Sensible thing

“ And the real, although common sense thus often opposes it to the merely desirable, remains to the end that which, if present, would, as we say, satisfy reason, and thereby give us the greatest fulfilment possible to our type of consciousness. ”

“ You must also be serious. You must forget yourself in your ideas. Your personal qualities—the vigour of your temperament, the manly independence of your nature, the tenderness of your heart—these facts are impertinent. ”

“ I have done with insensible human wisdom,—"indifference cold in wisdom's guise,"—and turn to the source of perfection—who perhaps never disregarded an almost broken heart, especially when a respect, a practical respect, for virtue, sharpened the wounds of adversity. ”

“ Which is it most difficult to judge for,—others or ourselves? The judgment given in ignorance, or that biassed by passion,—which is best? Alas for human sagacity, and that which is to depend on it,—human conduct! ”

“ I concede to you conscientious motives in what you do. You are sustained by those around you, men of intellect, men of character. I respect them while I differ from them. I appeal, however, to a higher law, and that, I think, sustains me. ”

“ Around thee are the institutions, the ideals, the knowledge and beliefs, ethical or intellectual, in which that work, that life, have been so far fragmentarily and partially realised. Submit thyself and press forward. Thou knowest well what it means to be better: more pure, more loving, more self-denying. ”

“ In order, therefore, to escape the latter of these alternatives, we will do our best to embrace and comply with the former of them. Such being our reasons, we now nail our colours to the mast, and prepare ourselves for a good deal of polemical discussion on the subject of "the human mind." ”

“ Things good and evil, honourable and disgraceful, just and unjust, dutiful and undutiful, the virtues and their practice, the possession of comforts, worth and respect, health, strength, beauty, keenness of the senses – all these qualities call for one who is able to appraise them. ”

“ Mind, I have been talking, not of ordinary conformity to what the world requires, but of that fine perfection of mental and moral constitution which in its own natural necessary acting leaves nothing to be desired, in every occasion or circumstance of life. ”

“ Good sense, disciplined by experience and inspired by goodness, issues in practical wisdom. ”

“ The contest about the original benevolence or malignity of man had not yet commenced. Speculation had not yet attempted to analyse the mind, to trace the passions to their sources, to unfold the seminal principles of vice and virtue, or sound the depths of the heart for the motives of action. All those enquiries, which from that time that human nature became the fashionable study, have been made sometimes with nice discernment, but often with idle subtilty, were yet unattempted. ”

“ Our understandings are so darkened, our wills so perverted, our affections so carnal, that we can depend upon no suggestions of external nature, or of reason and conscience, for the regulation of our moral conduct. ”

“ Now we must ask these persons the following questions: Whether to desire what is good is virtuous or vicious; and whether the desire to run in order to reach the goal in the pursuit of what is good be worthy of praise or censure? ”

“ This occurs oftenest when, to divine what any known person will do in a case stated, we go boldly by his character, his habits, or his interest: for these are great forces, towards which men gravitate through various and even contrary circumstances. ”

“ But above and beyond all the separate instances, such a person,—the object only to a few, perhaps, of love and reverence, but to those few the object of those feelings in the most unreserved and unequivocal form,—is something far more than a source of any number of particular benefits. ”

“ Taking, as our limits necessarily oblige us to take, a broad survey of the principle, and the results of the principle disclosed by experience, we cheerfully pronounce both to be positively and undeniably good. ”

“ How strange that where all that should be good, and all that is great is encouraged, there is little to be found but sheer vice; and how strange that where good examples alone should be led, bad examples alone are followed. ”

“ And yet mere common sense ought to tell us that He, whose way is perfect, can make no mistakes; that He who has promised to "perfect that which concerneth" us, and whose minute care counts the very hairs of our heads, and forms for us our circumstances, must know better than we the way to forward our truest interests and to glorify His own Name. ”

“ Among men, how often have I seen the most solid merit and knowledge neglected, unwelcome, or even rejected, for want of them! While flimsy parts, little knowledge, and less merit, introduced by the Graces, have been received, cherished, and admired. Even virtue, which is moral beauty, wants some of its charms if unaccompanied by them. ”

“ If you have any sensibility or imagination, this will establish such an intercourse between you and the Supreme Being, as will be of infinite consequence to you in life. It will communicate an habitual cheerfulness to your tempers, give a firmness and steadiness to your virtue, and enable you to go through all the vicissitudes of human life with propriety and dignity. ”

“ If the beauty of virtue, and the grandeur of truth, and the sublimity of invisible things, have been able to make such an impression upon your intellects, and your tastes,—upon that part of your constitution which is fixed and stationary, which responds organically to such objects, and which is not the seat of moral character,—then why is there not a corresponding influence and impression made by them upon your heart? ”

“ Can anything be more simple, more evidently or indisputably natural and right, than such connection of the two powers? That you should desire to know what you ought; what is worthy of your nature, and helpful to your life: to know that;—nothing less,—nothing more ”

“ To take, for instance, one of the more plausible, because one of the more complicated, of such proposed definitions, it may easily be thought, at first sight, that to be good may mean to be that which we desire to desire. ”

“ So, to pursue these gentlemen’s discourse, which I wholly approve and confirm, I say that of the things that we call good, there are some which simply and in themselves are always good, like temperance, fortitude, health, and all the virtues that bestow tranquillity upon the mind; others, which are good in various respects and for the object to which they tend, like law, liberality, riches, and other like things. ”

“ We could give you many of these things in so many words and say to you, 'This is the way it is — you must believe this,' but this is not our way, for you must choose; it is your choice that you shall prove yourself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Specious reasoning, aided and abetted by the temptation of a rare opportunity, further reinforced by an emotion which was more or less selfish even while it masked itself as a public and private duty, had routed the sterner sense of justice of which the man was, not without reason, proud. ”

“ What value should we put upon their praises? What should we think of their sincerity? Yet, comparing small things to great, such is the conduct of mankind in general, in reference to the Universe and its Cause. ”

“ What they lack, more or less completely, is good judgment, the moral sense, and especially continuity or logical consecutiveness, a unity of direction in intellectual production and the actions of life. ”

“ What is uncommon in you—at least that is my reading—is something which according to circumstances may be nice, or very much the other way about. It's something which stands quite apart from standards of morals or ethics or the ordinary emotions. ”

“ "Take care of your common sense, and your dignity will take care of itself." ”

“ The simplicity which characterizes us has its noble side, which should arouse respect and emotion in those who have lost it. Is it the faults or the vices that are found among us that make you sick at heart? ”

“ When I want something bad enough, common sense tells me to go and take it—and not get caught. ”

“ Without Knowledge of the Human Nature. “Varied, according to character, are the demands made by heart and mind,” assures us a representative of modern philosophy, “corresponding to them is the image of the world to which the individual turns by inner necessity. ”

“ For bad taste, for indelicacy, for vulgarity, for disregard of sound argument—that is, argument that sounds well—and for general obstinacy, there is nothing to compare with a conscience that remains in moderately good working order. ”

“ Now, judgment, sense, principle are invaluable and quite indispensable points, but one would be thankful for a little feeling, a little indulgence in addition—without these, poor fallible human nature shrinks under the domination of the sterner qualities. ”

“ And the same reason ought to determine us to make a choice even among the senses, and to give the precedence, not to the noblest, or most useful, but to the simplest, and that whose objects are least in danger of being mistaken for other things. ”

“ It is a vigorous expression of the philosophy of common sense. The plea is for more simplicity, for moderation in all things."
How to live and how to get the most out of life: Those are the problems that confront every one of us. ”

“ The issue depends upon that prudent, amiable, uniform conduct, which wisdom and virtue so strongly recommend, on the one hand, or on that imprudence which a want of reflection or passion may prompt, on the other. ”

“ But men boast of the reason and the conscience with which they are endowed. Agreed. But with the exception of a small number—the infinite minority of progress—to what advantage have men employed the reason and the conscience of which they boast? ”

“ Following our instinct for intellect and knowledge, we acquire pieces of knowledge; and presently, in the generality of men, there arises the desire to relate these pieces of knowledge to our sense for conduct, to our sense for beauty,—and there is weariness and dissatisfaction if the desire is baulked. ”

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

“ Of all these wider, more potential selves, the potential social Me is the most interesting, by reason of certain apparent paradoxes to which it leads in conduct, and by reason of its connection with our moral and religious life. ”

“ The reasoning we have developed rests, in a word, on the confusion between a pleasant thought and the thought of a pleasure; between an idea of an objective act or event, contemplation of which is pleasant, and of which I desire the realization, and the idea of myself as the subject of a feeling of satisfaction which is to be. ”

“ I know, my dear, that you are too virtuous to dishonour, and too independent to compromise any good principles, but I hope you will renounce those gloomy and mystical views which you have recently imbibed, and return to the adoption of those in which you have been educated. ”

“ Proceeding from this point, he asserted, further, that every faculty and emotion are derived from sensation; that all minds are originally equal; that pleasure is the only good, and self-interest the only ground of morality. ”

“ Wise maxims, some of the garnered grains of our fathers' experiences, are scattered through the books we read, and daily fall from the lips of teachers and friends; maxims which, if observed, would lead us to honor and happiness. ”