Commonplace Quotes

249 Commonplace quotes by 221 unique authors

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; ... — 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… — Delbert L. Stapley
The habit of expression leads to the search for something to express. Something remains as a residuum of the commonplace itself, if one strikes out… — Henry Adams
I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you… — Arthur C. Clarke
No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no… — Nathaniel Hawthorne
I can think of numberless males, from Bonnard to Callahan, who have photographed their lovers and spouses, but I am having trouble finding parallel examples… — Sally Mann
The inspired scribbler always has the gift for gossip in our common usage he or she can always inspire the commonplace with an uncommon flavor,… — Elizabeth Drew
It takes the passage of time before an image of a commonplace subject can be assessed. The great difficulty of what I attempt is seeing… — George A Tice
The insular arrogance of the English character is a commonplace joke. — Goldwin Smith
The air is an extremely dangerous, jealous and exacting mistress. Once under the spell most lovers are faithful to the end, which is not always… — Winston Churchill
Eschew the ordinary, disdain the commonplace. If you have a single-minded need for something, let it be the unusual, the esoteric, the bizarre, the unexpected. — Chuck Jones
To me, nostalgia is nothing more than a mindless plundering of the past for the commonplace. — Mel Torme
It is an accepted commonplace in psychology that the spiritual level of people acting as a crowd is far lower than the mean of each… — Christian Lous Lange
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… — Arthur Machen
Let me beg you, not to rest contented with the commonplace religion that is now so prevalent. — Adoniram Judson
No amount of toying with shades of print or with printing papers will transform a commonplace photograph into anything other than a commonplace photograph. — Bill Brandt
Simultaneous discovery is utterly commonplace, and it was only the rarity of scientists, not the inherent improbability of the phenomenon, that made it remarkable in… — Peter Medawar
We can escape the commonplace only by manipulating it, controlling it, thrusting it into our dreams or surrendering it to the free play of our… — Raoul Vaneigem
We Sioux spend a lot of time thinking about everyday things which in our minds are mixed up with the spiritual. We see in the… — John Fire Lame Deer
Men of genius are not to be analysed by commonplace rules. The rest of us who have been or are leaders, more commonplace in our… — Robert Menzies
Do not try to paint the grandiose thing. Paint the commonplace so that it will be distinguished. — William Merritt Chase
Let us dig our furrow in the fields of the commonplace. — Jean-Henri Fabre
I don't know what people find or like in me, I'm hopelessly commonplace!... Current appreciation of my work is a bit highbrow, I've always considered… — Maxfield Parrish
We attempt to define a person, the most commonplace person we know, but he will not submit to bounds; some unexpected beauty of nature breaks… — Charlotte Mason
Be not content with the common place in character anymore than with the commonplace in ambition or intellectual attainment. Do not expect that you will… — William Jewett Tucker

Who Wrote These Commonplace Quotes

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