When I was young I was sure of everything; in a few years, having been mistaken a thousand times, I was not half so sure of most things as I was before; at present, I am hardly sure of anything but what God has revealed to me.
– John Wesley
Reasoning
If our brain is full of prejudice towards the truth or towards the preacher, truth will not enter it nor will it extend to our life. No wonder some believers derive no help already have they decided what they would like to read or hear.
– Watchman Nee
Reasoning | Truth
Memory tempers prosperity, mitigates adversity, controls youth, and delights old age.
– Assorted Authors
Reasoning | Youth | Age
The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning | The Heart
Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning | Time
People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning
It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.
– Hosea Ballou
Reasoning | Beauty
If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning | The Future
People don’t buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons.
– Zig Ziglar
Reasoning
Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.
– Martin Luther
Faith | Reasoning
A sound economy is a sound understanding brought into action. It is calculation realized; it is the doctrine of proportion reduced to practice; it is foreseeing contingencies and providing against them; it is expecting contingencies and being prepared for them.
– Hannah More
Reasoning | Doctrine
I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.
– George Washington
Reasoning
We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.
– G.K. Chesterton
Reasoning
Through space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; through thought I comprehend the world.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning
Logic helps us to strip off the outward disguise of things, and to behold and judge of them in their own nature.
– Isaac Watts
Reasoning | Judging
Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; for in disobeying the one we are unfortunate, and in disobeying the other we are fools.
– Blaise Pascal
ReasoningFoolishness
The eyes of a man in the jaundice make yellow observations on everything; and the soul tinctured with any passion diffuses a false color over the appearance of things.
– Isaac Watts
Reasoning | Passion
The last advance of reason is to recognize that it is surpassed by innumerable things; it is feeble if it cannot realize that.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning
We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning
We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning | The Heart
It is not the eye that sees the beauty of the heaven, nor the ear that hears the sweetness of music or the glad tidings of a prosperous occurrence, but the soul, that perceives all the relishes of sensual and intellectual perfections; and the more noble and excellent the soul is, the greater and more savory are its perceptions.
– Jeremy Taylor
Reasoning | Music | Beauty
For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.
– Martin Luther
Reasoning | Nature
Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.
– Blaise Pascal
ReasoningNature
Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.
– Blaise Pascal
Beauty | Reasoning
The world is ruled by force, not by opinion; but opinion uses force.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning
You always admire what you really don’t understand.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning
Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning
The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning
No matter how high the powers of reason, no matter how deep the intellect, no one can discover God’s secret messages without paying the cost of true discipleship.
– Winkie Pratney
ReasoningDiscipleship
Man’s greatness lies in his power of thought.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning
Faith is a sounder guide than reason. Reason can go only so far, but faith has no limits.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning | Faith
It is the heart which experiences God, not the reason.
– Blaise Pascal
God | Reasoning | The Heart
A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning | Stress
The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning
How true it is that without the guidance of the Holy Spirit intellect not only is undependable but also extremely dangerous, because it often confuses the issue of right and wrong.
– Watchman Nee
Reasoning
Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning
I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.
– Blaise Pascal
Reasoning
Words easy to be understood do often hit the mark; when high and learned ones do only pierce the air.
– John Bunyan
Reasoning
I assert that nothing ever comes to pass without a cause.
– Jonathan Edwards
Reasoning
The present condition of fame is merely fashion.
– G.K. Chesterton
Reasoning
There need not be in religion, or music, or art, or love, or goodness, anything that is against reason; but never while the sun shines will we get great religion, or music, or art, or love, or goodness, without going beyond reason.
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
Reasoning | Music
He that lives in the kingdom of sense, shall die in the kingdom of sorrow.
– Richard Baxter
Reasoning
When human reason has exhausted every possibility, the children can go to their Father and receive all they need. … For only when you have become utterly dependent upon prayer and faith, only when all human possibilities have been exhausted, can you begin to reckon that God will intervene and work His miracles.
– Basilea Schlink
ReasoningMiracles
A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature.
