and fortunate in their ignorance and in what it spared them; but it was annoying when ignorance assumed superior knowledge, and wanted to teach its grandmother to suck eggs. Was it come to this—that ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... may not have, Beauty, nor wit, nor grace, But, until she's among the angels, She cannot be commonplace. ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... my mother in her closet, who was talking to me on the old subject, matrimony, I saw Pamela's commonplace book, as I may call it; in which, by her lady's direction, from time to time, she had transcribed from the Bible, and other good books, such passages as most impressed her as she read—A method, I take it, my dear" (turning to me), "of ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... own kith and kin, however, he showed himself implacable. In Yoshitsune's case it has been indicated that there was much to awaken Yoritomo's suspicions. But his brother Noriyori had no qualities at all likely to be dangerously exercised. A commonplace, simple-hearted man, he was living quietly on his estate in Izu when false news came that Yoritomo had perished under the sword of the Soga brothers. Yoritomo's wife being prostrated by the intelligence, Noriyori bade her be reassured since he, Noriyori, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the Greek noun, superstitio received all the meaning which Plutarch elaborated as to the former; the idea of that excellent heathen, that true piety is the mean between atheism and credulity, has given a sense to the word superstition, and become a commonplace of Christian hortatory literature. ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... relinquish immediately everything she loved—her sumptuous apartment on Riverside Drive, her automobile, her beautiful gowns, and gay little midnight champagne suppers in good company. Her life henceforth would be dreadfully prosaic and commonplace. She would be comparatively poor, perhaps in actual want. Even if she remained on the stage, she could not hope to secure good parts. Probably she would not be able to dress even decently; no one would look at her; she would have to darn stockings and be content ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... and afterwards had to flee the twilight across the windy spaces and under the dim and darkling trees. It is only now in the distant retrospect that I identify that far-off city of wonder, and luminous mist with the commonplace little town, through whose narrow streets we drove to the railway station. But, of course, that is ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... who, by the assiduous study of the ancients, have deserved, in some measure, the remembrance and gratitude of the moderns. The scholars of the present age may still enjoy the benefit of the philosophical commonplace book of Stobaeus, the grammatical and historical lexicon of Suidas, the Chiliads of Tzetzes, which comprise six hundred narratives in twelve thousand verses, and the commentaries on Homer of Eustathius, archbishop of Thessalonica, who, from his horn ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... showed me the photo. At the first glance I said right away that I knew her. Then I found I couldn't say exactly who she was. The more I looked the more certain I was that I'd seen her somewhere, her or someone very like her. And it wasn't a commonplace face by any means. Poor Simcox kept begging us to think. My wife went over our visitors' book—we've kept one of those silly things for years—but there wasn't a name in it which we couldn't account for. I got out all the old albums ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... Steele. By the Author of "Ion." The Art of Cutting the Teeth. Matthew's Nursery Songs. 2 vols. Paxton's Bloomers. 5 vols. On the Use of Mercury by the Ancient Poets. Drowsy's Recollections of Nothing. 3 vols. Heavyside's Conversations with Nobody. 3 vols. Commonplace Book of the Oldest Inhabitant. 2 vols. Growler's Gruffiology, with Appendix. 4 vols. The Books of Moses and Sons. 2 vols. Burke (of Edinburgh) on the Sublime and Beautiful. 2 vols. Teazer's Commentaries. King Henry the Eighth's Evidences of Christianity. 5 vols. Miss Biffin on Deportment. Morrison's ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... wonder and true dignity she meets the gradual dropping away of her illusion, the crumbling of her unreasoning faith, the cruel stings when her spiritual nature is misunderstood, and her actions misinterpreted. She is jarred by the rough contact of commonplace facts, and ruffled and wounded by the strange and cynical indifference to her sufferings of the man she loves. At last when she can bear no more, yet uncomplaining to the last, like a flower broken ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... Arnold's hasty and harassed existence among the busy haunts of men, we can understand that in this century a hard-working literary man has neither the taste nor the time for the graceful record of calm meditations, or for throwing a charm over commonplace details. And, on the whole, Arnold's correspondence, though it has some biographical value, must undoubtedly be relegated to the class of letters that would never have been published upon their own ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... marked by vigour and originality. Her versatility was marvellous; and, "though she had not in youth the severe training that makes for perfect accuracy," she had by nature the instinct which avoids the commonplace, and which touches even hackneyed themes with light and fire. Her humour was exuberant, unforced, untrammelled; it played freely round every object which met her mental gaze—sometimes too freely when she was dealing with things traditionally held sacred. But her flippancy was of speech ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... amazing how different conditions can alter a scene: at noon, with the hum from the busy streets, it was commonplace enough; by moonlight it became a mystic bower of enchantment. The girls walked along very quietly, treading on the grass so as to make no noise. A slight mist was rising from the ground near the Abbey; in the rays of the moon it resembled a lake. Everything, indeed, was altered. The outline of ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... these Mediterranean depths became more and more cluttered with such gruesome wreckage as the Nautilus drew nearer to the Strait of Gibraltar. By then the shores of Africa and Europe were converging, and in this narrow space collisions were commonplace. There I saw numerous iron undersides, the phantasmagoric ruins of steamers, some lying down, others rearing up like fearsome animals. One of these boats made a dreadful first impression: sides torn open, funnel bent, paddle wheels stripped ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... turned her feet resolutely from the road to success to walk in the commonplace paths of field and farmyard and home. Allister came and took Ellen away with him in July. He was disappointed at Christina's failure to accompany him, but promised her the long deferred college course would be hers yet. He was putting through a new deal ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... hungry as usual, but I could eat nothing. Neither could I talk. I was full of dreams and far away. Their conversation interrupted the flow of my fancy somewhat, and annoyed me a little, too. I despised the sordid and commonplace things they talked about. But as they proceeded, it began to amuse me. It grew to be rare fun to hear them planning their poor little economies and sighing over possible privations and distresses when a gold mine, all our ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... when a natural instinct is a surer guide than noble motive or high aspiration, and consequently the more thoughtful and introspective nature will sometimes fall just where a commonplace one would have passed in safety. Ruth had acted for the best. When for the first time in her life she had been brought into close contact with a life spent for others, its beauty had appealed to her with irresistible force, and she had willingly sacrificed herself to an ideal ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... family had not yet retired, it would not be safe to commence operations for some hours. The stale, commonplace method of tying the sheets and blankets together, and thus forming a rope by which he could descend to the ground, occurred to him; but he had not much confidence in the project. He lay quietly on the bed till he heard the clocks ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... ever encountered in Europe, in one of the bloody charges of the Russian cavalry, there was an officer—a man who felt and who possessed sufficient confidence in the troops he commanded, and in the authority of his own voice and example—received that charge not in the ordinary, commonplace, and accustomed manner, by forming his troops into a hollow square, and thus arresting the charge, but by forming into two diverging lines, and thus receiving upon the rifles of his Highlandmen the charge of the Russian cavalry and repelling ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... what he had not strength to acknowledge openly, and it was with some hesitation Violet prepared to ask those definite questions which would elucidate the cause and manner of a loss seemingly so important. She dreaded to hear some commonplace tale of inexcusable carelessness. Something subtler than this—the presence of some unsuspected agency opposed to young Clement's interest; some partisan of Carlos; some secret undermining force in a house full of servants and dependants, seemed necessary for the development of so ordinary ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... Ireland parted with "the greatest of her Captains" and reaped a full crop of failures as her reward. Too late there were flashing testimonials to his greatness. Too late it became a commonplace observation in Ireland, when the impotence of the sordid sections was apparent: "How different it would all be if Parnell were alive." Too late did we have tributes to Parnell's capacity from friend ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... was in this commonplace exchange of remarks that thrilled. Probably Maloney's swift acquiescence in the doctor's mood had something to do with it; for his quick obedience certainly impressed me a good deal. But, even without that slight evidence, ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... 'Is as much entitled to a fair valuation, under the lans of induction, as if it had been more probable beforehand'—One of the cases which La Place notices as entitled to a grave consideration, but which would most assuredly be treated as a trivial phenomenon, unworthy of attention, by commonplace spectators, is—when a run of success, with no apparent cause, takes place on heads or tails, (pile ou croix) Most people dismiss such a case as pure accident. But La Place insists on its being duly ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... and the carriage rolled on again. There was a little pause then, till Faith broke it. A rich preparatory colour rose in her cheeks, and the subject of her words would certainly have laughed to see how gravely, with what commonplace demureness, the ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... particularly in our representative democracy, and I will beg my readers who have been patient with me to the end to reflect for more than a moment on the extraordinarily novel state of things that this modern notion of the legislative function brings about. It is a commonplace of historical writers to open their first chapter by calling attention to the difference made by steel and electricity, to the fact that it took longer to get from Boston to Washington in 1776 than it does to-day from Maine to California and back; that it took longer even for ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... there is a view of the sea, and of the Guadalate, spanned by a metal bridge—a Menai on a small scale. Farther on, as we get to a district called La Piedad, the country is diversified by swampy flats at one side and sandy hills at the other. Blanche's Castle was a commonplace ruin, a complete "sell," and we turned our horse's head rather savagely. As we were coming back, the little American shortening the way by Sandford and Merton observations of this nature—"Prickly pear makes a capital hedge; no cattle ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... excitement of a holiday. What a strange holiday was his! He got into a smoking-carriage in order to be alone, and he looked out on the people who were bidding their friends good-bye. Some of them were not very pretty, many of them were ordinary, insignificant, commonplace-looking folks, but it was clear that they had those about them who loved them and thought much of them. There was one man whom, in other circumstances, Lavender would have dismissed with contempt as an excellent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... 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 to him, or to do anything but listen to him with cold attention, when ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... born. Only one, who should have come third among the ten, did she omit, the one in the next room, but at the end, after a pause, she said her name and repeated it again and again and again, lingering over it as if it were the most exquisite music and this her dying song. And yet it was a very commonplace name. ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... commonplace dissertation on 'The Wisdom and Goodness of God in having made both Rich and Poor,' from Proverbs xxii. 2: 'The rich and poor meet together, the Lord is the Maker of them all.' It could not but be most irritating to one such as young ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... individuality, until the one entitled "Almost a Heroine." In this work, which treated of the possible perfection of marriage, the whole womanly nature of the writer asserted itself by virtue of the mere fact of humanity. After this came a number of juvenile stories, some commonplace, others infiltrated with that subtile charm which breathes, with a single exception, through all her larger books like the perfume of an exotic. Thus in the three novels mentioned we have all that can be had of Elizabeth Sheppard ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... though I may not hope to climb Above the level commonplace, Or touch that vital growth of grace Which shapes the fruit of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... at once an ornament, invented, I fancied, by a genius to emphasize, by relieving it, the color in which the sky was drowned. And Khuns watched serenely, as if he knew the end. And almost suddenly the miraculous effort failed. Things again revealed their truth, whether commonplace or not. That pool of the Nile was no more a red jewel set in a feathery pattern of strange design, but only water fading from my sight beyond a group of palms. And that below me was only a camel going homeward, and that a child leading a bronze-colored sheep with a curly coat, and that a dusty, ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... and there to promote him, and to grant him an increase of salary. Thus vice would be punished, virtue would prevail, and the staff of that department would live in peace together. Here we have an example from everyday, commonplace life. How, therefore, could you bring yourself to send me that book, my beloved? It is a badly conceived work, Barbara, and also unreal, for the reason that in creation such a Tchinovnik does not exist. No, again I protest against it, little Barbara; again ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... while I shave. Quite possibly some may wonder that I should affect such commonplace pictures. They cost me threepence each, in Swansea. Well, I am not concerned with their merit as pieces of decorative art. When I look at that wet road and rainy sky, I go back in thought to the days ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... is of the commonplace book. Well, have you ever kept one, or, to be more accurate, tried to keep one? Personally, I believe in the commonplace book so long as we don't expect too much from it. Its two dangers are (1) that one is apt to make ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... that it is "de toutes les passions la plus forte, parce qu'elle attaque, a la fois, la tete, le coeur, le corps." It is a commonplace to say that Edward Bulwer's whole career might have been altered if he had never met Rosina Wheeler, because this is true in measure of every strong juvenile attachment: but it is rarely indeed so copiously or so fatally true as it was in his case. His existence was overwhelmed by this event; ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... of the Quakers," I have dwelt upon their dramatization of life. They "made believe" that "plainness" was sanctity. They fixed their minds upon the commonplace as the ideal. It is probable that the early population were men and women of no such talents as to disturb this conviction; and the variations from plainness in the direction of gayety were sternly denounced as immoral. Also the struggle with the wilderness occupied and exhausted ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... creature had a strange air of the commonplace, as he stood looking on Markheim with a smile; and when he added: "You are looking for the money, I believe?" it was in the ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... at her. "That is not a commonplace everyday occurrence to us, I assure you. The difference is that in this world of ours we can understand—or at least explain—these things as being scientific. And so they have not ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... regarding appropriate scenery, language, and costume in sundry periods and divers places, from China to Peru; and he was persecuted by that mortal foe of the old romancer, the well-informed critic, who trampled even upon a commonplace book well filled with references to standard authorities, insisting upon careful study of the whole environment, the dexterous incorporation of details, and delicate blending of local colours. Severe ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... the lines in his review of his Album Verses, under the title "The Latin Poems of Vincent Bourne," in the Englishman's Magazine (see Vol. I.). Two versions of the lines are copied by Lamb into one of his Commonplace Books. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of the brickwork, and decay only too plainly visible in the crazy angles of the tiled roof. But the ivy which covered portions of the brickwork hid some of the ravages of age, and helped the moat-house to show a brave front to the world, a well-preserved survivor of an ornamental period in a commonplace and ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... for the first time in months. She wandered about, even penetrating to those upper rooms sacred to her grandfather, to which he had retired on Howard's marriage. How strangely commonplace they were now, in the full light of day, and yet, when he was in them, the doors closed and only Burton, his valet, in attendance, ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to be loose. I would write psyche always instead of soul to avoid meanings which have become attached to the word soul, but it is awkward to do so. Clumsy inddeed are all words the moment the wooden stage of commonplace life is left. I restrained psyche, my soul, till I reached and put my foot on the grass at the beginning of the green hill itself. Moving up the sweet short turf, at every step my heart seemed to obtain a wider horizon ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... of an exciting or dramatic character in the circumstances connected with our discovery; it was all absolutely commonplace; we were not even molested by natives, of whom we saw no sign from first to last. Having thoroughly searched, without result, the entire area of the flat country for a space of eight or nine square miles immediately opposite the spot where the brigantine was ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... The front door stood in a portico, and a French window gave access to the roof of this portico from a bedroom or dressing-room. As Hewitt and his companion approached the house the French window was pushed open, and a man appeared—a middle-aged, slightly stoutish man with a short, grey beard; commonplace enough in himself, but now convulsed with noisy anger, shaking his fists and stamping on ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... and appropriate for a sovereign of his wealth and power, and everything is finished with that peculiar elegance which is only found in the East. In all the great cluster of buildings there is nothing mean or commonplace. Every apartment, every corridor, every arch and every column is perfect and a wonder of architectural design, ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... said Devoe, in that voice of his that gave thrilling interest to his most commonplace words. "I hardly think one could be found in Mojada. The natives never use them except when they are green and the milk is fresh. They sell all the ...
— Options • O. Henry
... vents or expressions of a surcharged heart. With such a view of the situation of the poet and of his patron, we may not only understand much that otherwise is inexplicable, but we may understand why so much and such resplendent poetry is lavished on incidents so bare, meagre, and commonplace, and why they present both poet and patron with frailties and faults naked and repellant; and we can the better palliate and forgive the weakness and subjection which the Sonnets indicate on the part of their author. With such ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... formally as his eyes met Patty's upraised glance. In the warm room all the glamour of the twilight—and of that hidden country within his mind—had faded from her. She looked fresh and blooming and merely commonplace, he thought. A brief half hour ago he had felt that he was in danger of losing his head; now his rational part was in the ascendant, and his future appeared pleasantly tranquil. Then the girl smiled that faint inscrutable smile ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... but as often as his memory fails him and his commonplace of comparisons. He is a fool with a good memory and some few scraps of other folks' wit. He is one whose conversation can never be approved, yet it is now and then to be endured. He has indeed one good quality: he is not exceptious, ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... is little disturbed by the modern accretions to the town. On the east side, it is true, there are new streets of dull and commonplace terraces, which one day an awakened England will wipe out; there are other elements of ugly sordidness, which the lack of a guiding and controlling authority, and the use of distressingly hideous white bricks, has made possible, but it is quite ...
— Beautiful Britain—Cambridge • Gordon Home
