Quotes about reason
page 16

“The big reason why folks leave a small town,' Rant used to say, 'is so they can moon over the idea of going back. And the reason they stay put is so they can moon about getting out.'

Rant meant that no one is happy, anywhere.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Source: Rant

Idea, Happiness

“The truth is, what I learned this year is that life is hard… Good people die for no reason. Little kids get sick. The people that are supposed to love you end up leaving.”

Jennifer Weiner (1970) American writer

Source: Certain Girls

Love, Life, People, Truth

“The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do everyday. There are two reasons for this rule: Getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind.”

Walter Mosley (1952) American writer

“The door slammed open. Vivenna jumped, putting a hand to her chest.

Vasher walked in. 'Start reaching for that sword when you're startled,' he said. 'There's little reason to grab your shirt, unless you're planning to rip it off.”

Brandon Sanderson book Warbreaker

Source: Warbreaker

“I dance for no reason, for reasons you can't dance,
Call me an activist of intellectualized circumstance
You can't learn my steps until you unlearn your thoughts Spirit, soul, can't be store-bought.”

Saul Williams (1972) American singer, musician, poet, writer, and actor

Soul, Learning, Dance

“So is it just human nature to believe that things happen for a reason - to find some shred of meaning even in the worst experiences?”

Christina Baker Kline (1964) American writer

Source: Orphan Train

Nature

“If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

Life

“rules exist for a reason. Rules exist because when people don't follow them, people get hurt.”

Ally Carter book Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Source: Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

People, Hurt

“Intelligence is not only the ability to reason; it is also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 3, "The lazy controller", page 46 (ISBN 9780141033570).

Intelligence, Memory

“Not even I can see all ends, but I have been in this world long enough to know that a choice is not choice and breeds slow ills, even were it done for the highest reasons.”

Alison Croggon book The Riddle

Source: The Riddle

World

“To be a god can ultimately become boring and degrading. There'd be reason enough for the invention of free will! A god might wish to escape into sleep and be alive only in the unconscious projections of his dream-creatures.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

God, Dreams, Sleep

“The poet makes himself a voyant through a long, immense reasoned deranging of all his senses. All the forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he tries to find himself, he exhausts in himself all the poisons, to keep only their quintessences.”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

Love, Sense, Suffering, Madness

“If you limit your choice only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.”

Robert Fritz (1943) American managemetn consultant

Source: The Path of Least Resistance

“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 book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

“HARRY DRESDEN—WIZARD Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations. Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates. No Love Potions, Endless Purses, Parties, or Other Entertainment”

Jim Butcher book Storm Front

Source: Storm Front

Love

“[…]my memory is reasonably good—unlike yours, dear sir!”
“Mine is erratic,” he said imperturbably. “I remember only what interests me.”

Georgette Heyer book Frederica

Source: Frederica

Memory

“I knew you loved me and that you'd do anything for me. And that was one of the reasons it hurt so much when you ended it, Dawson. Because I knew even then how rare that kind of love is. Only the luckiest people get to experience it at all.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Best of Me

Source: The Best of Me

Love, People, Hurt

“There are six reasons anyone does anything: Love. Faith. Greed. Boredom. Fear…" he said, ticking them off on his fingers; but he lingered on the last, drawing a deep breath before he said, "Revenge.”

Ally Carter book Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Source: Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Love, Fear, Faith, Revenge

“Fate, at first so amenable, so reasonable, so open to negotiation, ends up by exacting a cruel revenge for happiness.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

Fate, Revenge, Happiness

“Now I understand one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you've believed in all your life aren't true, and that nothing is what it appears to be.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Source: Flowers for Algernon (1966)

Life, Education, Understanding, Learning

“When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself”

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and …

Life

“We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it.”

Patrick Rothfuss (1973) American fantasy writer

Love

“The most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what's in between.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Variant: The most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what's in between, and they took great pleasure in doing just that.
Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

“Most men are reasonably useful in a crisis. The difficulty lies in convincing them that the situation has reached a critical point”

Elizabeth Peters The Curse of the Pharaohs

Source: The Curse of the Pharaohs

Men

“Without contraries there is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate are necessary to human existence.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

The Argument
1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793)

Love, Hate

“The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy.”

Sam Levenson (1911–1980) American journalist

For Parents

“There is no reason why because it is dark you should look at things differently from when it is light.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Source: The Sun Also Rises

Light

“One secret of life is that the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. Another secret is that laughter is carbonated holiness”

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

Source: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

Life, Secret, Laughter

“But most dragons seem to have interesting personalities--besides probably having quite good reasons for what they do, if only one could understand them”

Diana Wynne Jones book Fire and Hemlock

Source: Fire and Hemlock

Understanding, Personality

“In the end, I always act from the heart, even if I also value reason and tradition. I wish I could explain why, but I don't know.”

Elizabeth Kostova book The Swan Thieves

Source: The Swan Thieves

Heart

“Adrian.
He was the reason I was able to survive in this prison.
And he was also the reason I was here in the first place.”

Richelle Mead book Silver Shadows

Source: Silver Shadows

“… a miracles is a reasonable thing to ask for.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

“I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one.”

Charles Darwin book On the Origin of Species (1859)

Source: On the Origin of Species (1859), chapter XV: "Recapitulation and Conclusion", page 421 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=449&itemID=F391&viewtype=image, in the sixth (1872) edition <br class="br">Source: The Origin of Species

Feeling

“The ancient dialogue between reason and the senses is almost always more interestingly and passionately resolved in favor of the senses.”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Sense, Passion

“The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts.”

Rhonda Byrne book The Secret

Source: The Secret

Money, Personality

“He that cannot reason is a fool. He that will not is a bigot. He that dare not is a slave.”

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist

Fools

“A man may plant a tree for a number of reasons. Perhaps he likes trees. Perhaps he wants shelter. Or perhaps he knows that someday he may need the firewood.”

Joanne Harris book Runemarks

Source: Runemarks

Tree

“Mama says that satisfaction isn't what I should search for. Respect is. Respect?
I detest that word. Probably because in this world you have to respect the wrong people for the wrong reasons.”

Melina Marchetta book Looking for Alibrandi

Source: Looking for Alibrandi

People, World, Search

“Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

War

“Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: Henry And June

Love

“If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be 'meetings.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

For Team, Back To Work

“Sometimes you meet a girl and it's like matter and antimatter. You just hate each other for no damn reason.”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Source: Jealousy

Hate, Girl

“I'm just not having a very good time and I don't have any reason to think it'll get anything but worse. I'm tired. I'm hurt. I'm sad. I feel used.”

Marsha Norman 'night, Mother

Source: 'night, Mother

Sadness, Feeling, Thinking, Time

“I’ve learned that everything happens for a reason,” the yogi Krishnan told him. “Every event has a why and all adversity teaches us a lesson… Never regret your past. Accept it as the teacher that it is.”

Robin S. Sharma book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

Learning, Teachers, Past

“Listen to me, Jez. There's no reason for you to die-"
Wood… poison."
No it isn't! Not to humans. And you're half human. You're vampire enough to survie something that would kill a human, but you're human enough not to be poisoned by wood.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

“To think what is true, to sense what is beautiful and to want what is good, hereby the spirit finds purpose of a life in reason.”

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic

Life, Beauty, Thinking, Sense

“Maybe the reason I've never died in this story is that I've never had something worth dying for before.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

“The world has been abnormal for so long that we've forgotten what it's like to live in a peaceful and reasonable climate. If there is to be any peace or reason, we have to create it in our own hearts and homes.”

Madeleine L'Engle A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Source: A Swiftly Tilting Planet

World, Peace, Home, Heart

“There are 3 reasons for why you can't beat me. First, I'm better looking than you are. Second, your blows are too light. And third, there's nothing in the world I can't tear up.”

Akimine Kamijyo (1975) Japanese manga artist

Source: Samurai Deeper Kyo, Volume 03

World, Tear, Light

“There's no reason for any warlock to be interested in her unless he's in the market for nonfunctional crystal balls.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

Source: The Descent of Man

Truth, Fear, Hope

“Man staggers through life yapped at by his reason, pulled and shoved by his appetites, whispered to by fears, beckoned by hopes. Small wonder that what he craves most is self-forgetting.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Life, Fear, Hope, Forgetting

“Reason was for suckers and Presbyterians.”

Libba Bray book The Diviners

Source: The Diviners

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Happy, Good Morning, Life, Nature

“She gave so many reasons that I've forgotten them all.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

“… some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

Michael Caine movie The Dark Knight

Movie The Dark Knight, character Alfred Pennyworth

World, Money, Men

“Movies are so rarely great art, that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have very little reason to be interested in them.”

Pauline Kael book Going Steady

Going Steady (1969), Trash, Art and the Movies (February 1969)

Art

“The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D. C. This wasn't for any religious reasons. They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin.”

Jay Leno (1950) American comedian, actor, writer, producer, voice actor and television host

Men

“Nobody gets praised for the right reasons.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Castle in the Air

Source: Castle in the Air

“I wonder if children don't begin to reject both poetry and religion for similar reasons, because the way both are taught takes the life out of them.”

Kathleen Norris (1880–1966) American writer

Source: The Cloister Walk

Life, Children, Religion, Way

“In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence..”

David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Source: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Imagination

“For once, you're going to hear something that doesn't fit into your neat, compartmentalized world of order and logic and reason.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

World

“If I'm not telling you something, it's for a reason. Just because you trust me, it doesn't mean I have to automatically trust you. Trust doesn't work like that.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

“I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"Oscar Wilde: On the Skids Again" (1987)
1980s, At Home (1988)

Sex

“To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose. People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them. To hell with them!”

Louis-ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) French writer

People, Music, Hell, Reality

“See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be”

Joyce Carol Oates book After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away

Source: After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away

Life, People

“Teach her that the idea of 'gender roles' is absolute nonsense. Do not ever tell her that she should or should not do something because she is a girl.
'Because you are a girl' is never reason for anything.
Ever.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977) Nigerian writer

Source: Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

Girl, Idea

“I was afraid of being rejected, yes. I was also afraid of being accepted for the wrong reasons.”

Erich Segal book Love Story

Source: Love Story

“We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Failure

“After telling the hard facts to anyone from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes. Often it is awe or admiration, sometimes it is repulsion, once or twice it has been fury hurled directly at me for reasons I remain unsure of.”

Alice Sebold book Lucky

Source: Lucky

Lovers, Change

“Atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them -- and then they leap.”

Yann Martel (1963) Canadian author best known for the book Life of Pi

Faith, Sister

“Bob … the Titan … he only helped us in Tartarus because you were kind to him. You told him we were worth saving. That’s the only reason we’re alive.’ She said we so easily, as if she and Percy were interchangeable, inseparable.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Help

“If you don't annoy your big sister for no good reason from time to time, she thinks you don't love her anymore.”

Pearl Cleage What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day

Source: What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day

Love, Thinking, Sister, Time

“Sometimes I'm not nice for a reason. It's a way to find out what someone's made of.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Blue-Eyed Devil

Way

“Look to nothing, not even for a moment except to reason.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

“You are all my reasons.”

Sylvia Nasar book A Beautiful Mind

Source: A Beautiful Mind

“where some god pissed a rain of
reason to make things grow
only to die”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

God

“I don't see any reason why I should look for someone who never took the trouble to love me.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Love

“For what other reason would you have me save you? Because I like you? Better to be useful than liked.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Bloodfever

“I've never had a moment's doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life. Cee”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Love, Life

“When a man takes up arms, he does so for many reasons. Sometimes to punish, sometimes to intimidate or frighten. But when a woman picks up a weapon, she means to kill.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Clean Sweep

“Who said love was reasonable?”

Johanna Lindsey (1952–2019) American writer

Source: That Perfect Someone

Love

“If you're going to insist on being reasonable, I'm going to stop hanging with you.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Unbound

Source: Lover Unbound

“Vampires smiled for many reasons, but when a vampire male smiled at you from this distance with that kind of look in his eyes it was done for one purpose only: to impress. Look at my big teeth. I’m an apex predator. My genetic material is awesome.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Clean Sweep

Smile

“You look at a star for two reasons, because it is luminous, and because it is impenetrable. You have beside you a sweeter radiance and a greater mystery, woman.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Miserables

Star

“At the foundation of moral thinking lie beliefs in statements the truth of which no further reason can be given.”

Alasdair MacIntyre (1929) Scottish philosopher

Source: After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory

Truth, Lie, Thinking

“I'm afraid that if my dream is realized, I'll have no reason to go on living.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Dreams

“Colonialism. The enforced spread of the rule of reason. But who is going to spread it among the colonizers?”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

“My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

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

Life, Happiness

“It requires uncommon steadiness of reason to resist the attraction of being called the most charming girl in the world.”

Jane Austen book Northanger Abbey

Source: Northanger Abbey

World, Girl

“There's nothing more annoying than cold logic and reason when you've got a good fit going.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

“Don't reason in the mind just obey in the spirit.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Source: Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your Mind

“Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

“Storiesto be read, David's mother would whisper. They needed it. It was the reason they forced themselves from their world into ours. They wanted us to give them life.”

John Connolly The Book of Lost Things

Source: The Book of Lost Things

Life, World, Reading

“Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that's no reason not to give it.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

“Fear can’t be reasoned with. Neither can hate. They’re like love. They’re almost identical emotions. That’s why Ares and Aphrodite like each other. Their twin sons – Fear and Panic – were spawned from both war and love.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Love, Hate, War, Fear

“anger based on calculated reason is more dangerous than anger based on blind hate”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Hate, Anger

“Doubt may be a poor encouragement to do anything, but it is a bad reason for doing nothing.”

George MacDonald book Lilith

Source: Lilith

“So please don't think that I am renouncing anything, I am reasonably faithful in my unfaithfulness and though I have changed, I am the same, and what preys on my mind is simply this one question: what am I good for, could I not be of service or use in some way, how can I become more knowledgeable and study some subject or other in depth?”

Vincent Van Gogh book The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

1880s, 1880, Letter to Theo (Cuesmes, July 1880)
Source: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
Context: So please don't think that I am renouncing anything, I am reasonably faithful in my unfaithfulness and though I have changed, I am the same, and what preys on my mind is simply this one question: what am I good for, could I not be of service or use in some way, how can I become more knowledgeable and study some subject or other in depth? That is what keeps preying on my mind, you see, and then one feels imprisoned by poverty, barred from taking part in this or that project and all sorts of necessities are out of one's reach. As a result one cannot rid oneself of melancholy, one feels emptiness where there might have been friendship and sublime and genuine affection, and one feels dreadful disappointment gnawing at one's spiritual energy, fate seems to stand in the way of affection or one feels a wave of disgust welling up inside. And then one says “How long, my God!”

Unfaithfulness, Faith, Way, Question

“The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold…The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbor creates a war betwixt princes.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 12
Essais (1595), Book II

War, Soul

Quotes about reason page 16

Quotes about reason
page 16