"Commonsense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it can't be proper for a woman to deceive a man on such a vital point,' the stern moralist may exclaim. Possibly not, according to the strictly ideal standard of ethics; but, viewed from the larger standpoints of life and of commonsense, this 'deceit' would appear to be advisable. And be assured, my unpleasant moralist (I'm sure you are an unpleasant person), that the sinner will not get off 'scot free,' as you seem to fear. Many and many a stab will be her portion, ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... wrongs never made a right. It's better to endure awhile. The sober commonsense of the Nation will yet save us. We ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... more in a similar style, for his lordship loved composing florid despatches. But this one had a bad reception when it was sent home to England. "At this puerile piece of business," says the plain spoken Stocqueler, "the commonsense of the British community at large revolted. The ministers of religion protested against it as a most unpardonable homage to an idolatrous temple. Ridiculed by the Press of India and England, and laughed ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... department of ethics more disputed than the meaning of abstract right and wrong, and as I am not talking either on philosophy or ethics I will ask you to accept just such commonsense definitions as can be applied to the business world and that may be usefully employed as a working basis. Commercial morality and honesty are determined by each community for itself in the light of its own special needs and point of evolution. To-day we hold many things ...
— Morals in Trade and Commerce • Frank B. Anderson
... constructed in a different way; that they are in Cephalopods accompanied by several other organs which Vertebrates do not possess, whilst the latter on their side have many organs which Cephalopods lack" (p. 257). Geoffroy could not accept this commonsense view of the matter, but made a fight for his transcendental theories. This was the beginning of the famous controversy between Geoffroy and Cuvier which so excited the interest of Goethe. It was a struggle between "comparative anatomy" ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... man is still reduced to this in the latter part of the nineteenth century, notwithstanding all our science, all our analysis of the passion, all our wise jabber about the failure of marriage, all our commonsense about the relation of the sexes. Love is still a personal question, not to be reasoned about or in any way disposed of except in the old way. Maidens dream about it; diplomats yield to it; stolid men are upset by it; the aged become young, the young grave, under ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... This 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 remark in ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... agreed with 'im, and said wot a pity it was everybody 'adn't got Bob Pretty's commonsense ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... something worse than man-devouring beasts. And, mind you, twenty years of exile did not sober them, nor did contact with democratic thought in England and America teach them the most elementary lessons of commonsense. If the Emperor had not come back to-day, we should be once more working up for revolution—more terrible this time, more bloody and vengeful, if possible, than ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... square meal and a nice warm place to sleep, they are going to be badly fooled. We're all equal here. A couple of million dollars, more or less, doesn't cut any ice on this little island. What counts here is muscle and commonsense and a ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... like a woman instead of like a man. In reflecting upon the excellences of Rachel he had often said to himself that her unique charm consisted in the fact that she combined the attractiveness of woman with the powerful commonsense of man. In common with a whole enthusiastic army of young husbands he had been convinced that his wife was the one female creature on earth to whom you could talk as you would to a male. "Oh!" ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... more than an hour had elapsed since he gave his name to the letter clerk in the hotel. The singularity of his proceedings during that hour was thereby brought home to him. He knew nothing of newspapers, daily or weekly; but commonsense suggested that "The Firefly's" radiance was not over-powering. His native shrewdness advised caution, though he felt sure that he could, in homely phrase, twist this faded journalist ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... 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 take the war path alone. The children of Israel went in a crowd and so ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... homeward-bound. And that transport would be at least of as safe a character as that afforded by the cutter, while it would be infinitely more comfortable, at all events for Flora, should they happen to encounter bad weather. Following this train of thought, it seemed to Leslie that the obvious commonsense course for him to pursue was to take the catamaran, go out to the barque, and, acquainting the skipper with all the circumstances relating to the presence of the little party upon the island, pilot her into the lagoon, with the view of coming ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... make the slightest difference," he replied. "It's against all reason and commonsense that such a thing could have happened. Even if there ever was a glacier in this part of the country and if the lower portion of it did stick out over an immense hole in the ground, that protruding end would never have broken off and ...
— My Terminal Moraine - 1892 • Frank E. Stockton
... 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
... 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 ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... into the commonsense attitude of going to bed. Wakening after the dreamless sleep of the exhausted she found low spirits and self-blame had somewhat diminished and though her state of mind was as serious as her gray eyes yet life was not utterly bereft ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... general—" they would persist. "Who's a British general?" I would retort, "I am talking to you merely as a plain commonsense man, with ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... Guendolen are the two women in A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. Guendolen is the incarnation of high-hearted feminine commonsense, of clear insight into the truth of things, born of the power of love in her. Amid all the weaknesses of the personages and the plot; in the wildered situation made by a confused clashing of pride and innocence and remorse, in ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... because he could to a great extent supply out of his own nature the elements which as a rule men sought among women; and because the complexity and sensitiveness of his own temperament took refuge rather in tranquillity and straight-forward commonsense. As he grew older, as he became absorbed more and more in literary work, he tended, he thought, to draw more and more away from human relationships; the energy, the interest, that had formerly gone into making new relationships now began to run in a narrower channel. Whether it was prudent to ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... letter to write, I keep these two men in mind and I center all my efforts to convince them; using practical, commonsense arguments to convince the father, and enough snappy 'try-it-for-yourself' talk ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... do not even wish to deceive you, Madam. The Searcher of hearts is my witness how dear you are to me; but though it were possible you could be still dearer to me, I would not even kiss your hand at the expense of your conscience. Away with declamation! let us appeal to the bar of commonsense. It is not mouthing everything sacred; it is not vague ranting assertions; it is not assuming, haughtily and insultingly, the dictatorial language of a Roman pontiff, that must dissolve a union like ours. Tell me, Madam—Are ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... to the 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. But, when he found himself in the strenuous, stern, staid, sapient ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... groups and incidentally, they learned to distinguish the fetish in each. They read Greek mythology side by side with Judean mythology and noted similarities. The intent of Tutor Campe was to give these boys a scientific education. Science is only classified commonsense. To be truly scientific is to know differences—to distinguish between this and that. Every successful farmer has traveled a long way into science, for science deals with the maintenance of life. To know soils, animals and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... defining the curriculum of study, and here also—the religious question being disposed of—I was able to follow much the same line as his, and I remember being struck not only with his clear-headed ability, but with his strong commonsense, as to what was useful and practicable, and the utter absence in him of doctrinaire aspiration after ideal impossibilities. There was (I think) very little under his chairmanship ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... Calm Spirit Plenty of Good Cheer A Varied Diet Commonsense Good Cooking Judicious Neglect of Symptoms Forgetfulness of the Digestive Process A Little Accurate Knowledge A Determination to BE ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... adventuring, and with him goes Tom, a young worker at Harry's father's soap-boiling factory. Tom is wonderful. He gets Harry out of numerous dire situations, and the book would not work without him. He is down-to-earth, and full of commonsense and energy. ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... Medicine"—Charles Stuart Moody, M. D. Outing Publishing Co., New York, 75 cents net. A commonsense book written from experience. ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... honors, and held a fellowship. Mr. Tulliver regarded him with dutiful respect, as he did everything else belonging to the church-service; but he considered that church was one thing and common-sense another, and he wanted nobody to tell him what commonsense was. Certain seeds which are required to find a nidus for themselves under unfavorable circumstances have been supplied by nature with an apparatus of hooks, so that they will get a hold on very unreceptive surfaces. The spiritual seed which had been scattered over Mr. Tulliver had apparently ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... a quick, light tread. The next moment he was gazing again upon the vision that had charmed him out of all commonsense. She stood, framed in the night, white and pure and gloriously, most surpassingly, beautiful. Merefleet felt his heart throb heavily. He sat in dead silence, looking at her with fascinated eyes. Had he called her a Greek goddess? ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... mending musical instruments, and occasionally he went with his wife to sing duets in the open air on the Champs-Elysees, to pick up a few sous. Emilio and Massimilla de Varese were deeply sympathetic of the Gambaras, whom they met in the neighborhood of Faubourg Saint-Honore. Paolo Gambara had no commonsense except when drunk. He had invented an outlandish instrument which he called the ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... 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 ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... of 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
... 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 ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... something 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 ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... be funnier than that, it is that it is, very possibly, true. Let us end our quest-by-commonsense, for the moment, on this; that to read all the books that have been written—-in short to keep pace with those that are being written—is starkly impossible, and (as Aristotle would say) about what is impossible one ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... points involved in this controversy, and, strange to say, they were singularly unanimous in the other conclusion. They will learn with pain and amazement that I am deemed insubordinate, and wanting in commonsense; that I, who for four years have labored day and night, winter and summer, who have brought an army of seventy thousand men in magnificent condition across a country hitherto deemed impassable, and placed it just where it was wanted, on the day appointed, have brought discredit on ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... 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 defences ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... discussing whether my testimony that I am of such excessive natural funkiness as to be intimidated by a few threats into my matrimonial engagement is humanly credible.... I cannot at all comprehend why, at his frequent references to my alleged tiger-slaughters—which, with shrewd commonsense sapience, he seems to consider mere ideally fabricated fibs and fanciful yarns—the whole Court should be so convulsed with unmeaning merriment, nor why so stern a Judge does not make any attempt to check ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... accomplishment which they very speedily acquire. Beginning with fresh cow's milk for a week, their diet may be gradually increased to Mellin's or Benger's food, and later to gruel and Quaker Oats, their steadily increasing appetites being catered for by the simple exercise of commonsense. Feed them little and often, about five times a day, and encourage them to move about as much as possible; and see that they never go hungry, without allowing them to gorge. Let them play until they tire, and sleep until they hunger again, and they will be found to thrive and grow with ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... is the exclusion of another.'' Hence, say they, as the Constitution has established 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 legislative ...
— The Federalist Papers
... necessary to induce germination of seeds, no matter how full of life they may be; and as was shown in the preceding chapter the different varieties have some choice as to the degree of each, especially of temperature. This means of course that some commonsense must be used in planting, and when planting outdoors, where we cannot regulate the temperature to our need, we simply must regulate our seed sowing to its dictates, no matter how impatient ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... system of physical, mental, and spiritual unfoldment by 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
... is cast behind his master as fashionably as his sword and cloak are, and he is but in querpo[79] without him. His properness[80] qualifies him, and of that a good leg; for his head he has little use but to keep it bare. A good dull wit best suits with him to comprehend commonsense and a trencher; for any greater store of brain it makes him but tumultuous, and seldom thrives with him. He follows his master's steps, as well in conditions as the street: if he wench or drink, he comes him in an under kind, and thinks it a part of his duty to ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... better 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, regarded British settlers with an intense feeling ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the women in the neighbourhood seemed to have come this way; and they meg-megged, and they laughed, and when their children awoke they shouted up at the windows from outside. I heard snatches of childbearing adventures, astonishing yarns, interspersed with hard commonsense, not to say cynicism—the cynicism of people who cannot afford to embroider much the bare facts of existence or to turn their attention far from the necessities of life. "Her'll be weak," one woman said, "an' for a long time—never so strong as her was before. 'Tis always ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... Why should He be? It is the other things that have to be compatible with God. A church can only be a humble effort to utter God. A Parliament can only be a humble effort to express Man. But for all that, there is a deal of commonsense left in the world, and people do know when priests or politicians are honestly trying to express a mystery—and when they are only taking ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... which Ambrose made to the Arians, as already related, there is no appearance of his appealing to any law of the Empire in justification of his refusal to surrender the Basilica to them. He rested it upon the simple basis of the Divine Law, a commonsense argument which there was no evading. "The Basilica has been made over to Christ; the Church is His trustee; I am its ruler. I dare not alienate the Lord's property. He who does so, does it at his ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... 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 ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... But what we called commonsense views, after all, can be analysed and ought to be analysed. And there is a very sound and practical reason, as Aristotle knew, why men prefer the state to lesser associations. It is because the state leaves them more free. Those who talk of state-absolutism ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... to rubbish. You smile. It seems so futile. What are these kindlings saved when the whole house is burning? Is this what you call heroism? Yet the charge at Balaklava was not more futile. It had even less of commonsense, less of hope of benefit to mankind to back it and inspire it. Heroism is an instinct, not a thoughtout policy. Its quality is the same, in two-ounce ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... being that the Allies have no effigy. One might fill a thick volume with pictures of men up the scale and down working loyally and devotedly upon the war, to make this point clear that the essential king and the essential loyalty of our side is the commonsense of mankind. ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... have known! He did know, and it maddened him till he forgot reason, prudence, experience, commonsense—forgot everything but the present torture, the cruel longing for the impossible, the accursed conviction (worse than all the stings of drink and sin and remorse) that this one wild, hopeless desire of his existence could ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... matters, we must exercise a little intelligence. We must not confuse 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 ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... 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
... yours three thousand years ago—first dared to think of the world as round,—an astounding temerity. He rolled up the rivers and mountains, the forests and plains and broad horizons that stretched beyond his ken, that seemed to commonsense to go on certainly for ever, into a ball, into a little ball "like an orange." Magnificent feat of the imagination, outdoing Thor's deep draught of the sea! And once he had done it, all do it and no one falters at the deed. You are not yet seven as I write and ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... 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 the only course. If one would make provision against ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... New York air, which extends from the carefully brushed eyebrows quite to the curves of the wrist and hand. Praise Parisian modes all you will, but for genuine style, a New York girl, softened a trifle by commonsense or good taste, leads the world—certainly if she is abroad. For there she soon finds it impossible to go to the extremes that American air seems to rush her into. Three months, or perhaps, if she is observant, three days in Paris, ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... problems are deeply rooted and will not respond to quick political fixes, we must stick to our carefully integrated plan for recovery. That plan is based on four commonsense fundamentals: continued reduction of the growth in Federal spending; preserving the individual and business tax reductions that will stimulate saving and investment; removing unnecessary Federal regulations to spark productivity; and maintaining a healthy dollar and a stable ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan |
