415 Understanding Quotes

I don't want to convert people to Buddhism - all major religions, when understood properly, have the same potential for good.

If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

It would be easier for the Devil to go to church and cross himself with holy water than for these people to comprehend the ideas which are accepted facts to us today.

I do not want to found anything on the incomprehensible. I want to know whether I can live with what I know and with that alone.

A man must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings.

By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings.

When you plan a journey from your mind into mine, remember to allow for the time difference.

Why does merely attempting to understand Reality so often seem to lead to going insane?

I have just discovered the truth, and can't understand why everybody isn't eager to hear it.

Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.

The Universe forces those who live in it to understand it. Those creatures who find everyday experience a muddled jumble of events with no predictability, no regularity, are in grave peril. The Universe belongs to those who, at least to some degree, have figured it out.

Good sense travels on the well-worn paths; genius, never. And that is why the crowd, not altogether without reason, is so ready to treat great men as lunatics.

Unless man have a natural bent in accordance with nature's, he has no chance of understanding nature at all.

To some extent we are all the prisoners of stereotypes; we see each other in terms of distorted and oversimplified images. Better communication in the realm of ideas, of the arts, and of science can help refashion these false images. And by seeing more clearly we may act more wisely.

Home is not where you live but where they understand you.

The continuous capacity of genius to surpass understanding remains a human constant.

Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.

Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God; this saves much wear and tear on the brain tissues.

The most dangerous lovers women have are men of Cordis's feminine temperament. Such men, by the delicacy and sensitiveness of their own organizations, read women as easily and accurately as women read each other. They are alert to detect and interpret those smallest trifles in tone, expression, and bearing, which betray the real mood far more unmistakably than more obvious signs.

Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation.

The supernatural is the natural not yet understood.

Understanding is a two-way street.

What do you tell a man with two black eyes? Nothing, he's already been told twice.

It is not at all simple to understand the simple.

It is good to know what a man is, and also what the world takes him for. But you do not understand him until you have learnt how he understands himself.

Towards the avoidance of a piece of verbal confusion: What is intended to be actively destroyed must first of all have been firmly grasped; what crumbles away crumbles away, but cannot be destroyed.

The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

Oh, rather give me commentators plain, Who with no deep researches vex the brain; Who from the dark and doubtful love to run, And hold their glimmering tapers to the sun.

The human mind is not rich enough to drive many horses abreast and wants one general scheme, under which it strives to bring everything.

Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything.

'Kant ought to be arrested and given three years in Solovki asylum for that 'proof' of his!' Ivan Nikolayich burst out completely unexpectedly. 'Ivan!' whispered Berlioz, embarrassed. But the suggestion to pack Kant off to an asylum not only did not surprise the stranger but actually delighted him. 'Exactly, exactly!' he cried and his green left eye, turned on Berlioz glittered. 'That's exactly the place for him! I said to him myself that morning at breakfast: 'If you'll forgive me, professor, your theory is no good. It may be clever but it's horribly incomprehensible. People will think you're mad.'' Berlioz's eyes bulged. At breakfast...to Kant?

Language does not extend to explaining the Way in detail, but it can be grasped intuitively. Study this book; read a word then ponder on it. If you interpret the meaning loosely you will mistake the Way.

'I'm accusing you of violating the laws of nature,' he said, irritated at my failure to respond. 'Nature's virtue is intact,' I reassured him. 'I just know some different laws.'

In all [my] life, you are the first person [I've] known that wasn't [myself]. [I] never had to be understanding because [I] always understood.

He saw them with such better understanding that they took on power and meaning beyond anything in his experience before.

[He] didn't know what to say. He didn't even know the name for what he was feeling. 'I think that I don't know you.' she looked at him, a little perplexed. 'No that's wrong. I think that I didn't know you before, even though I thought I knew you, and know that I finally know you, I don't really know you at all.'

Is there any hope that you can explain to me why this makes sense?

You have just described the relationship between males and females. Two completely different species, completely unintelligible to each other, living side by side and thinking they're really the same. The fascinating thing is that the two species persist in marrying each other and having babies, sometimes of one species, sometimes of other, and the whole time they can't understand why they can't understand each other.

What is this thing between women, like men are a joke that woman all told each other long ago but men never get it.

You can't defeat a powerful enemy unless you understand him completely, and you can't understand him unless you know the desires of his heart, and you can't know the desires of his heart until you truly love him.

My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few Who fitly shalt conceive thy reasoning, Of such hard matter dost thou entertain; Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring Thee to base company (as chance may do), Quite unaware of what thou dost contain, I prithee, comfort thy sweet self again, My last delight! tell them that they are dull, And bid them own that thou art beautiful.

You and I, we're two of a kind, I hate to say it but you'll never relate, what makes you tick? It makes me smile. ~ 'Just Another'

I know you never wanted it this way. I can see, I can see. ~ 'Man In Uniform'

To understand anything is to find in it something which is our own, and it is the discovery of ourselves outside us which makes us glad. This relation of understanding is partial, but the relation of love is complete. In love the sense of difference is obliterated and the human soul fulfills its purpose in perfection, transcending the limits of itself and reaching across the threshold of the infinite. Therefore love is the highest bliss that man can attain to, for through it alone he truly knows that he is more than himself, and that he is at one with the All.

The difference between men is in their principle of association. Some men classify objects by color and size and other accidents of appearance; others by intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of cause and effect. The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance.

Salvation would not be a question of accepting a creed, but of acquiring insight.

What I cannot create, I do not understand.

If you can't explain something to a first year student, then you haven't really understood it.

What does it mean, to understand? ... I don't know.

?Como reconocer una obra de arte? ?Como separarla, aunque solo sea un momento, de su aparato critico, de sus exegetas, de sus incansables plagiarios, de sus ninguneadores, de su final destino de soledad? Es facil. Hay que traducirla.

You can live without a father who accepts you, but you cannot live without a world that makes some sense to you.

You know, there aren't six people in this room who know how true this really is.

Aesopian language was used by all of us. And of course, using this language meant having readers who understood it.

In trying to understand her, we must not be distracted ... by considering how far, and at what points we agree or disagree. ... I cannot conceive of anybody's agreeing with all of her views, or of not disagreeing violently with some of them. But agreement and rejection are secondary: what matters is to make contact with a great soul.

As for The Mapp... I suspect it'll never get a US publication. It seemed to frighten US publishers. They don't seem to understand it. That seems to point up a significant difference between Europeans and Americans: A European says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with me? An American says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with him? I make no suggestion that one side or other is right, but observation over many years leads me to believe it is true.

If I cannot sing a work, I cannot conduct it.

:Understanding being nothing else, but conception caused by Speech.

I may say Christianity itself divided into it's thousands also, who are disputing, anathematizing and where the laws permit burning and torturing one another for abstractions which no one of them understand, and which are indeed beyond the comprehension of the human mind[.]

But let me get to the point, let's roll another joint. And turn the radio loud, I'm too alone to be proud. You don't know how it feels, you don't know how it feels to be me.

Let me see if I can put it in words that even the inebriated might understand.

Albums are not the whole picture. You really need to go to loads of gigs to get the whole picture. That's really what it's about.

All my life, which has now lasted something under one hundred years, I have observed managers in action: in government, in universities, , and in industry, and I have puzzled over what made them tick. I am far form the end of that puzzle, for no man can ever fully understand another, even a close friend. But can we probe a bit toward the essence of the good, the great, managers.

Now I think I know what you tried to say to me How you suffered for you sanity How you tried to set them free They would not listen they're not listening still... Perhaps they never will...

The Herr Doctor does not know about peoples.

I have read Schopenhauer at the age of twelve with no bewilderment and no contempt of his contempt for the world and its strange inhabitants, and no contempt for the strange inhabitant himself.

I went there to try to get my head around this idea, this idea that the problem in the universe lives within me. I can't think of anything more progressive than the embrace of this fundamental idea.

Who knows the thoughts of a child?

Embla lies with each thing, Ask looks and knows. Understanding without explanation they depart and separate.

