Sensible Quotes - Page 31

• We think very few people sensible, except those who are of our opinion.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Thinking, People, Opinion

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• Look round this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organized, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind Nature, inpregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children.

  David Hume

  Nature, Children, Science

  David Hume (1874). “A Treatise on Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning Into Moral Subjects; and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion”, p.452

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• Statesmen and beauties are very rarely sensible of the gradations of their decay.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Age, Decay, Youth

  Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Eugenia Stanhope (1827). “Letters Written by the Earl of Chesterfield to His Son”, p.142

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• We are more sensible of what is done against custom than against nature.

  Plutarch

  Done, Tradition, Customs

  Plutarch (1909). “Plutarch's essays and miscellanies, comprising all the works collected under the title of "Morals", translated from the Greek by several hands, corr. and rev. by William W. Goodwin”

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• The President responded very impressively, saying that he was deeply sensible of his need of Divine assistance. He had sometime thought that perhaps he might be an instrument in God's hands of accomplishing a great work and he certainly was not unwilling to be. Perhaps, however, God's way of accomplishing the end which the memorialists have in view may be different from theirs.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Religious, Views, Hands

  Abraham Lincoln (2008). “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln”, p.279, Wildside Press LLC

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• Once we see, however, that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly minuscule as to make it absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favorable properties of physics, on which life depends, are in every respect deliberate.... It is, therefore, almost inevitable that our own measure of intelligence must reflect higher intelligence -even to the limit of God.

  Fred Hoyle

  Thinking, Origin Of Life, Limits

  "Big enough to bury Darwin", www.theguardian.com. August 23, 2001.

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• A relation is formed betwixt every man and the fruits of his own labour, the very thing we call property, which he himself is sensible of, and of which every other is equally sensible. Yours and mine are terms in all languages, familiar among savages, and understood even by children. This is a fact, which every human creature can testify.

  Henry Home, Lord Kames

  Children, Men, Savages

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• Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can't be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh?

  Aldous Huxley

  Death, Dying, Lasts

  Aldous Huxley (2015). “Time Must Have a Stop”, p.181, Random House

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• I say it is impossible that so sensible a people [citizens of Paris], under such circumstances, should have lived so long by the smoky, unwholesome, and enormously expensive light of candles, if they had really known that they might have had as much pure light of the sun for nothing.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Science, Light, Should Have

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• Habits of thought lead us to brush aside descriptions of cruelty to animals as emotional, for "animal-lovers only"; or if not that, then anyway the problem is so trivial in comparison to the problems of human beings that no sensible person could give it time and attention. This too is a prejudice - for how can one know that a problem is trivial until one has taken the time to examine its extent?

  Peter Singer

  Taken, Emotional, Animal

  Peter Singer (1975). “Animal liberation: a new ethics for our treatment of animals”

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• No matter whether you are a physician, a teacher, or a clergyman, if you can give increase of life to others and make them sensible of that fact, they will be attracted to you, and you will get rich.

  Wallace D. Wattles

  Teacher, Giving, Physicians

  Wallace D. Wattles (2015). “The Science of Wallace D. Wattles: The Science of Being Well, The Science of Getting Rich & The Science of Being Great – Complete Trilogy: From one of the New Thought pioneers, author of How to Promote Yourself, New Science of Living and Healing, Hellfire Harrison, A New Christ, How to Get What You Want and Jesus The Man and His Work”, p.65, e-artnow

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• People may talk about the equality of the sexes! They are not equal. The silent smile of a sensible, loving woman will vanquish ten men.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Sex, Women, People

  Henry Ward Beecher (2009). “Star Papers”, p.254, Applewood Books

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• Every sensible man, every honest man, must hold the Christian sect in horror. But what shall we substitute in its place? you say. What? A ferocious animal has sucked the blood of my relatives. I tell you to rid yourselves of this beast, and you ask me what you shall put in its place ?

  Voltaire

  Christian, Men, Animal

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• Beauty is but the sensible image of the infinite. Like truth and justice, it lives within us; like virtue and the moral law, it is a companion of the soul.

  George Bancroft

  Life, Law, Justice

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• I'm not dying for everyone to hear everything we do. Forty minutes every two years is sensible.

  Stephen Malkmus

  Years, Two, Dying

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Some things go better than you expected, other things go worse, so I'm... I think the only sensible thing is just to wait and see and what I'm doing when I'm writing books - I'm not doing science so much anymore.

  Freeman Dyson

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. March 5, 2010.

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• There is as much wisdom in soliciting good counsel as in giving it. The most sensible people are not reluctant to consider the feelings of other people; and to know how to submit to the wise guidance of others is a kind of wisdom in itself.

  Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de Sable

  Wise, People, Giving

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• She'd even violated the only sensible rule of dieting she'd ever run across, the sage advice of the Muppets Miss Piggy, who recommended never eating anything bigger than your head.

  Susan Donovan

  Running, Loss, Missing

  Susan Donovan (2015). “The Susan Donovan Collection: The Kept Woman, Knock Me Off My Feet, and He Loves Lucy”, p.1002, St. Martin's Paperbacks

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• A dream is the meeting of minds; an event in our waking consciousness is the coming together of sensible substances. Hence our feelings by day and our dreams by night are the meetings of mind with mind and of substance with substance.

  Lie Yukou

  Dream, Night, Feelings

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• 51% of the French people - who are not very religious - were thinking that what "Charlie Hebdo" did was unwise. They aren't asking for a law to prevent Charlie Hebdo from publishing caricatures, but they are calling on its editors to be a bit more sensible.

  Tariq Ramadan

  Religious, Thinking, Charlie Hebdo

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• Is this a dagger which I see before me,
  The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
  I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
  Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
  To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
  A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
  Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

  William Shakespeare

  Art, Memorable, Sight

  'Macbeth' (1606) act 2, sc. 1, l. 33

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• It is of dangerous consequence to represent to man how near he is to the level of beasts, without showing him at the same time his greatness. It is likewise dangerous to let him see his greatness without his meanness. It is more dangerous yet to leave him ignorant of either; but very beneficial that he should be made sensible of both.

  Blaise Pascal

  Greatness, Men, Ignorant

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• What we need to do is to have a sensible approach to immigration. It needs to be open. It needs to be non-dogmatic and non-bigoted. We need to be firm but reasonable in the way we deal with the problem of illegal immigration. And we need to try to get as many of our immigrants who want to do so to become citizens as quickly as possible so that the American people will all see that this is a part of the process of American history, which is a good one for our country.

  William J. Clinton

  Country, People, Trying

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• Ay, but to die and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstrution and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendant world.

  William Shakespeare

  Death, Lying, Ice

  'Measure for Measure' (1604) act 3, sc. 1, l. 114

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• Don't condemn the gangbangers, they've got guns that are trafficked, that are not enforced, that are straw purchased and they come into places even that have strong gun laws. Why? Because we don't have sensible gun legislation.

  Sheila Jackson Lee

  Strong, Stupid, Gun

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