Quotes About Understanding

Why didn't I feel that I belonged to my parents? How could I have known that I was not right? I think it has always been part of me. Can a newborn sense her parents' disappointment and feelings of frustration at not being able to change the unchangeable?

She wanted to know about them, not to know them.

You remember I said last night that you were my secret?" Anna nodded. "I knew just what you meant. You're mine.

Anna turned away abruptly. "You needn't bother," she said. But the girl held her back. "No, don't go! Don't be such a goose. I want to know you! Don't you want to know me?

I don't know these stories as well as they know me, I've discovered.

Conceptual knowledge is so valued in our world. Yet in many cultures wisdom is equated not with knowledge but with an open heart. And

Helping, fixing, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole.

A world without empathy is a world that is dead to others—and if we are dead to others, we are dead to ourselves. The sharing of another's pain can take us past the narrow canyon of selfish disregard, and even cruelty, and into the larger, more expansive landscape of wisdom and compassion.

Listening to the testimony of a dying person or a grieving family member can serve the one speaking; it all depends on how we listen. Maybe we can reflect back the words and feelings in such a way that the speaker can at last really hear what he's said.

The secret of life," say the Utes, "is in the shadows and not in the open sun; to see anything at all, you must look deeply into the shadow of a living thing.

if we manipulate others into not sharing so we don't have to hear, so we don't have to listen, or if we react with horror or abandon the scene, we stifle our empathy and rob ourselves of this fundamental virtue of humanity.

Realizing fully the true nature of place is to talk its language and hold its silence.

The second tenet, bearing witness, calls us to be present with the suffering and joy in the world, as it is, without judgment or any attachment to outcome.

Iris Murdoch defined humility as a "selfless respect for reality.

them," Snow admitted.

I'm concentrating on staying healthy, having peace, being happy, remembering what is important, taking in nature and animals, spending time reading, trying to understand the universe, where science and the spiritual meet.

He'd also explained that while you could

The real menace in dealing with a five-year-old is that in no time at all you begin to sound like a five-year-old.

Being empathic by reaffirming the patients' subjective experiences alone does not distinguish between true empathic resonance and collusion.

Marion Quade, the only member of the class to take Pythagoras in her stride, was a favourite pupil, in the sense that a savage who understands a few words of the language of a shipwrecked sailor is a favourite savage.

Throughout the time in which I am working on a canvas I can feel how I am beginning to love it, with that love which is born of slow comprehension.

We must stand together, realizing the complexity of our histories, both personal and social, choosing when we can tolerate each other's company and when we cannot. We must never pretend to be experts on each other's lives, never belittle the deep differences that do exist or pretend that we do not see the places of exposed pain.

When speaking to a Bear of Very Little Brain, remember that long words may bother him.

Yeah, I read history. But it doesn't make you nice. Hitler read history, too.