What a poor, ignorant, malicious, short-sighted, crapulous mass isTom Paine's common sense.

-Adams,John
  Letter to Thomas  Jefferson, 22  Jun, referring to the Republican's treatise on independence entitled Common Sense.

He that will write well in any tongue, must follow this counsel of Aristotle, to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do; and so should every man understand him, and the judgment of wise men allow him.

-Ascham, Roger
  Toxophilus,'To all Gentlemen andYeomen of England'.

Medicinal discovery, It moves in mighty leaps, It leapt straight past the common cold And gave it us for keeps.

-Ayres, Pam
  Some of Me Poetry,'Oh no, I got a cold'.

A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinion and uncommon abilities.

-Bagehot,Walter
Biographical Studies,'The Character of Sir Robert Peel'.

What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.

-Bible (NewTestament)
Acts of the  Apostles10:15.

Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell.

-Doyle, SirArthur Conan
  The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,'The Copper Beeches'.

Youth, beauty, graceful action seldom fail: But common interest always will prevail: And pity never ceases to be shown To him, who makes the people's wrongs his own.

-Dryden,John
Absalom and  Achitophel, pt.1, l.723^6.

The British Empire has advanced to a new conception of autonomyand freedom, to the idea of a system of British nations, each freely ordering its own individual life, but bound together in unity byallegiance to one Crown, and co-operating in all that concerns the common weal.

-GeorgeVI
  Opening, as Duke ofYork, the first  Australian Parliament to assemble in Canberra, 9 May.

The Common Law of England has been laboriously built about a mythical figureöthe figure of 'The Reasonable Man'.

-Herbert, SirA(lan) P(atrick)
  Uncommon Law,'The Reasonable Man'.

Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the latter onlyas a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.

-Huxley,T(homas) H(enry)
^4  Collected Essays, no.4,'The Method of Zadig'.

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kingsönor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it. Andöwhich is moreöyou'll be a Man, my son!

-Kipling, (Joseph) Rudyard
  Rewards and Fairies,'Ifö'.

This would surpass Common revenge.

-Milton,John
  Beelzebub speaking of the plan to tempt Man away from God. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.2, l.370^1.

You can be in the Horseguards and still be common, dear.

-Rattigan, SirTerence
  SeparateTables.

Without contemplating last and late the true nature of poetry. The drive to connect. The dream of a common language.

-Rich, Adrienne Cecile
  The Dream of a Common Language,'Origins and History of Consciousness'.

'But why should you want to shield him?'cried Egbert; 'the man is a common murderer.' 'A common murderer, possibly, but a very uncommon cook.'

-Saki pseudonym of  Hector Hugh Munro
  Beasts and Super-Beasts,'The Blind Spot'.

No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. Theyall require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.

-Marquis of
  Letter to Lord Lytton,15 Jun. Quoted in Lady Gwendolen Cecil Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury (1921^32), vol.2, ch.4.

Ce qu'ils ont en commun, c'est simplement le fait qu'ils estiment que l'existence pre¤  ce'  de l'essence, ou, si vous voulez, qu'il faut partir de la subjectivite¤  . What [existentialists] have in common is simply the fact that they believe that existence comes before essenceöor, if you will, that we must begin from the subjective.

-Sartre,Jean-Paul
  L'Existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism and Humanism,1948) (translated by Philip Mairet).

A man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

-Shaw, George Bernard
 Of Caesar. Caesar and Cleopatra, notes.

   The moment that the very name of Ireland ismentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, common prudence, and common sense, and to act with the barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of idiots.

-Smith, Rev Sydney
^8  Peter Plymley's Letters.

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.

-Stein, Gertrude
  'Reflection on theAtomic Bomb', collected in Robert A Goodwin (ed) Readings inWorld Politics (1959).