"Common ground" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that grand old church-tune that is so offensive to birds and squirrels I can't imagine. A year or two after this High Sierra concert, I was sitting one fine day on a hill in the Coast Range where the common Ground Squirrels were abundant. They were very shy on account of being hunted so much; but after I had been silent and motionless for half an hour or so they began to venture out of their holes and to feed on the seeds of the grasses and thistles around me as if I were ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... however lawful in origin. But the larger cities were ever trying to group the smaller round them as satellites; and the constant quarrels which resulted, often produced a party which was ready to welcome the interposition of the Emperor. There was this common ground, then, between these cities and the Papacy that, whereas they found it equally necessary to invoke the aid of the Emperor as an outside power against their foes, each was threatened by the assertion of those imperial rights which it was the sole object ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... last he tried halting Turkish, and the gipsy replied at once in German. As Monty used to get two-pence or three-pence a day extra when he was in the British army, for knowing something of that tongue, we stood at once on common ground. ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... diversion of comedy, it is a less offence to attend the comedy, though even this is not good Italianissimism. In regard to the caffe there is a perfectly understood system by which the Austrians go to one, and the Italians to another; and Florian's, in the Piazza, seems to be the only common ground in the city on which the hostile forces consent to meet. This is because it is thronged with foreigners of all nations, and to go there is not thought a demonstration of any kind. But the other caffe in the Piazza do not enjoy Florian's cosmopolitan ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... the girl had looked forward, perhaps, to making friends with the woman who was accounted worthy of the honour of being Monsieur Horace's wife; but the very first day she had turned away disappointed. There was, both instinctively felt, no common ground on which they could meet and speak a common language intelligible to both; memories, interests, tastes, all lay too wide apart; and as for those larger human sympathies which, wider and deeper ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... hesitation, poignant in its baffling anxiety, she rose and walked toward him, absolutely forgetful of their curious meeting and their lack of a common ground of interest. ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... treasures lie round us in the enclosure of this dear little rail. The center of the room is common property, and you see what a great space there is round each fire-place where we can chatter and talk, and be on common ground. The fire-place at the end of the room near the door is reserved especially for the little ones, but we elder girls sit at the top. Of course you will belong to us. How ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... here, which, born out of the merest propinquity, had sent down strong roots into the common ground between them. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... indifference to the flat was even greater. There seemed no common ground on which they could talk to one another. She let herself be asked for expenses. It became so with him that he hated to do it. He preferred standing off the butcher and baker. He ran up a grocery bill of sixteen dollars with Oeslogge, laying in a supply of staple articles, so ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... passion for her. It is customary in similar cases. But what seems strange about it is, that the same eagerness that a woman accepts as a proof of disrespect, before she is in perfect accord with her lover, becomes, in her imagination, a proof of love and esteem, as soon as they meet on a common ground. ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... Gentlemen: "The Babies." Now, that's something like. We haven't all had the good fortune to be ladies; we have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground—for we've all been babies. It is a shame that for a thousand years the world's banquets have utterly ignored the baby, as if he didn't amount to anything! If you, gentlemen, will stop and think a minute—if you will go back fifty or a hundred years, to your ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... may not be recognised; this is neutrality; it is to stand on equal terms. And since grave matters divide us—not directly concerned in our national struggle for freedom—let the dangerous idea be banished, that in entering on common ground we decry all opposing beliefs. For men who hold beliefs as vital it would not be creditable to either side to put them easily by. No, we do not ask them to forget themselves, but to respect one another—an ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... to which I could appeal. We had, I found, no common ground. The Holy Scriptures had no longer any authority: you had taught yourself to evade their inspiration. Any particular Oracle of God which pressed you, you could easily explain away; even the very character of God you weighed in your balance of fallen reason, ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... on, "and didn't he think you the most charming person I could possibly have referred him to for an account of me? Didn't you hit it off tremendously together and in fact fall quite in love, so that it will really be a great advantage for you to have me as a common ground? You're going to make, I can see, no end of a ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... the way for a long correspondence between Melanchthon and Du Bellay himself, in which the latter threw out suggestions of the practicability of some plan for bringing the intelligent and candid men in both countries to adopt a common ground in respect to religion. Finally, in response to Du Bellay's earnest request, his correspondent consented to draw up such a scheme as appeared to himself proper to serve for the basis of union. The result was a paper of a truly wonderful character, in which the reader ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... part of the crews of the vessels came ashore every evening, and we passed the time in going about from one house to another, and listening to all manner of languages. The Spanish was the common ground upon which we all met; for every one knew more or less of that. We had now, out of forty or fifty, representatives from almost every nation under the sun,— two Englishmen, three Yankees, two Scotchmen, two Welshmen, one Irishman, three Frenchmen (two of whom were Normans, and the third ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... expected much more than this, and he got all that he expected. The young men had a common ground to meet on, and they quickly became as intimate as ever Frederick Mostyn permitted himself to be with a stranger. Bryce could hardly help catching enthusiasm from Mostyn on the subject of New York, and he was able to show his new acquaintance phases of life in the marvelous city ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... welcome to younger men, and whatever number may hereafter be elected to this society, it is to be desired that no man be upon its lists who has not by some original and complete work justified his selection. The meeting together of our eminent men will contribute to unite on a common ground those best able to express the thoughts and illustrate the history of the time. It will serve to strengthen emulation among us, for the discussion of progress made in other lands, will breed the desire to push the intellectual development of our own. We may hope that ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... traditional. And now this was a bond between her father and Harry. They had both loved wild, uncivilised things, and it was this very trait in their character that had made division between them before. But now what had been in those early years the cause of trouble was their common ground of sympathy. ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... Science of Religion, I hope, will produce a similar change in our views of barbarous forms of faith and worship; and missionaries, instead of looking only for points of difference, will look out more anxiously for any common ground, any spark of the true light that may still be revived, any altar that may be dedicated afresh ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... he were looking right into your eyes, and twigged something there which you had half a mind to conceal from him. He keeps this look so pertinaciously that you feel it to be insufferably impertinent, and bethink yourself what common ground there may be between yourself and a stone image, enabling you to resent it. I have no doubt that the statue is as like Mr. Wilberforce as one pea to another, and you might fancy, that, at some ordinary moment, when he least expected it, and before he had time to smooth away his knowing complication ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... still one living, Goethe, and the idea of speaking with him or even of merely seeing him made me happy in anticipation. I never was, as was the fashion at that time, a blind worshipper of Goethe, any more than I was of any other one poet. True poetry seemed to me to lie where they met on common ground; their individual characteristics lent them, on the one hand, the charm of individuality, while, on the other hand, they shared the general propensity of mankind to err. Goethe, in particular, had, since the death of Schiller, turned his attention from poetry to science. By distributing ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the traditional view appear to have leaned rather to the theory that Marcion's Gospel and the canonical Luke are, more or less, independent offshoots from the common ground-stock of the evangelical narratives. Ritschl, and after him Baur and Schwegler, adopted more decidedly the view that the canonical Gospel was constructed out of Marcion's by interpolations directed against that heretic's teaching. The reaction came from a quarter whence it would not ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... either the wild turkey or domestic turkey begins to lay, and afterwards to sit and rear the brood, she secludes herself from the male, who then, very sensibly, herds with others of his sex, and betakes himself to haunts of his own till male and female, old and young, meet again on common ground, late in the fall. But rob the sitting bird of her eggs, or destroy her tender young, and she immediately sets out in quest of a male, who is no laggard when he hears her call. The same is true of ducks, and other aquatic ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... forerunning instinct of love, which uttered its prophecy in an unknown tongue in an alien country! There came a day before long, when Doctor Eben and Hetty were forced to forget all their prejudices, and to come together on a common ground, where no antagonisms ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... for disaffection. When the resources of Hungary are properly developed, and wealth results to the many, bringing education and general enlightenment in its train, there will be a common ground of interest, even amongst those who differ in race, religion, and language. It was a saying of the patriotic Count Szechenyi, and the saying has passed into a proverb, "Make money, and enrich the country; an ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... It is common ground that sex love between such people should be the physical expression of a lasting affection, and be so intimately blended with the feelings of helpfulness, sympathy, and intimate friendship as to form a union of body, mind and spirit. It further ...
— Love—Marriage—Birth Control - Being a Speech delivered at the Church Congress at - Birmingham, October, 1921 • Bertrand Dawson
... worshipped. They began to be treated as human beings, and when men idealized them in figures of romantic charm or pathos—figures like Shakespeare's Rosalind or Marivaux's Sylvia or Richardson's Clarissa—this humanity was henceforth the common ground out of which the vision arose. But, one notes, in nearly all the great poets and novelists up to the middle of the last century, it was usually in the weakness of humanity that the artist sought the charm and pathos of his feminine figures. From Shakespeare's ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... and the British had now no other enemy, and were incensed at the temerity of the little nation which had attempted to invade Canada and had so humiliated England at sea. Gradually, the commissioners began to find common ground. Gallatin reported to the home government that in his judgment no article could be secured renouncing the right to impress British subjects wherever found. With a heavy heart, Madison consented that that point should be ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... of 1575 was marked by a lull in warlike operations, and conferences were held at Breda between envoys of Orange and Requesens, only to find that there was no common ground of agreement. The marriage of the prince (June 24) with Charlotte de Bourbon, daughter of the Duke of Montpensier, was a daring step which aroused much prejudice against him. The bride, who was of the blood-royal of France, had been Abbess of Jouarre, ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... experiment and success. He did not think kindly of her. Lady Blandish's encomiums of her behaviour and her beauty annoyed him. Forgetful that he had in a measure forfeited his rights to it, he took the common ground of fathers, and demanded, "Why he was not justified in doing all that lay in his power to prevent his son from casting himself away upon the first creature with a pretty face he encountered?" Deliberating thus, he lost the tenderness he should have had for his experiment—the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... freedom from restraint there awoke in him a desire for independence—a thirst for the suppressed license of youth. His new acquaintances were accustomed to a rigid domestic regime, but of a different character, and they met on a common ground of rebellion. Their aberrations, it is true, were not of a very formidable character, and need not have been guarded but for the severe conventionalities of both sects. An occasional fox-chase, horse-race, ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... emotion, volition; but in the region of the intellect, especially in its most deliberate and elaborate processes, namely, conception, judgment, and reasoning, Logic and Psychology seem to occupy common ground. In fact, however, the two sciences have little in common except a few general terms, and even these they employ in different senses. It is usual to point out that Psychology tries to explain the subjective processes of conception, judgment ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... these in turn were forced to yield to such pastimes as music, drawing, mummeries, boyish games, masquerades, and even more pretentious adventures out in the garden, such as mimic chivalric contests, construction of underground