O thou weed,

Who art so lovely fair and smell'st so sweet

That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne'er been born.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Othello. Act iv. Sc. 2.

Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,

Lie in three words,—health, peace, and competence.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Man. Epistle iv. Line 79.

Made still a blund'ring kind of melody;

Spurr'd boldly on, and dashed through thick and thin,

Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Absalom and Achitophel. Part ii. Line 413.

Those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings,

Blank misgivings of a creature

Moving about in worlds not realized,

High instincts before which our mortal nature

Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Ode. Intimations of Immortality. Stanza 9.

Assume a virtue, if you have it not.

That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,

Of habits devil, is angel yet in this.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act iii. Sc. 4.

But Shadwell never deviates into sense.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Mac Flecknoe. Line 20.

Him of the western dome, whose weighty sense

Flows in fit words and heavenly eloquence.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Absalom and Achitophel. Part i. Line 868.

Remembrance and reflection how allied!

What thin partitions sense from thought divide!

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Man. Epistle i. Line 225.

Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven,

And though no science, fairly worth the seven.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Moral Essays. Epistle iv. Line 43.

The worst speak something good; if all want sense,

God takes a text, and preacheth Pa-ti-ence.

George Herbert (1593-1632): The Church Porch.

Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,

Lie in three words,—health, peace, and competence.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Man. Epistle iv. Line 79.

Music, when soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory;

Odours, when sweet violets sicken,

Live within the sense they quicken.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): Music, when soft Voices die.

Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move;

For fools admire, but men of sense approve.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Criticism. Part ii. Line 190.

Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,

Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Criticism. Part ii. Line 109.

Those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings,

Blank misgivings of a creature

Moving about in worlds not realized,

High instincts before which our mortal nature

Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Ode. Intimations of Immortality. Stanza 9.

The sense of death is most in apprehension;

And the poor beetle, that we tread upon,

In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great

As when a giant dies.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Measure for Measure. Act iii. Sc. 1.

Alas! regardless of their doom,

The little victims play;

No sense have they of ills to come,

Nor care beyond to-day.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): On a Distant Prospect of Eton College. Stanza 6.

If yet not lost to all the sense of shame.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Iliad of Homer. Book vi. Line 350.

The man that hails you Tom or Jack,

And proves, by thumping on your back,

His sense of your great merit,

Is such a friend that one had need

Be very much his friend indeed

To pardon or to bear it.

William Cowper (1731-1800): On Friendship.

For what is worth in anything

But so much money as 't will bring?

Samuel Butler (1600-1680): Hudibras. Part ii. Canto i. Line 465.

Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover,

Fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense.

The virtuous Marcia towers above her sex.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719): Cato. Act i. Sc. 4.

And be these juggling fiends no more believ'd,

That palter with us in a double sense:

That keep the word of promise to our ear

And break it to our hope.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act v. Sc. 8.

Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?

Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. Prologue to the Satires. Line 307.

In discourse more sweet;

For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense.

Others apart sat on a hill retir'd,

In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high

Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,

Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute;

And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book ii. Line 555.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,

As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.

'T is not enough no harshness gives offence,—

The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Criticism. Part ii. Line 162.

A man whose blood

Is very snow-broth; one who never feels

The wanton stings and motions of the sense.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Measure for Measure. Act i. Sc. 4.

A sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,—

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.

Immodest words admit of no defence,

For want of decency is want of sense.

Earl Of Roscommon (1633-1684): Essay on Translated Verse. Line 113.

Him of the western dome, whose weighty sense

Flows in fit words and heavenly eloquence.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Absalom and Achitophel. Part i. Line 868.

But Titus said, with his uncommon sense,

When the Exclusion Bill was in suspense:

"I hear a lion in the lobby roar;

Say, Mr. Speaker, shall we shut the door

And keep him there, or shall we let him in

To try if we can turn him out again?"

James Bramston (1694-1744): Art of Politics.