Fame! that common crier. [ J. Adams ]
A common table for guests. [ French ]
Polite beggary is too common. [ W. R. Alger ]
Common fame is seldom to blame. [ Proverb ]
A common blot is held no stain. [ Proverb ]
One common fate we both must prove;
You die with envy, I with love. [ Gay ]
Common sense is not a common thing. [ Valaincourt ]
I am not in the roll of common men. [ William Shakespeare ]
The sea is certainly common to all. [ Plautus ]
The educators of the common people. [ Theodore Parker ]
She is as common as a barber's chair. [ Proverb ]
Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God. [ Leigh ]
Keep the common road and you are safe. [ Proverb ]
Time's abyss, the common grave of all. [ Dryden ]
I count this thing to be grandly true:
That a noble deed is a step toward God,
Lifting the soul from the common clod
To a purer air and a broader view. [ J. G. Holland, Pseudonym: Timothy Titcomb ]
Above the vulgar flight of common souls. [ Arthur Murphy ]
Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever. [ Shelley ]
Our country is the common parent of all. [ Cicero ]
I count this thing to be grandly true.
That a noble deed is a step towards God:
Lifting the soul from the common sod
To a purer air and a broader view. [ J. G. Holland ]
Defend me, common sense, say I,
From reveries so airy, from the toil
Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old with drawing nothing up. [ William Cowper ]
Laughter is common in the mouth of fools.
Common fame hath a blister on its tongue. [ Proverb ]
Pluck is not so common nowadays as genius. [ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ]
Till sorrow seemed to wear one common face. [ Congreve ]
The common hackney horse is the worst shod. [ Proverb ]
Unprovoked and calm
You reason well, see as you ought to see,
And wonder at the madness of mankind:
Seized with the common rage, you soon forget
The speculations of your wiser hours. [ Armstrong ]
With common friends, go with bridle in hand. [ Proverb ]
Common sense is the growth of all countries. [ Proverb ]
A common jeerer may have wit, but not wisdom. [ Proverb ]
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And Cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness.
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy.
* * * * * *
At length the man perceives it die away.
And fade into the light of common day. [ Wordsworth ]
'Tis education forms the common mind;
Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined. [ Alexander Pope ]
Our common friends are but spies of our actions. [ Proverb ]
He thought he thought, and yet he did not think,
But only echoed still the common talk,
As might an empty room. [ Walter C. Smith ]
Do not, for ever, with thy veiled lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust;
Thou knowst 'tis common; all that lives must die.
Passing through nature to eternity. [ William Shakespeare ]
Common people hang more after praise than profit. [ Proverb ]
It is common to man to pardon all his own faults.
It is common to esteem most what is most unknown. [ Tacitus ]
The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance. [ William Shakespeare ]
Conform to common custom, and not to common folly. [ Proverb ]
One destined period men in common have,
The great, the base, the coward, and the brave.
All food alike for worms, companions in the grave. [ Lansdowne ]
The common ingredients of health and long life are:
Great temperance, open air,
Easy labor, little care. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
O very gloomy is the House of Woe,
Where tears are falling while the bell is knelling.
With all the dark solemnities which show
That Death is in the dwelling!
O, very, very dreary is the room
Where Love, domestic Love, no longer nestles.
But smitten by the common stroke of doom.
The corpse lies on the trestles! [ Hood ]
Let choler be only a common soldier, not a commander. [ Proverb ]
In a case of extreme emergency all things are common. [ Law ]
Our common conversation is but a babble about nothing. [ Proverb ]
The purse-strings are the most common ties of friendship. [ Proverb ]
It is difficult to handle a common theme with originality. [ Horace ]
Science is nothing but trained and organised common sense. [ Huxley ]
The character of the common people changes in a single day. [ Voltaire ]
Flowers are as common in the country as people are in London. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]
Where dainties are not to be had, be content with common fare. [ Proverb ]
Friends are rare, for the good reason that men are not common. [ Joseph Roux ]
The grave is a common treasury, to which we must all be taken. [ Burke ]
Death is an equal doom to good and bad, the common inn of rest. [ Spenser ]
Things that have a common quality ever quickly seek their kind. [ Marcus Aurelius ]
Nothing is more haughty than a common-place man raised to power. [ French Proverb ]
Nothing is more common on earth than to deceive and be deceived. [ Seume ]
Joy has this in common with pain, that it bereaves man of reason. [ Platen ]
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Sometimes the common people judge aright; at other times they err. [ Horace ]
I find that most people are made only for the common uses of life. [ John Foster ]
Literature is so common a luxury that the age has grown fastidious. [ Tuckerman ]
It is more common to see an extreme love than a perfect friendship. [ Du Coeur ]
He doeth well that serveth the common good rather than his own will. [ Thomas à Kempis ]
Common sense, in an uncommon degree, is what the world calls wisdom. [ Coleridge ]
In common things the law of sacrifice takes the form of positive duty. [ Froude ]
Common distress is a great promoter both of friendship and speculation. [ Swift ]
All things should be common between friends. Our friend is another self. [ Pythagoras ]
Eyes are not so common as poets would think, or poets would be plentier. [ Lowell ]
Nobody can think much to bear that, which is the common fate of all men. [ Proverb ]
Our blessings are the least heeded, because the most common events of life. [ Hosea Ballou ]
Evil is so common in the world that it is easy to believe it natural to man. [ F. Soulie ]
The end crowns all; and that old common arbitrator, Time, will one day end it. [ William Shakespeare ]
To make the common marvellous, as if it were a revelation, is the test of genius. [ Lowell ]
Large offers and sturdy rejections are among the most common topics of falsehood. [ Johnson ]
The common mind is the true Parian marble, fit to be wrought into likeness to a god. [ George Bancroft ]
However wretched a fellow-mortal may be, he is still a member of our common species. [ Seneca ]
Woman has this in common with angels, that suffering beings belong especially to her. [ Balzac ]
Reason is the life of the law; nay, the common law itself is nothing else but reason. [ Coke ]
It often falls, in course of common life, that right long time is overborne of wrong. [ Spenser ]
Women have always been picturesque protests against the mere existence of common sense. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
Commerce links all mankind in one common brotherhood of mutual dependence and interests. [ James A. Garfield ]
Error is none the better for being common, nor truth the worse for having lain neglected. [ John Locke ]
The common foible of women who have been handsome is to forget that they are no longer so. [ Rochefoucauld ]
To love IS a rare happiness; if it were common, it would be better to be a man than a god. [ Mme. du Chatelet ]
Upon the common course of life must our thoughts and our conversation be generally employed. [ Johnson ]
The sculptor does not work for the anatomist, but for the common observer of life and nature. [ Ruskin ]
It is the privilege of genius that to it life never grows common-place, as to the rest of us. [ Lowell ]
Strong conceit, like a new principle, carries all easily with it, when yet above common-sense. [ Locke ]
That the voice of the common people is the voice of God is as full of falsehood as commonness. [ Warwick ]
Literature draws its sap from the deep soil of human nature's common and everlasting sympathies. [ Lowell ]
In the common run of mankind, for one that is wise and good you find ten of a contrary character. [ Addison ]
It is the common wonder of all men how among so many millions of faces there should be none alike. [ Sir Thomas Browne ]
That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own. [ Swift ]
There is hardly a more common error than that of taking the man who has but one talent for a genius. [ Arthur Helps ]
Noble art is nothing less than the expression of a great soul; and great souls are not common things. [ John Ruskin ]
Praise from the common people is generally false, and rather follows vain persons than virtuous ones. [ Bacon ]
Intemperate wits will spare neither friend nor foe, and make themselves the common enemies of mankind. [ L'Estrange ]
It is the treating of the common-place with the feeling of the sublime that gives to art its true power. [ J. F. Millet ]
By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy. [ Bancroft ]
Experience is the common schoolhouse of fools and ill men. Men of wit and honesty be otherwise instructed. [ Erasmus ]
If, of all vices, avarice is the most generally detested, it is the effect of an avidity common to all men. [ Helvetius ]
Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated. [ Hazlitt ]
Ridicule is a weak weapon when levelled at a strong mind; but common men are cowards, and dread an empty laugh. [ Tupper ]
Obstinacy and contention are common qualities, most appearing in, and best becoming, a mean and illiterate soul. [ Montaigne ]
These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes. [ Dr. Johnson ]
Cure oneself as far as possible of a trick common to almost every one, of using four or five adjectives before a noun. [ Ada Ellen Bayly, a.k.a. Edna Lyall, English novelist and early feminist, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]
An idea, like a ghost (according to the common notion of ghosts), must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself. [ Charles Dickens ]
It is a common vanity of the aged to believe that they have always been more exemplary than those who have come after them. [ A. de Musset ]
Great souls are not those who have fewer passions and more virtues than the common, but those only who have greater designs. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Kings and their subjects, masters and slaves, find a common level in two places - at the foot of the cross, and in the grave. [ Colton ]
Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can, and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys. [ Lamartine ]
Great souls are not those which have less passion and more virtue than common souls, but only those which have greater designs. [ La Roche ]
Good poetry has a lot in common with good copy. A poem evokes vivid images and strong emotions through very careful word choice. [ Kathy Kleidermacher, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Copywriter's Words And Phrases ]
Those who attain any excellence commonly spend life in one common pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms. [ Johnson ]
Vicissitudes of fortune, which spare neither man nor the proudest of his works, which bury empires and cities in a common grave. [ Gibbon ]
God hath given to mankind a common library, His creatures; to every man a proper book, himself being an abridgment of all others. [ T. Fuller ]
Give bread to a stranger, in the name of the universal brotherhood which binds together all men under the common father of nature. [ Quintilian ]
Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is glorious; but the weak flavor of genius in a person essentially common is detestable. [ Holmes ]
The connoisseur of art must be able to appreciate what is simply beautiful, but the common run of people are satisfied with ornament. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
We pass by common objects or persons without noticing them; but the keen eye detects and notes types everywhere and among all classes. [ Thackeray ]
Differences, we know, are never so effectually laid asleep as by some common calamity; an enemy unites all to whom he threatens danger. [ Dr. Johnson ]
From a common custom of swearing men easily slide into perjury; therefore, if thou wouldst not be perjured, do not use thyself to swear. [ Hierocles ]
Natural liberty is the right of common upon a waste: civil liberty is the safe, exclusive, unmolested enjoyment of a cultivated enclosure. [ Paley ]
The finest lives, in my opinion, are those who rank in the common model and with the human race, but without miracle, without extravagance. [ Montaigne ]
Husband and wife, - so much in common, how different in type! Such a contrast, and yet such harmony, strength and weakness blended together! [ Ruffini ]
Nothing is more common than to talk of a friend; nothing more difficult than to find one; nothing more rare than to improve one as we ought. [ Henry A. Oakley ]
Refinement is the lifting of one's self upwards from the merely sensual; the effort of the soul to etherealize the common wants and uses of life. [ Beecher ]
To admit that there is any such thing as chance, in the common acceptation of the term, would be to attempt to establish a power independent of God. [ Colton ]
Do you wish to be free? Then above all things, love God, love your neighbor, love one another, love the common weal; then you will have true liberty. [ Savonarola ]
No woman, plain or pretty, has any commonsense at all. Common-sense is the privilege of our sex and we men are so self-sacrificing that we never use it. [ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ]
Of all things known to mortals wine is the most powerful and effectual for exciting and inflaming the passions of mankind, being common fuel to them all. [ Lord Bacon ]
When the dust of death has choked a great man's voice, the common words he said turn oracles, the common thoughts he yoked like horses draw like griffins. [ Mrs. Browning ]
The disease and its medicine are like two factions in a besieged town; they tear one another to pieces, but both unite against their common enemy, nature. [ Jeffrey ]
Among the minor virtues, cleanliness ought to be conspicuously ranked; and in the common topics of praise we generally arrange some commendation of neatness. [ J. Dennie ]
The chance meeting, the unplanned outing, and the unexpected diversion that so often come unsought in the passing days, afford the common channels of happiness. [ Henry D. Chapin ]
Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination. [ Swift ]
Most people don't realize that large pieces of coral, which have been painted brown and attached to the skull by common wood screws, can make a child look like a deer. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
