"Common ground" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dignity intrusted her to my care, and left us promenading while he went in search of Daniel. I, myself, looked in vain for that youth, whom I had not seen since the entrance of the last comers. Miss Pilgrim and I found a congenial common ground in Billy, whom she spoke of as one of the most delightfully original boys she had ever met; in fact, altogether the most fascinating young gentleman she had seen in New York society. You may be sure it wasn't Billy's left ear which burned when I ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow
... hath she, no understanding friend; O grief! when Heaven is forced of earth to borrow What the poor niggard earth has not to lend; But when the stalk is snapt, the rose must bend. The tallest flower that skyward rears its head Grows from the common ground, and there must shed Its delicate petals. Cruel fate, too surely That they should find so base a bridal bed, Who lived in virgin pride, ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... restraint there awoke in him a desire for independence—a thirst for the suppressed license of youth. His new acquaintances were accustomed to a rigid domestic regime, but of a different character, and they met on a common ground of rebellion. Their aberrations, it is true, were not of a very formidable character, and need not have been guarded but for the severe conventionalities of both sects. An occasional fox-chase, horse-race, or a "stag party" at ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... that grand old church-tune that is so offensive to birds and squirrels I can't imagine. A year or two after this High Sierra concert, I was sitting one fine day on a hill in the Coast Range where the common Ground Squirrels were abundant. They were very shy on account of being hunted so much; but after I had been silent and motionless for half an hour or so they began to venture out of their holes and to feed on the seeds ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... comparisons, which like all mine statistics must necessarily be accepted with reservation because of some dissimilarity of economic surroundings, are yet on sufficiently common ground to demonstrate the main issue,—that is, the bearing of inherent intelligence in the workmen and their consequent skill. Four groups of gold mines have been taken, from India, West Australia, South Africa, and Western America. All of those chosen are of the ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... big Texas beeves had stampeded, then what?" There was challenge in Dell's voice, but the brother vouchsafed no answer. A seniority of years had given one a twelve hours' insight over the other, in range cattle, and there was no common ground between sleepy bedfellows to justify further converse. "I piloted in the doctor, anyhow," said Dell defensively. ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... begged him to join seemed to have passed away from him when care fell upon him. He tried not to hold his head above the young men of his adopted rank, many of whom had been his school-fellows; but, except with the members of the choir and choral society, he had no common ground, and there were none with whom he could form a friendship. Thus he never had any real relaxation, except music, and his Sunday walks, besides his evenings with his sisters and of play with the children. It was not a natural life for a youth, but it seemed to suit with his disposition; ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... friends now on the common ground of nursing Aunt Butson, who had been bedridden almost from the day of her admission to the almshouse, her gaunt ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... his telling hits and droll speeches. I found that my neighbor, Mr. Jones, came in for his full share, but he always sent back as good as he received. The sale, in fact, had the aspect of a country merrymaking, at which all sorts and conditions of people met on common ground, Pat bidding against the best of the landed gentry, while boys and dogs innumerable played around and ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... the nature of the phenomena, that these things were "all imagination" and fancy, if indeed not rank falsehood and imposture. But the Yogis know better than this. They know that underneath all these varying reports there is a common ground of truth, which will be apparent to anyone investigating the matter. They know that all of these reports (except a few based upon fraudulent imitation of the real phenomenon) are based upon truth and are ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... catalogue those ideas of truth, love, and justice, which are Deity itself? Have you no common ground in them?' ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... Turk used at his pleasure, and he felt assured that in this instance no half-measures would satisfy him—but Bas himself had another proposition of alliance to offer, and he dared not broach it until he and this stranger could lay aside mutual suspicions and meet on the common ground of conspiracy. If there were any chance at all, however slight, that Parish Thornton could emerge, alive and free, from his predicament in court Rowlett wished to waylay and kill him ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... he was more kindly disposed to the Wagner-Verein than to any other Verein: at least they did provide an excuse for fine concerts: and although he did not share all the Wagnerian ideas on art, he was much nearer them than to those of any other group in music. He could he thought find common ground with a party which was as unjust as himself towards Brahms and the "Brahmins." So he let himself be put up for it. Mannheim introduced him: he knew everybody. Without being a musician he was a member ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... burst into song; the Skipper hated women, whereas the mate was, what he himself called "a bit of a gay Lathero." But notwithstanding these dissimilarities of tastes and disposition, they got along fairly well together, and both met on the common ground of getting as much work out of the two "hands" as was ordinarily possible. The Skipper didn't drink alcoholic liquors before the mate, and the mate returned the compliment by refraining from any musical outrage in the ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... Christianity has no permanent abode. I know, indeed, that college is no place for infusing or fostering sectarian prejudices, nor for preferring the weapons of sectarian warfare. No spirit of party should walk abroad on this common ground. No distinctive privileges of a denomination should here be ever claimed or allowed. But, as none are exempted from