Quotes About Understanding

Oh, but my dream , Will – I can't tell you how strange it was! It was like when I read the alethiometer, all that clearness and understanding going so deep you can't see the bottom, but clear all the way down.

Maybe it means nothing. It just is. Everything means something, Lyra said severely. We just have to find out how to read it.

No tenía más familia que aquella, e incluso hubiera podido pasar por su verdadera familia, si Lyra hubiera sabido qué significaba eso

they could discuss without quarreling and cooperate without getting in each other's way

Ik wist niet eens dat u Alice heette. - Lyra

May I ask a question? Without the books of symbols, how do you read it?" "I just make my mind go clear and then it's sort of like looking down into water. You got to let your eyes find the right level, because that's the only one that's in focus. Something like that," she said.

we take for lovers or husbands. You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and you'll understand it later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain.

JACK: I don't understand why you feel like an onion.

was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. • WILLIAM BLAKE •

Nothing is more likely to drive listeners away than a ponderous interpretation of what they've just marvelled at.

She wasn't sure what she wanted to do, except that she knew that if she fooled around for long enough, without fretting, or nagging herself, she'd find out.

Just sort of relax your mind and say yes, it does hurt, I know.

Just sort of relax your mind and say yes, it does hurt, I know. Don't try and shut it out.

She watched it calmly, content not to know at first but to know that a meaning was coming, and then it began to clear. She let it dance on until it was certain.

The thought came to Will and Lyra at the same moment, and they exchanged a tear-filled glance. And for the second time in their lives, but not the last, each of them saw their own expression on the other's face.

He couldn't possibly have said why. He knew it at once, as strongly as he knew that fire burned and kindness was good.

Lyra was bursting to interrupt, because she knew this process. So did Dr Malone, and so did the poet Keats, whoever he was, and all of them knew you couldn't get it by straining towards it.

There is truth and then again there is truth. For all that the world is full of people who go around believing they've got you or your neighbor figured out, there really is no bottom to what is not known. The truth about us is endless. As are the lies.

The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget about being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that—well, lucky you.

Rimane il fatto che, in ogni modo, capire bene la gente non è vivere. Vivere è capirla male, capirla male e male e poi male e, dopo un attento riesame, ancora male. Ecco come sappiamo di essere vivi: sbagliando. Forse la cosa migliore sarebbe dimenticare di aver ragione o torto sulla gente e godersi semplicemente la gita. Ma se ci riuscite... Beh, siete fortunati.

Too late, but I understand. That we don't perish of understanding everything too late, that is a miracle. But we do perish of that -- of just that.

I couldn't imagine anything that could have made Coleman more of a mystery to me than this unmasking. Now that I knew everything, it was as though I knew nothing

You don't have to work in a mental hospital to know about husbands and wives.

What is astonishing is that we, who had no idea how anything was going to turn out, now know exactly what happened.