Quotes About Reason

What is this reason, with its universality, infallibility, exuberant certainty and obviousness? An ens rationis, a stuffed dummy which the howling superstition of our unreason endows with divine attributes.

Finally it is, by the way, obvious that if mathematics can arrogate to itself the privilege of the nobility because of its universal and necessary reliability, then even human reason itself would be inferior to the unfailing and infallible instinct of insects.

Faith is not the work of reason, and therefore cannot succumb to its attack, because faith arises just as little from reason as tasting and seeing do.

Without language we would have no reason, without reason no religion, and without these three essential aspects of our nature, neither mind nor bond of society.

Not only is the whole faculty of thought dependent on language, but language is also the center of the misunderstanding of reason with itself.

Nur mit Johannes kann der Philosoph zusammenkommen, denn dieser allein hat Achtung für die Vernunft, und beruft sich auf den Beweis, den der Philosoph allein gelten lässt: den inneren.

The aim and final reason of all music should be none else but the glory of God and refreshing the soul. Where this is not observed there will be no music, but only a devilish hubbub.

Viewed from the summit of reason, all life looks like a malignant disease and the world like a madhouse.

MEFISTOFELE Non posso darvi tutti i torti. So bene che cos'è questa dottrina. Leggi e giurisprudenza si trasmettono per eredità come un male perenne, si trascinano di generazione in generazione e passano inavvertitamente da un luogo a un altro. La ragione finisce nell'assurdità, il beneficio in un danno.

Superstition is the poetry of life.

Reason can never be popular. Passions and feelings may become popular, but reason will always remain the sole property of a few eminent individuals.

Is this the destiny of man? Is he only happy before he has acquired his reason or after he has lost it?

He calls it reason, using it To be more beast than ever beast was yet.

I know what science this has come to be. All rights and laws are still transmitted Like an eternal sickness of the race,— From generation unto generation fitted, And shifted round from place to place. Reason becomes a sham, Beneficence a worry: Thou art a grandchild, therefore woe to thee! The right born with us, ours in verity,

God of heaven! and is this the destiny of man? Is he only happy before he has acquired his reason, or after he has lost it?

The Godhead is effective in the living and not in the dead, in the becoming and the changing, not in the become and the set-fast; and therefore, similarly, the reason is concerned only to strive towards the divine through the becoming and the living, and the understanding only to make use of the become and the set-fast.

Ah, when, within our narrow chamber The lamp with friendly lustre glows, Flames in the breast each faded ember, And in the heart, itself that knows. Then Hope again lends sweet assistance, And Reason then resumes her speech: One yearns, the rivers of existence, The very founts of Life, to reach.

Estará escrito en el destino del hombre que sólo puede ser feliz antes de tener razón o después de haberla perdido? ¡Pobre insensato! Envidio tu locura, envidio el laberinto mental en que te pierdes.

There is no why. We are. Life is beyond reason.

Half of our mistakes in life arise from feeling where we ought to think, and thinking where we ought to feel. - John Churton Collins The person who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.

We live not according to reason, but according to fashion.

Life is made of our attitudes. And there are certain things that the gods oblige us to live through. Their reason for this does not matter, and there is no action we can take to make them pass us by.

Reason can never reconcile one to life: nothing allays the wants one cannot explain.

Life is not a series of pathetic, meaningles actions. Some of them are so far from pathetic, so far from meaningless as to be beyond reason, maybe beyond forgiveness.