Commonplace Quotes

249 quotes by 223 authors

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,… — Cecil Beaton
To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to… — Jorge Luis Borges
Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions. — Samuel Butler
Standing ovations have become far too commonplace. What we need are ovations where the audience members all punch and kick one another. — George Carlin
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,… — Willa Cather
Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity… — Jean Cocteau
It is a commonplace of American life that immigrants have made our country great and continue to make a very important contribution to the fabric… — William J. Clinton
In proportion as our own mind is enlarged we discover a greater number of men of originality. Commonplace people see no difference between one man… — Blaise Pascal
Be patient and sympathetic with the type of mind that cuts a poor figure in examinations. It may, in the long examination which life sets… — William James
Suffering is by no means a privilege, a sign of nobility, a reminder of God. Suffering is a fierce, bestial thing, commonplace, uncalled for, natural… — Cesare Pavese
Commonplace though it may appear, this doing of one's duty embodies the highest ideal of life and character. There may be nothing heroic about it;… — Samuel Smiles
In my plays I want to look at life at the commonplace of existence as if we had just turned a corner and run into… — Christopher Fry
Funerals and weddings were commonplace, and nothing could have been so interesting to them as the coming of the end of the world ... unless… — Edward Eggleston
It is a commonplace of modern technology that problems have solutions before there is knowledge of how they are to be solved. — John Kenneth Galbraith
In this commonplace world every one is said to be romantic who either admires a fine thing or does one. — Alexander Pope
Science as an intellectual exercise enriches our culture, and is in itself ennobling. ... Though to the layman, the world revealed by the chemist may… — Henry Taube
Science is wonderful at destroying metaphysical answers, but incapable of providing substitute ones. Science takes away foundations without providing a replacement. Whether we want to… — Hilary Putnam
[Before the time of Benjamin Peirce it never occurred to anyone that mathematical research] was one of the things for which a mathematical department existed.… — Julian Coolidge
No society ever seems to have succumbed to boredom. Man has developed an obvious capacity for surviving the pompous reiteration of the commonplace. — John Kenneth Galbraith
No one can write a best seller by trying to. He must write with complete sincerity; the clichÃ©s that make you laugh, the hackneyed characters,… — W. Somerset Maugham

Who Wrote These Commonplace Quotes

223 authors contributed a total of 249 Commonplace Quotes, led by these top contributors: