Every why hath a wherefore. [ William Shakespeare ]

Why should a rich man steal? [ Proverb ]

O we fell out, I know not why.
And kiss'd again with tears. [ Tennyson ]

I do not love thee, Doctor Fell,
The reason why, I cannot tell;
But this alone I know full well
I do not love thee, Doctor Fell. [ Tom Brown ]

Ask why God made the gem so small,
And why so huge the granite?
Because God meant mankind should set
The higher value on it. [ Burns ]

Bear the burden of the present,
Let the morrow bear its own;
If the morning sky be pleasant.
Why the coming night bemoan?

Holy strivings nerve and strengthen,
Long endurance wins the crown;
When the evening shadows lengthen,
Thou shalt lay the burden down. [ Thomas Mackellar ]

Why read a book which you cannot quote? [ Bentley ]

Why are those tears? why droops your head
Is then your other husband dead?
Or does a worse disgrace betide?
Hath no one since his death applied? [ Gay ]

Lord, help me through this warld o' care,
I'm weary sick o't late and air;
Not but I hae a richer share
Than mony ithers;
But why should ae man better fare,
And a' men brithers? [ Burns ]

Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? [ Shakespeare ]

Why, let the stricken deer go weep,
The heart ungalled play;
For some must watch, while some must sleep;
Thus runs the world away. [ William Shakespeare ]

Man yields to custom as he bows to fate,
In all things ruled--mind, body, and estate;
In pain, in sickness, we for cure apply
To them we know not, and we know not why. [ Crabbe ]

Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love,
But why did you kick me down stairs? [ J. P. Kemble ]

Man yields to custom as he bows to fate.
In all things ruled - mind, body and estate;
In pain or sickness, we for cure apply
To them we know not, and we know not why. [ Crabbe ]

Why should the devil have all the good tunes? [ Rowland Hill ]

Treason doth never prosper; what's the reason?
Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason. [ Sir J. Harrington ]

Friends are like melons. Shall I tell you why?
To find one good, you must a hundred try. [ Claude Mermet ]

If she do frown, it is not in hate of you,
But rather to beget more love in you:
If she do chide, it is not to have you gone;
For why, the fools are mad if left alone.
Take no repulse, whatever she doth say;
For - get you gone - she doth not mean - away. [ William Shakespeare ]

Why can't you wear a watch like everybody else? [ Yogi Berra, after being bumped by a man carrying a grandfather clock ]

Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain,
Which, with pain purchased doth inherit pain. [ William Shakespeare ]

He cannot be good that knows not why he is good. [ Proverb ]

I wept when I was born, and every day shows why. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Brutus and Caesar: what should be in Caesar?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with them,
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.
Now in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,
That he is grown so great? [ William Shakespeare ]

Say that she rail; why then I'll tell her plain.
She sings as sweetly as a nightingale;
Say that she frown; I'll say she looks as clear
As morning roses, newly washed with dew;
Say she be mute and will not speak a word,
Then I'll commend her volubility
And say she uttereth piercing eloquence. [ William Shakespeare ]

Why is the hearse with scutcheons blazon'd round,
And with the nodding plume of ostrich crown'd?
No: the dead know it not, nor profit gain;
It only serves to prove the living vain. [ Gay ]

Whither away, Bluebird, Whither away?
The blast is chill, yet in the upper sky,
Thou still canst find the color of thy wing.
The hue of May.
Warbler, why speed thy southern flight? ah, why,
Thou too, whose song first told us of the Spring?
Whither away? [ E. C. Stedman ]

Too curious man! why dost thou seek to know
Events, which, good or ill, foreknown, are woe!
The all-seeing power, that made thee mortal, gave
Thee every thing a mortal state should have. [ Dryden ]

Oh! Why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
Man passes from life to his rest in the grave. [ Wm. Knox ]

Why does man hunger so much after forbidden fruit? [ Ovid ]

Why dost thou heap up wealth, which thou must quit,
Or what is worse, be left by it?
Why dost thou load thyself when thou 'rt to fly.
Oh, man! ordained to die?
Why dost thou build up stately rooms on high,
Thou who art under ground to lie?
Thou sow'st and plantest, but no fruit must see.
For death, alas! is reaping thee. [ Cowley ]

I wept when I was born, and now every day shews why. [ Proverb ]

Why may a man not speak the truth in a jocular vein? [ Horace ]

Two heads are better than one, or why do folks marry? [ Proverb ]

Why buy good luggage, you only use it when you travel. [ Yogi Berra ]

Forgive and forget! - why, the world would be lonely,
The garden a wilderness left to deform.
If the flowers but remember'd the chilling winds only.
And the fields gave no verdure for fear of the storm. [ Charles Swain ]

Can that which is not shape, shape the things that are?
Is chance omnipotent - resolve me why
The meanest shellfish, and the noblest brute,
Transmit their likeness to the years that come? [ Dilnot Sladden ]

Why wish for more? Wishing of all employments is the worst. [ Young ]

It is easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient. [ George Eliot ]

There is occasions and causes why and wherefore in all things. [ William Shakespeare ]

To be happy, one must ask neither the how nor the why of life.

