Top 433 Commonplace Quotes & Sayings

You will never be commonplace if you are vigilant in love.

Nothing is so commonplace has the wish to be remarkable.

Cliche refers to words, commonplace to ideas. Cliche describes the form or the letter, commonplace the substance or spirit. To confuse them is to confuse the thought with the expression of the thought. The cliche is immediately perceivable; the commonplace very often escapes notice if decked out in original dress. There are few examples, in any literature, of new ideas expressed in original form. The most critical mind must often be content with one or the other of these pleasures, only too happy when it is not deprived of both at once, which is not too rarely the case.

Metaphor is halfway between the unintelligible and the commonplace.

Be commonplace and creeping and you'll be a success.

I try and take the commonplace - and some of it is writ large, like death - take the commonplace and make it universally resonant, revelatory, and beautiful at the same time.

To genius life never grows commonplace.

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 quality, will do well to remember two things. One is never to forget posterity when devising a policy. The other is never to think of posterity when making a speech.

Casual dehumanization of people was commonplace at the Trump dinner table.

And common is the commonplace, And vacant chaff well meant for grain.

Culturally, it is commonplace for African women to work.

If we have never had the experience of taking our commonplace religious shoes off our commonplace religious feet, and getting rid of all the undue familiarity with which we approach God, it is questionable whether we have ever stood in his presence.

Anything seems commonplace, once explained.

I love to take something very commonplace and reuse it in an original way.

It is no easy matter to say commonplace things in an original way.

Space is going to be commonplace.

Commonplace minds usually condemn what is beyond the reach of their understanding.

Let us dig our furrow in the fields of the commonplace.

It is the treating of the commonplace with the feeling of the sublime that gives to art its true power.

You may want to keep a commonplace book which is a notebook where you can copy parts of books you think are in code, or take notes on a series of events you may have observed that are suspicious, unfortunate, or very dull. Keep your commonplace book in a safe place, such as underneath your bed, or at a nearby dairy.

the territory of grief ... is both cruel and commonplace.

Do not be fooled by its commonplace appearance. Like so many things, it is not what outside, but what is inside that counts.

I have found in experiments, people become used to the robots. The less startling they become, the more commonplace they get. If these robots do become commonplace, then that uncanny effect will go away.

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 every commonplace in the expression.

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 things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring—with immense, even startling power.

No amount of toying with shades of print or with printing papers will transform a commonplace photograph into anything other than a commonplace photograph.

Originality is never embraced as quickly as the commonplace.

Did any great genius ever enter the world in the wake of commonplace pre-natal conditions? Was a maker of history ever born amidst the pleasant harmonies of a satisfied domesticity? Of a mother who was less than remarkable, although she may have escaped being great? Did a woman with no wildness in her blood ever inform a brain with electric fire? The students of history know that while many mothers of great men have been virtuous, none have been commonplace, and few have been happy.

No one can write a best seller by trying to. He must write with complete sincerity; the clichés that make you laugh, the hackneyed characters, the well-worn situations, the commonplace story that excites your derision, seem neither hackneyed, well worn nor commonplace to him. ... The conclusion is obvious: you cannot write anything that will convince unless you are yourself convinced. The best seller sells because he writes with his heart's blood.

The whole story of human history is: The blasphemy of today is the commonplace of tomorrow.

The universal subjugator, the commonplace.

Making the simple complicated is commonplace.

The insular arrogance of the English character is a commonplace joke.

Eschew the ordinary, disdain the commonplace

Lying, stealing, and cheating are commonplace.

The principles of Buddhism have become more commonplace, which is a good thing.

Fabricating reality was criminal; editing it, commonplace.

Comedy defends the commonplace; tragedy explodes it.

It is a commonplace that the League of Nations is not yet-what its most enthusiastic protagonists intended it to be

No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind.

The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.

If to be interesting is to be uncommonplace, it is becoming a question, with me, if there are any commonplace people

No new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace.

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.

... beauty, like ecstasy, has always been hostile to the commonplace. And the commonplace, under its popular label of the normal,has been the supreme authority for Homo sapiens since the days when he was probably arboreal.

'Haunted by the past' is a commonplace phrase because it's a commonplace experience. Even if one is not, strictly speaking, 'haunted', the past is perpetually with one in the present, and the longer it grows and the further it recedes the stronger its presence seems to become.

That which is the wonder of one age is the commonplace of the next.

It is in the everyday and the commonplace that we learn patience, acceptance, and contentment.

Marines dying or being seriously wounded is commonplace in combat.

Nothing fires the warrior’s heart more with courage than to find himself and his comrades at the point of annihilation, at the brink of being routed and overrun, and then to dredge not merely from one’s own bowels or guts but from one’s discipline and training the presence of mind not to panic, not to yield to the possession of despair, but instead to complete those homely acts of order which Dienekes had ever declared the supreme accomplishment of the warrior: to perform the commonplace under far-from-commonplace conditions.

It is a commonplace that the League of Nations is not yet-what its most enthusiastic protagonists intended it to be.

Every commonplace or trite observation is not a truism.

Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting.

The ironies in the commonplace are my inspiration and delight.

I think that the way of bringing realism into fantasy is to treat it as the commonplace.

The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.

I could not for my soul distinguish ever the distinction between "religious anger" and "commonplace anger", "religious killing" and "commonplace killing", "religious slandering and irreligious", and so forth.

Let me beg you, not to rest contented with the commonplace religion that is now so prevalent.

Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.