Quotes About Understanding

This world is run by people who know how to do things. They know how things work. They are *equipped.* Up there, there's a layer of people who run everything. But we -- we're just peasants. We don't understand what's going on, and we can't do anything. ...You, running about playing at revolutions, playing little games, thinking you're important. You're just peasants, you'll never *do* anything.

el libro está vivo y es poderoso, fructificador y capaz de promover el pensamiento y la discusión solamente cuando su forma, intencionalidad y plan no se comprenden, debido a que el momento de captar la forma, la intencionalidad y el plan coincide con el momento en que no queda ya nada por extraer.

students should be told that an effort is always required, when you start to read a serious author, to overcome mental laziness and reluctance, because you are about to enter the mind of someone who thinks differently from yourself. And that is the whole point and the only point: the literary treasure-house has many mansions.

You won't change her by making fun of her. You just hurt her feelings.

Writing about oneself, one is writing about others, since your problems, pains, pleasures, emotions—and your extraordinary and remarkable ideas—can't be yours alone.

They're a bunch of Jews, too,' said Donovan gracefully. 'After knowing me for so long, you should have learned discrimination.

Sarah and William's unhappiness, their quarrelling, had probably attracted the mongol child—yes, yes, of course she knew one shouldn't call them mongol.

Onunla [kedimle] beraber olmak için oturuyorum, bu kendimi yavaÅŸlatmam, telaÅŸ ve endiÅŸeleri defetmem anlam?na geliyor. Bunu yap?nca -onun da keyifli olmas?, bir yerinin aÄŸr?mamas? veya huzursuz olmamamas? gerek - ona eriÅŸmek isteÄŸimin fark?nda olduÄŸunu bana incelikle belli ediyor. Kediye eriÅŸmek, kedinin özüne, onun en iyi yönlerine insan ve kedi, bizi neler ay?r?yorsa onlar? aÅŸmaya çal???yoruz.

they seem unable to retain this very simple truth for long, although they have been told again and again, and this is because of another and most powerful feature of their thinking, which is that anything they are told is distorted to fit their own particular personal or group bias and then added, like another pebble to the pile of the half-truths they already cherish.

This is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.

Anna directed the silent, compassionate thought towards her daughter: Well my poor girl, you'd better get used to it early, because you're going to have to live in a world full of it.

You're suggesting I should write of our experience? How? If I set down every word of the exchange between us during an hour, it would be unintelligible unless I wrote the story of my life to explain it.

But she grasped points quickly and put them in simple terms. There is a type of mind, like Willi's, that can only accept ideas if they are put in the language he would use himself.

Aber eins weiß ich schon jetzt. Worum wir trauern, wenn uns Angehörige sterben, das sind die ungeführten Gespräche.

Algunos no saben distinguir el bien del mal ni siquiera cuando se les muestra.

M?i ng??i ??u ch? là k? ?n th?t ng??i n?u nhÆ° không ?? cho nhau ???c yên.

If I have learned so much that I never expected, what more can I hope to learn and understand, providing I am patient, and do not allow myself to ask useless questions?

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.

I think novelists perform many useful tasks for their fellow citizens, but one of the most valuable is this: to enable us to see ourselves as others see us.

Por qué siento esta necesidad tan horrible de forzar a los otros a que vean las cosas como yo? Es infantil; ¿por qué habrían de hacerlo? En el fondo, me da miedo encontrarme a solas con mis sentimientos.

A friend drops their plans when you're in trouble, shares joy in your accomplishments, feels sad when you're in pain. A friend encourages your dreams and offers advice--but when you don't follow it, they still respect and love you.

I want hard stories, I demand them from myself. Hard stories are worth the difficulty. It seems to me the only way I have forgiven anything, understood anything, is through that process of opening up to my own terror and pain and reexamining it, re-creating it in the story, and making it something different, making it meaningful - even if the meaning is only in the act of the telling.

Class, race, sexuality, gender and all other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each other need to be excavated from the inside.

For that is of course what it means to read a novel and live in it for a while. You are viscerally inside someone else's reality. You feel and understand things you have not known before, and that is both scary and exhilarating. The world becomes more clear, reality more vivid, and your own experience larger.