Quotes About Understanding

It is difficult to reconcile oneself to the view that a single life determines our lot. We seem to come toward the end of our life just when we begin to get some insight.

Literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity.

One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the important things about even the people with whom one has been from time to time in the closest intimacy.

Do you think love flourishes at Stourwater?' 'I don't know,' said Moreland. 'Love means such different things to different people.

In short, the persons we see most clearly are not necessarily those we know best.

Some of the biggest challenges in relationships come from the fact that most people enter a relationship in order to get something: they're trying to find someone who's going to make them feel good. In reality, the only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take.

America has an internal enemy more deadly than any terrorist -- it's called ignorance.

MILO: It comes to the same thing. ANDREW: Things mostly do, you know.

It is terribly important to appreciate that some things remain obscure to the bitter end.

It is the concept of likelihood that a real understanding of probability resides, and we must learn how to measure it.

If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely,

Looking back on his life he reflected, 'In my case it must have been a passionate urge to understanding that brought about my birth. For that is the strongest element in my nature' (MDR 297).

Blacking believes that 'feeling with the body' is as close as anyone can get to resonating with another person.

Getting to know a difficult piece of music is comparable with getting to know a person who does not immediately reveal him- or herself, or who may appear to erect barriers against intimacy.

At an emotional level, there is something 'deeper' about hearing than seeing; and something about hearing other people which fosters human relationships even more than seeing them.

we may say that reading Montaigne, Samuel Johnson, and Tolstoy enriches our understanding of reality, and therefore enlarges our capacity to enjoy life and enhances our adaptation to it. Shakespeare, Keats, and the other great poets reveal the inner nature of the world and sharpen our sensibilities because their perceptions and their gift for metaphor make it possible for us to transcend our own limited vision by sharing theirs.

Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius; and the uniformity of a work denotes the hand of a single artist.' Edward Gibbon

With few exceptions, psychotherapists have omitted to consider the fact that the capacity to be alone is also an aspect of emotional maturity.

One can only pour out of a jug that which is in it.

It is not a mistake to have strong views. The mistake is to have nothing else.

Airy elaboration just loses everyone in a fog of words.

In general, if you can't imagine how anyone could hold the view you are attacking, you probably just don't understand it yet.

Arguing face to face can be a powerful thing, and done deftly and persistently, it can reinforce and build respect itself, even across major differences.