Whys Quotes & Sayings

"What is it with people these days?" he hisses ... "In my day, something just was. None of this analysis a hundred times over. None of these college courses with people graduating with degrees in Whys and Hows and Becauses. Sometimes, love, you just need to forget all of those words and enroll in a little lesson called 'Thank You.'" — Cecelia Ahern

I Keep Six Honest Serving Men ..."

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.

I let them rest from nine till five,
For I am busy then,
As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,
For they are hungry men.

But different folk have different views;
I know a person small -
She keeps ten million serving-men,
Who get no rest at all!

She sends'em abroad on her own affairs,
From the second she opens her eyes -
One million Hows, two million Wheres,
And seven million Whys! — Rudyard Kipling

Sometimes that whys aren't knowable, so you just have to ignore the whys, and just focus on what is and move on. — Carrie Jones

The whys and wherefores didn't need to be said. If you are reading this have ever loved someone, you will understand. Putting it into words is useless. The uninitiated cannot understand the mysterious. — Jose Rizal

To me the mountain mass lies nobly mute,
The whences and the whys I don't dispute.
When Nature by and in herself was founded,
In purity the earthen sphere she rounded.
In summit and in gorge did pleasure seek,
And threaded cliff to cliff and peak to peak;
Then did she fashion sloping hills at peace
And gently down into the vale release.
All greens and grows, and to her gay abundance
Your swirling lunacies are sheer redundance. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Before we have the complete solution of the whys and wherefores of herding and flocking and schooling, there must be a great deal of uncomfortable climbing and diving, hiding in unpleasant places, getting wet and hot and cramped and weary. — William Beebe

Wasted tries, The many whys, Is it the soul of Compromise?
Lows and highs, Believing in lies, In life we have to improvise.
Frustration and cries, The last leg of sighs, You are the dreamer in disguise!
To the guilt say goodbyes, Open your eyes, Your soul - I do so recognize. — Julieanne O'Connor

I'm sad. Pressed down by sorrow. I'm angry. Pissed at God, if there is one, and the way things are. I'm scared. Confused by the whys. Why are we here? Is there, really, some intelligent design? Why do we cry for someone who leaves us if there's some Grand Pearly Gate in the sky? Why worry about how we build our lives if the ultimate ending for all is death, a single breath away? (358) — Ellen Hopkins

The standards of judgement must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the world as it is, not our wished-for fantasy of the world as it should be. — Saul D. Alinsky

As long as you remember the whys, the hows will take care of themselves. — Richard Paul Evans

We'd both been stripped of all the evasiveness, all the lies, everything we'd ever kept from each other. Layer by layer, we had given up our defenses and our excuses and our demands for whys and hows, and what was left were two broken beings. Clinging to one last shred of hope. Tethered to each other. — Brodi Ashton

Life comes with problems, you have to accept that. And you have to try to lead the simple life; to not constantly ask questions about the whys and the wherefores of everything. — Elizabeth Berg

When we get into the spirit world, and the veil is withdrawn, we shall then perhaps understand the whys and wherefores. — Wilford Woodruff

Sometimes God allows us to explore the 'whys' of His instructions. Other times He wants us to obey 'because He said so.' Has God asked you to obey in a specific matter that still awaits your obedient response? — Beth Moore

Don't let the whys have it. Don't let them take advantage of you. They'll crush your heart and steal your peace and mess with your mind and wrap around you so tight you won't be able to breathe. Don't le the whys ruin your life, child. Every time they try to sneak up, push them aside and move forward. — Amy Matayo

Until the end of the world,all whys will be answered,but now,you can only ask! — Bob Marley

I wanted to know why people follow rules blindly, or why girls had to act a certain way and boys didn't. Why could boys ask girls out and girls not ask guys out? Why did girls have to shave their legs and guys didn't? Why did society, like, set everything up the way they did? My whole adolescence was full of unanswered whys. Because they never got answered, I just kept lighting fires everywhere - metaphorically speaking. — Madonna Ciccone

I guess it means we don't understand everything, and we're not going to. Maybe the whys aren't answered here. Not because there aren't answers, but because we wouldn't understand the answers if we had them. Maybe there's a bigger purpose, a bigger picture that we only contribute a very small piece to. You know, like one of those thousand piece puzzles? There's no way you can tell by looking at one piece of the puzzle what the puzzle is going to look like in the end. And we don't have the picture on the outside of the puzzle box to guide us. Maybe everyone represents a piece of the puzzle. We all fit together to create this experience we call life. None of us can see the part we play or the way it all turns out. Maybe the miracles that we see are just the tip of the iceberg. And maybe we just don't recognize the blessings that come as a result of terrible things. — Amy Harmon

And so, what of it all? What of me and my passions and personas, my great loves and failures of love, my writing, my politics? What of the clanging opinions, the endless queries as to the whys and wherefores of how I chose to conduct myself? In the end, there is but one answer to every question, whether it is spit at me or made as gentlest inquiry: I was I. — Elizabeth Berg

