Quotes About Understanding

We can only interpret the behavior of others through the screen we create.

JOHN: You said "Good day." I think that it is a nice day today. CAROL: Is it? JOHN: Yes, I think it is. CAROL: And why is that important? JOHN: Because it is the essence of all human communication. I say something conventional, you respond, and the information we exchange is not about the "weather," but that we both agree to converse. In effect, we agree that we are both human.

In addition to remembering things that one does not know how one remembers, one would also appear to remember things that one has no idea how one knew to begin with.

A friend is somebody who accepts your faults, who's there for you always, even when you're not your best, somebody who'll do anything for you, somebody you can count on totally, just as a friend can count on you. It's the most powerful relationship there is. Most

Politics look very simple to the outsider whether he is a businessman or a soldier – it is only when you get into it that all the angles and hard work become apparent. James Forrestal

Discussion and debate have been replaced with yelling and demonizing.

Another way is to surrender the feelings we have about what we want from the other person, and let go of the pressures we are putting on them in the form of expectation and desire.

Inside of us, but out of awareness, is the truth that "I already know everything I need to know.

self-awareness is increased much more rapidly by observing feelings rather than thoughts. The thoughts associated with even one feeling may literally run into the thousands. The understanding of the underlying emotion and its correct handling is, therefore, more rewarding and less time-consuming than dealing with one's thoughts.

You wouldn't use a hammer to open a can of soup. You can't use the intellect to apprehend spiritual reality.

To handle the fear of loss, we have to look at what purpose the external person or object serves in our life. What emotional need is being fulfilled? What emotions would arise were we to lose the object or the person? Loss can be anticipated, and we can handle the various fears associated with the sense of loss by disassembling the emotional complexes that they represent, and letting go of the individual component feelings.

I think what it means is that central to living A life that is good is a life that's forgiving.

There is no better way to conceal oneself than by listening to others.

We tell ourselves that intimacy (and marriage) takes two people who are willing to work at it-but, unfortunately, we rarely have the slightest inkling of our job assignments in this project.

as partners become better able to self-confront and self-soothe, they have less need to control each other. They can maintain their own emotional stability and worry less about what their partner is doing. They stop expecting their partner to understand them and focus more on understanding themselves, which, in turn, reduces defensiveness and combativeness, and encourages good will and growth rather than resistance and stagnation.

You can't brace yourself for famine if you've never known hunger.

Remember that the most important thing is to try and love other people as much as they love you.

I'd always thought that I understood this, but lately I realize that what I call understanding is basically just fantasizing.

I've always had a way with the little people, making it a point to humor them without looking down my nose at their wasted empty lives.

I can't seem to fathom that the things important to me are not important to other people as well, and so I come off sounding like a missionary, someone whose job it is to convert rather than listen.

didn't need a fifteen-minute conversation, just some human interaction. It can be had, and easily: a gesture, a joke, something that says, "I live in this world too.

I attributed their behavior to the fact that they didn't have a TV, but television didn't teach you everything. Asking for candy on Halloween was called trick-or-treating, but asking for candy on November first was called begging, and it made people uncomfortable. This was one of the things you were supposed to learn simply by being alive, and it angered me that the Tomkeys did not understand it.

A young couple strolls by, the adoration of one bouncing off the tolerance of the other.

Each one of us is left to choose our own quality of life and take pleasure where we find it with the understanding that, like Mom used to say, sooner or later something's gonna get you.