Connecting the Dots

"...The things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things are more valuable than extraordinary things; nay, they are more extraordinary. ...This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately."
- G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Chapter IV: The Ethics of Elfland

"To us a man's character is that which is peculiarly his own; it distinguishes each one from the rest. To the Greeks it was a man's share in the qualities all men partake of; it united each one to the rest. We are interested in people's special characteristics, the things in this or that person which are different from the general. The Greeks, on the contrary, thought what was important in a man were precisely the qualities he shared with all mankind."
- Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way, Chapter XVI: The Way of the Greeks

(Both excellent books, by the way.)