"Commonty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Kentucky manufacturer could not compete with the Scotch. The Kentuckian furnishes a more substantial and a cheaper article, and at a more uniform and regular price. But it was the frauds, the violations of law, of which I did complain; not smuggling, in the common sense of that practice, which has something bold, daring, and enterprising in it, but mean, barefaced cheating, by fraudulent invoices ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... swarmed in 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 was too wild to challenge acceptance. It became ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... theory, no use for our practice. And we hope that the thoughtful readers of these pages will see in our intention, an earnest, honest purpose and belief, and that, without affectation of science or pretense of superior knowledge, we base all our efforts upon nature and common sense. ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... reasoning of this book, it is not necessary to be a highly trained specialist; the only qualifications required are candor, an open mind, freedom from blinding prejudice, thoughtfulness, a real desire for truth, and enough common sense to understand that to talk of adding three quarts of milk to three-quarters of a mile is ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... with them; but the Hungarians and Polack miners know no reason. Mr. Hobart's present method of talking with them, to their way of thinking, betokened not sound common sense and ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... tendency to exalt the royal prerogative, and in the systematic manner in which he extolled absolute monarchy in his writings and speeches and discredited it by his conduct. James was an unusually learned man, for a king, but his learning did not enlighten him in matters of common sense. As a man and a ruler, he was far inferior to his unschooled and light-hearted contemporary, Henry IV of France. Henry VIII had been a heartless despot, and Elizabeth had ruled the nation in a high-handed manner; but both of them had known how ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... were an abler woman!" she breathed. And then her common sense and common honesty made her reply to herself: "I am able enough—in my own work! Nobody can do everything. I don't believe Edgar'd do it any better than I do.—He don't have to!—and then such a wave of bitterness rushed over her that she was afraid, and ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... again, tempted to defy all common sense because its dictates were not the same for everybody. But he marched away, back to the cubbyhole in which he had awakened. Angrily, he donned the heat-suit that had not protected him adequately before, but had ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... down in history as a great man!" But this was the comment of a Boston Brahmin, and all the Adamses had bitter tongues. Washington was, of course, a very great man, though not by virtue of any intellectual brilliancy, but of his strong character, his immense practical sagacity and common sense, his leadership ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... men were liars, and that the world was a wretched place after all. It was true that the Princess entertained the cheerful view more often than not, which was perhaps fortunate for her daughter; but in her heart the young girl felt that she would have to rely on her own common sense to form any opinion of life, and as her position became more difficult, while the future did not grow more defined, she tried to think connectedly about it all, and to reach some ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... disquisition is unnecessary. For our present needs arguments of common sense should abundantly suffice. This poison—this white powder—was said to be a secret of the Borgias. If that is so, by what Borgia was the secret of its existence ever divulged? Or, if it never was divulged, how comes it to be known that a poison so secret, and working at such distances ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... That wit's a jewel which we need not wear. Of plain sound sense life's current coin is made; With that we drive the most substantial trade. Prudence protects and guides us; wit betrays; A splendid source of ill ten thousand ways; A certain snare to miseries immense; A gay prerogative from common sense; Unless strong judgment that wild thing can tame, And break to paths of virtue and of fame. But grant your judgment equal to the best, Sense fills your head, and genius fires your breast; Yet still forbear: your ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... "science," as they call it, and stick up their signs to tell people they know how to cure their headaches and stomach-aches. Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor. But if a man has n't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has the worse for ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... really believe in death, till Abel died? It is from Julius Scaliger that he takes his motto, to the effect that the true knowledge of things must be had from things themselves, not from books; and he seems as seriously concerned as Bacon to dissipate the crude impressions of a false "common sense," of false science, and a fictitious authority. Inverting, oddly, Plato's theory that all learning is but reminiscence, he reflects with a sigh how much of oblivion must needs be involved in the getting of any true knowledge. "Men that [148] adore ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... present day requires for bare existence high protective duties. The Government, however, has had the common sense, and the Madeirans patriotic feeling enough, to defend their industry from certain ruinous vagaries, by taxing imported growths 80 reis (4d.) per kilo. A hard-grit free-trader would abolish this ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... how, I managed to push it free of him, and his venerable head all covered with green slime, like that of a yellowish Bacchus with ivy leaves, emerged upon the surface of the water. The rest was easy, for Billali was an eminently practical individual, and had the common sense not to grasp hold of me as drowning people often do, so I got him by the arm, and towed him to the bank, through the mud of which we were with difficulty dragged. Such a filthy spectacle as we presented I have ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... inaccuracy of which must in most instances have been known to the chief editor of the Mot d'Ordre, encouraged the hopes of the insurgents, while the announcement of unsuccessful combats was delayed with evident intention; the most ridiculous stories, the falsity of which was evident to the plainest common sense, and which could not escape the intelligence of M. Rochefort, were published in his journal, and kept up the popular excitement (12th, 15th, 19th, 26th, 27th, and 28th of April; 6th and 7th of May). It was in this manner that the ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... decisions were concerned. In his good intentions she retained an implicit belief; but she was not always satisfied that he acted in the wisest way. Occasionally it struck her that he did not see as clearly as she did; at other times, that he let a passing whim run away with him and override his common sense. And, her eyes thus opened, it was not in Mary to stand dumbly by and watch him make what she held to be mistakes. Openly to interfere, however, would also have gone against the grain in her; she had bowed for ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... had a bin, to me and mine. But I do find, a savin and exceptin your ever onnurable onnur, 'tis all a gull queerum! Whereof the face of affairs is quite transmogrified! And so, ast for raisin the wind of twenty thousand pounds, I find the think is neither komparissuble nur a parallel to common sense. For why? It is not to be had. A man's money is his own, your onnur; and when a has got it, there's as good law for he as for a dooke. Always a savin and exceptin your most exceptionable onnur, as in duty boundin. For as I wus a sayin, your onnur, when a man has a got the ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... episode of his experience. His mind was clear, and his perception keen; he seldom failed to recollect every detail of a circumstance when once the clue was given, and the right little cell in his brain was stirred. To these qualities he added a stock of good sound common sense, with a great equableness of temperament, though he could be cynical, and even severe, when occasion demanded. Just now, however, his venerable countenance was radiant,—his few remaining tufts of white hair glistened in the sun like spun silver,—his figure ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... look, Doc, let's don't get on that bit. Maybe I'm just a country boy but I'm as smart as the next man. Just because some of you eggheads spend half your life in college don't mean you've got any monopoly on good common sense. I went to the school of hard knocks, understand, and I got plenty of diplomas to prove it. Take it easy on that ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... that 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 ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... arisen as a result. It was the bad world spirit of competition and rivalry in among Christ's followers where it should never come, yet where it still does come. In writing this letter Paul throughout blends great plainness and common sense with great tenderness. ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... of official language. He has seen flesh-and-blood statesmen—at any rate, English statesmen—and understands the nature of the animal. Nobody can be freer from the dominion of crotchets. All his reasoning is made of the soundest common sense, and represents, if not the ultimate forces, yet forces with which we have to reckon. And he knows, too, how to stir the blood of the average Englishman. He understands most thoroughly the value of ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... cover of one bit as they built another, the Regulars soon had cover enough to fire comparatively at ease straight up at the barricade, while their comrades at the windows took it from above in flank. I was sometimes within a few feet of them, and was much struck by their coolness and military common sense, if I may use the expression. They did the work before them in a quiet, business-like way, in what, during the late war, was considered by some the best feature of Prussian fighting, not shirking risk when it was necessary, but, on the other ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... as common sense teaches us that the selecting of the species and the mere planting of the same is not a guarantee ...
— Arbor Day Leaves • N.H. Egleston
... is the poetry of hope. Europe did not adopt his politics in the generation that followed the Napoleonic Wars, and the result is we have had an infinitely more terrible war a hundred years later. Every generation rejects Shelley; it prefers incredulity to hope, fear to joy, obedience to common sense, and is surprised when the logic of its common sense turns out to be a tragedy such as even the wildest orgy of idealism could not have produced. Shelley must, no doubt, still seem a shocking poet to an age in which the limitation of ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... isn't stupid. He's got a notion o' things out o' door, an' a sort o' common sense, and he'll lay hold o' things by the right handle. But he's slow with his tongue, you see, and he reads but poorly, and can't abide the books, and spells all wrong, they tell me, an' you never hear ...
— Tom and Maggie Tulliver • Anonymous
... described, with her little thatched cottage beyond the river! Surely she would find the welcome there that was lacking here, and the touch of human kindness that one craved in a foreign land. But no! Robinette called to her aid her strong American common sense and the "grit" that her countrymen admire. Was she to confess herself routed in the very first onset—the very first attempt in storming the ancestral stronghold? With a characteristically quick return of hope, the ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 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 been so ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Mrs. Banks," said the Captain, slowly. "I've heard everything she said, and, where the insult comes in, I'm sure I don't know. I don't think I'm wanting in common sense, ma'am." ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... 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
... the coalition betwixt my father and Dr. Slop, in the ensuing discourse, which went a little hard against my uncle Toby.—In what manner a plain man, with nothing but common sense, could bear up against two such allies in science,—is hard to conceive.—You may conjecture upon it, if you please,—and whilst your imagination is in motion, you may encourage it to go on, and discover by what causes and effects in nature it could ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... are defeated, the ruin of the army must ensue in the confusion which the narrowness of the retreat creates." We cannot suppose so great a general as Bonaparte to have been ignorant of so established a principle, or a rule which common sense appears so obviously to dictate; it is more probable, that in the confidence which the long habit of success had occasioned, he never contemplated the possibility of a defeat, nor took any measures whatever for ensuring the safety of his army in the event of a retreat. ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... gentlemen, that it is time for us to learn that woman is neither a slave nor an angel, but a human being, entitled to be treated with ordinary common sense in the adjustment of human affairs . ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... could not do the same things himself, because there were no great jumps, no great leaps and bounds in his life from particular ability or special opportunity. He had no very brilliant talents, but he averaged well. He had good common sense and was a hard worker. He had tact and diplomacy and made ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... certain elusive quality that made her always interesting, and pleasantly something of a mystery. Diana was a sparkling, practical, outspoken young woman, much adored of young men whom she treated with scant courtesy, and with a great deal of common sense in her pretty head. The girls' influence upon each other, which was cemented by a very deep affection, was wholly beneficial; for whereas Diana awakened Meryl from too much dreaminess, Meryl's quiet dignity ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... not recollect seeing it remarked that the ordinary phenomena of dreaming seem to show that partial sensitiveness is a normal condition during sleep. They do so because one of the most marked characteristics of the dreamer is the absence of common sense. He accepts wildly incongruous visions without the slightest scepticism. Now common sense consists in the comprehension of a large number of related circumstances, and implies the simultaneous working ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... His Flying Machine" first appeared in Our Young Folks in 1867. It is to be read for its fun—fun of dialect, fun of character, and fun of incident. If it has any lesson, it must be that dreamers may come to grief unless they have some plain practical common sense to balance ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... accordingly, because my mind has been stirred to its inmost depths by the perusal of your address in my native city of Limerick. I do not regard the subject of your address as a political one. It ought to be regarded solely as a question of humanity, justice, common sense, and common honesty. I wish my lot had never been cast in rural places. As a clergyman I hear what neither landlords nor agents ever hear. I see the depression of the people; their sighs and groans are ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... less frequent in our country than in any other of equal population on the globe, and with the diffusion of intelligence it may well be hoped that they will constantly diminish in frequency and violence. The generous patriotism and sound common sense of the great mass of our fellow-citizens will assuredly in time produce this result; for as every assumption of illegal power not only wounds the majesty of the law, but furnishes a pretext for ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... wrists and neck of her brown-silk waist were spotless bands of white; and on her head was a dashing little brown hat with green wings. She exhibited square-toed little brown boots as an evidence