Commonly Quotes

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.
Henry David Thoreau

Men, Respect, Learning

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

Power, Cynicism, Accurate

It may happen sometimes that a long debate becomes the cause of a longer friendship. Commonly, those who dispute with one another at last agree.
Elbert Hubbard

Friendship, Long, May

The Lord commonly gives riches to foolish people, to whom he gives nothing else.
Martin Luther

Nothing, Else, Lord

People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something.
Soren Kierkegaard

Travel, Human, Stars

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.
Samuel Johnson

Food, Enough, Chance

Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable, and have every word received with a religious respect.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Respect, Ambition, Secret

Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron - namely, that he is a blockhead.
Ambrose Bierce

Power, Woman, Person

Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man's choice, and is highly prized.
Ambrose Bierce

Opinion, Another, Vote

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

Another, Move, Mysterious

Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.
Ambrose Bierce

High, Found, Ability

They that apply themselves to trifling matters commonly become incapable of great ones.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Great, Become, Themselves

Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Future, Past, Hard

Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.
Samuel Johnson

Life, Often, Spend

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.
Samuel Johnson

Advice, Wanted, Welcome

The point about manic depression or bipolar disorder, as it's now more commonly called, is that it's about mood swings. So, you have an elevated mood. When people think of manic depression, they only hear the word depression. They think one's a depressive. The point is, one's a manic-depressive.
Stephen Fry

Depression, Word, Point

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.
Francis Bacon

Down, Thoughts, Moment

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

Life, Ways, Surely

All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'Facts'. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.
Thomas Hobbes

Minds, Facts, Horror

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
Jonathan Swift

Politics, Nothing, Word

A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Death, Character, Both

The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Great, Men, Nor

For imagination sets the goal picture which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of will, as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination.
Maxwell Maltz

Goal, Picture, Act

As fathers commonly go, it is seldom a misfortune to be fatherless; and considering the general run of sons, as seldom a misfortune to be childless.
Lord Chesterfield

Run, General, Seldom

Sincerity is not only effective and honourable, it is also much less difficult than is commonly supposed.
George Henry Lewes

Difficult, Less, Sincerity

Working moms commonly testify that they feel guilty when they are away from their children and guilty when they are not at their jobs. Devoted fathers certainly miss their children deeply, but it does not seem to be with the same gnawing, primal anxiety that often afflicts women.
Camille Paglia

Women, Children, Working

It is commonly supposed that the art of pleasing is a wonderful aid in the pursuit of fortune; but the art of being bored is infinitely more successful.
Nicolas Chamfort

Art, Successful, Bored

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

Freedom, Tax, Clearly

Time-space as commonly understood, in the sense of the distance measured between two time-points, is the result of time calculation.
Martin Heidegger

Time, Two, Sense

Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions.
William E. Gladstone

Successful, Dangerous, Mediocrity

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