Quotes about reason
page 14

“Mom told us we would have to go shoplifting.
Isn't that a sin?" I asked Mom.
Not exactly," Mom said. "God doesn't mind you bending the rules a little if you have a good reason. It's sort of like justifiable homicide. This is justifiable pilfering.”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

God, Moms

“If you think of someone's good qualities as the umeboshi in an onigiri it's as if their qualities are stuck to their back! Maybe the reason people get jealous of each other is because they can see so clearly the umeboshi on other people's backs.”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Source: Fruits Basket, Vol. 2

People, Thinking

“She just happened to feel like it. Wasn’t that after all, the only reason there was? Had she ever had a less selfish, more complicated reason for doing anything in her life?”

Richard Yates book Revolutionary Road

Source: Revolutionary Road

Life, Feeling, Selfishness

“All which is beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Beauty

“They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for ones country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Sweet and glorious it is to die for our country. ~ Horace in Odes, Book 3, Ode 2, Line 13, as translated in The Works of Horace by J. C. Elgood
Notes on the Next War (1935)

War, Dogs, Country

“You could be
the leaf that never falls from the tree
you could be
the sun that never leaves the sky
this might be
the happy ending without the ending
this might be
a reason to try”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: How They Met, and Other Stories

Tree, Sun, Happiness

“Is this a game? We just blurt out whatever word comes next to mind? In that case mine's 'genuphobia'. It means an unreasonable fear of knees."
"What's the word for a perfectly reasonable fear of annoying idiots?" inqired Jessamine.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Fear, Game

“In time, in time they tell me, I'll not feel so bad. I don't want time to heal me. There's a reason I'm like this.
I want time to set me ugly and knotted with loss of you, marking me. I won't smooth you away.
I can't say goodbye.”

China Miéville book The Scar

Source: The Scar

Feeling, Loss, Time

“Life is made of our attitudes. And there are certain things that the gods oblige us to live through. Their reason for this does not matter, and there is no action we can take to make them pass us by.”

Paulo Coelho book The Fifth Mountain

Source: The Fifth Mountain

Life, God

“It is not the slumber of reason that engenders monsters, but vigilant and insomniac rationality.”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

Source: Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

“Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull’s life is so short, and with these gone from his thoughts, he lived a long fine life indeed.”

Richard Bach book Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Source: Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970)

Life, Fear, Anger

“The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriousity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

Source: The Fry Chronicles

People

“Everything happens for a reason, Sadie, even bad things.”

Rick Riordan book The Throne of Fire

Source: The Throne of Fire

“She had always wanted words, she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. Whereas I thought words bent emotions like sticks in water.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

Love, Water

“We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation.”

Lily Tomlin (1939) American actress, comedian, writer, and producer

“It was a lame excuse, and I knew that wasn't the reason he was canceling. If he wanted to avoid me, I would have preferred he made up something about how he and the other guardians had to up Moroi security or practice top-secret ninja moves.”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

Secret

“He wasn't in a safe little story where wrongs were automatically righted; he was still in the real world, where bad bitter things happened for no reason, and people paid for things that weren't their fault.”

Lev Grossman The Magicians

Source: The Magicians

People, World

“For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

Learning

“All of history is moving toward one great goal, the white-hot worship of God and His Son among all the peoples of the earth. Missions is not that goal. It is the means. And for that reason it is the second greatest human activity in the world.”

John Piper (1946) American writer

God, People, World, History

“The highest prize we can receive for creative work is the joy of being creative. Creative effort spent for any other reason than the joy of being in that light filled space, love, god, whatever we want to call it, is lacking in integrity…”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Love, God, Effort, Light

“Pain doesn't listen to reason, it has its own reason, which is not reasonable.”

Milan Kundera book Identity

pg 129
Source: Identity (1998)

Pain

“Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows.”

John Betjeman (1906–1984) English poet, writer and broadcaster

Childhood

“Life isn't a romance novel. The truth is, the reason romance novels sell so well ---- the reason why everyone loves them ---- is because no one's life is actually like that. Everyone WANTS their life to be like that.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Forever Princess

Love, Life, Truth

“People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons. The last way for skeptics to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent people is to belittle or condescend or to show arrogance toward their beliefs.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

People, Stupidity, Way, Intelligence

“It is not true that women cannot keep secrets. Where they love, they can be trusted to death and beyond, against all sense and reason. It is their weakness, and their great strength.”

Mary Stewart book The Hollow Hills

Source: The Hollow Hills

Love, Death, Women, Secret

“Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Source: The Rosy Crucifixion I: Sexus (1949), Ch. 21, p. 465

Sex

“Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.”

Harper Lee book Go Set a Watchman

Source: Go Set a Watchman

Faith

“Gratitude isn't a tool to manipulate the universe or God. It's a way to acknowledge our faith that everything happens for a reason even if we don't know what that reason is. ~Melody Beattie, 52 Weeks of Conscious Contact, pg. 34.”

Melody Beattie (1948) American writer

Source: 52 Weeks of Conscious Contact

God, Faith, Way, Universe

“Trust me?" I held my breath for her answer. She had every reason not to trust me. I'd been her kidnapper, her captor, yet I'd rather have died than hurt a single hair on her head.”

Alex Flinn book Beastly

Source: Beastly

Hurt

“Sometimes there are good reasons to do bad things.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Blacklisted

“There are five people you meet in heaven," the Blue Man suddenly said. "Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)

Life, People, Understanding, Time

“If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you.”

Jonathan Haidt (1963) American psychologist

Source: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012)

People, Truth, Thinking

“Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason.”

Jonathan Haidt (1963) American psychologist

Cited in: Alistair Croll, ‎Benjamin Yoskovitz (2013) Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster. p. 168.
Source: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012)

Truth

“I think when we make choices—for
each choice is individual of the choices we have made before—we must examine not
only our reasons for making them but what result they will have, and whether good people will be hurt by our decisions.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

People, Thinking, Decision, Hurt

“I'm not who you think i am. If you love me, you love me for the wrong reasons.”

Sister Souljah (1964) American hip hop-generation author, activist, recording artist, and film producer

Source: Midnight

Love, Thinking

“A brain with no heart and no reasoning… well, nothing is more meaningless.”

Melissa de la Cruz book Masquerade

Source: Masquerade

Heart

“There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, everyone of them sufficient”

Marilynne Robinson (1943) American novelist and essayist

Life

“There is no reason that we should ever be ashamed of our bodies or ashamed of our love.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Two Boys Kissing

Love

“Exotic: meaning you're "desired."
For madness is seductive, sexy. Female madness.
So long as the female is reasonably young and attractive.”

Joyce Carol Oates Blonde

Source: Blonde

Madness

“She closed one eye and looked at me and said, "I know there is a blessing in this somewhere."

It is worth living long enough to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire. Another reason why you must be careful of your health.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Health, Sense

“There is a reason God limits our days.'
'Why?'
'To make each one precious.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Variant: There is a reason God limits man's days.
Source: The Time Keeper

God

“It is named the "Web" for good reason.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

“Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

“I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of a work of fiction should be to tell a story; and I have never believed that the novelist who properly performed this first condition of his art, was in danger, on that account, of neglecting the delineation of character — for this plain reason, that the effect produced, by any narrative of events is essentially dependent, not on the events themselves, but on the human interest which is directly connected with them. It may be possible in novel-writing to present characters successfully without telling a story; but it is not possible to tell a story successfully without presenting characters: their existence, as recognizable realities, being the sole condition on which the story can be effectively told. The only narrative which can hope to lay a strong hold on the attention of readers is a narrative which interests them about men and women — for the perfectly obvious reasons that they are men and women themselves.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Source: Collins explaining what he calls the literary principal guiding him, in the preface of the second edition of The Woman in White. Also in Reality's Dark Light: The Sensational Wilkie Collins by Maria K. Bachman & Don Richard Cox [University of Tennessee Press, 2003, ISBN 1-572-33274-3] ( p. xiv https://books.google.com/books?id=_X8AlmIp0dwC&pg=PR14)

Women, Men, Hope, Art

“But what seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else.”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

Feeling, Personality

“When the heart craved something so forcefully, then reason became nothing but helpless observer.”

Cornelia Funke (1958) author

Source: Fearless

Heart

“The reason we go to poetry is not for wisdom, but for the dismantling of wisdom”

Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist

Wisdom

“Don't think I was the only reason he healed. You're his light, Marissa. Don't ever forget that.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Revealed

Source: Lover Revealed

Thinking, Light, Forgetting

“I find I am much prouder of the victory I obtain over myself, when, in the very ardor of dispute, I make myself submit to my adversary’s force of reason, than I am pleased with the victory I obtain over him through his weakness.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Source: The Complete Essays

Victory

“I'm not sure that insecurity is a good enough excuse for that sort of behavior. We're all insecure, and I really think he's old enough to have discovered the reasons behind his insecurity, and do something about them."

… Lucy”

Jane Green (1968) British writer

Behavior, Thinking

“… An average of seventy-four species become extinct every day, which was one good reason but not the only one to hold someone's hand…”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

“A life is never useless. Each soul that came down to Earth is here for a reason.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), Uselessness

Soul, Life

“For books are more than books, they are the life
The very heart and core of ages past,
The reason why men lived and worked and died,
The essence and quintessence of their lives.”

Amy Lowell (1874–1925) US writer

Life, Men, Books, Age

“The search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle.”

Christopher Hitchens book Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays

Source: Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays

History, Search, Sleep

“I'm going away," he said. "And I want you to know that I'm coming back. I love you because…."

"Don't say anything," Fatima interrupted. "One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Love

“I have no intent. I have no reason to live, that's all. When I'm gone, I don't want to be remembered.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

“What I'm saying is that I'm trying to find rational reasons to explain irrational feelings, and that's neveer a good sign.”

Stephen King The Dark Tower

Source: The Dark Tower

Feeling

“Pride is always a better lever against the nobility than reason.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

“Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

Beauty, Madness

“How quick come the reasons for approving what we like.”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Source: Persuasion

“Emotions come and go and can't be controlled so there's no reason to worry about them. That in the end, people should be judged by their actions since in the end it was actions that defined everyone.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

People

“People make their own reality, goddess. We hate and we love for reasons that are known only to us.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Styxx

Love, Hate, People, Reality

“Percy," my father said, "what exactly do you mean?" "Kronos couldn't have risen if it hadn't been for a lot of demigods who felt abandoned by their parents," I said. "They felt angry, resentful, and unloved, and they had a good reason.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

Parent

“Love has nothing to do with good reasons.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

Love

“The house of Life doesn’t trust our family, especially after what Dad and Mom did. Amos said we were raised apart for a reason, so we wouldn’t trigger each other’s magic.”
“Bloody awful reason to keep us apart,” I muttered.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Life, Family, Moms, Housing

“Everything happens for a reason, and part of that beauty of life is that we're not allowed to know those reasons for certain.”

Aron Ralston Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Source: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Life, Beauty, Parting

“The rules of reason build towers that reach past the treetops. The rules of trust build towers that reach past the stars.”

Mary E. Pearson (1955) young-adult fiction writer

Source: The Heart of Betrayal

Star, Past

“Statistics show that most mortals sell their souls for five reasons: sex, money, power, revenge, and love. In that order.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Blues

Love, Money, Sex, Soul

“We may run, walk, stumble. drive, or fly, but let us never lose sight of the reason for the journey, or miss a chance to see a rainbow on the way.”

Gloria Gaither (1942) American gospel songwriter, author & scholar

Way, Chance, Flying

“Most men seem to live according to sense rather than reason.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Men, Sense

“As the playwright George Bernard Shaw once put it: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

World, Dependency

“Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.”

Jonathan Haidt (1963) American psychologist

Source: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion

“One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses.”

Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer

Bird, Horse

“In the end, the tortures tearing the Lisbon girls pointed to a simple reasoned refusal to accept the world as it was handed down to them, so full of flaws.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

World, Girl, Tear

“Catholic, which I was until I reached the age of reason”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Age

“Cheating and lying aren't struggles, they're reasons to break up.”

Patti Callahan Henry American writer

Source: Between The Tides

Lying, Cheating

“Have the courage to use your own reason- That is the motto of enlightenment.
"Foundations of the Metaphysics of
Morals" (1785)”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Courage

“Music is what I always turn to when I'm feeling a certain way. It's my reason for everything.”

Josh Groban (1981) American musician and actor

Inside Connection, February 2004
Variant: I can only say so much about how I feel. Music is what I always turned to when I was feeling a certain way. It's been my reason for everything.

Music, Way, Feeling

“You must find another reason to work, other than the desire for success or recognition. It must come from another place.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

Success

“Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.”

Michael Shermer (1954) American science writer

People

“The shame of being a man - is there any better reason to write?”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

“Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Tout existant naît sans raison, se prolonge par faiblesse et meurt par rencontre.
Nausea (1938)

Chance

“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 3, Section 3
Part 3, Section 3
Source: A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 2: Of the passions
Context: We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.
Context: What may at first occur on this head, is, that as nothing can be contrary to truth or reason, except what has a reference to it, and as the judgments of our understanding only have this reference, it must follow, that passions can be contrary to reason only so far as they are accompany'd with some judgment or opinion. According to this principle, which is so obvious and natural, `tis only in two senses, that any affection can be call'd unreasonable. First, When a passion, such as hope or fear, grief or joy, despair or security, is founded on the supposition or the existence of objects, which really do not exist. Secondly, When in exerting any passion in action, we chuse means insufficient for the design'd end, and deceive ourselves in our judgment of causes and effects. Where a passion is neither founded on false suppositions, nor chuses means insufficient for the end, the understanding can neither justify nor condemn it. `Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. `Tis not contrary to reason for me to chuse my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me. `Tis as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledge'd lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter. A trivial good may, from certain circumstances, produce a desire superior to what arises from the greatest and most valuable enjoyment; nor is there any thing more extraordinary in this, than in mechanics to see one pound weight raise up a hundred by the advantage of its situation. In short, a passion must be accompany'd with some false judgment. in order to its being unreasonable; and even then `tis not the passion, properly speaking, which is unreasonable, but the judgment.

Passion