“Friendless, adj. Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense”

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

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Ambrose Bierce 204
American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabu… 1842–1914

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Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“Blasphemy is an epithet bestowed by superstition upon common sense.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

"To the Indianapolis Clergy." The Iconoclast (Indianapolis, IN) (1883)
Source: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. V
Context: I do not rely upon superstition, but upon knowledge; not upon miracles, but upon facts; not upon the dead, but upon the living; and when we become absolutely civilized, we shall look back upon the superstitions of the world, not simply with contempt, but with pity.
Context: What is blasphemy? I will give you a definition; I will give you my thought upon this subject. What is real blasphemy?
To live on the unpaid labor of other men — that is blasphemy.
To enslave your fellow-man, to put chains upon his body — that is blasphemy.
To enslave the minds of men, to put manacles upon the brain, padlocks upon the lips — that is blasphemy.
To deny what you believe to be true, to admit to be true what you believe to be a lie — that is blasphemy.
To strike the weak and unprotected, in order that you may gain the applause of the ignorant and superstitious mob — that is blasphemy.
To persecute the intelligent few, at the command of the ignorant many — that is blasphemy.
To forge chains, to build dungeons, for your honest fellow-men — that is blasphemy.
To pollute the souls of children with the dogma of eternal pain — that is blasphemy.
To violate your conscience — that is blasphemy.
The jury that gives an unjust verdict, and the judge who pronounces an unjust sentence, are blasphemers.
The man who bows to public opinion against his better judgment and against his honest conviction, is a blasphemer.
Why should we fear our fellow-men? Why should not each human being have the right, so far as thought and its expression are concerned, of all the world? What harm can come from an honest interchange of thought?

Ambrose Bierce photo

“TRUTHFUL, adj. Dumb and illiterate.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

Virgil photo

“Fortune favors the bold.”
Audentes fortuna iuvat.

Audentes fortuna iuvat.
Variant translations:
Fortune favors the brave.
Fortune helps the daring.
Fortune sides with him who dares.
Compare:
Fortibus est fortuna viris data.
Fortune is given to brave men.
Ennius, Annales, 257
Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book X, Line 284

“Common sense, the half-truths of a deceitful society, is honored as the honest truths of a frank world.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 23-25
Context: The Adlerians, in the name of “individual psychology,” take the side of society against the individual. … Adler’s later thought succumbs to the worst of his earlier banalization. It is conventional, practical, and moralistic. “Our science … is based on common sense.” Common sense, the half-truths of a deceitful society, is honored as the honest truths of a frank world.

Thomas Henry Huxley photo

“All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

"On the Study of Biology" (1876) http://books.google.com/books?id=4cl5c4T9LWkC&pg=PA163&lpg=PA163&dq=All+truth,+in+the+long+run,+is+only+common+sense+clarified.+huxley+On+the+Study+of+Biology&source=bl&ots=87sGwjauQT&sig=pEmWoYQoN8HUVIVU6WSrnAAM8Dc&hl=en&ei=hFcnStrlM5H0tQPG-NBH&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2
1870s

Miranda July photo

“Common sense and the truth should feel authorless, writ by time itself.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

The Shared Patio (2005)
Context: Common sense and the truth should feel authorless, writ by time itself. It is actually really hard to write something that will make a terminally ill person feel better. And Positive has rules, you can't just lift your guidance from the Bible or a book about Zen; they want original material. So far none of my submissions have gotten in, but I'm getting closer.

Richard Steele photo

“A favor well bestowed is almost as great an honor to him who confers it as to him who receives it.”

Richard Steele (1672–1729) British politician

No. 497 (30 September 1712)
The Spectator (1711-1714)

H.L. Mencken photo

“In the present case it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible to any public office of trust or profit in the Republic.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

As quoted in LIFE magazine, Vol. 21, No. 6, (5 August 1946), p. 52 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3UwEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PP1&client=safari&pg=PA52#v=onepage&q&f=false; this has also been paraphrased as "It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office."
1940s–present
Context: In the present case it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible to any public office of trust or profit in the Republic. But I do not repine, for I am a subject of it only by force of arms.

“Both Hopkins and Lawrence were religious not just in the ritualistic sense but in the sense of being obsessed with the word — the word made life and truth — with the need to invent a language as direct as religious utterance.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

Pt. 2, Ch. 3
The Struggle of the Modern (1963)
Context: Both Hopkins and Lawrence were religious not just in the ritualistic sense but in the sense of being obsessed with the word — the word made life and truth — with the need to invent a language as direct as religious utterance. Both were poets, but outside the literary fashions of their time. Both felt that among the poets of their time was an absorption in literary manners, fashions and techniques which separated the line of the writing from that of religious truth. Both felt that the modern situation imposed on them the necessity to express truth by means of a different kind of poetic writing from that used in past or present. Both found themselves driven into writing in a way which their contemporaries did not understand or respond to yet was inevitable to each in his pursuit of truth. Here of course there is a difference between Hopkins and Lawrence, because Hopkins in his art was perhaps over-worried, over-conscientious, whereas Lawrence was an instinctive poet who, in his concern for truth, understood little of the problems of poetic form, although he held strong views about them.

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