Quotes About Understanding

Every face, every shop, bedroom window, public-house, and dark square is a picture feverishly turned--in search of what? It is the same with books. What do we seek through millions of pages?

But nevertheless, the fact remained, it was almost impossible to dislike anyone if one looked at them.

Then may I tell you that the very next words I read were these – 'Chloe liked Olivia…' Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women.

You're the only person I've ever met who seems to have the faintest conception of what I mean when I say a thing.

We're all in the dark. We try to find out, but can you imagine anything more ludicrous than one person's opinion of another person? One goes along thinking one knows; but one really doesn't know

Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women.

Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently.

Among the tortures and devestations of life is this then - our friends are not able to finish their stories.

For we think back through our mothers if we are women.

The strange thing about life is that though the nature of it must have been apparent to every one for hundreds of years, no one has left any adequate account of it.

One must love everything.

Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, she thought, walking on. If you put her in a room with someone, up went her back like a cat's; or she purred.

I like people to be unhappy because I like them to have souls.

To feel anything strongly was to create an abyss between oneself and others who feel strongly perhaps but differently.

We are not as simple as our friends would have us to meet their ends.

It is strange that we, who are capable of so much suffering, should inflict so much suffering.

What I value is the naked contact of a mind.

One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.

In fact, though their acquaintance had been so short, they had guessed, as always happens between lovers, everything of any importance about each other in two seconds at the utmost, and it now remained only to fill in such unimportant details as what they were called; where they lived; and whether they were beggars or people of substance.

I want to write a novel about silence. The things people don't say.

My notion's to think of the human beings first and let the abstract ideas take care of themselves.

What is nobler, she mused, turning over the photographs, than to be a woman to whom every one turns, in sorrow or difficulty?

For one's children so often gave one's own perceptions a little thrust forwards.

I have sought happiness through many ages and not found it; fame and missed it; love and not known it; life - and behold, death is better. I have known many men and many women.' she continued; 'none have I understood. It is better that I should lie at peace here with only the sky above me - as the gipsy told me years ago. That was in Turkey.