Common Things Quotes

Now may deep sleep put us at rest in Thee after the long day, and may morning find us more serene, more thankful, a little stronger, and eager for the unfolding of radiant life. Help us to be ready to see Thy beauty in common things and to find our anchorage in eternal love and truth and forgiveness and hope. ~ Carl Heath Kopf

What we grieve for is not the loss of a grand vision, but rather the loss of common things, events and gestures ... ordinariness is the most precious thing we struggle for, what the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto fought for. Not noble causes or abstract theories. But the right to go on living with a sense of purpose and a sense of self-worth
an ordinary life. ~ Irena Klepfisz

If you're going to go for 'it' you have a common thing you share with other artists; that's desperation. You jump out a window style-wise. Try to put it together before you hit the ground. ~ Alex Katz

If you are not in an environment where there is scope for your best powers and talents you can move in due time; but meanwhile you can be great where you are. Lincoln was as great when he was a backwoods lawyer as when he was President; as a backwoods lawyer he did common things in a great way, and that made him President. Had he waited until he reached Washington to begin to be ~ Wallace D. Wattles

We have to adopt a wider perspective, and always find common things between the people of north, east, south, and west. Conflict comes from the basis of differencs. ~ Dalai Lama

The best perfection of a religious man is to do common things in a perfect manner. A constant fidelity in small things is a great and heroic virtue. ~ Bonaventure

And the Truth turns out to be nothing less than the amazing but undeniable fact that the whole outer world -whether it be the physical body, the common things of life, the winds and the rain, the clouds, the earth itself -is amenable to man's thought, and that he had dominion over it when he knows it. ~ Emmet Fox

There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she is given In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an angel's wings. ~ John Keats

Fiction means the common things as seen by the uncommon people. Fairy tales mean the uncommon things as seen by the common people. ~ G.K. Chesterton

But she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things. She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last. All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions. It was no wonder that her sons stood tall and straight. She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races. ~ Willa Cather

The doubts that drove us through the night as we two talked amain, And day had broken on the streets e'er it broke upon the brain. Between us, by the peace of God, such truth can now be told; Yea, there is strength in striking root and good in growing old. We have found common things at last and marriage and a creed, And I may safely write it now, and you may safely read. ~ G.K. Chesterton

It is a common thing for people to begin to lean in the direction of recovery, only to stop and take score too soon. And when they still find unwanted symptoms or conditions, they then offer resistant thought and lose the improved ground they have gained. With consistent releasing of resistance, all unwanted conditions will subside, returning you to your natural state of Well-Being. ~ Esther Hicks

When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world ~ George Washington Carver

To do common things perfectly is far better worth our endeavor than to do uncommon things respectably. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

She lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we recognize by instinct as universal and true ... she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things. ~ Willa Cather

The sea, as well as the air, is a free and common thing to all; and a particular nation cannot pretend to have the right to the exclusion of all others, without violating the rights of nature and public usage. ~ Elizabeth I

I have a variety of friends I climb with. But the common thing is I trust all of them. They're solid climbers, the sort of people I trust to know what they're doing. ~ Erik Weihenmayer

NO ONE GETS OUT OF CHILDHOOD ALIVE. It's not the first time I've said that. But among the few worthy bon mots I've gotten off in sixty-seven years, that and possibly one other may be the only considerations eligible for carving on my tombstone. (The other one is the one entrepreneurs have misappropriated to emboss on buttons and bumper stickers: The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
(I don't so much mind that they pirated it, but what does honk me off is that they never get it right. They render it dull and imbecile by phrasing it thus: "The two most common things in the universe are ... "
(Not things, you insensate gobbets of ambulatory giraffe dung, elements! Elements is funny, things is imprecise and semi-guttural. Things! Geezus, when will the goyim learn they don't know how to tell a joke. ~ Harlan Ellison

A lot of the younger Indian generation are either IT geniuses or doctors - the number of doctors I've seen in L.A. who are Indian is just crazy. So it is a very common thing. Or an accountant! That again is a very, very big thing. ~ Freida Pinto

THE ROSE

TOTHE ROSE UPON THE ROOD OF TIME
Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days!
Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways:
Cuchulain battling with the bitter tide;
The Druid, grey, wood-nurtured, quiet-eyed,
Who cast round Fergus dreams, and ruin untold;
And thine own sadness, where of stars, grown old
In dancing silver-sandalled on the sea,
Sing in their high and lonely melody.
Come near, that no more blinded by man's fate,
I find under the boughs of love and hate,
In all poor foolish things that live a day,
Eternal beauty wandering on her way.
Come near, come near, come near - Ah, leave me still
A little space for the rose-breath to fill!
Lest I no more bear common things that crave;
The weak worm hiding down in its small cave,
The field-mouse running by me in the grass,
And heavy mortal hopes that toil and pass;
But seek alone to hear the strange things said
By God to the bright hearts of those long dead,
And learn to chaunt a tongue men do not know.
Come near; I would, before my time to go,
Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways:
Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days.


A king is but a foolish labourer
Who wastes his blood to be another's dream. ~ W.B. Yeats

He who has not even a knowledge of common things is a brute among men. He who has an accurate knowledge of human concerns alone, is a man among brutes. But he who knows all that can be known by intellectual energy is a God among men. ~ Plotinus

Robert Burns in his splendid indifference to rank, and Whitman in his glorification of common things, have points of kinship with him. But to such radiant white heart of child-likeness, it would be impossible to find a perfect counterpart. ~ Sister Nivedita

The immense success of our life is, I think, that our treasure is hid away; or rather in such common things that nothing can touch it. ~ Virginia Woolf

Which Painters hold, and such the heritage This gentle solemn Spirit doth possess, Being a better mirror of his age In all his pity, love, and weariness, Than those who can but copy common things, And leave the Soul unpainted with its mighty questionings. But ~ Oscar Wilde

Learn to do common things uncommonly well; we must always keep in mind that anything that helps full the dinner pail is valuable. ~ George Washington Carver

It's amazing how lovely common things become, if one only knows how to look at them. ~ Louisa May Alcott

THE NAME OF THE WIND has everything fantasy readers like, magic and mysteries and ancient evil, but it's also humorous and terrifying and completely believable. As with all the very best books in our field, it's not the fantasy trappings (wonderful as they are) that make this novel so good, but what the author has to say about true, common things, about ambition and failure, art, love, and loss. ~ Tad Williams

Modern theory is about objects lower than man; even stars, being common things, are lower than man. ~ Hans Jonas

It was one of those strange moments that came to him rarely, but never left. A moment that stamped itself on heart and brain, instantly recallable in every detail, for all of his life. There was no telling what made these moments different from any other, though he knew them when they came. He had seen sights more gruesome and more beautiful by far, and been left with no more than a fleeting muddle of their memory. But these
the still moments, as he called them to himself
they came with no warning, to print a random image of the most common things inside his brain, indelible. ~ Diana Gabaldon

The Greeks were realists. They saw the beauty of common things and were content with it. ~ Edith Hamilton

I used to do Korean classical music and started training to join an idol group after someone set me up an interview with my current agency. The common thing between Korean classical music and becoming a singer is that I get to go on stage which why I decided to get professional training for K-pop music without holding any bias. ~ Kim Him-chan

And she said, in a voice strangely unlike her own, 'I see the vision of a poor weak soul striving after good. It was not cut short; and, in the end, it learnt, through tears and much pain, that holiness is an infinite compassion for others; that greatness is to take the common things of life and walk truly among them; that' - she moved her white hand and laid it on her forehead - 'happiness is a great love and much serving. It was not cut short; and it loved what it had learnt - it loved ~ Olive Schreiner

Being genius does not necessarily mean knowing it all or having the highest academic qualification; but a persons ability to apply wisdom and common sense to common things in a distinctive manner and courageously, exhibiting the latent deft to the admiration of the masses ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I tell people: walk around for one month and write down three problems in your life every day. At first it's easy - you got stuck in traffic, you missed your alarm - but by the end of the month you're looking really hard to get your 90 problems. The most common things on your list are now billion-dollar businesses. ~ Jay Samit

My Spanish is getting a little bit loose. Sometimes I go to Spain and after I've been talking with my folks for a while ... you start changing the verb for the adjective, for example, which is a common thing between Spanish and English. I change that sometimes but after a couple days there, boom, I'm back. ~ Antonio Banderas

I don't want people to think about one common thing. Coda is non-discursive, just like choreography for the stage. So each audience member's thoughts about it, or better yet, their feelings, will be different. Moreover, images contain so much information that one can see things that the next person won't notice. As a result, people will surely think about Coda in dissimilar ways. ~ Martine Epoque

Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery. It is far better to be free, to leave the forts and barricades of fear, to stand erect and face the future with a smile. It is far better to give yourself sometimes to negligence, to drift with wave and tide, with the blind force of the world, to think and dream, to forget the chains and limitations of the breathing life, to forget purpose and object, to lounge in the picture gallery of the brain, to feel once more the clasps and kisses of the past, to bring life's morning back, to see again the forms and faces of the dead, to paint fair pictures for the coming years, to forget all Gods, their promises and threats, to feel within your veins life's joyous stream and hear the martial music, the rhythmic beating of your fearless heart. And then to rouse yourself to do all useful things, to reach with thought and deed the ideal in your brain, to give your fancies wing, that they, like chemist bees, may find art's nectar in the weeds of common things, to look with trained and steady eyes for facts, to find the subtle threads that join the distant with the now, to increase knowledge, to take burdens from the weak, to develop the brain, to defend the right, to make a palace for the soul. This is real religion. This is real worship ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

To do a common thing uncommonly well brings success. ~ Henry J. Heinz

common sense is embedded in common things ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Even the common things he carried with him - the food and the brandy and the loaded pistol - took on exactly that concrete and material poetry which a child feels when he takes a gun upon a journey or a bun with him to bed. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Nor let us part with justice, like a cheap and common thing, for a small and trifling price. ~ Plutarch

It is love. I will have to run or hide.

The walls of its prison rise up, as in a twisted dream. The beautiful mask has changed, but as always it is the one. Of what use are my talismans: the literary exercises, the vague erudition, the knowledge of words used by the harsh North to sing its seas and swords, the temperate friendship, the galleries of the Library, the common things, the habits, the young love of my mother, the militant shadow of my dead, the timeless night, the taste of dreams?

Being with you or being without you is the measure of my time.

Now the pitcher breaks about the spring, now the man arises to the sound of birds, now those that watch at the windows have gone dark, but the darkness has brought no peace.

It, I know, is love: the anxiety and the relief at hearing your voice, the expectation and the memory, the horror of living in succession.

It is love with its mythologies, with its tiny useless magics.

There exists a corner that I dare not cross.

Now the armies confine me, the hordes.

(This room is unreal; she has not seen it.)

The name of a woman gives me away.

A woman hurts me in all of my body. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

I suddenly saw all the things that I have allowed to become common, things that would be considered miracles in the eyes of millions of believers in persecution. The truth is, these things that we take for granted are all miracles! ~ Nik Ripken

Faith and beliefs are the common things in all religion, so God is the faith and the belief without exception. ~ Debasish Mridha

Schizoid behavior is a pretty common thing in children. It's accepted, because all we adults have this unspoken agreement that children are lunatics. ~ Stephen King

We can sanctify ourselves in common things. We must do so. ~ Janet Erskine Stuart

Chellamuthu expected to feel heroic by helping Anu recover. Instead it was just hard work. Perhaps this was a secret that heroes don't share: Courage comes from doing common things. ~ Camron Wright

Although all the good arts serve to draw man's mind away from vices and lead it toward better things, this function can be more fully performed by this art, which also provides extraordinary intellectual pleasure. ~ Nicolaus Copernicus

You do have to change things as warfare changes. ~ Chuck Schumer

Why cannot we work at cooperative schemes and search for the common ground binding all mankind together? ~ William O. Douglas

Awakening the mystical kundalini prematurely is dangerous, because unless you have refined your being, you'll get all screwed up, entities, weird powers ... strange things. That is why I don't teach anyone how to open up the chakras. ~ Frederick Lenz

Reina sounds awesome," Sid says. "I'm digging her more and more."

"Were you there?" I ask. "Have you seen one of these movies?"

"No," Scottie says.

