"Common sense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nerves, as even old Fanny could not help noticing, had gone "all to pieces." She lived in perpetual fear. Nearly all the previous night she had been lying awake turning over and over in her mind the horrible possibilities of the future. It was in vain that she tried to call her normal common sense to the rescue, in vain that she tried to look at facts calmly, to sum them up dispassionately, and to draw from them reasonable conclusions. She could not be reasonable. Her brain said to her: "You have ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... often crawling along. Both knew a good deal about traps and how they are set, and their common sense enabled them to see the most likely places for them. They kept to open ground, avoiding shrubbery and what looked like windfalls of branches. Before they came into full view of the house they had about a quarter of a mile to go. And it was ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... the lady, and all the other workers, were earnest, enthusiastic, high-minded, and full of common sense. Henrietta was not one of these things. She was also very inaccurate, unpunctual, and forgetful, and if her failings were pointed out to her in the gentlest way she took offence, not because she was conceited, but because at her age she was beyond having things ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... of wild men, even, are not the less true, though they may not recommend themselves to the sense which is most common among Englishmen and Americans today. It is not every truth that recommends itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the wild Clematis as well as for the cabbage. Some expressions of truth are reminiscent—others merely SENSIBLE, as the phrase is,—others prophetic. Some forms of disease, even, may prophesy forms of health. ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau
... Common sense and humanity might have refuted every other evidence than that of the victims themselves. But what were the authorities to do, when, in addition to all legal and Scriptural precedents, the prisoners insisted on entering a plea of guilty? When Goody E—— testified ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Keith went to the courthouse. There he sat in the enclosure reserved for lawyers and listened to the proceedings, his legal mind alert and interested in the technical battles. At no time in the world's history has sheer technicality unleavened by common sense been carried further than in the early California courts. Even in the most law-ridden times elsewhere a certain check has been exercised by public opinion or the presence of business interests. But here was as yet no public opinion; ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... reader with true common sense remarks that this second ghost, Lord Lyttelton's own, does not appear in evidence till 1828, fifty years after date, and then in an anonymous book, on no authority. We have permitted to the reader this opportunity of exercising his acuteness, while laying a little ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... ease must now come to an end, must it needs be by wronging my king,—him by whom thou wert established? If thy house must come to ruin, should it therefore in its fall crush the heels of him that set it up? The matter is so unreasonable, and so dissonant from common sense, that hardly can it be conceived by human understanding, and altogether incredible unto strangers, till by the certain and undoubted effects thereof it be made apparent that nothing is either sacred or holy to those who, having emancipated themselves from ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Emerson says: "Whilst common sense looks at things or visible nature as real and final facts, poetry, or the imagination which dictates it, is a second sight, looking through these, and using them as types or words for thoughts which they signify." Using these faculties and not mere eyesight, one must surely say: "Since this world, ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... no importance whatever, would not be worthy even of mere mention if it were not for the fact that this form of delusion has of late become so common, under the deceptive names of metaphysics, Christian science, and mind-cure, when the theory is simply an attempt to get rid of science and common sense. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... of an Alaric. But he was an Alaric of the south, uniting the untamed strength of his island kindred with the mental powers of his Italian ancestry. In his personality there is a complex blending of force and grace, of animal passion and mental clearness, of northern common sense with the promptings of an oriental imagination; and this union in his nature of seeming opposites explains many of the mysteries of his life. Fortunately for lovers of romance, genius cannot be wholly analyzed, even by the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... greater wrong could not be done to orphans, when grown to maturity, than to treat them as children, unable to make their own way in the world. This would be to destroy all strength of character, and turn them into abject, and at the same time discontented, paupers. Few have been so destitute of common sense as to have supposed that in this way they were to be supported, but there has been a tendency to expect the missionaries to set them out on a career of self-support, and remove all obstacles in their way without any special effort on their part, and when difficulties have arisen to fall back ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... brother explained to her how common it was for noblemen of high birth to live on means provided by their wives' fortunes, and how uncommon it was that men born to high titles should consent to serve as clerks in a public office. But his common sense had no effect upon his sister, who ended the conversation by exacting from him a renewed assurance of secrecy. "I won't say a word till he comes," said Hampstead; "but you may be sure that a story like that will be all over London before he ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... eastward with long and rapid strides, striving to reduce to order in his mind the impressions the visit had given him, only to find them too complex, too complicated by unlooked-for emotions. Before its occurrence, he had, in spite of an inherent common sense, felt a little uneasiness over the prospective meeting with the financier. And Nelson Langmaid had hinted, good-naturedly, that it was his, Hodder's, business, to get on good terms with Mr. Parr—otherwise the rectorship of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... their "prompt action," their "common sense," their "ingenuity," were enough to have turned anybody's head. Phyllis enjoyed herself thoroughly. She had never been a real heroine before, and the feeling was delicious. Peter's ears got very red. Yet he, too, enjoyed himself. Only Bobbie ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... horn at your side on your way home from church? I can well believe it would not be your own minister. I have known fathers and mothers in this congregation to send for other ministers than their own minister when terrible trouble came upon them, and both my conscience and my common sense absolutely approved of the step they took. Five students were once sitting and talking together in a city in which there was to be an execution to-morrow morning. They were talking about the murderer who was to be executed in the morning, and about the minister he had sent for ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... has plenty of common sense. You're quite right, Olivia. This isn't a thing we can keep from ...
— Mr. Pim Passes By • Alan Alexander Milne
... day by day. So is common sense. Every decently educated person will soon insist on the abolition of hell. The idea of a lost soul will ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... dear, this is a practical world, you have some common sense even if you are a man of ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... sound common sense. He had never wholly doubted the tales of desperate encounters with devil-fish, told in the harbor these many years; for the various descriptions of how the long slimy arms had curled about the punts had rung too true ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... and twist its texts till they cover the divine morality of its author with mysteries, and require a priesthood to explain them. The Quakers seem to have discovered this. They have no priests, therefore no schisms. They judge of the text by the dictates of common sense and common morality. So the printers can never leave us in a state of perfect rest and union of opinion. They would be no longer useful, and would have to go to the plough. In the first moments of quietude which have succeeded the election, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... statue, in a storm of bullets and grape, in the most exposed places—wherever, in fact, duty, requiring him to go, permitted him to remain—when, without trouble and with distinct advantage to his reputation for common sense, he might have been in such security as is possible on a battlefield in the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... that Lord Salisbury's eyes may now be opened to the true state of the case, and that he may be able to convince Sir Wilfrid that common sense demands that England and Canada shall make a similar agreement with us to that which is just being prepared with ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 54, November 18, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... world, being the richest spots, have been generally the soonest conquered, the soonest civilized, and therefore the soonest taken out of the sphere of romance and wild adventure, into that of order and law, hard work and common sense, as well as—too often—into the sphere of slavery, cowardice, luxury, and ignoble greed. The lowland populations, for the same reasons, have been generally the first to deteriorate, though not on account of the vices ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... Touchstone he is very much more elevated, and shows not less than Hamlet, or than Lear himself, the grand development of Shakespeare's mind at this period of its maturity. In the representation of Shakespeare's plays there has been no greater affront to common sense than the usual presentation of this Fool upon the stage as a boy, except the putting a pretty woman into the part, dressed in such a way as to captivate the eye and divert the attention by the beauty of her ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... satisfactorily to all? I trow not; they would warn the family about eating any more; and if the case had not yet perished, they would let the nomenclature go and try all the means that history, research, and instructed common sense would suggest ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... character, as constituent parts, and yet at the same time as spectators, of the drama, the chorus could not but tend to enforce the unity of place;—not on the score of any supposed improbability, which the understanding or common sense might detect in a change of place;—but because the senses themselves put it out of the power of any imagination to conceive a place coming to, and going away from the persons, instead of the persons changing their place. Yet there are instances, in which, during ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... the West, my native heath; but for self-satisfied stupidity, for littleness in the world of morals, I have seen nothing on earth, or under it, quite so small as a well-to-do New Yorker. He has little brains, or culture, and only the rudiments of common sense, but, being from New York, he assumes everything. Of God's big world, outside Wall Street, Broadway, Fifth Avenue, Central Park and Coney Island, he knows nothing; for he neither reads nor travels; and yet pronounces instant judgment on world ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... absolutely void of common sense as not to understand this innuendo; and while Ratcliffe, in seemingly anxious haste of obedience, hastened to the spot where Sharpitlaw waited to deliver up Jeanie Deans to his custody, she fled with all the despatch she could exert in an opposite direction. ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... pleading guilty, he defended it (I must say, with some adroitness) by saying that it was universally acknowledged that the plea of "Not Guilty" is merely formal, and in no way commits one to its intrinsic truth (and he is right there, at least according to Moral Theology as well as common sense) and, therefore, that the alternative plea is ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... a third consideration, which I humbly commend to my friend Letitia. The turn of her note speaks her a girl of good common sense, with a faculty of hitting the nail square on the head; and such a girl must see that nothing is more likely to fall out than that she will some day be married. Evidently, our fair friend is born to rule; and at this hour, doubtless, her foreordained ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the management of the case. Beholders of the game had hitherto declared that Mr. Gibson's safety was secured by the constant coupling of the sisters. Neither would allow the other to hunt alone. But a common sense of the common danger had made some special strategy necessary, and Camilla hardly spoke a word to Mr. Gibson during the evening. Let us hope that she found some temporary consolation in the ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... old questions and let in upon them not a little light. Even today, however, a great deal of metrical analysis has wrecked itself on the visible rocks of a false accuracy, and it is therefore not only out of caution but also out of mere common sense that we should eschew the arbitrary, even at the risk of vagueness and an 'unscientific' admission of uncertainty. For the only great and annihilating danger of writing on versification is dogmatism. Our theorists, both old and new, are first tempted and ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... the kind of thing that is to be expected in a country where there are no laws, and where everybody is at liberty to do 'just what he jolly well likes'. I am astonished to hear you talking such utter tomfoolery; I set you down as having more common sense!" ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... her way to the side of her consort. Had she done so, and had her father been present at Paris, a very interesting and delicate situation would have been the result; and we may fancy that it would have needed all Metternich's finesse and Castlereagh's common sense to keep the three monarchs united. But Francis was still at Dijon; and Metternich and Castlereagh did not reach Paris until April 10th; so that everything in these important days was decided by the Czar and Talleyrand, both of them irreconcilable foes of ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... world; it would shock our allies. To think of replacing the officers with others is visionary. The loss of the veteran soldiers could not be replaced. To attempt to carry on the war with militia against disciplined troops, will be to attempt what the common sense and common experience of mankind will pronounce to be impracticable. But I should fail in respect to congress, to dwell on observations of this kind in ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... and Witherspoon were among the earliest contributors. William Smith and Provost Ewing assisted in later numbers. Benjamin Rush and Sergeant and Hutchinson imparted to Paine, in their walks in State House yard the suggestions of "Common Sense," the pamphlet which "had a greater run than any other ever published in our country," and which, as Elkanah Watson said, "passed through the continent like an electric spark. It everywhere flashed conviction, and aroused ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... man of common sense think it consistent with the honour of my profession, and not much beneath the dignity of a philosopher, to stand bawling before his own door?—— Alive! Alive ho! The famous Dr. Partridge! No counterfeit, but all ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... answer and none came. He had not only averted a Cabinet crisis but his remorseless common sense and his unswerving adherence to what he saw was best had strengthened his authority ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... of boy friends. And it was a boy, a tall pale Hollander and, as it now seems to me, certainly not a very attractive lad, whom I approached one bright summers eve wandering together in the starlight, with the proposition of eternal friendship. The pale lad possessed what is called common sense and replied that he had too vague a conception of eternity to dare accept this proposal. Later, among women I have seldom met with ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... passionately, that he had done right; but the silence of his old friend to him through those last hours left a sting that no reasoning could assuage. "He told good-by to the rest of the boys; but not to me." And nothing that I could point out in common sense turned him from the thread of his own argument. He worked round the circle again to self-justification. "Was it him I was deserting? Was not the deserting done by him the day I spoke my mind about stealing calves? I have kept my ways the same. He is the one that took to new ones. The man I used ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... convalescent hospitals, or even the preservation of open spaces for the healthful enjoyment of the masses of the Metropolis! Yet such is the sad fact. My Vestry, I am proud to say, are unanimously of opinion that, in such a case as I have described, common sense and common justice would dictate that, as the intentions of the pious founder cannot be applied to the punishment of vice, it should be devoted to the reward of virtue, and this would be best accomplished by expending the fund in question in an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... such sordid care. Not yet awhile; no, no; but the day will come. Human beings are not destined to struggle for ever like beasts of prey. Give them time; let civilization grow. You know what our poet says: "There the common sense of most shall hold a ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... the postulates of a tale. He starts with some wildly unusual—but, as a rule, not impossible—conjuncture of circumstances. This being granted, however, he deduces his story logically and precisely, appealing never to our passions and almost constantly to our common sense. His people are as full of common-sense as Defoe's. They may have more pluck than the average man or woman, and they usually have more adaptability; but they apply to extraordinary circumstances the good unsentimental reasoning of ordinary ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... be a great check upon you. The Duke is now a little too old a mouser to enjoy Tory tricks. He has unfortunately a large amount of common sense; and how fatal must that quality be to the genius of the Wharncliffes, the Goulburns, and the Stanleys! Besides, the Duke has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... In spite of common sense we're wont As cyphers others to appraise, Ourselves as unities to count; And like Napoleons each of us A million bipeds reckons thus One instrument for his own use— Feeling is silly, dangerous. Eugene, more tolerant than this ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... superficial theories of ignorance and haste for it to examine, while there will be the more pleasing task of noting the introduction of sound philosophy, the progress of careful investigation, the uprising of common sense against hereditary falsehood, and the gradual enlightenment of the clerical, medical, and educational professions by the slow progress of new ideas, and the unembarrassed progress of the physical sciences and inventions ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... important detail in the matter of engaging a governess. In fact, Mr. Bingle very properly said to his wife that as she was expected to devote her time to children who had no pedigree, "it wouldn't be along the line of common sense to exact references from her." Besides, said he, she was so sure to be satisfactory. It was only necessary to look into her honest eyes to feel sure about that. And Mrs. Bingle, who was just then in the throes of adopting Imogene, agreed to everything that Imogene's ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... Her own common sense, too, of which she had a goodly share, told her at the same time that the game was not worth the candle: the satisfaction of being asked to the most important wedding in the village, and there queening it ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... encouraging the proceedings of a mountebank like Cosmo Versal. What we've got to do is to prepare a dispatch for the press reassuring the populace and throwing the weight of this institution on the side of common sense and public tranquillity. Let the secretary indite such a dispatch, and then we'll edit ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... alone there are over 25,000 women clerks and secretaries—there is still need for adequate inspection of sanitary accommodation for women workers of this class. Apart altogether from sanitary accommodation, common sense would seem to suggest that, in the case of any one who has to turn out decent typing, a regular supply of hot water is a necessity for washing hands that may have to change a ribbon or do the many little messy jobs that ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... see to it that we brace others instead of giving mere pity. We all like to be pitied, but in our heart we are more grateful to the friend who puts fresh spring into us, by what perhaps seems hard common sense. Those are the friends whose memory comes back to us when circumstances, or years, or distance, have drifted us ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... difficult," he at length said, "to form anything like an exact opinion upon the first attack of insanity, arising from a disappointment of the heart. Much depends upon the firmness of the general character, and the natural force of their common sense. If I were to judge, not only by what I have heard from this most beautiful and interesting creature, as well as from the history of her heart, which her brother gave me so fully, I would say that I think this attack will not be a long one. I am of opinion that her mind is in a state of ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... boy to his senses! I've never laid hand on him yet, but he ain't too old. I'll get him down to common sense, if I got to break ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... their self-verification as those of Holbein. His personages live for us as few figures outside the drama of Shakespeare live.... All his powers cooperated harmoniously in creating this book—his religious ardor, his human tenderness, his sense of beauty, nourished by the Scriptures, his strong common sense, even his gift of humor. Through his deep seriousness play the lighter faculties. The whole man presses into ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... but still more the expression of "curmudgeon" as applied to his father. Naturally, if he had stopped to consider, he would have realised that there must be some mistake; for Standon would hardly have spoken thus of Lord Barminster in his son's presence. But what lover ever does use his common sense? He drew himself up sternly, and Standon could have kicked himself ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... and Occasion that conducts 'em in and makes them proper, their fair Cheeks would perhaps wear a natural Colour at the reading them: yet are never taken Notice of, because a Man writ them, and they may hear that from them they blush at from a Woman—But I make a Challenge to any Person of common Sense and Reason—that is not wilfully bent on ill Nature, and will in spight of Sense wrest a double Entendre from every thing, lying upon the Catch for a Jest or a Quibble, like a Rook for a Cully; but any unprejudic'd ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... bore such wonderful fruits for science. Facts are very well, and induction is also well, but science requires the aid of the creative and divining imagination to order the details and draw thence the broader and higher generalizations. Let us hope that the good common sense of the in-coming half-century will annul the divorce, and again unite on a solid basis spheres that should never have ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... collective control of belligerence and international relations is the obvious common sense settlement of the present world conflict, it is so manifest, so straight-forward that were it put plainly to them it would probably receive the assent of nineteen sane men out of twenty in the world. This, or some such thing as this, they ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... almost all overseers of hired laborers; and Oneida is in reality more a large and prosperous manufacturing corporation, with a great number of partners all actively engaged in the work, than a commune in the common sense of ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... 'mistrustful' of me, no, because she don't fear I shall make mainprize of the stray cloaks and umbrellas down-stairs, or turn an article for Colburn's on her sayings and doings up-stairs,—but spite of that, she does mistrust ... so mistrust my common sense,—nay, uncommon and dramatic-poet's sense, if I am put on asserting it!—all which pieces of mistrust I could detect, and catch struggling, and pin to death in a moment, and put a label in, with name, genus ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... cried Andrew, with a glare in his usually mild eyes and his ugly jaw set. They had had many passages at arms. Bakkus's sophistical rhetoric against Andrew's steady common sense; and they had sharpened Andrew's wit. But never before had they come to a serious quarrel. Feeling his power he had hitherto exercised it with humorous effectiveness. But now the situation appeared entirely devoid of humour. He was ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... world! You may even hear a short-sighted labor leader say the same thing, but you know very well, my friend, that they are wrong. You may not be able to confute them in debate, not having their skill in wordy warfare; but your experience, your common sense, convince you that they are wrong. And all the greatest political economists are on your side. I could fill a volume with quotations from the writings of the most learned political economists of all times in support of your position, but I ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... the sound common sense which fixed the worth of art at what it would fetch, some of the Forsytes—Aunt Hester, for instance, who had always been musical—could not help regretting that Francie's music was not 'classical'; the same with ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... broke in with words of common sense which ended the talk. He had every reason to wish us gone, to save the terror of a wild vengeance let loose in this palace; and that we should go ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... at breakfast, and we dared not look at one another. A wagon came rattling through the gate, and Parker shouted that he was ready. No one had said a word, but the old man struck the table with his fist and exclaimed: "I insist on everybody showin' common sense. I don't want anybody to speak to me. I'll fight in a minit. Git in that wagon ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... fatal weakness," he continued, "but what is there, candidly, to distinguish you from children? You are older, but not wiser,—really not so wise, for with years you lose the common sense you had as children. Have you ever heard a group of women talking ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... who pays his painful Pence Some Laws may frame from dark Experience: Still from the Wells of harsh Adversity May Wisdom draw the Pail of Common Sense— ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... had not been landed. Outside the fort there were fifteen hundred horse and a thousand foot sent by Sahoojee to Angria's assistance. The Portuguese were to face them, while five hundred English soldiers and marines, led by naval officers, were to force the gateway and scale the rampart. Common sense demanded that Sahoojee's force outside the fort should be disposed of, and the heavy guns that had been brought with so much labour from Chaul should be mounted and used, before any attempt at an assault was projected; but there was a woeful absence of ordinary capacity among the commanders. ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... of disaster. He might have met Rischenheim—though they had ridden in opposite directions; Rupert might have intercepted him—though no means could have brought Rupert to the forest so early. Our fears defeated common sense, and our conjectures outran possibility. Sapt was the first to recover from this foolish mood, and he rated us soundly, not sparing even the queen herself. With a laugh we regained some of our equanimity, and felt ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... his position. It was all very well for Game, and Ashley, and Wibberly to declare that but for him Willoughby would have gone to the dogs—it was all very well of them to make game of and caricature Riddell and his failures. Seeing is believing; and Bloomfield, whose heart was honest, and whose common sense, when left to itself, was not altogether feeble, could not help making the unpleasant discovery that he was not doing very much after ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... interested in opposing it doubtless saw that opposition would, at that moment, only irritate the majority, and reserved themselves for a more favourable time. The more favourable time soon came. No man of common sense could, when his blood had cooled, remember without shame that he had voted for a resolution which made no distinction between sinecurists and laborious public servants, between clerks employed in copying letters and ministers on whose wisdom and integrity ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... so, nuther! She had heaps of common sense, an' as she got near port, she saw turrible clear, an' she talked considerable 'bout larnin', an' how it could steer yer craft better than anythin' else; an' she 'lowed if ye was gal or lad, after ye got larnin', ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... helpless charges." But Grady also implied that the Negro had received too much attention and sympathy from the North. Said he: "To liberty and enfranchisement is as far as law can carry the Negro. The rest must be left to conscience and common sense." Hence on this occasion and others he asked that the South be left alone in the handling of her grave problem. The North, a little tired of the Negro question, a little uncertain also as to the wisdom of ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... becomes ridiculous, of course, when a mind that is properly trained in clear thinking by the diligent perusal of the classics strips it of its pseudo-scientific rags and shows it straight out from the shoulder, in the fire of common sense and sound religion. And here is the point of ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... spirit of international co-operation. And that is the way of regarding this great movement which some people think can be disposed of by describing it as idealism—a favourite term of abuse, I learn, now, but which seems to me not only good politics and good morality, but common sense as well. ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... with the women; my head was filled with chimeras which I preferred to realities. In short, my unique pleasure consisted in altering the nature of facts. If a thought were but extraordinary, if it shocked common sense, I became its ardent champion at the risk of advocating ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... is nothing wrong with Christmas except my advancing age, let that person read no more. This book is not written for him, either. It is written for persons who can look facts cheerfully in the face. That Christmas has lost some of its magic is a fact that the common sense of the western hemisphere will not dispute. To blink the fact is infantile. To confront it, to try to understand it, to reckon with it, and to obviate any evil that may attach to it—this course alone is meet for an ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... Austria, to reduce Germany's one ally to the condition of a vassal state, to establish the Slav people there and throughout the Balkan States, at the expense of the Teuton. Germany must protect her own. It is a struggle, mind you, which concerns them alone. If only there were common sense in the world, every one else would stand by and let Germany and Austria fight with Russia on the one great issue—Slav ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... dressing and of having had the skin relaxed by many hours, perhaps days, in bed, and thereby rendered more incapable of re-action. Then the same temperature which refreshes the patient in bed may destroy the patient just risen. And common sense will point out that, while purity of air is essential, a temperature must be secured which shall not chill the patient. Otherwise the best that can be expected will be ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... and the hands of his guards tightened, swift and strong, even before his muscles had fully tightened. Bart's head dropped. Cold common sense doused over his brave thoughts. He was uncountable millions of light-years from his own people. He was absolutely alone. Bravery would mean nothing; submission would mean nothing. Would he be more of a man, somehow, if he let his ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... filled with blended poetry and common sense, reminds one, as he reaches instinctively for a parallel, of the rarely delicate and beautiful ones told ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... There was a lot more, and she left two books as well, and I think she called me a Privilege, and Mamma said "Yes," and began to cry. And Nurse came in with luncheon on a tray, and put away the books, and said she was as weak as a kitten, and worried to fiddlestrings, as any one with common sense could see with half an eye. I was hopping round the room, but I stopped and said, "My kitten's not weak, and I don't believe anybody could see with only half an eye. Could they, Mamma?" And Nurse said, "Go and play, my dear, and let ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... situation in which you are, than any other woman of the court. But there is a long space between this and heroical friendship: I should deceive you if I were to affirm the contrary, and there would be no common sense in giving faith to my words. Every one has too much business, too much intrigue, too many quarrels on hand, to have any leisure to think of others: every one lives for himself alone. Mesdames de ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... what are called by our Lord the least commandments, the 6th and 7th. "Thou shalt not kill."—"Thou shalt not commit adultry." Math. v: 19, 21, 27. Are these shadows? Is there an individual with common sense in the world that dare risk his reputation in such kind of logic? Then it is as clear as a sun beam that all the others are tangible substances, and will continue in full force while immortality ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign - 1847 edition • Joseph Bates
... but of the system; not of the man, but of the situation; since the latter imposes on the former the formidable alternative of immolating the Prince to the Pontiff, or the Pontiff to the Prince." The pamphlet further taught: "The absolutely clerical character of the Roman government is opposed to common sense, and is a fertile source of discontent. The canon law does not suffice for the protection and development of modern society." The document concluded by proposing the secularization of the Roman government, and the establishment of an Italian confederation, of which the ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... were instituted before Chief Justice Holt for witchcraft, between the years 1694 and 1701. The evidence was of the usual character; but Holt appealed so successfully in each case to the common sense of the jury, that they were every one acquitted. A general feeling seemed to pervade the country that blood enough had been shed upon these absurd charges. Now and then, the flame of persecution burnt up in a remote district; but these instances were no longer looked upon as mere matters of ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... early disillusion had seriously poisoned the lifesprings natural to her age. Her awakening had been certain. He had warned Spence that she would wake! He felt all the exultation of a prophet who sees his prophecy fulfilled. But common sense urged caution. To frighten her now might be fatal. He tried to bring his ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... others are susceptible of like impressions. The only way, therefore, of converting an antagonist of this kind, is to leave him to himself. For, finding that nobody keeps up the controversy with him, it is probable he will, at last, of himself, from mere weariness, come over to the side of common sense and reason. ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... 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 handled many big cases. Mollie Billette, was just the opposite type ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... created as a frame for the face which had looked upon her as if out of the heart of the sun. The assumption was absurd, unreasonable, yet vital. She did not combat it because she felt it too powerful for common sense to strive against. And it seemed to her that the stranger felt it too, that she saw her sensation reflected in his eyes as he stood between the parapet and the staircase wall, barring—in despite of himself—her path. The moment seemed long while they stood ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... meant himself—but modern philosophers are kind enough to help him out occasionally—when the entrance of the gentleman in dust cut the Gordian knot, and saved the Stagyrite from the disgrace of having a pretty bit of esoteric abstruseness translated into common sense. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... proverbial or anecdotic "That!" to make it much greater. "That!" as it generally is, was in her case the last fusing touch of genius to accomplish the grand oeuvre—the perfect projection. She had humour, pathos, knowledge of the world, power of drawing it, acquaintance with literature, shrewd common sense, an excellent style when she was allowed to write in her own way, the feelings of a lady who was also a good woman. King Charles is made to say in Woodstock that "half the things in the world remind him of the Tales of Mother Goose." ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... her lips remained closed. She showed no signs of anything save anger. The baffled lover lost his head, and with it went his common sense and veneer ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... these surroundings,—that she was, indeed, the link, the safeguard which should bind him to them, the good influence which should keep him fit to breathe God's pure air, and to keep himself, as he had ever striven to, sans peur et sans reproche. Paul was no sentimentalist, in the idle and common sense of the word. In his attitude to every-day life, he was essentially practical, sometimes perhaps a little too practical. But he was capable of strong feeling, and it came then with a rush. He leant over towards Lady May, and laid his hand upon ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Dick would never have believed them, and the moralists would only have wasted much excellent common sense upon him. ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... military leader was due to his knowledge of men and how to handle them, common sense, and in a lesser degree to what he learned from books. Upon such a basis the young managers of industrial concerns would be most valuable material from which to select and train successful military leaders. They know men, and it is necessary to possess a world of common sense to acquire ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... remedy for the whole thing. You will appreciate the largeness of that statement, but I have thought and advised and worked it out. My remedy is based on common sense." ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... time he was influenced by all these contradictory views, but presently his strong common sense asserted itself, and he began to laugh at the fallacies which first of all fascinated him. Nevertheless the life of Brunford influenced him greatly, and his whole intellectual outlook was coloured by what he saw and heard. As a working ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... sense I confided the matter. Common sense, however, was as chilled and bewildered as all my other faculties, and it was only under the spur of an inexorable necessity that she spasmodically executed her trust. Thus urged, she paid the porter: considering the crisis, I did not blame her too much ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... on a very young baby—might be seen carried about in Elizabeth's arms every where. When, after the first six weeks, the wet nurse left—in fact, two or three nurses successively were abolished—she took little Henry solely under her own charge. She had comparatively small experience, but she had common sense, and the strong motherly instinct which comes by nature to some women. Besides, her whole soul was wrapped up in ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... gave the matter up in despair. On quitting the house, he proceeded forthwith, to inform those most interested of the determination of Mr. Effingham, not to be trampled on by any pretended meeting of the public. Common sense, not to say common honesty, began to resume its sway, and prudence put in its plea, by way of applying the corrective. Both he and Mr. Dodge, however, agreed that there was an unheard-of temerity in thus resisting ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... annoyed, irritated, and puzzled him almost beyond endurance. With the older and the younger group Selwyn was on the same terms of intimate friendship: now pleasing by his wit, and now helping by his kindness and common sense. ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... substituted memory of tradition for appeal to the simple sense of right, that they were utterly dazed when Jesus undertook to settle questions of Sabbath observance and ceremonial cleanliness by asking his hearers to use their religious common sense, and consider whether a man is not much better than a sheep, or whether a man is not defiled rather by what comes out of his mouth than by what enters into it (Matt. xii. 12; Mark vii. 15). Jesus was for ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... the warrior; such would be that of Robert Raikes, the Howard of the Christian church. And which is the nobler benefactor, patriot, and philanthropist? Mankind may admire and extol Lafayette more than the founder of the Sunday schools; but religion, philanthropy, and enlightened common sense must ever esteem Robert Raikes the superior of Lafayette. His are the virtues, the services, the sacrifices of a more enduring and exalted order of being. His counsels and triumphs belong less to ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... I cannot see that you are so much in fault. It happens to everybody, and if one is guided by common sense the matter is usually arranged and forgotten, and one lives on like the rest of the world," said Agrippina Petrovna, sternly and seriously. "There is no reason why you should take it so much to heart. I heard ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... Homoeopathy, which is a subject which makes me more wrath, even than does Clairvoyance. Clairvoyance so transcends belief, that one's ordinary faculties are put out of the question, but in homoeopathy common sense and common observation come into play, and both these must go to the dogs, if the infinitesimal doses have any effect whatever. How true is a remark I saw the other day by Quetelet, in respect to evidence of curative processes, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... common sense quickly routed his gloom. Captain Strawn was too direct in his methods, too afraid of antagonizing the rich and influential, to have permitted even a "special investigator" from the district attorney's office to torment those ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... Bevis was appealed to, as being better acquainted with the saints than the rest of the company, to state whether he thought it probable that one of them had been the agent. But Father Bevis's strong common sense declined to credit any but ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... time being forgotten. Now and again he met her eyes and felt, from the odd pulse of happiness that leapt in his heart, that his long search was over. So triumphantly does love rise over the obstacles of common sense and worldly knowledge—love, which takes no count of time, ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... been shouting at intervals for this last hour, and I should have been uncomfortable if I had not thought you had common sense enough to ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... the name o' common sense would ye go and borry a broken cradle?" came the wail from the bed. "I 'lowed you'd git Billy Spinner's, an' hit's as good ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... our native country is as natural to us as that of our parents; and the loss of liberty is insupportable to everyone who is not wholly destitute of common sense, and knows how to set a value on it. The body indeed may be enslaved, and under the subjection of a master, who has the power and authority in his hands; the will can never be conquered, but remains free and unconfined, depending on itself alone, as your ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... and none in Latin! When she managed to gasp out the awful situation in Bea's ear, that young person looked worried for full half a minute. It was a very serious thing to be a freshman. Then her cheery common sense came to the rescue. ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... Roraheid in Hoy was so utterly inexplicable to Macpherson, both as to place and character, that he speaks of it hopelessly as a story "concerning ghosts," on what principle of critical consistency, or of common sense, can he be said to have been the author of it? If the Septuagint translators, for example, had added a note of their own on the giving of the Law at Sinai, to the effect that it appeared "the most extravagant fiction" to them, at the same time transferring, ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... should be glad to meet Mr. Warwick Lake, and I am confident that no two men of common sense and good intentions can fail, in ten minutes, to arrange it so as to meet the Prince's wishes, and not to leave the shadow of a pretence for envious malignity to whisper a word against ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... the other hand, is kittenish and mild, He makes a pretty playfellow for any little child; And mothers of large families (who claim to common sense) Will find a Tiger well repay the ...
— Bad Child's Book of Beasts • Hilaire Belloc
... literature was exalted, he failed to approach German thought, and he shed never a tear of emotion over the pages of Goethe and Schiller. When his father rashly ventured from time to time to write him a word of common sense, the young man would listen to no sense at all, but insisted that Berlin was the best of educations in the best of Germanies; yet, when, at last, April came, and some genius suggested a tramp in Thuringen, his heart sang like a bird; he realized what a nightmare he had suffered, and he ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... conversation about the latest engagements and marriages, and nothing so much or so quickly interest them in a newspaper, even a religious one, and that, too, on the Sabbath, as the list of marriages. Alas! do mothers or daughters know what are the practical common sense inferences from this ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... preten'in to ony exparience,' returned Kirsty; 'I wad only hae ye tak coonsel wi' common sense. Is 't likly, Phemy, 'at a man wi gran' relations, and gran' notions, a man wi' a fouth o' grit leddies in 's acquantance to mak a fule o' him and themsel's thegither, special noo 'at he's an offisher i' the Company's service—is ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... come again. Fields that have never known the plow, and never been seeded by man, are yet covered with grass. And in human nature, too, weeds are by no means in the ascendant, troublesome as they are. The good green grass of love and truthfulness and common sense is more universal, and crowds the ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... give us useful information only when we combine them with observations made without brass instruments, upon the total demeanor of the measured individual, by teachers with eyes in their heads and common sense, and some feeling for the concrete facts of human ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... which what we call common sense was carried to genius,—a mind singularly practical and sagacious, like his father's, cared little for theological learning and priestly legend—for all that poesy of religion in which the Woman was wafted ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... but her own. I wanted it. Then I stopped to think. This engine seemed like a greedy devil swallowing everything. Another step, and she was penniless, ruined: common sense told me that. And I loved her,—well enough to see how my work came between us every hour, made me cruel to her, kept her wretched. If I were gone, she would be better off. I said that to myself day after day. I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... influences—be astonished that our jails and prisons are filled with criminals, and our hospitals with sickly specimens of humanity? As long as the mothers of the race are subject to such unhappy conditions, it can never be materially improved. Men exhibit some common sense in breeding all animals except those of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of Johnson. He was the grandfather of Frederick Temple, Bishop of Exeter at the time we passed through that city, afterwards Bishop of London, and finally Archbishop of Canterbury, to whose harsh voice and common sense we had once listened when he was addressing a public meeting in Manchester. In the churchyard at Mamhead was an enormous yew tree, over eight hundred years old. In 1775, when Boswell came to see Lord Lisburne at Mamhead ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... morning at the close of August 1840. Fifty years ago, the idea of a general, an ambassador, and a peer, with his marchioness and suite, embarking on board the common conveyance of the common race of mankind, would have been regarded as an absolute impossibility; but the common sense of the world has now decided otherwise. Speed and safety are wisely judged to be valuable compensations for state and seclusion; and when we see majesty itself, after making the experiment of yachts ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... the only person I know with a head," said she to Catherine. "You have some common sense and can help me. I want to take Esther out of this place within six hours. Can you manage to get ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... women, but few heroines as the convention of worldly thinking demands heroines. There is an endless train of what Thackeray so aptly described as "pale, pious, and pulmonary ladies" who snivel and snuffle and sigh and linger irresolutely under many trials which a little common sense would dissolve; but they are pathological heroines. "Little Nell," "Little Eva," and their married sisters are unquestionable in morals, purpose and faith; but oh! how—they—do—try—the—nerves! How brave and noble was Jennie Deans, but how ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... grant her false; oh Philander!—How 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
... that, they would inaugurate the practical operation of a new political doctrine, which must introduce still another element of barbarism, and interpose an additional obstacle to the progress of civilization. Shall this be? It is opposed to the political tendency of the times; and the common sense of mankind should forbid the acceptance of a political solecism in the organization of government, which virtually annuls the unity and integrity of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various |
