"Common sense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... profane enough to assert, and the ruled weak enough to allow, that the right of a man to govern his fellows was a direct gift from God, a departure from the bold and selfish principle, though it were only in profession, was thought sufficient to give a character of freedom and common sense to the polity of a nation. This belief is not without some justification, since it establishes in theory, at least, the foundations of government on a base sufficiently different from that which supposes all power to be the property of one, and that one to ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the prince out of the fairy-tale; but Silas Finn and the two others alone of his friends shared the knowledge of the days when he herded swine. Now a prince out of a fairy-tale who has herded swine is a romantic figure. Paul did not doubt that he was one. Even Jane, in spite of her direct common sense, admitted it. Barney Bill proclaimed it openly, slapping him on the back and taking much credit to himself for helping the prince on the way to his kingdom. And Mr. Finn, even in the heat of political discussion or theological asseveration, treated ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... Logic and A System of Moral Philosophy, the latter not published till 1755, nine years after his death. Hutcheson fills a large space in the history of philosophy, both as a metaphysician and as a moralist. He is in some respects a pioneer of the "Scotch school" and of "common sense" philosophy. He greatly developed the doctrine of "moral sense", a term first used by the third Earl of Shaftesbury; indeed, much of his whole moral system may be traced to Shaftesbury. Hutcheson's influence was widely felt: it is plainly ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... them. Good fare do these Servian swine find in the abundant provision of acorns in the vast forests. The men who spend their lives in restraining the vagabond instincts of these vulgar animals may perhaps be thought a collection of brutal hinds; but, on the contrary, they are fellows of shrewd common sense and much dignity of feeling. Kara-George, the terror of the Turk at the beginning of this century, the majestic character who won the admiration of Europe, whose genius as a soldier was praised by Napoleon the Great, and who freed his countrymen from bondage,—Kara-George ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... of fact upon which the Darwinian hypothesis is built; while those, on the other hand, who recognize a diversity of human species, will hardly be able to maintain that such species were primordial and supernatural in the common sense of the word. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... those others were agreed That chaste and good their consorts they believed. — "Think each man as he will, but well I read," (The landlord said,) "You fondly are deceived: Your rash replies to one conclusion lead, That you are all of common sense bereaved; And so too must believe this noble knight, Unless he would ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... not by any means a fool. I have occasionally been tempted to think he is, especially when he talks about having his throat cut at night; but he has always shown me in the end that he has in him a vein of strong common sense. He recognized that I was talking bombast when I spoke about the supreme crisis; but, curiously enough, he is quite convinced of Babberly's sincerity when he says things of ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... again, at the end of our wits!—where the common sense of you mortals loses its hold and snaps. Why dost thou make fellowship with us, if thou canst not carry it through? Wilt thou fly, and art not secure from dizziness? Did we thrust ourselves upon thee, ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... bridge, which was to have been loosened on the approach of Constantine, unluckily broke down under the weight of the flying Italians. M. de Tillemont (Hist. des Empereurs, tom. iv. part i. p. 576) very seriously examines whether, in contradiction to common sense, the testimony of Eusebius and Zosimus ought to prevail over the silence of Lactantius, Nazarius, and the anonymous, but contemporary orator, who composed the ninth Panegyric. * Note: Manso (Beylage, vi.) examines the question, and adduces two manifest ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... sole occupants of the compartment, and, despite the wide dissimilarity of character to be read upon their countenances, seemed to have struck up an acquaintance based upon mutual amiability and worldly common sense. The traveler first to descend and gallantly to offer his hand to his companion in order to assist her to the platform, was the one whom a casual observer would ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... the way back. I know that isn't exactly orders, but it seems to me it's common sense. General Bliss had a long line this morning, and Mardean was practically its centre. Hardport had become his base again. He's held Hardport now for two days, practically, and he's had time to repair all the damage we did. Why shouldn't he ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland
... spattered harmlessly against the boards. Thrice Bobby repeated this. Then, quite without heat or rancour, he threw the toy gun and what remained of the shot over the fence into the vacant lot behind it. His common sense had foretold just this result to his experiment, so he was not in the least disappointed; but he had considered it his duty to try the only expedient his ingenuity could invent. For if—by a miracle—the little gun had discharged ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... satisfactory to the ceding country and made after a plebiscite of the inhabitants, who voted almost unanimously for the change. Here, again, for reasons differing from those of the foregoing instance, no one in his senses would consider that the existing status quo was not one of justice and common sense. ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... Unfortunately, the means which have been adopted to lessen the evil have tended to increase it. In the first place, there was the master-evil of the poor-laws. Malthus points out the demoralising effects of these laws in chapters full of admirable common sense, which he was unfortunately able to enforce by fresh illustrations in successive editions. He attends simply to the stimulus to population. He thinks that if the laws had never existed, the poor would now have been much better off.[251] ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... Finch is a manageable bird. Her life is in her own power, and she will have plenty of all that makes it agreeable. It is winning a home instead of working for it; that is the common sense view—' ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little interest to him. And in this direction lay the main defect of his mind; it was too exclusively Platonic, subjective and spiritual. Had his profound Germanic intuitiveness of vision been tempered with a little more of our homely Anglo-Saxon common sense, the combination would have ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... what is this great and glorious combination of states, so admirably united, really founded? It is founded upon the maxims of common sense and reason, without military despotism or monarchical domination of any kind. The people simply govern themselves, and the government is of the people, by the people ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... 'It's not common sense, and I will not hear of it,' cried Mr Bloomfield. 'I command you, positively, Gid, to desist ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... public games. I have never unconsciously noted a signal even for a kick, much less made a deliberate attempt to learn the opponents' signals or code. What little I know of their ultimate plans is merely by applying common sense to their problem, based on the material and methods which they command. As to the value of scouting, volumes might be written, but suffice it to say that it is the principal means of standardizing the game. If the big teams of the country played throughout ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... Flaxman stepped up and shook hands with her. Daniel seemed to be master of ceremonies, and was walking around with a mixed air of anxiety and satisfaction. The work was new to him, and he was somewhat uncertain all the time what to do next. But on the whole he managed everything with good common sense. He had the children seated directly in front of the tree, some fifty of them, he assured me. Their faces were a picture of genuine childish delight. Probably memory would hold this scene clearly pictured on some of their hearts long after I was sleeping ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... creatures seem to have made up thegither, it's not for us to explain why." - "The panel, who (whatever else he may be) appears to be equally ill set-out in mind and boady." - "Neither the panel nor yet the old wife appears to have had so much common sense as even to tell a lie when it was necessary." And in the course of sentencing, my lord had this OBITER DICTUM: "I have been the means, under God, of haanging a great number, but never just such a disjaskit rascal as yourself." The words were strong in themselves; the light and heat and detonation ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... over all known seas, until at last I came to the shore of a sea beyond which (so the people told me who lived there) there was no further shore. 