"Commonplace" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... commonplace clergyman spoke with a sudden tremor of feeling. His wife, however, looked at ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... reasons, the face was of more than commonplace interest to him. Years ago he had seen it by a roadside in the White Mountains, and often since he had thought of it until the thought had taken deep root in his mind and become one of the pleasant dreams of his life. But Fate had further spurred his curiosity by a ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... Madame Mayer had hit upon a great truth, and Del Ferice was very much annoyed. He knew himself to be a scoundrel; he knew Madame Mayer to be a woman of very commonplace intellect; he wondered why he was not able to deceive her more effectually. He was often able to direct her, he sometimes elicited from her some expression of admiration at his astuteness; but in spite of his best ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... who realised something of the grandeur of his master's schemes and their reach beyond a merely commercial ideal through discovery to empire, yet preserves in the speeches and actions of captains and seamen alike, proof enough of the thoroughly commonplace aims of most of the ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... result of that interview been different,—had he distinctly stated, or even vaguely hinted, that it would be as well if I should select some other topic, or had he only sprinkled me with the cold water of conventional and commonplace encouragement,—I should have gone from him with a chill upon my mind, and, no doubt, have laid down the pen at once; for, as I have already said, it was not that I cared about writing a history, but that I felt an inevitable impulse to write ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... incumbent upon him to be fanciful, original, and out of the way, his fancy always assumes a foolish, unnatural vein, for the reason that it is compounded of trite, hackneyed forms. In short, the natural Frenchman is a conglomeration of commonplace, petty, everyday positiveness, so that he is the most tedious person in the world.—Indeed, I believe that none but greenhorns and excessively Russian people feel an attraction towards the French; for, to any man of sensibility, such a compendium of outworn forms—a compendium which ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... more frequent. What conclusion would common sense base upon this fact? Why, of course, that the number of marriages is definitely influenced by the ease with which sustenance is obtained. But this is a commonplace result; there is nothing in it bold, brilliant, striking; besides, it does not make man the slave of outward influences. Accordingly, Mr. Buckle generalizes from it as follows:—"Marriages, instead of having any connection with personal feelings, are completely controlled by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of silken screens of various hues placed before the foot and side lights. He discovered, too, that ingenious effects might be obtained by suspending gauzes between the scene and the spectators. These are now, of course, but commonplace contrivances; they were, however, distinctly the inventions of De Loutherbourg, and were calculated to impress the playgoers of his time very signally. To Garrick De Loutherbourg rendered very important assistance, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... heard the phantom! A man's footsteps. A magnetic reflecting invisible cloak. You couldn't fool an audience with that—it's too commonplace. If Rance Rankin tried—" ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... A commonplace happening is transfigured by the magic of a seer into a significant moment arrested in eternity. Rembrandt is a window looking out upon eternity. It was quite like the logical minded Frenchman, Eugene Fromentin, himself an admirable painter, to pick this ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... taking the words out of their mouths (too pleasantly to give offence) when they were describing their symptoms. There he sat now, contemplating his pale little cousin, with a patient attention wonderful to see; listening to the commonplace words which dropped at intervals from her lips, as if—in his state of health, and with the doubtful prospect which it implied—there were no serious interests ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... neither contained anything worth writing about. His fancy had been caught, probably, by her odd combination of the romantic and the practical, and in her dream of "Little Frank" he had scented a mystery. There was no mystery there, nothing but the most commonplace record of misplaced trust and ingratitude. Similar things happen ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... one of these intervals of silence that Barbara Herndon made a discovery that chilled our blood. She made some commonplace remark to her sister and received no reply. She repeated the observation, but it brought no comment. The happening seemed to drag the rest of us from the strange torpor, and we stopped. We sensed that Barbara Herndon was feeling her way ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... Yozhov's room they were all cleverer and better than they were in the street and in the hotels. They held peculiar conversations, words and gestures for use in the room, and all this was changed outside the room, into the most commonplace and human. Sometimes, in the room, they all blazed up like a huge woodpile, and Yozhov was the brightest firebrand among them; but the light of this bonfire illuminated but faintly the obscurity ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... (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 hides the depths ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... voice, was politically good for nothing. James K. Polk and James C. Jones led the van of stump orators in Tennessee, Ben Hardin, John J. Crittenden and John C. Breckenridge in Kentucky. Tradition still has stories to tell of their exploits and prowess, their wit and eloquence, even their commonplace sayings and doings. They were marked men who never failed to captivate their audiences. The system of stump oratory had many advantages as a public force and was both edifying and educational. There were a few conspicuous writers for the press, such as Ritchie, Greeley ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... Margaret, can you see a little what that Christmas box has been to us? I can't bear to say, "Thank you"; it seems so commonplace and inadequate. And yet there is n't anything else I can say. And we do thank you, each and every one of us. We thank you both for our own gift, and for all the others, for each one's gift is making all the others happy. Do you see? Oh, I hope you ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... create it. Having by degrees learned to esteem and care for his wife, the time that his happiness had taken to germinate was to Joseph Lebas a guarantee of its durability. Hence, when Augustine plaintively set forth her painful position, she had to face the deluge of commonplace morality which the traditions of the Rue Saint-Denis furnished ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... unbecoming to be married—fades one's ribbons and makes one look old. An espousal is a dreary absorption of brilliancy. A woman handed over to you by a notary, how commonplace! The brutality of marriage creates definite situations; suppresses the will; kills choice; has a syntax, like grammar; replaces inspiration by orthography; makes a dictation of love; disperses all life's mysteries; diminishes the rights both of sovereign and subject; ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... how commonplace in London is the aristocracy of wealth; of Mrs Grub, who, in a provincial town, keeps her carriage, and is at once the envy and the scandal of all the Ladies who have to proceed upon their ten toes, we wot not the existence. Mr Bill Wright, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... pause to take stock of some of the results which have accrued from the operation and influence of Confucianism during such a long period, and over such swarming myriads of the human race. It is a commonplace in the present day to assert that the Chinese are hardworking, thrifty, and sober—the last-mentioned, by the way, in a land where drunkenness is not regarded as a crime. Shallow observers of the globe-trotter type, who have had their pockets picked by professional thieves ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... at a loss for reply. What sort of woman was this? What a way she had of talking! Accustomed as he was to the commonplace chatter of his mother's friends, and still under the influence of this meeting, which had so deeply disturbed him, the poor boy imagined himself in the presence of a sage in skirts—a philosopher under the disguise ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the castle was completely destroyed and Italianised. The beautiful and picturesque irregularities of the walls were removed, the towers shaved off, the windows transformed into commonplace circular-headed apertures. And so the castle remained for more than ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... better, instead of making the commonplace assertion that there was nothing of the ascetic about Jesus Christ, for us to recall to mind His teaching at another time, that every disciple shall be perfected as his Master (Luke vi. 40), and to inquire ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... so, that I saw it made poor Sabre very uneasy. I do not know why it should, for I have given him no positive encouragement to hope for anything; not that I have the least idea that the baronet's attentions were more than commonplace politeness, but he has since called. I cannot, however, say that my vanity is at all flattered by this circumstance. At the same time, there surely could be no harm in Sir Marmaduke making me an offer, for you know I am not bound to accept it. Besides, ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... sensitive to the relations of life to be familiar upon invitation with any girl. If she was not one with whom to hold real converse, it was impossible to blow dandelions with her, and talk must confine itself to the commonplace. After gentlest assays to know what was possible, the result might be that he grew courteously playful, or drew back, and confined himself to ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... and broad and ugly man, approaching middle age; of a commonplace cut of features, of poor birth, of mean fortunes, of small account in the scheme of things; but he had an eye for beauty; he had a soul; and his eye was filled with a beauty completely satisfying his conception; ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... day be answered by herself, 'Will these hands ne'er be clean?' or that the fatal commonplace, 'What's done is done,' will make way for her last despairing sentence, 'What's done cannot ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... who is aware of the thousand emotions that are responsible for the blush of woman. I was again annoyed by the discovery that my pulses were not beating wildly, and that my heart was not throbbing tumultuously, and when I addressed a commonplace remark to her I was thoroughly ashamed and humiliated. It seemed like taking a mean advantage of ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... absence of effort would, I think, be my verdict on her writing; she clearly knows her Northern farmer-folk with the sympathy of intimate experience. I hope I have not already suggested too much of the plot, a little tragedy of the commonplace dealing with the relations between two farming brothers, of whom the younger prospers while the elder fails, and the life-long jealousies of their women. Miss HOLME works, one may say, on a minute scale; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... is bound to him by no tie which may grow prosaic and wearisome; she appears to him in no domestic capacity, can never descend to be the female drudge; her possession is prevented from growing stale, her personality from becoming commonplace, by the difficulty, rareness, mystery, adventure, danger, which even in the days of Courts of Love attach to illicit amours; above all, being for this man neither the housewife nor the mother, she remains essentially and continually the mistress, the beloved. Similarly ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... deliberate observation are good, since most men will not observe at home. Such is the singularity of our nature that we ignore the interesting at home to study the commonplace abroad. We never notice a narrow and crooked street in Boston or lower New York, whereas a narrow and crooked street in London fills us with an ecstasy of delight. We never visit the Metropolitan Art Museum, ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... done to him—these grievances were too old to be remembered now—but because he would never allow him to feel towards him as he was always trying to feel. As long as communication was confined to the merest commonplace all went well, but if these were departed from ever such a little he invariably felt that his father's instincts showed themselves in immediate opposition to his own. When he was attacked his father laid whatever stress was possible on everything which his opponents ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... world and life have in a sense become commonplace to our experience, it is but in an external torpor; the true sentiment slumbers within us; and we have but to reflect on ourselves or our surroundings to rekindle our astonishment. No length of habit can blunt our first surprise. Of the world I have but little to say in this connection; ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... magic nor religion belongs, but to which physical science, the knowledge of how to deal mechanically with material things, does belong wholly, is the workaday world, the region of normal, commonplace, calculable happenings. With our telescopes and microscopes we see farther and deeper into things than does the savage. Yet the savage has excellent eyes. What he sees he sees. Consequently, we must duly allow ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... remark as a compliment. What I really meant to say was that a commonplace man might easily be brother to so clever ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... known to the officers of the Union fleet that the enemy had a ram up the river, it does not appear that any preparation for defence had been made, or plan of action adopted. Even the commonplace precaution of sending out a picket-boat had not been taken. The attack, therefore, was a surprise, not only in the ordinary sense of the word, but, so far as appears, in finding the officer in command without any formed ideas as to what ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... proposed antagonists, expressing his inability to answer its arguments, and politely requesting them to help him. When it so happened that any incautious correspondents acceded to this appeal, Shelley fell with merciless severity upon their feeble and commonplace reasoning. The little pamphlet of two pages was entitled "The Necessity of Atheism"; and its proposed publication, beyond the limits of private circulation already described, is proved by an advertisement (February 9, 1811) in the "Oxford University ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... covers in the closet," promptly responded Cyn. "That is right, and see, here is room also for the coffee—pardon me, I had almost said commonplace coffee-pot!" ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... eyes. A stranger—an Americano from his dress and accent—was descending the rocks toward him. He was a slight-built man with a dark, smooth face, that would have been quite commonplace and inexpressive but for his left eye, in which all that was villainous in him apparently centered. Shut that eye, and you had the features and expression of an ordinary man; cover up those features, and the eye shone out like Eblis's own. Nature had apparently observed ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... how my climate is improved. The neighbourhood much the same as all other neighbourhoods. Red wine and white, soup and fish, commonplace dulness and prejudice, bad wit and good-nature. I am, after my manner, making my place perfect, and have twenty-eight people ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... often as I turned the conversation upon music, and particularly upon singing, he was sure to interrupt me, with that sardonic smile upon his face and those repulsive singing tones of his, by some remark of a quite opposite tendency, very often of a commonplace character. From the great distress which at such times Antonia's glances betrayed, I perceived that he only did it to deprive me of a pretext for calling upon her for a song. But I didn't relinquish my design. The hindrances which the Councillor threw in my way only ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... exactly the same when they 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 of snapshots and amateur photos in ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... memories that make the place romantic. It would be a pity if utilitarian axe and fire were to spoil the beauty of Te Puke Tapu. There is plenty of other good land to be had. No need for us to covet this, fertile as it is; no need to make a commonplace farm out of that picturesque old battle-ground. May it long remain just as it is now—a lovely natural monument to ancient Maori valour, a quiet undisturbed resting-place for the warrior dead, the ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... ruse to enable Chichikov to go across Russia in a troika, with Selifan the coachman as a sort of Russian Sancho Panza, gives Gogol a magnificent opportunity to reveal his genius as a painter of Russian panorama, peopled with characteristic native types commonplace enough but drawn in comic relief. "The comic," explained the author yet at the beginning of his career, "is hidden everywhere, only living in the midst of it we are not conscious of it; but if ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... packets are constantly filled with people of that nation, going and coming. Is it that they do not care for reading, or that less attention is paid to them than to the French or American passengers? One would think Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderon, or Moratin, better worth buying than many commonplace novels which ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... was evident that this man had been an artist and poet in search of effects. There were scraps of verse. I do not profess to be a judge of such things, but they appeared to me to be singularly wanting in merit. There were also some rather commonplace pictures of river scenery, a paint-box, a box of colored chalks, some brushes, that curved bone which lies upon my inkstand, a volume of Baxter's 'Moths and Butterflies,' a cheap revolver, and a few cartridges. ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Battle,' where he did not lose one of his own men, but slew many of the enemy. This battle strikingly proved the weakness of the city, for in former times the Spartans used to regard it as such a natural and commonplace event for them to conquer their enemies, that they only sacrificed a cock to the gods, while those who had won a victory never boasted of it, and those who heard of it expressed no extravagant delight at the news. When the Ephors heard of the battle at Mantinea, which is mentioned ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... royalty is very conservative of ancient usages, it would be no matter for surprise if the corpses of kings should continue to be carried out through special openings long after the bodies of commoners were allowed to be conveyed in commonplace fashion through the ordinary door. In point of fact we find the old custom observed by kings in countries where it has apparently ceased to be observed by their subjects. Thus among the Sakalava and Antimerina ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... of speech is such a commonplace that we scarcely notice it. But, rightly regarded, it is a thing to be rejoiced in with a great joy, and not without a certain sense of danger happily escaped. He would have been a bold man who ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... commonplace, stale situation, Now the curtain comes down from above On the end of our little flirtation— A travesty romance; for Love, If he climbed in disguise to your lattice, Fell dead of the first kisses' pain: But one thing is left us now; that is— Begin ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... that she meant this would be the end of their intimacy, of anything but the commonplace ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... suppose the American fleet they knew well had left Hongkong was going south for? If Admiral Dewey had been a commonplace man he would have paused and held a council of war nigh the huge rock Corregidor at the mouth of Manila Bay. There is a channel on either side of that island, and both were reputed to be guarded by torpedoes. The Spaniards had an enormous stock ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... nothing more than a frayed commonplace, perhaps, to say that the force of good goes on, is never lost—yet the sincere, the straight, the strong something that went out from this man and entered into others, certainly continued on, and ...