their obligations to God, and none are safe without His blessing, it is most evident that this should be the first and last of our labor with those who ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... his father and mother differed about the war was the first of other discoveries; that they differed about him; that they differed about many matters; that, indeed, they had no common ground at all on which to meet; between them, although Graham did not put it that way, was a No-Man's Land strewn with dead happiness, lost desires, and the wreckage of ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... structure and by its capacity, to receive her. In all this we think that he acted most judiciously; first, because, as he has himself remarked, the difference between his school and other schools was a difference so fundamental that there was hardly any common ground on which a controversial battle could be fought; and, secondly, because his mind, eminently observant, preeminently discursive and capacious, was, we conceive, neither formed by nature nor disciplined by habit for ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... as such an attitude may be the outcome of an antecedent disbelief in God, it is perfectly logical; only we have no common ground with those who take that view. It is otherwise, however, where an avowed acceptance of Theism is nevertheless accompanied by doubts as regards any objective effects flowing from supplications addressed to God; it is with such doubts as these that ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... the American citizen, whether native-born or who is eligible to our naturalization laws and becomes a citizen, are in a state of antagonism. They cannot, nor will not, ever meet upon common ground and occupy together the same so-called level. This is impossible. The pagan and the Christian travel different paths. This one believes in a living God; that one in the type of monsters and worship of wood and stone. Thus in the religion of the two races ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... attention at all to family quarrels or the niceties of social position amongst the neighbouring farmers, and yet there were no haughty looks. Even the Broadbents, who were always prepared to be a little superior to every one, laid aside their elegant exclusiveness, and descended to the common ground of unaffected ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... slightest reference to honesty, finance, or business may seem an insult. Has he figured in the Divorce Court? How are you to talk about the last new play without seeming personal? This explains why exposed persons are cut: they have made conversation impossible by cutting away the common ground of it, the hypothesis of perfection. Even with persons who have merely lost relatives one has to be careful to avoid references to mortality. The complete diner-out has to be equipped with a knowledge ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... the two men, who exchanged a few commonplace words—each, meanwhile, taking the measure of the other through eyes that were frankly hostile. They were of such dissimilar type that there was practically no common ground upon which they could meet, and with the swift, unerring intuition of the lover each had recognised the other as standing in some relationship to Magda which premised a just cause for jealousy. Both men endeavoured to ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... they should take pains to show the Nestorians, that they had no intention of subjecting them to any foreign ecclesiastial power; and showing that the acknowledgment of the New Testament, as the only authoritative standard of religious truth, made them stand on common ground with the people to whom they were sent; it was stated, that their main object would be to enable the Nestorian Church, through the grace of God, to exert a commanding influence in ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... a purpose to be realized in the history of the human race as a whole. Even missionaries have begun to approach the heathen in a new and better spirit. They look for what may safely be preserved in the religion of their pupils, and on that common ground they try to erect a purer faith and a better worship, instead of attempting to destroy the sacred foundations of religion, which, I believe, exist, or at least, existed, in every ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... which appointed a committee of three—Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Edward Rutledge to confer with Lord Howe. The conference, which exhibited the shrewd quality of John Adams and of Franklin, the politeness of Rutledge, and the studied urbanity of Lord Howe, simply showed that there was no common ground on which they could come to an agreement. The American Commissioners returned to Philadelphia and Lord Howe to New York City and there were no further ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... and the place was cleared by the fidelity and the courage of the men of old. I have countless blessings that were bought with blood. The red marks of sacrifice are over all my daily ways. Let me not take the inheritance and overlook the blood marks, and stride about as though it were nought but common ground. Mercies abound on every hand! "Count ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... I have said, I shall claim your answer. And now farewell for a season. When we next meet we shall have a larger common ground; we shall be master and ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... must first have been uplifted into praiseful song, before the common ground and form of feeling, in virtue of which men might thus meet, could be supplied. But the vocal utterance or the bodily presence is not at all necessary for this communion. When we read rejoicingly the true song-speech of one of our singing brethren, we hold song-worship with him and ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... to represent the doctrines forming the common ground of the Anabaptist groups as they existed at the end of the second decade of the fifteenth century. There were, however, as Heinrich Bullinger and his contemporary, Sebastian Franck, point out, numerous divergencies ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... Painter grew old together. They met on a common ground of horses, dogs and art; and while the King used these things to kill time and cause him to forget self, the Painter found horses and dogs good for rest and recreation. But art was for Velasquez a religion, a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... to be revived to carry on its mysterious duties. It was as if in Saxon-invaded Britain long ago a Roman garrison had been frozen to await