Quotes about reason
page 15

“There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

Books

“He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Passion

“Absolutely nothing visible to the eye provides a reason for or even evidence of those terrifying shifts which can in a matter of moments reconstitute a simple path into an extremely complicated one.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.”

George Bernard Shaw Overruled

1910s
Source: Overruled (1912)

Death

“Anxiety, the next gumption trap, is sort of the opposite of ego. You're so sure you'll do everything wrong you're afraid to do anything at all. Often this, rather than "laziness," is the real reason you find it hard to get started. This gumption trap of anxiety, which results from over-motivation, can lead to all kinds of errors of excessive fussiness. You fix things that don't need fixing, and chase after imaginary ailments. You jump to wild conclusions and build all kinds of errors into the machine because of your own nervousness. These errors, when made, tend to confirm your original underestimation of yourself. This leads to more errors, which lead to more underestimation, in a self-stoking cycle. The best way to break this cycle, I think, is to work out your anxieties on paper. Read every book and magazine you can on the subject. Your anxiety makes this easy and the more you read the more you calm down.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 26
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Books, Way, Error, Motivation

“Everyone had a reason for everything they did, even if that reason was sometimes stupidity.”

Karin Slaughter book Fractured

Source: Fractured

Stupidity

“He would write it for the reason he felt that all great literature, fiction and nonfiction, was written: truth comes out, in the end it always comes out. He would write it because he felt he had to.”

Stephen King book The Shining

Source: The Shining (1977)

Truth, Literature

“He knew these last lines by heart and mouthed them now in the darkness. My reason for life. Not living, but life. That was the touch. And she was his reason for life, and why he must survive.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Life, Heart

“In most cases, those who want power probably shouldn't have it, those who enjoy it probably do so for the wrong reasons, and those who want most to hold on to it don't understand that it's only temporary.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Source: Becoming a Person of Influence: How to Positively Impact the Lives of Others

Understanding

“The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when [Holmes] became a specialist in crime.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Science

“Tell me, did you summon me just so you could beat the crap out of me? Or is there a more productive reason for why I’m here? (Eros)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Fantasy Lover

Source: Fantasy Lover

“You would be better off having nobody than the wrong somebody. (On marrying for the wrong reasons.)”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

“Without love, there is no reason to know anyone, for love will in the end connect us to our neighbors, our children and our hearts.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Love, Children, Heart

“The only process you've mastered is the process of elimination, and the only reason you've mastered that is because you can do it in the toilet.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

“… the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. [pp. 65-66]”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

Life

“Sometimes all you need to live one more day is a good reason to stick around.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

“So we contemplate each other, and we want each other, and I give it life and warmth, and it gives me my reason for living.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Life

“Art is the reason I get up in the morning, but the definition ends there. It doesn't seem fair that I'm living for something I can't even define.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Out of Habit
Song lyrics
Variant: Art is why I get up in the morning; my definition ends there.
You know it doesn't seem fair,
That I'm living for something I can't even define.
And there you are right there, in the mean time.

Art

“Reason must know the heart's reasons and every other reason”

Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) Mexican artist, surrealist painter and novelist

Heart

“People have reasons for what they do, Beatrice. And even if those reasons can't be justified, that doesn't make them bad people, just flawed. You have to remember," she said, "someone or something has hurt them too.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: God-Shaped Hole

People, Hurt

“sometimes there are reasons for our fears that we can’t
quite explain. Sometimes it’s just something we feel in our bones, something we know to be true, but
would sound foolish to anyone else.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: The Viscount Who Loved Me

Fear, Feeling

“I rarely dislike people for things they can't change, they usually give me sufficient cause to dislike them for other reasons.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Devil in Winter

People, Change

“To me, reason is as spiritual as anything else, the beauty of reason seems to me indelible and ineffable and numinous… the spirit is after all the same word we use to describe… essence”

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

Beauty

“Don’t be flattered that he misses you. He should miss you. You are deeply missable. However, he’s still the same person who just broke up with you. Remember, the only reason he can miss you is because he’s choosing, every day, not to be with you.”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Source: He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys

Personality

“You see, I don't belive that libraries should be drab places where people sit in silence, that has been the main reason for our policy of employing wild animals as librarians.”

Graham Chapman (1941–1989) English comedian, writer and actor

People, Silence, Animals

“Mind is the Maker, for no reason at all, for all this creation, created to fall.”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Source: The Dharma Bums

“You destroy buildings, fight monsters openly in the streets of the city, work with the police, show up in newspapers, advertise in the phone book, and ride zombie dinosaurs down Michigan Avenue, and think that you work in the shadows? Be reasonable.”

Jim Butcher book Skin Game

Source: Skin Game

Books, Thinking, Fight

“Without the voice of reason, every faith is its own curse."

()”

Sting (1951) English musician

Source: Nothing Like the Sun

Faith

“You don't want him for a reason. You want him because he's your father.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

“Every worldview has to bring together reason and faith.”

Ravi Zacharias (1946) Indian philosopher

Faith

“An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he - for some reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give them.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

People, Idea, Thinking

“With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.”

William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) American journalist

Vol. I, p. 188
William Lloyd Garrison 1805-1879 (1885)

Men

“It seems to me that if you wish to apply laws to us, it were only reasonable to consult us on them, and from what you have read to me about Parliament, I do not think any dragons are invited to go there”

Naomi Novik book His Majesty's Dragon

Source: His Majesty's Dragon

Law, Thinking, Reading

“Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”

Jonathan Swift The Battle of the Books and Other Short Pieces

Source: The Battle of the Books and Other Short Pieces

World

“It was futile to attack with reason the stout wall of irrational feelings that, as is known, is the stuff of which the female mind is made.”

Milan Kundera book Laughable Loves

Source: Laughable Loves

Feeling

“If you can't win by reason, go for volume.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

“There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Science

“I knit the afternoon away. I knit reasons for Elijah to come back. I knit apologies for Emma. I knit angry knots and slipped stitches for every mistake I ever made, and I knit wet, swollen stitches that look awful. I knit the sun down.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Sun

“The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people that can write know anything.”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

Shakespeare
Literary Studies (1879)
Context: The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people that can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum.

People, Books

“For outward show is a wonderful perverter of the reason.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

“One good reason to only maintain a small circle of friends is that three out of four murders are committed by people who know the victim.”

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

People

“For whatever reason, we like to focus on the 2 percent that's different, and most of the conflict in the world comes from that.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

World

“At times to be silent is to lie. You will win because you have enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

Lie, Time

“for some reason, dying men always ask the question they know the answer to. perhaps it's so they can die being right.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Men, Question

“Why not? Why not? Why not not, then, if the best reasoning you can contrive is why not?”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

“The only reason he can miss you is because he’s choosing, every day, not to be with you.”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Source: He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys

“The gospel is not a doctrine of the tongue, but of life. It cannot be grasped by reason and memory only, but it is fully understood when it possesses the whole soul and penetrates to the inner recesses of the heart.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Source: Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life

Life, Soul, Memory, Heart

“Never get angry. Never make a threat. Reason with people.”

Mario Puzo (1920–1999) American Novelist

People

“Being afraid you'll look like a coward is the worst reason for doing anything.”

John Irving book The Cider House Rules

Source: The Cider House Rules

“All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Peace, Justice

“They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

People

“I believe there is a reason such as autism, severe manic-depression, and schizophrenia remain in our gene pool even though there is much suffering as a result.”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

Source: Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism

Suffering

“The reason you will not say it is, when you say it, even to yourself, you will know it is true.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

“The rich world likes and wishes to believe that someone, somewhere, is doing something for the Third World. For this reason, it does not inquire too closely into the motives or practices of anyone who fulfills, however vicariously, this mandate.”

Christopher Hitchens book The Missionary Position

Source: The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

World, Motivation

“I may have had good reasons. I may have had the best of intentions.
But intentions aren’t enough, no matter how good they are. Intentions can lead you to a place where you’re able to make a choice.
It’s the choice that counts.”

Jim Butcher book Ghost Story

Source: Ghost Story

“I would miss Colby, but it wasn't going anywhere. All the more reason why I should.”

Sarah Dessen book The Moon and More

Source: The Moon and More

“We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children. War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

"The Old Way of Thinking" http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/Old_Way_Thinking.html, in The Progressive (November 2001)

War, Children, Time

“One of the ironies of courage, and the reason why we prize it so highly, is that we find it easier to be brave for someone else than we do for ourselves alone.”

Gregory David Roberts (1952) Australian writer and bank robber

Courage

“It's a sin to hate, and for that reason alone, we must not hate the Normans… We can, however, thoroughly dislike them, Alice.”

Julie Garwood (1946) American writer

Source: The Prize

Hate

“It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Source: Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

Justice

“Not being heard is no reason for silence.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Silence

“By unnerving definition, anything that the heart has chosen for its own mysterious reasons it can always unchoose later—again, for its own mysterious reasons.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Heart

“That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

God, Idea, Universe

“I'm trying to make some sense out of the phrase "Everything happens for a reason," and I think I've figured out what the reason is - to pissed me off.”

Cecelia Ahern book Love, Rosie

Variant: I’m trying to make some sense out of the phrase “Everything happens for a reason,” and I think I’ve ﬁgured out what the reason is—to piss me off.
Source: Love, Rosie

Thinking, Sense

“Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.”

Alexander Hamilton Federalist Papers

No. 15
The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

Men, Justice, Passion

“Time is given us to be happy and for no other reason […] When we waste time, we waste happiness.”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

Time, Happiness

“He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.”

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

Attributed

“People like you are the reason
People like me need medication.”

Cheyenne McCray (1965) writer

Source: Demons Not Included

People

“His invitation lingers. So does my question. Why me? I don't know the answer. When I look at myself in the mirror, all I see is a starving, stunted bird who never grew wings and lost all reason to sing.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

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

Question, Bird, Singing

“In the middle of the night, things well up from the past that are not always cause for rejoicing--the unsolved, the painful encounters, the mistakes, the reasons for shame or woe. But all, good or bad, give me food for thought, food to grow on.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Source: At Seventy: A Journal

Pain, Food, Past, Night

“He would wake for no reason in the middle of the night, and the memory of the self-absorbed love was revealed to him for what it was: a pitfall of happiness that he despised and desired at the same time, but from which it was impossible to escape.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera

Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

Love, Memory, Time, Night

“Why would you do that? Why would you act like you didn't know how to drive?"
"Isn't it obvious, Sage? No, of course it isn't. I did it so I'd have a reason to be around you - one I knew you couldn't refuse”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

“ISABEL: Sorry I missed my session Monday.

DR. RUSH: Would you like to tell me why?

ISABEL: I was depressed.

DR. RUSH: That's a good reason to come to therapy.”

Lisa Lutz (1970) US author

Source: Revenge of the Spellmans

“The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

Hope, Future

“It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.”

Sam Harris Letter to a Christian Nation

Source: Letter to a Christian Nation

People, Faith, Time

“I do not need a reason to be angry with God.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

God

“The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

History, Passion, Change

“I’m not dangerous,” I breathed.

He brought his face toward mine. “You are to me.”

And somehow, against all reason, we were kissing.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

Kiss

“Sometimes, as much as writing saves one’s own life, you cannot imagine how it will save another’s. This is another reason why it is important to do the work, over and over again. It is food, the kind a soul needs.”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Life, Food, Soul, Imagination

“I try to give'em a reason, you see. It helps folks if they can latch onto a reason.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Help

“I don't remember Moses writing, 'Thou shalt not kill.. unless you think you have a good reason.”

Willie Nelson (1933) American country music singer-songwriter.

Source: The Tao of Willie: A Guide to the Happiness in Your Heart [With Headphones]

Thinking

“Or. I hate that word. It’s two letters long and stuffed to the gills with reasonable doubt.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Hate

“There are many reasons why novelists write but they all have one thing in common a need to create an alternative world.”

John Fowles (1926–2005) British writer

World

“For some unknown reason, success usually occurs in private, while failure occurs in
full view.”

Jill Shalvis (1963) American writer

Source: The Sweetest Thing

Failure, Success

“There comes a time for everybody when words and reasons can become such a great weariness.”

Christopher Pike book Sati

Source: Sati

Time

“Phillip is a repository of random snatches of film dialogue and song lyrics. To make room for all of it in his brain, he apparently cleared out all the areas where things like reason and common sense are stored.”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

Source: This is Where I Leave You

Sense

“There's no reason to speak. I have nothing to say.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

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

“Be reasonable. I know you can be. If you try very, very hard.” - Al to Rachel”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: The Outlaw Demon Wails

“You don't need a reason to forgive… If you want to go on with someone, that is what you do.”

Melissa Bank (1961) American writer

Forgiveness

“If a man wants to be romantically involved with you, he tries to kiss you. That's the entire story, and if he doesn't kiss you, there is never a reason to wait around for him.”

Curtis Sittenfeld (1975) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Man of My Dreams

Kiss, Waiting

“Women need a reason for having sex, men just need a place”

Billy Graham (1918–2018) American Christian evangelist

Women, Men, Sex

“For no reason I can think of, I've wandered far astray. And that is how I got to where I find myself today.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Thinking

“Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?”

William Golding book Lord of the Flies

Source: Lord of the Flies

Thinking, Parting

“There are enough cowards in the world without killing a brave creature for so little reason.”

Brian Jacques book Mossflower

Source: Mossflower

World

“I stood on Susan Boone's front porch, feeling lame. But then, since I've pretty much felt lame my entire life, this was no big surprise. On the other hand, usually I felt lame for no particular reason. This time I really had a reason to feel lame.”

Meg Cabot book All American Girl

Source: All-American Girl

Life, Feeling, Time

“The masters of life know the way, for they listen to the voice within them, the voice of wisdom and simplicity, the voice that reasons beyond cleverness and knows beyond knowledge.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Source: The Tao of Pooh

Life, Wisdom, Way, Knowledge

“It's as if when you love someone, they become your reason.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Love

“But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Pt. VIII, ch. 13
Source: Anna Karenina (1875–1877; 1878)
Context: Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.

Love, Law

“Why didn’t you sleep with the headrest?”
I shrugged. “It was uncomfortable.” I looked at Sadie for support. “You didn’t use it, did you?”
Sadie rolled her eyes. “Well, of course I did. It was obviously there for a reason.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Support, Sleep

“Ford Prefect suppressed a little giggle of evil satisfaction, realized that he had no reason to suppress it, and laughed out loud, a wicked laugh.”

Douglas Adams book So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Source: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Evil

Quotes about reason page 15

Quotes about reason
page 15