Everybody understands Mickey Mouse. Few understand Hermann Hesse. Only a handful understood Albert Einstein. And nobody understood Emperor Norton.

The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility: The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle. -- Einstein, 'Physics and Reality,' Journal of the Franklin Institute, March 1936

We'll hold hands and then we'll watch the sunrise From the bottom of the sea But first, are you experienced? Uh-have you ever been experienced? Well, I have

Not five generations distant, Fijians were cannibalizing each other. The missionaries and the colonial administration imposed a veneer of civilization on their native subjects. However, it is not apparent that they imparted to them any profound understanding of the process involved in the maintenance and upholding of the law.

Someday I will understand In God`s whole plan And what`s He`s done to me Oh but maybe Someday I will breathe And I`ll finally see See it all in my baby

The universe is a thought of God. After this ideal thought-fabric passed out into reality, and the new-born world fulfilled the plan of its Creator-permit me to use this human simile-the first duty of all thinking beings has been to retrace the original design in this great reality; to find the principle in the mechanism, the unity in the compound, the law in the phenomenon, and to pass back from the structure to its primitive foundation. Accordingly to me there is only one appearance in nature-the thinking being. The great compound called the world is only remarkable to me because it is present to shadow forth symbolically the manifold expressions of that being. All in me and out of me is only the hieroglyph of a power which is like to me. The laws of nature are the cyphers which the thinking mind adds on to make itself understandable to intelligence-the alphabet by means of which all spirits communicate with the most perfect Spirit and with one another. Harmony, truth, order, beauty, excellence, give me joy, because they transport me into the active state of their author, of their possessor, because they betray the presence of a rational and feeling Being, and let me perceive my relationship with that Being.

'Niggle's Picture!' said Parish in astonishment. 'Did you think of all this, Niggle? I never knew you were so clever. Why didn't you tell me?' 'He tried to tell you long ago,' said the man; 'but you would not look. He had only got canvas and paint in those days, and you wanted to mend your roof with them. This is what you and your wife used to call Niggle's Nonsense, or That Daubing.' 'But it did not look like this then, not real,' said Parish. 'No, it was only a glimpse then,' said the man; 'but you might have caught the glimpse, if you had ever thought it worth while to try.' 'I did not give you much chance,' said Niggle. 'I never tried to explain. I used to call you Old Earth-grubber. But what does it matter? We have lived and worked together now. Things might have been different, but they could not have been better. All the same, I am afraid I shall have to be going on. We shall meet again, I expect: there must be many more things we can do together. Good-bye!'

When an individual passes from one period of life to another a time comes when he cannot go on in senseless activity and excitement as before, ...he has out-grown what before used to direct him, ...he must formulate for himself an understanding of life corresponding to his age, and ...be guided by it. ...a similar time must come in the growth and development of humanity...

'Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy' (from Contributions to Philosophy from Enowning, full quote:

Before you judge me, try hard to love me Look within your heart then ask... Have you seen my childhood? ~ Childhood

His eyes were seductive with understanding

There's so much that we don't understand. And so much more that you don't understand. We should tell each other more

She understands my heart better than you do, and I can speak her thoughts almost before she speaks them

I know what you do... I know why you do it. I can name you more truly than you can name yourself

More than likely, mother would simply go enigmatic on him, give him one of her inscrutable smiles, and tell him that if he didn't already understand, he never would

You know nothing at all about men like me

[He] said nothing, but nodded to [her] as he shook her hand, as if to say that he understood her grief and approved of the strength of her commitment, even if he didn't share her faith

At last I was able to explain that I hadn't understood the implications of my statement in their language, that I was transliterating and certain words had different meanings and so on and so on

How dare they suppress the truth, I thought. But in the months since then I have come to understand that there are different kinds of truth

For the first time Lared did not fear her and did not hate her, for the first time he understood what lay behind her choice, and though he thought that it was wrong, he realized it was not justice's fault

I know exactly what Shahrukh is doing. Any wife would know for that matter. Of course, there are a lot of women who don't know what their husbands are upto. But I would know. I know what I can expect from him, what he can do for me, what he has done for me and the kind of respect he has for me. - Gauri

It's okay - I know.