Commonly Quotes

Enoki mushrooms, a tasty variety commonly sold in grocery stores, were one of the first mushrooms studied for preventing cancer. ~ Paul Stamets

Sometimes when we go through transitions, we aren't aware of the impact they have on us. Stress, doubt, and even depression commonly result from being moved or thrown out of your comfort zone, however easy the transition is. You may have a strong sense of purpose, high hopes, strong faith, a powerful sense of self-worth, a positive attitude, the courage to face your fears, and the ability to bounce back from failures. But if you fall apart when faced with the inevitable changes that life brings, you will never move forward. We ~ Nick Vujicic

Aristocracy naturally leads the human mind to the contemplation of the past, and fixes it there. Democracy, on the contrary, gives men a sort of instinctive distaste for what is ancient. In this respect aristocracy is far more favorable to poetry; for things commonly grow larger and more obscure as they are more remote; and, for this two-fold reason, they are better suited to the delineation of the ideal. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Even at the very dawn of Christianity, there was a commonly-accepted theory known as the Blood Libel, which stated matter-of-factly that Jewish people regularly sacrificed non-Jewish babies and used the blood of those babies in Judaic rituals. Later, in medieval times, plagues and other diseases were commonly blamed on Jews, resulting in the enforcement of Apartheid-like conditions, separating Jewish communities from the rest of the population throughout Europe. For example, in the Papal States – territories in the Italian Peninsula that existed throughout the middle ages and medieval times that were governed directly by the Pope – Jews were only allowed to reside in neighborhoods called ghettos. They were regularly forced to convert to Christianity in various barbaric ways such as involuntary baptisms. The stealing of Jewish babies from their parents by Church officials was also not uncommon and the children would often then be brought up as Catholic orphans never knowing of their Jewish heritage. ~ James Morcan

In this day and age, there is a limitless plethora of readily available distractions just waiting to take your mind off what you were supposed to be doing, and instead keep you unproductive and unmotivated. With distractions so easy to come by, and society so geared towards instant gratification as opposed to "Hard graft" for results, it is little wonder that many people suffer from a condition most commonly referred to as laziness. ~ James Frankton

We commonly speak as though a single 'thing' could 'have' some characteristic. A stone, we say, is 'hard,' 'small,' 'heavy,' 'yellow,' 'dense,' etc.

That is how our language is made: 'The stone is hard.' And so on. And that way of talking is good enough for the marketplace: 'That is a new brand.' 'The potatoes are rotten.' 'The container is damaged.' ... And so on.

But this way of talking is not good enough in science or epistemology. To think straight, it is advisable to expect all qualities and attributes, adjectives, and so on to refer to at least -two- sets of interactions in time. ...

Language continually asserts by the syntax of subject and predicate that 'things' somehow 'have' qualities and attributes. A more precise way of talking would insist that the 'things' are produced, are seen as separate from other 'things,' and are made 'real' by their internal relations and by their behaviour in relationship with other things and with the speaker.

It is necessary to be quite clear about the universal truth that whatever 'things' may be in their pleromatic and thingish world, they can only enter the world of communication and meaning by their names, their qualities and their attributes (i.e., by reports of their internal and external relations and interactions). ~ Gregory Bateson

The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man. The State does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. ~ Henry David Thoreau

The animadversions of critics are commonly such as may easily provoke the sedatest writer to some quickness of resentment and asperity of reply. ~ Samuel Johnson

Once we recognize the power of propaganda, we need to ask whether its exercise is consistent with those democratic ideals to which lip-service is commonly accorded. ~ Randal Marlin

November 25 2011 Day after Thanks giving day November 25 2011 Day after Thanks giving day This section is to check the table in the first line of the page.Independence Day, commonly known as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the adoption of the ~ Anonymous

The fortitude of a Christian consists in patience, not in enterprises which the poets call heroic, and which are commonly the effects of interest, pride and worldly honor. ~ John Dryden

Senor, a large river separated two districts of one and the same lordship - will your worship please to pay attention, for the case is an important and a rather knotty one? Well then, on this river there was a bridge, and at one end of it a gallows, and a sort of tribunal, where four judges commonly sat to administer the law which the lord of river, bridge and the lordship had enacted, and which was to this effect, 'If anyone crosses by this bridge from one side to the other he shall declare on oath where he is going to and with what object; and if he swears truly, he shall be allowed to pass, but if falsely, he shall be put to death for it by hanging on the gallows erected there, without any remission.' Though the law and its severe penalty were known, many persons crossed, but in their declarations it was easy to see at once they were telling the truth, and the judges let them pass free. It happened, however, that one man, when they came to take his declaration, swore and said that by the oath he took he was going to die upon that gallows that stood there, and nothing else. The judges held a consultation over the oath, and they said, 'If we let this man pass free he has sworn falsely, and by the law he ought to die; but if we hang him, as he swore he was going to die on that gallows, and therefore swore the truth, by the same law he ought to go free.' It is asked of your worship, senor governor, what are the judges to do with this man? For they are still in doubt and perple ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

How wholesome winter is, seen far or near; how good, above all mere sentimental, warm-blooded, short-lived, soft-hearted, moral goodness, commonly so called. Give me the goodness which has forgotten its own deeds,
which God has seen to be good, and let be. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. ~ Samuel Johnson

Oh, Phil," I teased. "You know what happens when you assume."
"Yes. Someone makes an overdone, tripe joke about the spelling of a commonly used verb. ~ Megan Squires

I think for a while now people have been scared to be out of TMT the commonly used acronym for technology-media-telecom stocks, which have tended to rise in tandem recently and the feeling has really been you have to be there ... but now we're getting a dose of reality. ~ Peter Oppenheimer

Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds on which it is commonly founded. ~ David Hume

The tragic evils of our life are so commonly unintentional. We did not start out for that poor, cheap goal. That aim was not in our minds at all ... Look to the road you are walking on. He who picks up one end of [a] stick picks up the other.He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

To put it another way, I believe that purpose and principle, clearly understood and articulated, and commonly shared, are the genetic code of any healthy organization. To the degree that you hold purpose and principles in common among you, you can dispense with command and control. People will know how to behave in accordance with them, and they'll do it in thousands of unimaginable, creative ways. The organization will become a vital, living set of beliefs. ~ Dee Hock

Gratitude is a virtue that has commonly profit annexed to it. ~ Epicurus

Eyes of youth have sharp sight but commonly not so deep as those of elder age. ~ Elizabeth I

Only by restoring the broken connections can we be healed. Connection is health. And what our society does its best to disguise from us is how ordinary, how commonly attainable, health is. We lose our health - and create profitable diseases and dependences - by failing to see the direct connections between living and eating, eating and working, working and loving. ~ Wendell Berry

It is commonly said to my little friend Legion: Read the great writers for style. But I say to him: Read the great dead masters for ideas. Devour them, Fletcherize them, digest, assimilate, make them part of your blood; let the enriched blood visit your brain. The resultant activities will be fairly your own, and the little kinks and convolutions of your brain, which are entirely different from the kinks of any other brain, will furnish you all the style you will ever get.
There are no really fresh ideas; just as there is not any fresh air. Air and ideas are refreshed and refreshing, vitalized and vitalizing; but the thoughts have been thought before and the air has been breathed before. ~ Eugene Manlove Rhodes

Probably the most important element in intricacy is centering. Good small parks typically have a place somewhere within them commonly understood to be the center - at the very least a main crossroads and pausing point, a climax. ~ Jane Jacobs

Estimates suggest that from 20 to 50 million Americans routinely, albeit illegally, smoke marijuana without the benefit of direct medical supervision. Yet, despite this long history of use and the extraordinarily high numbers of social smokers, there are simply no credible reports to suggest that consuming marijuana has caused a single death. By contrast, aspirin, a commonly used, over-the-counter medicine, causes hundreds of deaths each year. ~ Frances M. Young

In Europe it was once commonly believed that beasts could be possessed by demons and controlled by the evil of Satan. So animals, even birds and insects, were tried by ecclesiastical courts, just like witches and heretics. They were excommunicated, tortured and condemned to death. ~ Chet Williamson

If we consider the manner in which those who assume the office of directing the conduct of others execute their undertaking, it will not be very wonderful that their labours, however zealous or affectionate, are frequently useless. For what is the advice that is commonly given? A few general maxims, enforced with vehemence, and inculcated with importunity, but failing for want of particular reference and immediate application. ~ Samuel Johnson

Scientists estimate the universe unfolded from its state of infinite destiny* - a moment commonly referred to as "the big bang" - approximately 1.3-2 x 10^10 years ago.

