"Common ground" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 of ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 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 a discussion ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... "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 good thing ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... again to the sitting-room with its cheerful fire, we talked of books, finding common ground in the field of autobiography and travel. Whitley's reading in this field had been much wider than mine, and his knowledge of far countries and the men who wrote about them was a revelation to such a dabbler as I had been. Book after book was taken from the shelves ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... 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 would be wanting, nevertheless, in the ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... and the possibility of Lloyd George or Ramsay Macdonald or Macnamara taking office with the Liberals and whether there might not ultimately be a middle party in which Haldane and Balfour, Grey and the Cecils could meet upon common ground. It seemed now not only very small but very far off. She told me too of the huge popularity of King Edward. He had proved to be interested, curious, understanding and clever, an unexpectedly successful King. She described how he was breaking out of the ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... catastrophe. It was perhaps their unselfish interest in their mutual friends that at length taught them to know each other's worth, so that they finally became more than friends to one another. True love, to be firmly based, requires such a mutual interest or common ground on which the parties can meet,—something in addition to the usual attraction of the sexes. Mrs. Hawthorne has been supposed by some to have been the original of Hilda; and by ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... appointed a committee of three—Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Edward Rutledge to confer with Lord Howe. The conference, which exhibited the shrewd quality of John Adams and of Franklin, the politeness of Rutledge, and the studied urbanity of Lord Howe, simply showed that there was no common ground on which they could come to an agreement. The American Commissioners returned to Philadelphia and Lord Howe to New York City and there were no further ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... ridiculous as an old beau who seeks to gain favor with the girls by imitating with his rouge, hair dyes, and laced waistcoats, the freshness and symmetry of youth. But I must endeavor to establish some common ground on which I and the magnificent creature at my side could meet and hold converse. I must find it in literature. In a garret over my store I had a safe and some papers conveyed, ostensibly for attention ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to the end, an' evry sorrow of a privit's wife you shall know and niver a joy but wan, that shall go from you like the running tide from a rock. The pain av bearin' you shall know but niver the pleasure av giving the breast; an' you shall put away a man-child into the common ground wid niver a priest to say a prayer over him, an' on that man-child ye shall think ivry day av your life. Think long, Dinah Shadd, for you'll niver have another tho' you pray till your knees are bleedin'. The mothers av childer shall mock you behind ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... corner of one of those houses on the beach of Deal which stand so close to the sea that in many cases they occupy common ground with the boats, Tommy found himself suddenly close to a group of men, one of whom, a very tall man, was addressing the ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... another element of peculiar value to a maritime Empire. We are accustomed, partly for convenience and partly from lack of a scientific habit of thought, to speak of naval strategy and military strategy as though they were distinct branches of knowledge which had no common ground. It is the theory of war which brings out their intimate relation. It reveals that embracing them both is a larger strategy which regards the fleet and army as one weapon, which co-ordinates their action, and indicates the lines on which each must move to realise ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... blight their land with ignorance and indolence, to be followed by crime and anarchy. Their point of view was so radically different from that held by a large number of Northern people that it left no common ground for action,—scarcely, indeed, an opportunity for reasoning together. In the South they saw and felt their danger, and they determined at all hazards to defend themselves against policies which involved the total destruction ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... made them stronger than ever. In the school at Albany he had absorbed much of the white man's education, and, while his Indian nature remained unchanged, he understood also the white point of view. He could meet both Robert and Willet on common ground, and theirs was a friendship that ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... by agreement, opened the debate, he was fully conscious that he was addressing an audience which was in the main hostile to him. With the instinct of a born stump speaker, he sought first to find common ground with his hearers. Appealing to the history of parties, he pointed out the practical agreement of both Whig and Democratic parties on the slavery question down to 1854. It was when, in accordance with the Compromise of 1850, he brought in the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... took pains to search out our fellow beings. The camper below us proved to be Don Gaspar, velvet breeches and all. He received us hospitably, and proffered perfumed cigarettos which we did not like, but which we smoked out of politeness. Our common ground of meeting was at first the natural one of the gold diggings. Don Gaspar and his man, whom he called Vasquez, had produced somewhat less flake gold than ourselves, but exhibited a half-ounce nugget ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... sincere supporter of the British connection could co-operate. It was the assistance afforded by the Bond in moulding British administration in South Africa upon South African lines that provided the common ground upon which Rhodes and Hofmeyr met in their long alliance. Hofmeyr probably never abandoned his belief that a republican form of government was the inevitable denouement to which the administration of South Africa on a basis of South African ideas must lead. Rhodes never wavered in his loyalty ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... 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 ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... 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
