"Common sense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... humour and "needle-tipped satire." And his book, Splinters, contains all sorts of good things of which I can give you, alas, only some inadequate (because solitary) sample. Yet, anyway, here is his "Ode to Common Sense": ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... just in the way of going for something to eat, when I caught sight of another dray laden with boxes and crated affairs which I recognised as scientific apparatus. It was followed in quick succession by three others. Ignorant as I was of the requirements of a scientist, my common sense told me this could be no exploring outfit. I revised my first intention of going to the club, and bought a sandwich or two at the corner coffee house. I don't know why, but even then the affair seemed big with mystery, with the portent of ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... slashers. They were not far away, and were waiting to make the attack that night. How he learned this he did not explain, and Jean asked no questions. It was sufficient for her that he knew, and she had great respect for his knowledge of the ways of the wild, and his practical common sense. ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... country, toll or no toll. And so I think that that regulation is the invention of one of those people—as a rule, early stricken of God, intellectually—the departmental interpreters of the laws, in Washington. They can always be depended on to take any reasonably good law and interpret the common sense all out of it. They can be depended on, every time, to defeat a good law, and make it inoperative—yes, and utterly grotesque, too, mere matter for laughter and derision. Take some of the decisions of the Post-office Department, for instance—though I do not mean ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sufficiently thank the divine Power who spared me the disadvantage and shame of being one of them, and cast my lot in this favored land of goodness and right reason, the blessed abode of public morality and private worth—of liberty, conscience and common sense. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... out the meaning. No extravagant or unwarrantable inflections which will mar the expression of the thought should be permitted, but it is quite desirable to gradually extend the range of the inflections, if one still maintains in the practice that common sense which will leave the expression in perfect symmetry when the extra effort made for inflection shall have been withdrawn. Though it is sometimes desirable to exaggerate one element, even to the sacrifice of others, it is never necessary to introduce ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... does her perfidy entitle you to me? False as she is, you still are married to her; inconstant as she is, she is still your wife; and no breach of the nuptial vow can untie the fatal knot; and that is a mystery to common sense: sure she was born for mischief; and fortune, when she gave her you, designed the ruin of us all; but most particularly ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... Gloucester, by his suggestion, against my own reason and inclination, he would never have dared to have treated me ill any more. I hope to be rich enough in a year or two more, if I live, to be as much a patriot as I happen to choose; but it is a fichu matter, as times go, and nobody of common sense ever gives you any credit for it. I shall be contented only, if, instead of making a bargain with a Minister, I can be in circumstances good enough to sell him one, if he uses ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... might be gotten up forbidding the doing of a hundred things, the only evil of which is that they are outlandish and unbecoming; not modest, or ill-mannered, and behind which there is no evil intent—only thoughtlessness. The same endowment of common sense ought to teach young people to do those things which will promote their health, and not to do those things which would injure it. The greatest blessing to a young person, especially to a young woman, is good health; ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... wondering whether there wasn't some common sense in this after all, when the solution of it ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... a few practical counsels for everyday life, believing, as I do firmly, that the best part of this world's wisdom is really one with Christianity, and that the fruits of dutifulness, common sense, and kindliness, cannot be produced unless there is the root of real religion. Solomon takes that root for granted, only at the close reminding us of its necessity; and, in picturing our ideal woman, I am sure we all see ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... faultless, in its innocent, sympathetic common sense. The truth was, it was too faultless; it rendered James furious with a fury that was dangerous, because it had to ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... a 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 ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... that the days of the trail are numbered. To make a success of any business, a little common sense is necessary. Nine tenths of the investing in cattle to-day in the Northwest is being done by inexperienced men. No other line of business could prosper in such incompetent hands, and it's foolish to think that cattle companies and individuals, nearly all tenderfeet ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... 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 we do ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... that the axiom requires large qualifications. There are no absolute rules, in fact, except such as are dictated by the plainest common sense. Aristotle himself did not so much dogmatize as analyse, classify, and generalize from, the practices of the Attic dramatists. He said, "you had better" rather than "you must." It was Horace, in an age of deep dramatic decadence, who re-stated the pseudo-Aristotelian formulas of the Alexandrians ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... you credit for a great deal more common sense, as a rule, than you seem disposed to evince to-day. I am quite certain that you have never entertained any warmer feeling towards me ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... tenacious of their traditional independence as these Tyrolean mountaineers—descendants of those peasants, remember, who, led by Andreas Hofer, successfully defied the dictates of Napoleon. Though I think that she is going about the business of assimilating these unwilling subjects with tact and common sense, I do not envy Italy her task. Generally speaking, the sympathy of the world is always with a weak people as opposed to a strong one, as England discovered when she attempted to impose her rule upon the Boers. Once let the Italian administration of ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... and fears. Those who constitute the basis of the great fabric of society should be particularly regarded; for in policy, as in architecture, ruin is most fatal when it begins from the bottom." There was, indeed, throughout Goldsmith's miscellaneous writing much more common sense than might have been expected from a writer who was supposed ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... smoking briar-roots, with treaty tobacco instead of "weed," and whose chiefs replied to Mr. Laird's explanations and offers in a few brief and sensible statements, varied by vigorous appeals to the common sense and judgment, rather than the passions, of their people. It was a disappointing, yet, looked at aright, a gratifying spectacle. Here were men disciplined by good handling and native force out of barbarism—of which there was ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... poor French and fine clothes, good common sense and warm Irish heart, Lady Morgan was a most entertaining and original character—a spirited, versatile, spunky little woman, whose whole life was a grand social success. She was also one of the most popular and voluminous writers of her day; but, with all ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... like God's wind of grace always blows, as a soft gentle breeze. The common law among folk in all other matters for understanding any book or document is that some one rule of interpretation be applied consistently to all its parts. If we attempt to apply here the rule of first-flush, common sense meaning, as would be done to a house lease or an insurance policy, it brings out this surprising thing. The church is distinct from the kingdom. It came through the kingdom failing to come. It fits into a gap in the kingdom plan. It has a mission ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... Cecily. Gwendolen, your common sense is invaluable. Mr. Moncrieff, kindly answer me the following question. Why did you pretend to ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... Pinney, climbed down from the stage at the railroad station. During the interval Lansing had neither eaten nor slept. If at moments in that time he was able to indulge the hope that his tremendous experiment had been successful, for the main part the overwhelming presumption of common sense and common experience against such a notion made it seem ...
— At Pinney's Ranch - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... witchcraft, as he was inclined to believe, was chargeable solely to the ignorance of their hardly more intelligent master. A knowledge of the first principles of mechanics, or, in the absence of this, an ordinary degree of active, available common sense, would teach the proper use of such a whipple-tree. For want of this knowledge, the farmer suffered much chagrin, lost the time of four men, and did great ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... boys and girls, and boarding-schools and books. Mr Dombey would have reasoned: That a matrimonial alliance with himself must, in the nature of things, be gratifying and honourable to any woman of common sense. That the hope of giving birth to a new partner in such a House, could not fail to awaken a glorious and stirring ambition in the breast of the least ambitious of her sex. That Mrs Dombey had entered on that social contract ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... meat during the forty days immediately preceding Easter,—a cannibal, with a tender morsel of young missionary in his mouth, complaining that he cannot gratify his appetite for human flesh,—these would be models of reason and common sense, compared with the factious demagogues ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... was time to bring down the Monarch from his raptures to the level of common sense, I determined to endeavour to open up to him some glimpses of the truth, that is to say of the nature of things in Flatland. So I began thus: "How does your Royal Highness distinguish the shapes and positions of his subjects? I for my part noticed by the sense of sight, before ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... All difference of race, all distinction of nationality, must be merged into the one thought that, few as they were, they were the sole surviving representatives of a world which it seemed exceedingly improbable that they would ever see again; and common sense dictated that they were bound to direct all their energies to insure that their asteroid should at least have a ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... take it we retain enough realism and common sense not to wish to transfer these complicated conventions and compromises to a land of such ruthless logic and such rending divisions. We may hope to reproduce our laws, we do not want to reproduce our legal fictions. We do not want to insist on everybody ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... thoughts took. For although Dr. Mary Arkroyd was, and knew herself to be, no dazzling genius at her profession—in moments of candor she would speak of having "scraped through" her qualifying examinations—she had a high opinion of her own common sense and her power ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... the work- house. There have been wiseacres who have found severe fault with John Bunyan because he made his Puritan pilgrim such a bad husband and such an unnatural father. But nobody possessed of a spark of common sense, not to say religion or literature, would ever commit himself to such an utter imbecility as that. John Bunyan's pilgrim, whatever he may have been before he became a pilgrim, all the time he was a pilgrim, was the most faithful, affectionate, and solicitous husband in all the ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... arise here, is that of supposing the evil spirit in any respects independent of God; a supposition, however, which is not to be charged upon the advocates of diabolical agency. "It is evident," says Dr. Leland, "to the common sense of mankind, that there is a vast difference between the supposition of an almighty and independent evil being, a supposition full of absurdity and horror; and that of an inferior dependent being, who was made originally ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... deal the man beneath some tremendous blow in my hatred. I did not dare to shriek, so I struck the blow. Demanding his name from Mr. Raymond, and hearing that it was, as I expected, Clavering, I flung caution, reason, common sense, all to the winds, and in a moment of fury denounced him as the ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... now must close, of these Radicals dispose, For I am sad and weary as I view their folly o'er; In their wild Utopian dreaming, and impracticable scheming For a sinful world's redeeming, common sense flies out the door, And the long-drawn dissertations come to—words and nothing more; Only words, ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... many solemn deities has now, in extreme old age, entered upon a second childhood and grown altogether too youthful for his role, undergoing a metimorphosis beyond the boundaries of legendary probability or common sense; every trace of divinity and manly strength has been boiled out of him. So young and earthly fair, he looks, rather, like some pretty boy dressed up for a game with toy sword and helmet—one wants to have a romp with him. No warrior ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... 'tis a loose and futile position below a dispute. 'You are not to speak anything of the dead but what is good.' Why so? Who says so? Neither reason nor Scripture. Inspired authors have done otherwise, and reason and common sense tell me that, if the characters of past ages and men are to be drawn at all, they are to be drawn like themselves, that is, with their excellences and their foibles; and it as much a piece of justice to the world, and to virtue, too, to ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... see if any, in his judgment, might be sold with advantage (either on account of doubtful character or ex- ceptionally high price), and the money invested elsewhere. This business the bank will transact for her; and in the matter of investment, in addition to using her own common sense as to the nature of the securities in which she should place her money, she should seek the advice of her banker, and rely very much upon ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.
... 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 ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... noise too. It was impossible to be within a dozen yards of Mr Pickering, when on the trail, and not hear a noise. The suspicion that someone was following them did not come to him, for he was a man rather of common sense than of imagination, and common sense was asking him bluntly why the deuce anybody should want to tramp after them through a wood at that time of night. He caught the note of panic in Elizabeth's ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... cannot grasp too clearly that Socialism will abolish rates absolutely. Rates for public purposes are necessary to-day because the landowners of the world evade the public obligations that should, in common sense, ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... another subject which must be dealt with, not by legislation, but by mutual good feeling and by common sense. Wherever business is carried on upon a large scale, difficulties must in the nature of things be anticipated in the relations between labour and capital. Each of these elements in the operations ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... tortures.' 'Let us not hurt or imprison each other, nor put in the stocks, nor cruelly whip and lacerate each others' bodies; but let us thrash deceit, whip and beat that and all false doctrines': these were the breathings of our pilgrim forefathers,—it is the language of common sense and of real religion. May such sentiments spread, and soon cover ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... referred to in the line quoted above is suspected to be not merely the imaginary representative of a type but the popular local Fool of Shakespeare's time, a fellow of brilliant parts, but eccentric, and, we must suppose, lacking in balance and common sense. We are told that one winter Lord Chandos's players visited Evesham, and Jack Miller, our Fool, became greatly attached to the company and in particular to Grumball the clown; indeed, so greatly was he enamoured ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... this. "You're a wonder. When I found a university with my ill-gotten gains, I'll give you a job as professor of—well, of Common Sense, by jiminy!" ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... Cossack in the Don province, and took part in the Prussian campaign, at first as a paid soldier of Prussia, later as an adherent of the Czar. At the bombardment of Bender he had become a Cossack hetman. His extraordinary physical strength, his natural common sense and inventive power, had distinguished him even at this time, but the peace which was concluded barred before him the gate of progress. He was sent with many discharged officers back to the Don. Let them go again and look after their field labors! Pugasceff's head, however, was full of other ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... wealth placed his family among the leaders of the very exclusive society of Charleston. His children were accustomed to luxury and display, to the service of slaves, and to the indulgence of every selfish whim, although the father's practical common sense led him to protest against the habits to which such indulgences naturally led. He was necessarily much from home, but, when leisure permitted, his great pleasure was teaching his children and discussing various topics ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... in proportion to the extremity of their case? Our theorists and routine men move armies as a student practises at chess, as if the whole field was under their control, and both armies at their disposal. With our immense resources, vigorous fighting and practical common sense would speedily suppress the Rebellion. Where are our old fighting stock of Generals? our Hookers, Heintzelmans, Hancocks, and men of like kidney? Why must their fiery energies succumb to a cold-blooded strategy, that wastes the materiel of war, ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... favourite text with people that know very little of the depths of Christianity. They fancy that it appeals to common sense and men's natural consciences, apart altogether from minutenesses of doctrine or of Christian experience. They are very much mistaken. No doubt there is a surface of truth, but only a surface, in the application that is generally given to these words of our text, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... electricity and in the cells of a battery during electrolysis." In this paper, and those following it in 1841 and 1842, he laid the foundation of a new province in physical science-electric and chemical thermodynamics-then totally unknown, but now wonderfully familiar, even to the roughest common sense practical electrician. With regard to the heat evolved by a metallic conductor carrying an electric current, he established what was already supposed to be the law, namely, that "the quantity of heat evolved by it [in a given time] is always proportional ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... Scientific Management which speeds up the men uselessly, or which brings any ill feeling between the men or any feeling that the weaker ones have not a fair chance. All of these things are contrary to Scientific Management, as well as contrary to common sense, for it goes without saying that no man is capable of doing his best work permanently if he is worried by the idea that he will not receive the square deal, that someone stronger than he will be allowed to cheat or to domineer over him, or that he will be speeded up to such ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... thoroughly inducted. Mr. Ludlow, immersed in business, thought little about such matters, and suffered himself to be led into almost anything that his wife and daughters proposed. But Mrs. Ludlow's brother—Uncle Joseph, as he was called—a bachelor, and a man of strong common sense, steadily opposed his sister in her false notions, but with little good effect. Necessity at last called into proper activity the good sense of Mr. Ludlow, and he commenced the opposition that has just been noticed. After reflecting some ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... and thought in his limited, common sense way: "It is a confounded shame to let a man like that have command of the army!" And ten minutes later, when Maurice, comforted by his good breakfast, shook hands with Prosper and strolled away to smoke more cigarettes, he carried ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... troubled him: what could they know about the rights and wrongs of business? The fact which Lizzy sought to bring to bear upon him, that our Lord would not have done such a thing, was to him no argument at all. He said to himself, with the superior smile of arrogated common sense, that "no mere man since the fall" could be expected to do like Him; that He was divine, and had not to fight for a living; that He set us an example that we might see what sinners we were; that religion was one thing, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... considerable common sense,' said Lord Tottenham, and he let Noel go. And Alice put her arm round Noel and tried to cheer him up, but he was all trembly, and ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... for ordinary mortals to touch—if she'd batted it into the corner, or made mud pies on it, to show that she was inflexible, fortune would have changed in her favor. Sir Lancelot would have had some respect for her common sense." ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Christian who knows exactly why the literalists have failed to persuade the free-thinkers or even to have damaged their arguments. "For if you begin with Infidels by denying to them, what is evident and agreeable to common sense, I think there can be no reasonable hopes of converting or convincing them."[23] The irony is abrasive simply because it unanswerably singles out the great rhetorical failure of orthodoxy, its inability to argue from a set of principles as acceptable ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... every forecast was made with a wag of the head that implied a large mental reservation. At sea it was better to proceed with caution. To be prepared for emergencies—to expect the worst and to be ready for it—was the part of plain common sense. And Skipper Bill o' Burnt Bay was well ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... and Thomas Jefferson there were several points of resemblance, the chief of which was an intense faith in the sound common sense of the mass of the people. This faith was one of the strongest attributes of both these great men. It has usually been supposed that it was this incident of the meeting at the Green Dragon that determined Adams's final attitude in the state convention. Unquestionably, such a demonstration ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... bud. Sir Robert, Mr. Christie says, was not a popular Governor. Had that been his only misfortune, it would have been well. He was, evidently, something worse, in being only that which might emphatically be expressed in a single word. A few grains of common sense in one or two Governors of colonies would have saved England some millions of pounds. Sir Robert Shore Milnes having ruled, or having been ruled, for a period of six years, set sail for England, on the 5th of August, in H.M.S. Uranie, leaving Mr. Dunn, the Senior Executive Councillor ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... he, with an air of importance, "I tell you what, it is against all reason, it is contrary to common sense and everything else, that you remain any longer riveted down to this old bench. It will be your ruin; 'pend upon it, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... governed the municipality of Grey Town were not unlike the councillors in other towns and cities. They laid no claim to a pre-eminence in wisdom, professing to be merely ordinary men of business, of sound common sense, and strictly honest ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... the allied unions, emphasizing and explaining the meaning of each clause. "First, as to wages. This is purely a matter for adjustment to the cost of living and general industrial conditions. It is a matter of arithmetic and common sense. There is ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... measure of self-government the same measure ought to be extended to Ireland, though it sounds plausible, is neither conformable to democratic principle nor to our habitual practice, grounded as that practice is on considerations of common sense and expediency. The true watchwords which should guide English democrats in their dealings with Ireland, as in truth with every other part of the United Kingdom, are not "equality," "similarity," and "simultaneity," ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... man of common sense, when he pulls down his house for the purpose of rebuilding it, fails to provide himself with some shelter while the work is in progress; so, before demolishing the spacious, if not commodious, mansion of his old beliefs, Descartes thought ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... good sense of the people says, and it is this common sense which will triumph in the end over all vacillation, and will, in spite of everything, assert its way ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... people who go out to settlements, is not the only one; but as the other dangers, except perhaps domestic poisoning, are incidental to pottering about in the forests, or on the rivers, among the unsophisticated tribes, I will not dwell on them. They can all be avoided by any one with common sense, by keeping well out of the districts in which they occur; and so I warn the general reader that if he goes out to West Africa, it is not because I said the place was safe, or its dangers overrated. The cemeteries of the West Coast are full of the victims of those people who have said that Coast ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... my Mistake. Alas! the Mode and the Multitude flow like Torrents, which, when at their Height, having spent their Violence, quickly disappear. The Mischief is in the Spring itself; the Fault is in the Singers. They praise the Pathetick, yet sing the Allegro. He must want common Sense that does not see through them. They know the first to be the most Excellent, but they lay it aside, knowing it to be the ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... saw the common sense of the poem, but didn't see the fun in the bad spelling. Said he, "This Yankee poet has the true spirit. He puts the case admirably. I wish, however, he could have used good English." Evidently Sumner did not suspect that so cultured and polished a poet as James Russell Lowell ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... as a means of finding out, a great public discussion—a sort of religious tournament—was appointed to take place between certain champions of the two religions, in Westminster Abbey. You may suppose that it was soon made pretty clear to common sense, that for people to benefit by what they repeat or read, it is rather necessary they should understand something about it. Accordingly, a Church Service in plain English was settled, and other laws and regulations were made, completely ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... have another slaughter; and not a word of reason or common sense do I meet with, the whole day, till I retire to my volumes of the old Gentleman's Magazine, which just keeps my ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... occasion?— The question of immortality— Question of God's uniqueness and infinity: religious experience does not settle this question in the affirmative— The pluralistic hypothesis is more conformed to common sense. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... create monstrosities, but a practised writer should be able to create men and women capable of moving through a certain series of situations without shocking in any violent way the most generally applicable principles of common sense. I say that a practised writer should be able to do this; that they sometimes do not is a matter which I will not now go into, suffice it for my purpose if I admit that Mr. Hardy can do this. In farmer Oak there is nothing to object to; the conception is logical, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... game,'" and she imitated a set English voice, her beautiful mouth pursed up, until Paul had to use violent restraint with himself to keep from kissing it. "A wonderful people—mostly gentlemen and generally honest, but of a common sense that is disastrous to sentiment or romance. If you were not so polished, and lazy and strong—and beautiful to look at, one would not consider you ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... arranged long since by the Marechal de la Meilleraie, began to batter a breach, but slowly, because the artillerymen felt that they had been directed to attack two impregnable points; and because, with their experience, and above all with the common sense and quick perception of French soldiers, any one of them could at once have indicated the point against which the attack should have been directed. The King was surprised at the slowness of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... pining, heart-broken woman. Except that truthfulness was stamped on every lineament of Hetty's countenance, Father Antoine would have doubted her story; and, except that her every act showed such vigorous common sense, he would have doubted her sanity. As it was, his perplexity deepened; so also did his interest in her. It was impossible not to admire this brisk, kindly, outspoken woman, who already moved about in the village with a certain air of motherly interest in ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... is in another sense a vast society of minute individuals, severally living in 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. ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... the ancients; and it will be found true, that, in every age, the highest character for sense and learning has been obtained by those who have been most indebted to them. For, to say truth, whatever is very good sense must have been common sense in all times; and what we call learning is but the knowledge of the sense of our predecessors. Therefore they who say our thoughts are not our own, because they resemble the ancients, may as well say our faces are not our own, because they are like our fathers: and indeed it is very ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... hunting a spy. No prefect in the world, no master even, not Mr. Dupre himself, not the remote divine head-master in the calm Elysium of his garden, could have escaped a thrill at the mention of such a sport. Frank was conscious of a sudden relapse from the serenity of the grown man's common sense. For an instant he ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... he said. "I am willing to wait here till some one comes who has a little common sense. Just remember that I am only a boy, and haven't the strength ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... themselves in the enjoyment of their own selfishness; and sometimes there is not even the appearance of good fellowship, but a chronic resistance and disagreement, all for the want of a little sympathy and common sense. ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... turned away from God—and I had to, I had to in mere honesty—I simply lost Him. And having lost Him, there is nothing left to lose. Also, having once seen Him and then lost Him, I can't take up the puzzle again. I can't play the game. If I hadn't what we New Englanders call common sense, I suppose I should put an end to myself. What would be the good? He would simply catch me, like a rabbit out of a cage, and chuck me back again on the dark planet. Don't think I blame Him. He wouldn't ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... young,' he said, with less vehement contempt. 'I must remember that. At your age, a lad has a sort of devil in him, that's always driving him out of the path of common sense, whether he will or no. I'll try my best to talk quietly with you. Does your sister know what ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... around us who will not let us sleep. Then, they address the imagination; only poetry inspires poetry. They become the organic culture of the time. College education is the reading of certain books which the common sense of all scholars agrees will represent the science already accumulated. If you know that,—for instance, in geometry, if you have read Euclid and Laplace,—your opinion has some value; if you do not know these, you are not entitled to give any opinion on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... some of his low characters, that became it, he had a shuffling shamble in his gait, with so contented an ignorance in his aspect, and an awkward absurdity in his gesture, that had you not known him, you could not have believed, that naturally he could have had a grain of common sense. In a word, I am tempted to sum up the character of Nokes, as a comedian, in a parody of what Shakspeare's Mark Antony says of Brutus ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... attachment to the King and Government of England. Among the numerous writers on this momentous question, the most luminous, the most eloquent, and the most forcible was Thomas Paine. His pamphlet entitled 'Common Sense' was not only read, but understood, by everybody; and those who regard the independence of the United States as a blessing will never cease to cherish the remembrance of Thomas Paine. Whatever may have been his subsequent career—in whatever light his ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... What 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 great, then ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... that part of the back country his home. He was even then a man of powerful frame, with broad brow, keen blue eyes, and a dash of red in his hair from a Scottish ancestress—a man, too, of ardent patriotism, strong common sense, and exceptional powers of initiative and leadership. Small wonder that in the rapidly developing commonwealth beyond the mountains he quickly ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... applaud, or crucify, or neglect? Probably they will show him something of the generous hospitality of England, and leaven this with a plentiful sprinkling of ridicule, because the subject of the goat lends itself to humor of the obvious kind. But it is our belief that the hard, practical common sense of the Anglo-Saxon will lead them to make the utmost use of this opportunity of his visit, and, having got him, it is to be expected that they will know enough to keep him. This is quite as much their ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... logic of it does not stand forth clearly; The public conscience fidgets, and feels queerly. Yes, to be arbiter, by law's compulsion, In such a case, with issues so immense, Is hard, no doubt; the public common sense Against the arrangement turns with strong revulsion; And the right remedy, as all must feel, Is in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... of equable temperament who could always say: "WE know you, Governor-Generals! We have seen three or four of you come and go, whereas WE have been sitting on the same stools these thirty years." Nevertheless a prominent feature of the gathering was the total absence of what is vulgarly known as "common sense." In general, we Russians do not make a good show at representative assemblies, for the reason that, unless there be in authority a leading spirit to control the rest, the affair always develops into confusion. Why this should be so one could hardly say, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Common sense, knowing nothing of fine distinctions, is wont to draw a sharp line between the region of illusion and that of sane intelligence. To be the victim of an illusion is, in the popular judgment, to be excluded from the category of rational men. The term at once calls up images ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... able to enjoy, he secures all the rest of his kingdom: had he given up Amphipolis and Potidaea, he would not have deemed himself safe even in Macedonia. He knows therefore, both that he is plotting against you, and that you are aware of it; and, supposing you to have common sense, he judges that you detest him as you ought. Besides these important considerations, he is assured that, though he became master of every thing else, nothing can be safe for him while you are under popular government: should any reverse ever befall him, (and many may happen to a man,) ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... of the marriage would be the talk of the town. The cards were already out, the mayor notified, and the Virgin's chapel, in the parish church, engaged. To revoke all this at the caprice of a ghost and a fool, would be to sin against custom, common sense, and Heaven itself. ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... as a particularly choice tidbit at somebody else's banquet, came last. The rest of us just jostled along together. But Davie Paine, I noticed, held his head higher than I ever had seen it before; for Roger's appreciation of his sound common sense had pleased him beyond measure and had done wonders to ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... to her aid again, in a blunt fashion, neither kind nor unkind, but simply common sense. "What ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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 be the representative of the faultless ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... most voluminous description. Mr. Lincoln glanced at it and said: "I should want a new lease of life to read this through!" Throwing it down upon the table he added: "Why can't a committee of this kind occasionally exhibit a grain of common sense? If I send a man to buy a horse for me, I expect him to tell me his points—not how many hairs ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... discuss with fairness, I might say with common sense, any transactions, unless in reference to the object which was in the view of those who carried them on? I repeat it, whether gentlemen in this House do or do not consider the question to be one of peace or war, ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... just where it is!" said Smith, with some logic, but in a tone a wife uses in argument (which tone, by the way, especially if backed by logic or common sense, makes a man wild sooner than anything else in ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... conscience is the very devil. (He follows Paramore and puts his arm familiarly round his shoulder, bringing him back again whilst he speaks.) Now look here, Paramore: I've got no conscience in that sense at all: I loathe it as I loathe all the snares of idealism; but I have some common humanity and common sense. (He replaces him in the easy chair and sits down opposite him.) Come: what is a really scientific theory?—a true ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... "That's common sense," agreed Cap'n Bill. So they left the gardener's boy standing beside the path, and resumed their journey toward ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... and common sense with regard to the cutting up of a Window; according to which the Cartoon and Design must be modified.—Never disguise the lead line. Cut the necessary parts first, as I said before; cut the optional parts simply; thinking most of craft-convenience, and ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... authorities than Mr. Birrell held that the Ulster case for resistance was a good and valid one as it stood. No English statesman of the last half-century has deservedly enjoyed a higher reputation for political probity, combined with sound common sense, than the eighth Duke of Devonshire. As long ago as 1893, when this same issue had already been raised in circumstances much less favourable to Ulster than after the passing of the Parliament Act in 1911, the Duke ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... that the representatives of organized laborers may act effectively in collective bargaining the first condition necessary is that a large proportion, if not all, of the workers of the trade in the establishments concerned shall be organized. A common sense of wrong is one of the strongest motives to bring workers together, and has prompted the origin of many a local chapter. Then constant and strenuous efforts are made to bring workers into the organized ranks. Experienced organizers knowing all the arts of persuasion devote ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... obstinacy," pursued S. Behrman, bent upon finishing the phrase, "but it don't show common sense." ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... voicing. As Sir George Grove said, his organs are celebrated for "their excellent engineering qualities." Clever, ingenious, dauntless and resourceful—qualities blended together with a plentiful supply of sound judgment and good common sense—were some of the striking characteristics of this remarkable man. He gave his personal attention to every department of his factory; nothing was too insignificant to claim his notice; his thoroughness was extraordinary—every pipe went through his hands. An organist ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... difference between these great cotemporaries lay in their power of character. Gainsborough was as true as could be to nature, where the character was not of the very highest order. Plain, downright common sense he would hit off wonderfully, as in his portrait of Ralphe Schomberg—a picture, we are sorry to find, removed from the National Gallery. The world's every-day men were for his pencil. He did not so much excel in women. The bent of Sir Joshua's mind was to elevate, to dignify, to intellectualize. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... practical, common sense vision Mare Nubium, the Cloudy Sea, was an immense depression of the surface, sprinkled here and there with a few circular mountains. Covering a great portion of that part of the southern hemisphere which lies east of the centre, it occupied ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... with engraved metal-work, or embossed with coloured stones, oppressed the sense of utility; and when tables, chairs, and picture-frames were made of silver, chased and overloaded with the scroll-work he so abundantly patronised, common sense seems to have yielded its place to mere display. Despite of the costly character of such works, and their destination as the decoration of a palace, they are positive vulgarisms, and we feel little regret when ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... was an occasion where sound common sense and a readiness to grasp a situation were needed it seemed to be just then. And, fortunately, Jack Stormways was just the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... and character was wholly practical. Common sense was his polar star. He must be judged not as a scholar or a lawyer or a statesman merely, but as a man of business who was required to accomplish a given purpose. If that purpose was to be accomplished by writing, he took up ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... by one-third. An honourable gentleman had talked of establishing and securing the foundations of public prosperity; but what would be the consequence to-morrow if that night they adopted the proposition of the honourable gentleman? Every man of common sense would buy up every guinea in the country; the whole of our mercantile transactions would be disturbed, and all private contracts be open to inquiry and to defeat. Seven or eight years had already elapsed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... philanthropy, and the love of dogs and cats supersedes that of one's neighbor, the progress of experimental physiology and pathology will, indubitably, in course of time, place medicine and hygiene upon a rational basis. Two centuries ago England was devastated by the plague; cleanliness and common sense were enough to free us from its ravages. One century since, small-pox was almost as great a scourge; science, though working empirically, and almost in the dark, has reduced that evil to relative insignificance. At the present time, science, ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... a flurry. "I don't know who did it, of course. I'm not saying anybody did. Only somebody must of. That's just common sense. You'll admit that yourself." ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... be very painful to the sentimentalist to notice what common sense is beginning to prevail on one of his pet subjects: that of the ancient immunities of 'genius.' Of course, to a great many good people genius continues still to be accepted as payment in full for every species ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... the opportunity of Montague's rejection for pressing the suit of the other lover. She was simply anxious to get a husband for her daughter,—as she had been anxious to get a wife for her son,—in order that her child might live comfortably. But she felt that whenever she spoke common sense to Hetta, her daughter took it as an offence, and flew into tantrums, being altogether unable to accommodate herself to the hard truths of the world. Deep as was the sorrow which her son brought upon her, and great as was the disgrace, she could feel more sympathy ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Olga, that you were a better judge of common sense, and of the courtesy due to my opinions. I can tell you we are likely to see trouble enough with this high-tempered girl ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... girls were Betty Nelson, a born leader, bright, vigorous and with more than her share of common sense. She was the daughter of Charles Nelson, a wealthy carpet manufacturer. Grace Ford, tall, willowly, and exceedingly pretty, was blessed with well-to-do parents. Mr. Ford being a lawyer of note, who ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... heard of such a thing!" the other faltered with increasing agitation. "No—you can't mean it. It isn't common sense!" ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... upon their tracks. Being none too well balanced themselves, it was only natural that the exuberance of these new arrivals should prove infectious and that a sort of general auto-intoxication should result. That is precisely what happened at Dawson. Men lost all caution, all common sense; they lived in a land of rosy imaginings; hard-bought lessons of experience were forgotten; reality disappeared; fancy took wing and left fact behind; expectations were capitalized and no exaggeration ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... worse than the last of a superior. This refined observation delighted Sir John, who dignifies it as an axiom, yet afterwards came to doubt it with a sed de hoc quaere—query this! If it be true in politics, it is not so in common sense, according to the proverbs of both nations; for the honest English declares, that "Better be the head of the yeomanry than the tail of the gentry;" while the subtle Italian has it, "E meglio esser testa di Luccio, che coda di Storione;" "better be the head of a pike than ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... in the valley until late in November. The matter was left with the elders, all of whom, excepting one named Levi Savage, counselled them to go forward and trust in the Lord, who would surely protect them. Savage declared that they should trust, also, to such common sense as the Lord had given them. From his certain knowledge, the company, containing as it did so large a number of the aged and infirm, of women and children, could not cross the mountains thus late in the season without much suffering, sickness, and death. He was overruled and rebuked ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... finding all quiet, we gave a knock to rouse him up, and see if we could bring any thing out of him by speering cross-questions. Tommy and Benjie trembled from top to toe, like aspen leaves, but fient a word could we make common sense of at all. I wonder who educates these foreign creatures? it was in vain to follow him, for he just gab-gabbled away, like one of the stone masons at the Tower of Babel. At first I was completely bamboozled, and almost dung stupid, though I kent one word of French ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... nevertheless, were at first but trivial, and such as are not worth relating, but at last it broke out into open war: and it began with all the rudeness and insolence that can be imagined—without reason, without provocation, contrary to nature, and indeed to common sense; and though, it is true, the first relation of it came from the Spaniards themselves, whom I may call the accusers, yet when I came to examine the fellows they could not deny a word ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... it shouldn't be enough," he argued. "Perhaps we have too much common sense for these ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he ventured. "She's a wise old body and I'd like to hear her opinion of this business. We'll get common sense from her." ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... I thanked God for these broad lands, and the untiring energy of the band of workers and friends who so intelligently and successfully save them from poverty, crime, and wretchedness, and by change of position, sympathy, common sense, and Christian love, fit them for useful, prosperous lives here, and, by grace, ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... 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 happened to give any ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... group skill is acquired by the coordination of the energies of all the workers so that the work flows naturally and evenly from worker to worker with the minimum hindrance. This coordination takes place naturally through experience. It only needs common sense supervision and a protection of the workers from the impractical ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... It needs only common sense to ascertain whether the allied powers were sincere in this declaration, the object of which evidently was to alienate from the Emperor the affections of his people by holding up his Majesty before them as an obstacle to peace, and separating his cause from that of France; and on this point I am ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... consider myself exceptionally brilliant or talented. But it did seem to me, and the more I noted the doings of my fellow-men and women, the more assured did I become of it, that I possessed plain, practical common sense to an unusual and remarkable degree. Conscious of this, I wrote a little book, which I entitled How to be Happy, Wealthy, and Wise, and published it at my own expense. I did not seek for profit. I ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... but he went vigorously to work at that fire, although he had never laid eyes on anything so primitive as that stove in all his life. Presently, by using common sense, he had the thing going and a forlorn little kettle steaming ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... the kindred "1. P to Q4" opening, has since become the trusty weapon in serious encounters. Lasker wrote Common Sense in Chess, and gave the best defences of the Ruy Lopez (a certain form of it); but the "common sense" was demolished in the Paris and Nuremberg tournaments, and old forms of that remarkable opening have to be refurbished. These instances will suffice to show the reason for the cautious style of modern times. The Moltkes have ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... commented Professor Bolton, "in making up your mind to live. I congratulate you on your common sense. And perhaps, as the years go by, you will realize that had you married your Arabella, you would not have found life all honey and roses. She was fickle, unworthy of you. Soon you will forget. Youth—ah, youth ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... and placed himself immediately in the front rank of those who were fighting for a redress of undoubted grievances. He was thoroughly imbued with the ideas of English radicalism, and had an intense hatred of Toryism in every form. He possessed little of that strong common sense and power of acquisitiveness which make his countrymen, as a rule, so successful in every walk of life. When he felt he was being crushed by the intriguing and corrupting influences of the governing class, aided by the lieutenant-governor, ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... occasion—'Coleridge! the connections of a Declamation are not the transitions of Poetry—bad, however, as they are, they are better than "Apostrophes" and "O thou's", for at the worst they are something like common sense. The others are the grimaces ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... walked quietly into the room, and were received very kindly by Miss Wyllys and Elinor. One was a woman of about forty, plainly, but neatly dressed, with a pleasing face, remarkable for a simple expression of common sense and goodness. Her manners corresponded perfectly with her appearance; they were quiet and pleasant. The lad who accompanied her was a boy of sixteen, small, and slightly made, with good features, and an ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... (as I fondly thought) more gifted students. All was vain: that he had passed a riotous nonage, that he was a zealot, that he twice displayed (compared with his grotesque companions) some tincture of soldierly resolution and even of military common sense, and that he figured memorably in the scene on Magus Muir, so much and no more could I make out. But whenever I cast my eyes backward, it is to see him like a landmark on the plains of history, sitting with his cloak about his mouth, inscrutable. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... recant in the worst of times, when my ruin was designed, and my life was sought, and for near ten years I was kept from the exercise of that profession which had afforded me a competent subsistence; and surely I shall not now do it, when there is a liberty of speaking common sense, which, though not long since forbidden, is ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... broad, general way the element of common sense is the basework of an expert's success in the business. He cannot depend upon anything suggesting intuition. Where two signatures or two specimens of writing are in question and one exhibit is a forgery and the other is genuine, or where both are genuine, yet in question, ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... been sent to do man's work, and for this a man's garb was the only fitting one to wear. And this ruling was heard with great acclamation of satisfaction; for her dress had been almost more commented upon than any other matter by some, and that the Church had set its sanction upon that which common sense deemed most right and fitting, robbed the most doubtful of all scruple, and gave to the Maid herself no ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... puffs, pills, and whisky bitters; opposing rum, tobacco, infidelity, and the devil; containing pictures, true stories, incidents, providences, answers to prayer, poetry, music, temperance, religion, and common sense; fine paper, large type, and good reading for young and old; send $1 for THE CHRISTIAN and 25 cts. for the LITTLE CHRISTIAN a year. Both papers sent 3 months for 10 cts. Size 33 by 46 inches, containing 4 ...
— The Nursery, No. 169, January, 1881, Vol. XXIX - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... edition, revised and slightly enlarged, appeared in 1913. Since then the text has once more been subjected to a searching revision, and it is hoped that the book now contains no statement which is not in accord with common sense and the present state of philological knowledge. Only those who have experience of such work know how easy it is to stray unconsciously from the exact truth in publishing the results of etymological research. Moreover, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... Sabbath. Your Hebrew does not poignantly feel or bitterly resent being reviled and spat upon, provided he hears the broad gold pieces rattling in the courier-bag slung over his shoulder. He nurses his vengeance, but he has the common sense to perceive that the readiest and fullest manner of exacting it is by cozening his neighbour. At this semi-European edge of Africa he enjoys comparative license, although he is forced to appear in skull-cap and a long narrow robe of a dark colour ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... looked hard at her—so sad, that I forgot I ought either to speak up or go away. Of who she was or how she came to be at La Chance, I had no earthly clue. I knew, of course, that it was she who had met me at the landing, and common sense told me she had taken me for some one else: but I had no desire to say so, or to go away either. And suddenly she ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... she might avert from others the horrors which threatened them; and now, when she knew the history of the Divine Lord of the Christians, she told herself that she had acted at that moment in a manner well-pleasing to that sublime Teacher. Still, her strong common sense assured her that to sacrifice the dearest and fondest wish of her heart in vain would not have been right ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... labor or despises the laborer, is himself one of the most despicable creatures on God's earth. He not only displays a dull intelligence of those nobler inspirations with which God has endowed us, but he even shows a lack of plain common sense. ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... of common sense, for the sake of the men whose country has been torn from them, who may not speak their mothers' tongue in the land of their fathers, who are forbidden to worship in accordance with the dictates of their ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... galloped around and cut him off from the town. Then it was all over but the shouting. The Germans got into the town and our fellows got it in the neck. And all because that fool sergeant didn't use common sense in choosing a position for his gun. They marked his grave with a nice little white cross. And that's what you boys will get if you don't profit by ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... in which he ought to be a fully trained expert, or, if he be not conscientious, and be pressed for time, as he always is, he directs his department according to his general political theories and not according to practical common sense—a double distillation ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... sentence. How can one commit the crime of forgery who cannot write? Probably some "Smart Aleck" of a district judge can explain. I admit that it is beyond my powers of comprehension. It may be law, but there is not much COMMON SENSE in it. ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... in good-humored explanations like this that the Strangs managed to conceal their real interest in Gargoyle. They did not remind people of their only child, the brave boy of seven, who died before they came to Mockwood. Under the common sense that set the two instantly to work building a new home, creating new associations, lay the everlasting pain of an old life, when, as parents of a son, they had seemed to tread springier soil, to breathe keener, more vital air. And, though the Strangs adhered ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... "It is common sense," was the prompt reply. "With all your ability, you could not in six months' time appreciably affect the position either way. Therefore, we choose to have you concentrate the whole of your energies upon one ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... these compositions Foster adheres scrupulously to his theory adopted at the outset. His verses are distinguished by a naivete characteristic and appropriate, but consistent at the same time with common sense. Enough of the negro dialect is retained to preserve distinction, but not to offend. The sentiment is given in plain phrase and under homely illustration; but it is a sentiment nevertheless. The melodies are of twin birth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... flying,' is a sentence in form quite as grammatical as 'Theaetetus is sitting'; the difference between the two sentences is, that the one is true and the other false. But, before making this appeal to common sense, Plato propounds for our consideration a theory of ...
— Sophist • Plato |
