Quotes About Understanding

Philosophy is not confined to philosophers, thank God. Everyone has a philosophy. As Cicero famously said, you have no choice between having a philosophy and not having one, only between having a good one and having a bad one. And not to admit that you have a philosophy at all is to have a bad one. For it is one that does not know itself. So how could it know anything else, especially us?

Our conversation with God should be utterly free and familiar, because God is the only person who will never, ever misunderstand us and never, ever reject us (hate us, ignore us, or be indifferent to us). These are the tow reasons we hid from other people, even our friends, even our parents, and the tow reasons we should never hide from God.

Philosophy says truth, literature shows truth.

Philosophy makes literature clear, literature makes philosophy real.

Those who know, do not say; those who say, do not know.

Love suffers far more for the pains of the beloved than for its own pains.

If we seek the truth without realizing how far we are from it, we will be dogmatists. If we realize how far we are from the truth but do not seek it, we will be skeptics. If we both seek the truth and realize how far we are from it, we will be wise.

The more you treat someone you hate as if you loved them, the more you will find yourself loving them.

Not all prayer is in words, because not all conversation is in words.

Our conversation with God should be utterly free and familiar, because God is the only person who will never, ever misunderstand us and never, ever reject us (hate us, ignore us, or be indifferent to us).

Angels just see it all at once; they see all the individual applications of the general principle in the general principle

But all true effort to help begins with self-humiliation: the helper must first humble himself under him he would help, and therewith must understand that to help does not mean to be a sovereign but to be a servant, that to help does not mean to be ambitious but to be patient, that to help means to endure for the time being the imputation that one is in the wrong and does not understand what the other understands.

Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.

All metaphors limp.

To undo a contradiction, make a distinction.

From Socrates through Aquinas, reason meant primarily the understanding of the nature of reality, the knowledge of the essences of things.

See C. S. Lewis' essay "Meditation in a Toolshed" for this crucial distinction.) The

Each truth about God known by the mind is a new motive for loving Him with the will.

It also works the other way around: the more you love any person (human or divine), the more you want to know him (or Him) better, and the more you do. And this always causes deep joy.

Good theology is not the knowledge of theology but the knowledge of God. Bad theology is the theology of the theologian who died and went to Heaven and at the gates of Heaven God offered him the choice between Heaven and a theology lecture on Heaven, and he chose the lecture.

wisdom, which is the habit of distinguishing appearance from reality.)

Spirit means essentially two things: 1. The power of thinking—conscious, deliberate, rational understanding. Not sense perception; that's the work of a bodily organ, like the eye. 2. The power of willing and choosing and deliberately loving. Not sensory appetite; that's the work of a bodily function, like hunger.

We must distinguish the act of faith from the object of faith, believing from what is believed.

I expect that in Heaven, the angels will sing Bach, and they'll envy us our understanding of Beethoven. The unfallen angels don't have to go through the first movements of the 9th symphony to get to the Ode to Joy. But we do.