150 Quotes About Reasoning

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.

Reason in man is rather like God in the world.

Theories are always very thin and insubstantial, experience only is tangible.

Language is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved. It has arrested ten thousand lightning flashes of genius, which, unless thus fixed and arrested, might have been as bright, but would have also been as quickly passing and perishing, as the lightning.

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.

Genuine good taste consists in saying much in few words, in choosing among our thoughts, in having order and arrangement in what we say, and in speaking with composure.

There is no real elevation of mind in a contempt of little things. It is, on the contrary, from too narrow views that we consider those things of little importance, which have, in fact, such extensive consequences.

White is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. God paints in many colors; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.

Whatever is produced by the mind lacks spiritual power.

How dangerous a master human emotion is!

It is requisite for the relaxation of the mind that we make use, from time to time, of playful deeds and jokes.

All the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly.

God will never tell us to do something that gratifies the flesh.

Soulish Christians generally bend to certain directions. Most of them lean either towards emotion or towards reason.

Everything we do proceeds from a decision of will, involves our intelligence and perception, leads to emotional reactions or experiences, is approved or disapproved by the conscience, and is registered in the memory in complete perspective.

Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it.

If I have done the public any service, it is due to my patient thought.

Unlike spiritual Christians, who seek not so much the explanation as the experience of being one with God, soulish believers look diligently for an understanding in their mind.

The way to subject all things to thyself is to subject thyself to reason. Thou shalt govern many if reason govern thee. Wouldst thou be the monarch of a little world? command thyself.

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

Feelings are like chemicals; the more you analyze them the worse they smell.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

Eve's heart was sinless and yet she received Satan's suggested thoughts. She was thus beguiled through his deception into forfeiting her reasoning and tumbling into the snare of the enemy.

Memory depends very much on the perspicuity, regularity, and order of our thoughts. Many complain of the want of memory, when the defect is in their judgment; and others, by grasping at all, retain nothing.

People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.

Acquire a government over your ideas, that they may come down when they are called, and depart when they are bidden.

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

I know not if the dark or bright shall be by lot; if that wherein my hopes delight be best or not.

To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself.

Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kind of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.

The more perfect the sight is the more delightful the beautiful object. The more perfect the appetite, the sweeter the food. The more musical the ear, the more pleasant the melody. The more perfect the soul, the more joyous the joys of heaven and the more glorious that glory.

Imagination ennobles appetites which in themselves are low, and spiritualizes acts which, else, are only animal. But the pleasures which begin in the senses only sensualize.

The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.

There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.

These glorious things - words - are man's right alone. Without words we should know no more of each other's hearts and thoughts than the dog knows of his fellow dog for, if you will consider, you always think to yourself in words, though you do not speak them aloud; and without them all our thoughts would be mere blind longings, feelings which we could not understand ourselves.

Solitude shows us what we should be; society shows us what we are.

Eloquence is vehement simplicity.

A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

Grammar is the logic of speech, even as logic is the grammar of reason.

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

Ambition is a gilded misery, a secret poison, a hidden plague, the engineer of deceit, the mother of hypocrisy, the parent of envy, the original of vices, the moth of holiness, the blinder of hearts, turning medicines into maladies, and remedies into diseases.

Carnal believers are moved easily. On one occasion they may be extremely excited and happy, on another occasion, very despondent and sad. In the happy moment they judge the world too small to contain them, and so they soar on wings to the heavens; but in the moment of sadness they conclude that the world has had enough of them and will be glad to be rid of them... their lives are susceptible to constant changes for they are governed by their emotions.

The mind, if overly active, may affect and disturb the quietness of the spirit.

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

The shortest answer is doing.

The simplification of anything is always sensational.

They that are against superstition oftentimes run into it of the wrong side. If I wear all colors but black, then I am superstitious in not wearing black.

(speaking of soulish believers). These follow their desires and ideas and seek sensual pleasure and mental wisdom. While they may be spiritual in knowledge, in point of fact they are soulish.

Idolatry is in a man's own thought, not in the opinion of another.

Religion is as necessary to reason as reason is to religion: The one cannot exist without the other. A reasoning being would lose his reason, in attempting to account for the great phenomena of nature, had he not a Supreme Being to refer to; and well has it been said, that if there had been no God, mankind would have been obliged to imagine one.

Nothing is more common than for men to think that because they are familiar with words they understand the ideas they stand for.

The true knowledge or science which exists nowhere but in the mind itself, has no other entity at all besides intelligibility; and therefore whatsoever is clearly intelligible, is absolutely true.

A good discourse is that from which one can take nothing without taking the life.

We pass our life in deliberation, and we die upon it.

If you are not thinking right, if your mind is not being renewed, if you are not God and His Word properly, it will show up in your emotional life.

Despite a great revival in Samaria, Philip was not responsible for the follow-up labor of strengthening. He must leave immediately for the desert in order that a "heathen" eunuch might be saved. Ananias had not heard of Saul's conversion, but he could not refuse to go to pray for Saul when sent, though by standards of human judgment he was casting his life away by walking directly into the persecutor's hand. How then dare we follow our mind, emotion or will if even the Apostles did not move on that basis?. How people today have seized upon reason, thought, idea, feeling, wish and desire as the governing factors in work!

One thing about change hasn't changed: it still fascinates some people, frightens others, and provides a good living for a prophetic minority.

The preservation of society, and of the species itself, are ends that do not hang on the precarious thread of Reason: they are given by Instinct.

The obstinacy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinacy of folly and inanity.

Luther was guilty of two great crimes - he struck the Pope in his crown, and the monks in their belly.

We settle things by a majority vote, and the psychological effect of doing that is to create the impression that the majority is probably right. Of course, on any fine issue the majority is sure to be wrong. Think of taking a majority vote on the best music. Jazz would win over Chopin. Or on the best novel. Many cheap scribblers would win over Tolstoy. And any day a prizefight will get a bigger crowd, larger gate receipts and wider newspaper publicity than any new revelation of goodness, truth or beauty could hope to achieve in a century.

When a doubt is propounded, learn to distinguish, and show wherein a thing holds, and wherein it doth not hold. The not distinguishing where things should be distinguished, and the not confounding, where things should be confounded, is the cause of all the mistakes in the world.

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

Prevention is the best bridle.

The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret of outward success.

Better break your word than do worse in keeping it.

Most men seem to live according to sense rather than reason.

When passion is on the throne reason is out of doors.

The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.

Harmless mirth is the best cordial against the consumption of the spirit; wherefore jesting is not unlawful, if it trespasseth not in quantity, quality, or season.

How often the intents of the heart are utterly pure and yet the thoughts in the head are confused.

Realists do not fear the results of their study.

He that speaketh against his own reason speaks against his own conscience, and therefore it is certain that no man serves God with a good conscience who serves him against his reason.

Reason is the glory of human nature, and one of the chief eminences whereby we are raised above the beasts, in this lower world.

Human reason is like a drunken man on horseback; set it up on one side, and it tumbles over on the other.

When your thoughts and opinions become intellectual gods in rebellion against the Word of God, you are in idolatry.

Never contend with one that is foolish, proud, positive, testy, or with a superior, or a clown, in matter of argument.

His heart is alright and his intention is good, but it is founded upon human consideration derived from the soul life. All such considerations the Lord must reject. Even to desire after the Lord is not permitted if done by the flesh. Does this not demonstrate beyond doubt that we can indeed be soulish in serving and desiring the Lord?

I would far rather feel remorse than know how to define it.

Intellect is the soul of man, the only immortal part of him.

Our higher feelings move our animal nature; and our animal nature, irritated, may call back a semblance of those emotions; but the whole difference between nobleness and baseness lies in the question, whether the feeling begins from below or above.

Poor men's reasons are not heard.

I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.

First, in your sermons, use your logic, and then your rhetoric; Rhetoric without logic, is like a tree with leaves and blossoms, but no root; yet more are taken with rhetoric than logic, because they are caught with fine expressions when they understand not reason.

Ethics make one's soul mannerly and wise, but logic is the armory of reason, furnished with all offensive and defensive weapons.

The office of poetry is not to make us think accurately, but feel truly.

What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains, and studying night and day how to fly?

By burning Luther's books you may rid your bookshelves of him, but you will not rid men's minds of him.

Beware of reasoning about God's Word - obey it.

Sense is a line, the mind is a circle. Sense is like a line which is the flux of a point running out from itself, but intellect like a circle that keeps within itself.

Passion and prejudice govern the world; only under the name of reason.

If thou desirest ease, in the first place take care of the ease of thy mind; for that will make all other sufferings easy. But nothing can support a man whose mind is wounded.

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has.

A sentence well couched takes both the sense and the understanding. I love not those cart-rope speeches that are longer than the memory of man can measure.

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.