An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does he gets beyond his hearers.
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.
After all, the commonplaces are the great poetic truths.
Commonplaces never become tiresome. It is we who become tired when we cease to be curious and appreciative.
The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of the pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes.
My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.
Man, in spite of his tendency towards mendacity, has a great respect for what he calls the truth. Truth is his staff in his voyage through life; commonplaces are the bread in his bag and the wine in his jug.
Commonplaces are the tramways of intellectual transportation.