of exceeding common sense; and was pulling on a pair of absurdly small boy's gloves. This most suitable costume for the North was ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... housekeeper, as were her gay good-humor and words of cheer and affection to the younger of her companions. The two girls became more confidential in six days than eighteen years of neigbborly intercourse had sufficed to make them. Mabel's innate delicacy and excellent common sense would, in ordinary circumstances, have barred effusiveness upon the theme nearest her heart, but love at nineteen is rarely discreet, even when the persuasives to communicativeness are less powerful ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... has 'any rights' on free soil 'which the' original settlers 'are bound to respect.' Think of bleeding Kansas, even, refusing to incorporate negro-suffrage in her constitution, when left free to follow the dictates of common sense, and a wise self-interest. I sometimes think that that one thing, as a philosophical fact, is worth all the trouble which Kansas has cost. It cannot be 'unholy prejudice against color.' It is human nature asserting the laws which God has ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... alone, and who have sought their intellectual culture as an object not inferior to their physical comfort. It is not, perhaps, too much to say, that no man or woman of genius has sate either on the Scotch or English throne since, except Cromwell, to whom, however, the term 'genius,' in its common sense, seems ludicrously inadequate. James V. had some of the erratic qualities of the poetic tribe, but his claim to the songs—such as the 'Gaberlunzie Man'—which go under his name, is exceedingly doubtful. James VI. was a pedant, without being a ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... which the Darwinian hypothesis is built; while those, on the other hand, who recognize a diversity of human species, will hardly be able to maintain that such species were primordial and supernatural in the common sense ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... attending to ancient practice, and still more so by what is called theory: he would much rather apply to an old woman, and make use of sympathetic cures. In like manner he despises all foresight in other matters, and everything like regularity, moderation, and common sense: the last above all he holds in special abhorrence, as the antipode and arch-enemy to all enthusiasm. While yet a child he framed for himself an ideal of a noble character; and his constant aim is to make himself what he considers such, that is to say, a being who shews his ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... trust. If He be not God manifest in the flesh, I ought not to trust Him. I may admire Him as a historical personage; I may reverence Him for His wisdom and beauty; I may even in some vague way have a kind of love to Him. But what in the name of common sense shall I trust Him for? And why should He call upon me to exercise faith in Him unless He stand before me as the adequate Object of a man's trust—namely, the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... almost hopeless for two lone women, who had never been out of their own little town, to succeed in finding a soldier among so many, sent in so many different directions; but we helped them as we could, and started them on their journey the next morning, back on their track, to use their common sense and Yankee ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... guilty again, and is now in prison serving out his 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
... make the public-house the only counter attraction to the church on the working man's day of leisure; and when they are in a country place, and see our groups of idle, aimless young louts standing about not knowing what to do, they ask why in the name of common sense they should not play an outdoor game. The Idealist expresses the German point of view very well in her Memoirs, and in so far as she misunderstands our English point of view she is only on a line with those amongst us who denounce the continental Sunday as an orgy of noisy and godless pleasures. ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... explicit. Do you remember the passion with which I read the "Intellectual Development of Europe?" I understood not the tithe of it, but I was thrilled. My common sense was thrilled, I suppose; but it was all very joyous, gripping hold of the tangible world for the first time. And when I came to you, warm with the glow of adventure, you looked blankly, then smiled indulgently and did not answer. You regarded my ardour complacently. A passing humour of adolescence, ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... a engine-drivers; b having common sense; c hop-scotch players; d knowing what real happiness is; e living on barley-sugar; h mere babies; k ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... there, it is the life of the idle middle-class Italian today, which will always be much the same, let the world wag and change as it will, with all its extravagances, its fashions and its madnesses. Now and then he exclaims that there is no average common sense left in the world, no half-way stopping-place between extremes. One man wears his tunic to his heels, another is girt up as if for a race; Rufillus smells of perfumery, Gargonius of anything but scent; and so on—and he cries out that when a fool tries to avoid a mistake he will run to any length ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... a matter of common sense to believe, and now, sure that he was about to die. Kent had acted. He was acting in the full health of his mind and in extreme cognizance of the paralyzing shock he was contributing as a final legacy ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... 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 ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... not very clever in a literary or scientific point of view, was no fool. She had, in fact, under all her softness of manner, a great deal of that real hard grit which shrewd, worldly people call common sense. She saw through all the illusions of fancy and feeling, right to the tough material core of things. However soft and tender and sentimental her habits of speech and action were in her professional capacity of a charming woman, still the fair Lillie, had she been a man, ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... had any portents, nor seen the moon over my left shoulder, nor had a salt-cellar upset, nor seen a bat fly into the window, nor heard a cricket chirp from the hearth, nor been one of thirteen persons at a table. But my common sense, and the family record, and the almanac tell me it must ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... scientific knowledge, but only of the ignorance of a quack. Some of the modern twaddle about health is a conglomeration of the poorest kind of trash, expressing and inculcating more errors and whims than it does common sense. Many persons dilate upon these subjects with amazing flippancy, their mission seeming to be to traduce the profession rather than to act as help-mates and assistants. We do not believe that there is any real argument going on between the educated members of the medical profession but rather ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... general or more deserved punishment. To extend exemption from punishment for such crimes would be to shock the moral judgment of the community. To call their advocacy a tenet of religion is to offend the common sense of mankind. If they are crimes, then to teach, advise, and counsel their practice is to aid in their commission, and such teaching and counselling are themselves criminal and proper subjects of punishment, as aiding ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... have touched one of the aching wounds in your heart. It was a noble part for you to play, so young as you were,—that of protectress to a noble but wandering intellect. You said to yourself: 'Paolo will be my genius; I shall be his common sense; between us we shall be that almost divine being called an angel,—the sublime creature that enjoys and understands, reason ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... just plain common sense. No cow which is not a big eater can be profitable. But appetite is not of itself sufficient to make a cow a money maker. ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.
... Wm. James, of the chair of Philosophy in Harvard College, and apparently the most philosophic gentleman in that conservative institution, has published in the Popular Science Monthly an essay on Human Instincts, characterized by a vigorous common sense and close observation. When he asserts (contrary to the old metaphysics) the existence of such instincts as fear, acquisitiveness, constructiveness, play (or, properly, playfulness), curiosity, sociability, shyness, secretiveness, cleanliness, modesty, shame, love, coyness or ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... the aid of his giant reflecting telescope at Parsonstown, for the photographic plate records details that no telescope is capable of showing. Suppose we look at the photograph of this object as any person of common sense would look at any great and strange natural phenomenon. What is the first thing that strikes the mind? It is certainly the appearance of violent whirling motion. One would say that the whole glowing mass had been spun about with tremendous velocity, or that ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... portraits. But your literary men—why, with a few fortunate exceptions, the best of them barely make a living. What can literature be worth, if a man can't make a fortune out of it? So argues the Briton—no doubt with some of his sound common sense. Not that he has no respect for genius. All men bow to true genius, even when they fear and envy it. But he thinks a good deal more of genius dead than genius living. However this may be, there is no doubt but that if through any cause—such, for instance, as the sudden ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... in our public schools are not merely loaded up with those showy facts about geography, mathematics, and so on, and left in that incomplete state; no, there's machinery for clarifying and expanding their minds. They are required to take poems and analyze them, dig out their common sense, reduce them to statistics, and reproduce them in a luminous prose translation which shall tell you at a glance what the poet was trying to get at. One sample will do. Here is a stanza from "The Lady of the Lake," followed by the pupil's ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a skairful axent on the word "freeze" that seemed to bring all of Malviny's sufferin's right in front of me. But so strong is my common sense that even in that agitatin' time I thought to myself, as I wiped the perspiration from my foretop, "Good land! what is Malviny made of to be even comfortable cool to say nothin' of freezin'." And my next thought wuz, "What sort of a place have I got into?" Truly, I had read much of the hardenin' ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... it was this window and now plumped for the other, I took up a pebble at last and cast it upon the pane nearest to the door—for that seemed to me the more likely room, and I'd nothing else but common sense to guide me. You may judge of my feelings when no notice was taken of my signal except by a dog, which began to yap like a pup and to make such a scare that I thought every window and every door must be opened that very instant ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... glows With heat intense I turn the hose Of Common Sense, And out it goes At small expense! We must maintain Our fairy law; That is the main On which to draw - In that we gain ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... belief which takes a man to church on Sunday who would be ashamed to look as if he were really praying, or confessing real sins when he gets there, is small help to him when the will balances between right and wrong. It is truly, as a matter of mere common sense, a poor bargain, a wretched speculation, to be half religious; to get a few checks and scruples out of it, and no real strength and peace; and, it may be, to lose a man's soul, and not even gain the world. For who dare promise himself that Christ our Judge, who spent a self-denying ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... who stared at the window. There was—so the instinct of the magistrate told him—some strange project afoot. Yet that common sense which so often misleads us, urged that it was quite natural Sarah should employ whaling vessels to increase her trade. Granted that there was nothing wrong about her obtaining the business, there ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... they were mysteries now no longer, but revelations; that the things which were inexplicable mysteries, belonged to God, and that none but things that were revealed belonged to us. My impression was, that all things spiritual could be made as plain to people of common sense and honest hearts, as things natural; that all that was necessary to this end, was first to separate from Christianity all that was not Christianity, and secondly, to translate Christianity out of Latin and Greek, Hebrew and Gibberish, into ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... to be a bore. Southey's complexion is still healthy mahogany-brown, with a fleece of white hair, and eyes that seem running at full gallop. Leigh Hunt, "man of genius in the shape of a Cockney," is my near neighbor, full of quips and cranks, with good humor and no common sense. Old Rogers with his pale head, white, bare, and cold as snow, will work on you with those large blue eyes, cruel, sorrowful, and that sardonic shelf-chin:—This is the Man, O Rogers, that wrote the German Poetry in American Prose; consider him well!—But whither am I ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... happiness in order that 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 and good, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in the name of common sense and common civility, would you have me do, madam?" answered her husband. "Is it possible for me, with ordinary decency, to turn a young gentleman out of my house, who saved my daughter's life and my own, but the other ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... unmoved. "I—we—Doc Crombie, Jim Thorpe, and I. We made it up, as you choose to call it, because we've eyes and ears and common sense. And Doc Crombie knows just about how much force it would take to smash her head as it ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... which we are to remember; and so at the close, it is the Sabbath which was hallowed and blessed and not the seventh day. The Sabbath then, the holy rest itself, is one thing. The day on which we are to rest is another." I ask, in the name of common sense, how we should know how or when to keep the Sabbath if it did not matter which day. If the President could not see the sanctification of the seventh day in the decalogue what did he mean by quoting Gen. ii: 3, so often, ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign, from the Beginning to the Entering into the Gates of the Holy City, According to the Commandment • Joseph Bates
... plain that he must be an aristocrat of nature's own making—one of the few highly favoured beings who, in despite of circumstance, are pinnacled above mankind. In his ignorance of life, the boy visioned a triumphant career; an aristocrat de jure might possibly become one even in the common sense did he but pursue that end with sufficient zeal. And in his power of persistent endeavour he had ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... greater part of young Irish gentlemen, who have their fortunes to raise chiefly by their own efforts. London gradually unfolded to his view all her irresistible charms; the ligaments which tied him to his native home, grew every day more and more slender and weak: the dictates of common sense and prudence, in this one instance at least enforced by the attractions of pleasure, pointed out the vast superiority of England to the oppressed, impoverished country which he had left, as a field for genius and industry to work upon. Having a prepossessing face and person, and manners ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... what a good night's sleep will do for one. Yesterday I was almost willing to accept Van Helsing's monstrous ideas, but now they seem to start out lurid before me as outrages on common sense. I have no doubt that he believes it all. I wonder if his mind can have become in any way unhinged. Surely there must be some rational explanation of all these mysterious things. Is it possible that the Professor can have done it ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... procure for our diversion Arab music and dancing of a—of a highly recondite character. I should be unworthy of the name of father, sir, if I were to entrust my only daughter's happiness to a young man with so little common sense, so little self-restraint. And she will understand my ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... The canvass general, or the general doom; Extremes ne'er reach'd one passion of his soul, A villain tame, and an unmettled fool; To half his vices he has but pretence, For they usurp the place of common sense; To half his little merits has no claim, For very indolence has raised his name; Happy in this, that, under Satan's sway, His passions tremble, but will not obey. The vicar at the table's front presides, Whose presence a monastic life derides; The reverend wig, in sideway order placed, The ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... refined and flowing, but also less scientifically correct, than that of his distinguished exponent and successor. We would cite, for instance, the happy substitution by the latter of the terms 'laws of human thought and belief,' for the unfortunate phrases 'common sense' and 'instinct,' which raised so extensive a prejudice against the vigorous protest against scepticism made in other respects so effectively by Reid; and he passes oftener from the abstractions of his science into the regions of life and character ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... "Huntsman Common Sense Came to the rescue, bade prompt thwack of thong dispense Quiet i' the kennel: taught that ocean might be blue, And rolling and much more, and yet the soul have, too, Its touch of God's own flame, ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... came the march of tens of thousands of political lunatics, as brave as lions, though as incapable of discipline. My prediction was formidably fulfilled: the firebrand and the pike ravaged the land; blood flowed in torrents; and when the country returned to its senses, and the light of common sense once more dawned, ministers and people alike had only the melancholy office of burying the common offences in that great resting-place where the faults of the past generation are marked by tombs, and where the wisdom of the future ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... extends itself in silence from the edges of Abyssinia to the swamps of the Equator at an average pressure of one white man to several thousand square miles. It legislates according to the custom of the tribe where possible, and on the common sense of the moment when there is no precedent. It is recruited almost wholly from the army, armed chiefly with binoculars, and enjoys a death-rate a little lower than its own reputation. It is said to be the only service in which a man ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... side, opposite thereto. Moreover, He made, besides this, the midriff and the intestines and set up the bones of the breast and ribbed them with the ribs.' (Q.) 'How many ventricles are there in a man's head?' (A.) 'Three, which contain five faculties, styled the intrinsic senses, i.e. common sense, fancy, thought, apperception and memory.' (Q.) 'Describe to me the scheme of the bones.' (A.) 'It consists of two hundred and forty bones, which are divided into three parts, the head, the trunk ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... flesh he lives upon is rank and strong; His meat and mistresses are kept too long. But sure we all mistake this pious man, Who mortifies his person all he can What we uncharitably take for sin, Are only rules of this odd capuchin; For never hermit, under grave pretence, Has lived more contrary to common sense." ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Young R., "these are quite fool questions for one of your hard-headed common sense! If I knew exactly 'what' and 'where', I'd go and find it myself—at ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... improbability in this tale, and it leavened the whole lump. Ganders do not roost; there is not one in a hundred of them that could sit on a fender long enough to say Jack Robinson. So, as the Frau lived a thousand years before the birth of common sense—say about a half century ago—when everything uncommon had a smell of the supernatural, there was nothing for it but to consider her a witch. Had she been very feeble and withered, the people would have burned her, out of hand; but they did not like to proceed to extremes without perfectly ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... antiquated; thoroughly behind the times in all respects; the trade was groaning under a low rate of wages, which had not kept step with the general development and the augmentation of prices. But Pelle allowed his practical common sense to prevail. The moment was not favorable for a demand for higher wages. The organization could not lend the demand sufficient support; they must for the time being content themselves with causing the current tariff to be respected. Many of the large employers did ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... who sent me to "The Following of Christ," and she interested me in Saint Teresa, that illustrious woman so well compounded of mysticism and common sense, of whom, however, I could find no good "Life." But Thomas ['a] Kempis was a revelation! He fitted into nearly every crisis of the soul, but all his words are not for every-day life. He seems to demand too much of us poor folk of the world. Later, I came to understand ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... what they say or feel? that's not the point. It's simply a case of common sense: Your people put that girl there, and they must get her to clear out again sharp. It's just ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... What an anomalous position of a commander of armies, who is not to see a field of battle! Such a position is a genuine, new American invention, but it ought not to be patented, at least not for the use of other nations. It is impossible to understand it, and it will puzzle every one having sound common sense. ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... asking too much to take me for having a few grains of plain common sense?" she inquired. "You've known all this time that Comstock got what he deserved, when he undertook to sneak in an unused way across a swamp, with which he was none too familiar. Now I should have thought ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... resist age, but I believe I am not yet overcome by it. I could wish with you, that Madame Mazarin had looked upon life from her own viewpoint, without thinking of her beauty, which would always have been agreeable when common sense held the place of less brilliancy. Madame Sandwich will preserve her mental force after losing her youth, at ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... Pentateuch could have been used by Moses, and admitting for the sake of argument that Moses did not either himself write, or dictate to another, any part of the documents in question, it would seem that the application of a little common sense would show pretty conclusively that Moses throughout his whole administrative life acted upon a single scientific theory of the application of a supreme energy to the affairs of life, and upon the belief that he had discovered what that energy was ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... to be 'full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom.' Surely, something a little less august might have served their turn to qualify men for such a task! 'Wisdom' here, I suppose, means practical sagacity, common sense, the power of picking out an impostor when she came whining for a dole. Very commonplace virtues! —but the Apostles evidently thought that such everyday operations of the understanding as these were not too secular and commonplace to owe their origin to the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... perfect as the empire of Britain or the rule of these United States. All that Blackstone, and Paley, and Hobbs, or anybody else, says about the social compact, is flatly and fully denied and upset by the Bible, history, and common sense. Let any New York lawyer—or even a Philadelphia lawyer—deny this if he dares. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness never were the inalienable right ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... did not seem to me that Mrs. de Lancey had succeeded in killing the natural human impulses in Violet, though perhaps the girl was not as well versed in some of the ways of the world as others of her set. Still, I felt that her own natural common sense would protect her, even though she had been kept from a knowledge of much that in others of her set ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... built tight, excepting a little hole on top for air, and that it would shoot through the water like a fish, and ridiculed such an absurdity. He defied me to point to any such inconsistencies in the Holy Bible. He said the Bible was a book of common sense, written by men inspired of God. It was full of good works and pure characters, nothing like the impostor Joseph. He challenged me again to point to a single instance in the Bible which would compare with the stories in the ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... nearly noon and I was 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 tragedy. Perhaps the smell of tar was in my nostrils and ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... said the officer as they proceeded on their walk, "listen to the reason of the thing, and consider whether such a custom can obtain, as that which they term the duello, in any country of civilization and common sense, to say nothing of one which is blessed with the domination of the most rare Alexius Comnenus. Two great lords, or high officers, quarrel in the court, and before the reverend person of the Emperor. They dispute about a point of fact. Now, instead of each maintaining ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... laborer, "if it were only fifty francs you needed to help you out of your trouble, and save you from sending away your daughter, I should certainly find them for you, although fifty francs is no trifle for people like us. But in everything we must consult common sense as well as friendship. To be saved from want this year will not keep you from want in the future, and the longer your daughter takes to make up her mind, the harder you both will find it to part. Little Marie is growing tall and strong. She has ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... married." This learned judge (commenting upon Lord Coke's doctrine, and Serjeant Hawkins's after him, that the oaths of Jews and pagans were not to be taken) says, "that this notion, though advanced by so great a man, is contrary to religion, common sense, and common humanity, and I think the devils, to whom he has delivered them, could not have suggested anything worse." Chief-Justice Willes, admitting Lord Coke to be a great lawyer, then proceeds in very strong terms, and with marks of contempt, to condemn "his ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Rash," she expostulated, "it isn't being disagreeable to have common sense. It's all the more necessary for me not to abnegate that, for the simple reason ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... to-day may well pause, before he starts to an Indian reservation. What is the mysterious benefit which the poet derives from nature? Humility and common sense, Burns would probably answer, and that response would not appeal to the majority of poets. A mystical experience of religion, Wordsworth would say, of course. A wealth of imagery, nineteenth century poets would hardly think it worth while to add, for the influence ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... instinctively felt by the common sense of the people, nowhere is more manifestly shown than at this very moment in my native land. Hungary was declared by Francis Joseph of Austria no more to exist as a Nation, no more as a State. It ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... slaves at home, for a distant market, would be thought worthy of death if he should take a similar freight on the coast of Africa; but I know, too, that this distinction is absurd, and at war with the common sense of mankind, and that God and good men regard it ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... accosted him, and, in a few words, explained my situation: he listened with great politeness, and, when I made an end of my story, said, "Well, monsieur, what would you have me to do?" I was effectually abashed at this interrogation, which, I believe, no man of common sense or generosity could make, and made no other compliment than a low bow: he returned the compliment still lower, and tripped into an apartment, while the landlord let me know that my standing there to interrupt ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... maybe that is why I chose it. I got little out of it. What an absurd study, taught, as it was, as an aid to argumentation!—like teaching a man to walk by explaining to him the mechanism of walking. The analysis of one sound argument, or of one weak one, in terms of common sense, is worth any amount of such stuff. But it was of a piece with grammar and rhetoric as then taught—all preposterous studies viewed as helps toward correct writing and speaking. Think of our parsing Milton as an aid to mastering the ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... succeeded in none. Within two years he had become an intellectual leader of the American Revolution. Beginning his literary career with an attack on slavery, he continued it in 1776 by publishing his pamphlet "Common Sense," which gave an electric inspiration to the cause of separation and republicanism among the colonists. After serving the new commonwealth in office and with his pen, he went to France on an official mission in 1781; then returned to his native England, intent on furthering ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... the same effect upon fibers, whether the latter were combined with rubber or not, but very strong acids would affect the rubber injuriously. The line of defense in this case was that "no invention was required in selecting the strength of acid; only the common sense of the manufacturer, aided by his skill and experience, was necessary to bring about the proper results." In support of this a factory superintendent testified that varied stocks required skill and judgment in their treatment ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... this interval of silence with a satisfaction inexpressible. She, too, was under the spell of the place and the occasion. Mlle. Fouchette was not a sentimental woman, as we have seen; but she had recently been undergoing a mental struggle that taxed all her practical common sense. She found now that she saw ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... previous history of the island. When the late Admiral Schroeder was governor of Guam he consulted his log-book and discovered that he was altogether too far away from Washington to be tied to rules and regulations, or to be tangled up in official red tape. So he cut the tape and used good common sense instead. Perhaps the government was a bit patriarchal, but it was good, clean, and wholesome—and ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... of fighting ancestors; and his mind was no less robust than his body. Quick at mastering a mass of details, he soon saw into the heart of a problem, and his solution of it was marked both by unfailing skill and by sound common sense as to the choice of men and means. In some respects he resembles Napoleon the Great. Granted that he was his inferior in the width of vision and the versatility of gifts that mark a world-genius, yet he was his equal in diplomatic resourcefulness ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... be supplied from abroad; the necessity for this is in proportion to the magnitude of the armies. Every imported horse is probably bought on account of the Government, and if it is not some other horse is at least set free for belligerent use. "Under the mere light of common sense," he says, "the possibility of looking upon horses as contraband seems ...
— Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War • Robert Granville Campbell
... those others were agreed That chaste and good their consorts they believed. — "Think each man as he will, but well I read," (The landlord said,) "You fondly are deceived: Your rash replies to one conclusion lead, That you are all of common sense bereaved; And so too must believe this noble knight, Unless he would ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... "It is common sense that should have guided you, not knowledge of geography. When I sail into Port, you sail into Burgundy—you, the only woman I ever loved!" cried Napoleon, passionately. "Hereafter, madame, for the sake of our step-children, ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... of the revolutions he had seen. He remembered the time when Vaud was a province of Berne. His observations on this subject were rational, and were well seasoned with wholesome common sense. His doctrine was simply this. "If one man rule, he will rule for his own benefit, and that of his parasites; if a minority rule, we have many masters instead of one," (honest Jean had got hold here of a cant saying of the privileged, which he very ingeniously converted against themselves,) "all ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... am afraid," said he, "that to common sense, to fair reasoning, to any philosopher worthy of the name there would be no difference except in magnitude, between such an event as the sudden appearance of an animal (say man) for the first time in our world, or the first appearance of a tree (such a thing ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... common sense told him that Clanton's future lay with himself and his attitude toward his environment, but he loved the spirit of this girl's gift of faith in her friends. It was so wholly like her to reject the external evidence and accept her own conviction of ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... and these are only bluffs not as high or extensive as those of our rivers and dividing ridges. It is the greatest plain section of the world, and is the ancient home of the best fruits of the temperate zones. Common sense should lead us to give trial to the horticultural products of this plain. To find apples, pears, cherries, and plums as hardy, and as well adapted to the hot summers and cold winters of Illinois and Iowa as the Fameuse apple, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... the British Government was actuated simply by motives of humanity and common sense. The British fleet was thoroughly prepared for ordinary naval warfare, but an enemy had inaugurated another kind of naval warfare, for which it was not prepared. It was, therefore, decided to withdraw the ships until they should be prepared for the new kind of warfare. To ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... cause and effect. The fact is that death is surer to follow starvation. The glow at evening is generally followed by fair weather the next day; but the fair weather is not an effect of a clear sunset. Common sense must be used to determine whether the relation is one of cause and effect; something more than a ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... it; he must absolutely dismiss Zen—Zen Transley—from his mind. That was not only the course of honor; it was the course of common sense. After all, he had not sought her for his bride. He had not pressed his suit. He had given her to Transley. The thought was rather a pleasant one. It implied some sort of voluntary action upon Grant's part. He had been magnanimous. Nevertheless, he was cave man enough ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... of representation be a fair and useful principle to adopt in collecting the sense of the people with respect to laws or taxes, it must also be a useful and fair principle to resort to, in every other instance, where great bodies of men are permitted to express their common sense as they are unquestionably in petitioning for redress of grievances, &c. No, Englishmen! it was not because the Convention was unconstitutional as being representative, but because it was chosen to recommend, as the sense of the Irish people (for the Volunteers ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... for purposes of self-government; as I do, now. . . . Once, oppressed by form and theory, I told you that to remarry after divorce was a slap at civilisation. . . . Which is true sometimes and sometimes not. Common sense, not laws, must govern a man in that matter. But if any motive except desire to be a decent citizen sways a self-punished man toward self-leniency, then is he unpardonable if he breaks those laws which truly were ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... to enact a law enforcing the amendment. Then some of us waited on these "conscript fathers" at Topeka, and entreated them, and supplicated them, and almost got down on our knees to them, beseeching- them to use a little courage and common sense. The House of Representatives was largely made up of farmers and men from the country, and was overwhelmingly in favor of an honest temperance law; but the Senate was largely made up of lawyers and men from the city, and was full of treachery and open ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... but temper your determination to win with a little common sense. You've overdone it, both of you. Take my tip: they'll play up like blazes. Defend your own base; and then, when ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... simplified because trains running in each direction have separate tracks. Does it not seem simple? And how impossible are mistakes when its rules are adhered to. It really seems as if any one gifted with a reasonable amount of common sense, and having a knowledge of the rudiments of mathematics, could do the work, but underneath all the simplicity explained, there runs a deep current of complications that only long time and a cool head can master. I have worked in offices and been figuring on orders for a train soon to start ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... a man who was eager to obey God, and to be led by the Spirit, but who had the mistaken idea that the Holy Spirit sets aside human judgment and common sense, and speaks directly upon the most minute and commonplace matters. He wanted the Holy Spirit to direct him just how much to eat at each meal, and he has been known to take food out of his mouth at what he supposed to be the Holy Spirit's notification that he had eaten enough, ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... Colvin's case, that if England and Scotland should, in a course of descent, pass to separate Kings, those born under the same sovereign during the union, would remain natural subjects and not aliens. Common sense urges some considerations against this. Natural subjects owe allegiance; but we owe none. Aliens are the subjects of a foreign power; we are subjects of a foreign power. The King, by the treaty, acknowledges ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... not quite as strong as the evidence resulting from the examination of their handwriting. Two or three of them appeared to be such outrages on all probability, that even if there had been strong evidence of the genuineness of their handwriting, no man of common sense could come to the conclusion that they were genuine. Some of them were produced to prove that King George III. had ordered the fraud to be committed of rebaptising an infant child under a false name as the daughter of persons ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... courage, however deeply in vanity and affectation he had buried common sense, stood suspended, upon the request of Cecilia, that he would not go, and, with a shrug of distress, said, "Give me leave to own I am parfaitment in a state the most accablant in the world: nothing could ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... to have made up thegither, it's not for us to explain why." - "The panel, who (whatever else he may be) appears to be equally ill set-out in mind and boady." - "Neither the panel nor yet the old wife appears to have had so much common sense as even to tell a lie when it was necessary." And in the course of sentencing, my lord had this OBITER DICTUM: "I have been the means, under God, of haanging a great number, but never just such a disjaskit rascal ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... clothes, the third that he should not eat of the spoil and the fourth that he should not put off praying till after the proper period. It is said that there is no wealth more profitable than understanding, and there is no understanding like common sense and prudence, and there is no prudence like piety; that there is no means of drawing near to God like good morals, no measure like good breeding, no traffic like good works and no profit like earning the Divine favour; that there is no ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... privilege without responsibility, and when socially it is not "superiority in character or quality" but political cunning, opulence and sycophancy that are the touchstones to recognition and acceptance. The latter are the antithesis of Christianity and common sense, the former is consonant with both and, paradoxical as it may seem, it is also the fulfilling of the ideals of a real democracy, since its honours and distinctions imply service, its relations with those in other estates are reciprocal, it is not a closed caste but the prize ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... Scandinavia played as great parts in the millennia B.C., as they have done in the times we know about. All analogy from the other seats of civilization is for it; all racial memories and traditions—tradition is racial memory—are for it; and I venture to say, all reason and common sense are for it too. ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... is not common sense, I am an honest man. It is by degrading myself in your eyes that I elevate myself in my own. This has happened to me once before, but it was less painful then; it was a mere nothing. Yes, an honest man. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... America to help on the cause of Washington? There at last he discovered his true vocation. His broadsides struck home. "Rebellious staymaker, unkempt," says Carlyle, "who feels that he, a single needleman, did by his 'Common Sense' pamphlet, free America; that he can, and will free all this world; perhaps even the other." Tom Paine, indeed, had the rare gift of voicing tersely and stridently the dumb desires of the masses. Further, a sojourn in France before and during the early part of the Revolution enabled him to frame ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... gathering of commonplace men 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 little to ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... child might be worthless, and another the reverse; no matter—all were to be treated alike. No preference could be shewn, no posthumous reward could be given for general good-conduct or filial respect. In all this, there was something so revolting to common sense, that one feels a degree of wonder that so acute a people as the French should have failed to observe the error into ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... returned safe to receive their Iron Crosses. The German aim in such raids was probably to create a panic, and so interfere with the English military plans. If the English had not looked at the matter with common sense they might easily have been tempted to spend millions of pounds on seaboard fortifications, and keep millions of men at home who were more necessary in the armies in France. But the English people ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... at the technical execution. Rare, indeed, are the imaginative analysts who, while considering the design, can comprehend its philosophy, tell why it pleases or displeases, why they like or dislike; and still rarer are they who add to impartiality, observation, common sense, imaginative perception, and analytic power, a sufficiency of technical knowledge to render their criticism useful, not only to outsiders, but even to artists themselves. Such a guide would indeed be an invaluable companion in any ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... should not wear fine clothes, the third that he should not eat of the spoil and the fourth that he should not delay to pray after the proper time. It is said that there is no wealth better than understanding and no understanding like common sense and prudence and no prudence like the fear of God; that there is no offering like good morals and no measure like good breeding and no profit like earning the Divine favour;[FN34] that there is no piety like the observance of the limits of the Law and no science like that of meditation, no devotion ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... conclusion, "I want you to remember what I have said, and practise according to it. Boys bail things to one another very often, and a great many disputes arise among them, because they don't understand the law of bailment. It applies to boys as well as men. It is founded on principles of justice and common sense, and, of course, what is just and equitable among men, is just and equitable ...
— Rollo's Museum • Jacob Abbott
... navigation. Ask them that if two chronometers ain't better than one, then how can two thousand be better than one? And they'd answer quick, snap, like that, that if two dollars ain't any better than one dollar, then two thousand dollars ain't any better than one dollar. That's common sense." ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... not only less refined and flowing, but also less scientifically correct, than that of his distinguished exponent and successor. We would cite, for instance, the happy substitution by the latter of the terms 'laws of human thought and belief,' for the unfortunate phrases 'common sense' and 'instinct,' which raised so extensive a prejudice against the vigorous protest against scepticism made in other respects so effectively by Reid; and he passes oftener from the abstractions of his science into the regions of life and character in which all must feel ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... for this reason that I look with a certain measure of alarm on the excess of verbiage about versification which attends not merely criticism—for that matters little—but the actual production and creation. I am confident, however, that the common sense of readers will always bring about a reaction in favour of sanity ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... to win," grunted Steinert. "I've been offerin' you good stuff, too—new stuff. None of yer druggin' with chloroform or ticklin' with blackjacks. Why, I've gone from fine-esse to common sense. But, come to think of it, how about some woman? I c'n get ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... call it the peace of the sea," said Mr Charles Powell in an earnest tone but looking at us as though he expected to be met by a laugh of derision and were half prepared to salve his reputation for common sense by joining in it. But neither of us laughed at Mr Charles Powell in whose start in life we had been called to take a part. He was lucky in ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... objectionable. It would surely be more consistent that statues should be in the costume of the period and of the country in which the person lived. We know this will be opposed on the score of classic taste, which, in this instance, it seems difficult to reconcile with common sense. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various |
