“If one listens one may be convinced; and a man who allows himself to be convinced by an argument is a thoroughly unreasonable person”

“There is only one person who needs to be convinced that you're a writer. That would be you.”

“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.”

“And through it all, Adèle sat idle at the organ keyboard—listening to the muffled gasps of the old compressor in the basement—listening as it wheezed and pleaded its convincing argument for swift mutual retirement.”

“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.”

“Now pastor Jón Prímus laughed. Philosophy and theology have no effect on him, much less plain common sense. Impossible to convince this man by arguments. But humour he always listens to, even though it be ill humour.”