Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace.
The commonplace expression that life is nothing but a play is verified above all in this: the world speaks absolutely consistently in one way and acts absolutely consistently in another.
All systems of morality are fine. The Gospel alone has exhibited a complete assemblage of the principles of morality divested of all absurdity. It is not composed, like your creed, of a few commonplace sentences put in bad verse. Do you wish to see that which is really sublime? Repeat the Lord's Prayer.
Let me beg you, not to rest contented with the commonplace religion that is now so prevalent.
If you don't see the Internet as an opportunity, it will become a threat. In two or three year's time, the Internet will become as commonplace in the office as the telephone.
Publishers, theatrical managers, and critics ask not for the quality inherent in creative art, but will it meet with a good sale, will it suit the palate of the people? Alas, this palate is like a dumping ground; it relishes anything that needs no mental mastication. As a result, the mediocre, the ordinary, the commonplace represents the chief literary output.
Space is going to be commonplace.
Advancements in technology have become so commonplace that sometimes we forget to stop and think about how incredible it is that a girl on her laptop in Texas can see photos and cell phone video in real time that a young college student has posted of a rally he's at in Iran.
As information technology becomes millions of times more powerful, any particular use of it becomes correspondingly cheaper. Thus, it has become commonplace to expect online services (not just news, but 21st century treats like search or social networking) to be given for free, or rather, in exchange for acquiescence to being spied on.
You on the cutting edge of technology have already made yesterday's impossibilities the commonplace realities of today.
Metaphor is halfway between the unintelligible and the commonplace.
A common man marvels at uncommon things. A wise man marvels at the commonplace.
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.
It is rather astonishing how little practical value scientific knowledge has for ordinary men, how dull and commonplace such of it as has value is, and how its value seems almost to vary inversely to its reputed utility.
It is a commonplace that the League of Nations is not yet-what its most enthusiastic protagonists intended it to be
Lying, stealing, and cheating are commonplace.
This commonplace cycle of falling asleep and waking, in darkness, under private cover, with another creature, a pale soft tender mammal, putting faces together in a ritual of affection, briefly settled in the eternal necessities of warmth, comfort, safety, crossing limbs to draw nearer - a simple daily consolation, almost too obvious, easy to forget by daylight.
Fabricating reality was criminal; editing it, commonplace.
I think that the way of bringing realism into fantasy is to treat it as the commonplace.