Understanding Quotes - Page 37

• Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?

  Philip Roth

  Intelligent, Scales, Humans

  Philip Roth, George John Searles (1992). “Conversations with Philip Roth”, p.266, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• ...our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding.

  Helen Keller

  Depth, Literature, Great Work

  Helen Keller (2016). “The Story of My Life”, p.63, Om Books International

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• Is this the curse of modernity, to live in a world without judgment, without perspective, no context for understanding or distinguishing what is real and what is imagined, what is manipulated and what is by chance beautiful, what is shadow and what is flesh?

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Beautiful, Real, Perspective

  Terry Tempest Williams (2015). “Leap”, p.52, Vintage

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• Tolerance and understanding won't 'trickle down' in our society any more than wealth does.

  Muhammad Ali

  Justice, Diversity, Tolerance

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• The pain comes from more than the facts of circumstance, or the deeds of others. It comes from within. From understanding what we lost. It comes from knowing how foolish we were - vain, arrogant children - when we thought ourselves happy. It comes from knowing how fragile and doomed the old ways were, just when we thought them and ourselves, secure!. The pain comes from knowing we have never been safe, and therefore will never be safe again. It comes from knowing we can never be children again.

  John Jakes

  Children, Pain, Knowing

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• At that moment, it seemed to him that time stood still, and the Soul of the World surged within him. When he looked into her dark eyes, and saw that her lips were poised between a laugh and silence, he learned the most important part of the language that all the world spoke — the language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It was love. Something older than humanity, more ancient than the desert. Something that exerted the same force whenever two pairs of eyes met, as had theirs here at the well.

  Paulo Coelho

  Eye, Heart, Dark

  "The Alchemist". Book by Paulo Coelho, 1988.

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• Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.

  Terry Pratchett

  Simple, Guitar, Careers

  Terry Pratchett (2016). “Seriously Funny: The Endlessly Quotable Terry Pratchett”, p.37, Random House

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• The place is good. How good, one must have circumnavigated the globe to discover. Why not stay? Take root? But roots are chains. I have a terror of losing my freedom. Free, without ties, unpossessed by any possessions, free to do as one will, to go at a moment's notice wherever the fancy may suggest--it is good. But so is this place. Might it not be better? To gain freedom one sacrifices something [...] and all that these things and people signify. One sacrifices something--for a greater gain in knowledge, in understanding, in intensified living? I sometimes wonder.

  Aldous Huxley

  Sacrifice, Roots, Ties

  Aldous Huxley (1954). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Point counter point”

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• I don't let go of concepts -I meet them with understanding. Then they let go of me.

  Byron Katie

  Letting Go, Clever, Reality

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• Thank heaven I don't inherit God from anybody! I am free to make mine up as I wish Him. He's kind and sympathetic and imaginative and forgiving and understanding - and He has a sense of humor.

  Jean Webster

  Heaven, Forgiving, Wish

  Jean Webster (2004). “Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy”, p.59, Penguin

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• I have not the pleasure of understanding you.

  Jane Austen

  Mrs Bennet, Pleasure, Pride And Prejudice Pride

  Jane Austen (2014). “Pride and Prejudice”, p.89, Lulu.com

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• As I drift back into sleep, I can't help thinking that it's a wonderful thing to be right about the world. To weigh the evidence, always incomplete, and correctly intuit the whole, to see the world in a grain of sand, to recognize its beauty, its simplicity, its truth. It's as close as we get to God in this life, and reside in the glow of such brief flashes of understanding, fully awake, sometimes for two or three seconds, at peace with our existence. And then back to sleep we go.

  Richard Russo

  Sleep, Thinking, Two

  FaceBook post by Richard Russo from Dec 28, 2010

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• This is the awe-inspiring universe of magic: There are no atoms, only waves and motions all around. Here, you discard all belief in barriers to understanding. You put aside understanding itself. This universe cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be detected in any way by fixed perceptions. It is the ultimate void where no preordained screens occur upon which forms may be projected. You have only one awareness here—the screen of the magi: Imagination! Here, you learn what it is to be human. You are a creator of order, of beautiful shapes and systems, an organizer of chaos.

