Word: commonness
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...Harvard must arm himself with a certificate of high moral character, borrow a car-fare, and make a pilgrimage to this Mecca of boundless generosity. Our poor friend Jones is just weak enough to be food for all these hungry visitors. Endowed with that thirst for knowledge so common here, he is always found in his room, and his generous heart compels him to cry "Come in" at every knock on his door. Many a time has he sold his best coat - for the wretches will hardly look at an old one - at about one nineteenth of its value...
...Marched common and av'nue and shtrate...
...generally has a healthy tendency, and ought to go far toward correcting those faults which it censures. But an incomplete statement of facts, whether done willingly or ignorantly, a slight investigation where a thorough one is needed, the consideration of a question where prejudice is drawn upon more than common-sense, and from certain premises to draw conclusions entirely foreign to the subject discussed, - are in themselves indications of a lack of valid objections to the object criticised...
...older I grow (I am now quite venerable), the more I am inclined to think that it is nothing but lack of ability or opportunity that keeps down this element in the majority of men. Of course there are exceptions, but excessive modesty is not a common failing of the age. The boy who dragged his new trousers around in the dust before wearing them, so that their freshness might not be suspected, was an uncommon child. Boys don't do so now. Even the persons who are seemingly most free from the common weakness, if you but change their...
...great respect for and appreciation of true womanliness, or has so well described it. In almost every chapter he has written there are sentiments as far removed from cynicism as is the most earnest and modest charity. Whatever a man's faults may be, or however contemptible, in the common sense, he may appear, if he has a kindly or unselfish trait in his character, it is that which Thackeray dwells upon, which excites his enthusiasm. Perhaps there is no quality which we should less expect to find in a cynic than that of pathos, certainly there is none...