Quotes About Understanding

T]he more man accepts his limitations, the better is he enabled to know things truly.

What, should we get rid of our ignorance, the very substance of our lives, merely in order to understand one another?

person's behaviour changes mysteriously according to circumstances. So, it is impossible for anyone to understand it. Explaining this, Chanakya says that like the Neem tree (Indian

Dear Holy Spirit, there are so many things in Your Word I don't understand. Give me grace not to question but to accept that Your ways and Your thoughts are higher than my ways. Grant me too the power to bless others through my own hands, unworthy though I am. In Jesus's name, amen.

A man's wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offence' (Prov. 19:11).

If our marriages are to survive the long haul, we certainly must have a love that keeps no record of wrongs.

forgiveness.

All my days have I grown up among the Sages and I have found naught better for a man than silence.

Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.

When I read a book, I try my best, not always successfully, to let the wall crumble just a bit, the barricade that separates me from the book. I try to be involved. I am Raskalnikov. I am K. I am Humbert and Lolita. I am you. If you read these pages and think I'm the way I am because I lived through a civil war, you can't feel my pain. If you believe you're not like me because one woman, and only one, Hannah, chose to be my friend, then you're unable to empathize.

One reason we desire explanations is that they separate us and make us feel safe.

Insanity is the insistence on meaning.

You wanted people's stories, not them. You cared for the tale, not the teller.

you can tell how well a marriage is working by counting the bite marks on each partner's tongue.

My voice had no home until her.

When I read a book, I try my best, not always successfully, to let the wall crumble just a bit, the barricade that separates me from the book. I try to be involved.

Compared to the complexity of understanding grief, reading Foucault or Blanchot is like perusing a children's picture book.

He said you used him as a narrator, an interpreter of stories. I liked that term. I wondered if that was how you interacted with those around you. You wanted people's stories, not them. You cared for the tale, not the teller.

Uncle Jihad used to say that what happens is of little significance compared with the stories we tell ourselves about what happens. Events matter little, only stories of those events affect us. My father and I may have shared numerous experiences, but, as I was constantly finding out, we rarely shared their stories; we din't know how to listen to one another.

She was socially inept, an affliction I am quite intimate with.

I was a voracious reader, but after Hannah's death I grew insatiable. Books became my milk and honey. I made myself feel better by reciting jejune statements like 'Books are the air I breathe,' or, worse, 'Life is meaningless without literature,' all in a weak attempt to avoid the fact that I found the world inexplicable and impenetrable. Compared to the complexity of understanding grief, reading Foucault or Blanchot is like perusing a children's picture book.

Love's gift cannot be given, it waits to be accepted.

When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Oh, grant me my prayer that I may never lose the touch of the one in the play of the many.

Love is an endless mystery, for it has nothing else to explain it.