reasoning Quotes

“The man of education will seek exactness do far in each subject as the nature of the thing admits, it being plainly much the same absurdity to put up with a mathematician who tries to persuade without proving, and to demand strict demonstrative reasoning of a Rhetorician.”

“Oh, monsters are scared . . . That’s why they’re monsters.”

“Alas! how sad when reasoners reason wrong.”

″ ‘Can it think?’ ‘Not only can it think, but it can reason and compromise,’ said the Creator.”

“People think that they can clear up profound matters if they consider them deeply, but they exercise perverse thoughts and come to no good because they do their reflecting with only self-interest at the center.”

“The duty of rhetoric is to deal with such matters as we deliberate upon without arts or systems to guide us, in the hearing of persons who cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument, or follow a long chain of reasoning.”

“His aspiration is to be this Platonic creature of pure rationality and that’s why he’s attracted to the Classics, and particularly to the Greeks — all those high, cold ideas of beauty and perfection. I think it’s what in the end that gets him into trouble.”

“What, in fact, is the absurd man? He who, without negating it, does nothing for the eternal. Not that nostalgia is foreign to him. But he prefers his courage and his reasoning.”

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.”

“It’s not fair, after all, to lick tigers so small.”

“I always forget that trying to reason with the unreasonable is... unreasonable.”

“Why do you love him, Miss Cathy?” “Nonsense, I do—that’s sufficient.” “By no means; you must say why?” “Well, because he is handsome, and pleasant to be with.” “Bad!” was my commentary. “And because he is young and cheerful.

“You love Mr. Edgar because he is handsome, and young, and cheerful, and rich, and loves you. The last, however, goes for nothing: you would love him without that, probably; and with it you wouldn’t, unless he possessed the four former attractions.”