And yet said Saville how few men of letters perceive a truth so evident to us so hackneyed even in the conversations of society - Godolphin, Volume 2. by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

The failures of life's hopes and ambitions have been so often lamented that the subject is rather hackneyed and conventional - Anglo-Saxon Literature by John Earle

This is why the ordinary English novel with its hackneyed plot scenes and figures is more comfortable to the ordinary American than an American novel which deals at its worst with comparatively new interests and motives - Literature and Life by William Dean Howells