Quotes About Understanding

There is no place for objective reality in personal relationships. Objective reality is great for getting trains to run on time or for developing an important vaccine, but for ferreting out which point of view is "valid" in an interpersonal transaction, it is a loser.

Learning to listen relationally, listen with cool heads and clear boundaries, listen with the quietness of the heart and the gentleness of the body, means having a self so developed it can afford to yield.

When a mother quarrels with a daughter, she has a double dose of unhappiness hers from the conflict, and empathy with her daughter's from the conflict with her. Throughout her life a mother retains this special need to maintain a good relationship with her daughter.

Trying to make sense of other people's responses to us is a basic human activity. Accepting a mother's [or anyone's] anger by concluding that i is justified is a way of making sense of a difficult relationship. But this acceptance comes at a great cost, for it means that we see their cruelty as our shame.

Empathy, attention, and calm provide a scaffold that steadies the teen's volatile emotions.

You teach what you want to learn.

Listen, or your tongue will make you deaf.

Listen twice as much as you talk, since you were born with two ears and one mouth.

Art is the struggle to understand.

If I had to sum up Friendship in one word, it would be Comfort.

Hate less, live longer.

Don't be mean when you've had a bad day. Be nice, and your day will get better.

A sold poem loses half its meaning.

A proper collection of quotations is the whole world digested.

Some stand on tiptoe trying to reach God to talk — you try too hard, friend — drop to your knees and listen, he'll hear you better that way.

Sometimes we must unfocus our way to clarity.

Love is when you can be your true self with someone, and you only want to be your true self because of them.

I'm holding a teardrop for a friend Until his heartache and misery end.

My first hurdle came before we even left. Steve's little dog Sui was coming with us, and she realized that I would be taking her place next to Steve in the front of the truck. "Move over, Sui," I said. She turned and glared at me, for all the world like a jealous woman. I couldn't help but laugh. She was such a cute thing, and she looked at Steve with such rapture, joy, and love, that I had to forgive her for hating me.

He would hand Bindi and Robert his knowledge of nature and the bush, just as Bob and Lyn had handed it down to him. This is what few people understood about Steve--his relationship with his family, and the tradition of passion and commitment and understanding that passed from generation to generation.

When Steve came home from Sumatra, it was obvious how much he had missed his little girl. I had to smile when Steve sat down on the couch with Bindi, telling her of his adventures moment by moment, while she stared intently at him, trying desperately to puzzle out his words. "She really did miss you," I said. "No, she didn't," Steve scoffed. Then he added, his face brightening hopefully, "How could you tell?

Why do you take by force what you could obtain by love? —WAHUNSONACOCK (POWHATAN), POWHATAN, 1547–1622

As yet I didn't understand. Nor could I see the path. But I didn't need to, anymore than my sheep needed to understand my plans, or see the entire path when I took them to a pasture they had never been in before. They knew I was leading them, and that was enough. So now, all I needed to do was go where He led me, and give to Him my highest and best loyalty.

My sister's hard to understand when she has a breakdown," Rachael agreed. "She doesn't really mumble, but it's more like verbal kung fu. She has about six conversations at once and mixes them all up liked tossed salad.