Quotes About Understanding

It sounds like 'twee', but it's spelled T-H-U-Y.

I'm sure there are even some kind guys nice in here, but . . .

He didn't ask you for your opinion on what he was doing as far as a break—he was telling you what he needed," Emily reminded her. "So you don't get to decide that he has to talk to you now. He walked away. When he's ready, then he can always come back and talk to you.

Grasp the subject; the words will follow.

A clever learns more from fool than fools learn from the wise.

and in that single moment she felt as though she had seen into his soul and the very heart of the the love he bore for her and their children

But some things on earth were possible, and some were not, and Ruti knew the difference.

It has to do with an intuition about the past. By linking research and imagination, sometimes I can think myself into the heads of the people who made the book. I can figure out who they were, or how they worked.

He is able to put aside personal feelings and see the broad strokes. Experience counts in these things.

One did not need to penetrate David's secret counsels or insinuate a man in his bodyguard. All one needed was a pair of years and access to the royal precincts. Just to eavesdrop upon his singing was to develop an accurate idea of his state of mind.

I mean, not everything has to be about race, does

It galls me, when I catch a stray remark from the master, or between the older English pupils, to the effect that the Indians are uncommonly fortunate to be here. I have come to think it is a fault in us, to credit what we give in such a case, and never to consider what must be given up in order to receive it. And yet, it is not for me to weigh this balance: Christ, and knowledge against a pagan pantheon and an unaccomodated wilderness existence.

How the more you looked, the more you gleaned. All the 'ways of seeing' that John Berger wrote about.

Most of the time, he found it hard to explain to his wife that his work as a sofer—a scribe of God's holy languages—made him rich, despite the very few maravedis it earned them. But as he looked at her, smiling slightly as she cleared the table, he was glad that for once she seemed to understand him.

How little we know, I thought, of the people we live amongst. It is not as if, had you asked me, I would have claimed to fathom the thoughts and sentiments of two whose station in life was so far distant from mine. But in my own unexamined way I had believed that, working in their house and seeing to their needs, watching their comings and goings and their dealings with others, I had come to know them. How little, how very little, that knowledge had really amounted to.

He came to believe that horses lived with a world of fear, and when you grasped that, you had a clear idea how to be with

He was not afraid of silence, which most of us will rush to fill.

had believed that, working in their house and seeing to their needs, watching their comings and goings and their dealings with others, I had come to know them. How little, how very little, that knowledge had really amounted to.

Where was his empathy? Buried, I supposed, beneath his self-regard.

can see what others cannot see, but sometimes I miss what is apparent to the dimmest simpleton.

I suppose the answer was that if something can be known, I can't stand not knowing it.

For to know a man's library is, in some measure, to know his mind.

I thought it best to add nothing further, to let the line of his thought lead him to his own conclusions.

You don't have to have fought in a war to love peace.