"Scottie," Alex says, kicking Sid in the ribs. "Reina is a fuckedup ho bag, and you need to stay away from her. I've already told you that. Do you want to end up like me?"

"Yes," Scottie says.

"I mean the earlier me, when I was yelling at Mom."

"No," Scottie says.

"Well, Reina is going to be a crackhead, and she's going to get used. She's a twat. Say it."

"Twat," Scottie says. She gets up and runs across the room, saying, "Twat twat twat twat twat."

"Holy shit," Sid says. "This is some messed-up parenting. Isn't it?"

Alex shrugs. "Maybe. I guess we'll see."

"I don't get it," I say. "I don't know what to do. These things she does, they keep happening."

"It will go away," Alex says.

"Will it? I mean, look at how you kids talk. In front of me, especially. It's like you don't respect authority."

The kids stare at the television. I tell them to get out. I'm going to bed. ~ Kaui Hart Hemmings

Exploding many things under the name of trifles is a very false proof either of wisdom or magnanimity, and a great check to virtuous actions with regard to fame. ~ Jonathan Swift

Some things are so impossible, so fantastic, that when they happen, you are not at all surprised. Their sheer impossibility has made you imagine them too many times in your head, and when you find yourself on that longed-for moonlit path, it seems unreal but still, somehow, familiar. You dreamed of it, of course; you know it like a memory. ~ Andrew Sean Greer

You have been "self-pitying" for long years now and things don't seem to improve. Just try a few days of good self-esteeming" and you'll see things taking a better shape! ~ Israelmore Ayivor

My friend, stay positive! It is really good to always stay positive. You don't really give a damn to negative people, circumstances and things! You only learn lessons from them that can help you take precautions to always stay positive for positive footprints! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Barnett says he realized several things in that moment: the need for humility, the importance of remembering that each of us can learn from anyone and that the dismissed symptom can be the key. ~ Clifton K. Meador

I'll work with a director if I think I'm going to get into a comfortable situation, and if it's someone I respect and who respects me, even if they're not so well known. Movies are hard to make, and you have to work toward a common ethic and do your best. ~ Robert De Niro

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning. ~ Mary Wesley

By beginning a diary, I was already conceding that life would be more bearable if I looked at it as an adventure and a tale. I was telling myself the story of a life, and this transmutes into an adventure the things which can shatter you. ~ Anais Nin

It feels great to be a role model and I'm very careful with the things I do. I'm not perfect, I do make a lot of mistakes, but I try my best. ~ Angie Stone

There are things that can only be said with a good string of cussing. I'm definitely fond of a few choice words. They say things that nothing else can say. Gotta love it. ~ Tony Hale

Austin had a concussion tonight. That's the way it goes for us. We get one back, we lose one. Or lose two. We've had the most difficult time the last two years just keeping a full roster. Hopefully at some point at the end of the tunnel some good things can happen for the Indiana Pacers. ~ Jermaine O'Neal

An executive cannot gradually dismiss details. Business is made up of details and I notice that the chief executive who dismisses them is quite likely to dismiss his business. Success is the sum of detail. It might perhaps be pleasing to imagine oneself beyond detail and engaged only in great things, but as I have often observed, if one attends only to great things and lets the little things pass the great things become little; that is, the business shrinks. ~ Harvey S. Firestone

I get a lot of 'Oh, you've been gone.' I wasn't gone. Just because you didn't see me doesn't mean I wasn't working and collecting checks. I just wasn't singing and doing videos. I do a lot of other things, like I said, like writing scripts and stuff like that. I write for other artists. ~ Tionne Watkins

Forgetting is not forgetting
Forgetting is 'Letting things pass'

When Existence opens up to Essence
And rises above and beyond
The path of Transcendence opens

Love goes beyond Death
The body disappears
The person lives
In Love

And in this Love
Remembrance is born
(Page 91) ~ Neena Verma

An infinite Power must be infinitely little as well as infinitely great. We are neither, therefore there are things too little as well as too great for us to apprehend. ~ L.M. Montgomery

It's scary to do new things. What's even more scary is always doing the same thing. ~ Lisa M. Cronkhite

But two things I have ever respected are warmth and the ability to sit still." Martha ~ R.A. MacAvoy

Love is one of the most motivating and self-defining forces in our lives, whether we turn from it or allow ourselves to be drawn to it. If you allow romantic possibilities with others to consume all your time and energy, they will distract you from the things of interest that fill your life with passion and purpose. ~ A.J. Darkholme

Director and producers have to take all the risks they can. We developed this film with the possibility to create departing from a blank page and to discover things as the process went along and as we understood the things that at first we couldn't understand in words. ~ Alex Abreu

People are satisfied with making minor upgrades and tweaking things here and there - as long as that's the landscape, it will keep on happening. I don't see a problem necessarily, but at the same time it is nice to see new things come. ~ Hideo Kojima

Over the course of my years, I have met thousands of people. I have dined with the prosperous as well as the poverty-stricken. I have conversed with the mighty and with the meek. I have walked with the famous and the feeble. I have run with outstanding athletes and those who are not athletically inclined. One thing I can tell you with certainty is this: You cannot predict happiness by the amount of money, fame, or power a person has. External conditions do not necessarily make a person happy ... The fact is that the external things so valued by the world are often the cause of a great deal of misery in the world. Those who live in thanksgiving daily, however, are usually among the world's happiest people. And they make others happy as well. ~ Joseph B. Wirthlin

Teach faith as a non-negotiable - What should your family be aware of? Why should they be aware of these things? How will they become aware? When and at what stages must they become aware? ~ Archibald Marwizi

Express gratitude for the greatness of small things. ~ Richie Norton

The critic said that once a year he read Kim; and he read Kim, it was plain, at whim: not to teach, not to criticize, just for love - he read it, as Kipling wrote it, just because he liked to, wanted to, couldn't help himself. To him it wasn't a means to a lecture or article, it was an end; he read it not for anything he could get out of it, but for itself. And isn't this what the work of art demands of us? The work of art, Rilke said, says to us always: You must change your life. It demands of us that we too see things as ends, not as means - that we too know them and love them for their own sake. This change is beyond us, perhaps, during the active, greedy, and powerful hours of our lives; but duringthe contemplative and sympathetic hours of our reading, our listening, our looking, it is surely within our power, if we choose to make it so, if we choose to let one part of our nature follow its natural desires. So I say to you, for a closing sentence, Read at whim! read at whim! ~ Randall Jarrell

We all understand that we are living longer, and we are more likely to spend more years as frail, elderly people who can't work. We also recognize that the wonderful advances in medicine also come with wonderful price tags. Those are things you can't budget around. ~ Elizabeth Warren

Now, there are things I like just fine about church, and I don't just mean making money. The notion of getting together as a community to remind ourselves why we shouldn't behave like animals is a fucking great idea. ~ Nick Offerman

From Wall Street to Drive was almost a year, when I didn't do anything 'cause there was just nothing that was significantly different from the things I'd done before. There was just nothing to explore. ~ Carey Mulligan

By wit we search divine aspect above,
By wit we learn what secrets science yields,
By wit we speak, by wit the mind is rul'd,
By wit we govern all our actions;
Wit is the loadstar of each human thought,
Wit is the tool by which all things are wrought. ~ Robert Greene

One of the most important things about the geology on the moon is your descriptions of what you see, comparing them to things that you've seen on Earth so that the geologists and the scientists on the ground would know what you're talking about; and then take pictures of them. ~ Eugene Cernan

No, its the poor I tell you, and the poor only, as does such things for the poor. Don't think to come over me with th' old tale, that the rich knows nothing of the trials of the poor; I say, if they don't know, they ought to know. We're their slaves as long as we can work; we pile up their fortunes with the sweat of our brows, and yet we are to live as separate as if we were in two worlds ... Chap. 1, p. 12 ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

A straight oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see things but how we see them. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Anyone who enters into an intimate relationship with God can see God do exceptional things through his or her life. The outcome does not depend upon a person being unusually gifted, educated, or wealthy. The key is the indwelling presence of God doing unusual things ~ Henry T. Blackaby

Unfortunately, Feng Shui has mingled with superstition. Luckily, it's easy to expose myths. Don't think 'things', think 'energy'. ~ Stefan Emunds