Top 72 Commonest Quotes
#1. Every scene, even the commonest, is wonderful, if only one can detach oneself, casting off all memory of use and custom and behold it, as it were, for the first time.
Arnold Bennett
#2. If things went according to the death notices, ... the earth seems to have been populated by a horde of wingless angels without one's having been aware of it. Pure love, which in reality is to be found so seldom, shines on all sides in death, and is the commonest thing of all.
Erich Maria Remarque
#3. Common tools go on top. The commonest of all, the bread of writing, is vocabulary.
Stephen King
#4. Sitting by the chimney corner as we grow old, the commonest things around us take on live meanings and hint at the difference between these driving times and the calm, slow moving days when we were young.
Rebecca Harding Davis
#5. I believe that every human being is potentially capable within his 'limits' of fully 'realizing' his potentialities; that this, his being cheated and choked of it, is infinitely the ghastliest, commonest, and most inclusive of all the crimes of which the human world can assure itself.
James Agee
#6. Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.
George Bernard Shaw
#7. For it has come about, by the wise economy of nature, that our modern spirit can almost dispense with language; the commonest expressions do, since no expressions do; hence the most ordinary conversation is often the most poetic, and the most poetic is precisely that which cannot be written down.
Virginia Woolf
#8. Fear of self is the greatest of all terrors, the deepest of all dread, the commonest of all mistakes. From it grows failure. Because of it, life is a mockery. Out of it comes despair.
David Seabury
#9. The true creator may be recognized by his ability always to find about him, in the commonest and humblest thing, items worthy of note.
Igor Stravinsky
#10. One of the commonest weaknesses of human intelligence is the wish to reconcile opposing principles and to purchase harmony at the expensive of logic.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#11. It is probably true that the commonest real cause of anti-semitism is the action of the international Jew who is often unknown and always secure, but innocent victim of it is the poor Jew.
Henry Ford
#12. Mental indolence is one of the commonest of human traits
Anonymous
#13. Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.
Bertrand Russell
#14. The commonest forms of amateur natural history in the United States are probably gardening, bird watching, the maintenance of aquarium fish, and nature photography.
Marston Bates
#15. Money is far commoner than time. When one reflects, one perceives that money is just about the commonest thing there is.
Arnold Bennett
#16. Not only the adoration of images is idolatry, but also trust in one's own righteousness, works and merits, and putting confidence in riches and power. As the latter is the commonest, so it also is the most noxious.
Martin Luther
#17. In the human race, the frequency of the virtues that are identical in us all is not more wonderful than the multiplicity of the defects that are peculiar to each one of us. Undoubtedly, it is not common sense that is "the commonest thing in the world"; it is human kindness.
Marcel Proust
#18. The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.
W. H. Auden
#19. Water is the commonest symbol for the unconscious.
Carl Jung
#20. The commonest, dullest, most threadbare topic might be rendered interesting by the skill of the speaker.
Jane Austen
#21. Oh, God, if I were sure I were to die tonight I would repent at once. It is the commonest prayer in all languages.
James M. Barrie
#22. George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.
Mark Twain
#23. Not listening is probably the commonest unkindness of married life, and one that creates - more devastatingly than an eternity of forgotten birthdays and misguided Christmas gifts - an atmosphere of not loving and not caring.
Judith Viorst
#24. One of the commonest mistakes is thinking your worries are over when your children get married.
Kin Hubbard
#25. It is one of the commonest of our mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all that there is to perceive.
Charles W. Leadbeater
#26. Conviction brings a silent, indefinable beauty into faces made of the commonest human clay; the devout worshiper at any shrine reflects something of its golden glow, even as the glory of a noble love shines like a sort of light from a woman's face.
Honore De Balzac
#27. The commonest way to cheat an employer is not by stealing his money or loafing on the job, but by refusing to disagree when you feel he is wrong. If he is paying you for your brains, and not just for your body, an employee has an obligation to dissent from decisions he thinks wrong.
Sibichen K. Mathew
#28. The average American's simplest and commonest form of breakfast consists of coffee and beefsteak.
Mark Twain
#29. When you doubt between words, use the plainest, the commonest, the most idiomatic. Eschew fine words as you would rouge; love simple ones as you would the native roses on your cheek.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#30. Oh I can't explain. When I like people immensely I never tell their names to any one. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.
Oscar Wilde
#31. The amount of relief and comfort experienced by the sick after the skin has been carefully washed and dried, is one of the commonest observations made at a sick bed.
Florence Nightingale
#32. Instead of being a single, downright, bluff piece of work of which no man need feel ashamed, our commonest deeds are set about with a fluttering and flickering of wings, a rising and falling of lights.
Virginia Woolf
#33. What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me,
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take
me,
Not asking the sky to come down to my good will,
Scattering it freely forever.
Walt Whitman
#34. The two commonest mistakes in judgement ... are, the confounding of shyness with arrogance - a very common mistake indeed - and the not understanding that an obstinate nature exists in a perpetual struggle with itself.
Charles Dickens
#35. Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the potter: which, bake it and paint it as hewill, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature from the commonest brick or sun-dried clod.
Thomas Huxley
#36. It is the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive.
Charles Webster Leadbeater
#37. Buy good books, and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not blockheads.
Lord Chesterfield
#39. The commonest weakness of our race is our ability to rationalize our most selfish purposes.
Robert A. Heinlein
#40. Henry James seems most entirely in his element, doing that is to say what everything favors his doing, when it is a question of recollection. The mellow light which swims over the past, the beauty which suffuses even the commonest little figures of that
Virginia Woolf
#41. The commonest man, who has his ounce of sense and feeling, is conscious of the difference between a lovely, delicate woman and a coarse one. Even a dog feels a difference in her presence.
George Eliot
#42. What is commonest and cheapest and nearest and easiest is Me, Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns, Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me, Not asking the sky to come down to my goodwill, Scattering if freely forever.
Walt Whitman
#43. The commonest form, one of the most often neglected, and the safest opportunity for the average man to seize, is hard work.
Arthur Brisbane
#44. It is useful to the historian, among others, to be able to see the commonest forms of different phenomena, whether phonetic, morphological or other, and how language lives, carries on and changes over time.
Ferdinand De Saussure
#45. To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds, and watch the renewal of life - this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do.
Charles Dudley Warner
#46. The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.
Henry David Thoreau
#47. The secret seems to be the only way to become mysterious and wonderful modern life. The commonest thing gets a touch fascinating when done on the sly.
Oscar Wilde
#48. The dog is the most faithful of animals and would be much esteemed were it not so common. Our Lord God has made His greatest gifts the commonest.
Martin Luther
#49. And she leaned back in the corner, to indulge her murmurs, or to reason them away; probably a little of both - such being the commonest process of a not ill-disposed mind.
Jane Austen
#50. It's not much. You begin by thinking there is something extraordinary about it. But you'll find out, when you've been out in the world a while longer, unhappiness is the commonest thing there is.
Erich Maria Remarque
#51. Men of God have always, from time to time, walked among men, and made their commission felt in the heart and soul of the commonest hearer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#52. Militarism has been by far the commonest cause of the breakdown of civilizations. The single art of war makes progress at the expense of all the arts of peace.
Arnold Joseph Toynbee
#53. One of the commonest ailments of the present day is the premature formation of opinion.
Kin Hubbard
#54. Though a quarrel in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine; the commonest man shows a grace in his quarrel.
John Keats
#55. You will think me rhapsodizing; but when I am out of doors, especially when I am sitting out of doors, I am very apt to get into this sort of wondering strain. One cannot fix one's eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy.
Jane Austen
#56. For proverbs are the pith, the proprieties, the proofs, the purities, the elegancies, as the commonest so the commendablest phrases of a language. To use them is a grace, to understand them a good.
John Florio
#57. Music is the major form of communication. It's the commonest vibration, the people's news broadcast, especially for kids.
Richie Havens
#58. URBANITY, n. The kind of civility that urban observers ascribe to dwellers in all cities but New York. Its commonest expression is heard in the words, "I beg your pardon," and it is not consistent with disregard of the rights of others.
Ambrose Bierce
#59. Never be afraid to bring the transcendent mysteries of our faith, Christ's life and death and resurrection, to the help of the humblest and commonest of human wants.
Phillips Brooks
#60. The commonest fallacy among women is that simply having children makes them a mother - which is as absurd as believing that having a piano makes one a musician.
Sydney J. Harris
#61. When you first commence painting everything is a muddle. Even the commonest colors seem to have the devil in them.
Thomas Eakins
#62. Appeals to the past are among the commonest of strategies in interpretations of the present.
Edward W. Said
#63. The commonest objection to birth control is that it is against nature.
Bertrand Russell
#64. For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism - either a man emerges determined to be better, purer, and kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world and does even worse things. The last is by far the commonest reaction to stigma.
John Steinbeck
#65. Grief ennobles the commonest people because it has its own essential grandeur. To shine with the luster of grief, a person need only be sincere.
Honore De Balzac
#66. If you consulted your business experiences instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter.
G.K. Chesterton
#67. Golden opportunities are nothing to laziness, but industry makes the commonest chances golden.
Orison Swett Marden
#68. Plants and flowers of the commonest kind can form a pleasing diary, because nothing which calls back to us the remembrance of a happy moment can be insignificant.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#69. Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life.
Bertrand Russell
#70. Censorship is the commonest social blasphemy because it is mostly concealed, built into us by indolence, self-interest and cowardice.
John Osborne
#71. I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.
Oscar Wilde
#72. ...in its practical purpose the footpath of freedom is the only one on which it is possible to make use of reason in our conduct. Hence it is as impossible for the subtlest philosophy as for the commonest reasoning to argue freedom away.
Immanuel Kant
