Quotes About Understanding

Anyhow, she thought, they are aware of each other; they live in each other; what else is love, she asked, listening to their laughter.

One wanted fifty pairs of eyes to see with, she reflected. Fifty pairs of eyes were not enough to get round that one woman with, she thought.

It is one of those invaluable seeds, from which, since it is impossible to have every experience fully, one can grow something that represents other people's experiences. Often one has to make do with seeds; the germs of what might have been, had one's life been different.

We scarcely want to analyse what we feel to be so large and deeply human.

Nothing need be said; nothing could be said.

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

O friendship, how piercing are your darts - there, there, again there.

What she liked was simply life. That's what i did it for, she said, speaking aloud to life... Could any man understand what she meant, either, about life? …But to go deeper, beneath what people said, and these judgments, how superficial, how fragmentary, they are. In her own mind now, what did it mean to her, this thing she called life? It was an offering…it was her gift.

These then are some of my first memories. But of course as an account of my life they are misleading, because the things one does not remember are as important; perhaps they are more important.

Never would she come first with anyone.

Could loving, as people called it, make her and Mrs. Ramsay one? for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge, she had thought, leaning her head on Mrs. Ramsay's knee.

You're infinitely simpler than I am… That's the difficulty.

Do not dictate to your author; try to become him. Be his fellow-worker and accomplice.

For I am more selves than Neville thinks. We are not as simple as our friends would have us to meet our needs. Yet love is simple.

Have I never understood you, Katherine? Have I been very selfish?' 'Yes ... You've asked her for sympathy, and she's not sympathetic; you've wanted her to be practical, and she's not practical.

But we have other lives, I think, I hope,' she murmured. 'We live in others, … We live in things.

Distance had an extraordinary power.

Clearly the mind is always altering its focus, and bringing the world into different perspectives.

I put my bare hand on her bare hand and felt, "This is genuine. There can be no mistake about this.

And then she looked up and saw Flush. Something unusual in his look must have struck her. She paused. She laid down her pen. Once he had roused her with a kiss, and she thought that he was Pan. He had eaten chicken and rice pudding soaked in cream. He had given up the sunshine for her sake. She called him to her and said she forgave him.

The sweetness of this content overflowing runs down the walls of my mind, and liberates understanding.

For it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge, she had thought, leaning her head on Mrs. Ramsey's knee.

Long ago I realized that no other person would be to me what you are.

How then did it work out, this? How did one judge people, think of them? How did one add up this and that and conclude that it was liking one felt, or disliking?