Quotes About Understanding

All the translations of a poem in all possible languages may add nuance to nuance and, by a kind of mutual retouching, by correcting one another, may give an increasingly faithful picture of the poem they translate, yet they will never give the inner meaning of the original.

A philosopher worthy of the name has never said more than a single thing: and even then it is something he has tried to say, rather than actually said. And he has said only one thing because he has seen only one point: and at that it was not so much a vision as a point of contact.

Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science.

Nous ne voyons pas les choses mêmes ; nous nous bornons, le plus souvent, à lire des étiquettes collées sur elles.

En ce point est quelque chose de simple, d'infiniment simple, de si extraordinairement simple que le philosophe n'a jamais réussi à le dire. Et c'est pourquoi il a parlé toute sa vie.

In a society composed of pure intelligences there would probably be no more tears, though perhaps there would still be laughter; whereas highly emotional souls, in tune and unison with life, in whom every event would be sentimentally prolonged and re-echoed, would neither know nor understand laughter. Try

In a society composed of pure intelligences there would probably be no more tears, though perhaps there would still be laughter; whereas highly emotional souls, in tune and unison with life, in whom every event would be sentimentally prolonged and re-echoed, would neither know nor understand laughter.

Talvez não mais se chorasse numa sociedade em que só houvesse puras inteligências, mas provavelmente se risse; por outro lado, almas invariavelmente sensíveis, afinadas em uníssono com a vida, numa sociedade onde tudo se estendesse em ressonância afetiva, nem conheceriam nem compreenderiam o riso.

It is through living that we discover ourselves, at the same time as we discover the world around us.

Experience seems to come from a distance.

Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait [If youth but knew, if old age but could].

If youth but know, And old age only could.

Will localizes us; thought universalizes us.

Man becomes man only by his intelligence, but he is man only by his heart.

Sympathy is the first condition of criticism.

Women wish to be loved without a why or a wherefore not because they are pretty, or good, or well-bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.

An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.

An error is the more dangerous the more truth it contains.

Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.

Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.

Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it.

Et c'était pas un hasard. Je veux dire : on n'était pas là par hasard. On n'avait pas besoin de se le dire pour savoir qu'on était faits du même bois, un bois un peu pourri, mais un beau bois quand même.

En vérité, celui qui ne connaît pas la colère ne sait rien».

Reality always falls short of essence. Every child knows that.