Common

Famous quotes containing the word common:

    Poetry, at all times, exercises two distinct functions: it may reveal, it may unveil to every eye, the ideal aspects of common things ... or it may actually add to the number of motives poetic and uncommon in themselves, by the imaginative creation of things that are ideal from their very birth.
    Walter Pater (1839–1894)

    yet it seems
    Life scarce can cast a fragrance on the wind,
    Scarce spread a glory to the morning beams,
    But the torn petals strew the garden plot;
    And there’s but common greenness after that.
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    The line of separation was very distinct, and the Indian immediately remarked, “I guess you and I go there,—I guess there’s room for my canoe there.” This was his common expression instead of saying “we.” He never addressed us by our names, though curious to know how they were spelled and what they meant, while we called him Polis. He had already guessed very accurately at our ages, and said that he was forty-eight.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)