Sensibility

Sensibility refers to an acute perception of or responsiveness toward something, such as the emotions of another. This concept emerged in eighteenth-century Britain, and was closely associated with studies of sense perception as the means through which knowledge is gathered. It also became associated with sentimental moral philosophy.

Quotes

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 698.

• Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure
  Thrill the deepest notes of wo.
  • Robert Burns, Sweet Sensibility.

• Susceptible persons are more affected by a change of tone than by unexpected words.
  • George Eliot, Adam Bede, Chapter XXVII.

• Noli me tangere.
  • Do not wish to touch me. Touch me not.
  • John, XX. 17. From the Vulgate.

• And the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers
  Is always the first to be touch'd by the thorns.
  • Thomas Moore, O Think Not My Spirits.

• It seem'd as if each thought and look
  And motion were that minute chain'd
  Fast to the spot such root she took,
  And—like a sunflower by a brook,
  With face upturn'd—so still remain'd!
  • Thomas Moore, Loves of the Angels, First Angel's Story, line 33.

• To touch the quick.
  • Sophocles, Ajax, 786.

• Too quick a sense of constant infelicity.
  • Jeremy Taylor, Sermon.

• I sit with my toes in a brook.
  And if any one axes forwhy?
  I hits them a rap with my crook,
  For 'tis sentiment does it, says I.
  • Horace Walpole. See Cunningham's Walpole.