Quotes About Understanding

Aber weißt du,' fuhr sie fort, 'keine von uns steckt in ihrer Haut. So sehr uns das Wohl anderer Menschen am Herzen liegt, wir können nicht ihr Leben leben. Jeder kann nur das tun, was ihm möglich ist. Es mag mehr sein, als das, was wir, also du oder ich, tun könnten, oder auch weniger, aber meistens ist es etwas anderes.

Ganz allgemein sind mir Bücher inzwischen lieber als Menschen und Menschen in Büchern lieber als Menschen, die woanders sind.

Ich musste gerade an Miss Milliment denken, die oft von einem Spruch aus ihrer Kindheit erzählt hat. 'Sei gut, liebes Mädchen, Klugheit lass die andren lernen.' Das hat sie immer richtig wütend gemacht. Sie hat gesagt, schon mit zehn wollte ihr nicht einleuchten, warum Gutsein ein Ersatz für Klugheit sein sollte. Aber es könnte ein Ersatz fürs Glücklichsein sein, oder?

Das war alles Teil ihrer Unfähigkeit, dieses 'für immer' zu begreifen. Sie konnte sich durchaus vorstellen, dass jemand fort war, das Schwierige war, zu erfassen, dass diese Person niemals wiederkehren würde.

Das schönste an einer Freundschaft ist,' sagte sie, 'zu tun, wozu man Lust hat, ohne mit dem anderen reden zu müssen.

Imogen," he said with forced patience, "you have plenty of occupations of your own, and you don't care to do the things that give a great deal of pleasure to me – when I have time to do them. You don't want to fish or shoot and you can't drive my car, which would be a help to me sometimes. Am I to understand that you object to my having the companionship of another woman who can do these things?

Love which cries out, And wants the world to understand, Is love that holds itself in doubt. For love is quiet, and love is kind.

We think we know our friends, our lovers, but really all we know is pieces of them

could one do a compatibility test based on favourite books? Could an Anais Nin fan love a Dean Koontz fan? An Alice Munro woman love a James Joyce man?

Hardly anyone understands the principles behind magic,"scoffed Betony. "It's too difficult.

None of us are perfect, for which reason we should heed the voice of charity when it whispers in our ears, "Do not magnify the imperfections of others.

Spare me your uninformed teen ideology.

because what good would it do when a true understanding of what was in store for them couldn't save them from any of it?

He met her eyes and said, 'I mean—some things we've learnt might not make any kind of sense according to what we're used to seeing as sense, but they might work with the bits and pieces of knowledge we have.

Something terrible had happened in his life to send him back to her looking for revenge. He believed she had been unlucky for him and was to be blamed for some calamity, some failure or loss. But he didn't want to tell her about it; he just wanted her to suffer and be reduced, in his imagination and her own. There was no point in understanding any of this if she couldn't see a way through it.

it's owing to Roth and the handful of others like her who know

it revealed how people process disruptive information. Their first impulse is to force it into a familiar framework:

Never before had I known the sudden quiver of understanding that travels from word to brain to heart, the way a new language can move, coil, swim into life under the eyes, the almost savage leap of comprehension, the instantaneous, joyful release of meaning, the way the words shed their printed bodies in a flash of heat and light.

There is nothing harder, at moments, than talking to someone who has all the power of silence.

The problem is simply finding the right person. Ask Plato. Just make sure she finishes your thoughts and you finish hers. That's all you need.

Today I will go to wait for her again, because I cannot help it, because my whole being seems now to be bound up in the being of one so different from myself and yet so exquisitely familiar that I can scarely understand what has happened.

I wondered why she craved this knowledge and found myself remembering that she was, after all, an anthropologist.

then you must say to her, 'Madame, I observe that your heart is broken. Allow me to repair it for you...

Gardeners are generous because nature is generous to them, and because they know what it means to read about something and not be able to get it. (p.24)