Quotes about Causes

When then things to come are said to be seen, it is not themselves which as yet are not (that is, which are to be), but their causes perchance or signs are seen, which already are.

The causes of life's history [cannot] resolve the riddle of life's meaning.

In this way, metaphorically speaking, a strong lens applied to Mrs. Cadwallader's match-making will show a play of minute causes producing what may be called thought and speech vortices to bring her the sort of food she needed.

Our lives become trivial. And our capacity for magnificent causes and great worship dies.

The explanation of the blindness [in John 9] lies not in the past causes but the future purposes.

We have, it seems, shut the poor out of our minds and driven them from the mainstream of our society. We have allowed the poor to become invisible, and we have become angry when they make their presence felt. But just as nonviolence has exposed the ugliness of racial injustice, we must now find ways to expose and heal the sickness of poverty—not just its symptoms, but its basic causes.

Nature is unfathomable because we seek after causes and consequences in a realm where this form is not to be found. We try to reach the inner being of nature, which looks out at us from every phenomenon, under the guidance of the principle of sufficient reason - whereas this is merely the form under which our intellect comprehends appearance, i.e. the surface of things, while we want to employ it beyond the bounds of appearance; for within these bounds it is serviceable and sufficient.

Generally speaking, all the great events have been distorted, most of the important causes concealed, some of the principal characters never appear, and all who figure are so misunderstood and misrepresented, that the result is a complete mystification, and the perusal of the narrative about as profitable as reading the Republic of Plato or the Utopia if More.

So the Marine Corps really did teach me to conquer fear, and then to go for higher causes, higher purposes.

ADVENTINE  (ADVE'NTINE)   adj.[from advenio, adventum.]Adventitious; that which is extrinsically added; that which comes from outward causes: a word scarcely in use. As for the peregrine heat, it is thus far true, that, if the proportion of the adventine heat be greatly predominant to the natural heat and spirits of the body, it tendeth to dissolution or notable alteration.Bacon'sNatural History,No 836.

Thus Paul denies that the causes of our election can be sought anywhere except in the hidden good pleasure of God.

Commitment to great causes makes great men.