Quotes About Understanding

"Inconceivable!" You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Godliness, as well as the doctrine of our faith, is a mystery.

Christian, hath not God secretly instructed thee by his Spirit from the Word, how to read the shorthand of his providence? Dost

It is not, indeed, the bare knowing the truths of the gospel saves; but the gross ignorance of them, to be sure, will damn souls.

Truth lies deep, and must be digged for. Since

O it is hard then, as he said, amare hominem humaniter—to love and esteem man as a man, to reverence him such so, as not to be in danger of loving their errors also.

Some books are learned at once reading, but the gospel is a mystery that will take up more than thy lifetime to understand it.

They are all such notions as never came into the heart of the wisest sophists in the world to conceive of; and therefore it is no wonder that a little child, under the preaching of the gospel, believes these mysteries which Plato and Aristotle were ignorant of, because they are not attained by our parts and industry, but communicated by divine and supernatural revelation.

The gate into Christ's school is low, and these cannot stoop. The Master himself is so humble and lowly, that he will not teach a proud scholar. Therefore first become a fool in thine own eye. A wiser man than thyself hath confessed as much: 'I am more brutish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man. I neither learned wisdom, nor have the knowledge of the holy,' Prov. 30:2, 3.

Knowledge doth not make the heart good, but it is impossible that without knowledge it should be good. There

Bernard compares the study of the Word and the mere reading of it to the difference between a close friendship and a casual acquaintance. If you want genuine knowledge, he says, you will have to do more than greet the Word politely on Sundays or nod reverently when you chance to meet it on the street. You must walk with it and talk with it every day of the week. You must invite it into your private chambers, and forego other pleasures and worldly duties to spend time in its company.

What is said of some commentators, 'The places on which they treat were plain till they expounded them,' may be said of some preachers, their text was clear till their obscure dis course upon it darkened it.

Science isn't just about blowing things up. Rather it's about blowing things up and knowing how you did it.

Nobody is going to enjoy reading the contents of this book, but those who do read will be able to see things in their true perspective; they will be able to understand what is happening in the world today and why.

My boredom threshold is low at the best of times but I have spent more time being slowly and excruciatingly bored by children than any other section of the human race.

He was the first to understand that unambiguous equivalence principles could be obtained only with the most inspired attention to experimental accuracy.

I keep [a] subject constantly before me," Newton once remarked, "and wait 'till the first dawnings open slowly, by little and little, into a full and clear light.

Few of the stories one has it in one's self to speak get spoken, because the heart rarely confesses to intelligence its deeper needs; and few of the stories one has at the top of one's head to tell get told, because the mind does not always possess the voice for them. Even when the voice is there, and the tongue is limber as if with liquor or with love, where is that sensitive, admiring, other pair of ears?

His father had a dream: to keep his hands forever clean. Joey wasn't clear whether his father had ever understood that it takes a lot of digging in the dirt to do that.

Works of art are meant to be lived with and loved, and if we try to understand them, we should try to understand them as we try to understand anyone—in order to know them better, not in order to know something else.

If a person names as his three favorites of my books Stranger, Harsh Mistress, and Starship Troopers Ã¢â'¬Â¦ then I believe that he has grokked what I meant. But if he likes one—but not the other two—I am certain that he has misunderstood me, he has picked out points—and misunderstood what he picked. If he picks 2 of 3, then there is hope, 1 of 3—no hope. All three books are on one subject: Freedom and Self-Responsibility.28 And

The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it. We have talked enough; but we have not listened. And by not listening we have failed to concede the immense complexity of our society—and thus the great gaps between ourselves and those with whom we seek understanding.

Someday someone is going to create a stir by proposing a radical new tool for the study people. It will be called the face-value technique. It would be based on the premise that people often do what they do for the reasons they think they do. The use of this technique will lead to many pitfalls, for it is undeniably true that people do not always act logically or say what they mean. But I wonder if it would produce findings any more unscientific than the opposite course.

Most are interested in the philosophical only to the extent of finding out what the accepted view is in order that they may accept it and get on to the practical matters.