Willing as he was to do his full share of the talking, he became aware that except for inarticulate commonplaces he was having to do it all.

Destroy or modify the roots, change the seed, and the buds will bloom, if at all, not orchids, but dull brown commonplaces.

How much your dear father counted on the happiness in store for him in growing old with his children around him!and would he not be rejoiced to see us cling together, bound by ties as strong as life, and cherishing his memory by our mutual affection?" Mildred replied in some commonplaces,rather wondering at the vein of sentiment, and in no way suspecting the object which her step-mother had in view.

But those there were who stood out from the rank and file, for whom she watched, whom she missed if they failed to put in appearance at their accustomed hours, about whom her idle but able imagination wove wonderful fantasies, enduing them with histories and environments as far removed from fact as the drab dreams of the realists are from the picturesque commonplaces of everyday.

And how he did eat, saying nothing at all, while Harriet plied him with food and talked to me of the most disarming commonplaces.

Chatter not, sublime reader, commonplaces of scoundrel moralists against ambition.

We swapped commonplaces, I telling him what my business there was; and for a little while he plied his knife and fork busily, making the heavy gold curb chain on his left wrist tinkle musically.

Miracles had already become commonplaces; what might have been epic once was incidental now.

With a quick eye for the weak point of an enemy, and a knack of so draping commonplaces with rhetoric that they shall have the momentary air of profound generalizations, he is also, like him, more cunning in expedients than capable of far-seeing policy.

So he yielded and lingered, proffering apologies and exchanging polite commonplaces.

I would have given my soul, as the saying is, for the "feel" of those Bavarian villages we had passed through by the score; for the normal, human commonplaces; peasants drinking beer, tables beneath the trees, hot sunshine, and a ruined castle on the rocks behind the red-roofed church.

Mrs. Egg groaned, drawling commonplaces to her visitor, but he stayed a full hour, admiring the new milk shed and the cider press.

There is nothing either about its "dome," or about the scenery, except commonplaces so flat that one doubts if it be quite fair to quote them The very use, since so essential grown, Of painted scenes, was to his [Shakspere's] stage unknown.

After a few minutes of awkward commonplaces, he and Henrietta went up the lawns, leaving Del there.

"No," she went on, "your case is one of the commonplaces of life among those peopleand they're in all classeswho look for emotions and not for opportunities to be useful.

Some of them have become commonplaces for admiration, notably his description of the flight of the skylark, and the sentence in which he compares the gradual awakening of the human faculties to the sunrise, which "first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills."

But the easy scorn of Dryden and the delightful malice of Pope gave a pungent personal interest to their sarcasm, infinitely more effective than these commonplaces of satire.

A tired English statesman at a big reception is still allowed to spend his time rather in chaffing with a few friends in a distant corner of the room than in shaking hands and exchanging effusive commonplaces with innumerable unknown guests.

" I was getting the commonplaces of trench life.

Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull commonplaces, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence.

We are no more those hackneyed commonplaces that we appear in the world: an inn restores us to the level of nature, and quits scores with society!

Neither Dicky nor I spoke, except to exchange the veriest commonplaces.

His whole ability lay in putting a most imposing countenance upon commonplaces.

Still, no more than the Master did he appear one of life's commonplaces.

They might have uttered the dreariest commonplaces, but, in their vast isolation, they seemed musical and eloquent.