Reason Quotes
Aldrich Henry 1647-1710
A Catch
If all be true that I do think,
There are five reasons we should drink;
Good wine, a friend, or being dry,
Or lest we should be by and by;
Or any other reason why.
Anonymous
There are two reasons for doing things - a very good reason and the real reason.
Aytoun Sir Robert 1570-1638
‘To an Inconstant Mistress'
I loved thee once, I'll love no more,
Thine be the grief, as is the blame;
Thou art not what thou wast before,
What reason I should be the same?
Brown Thomas 1663-1704
I do not love thee, Doctor Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But this alone I know full well,
I do not love thee, Doctor Fell.
Brown Sir Thomas 1605-1682
Hydriotaphia
Men have lost their reason in nothing so much as their religion, wherein stones and clouts make martyrs.
Butler Samuel 1835-1902
Notebooks
To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
Cajal Santiago Ramon
That which enters the mind through reason can be corrected. That which is admitted through faith, hardly ever.
Cheknov Anton 1860-1904
Uncle Vanya
Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.
Coke Sir Edward 1552-1634
Institutes of Laws of England
How long soever it hath continued, if it be against reason, it is of no force in law.
Crystal Billy
Women need a reason to have sex - men just need a place.
Donne John 1572-1631
The difference between the reason of man and the instinct of the beast is this, that the beast does but know, but the man knows that he knows.
Eiseley Loren 1907-1977
When the human mind exists in the light of reason and no more than reason, we may say with absolute certainty that Man and all that made him will be in that instant gone.
Frankfurter Felix 1882-1965
Fragile as reason is and limited as law is as the institutionalized medium of reason, that's all we have standing between us and the tyranny of mere will and the cruelty of unbridled, undisciplined feeling.
Gaskell Elizabeth 1810-1865
Cranford
I'll not listen to reason ... Reason always means what someone else has got to say.
Gibbon Edward 1737-1794
Memoirs of My Life
The satirist may laugh, the philosopher may preach, but Reason herself will respect the prejudices and habits which have been consecrated by the experience of mankind.
Halifax Lord George 1633-1695
Nothing has an uglier look to us than Reason, when it is not of our side.
Hawker R. S. 1803-1875
‘The Song of the Western Men'
And have they fixed the where and when?
And shall Trelawny die?
Here's twenty thousand Cornish men
Will know the reason why!
Hawking Stephen 1942
A Brief History of Time
If we find the answer to that [why it is that we and the universe exist], it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God.
Kipling Rudyard 1865-1936
Nations have passed away and left no traces,
And history gives the naked cause of it -
One single simple reason in all cases;
They fell because their peoples were not fit.
La Fontaine Jean de 1621-1695
Fables ‘Le Loup et l'Agneau'
The reason of the strongest is always the best.
Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm 1646-1716
Letter on a General Principle ... Laws of Nature
It is God who is the ultimate reason of things, and the knowledge of God is no less the
beginning of science than his essence and will are the beginning of beings.
Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm 1646-1716
The Monadology
It is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from mere animals, and gives us Reason and the sciences, raising us to knowledge of ourselves and of God. It is this in us which we call the rational soul or Mind.
Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm 1646-1716
Studies in Physics and the Nature of Body
There is nothing without a reason.
Lermontov Mikhail 1814-1841
‘I'm lonely and sad'
What is passion? That sickness so sweet, either early or late,
Will vanish at reason's protesting;
And life, if you ever, attentive and cool, contemplate,
Is but empty and meaningless jesting.
Lessing G. E. 1729-1781
Emilia Galotti
A man who does not lose his reason over certain things has none to lose.
Locke John 1632-1704
An Essay concerning Human Understanding
Reason is natural revelation, whereby the eternal Father of light, and fountain of all knowledge communicates to mankind that portion of truth which he has laid within the reach of their natural faculties.
Mann Thomas 1875-1955
Human reason needs only to will more strongly than fate, and she is fate.
Milton John 1608-1674
Comus
Obstruding false rules pranked in reason's garb.
Milton John 1608-1674
Paradise Lost
Law to our selves, our reason is our law.
Milton John 1608-1674
Reason is also choice.
More Sir Thomas 1478-1535
(to a friend who had versified a mediocre book)
Yea, marry, now it is somewhat, for now it is rhyme; before, it was neither rhyme nor reason.
Newman John Henry, Cardinal 1801-1890
Reason is God's gift, but so are the passions.
Reason is as guilty as passion.
Pascal Blaise 1623-1662
The last advance of reason is to recognize that it is surpassed by innumerable things; it is feeble if it cannot realize that.
Pascal Blaise 1623-1662
Pensées
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.
Pope Alexander 1688-1744
Epistles to Several Persons ‘To Lord Bathurst'
The ruling passion, be it what it will,
The ruling passion conquers reason still.
Pope Alexander 1688-1744
An Essay on Man
All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony, not understood;
All partial evil, universal good:
And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite,
One truth is clear, ‘Whatever IS, IS RIGHT'.
Powell Sir John 1645-1713
Lord Raymond's Reports
Let us consider the reason of the case. For nothing is law that is not reason.
Regnard Jean François
We love without reason, and without reason we hate.
Rochester John Wilmot, Earl of 1647-1680
‘A Satire against Mankind'
Reason, an ignis fatuus of the mind,
Which leaves the light of nature, sense, behind.
Santayana George 1863-1952
Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, or inertia; it is by no means a representative of reason.
Santayana George 1863-1952
Habit is stronger than reason.
Schopenhauer Arthur 1788-1860
Reason deserves to be called a prophet; for in showing up the consequence and effect of our actions in the present, does it not tell us what the future will be?
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
Macbeth
Were such things here as we do speak about?
Or have we eaten on the insane root
That takes the reason prisoner?
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
Richard II
Teach thy necessity to reason thus;
There is no virtue like necessity.
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
I have no other but a woman's reason:
I think him so, because I think him so.
Shelley Percy Bysshe 1792-1822
Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.
Sterne Laurence 1713-1768
Tristram Shandy
Whenever a man talks loudly against religion, always suspect that it is not his reason, but his passions which have got the better of his creed.
Studdert Kennedy G. A. 1883-1929
It is much easier to do and die than it is to reason why.
Tennyson Alfred Lord 1809-1892
‘The Charge of the Light Brigade'
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Some one had blundered:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Ward Artemus 1834-1867
Artemus Ward's Lecture
Why is this thus? What is the reason of this thusness?
Washington George 1732-1799
Government is not reason, it is not eloquence -it is force.
Watkyns Rowland c.1616-1664
„Antipathy"
I love him not, but show no reason can
Wherefore, but this, I do not love the man.
Wesley John 1703-1791
Passion and prejudice govern the world; only under the name of reason.
Williams Heathcote
Reason is an emotion for the sexless.