Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature.
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
the territory of grief. . . is both cruel and commonplace.
. . . And God, who studies each separate soul, out of commonplace lives makes his beautiful whole.
Let me beg you, not to rest contented with the commonplace religion that is now so prevalent.
It is a commonplace that Racine is untranslatable. This is not because his verse is difficult, but because it is not.
The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.
Look up. . . and see them. The teaching stars, beyond worship and commonplace tongues.
Be commonplace and creeping and you'll be a success.
The dogs in our lives, the dogs we come to love and who (we fervently believe) love us in return, offer more than fidelity, consolation, and companionship. They offer comedy, irony, wit, and a wealth of anecdotes, the "shaggy dog stories" and "stupid pet tricks" that are commonplace pleasures of life.
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.
The inspired scribbler always has the gift for gossip in our common usage he or she can always inspire the commonplace with an uncommon flavor, and transform trivialities by some original grace or sympathy or humor or affection.
It is a commonplace by now to say that the urban school systems of America contain a higher percentage of Negro children each year.
It is the treating of the commonplace with the feeling of the sublime that gives to art its true power.
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.
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.
In very truth it is the unattained which gives zest to the commonplace and brims the cup of our daily life with keenest joy.
Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.
We do not hug our miracles close. We put them hastily away, preferring the commonplace to live with.
There is no tongue that flatters like a lover's; and yet, in the exaggeration of his feelings, flattery seems to him commonplace. Strange and prodigal exuberance, which soon exhausts itself by flowing!