“Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.”

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
Context: Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable. Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else, - very rarely to those who say to themselves, "Go to, now, let us be a celebrated individual!"

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable." by Oliver Wendell Holmes?

Oliver Wendell Holmes photo

Oliver Wendell Holmes 135

Poet, essayist, physician 1809–1894

Related quotes

“Nothing is more common than the wish to be remarkable.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858), ch. XII : Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.
Misattributed
Source: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Criminal_Minds_(season_1) Criminal Minds] ("L.D.S.K." - season 1, episode 6).

“There’s nothing quite so pernicious as wishful thinking.”

James K. Morrow book Towing Jehovah

Source: Towing Jehovah (1994), Chapter 11, “War” (p. 285)

“Nothing is so common as to imitate one's enemies, and to use their weapons.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Rien n’est si ordinaire que d’imiter ses ennemis, et d’employer leurs armes.
"Oracles" (1770)
Citas, Questions sur l'Encyclopédie (1770–1774)

“Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?'

'To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.'

'The dog did nothing in the night-time.'

'That was the curious incident,' remarked Sherlock Holmes.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventure of Silver Blaze

Source: Silver Blaze

“Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Art

“Nothing is more remarkable in the Bible than the absence of argument…Argument is internal continuity. So is logical sequence in narrative: in the Bible the connectives are just "and."”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), p. 200

“To a great mind, nothing is little,' remarked Holmes, sententiously.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book A Study in Scarlet

Source: A Study in Scarlet

“She might be pointing to a doorway, or a person, or the sky. But such things were so common to my eyes, so undistinguished, that they would register as "nothing" I walked in a gray world of nothing.”

Jerry Spinelli book Stargirl

Source: Stargirl

“Which I wish to remark,—
And my language is plain,—
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar.”

Bret Harte (1836–1902) American author and poet

The Heathen Chinee (1870)

Related topics