... that in this case they had a common ground; yet even thus he couldn't catch her by it. "Oh, I don't mean," she said from the threshold, "the fun that you mean. Good-night." In answer to which, as he turned out the electric light, he gave an odd, short groan, almost a grunt. He HAD ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... 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 ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... Van Buren under any circumstances; but the pervading tone of 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, but there was one great and vital issue to freedom on ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... view, from persuasion, by the possibility of communicating it and by showing its validity for the reason of every man; for in this case the presumption, at least, arises that the agreement of all judgements with each other, in spite of the different characters of individuals, rests upon the common ground of the agreement of each with the object, and thus the correctness of ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... tongue. Nay, more! your own traditions trace you here— Widespread in lapse of ages through the land— From o'er the mighty ocean of the West. What better title have you than ourselves, Who came from o'er the ocean of the East, And meet with you on free and common ground? Be reasonable, and let wisdom's words Displace your passion, and give judgment vent Think more of bounty, and talk less of rights— Our hands are full of gifts, our ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... him? Isabelle wondered.... Dinner, plentiful and appetizing, was finally provided by the one negro woman. Darnell tried to talk to Lane, but to Isabelle's surprise her husband was at a disadvantage:—the two men could not find common ground. Then Darnell and Falkner quoted poetry, and Isabelle listened. It was all very different from anything she knew. While the others waited for their coffee, Darnell showed her the old orchard, —"to smell the first blossoms." It was languorously still there under the trees, ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... 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
... in 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 ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... daughter and I am touched by what you say. Let us find common ground. Promise me that you will suspend judgment in this matter for a year, your promise meantime to be revoked and at the end of that time, we will take it up afresh. This will give time ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... elements a little difficult to harmonize at first. But Richard desired me to form a neutral house, as at Damascus, where politics and religion should never be mentioned, and where all might meet on a common ground. I did so, with the result that we had friends in all camps. There was an abundance of society of all kinds: Austrian, Italian, and what Ouida has called the haute Fuiverie. We were in touch with ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... have decided to work together also; and if they still have a passage at arms occasionally over some doubtful point, yet the results of their investigations are ever drawing them nearer to each other,—since men who study truth, when they reach their goal, must always meet at last on common ground. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... in celebrating the Passover, the feast of Pentecost, and the feast of Tabernacles; every male throughout the land was to appear before the Lord at Jerusalem with a gift; here the bond and the free stood on common ground. ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... longer 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 ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... a lump in his throat. It was the first time for months that any human being had met him on common ground. He experienced a warm feeling for Rutherford. And the curious thing about that was that out of the realm of the subconscious rose instantly the remembrance that he had never particularly liked Tommy Rutherford. He was one of the ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the garden should show its shrubbery and its flowers. The side or rear approach should be separated from the lawn, and show its constant business occupation, and openly lead off to where men and farm stock meet on common ground, devoted to every purpose which the farm requires. Such arrangement would be complete in all its parts, satisfactory, and lasting. Tinsel ornament, or gewgaw decoration should never be permitted on any building where the sober enjoyment of agricultural life is designed. It can ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... assumed entire guardianship of Miss Pilgrim, with an air of great dignity intrusted her to my care, and left us promenading while he went in search of Daniel. I, myself, looked in vain for that youth, whom I had not seen since the entrance of the last comers. Miss Pilgrim and I found a congenial common ground in Billy, whom she spoke of as one of the most delightfully original boys she had ever met; in fact, altogether the most fascinating young gentleman she had seen in New York society. You may ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow
... 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 to ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... including all its anti-Spanish stipulations concerning the restoration of the old privileges, the voting of taxes by the States, the defence of the country by native troops, the maintenance of the Catholic religion in all the provinces being the only common ground on which Spaniards and Belgians could meet. It was, nevertheless, a breach of the Pacification of Ghent, and was destined to link Belgium with Spain for many years to come. It was also a definite ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... subject on which it is more difficult to find a common ground than this. To some people it seems to be immoral even to ask the question—on what are your moral standards based? To others what we call our "moral standards" are so obviously absurd and "unnatural" that the question has for them no meaning. And between these extremes there are so many ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... this writer, although of undoubted intellectual merit, could not annul Delsarte's native tendencies; he could never have led Delsarte into any camp which the latter had not already decided to join; but when they met on common ground, he influenced, excited and sometimes ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... appeared to him to have passed in her misery beyond the bounds where any human sympathy could be of use. She was no longer his wife, nor he her husband; she was no