rhyme or reason

Calque of Middle French n'y avoir ryme ne raison (Eustache Deschamps), attributed to the poet Edmund Spenser in a conversation with Queen Elizabeth I.

• "Prices vary considerably from one town to another with no apparent rhyme or reason."
• "He would often fly into an unexpected rage without rhyme or reason."
• "I could see no rhyme or reason for the referee's decision. It was baffling!"
• "While many of your essays were interesting, some seemed little more than self-promotion on the part of authors. I wished there had been a central essay to anchor the others or some kind of discernable rhyme or reason to their placement. As it was, I could not help but feel that it was a mish-mash of unrelated and poorly edited information."