[People] ask themselves, what is suitable for my position? What is usually done by persons of my station and percuniary circumstances? Or (worse still) what is usually done by persons of a station and circumstances superior to mine? I do not mean that they choose what is customary in preference to what suits their own inclinations. It does not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in crowds; they exercise choice only among things that are commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature they have no nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own.

The art of music is good, for the reason, among others, that it produces pleasure; but what proof is it possible to give that pleasure is good? If, then, it is asserted that there is a comprehensive formula, including all things which are in themselves good, and that whatever else is good, is not so as an end, but as a mean, the formula may be accepted or rejected, but is not a subject of what is commonly understood by proof.

Saint Thomas Aquinas says, wisely, that the only way to drive out a bad passion is by a stronger good passion. The same is true of thoughts as of passions. When your mind wanders, like a child, your will must bring it back, like a mother. [. . .] The will-parent must discipline the mind-child, avoiding both the opposite extremes commonly made in disciplining either children or thoughts: tyranny or permissiveness.

Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it....

I had a dream about you. We installed Dr. Robert Jarvik's artificial heart in a mannequin and brought it to life, only to later kill it because a creature that's all fake heart and no brain is what's commonly called a "politician," and must be destroyed.?

People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains new stars garish birds freak fish grotesque breeds of human they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something.

To do a common thing uncommonly well brings success.

Our aversion to lying is commonly a secret ambition to make what we say considerable and have every word received with a religious respect.

It is commonly said and known that each civilization has its own religion. Now my claim is that if we look deeper the different civilizations were brought into being by the different revelations.

Clairvoyant n.: A person commonly a woman who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron - namely that he is a blockhead.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.

For imagination sets the goal picture which our automatic mechanism works on. We act or fail to act not because of will as is so commonly believed but because of imagination.

Mental agitations and eating cares are more injurious to health and destructive of life than is commonly imagined and could their effects be collected would make no inconsiderable figure in the bills of mortality.

They that apply themselves to trifling matters commonly become incapable of great ones.

Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils but the present are commonly too hard for it.

It may happen sometimes that a long debate becomes the cause of a longer friendship. Commonly those who dispute with one another at last agree.

We do not commonly see in a tax a diminution of freedom and yet it clearly is one.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail for being in a ship is being in a jail with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room better food and commonly better company.

It is commonly said that a teacher fails if he has not been surpassed by his students. There has been no failure on our part in this regard considering how far they have gone.

Though 'Fire and Rain' is very personal for other people it resonates as a sort of commonly held experience... And that's what happens with me. I write things for personal reasons and then in some cases it... can be a shared experience.

It's commonly said that people who've been ill in childhood and who've had an upset education never really regret that they do. It means that you don't look at the world in the way that other people do and if you were inclined to be a writer that's a help.

A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause and death ensued the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun and might if the latter were of an aggravated character return a verdict of justifiable homicide.

It is commonly supposed that the art of pleasing is a wonderful aid in the pursuit of fortune but the art of being bored is infinitely more successful.