Sense quotes
Albee Edward 1928-
Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?
I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humour.
Barnes Julian
Flaubert's Parrot
Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't...
Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people's lives, never your own.
Beecher Henry Ward 1813-1887
The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
Berkeley George 1685-1753
Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous
The same principles which at first lead to scepticism, pursued to a certain point bring men back to common sense.
Bruyere Jean de la 1645-1696
Les Caractères ou les moeurs de ce siècle
Between good sense and good taste there is the same
difference as between cause and effect.
Carroll Lewis (Charles L. Dodgson)
Through the Looking-Glass
Take care of the sense and the sounds will take of themselves.
Descartes René
Discourse on Method
Common sense is the best distributed commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.
La Rochefoucauld François Duc de 1613-1680
Maxims
We seldom attribute common sense except to those who agree with us.
Latham Peter
Common sense is in medicine the master workman.
Lloyd Robert 1733-1764
‘The Law-Student' (of Lord Mansfield)
Alone from Jargon born to rescue Law,
From precedent, grave hum, and formal saw!
To strip chicanery of its vain pretence,
And marry Common Law to Common Sense!
McGregor Jimmy
‘Football Crazy'
Oh, he's football crazy, he's football mad
And the football it has robbed him o' the
wee bit sense he had.
Maugham W. Somerset 1874-1965
Of Human Bondage
Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.
Mencken H.L. 1880-1956
A man loses his sense of direction after four drinks; a woman loses hers after four kisses.
Mencken H.L. 1880-1956
I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.
Meredith George 1828-1909
Modern Love
That rarest gift
To Beauty, Common Sense.
Mortimer John
A Voyage Round My Father
No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean finger nails.
Oppenheimer J. Robert 1904-1967
Open Mind
In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humour, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.
Rand Ayn 1905-1982
To demand ‘sense' is the hallmark of nonsense.
Nature does not make sense. Nothing makes sense.
Reynold Gillian
Art is life rearranged until it makes sense.
Rochester John Wilmot, Earl of 1647-1680
‘Against Constancy'
Tell me no more of constancy,
that frivolous pretence,
Of cold age, narrow jealousy,
disease and want of sense.
Roscommon Earl of 1637-1685
Essay on Translated Verse
Immodest words admit of no defence,
For want of decency is want of sense.
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
Othello
Let husbands know
Their wives have sense like them. They see, and smell.
And have their palates both for sweet and sour,
As husbands have.
Smith Sydney 1771-1845
Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.
Steichen Edward 1879-1973
Everybody gets so much common information all day long that they lose their common sense.
Stevenson Adlai 1900-1965
Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains.
Wordsworth William 1770-1850
‘Lines composed ... above Tintern Abbey'
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts,
And rolls through all things.