Quotes about understanding
page 14
Source: The Summer Tree
Variant: It’s pathetic how we can’t live with the things we can’t understand. How we need everything labeled and explained and deconstructed.
Source: Asfixia
Source: The Coffin Club
“See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence.”
Source: Message in a Bottle
“… Gentlemen don't understand anything, however wise they may be.”
Source: Venetia
By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Context: You have to take risks … We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen. Every day, God gives us the sun — and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Every day, we try to pretend that we haven't perceived that moment, that it doesn't exist — that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment. It may arrive in the instant when we are doing something mundane, like putting our front-door key in the lock; it may lie hidden in the quiet that follows the lunch hour or in the thousand and one things that all seem the same to us. But that moment exists — a moment when all the power of the stars becomes a part of us and enables us to perform miracles.
Source: Revolutionary Suicide (1973), p. 3
Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
“You dinna need to understand me, Sassenach," he said quietly. "So long as you love me.”
Source: Dragonfly in Amber
Source: Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover
“Please love me David the way I am. Please understand and love me.”
Catherine in Ch. 1
Source: The Garden of Eden (1986)
“Understanding means throwing away your knowledge.”
Source: Being Peace
Source: Flowers for Algernon
1847
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s
Context: It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox.
“Don’t try to understand! It’s enough if you do not misunderstand.”
“Everyone's moving on without me, into a world I don't understand.”
Source: Confessions of a Shopaholic
“I doubt you can understand the magnitude of the stupidity in your statement”
Source: The Gathering Storm
“Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.”
Source: The Hotel New Hampshire
Source: Memoirs of a Geisha
Source: Postcards from the Edge
Source: The Walking Drum (1984), Ch. 25
“Never question the truth of what you fail to understand, for the world is filled with wonders.”
Source: Rinkitink in Oz
“I'm playing with fire, with something I don't understand.”
Source: The Awakening
Quoted in Roberto Suro, "Hearts and Minds", New York Times Magazine (29 December 1991).
Source: The Nightingale
“By trying to understand everything, everything makes me dream”
Source: Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
“Spread love and understanding,” Reacher said. “Use force if necessary.”
Source: Never Go Back
“You'll never get to a person's soul until you understand their hurts.”
“Haters are confused admirers who can’t understand why everybody else likes you”
Variant: Haters are confused admirers who want to be like you.
Source: Al Capone Does My Shirts
“Best way to find the weakness of the enemy is to understand their ways.”
Source: Froi of the Exiles
“It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.”
Source: 2001: A Space Odyssey
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Hagakure (c. 1716)
Source: Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
Context: There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.
Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though he thought it were somewhere else.
“Life: I'll never understand it.”
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Variant: Life: I’ll never understand it.
Source: Spilling Open: The Art of Becoming Yourself
Source: Killing Rage: Ending Racism
“Anyone who reads a book with a sense of obligation does not understand the art of reading.”
Source: The Importance of Living
“.. to change something you do not understand is the true nature of evil.”
Source: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Source: English, August: An Indian Story
Source: Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts
“I would never understand photography, the sneaky, murderous taxidermy of it.”
Source: Anagrams
“Random Girl after a hookup: "Do you love me"
Tucker: "I don't understand the question.”
The Tucker Max Stories
Source: I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
Context: Tucker: Are you married?
Girl: Yes.
Tucker: How good is the marriage?
Girl: Very good.
Tucker: So there is no chance of us hooking up?
Girl: No.
Tucker: Well, do you have any hot friends who aren't fucking prudes? Hey--where are you going? I was only kidding! I respect the sanctity of the monogamous relationship! WHORE!
Context: Tucker: Do you hate the World Bank?
Girl: Uhh, umm, well, I mean, yeah, I feel that...
Tucker: You don't hate the World Bank.
Girl: I don't?
Tucker: No. You're mad at your father. You just want daddy to hug you more.
Girl: What?
Tucker: You were a sociology major weren't you?
Girl: NO!
Tucker: What was your major?
Girl: [Pauses] Uhhh, English Literature.
Tucker: [Pause--to give her a look of contempt] Did your parents send you a bill for college? How are those Marxist Literary Critique classes working out for you? You work at Barnes and Noble don't you?
Girl: NO--I wor--
Tucker: Shouldn't you be blocking an intersection right now? How many anti-sweatshop petitions have you signed--EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVE REEBOKS ON. Very-anti globalization to wear those with your animal tested Clinque make-up made in Nepal. Well, at least you're consistent in your shameless hypocrisy.
Girl: What a fascist piece of shi--
Tucker: You ever wake up in the middle of the night because a couple of cats are clawing each other to death outside your window? That's what it's like listening to you speak.
Girl: [A mishmash of stammered half insults]
Tucker: Seriously--If I stuck my dick in your mouth would that shut you up?
Girl: Wha... YOU ARE SUCH AN ASSHOLE!
Tucker: HEY--Don't blame me for the wound in your crotch. [As I walk off] By the way, you owe us a rib.