"Common man" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him that the praise of even this common man, proud of his own vanity, should be undeserved by him. He was troubled, too, at the flippancy with which Euphra spoke; yet not the less did he feel that he ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... next to nothing," said the third. "There are many classes in a town, and that is about the lowest. It is nothing to be called 'Master.' You might be very superior yourself; but as a master mason you would be only what is called 'a common man.' I know of something better. I will be an architect; enter upon the confines of science; work myself up to a high place in the kingdom of mind. I know I must begin at the foot of the ladder. I can hardly bear to ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... to resume more directly the thread of our narrative, on finding himself mounted, took an inveterate prejudice against walking. There was something, he thought, far more dignified in riding than in pacing slowly upon the earth, like a common man who had not the justification of Latin and Greek for becoming an equestrian. Besides this accomplishment, there were also many other habits to be broken off, and more genteel ones to be adopted in their place. These were all suggested by his rising pride; ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... public affairs, what need have you to employ punishments? Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass—I the grass, when the wind passes ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... little depreciation at a hundred per cent. and more profit, when there is particular demand or scarcity of them. And the traders who come with small cargoes, and others engaged in the business, buy them up from the merchants and sell them again to the common man, who cannot do without them, oftentimes at a hundred per cent. advance, or higher and lower according to the demand. Upon liquors, which are liable to much leakage, they take more, and those who buy from them ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... defence of the starch. "Cease to be slaves, in order that you may become cranks" is not a very inspiring call to arms; nor is it really improved by substituting saints for cranks. Both terms denote men of genius; and the common man does not want to live the life of a man of genius: he would much rather live the life of a pet collie if that were the only alternative. But he does want more money. Whatever else he may be vague about, he is clear about that. He may or may not prefer Major Barbara to the Drury Lane pantomime; ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... greatness of Lincoln was that of a common man raised to a high dimension. The possibility, still more the existence, of such a man is itself a justification of democracy. We do not say that so independent, so natural, so complete a man cannot ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... have them on your side. They were conceived as like men, irritated if they were neglected, contented if they were venerated. On this principle worship was based. It consisted in doing things agreeable to the gods to obtain their favor. Plato expresses as follows[55] the thought of the common man, "To know how to say and do those things that are pleasing to the gods, either in prayers or in offerings, this is piety which brings prosperity to individuals and to states. The reverse is impiety which ruins everything." ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... tell me) what they call left-handed wives, and leave them behind when they go abroad, widowhood is widowhood, left-handed or right. And really, to be the left-handed wife of a foreign baron is nobler than to be married all round to a common man. You'll excuse my freedom, ma'am; but being a widow myself, I have pitied you from my heart; so young as you are, and having to keep it a secret, and (excusing me) having no money out of his vast riches because 'tis swallowed up ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... right, the former German emperor brought upon the world the greatest evil that has ever befallen it through selfish ambition for himself, his family, and for the German autocracy; the other claiming to be a common man, a servant of men, seeking no riches, no throne, no personal power, entirely unselfish, gave his life at last to save a united democracy. Shall we not say that Lincoln served by the right of the divine qualities in him, while the ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... remarkable degree. We find men, for the love of Master Davis, leaving their firesides to sail with him, without other hope or motion; and silver bullets were cast to shoot him in a mutiny; the hard rude natures of the mutineers being awed by something in his carriage which was not like that of a common man. He has written the account of one of his northern voyages himself; one of those, by the by, which the Hakluyt Society have mutilated; and there is an imaginative beauty in it, and a rich delicacy of expression, which ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... guess as to the intellectual ferment out of which 1601 rose I would say that Mark's intellectual structure and subconscious graining was from Anglo-Saxons as primitive as the common man of the Tudor period. He came from the banks of the Mississippi—from the flatboatmen, pilots, roustabouts, farmers and village folk of a rude, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thee Knight if the King calls thee Knight? It is the dooty of a common man to call thee Sir John, and tak off his hat at saying o' it." His hat came off, and he nodded in such an odd way that Enderby burst out into a good honest laugh. "Dooth tha rememba little Tom Dowsby that went hoonting ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... men are doubtless infinitely interesting. But at times I must confess to a sense of reaction and an idea that the ordinary common man is entitled to have his biography written too. It is to illustrate this view that I write the life of John Smith, a man neither good nor great, but just the usual, everyday homo like you and me and the rest ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... the whole race of man: He, and He alone. But it seems to me that there may be periods of time when changes are appointed to take place among men—among nations, and even among races; and that a common man may then be called to devote himself for that nation, or for that race. Father, I feel that the hour may be come for the negro race to be redeemed; and that I, a common man, may so far devote myself as not to stand in the way of their redemption. I feel that I must step out from among ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... your equipment you are being paid in advance. David Starr Jordan has happily clothed the thought in these words: "It is in the saving of the few who serve the many that the progress of civilization lies. In the march of the common man, and in the influence of the man uncommon who rises freely from the ranks, we have ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... their country most among us. It is well to hold one's country to her promises, and if there are any who think she is forgetting them it is their duty to say so, even to the point of bitter accusation. I do not suppose it was the "common man" of Lincoln's dream that Lowell thought America was unfaithful to, though as I have suggested he could be tender of the common man's hopes in