"Common man" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... because the war is over that I have left my own country, signor," answered Giuseppe. "I fought against Austria on the sea; but now—now Italy is an unhappy place—no home for heroes at present. I am not a common man. I have a great ancestry—the Doria of Dolceaqua in the Alpes Maritimes. You have ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... of Alexandria, succeeded him. About that time Demetrianus died in Antioch, and Paul of Samosata received that episcopate. As he held low and degraded views of Christ, contrary to the teaching of the Church, namely, that in his nature He was a common man, Dionysius of Alexandria was entreated to come to the synod. But being unable to come on account of age and physical weakness, he gave his opinion on the subject under consideration by a letter. But the other pastors ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... nor St. Joseph's (which was still nearer) ever fired a Shot. So that it seems as if they could not believe the Thing, though they saw all in Flames. For this gallant Action the Admiral rewarded every common Man with a Dollar apiece. ...
— An Account of the expedition to Carthagena, with explanatory notes and observations • Sir Charles Knowles
... becomes more evident in their misfortune than in their fortune; the fine perfume of aloes wood is strongest when it falls into the fire"; "The anger of the best man lasts an instant, of the mediocre man six hours, of the common man a day and a night, and the rascal will never get rid of it"; "The scholar laughs with his eyes, mediocre people show their teeth when they laugh, common people roar, and true men of wisdom never laugh"; "Truthfulness ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... desire he should know the type she really conformed to without her doing anything so low as tell him, and he had surely begun to know it from the moment he didn't seize the opportunities into which a common man would promptly have blundered. These were on the mere awkward surface, and their relation was beautiful behind and below them. She had questioned so little on the way what they might be doing that as soon ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... every table rose a triglyph, two strong wooden posts with lintel; on the lintel stood spiked the ox's head, ox's hide hanging beneath it as drapery: and on the two sides of the two posts hung free the four roasted quarters of said ox; from which the common man joyfully helped himself. Three measures of beer he had, and two of wine;—which, unless the measures were miraculously small, we may take to be abundance. Thus they, in two long rows, 30,000 of them by the tale, dine joyfully SUB DIO. The two Majesties and two Crown-Princes rode through the ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... sirs; she was tall and grand-looking, had the brightest eyes and the whitest hand, and smiled in a way to make even a common man like me wish he had ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... sparkle not, they shine not, they are lustreless; there is not even the glare which lights up sometimes dull eyes into eloquence; and yet, even at first, the tout ensemble, strikes you as that of no common man, and you say, ere he has opened his lips, 'He ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... vulgarity. They love nobility. They admire exclusiveness. They will not obey a man risen from the ranks. They never trust one of their own class. I agree with them. I share their instincts. In my undergraduate days I was a Republican-a Socialist. I tried hard to feel toward a common man as I do towards a duke. I couldnt. Neither can you. Well, why should we be ashamed of this aspiration towards what is above us? Why dont I say that an honest man's the noblest work of God? Because I dont think so. If he's not a gentleman, I dont care whether he's honest ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... a clergyman, you know," Felix went on. "I don't think I should venture to say it to a common man." ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... manufacturers and purveyors of potentially dangerous products; had they been willing to cooperate with right-thinking men in a sane and orderly campaign for the cleaning-up and the proper regulation of the liquor traffic; had they seen that the common man's inarticulate but very definite resentment against the iniquities of the corner saloon system was tending to the legal abolition of the whole business of licensed drinking, I believe we should have had no Eighteenth Amendment saddled ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... Yet he was a common man. The air of the world first smote his lungs on the open prairie by the River Platte, the blue sky over head, and beneath, the green grass of the earth pressing against his tender nakedness. On the horses his eyes first opened, still ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... leaving their firesides to sail with him, without other hope or motion; and silver bullets were cast to shoot him in a mutiny; the hard rude natures of the mutineers being awed by something in his carriage which was not like that of a common man. He has written the account of one of his northern voyages himself; one of those, by the by, which the Hakluyt Society have mutilated; and there is an imaginative beauty in it, and a rich delicacy of expression, which is a true natural poetry, called out in him ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... was short but to the point, saying "that since he had dipped his hands in muddy water, and must be a pyrate, it was better being a commander than a common man," not perhaps a graceful nor grateful way of expressing his thanks, but one which was no doubt understood by ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... revolution envied the religious enjoyments of the common man, all pilgrimages were forbidden, and the road leading to our Lady's Chapel, and which, indeed, is the only high road in this part of the country, became almost impassable. Under the Emperor it was thoroughly ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... as he said it. Take great care not to spoil it in delivery and so to set one nobleman against another. He who wresteth the truth in transmitting the message, and only repeateth it in words that give pleasure to all men, gentleman or common man, ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... in Jefferson's first inaugural. It favored thrift and simplicity in government, involving close limitation of army, navy, and diplomatic corps to positive and tangible needs. It professed peculiar regard for the rights and interests of the common man, whether of foreign or of native parentage. Strict construction of the Constitution, which was to a great extent viewed as a compact of States, was another of its cherished ideas. It also maintained special friendliness for agriculture ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... himself so vividly of the majesty of the thought itself that no tinker's language can lower it or vulgarize it in his mind." The King James translators were most eager to say what the original said, and to say it so that the common man could well understand it, and yet so that it should not be vulgarized or cheapened by adoption ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... a prisoner. For it is not the highest word alone that the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the lust of other things entering in, choke, and render unfruitful. Waking from the divine vision, if that can be called waking which is indeed dying into the common day, the common man regards it straightway as a foolish dream; the wise man believes in it still, holds fast by the memory of the vanished glory, and looks to have it one day again a present portion of the light of his life. He knows ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... that on which both the common man and the expert (parik@saka) hold the same opinion. Established texts or conclusions (siddhanta) are of four kinds, viz (1) those which are accepted by all schools of thought called the sarvatantrasiddhanta; (2) ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... to be to the careful reader—cruel as was his treatment of Heloise—he must have had depths of love and goodness of which the world knew not. Such a woman as Heloise could not have so adored any common man, nor a wonderful man who had a hard heart. She saw and knew the recesses of his heart, and pardoned his occasional acts of cruelty. Having known what there was of good and nobleness in his nature, she was willing to die, nay, to live ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... flagging. The services of the younger Dalrymple were rewarded by a remission of the forfeiture which the offences of the elder had incurred. Those services indeed were not to be despised. For Sir John, though inferior to his father in depth and