The greatness of common sense, and its title to reverence, appear in this, that it deals with vast complexity, that is, with the innumerable elements…

- James Vila Blake

Common sense is so just an understanding that it rises almost to a virtue; in truth, it involves virtues and their participation in judgment. For sou…

- James Vila Blake

An enemy will train us in watchfulness; for if he be wary to seize on every error and trip us, we shall be more heedful to expose nothing, and this w…

- James Vila Blake

when a great war has cut off the young men of a nation it never can be told thereafter what losses of scholars, poets, thinkers and great designers t…

- James Vila Blake

Democracy has become, unless I mistake, a kind of test or shibboleth, by which we try men and measures; and this is the same as to say that it is mer…

- James Vila Blake

As but a swift glance is enough to catch the glory of a great landscape, or only a little lingering is necessary to observe many peculiar beauties in…

- James Vila Blake

Meditation ... must be power of will and strength of attention, being like a flight to great heights wherein wings must be plied hard though joyfully.

- James Vila Blake

We have great power to see the truth when the truth is all we wish to see; but what is easier than to credit what we desire? and can a man deceive an…

- James Vila Blake

Individuality in opinion, or, what is more, in thinking, is simply one with thinking at all; for he who thinks thereby looks at the thing or the fact…

- James Vila Blake