her; but he was impeaching in that blotted line her sincerity with the uncommon man: the man who had expected of her a constancy to the ideals ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... left to befriend her. The clergyman who had attended him in his dying moments took charge of this letter; he brought it in person to Laughton, and delivered it to Sir Miles. Whatever his errors, the old baronet was no common man. He was not vindictive, though he could not be called forgiving. He had considered his conduct to his sister a duty owed to his name and ancestors; she had placed herself and her youngest child out of the pale of his ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Travers by reciting an incident of my factory life. Every afternoon the men in my father's department would bring in Brisbane's latest editorial to me ... and listen to me as I read it aloud. To have the common man buy a newspaper for its ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... Advocate would look in on his way to or from the Sciennes for a cup of tea from Irma. And in our little parlour he would sit and rap on his snuffbox, talking all the while, and forgetting to go till it was dark—as gentle and human as any common man. ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... Thorstein Veblen has pointed out how the "common man" comes to identify his interest with that of the group: "The common man who so lends himself to the aggressive enhancement of the national Culture and its prestige has nothing of a material kind to gain from the increase of renown that comes to his sovereign, his language, his countrymen's art ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... bring it out, or even to paint in anything like intelligible colours the picture which our own minds have formed. Instructive, because human life must ever be instructive. How a human spirit contrived to get its life accomplished in this confused world: what a man like us, and yet no common man, felt, did, suffered; how he fought, and how he conquered; if we could only get a clear possession and firm grasp of that, we should have got almost all that is worth having in truth, with the technicalities stripped off, for what is the use of truth except ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... of Venalcadi which would have decorated the pole. The Spaniards departed to their own country—that is to say, such of them as desired to do so; but one Hamet, a Biscayan, declared that life was so intolerable for a common man such as he in his own country that he desired to throw in his lot with Barbarossa. Thirty-nine others followed his example, abjuring the Christian ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... grovelling uses as they are now put to and worn out by, but to behold beauty now invisible. May we not see God? Are we to be put off and amused in this life, as it were with a mere allegory? Is not Nature, rightly read, that of which she is commonly taken to be the symbol merely? When the common man looks into the sky, which he has not so much profaned, he thinks it less gross than the earth, and with reverence speaks of "the Heavens," but the seer will in the same sense speak of "the Earths," ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... "He was a common man, but he had an open, intelligent countenance, and his manner was most respectful. I motioned him to be seated. He selected a chair, and sat down on the ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... soul itself, suppress the personal revelation of the divine by taking from the soul the seals of original sovereignty, remove God to the first year of our era, relying on his mediate revelation in time, and thus take from common man the evidence of religion and therewith its certainty, and in general substitute faith in things for the vital faith? If the voice of the Church is to find only its own echo in the inner voice of life, if its evidences of religion involve more than is near and present ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... personality. And see how comparatively insignificant he made the supporting figures. The relation of those three people implies an acceptation of the old ideals of the social organization. MacNeil had a chance here to express the new spirit of today, the spirit that honors the common man and that makes an ideal of social co-operation on terms ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... and began to sing a lovely song. The seventh and youngest daughter of the King heard him, and she wondered who it was who could sing so deliciously. Then she put on her clothes, rolled up her hair, and came down to where the seemingly poor common man was lying singing. "Who are you? where do you ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... two have to live like trusted servants who have been made guardians of a helpless minor. We have to put things in order and keep them in order against the time when Man—Man whom we call in America the Common Man—can take hold of ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... Knights and obeyed a somewhat different code of manners from the common men. But in such respects the common man was just the same as his master. He, too, resembled a shy horse, easily frightened by a shadow or a silly piece of paper, capable of excellent and faithful service but liable to run away and do terrible damage when his ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... rise and fall from grace, combined with the thrill of the duel and the excitement of the chase. Even peons are allowed to participate in the Hunt, for this is the one holiday open to all, and the one holiday that symbolizes the common man's ability to rise above the restraints of ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... sailed this year (1622) from the west of England, and two from London, to fish on the New England coasts, and made profitable voyages." (Holmes' Annals of America, Vol. I., p. 179.) In a note on the same page it is said: "Where in Newfoundland they shared six or seven pounds for a common man, in New England they shared fourteen pounds; besides, six Dutch and French ships made wonderful returns ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... art sent to say; give the message exactly as he said it. Take great care not to spoil it in delivery and so to set one nobleman against another. He who wresteth the truth in transmitting the message, and only repeateth it in words that give pleasure to all men, gentleman or common man, is ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... that trackless waste of waters. The men mutinied—and one can hardly blame them; but he subdued them by his force of character,—they saw in his eye that which told them that their leader was no common man, but one who would die rather than abandon his marvellous enterprise. And you remember the end? The very day after the mutiny, a branch of thorn with berries on it floats by them. They are all excitement. Then a small board appears; then a rudely-carved stick; then at night Columbus sees a light, ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... suffrage amendments, which will be mentioned presently, made the possibility of Republican success extremely remote, the "old guard" has never regained its former position. In all the Southern States party control has been for years in the hands of the common man. The men he chooses to office are those who understand his psychology and can speak his language. Real primary elections were common in the South years before they were introduced elsewhere, and the man who is the choice of the majority in the ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... Triffitt, wildly smiting the crown of his deerstalker. "That's just it! What does it all mean, my dear! Gad!