Unreasonable Life Quotes & Sayings

Great things often come from actions and decisions taken by others, that are deemed wild, stupid or unreasonable at the time, but later prove to be very useful. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

It is easy to be disgruntled if you are denied rights and freedoms to which you feel entitled. But if you are not coherent, if you cannot put into words what it is that displeases you and why it is unfair and should change, then you are dismissed as an unreasonable whiner. You may be lectured about perseverance and patience, life as a test, the need to accept the higher wisdom of others. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

As long as you're better at it than skating ... , Anna said and stood up too. She wanted to say more, but that wasn't possible because he was kissing her. Reasonable Anna wanted to draw back the danger of touch. But unreasonable Anna welcomed the kiss like happiness. Maybe, she thought, it's better to take these moments when you get them - there might not be too many in life. — Antonia Michaelis

The twins were loitering over their cereal, and Mrs. Walpole, with one eye on the clock and the other on the kitchen window past which the school bus would come in a matter of minutes, felt the unreasonable irritation that comes with being late on a school morning, the wading-through-molasses feeling of trying to hurry children. — Shirley Jackson

Greatness is best measured by how well an individual responds to the happenings in life that appear to be totally unfair, unreasonable, and undeserved. — Marvin J. Ashton

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait. — G.K. Chesterton

It is unreasonable ... to oblige a man not to attempt the defense of his own life. — Baron De Montesquieu

So now you must choose ... Are you a child who has not yet become world-weary? Or are you a philosopher who will vow never to become so? To children, the world and everything in it is new, something that gives rise to astonishment. It is not like that for adults. Most adults accept the world as a matter of course. This is precisely where philosophers are a notable exception. A philosopher never gets quite used to the world. To him or her, the world continues to seem a bit unreasonable - bewildering, even enigmatic. Philosophers and small children thus have an important faculty in common. The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder ... — Jostein Gaarder

Two key leadership excellence values worth focusing on separately are being principle-centred and being consistent. The complimentary construction of these leadership fibres can easily be misconstrued for unreasonable stubbornness, yet they form the backbone of strong, effective transformational leadership. In building the legacy advocated for, in leadership excellence brands, you must sharpen the practice of these leadership values in every area of your life. — Archibald Marwizi

Emotional baggage, which is carried over from the past, colors our perceptions. Likewise, past conclusions and beliefs, based on reasoning that may or may not have been accurate, also tint our perception of reality. Retaining our capacity for reason is common sense, but definite conclusions and beliefs keep us from seeing life as it really is at any given moment.
Emotional reactions can be unreasonable, and reason can be flawed. It's difficult to have deep confidence in either one, especially when they're often at war with each other. But the universal mind exists in the instant, in a moment beyond time, and it sees the universe as it literally is. It's the universe perceiving itself. It is, moreover, something we can have absolute confidence in, and with that confidence, we can maintain a genuinely positive attitude. — H.E. Davey

It is not sufficient to live, there must be a destiny that does not have to wait for death. It is therefore
justifiable to say that man has an idea of a better world than this. But better does not mean different, it
means unified. This passion which lifts the mind above the commonplaces of a dispersed world, from
which it nevertheless cannot free itself, is the passion for unity. It does not result in mediocre efforts to
escape, however, but in the most obstinate demands. Religion or crime, every human endeavor in fact,
finally obeys this unreasonable desire and claims to give life a form it does not have. The same impulse,
which can lead to the adoration of the heavens or the destruction of man, also leads to creative literature,
which derives its serious content from this source. — Albert Camus

The gospel is so valuable that no risk is unreasonable. Life is gained by laying it down for the gospel. If I live, I win and get to keep on preaching Christ. If I die, I win bigger by going directly to be with Christ... — David Sitton

One of the great tragedies of life, it seems to me, is when a person classifies himself as someone who has no talents or gifts. When, in disgust or discouragement, we allow ourselves to reach depressive levels of despair because of our demeaning self-appraisal, it is a sad day for us and a sad day in the eyes of God. For us to conclude that we have no gifts when we judge ourselves by stature, intelligence, grade-point average, wealth, power, position, or external appearance is not only unfair but unreasonable. — Marvin J. Ashton

I know, Ezra, that I tend to be a bit impulsive at times, but it all seems so reasonable at the time I do these things, and so unreasonable when everyone looks back at what happened and what I did — L.A. Meyer

