"Commonsense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... late May)," says Monsieur ——, "my Fidele and I left the Hotel du Mont Blanc for a ramble amongst the hills. We were a little adventurous, because we were innocent. We took no guide but our commonsense; and that served us very ill—or very well, according to the point of view. Ours was that of the birds, singing to the sky and careless of the snake in the grass so long as they can pipe their tune. Of a surety that is ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... very different," continued the Professor. Quite another interest had taken hold of the Professor. It was easy enough to summon Dame Commonsense to one's aid when Malvina was not present. Before those strange eyes the good lady had a habit of sneaking away. Suppose—of course the idea was ridiculous, but suppose—something did happen! As a psychological experiment was not one justified? ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... kept them alive for thirty-three centuries, and then compile a list of the mistakes of the original writer. The writer of these records of dreams and hopes and guesses, all cemented with stern commonsense, has our profound reverence and regard. The "mistakes" lie in the minds of the people who, in the face of the accumulated knowledge of the centuries, have persisted that things once ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... now was his opportunity. In season and out of season he defended Payne. He fell upon the Lane-ites like Samson upon the Philistines. He gloried in the hurly-burly. He wallowed, as it were, in blood. Fortunately, too, at that time he had friends in the Government—straightforward, commonsense men—who were above all pettinesses. Lord Houghton, F. F. Arbuthnot, and others, also ranged themselves on the same side and ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... preaching this little sermon on commonsense versus hysteria as we put out the lights and left the billiard room. But neither Beaumont nor Miss Hisgins would agree that there had been any ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... but also a fair number of low private desires. And when people blame Bernard Shaw for his pitiless and prosaic coldness, his cutting refusal to reverence or admire, I think they should remember this riff-raff of lawless sentimentalism against which his commonsense had to strive, all the grandiloquent "comrades" and all the gushing "affinities," all the sweetstuff sensuality and senseless sulking against law. If Bernard Shaw became a little too fond of throwing cold water upon prophecies or ideals, remember that he ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... culprit to another room, or at least denied herself to subsequent callers, who included (of course) the most influential and scandal-mongering of the parish ladies. That is the kind of rather piled-up agony that made me suspect Mr. WALPOLE of letting his fortitude get at times the better of his commonsense. But he has written a ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... managed the housekeeping, and taught the pupils all kinds of plain and fancy needlework. She succeeded, and she lived till the year 1866, although most of her teaching was done from her sofa. When my mother was asked what it was that made Phin so successful, and so esteemed, she said it was her commonsense. The governesses were well enough, but the invalid old lady was the life and soul of the school. There were about 14 boarders, and nearly as many day scholars there, so long as there was no competition. ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... he would not move the Admiralty to work a submarine or two up the Straits at once so as to prevent reinforcements and supplies coming down by sea from Constantinople. By now the Turks must be on the alert and it was commonsense to suppose they would be sending some sort of help to their Forts. However things might pan out we could not be going wrong if we made the Marmora unhealthy for the Turkish ships. Lord K. thereupon made the remark that if we could get one submarine into the Marmora the ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... Stuart in her cheery commonsense way, 'that evening was such an overwhelming experience that I don't suppose she could have felt any soreness towards anybody. And, do you know, she is improved? I don't quite know what it is, but certainly ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with vigorous commonsense. "Mrs. Jasher would be spotted in a moment if she had gone to your quarters. She had to pass the sentry, remember. Then, again, we have not yet proved that she was the woman in Mrs. Bolton's clothes ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... Sister Cecilia, all heedless of the sarcasm. For extreme charity is proof against such. It covers other things besides a multitude of sins. Wielded foolishly it runs amuck like a too luxuriant creeper, and often kills commonsense. "And that is why I asked you to come, dear. I thought that you might want to confide in some one—that you might want to unburden your heart to one who feels for you as if this sorrow ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... pistons of steam-engines and air-pump buckets of condensing engines perfectly steam and water tight has led to the contrivance of many complex and costly constructions for the purpose of packing them. When we take a commonsense view of the subject, we find that in most cases the loss of power resulting from the extra friction neutralises the expected saving. This is especially the case with the air-pump bucket of a condensing steam-engine, as ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... a commodity." If this indignation expresses no more than a belief that in matters concerning conditions of work, and relations between employees and the management, the sensibilities of human nature should be taken into due account, it is based on elementary decency and commonsense. But if, as sometimes appears, it is directed against the fact that the remuneration of labor is controlled by the laws of supply and demand, it is a mere baying at the moon, with singularly little provocation. ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... requirements in his mind. M. de Bargeton seemed to be the only one who answered to this description. M. de Bargeton, aged forty, considerably shattered by the amorous dissipations of his youth, was generally held to be a man of remarkably feeble intellect; but he had just the exact amount of commonsense required for the management of his fortune, and breeding sufficient to enable him to avoid blunders or blatant follies in society in Angouleme. In the bluntest manner M. de Negrepelisse pointed out the negative virtues of the model husband designed for his daughter, ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... opinion, a bold and eloquent pamphleteer broke in upon the hesitating public with a program for absolute independence, without fears and without apologies. In the early days of 1776, Thomas Paine issued the first of his famous tracts, "Commonsense," a passionate attack upon the British monarchy and an equally passionate plea for American liberty. Casting aside the language of petition with which Americans had hitherto addressed George III, Paine went to the other extreme and assailed him with many a violent epithet. He condemned ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... that it made him rather interesting, something of a figure.... He would not have been human had he quite escaped that at his age. And yet it was that feeling no one but Killigrew, who frankly mooted it, had a suspicion of as possible, so Ishmael realised with shame. Also his commonsense told him that the sordid and quite unromantic incidents were likely to pile up more thickly than any of charm or pleasure. His was an admirable position for any one who loved self-pity; he would be able to see himself as a romantic centre, to feed on misunderstanding and ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... element in human nature that makes metaphysical healing so much more popular than plain, commonsense Nature Cure. ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... crimson in her hair as her husband had desired, and the table was decorated simply with a big silver bowl of crimson roses. A slight shade of apprehension in Sir Isaac's face changed to approval at the sight of her obedience. After all perhaps she was beginning to see the commonsense of her position. ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... an idiom that assumed a joint enterprise. They had agreed by a tacit consent to a common conception of the world they desired as a world scientifically ordered, an immense organization of mature commonsense, healthy and secure, gathering knowledge and power for creative adventures as yet beyond dreaming. They were prepared to think of the makers of the Avebury dyke as their yesterday selves, of the stone age savages as a phase, ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... world and to Powells, while partaking of the nature of a triumph, was at the same time something of a cold, fume-dispersing, commonsense-bestowing bath for Henry. He had meant to tell Sir George casually that he had taken advantage of his enforced leisure to write a book. 'Taken advantage of his enforced leisure' was the precise phrase which Henry had in mind to use. ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... there will also always be Englishmen unable to appreciate him at all. Such, mutatis mutandis—and in this case the proviso is a very large one—is the position of Beyle in France. After all, when Bunthorne asked for a not-too-French French bean he showed more commonsense than he intended. Beyle is a too-French French writer—too French even for the bulk of his own compatriots; and so for us it is only natural that he should be a little difficult. Yet this very fact is ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... acquainted with the country, we much prefer the conversation of the intelligent and unpretending class of farmers, who, though their education has been limited, often possess a rich fund of strong commonsense and liberality of sentiment, and not unfrequently great observation and originality of mind. At the period I refer to, a number of the American settlers from the United States, who composed a considerable part of the population, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... has nothing else to do, but in these latter days the right sort of husband don't go round. Either he died in the war or the stock has run low, so that more than half the well-meaning women have no homes to stay in. What Moses is going to lead the poor creatures to the commonsense suit that shall protect them from the inclement weather they are forced to meet as they go abroad to earn their bread and salt? It must be a concerted movement, for there is none among us who dares ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... the child, motherless, and worse than fatherless. She would take him and bring him up unspotted from the world. It was clearly a leading for her. She had not been permitted to save the girl, but she might take and protect the boy. She remembered even the commonsense of Mrs Hankworth. "It's soonest forgotten about if it's a boy." She was not so much an old maid as a woman shut up from issue, and she had no fear of a child. And in the midst of her bewilderment about the girl, about death and the hereafter, she could see an ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... the brilliant excursion of some solitary thinker with the well-grounded proposals of those who are concerned with the sober possibilities of actual life in our own time. People who are incapable of exercising a little shrewd commonsense in the affairs of life, and are in the habit of emptying out the baby with the bath, had better avoid touching the delicate problems connected with ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... circumstances governing habituation will allow. It is, at the best, slow work to shift the settled lines of any community's scheme of common sense. Now, national solidarity, and more particularly an unquestioning loyalty to the sovereign and the dynasty, is a matter of course and of commonsense necessity with the German people. It is not necessary to call to mind that the Japanese nation, which has here been coupled with the German, are in the same ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... simple and scientific methods of concentration and meditation, most of the complex problems of life may be solved, and peace and good-will come upon earth. The Swami's idea of right education is plain commonsense, free from all mysticism and non-praciticality; otherwise it ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... commonplace, the rather humdrum, virtues that in their sum are designated as character. If you have in public life men of good ability, not geniuses, but men of good abilities, with character,—and, gentlemen, you must include as one of the most important elements of character commonsense—if you possess such men, the Government will ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... high thin wall; the high thin wall of his own desperate conviction. If you will turn to page 209 of this book you will see it said of the denial of the Sacrament by the Reformers and of Ridley's dogma that it was bread only "the commonsense of the country was of the same opinion, and illusion was at an end." Froude knew that the illusion was not at an end. He probably knew (for we must continue to repeat that he was a most excellent historian) that the "commonsense of the country" was, by the time Ridley and the New English ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... fled to his beloved gems and solaced himself with them till it was time for his bath, which he took in his private bathrooms. He and I dined alone and talked chiefly of our hopes of the new Emperor. Falco particularly remarked his appearance of hard commonsense, ruthless ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... wife of one of the accused, the Durieus, and Catherine, your own servants, and Monsieur and Madame d'Hauteserre, father and mother of two of the accused. Such testimony is valueless; the law does not admit it against you, and commonsense rejects it when given in your favor. If, on the other hand, you were to say you went to the forest to recover eleven hundred thousand francs in gold, you would send the accused to the galleys as robbers. Judge, jury, audience, and the whole of France would believe that you took that gold ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... Masterman, "gave her experiences of imposture; you," looking at Mrs Jefferson, "combated those experiences by your own, and this gentleman."—she smiled at the cynical individual, who was hovering on the outskirts of the circle—"silenced you all by reducing your theories to strong commonsense facts. Shall I quote his own words? After the rate people have been running after spiritual phenomena, they are absolutely refreshing. He said that it was an intensely humiliating idea to find oneself at the beck and call of any other human being when you imagined ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... of commonsense, the spirit of criticism, gradually progressing, insensibly destroyed much superstition; insomuch that simple charges of sorcery were excluded from the courts in 1672. Such a measure would have been impossible under Henry IV. or Louis XIII. Nevertheless, such superstitions were ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... thousand are the few moments necessary to find out what is the matter with an injured man going to result in any harm to him, and of course in order to treat him intelligently you must first know what is the matter. Commonsense will tell the scout that he must waste no time, however, when there is severe bleeding, ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... to Darcy a flood of hard commonsense, as clear and crisp as the sunshine that filled his room. Slowly as he woke he gathered together the broken threads of the memories of the evening which had ended, so he told himself, in a trick of common hypnotism. That accounted for it all; the whole strange talk he had ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... Camp Fire Girls everywhere. What could they do? The very nature of the training of the girls from Wood Gatherer to Torch Bearer made the question, so far as they were concerned, a self-answering one. They had all the broad commonsense rudiments of nursing. With some advanced science on top of this, they ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... Gay is only exercising commonsense. We all of us have a little of that commodity. If we could only have it handy when it's wanted how much better the world ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... acquaintance was Mr. Chlamek, a famous advocate, one of the most honourable of characters, and withal an exceedingly dry man—practical shrewdness and commonsense personified. He, too, was a pater-familias with three ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... country's progress that many of its men should be so philosophically contented with so little. They do not, however, include the whole of the population, for Italy cannot be said to be without examples of aggressive discontent. It is somewhere between the two extremes that practical commonsense should be looked for. In the meantime, if it is a question of sharing a supper of spring quails on Mount Eryx, a peaceful, gentle philosopher is probably a more agreeable companion than a ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... said my aunt, "give me your hand, for your commonsense is invaluable." She pulled me towards her, and said to Mr. Murdstone, "You can go when you like; I'll take my ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... course of action adopted by "General" Booth and Mr. Bramwell Booth in respect of their legal obligations to other persons, or to the criminal and civil law, I have been as careful as I was bound to be, to put any difficulties suggested by mere lay commonsense in an interrogative or merely doubtful form; and to confine myself, for any positive expressions, to citations from published declarations of the judges before whom the acts of "General" Booth came; from reports of the ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... the trial by jury in criminal cases, and is silent in respect to civil, this silence is an implied prohibition of trial by jury in regard to the latter. The rules of legal interpretation are rules of COMMONSENSE, adopted by the courts in the construction of the laws. The true test, therefore, of a just application of them is its conformity to the source from which they are derived. This being the case, let me ask if it is consistent with common-sense to suppose that a provision obliging ...
— The Federalist Papers
... aspect of the boy's character that amazed and interested John Flint, who was himself too shrewd not to divine the sincerity, even the commonsense, of what Laurence called "applied Christianity." Altruism—and Slippy McGee! He listened with ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... women, and children alike, on account of his extreme kindliness of disposition. He was almost, to a ridiculous degree, dependent on the love of his friends; and the terms in which he addresses some of them, particularly ladies, sound odd in this commonsense world. Thus, the wife of one of his friends is, 'My sweet, gentle, and long-suffering Sophia.' He pours out his very heart to his correspondents, and with an effect which would reconcile to him the most irascible author he ever scarified. Thus, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... tongue to ask him whether he meant to take the Holsteigs by the throat, but I swallowed it, for fear of doing them an injury. I was feeling much the same general abhorrence myself, and had to hold myself in all the time for fear it should gallop over my commonsense. But Harburn, I could see, was giving it full rein. His whole manner and personality somehow had changed. He had lost geniality, and that good-humoured cynicism which had made him an attractive companion; he was as if gnawed ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... has been pertinently asked, 'How does he know that the earth is solid on which he builds?' This is a question of Metaphysics.[7] The claim is frequently made by a certain class of writers, that we withdraw ourselves from all metaphysical sophistries, and betake ourselves to the guidance of commonsense. But what is this commonsense of which the ordinary man vaunts himself? It is in reality a number of vague assumptions borrowed unconsciously from old exploded theories—assertions, opinions, beliefs, accumulated, no one knows how, {18} and accepted as settled ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... will, however, have presented to it numbers of projects, some of them under the guise of, rather than the reality of, their usefulness in the increase of employment during the depression. There are certain commonsense limitations upon any expansions of construction work. The Government must not undertake works that are not of sound economic purpose and that have not been subject to searching technical investigation, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... second letter, received the same day, assured them that thunder and hail storms were things for which travellers in Colorado must live in a state of continual preparation. "Who shall decide when doctors disagree?" In the end Clover concluded that it was best to follow the leadings of commonsense and rational precaution, do about a quarter of what people advised, and leave the rest undone; and she found that this worked ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... to arbitrate the two involving her national sovereignty, the world saw that the Allied countries did not want war, and were willing to suffer great humiliation for the sake of preventing it. Americans do not consider that any fair-minded man possessed of ordinary commonsense can honestly believe that nations seeking to provoke war with Germany would have urged their protege to make a humiliating surrender to insolent and unjust demands. If there were any truth in the assertion that the Allies were trying to force war on Germany, they would have advised ...
— Plain Words From America • Douglas W. Johnson
... was England indeed! For the first time since entering the house she realised that she was a stranger in a strange land. Eleanor's calm commonsense was so entirely foreign to her nature that she felt a distinct chilling of the new affection. The companion on her right looked more sympathetic, and she addressed her next ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey |
