Quotes About Understanding

Lesen ist eine Erinnerungsarbeit, bei der wir durch Geschichten in den Genuss der vergangenen Erfahrungen anderer kommen, als wären es unsere eigenen.

All reading is interpretation, every reading reveals and is dependent on the circumstances of its reader.

The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend

One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.

It's a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.

The trouble with fiction, said John Rivers, is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense.

I can sympathize with people's pains, but not with their pleasure. There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness.

The course of every intellectual, if he pursues his journey long and unflinchingly enough, ends in the obvious, from which the non-intellectuals have never stirred.

The more a man knows about himself in relation to every kind of experience, the greater his chance of suddenly, one fine morning, realizing who in fact he is...

But then every man is ludicrous if you look at him from outside, without taking into account what's going on in his heart and mind.

To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.

I know the outer world as well as you do, and I judge it. You know nothing of my inner world, and yet you presume to judge that world.

It's embarrassing to tell you this, but it seems to come down mostly to just learning to be kinder.

When one individual comes into intimate contact with another, she—or he, of course, as the case may be—must almost inevitably receive or inflict suffering.

But the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

science has explained nothing; ...the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness....

Words - I wonder if you can realize how much I love them. You are too much preoccupied with mere things and ideas and people to understand the full beauty of words. Your mind is not a literary mind.

Las palabras, como los rayos X, atraviesan cualquier cosa, si uno las emplea bien.

Start by being fully aware of what you think you are. It'll help you to become aware of what you are in fact.

You see, I'd behaved pretty badly. Losing my head about someone I didn't really love and hurting someone I did. Why is one so stupid? The heart has its reasons, said Will, and the endocrines have theirs.

What I'm going to tell you now, he said, may sound incredible. But then, when you're not accustomed to history, most facts about the past DO seem incredible.

The most nearly free men have always been those who combined virtue with insight.