"Commonplace" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... temperament? As I look back on the whole course of my relation to Louie, I am conscious only of a sickening sense of utter failure. Our father left her to me, and I have not been able to hold her back from—nay, I have helped to plunge her into the most obvious and commonplace ruin. Yet I am always asking myself, if it were to do again, could I do any better? Has any other force developed in me which would make it possible for me now to break through the barriers between her nature and mine, to ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... leaves blank before the pages of forms for filling in anthropometric and physiological data, and the headings may be made to suggest a worthier way of viewing these things. For instance, there may be the indication 'Place and time of conception,' and a specimen entry may be of service to lead commonplace minds into a more reverent and poetical view than is now usual—such as the one I culled from the life-history of an American child: 'Our second child M—— was conceived on Midsummer Day, under the shade of a friendly sycamore, ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... a brighter period. I shall not expatiate on the works of the Byzantine Greeks, who, by the assiduous study of the ancients, have deserved, in some measure, the remembrance and gratitude of the moderns. The scholars of the present age may still enjoy the benefit of the philosophical commonplace book of Stobaeus, the grammatical and historical lexicon of Suidas, the Chiliads of Tzetzes, which comprise six hundred narratives in twelve thousand verses, and the commentaries on Homer of Eustathius, archbishop of Thessalonica, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... And let me tell you that her flitting from each to each individual has been anything but a pleasure for me—certainly not a wanton game of my instigation. To see the creature who has hitherto been perfect, divine, lose under your very gaze the divinity which has informed her, grow commonplace, turn from flame to ashes, from a radiant vitality to a relic, is anything but a pleasure for any man, and has been nothing less than a racking spectacle to my sight. Each mournful emptied shape stands ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... the functional beauty of the whole setup no longer impressed him as it had several years before. Just as a professional actor is not impressed by being allowed backstage, or as a multimillionaire considers expensive luxuries as commonplace, so Spencer Candron thought of nothing more than his own personal work as he climbed the five steps and pushed open the ...
— What The Left Hand Was Doing • Gordon Randall Garrett
... who are paid for their presence, may plead other engagements, and their pleas will be considered; and if a witness be a lord, it may perhaps be thought very hard that he should be dragged away from his amusements. But the ordinary commonplace witness must simply listen and obey—at his peril. It was thus decided that Carry must be in Salisbury on the Wednesday, and remain there, hanging about the Court, till her services should be wanted. Fenwick, who had been in Salisbury, had seen ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... with its massive head. In voice and gesture and manner, Douglas was incomparably the superior, as he was, too, in the ready command of a language never, indeed, ornate or imaginative, and sometimes of the quality of political commonplace, but always forcible and always intelligible to his audience. Lincoln had the sense of words, the imagination, the intensity of feeling, which go to the making of great literature; but for his masterpieces he always needed time. His voice was high and strained, his gestures ungraceful, ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... was very curious; where, a few moments before, there had been ready repartee, interspersed with laughter, now there was low-toned commonplace conversation, or a dead silence. We were wrapped in a cloud; moisture began to form in tiny drops upon the stanchions and the deck, upon the beards and moustaches of the male part of the voyagers, upon the woolly texture of the garments of all, even ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... of bread is surely a sufficiently commonplace operation. Yet Jesus brake bread with his disciples in such way that that simple act has become the symbol of sublimely spiritual relations, the centre of the most august rite of the Christian Church. In like ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... was greatly amused, and noted down the incident and some of the remarks in his commonplace book, under the general head of "Bestiarium;" and the ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... nobleman may be original; a poor penniless wretch upon town must be humbly and insignificantly commonplace. What a pity for the success of the aristocratic monopolists that nature puts clever fellows and fools just in the reverse order! But then nature's ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... name and the subject of the discourse; it is the summum bonum of the Chinese. In opening this Book, compiled by a disciple of Confucius, and containing his doctrines, we might expect to find a work like Cicero's De Officiis; but we find a very different production, consisting of a few commonplace rules for the maintenance of a good government [1].' My readers will perhaps think, after reading the present section, that the truth lies between these two representations. 2. I believe that the Book should be styled ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... the success of both, following upon that of Hyde Parker a few weeks earlier, in his expedition to Tarrytown, confirmed Washington in the opinion which he expressed five years later to de Grasse, that batteries alone could not stop ships having a fair wind. This is now a commonplace of naval warfare; steam giving always a fair wind. On the 15th Howe's army crossed under cover of Parker's ships, Hotham again superintending the boat work. The garrison of New York slipped along the west shore of the island and joined ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... course, was an especially important occasion; and his Majesty, as well as all the people, was greatly interested in the workings and development of this trial. Never before had such a case occurred; never before had a subject dared to love the daughter of a king. In after-years such things became commonplace enough; but then they were, in no slight degree, novel ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... eyes that dreamed and wandered, and then suddenly sank into you like claws, Susy seemed to have found the key to all his years of dogged toil, his indifference to neglect, indifference to poverty, indifference to the needs of his growing family.... Yes: for the first time she saw that he looked commonplace enough to be a genius—was a genius, perhaps, even though it was Violet Melrose who affirmed it! Susy looked steadily at Fulmer, their eyes met, and he smiled at her faintly through ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... But that in which the Athenian excelled all men of all ages, that irresistible eloquence, which at the distance of more than two thousand years stirs our blood, and brings tears into our eyes, he passes by with a few phrases of commonplace commendation. The origin of the drama, the doctrines of the sophists, the course of Athenian education, the state of the arts and sciences, the whole domestic system of the Greeks, he has almost completely neglected. Yet these things will appear, to a reflecting ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... boat from keel to rigger was a grand ideal figure as it skimmed those Wavelets Blue, While the Heroes who propelled 'em were comparatively seldom of a commonplace type, like you— In their strength and in their science they were positively giants, through the gorgeous days of old, Still an Admirable Crichton in those lieben alten Zeiten was the oarsman brave ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... knowing now that Miss Lind was a commonplace amateur. He had been contrasting her with his sister, greatly to the disparagement of his home life; and he was disappointed to find the lady break down where the actress would have succeeded so well. Consoling ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... evidently her lover. Perhaps it was his imagination that had mixed the magic potion that lent an atmosphere of old-world pastoral charm to the story of the Valdes grant. Likely enough the girl would prove commonplace in a proud half-educated fashion that would be ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... majority in his profession always: consequently the moment his practice is tracked down to its source in human passion there is a great and quite sincere poohpoohing from himself, from the mass of the profession, and from the mass of the public, which sees that the average doctor is much too commonplace and decent a person to be capable of passionate wickedness of ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... but Aubrey's, Shakspeare's earliest biographer, but who did not write till forty-six years after his death. His name and signature are connected with the buying and selling of land and theatrical shares, and such-like commonplace transactions; and his last will and testament, with which everybody is familiar, is as plain and prosaic as if it had been the production of a pig-headed prerogative lawyer. Now, in all this we see a sensible, sagacious, cautious, persevering man, who certainly was free from the rashness and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... married—fades one's ribbons and makes one look old. An espousal is a dreary absorption of brilliancy. A woman handed over to you by a notary, how commonplace! The brutality of marriage creates definite situations; suppresses the will; kills choice; has a syntax, like grammar; replaces inspiration by orthography; makes a dictation of love; disperses all life's mysteries; diminishes the rights ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Snark's a peculiar creature, that won't Be caught in a commonplace way. Do all that you know, and try all that you don't: Not a chance ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll
... restaurant in the rain, and note what time someone inside left it. In short, it is not 'Pifield Rice, Investigator. No. 1.—The Adventure of the Maharajah's Ruby' that I submit to your notice, but the unsensational doings of a quite commonplace young man, variously known to his comrades at the Bureau as 'Fathead', 'That blighter ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... way from Charing Cross to Dover the train had hammered the words of the telegram into George Darrow's ears, ringing every change of irony on its commonplace syllables: rattling them out like a discharge of musketry, letting them, one by one, drip slowly and coldly into his brain, or shaking, tossing, transposing them like the dice in some game of the gods of malice; and now, as he emerged from his ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... suddenly, a propos des bottes, as the French say, and while chalking his cue. And perhaps it was some sort of enchantment. There are more spells than your commonplace ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... be regarded as an ordinary woman, as a mere commonplace, shack-bred, pretty girl. Down through the years had come a strain of effectiveness which she inherited in its full strength; she was as inexplicable as Abraham Lincoln. Her stress of mind relieved, she regarded the ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... on the grass well toward the rear where he could see her at work. He thought it wonderful to be able thus to make a beautiful picture out of such a commonplace thing as a saleratus swamp. But then, he was beginning to think that this girl was capable of endless wonders. He had met no other girl just like her, so young and so beautiful, and yet so talented and so well-informed; so rich, ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... was learning something more weighty—the art of handling people, in the two aspects thereof—bluffing, and backing up the bluff with force and originality. He came to the commonplace people along the road as something novel and admirable, a man who had taken his wife and his poverty and gone seeing the world. When he smiled in a superior way and said nothing, people immediately believed that he must have been places, done brave things. He didn't so ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... collected, they must be processed and disseminated and then stored for future access. Enterprise data storage and retrieval systems that are capable of working with many terrabytes (1,000 gigabytes) of information are already commonplace. Since it is impossible for humans to comprehend such vast quantities of information without some assistance, data exploitation tools (filters, fusion, automatic target recognition, image understanding, ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... shaped my passion in such words as these! Malignant goddess! bane to my repose, Thou universal cause of all my woes; Say whence it comes that thou art grown of late A poor amusement for my scorn and hate; The malice thou inspirest I never fail On thee to wreak the tribute when I rail; Fool's commonplace thou art, their weak ensconcing fort, Th'appeal of dulness in the last resort: Heaven, with a parent's eye regarding earth, Deals out to man the planet of his birth: But sees thy meteor blaze about ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... feeling of superiority and stoicism which accompanied the pang and pain of it. But in England, where everybody bathed—or at any rate had water in their rooms and splashed and said ah! ah! and oh! oh!