Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct. – Francis H. Bradley

My definition [of a philosopher] is of a man up in a balloon, with his family and friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth and trying to haul him down. – Louisa May Alcott, in Life, Letters, and Journals, ed. E.D. Cheney, 1889