It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office. H. L. Mencken
Whether you listen to a piece of music, or a poem, or look at a picture or a jug, or a piece of sculpture, what matters about it is not what it has in common with others of its kind, but what is singularly its own. Basil Bunting
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Vladimir Nabokov
A shock of orange hair, a pale face disfigured by a horrible scar, which, by its contraction, has turned up the outer edge of his upper lip, a bulldog chin, and a pair of very penetrating dark eyes, which present a singular contrast to the colour of his hair, all mark him out from amid the common crowd of mendicants and so, too, does his wit, for he is ever ready with a reply to any piece of chaff which may be thrown at him by the passers-by.
A common allegiance to form of expression that is identified with no single national unit is likely to prove one of the most potent symbols of the freedom of the human spirit that the world has yet known. Edward Sapir
Oxymorons are sometimes inadvertently created by errors or sloppiness in conversation; common examples include extremely average, objective opinion, pretty ugly, and original copy.
A common creation demands a common sacrifice, and perhaps not the least potent argument in favour of a constructed international language is the fact that it is equally foreign, or apparently so, to the traditions of all nationalities. Edward Sapir
First of all, the Jewish religion has a great deal in common with the Christian religion because, as Rabbi Gillman points out in the show, Christianity is based on Judaism. Christ was Jewish. Barbara Walters
She saw too that man has the power of exceeding himself, of becoming himself more entirely and profoundly than he is, truths which have only recently begun to be seen in Europe and seem even now too great for its common intelligence. Sri Aurobindo
Although a true oxymoron is “something that is surprisingly true, a paradox”, modern usage has brought a common misunderstanding as being near synonymous with a contradiction.
It is not the straining for great things that is most effective; it is the doing the little things, the common duties, a little better and better. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