longer even a fellow mortal between whom and himself there might be some common ground of understanding. Absolutely alone and unapproachable, he knew that she had reached the ultimate desolation of ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... common ground rice, mixed into a stiff paste with any dye; dry it before the fire, and when quite hard, pound it to a fine powder. The buds, berries, and hearts of some double flowers are made with cotton wool, wound around wire, moulded to the shape with thumb and finger. Smooth it over with gum water, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... literary culture, and a yet deeper contempt for social accomplishments and social position. In time he found out the grievous disadvantages of living in solitude with a companion who did not know how to think, and whose stock of ideas was so slight that the only common ground of talk between them was gossip and quodlibets. But her lack of sprightliness, beauty, grace, refinement, and that gentle initiative by which women may make even a sombre life so various, went for nothing with him. What his friends ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... was all simple and gay and charming, the little feast; and full of grievous self-consciousness as the shyest guest might have been when first met by Betty at the doorstep, the pleasure of the party itself proved most contagious, and all fears were forgotten. Everybody met on common ground for once, without any thought of self. It came with surprise to more than one girl's mind that a party was really so little trouble. It was such a pity that somebody did not have one ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... of much interest to note, that in these singing-games, if nowhere else, the country and the city child, the children of the mansion and the children of the alley, meet all, beautifully, on common ground. And, how the out-door ones lie dormant for spaces, and spring simultaneously into action in widely separated parts—town and country alike—is a problem which may not be easily solved. It seems to us that, like the songs of birds, they belong ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... 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 fowls. The propagating instinct ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... kind of attenuated claim to rule, but except for them and the still more infinitesimal pretensions of one or two ax-presidents of republics, no member of the council had even the shade of a right to his participation in its power. It was natural, therefore, that its opponents should find a common ground in a clamour for representative government, and build high hopes upon ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... mistakes. Yours, by placing you here among the lives which I can imagine, gives you the opportunity of excelling. You felt that you needed to live under conditions in which the effort and the merit would lie in not changing, in which action would be immobility. You know, Rose, there is always some common ground in human beings; to reach it, if you do not stoop, the others will raise themselves. With your beauty which is the wonder of every one you meet, with that gentleness which wins all hearts and with your soul which no longer knows either malice ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... 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 once to speak ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... confirmation of an old truth—that the boundary lines which mark off one field of science from another are purely artificial, are set up only for temporary convenience. The chemist has only to dig deep enough to find that the physicist and himself occupy common ground. "Delve from the surface of your sphere to its heart, and at once your radius joins every other." Even the briefest glance at electro-chemistry should pause to acknowledge its profound debt to the new theories as to the bonding of atoms to form molecules, and of the continuity between solution ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... incumbent of St Basil's at Hawthorne, the latter a small settlement, about nine miles distant, in which the English element predominated. Once a year the congregation of St. Basil's gave a picnic tea, when members of surrounding denominations met tranquilly on common ground and neutral territory. Macaulay's description of the peculiar position of the Church of England is nowhere truer than in some isolated districts like these Lower Canadian hamlets. She does, indeed, occupy a happy middle ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... 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 ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Upon the 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 ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... further, we can see plainly enough the object and purport of the whole doctrine. Its main result is to isolate. It isolates each man from his fellows; he cannot tell {95} what they know or think, they cannot reach any common ground with him. It isolates him from nature; he cannot tell what nature is, he cannot tell whether he knows anything of nature or reality at all. It isolates him from himself; he cannot tell for certain what relation exists (if ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... a great deal like undue influence—it implies that the property wasn't disposed of as originally intended. The most common ground is duress—physical pressure." ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of idolatry, which is in remarkable contrast to the inclination to it that had marked their previous history. So one answer only was possible, and it was given with unwelcome plainness of speech, which might have been more courteous, and not less firm. It flatly denied any common ground; it claimed exclusive relation to 'our God,' which meant, 'not yours'; it underscored the claim by reiterating that Jehovah was the 'God of Israel'; it put forward the decree of Cyrus, as leaving no option but to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 a religion, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... a musing air. "The curious student of humanity," he remarked, "traces resemblances where they are not obviously conspicuous. Now, at the first blush, one would not think of any common ground of meeting for our Aunt Anniky and the Empress Josephine. Yet that fine French lady introduced the fashion of handkerchiefs by continually raising delicate lace mouchoirs to her lips to hide her ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... and bad weather, the meetings with Raymond became more difficult to pursue and she saw less of him. They had patched their quarrel and were friendly enough, but the perfect understanding had departed. They preserved a common ground and she did not mention subjects likely to annoy him. He appeared to be working steadily, seldom came into the shops and was more reserved ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... 