Quotes About Insight

The man of understanding finds everything laughable.

What is not fully understood is not possessed.

It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it.

Experience is only half of experience

A collection of anecdotes and maxims is the greatest of treasures for the man of the world, for he knows how to intersperse conversation with the former in fit places, and to recollect the latter on proper occasions.

The greatest happiness for the thinking man is to have fathomed the fathomable, and to quietly revere the unfathomable.

Who wants to understand the poemMust go to the land of poetry;Who wishes to understand the poetMust go to the poet's land.

And here, poor fool! with all my loreI stand! no wiser than before.

Am I a god? I see so clearly!

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

One is never satisfied with a portrait of a person that one knows.

All truly wise thoughts have been thoughts already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.

More light! Give me more light!

Know thyself? If I knew myself, I'd run away.

A person hears only what they understand.

Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.

Every reader, if he has a strong mind, reads himself into the book, and amalgamates his thoughts with those of the author.

The intelligent man finds everything laughable, the sensible man hardly anything.

Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.

There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they find to laugh at.

The more one knows, the more one comprehends, the more one realizes that everything turns in a circle.

Nothing is worse than active ignorance.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.