"Romantics consider common sense vulgar"
About this Quote
Aphorisms like this one don’t just skewer a type; they expose a quiet class system of taste. Cooley’s line turns “romantics” into cultural snobs who treat common sense the way an aesthete treats a microwave dinner: not merely unappealing, but embarrassing. The sting is in the word “vulgar,” which isn’t about stupidity so much as proximity to the ordinary. Common sense is the wisdom of crowds, the negotiated reality of bills, weather, consequences. Calling it vulgar reveals a preference for the elevated pose over the practical fact.
Cooley’s intent feels diagnostic rather than purely mocking. He’s pointing at a recurring modern habit: mistaking intensity for depth. The romantic temperament often frames constraints as an insult to the self, so ordinary prudence becomes a kind of moral failure. If common sense is “vulgar,” then irrational devotion, grand gestures, and self-mythologizing can be recast as refinement. The subtext is how easily aesthetics becomes ethics: you’re not just practical, you’re coarse.
Context matters: Cooley wrote in an era when postwar America increasingly prized managerial logic, expertise, and the clean efficiencies of modern life. Against that backdrop, romanticism can look like resistance, a claim that life is more than optimization. Cooley doesn’t deny the appeal; he punctures the performance. The line works because it flips the usual stereotype. Instead of common sense being smug, it’s romanticism that’s elitist, guarding its glamour by treating reality as bad manners.
Cooley’s intent feels diagnostic rather than purely mocking. He’s pointing at a recurring modern habit: mistaking intensity for depth. The romantic temperament often frames constraints as an insult to the self, so ordinary prudence becomes a kind of moral failure. If common sense is “vulgar,” then irrational devotion, grand gestures, and self-mythologizing can be recast as refinement. The subtext is how easily aesthetics becomes ethics: you’re not just practical, you’re coarse.
Context matters: Cooley wrote in an era when postwar America increasingly prized managerial logic, expertise, and the clean efficiencies of modern life. Against that backdrop, romanticism can look like resistance, a claim that life is more than optimization. Cooley doesn’t deny the appeal; he punctures the performance. The line works because it flips the usual stereotype. Instead of common sense being smug, it’s romanticism that’s elitist, guarding its glamour by treating reality as bad manners.
Quote Details
| Topic | Romantic |
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