Quotes About Understanding

A wise friend told me that we all could use more than one set of parents—our relations with the original set are too intense, and need dissipating.

What does it mean to love an animal, in my case a cat, in the fierce, entire, and unambivalent way that some of us do?

This has been a most wonderful evening. Gertrude has said things tonight it will take her 10 years to understand.

Maeniel felt this was why all the great sages never wrote anything down. In the final analysis, scriptures are futile things, dependent as they are on the intentions of the interpreter. All too often too literal a mind can lead human students into strange follies. Sometimes it is better to allow the searchers to try to plumb the depths of the great mystery on their own and accept that not every one of those taking the road will see the same end.

Something had lubricated us. Something had washed us clean. I understood, and at the same minute I understood that that they all understood, too. Hate had passed away, and in its place was the other word that's just as big. ("Golden Baby")

One day I almost said it . . . after goin over the words in my mind, "Benjie, the greatest thing in the world is to love someone and they love you too." But when I opened my mouth, I said, "Benjie, brush the crumbs off your jacket.

Friends have ways of speaking without words.

Human reasoning, she said—referring now explicitly to Socrates and Plato—human reasoning is imperfect. Human bias keeps us from perfect vision of what is happening around us. But the quest for truth—the quest to understand the world around us—must ultimately be how you enact the good.

understood the world as much as possible through description rather than judgment,

And people wouldn't look up the details. They never look up the details.

People love to talk but hate to listen. Listening is not merely not talking, though even that is beyond most of our powers; it means taking a vigorous human interest in what is being told us. You can listen like a blank wall or like a splendid auditorium where every sound comes back fuller and richer.

Knowing that our happiness Might never come again; I, not forgetting, "Till death us do part," Was outrageously happy With death in my heart. Lovers in peacetime With fifty years to live, Have time to tease and quarrel And question what to give; But lovers in wartime Better understand The fullness of living, With death close at hand.

What does it matter if she breaks something, compared to her feeling as though she belongs?

father-daughter relationship is unique in the kind of delight it brings to both persons, a proprietary pride that also contains an understanding of the boundaries that hold the two

He saw me notice and took my hands in his. "It's too quiet for me, Cousin, and too dry. You understand, don't you?" I don't, but I was charmed, as he knew I would be, in spite of my being against charm in principle.

There was nothing to replace an old friend who knew everything, who'd spent enough time in the childhood home to know the atmosphere and how emotions and silences transpired—to know how the other had really grown up.

everyone had specialties when it came to others.

Maud, this is Dr. Goodman. I have asked her to sit in with us to get to know you a bit. She has been working with Heidi." "Oh. I didn't know." "I hope it is all right." Dr. Goodman quickly moved to shake Maud's hand with warm, dry fingers. A swift assessment occurred, and through an ineffable, possibly chemical process, the women reached the conclusion that they liked each other. She retreated to a spot behind Dr. Straight.

to me that people across the globe

There was nothing to replace an old friend who knew everything, who'd spent enough time in the childhood home to know the atmosphere and how emotions and silences transpired—to know how the other had really grown up. Polly felt the power of this truth as she sat in this room that she knew before she had language, with this person with whom she was a friend before friendship even began.

Anguish is the universal language

Just because something is unspoken doesn't mean that it disappears.

No one knows you like a person with whom you've shared a childhood. No one will ever understand you in quite the same way.

Top tip 4: Somtimes you're lying when you say nothing at all