*Typo: "destiny" should read "density. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

I am led to the proposition that there is no fiction or nonfiction as we commonly understand the distinction: there is only narrative. ~ E.L. Doctorow

Along with supernature and science, there is one other major source of horror movies disorder: the human psyche, most commonly homicidal psychosis. Unlike 'mad' scientists, horror-movies madmen are not visionary obsessives, glorifying in scientific reason as they single-mindedly purse their researches. They are, rather, victims of overpowering impulses that well up from within; monsters brought forth by the sleep of reason, not by its attractions. ~ Andrew Tudor

SCRAP-BOOK, n. A book that is commonly edited by a fool. Many persons of some small distinction compile scrap-books containing whatever they happen to read about themselves or employ others to collect. ~ Ambrose Bierce

My belief assumed a form that it commonly assumes among the educated people of our time. This belief was expressed by the word "progress." At the time it seemed to me that this word had meaning. Like any living individual, I was tormented by questions of how to live better. I still had not understood that in answering that one must live according to progress, I was talking just like a person being carried along in a boat by the waves and the wind; without really answering, such a person replies to the only important question-"Where are we to steer?"-by saying, "We are being carried somewhere. ~ Leo Tolstoy

I am very fond of the modest manner of life of those solitary owners of remote villages, who in Little Russia are commonly called "old-fashioned," who are like tumbledown picturesque little houses, delightful in their simplicity and complete unlikeness to the new smooth buildings whose walls have not yet been discolored by the rain, whose roofs are not yet covered with green lichen, and whose porch does not display its bricks through the peeling stucco. ~ Nikolai Gogol

One vital aspect in the Path toward Clear Awareness is the beginning of differentiation between belief-induced appearance and Reality. In many ways I can illustrate illusions and point out artificial concepts that are commonly accepted as real, but the onus of recognition is for you to come to see these things as what they are. ~ Thomas Daniel Nehrer

She had been amazed-and a little relieved-to discover that she was not concealing some private neurosis; almost all imaginative people heard voices. Not just thoughts but actual voices inside their heads, different personae, each as clearly defined as the voices on an old-time radio show. They came from the right side of the brain, the teacher explained-the side which is most commonly associated with visions of telepathy and that striking human ability to create images by drawing comparisons and making metaphors.
There are no such things as flying saucers. ~ Stephen King

{Excerpt from a message from one of the Cherokee chiefs - Onitositaii, commonly known as Old Tassle}

... 'If, therefore, a bare march, or reconnoitering a country is sufficient reason to ground a claim to it, we shall insist upon transposing the demand, and your relinquishing your settlements on the western waters and removing one hundred miles back towards the east, whither some of our warriors advanced against you in the course of last year's campaign.

Let us examine the facts of your present eruption into our country, and we shall discover your pretentions on that ground. What did you do? You marched into our territories with a superior force; our vigilance gave us no timely notice of your manouvres [sic]; your numbers far exceeded us, and we fled to the stronghold of our extensive woods, there to secure our women and children.

Thus, you marched into our towns; they were left to your mercy; you killed a few scattered and defenseless individuals, spread fire and desolation wherever you pleased, and returned again to your own habitations. If you meant this, indeed, as a conquest you omitted the most essential point; you should have fortified the junction of the Holstein and Tennessee rivers, and have thereby conquered all the waters above you. But, as all are fair advantages during the existence of a state of war, it is now too late for us to suffer for your mishap of generalship!

Again, were we to inquire by what law or authority ~ John Ehle

To discover and to teach are distinct functions; they are also distinct gifts, and are not commonly found united in the same person. ~ John Henry Newman

Astronomers do not commonly use Venereal, in favor of the less contagious-sounding Venutian. Blame the medical community, who snatched the word long before astronomers had any good use for it. I suppose you can't blame the doctors. Venus is the goddess of beauty and love, so she ought to be the goddess of its medical consequences. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

But consider whether you may not get more help from the customary method[1] than from that which is now commonly called a "breviary," though in the good old days, when real Latin was spoken, it was called a "summary."[2] ~ Seneca.

Contemplation is not and cannot be a function of this external self. There is an irreducible opposition between the deep transcendent self that awakens only in contemplation, and the superficial, external self which we commonly identify with the first person singular. ~ Thomas Merton

An amusing, if rather pathetic, case study in miracles is the Great Prayer Experiment: does praying for patients help them recover? Prayers are commonly offered for sick people, both privately and in formal places of worship. Darwin's cousin Francis Galton was the first to analyse scientifically whether praying for people is efficacious. He noted that every Sunday, in churches throughout Britain, entire congregations prayed publicly for the health of the royal family. Shouldn't they, therefore, be unusually fit, compared with the rest of us, who are prayed for only by our nearest and dearest?* Galton looked into it, and found no statistical difference. ~ Richard Dawkins

Gawande reports that research has shown that patients commonly prefer to have others make their decisions for them. Though as many as 65 percent of people surveyed say that if they were to get cancer, they would want to choose their own treatment, in fact, among people who do get ~ Barry Schwartz

Up up and quit your books' is not an adjuration commonly thought advisable in universities but there are occasions -- as for instance, when studying Wordsworth when it might be advisable. ~ Joseph Wood Krutch

We do not commonly see in a tax a diminution of freedom, and yet it clearly is one. ~ Herbert Spencer

(forks did not appear until the late fourteenth century and weren't commonly used until the Renaissance). ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

In order to live a life of nonviolence one must be willing to soften -- to open one's heart to others, to forgive, to be compassionate, to be graceful, to be loving toward others and oneself, to be kind. We must be willing, in other words, to reject hardness as the measure of power and justice, and to embrace, instead, so much of what is commonly associated with the feminine. Indeed, it is no longer tenable – if it ever were – to assess and critique nonviolence in terms of whether or not it conforms to some masculine idea of the justice-seeking self. ~ Alycee J. Lane

So here's the drill. Every morning you'll come here to the Bank to check in with the Etceteras."

"Wait, what?"

"Etceteras. ETC stands for Ether Traffic Controllers, and the nickname just evolved from there."

"What does that make us, then?"

"Well, technically," said Uncle Mort, "we're called Gamma Removal and Immigration Managers - "

"But are more commonly known as Grims," Driggs said.

"Can't say I approve of the term." Uncle Mort flourished his razor-sharp scythe and smiled. "We're not that grim, are we?"

Lex snickered. ~ Gina Damico

It is a pity that, commonly, more care is had
yea, and that among very wise men
to find out rather a cunning man for their horse than a cunning man for their children. ~ Roger Ascham

If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point. Now we know only a few laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of course, by any confusion or irregularity in Nature, but by our ignorance of essential elements in the calculation. Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful. The particular laws are as our points of view, as, to the traveller, a mountain outline varies with every step, and it has an infinite number of profiles, though absolutely but one form. Even when cleft or bored through it is not comprehended in its entireness. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Emotional incest is yet another form of emotional abuse. Emotional incest commonly involves the reversal of the parent/child roles. When this occurs, the mother or father "parentifies" the child who is then manipulated to gratify the unmet childhood needs of the parent. This typically manifests as the parent pumping the child for the unconditional love that she should herself be giving. ~ Pete Walker

We commonly confuse closeness with sameness and view intimacy as the merging of two separate I's into one worldview. ~ Harriet Lerner

What is commonly called love, namely the desire of satisfying a voracious appetite with a certain quantity of delicate white human flesh. ~ Henry Fielding

That the corruption of the best thing produces the worst, is grown into a maxim, and is commonly proved, among other instances, by the pernicious effects of superstition and enthusiasm, the corruptions of true religion. ~ David Hume

Sometime over the past generation we became less likely to object to something because it is immoral and more likely to object to something because it is unhealthy or unsafe. So smoking is now a worse evil than six of the Ten Commandments, and the word sinful is most commonly associated with chocolate. ~ David Brooks

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Since it is to the advantage of the wage-payer to pay as little as possible, even well-paid labor will have no more than what is regarded in a particular society as the reasonable level of subsistence. The lower ranks of labor will commonly have less, and if public relief were afforded even up to the wage-level of the lowest ranks of labor, that relief would compete in the labor market; check or dry up the supply of wage-labor. It would tend to render the performance of work by the wage-earner redundant. ~ Hilaire Belloc

Even in houses commonly held to be 'booky' one finds, nine times out of ten, not a library but a book-dump. ~ Edith Wharton

It's clear that if we use the mind attentively, mental power is increased, and if we concentrate the mind in the moment, it is easier to coordinate mind and body. But in terms of mind and body unity, is there something we can concentrate on that will reliably aid us in discovering this state of coordination?

In Japan, and to some degree other Asian countries, people have historically focused mental strength in the hara (abdomen) as a way of realizing their full potential. Japan has traditionally viewed the hara as the vital center of humanity in a manner not dissimilar to the Western view of the heart or brain. I once read that years ago Japanese children were asked to point to the origin of thoughts and feelings. They inevitably pointed toward the abdominal region. When the same question was asked of American children, most pointed at their heads or hearts. Likewise, Japan and the West have commonly held differing views of what is physical power or physical health, with Japan emphasizing the strength of the waist and lower body and Western people admiring upper body power. (Consider the ideal of the sumo wrestler versus the V-shaped Western bodybuilder with a narrow waist and broad shoulders.)

However, East and West also hold similar viewpoints regarding the hara, and we're perhaps not as dissimilar as some might imagine. For instance, hara ga nai hito describes a cowardly person, "a person with no hara." Sounds similar to our saying that so-and-so "ha ~ H.E. Davey

And the chief difference is this: that people will treat with disdain such phenomena as are proved by the evidence of the senses, and commonly experienced - while they will defend to the death the reality of a phenomenon which they have neither seen nor experienced. "Faith is as powerful a force as science," he concluded, voice soft in the darkness, " - but far more dangerous. ~ Diana Gabaldon

I saw that a humble man, with the blessing of the Lord, might live on a little; and that where the heart is set on greatness, success in business did not satisfy the craving, but that commonly with an increase of wealth, the desire of wealth increased. ~ John Woolman

I realized the shells were talking in a voice I recognized. I should have; it was my own. Had I always known that? I suppose I had. On some level, unless we're mad, I think most of us know the various voices of our own imaginations.
And of our memories, of course. They have voices, too. Ask anyone who has ever lost a limb or a child or a long-cherished dream. Ask anyone who blames himself for a bad decision, usually made in a raw instant (an instant that is most commonly red). Our memories have voices, too. Often sad ones that clamor like raised arms in the dark. ~ Stephen King

Perhaps that was just a hunch."

Barbee shivered again. He knew that he himself possessed what he called the "nose for news" - an intuitive perception of human motivations and the impending events that would spring from them. It wasn't a faculty he could analyze or account for, but he knew that it wasn't unusual. Most successful reporters possessed it, he believed - even though, in an age of skepticism for everything except mechanistic materialism, they wisely denied it.

That dim sense had been useful to him - on those summer field trips, before Mendrick turned him out, it had led him to more than one promising prehistoric site, simply because he somehow knew where a band of wild hunters would prefer to camp, or to dig a comrade's grave.

Commonly, however, that uncontrolled faculty had been more curse than blessing. It made him too keenly aware of all that people thought and did around him, kept him troubled with an uneasy alertness. Except when he was drunk. He drank too much, and knew that many other newsmen did. That vague sensitivity, he believed; was half the reason. ~ Jack Williamson

Your abusive partner's cycles of moving in and out of periods of cruelty can cause you to feel very close to him during those times when he is finally kind and loving. You can end up feeling that the nightmare of his abusiveness is an experience the two of you have shared and are escaping from together, a dangerous illusion that trauma can cause. I commonly hear an abused woman say about her partner, "He really knows me," or "No one understands me the way he does." This may be true, but the reason he seems to understand you well is that he has studied ways to manipulate your emotions and control your reactions. At times he may seem to grasp how badly he has hurt you, which can make you feel close to him, but it's another illusion; if he could really be empathic about the pain he has caused, he would stop abusing you for good. ~ Lundy Bancroft

The important thing about Dada, it seems to me, is that Dadaists despised what is commonly regarded as art, but put the whole universe on the lofty throne of art. ~ Hans Arp

An economic system can remain viable only so long as society has mechanisms to counter abuses of either state or market power and the erosion of the natural, social, and moral capital that such abuses commonly exacerbate. ~ David Korten

He was a devoted follower of the teachings of Epicurus - "that pleasure is the beginning and end of living happily" - although I hasten to add that he was an Epicurean not in the commonly misunderstood sense, as a seeker after luxury, but in the true meaning, as a pursuer of what the Greeks call ataraxia, or freedom from disturbance. He consequently avoided arguments and unpleasantness of any kind (needless to say, he was unmarried) and desired only to contemplate philosophy by day and dine by night with his cultured friends. He ~ Robert Harris

Insecurity, commonly regarded as a weakness in normal people, is the basic tool of the actor's trade. ~ Miranda Richardson

It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about. ~ Francis Bacon

Anyway, these ideas or feelings or ramblings had their satisfactions. They turned the pain of others into memories of one's own. They turned pain, which is natural, enduring, and eternally triumphant, into personal memory, which is human, brief, and eternally elusive. They turned a brutal story of injustice and abuse, an incoherent howl with no beginning or end, into a neatly structured story in which suicide was always held out as a possibility. They turned flight into freedom, even if freedom meant no more than the perpetuation of flight. They turned chaos into order, even if it was at the cost of what is commonly known as sanity. ~ Roberto Bolano

Mind control survivors have identified doctors used by the CIA under Project MKULTRA as having used different aliases. I have personally spoken and corresponded with many of these child Cold War survivors. It seems colors were one of the most commonly used themes. Many survivors have identified Josef Mengele as using the aliases Dr. Green, Dr. Black, Dr. Swartz (black in German), Father Joseph, or Vaterchen (daddy) when he did their programming. The experiments and programming he used on us were of such a heinous nature, that they were not unlike some of those performed at Auschwitz.

In 1937, Mengele was appointed research assistant at the Third Reich Institute for Heredity, Biology, and Racial Purity. Mengele provided "experimental materials" to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology from twins including eyes, blood, and other body parts from Auschwitz. Mengele fled Auschwitz in January 1945 before the Russians liberated the camp. French government documents state that the Americans captured Mengele in 1946. According to the French, Mengele "was released without explanation by the Americans on November 19, 1946." The French claimed that American authorities confirmed the Mengele arrest and release on Feb. 29, 1947. ~ Carol Rutz

In any case one can never forbear to smile at such a despairer, who, humanly speaking, although he is in despair, is so very innocent. Commonly such a despairer is infinitely comic. Think of a self (and next to God there is nothing so eternal as a self), and then that this self gets the notion of asking whether it might not let itself become or be made into another ... than itself. And yet such a despairer, whose only wish is this most crazy of all transformations, loves to think that this change might be accomplished as easily as changing a coat. For the immediate man does not recognize his self, he recognizes himself only by his dress, he recognizes (and here again appears the infinitely comic trait) he recognizes that he has a self only by externals. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

ACCUSE, v.t. To affirm another's guilt or unworth; most commonly as a justification of ourselves for having wronged him. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Some historical revisionists have also attempted to diminish the role of God and religion in our nation's past. A careful examination of the records, however, makes it quite clear that religion was a very important factor in the development of our nation. In 1831 when Alexis de Tocqueville came to America to try to unravel the secrets to the success of a fledgling nation that was already competing with the powers of Europe on virtually every level, he discovered that we had a fantastic public educational system that rendered anyone who had finished the second grade completely literate. He was more astonished to discover that the Bible was an important tool used to teach moral principles in our public schools. No particular religious denomination was revered, but rather commonly accepted biblical truths became the backbone of our social structure. ~ Ben Carson

I do not think a revival of business will be greatly postponed by [Samuel J.] Tilden's election. Business prosperity does not, inmy judgment, depend on government so much as men commonly think. ~ Rutherford B. Hayes

Abscond - to move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another. ~ Ambrose Bierce

The progress of science depends much less upon either theoretical considerations or systematic investigation than is commonly believed, but rather on the transmittal of reliable information, gained by chance or insight, from one set of men to their successors. ~ Gene Wolfe

Lovers are commonly industrious to make themselves uneasy. ~ Miguel De Cervantes

All those who love Nature she loves in return, and will richly reward, not perhaps with the good things, as they are commonly called, but with the best things of this world-not with money and titles, horses and carriages, but with bright and happy thoughts, contentment and peace of mind. ~ John Lubbock

Much of the early engineering development of digital computers was done in universities. A few years ago, the view was commonly expressed that universities had played their part in computer design, and that the matter could now safely be left to industry. [ ... ] Apart from the obvious functions of keeping in the public domain material that might otherwise be hidden, universities can make a special contribution by reason of their freedom from commercial considerations, including freedom from the need to follow the fashion. ~ Maurice Wilkes

Commonly we say a judgment falls upon a man for something in him we cannot abide. ~ John Selden

The men in my life have always been the folks who are wary of using the word 'love' lightly. They are wary because they believe women make too much of love. And they know that what we think love means is not always what they believe it means. Our confusion about what we mean when we use the word 'love' is the source of our difficulty in loving. If our society had a commonly held understanding of the meaning of love, the act of loving would not be so mystifying. ~ Bell Hooks