the return of the legions. Buck was right; there was no common ground today between Terran man and these unknowns. They ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... was not lacking in attentions of a kind, and so one evening as the West-bound train was due Mary found herself waiting for him in the ladies' balcony. This oriental retreat, giving them a view of the lobby without exposing them to the rough talk of the men, was common ground for the women of the hotel, and as she looked over the railing Mary was distinctly conscious of the chic Mrs. Jepson, sitting near. Mrs. Jepson, as the wife of the Tecolote Superintendent, was in a social class by herself and, even after Mary's startling rise to a directorship in the Company, ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... in Virginia, did not like all these new people coming merely with the stamp of the Government upon them, which was often, so they thought, no stamp at all; but with the ceaseless and increasing pressure from the North they met now on common ground at the President's ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... clergyman, blushing, "that we have no common ground on which to argue. I am sorry I have no power to ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... of much interest to note, that in these singing-games, if nowhere else, the country and the city child, the children of the mansion and the children of the alley, meet all, beautifully, on common ground. And, how the out-door ones lie dormant for spaces, and spring simultaneously into action in widely separated parts—town and country alike—is a problem which may not be easily solved. It seems to us that, like the songs of birds, they belong ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... district altogether. There is no safe way but a convention; and if in that convention, upon a common platform which all are willing to stand upon, one who has been known as an abolitionist, but who is now occupying none but common ground, can get the majority of the votes to which all look for an election, there is no ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... entirely deny the cogency of the proposed proof, and I have clearly already established the grounds of my refusal. Who then is to be the daysman between us? We are driven back on first principles, in order to ascertain if it may not be possible to meet on some common ground, and by the application of ordinary logical principles of reasoning to clear our view. [As to these we must refer the reader to the first volume of this work. Various cases of omission have been just quoted, and many have been discussed elsewhere. Accordingly, ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... The public-houses by the wayside, from being empty and noiseless as those in the remoter parts had been, now sent out boisterous shouts and clouds of smoke; and, from the misty windows, clusters of broad red faces looked down upon the road. On every piece of waste or common ground, some small gambler drove his noisy trade, and bellowed to the idle passersby to stop and try their chance; the crowd grew thicker and more noisy; gilt gingerbread in blanket-stalls exposed its glories to the dust; and often a four-horse carriage, dashing by, obscured all ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... on which it is more difficult to find a common ground than this. To some people it seems to be immoral even to ask the question—on what are your moral standards based? To others what we call our "moral standards" are so obviously absurd and "unnatural" that the ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... were accomplished botanists, and here, for the first time, I found myself on common ground with both. We discussed every familiar wild flower as eagerly as if we had been professed field naturalists. In walking or climbing my assistance was neither requisitioned nor required. I did not offer, therefore, what must have been ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... is the theory held by some Vedantists that there are many individuals and the world-appearance has no permanent illusion for all people, but each person creates for himself his own illusion, and there is no objective datum which forms the common ground for the illusory perception of all people; just as when ten persons see in the darkness a rope and having the illusion of a snake there, run away, and agree in their individual perceptions that they have all seen the same snake, though each really had his own illusion and there was no snake at ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... was that in this case they had a common ground; yet even thus he couldn't catch her by it. "Oh, I don't mean," she said from the threshold, "the fun that you mean. Good-night." In answer to which, as he turned out the electric light, he gave an odd, short groan, almost a grunt. He HAD apparently ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... "We are both citizens of the United States. In the duties and privileges of our citizenship we stand on exactly the same footing, just as in the army we stood on the common ground of loyalty. And we are both equally dependent upon the industries of our country—upon the Mill, and upon each other. Exactly as we were both dependent upon the army and upon each other ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... and I am persuaded very unwholesome. The flour is generally musty, and not quite free of sand. This is either owing to the particles of the mill-stone rubbed off in grinding, or to what adheres to the corn itself, in being threshed upon the common ground; for there are no threshing-floors in this country. I shall now take notice of the vegetables of Nice. In the winter, we have green pease, asparagus, artichoaks, cauliflower, beans, French beans, celery, and endive; cabbage, coleworts, radishes, turnips, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Stephen and himself to a carefully chosen play and a supper, but she had declined, gracefully enough—but she had declined, and Mrs. Stephen also. He could not make these people out, he told himself. Did they and he live in such different worlds that they could never meet on common ground? ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... at last they were on common ground. Harmony, delicately flushed, repeated the name, clung to it conversationally, using little adroitnesses to bring the talk back to him. All roads of talk led to Peter—Peter's future, Peter's poverty, Peter's refusing to have his hair ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... could scarcely be called a Whig victory; but it was a popular rebuke to the Nebraska bill. Clark's majority, slender as it finally appeared by the official count, was due to the Whigs occupying common ground with Free-soilers who discarded party attachments in behalf of their cherished convictions. The Silver-Grays found a home with the Hards and the Know-Nothings, and many Democrats, unwilling to go to ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... a wayside inn for this meeting with my cousin—you'll admit, sir, that I'm not bound so to do? Well, I've no objection to telling you that I meet him here so that, if I like him not, I can leave him on the instant. If I had him come to my own house, if I met him anywhere save on the common ground of a public place, and liked him not, or saw that he liked me not at all—why, there would be certain courtesies due from a lady to a gentleman, and I choose not to be held by those. And—and I may have had another reason for choosing The Jolly Grig, and then—I may not. But I think, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... outset. Strange forerunning instinct of love, which uttered its prophecy in an unknown tongue in an alien country! There came a day before long, when Doctor Eben and Hetty were forced to forget all their prejudices, and to come together on a common ground, where no antagonisms ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... have got near the poor boy," said Sewell to his wife, as they returned withindoors. "If I could only have reached him where he lives, as our slang says! But do what I would, I couldn't find any common ground where we could stand together. We were as unlike as if we were of two different species. I saw that everything I said bewildered him more and more; he couldn't understand me! Our education is unchristian, our civilisation is pagan. They both ought to bring us in closer relations with our ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... conditions—as too debased to justify one's serious endeavors towards improvement—was so nearly in harmony with the view that his father's inflamed mind sometimes took of the town's social conditions that the two were dangerously near to the common ground upon which they had ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... Magie;[4] and these in turn were forced to yield to such pastimes as music, drawing, mummeries, boyish games, masquerades, and even more pretentious adventures out in the garden, such as mimic chivalric contests, construction of underground passages, &c. The boys also discovered common ground in their desire to cultivate their minds by poetry and other reading. The last two years at school were most beneficial and productive in shaping Hoffmann's mind; he acquired a taste for classics and excited the attention of his teachers by his artistic talents, his graphic powers of representation ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... which I can imagine, gives you the opportunity of excelling. You felt that you needed to live under conditions in which the effort and the merit would lie in not changing, in which action would be immobility. You know, Rose, there is always some common ground in human beings; to reach it, if you do not stoop, the others will raise themselves. With your beauty which is the wonder of every one you meet, with that gentleness which wins all hearts and with your soul which no longer knows ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... neither. So that to run into the Parlour, after each new day was over, and discuss with Daddy and her the ups and downs, the fresh chances and prospects of his infant business, was pleasant enough. Daddy and he met on the common ground of wishing to make the world uncomfortable for Purcell; while Dora supplied the admiring uncritical wonder, in which, like a warm environment, an eager temperament expands, and feels itself under the stimulus more inventive and more ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to the religious opinions of such a body. More particularly the word is used of the various "sects" into which members of a common religious faith may be divided. The term "denominationalism" is thus given to the principle of emphasizing the distinctions, rather than the common ground, in the faith held by different bodies professing one sort of religious belief. This use is particularly applied to that system of religious education which lays stress on the principle that children belonging to a particular ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... whereon St. Eustace Academy lies hidden behind a hill held the St. Eustace supporters, while upon the other bank the Hillton lads and their friends congregated. But the long bridge, something more than a mile below, was common ground, and here the foes mingled and ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... well worked in the thin plate used for laminated armor, is better than English iron; while the comparatively high velocities of shot used in England are more trying to thin plates, and the comparatively heavy shot in America prove most destructive to solid plates. So that there is as yet no common ground of comparison. The cost of laminated armor is less than half that of solid plates. Thin plates, breaking joints, and bolted to or through the backing, form a continuous girder and add vastly to the strength of a vessel, while solid ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Democracy of my State, Louisiana, in company with others I reached Charleston two days in advance of the time. We were at once met by an invitation to join in council delegates from the Gulf States, to agree upon some common ground of action in the Convention, but declined for the reason that we were accredited to the National Convention, and had no authority to participate in other deliberations. This invitation and the terms in which it was ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... too have their duties to fulfil. There is a common ground between the Christian Churches and the Indians, as they all believe as we do, in a Great Spirit. The transition thence to the Christian's God is an ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... and Gentlemen: "The Babies." Now, that's something like. We haven't all had the good fortune to be ladies; we have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground—for we've all been babies. It is a shame that for a thousand years the world's banquets have utterly ignored the baby, as if he didn't amount to anything! If you, gentlemen, will stop and think a minute—if you will go back fifty or a hundred years, to your early married life, and recontemplate ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... every tie that time had knit between us. I do not demand that my friends should be wealthy, that they should have any attractions or charm, any special gifts of mind or body; but we must meet on common ground: that of