... still wore a long black frock coat, and now looked like a policeman. His commonplace good looks had changed to a ponderous regularity of feature. But Alfred was instinctively a gentleman, and he made no allusion to her painting that might lead Mildred to suppose that he thought that she had failed. That a young girl like Mildred should ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... blamed for his endeavor to serve one thing under the guise of another. The reasons for such deceptions are various ones. Fashion dictated it. Cooks were not considered "clever" unless they could surprise guests with a commonplace food material so skillfully prepared that identification was difficult or impossible. Another reason was the absence of good refrigeration, making "masking" necessary. Also the ambition of hosts to serve a cheaper food for a more ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... first the apparent want of internal unity in the Greek world, split up as it was into small and mutually hostile civic groups; and secondly, the loose coherence of each of these groups within itself (for each, we might almost say normally, was torn by intestine faction). It is a commonplace also that Greek civilization rested upon slavery, so that barbarism was not expelled but remained as a domestic and ever-present evil. Freedom and enlightenment was not in thought or practice designed for all men, but only for Greeks, ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... talked exclusively of the mining interests of the locality. It is this feverish, inexhaustible topic that is almost exclusively dwelt upon in mining camps, all other topics seeming tame and commonplace beside this fascinating subject, presided over by the golden fairy of fortune and involving her. To-day she tempts and eludes, she tantalizes and mocks and flies her thousands of wooers who follow her to the rocks, seeking her with back-breaking toil and dreaming ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... hidden. He changed his mood half a dozen times even in that quarter of an hour's walk through the town. Now the thing seemed horrible, like a nightmare; now absurdly preposterous; now rather beautiful; now perfectly ordinary and commonplace. After all, Jack argued with himself, there are such people as tramps, and they survive. Why should not Frank? He had gipsy blood in him, too. What in the ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... he said, trying to speak in a very commonplace tone. "I'm just a lawyer that your friend Miss Jane Carson sent out to see if I could be of any service to you. It may possibly make things a little easier for you if I explain that while I never had heard of you before, and have no possible connection ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... and boiling metaphors in the Confessions, and in his homilies and paraphrases of Holy Scripture. Later on, he will not have the time to observe, or he will have lost the power. Rhetoric will stretch its commonplace veil between him and the unceasing springtide of the earth. Ambition will turn him away from those sights which reveal themselves only to hearts unselfish and indifferent. Then, later on, Faith will seize hold of ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... we have both, either separately or together, seen and experienced, must be something perfectly natural and commonplace, although we may not either of us be able to understand or explain it. My private opinion and worse misgiving is, that there is some woman concealed about the place. If ever I find myself in arm's length of that little gipsy, I shall intercept her, even at the ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... every little detail, every commonplace insignificance is used—and must be used by them alone—to further their dark causes. They cannot trust their projects to brave lieutenants, to faithful subordinates. They cannot say, "Here is the end; this is the work to be done; upon your shoulders be the burden!" They must ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... thinkers, and from that list his name will never be erased. The nature of Mr. Mill's work is such as to make it easy to predict the character of his future reputation. His is the kind of philosophy that is destined to become the commonplace of the future. We may anticipate that many of his most remarkable views will become obsolete in the best sense: they will become worked up into practice, and embodied in institutions. Indeed, the place that he will hold will probably ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... overborne. Weber 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. ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and customary regularity they gave the name of Nature. But at the same time, their infantile and untutored reason, little more, as yet, than the playfellow of the imagination, led them to believe that this tangible, commonplace, orderly world of Nature was surrounded and interpenetrated by another intangible and mysterious world, no more bound by fixed rules than, as they fancied, were the thoughts and passions which coursed through their minds and seemed to exercise ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... learned; accomplished &c (skillful) 698; omniscient; self-taught. known &c. v.; ascertained, well-known, recognized, received, notorious, noted; proverbial; familiar, familiar as household words, familiar to every schoolboy; hackneyed, trite, trivial, commonplace. cognoscible[obs3], cognizable. Adv. to one's knowledge, to the best of one's knowledge. Phr. one's eyes being opened &c. (disclosure) 529; ompredre tout c'est tout pardonner[French: to know all is to pardon all]; empta dolore docet experientia[Lat];<gr/gnothi seauton/gr>[Grk]; "half ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... simply as a merchant conducting his own affairs; and he was to write home common business letters under the very harmless and unsuggestive name of Timothy Jones, adding the real dispatch in invisible ink. But these commonplace precautions were rendered of no avail through the treachery of Dr. Edward Bancroft, an American resident abroad, who had the confidence of Congress, but who "accepted the post of a paid American spy, to prepare himself ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... through such institutions, distinct original societies may come to be inside the great commonplace world. Here special personalities may find the only existence that suits them. If devout or laborious, not only do these afford an outlet for the deeper needs of conscience, of the imagination, of activity, and of discipline, but also they serve as ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... 