Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

I always have a reason for why I do something.

Why not? That's a good reason for almost anything - a bit used perhaps, but still quite serviceable.

I have found you an argument; I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

Anything I do, I always have a reason for.

An explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.

To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.

People need meanings to everything. People want you to intellectualize every choice you make.

Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness?

Have a very good reason for everything you do.

If it doen't make sense, you should find for the defense.

Everything is reason. If you don't have reason, you have nothing.

Opinion is something wherein I go about to give reasons why all the world should think as I think.

But they were wrong. There was a reason.

It's not enough to say I'm sorry. You have to also mean it. It's the same with saying I'm single.

Do you love the truth more than you need to be loved, or do you need to be loved more than you love the truth?

Like all Holmes' reasoning, the thing seemed simplicity itself when it was once explained. Dr. Watson, speaking of Sherlock Holmes.

The two important facts I should say, are emotion, and then words arising from emotion. I don't think you can write in an emotionless way. If you attempt it, the result is artificial. I don't like that kind of writing. I think that if a poem is really great, you should think of it as having written itself despite the author. It should flow.

I always try to write about something that's actually happened or it doesn't always have to have happened to me, but it has to have happened at some point. So every single lyric that you hear comes from some kind of story that I've come across in my life. I like to think that that maybe helps me mean it a bit more and if you don't mean it, it ceases to be soul music.

Tell me why.” My voice shook. “Tell me right now.

To disparage the dictate of reason is equivalent to contemning the command of God.

Naturalness is the easiest thing in the world to acquire, if you will forget yourself-forget about the impression you are trying to make.

When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

I prefer true over happy now.

me: you know what sucks about love? o.w.g.: what? me: that it's so tied to the truth. I know it sucks, but in a way, it's good....Love and truth being tied together, I mean. They make each other possible, you know?

Riposte of "that old lady in the anecdote who was accused by her nieces of being illogical," Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish! How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?