118 Commonplace Quotes

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Short Commonplace Quotes

  • To make mistakes is human; to stumble is commonplace; to be able to laugh at yourself is maturity. β€” William Arthur Ward
  • To give support should be commonplace in our society, not to be asked for. β€” Isaac Mashman
  • You will never be commonplace if you are vigilant in love. β€” Elizabeth of the Trinity
  • Do not try to paint the grandiose thing. Paint the commonplace so that it will be distinguished. β€” William Merritt Chase
  • Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions. β€” Samuel Butler
  • Eschew the ordinary, disdain the commonplace β€” Chuck Jones
  • The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace. β€” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  • Space is going to be commonplace. β€” Christa McAuliffe
  • Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting. β€” Gertrude Stein
  • Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace. β€” Elbert Hubbard

The Art Of The Commonplace Quotes

The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one's humdrum life, a life of monotonous, uninspiring commonplaceness, into one of art, full of genuine inner creativity. β€” D.T. Suzuki

It is the treating of the commonplace with the feeling of the sublime that gives to art its true power. β€” Jean-Francois Millet

No one questions the fact that verbal language has to be learned, but the commonplaceness of visual experience betrays art; people tend to assume that, because they can see, they can see art. β€” Anne Truitt

A science or an art may be said to be "useful" if its development increases, even indirectly, the material well-being and comfort of men, it promotes happiness, using that word in a crude and commonplace way. β€” G. H. Hardy

If the arts are held up solely as a means of social insight, fantasy is denied the chance to be commonplace and reality the chance to be exotic. β€” Richard Eyre

No longer do we accept the 'sublimation model' according to which 'the function of art is to sublimate or transform experience, raising it from ordinary to extraordinary, from commonplace to unique, from low to high'. β€” Rosalind E. Krauss

With little here to do or see Of things that in the great world be, Sweet Daisy! oft I talk to thee For thou art worthy, Thou unassuming commonplace Of Nature, with that homely face, And yet with something of a grace Which love makes for thee! β€” William Wordsworth

Commonplace Book Quotes

As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is, the less mysterious it proves to be. β€” Arthur Conan Doyle

For anyone addicted to reading commonplace books . . . finding a good new one is much like enduring a familiar recurrence of malaria, with fever, fits of shaking, strange dreams . . . . β€” M. F. K. Fisher

The ideas of the classics, so far as living, are our commonplaces. It is the modern books that give us the latest and most profound conceptions. It seems to me rather a lazy makeshift to mumble over the familiar. β€” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Not everything that can be extracted appears in anthologies of quotations, in commonplace books, or on the back of Celestial Seasonings boxes. Only certain sorts of extracts become quotations. β€” Gary Saul Morson

In books, the proportion of exceptional to commonplace people is high; in reality, very low. β€” Aldous Huxley

For obvious reasons, I never told you about my notebook, with a cover as green as mansions long ago, which I use as a commonplace book, a phrase which here means 'place where I have collected passages from some of the most important books I have read. β€” Daniel Handler

Common Things Quotes

We are all connected. What unites us is our common humanity. I don't want to oversimplify things - but the suffering of a mother who has lost her child is not dependent on her nationality, ethnicity or religion. White, black, rich, poor, Christian, Muslim or Jew - pain is pain - joy is joy. β€” Desmond Tutu

Robert Burns in his splendid indifference to rank, and Whitman in his glorification of common things, have points of kinship with him. But to such radiant white heart of child-likeness, it would be impossible to find a perfect counterpart. β€” Sister Nivedita

I have nothing in common with lazy people who blame others for their lack of success. β€” Kobe Bryant

The best perfection of a religious man is to do common things in a perfect manner. A constant fidelity in small things is a great and heroic virtue. β€” Bonaventure

Learn to do the common things uncommonly well. β€” George Washington Carver

Awe enables us to see in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple, to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. β€” Abraham Joshua Heschel

Do you wish to be free? Then above all things, love God, love your neighbor, love one another, love the common weal; then you will have true liberty. β€” Girolamo Savonarola

Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way. - Booker T. Washington

Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way. β€” Booker T. Washington

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing. β€” William James

The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind of eye couldn't detect. β€” Mark Twain

Common Life Quotes

In every physical action, unless it is purely mechanical, there is concealed some inner action, some feelings. This is how the two levels of life in a part are created, the inner and the outer. They are intertwined. A common purpose brings them together and reinforces the unbreakable bond. β€” Constantin Stanislavski

The happiness promised us in Christ does not consist in outward advantages-such as leading a joyous and peaceful life, having rich possessions, being safe from all harm, and abounding with delights such as the flesh commonly longs after. No, our happiness belongs to the heavenly life! β€” John Calvin

It became easy for me to detach myself from the course of life, so that while my hands and mind were engaged in the common affairs of every day, my spirit maintained its attitude of communion with God. β€” John G. Lake

The future of life on Earth depends on our ability to see the sacred where others see only the common β€” John Denver

Music is one of the closest link-ups with God that we can probably experience. I think it's a common vibrating tone of the musical notes that holds all life together. β€” Marvin Gaye

Fear and faith have something in common. They both ask us to believe in something we cannot see. β€” Joel Osteen

There is only one cause of unhappiness: the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them. β€” Anthony De Mello

Life gives to all the choice. You can satisfy yourself with mediocrity if you wish. You can be common, ordinary, dull, colorless, or yyou can channel your life so that it will be clean, vibrant, useful, progressive, colorful, and rich. β€” Spencer W. Kimball

It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement -- that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life. β€” Sigmund Freud

When brothers agree, no fortress is so strong as their common life. - Antisthenes

When brothers agree, no fortress is so strong as their common life. β€” Antisthenes

Common Sense Quotes

A lot of people like to fool you and say that you're not smart if you never went to college, but common sense rules over everything. That's what I learned from selling crack. β€” Snoop Dogg

Not to sound corny, but intelligence is big. Everything fades, and everything can be modified. But intelligence is something you cant fake. Im not even talking about whether you can read a thesaurus backwards. But there is a beauty in common sense. β€” Wale

There is a longing among all people and creatures to have a sense of purpose and worth. To satisfy that common longing in all of us we must respect each other. β€” Chief Dan George

Common sense is not so common. - Voltaire

Common sense is not so common. β€” Voltaire

We can have paid family and medical leave. We can make public colleges and universities tuition-free. These are not revolutionary, radical ideas. They're kind of common sense. β€” Bernie Sanders

For pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense. β€” C. S. Lewis

Simplicity and common sense should characterize planning and strategic direction. β€” Ingvar Kamprad

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense. β€” Gertrude Stein

If we lived in a state where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us saintly. But since we see that avarice, anger, pride and stupidity commonly profit far beyond charity, modesty, justice and thought, perhaps we must stand fast a little, even at the risk of being heroes. β€” Thomas More

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen. - Albert Einstein

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen. β€” Albert Einstein

Common Knowledge Quotes

The overeducated are worse off than the undereducated, for they traded common sense for the illusion of knowledge. β€” Naval Ravikant

It is a matter of common knowledge that the government of South Carolina is under domination of a small ring of cunning, conniving men. β€” Strom Thurmond

I remember I used to half believe and wholly play with fairies when I was a child. What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and common-sense... β€” Beatrix Potter

Music can be healing, and with my history and my knowledge of both sides of what looks like a gigantic divide in the world, I feel I can point a way forward to our common humanity again. β€” Cat Stevens

The true lover of knowledge naturally strives for truth, and is not content with common opinion, but soars with undimmed and unwearied passion till he grasps the essential nature of things. β€” Plato

What keeps the world from reverting to the Neanderthal with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos... the huge body of common knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man. β€” Robert M. Pirsig

It is, indeed, perhaps the greatest prospect of humanistic studies to contribute through an increasing knowledge of the history of cultural development to that gradual removal of prejudices which is the common aim of all science. β€” Niels Bohr

It's common knowledge that a large percentage of Wall Street brokers use astrology. β€” Donald T. Regan

We’re all familiar with the idea that lifestyle can be the cause of disease. What’s not common knowledge is that a change in lifestyle can also be the treatment and prevent us from getting sick in the first place. β€” Rangan Chatterjee

The world is the book of women. Whatever knowledge they may possess is more commonly acquired by observation than by reading. β€” Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Common Man Quotes

God is not looking for men of great faith, He is looking for common men to trust His great faithfulness. β€” Hudson Taylor

If one is determined to die for the truth, even a common man can create history. β€” Velupillai Prabhakaran

Woman is born free and lives equal to man in her rights. Social distinctions can be based only on the common utility. β€” Olympe de Gouges

In the history of the human race, those periods which later appeared as great have been the periods when the men and the women belonging to them had transcended the differences that divided them and had recognized in their membership in the human race a common bond. β€” Haile Selassie

This country [the Philippines] is like a pyramid, like a tower. It is made up of millions of stones... . And the foundation stone of this pyramid is the common man. β€” Ramon Magsaysay

To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues. β€” Thomas Hobbes

Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society and made by the legislative power vested in it and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, arbitrary will of another man. β€” John Locke

When the bell tolls three times, it will announce that I have been killed. If I am killed by common men, you and your children will rule Russia for centuries to come; if I am killed by one of your stock, you and your family will be killed by the Russian people! Pray Tsar of Russia. Pray. β€” Grigori Rasputin

Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection. β€” Henry A. Wallace

Down these mean streets a man must go who is neither tarnished nor afraid β€” Raymond Chandler

People Writing About Commonplace

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by William Arthur Ward

William Arthur Ward
quotes on life

161 7241
Read quotes by William Merritt Chase

William Merritt Chase
quotes on love, art and freedom

12 87
Read quotes by Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler
quotes on death, love

266 1844
Read quotes by Chuck Jones

Chuck Jones
quotes on life, art and culture

68 349
Read quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
quotes on love

1772 14221
Read quotes by Christa McAuliffe

Christa McAuliffe
quotes on education, leadership and religion

18 224

More Commonplace Quotes

God never intended His people to be ordinary or commonplace. His intentions were that they should be on fire for Him, conscious of His divine power, realizing the glory of the cross that foreshadows the crown. β€” Smith Wigglesworth

the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars. β€” Jack Kerouac

...The final secret is that there is no secret. Devote yourself to your leader. Work hard. Be grateful. Act boldly. Some may deride such suggestions as commonplace, and they'd be right: They are common. But to see them successfully enacted in this world is rare indeed. β€” Toyotomi Hideyoshi

It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those thingsβ€”a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earringβ€”with immense, even startling power. β€” Raymond Carver

Making the simple complicated is commonplace, Charles Mingus once said. Making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity. β€” Rick Rubin

We are so utterly ordinary, so commonplace, while we profess to know a Power the Twentieth Century does not reckon with.... Oh that God would make us dangerous! β€” Jim Elliot

The concern is over what will happen as strong encryption becomes commonplace with all digital communications and stored data. Right now the use of encryption isn't all that widespread, but that state of affairs is expected to change rapidly. β€” Dorothy Denning

The concern is over what will happen as strong encryption becomes commonplace with all digital communications and stored data. Right now the use of encryption isn't all that widespread, but that state of affairs is expected to change rapidly. β€” Dorothy E. Denning

As a rule, said Holmes, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify. β€” Arthur Conan Doyle

It was commonplace for colleagues to write comic poetry to each other, predicting the manner in which they might die. β€” Oliver Burkeman

Standing ovations have become far too commonplace. What we need are ovations where the audience members all punch and kick one another. β€” George Carlin

Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary. β€” Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity. β€” Charles Mingus

Good habits are developed in the workshops of our daily lives. It is not in the great moments of test and trial that character is built. That is only when it is displayed. The habits that direct our lives and form our character are fashioned in the often uneventful, commonplace routine of life. β€” Delbert L. Stapley

