Quotes About Understanding

I had become an inward being, and I walked as in an inward world; everything outside me became a dream; what I had understood till now became unintelligible.

Artists, as a rule, understand nothing about business, or, for some reason or other, they aren't allowed to understand anything about it.

Is it our calling to understand each other, or are we not, rather, called upon to misjudge one another, to prevent there being a surfeit of happiness and to ensure that happiness continues to be valued, and that these circumstances result in novels, which could not possibly exist if we all knew each other for what we are

En la continua necesidad de goce y prueba de cosas siempre nuevas se me antoja un rasgo de pequeñez, falta de vida interior, alejamiento de la Naturaleza y mediana o defectuosa capacidad de comprensión. Es a los niños pequeños a los que siempre hay que mostrarles algo nuevo y distinto para que no estén descontentos.

Being a person's true friend means endorsing the untruths he holds dearest.

It takes two to have a fight.

What is making contact? It is hard to define, but people do know when they have or have not made contact… Sometimes it seems that humans have lost the art. The range of possibilities for contact open to human beings is extremely large, ranging from conversations that can last hours to something as brief as a pull on a pigtail. However, just a small attempt to make contact with the other person on a regular basis can put a distant relationship back on track.

If you're going to say what you want to say, you're going to hear what you don't want to hear.

The pain, or the memory of pain, that here was literally sucked away by something nameless until only a void was left. The knowledge that this question was possible: pain that turns finally into emptiness. The knowledge that the same equation applied to everything, more or less.

For a moment the two of them looked at each other, wordless, as if they were asleep and their dreams had converged on common ground, a place where sound was alien.

You have to know how to look even if you don't know what you're looking for.

Marriage isn't just domesticity, or the continuance of the race, or institutionalized sex, or a form of property right. And it damned well isn't happiness, as that word is generally used. I think it's a way of finding your soul.

You're all mad for words. Words are just farts from a lot of fools who have swallowed too many books. Give me things!

To know all is to despise all.

Wisdom may be rented...on the experience of other people, but we buy it at an inordinate price before we make it our own forever.

Words are just farts from a lot of fools who have swallowed too many books.

Of course some of us had some geography in school and had studied maps, but a school map is a terribly uncommunicative thing.

Clarity is not a characteristic of the human spirit.

There's the satisfaction of Eng-Lang-and-Lit; somebody else has said everything for you, and said it better.

But when mother died, Caroline was twelve, and in that queer time between childhood and nubile girlhood, when some girls seem to be wise without experience, and perhaps more clear-headed then they will be again until after their menopause.

If Francis has really made up his soul [...], what lies ahead of him? Hasn't he achieved the great end of life? —[...] Having got his soul under his eye, so to speak, Francis must now begin to understand it and be worthy of it [...]. Making up a soul isn't an end; it's the new beginning in the middle of life.

understanding is not the point. Feeling is the point. Understanding and experiencing are not interchangeable. Any theologian understands martyrdom, but only the martyr experiences the fire.

If Heloise had been more clear-headed she'd have seen that Abelard was a frightful nerd in human relationships.

The borborygmy, or rumbling of the stomach, has not received the attention from either art or science which it deserves. It is as characteristic of each individual as the tone of the voice. It can be vehement, plaintive, ejaculatory, conversational, humorous -- its variety is boundless. But there are few who are prepared to give it an understanding ear; it is dismissed too often with embarrassment or low wit.