common quotes

What a poor, ignorant, malicious, short-sighted, crapulous mass isTom Paine's common sense.

-John Adams
  Letter to Thomas  Jefferson, 22  Jun, referring to the Republican's treatise on independence entitled Common Sense.

He that will write well in any tongue, must follow this counsel of Aristotle, to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do; and so should every man understand him, and the judgment of wise men allow him.

- Roger Ascham
  Toxophilus,'To all Gentlemen andYeomen of England'.

Medicinal discovery, It moves in mighty leaps, It leapt straight past the common cold And gave it us for keeps.

- Pam Ayres
  Some of Me Poetry,'Oh no, I got a cold'.

A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinion and uncommon abilities.

-Walter Bagehot
Biographical Studies,'The Character of Sir Robert Peel'.

What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.

-Bible (NewTestament)
Acts of the  Apostles10:15.

Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell.

- SirArthur Conan Doyle
  The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,'The Copper Beeches'.

Youth, beauty, graceful action seldom fail: But common interest always will prevail: And pity never ceases to be shown To him, who makes the people's wrongs his own.

-John Dryden
Absalom and  Achitophel, pt.1, l.723^6.

The British Empire has advanced to a new conception of autonomyand freedom, to the idea of a system of British nations, each freely ordering its own individual life, but bound together in unity byallegiance to one Crown, and co-operating in all that concerns the common weal.

-GeorgeVI
  Opening, as Duke ofYork, the first  Australian Parliament to assemble in Canberra, 9 May.

The Common Law of England has been laboriously built about a mythical figurethe figure of 'The Reasonable Man'.

- SirA(lan) P(atrick) Herbert
  Uncommon Law,'The Reasonable Man'.

Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the latter onlyas a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.

-T(homas) H(enry) Huxley
^4  Collected Essays, no.4,'The Method of Zadig'.

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kingsnor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it. Andwhich is moreyou'll be a Man, my son!

- (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
  Rewards and Fairies,'If'.

This would surpass Common revenge.

-John Milton
  Beelzebub speaking of the plan to tempt Man away from God. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.2, l.370^1.

You can be in the Horseguards and still be common, dear.

- SirTerence Rattigan
  SeparateTables.

Without contemplating last and late the true nature of poetry. The drive to connect. The dream of a common language.

- Adrienne Cecile Rich
  The Dream of a Common Language,'Origins and History of Consciousness'.

'But why should you want to shield him?'cried Egbert; 'the man is a common murderer.' 'A common murderer, possibly, but a very uncommon cook.'

-Saki pseudonym of  Hector Hugh Munro
  Beasts and Super-Beasts,'The Blind Spot'.

No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. Theyall require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.

-Marquis of
  Letter to Lord Lytton,15 Jun. Quoted in Lady Gwendolen Cecil Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury (1921^32), vol.2, ch.4.

Ce qu'ils ont en commun, c'est simplement le fait qu'ils estiment que l'existence pre  ce'  de l'essence, ou, si vous voulez, qu'il faut partir de la subjectivite  . What [existentialists] have in common is simply the fact that they believe that existence comes before essenceor, if you will, that we must begin from the subjective.

-Jean-Paul Sartre
  L'Existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism and Humanism,1948) (translated by Philip Mairet).

A man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

- George Bernard Shaw
 Of Caesar. Caesar and Cleopatra, notes.

   The moment that the very name of Ireland ismentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, common prudence, and common sense, and to act with the barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of idiots.

- Rev Sydney Smith
^8  Peter Plymley's Letters.

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.

- Gertrude Stein
  'Reflection on theAtomic Bomb', collected in Robert A Goodwin (ed) Readings inWorld Politics (1959).

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

-Tennyson
  In Memoriam A.H.H., canto 6, l.3^4.

Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense?

- Henry David Thoreau
  Walden, or Life in theWoods,'Conclusion'.

The first duty of the press is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of the events of the time, and bydisclosing them, to makethemthe common property of the nation.

-TheTimes
  Leading article, 6 Feb.

I have no concern for the common man except that he should not be so common.

- SirAngus FrankJohnstone Wilson
  No Laughing Matter.

Given a fair wind, we will negotiate our way into the Common Market, head held high, not crawl in† Negotiations? Yes.Unconditional acceptance of whatever terms we are offered? No.

- (James) Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx
  Speech, Bristol, 20 Mar.