Quotes About Understanding

Only the adventurous can understand the greatness of the past. In its day, the literature of the past was an adventure. Aischylus, Sophocles, Euripides were adventurers in the world of thought. To read their plays without any sense of new ways of understanding the world and of savouring its emotions is to miss the vividness which constitutes their whole value. But adventures are to the adventurous. Thus a passive knowledge of the past loses the whole value of its message.

In this sense, God is the great companion – the fellow-sufferer who understands.

Realization is… in itself the attainment of value

The merit of Locke 's 'Essay Concerning Human Understanding' is its adequacy, and not its consistency. . . He should have widened the title of his book into 'An Essay Concerning Experience.

Explicitly in the verbal sentence, or implicitly in the understanding of the subject entertaining it, every expression of a proposition includes demonstrative elements. In fact each word, and each symbolic phrase, is such an element, exciting the conscious prehension of some entity belonging to one of the categories of existence.

I am thankful I can see much to admire in all religions.

Every man has seen the wall that limits his mind.

By which I mean that he saw in commonplace events the movement of greater tides than others saw.

You know," he went on almost under his breath, "every man who thinks for himself and feels vividly finds he lives in a world of his own, apart, and believes that one day he'll come across, either in a book or in a person, the Priest who shall make it clear to him.

He was trying to make up for lost time and money in a way that showed conclusively he did not understand the value of either.

It is the same with all the emotions," he said. "The experiences of others never give a complete account. Until a man has deliberately turned and faced for himself the fiends that chase him down the years, he has no knowledge of what they really are, or of what they can do.

What we know instinctively," she continued, "is simply what we are trying to remember. Knowledge is memory.

He drew into his shell a little, giving the merest sketch of what had happened. But he listened closely while these two practical old friends supplied hm with infomration in the gossiping way that human nature loves.

The Wise are silent, the Foolish speak, and children are thus led astray.

No place worth knowing yields itself at sight, and those the least inviting on first view may leave the most haunting pictures upon the walls of memory.

It was so easy to be wise in the explanation of an experience one has not personally witnessed. ("The Wendigo")

Mrs. Bittarcy rustled ominously, holding her peace meanwhile. She feared long words she did not understand. Beelzebub lay hid among too many syllables. ("The Man Whom The Trees Loved")

I searched everywhere for a proof of reality, when all the while I understood quite well that the standard of reality had changed

It is not necessary to light a candle to the sun.

Silence is one of the gates to wisdom.

Wisdom and intellect is every man's friend, ignorance and illiteracy are his enemies.

Some signs of understanding are: clemency, knowledge, and silence. Silence is one of the doors to wisdom. It brings about love and is evidence for all good.

An alert and learned man will take advice from any event.

The wiser a man is, the less talkative will he be.