Quotes About Understanding

No malgastes lo que te queda de vida en conjeturar sobre los demás, a no ser que busques el bien común; pues si te dedicas a imaginar qué hace la gente, por qué, qué dice, que piensa, qué trama, y cosas parecidas, dejarás de observar tu propia conciencia interior.

When you are offended at any man's fault, immediately turn to yourself and reflect in what manner you yourself have erred:

To read with diligence; not to rest satisfied with a light and superficial knowledge, nor quickly to assent to things commonly spoken of:

When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you'll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them. Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. In which case they're misguided and deserve your compassion. Is that so hard?

And to behave in a conciliatory way when people who have angered or annoyed us want to make up.

Y recuerda que has de tratarles como a hombres, porque son tan humanos como tú y por tanto te resultan tan imprescindibles como la mandíbula inferior lo es para la superior.

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine.

That you don't know for sure it is a mistake. A lot of things are means to some other end. You have to know an awful lot before you can judge other people's actions with real understanding.

He who has seen the present has seen everything, that which happened in the most distant past and that which will happen in the future.

It is peculiar to man to love even those who do wrong. And this happens, if when they do wrong it occurs to you that they are fellow humans and that they do wrong through ignorance and unintentionally, and that soon both of you will die; and above all, that the wrongdoer has done you no harm, for he has not made your ruling faculty worse than it was before.

To the world: Your harmony is mine. Whatever time you choose is the right time. Not late, not early.

Learn to ask of all actions, "Why are they doing that?" Starting with your own.

Through not observing what is in the mind of another a man has seldom been seen to be unhappy; but those who do not observe the movements of their own minds must of necessity be unhappy.

He who loves fame considers another man's activity to be his own good; and he who loves pleasure, his own sensations; but he who has understanding, considers his own acts to be his own good. It

To enter others' minds and let them enter yours.

Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.

Learn to ask of all questions, 'Why are they doing that?' Starting with your own.

As surgeons have ever their knives and instruments at hand for the sudden emergencies of their art, so do you keep ready the principles requisite for understanding things divine and human, and for doing all things, even the least important, in the remembrance of the bond between the two. For in neglecting this, you will scant your duty both to Gods and men.

For then thou wilt neither blame those who offend involuntarily, nor wilt thou want their approbation, if thou lookest to the sources of their opinions and appetites.

We must make haste then, not only because we are daily nearer death, but also because the conception of things and the understanding of them cease first.

As for thy thirst after books, away with it with all speed.

That kindness is invincible, provided it's sincere- not ironic or an act. What can even the most vicious person do if you keep treating him with kindness and gently set him straight

It is high time for thee, to understand that there is somewhat in thee, better and more divine than either thy passions, or thy sensual appetites and affections

A man must not only consider how daily his life wasteth and decreaseth, but this also, that if he live long, he cannot be certain, whether his understanding shall continue so able and sufficient, for either discreet consideration, in matter of businesses; or for contemplation: it being the thing, whereon true knowledge of things both divine and human, doth depend.