Common

“ In practical talk, a man's common sense means his good judgment, his freedom from excentricity, his GUMPTION, to use the vernacular word. ”

“ May we not welcome, as at least a step in the right direction, a change in our conventional habits, which may extend, though in ever so small a degree, the region of common thoughts and aims, common hopes and disappointments, common joys and common sorrows? ”

“ But in the popular acceptation, common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom. ”

“ How is the conversion of common sense into philosophy to be brought about? We answer, by accepting completely and faithfully the facts and expressions of common sense as given in their primitive obscurity, and then by construing them without violence, without addition, and without diminution into clearer and more intelligible forms. ”

“ If there are certain principles, as I think there are, which the constitution of our nature leads us to believe, and which we are under a necessity to take for granted in the common concerns of life, without being able to give a reason for them; these are what we call the principles of common sense; and what is manifestly contrary to them, is what we call absurd. ”

“ The moment you get beyond the coarser and more commonplace moral maxims, the Decalogues and Poor Richard's Almanacs, you fall into schemes and positions which to the eye of common-sense are fantastic and overstrained. ”

“ One writes, that 'Other friends remain,'
⁠That 'Loss is common to the race'?
⁠And common is the commonplace,
And vacant chaff well meant for grain.
That loss is common would not make
⁠My own less bitter, rather more:
⁠Too common! ”

“ And whether the life we are living is quiet and commonplace, or whether it is full of change and adventure, to be of the greatest and most permanent use, a life must have as its habitual background plain every-day common sense. ”

“ But, on the other hand, there are certain things we feel to be too strange and absurd to be believed; and that feeling we come to especially, when we have endeavored to cultivate our Common-Sense in the manner which I described to you in my last lecture. The higher our common-sense—that is, the general resultant of the whole character and discipline of our minds—the more valuable is the direct judgment that we form by the use of it. ”

“ But we also find it socially convenient to view the common objects of our human and social knowledge as independent both of my fellow and myself, even while we still view these objects as the same for both of us, and for all other actual and possible human observers. ”

“ Of course common-sense, after all, must be trusted on such themes to draw the line not only between opinions and theories, but even in the statement and interpretation of facts, as they come from romancers, sentimentalists, idealists, and philanthropists, or from literal, practical, matter-of-fact persons, speaking from experience. ”

“ In reality, however, this common concept is but the sum of the elements which it is requisite for the purposes of discourse that people should agree with one another in including in the complex idea which they associate with a class name. ”

“ This is done by leading, in all respects, the common life, doing all things that are enjoined, but with exactness in the time, place, and manner prescribed. We must do common things not in a common matter, but in a manner more sublime and perfect than that in which they are commonly done. ”

“ That seems to us to be the common sense of the matter; and common sense often makes good law. ”

“ It appears necessary, however, that we attend to the universal qualities of our nature, before we regard its varieties, or attempt to explain differences consisting in the unequal possession or application of dispositions and powers that are in some measure common to all mankind. ”

“ But, whatever our opinion concerning the possible success of such striving and concerning the relation of its two phases, there can be no doubt that the concept 'humanity,' which has become common property among civilized peoples, combines an objective with a subjective aspect. ”

“ Societies, especially young societies, are very impressible, and their character—the quality, that is, of their life—is fixed by prevailing influences, which show themselves in fashions, habits, and tendencies, in the common types of thought, or taste, or behaviour, or conduct. ”

“ We propose making one or two very commonplace observations, professing to take no other guide than a small modicum of common sense, and to have no other object than our readers' delectation and the good of our country. ”

“ Sympathy and understanding, supplemented by communication, and backed up by the enormous mass of common feelings and ideas, find expression in those common and usual ways of doing things, those norms and elements of custom which Professor Sumner has so admirably named "the folkways." ”

“ For the average lawyer’s habit of thought is perhaps the most typical example of the average intelligent secular view of things. Is it not the final fruit of what is called common-sense, that is to say of the sense of common people? ”

“ It needs but a glimmer of common sense to perceive that man is not made to pass his life in a self-centered trance.
And common sense—do you not find what is designated by this name becoming as rare as the common-sense customs of other days? Common sense has become an old story. We must have something new—and we create a factitious existence, a refinement of living, that the vulgar crowd has not the wherewithal to procure. ”

“ You have had abundant practice, have yourself covered the ground foot by foot. You can therefore proceed with reasonable freedom from the commoner ideas of the human mind to that expression of definite aspects of them which is anything but common. ”

“ Popular discussion, on the other hand, doubtless demonstrating a reprehensible lack of rigor, returns again and again to more naturalistic assumptions such as the essentially "common" quality of the property involved or the idea that one owns one's own body. ”

“ The sum total of the beliefs thus acquired, by the impressions and influences under which every growing mind might pass, constitutes the Common Sense of a particular age and country. A person wanting in any of them would be considered, by the majority of the inhabitants, as deficient in Common Sense. ”

“ And when comprehended by common sense, it becomes evident, and there is no difference between what comes to common sense from the exterior or from the interior; on which very account some have entitled it the common sense, as being sensible from both sides. ”

“ Consequently our words tend to conceal what is private and peculiar in our impressions, and to make us believe that different people live in a common world to a greater extent than is in fact the case. ”

“ It seems to me that, for the nation as for the individual, what is most important is to insist on the vital need of combining certain sets of qualities, which separately are common enough, and, alas, useless enough. ”

“ The practical common-sense of modern society, the utilitarian direction which labor, laws, opinion, religion take, is the natural genius of the British mind. ”

“ On the other hand there are common prejudices which, while they last, are popularly dignified as 'common sense.' Some now universally admitted truths of science at first shocked men, although afterwards found to be in harmony with the general common sense to which philosophy appeals. ”

“ The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education. ”

“ Such are: the degree of knowledge, and of intellectual and moral culture, existing in the community, and in every class of it; the state of industry, of wealth and its distribution; the habitual occupations of the community; their division into classes, and the relations of those classes to one another; the common beliefs which they entertain on all the subjects most important to mankind, and the degree of assurance with which those beliefs are held ”

“ I reckon I do, but I have found in the course of a long experience that common people"—repeating it—"common people, take them as they run, are more easily influenced and informed through the medium of a broad illustration than in any other way, and as to what the hypercritical few may think I don't care." ”

“ That Law, Religion, and Manners are thus related—that their respective kinds of operation come under one generalization—that they have in certain contrasted characteristics of men a common support and a common danger—will, however, be most clearly seen on discovering that they have a common origin. ”

“ We must frankly confess, then, using our empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices, that in the world that actually is, the virtues of sympathy, charity, and non-resistance may be, and often have been, manifested in excess. ”

“ It is plain common sense, as all truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified. ”

“ To elucidate the matter, let us take the most familiar case in which the indirect judgments of Reason correct the direct judgments of Common Sense. The direct judgment of Common Sense is that the Sun moves round the Earth. ”

“ Now the sort of 'fact of experience' on which in my book I have proposed to compromise, is the so-called 'mental state,' in whose existence not only common men but philosophers have uniformly believed. ”

“ "and I am convinced that the only people worthy of consideration in this world are the unusual ones. For the common folks are like the leaves of a tree, and live and die unnoticed." ”

“ All bodies agree in some things, or have something in common: of these all men have adequate ideas; [846] and this is the origin of what are called common notions, which all men possess; as extension, duration, number. ”

“ "Are all very well for common people. ”

“ The fact that you had excellent reasons for adopting the scheme in the first place, will doubtless be of comfort to your soul, but that particular species of comfort and ordinary everyday common sense are not always as closely united as you might desire. ”

“ But, it may be said, this very consciousness that you are considering is after all located in a particular person, and so are all similar consciousnesses, so that what we see, if we take an objective view of the matter, is merely an aggregate of individuals, however social those individuals may be. Common-sense, most people think, assures us that the separate person is the primary fact of life. ”

“ A term thus frequently used of necessity will express at various times and in different connections different shades of thought. To discover the substance that lies behind this varying usage and is common to it all is no small task. ”

“ There is more than a verbal tie between the words common, community, and communication. ”

“ A certain simplicity of thought is common to serene souls at both ends of the social scale. ”

“ Can we define or describe our common people? They are a very mixed multitude. There is probably more individual variety than among the conventional refined and cultured, and this makes them more original and interesting. ”

“ I never have known a man of ordinary common-sense who did not urge upon his sons, from earliest childhood, doctrines of economy and the practice of accumulation. ”