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 ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... first attention should be given to bringing out the broad, healthy powers of human nature, not to increasing any peculiar attributes. "How much of life," asked Margaret Fuller, "is the life neither of man or of woman, but of Humanity?" Every mother should seek to lay a firm foundation in this common ground of Humanity, out of which the special flowers will grow more ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... powerful and brilliant speech, opposing the amendment because he was for peace, and because peace could only be maintained by showing France that we were preparing for war. So the rival leaders based their opposite action on a common ground. Dayton, the speaker, now embodied Gallatin's idea in another form, and introduced a paragraph to the effect that "the House receive with the utmost satisfaction the information of the President that a fresh attempt at negotiation will be instituted, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... afterwards he pretended a reason for staying. They had no more voluntarily cultivated the natural than the supernatural; he kindled the fire for her, and she made the coffee for him, not because they preferred, but because they must; and they had arrived at their common ground in the occult by virtue of being alone together, and not by seeking the solitude for the experiment which the solitude promoted. Mrs. Alderling did not talk less, nor he more, when either was alone with me, than when we were all together; perhaps he was more silent, and she not quite so much; ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... poverty, sincerity, debasement, and crime. No human being is truly ridiculous, however grotesque may be the expression of his feelings, when they are the genuine outpouring of a contrite heart. These nobles, common citizens, and beggars, thus meeting upon common ground, in a country where the distinctions of rank are so rigidly observed, and for the time being disregarding all differences of condition; forgetting their ambitions, their jealousies, and animosities, and giving themselves up with such unselfish zeal to all the demands made upon them by their forms ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... matters after consultation with others assume a very different aspect to that which at first sight they seemed to present. If difficulties arise he must not threaten. It does more harm than good. Let him try what conciliation will do. Let him see whether common ground of action cannot be found. Certainly it is unwise to rush into print; it only tends to inflame the smouldering embers of a quarrel which, but for the unfortunate publicity given to it, might soon have come to ...
— Churchwardens' Manual - their duties, powers, rights, and privilages • George Henry
... 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 ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... because they're whipped into line and bullied and snarled at. It's because they're treated like men—and made to feel they're a needed part of a big whole. You should hear Fred tell of the way men meet in this forest service—superintendent meeting ranger on a common ground. And why? Because they're doing something constructive. Because the work's the thing that counts. You'll see what it's done for Fred. The boy has a real dignity; not the stiff-necked kind he'd acquire around ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... College The Village of the Seven Palms Basketball at Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow Biology Class at Lucknow College A Social Service Group-Lucknow College Village People Girls of All Castes Meet on Common Ground Shelomith Vincent Street Scenes in Madras Scenes at Madras College At Work and Play The New Dormitory at Madras College The Old India Contrasts First Building at New Medical School, Vellore Dr. Scudder and the Medical Students at Vellore ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... our common schools, I repeat, should be Christian, but not sectarian. There is sufficient common ground which all true believers in Christianity agree in, to effect an incalculable amount of good, if honestly and faithfully taught. Which of the various religious sects in our country would take exceptions to the inculcation of ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... division is our own little work-table, and, in fact, our own individual 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
... 'You have fulfilled your task, it is true; but so fair an orchard requires a better setting. Golden trees should not grow out of common ground and be enclosed by common walls. Let your adopted son first turn all the ground and the walls into diamonds and rubies and precious stones, so that I may have orchards whereof the like is not known in all the world, and then will I give ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... Church work in America than a good many professional slum workers. She has been spending nearly all summer in getting information." Rollin was beginning to feel more at ease as they talked over this coming work of humanity. It was safe, common ground. ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... has thus related to each other the Celt and the Teuton, she takes another branch of the Indo-European family, the Sclaves, and shows us them as having the same name with the German Suevi, the SOLAR people; the common ground here, too, being that grand point of union, the sun, fire. So, also, we find Mr. Meyer, whose Celtic studies I just now mentioned, harping again and again on the connection even in Europe, if you go back far enough, between Celt and German. So, after all we have heard, and truly ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... that I never sinned 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 rather, "Such-and-such ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... bent, Their mania for some silly game, Their hours in stupid gossip spent,— Would give me self-contempt and shame; Between us is no common ground On which a ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... prostitutes from every quarter of Paris to "do the Palais." The Stone Galleries belonged to privileged houses, which paid for the right of exposing women dressed like princesses under such and such an arch, or in the corresponding space of garden; but the Wooden Galleries were the common ground of women of the streets. This was the Palais, a word which used to signify the temple of prostitution. A woman might come and go, taking away her prey whithersoever seemed good to her. So great was the crowd attracted thither at night by the women, that it was impossible to move except at a slow ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... was doing. If he had been less independent, he might have 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