—he regarded the morning bath as commonplace, and had often to be bribed ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... supply ahead for the summer campaign. There must be fifteen dollars' worth of target in sight, say, for the smallest shell costs that; and the shorter you are of shells the more valuable the target must be. Besides, firing a cannon had become as commonplace a function to both French and German gunners as getting up to put another stick of wood in the stove or going to open the door to take a letter ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... just as he had considered it,—with entire coldness. Yet both of them knew, in their secret thoughts, that the balance of life and death was so fine that the least minor incident might cast them into darkness. It would not have to be a great disaster, a wide departure from the commonplace. They were traveling at a terrific rate of speed, and a sharp rock too close to the surface would rip the bottom from their craft. Any instant might bring the shock ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... everybody might be expected to come to it. But as we have determined to dematerialize him, his disappearance would bring suspicion upon us, and we might get into trouble if he should be considered a mere commonplace person. So we decided to speak out plainly, say what we had done, and what we were going to do, and thus put ourselves at the head of the spirit operators of the world. But we are not yet ready to do anything or to make our announcements, and if ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton
... story, ye rising generation—it is not for nothing that the great stupid public of older days, ignorant alike of Teutonics and chromatics, but wise in pity and terror, as old Aristotle knew, took it to their commonplace hearts! Do not trouble yourselves to explain to me that Gretchen was but an episode in a great cosmic philosophy; I knew it once, when I was young like you. But I am nearly sixty now—worse luck!—and I see why the cosmic philosophy has ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... at gaze, uncomprehending, too astonished for speech. We had come, even the unbelievers of us, prepared for the supernatural, for something surpassingly eery, and anything so commonplace as the smoke of a fire was a surprise greater than the sight of all Jo Kettle's imaginations coming ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... warfare of the playground at Brienne Napoleon was master of the revels. His capacity for command had already been detected; but neither comrade nor teacher saw beneath the unpromising exterior of the West Point student a trace of aught save what was commonplace. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... and military household who had to receive his direct orders or enjoyed the right of "paying their court at these privileged hours." At Saint Helena, Napoleon boasted that at the Tuileries he had suppressed in the matter of etiquette "all that was real and commonplace, and had substituted what was merely nominal and decorative." "A king," he said, "is not a natural product; he is a result of civilization. He does not exist nakedly, but only ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... be seen, and which represent different episodes in the history of Florence—combats, and captures of cities, the whole being a travesty of antiquity, an intermingling of allegories. These frescos, painted with an intrepid and learned mediocrity, display the commonplace tones, swelling muscles and anatomical tricks in use at that epoch ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... conceived of flying conversation. In all the literature of ancient days, there is not a line that will apply to the telephone, except possibly that expressive phrase in the Bible, "And there came a voice." In these more privileged days, the telephone has come to be regarded as a commonplace fact of everyday life; and we are apt to forget that the wonder of it has become greater and not less; and that there are still honor and profit, plenty of both, to be won by the ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... not to trouble herself with such thoughts. "That's trash," said Miss Stanbury, angrily. "A person who has it is bound to trouble himself about it. You don't suppose I'm afraid of dying;—do you?" she added. Dorothy answered her with some commonplace,—declaring how strongly they all expected to see her as well as ever. "I'm not a bit afraid to die," said the old woman, wheezing, struggling with such voice as she possessed; "I'm not afraid of it, and I don't ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... To the Chinese such commonplace things as marriage, friendship, and home have an infinitely deeper meaning than can be attached to them by civilisation which practically lives abroad, in the hotels and restaurants and open houses of others, where there is no sanctity of the life within, no ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... in the grand old town, coming upon it thus at its best; and I was glad that fate had driven me into my own land en automobile. Even though, in following Carmona to watch over the girl we both loved, I might have to keep often to the beaten track made commonplace by tourists, the way would never be really commonplace, as to sightseers who take the ordinary ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... country, escaping from social overtures he did not feel prepared to meet. To all three men Mrs. Martha was at this time an object of silent wonder. Before the Adventist disturbance she had appeared a very commonplace person; now, as they saw her going about her daily work, grim in her complete reserve, questions which could hardly be put into words arose in their minds concerning her. She suggested to them such pictorial ideas as one gleans in childhood about the ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... thought that here was plain sailing. A tender interview at the garden gate. She "sighed and looked down as Charles Thorndike took her hand"—unavoidable and not unacceptable subject. Lovers are all commonplace young men with large eyes, long legs, and small moustaches (villains' moustaches grow apace); moreover, lovers, I believe, generally take care to avoid observation; but no! it appears that "our subscribers" have a stern code which may not be lightly ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... narrow-minded fanatic and will write a piece for great ladies to perform when asked by his accomplished friend Lawes: but he is already {120} the man who was later to denounce "court amours, Mix'd dance and wanton masque"; and if he writes a mask himself it will be to take the old "high-flown commonplace" of the magic power of chastity and give it an entirely new seriousness and beauty. The notion of Mr. Newbolt that there were two Miltons, one before and the other after the Civil War, and that the one was "sincerely engaged on the side of liberal manners" while the other ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... he cried enthusiastically, "you are a great poet! You have called an uncreated being out of the void. How much more godlike that is than if you had only ferreted out the mere facts! Indeed, the mere facts are rather commonplace and comic ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... house in Attica) in twenty books consists of numerous extracts from Greek and Roman writers on subjects connected with history, philosophy, philology, natural science and antiquities, illustrated by abundant criticisms and discussions. It is, in fact, acommonplace book, and the arrangement of the contents is merely casual, following the course of his reading of Greek and Latin authors. The work is, however, of special value to us from the very numerous quotations from ancient authors ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... what are they before the instinctive affection we feel for beings that have proceeded from ourselves, and who perpetuate the infinite variety of our habits and thoughts? I abhor those wretches who, in order not to disturb the commonplace peace of matrimony, abandon the children they have outside the house. Paternity is the most noble of all animal functions, but the animals have more courage and dignity than man in fulfilling it. No animal of the higher sort abandons or disowns its cub, and yet there are many men who turn ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... soul till reached the sward of the hill; psyche, the soul that longed to be loose. I would write psyche always instead of soul to avoid meanings which have become attached to the word soul, but it is awkward to do so. Clumsy inddeed are all words the moment the wooden stage of commonplace life is left. I restrained psyche, my soul, till I reached and put my foot on the grass at the beginning of the green hill itself. Moving up the sweet short turf, at every step my heart seemed to obtain a wider ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... the table, she hid her face in them, and sobbed as though her heart would break. Curtis placed a hand on her shoulder, and strove to calm her with such commonplace phrases as his dazed brain could dictate, but she wept bitterly, just as a child might weep if disappointed about the non-fulfillment of some object on which its heart ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... surprise at her own calmness; and there was an instant of silence, during which the commonplace seemed to be ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Lion asking the doctor what he meant, the Welshman, whose under jaw began to move violently, replied that he meant what he said. Here the matter ended, for the Lion, turning from him, looked at the writer. The writer, imagining that his own conversation hitherto had been too trivial and commonplace for the Lion to consider it worth his while to take much notice of it, determined to assume a little higher ground, and after repeating a few verses of the Koran, and gabbling a little Arabic, asked the Lion what he considered to be the difference between the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... err on the side of lucidity; but their meaning to contemporaries in this particular respect is ascertained, not only by fair inference from their contents, but by the practical commentary of numerous actions under commonplace commanders-in-chief. It further received authoritative formulation in the specific finding of the Court-Martial upon Admiral Byng, which was signed by thirteen experienced officers. "Admiral Byng should have caused ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... coherence in his mind; in all his thoughts nothing is certain or stable. If you watch your supposed prodigy attentively, you will sometimes find him a well-spring of energy, clear-sighted, penetrating the very marrow of things. Much oftener the same mind appears commonplace, dull, and as if enveloped in a dense fog. Sometimes he outruns you, and sometimes he stands still. At one moment you feel like saying, "He is a genius," and at another, "He is a fool." You are mistaken in either case: ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... they were alone. "You have been foolish; very foolish." He had a trick of repeating himself, conceiving, no doubt, that the commonplace achieves ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... little-known sections of the world. He had visited every country. He had entered every port that could be reached from the ocean—and all the time he had felt the Earth shrinking before the gods of speed. The time would soon come when everything on Earth would be commonplace. Then man's urge to go places he hadn't seen before would take him away from the Earth entirely—when he would begin the task of making even the universe shrink to appease the gods of speed. Somehow the thought was a ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... and he took it out and opened it now, reading and re-reading some of the lines most dear and familiar to him, when, as a boy, he had elected this poet, so wickedly done to death ere his prime by commonplace critics, as one of his chief favourites among the highest Singers. And his lips, half-murmuring, followed the verse ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... in the last analysis, but—that the legislation should not assume too exalted a level of ordinary morality. The utterances in the very unsatisfactory Deontology are of little value, and seem to imply a moral sentiment corresponding to a petty form of commonplace prudence.[476] ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... he told himself that it was fancy that made him see in the faces of these people—people, it must be remembered, who were not commonplace, but rather enthusiasts for their cause, since they preferred exile to a life under the Christian system—that made him see a kind of blankness and heaviness corresponding to that which the aspect of their street presented. Many of the faces were intellectual, ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... the intrigues which he feared might be set on foot in order to shake the fidelity of the Spaniards he commanded. I saw from his despatch that he feared the plotting of Romanillos, who, however, was not a person to cause much apprehension. Romanillos was as commonplace a man as could well be conceived; and his speeches, as well as his writings, were too innocent to create any influence on ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Such commonplace authors could hardly compose a version that would have a stable foundation or promise of long existence. But few of Tate and Brady's hymns are now seen in our church-collections of Hymns and Psalms. To them we owe, however, these noble lines, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... follow it immediately with Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare, because he will find the transition from great poetry to poor prose too violent for comfort. It will give him a shock. You never notice how commonplace and unpoetic gravel is, until you bite into a layer of it in ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Tight in the Middle General Grant Good, Bright, Passable Lie His Parts Seemed to Be Raised by the Demands of Great Station House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand I Can't Spare That Man, He Fights! Idealization Which So Easily Runs into the Commonplace If Slavery Is Not Wrong, Nothing Is Wrong Ignored the Insult, but Firmly Established His Superiority Inability to Say "No" as a Positive Weakness Leave Us to Take Care of Ourselves Let Us to the End Dare to Do Our Duty as We ...
— Widger's Quotations from Abraham Lincoln's Writings • David Widger
... glow filtered through the loom, softening the light on the happy faces—each scalp crowned with chaplets of laurel tied with red ribbons: an enchantment of color, form and light where but an hour before only the practical and the commonplace had held sway. ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... in Europe, in one of the bloody charges of the Russian cavalry, there was an officer—a man who felt and who possessed sufficient confidence in the troops he commanded, and in the authority of his own voice and example—received that charge not in the ordinary, commonplace, and accustomed manner, by forming his troops into a hollow square, and thus arresting the charge, but by forming into two diverging lines, and thus receiving upon the rifles of his Highlandmen the charge of the Russian cavalry and repelling it. How all England rang with ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... was only more conspicuous than that of the Maharajah of Burdawan because the former wore the many-folded turban and brocaded dress of his Sikh ancestry, whereas the latter, like most Bengalees of the upper classes, has adopted the much more commonplace broadcloth of the West. The bold, hawk-like features of Malik Umar Hyat Khan of Tiwana in the Punjab were as characteristic of the fighting Pathan from the North as were the Rajah of Mahmudabad's more delicate features of the Mahomedan aristocracy of the erstwhile kingdom of Oudh. ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... of his fortune. If I could make such folk understand how illusory is their belief, what a service I should render to art—if I could only make them understand that the original taste of man is always for the obvious and the commonplace, and that it is only by great labour and care that man learns to understand as beautiful that which the uneducated eye ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... tranquil; but his violet upper eye was sinister and adult. His skin was of the colour of yellow ivory. His long, curling hair matched his sorb—it was violet. The second man was standing erect before the other, a few feet away from him. He was short and muscular, his face was broad, bearded, and rather commonplace, but there was something terrible about his appearance. The features were distorted by a deep-seated look of pain, despair, ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... of Mr. Richardson of disjointed fragments, jotted down almost without any connexion. This was necessarily the case. Few incidents, save an occasional visit from thieves, or a dispute with that strange old gentleman, Sultan En-Noor, diversified this period. However, the simple commonplace book of a traveller in a totally new country can never be without its interest. No doubt Mr. Richardson would have attempted, had he survived, to throw all these observations into a picture; but any attempt to do so on my part would have probably resulted in the ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... day, when all looks sad and dismal without, my worthy friend and neighbour, PHORMIO, sometimes gives me a call—and we have a rare set-to at my old favourite volumes—the 'Lectiones Memorabiles et Reconditae' of WOLFIUS[172]—a commonplace book of as many curious, extraordinary, true and false occurrences, as ever were introduced into two ponderous folios. The number of strange cuts in it used to amuse my dear children—whose parent, from the remembrance of the past, still finds a pleasing recreation in ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... injury. Mr. Leslie Stephen says, "She might and probably did regard his friendship as a full equivalent for the sacrifice.... Is it better to be the most intimate friend of a man of genius or the wife of a commonplace Tisdall?" Whatever we may surmise, there is nothing to prove that she was disappointed. She was the one star which brightened Swift's storm-tossed course; it is well that she was spared seeing ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... sat thoughtful—the Tunker, the Indian, the pioneer woman, and the merry, sad-faced boy. It was a commonplace scene in the Indiana timber, and that one lonely grave is all that is left to recall such scenes to-day—the grave ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... dignity. "You have no feeling for romance," she said. "Your horizon is most commonplace." Then, struck by a sudden fear, she added, "But you surely will not be unpleasant enough to tell Aunt Therese what I have confided ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... of religion with any and every form of happiness leaves the essential peculiarity of religious happiness out. The more commonplace happinesses which we get are "reliefs," occasioned by our momentary escapes from evils either experienced or threatened. But in its most characteristic embodiments, religious happiness is no mere feeling of escape. It cares no longer to escape. It consents to the evil ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... the horse and armor was only a frame, an accidental setting, for the romance itself! It's up to date and practical and sordid and commonplace, you'd say, that puffing thing with a gasoline engine hidden away in its bowels. It's what we call machinery. But, supposing, now, instead of holding Monsieur le Duc Somebody, or Milord So-and-So, or Signor Comte Somebody-Else, with his wife or his mistress—I ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... flying guests, littered the carpet, adding to the general confusion of overturned chairs and tables. Everywhere were evidences of the haste with which the place had been vacated as well as the superstitious dread which had prevented it being re-entered for the commonplace purpose of cleaning. Even the piano had not been shut, and under it lay some scattered sheets of music which had been left where they fell, to the probable loss of some poor musician. The clock occupying ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... whiskers and eyeglasses. The initials on his suit case were J. S. M., Boston, and they stood for John Spencer Morgan. If the bearer of the suit case had followed the fashion of the native princes of India and had emblazoned his titles upon his baggage, the commonplace name just quoted might have been followed by "M.D., LL.D., at Harvard and Oxford; vice president American Medical Society; corresponding secretary Associated Society of Surgeons; lecturer at Harvard Medical College; author of 'Diseases ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... with money also. Now, as for myself, I confess I'm not nearly so magnanimous as my father, and, for Mad's sake, I do hope you will get rid of your vagaries. An income, I know, is a very commonplace sort of thing; but when a man has a family there are ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... supple, and living the ship seems upon the billows! With what a dip and rake she shears the flying sea! I cannot fancy the man who saw this effect, and took it on the wing with so much force and spirit, was what you call commonplace in the last recesses of the heart. And yet he thought, and was not ashamed to have it known of him, that Ouida was better in every way than William Shakespeare. If there were more people of his honesty, this would be about the staple of lay criticism. It is not taste that is plentiful, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... closely their credentials, though it is to be remembered that it kept its critical faculty sufficiently sharp to reject the Futurists while welcoming the Cubists. I cannot deny, however, that in that moment of enthusiasm and loyalty we were rather disposed to find extraordinary merits in commonplace painters. We knew well enough that a feeble and incompetent disciple of Cezanne was just as worthless as a feeble and incompetent disciple of anyone else—but, then, was our particular postulant so feeble after all? Also, we were fond of arguing that the liberating influence of Cezanne had made ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... then has happened, much has been achieved; Marvels, commonplace to-day, few then would have believed. Science, Liberty, Pure Manners, order, Peace, Goodwill, Punch for Fifty Years has ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... explicit, and may have been too little of a politician by nature to care for preserving an outward consistency in his incidental remarks concerning the lower classes. In his "Clerk's Tale" he finds room for a very dubious commonplace about the "stormy people," its levity, untruthfulness, indiscretion, fickleness, and garrulity, and the folly of putting any trust in it. In his "Nun's Priest's Tale" he further enlivens one of the liveliest descriptions of a ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... great central moral of it all was this: that human nature is good, that the world is capable of being made a desirable abiding-place, and that the evil of the world is the fruit of bad education and bad institutions. This cheerful doctrine now strikes on the ear as a commonplace and a truism. A hundred years ago in France it was a wonderful gospel, and the beginning of a new dispensation. It was the great counter-principle to asceticism in life and morals, to formalism in art, to absolutism in the social ordering, to obscurantism ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... of engrossing a lover's admiration and affection, better than they love the virtue and honour of the man they may be brought to prefer. He that serves his religion, his prince, and his country, with ardour and devotion, need not plead his cause with the commonplace rant of romantic passion—the woman whom he honours with his love becomes his debtor, and her corresponding affection is engaged ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... in the public mind this poorer type of teacher; and when an idea or an ideal, however low, becomes once established, it is changed only with difficulty. The commonplace individual, the mediocre type of man or of woman, is by many regarded as a fairly typical representative of what the teacher usually is; or, as the statistician would express it, he is the "mode" rather than the average. The "mode" in any class ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... wandering abroad over the universe of misery. For was not the world full of men and women who groaned, not merely under poverty and cruelty, weakness and sickness, but under dullness and stupidity, hugged in the paralyzing arms of that devil-fish, The Commonplace, or held fast to the rocks by the crab Custom, while the tide of moral indifference was fast rising to choke them? Was there no prophet, no redemption, no mediator for such as these? Were there not thousands of women, born with ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... of his hearers this essential article of his faith—that the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist and form of celebration were "idolatry"—may have been quite a new idea. It was already, however, a commonplace with Anglican Protestants. Nothing of the sort was to be found in the first Prayer Book of Edward VI.; broken lights of various ways of regarding the Sacrament probably played, at this moment, over the ideas of Knox's ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... in silence for some time. Both hearts were too full for commonplace talk, and he did not dare venture out of safe lines. He could not pretend to fatherly love, even that cloaked by brotherliness would be but a sham, he knew. He had his own honor to satisfy, as ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... Dolores had it in her by inheritance and by training to meddle with the lightning as safely as human being might; and Lady Merrifield owned with a sigh that she must accept as a fact that what even the heathens owned as a Divine mystery and awful attribute, had come to be treated as a commonplace business messenger and scientific toy, though (as Mrs. Gatty puts it) the mystery had only gone deeper. So much for the peril; and for the other scruple, it was set at rest by a hospitable letter from Mrs. Underwood, heartily inviting Miss ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... steep part of the incline, and Catherine suddenly quickened her steps and passed him, so making it impossible that he could see her face. She tried to speak, but the commonplace words she desired to say were strangled, at birth, ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... be thought of them, are, even to a superficial view, the extraordinary effluence of extraordinary lives. Here at length we gain a clearer conception of miracle. Life is the world's great magician,—life, so familiar, yet so mysterious; so commonplace, yet so transcendent. No miracle is more marvellous than its doings witnessed in the biological laboratory, or more inexplicable than its transformation of dead matter into living flesh, its development of a Shakespeare from a microscopic bit of protoplasm. But its mysterious processes ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... to a visitor, who gave him a commonplace account of some remarkable scenes, "do you know in what respect you differ from Don Quixote?"—"No," said the Abbe, not half liking the look of the question. "Why, M. l'Abbe, Don Quixote took the inns on the road for castles, but you have taken ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... interpretation and expression. Of course Auer (I studied with him in Petrograd and Dresden) has been especially fortunate as regards his pupils, too, because active in a land like Russia, where musical genius has almost become a commonplace. ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... yellow-flowering plant, the name of which I forget at the moment, also trained to the walls; and ivy. Altogether, six plants grow up the walls of the cottage; and over the wicket-gate there is a rude arch—a framework of tall sticks—from which droop thick bunches of hops. It is a very commonplace sort of cottage; nothing artistically picturesque about it, no effect of gable or timber-work; it stands by the roadside in the most commonplace way, and yet it pleases. They have called in Nature, that great genius, and let the artist have ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... know; but as soon as I got a little rest and peace, I began to think of what I had left and especially of Terry. It was not only my love for him that called, but what my life with him had been and would be if I returned—a life that was not a commonplace life, a life of intelligence and freedom. Already I was bored by the quiet goodness of the people I was with, and ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... SUSURRUS of the woodland, the tinkling of brooks, the throbbing of human hearts, the cries of all living creatures; all those groans of pain, stammers of desire, shrieks of despair, yawns even of languor, which are ever breaking out of the heart of things; and beside all this, the hearsay, commonplace, proverbial lore of the world. He turns these into melodies which shall be caught up by those who listen. In short, he converts by his alchemy the common stuff of pain and of joy into music. But he is optic as well as acoustic; that is, he calls up at the same time by his art a ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... bound together they again became resolved into the original waste. In the tea-room fugitiveness is suggested in the thatched roof, frailty in the slender pillars, lightness in the bamboo support, apparent carelessness in the use of commonplace materials. The eternal is to be found only in the spirit which, embodied in these simple surroundings, beautifies them with the subtle light of ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... themselves to be equal to this. A very simple instance occurred in the earliest experiences of the writer. After three or four sittings round a small table with two friends, at which there was meaningless tipping, and nothing better than commonplace sentences, the following was tipped out: "Try no more to move"—then this succession of letters—"a t a t a." It seemed useless to go on with nonsense, but one of the party suggested perseverance; when the following conclusion converted seeming nonsense ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... I felt little or no surprise at this, and when in the course of a few minutes I observed a pair of horns growing out of the creature's eyes and a bushy tail standing erect on the apex of its head, I ceased to be astonished at the sight altogether, and regarded it as quite natural and commonplace. The object afterwards assumed the appearance of a lion with a crocodile's bail, and a serpent with a monkey's head, and lastly of a gorilla, without producing in me any other feeling than that of profound indifference. Gradually the whole scene vanished, ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... avoid the blessing, still a secret, he resorts to a commonplace; literally, "For what generous man is not (in befriending ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... season Zizine consulted Francis with a look, and Francis seemed to take his ideas from Zizine's eyes. They frowned and smiled together, and seemingly took counsel of each other before making the simplest commonplace remark. ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... illustrious, famous, celebrated, renowned, noted; transcendent, extraordinary, supreme, consummate, conspicuous. Antonyms: undistinguished, obscure, commonplace, inconspicuous, humble. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... remark should have caused a halt in the conversation, but it did. Miss Preston said, "Oh, indeed!" rather hurriedly, and her next speech was concerning the height of a particularly big wave. Mr. Hazeltine answered this commonplace somewhat absent-mindedly. He acted like a man to whom a startling idea had suddenly occurred. Just then they heard ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Victoria, which is rather under a million; and then, observing that it is about the same as that of Liverpool and Manchester together, they infer that it is of no greater importance. There could not be a greater mistake. It is a commonplace to say that their importance is in the future, yet even commonplaces sometimes need repeating. There is no reason why, within the memory of men now living, this colony should not be as populous as England is now. At lunch, some few weeks ago—I remember ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... written elsewhere is right, one of the greatest works of the Hellenic spirit, and especially of fifth-century Athens, was to insist on what seems to us such a commonplace truism, the difference between Man and God. Sophrosyne in religion was the message of the classical age. But the ages before and after had no belief in such a lesson. The old Medicine-Man was perhaps himself the first Theos. At any rate the ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... virtue of necessity" is idealization, is not symbolism also a form of "make believe." If the "ability to persuade oneself that what is necessary is noble or dignified or honorable or pleasant," is exhibited on Quaker Hill as a "most important psychic factor," so is also the idealization of the commonplace the "making believe" that peace and plainness, that simple, old-fashioned dress, and seventeenth century forms of speech are spiritual and are serviceable to the believing mind. The power of idealization is nowhere exhibited as a social force more clearly than in a Quaker community. ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... belonging to the Malmaison company, considered that the acting at Neuilly was indecent, Lucien, who refused to act at Malmaison, naturally thought the Malmaison troupe was dull. "Hortense and Caroline filled the principal parts. They were very commonplace. In this they followed the unfortunate Marie Antoinette and her companions. Louis XVI., not naturally polite, when seeing them act, had said that it was royally badly acted" (see Madame Campan's Life of Marie Antoinette, tome i. p. ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... admiration. She was struck by what seemed to her a nobleness of sentiment which elevated his theme above the level of commonplace polemics. She was pleased to notice, in the attentive silence of his intelligent listeners, that they shared the effect produced on herself. In fact, Graham Vane was a born orator, and his studies had been those of a political thinker. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the wrong vehicle when I strive to dash off whimsicalities, because frequently my very best efforts, as done in English, have fallen flat. But when in some remote village I, using French, uttered the simplest and most commonplace remark to a French tavern keeper, with absolutely no intent or desire whatsoever, mind you, to be humorous or facetious, invariably he would burst instantly ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb
... attended other aspects of the scene. Instead of fiery oratory and pipes of peace—the stone calumets of old—the vigorous arguments, the outbursts of passion, and close calls from threatened violence, here was a gathering of commonplace men smoking briar-roots, with treaty tobacco instead of "weed," and whose chiefs replied to Mr. Laird's explanations and offers in a few brief and sensible statements, varied by vigorous appeals to the common ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... to disarrange the system of cotton cloth distribution of the whole world. It is now a commonplace to say that the United States, by the cutting off of the usual sources of supply, succeeded for the first time in entering in force markets which hitherto had been closed. It would probably be truer to say that foreign buyers, finding it impossible to secure their customary ...
— The Fabric of Civilization - A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States • Anonymous
... macadamized, and worn so firm and level, it reminded me, constantly, of the stone walks in a granite quarry. Among our party was a young man just returned from Europe surfeited with scenery and sight-seeing, but for the rest, we were commonplace Americans, eager to see everything, and ready to go into ecstasies over everything which we saw. It was in early July, and the foliage had not yet wilted from its moist, bright greenness; the atmosphere was a wave of light, and the earth seemed no longer dust, dross, and atoms of decay, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... the great savage there was no such thing as peril in any of the objects of nature. Full of strength and calm matter-of-fact courage, climbing rocks or making his way into such a place as this was a very commonplace affair. His idea of danger was in the sight of enemies thirsting for his blood. Now that they were out of reach, and he believed that he had thrown them off the scent, he was perfectly content, and ready to smile at the perfection ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... in general as "the art of saying in a commonplace and inoffensive way what everybody knew long ago." There are a great many competent editorial writers, and the bittern carrying on his trade by the side of some swamp is about as influential as ten ordinary ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... It is a commonplace observation, but none the less true, that the story commenced in the Acts of the Apostles could not be finished by Luke, because the great activity, the commencement of which he recorded, is still going forward. ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... were here most in evidence. What he says of Milton might appropriately be applied to himself, that he formed the most intense conception of things and then embodied them by a single stroke of his pen. In a phrase or in a sentence he stamped the character of an author indelibly, and, enemy to commonplace though he was, became a cause of commonplace in others. No matter how much might already have been written on a subject (and Hazlitt did not make a practice of celebrating neglected obscurity) his own view stood out fresh and clear, and yet his judgments were ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Certain things are true of all news stories; whether the story be the baldest recital of facts or the most sensational featuring of an imaginary thrill in a commonplace happening, certain characteristics are always present. And these characteristics can always be traced to one cause—the effort to catch and hold the reader's interest. When a busy American glances over his ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... The conditions imposed upon the game are strict, uniform, and mechanical. Yet those who have made of chess a life- long study are ready to confess their complete ignorance of the fundamental merits of particular moves; one game does not resemble another; and from the most commonplace of developments there may spring up, on the sudden, wild romantic possibilities and situations that are like miracles. If these surprising flowers of fancy grow on the chess- board, how shall we set a limit to the possibilities of human life, which is chess, with variety and uncertainty many ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... went on; 'several thousands of commonplace persons are saying that I have fallen in love with you. Do you think it's true, ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... Forming Man the Final Earth Product Superstitions Self-Justice Symbolism Love Ideals of Love The Needs of Woman Man versus Woman Natural Cruelty of the Undeveloped The Worst Sin Reincarnation Processes of Reincarnation Education of Children Egotism Responsiveness Hell The Commonplace Petroleum Law Communism Happiness Pain Foes in the Household The Inner Life Root of Evils Rest in Change Miserliness Special Providence Human Destiny Ethical Law Human Life Animal Likeness Natural Superstition Adaptiveness of Man Devil Worship Fanaticism Truth Christs Hero Worship Reason Sympathy ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... general hunting-ground. England, Spain, France, the Netherlands, captured, bought, and sold slaves. Englishmen in Virginia bought without qualm, as Englishmen in England bought without qualm. The cargo of the Dutch ship was a commonplace. The only novelty was that it was the first shipload of Africans brought to English-America. Here, by the same waters, were the beginnings of popular government and the young upas-tree of slavery. A contradiction in terms was set to resolve itself, a riddle for unborn generations ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... literary graces, in its portrayal of characters that are never commonplace though genuinely human, and in its development of a singular social situation, the book is one to ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... situated by a well-wooded hill and a fair flowing river. The college, with some fields that were cultivated for its use, was a little apart from most of the houses, placed, both as to physical and social position, between the commonplace village and the farms of the undulating land around it; for, by a curious drift of circumstances, the farms of this district were chiefly worked by English gentlemen, whose families, in lieu of all other worldly advantage, held the more stoutly by their family traditions. In doing so they were but ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... afraid, love, you would be disappointed. A man might seem a marvel of eloquence and wisdom to poor Theodore, while you would find him a very commonplace, perhaps obtrusive individual." ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... consciously loved him as she listened to him, sitting there on the homemade stool in her mother's cabin and talking of things beyond comprehension. But she could have loved him, and she did worship him. It was the personal fascination of Brother Friedsam and her own vigorous hatred of the commonplace that had led her three years before to join the sisterhood in the Sharon house. She did not know to what degree a desire for Beissels's companionship had drawn her to accept his speculations concerning the mystical Sophia and the Philadelphian fellowship. But the convent had ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... and I am not joking," replied the girl, "and I think Rupert would suit me very well. You see, I think a great deal more of Rupert than I do of Mr. Hemphill, although the latter gentleman has excellent points. He is commonplace, and, above everything else, I want a commonplace husband. I want some one to soothe me, and quiet me, and to give me ballast. If there is anything out of the way to be done I want to do it myself. I am sure he is in love with me, for ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... could have been, as history tells us; that such a strange world was a part of our world,—that such a strange life was a part of the life, which seems to us who are living it now, so passionless and commonplace. It is only when I stand amid ruined castles, that look at me so mournfully, and behold the heavy armour of old knights, hanging upon the wainscot of Gothic chambers; or when I walk amid the aisles of some dusky minster, whose walls are narrative ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