Like King Midas, I am left with nothing
but this unreasonable hope
that, somehow, my strange life
and my lost family
will return
to normal. — Margarita Engle

It is unreasonable to think we can earn rewards without being willing to pay their true price. It is always our choice whether or not we wish to pay the price for life's rewards. — Epictetus

You need to challenge your fear of life becoming unreasonable - because it is already unreasonable. In truth, your life has never been reasonable, it's just that you keep hoping tomorrow will be different and that you will find a way to bring more control into your world. Recognize that life will always be full of challenges and crisis. The wise way is not to attempt to find one path that promises you will never have to endure the pain of loss and illness, but instead to learn how to endure and transcend when unreasonable events come your way. Learning to defy gravity in your world - to think, perceive, and act at the mystical level of consciousness - is the greatest gift you can give yourself, because it is the gift of truth. And as we are bound to learn again and again in this life, the truth does indeed set us free. — Caroline Myss

There is nothing more dangerous or more plentiful in all the world than unreasonable men of greed that preach an intolerant ideology and are full of a self-esteeming and illogical moral creed. — Tonny K. Brown

The fatal errors of life are not due to man's being unreasonable: an unreasonable moment may be one's finest moment. They are due to man's being logical. — Oscar Wilde

It would not be more unreasonable to transplant a favorite flower out of black earth into gold dust than it is for a person to let money-getting harden his heart into contempt, or into impatience, of the little attentions, the merriments and the caresses of domestic life. — William Mountford

Be patient with yourself. Perfection comes not in this life, but in the next life. Don't demand things that are unreasonable, but demand of yourself improvement. As you let the Lord help you through that, He will make the difference. — Russell M. Nelson

Diversity of opinion in religious belief and its mode is not incompatible with equal possession of the essentials of pure faith, nor at variance with the divine purpose. If an analogy exists between the growth we observe in the vegetable kingdom and that of the intellectual, we should expect to find the same variety in the expression of human belief that we seek in the development of tree and flower. Every tree is not an oak, nor every flower a rose, but each tree and flower is the expression in form and colour of its own inner life. In the same manner the mind was intended to be free to develop according to its own light, and any attempt to coerce it into a defined groove is an interference with the natural order of things. To condemn those who in matters of religion do not conform to our standards is, therefore, as unreasonable as to find fault with an oak tree because it is not an elm. — John Daniel

Unreasonable is very relative. — Lakshmi Pratury

I have long believed that Israel should seek to give up the so-called Occupied Territories in return for security, and that a Palestinian state should be established. I have felt that way all my life. I think it is unreasonable to ask the Israelis to do this in a context where there is no guarantee at all that suicide bombers will be controlled. — Russ Feingold

Of the four billion life forms which have existed on this planet, three billion, nine hundred and sixty million are now extinct. We don't know why. Some by wanton extinction, some through natural catastrophe, some destroyed by meteorites and asteroids. In the light of these mass extinctions it really does seem unreasonable to suppose that Homo sapiens should be exempt. Our species will have been one of the shortest-lived of all, a mere blink, you may say, in the eye of time. — P.D. James

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. — George Bernard Shaw

'There is no completeness; nothing endures, nothing lives; there is only change, unreasoning unreasonable; only birth and death repeating the same story each time, yet different; why?' The voice laughed
'Why you know already; look in your hands. — Vikram Chandra

Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does. — David Chalmers

This is precisely where philosophers are a notable exception. A philosopher never gets quite used to the world. to him or her, the world continues to seem a bit unreasonable - bewildering, even enigmatic. Philosophers and small children thus have an important faculty in common. You might say that throughout his life a philosopher remains as thin-skinned as a child. — Jostein Gaarder

Given that there is every indication I'll be checking the single box on all official forms from now until I'm dead, hopefully at the ripe old age of 98 like Grandma Sanders, an unreasonable number of cats seems to be the next logical step in my life. — Lindsey Stuffel

It is surely unreasonable to credit that only one small star in the immensity of the universe is capable of developing and supporting intelligent life. But we shall not get to them and they will not come to us. — P.D. James

What is there unreasonable in admitting the intervention of a supernatural power in the most ordinary circumstances of life? — Jules Verne

Can you understand why the Congress, most states and most cities refuse to pass legislation requiring the registration and licensing of any and all guns? For the life of me, I can't. We must register our cars and be licensed to drive. In many places we must get licenses for dogs and even bicycles. Being required to register firearms and show the competence and capacity to handle them hardly seems unreasonable, hardly seems an infringement of freedom. What is it that blocks such legislation? Why do they block it? How are they able to block it? — Malcolm Forbes

... man has an idea of a better world than this. But better does not mean different, it means unified ... Religion or crime, every human endeavor in fact, finally obeys this unreasonable desire and claims to give life a form it does not have. — Albert Camus

Each era invents its own child. Over the past 500 years, conceptions of the child changed gradually from an ill-formed adult who must be subjugated to society's goals to a precious being who must be protected from unreasonable social demands. Childhood has come to be seen as a special period of life, rather than as a temporary state of no lasting importance for adulthood. — Sandra Scarr

Privacy is a protection from the unreasonable use of state and corporate power. But that is, in a sense, a secondary thing. In the first instance, privacy is the statement in words of a simple understanding, which belongs to the instinctive world rather than the formal one, that some things are the province of those who experience them and not naturally open to the scrutiny of others: courtship and love, with their emotional nakedness; the simple moments of family life; the appalling rawness of grief. That the state and other systems are precluded from snooping on these things is important - it is a strong barrier between the formal world and the hearth, extended or not - but at root privacy is a simple understanding: not everything belongs to everyone. — Nick Harkaway

But can I say, now that she is dead, long dead that I only half believed in her. I wanted, I needed her to revolt. I know, revolutions take vast energy like volcanic eruptions. I know. And the sick must husband their resources even as they are resourceful for their husbands. But I couldn't help wanting for her, couldn't help the feeling that she'd given in, that she had measured out with coffee spoons what it was that she might ask of life and having found it lacking, tragically, gapingly lacking, had decided none-the-less to accept her modest share. I wanted her ignoble, irresponsible, unreasonable, petty, grasping, fucking greedy for the lot of it, jostling and spitting and clawing for every grain of life. — Claire Messud

We place such demands on our partners, and become so unreasonable around them, because we have faith that someone who understands obscure parts of us, whose presence solves so many of our woes, must somehow also be able to fix everything about our lives. We exaggerate the other's powers in a curious sort of homage - heard in adult life decades down the line - to a small child's awe at their own parents' apparently miraculous capacities. To — Alain De Botton

Drug companies should not be allowed to reap excessive profits or spend unreasonable amounts on marketing if they want to receive support that is designed to encourage life- saving and health-improving treatments. — Hillary Clinton

[On the ancient Venus figurines:] If the central religious figure was a woman giving birth and not, as in our time, a man dying on a cross, it would not be unreasonable to infer that life and the love of life - rather than death and the fear of death - were dominant in society as well as art. — Riane Eisler

There is no such thing as an unreasonable question, or a silly question, or a frivolous question, or a waste-of-time question. It's your life, and you've got to get these answers. — Marcia Wallace

[On married love]
This love is above all fully human, a compound of sense and spirit. It is not, then, merely a question of natural instinct or emotional drive. It is also, and above all, an act of the free will, whose trust is such that it is meant not only to survive the joys and sorrows of daily life, but also to grow, so that husband and wife become in a way one heart and one soul, and together attain their human fulfillment.
It is a love which is total - that very special form of personal friendship in which husband and wife generously share everything, allowing no unreasonable exceptions and not thinking solely of their own convenience. Whoever really loves his partner loves not only for what he receives, but loves that partner for the partner's own sake, content to be able to enrich the other with the gift of himself. — Pope Paul VI

In fact, when we listen to the church today, at least in the West, we are often left with impression that Christianity actually has very little to do with truth. Christianity is only about feeling better about ourselves, about leaping over our difficulties, about being more satisfied, about have better relationships, about getting on with our mothers-in-law, about understanding teenage rebellion, about coping with our unreasonable bosses, about finding greater sexual satisfaction, about getting rich, about receiving our own private miracles, and much else besides. It is about everything except truth. And yet this truth, personally embodied in Christ, gives us a place to stand in order to deal with the complexities of life, such as broken relations, teenage rebellion, and job insecurities. — David F. Wells

Architects spend an entire life with this unreasonable idea that you can fight against gravity. — Renzo Piano

Mr. Ellison is that unreasonable man that possesses the ostranenie effect-- he has a keen eye to see the simplest things and make them profound, and make simple minded people see deeply into mundane topics- bringing a philosophical charm to even politics.

No man, not even a semi-god lived an entire life without making a mistake and the fact that Mr. Ellison has lived a life so grandiose with such few errors, is a testament and a plaque to the big person he is. — Avra Amar Filion

Sometimes sorrow, sometimes joy. But beneath it all remember the innate perfection of your life unfolding. That is the secret of unreasonable happiness. — Dan Millman

Time will prolong time, and life will serve life. In this field that is both limited and bulging with possibilities, everything to himself, except his lucidity, seems unforeseeable to him. What rule, then, could emanate from that unreasonable order? The only truth that might seem instructive to him is not formal: it comes to life and unfolds in men. The absurd mind cannot so much expect ethical rules at the end of its reasoning as, rather, illustrations and the breath of human lives. — Albert Camus

In human life there is constant change of fortune; and it is unreasonable to expect an exemption from the common fate. Life itself decays, and all things are daily changing. — Plutarch

I think a lot of people have unreasonable expectations because they never stop to consider what life actually has to offer them. They're always looking for some great epiphany from the skies. They never stop to consider the fact which human beings find hardest to recognize: Maybe I'm not worthy of an epiphany. — Robertson Davies

In her more lucid moments, she knew that half her life had been sacrificed to safeguard her secret heart, to appease that unreasonable, mortal dread she suffered of being suddenly revealed to others in a nakedness of spirit that terrified her more than the concept of God's own retribution itself. — Raymond Kennedy

Gilbert would never have dreamed of writing a sonnet to her eyebrows. But then, Gilbert could see a joke. She had once told Roy a funny story - and he had not seen the point of it. She recalled the chummy laugh she and Gilbert had had together over it, and wondered uneasily if life with a man who had no sense of humor might not be somewhat uninteresting in the long run. But who could expect a melancholy, inscrutable hero to see the humorous side of things? It would be flatly unreasonable. — L.M. Montgomery

- But, if life is just that, just being reasonable, then there is nothing in it - nothing worthwhile. So, the yearning that we have to keep dead things living - or to make unreasonable things reasonable. That is why a person should live. — Jesse Ball

Everyone with any sense and experience in life would rather take his fellows one by one than in a crowd. Crowds are noisy, unreasonable and impatient. They can trample you easier than a single person can. And a crowd will never buy you lunch. — P. J. O'Rourke

The reason for such an "unreasonable" attitude with me is that I am not at all sure what will happen to me after death. I have good reasons to assume that things are not finished with death. Life seems to be an interlude in a long story. — Carl Jung

There is, indeed, a viewpoint from which this "rationalization" of life is not rational. The brain is clever enough to see the vicious circle which it has made for itself. But it can do nothing about it. Seeing that it is unreasonable to worry does not stop worrying; rather, you worry the more at being unreasonable. — Alan W. Watts

The more reasonable a student was in mathematics, the more unreasonable she was in the affairs of real life, concerning which fewtrustworthy postulates have yet been ascertained. — George Bernard Shaw

After a while, meaning and implication detach themselves from everything. One can be a father and assume no obligations, it follows that one can be a boyfriend and do nothing at all. Pretty soon you can add friend, acquaintance, co-worker, and just about anyone else to the long list of people who seem to be part of your life, though there is no code of conduct that they must adhere to. Pretty soon, it seems unreasonable to be bothered or outraged by much of anything because, well, what did you expect? In a world where the core social unit - the family - is so dispensable, how much can anything else mean? — Elizabeth Wurtzel

Rousseau had it backwards. We are NOT born free. We are born in the chains of the random and the reflexive, and are ignorant and unreasonable by simple nature. We must learn to be free, to organize the random and detect the reflexive, to acquire the knowledge of particulars and the powers of reason. The examined life is impossible if we cannot examine, order, classify, define, distinguish, always in minute particulars. — Richard Mitchell

In the ordinary affairs of life we do not require nor expect demonstrative evidence, because it is inconsistent with the nature of matters of fact, and to insist on its production would be unreasonable and absurd. — Simon Greenleaf