Senses

Senses are physiological capacities of organisms that provide inputs for perception. The senses and their operation, classification, and theory are overlapping topics studied by a variety of fields, most notably neuroscience, cognitive psychology (or cognitive science), and philosophy of perception. The nervous system has a specific sensory system or organ, dedicated to each sense. Human beings have a multitude of senses, including the five traditional senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch, and other senses such as balance and the ability to note the passage of time.

Quotes

• When the mind is not dissipated upon extraneous things, nor diffused over the world about us through the senses, it withdraws within itself, and of its own accord ascends to the contemplation of God.
  • Basil of Caesarea, Letters, vol. 1, p. 15

• People are plagued by their senses if they act without restraint to attain their desires. ... If one is dragged along as the victim of his natural five senses, his adversities wax like the moon in the bright fortnight.
  • Mahābhārata 5(51)34:53

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 697-98.

• I am almost frightened out of my seven senses.
  • Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605-15), Part I, Book III, Chapter IX.

• Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves.
  • Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, Chapter IX.

• He had used the word in its Pickwickian sense … he had merely considered him a humbug in a Pickwickian point of view.
  • Charles Dickens, Pickwick Papers (1836), Chapter I. The quarrel in the Pickwick Club is a literal paraphrase of a scene in the House of Commons during a debate, April 17, 1823, when Brougham and Canning quarreled over an accusation which was decided should be taken as political, not personal.

• Him of the western dome, whose weighty sense
  Flows in fit words and heavenly eloquence.
  • John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel (1681), Part I, line 868.

• They received the use of the five operations of the Lord and in the sixth place he imparted them understanding, and in the seventh speech, an interpreter of the cogitations thereof.
  • Ecclesiasticus, XVII. 5.

• Be sober, and to doubt prepense,
  These are the sinews of good sense.
  • Sir William Hamilton, Notes on Reid, from the Fragments of Epicharmus, 255.

• Rarus enim ferme sensus communis in illa
  Fortuna.
  • Generally common sense is rare in that (higher) rank.
  • Juvenal, Satires, VIII. 73.

• If Poverty is the Mother of Crimes, want of Sense is the Father.
  • Jean de La Bruyère, The Characters or Manners of the Present Age (1688), Volume II, Chapter II.

• Entre le bon sens et le bon goût il y a la différence de la cause à son effet.
  • Between good sense and good taste there is the difference between cause and effect.
  • Jean de La Bruyère, Les Caractères, XII.

• Il n'est rien d'inutile aux personnes de sens.
  • Sensible people find nothing useless.
  • Jean de La Fontaine, Fables, V. 19.

• Whate'er in her Horizon doth appear,
  She is one Orb of Sense, all Eye, all aiery Ear.
  • Henry More, Antidote against Atheism.

• What thin partitions sense from thought divide.
  • Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle I, line 226. And thin partitions do their bounds divide. Dryden—Absalom and Achitophel.

• Good sense which only is the gift of Heaven,
  And though no science, fairly worth the seven.
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-35), Epistle IV, line 43.

• 'Tis use alone that sanctifies expense
  And splendor borrows all her rays from sense.
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-35), Epistle IV, line 179.

• Fool, 'tis in vain from wit to wit to roam:
  Know, sense, like charity, begins at home.
  • Alexander Pope, Umbra.

• Oft has good nature been the fool's defence,
  And honest meaning gilded want of sense.
  • William Shenstone, Ode to a Lady.

• Huzzaed out of my seven senses.
  • Spectator, No. 616. Nov. 5, 1774.

• Le sens commun n'est pas si commun.
  • Common sense is not so common.
  • Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, Self Love.

• Sense is our helmet, wit is but the plume;
  The plume exposes, 'tis our helmet saves.
  Sense is the diamond, weighty, solid, sound;
  When cut by wit, it casts a brighter beam;
  Yet, wit apart, it is a diamond still.
  • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night VIII, line 1,254.

See also

• Hearing
• Perception
• Vision