Quotes about understanding
page 13

“Confound you handsome young fellows! You think of having it all your own way in the world. You don't understand women. They don't admire you half so much as you admire yourselves.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Source: Middlemarch

Women, World, Way, Thinking

“Moods are such an essential part of the substance of life, of one's notion of oneself, that even psychotic extremes in mood and behavior somehow can be seen as temporary, even understandable, reactions to what life has dealt.”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Life, Behavior, Mood, Parting

“The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

Life, Fear, Sense, Study

“I would give up everything for you, Giulia"
I smiled at him gently. "But you must understand. I should never want a man to give up anything for me. I should want him to feel in winning me he has won the whole world…”

Deanna Raybourn (1968) American writer

Source: Silent in the Sanctuary

World, Smile, Feeling

“You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language?”

Jorge Luis Borges book The Library of Babel

Source: The Library of Babel

Reading

“Why is it nobody understands me and everybody likes me?”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

As quoted in New York Times article "The Einstein Theory of Living; At 65 he leads the simplest of lives — and grapples with the most complex thoughts." http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00713FA3A58157A93C0A81788D85F408485F9 (12 March 1944) Variants: Why is it that nobody understands me, yet everybody likes me? As quoted in The Dark Side of Shakespeare : An Elizabethan Courtier, Diplomat, Spymaster, & Epic Hero, p. 126 https://books.google.com/books?id=-5SxGKrTRUEC&pg=PA126 (2003) by W. Ron Hess Everyone likes me, yet nobody understands me. As quoted in "The culture of Einstein" at MSNBC (18 March 2005) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7406337/ 1940s

“I wished that love could be simple, that it was always given and returned in the same measure, equally and at the same time, that all the planets aligned in a perfect way to dispel all doubts, that it was easy to understand and never painful.”

Mary E. Pearson (1955) young-adult fiction writer

Source: The Heart of Betrayal

Love, Pain, Way, Time

“Shades of a new morning standing still are worse than the shades of night. At least a person can understand the dark of night. It’s not fickle like the day.”

Sarah E. Wright (1929–2009) American writer

Source: This Child's Gonna Live

Personality, Night

“Let no one think of me that I am humble or weak or passive; let them understand I am of a different kind: dangerous to my enemies, loyal to my friends. To such a life glory belongs.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Source: Medea and Other Plays: Medea / Alcestis / The Children of Heracles / Hippolytus

Life, Thinking

“People didn't change. they liked what they liked even if they didn't understand why.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

People, Change

“It’s what we chase but never find. It is the mystery of our lives, the understanding that even when we have everything we want it is one day to leave us. It’s the something unseen, the lurking devastation, the darkness that gives our lives dimension.”

Marisha Pessl (1977) American writer

Source: Night Film

“I don't understand it any more than you do, but one thing I've learned is that you don't have to understand things for them to be.”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

Learning

“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it… he who doesn't… pays it.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

World

“If you want to make a million you don't have to understand money, what you have to understand is people's fears about money”

William Gaddis book J R

Source: JR

Money, People, Fear

“She doesn't understand the concept of Roman numerals. She thought we just fought in world war eleven.”

Joan Rivers (1933–2014) American comedian, actress, and television host

War, World

“Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding.”

Milan Kundera book The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Part Four: Lost Letters (p. 106)
Source: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979)
Context: The proliferation of mass graphomania among politicians, cab drivers, women on the delivery table, mistresses, murderers, criminals, prostitutes, police chiefs, doctors, and patients proves to me that every individual without exception bears a potential writer within himself and that all mankind has every right to rush out into the streets with a cry of "We are all writers!"
The reason is that everyone has trouble accepting the fact that he will disappear unheard of and unnoticed in an indifferent universe, and everyone wants to make himself into a universe of words before it's too late.
Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding.

Life, Age, Universe, Time

“Sometimes my grief is overwhelming, and even though I understand that we will never see each other again, there is a part of me that wants to hold on to you forever.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

Parting

“… when people we love make choices, we don't always understand them. But we can go on loving them, just the same. It isn't a matter of comprehension. It's forgiveness.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

Love, People, Forgiveness

“All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the message. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty – psychic or physical.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Medium is the Message (1967), p. 26
Source: The Medium is the Massage

Way, Knowledge, Change, Parting

“People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

People

“Is it faith to understand nothing, and merely submit your convictions implicitly to the Church?”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Faith

“He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands.”

Susanna Clarke book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

World, Time, Waiting

“No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn't understand at all, or at someone who speaks a foreign language, but rather at someone who tampers with your own language, with this 'relation,' precisely, which is yours.”

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) French philosopher (1930-2004)

Derrida Jacques, Elisabeth Weber (1995), Points...: Interviews, 1974-1994. p. 115

“As Hazel marched down the hill, she cursed in Latin. Percy didn’t understand all of it, but he got,, and a few choice suggestions about where Octavian could stick his knife.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

“There's something sad about people going to bed. You can see they don't give a damn whether they're getting what they want out of life or not, you can see they don't even try to understand what we're here for. They just don't care.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

Life, People, Sadness

“You don't understand,' she said, and there was a puzzling trace of resentment in her voice. 'Children never do. The love a parent has for a child, there's nothing else like it. No other love so consuming.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Love, Children, Parent

“The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with those three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Expanded Universe

Source: "The Happy Days Ahead" in Expanded Universe (1980)
Context: I started clipping and filing by categories on trends as early as 1930 and my "youngest" file was started in 1945.
Span of time is important; the 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots.

History, Mathematics, Learning

“I had someone at the Houston police station shoot me with heroin so I could do a story about it. The experience was a special kind of hell. I came out understanding full well how one could be addicted to 'smack,' and quickly.”

Dan Rather (1931) Journalist, Anchor

Hell

“… we all must admit that everything is fine and there's no need in the world to worry, and in fact we should realize what it would mean to us to UNDERSTAND that we're not REALLY worried about ANYTHING.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

World

“Be the one who nurtures and builds. Be the one who has an understanding and a forgiving heart one who looks for the best in people. Leave people better than you found them.”

Marvin J. Ashton (1915–1994) Apostle of the LDS Church

People, Forgiveness, Heart

“Life is like that. You live it forward but understand it backward.”

Abraham Verghese book Cutting for Stone

Variant: You live it forward, but understand it backward.
Source: Cutting for Stone

Life

“If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

“so mortals tend to see only what they can understand.”

Rick Riordan book The Sea of Monsters

Source: The Sea of Monsters

“Thank you,” Skulduggery said to her. “I fear he was about to start insulting me.”
“I couldn’t let that happen,” she said. “Your ego is a fragile and delicate thing.”
“You see? You understand me.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Last Stand of Dead Men

Fear

“I'd made water shoot out of the bathroom fixtures. I didn't understand how. But the toilets responded to me. I had become one with the plumbing.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Variant: I didn't understand how. But the toilets had responded to me. I had become one with the plumbing...
Source: The Lightning Thief

Water

“Listen to me, he said, when your dreams are of some world that never was or some world that never will be, and you're happy again, then you'll have given up. Do you understand? And you can't give up, I won't let you.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

Happiness, World, Dreams

“Look at him now, poor fellow. That's what a dose of reality does for you… Never touch the stuff myself, you understand. Find it gets in the way of the hallucinations.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

Way, Reality

“We all agree it's too big to keep up with, that we're surrounded by life, that we'll never understand it, so we center it all in by swigging Scotch from the bottle and when it's empty I run out of the car and buy another one, period.”

Jack Kerouac book Big Sur

Source: Big Sur

Life, Cars

“There ain't no way you can hold onto something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it.”

Kate DiCamillo book Because of Winn-Dixie

Source: Because of Winn-Dixie

Love, Way

“I realized then that I didn't understand anything. I read all the books I could.”

Marjane Satrapi (1969) Artist

Source: Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood

Books, Reading

“I do not know everything; still many things I understand.”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

“And now I know it is perfectly natural for me not to look at someone when I talk. Those of us with Asperger's are just not comfortable doing it. In fact, I don'treally understand why it's considered normal to stare at someone's eyeballs.”

John Elder Robison (1957) American writer

Nature

“If that is what this world is, what humans are… There is no future. Understanding and faith… If you take those away, all that's left is fear. I can't accept immoral methods or giving up.”

Masashi Kishimoto book Naruto

Source: Naruto, Band 11

World, Fear, Faith, Future

“Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Dwell in possibility.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

“I don't understand beauty.”

Douglas Coupland book Eleanor Rigby

Eleanor Rigby

Beauty

“It's easy to talk to a horse if you understand his language. Horses stay the same from the day they are born until the day they die. They are only changed by the way people treat them.”

Laura Hillenbrand book Seabiscuit: An American Legend

Source: Seabiscuit: An American Legend

People, Way, Change, Horse

“We should have stories in common, I found myself thinking. We should have stories, and jokes no one understands, and memories that we know will stay alive because neither of us will let the other forget.”

Kamila Shamsie (1973) Pakistani writer

Thinking, Memory, Forgetting

“You don't get it, Clary. You don't understand what it's like to live always at war, to grow up with battle and sacrifice. I guess it's not your fault. It's just how you were brought up”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

War

“People talk about how wonderful the world seems to children, and that's true enough. But children think they will grow into it and understand it, and I know very well that I will not, and would not if I had a dozen lives.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Children, People, World, Thinking

“His ear heard more than is said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.”

John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men

Source: Of Mice and Men (1937), Ch. 2, p. 36

“The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Way

“but she realized that she wanted him to know her. She wanted him to understand her, if only because she had strange sense that he was the kind of man she could fall in love with, even if she didn't want to.”

Nicholas Sparks book Safe Haven

Source: Safe Haven

Love, Sense

“There is no other way of guarding oneself against flattery than by letting men understand that they will not offend you by speaking the truth; but when everyone can tell you the truth, you lose their respect.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 23; translated by Luigi Ricci

Men, Truth, Way

“He shook his head. “No. Because there's no one else out there who understands you like I do.”
I waited for more. “That's it? You're not going to elaborate on what that means?”
Those green eyes held me. “I don't think I need to.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Thinking, Waiting

“How could you not want to draw breath one more day? How could your own life be such a cheap commodity? But then I started to understand: when your existence is hell, death must be heaven.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Life, Death, Hell, Drawing

“Yeah, the whole family knows. It's no big deal. One night at dinner I said, 'Mom, you know the forbidden love that Spock has for Kirk? Well, me too.' It was easier for her to understand that way.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: Tithe

Love, Family, Way, Moms

“One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma (1815)

Pleasure, World

“Quantum theory provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in images and parables.”

Werner Heisenberg book The Part and The Whole

Die Quantentheorie ist so ein wunderbares Beispiel dafür, daß man einen Sachverhalt in völliger Klarheit verstanden haben kann und gleichzeitig doch weiß, daß man nur in Bildern und Gleichnissen von ihm reden kann. Der Teil und das Ganze. Gespräche im Umkreis der Atomphysik (1969); also in "Kein Chaos, aus dem nicht wieder Ordnung würde", Die Zeit No. 34 (22 August 1969) http://www.zeit.de/1969/34/kein-chaos-aus-dem-nicht-wieder-ordnung-wuerde/komplettansicht; as translated in Physics and Beyond : Encounters and Conversation (1971)

“I want to work in revelations, not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Letter to Ed White (5 July 1950) as published in The Missouri Review, Vol. XVII, No. 3, 1994, page 137, and also quoted in Jack Kerouac: Angelheaded Hipster (1996) by Steve Turner, p. 117

Money, Fish

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Xunzi in the Xunzi (book)
Misattributed, Chinese

Forgetting

“She understands. There is nowhere to go but on. Still, part of her longs to go back”

Celeste Ng book Everything I Never Told You: A Novel

Source: Everything I Never Told You

Parting

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

Doris Lessing book The Four-Gated City

The Four-Gated City (1969)

Life, Way, Learning

“Anything that works against you can also work for you once you understand the Principle of Reverse.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

World

“Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records — Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

"Theme from English B"
Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)

Love, Life, Color, Drink

“I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.”

Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) Irish poet, playwright, translator, lecturer

People, World, Thinking, Change

“You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his destiny. If he abandons that pursuit, it's because it wasn't true love.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Variant: You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his destiny. If he abandons that pursuit, it's because it wasn't true love... the love that speaks the Language of the World.
Source: The Alchemist

Love

“It’s my belief that the study of history should be our preparation for understanding the present, rather than an escape from it.”

Elizabeth Kostova book The Historian

Source: The Historian (2005), Ch. 39
Context: I’ve always been interested in foreign relations. It’s my belief that the study of history should be our preparation for understanding the present, rather than an escape from it.

History, Study

“When you were in love, you were capable of learning everything and of knowing things you had never dared even to think, because love was the key to understanding all of the mysteries.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Variant: When you’re in love, you’re capable of learning everything and knowing things you had never dared even to think, because love is the key to understanding of all the the mysteries.
Source: Brida

Love, Thinking, Learning

“I can
almost understand
why
people
leap
from
bridges.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

People

“Understanding is but the sum of misunderstandings.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

“She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

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

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

God, Tear

“He is dangerous, he is beautiful, I could drown in his understanding.”

Orson Scott Card book Speaker for the Dead

Source: Speaker for the Dead

Beauty

“Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Peace, Peaceful

“No one understands and appreciates the American Dream of hard work leading to material rewards better than a non-American.”

Anthony Bourdain book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Source: Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Dreams

“Let me get this straight. First you decide I'm a demon because of a power I didn't ask for and don't even understand. Then when that falls through you label me a fallen sybil and a ho. Am I missing something or do you just not like me”

Karen Chance book Touch the Dark

Source: Touch the Dark

“The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand.
We listen to reply.”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

Communication, Problem

“In my experience, men who understand women seem to rarely want to have anything to do with them.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

Women, Men

“God understands that part of us which is more than what we think we are.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

God, Thinking, Parting

“I shall have to believe even though I cannot understand.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book A Princess of Mars

Source: A Princess of Mars

“Knowing something and understanding it were not the same thing.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Time Keeper

“Boys are perhaps beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of eighteen months and ninety years.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

"The Darlings at the Top of the Stairs", Lanterns & Lances (1961); previously appeared in The Queen and in Harper's Magazine.
From Lanterns and Lances‎

Age, Boy

“It’s hard to understand other people, to know what’s hidden in their hearts, and without the assistance of alcohol it might never be done at all.”

Michel Houellebecq (1956) writer

Source: Submission

People, Alcohol, Heart

“I’m not a gentleman, I’m a nobleman, a distinction I suspect you understand very well.”

Stephanie Laurens (1943) Australian writer

Source: Devil's Bride

“The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Money

“And then there are the rare ones who know love, who understand it. Who freely give of themselves, demanding only a return of that love, that trust.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Every Which Way But Dead

Love

“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 book How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse

Source: How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse

Time

“Silence is the demon's trap, and the more one is silenced, the more terrible the demon; but silence is also the divinity's mutual understanding with the single individual.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Silence

“Want to hit Leo?
That is understandable
Hunk muffin earned it”

Rick Riordan book The Hidden Oracle

Source: The Hidden Oracle

“There are moments when troubles enter our lives and we can do nothing to avoid them.
But they are there for a reason. Only when we have overcome them will we understand why they were there.”

Paulo Coelho book The Fifth Mountain

Source: The Fifth Mountain

“In the beginning, the price of giving great love is risking that it won't be returned. Until you understand, of course, that great love is always returned. With interest.”

Mike Dooley (1961) American writer

Love

“No blame, no
reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you
understand, and you show that you understand, you can
love, and the situation will change.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Love, Change

“I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

“Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)
Source: Miscellanies in Verse and Prose. by Alexander Pope, Esq; And Dean Swift. in One Volume. Viz. the Strange and Deplorable Frensy of Mr. John Dennis. ... Epitaph on Francis Ch-Is. Soldier and Scholar. with Several More Epigrams, Epitaphs, and Poems.

People, Learning