Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.

Let thy speech be short, comprehending much in few words

People all over the nation are starved for honesty and common sense.

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor.

Common sense is the very antipodes of science.

In life, all good things come hard, but wisdom is the hardest to come by.

The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live accordingly to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.

Those who would administer wisely must, indeed, be wise, for one of the serious obstacles in the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity.

The wise man accepts his pain, endures it, but does not add to it.