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 of ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... warranted. When a man is going to act against his conscience, there is a sort of comfort in making out that the crime has features of more striking depravity than an unbiased observer would detect; the inclination in this direction is increased when it is a question of impressing others. Sin seems commonplace if we give it no pomp and circumstance. No man was more free than Stafford from any conscious hypocrisy or posing, or from the inverted pride in immorality that is often an affectation, but also, more often than we are willing to allow, a real disease ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... those poignant moments 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 ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... nearest approach to them preserved in that national collection of literature are some Lottery squibs, which imitated them; and Hone, writing in 1838, says: "It must be admitted, however, that the characters sold by the pastry cooks are either commonplace or gross; when genteel, they are inane; when ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... to Bertram that the beautiful woman with the soul in her eyes should turn out to be the sister of the very commonplace young man with the boiled-fish expression he had met by the corner; but he disguised his astonishment, and only interjected, as if it were the most natural remark in the world: "I'm pleased to meet you. What a lovely gown! and how ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... certain other weatherworn structures of great beauty. I have seen photographs of an old Baptist Church with a fine (and not at all Baptist-looking) portico and fluted columns, which was torn down to make room for the present stupidly commonplace Baptist church: and I have seen pictures of the beautiful old town hall which was recently supplanted by an ignorantly ordinary town building of yellow pressed brick. The destruction of these two early buildings ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... the most commonplace sense I possess. If Prim was not referring to your wedding dress, what did ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... the sand. They showed me the way to find you," he said, trying vainly to speak in a commonplace tone. But somehow his voice seemed to take on a deep significance. He looked at her shyly, half fearing she must feel it, and then murmuring something about looking after the ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... room smartened up and looking its best with a blazing fire and a singing kettle, and a cozy meal ready laid for two people; and then all they would have to say to one another—on his part much to hear and little to tell, for his life had jogged on at a very commonplace trot, his business neither better nor worse, but still, with the aid of the little sum his more than rigid economy had enabled him to save, they might make a fair start, free from all debt and able ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... cowboy which squatted and wheeled under the spur and burst down the straggling street of the little frontier town. Before that time, and since that time, it was and has been the same pony and the same man who have traveled the range, guarding and guiding the wild herds, from the romantic to the commonplace ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... William of Malmesbury, who in the fifth book, devoted to St Aldhelm, of the Gesta Pontificum proposes to fill up the outline of Faritius, using the church records, the traditions of Aldhelm's miracles preserved by the monks of Malmesbury, and the lost "Handboc'' or commonplace book of King Alfred. His narrative is divided into four parts: the birth and attainments of Aldhelm, the religious houses he had established and endowed, the miracles recorded of him, and the history of the abbey down ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... creditable, but actually for the things that are not there. He will admire the grace and indolence of the most industrious people in the world. He will admire the romance and fantasy of the most determinedly respectable and commonplace people in the world. This mistake the Englishman will make if he admires France too hastily; but the mistake that he makes about France will be slight compared with the mistake that he makes about himself. An Englishman who professes really to ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... with a desire to be as self-reliant. "I'm going to set about living in earnest, as she has; though I think it will be harder for me than for her, because she stands alone and has a career marked out for her. I'm nothing but a commonplace sort of girl, with no end of relations to be consulted every time I wink and a dreadful fortune hanging like a millstone round my neck to weigh me down if I try to fly. It is a hard case, Uncle, and I get low in ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott |
