Common-place

But they would have been improved by some share of his frankness and warmth; and her visit was long enough to detract something from their first admiration, by shewing that though perfectly well bred, she was reserved, cold, and had nothing to say for herself beyond the most common-place inquiry or remark.

The points I am about to treat are common-place; and why are they common-place? Simply because they are at once so obvious, and so important, that he who thinks at all, must think of them.

Who does not understand, as single parts of speech, all the common combinations which serve to connect and carry on construction, such as in-consequence-of, on-this-account, under-these-circumstances, at-all-events, admitting-the-fact, and the like? Indeed, we are entitled to say of ordinary common-place speakers, that as they scarcely use constructed language except in forms already existing, so, with them, each thought finds an immediate sign in some familiar sentence; but then, be it observed, the parts which compose the sign have ceased to be separately significant: the sentences so used have been brought back to the condition of original or natural language, that of exclamations,—they have ceased to be logical, by having become purely rhetorical.

Many well formed and well fed bodies over-indulge in sensuality, take little or no exercise, and remain sickly throughout life; many well formed minds, over-indulge in mere gossip, frivolous conversations, and reading novels, take no serious thought or study, and remain common-place through life; or worse than common-place, being more or less intensely perverted in proportion to original endowments of mental capacity.

Common-places do properly contain nothing but general advice that remembers thoſe who conſult them of all the faces by which a ſubject may be conſidered; […]

And therefore, whatever in my ſmall Reading, occurs, concerning this our Fellow-Creature, I do never fail to ſet it down, by way of Common-place; […]

While your Highneſs is forming your ſelf for a Throne, conſider the Laws as ſo many Common-Places in your Study of the Science of Government.

It is odd how easily the common-places of morality or of sentiment glide off in conversation. Well, they are “exceedingly helpful,” and so Lord Avonleigh found them.