“A man may long for water in Sahara, but he doesn't always get it.”

A concise rebuttal of the idea that human longing proves the existence of what is longed for · Marginalia on Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm, c. 1889

• Belief
• Desire
• Reason

“Whatever he reads about textual criticism in books, or hears at lectures, he should test by reason and common sense.”

Advocating independent judgement rather than passive acceptance of authority · Lecture, The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism, 1921

• Criticism
• Independence
• Reason

“Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.”

A concise distinction between analysis and the perception of underlying relationships. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Imagination
• Reason
• Understanding

“The truth seems to be that we live in concepts of the imagination before the reason has established them.”

Gives imagination priority over reason in how life is first inhabited · Essay, Imagination as Value, in The Necessary Angel

• Imagination
• Reason
• Truth

“Between men there are only two relationships: logic or war.”

Original: Entre les hommes il n'existe que deux relations: la logique ou la guerre. — An extreme formulation of the tension between rational agreement and conflict. · Monsieur Teste (French)

• Conflict
• Reason
• Relationships

“The cold reasoner and the active mind are not necessarily opposed to each other.”

Resisting a simple opposition between rational thought and imaginative activity. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Ideas
• Mind
• Reason

“It is purely a matter of reason and of common sense.”

Rejecting unnecessary mystification in scholarly practice · Lecture, The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism, 1921

• Criticism
• Reason
• Simplicity

“We have followed the road of inductive reason, rightly enough for certain temporal purposes, and devoted ourselves to analytical methods, forgetting that the intellect and spirit of man have other faculties, nobler and more profound.”

Warning against the limits of purely analytical thought · Speech, Conference of Universities, 1933

• Knowledge
• Mind
• Reason

“Reason is sometimes transcended by Emotion—sufficiently often to prevent philosophers from deriding the idea that a truth may be reached emotionally.”

Feeling defended as a way of knowing, not a lapse from it · Letter to John Elder, October 1879

• Emotion
• Reason
• Truth

“The logic knows how to forge unassailable arguments which, nevertheless, do not convince. How easily precise conclusions are drawn from a false premise.”

Original: La lógica sabe fraguar razonamientos inatacables que, á pesar de todo, no convencen. ¡Con tanta facilidad se sacan deducciones precisas de una base falsa! — Bécquer warns that flawless reasoning cannot rescue a false starting point. · Letter IV, Cartas literarias a una mujer (Spanish)

• Logic
• Reason
• Truth

“The best riches of the earth are produced on its surface, and we need no reasoning to teach us the folly of a people who should leave its harvest ungathered to dig for its ores.”

A metaphor for recognising wisdom that lies plainly before us · Lecture, On the Nature of Poetry, 1825–26

• Metaphor
• Reason
• Wisdom

“The heart has its own reasons, and they are often wiser than the calculations of the understanding.”

Giving emotional intuition a dignity that purely rational judgement may lack. · Journal

• Emotion
• Heart
• Reason

“Poetry is the worst mask in the world behind which folly and stupidity could attempt to hide their features.”

A sharp warning that verse cannot conceal weak thinking · Lecture, On the Nature of Poetry, 1825–26

• Criticism
• Poetry
• Reason

“Whoever cannot attack the reasoning attacks the reasoner.”

Original: Qui ne peut attaquer le raisonnement, attaque le raisonneur. — A concise warning about personal attacks as a substitute for intellectual argument. · Tel quel (French)

• Argument
• Conflict
• Reason

“The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to nothing but error and confusion.”

Warning that detached abstraction can lose contact with the richness of lived experience. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Error
• Ideas
• Reason

“Reason is the enumeration of quantities already known; imagination is the perception of the value of those quantities, both separately and as a whole.”

Distinguishing analytical reason from the synthesising power of imagination. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Imagination
• Knowledge
• Reason

“Ask always for proofs; proof is the elementary politeness we owe one another.”

Original: Demandez toujours des preuves, la preuve est la politesse élémentaire qu'on se doit. — Evidence is treated not merely as a logical requirement but as a form of respect between people. · Monsieur Teste (French)

• Courtesy
• Evidence
• Reason

“We may demand the credentials of every creed and catechise all the catechisms.”

Arguing for the right to examine inherited beliefs critically · Religious reflections quoted in the memoir

• Reason
• Religion
• Scepticism

“The difference between an icicle and a red-hot poker is really much slighter than the difference between truth and falsehood or sense and nonsense.”

Using a physical contrast to dramatise the gulf between sound and unsound reasoning · Lecture, The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism, 1921

• Imagery
• Reason
• Truth

“Belief in the future life is the appetite of reason.”

Reason's desire for an afterlife · Conversation / essay (as commonly attributed)

• Belief
• Future
• Reason

“To write fine poetry requires intellectual faculties of the highest order, and among these, not the least important, is the faculty of reason.”

Rejecting the idea that poetry belongs to feeling alone · Lecture, On the Nature of Poetry, 1825–26

• Mind
• Poetry
• Reason

“We oftener say things because we can say them well, than because they are sound and reasonable.”

Eloquence can outweigh truth in speech · Conversation / essay (as commonly attributed)

• Reason
• Speech
• Wit

“Coherence is that principle which groups related parts together and keeps unrelated parts removed from one another.”

Describing coherence as the orderly relationship of a work’s constituent parts · Essay, Literary Composition

• Reason
• Structure
• Writing

“No reasoning allows or accounts for these moments.”

Recognising experiences of profound perception that seem to exceed rational explanation. · A Defence of Idealism

• Experience
• Mystery
• Reason