#commonplace

As a rule, said Holmes, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#commonplace #crimes #difficult #face #holmes

I want to look at life - at the commonplaces of existence - as if we had just turned a corner and run into it for the first time. ↗

— Christopher Fry

#corner #existence #first #first time #had

The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will. ↗

— Jose Ortega y Gasset

#characteristic #commonplace #hour #impose #itself

It is an accepted commonplace in psychology that the spiritual level of people acting as a crowd is far lower than the mean of each individual's intelligence or morality. ↗

— Christian Lous Lange

#acting #commonplace #crowd #each #far

Another symptom of progress toward the Singularity: ideas themselves should spread ever faster, and even the most radical will quickly become commonplace. ↗

— Vernor Vinge

#become #commonplace #even #ever #faster

At a certain age, death becomes familiar to you-or a loss becomes familiar-the tragedies that are more commonplace in life. ↗

— Jessica Lange

#becomes #certain #certain age #commonplace #death

I'm saying look, here they come, pay attention. Let your eyes transform what appears ordinary, commonplace, into what it is, a moment in time, an observed fragment of eternity. ↗

— Philip Levine

#attention #come #commonplace #eternity #eyes

Most remarks that are worth making are commonplace remarks. The things that makes them worth saying is that we really mean them. ↗

— Robert Staughton Lynd

#makes #making #mean #most #really

We imagine that we want to escape our selfish and commonplace existence, but we cling desperately to our chains. ↗

— Anne Sullivan Macy

#chains #cling #commonplace #desperately #escape

Commonplace people dislike tragedy because they dare not suffer and cannot exult. ↗

— John Masefield

#cannot #commonplace #dare #dislike #exult