Quotes About Understanding

Making people change because you can't deal with who they are isn't how it's supposed to be done. What needs to be done is for people to pull their heads out of their asses. You say 'cure.' I hear 'you're not human enough

Such attitude," I said to Jane. "She gets it from your side." "She's adopted," Jane said. "And I'm not the smart-ass in the family.

I listen....because I don't have any answers.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.

You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.

His ear heard more than what was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.

It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.

I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.

I wonder how many people I have looked at all my life and never really seen.

In every bit of honest writing in the world, there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. KNOWING A MAN WELL NEVER LEADS TO HATE and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. TRY TO UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER!

A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders.

There are some times...when the love for people is strong and warm like a sorrow.

It was deeply a part of Lee's kindness and understanding that man's right to kill himself is inviolable, but sometimes a friend can make it unnecessary

She knew she could help him best by being silent and by being near.

We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say — and to feel — Yes, that's the way it is, or at least that's the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought.

This is beyond understanding. said the king. You are the wisest man alive. You know what is preparing. Why do you not make a plan to save yourself? And Merlin said quietly, Because I am wise. In the combat between wisdom and feeling, wisdom never wins.

Doc tips his hat to dogs as he drives by and the dogs look up and smile at him.

Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love.

I seen it over an' over—a guy talkin' to another guy and it don't make no difference if he don't hear or understand. The thing is, they're talkin', or they're settin' still not talkin'. It don't make no difference, no difference. [...] George can tell you screwy things, and it don't matter. It's just the talking. It's just bein' with another guy. That's all.

I'm tired of people who have not been at war who know all about it.

Some day, his mind said, that boy would know what things were in the books and what things were not.

It is possible, even probable, to be told a truth about a place, to accept it, to know it and at the same time not to know anything about it.

A dog...is a bond between strangers.