passages, &c. The boys also discovered common ground in their desire to cultivate their minds by poetry and other reading. The last two years at school were most beneficial and productive in shaping Hoffmann's mind; he acquired a taste for classics and excited ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Manhattan." The first is applied to a small District in the vicinity of Corlaer's Hook, while the last embraces the Whole island; or the city and county of New York as it is termed in the laws.] became common ground, in which both parties continued to act for the remainder of the war of the Revolution. A large proportion of its inhabitants, either restrained by their attachments, or influenced by their fears, affected ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... demon, and mockery with him was impossible. I was therefore more bewildered than ever at this reiteration of sentiments that were so utterly incomprehensible. He, on the other hand, seemed as astonished at my sentiments and as bewildered, and we could find no common ground on ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... common ground between them that the Warings lacked money for her to live as independently as all Warings felt that every Waring had a right to live. Each generation of younger brothers had been confined within an ever-narrowing circle; and, but for the ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... through the knowledge of Christ that the Spirit of the Father mainly works in the members of his body; and it seemed to me she did not take the trouble to "know him and the power of his resurrection." Therefore we had scarcely enough of common ground, as I say, to meet upon. I could not help contrasting her religion with ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... replacing any chair he moved; most men, she averred, were so thoughtless and untidy. But it was with Zenas Henry that the young man won his greatest triumph, the two immediately coming into harmony on the common ground of motor-boating. Most of the male visitors who dropped in at the white cottage came only to see Delight, but here was one who came to call on the entire family. How charming it was! They liked him one and all; how could they help it? And soon, so eagerly did they anticipate his coming, any ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... perceptibly as she mused, for she was the mother of nine—three still-born and one deaf and dumb from birth. Putting the plates in the rack she heard once more Sanders at it again ("He don't give Bonamy a chance," she thought). "Objective something," said Bonamy; and "common ground" and something else—all very long words, she noted. "Book learning does it," she thought to herself, and, as she thrust her arms into her jacket, heard something—might be the little table by the fire—fall; and then stamp, stamp, stamp—as if they were ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... history, in bulk. That which is understood excels that which is spoken in quantity and quality alike; ideas thus figured and personified, change hands, as we may say, like coin; and the speakers imply without effort the most obscure and intricate thoughts. Strangers who have a large common ground of reading will, for this reason, come the sooner to the grapple of genuine converse. If they know Othello and Napoleon, Consuelo and Clarissa Harlowe, Vautrin and Steenie Steenson, they can leave generalities and begin at ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not Old Lutherans in the sense of a small party [Breslauer], which in Germany bears this name. We are convinced that, if the great Luther were still living, he himself would not be one of them." "In most of our church-principles we stand on common ground with the Union Church of Germany. The distinctive views which separate the Old Lutherans and the Reformed Church we do not consider essential; and the tendency of the so-called old Lutheran party seems to us to be behind our age." "The great Luther made progress ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... with authority about another man, we must have fellow-feeling and some common ground of experience with our subject. We may praise or blame according as we find him related to us by the best or worst in ourselves; but it is only in virtue of some relationship that we can be his judges, even to condemn. Feelings which ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... distinguished as the Patriarchal, Jewish, and Christian dispensations; that one nation of people should be selected as the depository of the sacred oracles, and as a theatre for the exhibition of the true religion; that in the fulness of time, Jews and Gentiles should be placed upon one common ground of religious privilege, the partition wall being broken down. It is also decreed that there shall be a general judgment. God hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world; that there shall be a resurrection ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... plants of old England here dwell contentedly, leafage being free, however few and dwarfed in some cases the bloom. Roses, violets, honeysuckle, pansies, cosmos, phlox, balsams, sunflowers, zinnias, blue Michaelmas daisies, dianthus, nasturtiums, &c., are on common ground with purely tropical plants, while ageratum has become a ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... as I have said, I shall claim your answer. And now farewell for a season. When we next meet we shall have a larger common ground; we shall be master and ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... that 'the Spirit of God' was in him. So here was a divinely sent messenger, whom it would be impiety and madness to reject. Observe that Pharaoh and Joseph both speak in this chapter of 'God.' There was a common ground of recognition of a divine Being on which they met. The local colour of the story indicates a period before the fuller revelation, which drew so broad a line of demarcation between Israel ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... because in a study of educational aims, in so far as they concern Catholic girls, there is not much that is distinctive which practically affects these branches; during the years of school life they stand, more or less, on common ground with others. More advanced studies of natural science open up burning questions, and as to these, it is the last counsel of wisdom for girls leaving school or school-room to remember that they have no right to have any opinion at all. It is well to make them understand that after years of specialized ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... cane, while the sleek old footman followed at a respectful distance behind." Lady Fenn was forty- six years old when Cowper referred to her. She was sixty-six when the boy Borrow saw her in Dereham streets. At no other points do these great East Dereham writers come upon common ground: Cowper during the greater part of his life was a recluse. He practically fled from the world. In reading the many letters he wrote—and they are among the best letters in the English language—one is struck by the small number of his correspondents. He had few acquaintances and still fewer ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... Harvest mines. It was difficult, she smiled to herself, aflame as she was toward Graham, to be married to a philosopher who would not lift a hand to hold her. And it came to her afresh that one phase of Graham's charm for her was his humanness, his flamingness. They met on common ground. At any rate, even in the heyday of their coming together in Paris, Dick had not so inflamed her. A wonderful lover he had been, too, with his gift of speech and lover's phrases, with his love-chants that had so delighted her; but somehow ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... you have some common ground with Nakpa, for you both always want to have your own way, and stick to it, too! I tell you, I fear this Long Ears. She is not to be trusted with babies," remarked Shunkaska, with a ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... out every spark of affection, in driving away every atom of regard, that I am trying so hard to acquire for you. Is all the strivin' to be on my side?—all the thought and care to be with me? A very little pains on your part, some small self-control, and we should get to find common ground on which we could meet and be happy. As to Iver Verstage, both he and I know well enough that we can ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... (had they been Partridges under the care of a keeper they would have been), but as it was only one was washed out of the nest and drowned; the rest were all well and left the nest a few days after. So in spite of the exposed situation close to a frequented road, on a bit of common ground where goats and cows were tethered, nets and seaweed, or "vraic," as it is called in Guernsey, spread for drying, dogs, cats, and children continually wandering about, and without any shelter from rain, the old birds brought off three young from ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... the resting unit of the Eleatics—the Being."[418] The Heraclitean "fire" is endowed with spiritual attributes. "Aristotle calls it psyche—soul, and says that it is asomatotaton, or absolutely incorporeal ("De Anima," i. 2. 16). It is, in effect, the common ground of the phenomena both of mind and matter it is not only the animating, but also the intelligent and regulating principle of the universe; the Zynos Logos, or universal Word or Reason, which it behooves all men to follow."[419] The psychology of Heraclitus throws additional ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... earnestness in the Convention, and the growing spirit of political fraternity, had modified our views. We saw that several of the great leaders of the Liberty party were quite ready to meet the "Barnburners" on common ground. It seemed very desirable to combine with so large a body of helpers, and to profit by their experience and training in the school of practical politics. Mr. Van Buren had certainly gone great lengths as the servant of the slave power, ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... "both of you. I don't know what quarrel there is between you two, and I am not interested in it. But you, Miss Carmen, represent the press; Mr. Ames, business. The things which have been voiced here this morning must remain with us alone. Now let us see if we can not meet on common ground. Is the attitude of your newspaper, Miss Carmen, one of hostility ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... fair opportunity of obtaining farm labour, which is paid for (out of harvest time) at the rate of nine shillings a week. But this is a resource of which they are rarely obliged to take advantage. A plot of common ground is included with the cottages that are let to them; and the cultivation of this, helps to keep them and their families, in bad times, until they find an opportunity of resuming work; when they may perhaps make as much in one month, as an ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... common ground on which to start the mute conversation, and the only replies volunteered by him were occasional grunts. Not a groan escaped his lips when the Professor sought to remove the bullet, but he sat there stoically, and ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... no way that men and prowlers could ever meet on common ground. They were alien to one another, separated by the gulf of an origin on worlds two hundred and fifty light-years apart. Their only common heritage was the ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... and the Painter grew old together. They met on a common ground of horses, dogs and art; and while the King used these things to kill time and cause him to forget self, the Painter found horses and dogs good for rest and recreation. But art was for Velasquez ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... between men. Even among members of a single community, with closely similar inheritance and environment, we find marked divergence in moral judgment. And when we compare widely different times and places we are apt to wonder if there is any common ground. It is only a very smug provincialism that can attribute the alien standards of other races and nations to a disregard of the light. Mohammedans and Buddhists have believed as firmly in, and fought as passionately for, their moral convictions as Christians have for ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... only to give expression to the poetic fervour called forth by the circumstances, but accomplished a good deal more, the establishment of a common ground between himself and the nearest relative of a very charming and cultivated young lady. The said young lady came up to join in the conversation, and request Mr. Wilkinson to repeat all that he knew of the battle hymn. The lawyer was secretly of the opinion that his friend ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... pretty, and the whole valley of Kashmir is lovely beyond description: surrounded by beautifully-wooded mountains, intersected with streams and lakes, and gay with flowers of every description, for in Kashmir many of the gorgeous eastern plants and the more simple but sweeter ones of England meet on common ground. To it may appropriately ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... it was merely along the broad and general lines mentioned in the last chapter. Now, in presence of such attributions as, for example, the Satanic character of tolerance in matters of religion, I, for one, would unconditionally lay down my pen, as there is no common ground upon which ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... from your lips breaks every tie that time had knit between us. I do not demand that my friends should be wealthy, that they should have any attractions or charm, any special gifts of mind or body; but we must meet on common ground: that of honorable feeling. That you did not bring into the world, or you have lost it; and from this hour I am a stranger to you and never wish to see you again, excepting by the side of your ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... languidly, catching Haycroft's eye and almost making terms with him upon a common ground of masculine understanding. 'Yes, yes. It is well known what children we are. Pleased with a rattle!' Then, as if fearing he might be going too far, he smiled that disarming smile of his, and said good-humouredly, 'I know now why you are called a ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... of showing the materials for anthropology contained in the history of the law, are the immediate object here. My aim and purpose have been to show that the various forms of liability known to modern law spring from the common ground of revenge. In the sphere of contract the fact will hardly be material outside the cases which have been stated in this Lecture. But in the criminal law and the law of torts it is of the first importance. It shows that they have started from a moral basis, from the thought ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... admired my father, and I told him all about my brother's business. He also knew what I liked best to eat and to wear. In return, he confided his family secrets to me. I knew his tastes and wishes. There was no common ground where I met Redmond and Harry Lothrop. There were too many topics between Redmond and myself to be avoided, for us to venture upon private or familiar conversation. Harry Lothrop was an accomplished, fastidious man of the world, I dreaded boring him, and so I said little. He was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... appearance. They had evidently been made for a boy, an individual much larger than their present wearer. Great wrinkles crossing each other shut off some low, unoccupied land near the toe, and showed how much of the sole had been too proud to touch the common ground. All this ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... Why, you might jest as well throw a lot of snowflakes into the street, and say, 'Some of 'em are female flakes, and mustn't be trampled on.' The great march of life tramples on 'em all alike: they fall from one common sky, and are trodden down into one common ground. ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... the County healed themselves after their own fashion; both parties found common ground in condemning the Baroness's outrageously ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... of infinite and paradoxical variety, a curious and absolute fusion is doubtless steadily annealing, compacting, identifying all. But subtler and wider and more solid, (to produce such compaction,) than the laws of the States, or the common ground of Congress, or the Supreme Court, or the grim welding of our national wars, or the steel ties of railroads, or all the kneading and fusing processes of our material and business history, past or present, would in my opinion be a great ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... started up with more alacrity than I have displayed for some years; but sat down while my aunt added, laying her hand upon my sleeve, "The chapel has been long considered as common ground, my dear, and used for a penfold, and what objection can we have to the man for employing what is his own, to his own profit? Besides, I did speak to him, and he very readily and civilly promised, that, if he found bones or monuments, they should be carefully respected and reinstated; and what more ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... understand the nature of the phenomena, that these things were "all imagination" and fancy, if indeed not rank falsehood and imposture. But the Yogis know better than this. They know that underneath all these varying reports there is a common ground of truth, which will be apparent to anyone investigating the matter. They know that all of these reports (except a few based upon fraudulent imitation of the real phenomenon) are based upon truth and are but the bewildered reports of the various ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... information," Mr. Draconmeyer declared, his eyes blinking behind his glasses. "For that I certainly should not come to you. I only wish to ask you a question, and I must ask it so that we may meet on a common ground of confidence. Are you here in Monte Carlo to look after your wife, or in search of change of air and scene? Is that your honest motive for being here? Or is there any other reason in the world which has prompted you to come to Monte Carlo during this particular month—I might ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that the decks of the steamers were common ground, and most of them could only be reached by passing over others. But near the levee I found a wharf, the lower end of which was under water, at which I concluded we could lie by paying wharfage. I ran the Sylvania in as far as I could ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... and ever since knowing you I have made the constant prayer that I might be given the purity to be worthy the good in you, and that you might be granted the patience to reach the good in me—but it's no use. But at least I'm glad we have met on common ground, as it were, and that you understand, in a measure. The prayer could not be answered; but through it I have found myself and—I have known you. That last is worth more than a king's ransom to me. It is a holy thing which I shall reverence always, and when you go you will leave me ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... widely apart the nonchalance of the Moslem, and the matter-of-fact diligence of the Parsee,[5] may have placed them respectively in their appreciation of the scientific marvels of the Polytechnic Institution, they meet on common ground in their admiration of the wax-work exhibition of Madame Tussaud; though the Khan, who was not sufficiently acquainted with the features of our public characters to judge of the likenesses, expresses his commendation only in general terms. But the Parsees, with the naivete of children, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... been bankrupt? The slightest reference to honesty, finance, or business may seem an insult. Has he figured in the Divorce Court? How are you to talk about the last new play without seeming personal? This explains why exposed persons are cut: they have made conversation impossible by cutting away the common ground of it, the hypothesis of perfection. Even with persons who have merely lost relatives one has to be careful to avoid references to mortality. The complete diner-out has to be equipped with a knowledge of his fellows to the third and fourth ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... confidence, who maintain that all its provisions are within the purview of the Constitution; there are others in whom I have confidence, and equal confidence, who maintain directly the contrary; and this has brought me seriously to consider whether there be no common ground upon which friends can stand and stand together. Sir, I may have failed to find it; but if I have, it is not because I have not most earnestly sought for it with some days of study and most earnest reflection. I have endeavored to put upon paper what I believe would carry ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... in Christ is the common ground of justification for Jews and Gentiles, both were to be admitted upon equal terms to all the rights and privileges of the Christian church; the ancient prerogative of the Jews above the Gentiles ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... understanding friend; O grief! when Heaven is forced of earth to borrow What the poor niggard earth has not to lend; But when the stalk is snapped, the rose must bend. The tallest flower that skyward rears its head Grows from the common ground, and there must shed Its delicate petals. Cruel fate, too surely, That they should find so base a bridal bed, Who lived in virgin pride, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... with them, I shall find him harder to convince that I was never invited to sin. Such, however, is the fact, and of course it is open to the retort that you do not invite a drunkard to be drunk. Be that as it may, I met these unfortunates upon the common ground of civility, conversed with them as equals, and was not only respected by them for what I was, but came myself to respect them in spite of what they were. Virginia taught me much here. With her it never was, "Such-and-such is a woman of infamous life," but ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... can only be solved by teachers who believe something, who believe that there is some common ground, some spiritual law of junction, between the man of genius, the natural or free man, and the cramped, i. e., artificial, ordinary one. It would be hard to name any more important proposition for current education to act on than this, that the natural man in this world is the man of genius. ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... it had better be, for I'm going to take a chance on you. Sooner or later the law will have to admit the existence of Psi. I know as well as you Stigma cases that this gene is dominant—that there'll be more Psis every generation. We've got to find some common ground between the two societies—some way to get along. Give me your personal surety in this Mary Hall thing. As an attorney, you're an officer of the Court, and I guess I have the right to make her your responsibility. I certainly don't want it getting out that ...
— Modus Vivendi • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Caucasian race told him that the plan he took was the only one that offered safety to himself. What reason had he to believe that the hunters were kind of heart? If he hid his distress, would he not be treated as a well Indian? And was there any but the one common ground upon ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... of course, as such an attitude may be the outcome of an antecedent disbelief in God, it is perfectly logical; only we have no common ground with those who take that view. It is otherwise, however, where an avowed acceptance of Theism is nevertheless accompanied by doubts as regards any objective effects flowing from supplications addressed to God; it is with such doubts as ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... historian to estimate. The external divisions of the Christian Church are numerous; its unity is to be seen in the Hymn Book. 'Men whose theological views contrast most strongly,' says Mr. Abbey in his essay on The English Sacred Poetry of the Eighteenth Century, 'meet on common ground when they express in verse the deeper aspirations of the heart and the voice ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... rich," is the equivalent of our "Happy New Year," and is bandied about from mouth to mouth at this festive season, until petty distinctions of nationality and creed vanish before the conviction that, at least in matters of sentiment, Chinamen and Europeans meet upon common ground. Yet there is one solitary exception to the rule—an unfortunate being whom no one wishes to see prosperous, and whom nobody greets with the pleasant phrase, "Get rich, get ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... and grounded in love," will grow up, a holy family in the Lord. If love be the common ground the varieties in God's ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... waiters from among their number; then turn about, and the waiters were waited upon; and through it all ran the laugh and jest of happy young folks, who thoroughly enjoyed each other's company, and who for one evening met on common ground. After supper, came games and more music, while a few of the more earnest ones, in an out-of-the-way corner, discussed the reading room and planned for its future. Then came a call for everyone to sing, and with Amy at the piano, they sang song ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... On common ground once more, she prepared for battle, but to her consternation she found the battle already ended and an enemy ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... in book-shape there is no end. The mass grows day by day, almost hour by hour. Yet the successful candidates for admission to our inner circle of publications of all ages and countries, which so far meet on common ground in being provided with a passport to succeeding times requiring and recognising no critical vise, increase in numbers slowly, O so slowly! It would be presumptuous and unsafe to attempt to discount the ultimate verdict on many now ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... what she thought.[27] There was something of AEschylus in her, as there was much of Aristophanes in him; it was not for nothing that her girlish ardour had twice flung itself upon the task of rendering the Prometheus Bound in English; they met on common ground in the human and pathetic Euripides. But her power was lyric, not dramatic. She sang from the depths of a wonderfully rich and passionate nature; while he was most truly himself when he was ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... subdued audience. How could one talk on equal terms with a man who could not brook contradiction or even argument upon the most vital questions in life? Would Goldsmith defend his literary views, or Burke his Whiggism, or Gibbon his Deism? There was no common ground of philosophic toleration on which one could stand. If he could not argue he would be rude, or, as Goldsmith put it: "If his pistol missed fire, he would knock you down with the butt end." In the face of that "rhinoceros laugh" there was an end ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... judgment Inability to keep up with current literature Main object of life is not to keep up with the printing-press Man who is past the period of business activity Never to read a book until it is from one to five years old Quietly putting himself on common ground with his reader Simplicity Slovenly literature, unrebuked and uncorrected Suggestion rather than by commandment Unenlightened popular preference for a book Waste precious time ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner
... to bring about a General Council failed repeatedly. The nearest approach to reconciliation was achieved when a conference was arranged at Ratisbon (1541) at which there were papal as well as Lutheran representatives and it seemed as if common ground of agreement was in course of emerging. But Luther himself held aloof; Paul III. would not ratify the concessions that Contarini and others were willing to make. The Conference ended in failure; and Charles—always ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... "self-determination," the other had it equally. Thus the axiom of democracy that government is by the majority was, as Maine said, "paralysed by the plea of nationality," since the contending parties appealed to the same principle without having any common ground as to how it should be applied to ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... was she nearer still—at Penfold Rectory, just beyond the moor he was climbing, the old rectory-house where Sorell and Radowitz were staying? He had taken good care to give that side of the hills a wide berth since his return home. But a great deal of the long ridge was common ground, and in the private and enclosed parts there were several rights of way crossing the moor, besides the one lonely road traversing it from end to end on which he had met Constance Bledlow. If he had not been so tied at home, and so determined not to run any risks ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that one feels more and more irritatingly in England is that, while with other foreigners we stand on common ground, where we may be as unlike them as we choose, with the English we always stand on English ground, where we can differ only at our peril, and to our disadvantage. A person speaking English and bearing an English name, had better be English, for if he cannot it shows, it proves, that there is ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... year 1780 a solitary traveller was pursuing his way through one of the numerous little valleys of New York State which were then common ground for the British and Revolutionary forces. Anxious to obtain a speedy shelter from the increasing violence of the storm, the traveller knocked at the door of a house which had an air altogether superior to the common farmhouses of the country. In answer ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the two men, who exchanged a few commonplace words—each, meanwhile, taking the measure of the other through eyes that were frankly hostile. They were of such dissimilar type that there was practically no common ground upon which they