Quotes About Understanding

We are the people birthed from this land. For the first time I can see something I've not fully understood before, not until now as these pale creatures from somewhere far away stare down at us in wonder, trying to make sense of what they see. We are this place. This place is us.

T]he accumulation of things not spelled out, not properly articulated, may result in neurosis.

un romanzo o una poesia sono il prodotto di una reciproca solitudine – quella di uno scrittore e quella di un lettore.

The reason English-speaking readers can hardly tell the difference between Tolstoy and Dostoevsky is because they read neither prose. They're reading Constance Garnett.

But I didn't care. I just wanted to be close to them and feel their presence. I felt as if I were in there with them, looking out of their eyes, sharing their thoughts.

Never forget, grandchildren, that we must always see all other people as human beings, worthy of respect.

I don't have to have faith, I have experience.

Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.

There seem to be only two kinds of people: Those who think that metaphors are facts, and those who know that they are not facts. Those who know they are not facts are what we call atheists, and those who think they are facts are religious. Which group really gets the message?

All life stinks and you must embrace that with compassion.

When you find a writer who really is saying something to you, read everything that writer has written and you will get more education and depth of understanding out of that than reading a scrap here and a scrap there and elsewhere. Then go to people who influenced that writer, or those who were related to him, and your world builds together in an organic way that is really marvelous.

It may be a species of impudence to think that the way you understand God is the way God is. (60).

He who thinks he knows, doesn't know. He who knows that he doesn't know, knows. For in this context, to know is not to know. And not to know is to know.

Mythology may, in a real sense, be defined as other people's religion. And religion may, in a sense, be understood as popular misunderstanding of mythology. (8)

I would say that all our sciences are the material that has to be mythologized. A mythology gives spiritual import - what one might call rather the psychological, inward import, of the world of nature round about us, as understood today. There's no real conflict between science and religion ... What is in conflict is the science of 2000 BC ... and the science of the 20th century AD.

The fundamental human experience is that of compassion.

Love thine enemies because they are the instruments of your destiny.

If you really want to help this world, what you really will have to teach is how to live in it.

You don't understand death, you learn to acquiesce in death.

You have to learn to recognize your own depths.

Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck to its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.

A mythological image that has to be explained to the brain is not working.

Eternity isn't some later time. Eternity isn't some long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension between here and now, where thinking and time cuts out. If you won't get it here, you won't get it anywhere

Woman, in the picture language of mythology, represents the totality of what can be known. The hero is the one who comes to know.