extent of legal learning, was no common man. His knowledge was great and various: his parts were quick; and his eloquence was singularly ready and graceful. To sanctity he made no pretensions. Indeed Episcopalians and Presbyterians agreed in regarding ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... profoundly philosophical suspicion, that a rose, or a violet, did actually smell, to a person occupying this sublime position, very much as it did to another; a suspicion which, in the mouth of a common man, would have been literally sufficient to 'make a star-chamber matter of'; and all that thorough-going analysis of the trick and pageant of majesty which follows it, would, of course, come only as a graceful concession, from the mouth of that genuine piece of royalty, who contrives to hide so much ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... someone who has formed a plan Beyond the pitch of common minds, she sailed, Mocked and deserted by the common man, Made half divine to ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... connected with money. The common man's conscience was wounded by the smart in his purse. The wealth of the church was enormous, though exaggerated by those contemporaries who estimated it at one-third of the total real estate of Western Europe. In addition to revenues ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... the genius of common sense; of common sense in action; of common sense in thought; of common sense enriched by experience and unhindered by fear. "He was a common man," says his friend Joshua Speed, "expanded into giant proportions; well acquainted with the people, he placed his hand on the beating pulse of the nation, judged of its disease, and was ready with a remedy." Inspired he was truly, as Shakespeare was inspired; as Mozart was inspired; ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... captivity. What gives it a peculiar value, is, that it may be considered a transcript of the royal bard's true feelings, and the story of his real loves and fortunes. It is not often that sovereigns write poetry or that poets deal in fact. It is gratifying to the pride of a common man, to find a monarch thus suing, as it were, for admission into his closet, and seeking to win his favor by administering to his pleasures. It is a proof of the honest equality of intellectual competition, which strips off all the trappings of factitious ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... a portion of the reward has come first. In your equipment you are being paid in advance. David Starr Jordan has happily clothed the thought in these words: "It is in the saving of the few who serve the many that the progress of civilization lies. In the march of the common man, and in the influence of the man uncommon who rises freely from the ranks, we have all of history ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... mass of English people India and Egypt and all that side of our system mean less than nothing; our trade is something they do not understand, our imperial wealth something they do not share. Britain has been a group of four democracies caught in the net of a vast yet casual imperialism; the common man here is in a state of political perplexity from the cradle to the grave. None the less there is a great people here even as there is a great people in Russia, a people with a soul and character of its own, a ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... that she likes gentlefolk and is fit to mix with them; and after all, Jo, I'm nothing but a pore common man." ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... wife nor widow is she—yet she is not, never has been, and never will be a woman without virtue. Ah, Donald, my son, she's a bonny lass! For all her fall, she's not a common woman and my son is not a common man—I wonder—Oh, 'tis lies, lies, lies, and she's heard them and knows they're lies. Ah, my son, my son, with the hot blood of youth in you—you've a man's head and heart and a will of your own—Aye, she's sweet—that ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... thought that to be in mind and manners the "gentlemen," was as necessary to perfect the painter. The friend of Johnson and Burke, and of all persons of that brilliant age, distinguished by abilities and worth, was no common man. In raising himself, he was ever mindful to raise the art to which he had devoted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... Virginia felt, that in the transition from royal to republican forms the dignity of that office should not be allowed to decline in any important particular. Moreover, as a contemporary observer mentions, Patrick Henry had been "accused by the big-wigs of former times as being a coarse and common man, and utterly destitute of dignity; and perhaps he wished to show them that they were mistaken."[260] At any rate, by the testimony of all, he seems to have displayed his usual judgment and skill in adapting himself to the requirements of his position; and, while never losing his gentleness ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... night, and the news ran that Tristan and the Queen were held and that the King would kill them; and wealthy burgess, or common man, they wept ...
— The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult • M. Joseph Bedier
... marry a girl-wife, and his motives might be misunderstood. The idyllic wife is a beautiful thing to read about, but in practice idylls should be kept episodes; in practice the idyllic life is a little too like a dinner that is all dessert. A common man, after a time, tires of winsome worship; he craves after companionship, and a sympathy based on experience. The ordinary young man, with the still younger wife, I have noticed, continues to love her with all his heart—and spends his leisure telling somebody else's wife ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... same false position, from the beginning to the end; but I am not sure whether this be not better than a perpetually shifting false position. Disguise it as you may, an obstinate man is preferable to a trimmer; be he a common man, or an uncommon man; a layman or a clergyman; "in ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... for the whole race of man: He, and He alone. But it seems to me that there may be periods of time when changes are appointed to take place among men—among nations, and even among races; and that a common man may then be called to devote himself for that nation, or for that race. Father, I feel that the hour may be come for the negro race to be redeemed; and that I, a common man, may so far devote myself as not to stand in the way of their redemption. ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... public attention was now turned, and whom the people of the City and State began to regard as their champion and deliverer, was James King of William, and he was no common man. He was born in Georgetown, D. C., in January, 1822, and was therefore thirty-four years old at the time of his death. Having received a common school education, he was placed at an early age in the banking house of Corcoran & Riggs at Washington City where he remained many years. ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb
... expression—something to stir a doubt or awaken a feeling of concern. The eyes, that were deep and intense, had a shadow in them, and the curves of the mouth had suffering and passion and evidences of stern mental conflict in every line. This was no common man, no social drone, but one who in his contact with men was used ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... figure these mighty forms, forty feet high the least of them was, reclining on a patch of turf that would have seemed a stubble of reeds to a common man. One sat up and chipped earth from his huge boots with an iron girder he grasped in his hand; the second rested on his elbow; the third whittled a pine tree into shape and made a smell of resin in the air. ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... common man who could thus induce the congress of a republic to raise him to absolute power over its members and the people. Francia at that time was fifty-nine years of age, a lean and vigorous man, of medium stature, ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... then, after apparently reflecting a moment, "My people live near the Leighs of Burrough Court, and I was playmate to the young gentlemen and was given a chance to learn with them, with their tutors, more than a common man is likely ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... saw that a light shone from Michael. And Simon rose, bowed down to Michael, and said: "I see, Michael, that you are no common man, and I can neither keep you nor question you. Only tell me this: how is it that when I found you and brought you home, you were gloomy, and when my wife gave you food you smiled at her and became brighter? Then when the gentleman came to order the boots, you smiled again and ...
