Quotes About Understanding

He remembered having said to his uncle (with a solemn dogmatism better befitting a much younger man): Surely it is possible to love with the head as well as the heart. Mr. Delagardie had replied, somewhat drily: No doubt; so long as you do not end by thinking with your entrails instead of your brain.

I know what an Act to make things simpler means. It means that the people who drew it up don't understand it themselves and that every one of its clauses needs a law-suit to disentangle it.

I took the liberty of ascertaining as much beforehand, my lord. Of course you did, Bunter. You always ascertain everything.

They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects.

I suppose one oughtn't to marry anybody, unless one's prepared to make him a full-time job." "Probably not; though there are a few rare people, I believe, who don't look on themselves as jobs but as fellow creatures.

In the terms in which you set it, the problem is unanswerable; but in the Kingdom of Heaven, those terms do not apply. You have asked the question in a form that is much too limited; the 'solution' must be brought in from outside your sphere of reference altogether.

Harriet had long ago discovered that one could not like people any the better, merely because they were ill, or dead—still less because one had once liked them very much.

Like all male creatures Wimsey was a simple soul at bottom.

But the worse you express yourself these days the more profound people think you--though that's nothing new.

We are so made that we soon grow weary of ornament for sake of ornament, and even of beauty that makes no appeal to the heart or the understanding.

Theology is the mistress-science, without which the whole educational structure will necessarily lack its final synthesis.

I will say here and now that I have never discovered, nor can I see, any reasonable use or excuse for the " waynee, weedee, weekee " convention. It is not merely that I have a profound sympathy with one of my friends who says he just cannot believe that Caesar was the kind of man to talk in that kind of way. Caesar may, indeed, have done so, but what then ?

He has the valuable quality of being fond of people without wanting to turn them inside out.

To learn six subjects without remembering how they were learnt does nothing to ease the approach to a seventh; to have learnt and remembered the art of learning makes the approach to every subject an open door.

in the first part, the master-faculties are Observation and Memory, so in the second, the master-faculty is the Discursive Reason.

We cannot really look at the movement of the Spirit, just because It is the Power by which we do the looking.

But you see, I can believe a thing without understanding it. It's all a matter of training.

Mummy, I think I might understand if only you wouldn't explain.

Well, it's no good jumping at conclusions." "Jump? You don't even crawl distantly within sight of a conclusion.

this plain, sulky, inarticulate girl, who had never had any

and to know, by his ironical eyes, that he perfectly well understood the reason of her unusual meekness.

I love you.' 'Bravely said – though I had to screw it out of you like a cork out of a bottle. Why should that phrase be so difficult? I – personal pronoun, subjective case; L – O – V – E, love, verb, active, meaning – Well, on Mr Squeers's principle, go to bed and work it out.'  

Yes—but your luck will come more at the end of life than at the beginning, because the other sort of people won't understand the way your mind works. They will start by thinking you dreamy and romantic, and then they'll be surprised to discover that you are really hard and heartless, they'll be quite wrong both times—but they won't ever know it, and you won't know it at first, and it'll worry you.

But that's men all over. They want the thing done and then, of course, they don't like the consequences. Poor dears, they can't help it. They haven't got logical minds.