Commonness Quotes

“No knowledge, however thorough and extensive, no brilliance and perspicuity, no dialectic sophistication, will preserve us from the commmonness of thought and will. It is truly not the merit of the school if we do not come out selfish.”
― Max Stirner, False Principle of Our Education

“He's meeting his girl now, a girl not much older than 14. A five-and-ten-cents store Cleopatra, a four letter word.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“I'm swimming upstream. Fighting the tide while the happy dead drift past me to the pools of ignorance.”
― Katie Waitman, The Merro Tree

“There is a constitution that some have, and I had it---to which everything foreign is wondrous, and all that is domestic, tiresome.”
― Jesse Ball, Census

“Wonders do not confuse. We call them that
And close the matter there. But common things
Surprise us. They accept the names we give
With calm, and keep them. Easy-breathing then
We brave our next small business. Well, behind
Our backs they alter. How were we to know.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters