Quotes
Quotes about Reason
That well by reason men it call may
The daisie, or els the eye of the day,
The emprise, and floure of floures all.
Reason is the life of the law; nay, the common law itself is nothing else but reason.... The law, which is perfection of reason.
They (corporations) cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed nor
excommunicate, for they have no souls.
I was promised on a time
To have reason for my rhyme;
From that time unto this season,
I received nor rhyme nor reason.
Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
Neither rhyme nor reason.
No sooner met but they looked; no sooner looked but they loved; no sooner loved but they sighed; no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason; no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy.
Give you a reason on compulsion! If reasons were as plentiful as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion, I.
I have no other but a woman's reason:
I think him so, because I think him so.
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.
Great Cæsar fell.
O, what a fall was there, my countrymen!
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,
Whilst bloody treason flourish'd over us.
The insane root
That takes the reason prisoner.
Better be with the dead,
Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well:
Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him further.
'T is a fault to Heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd.
A beast, that wants discourse of reason.
This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh.
O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,
If thou canst mutine in a matron's bones,
To flaming youth let virtue be as wax,
And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame
When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,
Since frost itself as actively doth burn,
And reason panders will.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unused.
There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would.
So on the tip of his subduing tongue
All kinds of arguments and questions deep,
All replication prompt, and reason strong,
For his advantage still did wake and sleep.
To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep,
He had the dialect and different skill,
Catching all passion in his craft of will.
Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search.
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.
Still may syllabes jar with time,
Still may reason war with rhyme,
Resting never!
This principle is old, but true as fate,--
Kings may love treason, but the traitor hate.
