Common Ground Quotes

An irenic approach to expounding Christian beliefs is one that attempts always to understand opposing viewpoints before disagreeing, and when it is necessary to disagree does so respectfully and in love. An irenic approach to doctrine seeks common ground and values unity within diversity and diversity within unity. An irenic approach does not imply relativism or disregard for truth, but it does seek to live by the motto "in essentials unity, ~ Roger E. Olson

Some of us believe humanity should be in divine partnership with nature, some people believe that man has been given by God the right to have dominion over nature. But since even they say that we should be good stewards, that right there should be the common ground. ~ Marianne Williamson

COMMUNICATION: If I had to pick a first rule of communication-the one practice above all others that opens the door to connecting with others-it would be to look for common ground. Too often people see communication as the process of transmitting massive amounts of information to other people. But that's the wrong picture. Communication is a journey. The more that people have in common, the better the chance that they can take that journey together. ~ John C. Maxwell

But you need more than love, Em. Sometimes you need common ground. ~ Karen Kingsbury

Regardless of the faps in years, place and circumstance, women across the ages have had to negotiate the borders of their identities; in this, we find a common ground. ~ Stephanie Staal

Touch the earth, speak of love, walk on common ground. ~ Steven Van Zandt

This deeply free and public space plays a vital role in our world, equally important in our digital age as in Greco-Roman times, when they were marketplaces for goods and ideas. As common ground, squares are equitable and democratic; they have played a fundamental role in the development of free speech. ~ Catie Marron

Real estate sales was perfect training for the experience to go into public life because you learn to accept rejection, learn to meet new people, learn to work with people and find common ground. That's the way you sell houses ... that's also the way you win over constituency. ~ Johnny Isakson

Manners count. Be polite and seek out the common ground, not just the high ground. ~ Allan Dare Pearce

Palestinian weddings are celebrated over coffee, but when a young man is killed his mother is held up over his grave. 'Trill out your zaghrouda [ululation], his friends say, the shabab who might die tomorrow. A mother says to me: 'Our joy-cries now only ring out in the face of death. Our world is upside down.'
Under the Gun, A Palestinian Journey - MEZZATERRA: FRAGMENTS FROM THE COMMON GROUND ~ Ahdaf Soueif

Astronomers ... have a common ground for discussion with musicians in the harmony of the stars and musical concords in tetrads and triads of the fourth and the fifth, and with geometricians in the subject of vision; and in all other sciences many points, perhaps all, are common so far as the discussion of them is concerned. But the actual undertaking of works which are brought to perfection by the hand and its manipulation is the function of those who have been specially trained to deal with a single art. ~ Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

Friendship is like that. I guess it's not always about common ground. ~ Becky Albertalli

It seems to me that when we listen to the Muslim mystics as they talk about Jesus and their love for Jesus, I must say, it's a lot closer to New Testament Christianity than a lot of the Christians that I hear. In other words if we are looking for common ground, can we find it in mystical spirituality, even if we cannot theologically agree, Can we pray together in such a way that we connect with a God that transcends our theological differences? ~ Tony Campolo

It makes more sense to find out where the middle- and long-term common ground lies. ~ Gerhard Schroder

Addressing the economic plight of women may ultimately be the feminist platform that draws a collective response. It may well become the place of collective organizing, the common ground, the issue that unites all women. ~ Bell Hooks

Many Hindus are willing to consider Jesus as a legitimate manifestation of the divine ... many Buddhists see Jesus as one of humanity's most enlightened people ... A shared reappraisal of Jesus' message could provide a unique space or common ground for urgently needed religious dialogue - and it doesn't seem an exaggeration to say that the future of our planet may depend on such dialogue. This reappraisal of Jesus' message may be the only project capable of saving a number of religions. ~ Brian D. McLaren

Look, even in the shadows of skyscrapers some still stumble over the rubble of Babylon and stay separate. But a fearless few cross our lines of language. Lamp-led messengers show the common ground we're already standing on – if we'll just look. There's light. ~ Matthew Akers

The difference between a debater and a polemicist is that unlike debaters, who try to seek a common ground, a polemicist intends to establish the truth of a controversial point of view while refuting the opposing point of view - there is no room for compromise. ~ Henrik O. Lunde

They were falling back into familiarity, into common ground, into the dirty gray. Just ordinary humans in ordinary opaque boiled-egg light, without grace, without revelation, composite of contradictions, easy principles, arguing about what they half believed in or even what they didn't believe in at all, desiring comfort as much as raw austerity, authenticity as much as playacting, desiring coziness of family as much as to abandon it forever. Cheese and chocolate they wanted, but also to kick all these bloody foreign things out. A wild daring love ... but also a rice and dal love blessed by the unexciting feel of everyday, its surprises safely enmeshed in something solidly familiar ... Every single contradiction history or opportunity might make available to them, every contradiction they were heir to, they desired. But only as much, of course, as they desired purity and a lack of contradiction. ~ Kiran Desai

Beyond the family or particular Christian tradition, how much effort do we make to consider what the Mennonites or the Episcopalians, the Baptists or the Pentecostals, the Methodists or the Presbyterians have to say to the rest of us out of their DIFFERENCES, as well as out of the affirmation in common with other Christians? As I suggested earlier, our patterns of ecumenicity tend to bracket out our differences rather than to celebrate and capitalize upon them. Finding common ground has been the necessary first step in ecumenical relations and activity. But the next step is to acknowledge and enjoy what God has done elsewhere in the Body of Christ. And if at the congregational level we are willing to say, 'I can't do everything myself, for I am an ear: I must consult with a hand or an eye on this matter,' I suggest that we do the same among whole traditions. If we do not regularly and programmatically consult with each other, we are tacitly claiming that we have no need of each other, and that all the truth, beauty, and goodness we need has been vouchsafed to us by God already. Not only is such an attitude problematic in terms of our flourishing, as I have asserted, but in this context now we must recognize how useless a picture this presents to the rest of society. Baptists, Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics failing to celebrate diversity provide no positive examples to societies trying to understand how to celebrate diversity on larger scales. ~ John G. Stackhouse Jr.

All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort
a sustained effort
to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children, and to respect the dignity of all human beings. ~ Barack Obama

Having a family that loves books and loves to read has always created a common ground for communication. ~ Tony DiTerlizzi

We can find common ground only by moving to higher ground. ~ Jim Wallis

I wanted to show those characters discovering it is possible to find common ground, as they make their way through a plotline that I hope is engrossing enough to keep the reader a willing participant. ~ Joan D. Vinge

The narrow, middle, common-ground is the life-raft in a turbulent sea of extremism. We are overwhelmed by common hopes. ~ Bryant McGill

There's a lot of common ground between criminals and cops. Both savor power, thrills, control. The good cops know they're only a step or two away from the crooks they're arresting. ~ Nanci Rathbun

When I started Ashes and Snow in 1992, I set out to explore the relationship between man and animals from the inside out. In discovering the shared language and poetic sensibilities of all animals, I am working towards restoring the common ground that once existed when people lived in harmony with animals. ~ Gregory Colbert

To be able to influence someone or to be able to have a group of guys come together to have a successful team and to be together all the time every day for, you know, a year and longer together, you have to have a - find a common ground. And that common ground for us is football. ~ Tim Tebow

I will go anywhere, anytime, to meet with anyone to find common ground. ~ Hillary Clinton

I have no problem playing anyone who has different politics than me. In fact, I don't take that into consideration at all. You have to find something sympathetic in a man. It's that common ground you need to connect with someone. ~ Leonardo DiCaprio

I like Mitt Romney as a person. I think he's a dignified person. But I have no common ground on economics. He doesn't worry about the Federal Reserve. He doesn't worry about foreign policy. He doesn't talk about civil liberties, so I would have a hard time to expect him to ever invite me to campaign with him. ~ Ron Paul

Jason always tried to build a good relationship with his team. He'd learned the hard way that if somebody was going to have your back in a fight, it was better if you found some common ground and trusted each other. But Nico wasn't easy to figure out. ~ Rick Riordan

As believers we all have an opportunity and moral obligation to recognize our spiritual common ground; to rise above our differences; to combat prejudice and intolerance. ~ Queen Noor Of Jordan

I am a very committed person when it comes to finding common ground. ~ Hillary Clinton

Style is, above all, a system of forms with a quality and a meaningful expression through which the personality of the artist andthe broad outlook of a group are visible, ... communicating and fixing certain values of religious, social, and moral life through the emotional suggestiveness of forms. It is, besides, a common ground against which innovations and individuality of particular works may be measured. ~ Meyer Schapiro

There are many domestic issues that give us a lot of common ground to work on. Health, education and immigration are among the areas where we share mutual goals and aspirations. There are also many values that we share as a communities. ~ Bob Menendez

At the first stage of his dialectic, Hegel affirms that in so far as death is the common ground of man and
animal, it is by accepting death and even by inviting it that the former differentiates himself from the
latter. At the heart of this primordial struggle for recognition, man is thus identified with violent death.
The mystic slogan "Die and become what you are" is taken up once more by Hegel. But "Become what
you are" gives place to "Become what you so far are not." This primitive and passionate desire for
recognition, which is confused with the will to exist, can be satisfied only by a recognition gradually
extended until it embraces everyone. In that everyone wants equally much to be recognized by everyone,
the fight for life will cease only with the recognition of all by all, which will mark the termination of
history. The existence that Hegelian consciousness seeks to obtain is born in the hard-won glory of
collective approval. ~ Albert Camus

No one is exempt from the call to find common ground. ~ Barack Obama

In his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides adduces a change in language as a major factor in Athens's descent from dysfunctional democracy through demagoguery into tyranny and anarchy: people began to define things in any way they pleased, he says, and the "normally accepted meaning of words" broke down. In his account of the Catiline crisis in republican Rome, Sallust has Cato the Younger identify the misuse of language - specifically the scission of word and meaning - as the underlying cause of the threat to the state. Society, Cato says, has lost the "vera vocabula rerum," literally, the "true names of things."18 In seventeenth-century England, Thomas Hobbes lived through a civil war he believed had been caused in significant measure by a war of words about religion - spread through the pervasive pamphleteering that printing had made possible - that had fatally weakened the linguistic common ground on which an ordered state depends. ~ Mark John Thompson

I find Indian music very funky. I mean it's very soulful, with their own kind of blues. But it's the only other school on the planet that develops improvisation to the high degree that you find in jazz music. So we have a lot of common ground. ~ John McLaughlin

California had organized itself, not accidentally, into highly partisan legislative districts. It elected highly partisan people to office and then required these people to reach a two-thirds majority to enact any new tax or meddle with big spending decisions. On the off chance that they found some common ground, it could be pulled out from under them by voters through the initiative process. Throw in term limits - no elected official now serves in California government long enough to fully understand it - and you have a recipe for generating maximum contempt for elected officials. Politicians are elected to get things done and are prevented by the system from doing it, leading the people to grow even more disgusted with them. "The vicious cycle of contempt," as Mark Paul calls it. California state government was designed mainly to maximize the likelihood that voters will continue to despise the people they elect. ~ Michael Lewis

I do see music as complete refuge. It's a universal home, complete common ground between everyone; it comes from a place that has no nation and no boundaries around it. ~ Abigail Washburn

If you go deep enough into any faith tradition, you find the common ground with all faith traditions. ~ Martin E. Marty

The sophisticates of Java, the traders of Sumatra, the peasants from the outer islands found no common ground. During siesta time from one to five, the Islamic group met separately, the Nationalist group met separately, the Federalist and Unitarians met separately. ~ Sukarno

Beyond these models of reconciliation, a theology of mysticism provides some hope for common ground between Christianity and Islam. Both religions have within their histories examples of ecstatic union with God, which seem at odds with their own spiritual traditions but have much in common with each other. ~ Tony Campolo

It was as if I had stepped through a mirror and was living a day in the life I might have had, if I'd stayed on the mountain. My life had diverged from my sister's, and it felt as though there was no common ground between us. The hours passed; it was late afternoon; and still she felt distant from me, still she refused to meet my gaze. ~ Tara Westover

As the sun rules the day and the moon governs the night, so too, we are connected by: the air that we breathe, light that we see and the darkness that follows. Life is too short to waste it on disagreements. Surely, we can all agree to disagree. So let us find a common ground, form a union and spread joy, happiness and freedom around the world for the benefit of you, me and the future generations to come. ~ Raymond Beresford Hamilton

We simply must look beyond partisan goals and find common ground as Americans. It is imperative that the Members of Congress recognize that partisanship will not serve the American people. ~ Michael Crapo

When I speak about love and compassion, I do so not as a Buddhist, nor as a Tibetan, nor as the Dalai Lama. I do so as one human being speaking with another. I hope that you at this moment will think of yourself as a human being rather than as an American, Asian, European, African, or member of any particular country. These loyalties are secondary. If you and I find common ground as human beings, we will communicate on a basic level. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

I guess the message in the songs is that is shouldn't matter if someone moves differently, or looks differently, or talks differently. Is biotic differently. What matters is that we're all thinking beings, and if we are thinking beings we ought to be able to find common ground somewhere. ~ Daniel Waters

To deny the truth of our own experience in the scientific study of ourselves is not only unsatisfactory; it is to render the scientific study of ourselves without a subject matter. But to suppose that science cannot contribute to an understanding of our experience may be to abandon, within the modern context, the task of self-understanding. Experience and scientific understanding are like two legs without which we cannot walk.

We can phrase this very same idea in positive terms: it is only by having a sense of common ground between cognitive science and human experience that our understanding of cognition can be more complete and reach a satisfying level. We thus propose a constructive task: to enlarge the horizon of cognitive science to include the broader panorama of human, lived experience in a disciplined, transformative analysis. ~ Evan Thompson

Anyway, stories bring us together to find common ground, to find our way through life together, or just to entertain us, and I am just thrilled to be a part of that process. ~ Dorothea Benton Frank

I let my face go blank and nodded slowly. "Yes.The trolls.Back. With me. Cannot form.Complete sentences." I shook my head. "Yeah,so not happening."
He considered me,annoyed and at a loss for what to do next."I don't kill humans."
"Me niether!See,common ground already. ~ Kiersten White

Let there be no doubt that as they are currently practiced, there is no common ground between science and religion. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Our talents come so easily to use that we acquire a false sense of security: Doesn't everyone see the world as I do? Doesn't everyone feel a sense of impatience to get this project started? Doesn't everyone want to avoid conflict and find the common ground? Can't everyone see the obstacles lying in wait if we proceed down this path? Our talents feel so natural to us that they seem to be common sense. ~ Marcus Buckingham

Let's clean up the Senate and return to politics of common ground. ~ Mark Pryor

I know Barack Obama. And I believe that as president, he'll pursue the common good by seeking common ground rather than trying to divide us. ~ Bob Casey, Jr.

I celebrate ideals of individual excellence, self-reliance, and personal responsibility… But rugged individualism alone did not get us to the moon. It did not end slavery, win World War II, pass the Voting Rights Act, or bring down the Berlin Wall. It didn't build our dams, bridges, and highways, or map the human genome. Our most lasting accomplishments require mutual effort and shared sacrifice; this is an idea that is woven into the very fabric of this country. ~ Cory Booker

For a few minutes, we stare at each other, and it feels like a bond snaps into place between us. We have common ground that I never realized. Forge isn't just an arrogant asshole. He's...real. And that makes him even more dangerou to me. ~ Meghan March

A reasonable being might think that he and I could find some common ground; have a cup of coffee and compare our Passengers, exchange trade talk and chitchat about dismemberment techniques. But no: Doakes wanted me dead. And I found it difficult to share his point of view. ~ Jeff Lindsay

Sometimes I wonder if a friendship in which the common ground is all that is bad about each person is a friendship worth having. ~ Thomas Beller

I think in most relationships that have problems, there's fault on both sides. And in order for it to work, there has to be some common ground that's shared. And it's not just one person making amends. ~ Steve Carell

The emotions that sustain religious belief are all, in fact, deeply ordinary and deeply recognisable to anybody who has ever made their way across the common ground of human experience as an adult. ~ Francis Spufford

I could fight with the living but I could not fight the dead. If there was some woman in London that Maxim loved, someone he wrote to, visited, dined with, slept with, I could fight her. We would stand on common ground. I should not be afraid. Anger and jealousy were things that could be conquered. One day the woman would grow old or tired or different, and Maxim would not love her anymore. But Rebecca would never grow old. Rebecca would always be the same. And she and I could not fight. She was too strong for me. ~ Daphne Du Maurier

Here comes Jesse Jackson, he talks of common ground. Does that common ground include me, or is it just a sound? ~ Lou Reed

My message to Washington is the United States has gone through incredible crises, and our leaders have been able to find common ground. And that's what our leaders have to do. ~ Kenneth Chenault

I'm not stupid and I'm not brainy. I just lack execution sometimes.
I'm more of a "I should have said that" kind of gal. But there will be other days when I'll have a comback that'll knock ya flat and you knows it brov! ha-ha! ~ Ellie Williams

As president, I will take that common ground and sign the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. I will stop allowing taxpayer money to fund Planned Parenthood. And I will support those pregnancy centers and women's health clinics around the country that are actually serving their communities. ~ Carly Fiorina

There is common ground we can look towards and hopefully make this country better for all of us. That is what Joe for America means. I want more jobs. I want veterans to have better benefits and not have them taken away. I want people to succeed in this country and have the tools to do so. ~ Joe Wurzelbacher

I like to see myself as a bridge builder, that is me building bridges between people, between races, between cultures, between politics, trying to find common ground. ~ T.D. Jakes

There is nothing wrong with our country, there is something wrong with our politics ... When this country is operating off a common ground, nobody can stop us. But when we're divided, then we end up having a whole lot of self-inflicted problems. ~ Barack Obama

In a politically diverse nation, only by finding that common ground can we achieve results for the common good. ~ Olympia Snowe

Free verse seemed democratic because it offered freedom of access to writers. And those who disdained free verse would always be open to accusations of elitism, mandarinism. Open form was like common ground on which all might graze their cattle - it was not to be closed in by usurping landlords. ~ James Fenton

Laughter is such a healing thing, and through laughter, we find commonalities with each other. There's a lot of separation in the world, and by creating more things to laugh at, we can create a common ground for open discussion. ~ Sufe Bradshaw

Real love is on the inside. It's somebody you have a common ground with, you share the same values, you share the same interests, you share the same humor, you share all those things that are things that will last you the rest of your life. ~ George Lucas

[A]s they are currently practiced, there is no common ground between science and religion ... Although just as in hostage negotiations, it's probably best to keep both sides talking to each other. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Whether you're an opera singer, a legislator or customer service operator, there is a way that we can find common ground with our audience - be they young or old, Democrats or Republicans, rich or poor, religious or secular. ~ Charity Sunshine Tillemann-Dick

Keeping a new church outwardly focused from the beginning is much easier than trying to refocus an inwardly concerned church.

In order to plant a successful church, you have to know that you know that you are undeniably called by God.

The call to start a new church plant is not the same as the call to serve in an existing church or work in a ministry-related organization. You may be the greatest preacher this side of Billy Graham but still not be called to start a church.

If you think you may have allowed an improper reason, voice or emotion to lead you to the idea of starting a new church, back away now. Spend some more time with God. You don't want to move forward on a hunch or because you feel "pretty sure" that you should be planting a church. You have to be completely certain.

"You're afraid? So what. Everybody's afraid. Fear is the common ground of humanity. The question you must wrestle to the ground is, 'Will I allow my fear to bind me to mediocrity?'"

When you think of a people group that you might be called to reach, does your heart break for them? If so, you may want to consider whether God is specifically calling you to reach that group for His kingdom.

Is your calling clear? Has your calling been confirmed by others? Are you humbled by the call? Have you acted on your call?

Do you know for certain that God has called you to start a new church? Nail it down. When exactly were you called? ~ Nelson Searcy

All the same, we should excuse ourselves," Vergil said. "Although I am wondering if the meeting was already well concluded when we intruded." He gave Nathaniel a deep look on the last sentence that made Charlotte's caution prickle. She saw the big brother in him, thinking that a private chat with this man was in order.
Bianca still had not picked up the cue. "You are making plans regarding the petitions?"
"I trust that a petition came up at some point in the visit," Vergil said dryly. "Correct, Knightridge?"
Charlotte wanted to die. "Indeed one did," she said. "Mr. Knightridge is proving to be a great help in the cause."
Bianca beamed. "I always knew that the two of you would find common ground in something."
"Yes, we have discovered that we think alike in one small area," Nathaniel agreed.
Charlotte wanted to hit him.
"Indeed," Vergil muttered. ~ Madeline Hunter

When Stephen talked about stalking chamois his whole expression changed. The features became more aquiline, the nose sharpened, the chin narrowed, and his eyes-steel blue - somehow took on the cold brilliance of a northern sky. I am being very frank about my husband. He attracted me at those times, and he repelled me too. This man, I told myself when I first met him, is a perfectionist. And he has no compassion. Gratified like all women who find themselves sought after and desired - a mutual love for Sibelius had been our common ground at our first encounter - after a few weeks in his company I shut my eyes to further judgment, because being with him gave me pleasure. It flattered my self-esteem. The perfectionist, admired by other women, now sought me. Marriage was in every sense a coup. It was only afterwards that I knew myself deceived. ("The Chamois") ~ Daphne Du Maurier

Hip-hop gave a generation a common ground that didn't require either race to lose anything; everyone gained. ~ Jay-Z

Always look for common ground, but don't ever be afraid to choose sides. ~ Mark Deklin

I think the most effective forms of critique are ones that establish a common ground for people to occupy, and then appeal to the best nature of people on that common ground. ~ Mohsin Hamid

Somewhere here I want to bring in a learning which has been most rewarding, because it makes me feel so deeply akin to others. I can word it this way. What is most personal is most general. There have been times when in talking with students or staff, or in my writing, I have expressed myself in ways so personal that I have felt I was expressing an attitude which it was probable no one else could understand, because it was so uniquely my own…. In these instances I have almost invariably found that the very feeling which has seemed to me most private, most personal, and hence most incomprehensible by others, has turned out to be an expression for which there is a resonance in many other people. It has led me to believe that what is most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very element which would, if it were shared or expressed, speak most deeply to others. This has helped me to understand artists and poets as people who have dared to express the unique in themselves. ~ Carl R. Rogers

If you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines; but meet on what common ground remains,
if onlythat the sun shines, and the rain rains for both; the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted into air. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The common ground where the activities of God and man become one is the motive of perfect love; for in the last resolve love is the essence of God's nature. When he thinks, love is his thought; when he wills, love is the product of his will. To the degree, therefore, that man thinks and wills the good
to the degree that he realizes love in his finite dealings
he interfuses himself with God. ~ Frank C. Lockwood

We must stop the Tea Party before the United States Senate falls into the hands of extremists and ideologues who leave no room for reason or compromise, who don't recognize common ground even when they're standing on it. ~ Harry Reid

One function of the librarian, as he saw it, was to blunt the edge of these differences and to provide a means whereby the rich and poor could live happily side by side. The public library was a great leveler, supplying a literature by which the ordinary man could experience some of the pleasures of the rich, and providing a common ground where employer and employee could meet on equal terms. ~ Lewis Henry Steiner

Let's listen to the people and find common ground to remove barriers to job creation. ~ Peter Roskam

Did they love me? The question is beside the point, somehow. Certainly they each spoiled me, mainly by giving me the false impression that I was entitled to attention nearly all the the time. They played. THEY were like children, if you consider that one of the things about being a child is that you are a parasite of sorts and have to brazen out self-righteously. I want. They were good at wanting and I shared much more common ground with them than with my mother when I was three or four years old. ~ Lorna Sage

I will get things done for America ... Faced with apathy, I will take action. Faced with conflict, I will seek common ground ... Faced with adversity, I will persevere. I will carry this commitment with me this year. I am an Americorps volunteer. ~ William J. Clinton

It's remarkable that the failures of the Obama, Clinton, Kerry foreign policy are not only uniting the Left and Right in Israel but might even be creating some common ground between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. ~ Ted Cruz

But another part of me wanted him to sense that there was no point trying to catch up now - we'd traveled and been through too much without each other for there to be any common ground between us. Perhaps I wanted him to feel the sting of loss, and grieve. But in the end, and by way of compromise, perhaps, I decided that the easiest way was to show I'd forgotten none of it. I made a motion to take him to the empty lot that remained as scorched and fallow as when I'd shown it to him two decades before. I had barely finished my offer - 'Been there, done that,' he replied. It was his way of telling me he hadn't forgotten either. 'Maybe you'd prefer to make a quick stop at the bank.' He burst out laughing. 'I'll bet you they never closed my account.' 'If we have time, and if you care to, I'll take you to the belfry. I know you've never been up there.'

'To-die-for?'

I smiled back. He remembered our name for it. ~ Andre Aciman

Maya is Time, the illusion of the ego, the stuff of individual existence, the dream that separates us from a true perception of the whole. It is often likened to a sealed glass vessel that separates the air within from the clear and unconfined air all around, or water from the all encompassing sea. Yet the vessel is not different from the sea, and to shatter or dissolve it brings about the reunion with all universal life that mystics seek, the homegoing, the return to the lost paradise of our "true nature."

Today science is telling us what the Vedas have taught mankind for three thousand years, that we do not see the universe as it is. What we see is Maya, or Illusion, the "magic show" of Nature, a collective hallucination of that part of our consciousness which is shared with all of our own kind, and which gives a common ground, a continuity, to the life experience. According to Buddhists (but not Hindus), this world perceived by the senses, this relative but not absolute reality, this dream, also exists, also has meaning; but it is only one aspect of the truth, like the cosmic vision of this goat by the crooked door, gazing through sheets of rain into the mud. ~ Peter Matthiessen

The first thing I plan to do is what I did while serving in Arizona's legislature - and that was to seek out members that I often disagreed with on important issues. It was through our authentic relationships and mutual respect that we found common ground on legislation that helped people. The challenge for Congress is to move past the harsh partisanship that we saw in the last term. This is a critical step in advancing policies that will strengthen and protect LGBT families. ~ Kyrsten Sinema

She rattled around that huge house, growing more and more used to being on her own, resenting his presence more and more when he was back for the weekends, feeling like he was invading her space.
They became like strangers, ships that pass in the night, not able to agree on anything, not having any common ground ~ Jane Green

Everything established, settled, everything to do with home and order and the common ground, has crumbled into dust and has been swept away in the general upheaval and reorganization of the whole of society. The whole human way of life has been destroyed and ruined. All that's left is the bare, shivering human soul, stripped to the last shred, the naked force of the human psyche for which nothing has changed because it was always cold and shivering and reaching out to its nearest neighbor, as cold and lonely as itself. ~ Boris Pasternak

In the person of Quanah Parker, an extraordinary man in whom the blood of two strong peoples flowed, the Lone Star and the Comanche Moon at last found common ground. ~ Thomas W. Knowles

That there is an evolution of one sort or another is now common ground among scientists. Whether or not that evolution is directed is another question. ~ Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

No matter what message you are about to deliver somewhere, whether it is holding out a hand of friendship, or making clear that you disapprove of something, is the fact that the person sitting across the table is a human being, so the goal is to always establish common ground. ~ Madeleine Albright