Panksepp is emphatic on this point, arguing that his neural studies as well as those of his colleagues show that the prime, fundamental emotions of humans and all mammals do not emerge from the cerebral cortex, as was commonly believed in the twentieth century and as some leading neuroscientists still claim, but come from deep, ancient brain structures, including the hypothalamus and amygdala. It is why, he notes, that "drugs used to treat emotional and psychiatric disorders in humans were first developed and found effective in animals - rats and mice. This kind of research would obviously have no value if animals were incapable of experiencing these emotional states, or if we did not share them. ~ Virginia Morell

Though 'Fire and Rain' is very personal, for other people it resonates as a sort of commonly held experience ... And that's what happens with me. I write things for personal reasons, and then in some cases it ... can be a shared experience. ~ James Taylor

Much like humans, opinions come in all shapes and forms, but in the end, they are just what they are; and may yet still be categorized in nature. The first you might say is the Indoctrinal, which is, of course, dictated by community and necessity, by the human need for acceptance; secondly, there is the Personal, and this is often dictated by individuality, by the yearning to seem interesting and intelligent, or free, or special; and lastly comes the Emotional. This is most commonly dictated by circumstance and bitterness and excitement. However, rarely do we find the case in which any of these are dictated by reason in the pure state: it is by this we see that at the core of a number of false opinions lies not always misinformation but quite often some issue of the human self. ~ Criss Jami

Yet what moved Our Blessed Lord to invective was not badness but just such self-righteousness as this…He said that the harlots and the Quislings would enter the Kingdom of Heaven before the self-righteous and the smug. Concerning all those who endowed hospitals and libraries and public works, in order to have their names graven in stone before their fellow men, He said, "Amen I say to you, they have received their reward" (Matt. 6:2). They wanted no more than human glory, and they got it. Never once is Our Blessed Lord indignant against those who are already, in the eyes of society, below the level of law and respectability. He attacked only the sham indignation of those who dwelt more on the sin than the sinner and who felt pleasantly virtuous, because they had found someone more vicious than they. He would not condemn those whom society condemned; his severe words were for those who had sinned and had not been found out…He would not add His burden of accusation to those that had already been hurled against the winebibbers and the thieves, the cheap revolutionists, the streetwalkers, and the traitors. They were everybody's target, and everybody knew that they were wrong…And the people who chose to make war against Our Lord were never those whom society had labeled as sinners. Of those who sentenced Him to death, none had ever had a record in the police court, had ever been arrested, was ever commonly known to be fallen or weak. But among his friends, who sorrowed at His deat ~ Fulton J. Sheen

So that it must be only by the imagination that Satan has access to the soul, to tempt and delude it, or suggest anything to it. And this seems to be the reason why persons that are under the disease of melancholy are commonly so visibly and remarkably subject to the suggestions and temptations of Satan ... Innumerable are the ways by which the mind may be led on to all kind of evil thoughts, by the exciting of external ideas in the imagination. ~ Jonathan Edwards

I find a preacher of the Gospel profaning the beautiful and prophetic ejaculation, commonly called "Nunc dimittis," made on the first presentation of our Saviour in the temple, and applying it, with an inhuman and unnatural rapture, to the most horrid, atrocious, and afflicting spectacle that perhaps ever was exhibited to the pity and indignation of mankind. This "leading in triumph," a thing in its best form unmanly and irreligious, which fills our preacher with such unhallowed transports, must shock, I believe, the moral taste of every well-born mind. Several English were the stupefied and indignant spectators of that triumph. It was (unless we have been strangely deceived) a spectacle more resembling a procession of American savages entering into Onondaga after some of their murders called victories, ~ Edmund Burke

Consider an AI that has hedonism as its final goal, and which would therefore like to tile the universe with "hedonium" (matter organized in a configuration that is optimal for the generation of pleasurable experience). To this end, the AI might produce computronium (matter organized in a configuration that is optimal for computation) and use it to implement digital minds in states of euphoria. In order to maximize efficiency, the AI omits from the implementation any mental faculties that are not essential for the experience of pleasure, and exploits any computational shortcuts that according to its definition of pleasure do not vitiate the generation of pleasure. For instance, the AI might confine its simulation to reward circuitry, eliding faculties such as a memory, sensory perception, executive function, and language; it might simulate minds at a relatively coarse-grained level of functionality, omitting lower-level neuronal processes; it might replace commonly repeated computations with calls to a lookup table; or it might put in place some arrangement whereby multiple minds would share most parts of their underlying computational machinery (their "supervenience bases" in philosophical parlance). Such tricks could greatly increase the quantity of pleasure producible with a given amount of resources. ~ Nick Bostrom

Let's zoom in on a particular form of synesthesia as an example. For most of us, February and Wednesday do not have any particular place in space. But some synesthetes experience precise locations in relation to their bodies for numbers, time units, and other concepts involving sequence or ordinality. They can point to the spot where the number 32 is, where December floats, or where the year 1966 lies.8 These objectified three-dimensional sequences are commonly called number forms, although more precisely the phenomenon is called spatial sequence synesthesia.9 The most common types of spatial sequence synesthesia involve days of the week, months of the year, the counting integers, or years grouped by decade. In addition to these common types, researchers have encountered spatial configurations for shoe and clothing sizes, baseball statistics, historical eras, salaries, TV channels, temperature, and more. ~ David Eagleman

The mode of founding a college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then, following blindly the principles of a division of labor to its extreme,
a principle which should never be followed but with circumspection,
to call in a contractor who makes this a subject of speculation, ... and for these oversights successive generations have to pay. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Space flight participants, commonly known as space tourists, pay between $20 and $40 million each to leave Earth for 10 days or so and go to the International Space Station (ISS) via Soyuz, the compact Russian rocket that is now the only way for humans to get to the ISS. ~ Chris Hadfield

Money changes people. This process is more commonly known as trading. ~ Kevin Focke

I was too much taken up with another interest to care; I felt beneath my feet the threshold of the strange door, in my life, which had suddenly been thrown open and out of which came an air of a keenness I had never breathed and of a taste stronger than wine. I had heard all my days of apparitions, but it was a different thing to have seen one and to know that I should in all likelihood see it familiarly, as I might say, again. I was on the lookout for it as a pilot for the flash of a revolving light and ready to generalise on the sinister subject, to answer for it to all and sundry that ghosts were much less alarming and much more amusing than was commonly supposed. There's no doubt that I was much uplifted. I couldn't get over the distinction conferred on me, the exception - in the way of mystic enlargement of vision - made in my favour.
("Sir Edmund Orme") ~ Henry James

Very few people are acquainted with death. They undergo it, commonly, not so much out of resolution as custom and insensitivity; and most men die because they cannot help it. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The FN P-35 was known more commonly as the Browning Hi-Power, a popular enough firearm to those who used it, and in and of itself, nothing more needed to be noted. Except the fact that the Browning was the sidearm of choice for the Special Air Service, and while the gun itself was produced by Fabrique Nationale, a Belgian concern, and named after an American gunmaker--John M. Browning--there were many who thought of the weapon as Very British Indeed. ~ Greg Rucka

Animals, including people, fight harder to prevent losses than to achieve gains. In the world of territorial animals, this principle explains the success of defenders. A biologist observed that "when a territory holder is challenged by a rival, the owner almost always wins the contest - usually within a matter of seconds." In human affairs, the same simple rule explains much of what happens when institutions attempt to reform themselves, in "reorganizations" and "restructuring" of companies, and in efforts to rationalize a bureaucracy, simplify the tax code, or reduce medical costs. As initially conceived, plans for reform almost always produce many winners and some losers while achieving an overall improvement. If the affected parties have any political influence, however, potential losers will be more active and determined than potential winners; the outcome will be biased in their favor and inevitably more expensive and less effective than initially planned. Reforms commonly include grandfather clauses that protect current stake-holders - for example, when the existing workforce is reduced by attrition rather than by dismissals, or when cuts in salaries and benefits apply only to future workers. Loss aversion is a powerful conservative force that favors minimal changes from the status quo in the lives of both institutions and individuals. ~ Daniel Kahneman

Inevitably, malaria parasites developed resistance to commonly used drugs, and mosquito vectors became insecticide-resistant. ~ Anthony Fauci

Numerous studies have clearly demonstrated that coconut oil has a neutral effect on cholesterol levels. The reason coconut oil does not adversely affect cholesterol is because it is composed primarily of medium-chain fatty acids (MCFA). These fatty acids are different from those commonly found in other food sources and are burned almost immediately for energy production, and so they are not converted into body fat or cholesterol to the degree other fats are and do not affect blood cholesterol levels. ~ Bruce Fife

A good writer does not receive anywhere near the number of poison-pen letters that is commonly assumed. Among a hundred jackassesthere are not ten who will admit to being jackasses, and at most one who will put it in writing. ~ Karl Kraus

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist. ~ John Maynard Keynes