Quotes About Understanding

This was probably one of those many queer experiences that human beings could not speak of to each other, because though words could be formed into a casket to hold visions, and could be at the same time the power that liberated them, they seemed of little use when one tried to use them to explain to another person what it was they had set free. Words were queer things, Stella decided, to be at once so powerful and so weak.

Very well then' said the doctor, and he leaned back in his chair, stuck his feet on the fender, and opened to Zachary, as to so many before him in this room, the comforting depth of his comprehending silence.

These were the best moments of marriage, these times when the surface irritations fell away and each gave to the other what the other needed.

He saw now that [compassion] was the very first necessity, always and everywhere, and should flow between all men, always and everywhere. Men lived with their nearest and dearest and knew little of them, and strangers passing by in the street were as impersonal as trees walking, and all the while there was this deep affinity, for all men suffered.

Ferranti's thoughts had been his. As before he had understood his remorse so now he understood the mental chains that had imprisoned him. The poor wretch could not move. Misery had become apathy and apathy had brought the inevitable paralysis of the will.

Every now and then he [Sol] made these cryptic remarks, gazing into the fire or at Stella with his bright amused eyes. She did not understand him, and he had no words to explain what he knew. It was only by the tranquillity with which he carried the burden of things as they are that he could reveal his innate knowledge that the hands that had put it upon him were the hands of love.

Mrs. Loraine's] sweet lips folded themselves into a straight line, and Stella thought briefly how odd it was that thinking differently about God tended to make even the nicest people not very sympathetic towards each other.

Though they were life of her life she regarded her adored grandchildren with a certain detachment. The gulf of time was so wide between them that she could not fully share their thoughts or their outlook, their torments or their battles, which were of their generation and not of hers; she could only love them and tend them and make for them a refuge to which they could fly when those same thoughts and struggles had wearied them beyond endurance.

The past, she knew, is inviolable, one of the few things in life that cannot be marred by present foolishness, and in it the present may find its peace.

Mathematicians need to understand a problem only for themselves; math teachers need both to know the math and to know how 30 different minds might understand (or misunderstand) it. Then they need to take each mind from not getting it to mastery. And they need to do this in 45 minutes or less.

But mostly I'm just respectful of old ways. I believe things for a reason, and in the old days they did things for a reason. And if you don't understand why—well, you might end up opening a few doors better left closed. That's all.

In the long run wives are to be paid in a peculiar coin — consideration for their feelings. As it usually turns out this is an enormous, unthinkable inflation few men will remit, or if they will, only with a sense of being overcharged.

Forgiveness, she was thinking, was in some terrible, overeager way, a lack of curiosity. It was a big, powerful hose that washed everything away. She had, in effect, turned the hose on herself. "Of course I forgive you." As eager to reconcile as she has been in the schoolyard and in her first marriage too. Only to think that now she should not have been so hasty. Forgiveness was the premature end to the story. She had skipped to the last page instead of reading the book through.

Nobody can see pain. They have no frame of reference for pain that's happening to someone else. They can only see inactivity - which they interpret as laziness.

I looked up and met the saddest eyes I've ever seen. His eyes were like a hole that I fell into. I could see every emotion passing through his mind. I could see hope, yet the emotion that stood out the most, hurt led me to his his heart, his poor broken heart...

When I first met him I didn't want to look into his eyes because I knew I would be able to tell how he thought about me and that scared me

I knew I love him then. It was the first time I cried out of hurt and the thought that he might never fully understand me.

It's sad to say, but I think she's right for you. More right than I would have ever been.

Byrne had an inspiration. He called Nim over, put the ointment on Nim's hand, and asked him, in plain English, to put it on Midge's wound. Nim promptly walked over to Midge, slathered the ointment on his ankle, and in doing so broke the ice between them.

It was a strange thing, this feeling of empathy. He'd never experienced it before. He realized that what hurt this woman hurt him as well, that what made her bleed caused a hemorrhage of pain within his soul.

When one peels back an onion, all they have done is reveal a smaller onion.

There are some things you shouldn't have to discuss with your parents, lesbian conception is one of them.

It seemed awful that the only things she knew about him were those that made him miserable.

Love is neither a conditional business nor an ever-fixed mark arrangement. People always know somewhere inside them if they are not loved. No gestures, talk, conciliation, pronouncements can prevail over that deep instinctual knowledge.