— Some Personal Recollections of Dr. Janeway • James Bayard Clark
... provincial or parisian, until his fortieth year, when he was made professor at the said ecole normale. Since 1900 he has been professor at the College de France, and member of the Institute since 1900. So far as the outward facts go, Bergson's career has then been commonplace to the utmost. Neither one of Taine's famous principles of explanation of great men, the race, the environment, or the moment, no, nor all three together, will explain that peculiar way of looking at things that constitutes his ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... staring fixedly at the old and familiar enough symbol of the rayed eye within the triangle. It was not commonplace or familiar set up there in that secret and awesome place and seen by a pale light. There was about it a stark and stern solemnity, such as suggested the winged circle of immortality carved above the rock-hewn doors of the tombs of Egyptian kings. Higher than a tall man's ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... his blind complacency had imagined himself to have sucked the orange and thrown away the skin, had really, in point of fact, had a strange lovely fruit snatched from him before his blunt teeth had done more than nibble at its seemingly commonplace rind. ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... Mr. Rickmans, though inextricably, damnably one with them, was a certain apparently commonplace but amiable young man, who lived in a Bloomsbury boarding-house and dropped his aitches. This young man was tender and chivalrous, full of little innocent civilities to the ladies of his boarding-house; he admired, above all things, modesty in a woman, and somewhere, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... Walton was not the hearty and thorough advocate of nature he is supposed to have been. There would have been something to say for him on that score, had he looked upon the sum of evil as a thing not to be diminished. But he shared the opinions of the most commonplace believers in sin and trouble, and only congratulated himself on being exempt from their consequences. The overweening old man found himself comfortably off somehow; and it is good that he did. It is a comfort to all of us, wise or foolish. But ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... church 'ud be packed to the doors every Sunday. It's them missionaries who has the hard time. Oh, they're wonderful people. Parson John's a good man, but he ain't in the same line with them nohow. He's too commonplace, an' ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... be the golden sunset or the breezy noon, the solemn breadth of twilight, or the silvery freshness of morn—the something of colour, of form, of light and shade, floating rapidly away, that makes the meanest and most commonplace view at times startle us with wonder at its beauty, when ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... down to the drawing-room, Mrs. Clifford rose from her seat, and took her hand in her own, and kissed her on one cheek as if nothing out of the common had happened in any way. The talk between them was obtrusively commonplace. But all that day long, Elma noticed her mother was far tenderer to her than usual; and when she went up to bed Mrs. Clifford held her fingers for a moment with a gentle pressure, and kissed her twice upon her eyes, ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... results of education," thought I as I passed beside them and came fairly among the tombs. Here, at least, there were no commonplace politics, no diluted this-morning's leader, to distract or offend me. The old shabby church showed, as usual, its quaint extent of roofage and the relievo skeleton on one gable, still blackened with the fire of thirty years ago. A chill dank mist lay over all. The ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of romance, and the subject of dazzling pictures, is one of the most commonplace towns I have ever been in. It has its one big street—the Nevski Prospect—where people walk and shop as they do in Oxford Street, and it has a few cathedrals and churches, which are not very wonderful. The roadways are a mass of slush ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... knowing now that Miss Lind was a commonplace amateur. He had been contrasting her with his sister, greatly to the disparagement of his home life; and he was disappointed to find the lady break down where the actress would have succeeded so well. Consoling himself with the reflexion that if Miss Lind could not rap out a B flat like Susanna, ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... any of the great native painters, beside a real Japanese gentleman or lady, you will see that there is not the slightest resemblance between them. The actual people who live in Japan are not unlike the general run of English people; that is to say, they are extremely commonplace, and have nothing curious or extraordinary about them. In fact the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people. One of our most charming painters {3} went recently to the Land of the Chrysanthemum in the foolish ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... Jesus then reveal the immortality of the soul: the doctrine was already accepted, and he assumed it in his discourse as a truth known and acknowledged. Even the resurrection of the body was a commonplace among the immediate disciples of Jesus during the period of his ministry: "Thy brother shall rise again," said the Lord to Martha. "I know that he shall rise again," she replied, "in the resurrection at the last day:" this was a belief ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... was at that time not only Secretary of the Senate of the United States, but the proprietor of the Chronicle newspaper in Washington, of the Press in Philadelphia, "both daily," as the Colonel once said, which very simple and commonplace expression became a popular by-word. Colonel Forney wanted a managing editor for the Press, and, as I found in due time, not so much a man of enterprise and a leader—that he supplied—nor yet one to practically run the journal—that his son John, a young man of ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... leading idea was a simple one, and has become to-day almost a commonplace. He compared the backward state of agriculture in Ireland with the great advance that had been made in various continental countries, where the natural conditions were not dissimilar to those of Ireland, and asked himself the secret of the difference. That secret he found in the ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... tickled at the man's enthusiastic admiration of my little twopenny-halfpenny feat of navigation, and—secretly—very proud of it myself; but, of course, in reality it was an exceedingly commonplace exploit, which any other navigator worthy of being so-called could have accomplished without the slightest difficulty, the only essentials to success being good instruments, clear skies, and correct arithmetic, all of which I fortunately possessed. But I was nevertheless highly elated ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... same owner had become great friends. Ponto and Dick, we will call them, though I am not quite certain as to their names. Ponto's leg being broken, he was kept a close prisoner. His friend Dick, instead of whining out a few commonplace expressions of sympathy,—"Dear me, I'm so sorry; well, I hope you will soon get better," and then scampering off to amuse himself with other dogs in the village, or to run after the cows, or to go out hunting,—came and sat down by his side, showing him every mark of attention. Then, ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... laughing-wrinkles began to fade away from Mr. Hamilton's eyes, just for lack of daily use; and it was then that the corners of his mouth began to turn down; and his shoulders to stoop, and his eye to grow less keen and brave, and his step less vigorous. It may be a commonplace remark, but it is not at these precise moments in life that tired, depressed men in modest positions are wafted by Uncle Sam to great and desirable heights; but to Mrs. Hamilton it appeared that ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... multiplied marvels of his holy patron's life? Doubtless he did—and why not! To the unsophisticated monastic and mediaeval mind, as to the mind of primitive man, the marvellous and supernatural is almost as real and near as the commonplace and natural. If anyone doubts this let him study the mind of the modern Irish peasant; let him get beneath its surface and inside its guardian ring of shrinking reserve; there he will find the same material exactly as composed ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... mind is marvelous in its power of adjustment, its adaptability to the new and the strange. The unbelievable is so soon the commonplace. Jerry Foster was to sleep more than once in this tiny new world of Winslow's creating, this diminutive meteor, inside which they lived and moved and thought and talked. The fact of their new existence soon ceased as a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... addressed her in a deferential tone, and with a look which clearly showed the admiration he felt. He inquired how she liked the West Indies, and what parts of the islands she had seen, and whether she enjoyed being at sea. They were but commonplace questions, but his manner encouraged her to speak freely, and she described with much graphic power the scenery and ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... instead of a pleasure to read them; and there are parts in them which to such judges cannot but be vapid or ridiculous. Most works of the highest art,—those of Raffaelle, M. Angelo, or Da Vinci,—stand as Shakspeare does,—that which is commonplace and feeble in their excellence being taken for its essence by the uneducated, imagination assisting the impression, (for we readily fancy that we feel, when feeling is a matter of pride or conscience,) and affectation and pretension increasing ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... slept in; its walls dim with tapestry, and its screen of antique bead-work. But it was round the toilet table that memory grew brightest, for thereon was a crystal phial of a most marvellous perfume, and two great mother-of-pearl shells, shedding a mystical radiance—the most commonplace Rimmel's, without doubt, and the shells 'dreadful,' one may be sure. But to him, as he took a reverent breath of that phial, it seemed the very sweetbriar fragrance of her gown that caught his sense; and, surely, he never in all the world ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... attack women than to admire them, and was a little hard upon the fashionable young persons of her acquaintance and sex. In after life, care and thought subdued her pride, and she learned to look at society more good-naturedly; but at this time, and for some years after, she was impatient of commonplace people, and did not choose to conceal her scorn. Lady Clara was very much afraid of her. Those timid little thoughts, which would come out, and frisk and gambol with pretty graceful antics, and advance confidingly at the sound of Jack Belsize's jolly voice, and nibble crumbs out of ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... together a few scrapers, and began such an academia as drove me to one end of the room, whilst they possessed the other. The hopes and heir of the family—a coarse chubby dolt of about eighteen—played out of all time, and during the interval of repose he gave his elbow, burst out into a torrent of commonplace, which completed, you may ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... while personally making one gentleman known to another. There is likewise a rare vigor of expression and pregnancy of meaning, such as only a man of habitual energy of thought could have conveyed into so commonplace a thing as an introductory letter. This autograph is a graceful one, with an easy and picturesque flourish beneath the signature, symbolical of a courteous bow at the conclusion of the social ceremony so admirably performed. Hamilton might well be the leader and idol of ...
— A Book of Autographs - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of small frame, but a large brain and a generous heart. His style of speech was clear, distinct and rapid. He could reason a question with great force, and could fringe the most commonplace subjects with wit and humor. He was a true man, a good ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... about Santry, but he evaded a direct answer beyond expressing the conviction that everything would end all right. They talked for a while of commonplaces, although nothing that he said seemed commonplace to her and nothing that she said seemed so to him. When it was fully dark he arose to go. Then she seemed a little sorry that she had not let him put his arm around her, and she leaned toward him as she had done on the trail; but he was not well versed in woman's subtleties, and he failed to guess ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... being a hero, after all—and it isn't so difficult, if the girl helps you as you helped me. It's too bad I couldn't do it all by myself. I have always counted on rescuing you from an Ogre's castle or something of that sort. It's rather commonplace as it is, ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... a general hunting-ground. England, Spain, France, the Netherlands, captured, bought, and sold slaves. Englishmen in Virginia bought without qualm, as Englishmen in England bought without qualm. The cargo of the Dutch ship was a commonplace. The only novelty was that it was the first shipload of Africans brought to English-America. Here, by the same waters, were the beginnings of popular government and the young upas-tree of slavery. A contradiction in terms was ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... which prevented them from taking a place in standard literature. He was conscious of it himself, and was accustomed to say that it was the mission of his life to make up cartridges for others to fire. The little volume of 'Miscellanies,' including his commonplace book and his notes for his books, which was published by his daughter, exhibits with great clearness the character of his mind. Though a very candid and, in the best sense of the word, a very tolerant man, and an excellent scholar, he had, I think, little power of reproducing ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... without daring to ask a question. On getting away at midnight from the power of his enchantments, I almost doubted of my own existence. But what is the most wonderful thing about it is, that all those marvels appear to be quite natural and commonplace compared to the extraordinary hallucination I was subjected to afterwards. I don't know how to explain the state of my feelings to you in words; I will only say that, from henceforth, I an not surprised that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... wild and monotonous tune. In the silence of the night this strange music had its charm. Unluckily Miss Lydia did not understand perfectly what the sailor was singing. Amid a good deal that was commonplace, a passionate line would occasionally excite her liveliest curiosity. But just at the most important moment some words of patois would occur, the sense of which utterly escaped her. Yet she did make out that the subject was connected with a murder. Curses against ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... genius, a wise philosopher, an eloquent preacher, a statesman, a warrior, poet, painter? No! 'A faithful brother.' He may have been a commonplace one. We do not know anything about his intellectual capacity. He may have had very narrow limitations and very few powers, or he may have been a man of large faculty and acquirements. But these things drop out of sight; and this remains—that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... the ideas which have come to her from the confidences of evil-minded servants, inquisitive and imaginative playmates, or the gossip she overhears in her mother's society. Every other matter of her life, serious and commonplace, has received careful attention, but here she has been obliged to feel her way and, worst of abominations, to feel it with an inner fear that she ought not to know or ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... to do more than herald it, however, for we must wait two hundred years for the next name of great magnitude; moreover he was isolated, and so far in advance of his time that he left no followers. His own work suffered from the prevailing ignorance, for he was persecuted and imprisoned, not for the commonplace and natural reason that he frightened the Church, but merely because he was eccentric in his ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... and penny novelette. By rights our host should have been a cool cynical villain, always in full uniform, and continually turning up at awkward moments to harass some innocent victim, instead of which he was rather a commonplace but benevolent individual devoted to his wife and child and consumed with a passion for photography, which was shared by many of the exiles under his charge. I once had occasion to go to his office and found Zuyeff in his shirt sleeves, busily engaged ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... touched in his mind, which would be so natural a conclusion that everybody might be expected to come to it. But as we have determined to dematerialize him, his disappearance would bring suspicion upon us, and we might get into trouble if he should be considered a mere commonplace person. So we decided to speak out plainly, say what we had done, and what we were going to do, and thus put ourselves at the head of the spirit operators of the world. But we are not yet ready to do anything or to make our announcements, and if he had held his tongue ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton
... genius retains this myth of the supernatural smiths, but gives it an entirely different character and one which makes it even more striking; it changes the giants to dwarfs and makes gnomes of the Cyclops. With like originality, it substitutes for the somewhat commonplace Lernaean hydra all the local dragons of our national legends—the gargoyle of Rouen, the gra-ouilli of Metz, the chair sallee of Troyes, the dree of Montlhery, the tarasque of Tarascon—monsters of forms so diverse, whose outlandish names are an additional ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... Philosophers', and in his mouth that can only mean 'Against the Pythagoreans'. Now the Pythagorean use of the term depends on a certain way of regarding man, which there is good reason for ascribing to Pythagoras himself. It has become more or less of a commonplace now, but we must try to seize it in its original freshness if we wish to understand the associations the word 'philosophy' came to have for the Greeks. To state it briefly, it is the view that man is something intermediate ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... live very happily with commonplace wives, and Robert Worth had never regretted that his Maria did not play on the piano, and paint on velvet, and work fine embroideries for the altars. They had passed nearly twenty-six years together in more than ordinary content and prosperity. Yet no life ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... school, but all of it will come forth more or less fully armed from the actor's brain in the process of learning his art by practice. For the way to learn to do a thing is to do it; and in learning to act by acting, though there is plenty of incidental hard drill and hard work, there is nothing commonplace or unfruitful. ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... country could afford. Whatever that might cost, depend upon it the investment would be a good one. I weigh my words when I say that if the nation could purchase a potential Watt, or Davy, or Faraday, at the cost of a hundred thousand pounds down, he would be dirt-cheap at the money. It is a mere commonplace and everyday piece of knowledge, that what these three men did has produced untold millions of wealth, in the narrowest economical sense ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... Ideas advance most readily along the solid ground of practical reality, and often find true sublimity while laying aside empty marvels. Progress is the result, not so much of sudden flights of genius, as of sustained, patient, often commonplace endeavour; and the true lesson of scientific history lies in the close connection which it discloses between the most brilliant developments of knowledge and the faithful accomplishment of his daily task by each individual ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... 'Certainly; we commonplace mortals want something definite. The Stars are a long way off, and their words get somewhat dulled in ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... about him an air of fatigue and laboriousness which suggested the hard-working and successful business man rather than a great statesman and financier, and the courtly richness of his embroidered velvet dress suited ill his commonplace figure. In his whole personality Calvert decided there was no suggestion of that nobility of mind and nature which so distinguished Mr. Jefferson, nor of that keen mentality and easy elegance of manner so characteristic ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... the end of it what it might, this situation was deliciously strong of the Tristrams. They were redeeming their characters; they had not settled down into the ordinary or been gulfed in the slough of the commonplace. Unexpected appearances and midnight interviews of sentimental moment were still to be hoped for from them. There was not yet an ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... ideal. Even young men of fashion—she had seen some of them on Tuesdays—Raoul Wermant, the one who so distinguished himself as a leader in the 'german', or Yvonne's brother, the officer of chasseurs, who had gained the prize for horsemanship, and others besides these—seemed to her very commonplace by comparison. No!—he whom she loved was a man in the prime of life, well known to fame. She didn't care if he had a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... reverence, too. She was far better than he. Words of humility and apology leaped once more to the end of his tongue, but they did not pass his lips. He could not say them. His stubborn pride still controlled and he rambled on with commonplace and idle talk. ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... to judge folk too much by their mere outward appearance and manner, and not very fond of dull, ugly, commonplace people—the very people, unfortunately, who were fondest of him; he really detested them, almost as much as they detest each other, in spite of many sterling qualities of the heart and head they sometimes possess. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... unhonoured. Antigone, mindful of her brother's request to her in their last interview, resolves to brave the edict, and perform those rites so indispensably sacred in the eyes of a Greek. She communicates her resolution to her sister Ismene, whose character, still feeble and commonplace, is a perpetual foil to the heroism of Antigone. She acts upon her resolutions, baffles the vigilant guards, buries the corpse. Creon, on learning that his edict has been secretly disobeyed, orders the remains to be disinterred, and in ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... out. How many wooden oaths could kicked chairs and slammed doors tell of! After all the home-life comes close to being the real test of power, does it not? It takes power to be gracious and strong, and patient and tender, and cheery, in the commonplace things, and the ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... when I recollect the mixture of hurt vanity, and wounded feeling, with which I regarded my remonstrance, to the penning of which there had gone, I promise you, some trouble, as I beheld it extracted from amongst letters of advice, of credit, and all the commonplace lumber, as I then thought them, of a merchant's correspondence. Surely, thought I, a letter of such importance (I dared not say, even to myself, so well written) deserved a separate place, as well as more anxious consideration, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... heart, but trembling frame. It was more than probable that she would be misconstrued and wounded, but she determined to hazard all, knowing how pure were the motives that actuated her. He seemed restless and ill at ease, yet curious withal, and, after some trifling commonplace remarks, Beulah seated herself on the ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... which it was to be effected; but the former would scarcely have been a Cecil had he not also read his royal master. His Majesty must have the matter so communicated to him that he should be able to believe that his own supernatural sagacity had solved a mystery impenetrable to the commonplace brains of the Lords of the Council. It might be reasonably anticipated that such a warning should be no mystery to the son of Lord Darnley—that his thoughts would fly rapidly to that house in the Kirk o' Field, ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... tired; but she wouldn't have admitted it, for fear of being asked the reason. Did mother, perhaps, know? Missy had a teasing sense that, under the placid, commonplace conversation, there was something unspoken. A curious and uncomfortable feeling. But, then, as one ascertains increasingly with every year one lives, Life is filled with curious and often uncomfortable feelings. Which, however, one would hardly ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... private. He passed into the drawing-room, and found himself in the presence of three men, two of whom he recognized as small farmers of the neighborhood, and the other as the landlord of a public house. With a brief salutation, he seated himself beside them, and after a few commonplace remarks, paused, as if to learn their ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... great crash in the room just when the parish minister was saying grace, and that many of the people from outside noticed it, and "they just looked at each other." I was myself in the room, but as we had just had a very physical and commonplace disturbance—the arrival of an uninvited and intoxicated guest, of which the other people did not know as I did—I was ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... seeing, with sad eyes, The same old difficult hills and cloud-cold skies, We said: "This outward search availeth not To find Him. He is farther than we thought, Or, haply, nearer. To this very spot Whereon we wait, this commonplace of home, As to the well of Jacob, He may come And tell us all things." As I listened there, Through the expectant silences of prayer, Somewhat I seemed to hear, which hath to me Been hope, strength, comfort, and I give ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... amount of that which the world calls greatness is nothing more than vigorous and brilliant commonplace. Taine, who is the most splendid writer upon Bonaparte, ascribes to him intellectual greatness, but it was greatness on a common plane—the plane of animal life. He had a grand comprehension of physical and social forces, of everything upon the selfish plane, for ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... are not interested in what may be going on for the time being. It is evident, however, that resorting to violent stimuli is dangerous, that forced attention is ultimately disagreeable and certainly not a modern commonplace in experience, that attention which attends genuine interest is the attention ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... they were comely of countenance and added fresh charm to their personal beauty by their beauty of character. But such a defence is, as I have already said, far from me. Not only has nature given me but a commonplace appearance, but continued literary labour has swept away such charm as my person ever possessed, has reduced me to a lean habit of body, sucked away all the freshness of life, destroyed my complexion and impaired my vigour. As to my hair, which they with unblushing ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... bring forward the case of Gabinius.[588] I collect every item of intelligence, that I may have some news to tell you: but, as you see, I am short of material. Accordingly, I return to Callisthenes and Philistus, in whom I see that you have been wallowing. Callisthenes is a commonplace and hackneyed piece of business, like a good many Greeks. The Sicilian is a first-rate writer, terse, sagacious, concise, almost a minor Thucydides;[589] but which of his two books you have—for these are two works—I don't know. That about ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Theil. "I saw the Sibyl at Cumae," says Trimalchio. Now if the scene of the dinner is actually at Cumae this sounds very peculiar; it might even be a gloss added by some copyist whose knowledge was not equal to his industry. On the other hand, suppose Trimalchio is speaking of something so commonplace in his locality that the second term has become a generic, then the difficulty disappears. We today, even though standing upon the very spot in Melos where the Venus was unearthed, would still refer to her as the Venus de Melos. Friedlaender, in bracketing Cumis, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... the masses of the people itself. The very character of the authorship of the time, its love of compendiums and abridgements of such scientific and historical knowledge as the world believed it possessed, its dramatic performances or mysteries, the commonplace morality of its poets, the popularity of its rimed chronicles, are proof that literature was ceasing to be the possession of a purely intellectual class, and was beginning to appeal to the nation at large. The ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... that way as if he would ever think of dancing with them. They swarmed around me, as a representative person. They forgot their own trivialities, and rendered me such homage as genius commands from commonplace minds. ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... looking. Best of all, his old, petulant, dissatisfied expression was gone. In its place was the light of worthy achievement, success, and happiness. He told us there were no finer fruit trees anywhere than his. Such incidents as this are not rare—indeed, they are commonplace. We could recount them from our records in great number. But every observant reader can supply many from his ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... IN THE WEST It was a commonplace of the old diplomacy that the most effective way to deceive a rival diplomatist was to tell him the truth, and similar conditions enabled the Germans to delude the British public if not the British Government, so ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... Aldrich nor his naturalness and ease. Certainly he had not his atmosphere of the beau monde and his grace of style, but in whimsicality and unexpectedness and in that subtle art that makes the obviously impossible seem perfectly plausible and commonplace he surpassed not only him but Edward Everett Hale and all others. After Stockton and The Lady or the Tiger? it was realized even by the uncritical that short story writing had become a subtle art and that the master of its subtleties had his reader ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... generation and its leaders; each generation and its prophets; each generation and its teachers; each generation and its scholars; each generation and its statesmen; each generation and its judges; each generation and its pious members; each generation and its average, commonplace members; and each generation and its impious members. The tale of their years, the number of their days, the reckoning of their hours, and the measure of their steps, all ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... embankment does above the cliff brow. Lower, come the opposing curves in the two boats, the whole forming one group of sequent lines up the whole side of the picture. The rest of the composition is more commonplace than is usual with the great master; but there are beautiful transitions of light and shade between the sails of the little fishing-boat, the brig behind her, and the cliffs. Note how dexterously the two front sails[R] of the brig are brought on the top of the white sail of the ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... him in this city and in Schenectady."[223] In the next month, September 21, he is even more outspoken. "Yates is despised and talked against openly. Savage and Skinner talk plainly against him, and he is the subject of commonplace ridicule."[224] Clinton was the last person to abandon hope of Yates' defeat; and yet Yates' election could, without exaggeration, be declared practically unanimous.[225] Republican legislative candidates fared equally well. Clintonians and Federalists were entirely without representation in the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... respectably dressed, she had nevertheless described herself as being "in distress." She had expressed the deepest contrition, but had persisted in giving a name which was on the face of it a false one; in telling a commonplace story, which was manifestly an invention; and in refusing to the last to furnish any clew to her friends. A lady connected with a charitable institution ("interested by her extreme elegance and beauty") had volunteered ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... 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 ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... presumption of its reality; but simply that it is no objection, that it has no power to neutralize the evidence produced, and that unbelievers have no authority, on this account, to treat the subject with that profane and impertinent ridicule, which is a mere commonplace artifice to ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... thoughts, feelings, and passions so long at rest rushed again into a terrible and tumultuous action. The newly-formed stratum of my mind was swept away; everything seemed a wreck, a chaos, a convulsion of jarring elements; but this is a trite and tame description of my feelings; words would be but commonplace to express the revulsion which I experienced: yet, amidst all, there was one paramount and presiding thought, to which the rest were as atoms in the heap,—the awakened thought of vengeance!-but how ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