'I cannot help that,' said I; 'I have not yet come to the End of the World, and it is common sense that such a lot of water must have something at the back of it to hold it up; besides which there is a strong wind blowing out of the gates of the west and from the sunset. Now that wind must rise somewhere, and I am going on to see where it rises.' One of them was kind enough to lend me a boat ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... first to last. She was wise enough to see that I had been made acquainted with matters that I could not possibly have learned through any ordinary channels of communication. In short, she was not so enamoured of professional jargon as to have lost her common sense. The doctor, however, with the mole-blindness of many of his tribe, refused to believe. Nothing of this kind had previously come within the range of his own experience, and it was therefore impossible. He accounted for it all upon the hypothesis of ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... occupation kept him away from home much of the time during my boyhood, and as a consequence I grew up under the sole guidance and training of my mother, whose excellent common sense and clear discernment in every way fitted her for such maternal duties. When old enough I was sent to the village school, which was taught by an old-time Irish "master"—one of those itinerant dominies of the early frontier—who, holding that to spare the rod was to spoil the child, if ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... The Bible is the best of books, and one that reads it as often as Harvey's father should have the best of reasons for so doing. This is no more than common sense." ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... people to survey the world from, before taking their first flight, and strangers looked back upon it, as a quiet nook full of ancient legends and modern lights, which would keep its memory green when many a gayer spot was quite forgotten. Anything based upon common sense found favor with the inhabitants, and Dr. Turner's theories, being eminently so, were accepted at once and energetically carried out. A sort of heathen revival took place, for even the ministers and deacons turned Musclemen; old ladies tossed bean-bags till their caps were awry, and winter ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... pint of port—for the best gentleman in the land should not drink a bottle—carry on one's argument, with gravity and decorum, with any commercial gentleman who, responsive to one's challenge, takes the part of common sense and humanity against 'protection' ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... hope the new owner exhibits some common sense, Uncle dear," she replied, and turned back to the piano. "But I greatly fear," she added to herself, "that the new owner is going to prove a most obstinate creature ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... attempt to make her reasonable, and Jane to make her resigned. As for Elizabeth herself, this invitation was so far from exciting in her the same feelings as in her mother and Lydia, that she considered it as the death warrant of all possibility of common sense for the latter; and detestable as such a step must make her were it known, she could not help secretly advising her father not to let her go. She represented to him all the improprieties of Lydia's general behaviour, the little advantage she could derive from the friendship ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... I have got to tell you now. Hear it all in order, and try to bear up, and use your common sense and courage. As I said before, you have good friends around you, and ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... greater or less degrees, and some of them maintaining their independent lives unrestrained, would have seemed an absurdity. But this truth which, like so many of the truths established by science, is contrary to that common sense in which most people have so much confidence, has been gradually growing clear since the days when Leeuwenhoeck and his contemporaries began to examine through lenses the minute structures of common plants and animals. Each improvement in the microscope, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... possession of some recondite and indescribable magic, sharply separated from the ordinary mental processes of man. The theory is unsound and preposterous. Miss Nightingale accomplished her useful work, not by magic, but by hard common sense. The problem before her was simply one of organization. Many men had tackled it, and all of them had failed stupendously. What she did was to bring her feminine sharpness of wit, her feminine clear-thinking, to bear upon it. Thus ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... comes an antidote Against sic poison'd nostrum; For Peebles, frae the water-fit, [river-mouth] Ascends the holy rostrum: See, up he's got the word o' God, An' meek an' mim has view'd it, [prim] While Common Sense[20] has ta'en the road, An' aff, an' up the Cowgate ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... Conseil d'Etat in France was a great tribunal, established in the centre of the kingdom, which exercised a preliminary and somewhat tyrannical jurisdiction in all political causes. But when I told them that the Conseil d'Etat was not a judicial body, in the common sense of the term, but an administrative council composed of men dependent on the Crown, so that the king, after having ordered one of his servants, called a Prefect, to commit an injustice, has the power of commanding ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... propounded by poets long ago, and perhaps consecrated by religion. It would not require a great man to say calmly: Men, birds, even ether-waves, if you will, feel after this and this fashion. The greatness and the excitement begin when he says: Your common sense, your practical intellect, your boasted science have entirely deceived you; see what the real truth is instead! So M. Bergson is bent on telling us that the immediate, as he describes it, is the sole reality; all else is unreal, artificial, and a more or less convenient symbol in discourse—discourse ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... Without doubt his flask in the moon is full; and not at all less than any of those which Ariosto saw in that planet filled with the lost wits of men, so thoroughly is his great work emptied of every drop of common sense. Nevertheless there prevails in every part so wonderful an agreement with all that the most refined and consistent sense under the same fantastic delusions could produce on the same subject, that the reader will pardon me if I here detect the same curiosities ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... with, on the top of her, a still smaller and still more fragile mite of humanity that, in compliment to its only relative worth a penny-piece, had been christened Thomas—a name common enough in all conscience, as Peter had reminded himself more than once. In the name of common sense, what had dead and buried Tommy Hope to do with this affair? The whole thing was the veriest sentiment, and sentiment was Mr. Peter Hope's abomination. Had he not penned articles innumerable pointing out its baneful ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... and strong; His meat and mistresses are kept too long. But sure we all mistake this pious man, Who mortifies his person all he can What we uncharitably take for sin, Are only rules of this odd capuchin; For never hermit, under grave pretence, Has lived more contrary to common sense." ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... thus to constitute itself Defender of the Faith was not merely to trespass on the office of the Crown, but to sin against the more sacred right of common sense itself. We cannot be surprised, therefore, since the English Parliament sinned in this way (as it does to this day in a minor degree), that the Irish Parliament should have sinned equally, as it did about the same time, in the case of a book whose title far more suggested heresy than its ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... Cholera in my house than be a spiritual medium! for years I have lived alone for spiritualism and its cognates. Henceforth I live to combat many of the identical doctrines that I once accepted as Heavenly truths." "I enter the arena," says he "as the champion of common sense, against what in my soul I believe to be the most tremendous enemy of God, morals and religion, that ever found foothold on the earth—the most seductive, hence most dangerous form of sensualism that ever cursed a nation, age or people." If Dr. ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... Duc de Bouillon, on ceding Sedan, had also been restored to favor; and that if the 'grand ecuyer' had not yet appeared, the reason was the more decided animosity of the Cardinal toward him, and the greater part he had taken in the conspiracy. But common sense and natural justice clearly said that having acted under the order of the King's brother, his pardon ought to follow that ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... the bay mare was making her tired way home he was still fighting—still trying to do something. His professional knowledge and experience told him that he could not win; that, at best, he could do no more than delay his defeat a few days, and his common sense urged him to dismiss the case from his mind. But there was something in Dr. Harry stronger than his common sense; something greater than his professional skill. And so he must go on fighting ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... first, just one trace of common sense, one semblance of a plan for the movement of the hordes and mobs toward the Holy Land. Some who had had a taste of war agreed that, as the numbers were great enough for several armies, they should not start at the same time nor traverse the same route, and that ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... such a thing as common sense," interrupted Vane. "Surely the matter can be put in front of them so that they will understand? . . . If not, it's a pretty useful confession ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... don't see the common sense," persisted Jobson, "if he was determined to kill himself, of leaving all the pies and things that they brought him, and starving himself and getting wet in the bargain, when he had a shorter way of doing ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... life was quiet enough, but, with such beautiful Nature, and plenty to do, we were not lonely,—less so because Jo's hands were as open as her heart, and to her all the sick and poor looked, not only for help, but for the rarer consolations of living sympathy and counsel. Her shrewd common sense, her practical capacity, her kindly, cheerful face, her power of appreciating a position of want and perplexity and seeing the best way out of it, and, above all, her deep and fervent religious ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... reflection came. A sister, youthful, but suddenly sagacious (with a gleam of suspicion), very suddenly has stilled the waves of romance, and the lips of beauty have uttered common sense. Shall they utter it in vain? Never! It may be years before they do it again. We must not slight rare phenomena. Zoe locuta est—Eccentricity must be suppressed. Doctresses, warned by a little starvation, must take the world as it is, and ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... mentioned exists now in the town; I don't think it does. When I commenced business I made it a point fix my price in that way, and I have always adhered that. I was told by some parties I would never do business in that manner; but I had some faith in common sense, and I hoped the people would come to see that they were as well dealt with in taking the real cash value and getting the real cash value; so that we never give a higher price than we consider the thing is worth in the market, and ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... laws prescribing what they must do. There is, moreover, no likelihood that these distinctions will ever be completely abolished. As long as the words "can," "ought," and "must" continue to have any meaning for us the distinctions that they represent will persist in science as well as in common sense. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... of hearing them played by different organists and deciding which sounded the better. To any but a legal mind the affair would seem to have resolved itself mainly into a competition between organ-players; but we know how absolutely lost to all sense of justice, fairness, reason and common sense the legal mind is. So Purcell played for Father Smith, and inevitably the organ built by Father Smith was thought the finer. This easy way of solving a difficult problem, though it has so much to recommend it to the legal mind, ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... England, one is astonished to see, has its royal-republican ways of doing; something Roman in it, from Peerage down to Plebs; strange and curious to the eye of M. de Voltaire. Sciences flourishing; Newton still alive, white with fourscore years, the venerable hoary man; Locke's Gospel of Common Sense in full vogue, or even done into verse, by incomparable Mr. Pope, for the cultivated upper classes. In science, in religion, in politics, what a surprising 'liberty' allowed or taken! Never was a freer turn of thinking. And ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... neither apprehend by our Senses, nor demonstrate by our Reasoning; so that the only Objects of our Faith are such Things as we receive upon the Credit of another; which, how far it is from Vision, is evident to common Sense. And the same Apostle tells us, that now we see through A Glass darkly; and that we know in part, and ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... journalist, but only a reviewer; the distinction is very thin, but let it pass. You know and I know that the houses of none in any way connected with the daily Press should ever be approached. It is plain common sense. The journalist comes home at all hours of the night. His servant (if he keeps one) is often up before he is abed. Do you think to ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... than I should wish to traverse on foot;—of mathematics, enough to give me the headach without clearing the part affected;—of philosophy, astronomy, and metaphysics, more than I can comprehend; and of common sense so little, that I mean to leave a Byronian prize at each of our "Almae Matres" for the first discovery,—though I rather fear that of the longitude ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... moonshine, and draughts of nitrous oxide, which they swallowed with incredible voracity, particularly the females; and we have likewise endeavored to instil into them the precepts of lunar philosophy. We have insisted upon their renouncing the contemptible shackles of religion and common sense, and adoring the profound, omnipotent, and all perfect energy, and the ecstatic, immutable, immovable perfection. But such was the unparalleled obstinacy of these wretched savages that they persisted in cleaving to their wives, and adhering to their religion, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... tyranny and aggravation must lie beneath it all, and blessed their stars that they were still single and able to tell a tale their own way. The married ones had more idea of how it really was, and wished in the name of common sense and good taste that Skratdj and his wife would ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... those who were going the wrong way and were disturbed by some suspicion of the truth. She had known Hiram Ranger long, had had many a trying experience of his character, gentle as a trade wind—and as steady and unchangeable. Also, beneath her surface of desperate striving after the things which common sense denounces, or affects to denounce, as foolishness, there was a shrewd, practical person. "He means some kind of mischief," she thought—an unreasoned, instinctive conclusion, and, therefore, all-powerful ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... than Montesquieu was Voltaire. He exercised an irresistible fascination on the intellectual class by the unrivalled lucidity and logic of his powerful yet witty prose. He carried common sense to the point of genius, threw the glamour of intellect over the materialism of his century, and always seized his pen most eagerly when a question of humanity and liberalism was at stake. He had weak sides, was materialistic in living as {17} in thinking, ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... with the cheese or bread that she was laying on the table. It was an atmosphere of feverish and delirious credulity. The pagan madness got the better of the Christians themselves. Augustin, who had lived in this atmosphere, will later find considerable trouble in maintaining his strong common sense amid such an ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... Sunday who would be ashamed to look as if he were really praying, or confessing real sins when he gets there, is small help to him when the will balances between right and wrong. It is truly, as a matter of mere common sense, a poor bargain, a wretched speculation, to be half religious; to get a few checks and scruples out of it, and no real strength and peace; and, it may be, to lose a man's soul, and not even gain the world. For who dare promise ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Marchant was never in the company of Lord Cochrane, he never heard one word that Lord Cochrane said; all that he speaks of are conversations with Mr. De Berenger, which may be evidence against Mr. De Berenger, but in point of law or common sense are no evidence against Lord Cochrane; but I will dispose of this man for the sake of the country, that he may never be sent out of the country in any office. I will shew you that he is a man utterly unworthy of credit, ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... Bigot; she is too much in every man's eye, and cannot be stowed away in a secret corner like her poor victim. A dead silence on every point of this cursed business is our only policy, our only safety." Cadet had plenty of common sense in the rough, and Bigot was ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Sentences, if weighty, and Philosophical, common Sense tells us they are not fit for a Shepherd's mouth. Here Theocritus cannot be altogether excus'd, but Virgil deserves no reprehension. But Proverbs justly challenge admission into Pastorals, nothing being more common ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... the men of business say,' he answered, resuming the walk and laughing outright. 'I don't know why we unfortunate creatures should be supposed to want common sense, but it is generally taken for granted that we do. Even the best friend I have in the world, our excellent friend over yonder,' said Doyce, nodding towards Twickenham, 'extends a sort of protection to me, don't you know, as a man not quite able ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Mr. and Mrs. Wright. For weeks after, Nancy shuddered to think what might have happened if Hetty and her father had come face to face at the ceremony or the feast. By good luck—or rather by using her common sense and divining the mistake—Hetty refused. Her husband, however, insisted on attending, and she let him go. With his presence the Rector could not ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... here." There was something so sullen and mysterious in the coarse features of this stalwart man-something so revolting in his profession, though it was esteemed necessary to the elevation of men seeking political popularity-something so at variance with common sense in the punishment meted out to him who followed it, as to create a deep interest in his history, notwithstanding his coldness towards the inebriate. And yet you sought in vain for one congenial or redeeming trait in ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... for setting a day that they would talk little. They would simply build fence. She added that a woman in this business had to be looking for the worst of it all the time. She was bound to get the elbow if she didn't use her common sense. ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... Well, every man to his taste; but for me, I don't like to be bought and sold. I like to be my own master, and am suspicious of anything irrevocable. Why should you commit yourself (do you see?) for ever, for ever, to a girl you know so little of? Don't look surprised: it's common sense. It's very well to buy her; but to be bought, that's quite another matter. And I don't know that you can. Being a Roman citizen yourself, you can only make a marriage with a citizen; now the question is whether Callista is a citizen at all. I know perfectly well the sweeping measure ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... looking at it. I've always known that a little common sense would revise the law so that a lot of this absurd red tape could be ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... little speech speaks volumes for the good, hard common sense of our President. He believes thoroughly in our public institutions, and knows the real value of sending out his boys to fight their own battles in the world at large. He does not believe in pampering children, ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... said that no kind of sense is so rare as common sense; and this is true, simply because common sense is attainable by all far more, and is a natural gift far less, than most other traits of character. Common sense is the application of Thought to common things, and it is rare because ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... they arrived. The advice seemed good, so the marechal and the intendant hastened to follow it: the informer was sent to Nimes guarded by six archers, the conduct of the expedition was given to Barnier, the provost's lieutenant, a man of intellect and common sense, and in whom the provost had full confidence. He carried letters ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... vanity struggled against common sense, but sense got the victory, and I replied, with rather shaky voice, 'I'm very much obliged to you,' and then beat a hasty retreat. As soon as I got out of sight, I slipped the ring into my pocket, and walking rapidly to the ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... dear, this is a practical world, you have some common sense even if you are a man of genius; you're ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... and eternal, subject to the action, direct or indirect, of the five senses, whilst its properties present themselves in three states, the solid, the liquid, and the gaseous. To casuistical Berkeley they prefer the common sense of mankind. They ask the idealist and the spiritualist why they cannot find names for themselves without borrowing from a dark and degraded school; why the former must call himself after his eye (idein); the latter after his breath (spiritus)? ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... shock came when I found an innocent loop that had no test in it. No test. *None*. Common sense said it had to be a closed loop, where the program would circle, forever, endlessly. Program control passed right through it, however, and safely out the other side. It took me two weeks to figure ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... therefore naturally forest-clad, I have seen the trees diminish in number, give place to wide prairies, restrict their growth to the borders of streams, and then disappear from the boundless drier plains; have seen grassy plains change into a brown and sere desert—desert in the common sense, but hardly anywhere botanically so—have seen a fair growth of coniferous trees adorning the more favored slopes of a mountain-range high enough to compel summer showers; have traversed that broad and bare elevated region shut off on ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... Germans are very much alive. Please understand, sir, that I'm speaking absolutely without hate. What I mean is that we must destroy Carthage—that is German military power—so completely that the very idea of revenge will appear absurd to any German with an ounce of common sense. As long as there exists at any time the barest chance of an enterprise, they will attempt it. I don't blame them in the least for it; in fact I admire them for not despairing of their country; but our duty—and yours too—is to make such ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... the early stages of society, little difficulty is felt in providing for the administration of justice, because the subjects of controversy are plain and simple, such as any man of common sense may determine; but as civilization advances, the relations between men become more complicated, property assumes innumerable forms, and the determination of questions resulting from these changes, becomes a matter of no ordinary difficulty. In the first ages of the republic, ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... appearance and certainty, since it had nothing but phenomena to build upon, and since there is no criterion to apply to reason itself." Then they proclaimed philosophy a failure, and without foundation. But he, taking a stand on common sense, fought for morality, as did Reid and Beattie, when they combated ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... hard to show that manufactures are noways detrimental either to health or morals; and that the mortality and crime of the manufacturing counties were in no respect greater than those of the pastoral or agricultural districts. The common sense of mankind has uniformly revolted against this absurdity, so completely contrary to what experience every where tells in a language not to be misunderstood; but it has now been completely disproved by the Parliamentary ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... the machine, and if he really is doing stunts with Amalgamated Electric, and is also mixing feet with the Inter-County crowd, why, he is virtually paralleling his own road; and why, in the name of common sense, is he doing that? He'll kill ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... using such slender means as I had already got. My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly there, but to transact some private business with the fewest obstacles; to be hindered from accomplishing which for want of a little common sense, a little enterprise and business talent, appeared not ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... yet comely, fond of home and home duties, and yet not homely. And it would be well if she had a few hundreds—a very small sum would do—for her dower. It is not that he wants the money, which can be settled on herself; but there is a vein of the old, prudent common sense running through Harry's character. He is in no hurry; in time he ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... important match is to be always in "training"; not to have to alter your habits before a match is the secret. To change your diet and mode of living suddenly, as some players do, is more calculated to upset you than to make you fitter for the ordeal. Common sense must of course be used. For instance, you should not eat a heavy meal just before playing. I generally prefer bread-and-cheese, a milk pudding of some sort, and perhaps a little fruit for lunch if I have a match, in the afternoon. I find this diet very satisfying and sustaining, ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... there are books which are depressing. Their pigments are all black. They move from the dignity of Schopenhauer's pessimism to the bedlam of Nietzsche's contempt for life and goodness. But here, also, the sane common sense of humanity comes to the rescue. The picture is not true if it is all white or all black. The Bible is absolutely fair to humanity. It moves within the circle of man's experience; and, while it deals with men, it results in a treatment ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... those who had no other object than the attainment of truth, was to accept "Darwinism" as a working hypothesis, and see what could be made of it. Either it would prove its capacity to elucidate the facts of organic life, or it would break down under the strain. This was surely the dictate of common sense; and, for once, common sense carried the day. The result has been that complete volte-face of the whole scientific world, which must seem so surprising to the present generation. I do not mean to say that all the leaders of biological science ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... successive generations have believed in may be believed by us; a thought expressed by the author of "Modern Painters" in one magnificent sentence, containing 153 words and too long for quotation. The argument is based on the common sense of mankind. It has however this objection. Judgment by such agreement is bound to be cumulative. What is good in the beginning is better to-day, still better to morrow, then ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... shared fully my ambition and sympathized with me and aided me in every way that she could. Though she was totally ignorant, so far as mere book knowledge was concerned, she had high ambitions for her children, and a large fund of good, hard common sense which seemed to enable her to meet and master every situation. If I have done anything in life worth attention, I feel sure that I inherited the disposition from ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... is preposterous when it is contrary to nature, reason, or common sense. Literally, having that last which ought to be first; as, the "cart before ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... happier even if all my plans were put in execution? It would certainly be a somewhat finer thing than it is, for a magnificent uniformity would reign throughout it. I am not a philosopher; and in the affair of common sense, I am bound to own that the Florentine secretary was a master to us all. I am no proficient in theories: with me reflection precedes decision, and execution instantly follows: the shortness of life forbids us to stand still. When ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... the key to the entrance to the cavern, but no visitor was suffered to pass within without the consent of the bishop of the diocese, and the payment of a heavy fee. Among all the extravagance that was written by visitors about the purgatory, some retained their common sense, and perceived that there was either fraud or hallucination in the visions there ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... periodical literature, there will be a countless number of the superficial theories of ignorance and haste for it to examine, while there will be the more pleasing task of noting the introduction of sound philosophy, the progress of careful investigation, the uprising of common sense against hereditary falsehood, and the gradual enlightenment of the clerical, medical, and educational professions by the slow progress of new ideas, and the unembarrassed progress of the physical sciences and inventions which encounter no collegiate hindrance, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... and sitting opposite the Everetts, it seemed impossible to accept as a fact that all four of them at the same time and in the same manner had fallen victims to the same illusion. I think I succeeded in leaving her more hopeful. She acknowledged that the story, looked at from the point of common sense, did sound ridiculous; and threatened me that if I ever breathed a word of it to anyone, she never would speak to me again. She is a charming woman, ...
— The Philosopher's Joke • Jerome K. Jerome
... I know with a head," said she to Catherine. "You have some common sense and can help me. I want to take Esther out of this place within six hours. Can you manage to get ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... Yankees. The diplomats have lost the compass. They, duty bound, were diplomatically obsequious to the power held so long by the pro-slavery party. They got accustomed to the arrogant assumption and impertinence of the slavers, and, forgetting their European origin, the diplomats tacitly—but for their common sense and honor I hope reluctantly—admitted the assumptions of the Southern banditti to be in America the nearest assimilation to the chivalry and nobility of old Europe. Without taking the cudgel in defence of European nobility, chivalry, and ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... it all (if she had cared to justify herself), under the mystery and the beauty and the wonder, there was the sound, practical common sense of it all. As long as Violet was comfortable with Ranny she would stay with him. But she would not be comfortable if she had too many things to do; and if she became uncomfortable she would leave him; and if she left him Ranny would be unhappy. So that the more you did for her the more likely ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... 'It is sober common sense,' I said. 'But you must begin at the right end. First find the race that fears its priests. It is waiting for you—the Mussulmans of Somaliland and the Abyssinian border and the Blue and White Nile. They would be ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... reckon anything's worth all the heart-burnings you're indulging in? Some things are tough; I've waded kinda deep, myself, so I know. But there's nothing you can't get over, with time and lots of common sense, except being a sneak—and being dead. To me, one's as bad as the other, with maybe first choice on death. You aren't a sneak, and I don't see why you hanker to be dead. What do you want to ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... be imagined that this highly sophisticated doctrine was regarded as perverse. All the ordinary prejudices of thought are irritated by a thinker who frankly advises masses of his fellow-men to hold fast to a belief which by all the canons of common sense is nothing but an illusion. M. Sorel must have felt the need of closer statement, for in a letter to Daniel Halevy, published in the second edition, he makes his position much clearer. "Revolutionary myths ..." we read, "enable us to understand the ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... nerves were sorely tried by the lonely imprisonment, the bad air, the heat, and the darkness, and it is not to be wondered at that her usual sound common sense was tricked by her imagination. Her fancy suggested that the weight of the tools might have torn a hole in the floor, they might have dropped through to the roof, and Betty herself might be in momentary danger ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... misery. I could not but perceive, however, that as in the case of the persecuted Mussulman, the misfortunes of my poor friend had their origin in his own bad management, and to speak the honest truth, of common sense. The wound in his hand, indeed, might perhaps be accounted an unavoidable casualty; but had it not been for his previous errors, this misfortune would not have proved the cause of ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... avoids allowing his readers to see that I am contending fundamentally for that which the ablest Christian divines have conceded and maintained; that which the common sense of every missionary knows, and every one who is not profoundly ignorant of the Bible and of history ought to know. Mr. Rogers is quite aware, that no apostle ever carried a Bible in his hand and said to the heathen, "Believe ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... OF THE I. W. W. PROGRAM.—It is a testimonial to the common sense of American workmen that the I. W. W. have made little headway. Until the Lawrence strike in 1912, the movement centered in the Far West, and it is even now practically confined to those parts of the West where industry is less well organized, and ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... in the steward's storeroom, but not a pot, pan, or cooking utensil of any kind in the cabin. So these two poor heathen, against my expostulations—somewhat faint, I admit, for the thought of hot coffee took away some of my common sense—went out on the deck and waded forward, waist-deep in the water, muddy now, from the downfall ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... high, with the neglect of the intervening gradations. But the same error would introduce discord into the gamut, et ab abusu contra usum non valet consequentia. That these degrees will themselves bring forth secondary kinds sufficiently distinct for all the purposes of science, and even for common sense, will be seen in the course of this inquisition: for this is one proof of the essential vitality of nature, that she does not ascend as links in a suspended chain, but as the steps in a ladder; or rather she at one and the same time ascends ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... I sprang down and looked. It was only a few feet across; but to leap through that living fire was to leap into eternity. I drew back instantly, less because my heart failed me, I may truly say, than because my common sense ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... There are some things one can argue against with temper, and submit to, if overruled, without mortification. There are other things that seem to affect one's consciousness of being a sensible man, and to imply a disposition to impose upon his common sense. And of this class of topics, or pretences, I have never heard of any thing, and I cannot conceive of any thing, more ridiculous in itself, more absurd, and more affrontive to all sober judgment, than the cry that we are getting indemnity by the acquisition of ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... altogether from divine revelation, by which we are informed that "all deeps, fire, and hail, snow, and vapour, and stormy wind," are "fulfilling God's word" (which information we are bound to receive as a matter of faith if we be Christians, and as a matter of necessity if we be men of common sense, because it is mere absurdity to suppose that the "stormy winds," etcetera, are not fulfilling God's word—or will), we now know, to a great extent from practical experience and scientific investigation, that the winds ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... who was full of sound common sense, began to think she had reason on her side; and this was of great advantage to him, for with Head-nurse, and Foster-mother and the others, he stood a great ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... and as I went over my memories of that time, and revived its sombre and almost sinister fascination, I seemed to see an answer looming before my imagination. But it was an answer, an hypothesis or supposition, so fantastic, that my common sense could hardly accept it. ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... taint of hypocrisy or cant. He was a frank, kind-hearted old man, who made friends of all he met. Of his fervent piety there are abundant proofs, and his piety and humility were of an agreeable type, unobtrusive, and blended with common sense. He overcame obstacles in the way of duty, but he created no obstacles for the mere sake of surmounting them. He was not a man to limp through life on a sore leg if a cure could be found. . . . First among the Californian prelates ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... embodied in the Decalogue and the gospel of Christ) be exacted of chattels as of men? But they are not valid. They are the logic of Bedlam, the morality of the pirate ship, the diabolism of the pit. They insult the common sense and shock the moral nature of mankind. Take them to Europe, and see with what scorn they will be universally treated! Go, first, to England, and gravely propound them there; and the universal response will proudly be, in the ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... getting panicky at the outset," declared Jerry comfortably. "Follow orders and use your brains; and remember that if you get addled you can always consult Tim. Tim has a world of common sense and a heap of knowledge of odd sorts. And more than that, he's never swept off his feet by the cost of things. Having been brought up in the company of Rolls-Royce cars, and diamond rings, and thousand-dollar ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... interests of the specially gifted. The first thing we see clearly now is to find out which children are exceptional on the upper side, and for that the newly devised forms of scientific observation and measurement may be useful if care is taken to mix every formula with common sense, patience, and human sympathy. The next essential is to decide whether the children who can go faster shall be passed along through the grades by special arrangement more rapidly or whether they shall be kept on the regular track ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... all difficult to understand. It has always been applied, to greater or less extent, in the lives of all human beings, everywhere. It is no more than common sense to profit by the experiences of others, and ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... for purposes of self-government; as I do, now. . . . Once, oppressed by form and theory, I told you that to remarry after divorce was a slap at civilisation. . . . Which is true sometimes and sometimes not. Common sense, not laws, must govern a man in that matter. But if any motive except desire to be a decent citizen sways a self-punished man toward self-leniency, then is he unpardonable if he breaks those laws which truly were fashioned ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... method was one of assertion, assumption, and denunciation. They proved that a seal pup could swim or not swim at birth by stating the proposition very bellicosely and then following it up with an attack on the opposing man's judgment, common sense, nationality, or past history. Rebuttal was precisely similar. I have related this in order to show the mental calibre of the men with whom I was thrown in contact. Intellectually they were children, inhabiting the physical ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... radiant, he said firmly and briskly: 'Listen, Petya, my boy; I guess what you've come for, and what you want to talk about; but I give you warning, if you say a single word about her, or about her action, or about what, according to you, is the course dictated to me by common sense, we're friends no longer, we're not even acquainted, and I shall beg you to treat me as ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... transcendental path, or madness. "Let us bless heaven that the patriarch of the Gnosis has selected the former." It is possibly showing gratitude for small mercies, because our friend has saved his reason, but is blood-guilty in the matter of common sense. Meanwhile, the widowed Gnosis illuminates its Ichabod in the cryptic quartiers of Paris, Lyons, ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... may be to some extent instructive, but I should certainly deny that there was anything like a scientific induction. We, happily, can reason to some extent upon political matters by the help of simple common sense before it has undergone that process of organisation, of reduction to precise measurable statements, which entitles it to be called a scientific procedure. The resemblance of Washington to Cromwell was of the external and superficial order. It may be compared to those analogies which exist ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... degenerates into an oligarchy of privilege without responsibility, and when socially it is not "superiority in character or quality" but political cunning, opulence and sycophancy that are the touchstones to recognition and acceptance. The latter are the antithesis of Christianity and common sense, the former is consonant with both and, paradoxical as it may seem, it is also the fulfilling of the ideals of a real democracy, since its honours and distinctions imply service, its relations with those in other estates are reciprocal, it is not a closed caste but the prize of meritorious ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... to "take heed" to myself. I must exercise common sense, the most important of all the senses. I must put a bridle upon my appetite, and hold it in subjection to ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... perceive not the slightest resemblance between her position in society and that of the wretched troll who practises indiscriminate prostitution in some low "crib" in Ann street. And yet philosophy and common sense both level all moral distinction between the two conditions.—A noble murderer once protested against being hung on the same gallows with a chimney-sweep—there was aristocracy with a vengeance! ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... thinking I believe he was saying a severe thing, that I was a poet, and therefore that the subject we were discussing lay out of my way. I answered as quietly as I could, that I did not apprehend my having written poetry rendered me incapable of speaking common sense in prose, and that I requested the audience to judge of me not by the nonsense I might have written for their amusement, but by the sober sense I was endeavouring to speak for their information, and only expected [of] them, in case I had ever ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... Tom replied. "The added help that you fellows have given us has enabled us to double our rush forward. I've a notion that President Newnham is a man of great common sense." ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... woman's happiness requires of her husband. She gave instances long after to prove her point; but she always spoke of him with friendship and respect as "a man with a heart full of human kindness and a head full of common sense." ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... rate, let him get a dose of common sense before committing himself. He is a capital fellow, sure to rise; has the soul and head and hands for it, but he ought not to ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... despot had bought a piece of parchment somewhere in foreign countries, or from some stranger passing through his territory. If the Emperor had been good for anything, so ran the logic of uncritical common sense, he would never have let the tyrant rise at all. Since the Roman expedition of Charles IV, the emperors had done nothing more in Italy than sanction a tyranny which had arisen without their help; they could ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Limestone, Green County, Tennessee. His free and wild youth was spent in hunting. He became a soldier in the war of 1812: he was elected to the Tennessee Legislature in 1821 and 1823, and to Congress in 1829 and 1833. His eccentricity of manners, his lack of education, and his strong common sense and shrewdness made him a marked figure, especially in Washington. In 1835 he went to Texas to aid in the struggle for independence; and in 1836, was massacred by General Santa Anna, with five other prisoners, after the surrender of the Alamo, these six being the only survivors of a band ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... heavily-taxed housekeeper, as were her gay good-humor and words of cheer and affection to the younger of her companions. The two girls became more confidential in six days than eighteen years of neigbborly intercourse had sufficed to make them. Mabel's innate delicacy and excellent common sense would, in ordinary circumstances, have barred effusiveness upon the theme nearest her heart, but love at nineteen is rarely discreet, even when the persuasives to communicativeness are less powerful than were the sorcery of Rosa's sympathy and the confessions ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... empire; sending English forces into Germany, where they had taken possession of Embden; and exacting contributions in different parts of Germany. In answer to these imputations, he alleged that he could not, consistent with his own safety or the dictates of common sense, concur with a majority in joining his troops, which were immediately necessary for his own defence, to those which, from the arbitrary views of the court of Vienna, were led against his friend and ally the king of Prussia, by a prince who did not belong ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... she turned to me and said, "Good as the captain is, I hope he is not really going to spoil those children and conjure up a prodigious storm for their amusement. Now brats, get out of the way, and let us have a little common sense. You think we ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... child of mine go away among strangers in that manner," declared Mrs. Underhill. "No one can tell what will happen to her. I shouldn't have thought it of Mr. Theodore. The women, of course, are not overweighted with common sense, and the poor child has ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... "Huntsman Common Sense Came to the rescue, bade prompt thwack of thong dispense Quiet i' the kennel: taught that ocean might be blue, And rolling and much more, and yet the soul have, too, Its touch of God's own flame, which He may so expand 'Who measured the waters i' the hollow of His hand' ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... gaunt and grey haired. She had square jaws and cold grey eyes and an aggressive nose, but there was something attractive in her plain face, a mingling of common sense and kindliness. She watched Marcella and Mrs. Liddell closely and lost nothing of all that was said and done on both sides. Now and then she ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... last cottage a transitory gleam of common sense flickered across me, and, turning on Charlotte, I sternly ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... greater from their enacting the parts of shepherdess and shepherd. She had been strengthened in this, her first love, by the former illusions of her imagination; and without one thought of evil, she had lost her common sense, and had followed her lover instead of attending to her mamma. Oh, young damsels, who are fond of pastorals, and can dream of young cavaliers and ancient castles!—who hear, on one side, the soft whisperings ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... Lady Caroline, I don't think the frivolity of the wife has ever anything to do with it. More marriages are ruined nowadays by the common sense of the husband than by anything else. How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a ...
— A Woman of No Importance • Oscar Wilde
... childhood have shown much mental aptitude and capacity, the 'savagery' in them, however, only dying down as they grew older. They can read and write well, understand and speak English correctly, have acquired European habits completely, and possess much shrewdness and common sense: one has herself taught her Andamanese husband, the dynamo-man above mentioned, to read and write English and induced him to join the Government House Press as a compositor. She writes a well-expressed and ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... but the dog did, and, being an intelligent dog, was in some degree reassured. In the wood the tinker spent some time in selecting a tree with a projecting branch suitable to his purpose, and having found one he proceeded to hang the dog. Even in his cups Mr. Fennessy made sentiment subservient to common sense. ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... you would put down ingratitude. We use acts in the moral world pretty much as in the physical; and it is entirely by the impossibility of committing the offence that this gentleman proposes to prevent its occurrence. But, in the name of common sense, why do we inveigh against monasteries and nunneries?—why are we so severe on a system that substitutes restraint for reason, and instead of correction supplies coercion? Surely this plan is based on exactly the same principle. ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... bewildering multiplicity of competing "denominations," whose points of difference are to the plain man obscure, but whose mutual separation is in his eyes an obvious scandal and an offence both against charity and against common sense. Why cannot they agree to sink their differences, and to unite upon the broad basis of a common loyalty to Christ? To what purpose is this overlapping and conflict? The reluctant tribute of the ancient sceptic—"See ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... we add that the experience of life, or what we call knowledge of the world, is the best school of practical wisdom. We do not however identify practical wisdom with the life of reason but with that empirical substitute for it which we call common sense. There is in all classes a deep distrust of ideas, often amounting to what Plato called misologia, "hatred of reason." An Englishman, as Bishop Creighton said, not only has no ideas; he hates an idea when he meets one. We discount the opinion of one who ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... visitation receded. As his religious hunger augmented and he gazed eagerly at this faith visible but so far off that the distance terrified him, ideas pressed upon his active mind, driving back his will, rejecting, by common sense and mathematical proofs, the mysteries and dogmas. He sadly told himself that he would have to find a way to abstain from self-discussion. He would have to learn how to close his eyes and let himself be swept along by the current, forgetting those accursed ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... that common sense which borders on stupidity. For a long time he had been living quietly, with economy, temperate through prudence, chaste by temperament, when suddenly he was assailed by a terrible apprehension. One evening in the street he suddenly felt an attack ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... describes the characteristics of the chief justice at that time as follows: "He has the reputation of possessing a vigorous intellect, which very readily and clearly grasps the facts and the law of a case. He has a sound and well-balanced judgment and a large share of practical common sense. He is blessed with robust health, is industrious in his habits, and possesses an equable temper. His appointment was not prompted by motives of party or political policy. He will enter into his office untrammelled by close political alliances, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... the Rights of Man was attacked by that faction, and its author continually abused. But let them go on; give them rope enough and they will put an end to their own insignificance. There is too much common sense and independence in America to be long the dupe of ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... He was in tune with, even when he directly opposed, the class from which he sprang, the mass of well-to-do Protestant Englishmen of Queen Victoria's reign. Their furniture had nothing shocking for him nor their steel engravings. He took for granted their probity, their common sense, and their reading. He knew what they were thinking about and therefore all he did to praise or blame their convictions, to soothe or to exasperate them, told. He could ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... [and italicised too, by the writer for a particular object,] clearly proves that the invention of 1831 was an abortion; for if the principle was effective to cut one acre of grain properly, any man of common sense knows that it was equally so to cut one thousand acres; but so complete was the failure that, "During this interval"—between 1831 and 1834—"I was often advised by my father and family to abandon it, and pursue my ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... never would have permitted it, Artie, if I hadn't compelled you; for I've got all the prudence and common sense of the family bottled up here in my own forehead,' said the old man, tapping his bulging brow significantly. 'I don't deny that Oxford may be an excellent school for Greek and Latin, and philosophy, and so forth; but if you want prudence and sagacity and common-sense it's a ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... shut one's eyes tight against known and assured results of an opposite sort, cannot be the part of a sensible man, to say nothing of a religious one. So moralists have been preaching ever since there was such a thing as temptation in the world; and men have assented to the common sense of the teaching, and then have gone straight away and done ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... when I was a child, once in the time of the Great Exhibition, and passing through it now with you. But any one of common sense can manage." ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sentiment it conveys be told by design and colour?—and if so, are such moral and such sentiment worth the "doing." Will it please, or will it disgust? We mean not to use the word "please" in its lowest common sense, but in that which expresses the gratification we are known to feel even when our quiescent happiness is disturbed. In that sense we know even tragedies are pleasing. We may, however, paint a martyr on his gridiron, and paint that which is only disgusting; the firmness, the devotion through ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... subject of morals and religion. The least observation will show how little the generality of men are capable of speculations. Therefore morality and religion must be somewhat plan and easy to be understood: it must appeal to what we call plain common sense, as distinguished from superior capacity and improvement; because it appeals to mankind. Persons of superior capacity and improvement have often fallen into errors which no one of mere common understanding ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... She felt, and he made her feel, that she dominated him, and could turn him whither she would. Her pride was flattered, and though she promised herself that she would make him give up his love for her by the mere exertion of a superior common sense, she was conscious that the task was not wholly distasteful. She enjoyed the sensation of being the stronger, of realizing that Alexander was wholly at her feet and subject to her commands. That he should have gradually grown so intimate as to speak so freely to her is not ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... idea of a base is a real necessity for strategy, and to have conceived it is meritorious; but to make such a use of it as we have depicted is completely inadmissible, and could not but lead to partial conclusions which have forced these theorists into a direction opposed to common sense, namely, to a belief in the decisive effect of the ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... government having been defeated on a proposal to reduce the five per cents, he once more resigned, and never returned to official life. He had remained in power long enough to prove what honesty of purpose, experience of affairs, and common sense can accomplish when allied with authority. The debt that France and Europe owed him may be measured by comparing the results of his policy with that of his successors under not dissimilar circumstances. He had found France isolated and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... is this, that what I did wasn't sound common sense. Now if Carroll had done it, it ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the outside edge of New York's best circles. And I'm mighty sure I'm more welcome. Now my eyesight's strong enough to see through a two-foot hole after the plug's out, and I can see that you and 'Bije's children won't shed tears if I say no to that will. No offense meant, you know; just common sense, that's all." ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to the spot. Then a sudden movement of the dancer which brought her perilously near the water's edge recalled her common sense. ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond |
