Quotes About Understanding

His mind had no horizon—and his sympathy had no warp.

A man looking at reality brings his own limitations to the world.

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.

St. Paul has just closed his book. His finger marks the last page read and on his face are the wonder and will to understand after the book is closed. Maybe understanding is possible only after.

Sometimes a sad man can talk the sadness right out through his mouth. Sometimes a killin' man can talk the murder right out of his mouth an' not do no murder. You done right. Don't you kill nobody if you can help it.

Let me absorb this thing. Let me try to understand it without private barriers. When I have understood what you are saying, only then will I subject it to my own scrutiny and my own criticism This is the finest of all critical approaches and the rarest.

I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks

People are felt rather than seen after the first few moments.

This is just a nigger talkin', an' a busted-back nigger. So it don't mean nothing, see? You couldn't remember it anyways. 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.

The thing that give me the mos' trouble was, it didn't make no sense. You don't look for no sense when lightnin' kill a cow, or it comes up a lood. That's jus' the way things is. But when a bunch of men take an' lock you up four years, it ought to have some meaning. Men is supposed to think things out. Here they put me in an' keep me an' feed me four years. That ought to either make me so I won't do her again or else punish me so I'll be afraid to do her again

It was strange to Old Robert that he, who knew so much more than his neighbors, who had pondered so endlessly, should be not even a good farmer. Sometimes he imagined he understood too many things ever to do anything well.

You can't hate men if you know them.

In every bit of honest writing in the world," he noted in a 1938 journal entry," . . . 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.

An' I got to thinkin', on'y it wasn't thinkin', it was deeper down than thinkin'.

Woman can change better'n man, Ma said soothingly. Woman got all her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head.

Guys like us are the loneliest in the world. No family. No place where we belong. Nothing to look forward to. We're different, we have a future. We have someone who gives a damn about us. I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you and that's why.

Will you have a touch of ng-ka-py?" "You mean the drink that tastes of good rotten apples?" "Yes. I can talk better with it." "Maybe I can listen better," said Samuel.

They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyway.

I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen." ? John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

Adam said, "Well, you can keep it warm," and he continued, "Old Sam Hamilton saw this coming. He said there couldn't be any more universal philosophers. The weight of knowledge is too great for one mind to absorb. He saw a time when one man would know only one little fragment, but he would know it well." "Yes," Lee said from the doorway, "and he deplored it. He hated it." "Did he now?" Adam asked.

Cal considered. "What did my father do to make her leave?" "He loved her with his whole mind and body. He gave her everything he could imagine.

Catherine was clever, but even a clever woman misses some of the strange corridors in a man.

If I'm a little late, don't go before I get there, will you? Would you like to carry my books home? Yes, said Cal. She looked at him long, full in the eyes, until he wanted to drop his gaze, and then she walked away toward her class.

Then it occured to me that the elicate shades of feeling, of reaction, are the result of communication, and without such communication they tend to disappear. A man with nothing to say has no words.