There are no whys in a person's life, and very few hows. In the end, in search of useful wisdom, you could only come back to the most hackneyed concepts, like kindness, forbearance, infinite patience. Solomon and Lincoln: This too shall pass. Damn right it will. Or Chekhov: Nothing passes. Equally true. — Chad Harbach

In the mental calmness of a spiritual life, I have found that the answers to the whys in our lives are able to come to you. In my music I find the same thing. — Clarence Clemons

I find that a lot of my best character stuff and ideas come unwittingly from novels. In scripts, it's a lot about the outward signs of whatever's happening - you have the end result. Whereas in a novel you get a buildup of the whys and wherefores, and you're let into the backstory. — Alison Pill

I don't think we get answers to every question. We don't get all the whys. But I think when we look back to the end of our lives, if we do the best we can, and we will see that the things we begged God to take from us, the things we cursed him for, the things that made us turn our backs on him, are the things that were the biggest blessings, the biggest opportunities for growth. — Amy Harmon

The wise begin with whys." Everyone wants to be happy, healthy, and successful, but wanting is rarely an effective strategy for getting. Those who overcome the temptations of mediocrity and achieve everything they want in life have an extraordinarily compelling why that drives them. They — Hal Elrod

There are no whys or hows when it comes to the natural order of things. It just is. — Julie Kagawa

He did not want me to seek the whys, because there are some things that happen for which we can formulate no whys, for which whys simply do not exist and, perhaps, are not necessary. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Lord never makes a mistake. One day, when we are in heaven, I'm sure we shall see the answers to the whys. — Corrie Ten Boom

[T]he single answer to the 'whys' in life is God's sovereignty. — Norma Gail

I am used to going to and fro without much thought. Walking alone, I am used to never having a conversation about the whys, when's, and how's of getting from one side of a strett to the other.



But walking in twosome is different. It seems to require an ungodly amount of conversation. Because, it seems, James (my new husband) has a strategy for crossing roads, and a need to teach it to me. I did not know that; I did not know that my street-crossing skills were so in need of improvement. — Vivian Swift

People ask why my brother killed himself. "Why would such a gifted journalist, whose works have won all the prizes in the world, do such a thing?" "He had so many friends, why would he want to leave them?" "But what about all he had to live for?"
In a short space of time, I had a drawerful of articles wirtten by reporters pondering the death of one who, like them, made a living out of trying to sort out the truth, separating fact from conjecture. They were hell-bent on making sense out of this event.
When they phoned, I told them they were going to fail. I told them that the problem with suicide is that it is a senseless event. There is no why.
But of course that's wrong. There are numerous whys, though it's almost impossible, or unlikely that any single one of them is "the answer" that people want to hear. — Christopher Lukas

When we hold firmly to God's truth, work through the difficult issues and challenges, and become clear in our understanding of the whys and the wherefores, we can truly say, without fear and without embarrassment, "God has said this in His Holy Word. — James R. White

Love is a big knot of whys. — David Mitchell

His letters dwell on me. I carry them around because they are long and detailed, because they remind me of my worthiness, because they tug at my feelings. Some months ago, he wrote that he did not want me to seek the whys, because there are some things that happen for which we can formulate no whys, for which whys simply do not exist and, perhaps, are not necessary. He did not mention Papa - he hardly mentions Papa in his letters - but I knew what he meant, I understood that he was stirring what I was afraid to stir myself. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

There cannot be mental atrophy in any person who continues to observe, to remember what he observes, and to seek answers for his unceasing hows and whys about things. — Alexander Graham Bell

There are no whys to this, There are no becauses....
It just is this way. You upset me, you made me angry, you made me laugh, you made me love you. You sparked my emotions.
What more is there between two people?
Please Don't worry about right or wrong. Let's just see what the autumn brings. — Lisa Kusel

Focus forward, not around you.
In the moment;
Not behind you.
Don't grimace in the whys,
Relish in 'Yes-es;' - Be Positive ...
When you amplify the goods,
you'll see bads as infinitesimally minuscule.
Glorify and Cleanse ... first and foremost ,
YOUR perception.
#levitate — Tiffany Luard

There comes a point in everyone's life when the only thing you can manage to do is sit. To sit and stare. To sit and stare and wonder how everything got so messed up that you've passed the point of caring.

The Whys Have It — Amy Matayo

If you have answers to the "whys", it will direct you to the "hows". As simple as that! — Israelmore Ayivor

The foundation of data gathering is built on asking questions. Never limit the number of hows, whats, wheres, whens, whys and whos, as you are conducting an investigation. A good researcher knows that there will always be more questions than answers. — Karl Pippart III

Do you love yourself? The test is simple. Do you look at others and see anything besides another beautiful human being? Do you see somebody who is more beautiful or less beautiful than you? If so, look down a little deeper and ask yourself why. It may be painful. The whys usually are. Do it anyway. — Dan Pearce

So many whys, whats, whens, whos. Why had Master hurt her so badly? What did it mean? When was this phase over? Who would tell her what to do next? — Lucian Bane

Been to yesterdays,
lived through todays.
Looking on toward tomorrows -
new characters, new plays.
The whys of life change,
and so do ways,
new scenery is built,
to fill an empty stage. — Lee Bennett Hopkins

At first you might wonder what you did to deserve such treatment. Nothing, probably, so that doesn't matter. What matters is that, eventually, the abuse becomes the status quo. It's no longer about the whats and whys ("what did I do?" "why are they doing this?") but the whens and hows ("when are they going to do it?" "how are they going to get me?"). Persecution becomes inevitable, inescapable. And once you get into the victim mindset, you're fucked. The bullies don't even need to hurt you now; your poor, warped, pathetic brain is doing half the work for them. — Nenia Campbell

Heaven on Earth, we need it now
I'm sick of all of this hanging around
Sick of sorrow, sick of the pain
I'm sick of hearing again and again
That there's gonna be peace on Earth ...
... Tell the ones who hear no sound
Whose sons are living in the ground
Peace on Earth
No whos or whys
No one cries like a mother cries
For peace on Earth — U2

Oh aye. He's as dangerous as a sack of blackmark vipers. A right cunt and no mistake.'
The boy raised his eyebrows, mouth slightly agape.
Mia met his tare, scowling. 'What?'
'My mother said that's a filthy word,' Tric Frowned.
'The filthiest. She told me never to say it. Especially in front of dona.'
'O, really.' The girl took another pull on her cigarillo, eyes narrowed. 'And whys that?'
'I don't know.' Tric found himself mumbling. 'It's just what she said. — Jay Kristoff

We can't always know the whys and wherefores,' the old man said. 'A bird's given two wings, not four, because it can fly with two; so a man's not given to know everything, but only a half or a quarter. As much as he needs to know in order to live, so much he knows. — Anton Chekhov

Our situation on this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here involuntarily and uninvited for a short stay, without knowing the whys and the wherefore. — Albert Einstein

There is no doubt that religion had already waned under the onslaught of the Enlightenment, but it was Freud who provided the radically new understanding of human nature that made any religious explanation of the whats and whys of our personhood seem naive. — Tony Campolo

Like everything else, words have their whys and wherefores. Some call to us solemnly, arrogantly, giving themselves airs, as if they were destined for great things, and then it turns out that they were nothing more than a breeze too light even to set the sail of a windmill moving, whereas other ordinary, habitual words, the sort you use every day, end up having consequences no one would have dared predict, they weren't born for that and yet they shook the world. — Jose Saramago

Many aspects of life cannot be explained through logic or reason. The reasoning part of the mind simply doesn't have the capacity to understand the many whys and how's of being and non-being. — Frederick Lenz

It's a painful thing to look inside yourself and see the whys and the hows of your clockwork. — Tarryn Fisher

I struggle with the whys on my life. why her? why him? why me? I get frustrated with the things that are out of my control and I wonder why people don't deal with the things they can control. — Megan Bostic

We cannot 100 percent know the depth of another person's heart. We cannot know the whys and whats of his soul.

This idea could be sad, but it doesn't have to be. Instead of rendering human beings powerless, it could render them more compassionate. Knowing that the stranger who just bumped you in the hall or that the awkward loner who sits behind you in class each have a story, makes it easier to chose kindness - again, again, and again. — Chelsey Philpot

I took a hasty trip to Germany, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and England to talk to the officials of each Government about their pension provisions, and to talk to the responsible ministers in each country about the political "whys" of their legislation. — Judy LaMarsh

One never can know the whys and the wherefores of one's passional changes. — D.H. Lawrence

I should be at peace. I have understood. Don't some say that peace comes when you understand? I have understood. I should be at peace. Who said that peace derives from the contemplation of order, order understood, enjoyed, realized without residuum, in joy and truimph, the end of effort? All is clear, limpid; the eye rests on the whole and on the parts and sees how the parts have conspired to make the whole; it perceives the center where the lymph flows, the breath, the root of the whys ... — Umberto Eco

You can ask why all day long if you want to. You can ask God why and your friends why and yourself why until you're buried in nothing but that single question, but you'll never get an answer. This side of heaven, time is the only thing that helps a little bit. So don't give in. Don't let the whys have it. Don't let them take advantage of you. They'll crush your heart and steal your peace and mess with your mind and wrap around you so tight you won't be able to breathe. Don't let the whys ruin your life, child. Every time they try to sneak up, push them aside and move forward. Trust me, it's the only way you can get on with living. — Amy Matayo

There were no whys in a person's life, and very few hows. In the end, in search of useful wisdom, you could only come back to the most hackneyed concepts, like kindness, forbearance, infinite self patience. — Chad Harbach

A soldier lives . . . A soldier lives a soldier dies a military chaplain sighs a flag is folded someone cries a general tells the truth or lies a politician simplifies a voice vote echoes only ayes reporters ask for hows and whys a spokesman has to improvise some doctrine somehow still applies negotiators compromise or don't as one more soldier dies. - Robert West — Dave Eggers

Brendan stopped reading. The words had melted into a liquid blur ... In his possession was a box full of information that would likely fill in the gaps and help him to wrap his brain around the whys of her death. And yet, there was really only one question that mattered, and Tommy had already answered it. — Lynda Meyers