Who reasons wisely, is not therefore wise,
His pride in reasoning, not in acting lies. [ Pope ]
In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies;
All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.
Pride still is aiming at the bless'd abodes,
Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,
Aspiring to be angels men rebel;
And who but wishes to invert the laws
Of order, sins against the Eternal cause. [ Pope ]
The reasoning of the strongest is always the best. [ La Fontaine ]
While we are reasoning concerning life, life is gone. [ Hume ]
All the reasoning of man is not worth one sentiment of woman. [ Voltaire ]
The most careful reasoning characters are very often the most easily abashed. [ Mme. de Stael ]
Reason cannot show itself more reasonable than to cease reasoning on things above reason. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
I have been reasoning all my life, and find that all argument will vanish before one touch of Nature. [ Colman ]
He knows very little of mankind who expects, by facts or reasoning, to convince a determined party-man. [ Lavater ]
Nature tempts us continually, but we are not responsible for the sin, unless our reasoning gives its consent. [ Pascal ]
Man spends his life in reasoning on the past, in complaining of the present, and in trembling for the future. [ Rivarol ]
The philosophy of reasoning, to be complete, ought to comprise the theory of bad as well as of good reasoning. [ John Stuart Mill ]
The highest reach of a news-writer is an empty reasoning on policy, and vain conjectures on the public management. [ La Bruyere ]
To think and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius - the men of reasoning and the men of imagination. [ Isaac Disraeli ]
Mathematics does not exercise the judgment, and if too exclusively pursued, may leave the student very ill qualified for moral reasoning. [ R. Whately ]
By reasoning we satisfy ourselves: by rhetoric we satisfy others. Most modern orators and rhetoricians content themselves with fulfilling the first part of this proposition. [ P. B. Randolph ]
I consider the study of mathematics the basis of the soundest mode of reasoning, the foundation of metaphysical deductions; it contains eternal truths, concluded by pure intelligence. [ Sir R. Maltravers ]
All reasoning is retrospect; it consists in the application of facts and principles previously known. This will show the very great importance of knowledge, especially of that kind called experience. [ J. Foster ]
Genius is not a single power, but a combination of great powers. It reasons, but it is not reasoning; it judges, but it is not judgment: it imagines, but it is not imagination; it feels deeply and fiercely, but it is not passion. It is neither, because it is all. [ Whipple ]
To behold, is not necessary to observe, and the power of comparing and combining is only to be obtained by education. It is much to be regretted that habits of exact observation are not cultivated in our schools; to this deficiency may be traced much of the fallacious reasoning, the false philosophy which prevails. [ Humboldt ]
Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two great faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle, at any cost, which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry in his reasoning. [ Macaulay ]
I have mentioned mathematics as a way to settle in the mind a habit of reasoning closely, and in train; not that I think it necessary that all men should be deep mathematicians, but that having got the way of reasoning, which that study necessarily brings the mind to, they might be able to transfer it to other parts of knowledge, as they have occasion. [ J. Locke ]
As a science, logic institutes an analysis of the process of the mind in reasoning, and investigating the principles on which argumentation is conducted; as an art, it furnishes such rules as may be derived from those principles, for guarding against erroneous deductions. Some are disposed to view logic as a peculiar method of reasoning, and not as it is, a method of unfolding and analysing our reason. They have, in short, considered logic as an art of reasoning. The logician's object being, not to lay down principles by which one may reason, but by which all must reason, even though they are not distinctly aware of them - to lay down rules not which may be followed with advantage, but which cannot possibly be deviated from in sound reasoning. [ R. Whately ]