It is presentation which lifts the card trick from the level of the commonplace puzzle to the status of an unforgettable and inexplicable mystery. β€” Jean Hugard

The mystery religions were instituted in order to protect the marvels of the commonplace from those who would devalue them. β€” Peter Redgrove

Commonplaces never become tiresome. It is we who become tired when we cease to be curious and appreciative. β€” Norman Rockwell

I wonder how many parents realize that by the so-called education they are giving their children, they are only driving them into the commonplace, and depriving them of any chance of doing anything beautiful or original. β€” Isadora Duncan

My professional life has been a constant record of disillusion, and many things that seem wonderful to most men are the every-day commonplaces of my business. β€” Harry Houdini

Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual. β€” Edward Weston

Beauty belongs to the sphere of the simple, the ordinary, whilst ugliness is something extraordinary, and there is no question but that every ardent imagination prefers in lubricity, the extraordinary to the commonplace β€” Marquis De Sade

Society chooses to disregard the mistreatment of children, judging it to be altogether normal because it is so commonplace. β€” Alice Miller

If mankind were all intellect, they would be continually changing, so that one age would be entirely unlike another. The great conservative is the heart, which remains the same in all ages; so that commonplaces of a thousand years' standing are as effective as ever. β€” Nathaniel Hawthorne

All systems of morality are fine. The gospel alone has exhibited a complete assemblage of the principles of morality, divested of all absurdity. It is not composed, like your creed, of a few common-place sentences put into bad verse. Do you wish to see that which is really sublime? Repeat the Lord's Prayer. β€” Napoleon Bonaparte

To do one's best in the face of the commonplace struggles of life, and possibly in the face of failures, and to continue to endure and persevere with the ongoing difficulties of life - when those struggles and tasks contribute to the progress and happiness of others and the eternal salvation of one's self - this is true greatness. β€” Howard W. Hunter

Each generation thinks it invented sex; each generation is totally mistaken. Anything along that line today was commonplace both in Pompeii and in Victorian England; the differences lie only in the degree of coverup - if any. β€” Robert A. Heinlein

If God does not enter your kitchen, there is something wrong with your kitchen. If you can't take God into your recreation, there is something wrong with your play. We all believe in the God of the heroic. What we need most these days is the God of the humdrum, the commonplace, the everyday. β€” Peter Marshall

I think there's something degrading about having a husband for a rival. It's humiliating if you fail and commonplace if you succeed. β€” Christopher Hampton

In today’s interconnected and globalized world, it is now commonplace for people of dissimilar world views, faiths and races to live side by side. It is a matter of great urgency, therefore, that we find ways to cooperate with one another in a spirit of mutual acceptance and respect. β€” Dalai Lama

When you love something, whether it's jam and cheese sandwiches or wearing your pyjamas as pants, you forget that it was ever anything other than commonplace. β€” Elisha Lim

Sometimes a neighbor whom we have disliked a lifetime for his arrogance and conceit lets fall a single commonplace remark that shows us another side, another man, really; a man uncertain, and puzzled, and in the dark like ourselves. β€” Willa Cather

The presumption of innocence is not just a legal concept. In commonplace terms, it rests on that generosity of spirit which assumes the best, not the worst, of the stranger. β€” Kingman Brewster, Jr.

Commonplace objects are constantly changing… The pies, for example, we now see, are not going to be around forever. We are merely used to the idea that things do not change. β€” Wayne Thiebaud

Here then is the pattern in my carpet, the sense of the eternal mysteries, the eternal beauty hidden beneath the crust of common and commonplace things; hidden and yet burning and glowing continually if you care to look with purged eyes. β€” Arthur Machen

Funerals and weddings were commonplace, and nothing could have been so interesting to them as the coming of the end of the world ... unless it had been a first-class circus. β€” Edward Eggleston

One who aspires to greatness should read and study, pursuing the True Way with such a firm resolve that he is perfectly straightforward and open, rises above the superficialities of conventional behavior, and refuses to be satisfied with the petty or commonplace. β€” Yoshida Shoin

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