Knowing Why Quotes

When the meaning of life has been suppressed, there still remains life. "I live," says Ivan, "in spite of logic." And again: "If I no longer had any faith in life, if I doubted a woman I loved, or the universal order of things, if I were persuaded, on the contrary, that everything was only an infernal and accursed chaos - even then I would want to live." Ivan will live,
then, and will love as well "without knowing why." But to live is also to act. To act in the name of what?
If there is no immortality, then there is neither reward nor punishment. "I believe that there is no virtue
without immortality." And also: "I only know that suffering exists, that no one is guilty, that everything is
connected, that everything passes away and equals out." But if there is no virtue, there is no law:
"Everything is permitted. ~ Albert Camus

Things that we do without knowing why are we doing them are usually the best things that we do. ~ Minhal Mehdi

He locked gazes with her. "I have to wonder why you aren't being straight with me. I hate getting myself killed without knowing why. ~ B. J. Daniels

Leadership is knowing what to do next, knowing why that's important, and knowing how to bring the appropriate resources to bear on the need at hand. ~ Bobb Biehl

To paraphrase the philosopher Nietzsche, he who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how. I've found that 20 percent of any change is knowing how; but 80 percent is knowing why. If we gather a set of strong enough reasons to change, we can change in a minute something we've failed to change for years. ~ Tony Robbins

The true voyagers are those who go for the sake of traveling ... and without quite knowing why, they say, 'Let us depart!'. ~ Charles Baudelaire

Why ask? Why doubt what you cannot help knowing? Why use words when words cannot express what one feels? ~ Leo Tolstoy

The children laughing without knowing why - isn't that beautiful? ~ Milan Kundera

If we have faith, then we can see the beauty around us. If we don't then we are just blind followers, not knowing why we are on the path. ~ Fennel Hudson

I've become to realize there's a world of difference between knowing something happened, even knowing why it happened, and believing it. ~ Gayle Forman

I write because I don't know why I write. ~ Marty Rubin

When we think of friends, and call their faces out of the shadows, and their voices out of the echoes that faint along the corridors of memory, and do it without knowing why save that we love to do it, we content ourselves that that friendship is a Reality, and not a Fancy
that it is builded upon a rock, and not upon the sands that dissolve away with the ebbing tides and carry their monuments with them. ~ Mark Twain

I think in the bullpen you can tell during your warmups, if you have a good feel for it. But anything can happen once you get into a game. Sometimes you just wind up throwing it better than ever before one day without knowing why. ~ Barry Zito

One reason why so many people are unhappy, not knowing why, is that they have burdened their minds with resentments. These evil thoughts pile right on top of happier and generous ones and smother them so that they never get expression. Resentments are a form of hate ... What a dearth of good will and co-operation there are among human beings and nations! What a world this would be if we all worked together, and as a popular diplomat recently expressed it-played together! ~ George Matthew Adams

I think she is growing up, and so begins to dream dreams, and have hopes and fears and fidgets, without knowing why or being able to explain them. ~ Louisa May Alcott

These educated parents subjected the poor five-year old girl to every possible torture. They beat her, flogged her, kicked her, not knowing why themselves, until her whole body was nothing but bruises; finally they attained the height of finesse: in the freezing cold, they locked her all night in the outhouse, because she wouldn't ask to get up and go in the middle of the night (as if a five-year-old child sleeping its sound angelic sleep could have learned to ask by that age)--for that they smeared her face with her excrement and made her eat the excrement, and it was her mother, her mother who made her! And this mother could sleep while her poor little child was moaning all night in that vile place! Can you understand that a small creature, who cannot even comprehend what is being done to her, in a vile place, in the dark and the cold, beats herself on her strained little chest with her tiny fist and weeps with her anguished, gentle, meek tears for 'dear God' to protect her--can you understand such nonsense, my friend and my brother, my godly and humble novice, can you understand why this nonsense is needed and created? Without it, they say, man could not even have lived on earth, for he would not have known good and evil. Who wants to know this damned good and evil at such a price? The whole world of knowledge is not worth the tears of that little child to 'dear God.' I'm not talking about the suffering of grown-ups, they ate the apple and to hell with them, let the devil ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Warrior of the Light views life with tenderness and determination. He stands before a mystery, whose solution he will one day find. Every so often, he says to himself: "This life is absolutely insane." He is right. In surrendering to the miracle of the everyday, he notices that he cannot always foresee the consequences of his actions. Sometimes he acts without even knowing that he is doing so, he saves someone without even knowing he is saving them, he suffers without even knowing why he is sad. Yes, life is insane. But the great wisdom of the Warrior lies in choosing his insanity wisely. ~ Paulo Coelho

