Quotes About Understanding

I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.

Science explained people, but could not understand them.

It is obvious enough for the reader to conclude, "She loves young Emerson." A reader in Lucy's place would not find it obvious. Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome "nerves" or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire. She loved Cecil; George made her nervous; will the reader explain to her that the phrases should have been reversed?

If you let yourself go I am sure you are sensible. . . . You are inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them. By understanding George you may learn to understand yourself.

It is easy to sympathize at a distance,' said an old gentleman with a beard. 'I value more the kind word that is spoken close to my ear.

A slow nature such as Maurice's appears insensitive, for it needs time even to feel.

He had known so much about her once -what she thought, how she felt, the reasons for her actions. And now he only knew that he loved her, and all the other knowledge seemed passing from him just as he needed it most.

Perhaps anything that he did would have pleased Lucy, but his awkwardness went straight to her heart.

One minute. You know nothing about him. He probably has his own joys and interests- wife, children, snug little home. That's where we practical fellows'- he smiled-'are more tolerant than you intellectuals. We live and let live, and assume that things are jogging on fairly well elsewhere, and that the ordinary plain man may be trusted to look after his own affairs.

Let us think of people as starting life with an experience they forget and ending it with one which they anticipate but cannot understand.

She loved him with too clear a vision to fear his cloudiness

Books have to be read (worse luck, for it takes a long time); it is the only way of discovering what they contain.

You are inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.

People turned out to be alive. Hitherto he had supposed that they were what he pretended to be - flat pieces of cardboard stamped with a conventional design… there came by no process of reason a conviction that they were human beings with feelings akin to his own.

But books meant so much for him he forgot that they were a bewilderment to others.

If one doesn't worry, how does one understand?

Science is better than sympathy, if only it is science.

and someone he scarcely knew moved towards him and knelt beside him and whispered, 'Sir, was you calling out for me? ... Sir, I know ... I know,' and touched him.

But let yourself go. You are inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them. By understanding George you may learn to understand yourself. It will be good for both of you.

I have always been like the Greeks and didn't know.

Most quarrels are inevitable at the time; incredible afterward.

When they sat it was nearly always in the same position – Maurice in a chair, and Durham at his feet, leaning against him. In the world of their friends this attracted no notice. Maurice would stroke Durham's hair.

They had nothing in common but the English language, and tried by its help to express what neither of them understood.

Italian in the mouth of Italians is a deep-voiced stream, with unexpected cataracts and boulders to preserve it from monotony. In Mr. Eager's mouth it resembled nothing so much as an acid whistling fountain which played ever higher and higher, and quicker and quicker, and more and more shrilly, till abruptly it was turned off with a click.