“They write songs about California girls for a reason.”
Sarah Mlynowski (1977) Novelist
Source: Ten Things We Did
Quotes about reason page 13
“Men are reasoning rather than reasonable animals.”
Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) Founding Father of the United States
Source: The Works Of Alexander Hamilton
“He read it for the same reason an animal tears at a wounded foot: to hurt the pain.”
Nathanael West book Miss Lonelyhearts
Source: Miss Lonelyhearts
“Really, it was difficult to determine which I had most reason to fear—dogs, alligators or men!”
Solomon Northup book Twelve Years a Slave
Source: Twelve Years a Slave
“Women need a reason to have sex; men need only a place.”
Nelson DeMille book Wild Fire
Source: Wild Fire
“I will not reason and compare my business is to create.”
William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist
Ally Carter (1974) American writer
Source: Double Crossed: A Spies and Thieves Story
“You won't find reasonable men on the tops of tall mountains.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author
William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist
Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 4
Source: Habit
Context: Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.
“Just because one of Arlene's husbands was a murderer is no reason for me to be ugly”
Charlaine Harris book All Together Dead
Source: All Together Dead
“One possible reason why things aren't going according to plan is that there never was a plan.”
Ashleigh Brilliant (1933) American author and cartoonist
Jill Shalvis (1963) American writer
Source: Always on My Mind
Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian
Source: Passionate Declarations: Essays on War and Justice
Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist
Source: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
“Trust people, until they give you a reason not to. And then never turn your back”
Nicholas Sparks book The Longest Ride
Source: The Longest Ride
Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian
“Crazy people are not crazy if one accepts their reasoning.”
Gabriel García Márquez book Of Love and Other Demons
Source: Of Love and Other Demons
“You cannot dispute the ridiculous. You cannot argue reasonably with evil.”
Alice Hoffman (1952) Novelist, young-adult writer, children's writer
Source: Incantation
“I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it.”
Rita Mae Brown (1944) Novelist, poet, screenwriter, activist
“The crazy ones only laugh when there is no reason to laugh.”
Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer
Marya Hornbacher book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
Source: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
“Wisdom comes not from reason but from love.”
André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist
La sagesse n'est pas dans la raison, mais dans l'amour.
Les Nourritures Terrestres [Fruits of the Earth] (1897), book I
Source: Autumn Leaves
Brian Andreas (1956) American artist
Variant: Real Reason:
There are things you do because they feel right & they may make no sense & they may make no money & it may be the real reason we are here: to love each other & to eat each other's cooking & say it was good.
“There's a reason they say,"Pride goeth before a fall.”
Richelle Mead book Frostbite
Source: Frostbite
“The real hell of life is everyone has his reasons.”
Jean Renoir (1894–1979) French film director and screenwriter
Variant: The truly terrible thing is that everybody has their reasons.
“Betrayal isn't ridiculous. It's the reason empires fall.”
Marisha Pessl (1977) American writer
Source: Night Film
“Jealous?"
"Maybe."
"No reason. I like my ladies with a pulse.”
Rachel Caine (1962) American writer
Source: Feast of Fools
“Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.”
Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor
I'm Telling You for the Last Time (1998)
“There was a reason for the cost of those perfectly plain black dresses.”
Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist
Source: The Portable Dorothy Parker
“for some reason Gale and Peeta do not coexist well in my thoughts.”
Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games
Katniss, p. 186/187
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games (2008)
Context: I wonder what Gale made of the incident for a moment and then I push the whole thing out of my mind becouse for some reason Gale and Peeta do not coexist well together in my thoughts.
“Reason is intelligence taking exercise; imagination is intelligence with an erection.”
Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist
Unpublished notebook from 1845-50. Published in Seebacher (ed.), Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 10, p. 158 (Laffont, 1989). English translation from Robb, Victor Hugo p. 249 (Norton, 1997).
“Committing suicide so as not to be murdered is the worst reason I've ever heard of to die.”
Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer
Source: God-Shaped Hole
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist
Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility
Variant: Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?
Source: Sense and Sensibility
Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher
Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States
Autobiographical Notes (1952)
Context: I don't like people who like me because I'm a Negro; neither do I like people who find in the same accident grounds for contempt. I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one's own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright. I consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get my work done.
I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright
"Carpe Noctem, If You Can", Credos and Curios (1962)
From other writings
Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor
The New York Times October 15, 1986, MAN IN THE NEWS; WITNESS TO EVIL: ELIEZER WEISEL, By JOSEPH BERGER http://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/15/world/man-in-the-news-witness-to-evil-eliezer-weisel.html
“Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.”
Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer
Source: Written on the Body
Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature
“The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”
T.S. Eliot Murder in the Cathedral
Variant: The last act is the greatest treason. To do the right deed for the wrong reason.
Source: Murder in the Cathedral
Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist
Source: Lover Unleashed
Jorge Luis Borges book Other Inquisitions
"Note on (toward) Bernard Shaw"
Variant translation: A book is not an autonomous entity: it is a relation, an axis of innumerable relations. One literature differs from another, be it earlier or later, not because of the texts but because of the way they are read: if I could read any page from the present time — this one, for instance — as it will be read in the year 2000, I would know what the literature of the year 2000 would be like.
Other Inquisitions (1952)
Ben Sherwood book The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud
Source: The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud
John Boyne (1971) Irish novelist, author of children's and youth fiction
Source: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
“we are all supposed to think of reasons to live.”
Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author
From Peter Engel, "An Interview With Stanislaw Lem": The Missouri Review, Volume VII, Number 2 (1984) http://www.missourireview.org/index.php?genre=Interviews&title=An+Interview+with+Stanislaw+Lem <br class="br">Context: For moral reasons I am an atheist — for moral reasons. I am of the opinion that you would recognize a creator by his creation, and the world appears to me to be put together in such a painful way that I prefer to believe that it was not created by anyone than to think that somebody created this intentionally.
“there was a reason why there was only a single stairway to heaven, but an entire highway to hell.”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist
Source: Illusion