Quotes About Understanding

Home is not where you live, but where they understand you." —Christian Morgenstern "Call

Anyone who never met a man he didn't like just isn't trying hard enough.

Why does the world have to destroy anything that doesn't fit in? We still can't figure out that this is the most important reason to love something

I like Alice Cooper too, even after I learned that she is a he.

Novel is a particular form of narrative./ And narrative is a phenomenon which extends considerably beyond the scope of literature; it is one of the essential constituents of our understanding of reality. From the time we begin to understand language until our death, we are perpetually surrounded by narratives, first of all in our family, then at school, then through our encounters with people and reading. - The Novel as Research. (1968)

I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.

We can be Knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.

A man of understanding has lost nothing, if he has himself.

He was doubtless an understanding Fellow that said, there was no happy Marriage but betwixt a blind Wife and a deaf Husband.

Let us a little permit Nature to take her own way; she better understands her own Affairs than we.

We have more poets than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write an indifferent poem that to understand a good one.

Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.

I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.

If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.

We are born to inquire into truth; it belongs to a greater to possess it.

We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

Peter..." She let her head fall back against the seat and sighed. "Let's not go there." "That's what people always say about places where they already are.

Because human beings suffer so much more than ducks." "You might not think so if you were a duck.

People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does.

I maintained a tactical silence. When you maintain a tactical silence and look people right in the eye, as if drinking in their words, they talk. People like to be listened to, as every researcher knows--every researcher, every writer, every spy.

Even in our deepest, most lasting friendships, we never speak as openly as when we face a blank page and address a reader we do not know.

The only conclusion he could draw was that without points of reference, a man melts away.

It's hard to understand other people, to know what's hidden in their hearts, and without the assistance of alcohol it might never be done.