Reasons Quotes (page 153)
And most likely, that was the future in a nutshell, Sumire growing ever more distant. It made me sad. I felt like I was a meaningless bug clinging for no special reason to a high stone wall on a windy night, with no plans, no beliefs. Sumire said she missed me. But she had Miu beside her. I had no one. all I had was-me. Same as always.
Haruki Murakami
It is not seldom the case that when a man is browbeaten in some unprecedented and violently unreasonable way, he begins to stagger in hisown plainest faith. He begins, as it were, vaguely to surmise that, wonderfulas it may be, all the justice and all the reason is on the other side. Accordingly, if any disinterested persons are present, he turns to themfor some reinforcement for his own faltering mind.
Herman Melville
Fictions are necessary for the people, and the Truth becomes deadly to those who are not strong enough to contemplate it in all its brilliance. In fact, what can there be in common between the vile multitude and sublime wisdom? The Truth must be kept secret, and the masses need a teaching proportioned to their imperfect reason.
Albert Pike
Autopsychography. The poet is a man who feigns. And feigns so thoroughly, at last. He manages to feign as pain. The pain he really feels, And those who read what once he wrote. Feel clearly, in the pain they read, Neither of the pains he felt, Only a pain they cannot sense. And thus, around its jolting track. There runs, to keep our reason busy, The circling clockwork train of ours. That men agree to call a heart.
Fernando Pessoa
Lord Chesterfield said that since he had had the full use of his reason nobody had heard him laugh. I don't suppose you have read Lord Chesterfield's 'Letters To His Son'?
...Well, of course I hadn't. Bertram Wooster does not read other people's letters. If I were employed in the post office I wouldn't even read the postcards.
P. G. Wodehouse