Quotes About Understanding

beginning of this book that the instruction in reading that it provides applies to anything you have to or want to read. However,

It is worth emphasizing, therefore, that it is precisely comprehension in reading that this book seeks to improve. You cannot comprehend a book without reading it analytically; analytical reading, as we have noted, is undertaken primarily for the sake of comprehension (or understanding).

By the time a man realizes that his father was right, he has a son who thinks he's wrong.

A warless world will come as men develop warless hearts.

Many promising reconciliations have broken down because while both parties come prepared to forgive, neither party come prepared to be forgiven.

There are tales that can give you yourself completely and the world could never treat you so badly then that you wouldn't neglect it. One can get everything by listening or looking in the right way: there are all sorts of turns.

Everything lovely in you for a perpetual companion, so that you'd never be frightened or disappointed or ashamed any more. There are tales that can give you yourself completely and the world could never treat you so badly then that you wouldn't neglect it. One can get everything by listening or looking in the right way: there are all sorts of turns.

Because then I might have known whether the light's in the sun or the sun's in the light.

An hour's conversation on literature between two ardent minds with a common devotion to a neglected poet is a miraculous road to intimacy.

She endured her own nature and supposed it to be the burden of another's.

Why isn't one taught how to be loved? Why isn't one taught anything?

Sir Joshua Reynolds, said Jonathan, "once alluded to 'common observation and a plain understanding' as the source of all art.

I know none of this seems very believable. It probably doesn't even make sense. But for once in your life, please, I am asking you to trust me. Trust yourself.

Dog sighs are some form of distilled truth. What does he know? What do dogs know? Ed sighs like he knows the truth about me and he loves me anyway.

She whispers to you: Let me do the talking. You nod, unsure why you're going along with her, oh yeah, you are probably in love with her already, that's why.

This gap, always there. Somehow unbridgeable, whether it's across a wide Pacific gulf of language and culture, or just a simple sentence, father to son, always distance.

By putting ourselves below everyone, we're building in a self-defense mechanism. Protecting against real engagement. By imagining that no one wants us, that all others are so different from us, we're privileging our own point of view.

If I could be half the person my dog is, I would be twice the human I am. from How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

That is to say, our physical ability to understand time has been honed by evolutionary pressures to select for traits useful for survival, in all aspects, and time perception is no exception or special case or even magical or mysterious case.

The great shame of your life that you can't speak his language, not really, not fluently.

He says something you don't quite follow. You hear it, you catch most of the individual words, and yet somehow--you don't understand. This gap, always there. Somehow unbridgeable, whether it's across a wide Pacific gulf of language and culture, or just a simple sentence, father to son, always distance. The texture of everyday actions, simple movements and gestures, is harder than it looks. The great shame of your life that you can't speak his language, not really, not fluently.

One of the benefits of aligning yourself with an indistinct cluster of people is that claiming to feel their pain is often enough.

More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness

I tell them to bring him in. He comes in smiling in triumph. And he can't speak English. After his hours of waiting we cannot talk. I feel rather sorry for him and we do our best. Finally, with the aid of about everyone in the hotel he manages to ask: "Do you like France?" "Yes," I answer. He is satisfied.