honorable feeling. That you did not bring into the world, or you have lost it; and from this hour I am a stranger to you and never wish to see you again, excepting by the side of your husband when he ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... nature deliberate in forming friendships, and proportionally tenacious of them when they were formed, Lidgerwood's impulse was to hold all men at arm's length until he was reasonably assured of sincerity and a common ground. But the genial master-mechanic refused to be put on probation. Lidgerwood made the effort while the rescue train was whipping around the hill shoulders and plunging deeper into the afternoon shadows of the great mountain range. The tool-car was comfortably filled with men and ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... much more than this, and he got all that he expected. The young men had a common ground to meet on, and they quickly became as intimate as ever Frederick Mostyn permitted himself to be with a stranger. Bryce could hardly help catching enthusiasm from Mostyn on the subject of New York, and he was able to show his new acquaintance phases ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... that each and all shall prosper, serving those who find in one form of belief or another their best aid and guidance, and that all meet on common ground in the great essentials of love to God and love to man as a signal proof of the divine origin of humanity which finds no rest until it finds the peace of the Lord in spirituality. They all teach that ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... some vates of a Mediterranean folk were come in rapt and lofty mood to offer sacrifice, to pacify the living, to celebrate with fitting rites the unnumbered multitudes of the heroic dead. There are some compositions that seem to find the common ground of all men throughout the ages. And to the company of such works of art, the grand Mass for the Dead of Hector ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... time, years ago, when the East End was the East End—a land apart, with laws and customs of its own, cut off from civilization, and having no common ground with Piccadilly. But the motor-'bus has changed all that. It has so linked things and places that all individual character has been swamped in a universal chaos, and there is now neither East nor West. All lost nooks ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... Gadarene pig-bedevilment actually occurred, or to write himself down an "Infidel." As was to be expected, he chose the former alternative; and I may express my great satisfaction at finding that there is one spot of common ground on which both he and I stand. So far as I can judge, we are agreed to state one of the broad issues between the consequences of agnostic principles (as I draw them), and the consequences of ecclesiastical dogmatism (as he accepts it), ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... Losing him from sight, she understood what she was doing, and stayed her steps. A sense of having escaped a great danger made her tremble so that she feared she must fall to the ground if she could not find some place in which to rest. A few steps brought her into a piece of common ground, which lay in the rear of the garden, and here, at the foot of the wall, were some pieces of timber, the severed limbs of a tree that had fallen in the past winter. Here she could sit, leaning against the brickwork and letting her heart throb itself ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... letter of introduction, and I did what I could for him—asked him to lunch, told him about picture galleries, adjured him not to see this play and that, and mentioned a few new books. Our surest common ground being American men of letters, we discussed them. We agreed that the early death of FRANK NORRIS was a blow; that GEORGE W. CABLE had style; that JOHN FOX, Junior, could tell a good story, but OWEN WISTER a better. My friend interested me greatly by stating that he had been ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... was walking towards Millbank Gaol with the Rev. S.D. Headlam, on the way to liberate a prisoner, I said to him: 'Mr. Headlam, we ought to have a new Church, which should include all who have the common ground of faith in and love for man.' And a little later I found that my friend Mr. W.T. Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, had long been brooding over a similar thought, and wondering whether men 'might not be persuaded to be as ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... have few thoughts to communicate at present, Herr Professor. My German will fail me as soon as I quit common ground. I love my country, and I do not reckon it as perfect. We are swillers, possibly gluttons; we have a large prosperous middle class; many good men are to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... perhaps, to making friends with the woman who was accounted worthy of the honour of being Monsieur Horace's wife; but the very first day she had turned away disappointed. There was, both instinctively felt, no common ground on which they could meet and speak a common language intelligible to both; memories, interests, tastes, all lay too wide apart; and as for those larger human sympathies which, wider and deeper than ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... personally I should say that they got the Reformation and deserved it. But it matters nothing to the truth here whether the Reformation was a just revolt and revenge or an unjust culmination and conquest. It is common ground to Catholics and Protestants of intelligence that evils preceded and produced the schism; and that evils were produced by it and have pursued it down to our own day. We know it if only in the one example, ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... together, you and we. Without doubt, common interest and an absence of possible competition helps to that end, but there is something more which unites us—it is our kindred sentiments. It is this kinship which has created our attraction for each other and which has cemented it; it is our common ground of affections, of hatreds, of hopes; our ideals rest upon the same high plane. To mention but one point, one of you has said: "The United States and France are the only two nations which have fought for an ideal." And it is that which separates us, you and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... that as Muhammadanism is so near to Christianity that it may almost be called a Christian heresy, and as we have in consequence much common ground, we might expect to find its adherents more accessible than Hindus to the Christian missionary. The opposite is the case, furnishing another illustration of the fact that no religionists are so antagonistic to ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... a question of evidence. If a man say "I won't believe in anything super-natural whatever the evidence may be," it is best to leave him to his folly. If he will accept the evidence that would pass muster in a court of law, then you have a common ground, you can weigh evidence. To me the evidence for spiritual appearances is overwhelming looking at it from the strictly ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... offence to attend the comedy, though even this is not good Italianissimism. In regard to the caffe there is a perfectly understood system by which the Austrians go to one, and the Italians to another; and Florian's, in the Piazza, seems to be the only common ground in the city on which the hostile forces consent to meet. This is because it is thronged with foreigners of all nations, and to go there is not thought a demonstration of any kind. But the other caffe in the Piazza do not enjoy Florian's ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... turkey begins to lay, and afterwards to sit and rear the brood, she secludes herself from the male, who then, very sensibly, herds with others of his sex, and betakes himself to haunts of his own till male and female, old and young, meet again on common ground, late in the fall. But rob the sitting bird of her eggs, or destroy her tender young, and she immediately sets out in quest of a male, who is no laggard when he hears her call. The same is true of ducks and ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... "Both Uncle John and that tramp we encountered have met on common ground to bewail the lack of a daily newspaper 'in our midst'—to speak in journalistic parlance. At the paper mill at Royal are over two hundred workmen moaning in despair while they lose all track of the world's progress. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... rule, but except for them and the still more infinitesimal pretensions of one or two ax-presidents of republics, no member of the council had even the shade of a right to his participation in its power. It was natural, therefore, that its opponents should find a common ground in a clamour for representative government, and build high hopes upon a return, to ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... thought, and the shepherd, seeing how it was, would smile as he helped the lad on his way. The scholar looked forward with confidence to the time when young Matt would discover for himself, as Sammy had found for herself, that the only common ground whereon men and women may meet in safety is the ground of their manhood ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... however, on any common ground; she passed over all personal interest; instead of two women befriending a third in her need, who in turn was to give life to a little child waiting helplessly for some such ministry, it might have been the leasing of a house, ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... since knowing you I have made the constant prayer that I might be given the purity to be worthy the good in you, and that you might be granted the patience to reach the good in me—but it's no use. But at least I'm glad we have met on common ground, as it were, and that you understand, in a measure. The prayer could not be answered; but through it I have found myself and—I have known you. That last is worth more than a king's ransom to me. It is a holy thing which I shall reverence always, and when you ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... graceful and exquisite in Leonardo with the sublime and noble manner of Michael Angelo. It is the privilege and glory of genius to appropriate to itself whatever is noble and true. The region of thought is thus made a common ground for all, and one master mind becomes a reservoir for the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... form, more or less mixed with the neighboring ones, and with corruptions of French and English words. Mr. Swan, among others, has been led into this error. The place of his residence, Shoalwater Bay, is common ground of the Chinook and Chihalis Indians, and the degraded remnants of the two tribes are closely intermarried, and use both languages ...
— Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon, or, Trade Language of Oregon • George Gibbs
... lines mentioned in the last chapter. Now, in presence of such attributions as, for example, the Satanic character of tolerance in matters of religion, I, for one, would unconditionally lay down my pen, as there is no common ground upon which ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... neutrality. But if it may not be resisted, it may not be recognised; this is neutrality; it is to stand on equal terms. And since grave matters divide us—not directly concerned in our national struggle for freedom—let the dangerous idea be banished, that in entering on common ground we decry all opposing beliefs. For men who hold beliefs as vital it would not be creditable to either side to put them easily by. No, we do not ask them to forget themselves, but to respect one another—an entirely ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... those days not bad days, Miss Kate would cross our little common ground of an early evening to where I played the game on my porch. Often I did this until dusk obscured the faces of the cards. I faintly suspected in the course of these bird-like visits a caprice in Miss Kate to know what it might be that I ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... centre fitted with the conveniences of a lavatory. A door running in grooves separated each of the others from the lavatory; but as there were neither bolts nor locks, the whole suite was practically common ground. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The common ground of all these various lines of investigations of pathologist, anatomist, physiologist, physicist, and psychologist is, clearly, the central nervous system—the spinal cord and the brain. The importance of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... her. With the shortening days and bad weather, the meetings with Raymond became more difficult to pursue and she saw less of him. They had patched their quarrel and were friendly enough, but the perfect understanding had departed. They preserved a common ground and she did not mention subjects likely to annoy him. He appeared to be working steadily, seldom came into the shops and was more reserved to everybody in ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... probity of life, determined partly by natural affection, partly by enlightened self-interest or the feeling of honour, due in part even to the mere fear of penalties; no element of which, [8] however, was distinctively moral in the agent himself as such, and providing him, therefore, no common ground with a really moral being like Cornelius, or even like the philosophic emperor. Performing the same offices; actually satisfying, even as they, the external claims of others; rendering to all their dues—one thus circumstanced would be wanting, nevertheless, in the ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... a man has been defined as the sum of his ideas, an idea being a state of the consciousness. But the essence of mind must be the common ground and element ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the whole valley of Kashmir is lovely beyond description: surrounded by beautifully-wooded mountains, intersected with streams and lakes, and gay with flowers of every description, for in Kashmir many of the gorgeous eastern plants and the more simple but sweeter ones of England meet on common ground. To it may appropriately be applied ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... its baffling anxiety, she rose and walked toward him, absolutely forgetful of their curious meeting and their lack of a common ground of interest. ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... saying" what she thought.[27] There was something of AEschylus in her, as there was much of Aristophanes in him; it was not for nothing that her girlish ardour had twice flung itself upon the task of rendering the Prometheus Bound in English; they met on common ground in the human and pathetic Euripides. But her power was lyric, not dramatic. She sang from the depths of a wonderfully rich and passionate nature; while he was most truly himself when he was personating some ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... on all subjects," and he talked to everybody on a common ground of fellowship. Newman, the cabdriver at Shepperton, beside whom he always insisted on sitting when he came to Dockett; Jim Haslett, his ferryman; Busby, his old gardener and lodge-keeper at Pyrford: these no less than "Bill" East who rowed with him, and "Fred" Macpherson with whom ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... in our common schools, I repeat, should be Christian, but not sectarian. There is sufficient common ground which all true believers in Christianity agree in, to effect an incalculable amount of good, if honestly and faithfully taught. Which of the various religious sects in our country would take exceptions to the inculcation of the following sentiments, and kindred ones expressed ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... connected with the case whom it would be unpleasant to speak about it to, but not the actual principals. And when I asked Mrs. Van Brounker-Courtfield why she called them "court relations" she said because the divorce court was their common ground of connection, and it was a very good reason, and quite as true as calling people blood relations in London or Paris! And that pleased Octavia very much, because she said it was the first subtle thing she had heard in New ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... in the discussion of which England and China can never meet on a common ground. China views the whole question from a moral standpoint, England from ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... write the history of my life, from my entrance upon it down to a period which is within the memory of men still living. In so doing, I shall not be careful to trace out that common ground which may be supposed to underlie all lives, but only indicate those features which serve to distinguish one from another. Everybody is christened, cuts his teeth, and eats bread and molasses. Silently will we, therefore, infer the bread and molasses, and swiftly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... that it is the first sermon of Paul of which we have any record, and is probably the usual way in which he began his work in a great many Jewish synagogues. Paul is asked to speak to the assembled Jews. He begins upon the common ground of the history of Israel. He declares the promise of a Savior. This Savior is to be of the seed of David. Then Paul sets forth that Jesus is the promised Savior. He reminds them of the testimony of John and of those who had seen Jesus before and after His resurrection. ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell
... a certain variety in the emotions of the rest of the audience, but they met on common ground in the feeling of not knowing where to look or what to say. Their individualities submerged in a great crowd, they might—most of them—have allowed themselves to be carried away, especially if they'd come in the ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... by agreement, opened the debate, he was fully conscious that he was addressing an audience which was in the main hostile to him. With the instinct of a born stump speaker, he sought first to find common ground with his hearers. Appealing to the history of parties, he pointed out the practical agreement of both Whig and Democratic parties on the slavery question down to 1854. It was when, in accordance with the Compromise of 1850, he brought in the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... the hermit in the desert and in the monastery governed by its abbot and its rules. We must view the monk in one other aspect, that of theological champion. Here the hermit and the monk of the monastery meet on common ground. They were fighters, not debaters; fighters, not disciplined soldiers; fighters, not persuading Christians. They swarmed down from the mountains like hungry wolves. They fought heretics, they fought bishops, they fought Roman authorities, they fought soldiers, ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... to her and Bridget, when the sketching was done. And as he read, he would digress into talk, the careless audacity of which would sometimes distress or repel, and sometimes absorb her; till suddenly, perhaps, she realised how far she was wandering from that common ground where she and George had moved together, and would try and find her way back to it. She was always learning some new thing; and she hated to learn, unless George changed and learnt ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Directory of the United Irish League in convening a friendly Conference of all Irish parties and sections for the purpose of securing the enactment of a Labourers' Bill on these lines as a non-contentious measure. If common ground was to be found anywhere on which all Irishmen, or at the worst all Nationalists, might safely grasp hands, and with a most noble aim, it was surely here. But once more Mr Dillon scented some new plot against ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... good deal, not out of mere levity, but because of experience. We ought not to think too much of the importance of what we are doing, and still less of the importance of what we have done; we ought to find a common ground on which to meet distasteful people; we ought to labour hard against self-pity as well as against self-applause; we ought to feel that if we have missed chances, it is out of our own heedlessness and stupidity. Self-applause is a more subtle thing even than self-pity, because, ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... terminate disastrously, would shake the republic to its foundations, and perhaps topple it to the ground, this same Alsace-Lorraine difficulty is, in home affairs, almost the only question in whose consideration all parties unite on the common ground of patriotism. A republican orator is sure to win the applause of the Right when he refers in eloquent terms to the "Lost Provinces," "about which," as Gambetta said, "a Frenchman should always think ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... if it were thoughtless, and he might not meet her with reproaches after all. There might not be the cold greeting she had often feared—"Well, you've concluded to come back, have you? It was about time!" If only John were a little penitent, a little anxious to meet her on some common ground, she felt her task would be an ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... strengthening our domestic and foreign markets, in perfecting our transportation facilities, in building up our merchant marine, in preventing the entrance of undesirable immigrants, in improving commercial and industrial conditions, and in bringing together on common ground those necessary partners in industrial ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... you know, it is a town gone mad with folly. A huge masked ball emptied into the streets at daylight; a meeting of all nations on common ground, a pot-pourri of every conceivable human ingredient, but faintly describes it all. There are music and flowers, cries and laughter and song and joyousness, and never an aching heart to show its sorrow or dim the happiness of the streets. A ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... Mason's gate,—and it may as well be stated here that this gate is but three hundred yards from the house, and is guarded by no lodge. This village stands at the foot of Cleeve Hill. The land hereabouts ceases to be fertile, and breaks away into heath and common ground. Round the foot of the hill there are extensive woods, all of which belong to Sir Peregrine Orme, the lord of the manor. Sir Peregrine is not a rich man, not rich, that is, it being borne in mind that he is a baronet, that he represented his county ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... said the demonstration at Commencement was in bad taste. Why? you will say. Because Commencement day brings together the alumni of the college from all parts of the Union, from the South as well as the North. They are to meet on some common ground, and that common ground is the love that all are supposed to bear to the old Alma Mater, cherished by memories of past friendships in their college associations. The late Commencement was one of peculiar note. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... amusement at these words. "Not too much of that either," she said, softly, with a tremulous smile. "But patience carries the lilies of the saints," said Lucy, with a touch of the sweet asceticism which had once been so charming to the young Anglican. It brought him back like a spell to the common ground on which they used to meet; it brought him back also to his former position on his knee, which was embarrassing to Lucy, though she had not the heart to draw back, nor even to withdraw her hand, which somehow happened to be ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... however lawful in origin. But the larger cities were ever trying to group the smaller round them as satellites; and the constant quarrels which resulted, often produced a party which was ready to welcome the interposition of the Emperor. There was this common ground, then, between these cities and the Papacy that, whereas they found it equally necessary to invoke the aid of the Emperor as an outside power against their foes, each was threatened by the assertion of those imperial rights which it was the sole object ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... is at a low point, both countries have important interests in the region that could be enhanced if they were able to establish some common ground on how to move forward. This approach worked effectively in the early 1990s. In this context, Syria's national interests in the Arab-Israeli dispute are important and can be ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace
... to be so in my day, Mary. Almack's was a common ground, even if there had been no other. But now there are circles and circles, I believe, rings that touch occasionally, but never break and mingle. I am afraid poor Georgie's set is not quite so nice as I could have wished. Yet Lesbia writes as if she were in raptures with her chaperon, and with ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... a musing air. "The curious student of humanity," he remarked, "traces resemblances where they are not obviously conspicuous. Now, at the first blush, one would not think of any common ground of meeting for our Aunt Anniky and the Empress Josephine. Yet that fine French lady introduced the fashion of handkerchiefs by continually raising delicate lace mouchoirs to her lips to hide her bad teeth. Aunt Anniky lifts her turkey-tail! ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... settling the West, everybody worked shoulder to shoulder. There were no privileged classes to be excepted from the common toils and privations. All met on common ground, shared each other's troubles, and assisted each other in difficult work. All were outspoken and championed their own opinions without restraint. At few times in the history of the civilized world has the home been a more independent ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... corner of one of those houses on the beach of Deal which stand so close to the sea that in many cases they occupy common ground with the boats, Tommy found himself suddenly close to a group of men, one of whom, a very tall man, was addressing the ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... meet here not on the common ground of the brotherhood of man, but of human appetite and desire. Whether they hail from Japan, Spain, or Turkey, or whether they come from Maine or California, they all succumb to the same allurements. The test here is the manner in which people use the wealth ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand |
