Quotes About Reason

Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.

There are dreamers and poets and landscape painters with dirty noses and wanderers like me who came here by chance and never left. They are all looking for something, travelling the world and the seven seas but looking for a reason to stay.

there is no real advance in human reason, for what we gain in one direction we lose in another; for all minds start from the same point, and as the time spent in learning what others have thought is so much time lost in learning to think for ourselves, we have more acquired knowledge and less vigor of mind. Our minds like our arms are accustomed to use tools for everything, and to do nothing for themselves.

Man's first law is to watch over his own preservation; his first care he owes to himself; and as soon as he reaches the age of reason, he becomes the only judge of the best means to preserve himself; he becomes his own master.

It is by the activity of our passions, that our reason improves: we covet knowledge merely because we covet enjoyment, and it is impossible to conceive why a man exempt from fears and desires should take the trouble to reason.

Qu'il voie par ses yeux, qu'il sente par son coeur ; qu'aucune autorité ne le gouverne, hors celle de sa propre raison.

When a man is set in authority over others, everything conspires to rob him of his sense of justice and reason.

Dès lors qu'elle dépend à la fois de sa propre conscience et des opinions des autres, il faut qu'elle apprenne à comparer ces deux règles, à les concilier, et à ne préférer la première que quand elles sont en opposition. [...] Rien de tout cela ne peut bien se faire sans cultiver son esprit ou sa raison.

Men, despite all their ethics, would never be anything more than monsters if nature had not given them pity to bolster their reason.

We seek knowledge only because we desire enjoyment, and it is impossible to conceive why a person who has neither desires nor fears would take the trouble to reason.

Su principal deber es procurar su propia conservación, sus principales cuidados son los que se debe a sí mismo; y después que adquiere uso de razón, siendo él sólo el juez de los medios propios para conservarse, llega a ser por este motivo su propio dueño.

I believed in childhood by authority, in youth by sentiment, in my mature years by reason; now I believe because I have always believed.

In instinct alone, man had everything he needed in order to live in the state of nature; in a cultivated reason, he has only what he needs to live in society.

In the midst of so much philosophy, humanity, and civilization, and of such sublime codes of morality, we have nothing to show for ourselves but a frivolous and deceitful exterior, honor without virtue, reason without wisdom, and pleasure without happiness.

Si c'est la raison qui fait l'homme, c'est le sentiment qui le conduit.

Since everything that comes into the human mind enters through the gates of sense, man's first reason is a reason of sense-experience. It is this that serves as a foundation for the reason of the intelligence; our first teachers in natural philosophy are our feet, hands, and eyes. To substitute books for them does not teach us to reason, it teaches us to use the reason of others rather than our own; it teaches us to believe much and know little.

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.

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

He yawned; he had finished the day, and he had also finished with his youth. Various tried and proved rules of conduct had already discreetly offered him their services: disillusioned epicureanism, smiling tolerance, resignation, flat seriousness, stoicism--all the aids whereby a man may savor, minute by minute, like a connoisseur, the failure of a life... 'I have attained the age of reason.

I admire the way we can lie, putting reason on our side.

Well, you're free without wanting to be,' he explained, 'it just happens so, that's all. But Mathieu's freedom is based on reason.' 'I still don't understand,' said Lola, shaking her head. 'Well, he doesn't care a curse about his apartment: he lives there just as he would live anywhere else, and I've got the feeling that he doesn't care much about his girl. He stays with her because he must sleep with someone. His freedom isn't visible, it's inside him.

This then is the age of reason.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance. I leaned back and closed my eyes. But the images, forewarned, immediately leaped up and filled my closed eyes with existences: existence is a fullness which man can never abandon. Strange

L'homme sensible moderne » ne souffre pas pour tel ou tel motif particulier, mais, en général, parce que rien de cette terre ne saurait contenter ses désirs.