At the age of 15, a teacher had asked me what I wanted to do for a career, and without knowing why or even how I replied that I wanted to be a poet. ~ Ama Ata Aidoo

We need to respect the fact that it is possible to know without knowing why we know and accept that - sometimes - we're better off that way. 1. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

Knowing why you're doing something provides the inspiration and motivation to give the extra perspiration needed to persevere when things go south..
..Purpose provides the ultimate glue that can help you stick to the path you've set. When what you do matches your purpose, your life just feels in rhythm, and the path you beat with your feet seems to match the sound in your head and heart. Live with purpose and don't be surprised if you actually hum more and even whistle while you work. ~ Gary Keller

Not all of the women were influenced by the pheromones, but enough of them were to elevate the findings to robust statistical significance and to demonstrate with fair firmness that human pheromones exist. What we see in this carefully controlled experiment is that women can push and women can pull, and they can respond to other women in varying ways, all unconsciously, without knowing why, without the benefit even of olfaction, for the women in the study said they smelled nothing when the swab was applied under their nose, save for the scent of rubbing alcohol used as a prep in the experiment. ~ Natalie Angier

She had my back, supported me. This is the role of the mother, and in that visit I really saw clearly, and for the first time, why a mother is really important. Not just because she feeds and also loves and cuddles and even mollycoddles a child, but because in an interesting and maybe an eerie and unworldly way, she stands in the gap. She stands between the unknown and the known. In Stockholm, my mother shed her protective love down around me and without knowing why people sensed that I had value. I ~ Maya Angelou

That you don't make war without knowing why. ~ Tim O'Brien

Lena." Alex's voice is stronger, more forceful now, and it finally stops me.
He turns so that we're face-to-face. At that moment my shoes skim off the sand
bottom, and I realize that the water is lapping up to my neck. The tide is coming
in fast. "Listen to me. I'm not who - I'm not who you think I am."
I have to fight to stand. All of a sudden the currents tug and pull at me. It's
always seemed this way. The tide goes out a slow drain, comes back in a rush.
"What do you mean?"
His eyes - shifting gold, amber, an animal's eyes - search my face, and
without knowing why, I'm scared again. "I was never cured," he says. For a
moment I close my eyes and imagine I've misheard him, imagine I've only
confused the shushing of the waves for his voice. But when I open my eyes he's
still standing there, staring at me, looking guilty and something else - sad,
maybe? - and I know I heard correctly. He says, "I never had the procedure."
"You mean it didn't work?" I say. My body is tingling, going numb, and I
realize then how cold it is. "You had the procedure and it didn't work? Like what
happened to my mom?"
"No, Lena. I - " He looks away, squinting, says under his breath, "I don't
know how to explain. ~ Lauren Oliver

Literally, no man ever sees himself as others see him. No photograph or reflection ever gives us the same slant on ourselves that others see. It has often been proved on the witness stand that no two people ever see the same accident precisely the same way. We see through different eyes and from different angles. But if we could see things as other people see them, we could come closer to knowing why they do what they do and why they say what they say. ~ Richard L. Evans

The shock caused by the fall of a careless word displaces that against which it strikes. At times it happens, without our knowing why, that because we have received an almost imperceptible blow from a chance word, the heart insensibly empties itself of love. He who loves, perceives a decline in his happiness. There is nothing more to be dreaded than this slow exudation from the fissure in the vase. ~ Victor Hugo

He still thinks that knowing why might help. He doesn't yet know that the reason will never be good enough. ~ Ally Condie

We may feel in control, but we never truly are unless we understand people. Controlling our environment is no longer about blocking the wind, it's about knowing why the serving lady was crying last night, or why a particular guard always loses at cards. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Knowing what we feel is the first step to knowing why we feel that way. If ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

She closed the distance between them and gave him a tentative hug. He was liberally cologned, with a scent that incited bewildering memories. She circled him, not knowing why. She had only met him a few weeks back, yet tonight, something about him triggered old memories, of a time, a person.
Maybe not.
What she did know, he lacked that special ingredient that moved her. Dull as ditch water. He was sufficiently polite, but that was about all she could say. –Michael Benzehabe, from the novel Unassimilated ~ Michael Ben Zehabe

I ran through the streets as though I were running away from a nightmare, running faster and faster toward the Inner City, not knowing why I was running in that direction, since to get home I would have had to go in the opposite direction, but perhaps I did not want to go home. If only I'd spent this winter in London! I said to myself. It was four in the morning, and I was running in the direction of the Inner City when I should have been going home. I should have stayed in London at all costs, I told myself, and I kept on running in the direction of the Inner City, without knowing why, and I told myself that London had always brought me happiness and Vienna unhappiness, and I went on running, running, running, as though now, in the eighties, I was once more running away from the fifties, running into the eighties, the dangerous, benighted, mindless eighties, and again it struck me that instead of going to this tasteless artistic dinner I ought to have read my Gogol or my Pascal or my Montaigne, and as I ran it seemed to me that I was running away from the Auersberger nightmare, and with ever greater energy I ran away from the Auersberger nightmare and toward the Inner City, and as I ran I reflected that the city through which I was running, dreadful though I had always felt it to be and still felt it to be, was still the best city there was, that Vienna, which I found detestable and had always found detestable, was suddenly once again the best city in the world, my own city, ~ Thomas Bernhard

Not knowing why is, itself, a profound type of suffering. ~ Emily Nagoski

I'm not trying to be a poet on Twitter; I'm trying to be aware of the fact that a very simple sentence, well written, can have a very moving effect without that person knowing why. There's a deep genetic part of you that somehow, even without your permission, recognizes good language when it arrives. ~ Teju Cole

Locksley? It was. The fall of pale hair, the set of wide shoulders, the posture of his body. Unmistakable. She knew him instantly. And knew, without knowing why, that she would always know him. ~ Jennifer Roberson

Tell me something, old friend: why are you fighting?"
What other reason could there be?" Colonel Gerineldo Marquez answered. "For the great Liberal party."
You're lucky because you know why," he answered. "As far as I'm concerned, I've come to realize only just now that I'm fighting because of pride."
That's bad," Colonel Gerineldo Marquez said.
Colonel Aureliano Buendia was amused at his alarm. "Naturally," he said. "But in any case, it's better than not knowing why you're fighting." He looked him in the eyes and added with a smile:
Or fighting, like you, for something that doesn't have any meaning for anyone. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The truth is this: We always have sure and sufficient reasons for knowing why we can trust God, but do not always know what God is doing and why. ~ Os Guinness

Something else that puzzles me about other people is that a lot of them don't know their purpose in life. This usually does bother them - more than not being able to remember being born, anyway - but I can't even imagine it. Part of knowing who I am is knowing why I am, and I've always known who I am, from the first moment. ~ Matt Ruff

I was born in a time when most young people had lost their belief in God for much the same reason that their elders had kept theirs - without knowing why. ~ Fernando Pessoa

Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends. - ALBERT EINSTEIN ~ Richard Dawkins

Two fears alternate in marriage, of loneliness and of bondage. The dread of loneliness being keener than the fear of bondage, we get married. For one person who fears being thus tied there are four who dread being set free. Yet the love of liberty is a noble passion and one to which most married people secretly aspire, -- in moments when they are not neurotically dependent -- but by then it is too late; the ox does not become a bull, not the hen a falcon.

The fear of loneliness can be overcome, for it springs from weakness; human beings are intended to be free, and to be free is to be lonely, but the fear of bondage is the apprehension of a real danger, and so I find it all the more pathetic to watch young men and beautiful girls taking refuge in marriage from an imaginary danger, a sad loss to their friends ad a sore trial to each other. First love is the one most worth having, yet the best marriage is often the second, for we should marry only when the desire for freedom be spent; not till then does a man know whether he is the kind who can settle down. The most tragic breakings-up are of those couples who have married young and who have enjoyed seven years of happiness, after which the banked fires of passion and independence explode -- and without knowing why, for they still love each other, they set about accomplishing their common destruction. ~ Cyril Connolly

This way I'm 'honored' without anyone having to actually do, concede, admit, sacrifice, or change anything significant. They just tack a few meaningless letters up on a wall, some self-important men say some forgettable words, a few people cheer without knowing why but do so because it's expected, and then everyone decides they're satisfied. That, Peto, is politics."
"That's rubbish!"
"Same thing. ~ Trish Mercer

We can't always know why things happen the way they happen, or why a person makes the choices they do. Knowing why isn't necessary to move forward, unless we make it so.