could meet, and with the swift, unerring intuition of the lover each had recognised the other as standing in some relationship to Magda which premised a just cause for jealousy. Both men endeavoured to secure her undivided attention and, failing lamentably, ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... Genius is supreme in proportion as it does that, and becomes the interpreter of every man who is born into the world, makes him know his brotherhood with all, and the incorporation of his fate in the scheme of law, and ideal achievement under it, which is the common ground of humanity. Ideal literature is the treasury of such genius in the past; here, as I said in the beginning, the wisdom of the soul is stored; and art, in all its forms, is immortal only in so far as it has done its share in this same labour of illumination, persuasion, ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... forming friendships, and proportionally tenacious of them when they were formed, Lidgerwood's impulse was to hold all men at arm's length until he was reasonably assured of sincerity and a common ground. But the genial master-mechanic refused to be put on probation. Lidgerwood made the effort while the rescue train was whipping around the hill shoulders and plunging deeper into the afternoon shadows of the great mountain range. The tool-car was comfortably filled ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... his shoulders a little impatiently. "My dear lady, we have no common ground there. The wishes of the dead have no weight with me when set against the welfare of the living. The question which I beg you to consider is whether you wish your daughter to continue in this mental torture? Do ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... at the disposal of the Cabinet Minister (taking his holiday, by the way, during the long recess), and had wearied himself in order to reach some subject of interest where he and his guest could meet on common ground. ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... triumphed, at least for the time being, the cause of their triumph must be sought in the plain fact that such men as Berkeley, Butler, and Paley, each according to his light, fought the battle fairly, on the common ground of reason and philosophy, instead of on that of tradition and authority; and that the forms of Christianity current in England—whether Quaker, Puritan, or Anglican—offended, less than that current in France, the common-sense and ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... Catholic {264} church. William of Orange, now a Protestant, living at Delft, inspired the whole movement. Requesens, believing that if he were out of the way the revolt would collapse, like Alva offered public rewards for his assassination. That there was really no common ground was proved at a conference between the two foes, broken off without result. In the campaign of 1575 the Spanish army again achieved great things, taking Oudewater, Schoonhoven and other places. But the rebels ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... before. The only real emotions she had ever known were her love for Harold Lounsbury and her grief at his absence: in these autumn woods she might easily learn all the others. She had never known true loneliness; here, except for her fiance's uncle with whom she had never felt on common ground and two paid employees—the latter, she told herself, did not count—she was as much alone as if she had been cast upon an uninhabited sphere. Already she knew something of the great malevolence that is the eternal tone ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... last they had hit on common ground—tapped a universal spring of human communication. Adolay at once beamed an answering smile, and displayed all her brilliant teeth in doing so. This drew a soft laugh of pleasure from ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... The common ground of all these various lines of investigations of pathologist, anatomist, physiologist, physicist, and psychologist is, clearly, the central nervous system—the spinal cord and the brain. The importance of these structures as ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... ideal race journal attainable? I say, YES—when the two elements necessary to the transaction—the public and the publisher—are able to meet on a common ground, in the spirit of co-operation and fair dealing. The chasm between the journalist and his rightful constituency must be bridged by mutual confidence and mutual sympathy, or neither can reap the great benefits that lie in concentration ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... aroused the caller's interest and approval; and the subsequent talk ran along quite freely on the child's deserts and prospects. Mrs. Bates was quite direct and unadorned; and, though Rosy's future was the only common ground upon which the two women could meet, yet she handled this material with such a sympathetic persistence that Eliza Marshall was fain to believe that she and her caller had been knit in a close community ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... bread, and the prospect of a slice out of the public land occupied by Italians, were all not strong enough to overcome the deep, ingrained prejudice against extending the franchise. Rich and poor Romans met here on the common ground of narrow pride, and the offence caused by this wise project probably paved the ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... doctrine is the theory held by some Vedantists that there are many individuals and the world-appearance has no permanent illusion for all people, but each person creates for himself his own illusion, and there is no objective datum which forms the common ground for the illusory perception of all people; just as when ten persons see in the darkness a rope and having the illusion of a snake there, run away, and agree in their individual perceptions that ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... make those days not bad days, Miss Kate would cross our little common ground of an early evening to where I played the game on my porch. Often I did this until dusk obscured the faces of the cards. I faintly suspected in the course of these bird-like visits a caprice in Miss Kate to know what it might ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... to Green's untiring efforts, they met on common ground at his concerts, and any member of the audience who dared to commit any breach of the peace on any of these occasions was summarily dealt with by Green himself. He knew how to keep his men in hand. There was not one of them who ever ventured to question his ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... Byron's. Or if there are any of the latter's writings, that we can dwell upon in the same way, that is, as lasting and heart-felt sentiments, it is when laying aside his usual pomp and pretension, he descends with Mr. Wordsworth to the common ground of a disinterested humanity. It may be considered as characteristic of our poet's writings, that they either make no impression on the mind at all, seem mere nonsense-verses, or that they leave a mark behind them that never wears out. ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... that as Muhammadanism is so near to Christianity that it may almost be called a Christian heresy, and as we have in consequence much common ground, we might expect to find its adherents more accessible than Hindus to the Christian missionary. The opposite is the case, furnishing another illustration of the fact that no religionists are so antagonistic ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... would suddenly force my father (by pretending, for instance, to believe that my grandfather's business had been in our family before his day, or that the hedge with the pink hawthorn which my aunt Leonie wished to visit was on common ground) to correct my statements, to say, as though in opposition to me and of his own accord: "No, no, the business belonged to Swann's father, that hedge is part of Swann's park." And then I would be obliged to pause for breath; so stifling was the ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... see, feeble-mindedness is a great deal like undue influence—it implies that the property wasn't disposed of as originally intended. The most common ground is ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... frowned. There were men amongst them who had never felt the softer side of life, and men who had been ruthlessly kicked from that downy couch. There were good men and scoundrels, workers and loafers; there were men who had few scruples, and certainly no morals whatever. But they had met on a common ground with the common purpose of spinning fortune's wheel, and the sight of a woman's handsome face set them tumbling over each other to extend the hand of friendship ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... common ground of rationalism and realism, Plato and Aristotle are complementary in temper, method, and principle. Plato's is the genius of inspiration and fertility, Aristotle's the genius of erudition, mastery, and synthesis. In form, Plato's is the gift of expression, Aristotle's ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... of these considerations is clear. It is a plea for reconciliation, for a return to that Synthesis which was on the point of becoming the common ground of all American Israel. American Judaism needs peace to carry out the great task confronting it. Zionism is no less in need of peace in order to gain the hearts of those whose hearts are still ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... of sweetness and of pain. He, a son of the soil, knowing his roughness, his uncouthness, his bondage, never giving them a thought till then, had led her by the hand, a daughter of the stars, for a little space, the barriers down between them. One bit of common ground they had; beyond it, distance immeasurable ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... inner sentiments and sympathies. For this purpose a host of devices have been contrived by which all the forms of friendship may be gone through, without committing ourselves to one spark of the spirit. We fly with eagerness to some common ground in which each can take the liveliest interest, without taking the slightest in the world in his companion. Our various fashionable manias, for charity one season, for science the next, are only so many clever ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... affection, partly by enlightened self-interest or the feeling of honour, due in part even to the mere fear of penalties; no element of which, [8] however, was distinctively moral in the agent himself as such, and providing him, therefore, no common ground with a really moral being like Cornelius, or even like the philosophic emperor. Performing the same offices; actually satisfying, even as they, the external claims of others; rendering to all their dues—one thus circumstanced ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... thoughts. The next day he rode out with Travers and Cecilia. Their way passed through quiet shady lanes without any purposed direction, when suddenly, at the spot where three of those lanes met on an angle of common ground, a lonely gray tower, in the midst of a wide space of grass-land which looked as if it had once been a park, with huge boles of pollarded oak dotting the space here and there, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Congressional career been a compromiser, but he now worked most earnestly to bring about an accommodation between the Administration and Congress. His argument was the one skillfully employed by all who seek an adjustment between those who ought to be friends: Let each party give way a little; let a common ground of action be established; and, above all, let the calamity of ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... a common end. Again, parents in many, many instances are not acquainted with the schools nor with the methods of instruction which are followed therein. What is done by one may be undone by the other. If there could be a common ground of meeting, much labor would be saved and greater ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... age, our attitude tends to make him a little prig; if we meet him as if we were as young as he is, his need for maturer influences produces a lack of balance which we must both feet; but if we sincerely meet him as if the exchange of age were mutual, we find common ground and valuable companionship. ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... town the kite-flying usually takes place on some common ground in the vicinity, and there may be seen the young and old boys in eager groups, and all as much interested in the sport as if their lives depended upon their success. And sometimes, indeed, their fortunes do. Many a poor little ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... strangers after introduction, is always opened by the question, "And how old are YOU?" This strikes me as singularly apt and sensible. Here is the one thing that is common ground between any two people, high or low, rich or poor—how far are you ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... reports of it. In confidence, however, it may be owned that it is apt rather to be bad than good. If what has led up to it has softened the critical edge of the listener, it has not sharpened the critical edge of the speaker, and they meet on the common ground where any platitude passes, where a farrago of funny stories serves the purpose of coherent humor, where any feeble flash of wit lights up the obscurity as with an electric radiance, where any slightest ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... as we know them or as they exist in England being rare, and when found being, with few exceptions, but gambling-houses in disguise. As a Frenchman rarely asks an acquaintance, or even a friend, to his apartment, the café has become the common ground where all meet, for business or pleasure. Not in Paris only, but all over France, in every garrison town, provincial city, or tiny village, the café is the chief attraction, the centre of thought, the focus toward which all the rays of masculine ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... before her. The French, who were only separated from the English metropolis by a mere few miles of Channel, did not exchange their actors year after year in increasing numbers, making a mere friendly barter of each other's territory, as though each land was common ground and not divided by leagues ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... crushed it down, and come to view it as a private fancy. He might have said to himself that it was plain that many human spirits did not feel that more delicate appeal, and that his duty was to meet other natures on some common ground. ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... its structure and by its capacity, to receive her. In all this we think that he acted most judiciously; first, because, as he has himself remarked, the difference between his school and other schools was a difference so fundamental that there was hardly any common ground on which a controversial battle could be fought; and, secondly, because his mind, eminently observant, preeminently discursive and capacious, was, we conceive, neither formed by nature nor disciplined by ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