  Frank Herbert

  Beautiful, Order, Imagination

  "Heretics of Dune. Chapter: The Atreides Manifesto, Bene Gesserit Archives". Book by Frank Herbert, 1984.

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• A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.

  Frank Herbert

  Inspirational, Business, Moving

  Frank Herbert (2003). “Dune”, p.35, Penguin

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• In a story you only had to wish, you only had to write it down and you could have the world...It seemed so obvious now that it was too late: a story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it. Reading a sentence and understanding it were the same thing; as with the crooking of a finger, nothing lay between them. There was no gap during which the symbols were unraveled.

  Ian Mcewan

  Reading, Writing, Mean

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• Speaking, writing, and discoursing are not mere acts of communication; they are above all acts of compulsion. Please follow me. Trust me, for deep feeling and understanding require total committment.

  Trinh T. Minh-ha

  Communication, Writing, Feelings

  Trinh T. Minh-Ha (2009). “Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism”, p.52, Indiana University Press

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• My understanding of the meaning of a book is that the book itself disappears from sight, that it is chewed alive, digested and incorporated into the system as flesh and blood which in turn creates new spirit and reshapes the world.

  Henry Miller

  Book, Sight, Blood

  Henry Miller (1966). “Tropic of Capricorn”

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• If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death Perhaps the world can teach us as when everything seems dead but later proves to be alive.

  Pablo Neruda

  Moving, Sadness, Silence

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• we can learn to trust our maternal selves and to have faith in the innate goodness and purity of our children - even when we feel overwhelmed and the kids are pushing all our buttons. we can support one another....we can be understanding of each other and easier on ourselves.

  Katrina Kenison

  Children, Kids, Self

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• ....Man's struggle to be rational about himself, about his relationship to his own society and to other peoples and nations involves a constant search for understanding among all peoples and all cultures-a search that can only be effective when learning is pursued on a worldwide basis.

  J. William Fulbright

  Educational, Struggle, Men

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• We cannot understand without wanting to understand, that is, without wanting to let something be said...Understanding does not occur when we try to intercept what someone wants to say to us by claiming we already know it.

  Hans-Georg Gadamer

  Trying, Doe, Want

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• Our spirits have their own private way of understanding each other, of becoming intimate, while our external persons are still trapped in the commerce of ordinary words, in the slavery of social rules. Souls have their own needs and their own ambitions, which the body ignores when it sees that it's impossible to satisfy them or achieve them.

  Luigi Pirandello

  Ambition, Soul, Ordinary

  Luigi Pirandello (1987). “The late Mattia Pascal”, Eridanos Library

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• I knew that our time together was almost over, I asked her if she liked sports, she asked me if I liked chess, I asked her if she liked fallen trees, she went home with her father, the center of me followed her, but I was left with the shell of me, I needed to see her again, I couldn't explain my need to myself, and that's why it was such a beautiful need, there's nothing wrong with not understanding yourself.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Beautiful, Sports, Father

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.113, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• A real love letter is made of insight, understanding, and compassion. Otherwise it's not a love letter. A true love letter can produce a transformation in the other person, and therefore in the world. But before it produces a transformation in the other person, it has to produce a transformation within us. Some letters may take the whole of our lifetime to write.

  Nhat Hanh

  Peace, Truth, Real

  Thich Nhat Hanh (2011). “Your True Home: The Everyday Wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh: 365 days of practical, powerful teaching s from the beloved Zen teacher”, p.24, Shambhala Publications

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• Sometimes it is only a True Friend who knows what we mean when we try to speak. Somebody who has spent a lot of time with us, and listens carefully to what we are trying to say, and tries to understand.

  Cressida Cowell

  True Friend, Mean, Trying

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