O sleep, why dost thou leave me? why thy visionary joys remove? [ Congreve ]

If hero means sincere man, why may not every one of us be a hero [ Carlyle ]

Why, then the world's mine oyster, which I with sword will open. [ Shakespeare ]

Why do we discover faults so much more readily than perfections? [ Mme. de Sévigné ]

Tell me why the ant midst summer's plenty thinks of winter's want. [ Prior ]

If you love not the noise of the bells, why do you pull the ropes? [ Proverb ]

Whence? whither? why? how? - these questions cover all philosophy. [ Joubert ]

The ruins of a house may be repaired; why cannot those of the face? [ La Fontaine ]

Love is blind: that is why he always proceeds by the sense of touch.

Why must we first weep before we can love so deep that our hearts ache. [ Richter ]

Why do we pray to Heaven without setting our own shoulder to the wheel? [ Carlyle ]

The moods of love are like the wind; and none knows whence or why they rise. [ Patmore ]

Why complain of wanting light? It is courage, energy, perseverance that I want. [ Carlyle ]

Why will you break the Sabbath of my days? Now sick alike of envy and of praise. [ Pope ]

Why should we complain, since we are so little moved by the complaints of others? [ Alfred Bougeart ]

Why Mammon sits before a million hearths Where God is bolted out from every house. [ Bailey ]

O you much partial gods! why gave ye men affections, and not power to govern them? [ Ludovic Barry ]

Call him wise whose actions, words, and steps are all a clear because to a clear why. [ Lavater ]

Such, whose sole bliss is eating, who can give but that one brutal reason why they live. [ Juvenal ]

Good taste is the modesty of the mind; that is why it cannot be either imitated or acquired. [ Mme. Girardin ]

Why are we so blind? That which we improve, we have, that which we hoard is not for ourselves. [ Madame Deluzy ]

We gild our medicines with sweets; why not clothe truth and morals in pleasant garments as well? [ Chamfort ]

To give awkwardly is churlishness. The most difficult part is to give, then why not add a smile? [ La Bruyere ]

Why is it that we entertain the belief that for every purpose odd numbers are the most effectual? [ Pliny ]

We have been thrust into the world - we know not why; and we must die to become - we know not what. [ Mme. d'Albany ]

The reason why lovers never weary of each other's company is because they speak always of themselves. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

There is no doubt such a thing as chance, but I see no reason why Providence should not make use of it. [ Simms ]

Since Cupid is represented with a torch in his hand, why did they place virtue on a barrel of gunpowder? [ Levis ]

Too high an appreciation of our own talents is the chief cause why experience preaches to us all in vain. [ Colton ]

I confess I could never see any good reason why dirt should always be a necessary concomitant of poverty. [ W. G. Clark ]

Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Child of mortality, whence comest thou? Why is thy countenance sad, and why are thine eyes red with weeping? [ Anna Letitia Barbauld ]

Why should not a scientific convention harmonize the letters of the alphabet with the sounds of the languages? [ J. A. Weisse ]

Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye? [ Bible ]

The reason why so few women are touched by friendship is, that they find it dull when they have experienced love. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

America is a Paradise for women - that is why, like Eve, the American women are extremely anxious to get out of it. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]

Why aren't more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books aren't within everybody's reach. [ S. T. Coleridge ]

Why, at this rate, a fellow that has but a groat in his pocket may have a stomach capable of a ten-shilling ordinary. [ Congreve ]

May I tell you why it seems to me a good thing for us to remember wrong that has been done us? That we may forgive it. [ Dickens ]

The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages. [ Swift ]

Why go I into details? we have nothing that is not perishable, except what our hearts and our intellects endow us with. [ Ovid ]

Thou canst withstand fate, but many a time it gives blows. Will it not go out of thy way, why then, go thou out of its. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin. [ Bible ]

Why do we dream in our sleep if we have no soul? and, if we have one, how is it that dreams are so incoherent and extravagant? [ Voltaire ]

Alas! alas! why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once; and he that might the vantage best have took found out the remedy. [ William Shakespeare ]

Let us laugh! Our fathers laughed at their miseries, let us laugh at ours too! Why! Lisette is not cruel, nor is my flagon broken! [ Beranger ]

The reason why education is usually so poor among women of fashion is that it is not needed for the life which they elect to lead. [ Julia Ward Howe ]

Why should I start at the plough of my Lord, that maketh deep furrows on my soul? I know he is no idle husbandman; he purposeth a crop. [ Rutherford ]

The reason why borrowed books are so seldom returned to their owners is, that it is much easier to retain the books than what is in them. [ Montaigne ]

The reason why the character of woman is so often misunderstood, is that it is the beautiful nature of woman to veil her soul as her charms. [ F. Schlegel ]

A lover is a man who endeavors to be more amiable than it is possible for him to be: this is the reason why almost all lovers are ridiculous. [ Chamfort ]

I cannot imagine why we should be at the expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sort of provision for ours. [ Swift ]

The youth longs so to love, the maiden so to be loved; ah! why does there spring out of this holiest of all our instincts such agonising pain? [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Science cannot grapple with the problem of women. It can never grapple with the irrational. That is why there is no future before it in this world. [ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ]

I believe one reason why women are generally so much more cheerful than men is because they can work with the needle, and so endlessly vary their employment. [ Sydney Smith ]

Do you know why people like violence? It is because it feels good. Humans find violence deeply satisfying. But remove the satisfaction, and the act becomes hollow. [ Alan Turing ]

Oh! why is daily bread indispensable to the poet and to the artist! This inexorable necessity darkens for them the joys of nature and the radiations of the beautiful. [ Mme. Louise Colet ]

Love is - I know not what; which comes - I know not whence; which is formed - I know not how; which enchants - I know not by what; and which ends - I know not when or why. [ Mlle. de Scuderi ]

But since, however protracted, death will come. Why fondly study, with ingenious pains. To put it off? - To breathe a little longer is to defer our fate, but not to shun it. [ Hannah More ]

I cannot see why women are so desirous of imitating men. I could understand the wish to be a boa constrictor, a lion, or an elephant; but a man! that surpasses my comprehension. [ T. Gautier ]

Oratory may be symbolized by a warrior's eye, flashing from under a philosopher's brow. But why a warrior's eye rather than a poet's? Because in oratory the will must predominate. [ J. C. and A. W. Hare ]

Why tell me that a man is a fine speaker if it is not the truth that he is speaking? If an eloquent speaker is not speaking the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation? [ Carlyle ]

Virginity of the heart, alas! so soon ravished! sweet dreams! expectations of happiness' and of love! fresh illusions of the morning of life! why do you not last till the end of the day! [ Gavarni ]

We may deserve grief; but why should women be unhappy? - except that we know heaven chastens those whom it loves best, being pleased by repeated trials to make these pure spirits more pure. [ Thackeray ]

If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is God is crying. And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is Probably because of something you did. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Why was the sight to such a tender ball as the eye confined, so obvious and so easy to be quenched, and not, as feeling, through all parts diffused, that she might look at will through every pore? [ Milton ]

I do not know what arguments mean in reference to any expression of a thought. I delight in telling what I think; but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of men. [ Emerson ]

Why destroy present happiness by a distant misery, which may never come at all, or you may never live to see it? For every substantial grief has twenty shadows, and most of them shadows of your own making. [ Sydney Smith ]

I can see why it would be prohibited to throw most things off the top of the Empire State Building, but what's wrong with little bits of cheese? They probably break down into their various gases before they even hit. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: Mankind. Basically, it's made up of two separate words - mank and ind. What do these words mean ? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Music moves us, and we know not why; we feel the tears, and cannot trace the source. Is it the language of some other state, born of its memory? For what can wake the soul's strong instinct of another world, like music? [ Miss L. E. Landon ]

Give him gold enough, and marry him to a puppet, or an aglet-baby; or an old trot with never a tooth in her head, though she have as many diseases as two and fifty horses; why, nothing comes amiss, so money comes withal. [ William Shakespeare ]

O Truth! pure and sacred virgin, when wilt thou be worthily revered? O Goddess who instructs us, why didst thou put thy palace in a well? When will our learned writers, alike free from bitterness and from flattery, faithfully teach us life? [ Voltaire ]

Why does the evening, does the night, put warmer love in our hearts? Is it the nightly pressure of helplessness? or is it the exalting separation from the turmoils of life - that veiling of the world in which for the soul nothing then remains but souls? [ Richter ]

I may grieve with the smart of an evil as soon as I feel it, but I will not smart with the grief of an evil as soon as I hear of it. My evil, when it Cometh, may make my grief too great; why, then, should my grief, before it comes, make my evil greater? [ Arthur Warwick ]

The absent one is an ideal person; those who are present seem to one another to be quite commonplace. It is a silly thing that the ideal is, as it were, ousted by the real; that may be the reason why to the moderns their ideal only manifests itself in longing. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Ask men of genius how much they owe to their mothers, and you will find that they attribute almost all to them and their influence; and if we could only guage the mental capacity of the wives of great men, we might perhaps learn why genius is so seldom hereditary. [ Lord Kames ]

There is nothing like fun, is there? I haven't any myself, but I do like it in others. O, we need it! We need all the counterweights we can muster to balance the sad relations of life. God has made many sunny spots in the heart; why should we exclude the light from them? [ Haliburton ]

The idea that a baby doesn't amount to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a front yard full by itself. One baby can, furnish more business than you and your whole Interior Department can attend to. He is enterprising, irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities. [ Mark Twain, The Babies ]

One great reason why men practice generosity so little in the world is their finding so little there. Generosity is catching; and if so many men escape it, it is in a great degree from the same reason the countrymen escape the smallpox, - because they meet no one to give it to them. [ Greville ]

Parents fear the destruction of natural affection in their children. What is this natural principle so liable to decay? Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first. Why is not custom nature? I suspect that this nature itself is but a first custom, as custom is a second nature. [ Pascal ]

What a wretched thing is all fame! A renown of the highest sort endures, say, for two thousand years. And then? Why, then, a fathomless eternity swallows it. Work for eternity: not the meagre rhetorical eternity of the periodical critics, but for the real eternity, wherein dwelleth the Divine. [ Carlyle ]

Why doth Fate, that often bestows thousands of souls on a conqueror or tyrant, to be the sport of his passions, so often deny to the tenderest and most feeling hearts one kindred one on which to lavish their affections? Why is it that Love must so often sigh in vain for an object, and Hate never? [ Richter ]

Style! style, why, all writers will tell you that it is the very thing which can least of all be changed. A man's style is nearly as much a part of him as his physiognomy, his figure, the throbbing of his pulse, - in short, as any part of his being which is at least subjected to the action of the will. [ Fenelon ]

Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people who live out of town are so uncivilized. There are only two ways of becoming civilized. One is by being cultured, the other is by being corrupt. Country people have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

Metaphysicians have been learning their lessons for the last four thousand years, and it is high time that they should now begin to teach us something. Can any of the tribe inform us why all the operations of the mind are carried on with undiminished strength and activity in dreams, except the judgment, which alone is suspended and dormant? [ Colton ]

Oceans of ink, reams of paper, and disputes infinite, might have been spared, if wranglers had avoided lighting the torch of strife at the wrong end; since a tenth part of the pains expended in attempting to prove the why, the where, and the when, certain events have happened, would have been more than sufficient to prove that they never happened at all. [ Colton ]

One man affirms that he has rode post a hundred miles in six hours: probably it is a lie; but supposing it to be true, what then? Why, he is a very good post-boy; that is all. Another asserts, and probably not without oaths, that he has drunk six or eight bottles of wine at a sitting; out of charity I will believe him a liar; for, if I do not, I must think him a beast. [ Chesterfield ]

Great merit or great failings will make you respected or despised; but trifles, little attentions, mere nothings, either done or neglected, will make you either liked or disliked, in the general run of the world. Examine yourself, why you like such and such people and dislike such and such others; and you will find that those different sentiments proceed from very slight causes. [ Chesterfield ]

Men cannot labor on always. They must have intervals of relaxation. They cannot sleep through these interTafs. What are they to do? Why, if they do not work or sleep, they must have recreation. And if they have not recreation from healthful sources, they will be very likely to take it from the poisoned fountains of intemperance. Or, if they have pleasures, which, though innocent, are forbidden by the maxims of public morality, their very pleasures are liable to become poisoned fountains. [ Orville Dewey ]

Today it is all of sixty years since I began to smoke the limit. I have never bought cigars with life-belts around them. I early found that those were too expensive for me: I have always bought cheap cigars - reasonably cheap, at any rate. Sixty years ago they cost me four dollars a barrel, but my taste has improved, latterly, and I pay seven, now. Six or seven. Seven, I think. Yes; it's seven. But that includes the barrel. I often have smoking-parties at my house; but the people that come have always just taken the pledge. I wonder why that is? [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]

Why has the beneficent Creator scattered over the face of the earth such a profusion of beautiful flowers? Why is it that every landscape has its appropriate flowers, every nation its national flowers, every rural home its home flowers? Why do flowers enter and shed their perfume over every scene of life, from the cradle to the grave? Why are flowers made to utter all voices of joy and sorrow in all varying scenes? It is that flowers have in themselves a real and natural significance; they have a positive relation to man; they correspond to actual emotions; they have their mission - a mission of love and mercy; they have their language, and from the remotest ages this language has found its interpreters. [ Henrietta Dumont ]