Quotes About Understanding

In reading and writing thou must learn first to follow instruction before thou canst give it. Much more is this true of life.

What is outside the scope of my mind has absolutely no concern with my mind. Learn this lesson and thou standest erect.

In conversation keep abreast of what is being said, and, in every effort, of what is being done. In the latter see from the first to what end it has reference, and in the former be careful to catch the meaning.

Train thyself to pay careful attention to what is being said by another and as far as possible enter into his soul.

From Alexander the grammarian, not to be captious; nor in a carping spirit find fault with those who import into their conversation any expression which is barbarous or ungrammatical or mispronounced, but tactfully to bring in the very expression, that ought to have been used, by way of answer, or as it were in joint support of the assertion, or as a joint consideration of the thing itself and not of the language, or by some such graceful reminder.

When a guide meets up with someone who is lost, ordinarily his reaction is to direct him on the right path, not mock or malign him, then turn on his heel and walk away. As for you, lead someone to the truth and you will find that he can follow.

Many such things will strike him, things not credible to the many, but which come to him alone who is truly familiar with the works of Nature and near to her own heart.

Accustom yourself to attend closely to what is said by others, and as far as possible to penetrate into the mind of the speaker.

When another blames you or hates you, or when men say anything injurious about you, approach their poor souls, penetrate within, and see what kind of men they are. You will discover that there is no reason to be concerned that these men have this or that opinion about you.

This can be both a blessing and a curse. You are blessed with a wonderfully unique filter but cursed with a systematic inability to understand anybody else's.

This thinking is well-intended but overly simplistic, reminiscent perhaps of the four-year-old who proudly presents his mother with a red truck for her birthday because that is the present he wants. So the best managers reject the Golden Rule. Instead, they say, treat each person as he would like to be treated, bearing in mind who he is.

Putting these conclusions together, this controlling insight can serve as the One Thing you need to know about happy marriage: Find the most generous explanation for each other's behavior and believe it.

This book might also be seen as "a Christian primer." A primer teaches us how to read. Reading is not just about learning to recognize and pronounce words, but also about how to hear and understand them. This book's purpose is to help us to read, hear, and inwardly digest Christian language without preconceived understandings getting in the way.

Stories can be true without being literally and factually true.

To state the obvious, how we see is to a large extent the product of what we have seen.

How can it be that God is known in only one religion—and then perhaps only in the "right" form of that religion?7

To believe in a person is quite different from believing that a series of statements about the person are true.

The sacrifice that Christianity asks of us is not ultimately a sacrifice of the intellect.

God has always been in relationship to us, journeying with us, and yearning to be known by us.

As we read the Bible, we are not only to bring our critical intelligence with us, but also to listen.

I am not among the relatively few scholars who think that only that which is historically factual matters.

And I took it for granted that he knew all of these things about himself.

But did Jesus himself see his own purpose this way? According to the gospels in their present form, yes.

In short, I could accept that Jesus saw his own death the way that Tom suggests only if there were very strong historical evidence for it. I find it more historically persuasive, and religiously compelling, to see the purposeful understanding of Jesus' death as post-Easter interpretations, and as history metaphorized, not history remembered.