Quotes About Understanding

But perhaps the best words of wisdom come from Anne Gilberto of East Boston, who's been married to Steve for more than 50 years. In that time, they've reached a form of compromise that not only gets things done but also lets them both take satisfaction in having had their own way. The secret to their long marriage, say Anne, is this: 'I always give him the last word. I tell him what to do, and he says, 'Yes, ma'am.

Humanity is not condemned to wander forever in an epistemological fog, knowing only the surface appearance of things but never their true nature.

Stories have the ability to take us inside all kinds of life.

Everybody is Other in Maupin.

Captain Timothy Meaher, the boat's owner, was drinking with the rest of them, and he focused his cunning gray eyes on Russell. Meaher figured the foreign journalist might not understand the way folks did things here in America, so close to the old frontier. White men had claimed

You just totally missed the metaphor. I could never love someone who missed the metaphor.

Don't talk to me about sense. i've been alive for forty-seven years and I have absolutely no understanding of human nature whatsoever. I might as well be living with a completely different species, giant squids or perhaps some kind of insect colony.

Dammit, that's not all!" Ripley shouted. She couldn't get through to them. Could they not see? Could they not understand? "' Cause if one of those things gets down here, that will be all, and this…" She grabbed the papers, copies of her deposition, evidence sheets. "This bullshit that you think is so important… you can kiss all that goodbye!

A good conversation is the only human equivalent: the realizing that decent points are being made and understood, that irony is in play, and elaboration, and that a dull and obvious remark would be almost physically hurtful.

A point, like a joke, is a terrible thing to miss.

Of course what I'm about to share isn't true for me but... Friends, somebody said, are god's apology for relations. (p. 129)

The most satisfying compliment a reader can pay is to tell me that he or she feels personally addressed. Think of your own favorite authors and see if that isn't precisely one of the things that engage you, often at first without your noticing it. A good conversation is the only human equivalent: the realizing that decent points are being made and understood, that irony is in play, and elaboration, and that a dull or obvious remark would be almost physically hurtful.

You don't so much as become an atheist as find out that's what you are. There's no moment of conversion. You don't suddenly think 'I don't believe this anymore.' You essentially find you don't believe it.

As long as the human heart is strong and the human reason weak, royalty will be strong because it appeals to diffuse feeling, and Republics weak because they appeal to the understanding.

At one point I suggested he go to a well-regarded waxing parlor in town for what they indelicately call the "sack, back, and crack." He struggled to absorb the full meaning of this, but after a few seconds he smiled a nervous smile and said, "In for a penny…

Your narrative may fail to grip if you haven't taken any care to find out how well or badly your audience member is faring (or feeling).

It kindled in me a resolution which I have tried to keep ever since: to spend at least once every year a little time in a country less fortunate than my own. (If

If someone tells me that I've hurt their feelings, I say, 'I'm still waiting to hear what your point is.

One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody—not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms—had the smallest idea what was going on.

The most educated person in the world now has to admit—I shall not say confess—that he or she knows less and less but at least knows less and less about more and more.

If you can't hear, I hope it's not my fault.

The ignorant psychopath or brute who mistreats his children must be punished but can be understood. Those who claim a heavenly warrant for the cruelty have been tainted by evil, and also constitute far more of a danger.

You don't become an atheist so much as you find out that's what you are.

George feels that, even if all this double talk hasn't brought them any closer to understanding each other, the not-understanding, the readiness to remain at cross-purposes, is in itself a kind of intimacy.