— What Men Live By and Other Tales • Leo Tolstoy
... to pass, that none but peaceful bards had ever sat upon the mound. Never a warrior or a common man had risked sitting there. The general fear felt, and the awe inspired by the place, was ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... ruthless spirit, but never a cringing or a submissive one. The gentleman and the magistrate were deferred to, but neither was regarded as sacrosanct; and when, in the regime of Berkeley, special privilege in alliance with official corruption seemed to be narrowing the chances of the common man, the insurgent spirit of frontier democracy, denying the validity of distinctions and demanding fair play, found militant expression in Bacon's Rebellion. The episode was an early instance of that struggle between rich and poor, between exploiter and exploited, of that stubborn insistence ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... modern world is out of sympathy with the serious democratic sentiment that this statement will seem to many to be lacking in seriousness. Democracy is not philanthropy; it is not even altruism or social reform. Democracy is not founded on pity for the common man; democracy is founded on reverence for the common man, or, if you will, even on fear of him. It does not champion man because man is so miserable, but because man is so sublime. It does not object so much to the ordinary man being a slave as to his not being a king, for its dream ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... he has his father's prescience of the psychological moment for not bothering. Of course, he is a fetish; no Englishman can deny that the kingship is an idolatry; but he is a fetish with an uncommon share of the common man's divinity. The system which provides him for the people provides them the best administration in the world, always naturally in the hands of their superiors, social and political; but we could be several times rottener ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... not, Mr Simple; and I think, moreover, that he who has more to lose than another will always strive more. Now a common man only fights for his own credit; but when a man is descended from a long line of people famous in history, and has a coat in arms, criss-crossed, and stuck all over with lions and unicorns to support the dignity of—why, has he not to fight for the credit ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... enemy and themselves. You brought me to Les Touches to mask your real feelings and leave you safe to follow your own secret adoration. The scheme was grand and ignoble both; but to carry it out you should have chosen either a common man or one so preoccupied by noble thoughts that you could easily deceive him. You thought me simple and easy to mislead as a man of genius. I am not a man of genius, I am a man of talent, and as such I have divined you. When I made that eulogy yesterday on women of your ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... smiting the crown of his deerstalker. "That's just it! What does it all mean, my dear! Gad!—this is—to use the common language of the common man, a fair licker! That that chap Burchill should march as bold as brass into those Herapath Flats, is—well, I couldn't be more surprised, Trixie, than if you were to tell me that you are the Queen of Sheba's grand-daughter! Not so much so, in ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... one of our own class ... or ... God knows what ..." they thought, one and all. "It is hateful to have refused him. But no, if he is one of us, why does he come clothed like a common man? He has only ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... then just a little edification, in a manner of speaking. But I'm a poor, common man, and have little enough gift, God help me!—and so I thought, as the Reverend Mr. Manders happened ...
— Ghosts • Henrik Ibsen
... slaying any more? For would that all that I have ever slain Might be once more alive; my bitterest foes, And they who were call'd champions in their time, And through whose death I won that fame I have— And I were nothing but a common man, A poor, mean soldier, and without renown, So thou mightest live too, my son, my son! Or rather would that I, even I myself, Might now be lying on this bloody sand, Near death, and by an ignorant stroke of thine, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... speaking a loud trampling of feet was heard outside the great hall, and all the lackeys came tumbling in, pell-mell, without waiting to do their reverence, just as if the King had been any common man. ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... is not a common man. He has a theory, and lives up to it, which is more than I can say for any philosopher I have the honour of shaving," answered Nello, whose loquacity, like an over-full bottle, could never pour forth a small dose. "Bratti means to extract the utmost possible amount of pleasure, that is to say, of ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... the day of the common man. Do you glorify the common man? This is the day of the machine. When have you sung of the machine? The crusades are here again, not the Crusades of Christ but the Crusades of the Machine—have you found motive in them for your song? We are crusading to-day, not for the remission of sins, but ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... have I drunk in my time," he said reflectively. "Yet is the awa but a common man's drink, while the haole liquor is a drink for chiefs. The awa has not the liquor's hot willingness, its spur in the ribs of feeling, its biting alive of oneself that is very pleasant since it ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... Capital! Only more things may tend to make the world better than some people think.—Who is this Mr Graham of yours? He must be no common man." ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... grasped his chin reflectively, admitting that he had not thought of that contingency. "But father was a knowing man," he added; "he looked close at things. Though he was only a boor common man, he had traffeled a great deal, and I think he'd know gold when he ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... partners appear to have been the three brothers—Thomas, Matthias, and George Attwood, and Mr. Richard Spooner. Matthias Attwood seceded, and went to London. Of Thomas, it is unnecessary to say one word to Birmingham people; his statue in our principal street shows that he was considered to be no common man. He was one of the first Members for Birmingham upon its incorporation, and was re-elected in 1837. Although he had been so great and successful as a popular political leader, he made no "way" in Parliament; and soon after the riots of 1839 he retired, being ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... although surrounded on every side by those who might be deemed the very types and pictures of their caste, there was something in the easy but upright carriage of his head, the intrepid character of his features, the bold and vigorous flashing of his deep blue eye, that marked him as no common man. He was talking with an old and prosy-looking personage in civilian dress; and while I could detect an anxiety to get free from a tiresome companion, there was an air of deferential, and even kind attention ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... was rejoiced in his heart that his daughter had married a prince, and not a common man, and he chased the two soldiers away with whips, and told them that if they ever dared to show their faces across the borders of his kingdom, they should die the same death he ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... him.' CHAP. XXIV. The Master said, 'Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles. Have no friends not equal to yourself. When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them.' CHAP. XXV. The Master said, 'The commander of the forces of a large state may be carried off, but the will of even a common man cannot ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... glorious, but even as happy: they go back as far as Erechtheus,[28] whose very daughters underwent death, for the safety of their fellow-citizens: they instance Codrus, who threw himself into the midst of his enemies, dressed like a common man, that his royal robes might not betray him, because the oracle had declared the Athenians conquerors, if their king was slain. Menoeceus[29] is not overlooked by them, who, in compliance with the injunctions of an oracle, freely shed his blood for his country. ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... to do as he liked. It was thus come so far that the people were baptized in the most places on the sea-coast, but the most of them were ignorant of Christian law. In the upper ends of the valleys, and in the habitations among the mountains, the greater part of the people were heathen; for when the common man is left to himself, the faith he has been taught in his childhood is that which has the strongest hold over his inclination. But the king threatened the most violent proceedings against great or small, who, after the king's message, would ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... did display some energy. When I had swallowed one glass I rose up to leave. He no longer spoke of accompanying me, and with a sullen scowl, the scowl of a common man in an angry mood, the scowl of a brute whose violence is only slumbering, in the direction of his ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... revolutionary economic and social programs. He was not a student of such philosophies, yet he had in his heart that particular treasure, namely an affection for people, for the fortunate and no less for the poor and the dispossessed. Without this love for the common man, these philosophies are never translated into the natural order of things nor ever become more than intellectual pronouncements. He was neither a mystic nor a reformer, but a citizen who was deeply cognizant of ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... while Irish bogs were deep and Irish pikes were sharp, his life would not be worth one week's purchase if he wronged this girl. Bad man as Asgill was, his love was of no common kind, even as the man was no common man. ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... first moment I saw that beautiful girl I felt a warm interest in her, and I feel that interest increasing every day. I certainly am very anxious to secure her for her own sake, whilst I candidly admit that I am not wholly indifferent to the property. I am only a common man like others, and not above the world and its influences—who can be that lives in it? My mother, besides, will come to think better of Alice, and all of them, when she shall be enabled to call Alice daughter; won't ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... task of human politics and statesmanship is to extend the sphere of Law. Let others labour to make men cultured or virtuous or happy. These are the tasks of the teacher, the priest, and the common man. The statesman's task is simpler. It is to enfold them in a jurisdiction which will enable them to live the life of their souls' choice. The State, said the Greek philosophers, is the foundation of the good life; but its crown rises far above ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... a hundred per cent. and more profit, when there is particular demand or scarcity of them. And the traders who come with small cargoes, and others engaged in the business, buy them up from the merchants and sell them again to the common man, who cannot do without them, oftentimes at a hundred per cent. advance, or higher and lower according to the demand. Upon liquors, which are liable to much leakage, they take more, and those who buy from them retail them in the same manner, as we have described in ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... Gentlemen! (Silence ensues, and he continues in his usual voice.) Permit a common man to say a word, too, on this festive occasion. I was a poor little boy when I entered Mr. Tjaelde's employment; but he pulled me out of the gutter. (Laughter.) I am-what I am, gentlemen! And therefore if any here is qualified to talk about Mr. Tjaelde, ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... seeks a loan from the other, who, so far as fortune goes, is more than competent to grant it. And the persons are to be you and I: you, the friend from whom the loan is sought—I, the friend who seeks it; you, the disciple of the philosophy in question—I, a common man, with no more philosophy than to know that when I am comfortably warm I don't feel cold, and when I have the ague I shake. Mind, now, you must work up your imagination, and, as much as possible, talk and behave ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... with us; some sought to destroy us; some fought the Turks; some were in alliance with them. They have a Bishop, Governor and Serdar, but these are mere names. People obey only if they can gain by so doing. We even heard a common man say to the Bishop's face: 'Holy Bishop, you lie like a hound! I will cut out your heart on the point of my knife.' Except that they keep the fasts they have no religion. They rob, steal, and have many wives. Some sell women ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... the products of scientific research, but he had a vague fear of the scientist—the "egghead." To his way of thinking, the laws were cleverly-designed restrictions promulgated by that marvelous epitome of humanity, the common man, to keep the mysterious scientists from meddling with things they ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... wandered by the banks of the pleasant rivulet. It seems singular to me, on reflection, that I never availed myself of his kind invitation. I say singular, for the extraordinary, under whatever form, had long had no slight interest for me: and I had discernment enough to perceive that yon was no common man. Yet I went not near him, certainly not from bashfulness, or timidity, feelings to which I had long been an entire stranger. Am I to regret this? perhaps, for I might have learned both wisdom and righteousness from those calm, quiet lips, and my after-course might ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... turned mechanically. A barge at the river steps was disgorging musicians with lutes like half melons set on staves, horns that opened bell mouths to the sky, and cymbals that clanged in the rushing of the river. With his eyes upon them Henry said: 'A common man may commonly choose his bedfellow.' They had reminded him of the Queen for whose ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... occupants now were men of Mexican birth. One of them, under more favourable circumstances, would have presented a fine appearance. Even in his prison garb, somewhat ragged and squalid, he looked the gentleman and something more. For there was that in his air and physiognomy, which proclaimed him no common man. Captivity may hold and make more fierce, but cannot degrade, the lion. And just as a lion in its cage seemed this man in a cell of the Acordada. His face was of the rotund type, bold in its expression, yet with something of gentle humanity, seen when searched for, ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... sword, and as long as it is buckled on you you will lose no blood, however sorely you may be wounded.' So they rode into the town of Carlion, and Arthur's Knights gave them a glad welcome, and said it was a joy to serve under a King who risked his life as much as any common man. ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... little political prison up in Fort Tryon Park that the World Welfare State, with its usual solicitousness for the common man, keeps for its favorite guests," Morgan said. His wolfish smile returned. "I'd've cut the whole thing down if I'd had had the time. Not the stone—just the steel. In order to apply that kind of pressure you ...
— Thin Edge • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the praise of even this common man, proud of his own vanity, should be undeserved by him. He was troubled, too, at the flippancy with which Euphra spoke; yet not the less did he feel that ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... not the fact or the adventures which give power to Robinson Crusoe. It is the manner of treating what might occur to any fancy, even the dullest. The charm consists in the simplicity and the verisimilitude of the narrative, the rare adaptation of the common man to his circumstances, his projects and failures, the birth of religion in his soul, his conflicting hopes and fears, his occasional despair. We see in him a brother, and a suffering one. We live his life on the island; we share his terrible ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... had fled. Overwhelmingly she realized that Richard had believed her to be the daughter of Peter Bower. Daughter of that crude and common man! Sister of ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... a man who tramped into her presence without removing his hat, who had no greeting for her, who had no semblance of courtesy. In looks, as in action, he made her think of a bull stamping cross-grained into a corral. She had heard of Bishop Dyer forgetting the minister in the fury of a common man, and now she was to feel it. The glance by which she measured him in turn momentarily veiled the divine in the ordinary. He looked a rancher; he was booted, spurred, and covered with dust; he carried a gun at his hip, and she remembered ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... friend," he went on, "I take it that if a common man or a gentleman takes interest, he is a wrong-doer. The truth ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... that Joy Irving has both. She is a good girl, too, and a fine musician; but she has no family, and her alliance with my son would be a great drawback to his career. Her father was a grocer, I believe, or something of that sort; quite a common man, who married a third-class actress, Joy's mother. Mr Irving was in very comfortable circumstances at one time, but a stroke of paralysis rendered him helpless some four years ago. He died last ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... aim is to rid this country of this anarchy. Your common man cannot live without a King, whether a real one or a fraud! Anarchy is ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... myself to their notions, I shall at first suppose; that there is only a single existence, which I shall call indifferently OBJECT or PERCEPTION, according as it shall seem best to suit my purpose, understanding by both of them what any common man means by a hat, or shoe, or stone, or any other impression, conveyd to him by his senses. I shall be sure to give warning, when I return to a more philosophical way of speaking ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... saw him at the stand to-day, good Malluch, Sheik Ilderim appeared to be a very common man. The rabbis in Jerusalem would look down upon him, I fear, as a son of a dog of Edom. How came he in possession of the Orchard? And how has he been able to hold it against the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... OF MR. JOHNSTON.—Gov. Cass writes from Washington: "Mr. Johnston's death is an event I sincerely deplore, and one upon which I tender my condolements to the family. He was really no common man. To preserve the manners of a perfect gentleman, and the intelligence and information of a well-educated man, in the dreary wastes around him, and in his seclusion from all society but that of his own family, required a vigor and ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... beard. The second was a popular lecturer. The third was in distemper and crouched quietly at her plate. The first two are sharp and bright and they roared to expectation. But I do not complain when lions take possession of the cage, for it reduces the general liability of talk, and a common man, if he be industrious, may pluck his bird down to the ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... closer-fighting swordsman or the bowman could hold his own, and a democratic flavour, a touch of repudiation, was in the air. In such countries as Italy, Greece, the Alps, the Netherlands, and Great Britain, the two forces of the old order, the aristocrat and the common man, were in a state of unstable equilibrium through the whole period of history. A slight change[22] in the details of the conflict for existence could tilt the balance. A weapon a little better adapted to one class than the other, or a slight widening of the educational ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... These unfortunate people who are fighting here strive to create a republic where all men shall be equal! Said the sainted martyr Charles on the scaffold, ''T is no concern of the common people's how they are governed.' A common man equal to a Talbot! Fight, my son, if you must; but oh, fight for the king, even an usurper, before a republic, a mob in which so-called equality stands in very unstable equilibrium,—fight for the rightful ruler of the land, ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... split an infinitive and failed to button up a sentence in saying so. His main argument conceded every objection a reasonable person could make to the City Merchants' curriculum. He admitted that translation had now placed all the wisdom of the past at a common man's disposal, that scarcely a field of endeavour remained in which modern work had not long since passed beyond the ancient achievement. He disclaimed any utility. But there was, he said, a peculiar magic in these ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... know what to say to that, for it did not seem fitting that his daughter should marry a common man. But the Tsaritsa begged and plead with him till he could no ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... was an essential feature of Babylonian costume, common to high and low, to the king and to the peasant. It was a broad belt, probably of leather, and encircled the waist rather high up. The warrior carried his daggers in it; to the common man it served the purpose of keeping in place the cloth which he wore round his body. According to Herodotus, it was also universal in Babylonia to carry a seal and ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... in a democratic age and we democratise everything. It is too late in the day to propose to place the whole of this department under the care of any Brahmin caste; the subject is one which every common man and woman can understand. It is one which comes home to every human being, for it adds a new interest to life, and vivifies the sombre but all-pervading ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... only excited erroneous ideas,(11) and the mistaken system of sacrifice; but, since these institutions had been once established, every good citizen ought to own and follow them and do his part, that the "common man" might learn rather to set a higher value on, than to contemn, the gods. That the common man, for whose benefit the grandees thus surrendered their judgment, now despised this faith and sought his remedy elsewhere, was a matter of course and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... language of the common man; my words are fitted to his understanding. My congregation is larger than that of any church in my town; my readers are more than those in the school. Young and old alike find in me stimulation, instruction, entertainment, inspiration, solace, comfort. I am the chronicler of birth, and ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... value or independence of any of them. Witness his effort at the reunion of the Catholic and Protestant Churches. After Leibnitz came Kant. He certainly was very much of a German. He owned, nevertheless, that he had learned from Rousseau to honor the common man who, not being a savant, possesses moral value far above the savant, who has no merit but science. And, starting from the principle that every person, so far as he is capable of moral value, is entitled to respect, he urged men to create ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... all the nations: to hint at the possibility of a revelation of the glory of God to a stranger; far more, to hint that a stranger might be fitter to receive such a revelation than a Jew, was an offence reaching to the worst insult; and it was cast in their teeth by a common man of their own city! 