Quotes About Understanding

Matilda had never once stopped to think about where Miss Honey might be living. She had always regarded her purely as a teacher, a person who turned up out of nowhere and taught at school and then went away again. Do any of us children, she wondered, ever stop to ask ourselves where our teachers go when school is over for the day? Do we wonder if they live alone, or if there is a mother at home or a sister or a husband?

There are many things that make a man irritable when he arrives home from work in the evening and a sensible wife will usually notice the storm-signals and will leave him alone until he simmers down.

But I am hearing all the secret whisperings of the world!

I can see you is not born last week.

I don't want a grown-up person at all. A grown-up won't listen to me; he won't learn.

I is telling you once before,' he said quietly, 'that I is never having a chance to go to school. I is full of mistakes. They is not my fault. I do my best. You is a lovely little girl, but please remember that you is not exactly Miss Knoweverything yourself.' 'I'm sorry,' Sophie said. 'I really am. It is very rude of me to keep correcting you.

Matilda longed for her parents to be good and loving and understanding and honourable and intelligent. The fact that they were none of these things was something she had to put up with.

I can't bear to think of it!' Sophie cried. 'Then don't,' the BFG said. 'For years and years I is sitting here on this very rock every night after night when they is galloping away, and I is feeling so sad for all the human beans they is going to gobble up. But I has had to get used to it. There is nothing I can do. If I wasn't a titchy little runty giant only twenty-four feet high then I would be stopping them. But that is absolutely out of the window.

loved her more than ever when she said things like that.

Mr Hemingway says a lot of things I don't understand,' Matilda said, 'Especially about men and women. But I loved it all the same.' 'A fine writer will always make you feel that', Mrs Phelps said. 'And don't worry about the bits you can't understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music.

Whatever we say about God always rests within the larger reality of what we can't say; meaning always resides within a larger mystery; knowing always takes place within unknowing; whatever has been revealed to us surrounded by that which hasn't been revealed to us.

When the gospel is understood primarily in terms of entrance rather than joyous participation, it can actually serve to cut people off from the explosive, liberating experience of the God who is an endless giving circle of joy and creativity.

Be patient. Don't force your experiences on others. The moving of spirit is a great mystery, and how or why or when certain people wake up is beyond us. Let people have their own experiences.

When I look far enough inside of you, I'll find me. When I look far enough inside me, I'll find you.

He writes to his friends in Ephesus: I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened. When people ask you what the Bible is about, do you answer: It's about becoming more enlightened? Because that's how Paul puts it.

Often times when I meet atheists and we talked about the god they don't believe in, we quickly discover that I don't believe in that god either.

Jesus responds to almost every question he's asked with...a question. What do you think? How do you read it? he asks, again and again and again.

people are rarely persuaded by arguments, but more often by experiences.

When you're fighting, it's absolutely crucial to keep remembering that they're trying to figure it out just like you are.

In those moments when the two of you see things differently, you can hold on to your view, defending it and protecting it and arguing for its superiority, or you can allow your perspective to be broadened, enriched, expanded, and deepened.

When people charge in with great insistence that this is God's word all the while neglecting the very real humanity of these books, they can inadvertently rob these writings of their sacred power. All because of starting in the wrong place. You start with the human. You ask those questions, you enter there, you direct your energies to understanding why these people wrote these books. Because whatever divine you find in it, you find the divine through and in the human, not around it.

To fully appreciate the Bible, you have to let it be what it is.

everybody is resting on a set of interpretations, and we need to be honest about it.

When in doubt, assume that they're seeing something that you aren't.