You may never find out why. Don't let that keep you from moving on with your life. ~ Scott Stabile

We must agree to live in this world, with all that is unfair about it, without knowing why, if we wish to have a God in our lives. ~ Fred Melamed

Wisdom is having things right in your life
and knowing why. ~ William Stafford

But the blind did not go around very much. They sat, and didn't seem to have any conversation, and soon you were aware of leisure gone bad. I had learned something of this during Einhorn's days of dirty mental weather. Or of the soul, not the mind, the sick evil of not even knowing why anything should ail you since you're resigned to accept all conditions. ~ Saul Bellow

I don't see how knowing why I have this fear will help stop it. That's why I don't see any point in going to a shrink. Knowing why you broke the glass
because you weren't paying attention to where the edge of the table was, dummy
doesn't mend the glass, doesn't ensure it won't happen again, that you won't break something more precious next time. ~ Meg Howrey

This, which men often call docility, goodness, or even superiority or knowledge of the world,is none other than the superficiality of those without reason in what they do, who merely find themselves doing it, not knowing why they wanted the things they wanted,having neither the potency of those things in themselves nor the sufficiency to withstand their loss. Instead they find themselves extracting their little lives from those things.Only fear for their own continuation makes them exchange those things now, in the same way that they grasped them before,when they obeyed that fear through insufficiency. ~ Carlo Michelstaedter

Ignorance is mere privation by which nothing can be produced: it is a vacuity in which the soul sits motionless and torpid for want of attraction: and, without knowing why, we always rejoice when we learn, and grieve when we forget. ~ Samuel Johnson

After three glasses, Cynthia flung the windows open and announced, "Zac Efron, I love you!" to the whole of Chelsea, while Lesley was crouched head down over the lavatory bowl throwing up, Maggie had made Sarah a declaration of love ("you're sho, sho beautiful, marry me!"), and Sarah was shedding floods of tears without knowing why. It hit me worst of all. I had jumped on Cynthia's bed and was bawling out "Breaking Free" in an endless loop. When Cynthia's father came into the room, I'd held Cynthia's hairbrush up to him like a microphone and called out, "Sing alone, baldie! Get those hips swinging!" Although the next day I couldn't even being to explain why myself.
After that embarrassing episode, Lesley and I had decided to give the demon drink a wide berth in future (we gave Cynthia's father a wide berth as well for a couple of months), and we had stuck to that resolution. ~ Kerstin Gier

It seems weird to me that here we are, alive, not knowing why we are alive, and just going about our business, sort of ignoring that fact. How are we all not looking at each other all the time just like, Yo, what the fuck? ~ Melissa Broder

I look down at his hand and laugh without quite knowing why. "You deserve some sort of
reward for putting up with me."
"You're my reward."
"Shit reward I am."
"Why do you think everyone needs some sort of recompense for being around you?" he says,
his voice so gentle I almost start to cry. ~ Mackenzi Lee

Didn't she know that knowing why doesn't make things any less scary? ~ Helen Oyeyemi

It's true that he would come to himself at once, and yet, if he were asked what he had been thinking about while standing there, he would most likely not remember, but would most likely keep hidden away in himself the impression he had been under while contemplating. These impressions are dear to him, and he is most likely storing them up imperceptibly and even without realizing it - why and what for, of course, he does not know either; perhaps suddenly, having stored up his impressions over many years, he will drop everything and wander off to Jerusalem to save his soul, or perhaps he will suddenly burn down his native village, or perhaps he will do both. There are plenty of contemplators among the people. Most likely Smerdyakov, too, was such a contemplator, and most likely he, too, was greedily storing up his impressions, almost without knowing why himself. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Fashion is a tool ... to compete in life outside the home. People like you better, without knowing why, because people always react well to a person they like the looks of. ~ Mary Quant

No one in my family wrote. And there was no real introduction. I suppose I somehow blundered into it when I was about six or seven years old. I was asked what present I would like, and, without knowing why, I responded that I would like a journal. It was a beautiful journal - so beautiful that I didn't want to sully it. ~ Imre Kertesz

I just love learning about the way people used to live their lives, and I think what also ties into that is psychology, because I like knowing why people do certain things. ~ Molly Quinn

[He] turned his back on the window, not knowing why he had gone to it, not knowing what he hoped to see, and just at that moment, when there was no one at the window any more and only a little lamp of colored glass at the back of the room flickering, it appeared. ~ Roberto Bolano

But explanations don't change anything, do they? They don't make you feel any better. You either like something or you don't, and if you don't like it, then knowing why it happens doesn't make any difference - it's still going to happen and you're still not going to like it, so what's the point? ~ Kevin Brooks

The centripetal force on our planet is still fearfully strong, Alyosha. I have a longing for life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they open in spring. I love the blue sky, I love some people, whom one loves you know sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by men, though I've long ceased perhaps to have faith in them, yet from old habit one's heart prizes them. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

We must accept the fact that it is possible we know something without knowing why we know it. ~ Dick Swaab

Maybe the whys and the hows aren't as important as just the knowing. ~ Tawdra Kandle

He gets that sometimes you just need to guard the door without knowing why ~ Daisy Whitney

Belief is knowing what you believe. Conviction is knowing why you believe it. ~ Josh McDowell

Some girls have to go to college to discover what they are good at; some are born doing what they must without even truly knowing why. I felt a hole in my heart shaped like a dark door I needed to guard. ~ Catherynne M Valente

She recognized the strange happiness that came from loving something without knowing why you did, that strange happiness that was sometimes so big that it felt like sadness. It was the way she felt when she looked at the stars. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

No one can avoid defeat. That is why it is better to lose a few battles in the fight for your dreams than to be defeated without even knowing why you are fighting. ~ Paulo Coelho

Knowing why we are married & should stay married is crucial. The key question is: Will we approach marriage from a God-centered view or a man-centered view? In a man-centered view, we will maintain our marriage as long as our earthly comforts, desires, & expectations are met. In a God-centered view, we preserve our marriage because it brings glory to God & points a sinful world to a reconciling Creator. ~ G. Thomas

Knowing the why is vastly more important than knowing the how. ~ Debasish Mridha

... in the relentless and meaningless manner one searches for something in a nightmare, coming on doors that won't open or drawers that won't shut, struggling over and over against the same meaningless thing, not knowing why the effort seems so desperate, why the sudden sight of a chair with a shawl thrown over it inspires the mind with horror.
~ Anne Rice

So completely stunned by the force of that smile, Sam found himself helpless to do anything but watch as she quickly closed the gap between them. Her hands reached up to grasp his chin, and he bent down to her, not really knowing why he did it. It was like gravity, so natural that the compulsion was inescapable. Her heels helped.
When
she kissed him, every nerve ending in his body exploded into his awareness.
No girl had ever kissed him like that. Hell, no girl had ever kissed any guy like that, at least not that Sam had heard. ~ Isobel Irons

Monstrosities of tall "monuments" and draped urns. One of the latter, the biggest and ugliest in the graveyard, was sacred to the memory of a certain Alec Davis who had been born a Methodist but had taken to himself a Presbyterian bride of the Douglas clan. She had made him turn Presbyterian and kept him toeing the Presbyterian mark all his life. But when he died she did not dare to doom him to a lonely grave in the Presbyterian graveyard over-harbour. His people were all buried in the Methodist cemetery; so Alec Davis went back to his own in death and his widow consoled herself by erecting a monument which cost more than any of the Methodists could afford. The Meredith children hated it, without just knowing why, but they loved the old, flat, bench-like stones with the tall grasses growing rankly about them. They made jolly seats for one thing. They were all sitting on one now. Jerry, tired of leap frog, was playing on ~ L.M. Montgomery

Hell's waking up every goddamn day and not even knowing why you're here. ~ Frank Miller

Knowing "why" (an idea) is more important than learning "what" (the fact). ~ James D. Watson

I see the terrifying spaces of the universe that enclose me, and I find myself attached to a corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am more in this place than in another, nor why this little time that is given me to live is assigned me at this point more than another out of all the eternity that has preceded me and out of all that will follow me. ~ Blaise Pascal

I think a person has to believe in something,
or search out some kind of faith;
otherwise life is empty, nothing.
How can you live not knowing why the cranes fly,
why children are born, why there are stars in the sky ...
Either you know why you live,
or it's all small, unnecessary bits. ~ Sarah Ruhl

Though I do not believe in the order of things, still the sticky little leaves that come out in the spring are dear to me, the blue sky is dear to me, some people are dear to me, whom one loves sometimes, would you believe it, without even knowing why; some human deeds are dear to me, which one has perhaps long ceased believing in, but still honors with one's heart, out of old habit ...
Ivan Karamazov ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Tragedy springs from its own peculiar sorcery, with treachery, born of envy or ambition, a usual instigator. Treachery is apparent only after the events staged are well over, as we know, its victims dead, or living and smarting under its tricks, realizing too late how they have been misused: if indeed they are ever cognizant of its role, if still players, to this wonder and rue. Most unacceptable is its subtlety, the double-face which double-deals, the Iago perpetrators hidden for decades, smiling the smiles of polite and not so polite society. They nod and wave, heroes to many; sly politicians these Claudiuses. Time favours the Macbeths and forgets the maligned. The former enjoy live, some even oblivious to their lies as being lies, for they prefer to bask in blessings, aping the certainties of creed, cheating death and duty while in pavilions of ease. They succeed on their success, trite or vast; wealth for some, and enviably, fame for the few. The unaware, their victims, float off to obscurity on ruptured vessels of injustice to theater lands unknown, never really knowing why, if the job's done property. Normality is, truthfully, life's whore, readily embraced and conveniently embracing; secretly, it has the clap. Thinking of plot should then give pause. The treacherous cheat fate and re-write, their 'intended history'. Call it fate. They become authors of an illicit story, penmen of their own gods, living their own fresh creation through a new, egregious, utilitarian dram ~ Barnaby Allen

Some people are drawn to meditation without knowing why. Their inner being realizes that they've totally fouled up their life so far, and now it's just going to drag them to the local meditation hall. ~ Frederick Lenz

She slipped into this rhythm without thinking about it, like a clock that moved its hands without knowing why. ~ Katherine Howe

If the masses can love without knowing why, they also hate without much foundation. ~ William Shakespeare

I've been so alone, apart from life, not really knowing why i was so empty. You've filled all those empty places, cara mia. I sleep with you in my arms and have no nightmares. I open my eyes and look forward to each hour, to hear your laughter, to watch you move through my home. Your smile takes my breath away. ~ Christine Feehan

To observe is not to not feel - in fact, it is to put yourself at the mercy of feeling, like the child's warm skin meeting the cold air of midnight. My own children, too, have been roused from the unconsciousness of childhood; theirs too is the pain and the gift of awareness. 'I have two homes,' my daughter said to me one evening, clearly and carefully, 'and I have no home.' To suffer and to know what it is that you suffer: how can that be measured against its much-prized opposite, the ability to be happy without knowing why? ~ Rachel Cusk

practical intelligence." To Sternberg, practical intelligence includes things like "knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect." It is procedural: it is about knowing how to do something without necessarily knowing why you know it or being able to explain it. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

The fact was that despite himself, without knowing why or how it had happened and very much against his better judgement, he had fallen hopelessly in love. He had fallen as if into some deep and muddy hole. By nature he was a delicate and sensitive soul. He had had ideals and dreamed of an exquisite and passionate affair. And now he had fallen for this little cricket of a creature. She was as stupid as every other woman and not even pretty to make up for it. Skinny and foul-tempered, she had taken possession of him entirely from tip to toe, body and soul. He had fallen under the omnipotent and mysterious spell of the female. He was overwhelmed by this colossal force of unknown origin, the demon in the flesh capable of hurling the most rational man in the world at the feet of a worthless harlot. There was no way he could explain its fatal and total power. ~ Guy De Maupassant

There is a difference between knowing what is true and knowing why it is true ~ Edward Witten

Olivia said. Without knowing why, Eli found himself ~ Michael Phillip Cash

Don't die not knowing why you lived. ~ Duaine Johnson

Without knowing why, he yielded to the temptation of those lips and flung onto them, eating them, partaking of their sacrament ... Eucharist of love with a red host! ~ Georges Rodenbach

powerless and raged without knowing why. ~ William Golding

A king is a living symbol, a beating heart, a star upon which Elfhame's future is written. Surely you have noticed that since his reign began, the isles are different. Storms come in faster. Colors are a bit more vivid, smells are sharper.... When he becomes drunk, his subjects becomes tipsy without knowing why. When his blood falls, things grow. ~ Holly Black

One morning as I was leaving, the director said I didn't have to leave the set anymore. What happened? Why did they change their ways of treating me? I came to the realization that it was because I had a mother. My mother spoke highly of me, and to me. But more important, whether they met her or simply heard about her, she was there with me. She had my back, supported me. This is the role of the mother, and in that visit I really saw clearly, and for the first time, why a mother is really important. Not just because she feeds and also loves and cuddles and even mollycoddles a child, but because in an interesting and maybe an eerie and unworldly way, she stands in the gap. She stands between the unknown and the known. In Stockholm, my mother shed her protective love down around me and without knowing why people sensed that I had value. ~ Maya Angelou

Real knowledge, true knowledge, comes from knowing why. ~ Thomas Lewis

It was hard to understand, and all I knew was that you had to run, run, run without knowing why you were running, but on you went through fields you didn't understand and into woods that made you afraid, over hills without knowing you'd been up and down, and shooting across streams that would have cut the heart out of you had you fallen into them. And the winning post was no end to it, even though crowds might be cheering you in, because on you had to go before you got your breath back, and the only time you stopped really was when you tripped over a tree trunk and broke your neck or fell into a disused well and stayed dead in the darkness forever. ~ Alan Sillitoe

When I decided to become a doctor, I was very, very young, when my mother, her seventh child, became pregnant, and she was feeling terrible pain, and I could not know how to help her. And my mother died in front of my eyes, without knowing why, which diagnosis. So I decided to be a doctor. ~ Hawa Abdi

Bulls can do nothing to demand justice. They can only defend themselves as best they can in a fight with a pre-determined ending and die never knowing why they were forced to endure such a painful and prolonged death. It's up to us, as a civilized society, to call for an end to the Running of the Bulls and bullfighting. ~ Ingrid Newkirk

You like or dislike people long before you know much about them; you trust or distrust strangers without knowing why; you feel that an enterprise is bound to succeed without analyzing it. Whether you state them or not, you often have answers to questions that you do not completely understand, relying on evidence that you can neither explain nor defend. ~ Daniel Kahneman

The last summer of his life he sat hours together on the old chintz-covered swing-bed in front of the willow tree, chain-smoking Woodbines and watching the shadows flood the lawn until they swallowed him and only the tip of his ciggarette still showed, a faint red pulse. How she had longed to bring him in, to rescue him as he had rescued his sergeant. Her mother wasn't up to it, sitting all day in the kitchen listening to Alma Cogan and Ronnie Hilton on the wireless, biting her nails until they bled. So, it was she who had gone, crossing the lawn at dusk to stand in front of him, waiting for the right words to come into her head, for a dove that would bring her the gift of speech. But nothing came, and he had gazed at her through the smoke of his ciggarette as though from the far side of a pane of glass. He felt sorry for her perhaps, knowing why she had come out, knowing the impossibility of it. But instead of saying, sit down beside me Alice, sit down, daughter, and we will try to understand together the unbearable truth that love is not always enough, that people cannot always be brought back in, he had said, very conservatively, as though in reference to a discussion he had been having with her in his head for weeks, 'They used flame-throwers, you know'. And she had nodded, yes, Daddy, and left him, and gone to her room, and pushed her face into the pillow and bawled. Because she should have done it, should have, and she had failed. ~ Andrew Miller

The language sticks to them like cat hair to black trousers, and they do things correctly without knowing why. ~ Kitty Burns Florey

In his Comedy, Dante Alighieri names Virgil, with many tokens of respect, as his teacher, and yet as Herr Meinhard remarks, makes such ill use of him: clear proof that even in the days of Dante one praised the ancients without knowing why. This respect for poets one does not understand and yet wishes to equal is the source of the bad writing in our literature. ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

The painter Kramskoy has a remarkable painting entitled The Contemplator: it depicts a forest in winter, and in the forest, standing all by himself on the road, in deepest solitude, a stray little peasant in a ragged caftan and bast shoes; he stands as if he were lost in thought, but he is not thinking, he is "contemplating" something. If you nudged him, he would give a start and look at you as if he had just woken up, but without understanding anything. It's true that he would come to himself at once, and yet, if he were asked what he had been thinking about while standing there, he would most likely not remember, but would most likely keep hidden away in himself the impression he had been under while contemplating. These impressions are dear to him, and he is most likely storing them up imperceptibly and even without realizing it--why and what for, he does not know either; perhaps suddenly, having stored up his impressions over many years, he will drop everything and wander off to Jerusalem to save his soul, or perhaps he will suddenly burn down his native village, or perhaps he will do both.

There are a good many "contemplatives" among our peasants. And Smerdyakov was probably one of them. And he was probably greedily hoarding up his impressions, hardly knowing why. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky