Quotes About Understanding

All good teachers know that inside a remote or angry person is a soul, way deep down, capable of a full human life--a person with hope of a better story, who has allies, and can read... To me, teaching is a holy calling, especially with students less likely to succeed. It's the gift not only of not giving up on people, but of even figuring out where to begin.

sixth chapter of Luke: "Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.

When you're feeling low, you don't want anyone even to joke that you may be in some kind of astrological strike zone where you'll be for the next seven years. On a bad day you also don't need a lot of advice. You just need a little empathy and affirmation." ~ @ANNELAMOTT

I have a quote taped to my office wall from an anonymous source that says, 'Love is hard. Love is ... seeing the darkness in another person and defying the impulse to jump ship.

Given the infinite variety of human personalities, it was impossible to like everyone.

Exchange information, learn to talk sensibly about any subject, learn to express your thoughts, accept new ones, examine them, analyze. Think objectively. Think toward the future.

The AI told her not long ago that her Why? period might have been the shortest on record - because Mum and Dad answered every Why? in detail AND made sure she understood, so she wouldn't ask that particular Why? again. After a month Why? wasn't fun anymore, and she went on to other things.

What I know I wish I didn't. What I'd give anything to know, I have to wait and see.

I can only find you by looking deeper, that's how love leads us into the world.

Somewhere there is a man who is not afraid to live in a woman's hope

Avery did not know what Jean was thinking, only that there was intense thought behind those eyes filled with tears. It was not only her weeping that moved him, but this intensity of thought he perceived in her. Already he knew that he did not want to tamper, to force open, to take what was not his; and that he was willing to wait for a long time for her to speak herself to him.

I am most anxious to give my own children enough love and understanding so that they won't grow up with an aching void in them--like you and I and Harold and Martha. That can never be filled, and one goes around all one's life trying, trying to make up for what one didn't get that was one's birthright, asking the wrong people for it.

Love does not consist in gazing at each other (one perfect sunrise gazing at another!) but in looking outward together in the same direction.

Only when one is connected to one's own core is one connected to others, I am beginning to discover. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude.

When you love someone you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment.

With a new awareness, both painful and humorous, I begin to understand why the saints were rarely married women.

One longs to explain, to be sure they understand, the people one loves.

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable. All these and other factors combined, if the circumstances are right, can teach and can lead to rebirth.

How little one guessed of people when one saw them only in the single dimension of a few days or weeks; how they lacked all the substance of the past. They seemed almost flat, like cardboard, with all the depth gone.

That is the magical thing about books. You can listen to all the greatest people who have ever lived, anywhere in the world, in any civilization. You can see what is completely different about them, things you never imagined.

Be aware that you can truly help people only by aiding them to become what they are, not what you are.

Remember, my dear, you are dealing with the world as it is, not as you believe, maybe rightly, that it ought to be.

Be aware that you can truly help people only by aiding them to become what they are, not what you are. I have heard you say 'If I were you, I would do this—or that.' 'I' am never 'you'—and my solutions may not be yours.

The imagination conjures so many things, and one feels the pain of them all, until one knows.