Quotes About Understanding

He saw that the highest compliment a white Englishman can give himself is the assertion that he is "color-blind," by which he means he has been able to overlook the fact of your color—to look past it—to the "you" beneath.

Nine SPEAKING IN TONGUES The following is based on a lecture given at the New York Public Library in December 2008. 1

He had an absolute empathy for everybody, Magid. And it was an unbelievable pain in the arse.

My children know the truth about me but still tolerate me, so far.

I think great novels free us into an understanding that the tension between true/not true might in fact be liveable, might not have to be judged and immediately neutralized in the court of public opinion or in the oppressive conservatism of our social lives.

Harry surely hadn't meant to tell his only son that you couldn't accept black people to develop mentally like white people do. He had meant to say : I love you, I love my grandchildren, please stay another day.

has never been hard for me to pay my taxes because I understand it to be the repaying of a large, in fact, an almost incalculable, debt.

With me he [Lamin] would wait till I finished each sentence, and leave long gaps of silence before he replied, silences I came to think of as conversational graveyards, where anything awkward or unpleasant I might have presented to him was sent to be buried.

Children are so narcissistic: nothing about other people ever really occurs to them, least of all about their parents.

les livres sont des miroirs,et l`on n y voit que ce qu`on porte en soi-meme.

Mes suvokiame, koks godulys slepiasi širdyje, tik tada, kai išgirstame skambant sidabr? kišen?je

Viena iš vaikyst?s apgauli? yra tai, jog neb?tina suprasti, kad pajustum. Kai protas pradeda suvokti, kas vyksta, žaizdos širdyje jau b?na gana gilios.

What is happening in Africa (& elsewhere) is because the men did not listen to the women & the women did not listen to the women either & because the people did not listen to each other & themselves & because nobody listened to the children & the poets. - Alice Walker

They always say that people should give relationships time to develop. That sooner or later a person's real traits will be exposed. I should have listened to they.

Love is when you look into someone's eyes and see everything you need." —Unknown

A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him." —Brendan Francis

The only abnormality is the incapacity to love." —Anaïs Nin

People put up walls. Not to keep others out, but to see who cares enough to break them down." —Socrates

Dad, I don't know women very well, but I reckon they live by their hearts. You

Oh, Glenn!--forgive--me! she faltered. I was only--talking. What do I know? Oh, I am blind--blind and little!

perhaps he and this man, alone on the desert, driven there by life's mysterious and remorseless motive, were to see each other through God's eyes. His

he wanted to understand to the very end —Pascal's night —the nature of a diamond —the melancholy of the prophets —Achille's wrath —the madness of those who kill —the dreams of Mary Stuart —Neanderthal fear —the despair of the last Aztecs —Nietzsche's long death throes —the joy of the painter of Lascaux —the rise and fall of an oak —the rise and fall of Rome

Când iubeÈ™ti pe cineva îi simÈ›i durerea.

Time is a dimension of human understanding, a challenge to our assumptions, imagination and our ability to make and, on occasion, break connections.