In human life there is a constant mutability; and it is unreasonable to expect an exemption from the common fate; life itself decays, and all things are daily changing. [ Plutarch ]
If all men would bring their misfortunes together in one place, most would be glad to take his own home again, rather than to take a proportion out of the common stock. [ Solon ]
Is it not a thing divine to have a smile which, none know how, has the power to lighten the weight of that enormous chain which all the living in common drag behind them? [ Victor Hugo ]
In human life there is a constant change of fortune; and it is unreasonable to expect an exemption from the common fate. Life itself decays, and all things are daily changing. [ Plutarch ]
Unwillingness to acknowledge whatever is good in religion foreign to our own has always been a very common trait of human nature; but it seems to me neither generous nor just. [ Mrs. L. M. Child ]
Genius is allied to a warm and inflammable constitution; delicacy of taste, to calmness and sedateness. Hence it is common to find genius in one who is a prey to every passion. [ Lord Karnes ]
We so converse every night with the image of death that every morning we find an argument of the resurrection. Sleep and death have but one mother, and they have one name in common. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
A nation's character is the sum of its splendid deeds; they constitute one common patrimony, the nation's inheritance. They awe foreign powers; they arouse and animate our own people. [ Henry Clay ]
Office of itself does much to equalize politicians. It by no means brings all characters to a level; but it does bring high characters down and low characters up towards a common standard. [ Macaulay ]
Husband and wife have so many interests in common that when they have jogged through the ups and downs of life a sufficient time, the leash which at first galled often grows easy and familiar. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
We want more loving knowledge to enable us to enjoy life, and we require to cultivate the art of making the most of the common means and appliances of enjoyment which lie about us on every side. [ Samuel Smiles ]
Common fame is the only liar that deserveth to have some respect still reserved to it: though she telleth many an untruth, she often hits right, and most especially when she speaketh ill of men. [ Saville ]
Genius is nothing more than our common faculties refined to a greater intensity. There are no astonishing ways of doing astonishing things. All astonishing things are done by ordinary materials. [ B. R. Haydon ]
All the arts, which have a tendency to raise man in the scale of being, have a certain common band of union. and are connected, if I may be allowed to say so, by blood-relationship with one another. [ Cicero ]
Of all the vices, avarice is the most generally detested; it is the effect of an avidity common to all men; it is because men hate those from whom they can expect nothing. The greedy misers rail at sordid misers. [ Helvetius ]
That mere will and industry can enable any man to accomplish anything is a belief common enough amongst imperfectly educated man. But no one of really cultivated intellect denies the variety of natural endowments. [ Hamerton ]
More marriages are ruined nowadays by the common sense of the husband than by anything else. How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly rational being. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
Fine sense and exalted sense are not half as useful as common sense. There are forty men of wit for one man of sense. And he that will carry nothing about him but gold will be every day at a loss for readier change. [ Pope ]
The capacity of apprehending what is high is very rare; and therefore, in common life a man does well to keep such things for himself, and only to give out so much as is needful to have some advantage against others. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber if he has common-sense on the ground-floor. But if a man has not got plenty of good common-sense, the more science he has the worse for his patient. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]
Gifts of rings by lovers have always been common; but how pleasant when the husband can look to the past, to the present, to the future, with feelings of love, honor, and duty, and not as is often the case with repentance. [ Miss L. E. Landon ]
Pride is the common forerunner of a fall. It was the devil's sin. and the devil's ruin; and has been, ever since, the devil's stratagem, who, like an expert wrestler, usually gives a man a lift before he gives him a throw. [ South ]
Poetry, like truth, is a common flower. God has sown it over the earth like daisies, sprinkled with tears, or glowing in the sun, even as he places the crocus and the March frosts together, and beautifully mingles life and death. [ Ebenezer Elliott ]
I have no wife or children, good or bad, to provide for; a mere spectator of other men's fortunes and adventures, and how they play their parts; which, methinks, are diversely presetted unto me, as from a common theatre or scene. [ Burton ]
Every modulated sound is not a song, and every voice that executes a beautiful air does not sing. Singing should enchant. But to produce this effect there must be a quality of soul and voice which is by no means common even with great singers. [ Joubert ]
To make much of little, to find reasons of interest in common things, to develop a sensibility to mild enjoyments, to inspire the imagination, to throw a charm upon homely and familiar things, will constitute a man master of his own happiness. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]
The wise men of old have sent most of their morality down to the stream of time in the light skiff of apothegm or epigram; and the proverbs of nations, which embody the common sense of nations, have the brisk concussion of the most sparkling wit. [ Edwin Percy Whipple ]
Ordinary or Common? A distinction may be thus drawn between these terms; what is common is done by many persons; what is ordinary is repeated many times. Ordinary has to do with the repetition of the act; common, with the persons who perform it. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]
Love may exist without jealousy, although this is rare: but jealousy may exist without love, and this is common; for jealousy can feed on that which is bitter no less than on that which is sweet, and is sustained by pride as often as by affection. [ Colton ]
When all moves equally (says Pascal), nothing seems to move, as in a vessel under sail; and when all run by common consent into vice, none appear to do so. He that stops first, views as from a fixed point the horrible extravagance that transports the rest. [ Colton ]
There is to me a daintiness about early flowers that touches me like poetry; they blow out with such a simple loveliness among the common herbs of pastures, and breathe their lives so unobstrusively, like hearts whose beatings are too gentle for the world. [ N. P. Willis ]
Without some strong motive to the contrary, men united by the pursuit of a clearly defined common aim of irresistible attractiveness naturally coalesce; and since they coalesce naturally, they are clearly right in coalescing and find their advantage in it. [ Matthew Arnold ]
God creates out of the dry, dull earth so many flowers of such beautiful colors, and such sweet perfume, such as no painter nor apothecary can rival. From the common ground God is ever bringing forth flowers, golden, crimson, blue, brown, and of all colors. [ M. Luther ]
That fine part of our construction, the eye, seems as much the receptacle and seat of our passions as the mind itself; and at least it is the outward portal to introduce them to the house within, or rather the common thoroughfare to let our affections pass in and out. [ Addison ]
To write a genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation, who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes. [ Hazlitt ]
Love is not altogether a delirium, yet has it many points in common therewith ... I call it rather a discerning of the Infinite in the Finite, of the Idea made Real; which discerning again may be either true or false, either seraphic or demonic, Inspiration or Insanity. [ Carlyle ]
The common cause of waves is the friction of the wind upon the surface of the water; little ridges or elevations first appear, which by continuance of the force gradually increase until they become the rolling mountains seen where the wind sweeps over a great extent of water. [ F. Marryatt ]
Blessings we enjoy daily; and for most of them, because they be so common, most men forget to pay their praises; but let not us, because it is a sacrifice so pleasing to Him that made the sun and us, and still protects us, and gives us flowers and showers and meat and content. [ Izaak Walton ]
The birds of the air die to sustain thee; the beasts of the field die to nourish thee; the fishes of the sea die to feed thee. Our stomachs are their common sepulchre. Good God! with how many deaths are our poor lives patched up! how full of death is the life of momentary man! [ Quarles ]
Great men, though far above us, are felt to be our brothers; and their elevation shows us what vast possibilities are wrapped up in our common humanity. They beckon us up the gleaming heights to whose summits they have climbed. Their deeds are the woof of this world's history. [ Moses Harvey ]
Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed. That nation cannot be free, where reform is a common hack, that is dismissed with a kick the moment it has brought its rider to his place. [ Colton ]
It is averse to talent to be consorted and trained up with inferior minds or inferior companions, however high they may rank. The foal of the racer neither finds out his speed, nor calls out his powers, if pastured out with the common herd, that are destined for the collar and the yoke. [ Colton ]
It is adverse to talent to be consorted and trained up with inferior minds and inferior companions, however high they may rank. The foal of the racer neither finds out his speed nor calls out his powers if pastured out with the common herd, that are destined for the collar and the yoke. [ Colton ]
Nature eschews regular lines; she does not shape her lines by a common model. Not one of Eve's numerous progeny in all respects resembles her who first culled the flowers of Eden. To the infinite variety and picturesque inequality of nature we owe the great charm of her uncloying beauty. [ Whittier ]
Liberty is the richest inheritance which man has received from the skies! When shall its sacred fire burn in every bosom, and kindling with the thrilling force of inspiration, spread from heart to heart and from mind to mind, and be the common privilege and birthright of every human being? [ Acton ]
Observe or Say? While the dictionaries authorize the common use of these words, it is in better taste to restrict the employment of observe to its primitive signification; namely, to notice. Hence such an expression as, What did you observe?
is objectionable, and should be, What did you say?
[ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]
Men pursue riches under the idea that their possession will set them at pace, and above the world. But the law of association often makes those who begin by loving gold as a servant finish by becoming themselves its slaves; and independence without wealth is at least as common as wealth without independence. [ Colton ]
Every common dauber writes rascal and villain under his pictures, because the pictures themselves have neither character nor resemblance. But the works of a master require no index. His features and coloring are taken from nature. The impression they make is immediate and uniform; nor is it possible to mistake his characters. [ Junius ]
Partake or Eat? Partake, meaning to take a part of in common with others, to participate, is often affectedly used as a synonym of eat. It is correct to say that two or more persons partake of dinner, as they may partake of anything else. But, for the individual who eats alone, to say he partook of refreshments is an egregious blunder. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]
The study of the mathematics cultivates the reason; that of the languages at the same time the reason and the taste. The former gives power to the mind; the latter, both power and flexibility. The former, by itself, would prepare us for a state of certainties, which nowhere exists; the latter, for a state of probabilities, which is that of common life. [ T. Godfrey ]
The only difference between a genius and one of common capacity is that the former anticipates and explores what the latter accidentally hits upon. But even the man of genius himself more frequently employs the advantages that chance presents to him. It is the lapidary that gives value to the diamond, which the peasant has dug up without knowing its worth. [ Abbe Raynal ]
Partially or Partly? The use of the adverb partially for partly, although it has the sanction of Webster, is obviously incorrect. The case in court has been partially heard.
This is a common expression, the intended meaning of which is, that the case has been heard in part, or partly heard. Partially heard, denotes that it was heard in a biased or prejudiced manner. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]
Occur or Transpire? The misuse of these words is very common. Occur means simply to take place, to happen; transpire to leak out, to come to light. Hence, it is incorrect to say, The annual school exhibition transpired last week.
The proper word here is occurred. But transpire is correctly used in such a sentence as, The proceedings of the caucus have not yet transpired
. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]
Individuals possessing moderate sized brains easily find their proper sphere, and enjoy in it scope for all their energy. In ordinary circumstances they distinguish themselves, but they sink when difficulties accumulate around them. Persons with large brains, on the other hand, do not readily attain their appropriate place; common occurrences do not rouse or call them forth. [ George Combe ]
No process is so fatal as that which would cast all men in one mould. Every human being is intended to have a character of his own, to be what no other is, to do what no other can do. Our common nature is to be unfolded in unbounded diversities. It is rich enough for infinite manifestations. It is to wear innumerable forms of beauty and glory. Every human being has a work to carry on within, duties to perform abroad, influences to exert, which are peculiarly his, and which no conscience but his own can teach. [ Channing ]
The Christian cemetery is a memorial and a record. It is not a mere field in which the dead are stowed away unknown; it is a touching and beautiful history, written in family burial plots, in mounded graves, in sculptured and inscribed monuments. It tells the story of the past, - not of its institutions, or its wars, or its ideas, but of its individual lives, - of its men and women and children, and of its household. It is silent, but eloquent; it is common, but it is unique. We find no such history elsewhere; there are no records in all the wide world in which we can discover so much that is suggestive, so much that is pathetic and impressive. [ Joseph Anderson ]