"Common people" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but he hushed his very breath, that she might sleep on, for his heart was full of that ungovernable pity which makes the fading heart of the lover a shadow of the divine heart. Presently he turned to Duallach and said: 'It is not right that I stay here where there are none of her kindred, for the common people are always ready to blame the beautiful.' And then they went down and stood at the door of the house and waited, but the evening wore on and ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... to. Well, I won't put you in a hole, Mr. Hovstad. Let us say it is I that am the freethinker, then. I am going to prove to you, scientifically, that the "People's Messenger" leads you by the nose in a shameful manner when it tells you that you—that the common people, the crowd, the masses, are the real essence of the People. That is only a newspaper lie, I tell you! The common people are nothing more than the raw material of which a People is made. (Groans, laughter and uproar.) Well, isn't that the ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... the success at Loudoun Hill was spread abroad, a number of preachers, gentlemen, and common people, who had embraced the more moderate doctrine, joined the army of Hamilton, thinking, that the difference in their opinions ought not to prevent their acting in the common cause. The insurgents were repulsed in an attack upon the town of Glasgow, which, however, Claverhouse, shortly afterwards, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... were so far hieratic as to be understood only by the priests and those who had received a special training in this direction, and they seem therefore to have been entirely unintelligible to the common people. ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... countenance the old painter endeavored to throw an air of profoundest repose. He succeeded. I have heard that that picture has a strange power to soothe. Gazing upon it the spirit grows calm and the voice unconsciously sinks into a whisper. Our priests would tell the common people that it is a miraculous influence exerted upon them by the Virgin herself, whereas it is only the effect produced by the exquisite skill of the artist. Eh, bien! our church is full ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... myself I am a trifle above common people," returned Mr. Woodward, and it was plain to see where Duncan got ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... free institution, the people stood an independent and free nation,—and that bonds to her meant slavery to them. Therefore did he gird on the sword when he saw peril gathering around her. The privileges,—the entire standing of the common people, as given them by the Reformation,—he saw to be in danger: he was "one of themselves;" and he felt and fought as if almost the quarrel had been a personal one, and the question at issue his own liberty or slavery. How richly equipped and nobly ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... former, on the other hand, is the attainment of a clever pupil when the sentiment is commonplace; when it is deep and vehement, it is often, in the language of Carlyle, "the effort of a man to express something which he has no organ fit for expressing." Common people, to whom niceties of style are unknown, and who read primarily or exclusively for the sake of the matter, perceive nothing of this affectation, and think scarcely less highly of Burns's letters than ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... than by this uncultivated savage. All the effects landed from the ships were deposited near his dwelling; and an armed guard surrounded them all night, until houses could be prepared in which to store them. There seemed, however, even among the common people, no disposition to take advantage of the misfortune of the stranger. Although they beheld what must in their eyes have been inestimable treasures, cast, as it were, upon their shores, and open to depredation, yet there was not the least attempt to pilfer, nor, in transporting the ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... old barn." There the Rector performed two services a Sunday, celebrated the Holy Communion once a month, and preached his practical sermons, transcribed from his own execrable manuscript by a sedulous clerk. "I like," he said, "to look down upon my congregation—to fire into them. The common people say I am a bould preacher, for I like to have my arms free, and to thump the pulpit." A lady dressed in crimson velvet he welcomed with the words, "Exactly the colour of my preaching cushion! I really can hardly keep my hands ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... destruction, ubiquity, eternity, almighty power, those of the divine attributes—these are all ideas so confused and obscure that few men succeed in grasping them; yet there is nothing obscure about them to the common people, because they do not understand them in the least; how then should they present themselves in full force, that is to say in all their obscurity, to the young mind which is still occupied with the first working of the senses, and fails to realise anything but what it ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... no wealth, and no social position outside his flock. He preached in an upper chamber or in catacombs. Saint Paul preached at Rome with chains on his arms or legs. The apostles preached to plain people, to common people, and lived sometimes by the work of their own hands. In a century or two, although the Church was still hunted and persecuted, there were nevertheless many converts. These converts contributed from their small means to the support of the poor. At first the deacons, who seem to have ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... madness!) conform their manners to the pure and simple living of CHRIST and his Apostles, nor they will not follow freely their learning. Wherefore all the Emperors and Kings, and all other lords and ladies, and all the common people in every degree and state, which have before time known or might have known; and also all they that now yet know or might know this foresaid witness of priesthood; and would not, nor yet will enforce them, after their ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... changed; but in the fifty-eighth year after its millennium and a half it will then begin to flourish. The practice at the same time following upon the theory will be proved by wonderful and incredible signs, so as to be open to mechanics and common people, and they will thoroughly understand how firm and immovable is that Paracelsic Art against the triflings of the Sophists; though meanwhile that sophistical science has to have its ineptitude propped up ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... collateral attestation? And how transcendently extraordinary, I had almost said miraculous, will it be estimated by candid and reasonable minds, that a writer whose object was a melioration of condition to the common people, and their deliverance from oppression, poverty, wretchedness, to the numberless blessings of upright and equal government, should be reviled, persecuted, and burned in effigy, with every circumstance of insult and execration, by these very objects of his benevolent ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... charred bones found among the ashes in them, are known to be tombs, and they were probably the sepulchers of the common people, whose bodies were burned. The large mounds are heaped above walled chambers, and in these were platforms, supposed to have been altars, and whole skeletons, supposed to be the skeletons of priests buried there. The priests are supposed to have been the chiefs of the people, and to have ruled ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... of the cities and large towns and the residents of the country. There is no homogeneity, but everywhere a rigid spirit of caste. The longings of South Carolina are essentially monarchical rather than republican; even the common people have become so debauched in loyalty, that very many of them would readily accept the creation of orders of nobility. In Georgia there is something less of this spirit; but the upper classes continually ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... feelings of the natives, was puzzling to the Europeans. This continued throughout their stay, presents of all kinds being showered upon them. The officers, however, observed that the warrior chiefs were not so enthusiastic as the priests and common people. The death of a seaman, who was buried on shore in the presence of a large concourse, would seem to have been the first circumstance that threw doubts upon the godlike character of the visitors; but the ready way in which the fence of a Morai or sacred inclosure, which ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... no such thing, and I presoom the man told considerable truth. And we see Rabbis, Turkish cavalry, common people livin' in the queer little housen jest as they did in Jerusalem, and the priests goin' through their religious ceremonies jest the same. And we went through the Citadel and the different ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... Metre Fitted to the Tunes used in Parish Churches by John Patrick, D.D. Precentor to the Charter House London." A curious feature of this octavo edition of 1701, which I have, is, "An Explication of Some Words of less Common Use For the Benefit of the Common People." Here are a few ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... and we are only common people. My father can't hand a lady in and out of a carriage as Lord Chesterfield can, nor can he make so grand a bow, nor does he put on evening dress for a late dinner, and we never go to the opera nor to the theatre, and know nothing of polite society, nor can we tell exactly whom our great-great-grandfather ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... the police—a feeling which the women, whose sympathies were with the outlaw, and who resented the arrest of their husbands, fathers, and brothers, did their utmost to encourage. The police found it hopeless to get a scrap of information. The common people even refused to fraternize with them in the evenings when they were gathered round the bar-room ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... some of these seeds resembling wheat; and taking off the outward pulp of the ivy-berries, we found in each of the berries four seeds; which were generally concluded by the Society to be the same with those that were supposed and believed by the common people to have been wheat that had been rained; and, that they were brought to those places, where they were found, by starlings; who, of all the birds that we know, do assemble in the greatest numbers; and do, at this time of the year, feed upon ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... no one got in, and the train started, and we opened our baskets and began to eat and to drink, like two aristocrats or plutocrats. What made our inhuman behavior worse was that we were really nothing of the kind, but both professed friends of the common people. The story might show that when it comes to a question of selfishness men are all alike ready to profit by the unjust conditions. However, it must be remembered that those people were only bicyclers. If we could have conceived of them as masses we should have known ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... These, however, were popular divinities which the Druids ostensibly worshipped, and popular notions which they ostensibly adopted, in conformity with the prejudices of the vulgar. The Druids well knew that the common people were no philosophers. There is reason also, to think that a great part of the idolatries were not sanctioned by the Druids, but afterwards introduced by the Phoenician colony. But it would be impossible to say how far the primitive Druids accommodated themselves to vulgar superstition, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... common people (and belike, in great part, of the middle class also) was yet more pitiable to behold, for that these, for the most part retained by hope[11] or poverty in their houses and abiding in their own quarters, sickened by the thousand daily and being altogether ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... being brought over one shoulder, and then wrapped round and round the body. It was generally of dark material; the tartans now supposed to be peculiar to the various clans being then unknown, or at least not worn by the common people, although the heads of the clans may have worn scarfs of those patterns. A Highland gentleman or chief, however, dressed in the same garb as Englishmen—that is, in armor, with doublet and hose. His wild followers lived in huts ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... of the country gentlemen, who were obliged to hide their heads, wherever they could, from the plunderers and robbers established under his authority in every part of the country, and that of the miserable common people, who have been obliged to sell their children through want of food to feed them,—the consideration, I say, of the manner in which this country, in the highest, in the middle, and in the lowest classes of its inhabitants, nay, in physical works of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... a distance we may calculate of about 1500 le, (the pilgrims) reached the kingdom of Shen-shen,(1) a country rugged and hilly, with a thin and barren soil. The clothes of the common people are coarse, and like those worn in our land of Han,(2) some wearing felt and others coarse serge or cloth of hair;—this was the only difference seen among them. The king professed (our) Law, and there might be in the country more than four thousand monks,(3) who were all students of the hinayana.(4) ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... brush; Now and then I make a new poem. When the poem is made, it is slight and flavourless, A thing of derision to almost every one. Superior people will be pained at the flatness of the metre; Common people will hate the plainness of the words. I sing it to myself, then stop and ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... dried the perspiration from his forehead. "I will come back in my own time; and it can never be wiped out. For you shook all my faith in my old world. That's the worst thing that can happen a man. I only believe in the very common people now—those who are not put upon their honour. One doesn't expect it of them, and, unlikely as it is, one isn't often deceived. I think we'd better talk no more ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... town of Kardiki, whose inhabitants had formerly joined with those of Kormovo in the outrage inflicted on his mother and sister. The besieged, knowing they had no mercy to hope for, defended themselves bravely, but were obliged to yield to famine. After a month's blockade, the common people, having no food for themselves or their cattle, began to cry for mercy in the open streets, and their chiefs, intimidated by the general misery and unable to stand alone, consented to capitulate. Ali, whose intentions as to the fate of this unhappy town were irrevocably decided, agreed to all that ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... are marvellously expressive, while yet they never depart from a secret and controlling sense of form. His vocabulary is very rich—stocked chiefly with old-fashioned words, racy, colloquial, smacking of the soil, and put together with the light elliptical constructions of the common people. Nicknames he is particularly fond of: the cat is Raminagrobis, or Grippeminaud, or Rodilard, or Maitre Mitis; the mice are 'la gent trotte-menu'; the stomach is Messer Gaster; Jupiter is Jupin; La Fontaine himself ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... those things, whether they chanced by the craft of man, or illusion of the diuell; or whether they proceeded of some naturall cause, which the common people oftentimes taketh superstitiouslie, in place of strange woonders signifieng things to follow, we would let passe, least we might be thought to offend religion; the which teaching all things to be ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (4 of 8) - The Fovrth Booke Of The Historie Of England • Raphael Holinshed
... prepared, Yoshida set himself to teach, and he to learn, the Chinese literature. It is an episode most honourable to Yoshida, and yet more honourable still to the soldier, and to the capacity and virtue of the common people of Japan. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... No. 161, should not be read pynes. But, after all, we have cones brought hither from Italy full of nuts, or kernels, which upon roasting come out of their capsul, and are much eaten by the common people, and these perhaps may ...
— The Forme of Cury • Samuel Pegge
... But the great power which has sustained and developed it is the sturdy and unconquerable Love of individual Liberty which is one of the most marked characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon, whether Briton or American. The Common People of England sent Juries, as well as regiments of Ironsides, to do battle for the Right. Gentlemen, let us devoutly thank God for this Safeguard of Freedom, and take heed that it suffers no detriment in our day, but serves always the Higher Law of ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... universal ignorance of it belong. He takes up this plain, simple subject, and becomes an intellectual aristocrat and a snob of exclusiveness from that time on, and, like the aristocrat of wealth, will have nothing further to do with the common people, cutting off all former connections by turning out a mass of intellectual mud that, only leisure and education can penetrate. And dear to him is the dignity of bulk, the dignity of paunch, using, as he does, twenty words where three would do better work. The living ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... players who needed perhaps but to unroll a mat in some Eastern garden. Nor have I felt this only when I listened to speech, but even more when I have watched the movement of a player or heard singing in a play. I love all the arts that can still remind me of their origin among the common people, and my ears are only comfortable when the singer sings as if mere speech had taken fire, when he appears to have passed into song almost imperceptibly. I am bored and wretched, a limitation I greatly regret, when he seems no longer a human being but an invention of science. To explain him ...
— Certain Noble Plays of Japan • Ezra Pound
... is, alas! some poor demoniac Wandering about the fields, and uttering His unintelligible blasphemies Among the common people, who receive As prophecies the words they comprehend not! Deluded folk! The incomprehensible Alone excites their wonder. There is none So visionary, or so void of sense, But he will find a ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... fourth of the calends of May (which was the twenty-eighth of April), the foundations were laid by Bishop Richard Poore. "On the day appointed for the purpose the bishop came with great devotion, few earls or barons of the county, but a great multitude of the common people coming in from all parts; and when divine service had been performed, and the Holy Spirit invoked, the said bishop, putting off his shoes, went in procession with the clergy of the church to the place of foundation ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... the Lord in His divine providence took care that they should recede from worship of Him, invoke the dead, pray to graven images of the dead, kiss their bones and kneel at their tombs, should ban the reading of the Word, appoint holy worship in masses not understood by the common people, and sell salvation for money. For if they had not done this, they would have profaned the sanctities of the Word and the church. For, as was shown in the preceding section, only those profane holy things who ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Dutch, amongst whom there are very severe penalties for those who are convicted of killing this bird. They are kept tame in almost all their towns, and particularly at the Hague, of the arms of which they make a part. The common people of Holland are said to entertain a superstitious sentiment, that if the whole species of them should become extinct, they should ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... of the largest harvest in the neighbourhood this summer festival had been brilliantly celebrated, and as long as Marcus's father had lived the family had still cherished the quaint rites and the merrymaking of a holiday especially dear to the common people of both city and country. But in these later years there had been neither time nor money for any fetes. Piety, however, was still left, and it was characteristic of the scrupulousness persisting in Marcus's mother ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... indignities they suffered on earth .... them.... the Chosen People of the Lord! It bred in them scorn of the Gentiles, for which there was no solvent in the Roman polity, the Roman citizenship, the Roman peace.—There must have been always noble protest-ants among them. The common people,—as the picture in the Gospels shows,—were ready enough to fraternize humanly with Gentiles and Romans; but the fact remains that at the time Judaism gave birth to Christianity, this narrow fierce antagonism to all other religions was the official attitude of the Jewish church. ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... but their parents guessed that it had some allusion to the state of public affairs. About this time some of those discontents had broken out which preceded the terrible days of the Revolution. As yet, most of the common people, who were honestly employed in earning their own living, neither understood what was going on nor foresaw what was to happen. Many of their superiors were not in such happy ignorance—they had information of the intrigues that were forming; and the more penetration they possessed, the ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... the enemies of the Cross of Christ. The loss to the Crown was enormous.[87] The convents made themselves masters of the valuable libraries of the Jews, one at Stamford, another at Oxford, from which the celebrated Roger Bacon is said to have derived great information; and long after, the common people would dig in the places they had frequented, in hopes ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... in the distant city which the Suffolk villagers called Lunnon, there was a Suffolk lad, whose relations kept a very little shop just by us, who was born at Uggeshall—pronounced Ouchell by the common people—on a very small farm, and who, as Unitarian preacher and newspaper writer, had been and was doing his best in the good cause; but it was not the influence of W. Johnson Fox—for it is of him I ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... places the gimokod are met by the spirits, Toglai and Tigyama, and by them are assigned to their future homes. If a man has been a datu on earth, his spirits have like rank in the other life, but go to the same place as those of common people. The gimokod of evil men are punished by being crowded into poor houses. These spirits may return to their old home for short periods, and talk with the gimokod of the living through dreams, but they never return to dwell ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... For two sins the common people perish: they speak of the holy ark as a box and the synagogue as a resort for ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... we dropped down the Kafu two miles in a canoe, in order that the common people might not see us; for the exclusive king would not allow any eyes but his won to be indulged with the extraordinary sight of white men in Unyoro! The palace side of the river, however, as we paddled away, was thronged with anxious spectators amongst whom the most conspicuous was the ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Scarcity of Books in Country Places; Female Education Literary Attainments of Gentlemen Influence of French Literature Immorality of the Polite Literature of England State of Science in England State of the Fine Arts State of the Common People; Agricultural Wages Wages of Manufacturers Labour of Children in Factories Wages of different Classes of Artisans Number of Paupers Benefits derived by the Common People from the Progress of Civilisation Delusion which leads Men to overrate ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Complete Contents of the Five Volumes • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Cromarty, and was said to have been a man of much ability and considerable culture for the times in which he lived. At the same time he was a man of strong personality though of evil repute in the Gaelic-speaking districts, as the following couplet still current among the common people showed: ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... class of the population, and numbered about five percent of it. It was distinct from the Ku-Li (coolie) or common people, and from the "Ki-Ling" or aristocracy composed of those more energetic men (at least mentally more energetic) who were the active or retired executive heads of the various industrial, educational, ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... the English yoke. Our nobles are for the most part of Norman blood; very many are barons of England; and so great are the jealousies among them that no general effort against England will be possible. No, if Scotland is ever to be freed, it will be by a mighty rising of the common people, and even then the struggle between the commons of Scotland and the whole force of England aided by the feudal power of all the great Scotch nobles, would be well ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... Jones is said to have been able to secure his first pundit's help only by paying him Rs. 500 a month, or L700 a year. Carey engaged and trained his many pundits at a twentieth of that sum. He well knew that the Brahmans would scorn a book in the language of the common people. "What," said one who was offered the Hindi version, "even if the books should contain divine knowledge, they are nothing to us. The knowledge of God contained in them is to us as milk in a vessel ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... harmoniously blended. The modern democratic ideal illustrates this fact. It is greatly different from the ancient democratic ideal, as neither Plato nor Aristotle nor Dante had a place in their ideals for the common people, but when the French Revolution startled the world with the idea of human rights, of natural rights common to all, there sprang into life the conception of the same ideal among the men of our own country." Dr. Shaw traced the progress of democratic ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... political refugee directed the entertainment. On each side of the stage, roofed in with palm leaves, ran covered galleries for the dignitaries of the place; the uncovered space between these was set apart for the common people. The performers had chosen a play taken from Persian history. The language was Spanish, and the dresses were, to say the least, eccentric. The stage was erected hard by a public street, which itself formed part of the auditorium, and the noise ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... we will talk about. Art is the grandest thing in the world; it means everything that is strong and beautiful—statues, pictures, poetry, music. How could one live without art? The artist is born a prince among men. What has he to do with the rules by which common people must direct their lives? Before long, you will feel this as deeply as I do, Miriam. ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... into its bag. 'I say,' said Cyril suddenly, 'I'm rather sick of kings. And people notice you so in palaces. Besides the Amulet's sure to be in a Temple. Let's just go among the common people, and try to work ourselves up by degrees. We might get taken on as ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... Among the common people of the towns and villages their relations were of the most comfortable kind, their depredations being chiefly confined to the rich and prosperous, who, as they wrung their wealth out of the people, were not considered particular objects of compassion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... anybody; she's quite different from common people. How I wish she'd hurry and come out again. She promised to kiss her hand to me from the horse's back, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... the old virtues of the knightly days—loyalty, obedience, redress of wrongs, reverence of womanhood, and the application of Christian ethics to the old rude rules of decency, lifted the life of the common people to a nobler plane and ushered in ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... "The common people," says a late historian, "stood in awe for many years of these suave, urbane, occasionally fire-eating and always well-dressed gentlemen from this most aristocratic section of the Union. The Southerners, born leaders of men, and with politics the paramount interest in their ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... you for the roses; the yellow Scotch and Knight's dark red, and the ever-blowing, came quite fresh, and just at the moment I wanted them, when I had taken to my garden, after finishing my gutters. Lady Hartland told me that the common people call the rose des quatre ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... observer good to see how humanly plants differ in their likes and dislikes. One is catholic: as common people say, it is not particular; it can live and thrive almost anywhere. Another must have precisely such and such conditions, and is to be found, therefore, only in very restricted localities. The Dionaea, or Venus's fly-trap, is a famous example of this fastidiousness, growing ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... with Sir J. Minnes to attend the Duke, and then we back again and rode into the beginning of my Lord Chancellor's new house, near St. James's; which common people have already called Dunkirke-house, from their opinion of his having a good bribe for the selling of that towne. And very noble I believe it will be. Near that is my Lord Barkeley beginning another on one side, and Sir J. Denham on the other. Thence I to ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... public courts of justice by the fact of all cases being referred to him as arbitrator, and that he was virtually king of Athens, although he had not yet surrounded himself with a body-guard. By this time too the common people, elated with their victory at Marathon, and thinking themselves capable of the greatest exploits, were ill pleased at any private citizen being exalted above the rest by his character and virtues. They flocked into the city from all parts of the country and ostracised ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... views of the common people that a banker in Dublin of the name of Beresford having made himself very unpopular, a "large assemblage of ignorant country people having previously collected a quantity of Beresford's notes, publicly burnt them, crying out with enthusiasm while the promises to pay on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... his opinion speak eloquently of the nature of a Roman gentleman of the Empire. As for the state of the poor under Augustus, 200,000 persons in Rome received outdoor relief. Although the rich had every luxury that desire could suggest and wealth afford, the great need of the common people was food. The city had to rely mainly on imported corn, and the price of this at times became prohibitive owing to scarcity—sometimes the result of piracy and the dangers of the sea, but often caused by artificial means owing to the merchants "cornering" the ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... but I didn't know he meant to take you along. That's very kind of Dick. I s'pose you won't speak to common people when ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... in it the first live hippopotamus that had ever been seen in America. The brute was advertised most extensively and ingeniously as "the great behemoth of the Scriptures," and thousands of scientific men, biblical students, clergymen and others, besides the great host of the common people, flocked to see it. There was fully as much excitement in New York over this wonder in the animal creation as there was in London when the first hippopotamus was placed ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... thought on ethical problems and on the moral life of the individual, it powerfully prepared for Christianity. It was not a religion, for it had neither any historical root nor any belief and practice definite enough for the guidance of the common people. Yet Christianity could not have conquered the ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... interference. It is his Areopagitica, in which he contends for unlicensed printing—an oration addressed from his closet to the Parliament of England, and which has been cited by Lord Mansfield himself, on the bench. His words are—"Nor is it to the common people less than a reproach; for if we be so jealous of them that we cannot trust them with an English pamphlet, what do we but censure them for a giddy, vicious and ungrounded people? That this is care or love ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... "common people, such as you are, get their dinners about one o'clock, but the gentry and big bugs dine at three. As for representatives we dine at four, and the aristocracy and the Senators don't get ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... Count, as they hailed a hansom. "Is all that she can say? Why, all we Italians are supposed to be tall and dark, and wear moustaches. Your common people in England never fancy one of ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... not knowing one note from another. One old man by me sang five notes below the key; a woman on the other side screamed out as many above; a girl before me had a strong nasal twang. I should think you'd go distracted; and, by the way, what a quantity of common people attend your church!" ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... should forthwith be printed; and that every parish should have and receive one of the aforesaid printed books into every Church throughout all their principalities and dominions, to be chained up, for the common people to ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... Jesus of Nazareth is our Messiah." It is easy for us to condemn him as wanting in courage, but we must put ourselves back in his place when we think of what he failed to do. This was before Jesus was glorified. He was a lowly man of sorrows. Many of the common people had followed him; but it was chiefly to see his miracles, and to gather benefit for themselves from his power. There was only a little band of true disciples, and among these were none of the rulers ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... of rams' heads, festooned with garlands of flowers. Usually the bas-reliefs are supposed to represent bulls' heads; and the name of Capo de Bove (the "head of the ox"), by which the monument has long been known to the common people, is said to be derived from these ornaments. But a careful examination will convince any one that they are in reality rams' heads; and the vulgar name of the tomb was obviously borrowed from the armorial bearings of the Gaetani ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... and do not suffer those of one trade or profession to marry with those of a different occupation, or to put their children to learn any other trade but that of their fathers. The Nayres, who are their nobles, if they chance to touch any of the common people, purify themselves by ablution, as was done by the Jews and Samaritans. The women among the Nayres axe common to all, but chiefly those, of the Bramin cast, so that no one knows his father, nor is any one bound to maintain the children. These Nayres are wonderfully expert in the use of their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... be very careful," declared the pretentious Bella. "I wouldn't take so much notice of that Hannah Lee. They are very common people. Her father is a blacksmith and her mother was a servant before she was married. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... was very gracious in receiving men, whether men of position or the common people. He treated all alike. If they wished to discuss any matter with him and get his advice, he would patiently listen to their tale. If he had any counsel to give, he gave it. If he felt he could not conscientiously have anything to do with the ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... being perceived. I shall never quarrel with you for an expression. MATTER, or MATERIAL SUBSTANCE, are terms introduced by philosophers; and, as used by them, imply a sort of independency, or a subsistence distinct from being perceived by a mind: but are never used by common people; or, if ever, it is to signify the immediate objects of sense. One would think, therefore, so long as the names of all particular things, with the TERMS SENSIBLE, SUBSTANCE, BODY, STUFF, and the like, are retained, the word MATTER ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... network over a very large and powerful river, which we crossed twice, which was a marvellous thing to see. The horses crossed over by them. At each passage they have two bridges, the one by which the common people go over, and the other for the lords of the land and their captains. The approaches are always kept closed, with Indians to guard them. These Indians exact transit dues from all passengers. The chiefs and people of the mountains are more intelligent than those of the coast. The ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... Sabre it was extraordinary how "that class of person" always got in such a horrible state from the most ridiculous trifles. "I suppose I knock my knee a dozen times a week, but my knee doesn't swell up and get disgusting. You're always reading in the paper about common people getting stung by wasps, or getting a scratch from a nail, and dying the next day. They must be in a horrible state. It always makes me feel ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... flocci will mark the plant. It has a wide distribution throughout the states. I found it in a number of places in Ohio and it is quite plentiful about Chillicothe. It is a favorite in Germany and it is called by the common people ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... National prosperity always endangers the nation. (4) The wisest and best of men may go wrong, if they subject themselves to evil influences. (5) Temples or houses of worship are of value in giving dignity to faith and in preserving the spirit of worship. (6) If the common people feel that they are unjustly treated nothing will prevent the disintegration of the nation. (7) Religion that does not issue in proper ethics will suffer at the hands of true ethics. (8) The security of society ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... profess me Mahometan religion, but are not even so well instructed in it as the tawny Moors, more especially the common people. The lords have always about them some Arabs or Azanhaji for this purpose, who inculcate on their minds that it would be disgraceful for men of their quality to live in ignorance of the laws of God, like the common ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... spared no efforts to incense the king against his unhappy uncle; he also contrived by a course of amusements and festivities to divert him from serious thought; and on January 21st 1552, to the great regret of the common people and the dismay of the protestant party, the duke of Somerset underwent the fatal stroke ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... day has, but ever so much brighter. Their blues and reds and greens are like ours with a light behind them. The palace is entirely built of many-coloured glasses, and it is quite the loveliest of all royal residences, but the queen sometimes complains because the common people will peep in to see what she is doing. They are very inquisitive folk, and press quite hard against the glass, and that is why their noses are mostly snubby. The streets are miles long and very twisty, and have paths on each side made of bright worsted. The birds used to ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... of the workings of this dreaded court, of whose sessions and secrets the common people of the land had exaggerated conceptions, but whose sudden and silent deeds in the interest of justice went far to repress crime in that lawless age. We have seen the completion of the sentence, let us attend a session of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... boys. We were not overmuch pestered with schooling. Mainly we were trained to be good Christians; to revere the Virgin, the Church, and the saints above everything. Beyond these matters we were not required to know much; and, in fact, not allowed to. Knowledge was not good for the common people, and could make them discontented with the lot which God had appointed for them, and God would not endure discontentment with His plans. We had two priests. One of them, Father Adolf, was a very zealous ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... good in literature also. Give the common people good models, and there is no danger but they will appreciate and understand them. Never stoop to pander to a depraved taste, no matter what specious pleas you may hear for tolerating the low in order to lead to the high, or for making your library contribute ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... Cuthbert or Cnut. A rough meal was taken, and they then ascended to the rude accommodation which had been provided. It was one large room, barely furnished. Upon one side straw was thickly littered down—for in those days beds among the common people were unknown. In a sort of alcove at the end was a couch with a rough mattress and coverlet. This Cuthbert took possession of, while his followers stretched themselves ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... the numerous sessions we see so often held in a year at the Old Bailey, and the multitudes which in consequence of them are yearly executed at Tyburn. Fraud, which is only robbery within the limits of the Law, is at this time of day (especially amongst the common people) thought a sign of wit, and esteemed as fair a branch of their calling as their labours. Mechanics of all sorts practise it without showing any great concern to hide it, especially from their own family, in which, on the contrary, they encourage and admire it. Instead of being reproved ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... which was counted in Heaven the most precious in all the world. And he found it and brought it and went into Heaven. But for the most of them—the Good People themselves do not know whether they are to be saved, and we common people do not know, but they say that priests know. And sometimes the Good People themselves have tried ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... Augustine says (De Civ. Dei x), "the term piety is often used in connection with works of mercy, in the language of the common people; the reason for which I consider to be the fact that God Himself has declared that these works are more pleasing to Him than sacrifices. This custom has led to the application of the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... many questions, but they got no answers, and they found neither sorcerers nor wise men, they only found two friendly little old men, who seemed to be mute and to have become a bit strange and gaga. And the curious people laughed and were discussing how foolishly and gullibly the common people were spreading ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... suspicion and a sulky craftiness, beneath which simmered a very volcano of revengeful cruelty. Another peculiarity, more fatal to him in that aristocratic age than any other, was his fondness for the common people, which was increased by his passion for a pretty Dutch girl, named Dyveke, who became his mistress in 1507 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... clique of wise men at Oxford patted themselves on the back for having discovered "The Historical Method." But the common people of all countries have always known it. The names of the great dead are not forgotten, nor yet the great things for which they stood. There may be no strict liturgy for the ancestor worship of the West, but that worship is a simple fact, and it is a ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... The common people apprehended a return of the times of her whom they unreasonably called Bloody Mary. Sons of this marriage, they feared, meant a long succession of princes and kings hostile to the Protestant faith and government by the people. In 1689, ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... villagers were entirely convinced by this pious reasoning; for they assembled one Saturday night and burned an effigy of Tom Paine! This proceeding led to a tragic consequence, for one of the "common people," known as Robert, "was overtaken by liquor," and was unable to appear at Sunday School next day. This fall from grace occasioned intense remorse in Robert. "It preyed dreadfully upon his mind for many months," records Martha ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... to distinguish it from Northampton, but the common people in both neighbourhoods generally say ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... beginning to see the pictures in the fire yourself. Well, he shall be a knight, but he shall not wear any armor and he shall not fight, and all the rest of the people we see shall be quite common people, mere tradesmen, a goldsmith and a tailor and a toy-maker and a cobbler and the like. But whether the young man is a knight or not, he and the pretty girl ought to know better than to look at each other in that way in church, with looks that seem to ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... which I will not here take up space in stating, a political arrangement, whether it be an elected monarch or a constitution, cannot be made, in our day, to reign in men's hearts except as the result of benefits so palpable that common people, as well as political philosophers, can ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... Cougham he did not fear: he could make a sort of calculation of the votes for the Liberal thumping on the old drum of Reform; but the number for him who appealed to feelings and quickened the romantic sentiments of the common people now huddled within our electoral penfold, was not calculable. Tory and Radical have an eye for one another, which overlooks the Liberal at all times except when he is, as they imagine, playing the game of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and make a severe example of the rebels, sent a powerful army into Mauritania, which vanquished and reduced them again to obedience. Soon after the ringleaders of the rebellion were put to death, and the tongues of the common people, together with those of their wives and children, were cut out, and then they were all put aboard vessels with some grain and cattle, and transported to the ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... Where the common people pay for their beds and meals with Cook's coupons! [Sitting upon the arm of the further settee in the centre and swinging her feet.] Oh, it doesn't matter. I suppose it'll have to be Swanage, or some brisk resort of that description. ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... was the Lord of life and glory. He made the worlds, and upholds them by His word of power (John i., Hebrews i.). But He humbled Himself, and became man, and was born of the Virgin in a manger among the cattle. He lived among the common people, and worked at the carpenter's bench. And then, anointed with the Holy Spirit, He went about doing good, preaching the Gospel to the poor, and ministering to the manifold needs of the sick and sinful and sorrowing. He touched the lepers; He was the Friend of publicans and ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... gravity of their offences, are seldom born criminals, nor do they (except in rare cases) begin their career at a very early age. They possess, moreover, good qualities[3] and are capable of affection, generosity, and chivalry, which explains why their memories are cherished by the common people long after good and law-abiding men ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... exquisite—taste prevented him from falling into this error. There is not in the world a large rural population that speaks its native language with a purity approaching that with which the English is spoken by the common people of New England. The vulgar words and phrases which in other states are supposed to be peculiar to this part of the country are unknown east of the Hudson, except to the readers of foreign newspapers, or the listeners to low comedians who find it profitable ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... tone, to keep back. Napoleon interfered, saying, 'Respect the burden, Madam.'" In the time of the empire, he directed attention to the improvement and embellishment of the market of the capital. "The market-place," he said, "is the Louvre of the common people." The principal works that have survived him are his magnificent roads. He filled the troops with his spirit, and a sort of freedom and companionship grew up between him and them, which the forms of his court never permitted between ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Campbell, Jr. (Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, vol. iii, Harvard University Press, 1914). This is the only full treatment of Holberg in English. Ed.] "The satire," says Holberg, in his introduction to the first published edition of the play, "is directed against those boasters among common people in free cities who sit in taverns and criticise the mayor and Council; they know everything and yet nothing.... I doubt if any one can show me a comedy more honorable and more moral.... The comedy, besides, is not less merry than moral, for it has kept spectators laughing from ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... half-starved for a year or two, and who have run through every note of the gamut of emotion, may be quicker to appreciate these influences than common people are: but Polson Jervase, lying on his back and staring upwards in a futile endeavour to trace the semi-circular ring of smoke upon the ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... then, according to preconcerted arrangement, a disturbance was made, and, at a given signal, the Roman youths rushed in different directions to carry off the unmarried women. A great number were carried off at hap-hazard, by those into whose hands they severally fell: some of the common people, to whom the task had been assigned, conveyed to their homes certain women of surpassing beauty, who were destined for the leading senators. They say that one, far distinguished beyond the rest in form and beauty, was ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius |
