Ordinary man

“ The ordinary man, confronted by the daily problems of ordinary life, perceives that there are daily difficulties, daily obscurities, daily contradictions. Being a moderately sensible fellow, he makes the best of all these difficulties and contradictions, and, practically, gets on pretty well. ”

“ He appears to him in two entirely different capacities. First he appears to him merely as a man, an ordinary man, with faults and weaknesses like other ordinary men. His private life is apt to be discussed in the newspapers. ”

“ This predominating feature can perhaps be best defined as a certain low estimate of the value of individuality in the common man, a cheap appraisal of the worthwhileness of the life of the ordinary person. ”

“ Thus you will come in contact with larger conceptions, fuller ideas, deeper sympathies, higher aspirations than is possible where you follow the ordinary routine of the ordinary, mediocre, self-contented man. ”

“ But his pinch will come in learning properly to shape his mind's attitude toward all things, and especially toward his fellow man. For the courtesies of ordinary life, he must substitute unselfishness, forbearance, and tolerance. ”

“ In the case of every thing that belongs to the realm of sentiment—religion, politics, morality, the affections and antipathies, &c.—the most eminent men seldom surpass the standard of the most ordinary individuals. ”

“ In the ordinary commonplace life we shrink to ordinary commonplace selves, but it is one of the blessings of great experiences, even though they are tragic or painful, that they throw us out into that enormously greater self to which we belong. ”

“ If one looked deeper, one saw at once that he was not ordinary, that the piquancies of his conversation and his manner—his free-and-easy vaguenesses, his abrupt questions, his lollings and loungings, his innumerable oaths—were something more than an amusing ornament, were the outward manifestation of an individuality that was fundamental. ”

“ Behold then all human faculties developed, memory and imagination in full play, egoism interested, reason active, and the mind almost at the highest point of its perfection. Behold all the natural qualities in action, the rank and condition of every man assigned him; not merely his share of property and his power to serve or injure others, but also his wit, beauty, strength or skill, merit or talents: and these being the only qualities capable of commanding respect, it soon became necessary to possess or to affect them. ”

“ Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality. ”

“ How elevated must be the tone of their thoughts, the style of their conversation! and what a lucky accident it was that led you to that goal to which all your wishes and hopes have been converging!—For how much can a man live—a single gentleman like myself—here in your city? ”

“ Ah! father, your rugged constitution, your untiring energy, your stoical sobriety and your inveterate habit of working make you an exceptional man, and you imagine a society formed after your image, you do not see that there is no suitable place there for any but exceptional men. ”

“ Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you, and all men, and all events. Ordinarily, every body in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other person. ”

“ Without pretending to answer these questions I am not unwilling to reaffirm what I have said before, that in the uncivilised man we have just as great a divergence of character as we have in civilised society. ”

“ In order to reach still more definite results, let us consider what their psychology, that is to say, what their doctrine, was in regard to the nature of man, considered as an isolated individual, or viewed in his unsocial capacity. You will observe that man presents himself to our notice under two points of view; as a member of society, and as a man simply, and irrespective of all social relations; in other and shorter words, as a citizen and as an individual. Now, the question is, What are the attributes and constituents of man considered as an individual? ”

“ To analyze his experience, study the pictures of his deeds, and estimate his character by a free and universal standard, is one of the fittest and finest tasks to which we can be summoned. To do this with assimilating sympathy and impartial temper, stooping to no meaner considerations than the good and evil, the baseness and grandeur of man as man, requires a degree of freedom from narrow distastes, class and local biases, but rarely attained. ”

“ To put myself in a nutshell, I suppose I'm simply a working man; I have his virtues and I have his defects. I'm a very common fellow."
"Do you call yourself a very common fellow because you really believe yourself to be one, or because you are weakly tempted to disfigure your rather flattering catalogue with a great final blot?" ”

“ Everywhere and always our ordinary living implies this reference to values, to better and worse, desirable and undesirable, vulgar and refined. And that is the same thing as saying that our ordinary living is not scientific. ”

“ I recollect seeing in some author a description of a true gentleman, in which, among other things, he was characterized as the man that asks the fewest questions. This trait of refined society might be adopted into home-life in a far greater degree than it is, and make it far more agreeable. ”

“ The ordinary human being, until he is so aroused, will acquiesce in any collective activities that are going on in this world in which he finds himself, and any phrasing or symbolization that meets his vague need for something greater to which his personal affairs, his individual circle, can be anchored. ”

“ We must frankly confess, then, using our empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices, that in the world that actually is, the virtues of sympathy, charity, and non-resistance may be, and often have been, manifested in excess. ”

“ What is applicable universally, is also applicable individually,—and now, ‘parlez-moi raison si vous l’osez.’—But, seriously speaking, a man who has the misfortune to be born with a too independent spirit, and who cares little for common opinion, merely because it is common, should remain unchanged all his life. ”

“ You know a conjuror gets no credit when once he has explained his trick, and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all." ”

“ I insist that whether I shall be a whole man or only the half of one in comparison with others is a question in which I am somewhat concerned; and one which no other man can have a sacred right of deciding for me. ”

“ It was as if the projection had been so completely outward that one could but find one’s self almost uneasy about the mere perspective required for the common acts of the personal life, that minimum of vagueness as to what takes place in it for which the complete “home” aspires to provide.
What had it been their idea to do, the good people—do, exactly, for their manners, their habits, their intercourse, their relations, their pleasures, their general advantage and justification? ”

“ And in the same way, when we deal with Man, — with the concrete issues of his daily life, — with the problems of private passion or of public policy, we have to do, primarily, with human nature as it is, and with all the unconquerable naïveté of our desires, of our imperfections, and even of our virtues. ”

“ It would be impossible for the ordinary mortal so to acquaint himself with them as to become a “social success;” and this is far from our purpose. All we need care about is to see that the habits formed are free from anything offensive. ”

“ Under the regime of prescribed routine, of life with regard to the hereafter, and of mysterious powers of all sorts, more or less in good standing in the realm of the unworldly, personal individuality, though in itself not without some honour, was valued chiefly and primarily for the different conditions, the different relations to the things of this world, and the different views of these things, which men succeeded in overcoming, or rather in completely denying and eschewing. ”

“ I admire your sort most of all, the independent sort who 'don't give a damn'—who try to live up to their own ideals, and not down to those of the sheep-like multitude, the sort every one respects and a good many fear, the sort whom fellows go to when in trouble, the sort who don't parade their principles but try to follow them, the sort who have a sense of humor and get a lot of fun out of life, and yet see fit, for instance, to go to Murray Hall and—what's the matter, have I hurt you? ”

“ Is it possible to draw all our passions inward? Shall the boiling heat of youth be sunk in pleasures, the ambition of manhood in selfish intrigues? Shall all that is glorious, all that is worth the pursuit of great minds, be so easily rooted out? When the universal bent of a people seems diverted from the sense of their common good, and common glory, it looks like a fatality, and crisis of impending misfortune. ”

“ By this perpetually-renewed casting down of the hard barriers of individuality, these willing submissions to the compelling rhythm of a larger existence than that of the solitary individual or even of the human group--by this perpetual widening, deepening, and unselfing of your attentiveness--you are to enlarge your boundaries and become the citizen of a greater, more joyous, more poignant world, the partaker of a more abundant life. ”

“ Indeed, I do not expect to be understood in this except by those of my class—the men whose large responsibilities and duties have forced them to put wholly aside those feelings in which the ordinary run of mankind may indulge without harm. ”

“ In some cases these two forms are in fact entirely separated, and one or the other can exist entirely distinct from the other—as in the case of the kind feelings of a good man towards the poor and miserable. ”

“ What a man is depends on his character; but what he does, and what we think of what he does, depends on his circumstances. ”

“ He felt, how arbitrary was the law of human opinion; how little resorted to were the principles of human nature; how difficult to eradicate those principles impressed on the character without any operation of the reason, received in the first era of existence, expanding with the years, and associating with all the feelings, the passions, and the habits of life. ”

“ Yet while the separate self and the conjunct self lodge in the same being, the degree and kind of attention accorded to the latter marks the stage of moral maturity at which man or nation has arrived. ”

“ To know how to deal with such men—to know how to use them—is the problem which ambitious force is called upon to solve. Personality, individuality, force of character, or by whatever name we choose to designate original and vigourous manhood, is the best thing which nature has in her gift. ”

“ It might be truer to say that I, the real, the deeper, the relatively impersonal, or, rather, if you like, the genuinely and essentially personal self, need, and so express myself in, the world of social business. All we human selves are thus one true organic self, in so far as we work together. And this organic self we all of us experience just in so far as we do toil together. But not even this larger self of society can fully express the vocation which constitutes me in my true, in my deeper personality. ”

“ She weighed this, a forefinger against a cheek.
“The big ways are those which indicate character, aren’t they? While the little ones only make for habits. Men differ as to their habits, but in character they’re all cut on the same pattern—two or three patterns at most.” ”

“ You will hear every day the maxims of a low prudence. You will hear, that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. ‘What is this Truth you seek? what is this Beauty?’ men will ask, with derision. If, nevertheless, God have called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true. When you shall say, ‘As others do, so will I: I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early visions; I must eat the good of the land,{179} and let learning and romantic expectations go, until a more convenient season;’—then dies the man in you; ”

“ Thus, men of character are the conscience of the society to which they belong. ”

“ Men, who in private life were just, modest, and good, have been observed, upon their elevation into high places, to have left all their virtuous and beneficent qualities behind them, and to have acted afterwards upon a new spirit, of arrogance, injustice, and oppression. And yet, perhaps, their latter actions had as much the sanction of their own judgment as their first. ”

“ Commonness and the common mind are now generally spoken of as meaning in some manner inferiority and the inferior mind; the mind of the mere mob. But the common mind means the mind of all the artists and heroes ”

“ Facts should explain facts; and the view called ‘individualism’ (because the one reality that it believes in is the ‘individual,’ in the sense of this, that, and the other particular) should hence be the right explanation. What are the facts here to be explained? They are human communities, the family, society, and the state. Individualism has explained them long ago. ”

“ We give it a soul, and a habit and manners which do not attach to its stuff at all. The projection of this imagined living character in our authority is comparable to what we also do with mountains, statues, towns, and so forth. Our living individuality lends individuality to them. ”