It was the old story, which the world is continually re-enacting, while the sage stands by, and marvels at its folly, and preaches what we call commonplaces, in a vain endeavour to modify or to prevent it. ❋ Theodore Martin (1862)
"Wise people say we must carry our sunshine with us," answered Rose, taking refuge in commonplaces, for the face at the window grew pensive suddenly as he answered, with a longing look, "I wish I could." ❋ Unknown (1876)
It's deadly commonplace, but, after all, the commonplaces are the great poetic truths. ❋ Robert Louis Stevenson (1872)
When Couper's statue of Longfellow was dedicated in Washington, Hamilton Mabie said: "His freedom from the sophistication of a more experienced country; his simplicity, due in large measure to the absence of social self-consciousness; his tranquil and deep-seated optimism, which is the effluence of an unexhausted soil; his happy and confident expectation, born of a sense of tremendous national vitality; his love of simple things in normal relations to world-wide interests of the mind; his courage in interpreting those deeper experiences which craftsmen who know art but who do not know life call commonplaces; the unaffected and beautiful democracy of his spirit -- these are the delicate flowers of our new world, and as much a part of it as its stretches of wilderness and the continental roll of its rivers." ❋ Bliss Perry (1907)
Rather the poet should sweep on his way borne by the breath of inspiration and untrammelled by hard fact, making use of cunning artifice and divine intervention, and interfusing his "commonplaces" with legendary lore; only so will his work seem to be the fine frenzy of an inspired bard rather than the exactitude of one who is giving sworn evidence before a judge '. ❋ Harold Edgeworth Butler (1914)
The class called People (to which you and I, with no little pride, attach ourselves) has certain casual, yet profound, assumptions, which are called "commonplaces," as that children are charming, or that twilight is sad and sentimental, or that one man fighting three is a fine sight. ❋ Unknown (1905)
Devices of method called 'commonplaces' were constructed, whereby, irrespective of the truth or falsehood of the subject-matter, a favourable vote in the public assemblies, a successful verdict in the public courts, might more readily be procured. ❋ John Marshall (1880)
"commonplaces," that is, stock phrases, lines or stanzas which are conveniently held by the memory and which may appear in dozens of different ballads. ❋ Bliss Perry (1907)
Minister had characterized these assertions as "commonplaces," and had added in an irritated tone: "The Jews themselves are responsible for the pogroms. ❋ I. [Translator] Friedlaender (1900)
It will let people know that evolutionary studies have themselves evolved a great deal beyond the few commonplaces about survival of the fittestthat we learned in our intro to bio course. ❋ Unknown (2009)
Just as I had expected, that first meeting, ere he spoke a word, to hear fall from his lips words of untold beneficence and wisdom, and then heard him utter mere social commonplaces, so I now find myself almost forced to conclude that his touch of race, and beak of power, and all the tall, aristocratic slenderness of him have nothing behind them. ❋ Unknown (2010)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, "Truths that startled the generation in which they were first announced become in the next age the commonplaces of conversation." ❋ Emma Wilhelm (2012)
He's entirely serious, or so it seems, about two commonplaces well-lodged within progressive discourse at the time, and a bit of knowledge that is hardly arcane. ❋ Unknown (2009)
Rough jests and rougher jokes went up and down, and great hazards by trail and river were spoken of in the light of commonplaces, only to be recalled by virtue of some grain of humor or ludicrous happening. ❋ Unknown (2010)
Life was so strange and wonderful, filled with an immensity of problems, of dreams, and of heroic toils, and yet these stories dealt only with the commonplaces of life. ❋ Unknown (2010)
EU membership has probably added cheap package tours on the Black Sea to the other Bulgarian commonplaces of poisoned umbrellas on Waterloo bridge and endowing the English language with the word "bugger". ❋ Tibor Fischer (2010)
But the huge majority of the parallels Sobran lists are Elizabethan commonplaces, and given his generous standards as to what constitutes a "parallel," a similar list could be compiled for any Elizabethan poet with a canon the size of Oxford's. ❋ Unknown (2009)