—this is—to use the common language of the common man, a fair licker! That that chap Burchill should march as bold as brass into those Herapath Flats, is—well, I couldn't be more surprised, Trixie, than if you were to tell me that you are the Queen of Sheba's grand-daughter! Not so much so, ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... for history. We might well think shame of ourselves, glorifying the old when we should be welcoming the new. We're no' to be aye dwellin' amang the tombs" (this with a rise in feeling and a drop in language). "Besides, Doctor Grant was no' a common man, and it's no becomin' to be comparin' common men along wi' the ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... merely the social contacts that one gains from travel and exploration, but the stimulation and suggestions that come to us through the medium of communication, by which sentiments and ideas are put in social circulation. Through the newspaper, the common man of today participates in the social movements of his time. His illiterate forbear of yesterday, on the other hand, lived unmoved by the current of world-events outside his hamlet. The tempo of modern societies may be measured comparatively by the relative perfection ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... winter sun was streaming in on the Elder's face as he read Draxy's letter. He let it fall on the scarlet and white counterpane, and lay thinking. The letter touched him unspeakably. Elder Kinney was no common man; he had a sensitive organization and a magnetic power, which, if he had had the advantages of education and position, would have made him a distinguished preacher. As a man, he was tender, chivalrous, and impulsive; and even the rough, cold, undemonstrative people among whom his life had ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... such a vast section of the modern world is out of sympathy with the serious democratic sentiment that this statement will seem to many to be lacking in seriousness. Democracy is not philanthropy; it is not even altruism or social reform. Democracy is not founded on pity for the common man; democracy is founded on reverence for the common man, or, if you will, even on fear of him. It does not champion man because man is so miserable, but because man is so sublime. It does not object so much to the ordinary ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... once, to pick her some great blue violets. She thanked him with real pleasure. In the company of this common man the world was beautiful and direct. For the first time she felt the influence of Spring. His arm swept the horizon gracefully; violets, like other things, existed in great profusion there; "would she ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... still under the snow that covered him like a shroud, all except his face. A bit of my cape had blown over it, and when I took it off and the sun shone on his dead face, I declare to you it was so full of heavenly peace I felt as if that common man had been glorified by God's light, and rewarded by God's 'Well done.' ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... whom public attention was now turned, and whom the people of the City and State began to regard as their champion and deliverer, was James King of William, and he was no common man. He was born in Georgetown, D. C., in January, 1822, and was therefore thirty-four years old at the time of his death. Having received a common school education, he was placed at an early age in the banking house of Corcoran ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb
... they were, too; the death of Lord Howe acting on the whole army much as if it had been a defeat. He was the idol of the King's troops, and he had rendered himself as popular with us Americans, as with his own countrymen. A sort of ominous sadness prevailed among us each common man appearing to feel his loss as he might have felt that ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... England in the year 1066, along with William Conqueruns. My master called it his podygree. I do bleev it was because he had this pictur, and because he was the HONRABBLE Deuceace, that he mannitched to live as he did. If he had been a common man, you'd have said he was no better than a swinler. It's only rank and buth that can warrant such singularities as my master show'd. For it's no use disgysing it—the Honrabble Halgernon was a GAMBLER. For a man of wulgar family, it's ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Bechamel, for all the world like a common man. "I'll chuck this infernal business! ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... I did display some energy. When I had swallowed one glass I rose up to leave. He no longer spoke of accompanying me, and with a sullen scowl, the scowl of a common man in an angry mood, the scowl of a brute whose violence is only slumbering, in the direction of his wife's sleeping apartment, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... passionless severity of face as before, which proved how entirely necessity and not gusto had to do with the iteration. "And the next thing I heard was, 'I forbid the banns,' from her. 'I'll speak to you after the service,' said the parson, in quite a homely way—yes, turning all at once into a common man no holier than you or I. Ah, her face was pale! Maybe you can call to mind that monument in Weatherbury church—the cross-legged soldier that have had his arm knocked away by the school-children? Well, he would about have matched that woman's face, when she ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... thus reveals the successive causes of social progress. Its other service is to put before us the things that fundamentally concern all men in common—the occupations and values connected with getting a living. Economic history deals with the activities, the career, and fortunes of the common man as does no other branch of history. The one thing every individual must do is to live; the one thing that society must do is to secure from each individual his fair contribution to the general well being and see to it that a just ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... These unfortunate people who are fighting here strive to create a republic where all men shall be equal! Said the sainted martyr Charles on the scaffold, ''T is no concern of the common people's how they are governed.' A common man equal to a Talbot! Fight, my son, if you must; but oh, fight for the king, even an usurper, before a republic, a mob in which so-called equality stands in very unstable equilibrium,—fight for the rightful ruler of the land, not ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... A common man looking at this decision of the very learned Judge, might possibly object to it. But ploughed up to the primary rock of the matter, the two great principles laid down in the twin whaling laws previously quoted, and applied ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... spiritual force. Cowper, Burns, Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats constitute a group of poets who gave to English literature a new poetry of nature. The majority of these were also poets of man, of a more ideal humanity. The common man became an object of regard. Burns sings of the Scotch peasant. Wordsworth pictures the life of shepherds and dalesmen. Byron's lines ring with a cry of liberty for all, and Shelley immortalizes the dreams of a universal brotherhood of man. Keats, the poet ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... little boys even, you will hear them addressing each other as chief this, that, and the other thing. Hence, I have heard a stranger remark, that the difficulty in Samoa is, not to find who is a chief, but to find out who is a common man. ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... I understand; words were put into his mouth. I have read of such things. God sometimes uses some common man as His messenger. ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... must ask pardon. Upon no other foundation than this, Mr. Triplett took occasion to give the gentleman's pedigree, by what methods some part of the estate was acquired, how much it was beholden to a marriage for the present circumstances of it: after all, he could see nothing but a common man in his person, his breeding ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... of Aragon gazed into the republican eyes of the Kentuckian with a glowing fire which was contrary to all rules and conventions of the divine right of kings. No common man should have been given such a glimpse of empire; but, in justice to the magic of such glances which come once from the eyes of every good woman, for some good man, in each lifetime, it must be acknowledged that their potent wizardry turns the commonplace, even the tawdry ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... the terrible sorcerer Kwytoffle, who threatened to change you into grasshoppers and june-bugs. But you may see that he is a very common man, with ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... to rid this country of this anarchy. Your common man cannot live without a King, whether a real one or a fraud! Anarchy is always a ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... and the vegetation assumes the aspect of the Hot Country. Specially noticeable were the usual thickets of thorny, dry, and scraggy trees, seen even on the edge of the mesa. They are called guisachi, and in the vernacular of the common man the word has been utilised to designate a sharper. A man who "hooks on," as, for instance, a tricky lawyer, is called a guisachero. It is the counterpart of the "lawyer palm" among the shrubs of ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... succeeded him. About that time Demetrianus died in Antioch, and Paul of Samosata received that episcopate. As he held low and degraded views of Christ, contrary to the teaching of the Church, namely, that in his nature He was a common man, Dionysius of Alexandria was entreated to come to the synod. But being unable to come on account of age and physical weakness, he gave his opinion on the subject under consideration by a letter. But the other pastors of the churches assembled from all directions, as against a ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... emeralds. 'I am royal,' he answered, with naive dignity, 'and the tiger is a royal beast. Kings know the ways of kings. If a king kills what is kingly, it owes him no grudge for it. But if a common man or a low caste man were to kill a tiger—who ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... the real and sufficient explanation of the paradoxical truth, on which so much stress is laid by Dr. Whewell, that a scientifically cultivated mind is actually, in virtue of that cultivation, unable to conceive suppositions which a common man conceives without the smallest difficulty. For there is nothing inconceivable in the suppositions themselves; the impossibility is in combining them with facts inconsistent with them, as part of the same mental picture; an obstacle of course only felt by those who know the facts, and are able ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... revolution envied the religious enjoyments of the common man, all pilgrimages were forbidden, and the road leading to our Lady's Chapel, and which, indeed, is the only high road in this part of the country, became almost impassable. Under the Emperor it was thoroughly repaired, and, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... favour of God for them only of all the nations: to hint at the possibility of a revelation of the glory of God to a stranger; far more, to hint that a stranger might be fitter to receive such a revelation than a Jew, was an offence reaching to the worst insult; and it was cast in their teeth by a common man of their own city! 'Thou art but a well-known carpenter's son, and dost thou teach us! Darest thou imply a divine preference for Capernaum over Nazareth?' In bad odour with the rest of their countrymen, they were the prouder ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... millions of people were in the extremest misery—even unto starvation; while great grandees thought it the acme of earthly bliss and honor to help put the king to bed, or take off his dirty socks. And if a common man, by any chance, caught a glimpse of royalty changing its shirt, he felt as if he had looked into heaven and beheld Divinity creating worlds. Oh, it is enough to make a man ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... or independence of any of them. Witness his effort at the reunion of the Catholic and Protestant Churches. After Leibnitz came Kant. He certainly was very much of a German. He owned, nevertheless, that he had learned from Rousseau to honor the common man who, not being a savant, possesses moral value far above the savant, who has no merit but science. And, starting from the principle that every person, so far as he is capable of moral value, is entitled to respect, he urged men to create not a universal and ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... was shorn of adventure for the common man. Adventure in industrial enterprise is the business man's great monopoly. His impetus is not due to his desire to create wealth but to exploit it, and he secures its creation by "paying men off." Commonly he is peevishly expectant that those he pays off will have ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... thrust home upon us all, I do not mean to imply that all men are constantly or even often engaged in meditating on the nature and origin of death. Far from it. Few people trouble themselves about that or any other purely abstract question: the common man would probably not give a straw for an answer to it. What he wants to know, what we all want to know, is whether death is the end of all things for the individual, whether our conscious personality perishes with the body or survives it for ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... to see how white and fat they were. He wept when he won a victory over Greeks; 'for he loved all Greeks and only hated barbarians'. When he returned home after his successful campaigns, he obeyed the orders of the ephors without question; his house and furniture were as simple as those of a common man, and his daughter the princess, when she went to and fro to Amyclae, went simply in the public omnibus. He reared chargers and hunting dogs; the rearing of chariot horses he thought effeminate. But he advised his ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... she said, her lovely eyes twinkling and sparkling like diamonds:—"So! Then your Majesty is no more than a very common man who loses temper when he cannot have his own way!" She laughed again, and the King stared at her unoffended,—being