... Malesherbes may be common ground for us offers me the best prospect I see for the pleasure of meeting ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... three centuries of life in Virginia, did not like all these new people coming merely with the stamp of the Government upon them, which was often, so they thought, no stamp at all; but with the ceaseless and increasing pressure from the North they met now on common ground at the President's official reception, mingling ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... republic to its foundations, and perhaps topple it to the ground, this same Alsace-Lorraine difficulty is, in home affairs, almost the only question in whose consideration all parties unite on the common ground of patriotism. A republican orator is sure to win the applause of the Right when he refers in eloquent terms to the "Lost Provinces," "about which," as Gambetta said, "a Frenchman should always ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... systems it is important to distinguish between religion and ethics. In the sphere of ethics the different faiths of men may find much common ground, while in their religious elements they may be entirely true or utterly false. The teachings of Confucius, though agnostic, presented a moral code which places the relations of the family and state on a very firm basis. And the very highest precepts of Buddhism belong to the period in which it ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... the 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 ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the English team through all the Internationals of the season 1913-14, could have had anything in common, except football, with Dune, artist and poet if ever there was one. But on the few occasions when I saw them together it struck me that football was the very least part of their common ground. And that was the first occasion on which I suspected that Jerry Lawrence was ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... a public body. They are not Incorporated into a framework of exclusive, narrow-minded interests of their own. Each individual looks out of his own insignificance at a scene, ideal perhaps, and foreign to himself, but true to nature; friends, strangers, meet on the common ground of humanity, and the tears that spring from their breasts are those which 'sacred pity has engendered.' They are a mixed multitude melted Into sympathy by remote, imaginary events, not a combination cemented by petty views, and ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... suffering and heroism of the black soldier was fully equal to that of the Anglo-Saxon. It was quite the same, the gentleness and appreciation. They were a study, these men so widely apart in life, but here strangely close and alike on the common ground of duty and sacrifice. They received precisely the same care; each fed like a child, for with their bandaged eyes they were as helpless as blind men. When the ice pads were renewed on Captain Mills's eyes the same change was made on Private Clark's ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... insult a German, therefore he cannot insult you. He does not know about such things in the Anglo-Saxon meaning. His conception of social and moral values is so obtusely or radically different from those of the truly occidental civilizations that there is little common ground here. Consequently, in such relations, the Teuton does not feel anything to be sorry for. There is nothing for him to worry about in any shame ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... their friendliness, greediness, and even sociability—where nuts are in evidence or anticipated—I have written fully in the chapter on Tahoe Tavern. Of the three ground-squirrels the largest is the common ground-squirrel of the valleys of California. It is gray, somewhat spotted on the back, and has a whitish collar and a bushy tail. The next in size is the "picket-pin", so called from his habit of sitting bolt upright on his haunches and remaining steadfast ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... with Philip,—and there was a certain element of ingenuous unconsciousness in which they were not so far unlike,—it only placed them in the more complete antagonism. Perhaps if two beings were in absolutely no respect alike, they never could meet even for purposes of hostility; there must be some common ground from which the aversion may proceed. Moreover, in this case Aunt Jane utterly disbelieved in Malbone because she had reason to disbelieve in his father, and the better she knew the son the more she disliked the ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... 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 having at each other—round the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... neutrality. But if it may not be resisted, it 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 entirely greater and more honourable ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... she, no 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 snapt, 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, so sweet ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... the hungry young people by 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 ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... was no teasing 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 ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... heed to what he said, which was not Geissler's way at all. That same assistant, moreover, must presumably have altered his own opinion, since he was now a would-be purchaser himself of lands from the common ground held by the State. ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... play and a supper, but she had declined, gracefully enough—but she had declined, and Mrs. Stephen also. He could not make these people out, he told himself. Did they and he live in such different worlds that they could never meet on common ground? ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... conditions. To her, a woman was a woman, whether garbed in purple or the rags of the gutter; Freda was a woman. She would not have been surprised had she been taken into the dancer's cabin and encountered on common ground; nor surprised had she been taken in and flaunted in prideless arrogance. But to be treated as she had been treated, was unexpected and disappointing. Ergo, she had not caught Freda's point of view. And this was good. There are some points of view which cannot be gained ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... 