– John Henry Newman
Reasoning
Gravity is the ballast of the soul, which keeps the mind steady.
– Thomas Fuller
Reasoning
There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Reasoning
A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.
– G.K. Chesterton
Reasoning
Reason in man is rather like God in the world.
– Thomas Aquinas
Reasoning
Theories are always very thin and insubstantial, experience only is tangible.
– Hosea Ballou
Reasoning
Just because it doesn’t make sense to you doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense.
– Adrian Rogers
Reasoning
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.
– Richard Chenevix Trench
Reasoning
Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.
– Helen Keller
Reasoning
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.
– Francois Fenelon
Reasoning
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.
– Francois Fenelon
Reasoning
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.
– G.K. Chesterton
Reasoning
Whatever is produced by the mind lacks spiritual power.
– Watchman Nee
Reasoning
How dangerous a master human emotion is!
– Watchman Nee
Reasoning
It is requisite for the relaxation of the mind that we make use, from time to time, of playful deeds and jokes.
– Thomas Aquinas
Reasoning
All the efforts of the human mind cannot exhaust the essence of a single fly.
– Thomas Aquinas
Reasoning
God will never tell us to do something that gratifies the flesh.
– Charles Stanley
Reasoning
Soulish Christians generally bend to certain directions. Most of them lean either towards emotion or towards reason.
– Watchman Nee
Reasoning | Christians
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.
– Assorted Authors
Reasoning
A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.
– Thomas Aquinas
Reasoning | Choices | Freedom
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.
– G.K. Chesterton
Theology | Reasoning | The Heart
If I have done the public any service, it is due to my patient thought.
– Isaac Newton
Patience | Reasoning
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.
– Watchman Nee
Reasoning | Diligence
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.
– Francis Quarles
Reasoning
One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.
– G.K. Chesterton
Reasoning
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
– G.K. Chesterton
Reasoning
Feelings are like chemicals; the more you analyze them the worse they smell.
– Charles Kingsley
Reasoning | Feelings
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.
– G.K. Chesterton
Reasoning
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.
– Watchman Nee
Reasoning | Satan | The Heart
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.
– Thomas Fuller
Reasoning
People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.
– Helen Keller
Reasoning
Acquire a government over your ideas, that they may come down when they are called, and depart when they are bidden.
– Isaac Watts
Reasoning
And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.
– G.K. Chesterton
Reasoning | Miracles
I know not if the dark or bright shall be by lot; if that wherein my hopes delight be best or not.
– Henry Alford
Reasoning
To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Reasoning
Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kind of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.
– G.K. Chesterton
Reasoning
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.
– Helen Keller
Reasoning
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.
– Richard Baxter
Reasoning | Beauty
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.
– Frederick W. Robertson
Reasoning
The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Apathy | Reasoning | The Heart
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.
– G.K. Chesterton
Reasoning | America
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.
– Charles Kingsley
Reasoning | Feelings
Solitude shows us what we should be; society shows us what we are.
– Richard Cecil
Reasoning
Eloquence is vehement simplicity.
– Richard Cecil
Reasoning
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.
– G.K. Chesterton
Reasoning
A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.
– G.K. Chesterton
Reasoning
Grammar is the logic of speech, even as logic is the grammar of reason.
– Richard Chenevix Trench
Reasoning
The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
– G.K. Chesterton
Reasoning
The secret heart is devotion’s temple; there the saint lights the flame of purest sacrifice, which burns unseen but not unaccepted.
– Hannah More
Reasoning | The Heart | Sacrifice
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.
– Thomas Brooks
Reasoning | Envy
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.
– Watchman Nee
Carnality | Reasoning
The mind, if overly active, may affect and disturb the quietness of the spirit.
– Watchman Nee
Reasoning
What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.
– G.K. Chesterton
Reasoning
There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.
– G.K. Chesterton
Reasoning | Greed | The Heart
The shortest answer is doing.
– George Herbert
Reasoning
The simplification of anything is always sensational.
– G.K. Chesterton
Reasoning
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.
– John Selden
Reasoning