'Thou art but a well-known carpenter's son, and dost thou teach us! Darest thou imply a divine preference for Capernaum over Nazareth?' In bad odour with the rest of their countrymen, they ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... I was a good enough card to make his hand worth playing, and in spite of the half contemptuous amusement with which I regarded the whole scheme, I couldn't help being "on my mettle." I found myself wanting to succeed, wanting to please the big, common man whom a few hours ago I ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... would not that one should pass from under the shadow of my house whither she is not welcome. Without my leave the prince named this woman as his queen, as he had the right to do; and without my leave he unnames her, as he has the right to do. Were the prince a common man, according to custom he should pay a fine of cattle to be held by me in trust for her whom he discards; but this is a matter that I leave ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... people themselves. His personal contact with these, however, was rather slight. Except for his brief work as a pastor, he had so far spent the greater part of his life in intellectual pursuits quite removed from the interest of the common man. And the question was then how he, a man without any special position and influence, could reach the ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... must ask pardon. Upon no other foundation than this, Mr. Triplett took occasion to give the gentleman's pedigree, by what methods some part of the estate was acquired, how much it was beholden to a marriage for the present circumstances of it: after all, he could see nothing but a common man in his person, his ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... vaguely disappointed because he was missing from the scene of splendor. It proved to her that caste overcame all else In the rock-ribbed east. The common man, no matter how valiant, had no place in such affairs as these. Her pride was suffering. She was as a queen among the noblest of the realm. As the wife of Baldos she would live in another world—on the outskirts of this one of splendor and arrogance. A stubborn, defiant ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... man—these who, so far from giving medicine to heal his malady, even feed it with sweet poison? These it is who kill the rich crop of reason with the barren thorns of passion, who accustom men's minds to disease, instead of setting them free. Now, were it some common man whom your allurements were seducing, as is usually your way, I should be less indignant. On such a one I should not have spent my pains for naught. But this is one nurtured in the Eleatic and Academic philosophies. Nay, ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... figures of King and Queen and the lesser figures of Greek and Amazon, Centaur and Greek. I thought that all art should be a Centaur finding in the popular lore its back and its strong legs. I got great pleasure too from remembering that Homer was sung, and from that tale of Dante hearing a common man sing some stanza from 'The Divine Comedy,' and from Don Quixote's meeting with some common man that sang Ariosto. Morris had never seemed to care for any poet later than Chaucer; and though I preferred Shakespeare to Chaucer ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... and irritated me. "How infinitely absurd!" I said. "Do they dream of sinking you into a common man?" ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... lecture me in an injured tone: "I say, it is really too bad of you. I should not have believed it if you had not told us yourself. To go and get married like any fool of a fella' that hasn't forty thou' a year, like any common man—it's too rough." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... small and dark and ugly... he wore a rough reefer and cap ... but Gerald, he's no common man! There's something strange and terrible about him... there's a fire blazing in him. The detective who was with us introduced us to him... and he stood there and stared at me! I tried to say something or other... "I've been so ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... the large-handed man. In parrying the spear the chief is vigorous; the breaking of points is sweet. Delightful is the season of fish, the season of food; when one is filled with fish, when one is filled with food. Thou art satisfied with food, O thou common man, To be satisfied with ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... than they care for success, for fame, for pleasure. If they are defeated, if they never have the chance to do that one thing—perhaps the world is no poorer—there are plenty to take their places, but they are capable of misery, real misery, such as no common failure ever brings to the common man. They may be foolish; they may be idle and be drawn aside and think they are happier in doing what comes along, but that is never true. They are wretched. Such men can never love, except as an interlude. ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... revives in his imagination all the beauteous lawns, green fields, woods, forests, rivers and solitudes, which he had ever before seen in picture, description, or real life: and all with this addition, that he now sees them with the eyes of a happy lover, as before only with those of a common man. You laugh, gentlemen: but consider yourselves (you common people that were never in love) and compare yourselves in good humour with yourselves out of humour, and you will then acknowledge, that all external objects affect you according to the disposition you are in to receive ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... from the west of England, and two from London, to fish on the New England coasts, and made profitable voyages." (Holmes' Annals of America, Vol. I., p. 179.) In a note on the same page it is said: "Where in Newfoundland they shared six or seven pounds for a common man, in New England they shared fourteen pounds; besides, six Dutch and French ships made wonderful ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... no prerogative more tenaciously held by the common man than that of rulership. There is no greater opposition to woman's equality in the State than there is in the Church, and this notwithstanding the fact that the Church and the pulpit are largely sustained by women. The Church is spiritually and actually a womanly institution, ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... verbal and empty character of philosophy is surely a reproach with which we are, but too familiar. If pragmatism be true, it is a perfectly sound reproach unless the theories under fire can be shown to have alternative practical outcomes, however delicate and distant these may be. The common man and the scientist say they discover no such outcomes, and if the metaphysician can discern none either, the others certainly are in the right of it, as against him. His science is then but pompous trifling; and the endowment of ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... did not bow sufficiently low to confidential Secretaries and Executive Clerks. He would have found such obsequiousness difficult. Mr. Stuart was both vigorous in mind and body, and was very far from being a common man. He stood more than six feet high, and was built in proportion. His shoulders were broad, his chest ample, and his arms long. His head was immoderately large. His countenance was commanding and his bearing dignified. He spoke with great ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... can take (as my poor husband used to tell me) what they call left-handed wives, and leave them behind when they go abroad, widowhood is widowhood, left-handed or right. And really, to be the left-handed wife of a foreign baron is nobler than to be married all round to a common man. You'll excuse my freedom, ma'am; but being a widow myself, I have pitied you from my heart; so young as you are, and having to keep it a secret, and (excusing me) having no money out of his vast riches because 'tis swallowed up by Baroness ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... was started in Luther's days was a particularly offensive enterprise. "It was not so much the theory of the Church that excited Luther's indignation as it was the practises of some of her agents. They encouraged the common man to believe that the purchase of a papal pardon would assure him impunity without any real repentance on his part. Moreover, whatever the theoretical worth of indulgences, the motive of their sale was notoriously the greed of unscrupulous ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... all the time that you're nothing but a bully. You know I can't go back to the gutter, as you call it, and that I have no real friends in the world but you and the Colonel. You know well I couldn't bear to live with a low common man after you two; and it's wicked and cruel of you to insult me by pretending I could. You think I must go back to Wimpole Street because I have nowhere else to go but father's. But don't you be too ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... rough cloak of frieze, and on his head a broad hat to shade his face; in his hand he carried a trident for spearing fish, and over his shoulder was a casting-net; but Danae could see that he was no common man by his stature, and his walk, and his flowing golden hair and beard; and by the two servants who came behind him, carrying baskets for his fish. But she had hardly time to look at him before he had laid aside his trident and leapt down the rocks, and thrown his casting-net so surely ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... founder of the old Republican party. They went back to the policy of the fathers, whose words on the subject of slavery they eagerly read. From this source also came the chief material for their public addresses. To the common man who was thus indoctrinated, the Chief Justice, in describing the sentiments of the fathers respecting slavery, appeared to be doing what Horace Greeley was wont to describe as "saying a thing and being conscious while saying it that ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... It is at such instants that my nature asserts itself. With dignity I advanced toward the tribunal. My jacket was torn, my hair was dishevelled, my head was bleeding, but there was that in my eyes and in my carriage which made them realise that no common man was before them. Not a hand was raised to arrest me until I halted in front of a formidable old man, whose long grey beard and masterful manner told me that both by years and by character he was ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "sole responsibility," in an affair which seemed likely to be so hotly contested. The blood curdled in his veins at the thought of the deadly enemies, darkly hinted at, and the consequences clearly threatened. He saw Caroline was no common thief, and Franklin no common man. There were moments when he actually believed the fact really was as Franklin represented—and, thus quailing under the torrent of eloquence to which the voice and manner gave something absolutely irresistible, half suffocated with rage and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... to imply that all men are constantly or even often engaged in meditating on the nature and origin of death. Far from it. Few people trouble themselves about that or any other purely abstract question: the common man would probably not give a straw for an answer to it. What he wants to know, what we all want to know, is whether death is the end of all things for the individual, whether our conscious personality perishes ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... "He was a common man, but he had an open, intelligent countenance, and his manner was most respectful. I motioned him to be seated. He selected a chair, and sat down on the extreme edge ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... has a good mind. Nor can we expect in one man every good quality. But he is really a silly fellow, my dear, to trouble his head about me, when he sees how much I despise his whole sex; and must of course make a common man look like a fool, were he not to make himself look like one, by wishing to pitch his tent so oddly. Our likings and dislikings, as I have often thought, are seldom governed by prudence, or with a view to happiness. The eye, my dear, the wicked eye, has such a strict alliance with the heart—and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... stride of a perfect creature, swinging from the hip and covering the ground at a common man's running pace. His vast chest heaved and fell easily and rhythmically, the golden-hued skin rippling and flashing in the rising sunlight; every line of limbs and torso was the outward and visible sign of abounding health; the straight black hair falling to his shoulders framed a ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... common man should be shamed before the world, is nothing; but it were dishonor to the king if any that saw his minister naked should not also see him delivered from his shame. If I might ask that my ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the room, however, which were peculiar to itself. The one was a human skull—to all appearance, the same as all other skulls, the virtue of which has gone out of them, though it had once belonged to no common man. The second object could still less be termed an ornament than the first, although it was a picture. It depicted a woman of frightful aspect, having but one eye, and a hare-lip; she was standing up, and appeared to be declaiming or dictating; while an old cripple, at a table beside her, took down ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... long he remained with Paul does not appear, but it was long enough to impress on the Apostle's mind that this slave was no common man. Paul had devoted and active friends by him, but this slave, trained to watch his master's wants and to execute promptly all that was entrusted to him, became almost indispensable to the Apostle. But to retain him, he feels, would be to steal him, or at any rate to deprive Philemon of the ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... walls of our retreat by night, resolved to kill his nephew first and me afterwards. Roused by the noise of the ruffians, my husband seized his firearms. Three of his assailants he shot from the balcony, and my father, disguised as a common man, received a volley in the face, which destroyed his eyesight. The Parliament of Rennes took up the matter. My husband thought it best not to put in an appearance, and after the evidence of sundry witnesses called at random, a warrant for ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... monarchy, complete with the installation of the Kyle Dynasty—damn him! This is something which psychologists, not historians, must explain. Has the age of the Common Man, so bravely flaunted for over one hundred years, truly come to nothing? Would people really prefer a figurehead and a symbol ...
— With a Vengeance • J. B. Woodley
... Wales, from low things to things more worthy his birth. It ends with the killing of Hotspur, by the Prince of Wales, on the battlefield at Shrewsbury. Hotspur is an uncommon man, whose uncommonness is unsupported by his father at a critical moment. Henry, Prince of Wales, is a common man, whose commonness props his father, and helps him to conquer. The play is about a son too brilliant to be understood, and a son too common ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... in which man feels himself taken possession of and inspired by his god. Some of these belonged to Asia Minor, the great centre of worships accompanied with ecstasy and frenzy, but some were of native growth. In these the common man found a satisfaction which the stately ceremonial of the temples did not afford. The official religion had grown cold and distant; but in the worship of Demeter or Dionysus, as afterwards of the Phrygian Cybele, the "Great Mother" whom the Romans ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... diminished, although the thickness of a dozen cocoons could not be measured; and this old cell needs removing, that the bees may replace it with a new one. But how shall it be done? This is a feat for the display of ingenuity. A common man might go about it in a very sensible, simple manner, might possibly turn the hive over, and cut out the old combs when necessary, without knowing perhaps that the patent-vender could sell a receipt to do the thing scientifically, ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... in the constitution to prevail over the disease; that all he had heard of the manner of the King's life, did unquestionably make him an unfavourable subject for such a struggle, but that if it was the case of any common man, he should have no hesitation in pronouncing even now that it would be very bad luck indeed if he did not recover, and that the chances were nine to one in his favour. You will easily suppose that this was said under the seal of confidence, and that a professional man would not choose to have ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... to be the real and sufficient explanation of the paradoxical truth, on which so much stress is laid by Dr. Whewell, that a scientifically cultivated mind is actually, in virtue of that cultivation, unable to conceive suppositions which a common man conceives without the smallest difficulty. For there is nothing inconceivable in the suppositions themselves; the impossibility is in combining them with facts inconsistent with them, as part of the same mental picture; an obstacle of course only felt by those who know the facts, and are able ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... which employs me until it is time to dress for dinner." A visitor at this time is authority for the statement that the master "often works with his men himself—strips off his coat and labors like a common man. The General has a great turn for mechanics. It's astonishing with what niceness he directs everything in the building way, condescending even to measure the things himself, that ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... schools; she must use less powder and buckshot and more law and equity; she must pay less attention to politics and more attention to the development of her magnificent resources; she must get off the "race line" hobby and pay more attention to the common man; she must wake ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... is, that, but for their wives' money, they would be but the merest, poorest nobodies. So small are they that even that suffices to make them feel big! But Helen did not like it, especially when he would ask her if he might have this or that, or do so and so. Any common man who heard him would have thought him afraid of his wife; but a large-hearted woman would at once have understood, as did Helen, that it all came of his fine sense of truth, and reality, and obligation. Still Helen would ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... were good enough—as good as, if more sober than, my housecarl finery. But I suppose that not one in all the gathering looked at what he wore; for as he passed up the long tables, it seemed that there was no man worth looking at but he, and even Ragnar seemed to be but a common man when one turned to him with eyes that had ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... warlike; but he always contrived so as never to make war in reality, and always to make money. His taxation of the people, on pretence of war with France, involved, at one time, a very dangerous insurrection, headed by Sir John Egremont, and a common man called John a Chambre. But it was subdued by the royal forces, under the command of the Earl of Surrey. The knighted John escaped to the Duchess of Burgundy, who was ever ready to receive any one who gave the King trouble; and the plain John was hanged ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... learn not to give herself airs; you'd think she was a duke's granddaughter and not the other. I'm sure she looks at me sometimes as much as to say, "I'm a princess, and you're only a common man," and treats me as if I was the dirt under her feet, instead of being her father, to whom she owes everything,' said Mr ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... cloud of disappointment passed over his face as he replied: "Nay, miracles have I never wrought, though I have heard of many; but the All-Father has given no power to my hands save such as belongs to common man." ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... social progress. Its other service is to put before us the things that fundamentally concern all men in common—the occupations and values connected with getting a living. Economic history deals with the activities, the career, and fortunes of the common man as does no other branch of history. The one thing every individual must do is to live; the one thing that society must do is to secure from each individual his fair contribution to the general well being and see to it that a just ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... both of the Long Island is only the lodging of the common man or 'Tuathanach,' and is consequently of small dimensions, and not remarkable for comfort. If the modern Highland proprietor or large farmer should ever be induced to lead a pastoral life, and adopt a Pictish architecture ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
... grac'd by him: Hee's our old enemie and still maligns us. 'Twill have an end, nay it shall have an end. Why, I have bin too pittifull, too remisse; My easinesse is laught at and contemn'd. But I will change it; not as heretofore By singling out them one by one to death: Each common man can such revenges have; A Princes anger must lay desolate Citties, Kingdomes consume, Roote up mankind. O could I live to see the generall end, Behold the world enwrapt in funerall flame, When as the Sunne shall lend his beames to burne What he before brought ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... tell you what might be ugly behaviour in a common man is suitable and right in a king. But you are so hard to please and so pettish, I am seven times tired of yourself and ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... first and chief need of this nation of ours to-day is to include in the partnership of government all those great bodies of unnamed men who are going to produce our future leaders and renew the future energies of America. And as I confess that, as I confess my belief in the common man, I know what I am saying. The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it. The man who is in the melee knows what blows are being struck and what blood is being drawn. The man who is on the make is the judge of what is happening in America, ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... the letters in the Latin tongue, how one ought to speak German; but one must ask the mother in the house, the children in the lanes and alleys, the common man in the market, concerning this; yea, and look at the moves of their mouths while they are talking, and thereafter interpret. They understand you then, and mark that one ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... order those miles of stately columns, those seas of glittering gilt and crystal, he who had been magician, builder, creator, perverter, debaser—he, Louis of France, the Grand Monarque, now lay suffering like any ordinary human being, like any common man. ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... to and worn out by, but to behold beauty now invisible. May we not see God? Are we to be put off and amused in this life, as it were with a mere allegory? Is not Nature, rightly read, that of which she is commonly taken to be the symbol merely? When the common man looks into the sky, which he has not so much profaned, he thinks it less gross than the earth, and with reverence speaks of "the Heavens," but the seer will in the same sense speak of "the Earths," and his Father who is in them. "Did not he that made that which is within, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... arrived in response to the Examiner's call, one almost literally fulfilled Eunice's prophecy of a rude, unkempt, common man. His name was Shane and he strode into the room with a bumptious, self-important air, his burly frame looking especially awkward and unwieldy in ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... themselves why there is no revolt against the dogmas of mathematics though there is one against the dogmas of religion. It is not that the mathematical dogmas are more comprehensible. The law of inverse squares is as incomprehensible to the common man as the Athanasian creed. It is not that science is free from legends, witchcraft, miracles, biographic boostings of quacks as heroes and saints, and of barren scoundrels as explorers and discoverers. On the contrary, ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... rights. But once in ancient times one of 'em, when he was at work, changed clothes with King Charles the Second, and saved the king's life. King Charles came up to him like a common man, and said off-hand, "Man in the smock-frock, my name is Charles the Second, and that's the truth on't. Will you lend me your clothes?" "I don't mind if I do," said Hedger Luxellian; and they changed there and then. "Now mind ye," King Charles the Second said, like a common man, ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... the Middle Ages, when crude grinding made impure flour, were the days of the oppressed peasant and the rich landowner, dark days of toil and poverty and war, of blight and drought and famine; when common man in his wretchedness and hunger cried out, ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... Jack!—What can they be?—I have not found that my generosity to my Rose-bud ever did me due credit with this pair of friends. Very hard, Belford, that credits cannot be set against debits, and a balance struck in a rake's favour, as well as in that of every common man!—But he, from whom no good is expected, is not allowed the merit ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Frenchman's face like the changes on a moving picture film. I suppose it was half a minute. And here was the coward face gazing into mine, transfigured into the face of a man who cared about another man more than himself—a common man whose one high quality ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... delighted grenadier, handing the bottle, the bread and the meat to Napoleon, who took them and drank and ate rapidly as he continued to question amid the approving murmurs of the soldiers, who were so delighted to see their Emperor eat like a common man that they quite forgot their ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... a surer pledge, That thou art gentle, than thy filial love. I say no more. Much yet is to be done, Ere thou mak'st booty of the golden fleece. Expect no easy victory! Czar Boris rules with strong and skilful hand; You take the field against no common man. He that by merit hath achieved the throne, Is not puffed from his seat by popular breath; His deeds do serve to him for ancestors. To your good fortune I commend you now; Already twice, as by a miracle, Hath it redeemed you from the grasp of death; 'Twill put the finish on its work, and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... from the boat, after he has plunged panting into the lake, requires the rare ability to hit a moving object the size of a deer's head a few rods distant. Either exploit is sufficient to make a hero of a common man. To paddle up to the swimming deer, and cut his throat, is a sure means of getting venison, and has its charms for some. Even women and doctors of divinity have enjoyed this exquisite pleasure. It cannot be denied that we are so constituted by a wise Creator as to feel a delight in killing a wild ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... If a common man were really cruel to his horse he would be compelled to draw his merchandise by hand. If the offence were committed by a man of high position the punishment would be more severe, and not only would he be treated ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... I, the Princess of Egypt, cannot live as the wife of a common man who falls from a throne to set himself upon the earth, and smears his own brow with mud for a uraeus crown. When your prophecies come true, Seti, and you crawl from your dust, then ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... shadow theatre are the "opera of the common man" and took a new development in Ming time, the wood-cut and block-printing developed largely as a cheap substitute of real paintings. The new urbanites wanted to have paintings of the masters and found in the wood-cut which soon became a multi-colour ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard |
