Quotes on Reason

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

For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked.

Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

Wherever an inferiority complex exists, there is a good reason for it.

There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof, I hope, there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am not understood, it shall be concluded, that something very useful and profound is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentence is printed in a different character, shall be judged to contain something extraordinary either or wit of sublime.

I do not oppose the insane asylum - but I abhor and condemn the cutthroat system that robs man of his reason, drives him to insanity and makes the lunatic asylum an indispensable adjunct to every civilized community.

A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.

Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity.

It is a [disputed] question, whether the circulation of paper, rather than of specie [gold and silver coin], is a good or an evil I believe it to be one of those cases where mercantile clamor will bear down reason, until it is corrected by ruin.

Questions of natural right are triable by their conformity with the moral sense and reason of man.

Reason has seldom failed us because it has seldom been tried.

Have I not reason to lament _x000D_ What man has made of man?

The brain of man, like that of all animals is double, being parted down its centre by a thin membrane. For this reason pain is not always felt in the same part of the head, but sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, and occasionally all over.

One universe made up all that is; and one God in it all, and one principle of being, and one law, the reason shared by all thinking creatures, and one truth.

Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dak trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more the prettiness.

Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.

We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.

And so it is they who, between them, give me all the reasons for believing in none.

Theologians and other clerks, _x000D_ You won't understand this book, _x000D_ -- However bright your wits -- _x000D_ If you do not meet it humbly, _x000D_ And in this way, Love and Faith _x000D_ Make you surmount Reason, for _x000D_ They are the protectors of Reason's house.

If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.

As the purpose of comedy is to correct the vices of men, I see no reason why anyone should be exempt.