Quotes About Understanding

Christians are called to love the whole world, which includes the cultures in which we are embedded. For only by loving culture can we become effective communicators within it.

What I do know is that love, real love, true unconditional love, transcends age, race, and religious beliefs. It sees the good, focuses on the good, and constantly emphasizes it.

We don't always recognize mercy when we see it. It isn't always what we want or think we need, but it's there. It's here.

Make your fellow men know by your actions in the days when you can reach them and help them, you appreciate their real worth. It will solve every problem of living.

One thing about the greenhouse effect that makes it so difficult for some of us to take seriously is that it's invisible.

There's one highly effective intervention only you can deliver in a dosage more potent than any secular medical professional could deliver: you can provide acceptance. Radical, loving, compassionate acceptance. The "Jesus touching the leper" kind of acceptance. The acceptance that is expressed with hugs, reassuring pats, and sometimes just the kind of silent but loving physical presence of a parent that anxious children can feel in their bones.

A composition that we do not understand or like appears to expand in time as we experience it, yet vanishes almost immediately from memory.

We have to make mistakes, it's how we learn compassion for others.

The big occurrences in life, the serious ones, have for me always been nearly impossible to recognize because they never feel big or serious. In the moment, you have to pee, your arm itches, or what people are saying strikes you as melodramatic or sentimental, and it's hard not to smirk. You have a sense of what this type of situation should be like - for one thing, all-consuming - and this isn't it. But then you look back, and it was that; it did happen.

And this is how I know that it's all just words, words, words - that fundamentally, they make no difference... Our relationship, for as long as things were good, and in that moment when they could have been good again, was about the irrelevance of words. You feel what you feel, you act as you act, who in the history of the world has ever been convinced by a well-reasoned argument?

And I am pretty sure that's the point of reading fiction -- so someone else can say in a way you never would have something you recognize immediately.

My wife disagrees with 100 percent of what I say. That's the same marriage I have.

Reconciliation: Our Greatest Challenge--Our Only Hope.

Reconciliation occurs between equals.

To achieve excellence, we must also consider and work with what is not apparent, with what cannot be seen. We must journey into the complex world of subtle energies.

Suitable relational boundaries will show us the true nature of another person or a group, and if we fail to listen, they will draw help to us. The problem is that our relational borders aren't always in fail-safe condition. We might be too isolated, as in the case of inflexible boundaries; too confused, as happens when our borders are wishy-washy; or simply broken, as occurs when we have holes or slashes in our field.

Wisdom is passionate and heartfelt, giving rise to compassion and love.

the apt conclusion may be not that the universe is meaningless but that we have identified meaning with rational explanation. "Might it not be the case that the reason for existence has no explanation in the usual sense?" he asks-and then answers himself with a remarkable observation: "This does not mean that the universe is absurd or meaningless. Only that an understanding of its existence and properties lies outside the usual categories of rational human thought"5

Everyone's always on the hunt for a mirror. It's basic psychology. You want to see yourself reflected in others.

If you want to predict a person's behavior, identify his or her incentives. Leo

she understood he was lonely and that their ritual comforted him, connected the noises of her life with the silence of his

Was that how every couple functioned after time? Seeing the contours of someone else's intelligence so much more easily than your own?

I know why he picked you. You were his mirror. His perfect, broken mirror.

You think you know someone," she whispered. "You think you understand a person, then you find out all the secrets and lies. So many secrets." Sadness pulled at her. "Do we ever really know anyone? Or do we just know what people want us to believe?