spellbound, both by her regal beauty, and her complete indifference to himself. "I will speak like the prophets do in the Bible and say, 'Lo! there is no mystery, O King!' I am only ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... that a good many people in Macassar were expecting Willems' return there, supposing him to be absent on some confidential mission. Abdulla, in his surprise, hesitated on the threshold. He had prepared himself to see some seaman—some old officer of Lingard's; a common man—perhaps difficult to deal with, but still no match for him. Instead, he saw himself confronted by an individual whose reputation for sagacity in business was well known to him. How did he get here, and why? Abdulla, recovering from his surprise, advanced in a ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... of the self and its pleasures above the more indirect, the more remote and distant benefits of a great, wonderful, free community. We are all careerists. In so far as democracy has succeeded as a form, it has persisted because there was in it for the common man the promise of his getting more out of life that way than any other way. For himself. And the devil take the others. The myopia of such crude selfishness continues to determine his politics to this very ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... which was started in Luther's days was a particularly offensive enterprise. "It was not so much the theory of the Church that excited Luther's indignation as it was the practises of some of her agents. They encouraged the common man to believe that the purchase of a papal pardon would assure him impunity without any real repentance on his part. Moreover, whatever the theoretical worth of indulgences, the motive of their sale was notoriously the greed of unscrupulous ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... such things to slight, His heart is thine, although it once was frail; Think of his grief, and let his love prevail!" "Plead thou no more, "the lofty lass return'd; "Forgiving woman is deceived and spurn'd: Say that the crime is common—shall I take A common man my wedded lord to make? See? a weak woman by his arts betray'd, An infant born his father to upbraid; Shall I forgive his vileness, take his name, Sanction his error, and partake his shame? No! this assent would kindred frailty ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... was speaking a loud trampling of feet was heard outside the great hall, and all the lackeys came tumbling in, pell-mell, without waiting to do their reverence, just as if the King had been any common man. ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... what might be ugly behaviour in a common man is suitable and right in a king. But you are so hard to please and so pettish, I am seven times tired of yourself ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... to some sort of crisis, by which it would appear whether there was strength enough in the constitution to prevail over the disease; that all he had heard of the manner of the King's life, did unquestionably make him an unfavourable subject for such a struggle, but that if it was the case of any common man, he should have no hesitation in pronouncing even now that it would be very bad luck indeed if he did not recover, and that the chances were nine to one in his favour. You will easily suppose that this was said under the seal of confidence, and that a professional man would not choose to have ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... to talk. It is only lately that the general increase of efficiency, that is, of the Speaker, has made it mostly a place where people are prevented from talking. The poor do not go to the modern church, but they went to the ancient church all right; and if the common man in the past had a grave respect for property, it may conceivably have been because he sometimes had some of his own. I therefore can claim that I have no vulgar itch of innovation in anything I say about any of these institutions. Certainly I have none in that particular ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... buckled on you you will lose no blood, however sorely you may be wounded.' So they rode into the town of Carlion, and Arthur's Knights gave them a glad welcome, and said it was a joy to serve under a King who risked his life as much as any common man. ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... are a clergyman, you know," Felix went on. "I don't think I should venture to say it to a common man." ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... professor, the philosopher, the representative of all that was best in the life of the University; now, fresh from his own grapple with London and its life, what moved him most was the memory of the citizen, the friend and brother of common man, the thinker who had never shirked action in the name of thought, for whom conduct had been from beginning to end ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... presence without removing his hat, who had no greeting for her, who had no semblance of courtesy. In looks, as in action, he made her think of a bull stamping cross-grained into a corral. She had heard of Bishop Dyer forgetting the minister in the fury of a common man, and now she was to feel it. The glance by which she measured him in turn momentarily veiled the divine in the ordinary. He looked a rancher; he was booted, spurred, and covered with dust; he carried a gun at his hip, and she remembered that he had been known ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... four-sided pyramid, and afterwards brought more or less into a true image of leaves, but deriving all its beauty from the botanical form. In the present instance only two leaves are set in each cluster; and the architect has been determined that the naturalism should be perfect. For he was no common man who designed that cathedral of Dunblane. I know not anything so perfect in its simplicity, and so beautiful, as far as it reaches, in all the Gothic with which I am acquainted. And just in proportion to his power of mind, that man was content to work under Nature's teaching; ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... had flashed through the tangle of the old priest's mind. But Winfried's voice sank lower and a cloud of disappointment passed over his face as he replied: "Nay, miracles have I never wrought, though I have heard of many; but the All-Father has given no power to my hands save such as belongs to common man." ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... is that on which both the common man and the expert (parik@saka) hold the same opinion. Established texts or conclusions (siddhanta) are of four kinds, viz (1) those which are accepted by all schools of thought called the sarvatantrasiddhanta; (2) those which are held by one school or similar ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... forms of crime, and that they approve of justice and the carrying out of compacts. The gods overlook the state, because the state engages them so to do, and therefore to break the laws of the state is to anger the gods of the state. But this is rather subtle for the common man, and there is generally no understood immediate relation between these gods and his moral conduct, unless he has sworn an oath by one or other of them. The purpose of calling a god to witness is to bring upon a perjurer the anger of the offended deity. But he entertains ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... Germany and France were both so proudly sovereign and independent. Both countries have been slaves to Kruppism and Zabernism—because they were sovereign and free! So it will always be. So long as patriotic cant can keep the common man jealous of international controls over his belligerent possibilities, so long will he be the helpless slave of the foreign threat, and "Peace" remain a mere name for the resting phase ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... the common people, rather than on the pretensions of the aristocracy whose corruption he held responsible for the decadence of the nation. Following the example of Frederick the Great, he tried to foster the simple virtues of the common man. He was, however, opposed to radicalism, seeing permanent progress only in order, self-discipline, and moderation. His leading idea, which was shared by such men as Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Niebuhr, and others, was that the principal task ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... myself to take any sort of joy in music. You think it foolish? Well, perhaps it was. I am not careful to defend it, gentlemen, and it may happen that I might not if I tried. But that was how I came to give up the fiddle. He was a wonder of the world, was Paganini. He was no more like a common man than his fiddlin' was like common fiddlin'. There was things he played that made the blood run cold all down the back, and laid a sort ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... He boldly mentioned the fact that the boot was off, and he suggested a probable explanation, and he did it all with just the right amount of careless curiosity. But he was dealing with no common man. The tall, powerful foreigner was still holding him by one hand with a grip of steel, and the fierce blue eyes blazed again with suspicion and distrust. The man spoke, and his tone was low and cool, for he had mastered himself, but there was a ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... the report was false. He was defeated off York, and retired for some days into the woods; but it is he who has enticed the sons of Latimer and Fitzhugh into the revolt, and resigned his own command to the martial cunning of Sir John Coniers. This Robin of Redesdale is no common man. He hath had a clerkly education, he hath travelled among the Free Towns of Italy, he hath deep purpose in all he doth; and among his projects is the destruction of the nobles here, as it was whilome effected in Florence, the depriving us of all offices and posts, with other changes, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... common man, Barbecue," said the coxswain to me. "He had good schooling in his young days, and can speak like a book when so minded; and brave—a lion's nothing alongside of Long John! I seen him grapple four and knock their ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ruler. Just as a great number of people in your days regarded the Crown as the ruler. They are discontented—the masses all over the earth—with the rule of your Trustees. For the most part it is the old discontent, the old quarrel of the common man with his commonness—the misery of work and discipline and unfitness. But your Trustees have ruled ill. In certain matters, in the administration of the Labour Companies, for example, they have been ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... itself into ecstasy, and his love into madness. At times his very felicity terrified him. To be only a wretched king, only a remote descendant of a hero who had become a god by mighty labours, only a common man formed of flesh and bone, and without having in aught rendered himself worthy of it—without having even, like his ancestor, strangled some hydra, or torn some lion asunder—to enjoy a happiness whereof Zeus of the ambrosial hair would scarce be worthy, though lord of all Olympus! He felt, as ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... her tripod—speaks through your lips, utters words you hardly comprehend, falsifies your thoughts, confounds your reason, and betrays your secrets. When this sublime madness possesses you, it elevates you—it transfigures you. It can suddenly convert a common man into a poet, a coward into a hero, an egotist into a martyr, and Don Juan himself into an ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 'True, your Excellency, but the King will not see him. Three times to-day, as I am told, the Cardinal has driven to the Luxembourg and stood like any common man in the ante-chamber, so that I hear it was pitiful to see him. But his Majesty would not admit him. And when he went away the last time I am told that his face was like death! Well, he was a great man, and we may be worse ruled, M. de Berault, saving your presence. If the ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... for centuries. The map of the county, the mineralogical survey, the new roads, the opening of lime works, the competition of ploughing, the improving harbours, the building of bridges, are works which bespeak the exertions of no common man."—Letter to Mr. Andrew. Little, dated ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... Matthias, and George Attwood, and Mr. Richard Spooner. Matthias Attwood seceded, and went to London. Of Thomas, it is unnecessary to say one word to Birmingham people; his statue in our principal street shows that he was considered to be no common man. He was one of the first Members for Birmingham upon its incorporation, and was re-elected in 1837. Although he had been so great and successful as a popular political leader, he made no "way" in Parliament; and soon after the riots of 1839 he retired, being ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... me new things," said Bosambo enticingly; "strange devil boxes, large magics which will entrance you, things that no common man has seen, such as I and Sandi alone know in all this land. Go now, I tell thee, to your people in this country, telling them all that I have spoken to you, and when the moon is in a certain quarter they will come in joy bearing presents in both hands, ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... Mr. Belmaine, a common man of thirty, younger than his wife, who had lately come ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... who wished to question Ursus touching Lygia's birthplace, these words produced a certain pleasant impression; for discourse with a free though a common man was less disagreeable to his Roman and patrician pride, than with a slave, in whom neither law ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... mist of their own moods. He read much in the poets; you would say that Vergil and Ovid, as well as the poets of his own day, were his friends; he lived within, surrounded by his own images, and therefore he loved and hated with ten times the ardour of a common man. He was furious for the Old Faith, furious against the new; he dreamed of wars and gallantry and splendour; you could see it even in his dress, in his furred doublet, the embroideries at his throat, his ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... the idea of acting on his "sole responsibility," in an affair which seemed likely to be so hotly contested. The blood curdled in his veins at the thought of the deadly enemies, darkly hinted at, and the consequences clearly threatened. He saw Caroline was no common thief, and Franklin no common man. There were moments when he actually believed the fact really was as Franklin represented—and, thus quailing under the torrent of eloquence to which the voice and manner gave something absolutely irresistible, half suffocated with rage and fear, he ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... The common man is he who does not receive any special distinction: universities do not compete to do him honour, his name is but mentioned in a small circle. These are those of whom Dickens wrote. 'It is,' says Chesterton, 'in private life that we find the great characters. They are ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... this book interesting; we do not know; we wrote with no other intention than to bless the hearts and lives of the great common man and woman. ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... for Alleyne, but a worse one still for him who struck it. The Spanish slinger, seeing the youth lie slain, and judging from his dress that he was no common man, rushed forward to plunder him, knowing well that the bowmen above him had expended their last shaft. He was still three paces, however, from his victim's side when John upon the cliff above plucked up a huge boulder, and, poising it for an instant, dropped it with fatal aim upon the ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... is over that I have left my own country, signor," answered Giuseppe. "I fought against Austria on the sea; but now—now Italy is an unhappy place—no home for heroes at present. I am not a common man. I have a great ancestry—the Doria of Dolceaqua in the Alpes Maritimes. You ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... Lady Meadowcroft is not at all well," he answered, looking piteous; "and—she can't endure the ship's doctor. Such a common man, you know! His loud voice disturbs her. You MUST have noticed that my wife is a lady of exceptionally delicate nervous organisation." He hesitated, beamed on me, and played his trump card. "She dislikes being attended by owt but ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... State, and withal half of the North, ready to lick its boots, and still was not satisfied. It could not go without giving us a thrashing. And that was the drop too much. So we fought. And we conquered; but how? It was all expressed in a few words, which I heard uttered by a common man at a Bulletin board, on the dreadful day when we first read the news of the retreat at Bull Run: "It's hard—but we must buckle up and go at it again." It is very strange that the South never understood that among the mud-sills ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... remission of the punishment as well as of the guilt. Could the pope know how his agents misled the people, he would rather have St. Peter's burn to ashes than build it up with money gained under false pretenses. Then, Luther adds, there is danger that the common man will ask awkward questions. For example, "If the pope releases souls from purgatory for money, why not for charity's sake?" or, "Since the pope is rich as Croesus, why does he not build St. Peter's with his own money, instead of taking that of the ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... say that, sir," she replied, with a dignity of which Lottie did not think her capable. "Any common man may have kingly power, and the meanest have cursed the world with it. But the power to win men from evil is godlike, and only the godlike ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... all the foreign sketches you have ever read of brother, announce that his parents were 'common peasants,' while many American writers, although they do not use the word 'peasant,' convey a similar impression. Father was by no means a common man, for to be 'common' one must be vulgar or ignorant, and father was neither. He was not uneducated, although his schooling was very slight; but he was a good reader, was very skilful in arithmetic, and wrote an excellent ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... Islands," says Dr. Codrington, "there is nothing to prevent a common man from becoming a chief, if he can show that he has the mana (supernatural power) ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... all? Impossible! Impossible that a woman on whom he had lavished such passion should never have felt passion for him—never any! Innumerable images of her passed before him—surrendering, always surrendering. It could not all have been pretence! He was not a common man—she herself had said so; he had charm—or, other women thought so! She had lied; she must have lied, to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... but the East, to name any sort of cosmetic the "Paste of Sultans" thus divining the magic force of such words in a land where every man hoped to be a sultan as much as every woman longed to be a sultana, was an inspiration which could only have come to a common man or a man of genius. The public always judges by results. Birotteau passed for a superior man, commercially speaking; all the more because he compiled a prospectus whose ridiculous phraseology was an element of success. In France they only made fun ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... hand, we see presented a scheme of life which, at the same time, satisfies the highest philosophy and is perfectly intelligible to the most simple-minded. Here a bewildering number of mutually contradictory ways of life are urged upon us, not one of which can appeal in fulness and power to the common man. There do we find one clear way of salvation—the way of faith in Christ; and in order to walk in that way the power of the Divine Spirit is promised to every one, even to the humblest soul and to the greatest sinner, ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... had strength to keep his own feelings in check—who followed me in spirit to far lands and desperate adventures, and who, though he might be across the world from me, was ready to put out a hand to save or help me, was no common man; and his care of my mother's son meant no common love for my dear mother. And so she and I together accept his trust, come of it what may. I have been thinking it over all night, and all the time I could not get ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... a shot was never fired before or since; that a gun was never pointed in such a way. Suppose I had been a common man, and contented myself with firing bang at the head of the first animal? An ass would have done it, prided himself had he hit his mark, and what would have been the consequence? Why, that the ball might have killed ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... old Whetstone like a feather, letting him have his spurts of kicking and stiff-legged bouncing without any effort to restrain him at all. There wasn't much steam in the outlaw's antics now; any common man could have ridden him without losing ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... of great importance to observe, that the character of every man is, in some degree, formed by his profession. A man of sense may only have a cast of countenance that wears off as you trace his individuality, whilst the weak, common man, has scarcely ever any character, but what belongs to the body; at least, all his opinions have been so steeped in the vat consecrated by authority, that the faint spirit which the grape of his own ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... as he could not very well shut the door in his face, he had very sensibly warned his granddaughter against him. He explained to her that people of his class were not in the habit of marrying a common man's child, although it happened far too often that they might play at love with them. "Such a lad as Salve Kristiansen, now," he remarked, in conclusion, "that is the sort of stuff that will not disappoint you;" and he thought he had played the diplomatist ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... and conscious superiority, any suggestion of shame at thus appearing before a common man and a mendicant was as impossible to her nature as it would have been to a queen or the goddess of his simile. His presence and his compliment alike passed her calm modesty unchallenged. The wretched scamp recognized the fact and felt its power, ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the Oxus back in peace! What should I do with slaying any more? For would that all that I have ever slain Might be once more alive; my bitterest foes, And they who were call'd champions in their time, And through whose death I won that fame I have— And I were nothing but a common man, A poor, mean soldier, and without renown, So thou mightest live too, my son, my son! Or rather would that I, even I myself, Might now be lying on this bloody sand, Near death, and by an ignorant stroke of thine, Not thou of mine! and I might die, not thou; And I, not ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... feature of Babylonian costume, common to high and low, to the king and to the peasant. It was a broad belt, probably of leather, and encircled the waist rather high up. The warrior carried his daggers in it; to the common man it served the purpose of keeping in place the cloth which he wore round his body. According to Herodotus, it was also universal in Babylonia to carry ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... it is not the highest word alone that the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the lust of other things entering in, choke, and render unfruitful. Waking from the divine vision, if that can be called waking which is indeed dying into the common day, the common man regards it straightway as a foolish dream; the wise man believes in it still, holds fast by the memory of the vanished glory, and looks to have it one day again a present portion of the light of his life. He knows that, because of the imperfection ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... real genius among them once in forty years; but to look for an exception to the common run of yellow dogs and damfools among them is like opening oysters with the hope of finding pearls. It's the common man we want and the uncommon common man when we can find him—never the crank. This ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... Neighbor Hutchins, "for a queerer chap I never saw in my life. Somehow it makes me feel small to look at him. He's more than a common man." ...
— Biographical Stories - (From: "True Stories of History and Biography") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Though he left sons of his own, he was succeeded by AElfred, his youngest brother. It was not the English custom to give the crown to the child of a king if there was any one of the kingly family more fitted to wear it. AElfred was no common man. In his childhood he had visited Rome, and had been hallowed as king by Pope Leo IV., though the ceremony could have had no weight in England. He had early shown a love of letters, and the story goes that when his mother ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... thief! No common man such as we are looking for, would make choice of just those bottles. So there we are again! Contradictions ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... would not have dared to lead to perjury, by such words, a common man and woman. It was enough for such to ask if they would take, and keep to, ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... such possibilities, because they have the power of launching themselves into the unseen. We cannot. This is the reason why cataclysms, things like the Flood recorded in the Book of Genesis, and the French Revolution, always come upon societies unprepared for them. The prophets foretell them, but the common man has not the amount of imagination which would make it possible for him to believe the prophets. "They eat and drink, marry, and are given in marriage," until the day when the ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... not a common man. He has a theory, and lives up to it, which is more than I can say for any philosopher I have the honour of shaving," answered Nello, whose loquacity, like an over-full bottle, could never pour forth a small dose. "Bratti means to extract the utmost possible amount of pleasure, that is to say, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... The man in the street finds in him the qualities and powers of other men in the street. He finds him, like himself, by birth a citizen, who, by very intelligible merits, arrived at such a commanding position, that he could indulge all those tastes which the common man possesses, but is obliged to conceal and deny; good society, good books, fast traveling, dress, dinners, servants without number, personal weight, the execution of his ideas, the standing in the attitude of a benefactor ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... insignificant, but a glorious body. The desert master by nourishing the Rishi, procured a birth as the three leg, or foot star; worldly profit is fleeting and perishable, religious profit is eternal and inexhaustible; a man though a king is full of trouble, a common man, who is holy, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... she first saw Burke, says:—'I had been told that Burke was not expected; yet I could conclude this gentleman to be no other. There was an evident, a striking superiority in his demeanour, his eye, his motions, that announced him no common man.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 145. See ante, ii. 450, where Johnson said of Burke:—'His stream of mind is perpetual;' and Boswell's Hebrides post,, v. 32, and Prior's Life of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... understood that he had no common man to deal with. He gave the necessary directions without any further remark, and parted with his patient ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... a rough cloak of frieze, and on his head a broad hat to shade his face; in his hand he carried a trident for spearing fish, and over his shoulder was a casting-net; but Danae could see that he was no common man by his stature, and his walk, and his flowing golden hair and beard; and by the two servants who came behind him, carrying baskets for his fish. But she had hardly time to look at him before he had ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... the classic tongues, and he split an infinitive and failed to button up a sentence in saying so. His main argument conceded every objection a reasonable person could make to the City Merchants' curriculum. He admitted that translation had now placed all the wisdom of the past at a common man's disposal, that scarcely a field of endeavour remained in which modern work had not long since passed beyond the ancient achievement. He disclaimed any utility. But there was, he said, a peculiar magic ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... and gross and florid—but they were his. They presented in concrete form his ideals, his conceptions of beauty and desire, his idea of all that is precious in life. And now—he must leave it all like a common man. He was, he felt, a slender and delicate flame, burning out. So must all life flame up and pass, he thought. ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells |