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 will of ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... people among whom the redeeming spirit of Christianity has no permanent abode. I know, indeed, that college is no place for infusing or fostering sectarian prejudices, nor for preferring the weapons of sectarian warfare. No spirit of party should walk abroad on this common ground. No distinctive privileges of a denomination should here be ever claimed or allowed. But, as none are exempted from their obligations to God, and none are safe without His blessing, it is most evident ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... English apologists of Christianity 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 human instincts of the ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... occasional 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, or a "stag party" at some outlying tavern, formed the sum of their ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... the news and the prices. Here a Greek or Dalmat talks with an eager Italian or a slow, sure Englishman; here the hated Austrian button-holes the Venetian or the Magyar; here the Jew meets the Gentile on common ground; here Christianity encounters the hoary superstitions of the East, and makes a good thing out of them in cotton or grain. All costumes are seen here, and all tongues are heard, the native Triestines contributing almost as much to the variety ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... were divided into three compartments - one at each end for travellers, and one in the centre fitted with the conveniences of a lavatory. A door running in grooves separated each of the others from the lavatory; but as there were neither bolts nor locks, the whole suite was practically common ground. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... manhood. Yet even here the tender pitifulness of Dorothea overpasses a barrier that to any other would be impassable. In her sweet, instinctive, universal sympathy for human sorrow and pain, she finds a common ground of union; and in no fancied sense of superiority—solely from the sense of common human need—she strives to console, to elevate, to lead back to hope and trust, with a gentle yet steadfast simplicity all ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... to his old friend in the Hollow with some thought, and the shepherd, seeing how it was, would smile as he helped the lad on his way. The scholar looked forward with confidence to the time when young Matt would discover for himself, as Sammy had found for herself, that the only common ground whereon men and women may meet in safety is the ground of ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... locus standi to the opponents of the Petrine claims, yet the number of those Anglicans who admit the historical, critical, philosophical, and theological assumptions upon which the controversy is based and which are presumed as common ground, is so small and dwindling that, were they all gained to the Church, we should be still a "feeble folk" in the face of that tidal wave of unbelief whose gathering force bids fair to sweep everything before it. Also the lingering impression left from "Tractarian" days as to ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... take a few days to think about it. At our next meeting we found ourselves in agreement again,—but this time on the common ground that it would probably be a wise thing to write a history of the Titanic disaster as correctly as possible. I was supported in this decision by the fact that a short account, which I wrote at intervals on board the Carpathia, in the hope that it would calm ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... delight in trying to discover the secrets of this mysterious creature. Everything about her was a snare to the soul and a snare to the senses. Even the silence that fell between them, far from raising an obstacle to the understanding of their hearts, became the common ground for mutual thoughts. But after a while the many looks in which their eyes encountered each other warned Marie de Verneuil that the silence was compromising her, and she turned to Madame du Gua with one of those commonplace ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... I mean—and argument with them is vain, because we cannot find common ground to start from. What ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... There was no 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 ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... leaning cliff, instead of stumbling on through the trackless night to an unknown "Somewheres." He has always reminded me of John Muir, the only other man I have known intimately who was as insatiate a climber and inspiring a talker. But Bandelier had one advantage. He could find common ground with anyone. I have seen him with Presidents, diplomats, Irish section-hands, Mexican peons, Indians, authors, scientists and "society." Within an hour or so he was easily the Center. Not unconscious ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... 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
... 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 ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... all know; personally I should say that they got the Reformation and deserved it. But it matters nothing to the truth here whether the Reformation was a just revolt and revenge or an unjust culmination and conquest. It is common ground to Catholics and Protestants of intelligence that evils preceded and produced the schism; and that evils were produced by it and have pursued it down to our own day. We know it if only in the one example, ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... 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 ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... finicky pretentious framework, fluttering with the faded rags of ideals long outworn. Every great tradition has its own way of dying; and the classical tradition died of timidity. It grew afraid of the flesh and blood of life; it was too polite to face realities, too elevated to tread the common ground of fact and detail; it would touch nothing but generalities, for they alone are safe, harmless, and respectable; and, if they are also empty, how can that he helped? Starving, it shrank into itself, muttering old incantations; and it continued ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... 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 ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... the Federal government, and it was adopted by the Congress and accepted by the nation; for both the Democratic and Whig parties, then the great dividing political parties, united upon it as common ground in the presidential canvass of 1852. One party, however, styling itself the Free Soil Democracy, the remnant of the party that had in 1848 supported Martin Van Buren for the presidency upon the Buffalo platform of "no more Slave States—no ...
— The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery - Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 • Joseph Ketchum Edgerton
... divisions in the County healed themselves after their own fashion; both parties found common ground in condemning the Baroness's outrageously bad taste ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... tentatively amorous: clear good fellowship was in them. And it was a blessedness (whatever might be her feeling later, when she came to thank him at heart) to be in the presence of a man whose appearance breathed of offering her common ground, whereon to meet and speak together, unburdened by the hunting world, and by the stoneing world. Such common ground seems a kind of celestial to the better order ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Strahan had come over to have a quiet talk with Marian, and had found Mr. Lane there before him. By feminine tactics peculiarly her own, Marian had given them to understand that both were on much the same footing, and that their united presence did not form "a crowd;" and the young men, having a common ground of purpose and motive, were soon at ease together, and talked over personal and military matters with entire freedom, amusing the young girl with accounts of their awkwardness in drill and of the scenes they had witnessed. She was proud indeed of her two knights, as she mentally characterized them,—so ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... than to any other Verein: at least they did provide an excuse for fine concerts: and although he did not share all the Wagnerian ideas on art, he was much nearer them than to those of any other group in music. He could he thought find common ground with a party which was as unjust as himself towards Brahms and the "Brahmins." So he let himself be put up for it. Mannheim introduced him: he knew everybody. Without being a musician he was a member ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... thing the girl by this time had made sure of, viz., when Pierce was his natural self he felt her appeal only faintly. On the other hand, the moment he was not his natural self, the moment his pitch was raised, he saw allurements in her, and at such times they met on common ground. She made the most of ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... Colonies secured their independence, each colony of the thirteen was a helpless independent unit. They had united for the war of Independence, but the union was one of sentiment, there was no constitution, no common ground on which they could unite for political action. Fortunately, the war had produced such wise patriotic men as Washington, Franklin and Hamilton, and through their efforts a political union of the Colonies was accomplished. It took the better part of ten years to do this. It was part of ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... that his eyes, or his manner, might betray what he knew. He might have spared himself this feeling of humiliation on her account, for Ollie, all unconscious of his discovery, was bright and full of smiles. Joe could not rise to her level of light-heartedness, and, there being no common ground between them, he lapsed into his old-time silence over ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... too think, and let us too observe. For if we are ignorant, not merely of the results of experimental science, but of the methods thereof: then we and the men of science shall have no common ground whereon to stretch out ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... Hartley also was constantly toiling to find some common ground upon which negotiators could stand and talk. One of his schemes, which now seems an idle one, was for a long truce, during which passions might subside and perhaps a settlement be devised. Franklin ever lent a courteous ear to any ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses" (Acts 13:39). The best of men need to be saved by faith in Jesus Christ, and the worst need only that. As there is no difference in the need, neither is there in the method of its application. On this common ground all saved sinners meet, and will stand forever. The first step, then, in justification is to despair of works; the second, to believe on ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... 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 in ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner
... to represent the doctrines forming the common ground of the Anabaptist groups as they existed at the end of the second decade of the fifteenth century. There were, however, as Heinrich Bullinger and his contemporary, Sebastian Franck, point out, numerous divergencies between the various sections of the party. Many ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax |
