Quotes about understanding
page 14

“Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully.
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever."
"And he has Brain."
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain."
There was a long silence.
"I suppose," said Pooh, "that that's why he never understands anything.”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

Silence

“Anything you don’t understand, Mr. Rankin, you attribute to God. God for you is where you sweep away all the mysteries of the world, all the challenges to our intelligence. You simply turn your mind off and say God did it.”

Carl Sagan book Contact

Source: Contact (1985), Chapter 10 (p. 166)

God, World, Intelligence

“There are kinds of action, for good or ill, that lie so far outside the boundaries of normal behavior that they force us, in acknowledging that they have occurred, to restructure our own understanding of reality. We have to make room for them.”

Guy Gavriel Kay book The Summer Tree

Source: The Summer Tree

Lie, Behavior, Reality

“Sheriff Mossberg was one of those people who never stop speaking until
they are finished, so by this time he was saying: “Do you understand
these rights?”
“No, sir! Mi ne komprenas Dumbtalk!”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Shadow Souls

People, Time

“If you've lived through it, you already know there are no words that will ever come close to describing it, and if you didn't - you will never understand.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

“It's pathetic how we can't live with the things we can't understand. How we need everything labeled and explained and deconstructed.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

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

“They understand not only evil, it seemed, but the extravagance of tricks with which evil presents itself as good.”

Donna Tartt book The Secret History

Source: The Secret History

Evil

“Let’s just say I understand betrayal. And having been where he is, I know the explosion to come. Trust me. ‘Duck’ won’t quite cover it. (Sin)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Devil May Cry

Betrayal

“Anyone who knows me well must understand and be sympathetic to my genuine need to be my own greatest hero. It is not a flaw of character; it is a catastrophe.”

Pat Conroy The Lords of Discipline

Source: The Lords of Discipline

“… our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding.”

Helen Keller book The Story of My Life

Source: The Story of My Life

Literature, Dependency

“Oh, I could spend my life having this conversation - look - please try to understand before one of us dies”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

Life

“Who are you?'
I didn't understand the question.
I'm Uri', he said. 'What's your name?'
I gave him my name. 'Stopthief.”

Jerry Spinelli book Milkweed

Source: Milkweed

Question

“She kept her face to the floor, moving in her personal oblivion, her sunflower eyes fixed on the predicament of her life we would never understand.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

Life, Personality

“That's what my mother doesn't understand about my lipstick and dark clothes. I don't wear tattoos to freak her out; I wear them because I have to. It's me.”

Ellen Schreiber (1967) American writer

Source: The Coffin Club

Tattoo, Clothes

“See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

People

“If some lives form a perfect circle, other take shape in ways we cannot predict or always understand. Loss has been part of my journey. But it has also shown me what is precious. So has love for which I can only be grateful.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

Love, Way, Loss, Parting

“… Gentlemen don't understand anything, however wise they may be.”

Georgette Heyer book Venetia

Source: Venetia

“By understanding the nuances of the world around you and how to survive the temptations, you can rule anything. Even yourself”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

World

“You have to take risks … We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

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.

Life

“You have understood what all great painters understand: in order to forget the rules, you must know them and respect them.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

Forgetting

“The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man. Unless he understands this, he does not grasp the essential meaning of his life.”

Huey P. Newton book Revolutionary Suicide

Source: Revolutionary Suicide (1973), p. 3

Life, Learning

“Habit 1: Be Proactive
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Habit 3: Put First Things First
Habit 4: Think Win/Win
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
Habit 6: Synergize
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Thinking

“You dinna need to understand me, Sassenach," he said quietly. "So long as you love me.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Love

“Maybe Liz was right and she'd wanted someplace safe. Maybe Mr. Solomon really did understand that running was the only way Macey would find out if we'd run after her. Or maybe, like me, she just wanted to disappear for a little while”

Ally Carter book Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Source: Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Way

“Please love me David the way I am. Please understand and love me.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Garden of Eden

Catherine in Ch. 1
Source: The Garden of Eden (1986)

Love, Way

“Understanding means throwing away your knowledge.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Being Peace

Knowledge

“The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no?
Doesn't that make life a story?”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Life, World, Way

“How can I make him understand that he did not create me?
He makes the same mistake as the others when they look at a feeble-minded person and laugh because they don't understand there are human feelings involved.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Source: Flowers for Algernon

Feeling, Personality

“It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are.”

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

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.

“So we make stories of our own, in fevered and envious imitation of our Maker, hoping that we'll tell, by chance, what God left untold. And finishing our tale, come to understand why we were born.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

God, Hope, Chance

“It took turns that people couldn’t foresee or even understand, leaving a long trail of regret in its wake. And almost always, those regrets led to the kinds of what if questions that could never be answered.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Best of Me

Source: The Best of Me

People, Question

“Don’t try to understand! It’s enough if you do not misunderstand.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

“Everyone's moving on without me, into a world I don't understand.”

Sophie Kinsella book The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic

Source: Confessions of a Shopaholic

World

“… I wanted Ambiades to understand that I considered myself a hierarchy of one.”

Megan Whalen Turner The Thief

Source: The Thief

“I doubt you can understand the magnitude of the stupidity in your statement”

Robert Jordan The Wheel of Time

Source: The Gathering Storm

Stupidity

“Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.”

John Irving book The Hotel New Hampshire

Source: The Hotel New Hampshire

Imagination

“I've come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying
the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I
now enjoy.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

Failure, Past

“Already Roland feels his limbs starting to go numb. He swallows hard.
"I hate this. I hate you. I hate all of you."
"I understand.”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Source: Unwind

Hate, Feeling

“What you have to understand, is your father was your model for God.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

God

“Occasionally in life we come upon things we can't understand, because we have never seen anything similar.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Life

“Did you ever think, Clarice, why the Philistines don't understand you? It's because you are the answer to Samson's riddle. You are the honey in the lion.”

Thomas Harris book Hannibal

Source: Hannibal

Thinking

“My sister, who never understood most of the things I wanted her to, might have been able to understand what had happened to me in this summer of weddings and beginnings. And she was right. The first boy was always the hardest. page 40000”

Sarah Dessen book That Summer

Source: That Summer (1996)

Boy, Sister, Wedding, Summer

“We live in America,' he said. 'Everyone who speaks English understands you. How they interpret you is something else.”

Carrie Fisher book Postcards from the Edge

Source: Postcards from the Edge

“Then I turned the page and at the top it said THINGS I MISS ABOUT M and there was a list of 15 things, and the first was THE WAY HE HOLDS THINGS. I did not understand how you can miss the way somebody holds things.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Way

“What kind of scholar was I? Or was I a scholar at all? My ignorance was enormous. Beside it my knowledge was nothing. My hunger for learning, not so much to improve my lot as to understand my world, had led me to study and to thought. Reading without thinking is as nothing, for a book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.”

Louis L'Amour book The Walking Drum

Source: The Walking Drum (1984), Ch. 25

Hunger, Books, World, Knowledge

“Never question the truth of what you fail to understand, for the world is filled with wonders.”

L. Frank Baum book Rinkitink in Oz

Source: Rinkitink in Oz

Truth, World, Question

“I'm playing with fire, with something I don't understand.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: The Awakening

“When a wise man does not understand, he says: "I do not understand." The fool and the uncultured are ashamed of their ignorance. They remain silent when a question could bring them wisdom.”

Frank Herbert book The Godmakers

Source: The Godmakers (1972)

Wisdom, Fools, Question

“She doesn't understand that a writer is a special creature--that I'm different from everyone else. I'm not saying I'm superior to other people, just more sensitive, I guess.”

Christopher Moore book Bloodsucking Fiends

Source: Bloodsucking Fiends

People

“I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it's medically conservative to cut people open or put them on powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives … Animal products are the main culprit in what is killing us. We can absolutely live better lives without them.”

Dean Ornish (1953) American physician

Quoted in Roberto Suro, "Hearts and Minds", New York Times Magazine (29 December 1991).

People, Animals

“There were some things that needed to be said even if the person you were saying them to didn't understand; words that must be released from their trapped place where their flapping to get out could cause internal damage.”

Patti Callahan Henry American writer

Source: Between The Tides

Personality

“Today’s young people want to know everything about everyone. They think talking about a problem will solve it. I come from a quieter generation. We understand the value of forgetting, the lure of reinvention.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Source: The Nightingale

People, Problem, Thinking, Forgetting

“And we must still try or we would be leaving our friends to fight without us. I think this is what you have meant by duty, all along; I do understand, at least this much of it.”

Naomi Novik book His Majesty's Dragon

Source: His Majesty's Dragon

Thinking, Fight

“By trying to understand everything, everything makes me dream”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

Dreams

“understanding the true nature of instinctive decision making requires us to be forgiving of those people trapped in circumstances where good judgment is imperiled.”

Malcolm Gladwell book Blink

Source: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

People, Forgiveness, Nature, Decision

“For men, I think, love is a thing formed of equal parts lust and astonishment. The astonishment part women understand. The lust part they only think they understand.”

Stephen King book Bag of Bones

Source: Bag of Bones

Love, Women, Men, Thinking

“Sitting high above the city, Father Time realized that knowing something and understanding it were not the same thing.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Time Keeper

Time

“Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Source: Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

Art, Effort

“But if we are talking in terms of making progress in life, we must understand that "good enough" is very different from "best.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Life

“As if the night had said to me, ‘You are the night and the night alone understands you and enfolds you in its arms’ One with the shadows. Without nightmare. An inexplicable peace.”

Anne Rice book Interview with the Vampire

Source: Interview with the Vampire

Peace, Night

“What the younger generation didn't understand was that the grass was greenest where it's watered..”

Nicholas Sparks book The Best of Me

Source: The Best of Me

Grass, Water

“Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

People

“Spread love and understanding,” Reacher said. “Use force if necessary.”

Lee Child book Never Go Back

Source: Never Go Back

Love

“If you accept such love with purity and humility, you will understand that Love is neither giving nor receiving -it is participating.”

Paulo Coelho Maktub

Source: Maktub

Love

“You'll never get to a person's soul until you understand their hurts.”

Ravi Zacharias (1946) Indian philosopher

Soul, Hurt, Personality

“Haters are confused admirers who can’t understand why everybody else likes you”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Variant: Haters are confused admirers who want to be like you.

“I shan't ever understand your willingness to lie down and die," Felicity bars. "If you won't at least try to fight, I have no sympathy for you.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

Lie, Fight

“Now I understand. When you love someone, you have to try things even if they don't make sense to anyone else.”

Gennifer Choldenko book Al Capone Does My Shirts

Source: Al Capone Does My Shirts

Love, Sense

“She didn't need to understand the meaning of life; it was enough to find someone who did, and then fall asleep in his arms and sleep as a child sleeps, knowing that someone stronger than you is protecting you from all evil and all danger”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

Life, Sleep, Evil

“Best way to find the weakness of the enemy is to understand their ways.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Froi of the Exiles

Way

“It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.”

Arthur C. Clarke book 2001: A Space Odyssey

Source: 2001: A Space Odyssey

“To learn and think; to think and live; to live and learn: this always, with new insight, new understanding, and new love.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Love, Thinking, Learning

“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.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

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, Success

“To be happy with a man you must understand him a lot and love him a little. To be happy with a woman you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all.”

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (1938) American historian

Source: Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History

Love, Happiness

“Now I understand,” said the last man.”

Arthur C. Clarke book Childhood's End

Source: Childhood's End

“Life: I'll never understand it.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Variant: Life: I’ll never understand it.

Life

“You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

Freedom

“TRYING TO FILL THE empty SPACE

i don't know
if I will
ever understand
this Ache.
Perhaps it is
simpley and completely
Love and

what

HAPPENS.
at the end.

Loss

November 17, early morning”

Sabrina Ward Harrison (1975) Canadian writer

Source: Spilling Open: The Art of Becoming Yourself

Love, Loss

“Being locked up is one thing, but to have no concept of confinement, to be ignorant of its terms and never understand that struggle is useless - that's what hell must be like.”

David Sedaris (1956) American author

Hell

“What she hadn't realized was that sometimes when your vision was that sharp and true, it could cut you. That only if you'd felt such fullness could you really understand the ache of being empty.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

“There must exist a paradigm, a practical model for social change that includes an understanding of ways to transform consciousness that are linked to efforts to transform structures.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Killing Rage: Ending Racism

Way, Effort, Change

“Anyone who reads a book with a sense of obligation does not understand the art of reading.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living

Books, Art, Sense, Reading

“She could understand suddenly why people talked about passion as fire: She felt as if they had caught aflame and were burning like the dry Malibu hills, about to become ashes that would mix together forever.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

People, Passion

“And one has to understand that braveness is not the absence of fear but rather the strength to keep on going forward despite the fear.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Fear

“Those who cannot love do not understand it”

Cassandra Clare book Lord of Shadows

Source: Lord of Shadows

Love

“You're my friend, Danny. You understand? There's no debt between friends."
Maybe it's just that the debt gets so high you stop counting it.”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

“Feelings are your guide. Trust your feelings and learn to express them, and do not blame anyone for how you feel. Be yourself, observe yourself. Look to understand any crisis you have been in or will be in.”

Barbara Marciniak (1928–2012)

Source: Family of Light: Pleiadian Tales and Lessons in Living

Feeling, Learning

“.. to change something you do not understand is the true nature of evil.”

Jeanette Winterson book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Source: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Nature, Evil, Change

“He found himself understanding the wearisomeness of this life, where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one's waking life was spent watching one's feet.”

William Golding book Lord of the Flies

Source: Lord of the Flies

Life, Parting

“We are men without ambition, and all we want is to be left alone, in peace so that we can try and be happy. So few people will understand this simplicity.”

Upamanyu Chatterjee (1959) Indian writer

Source: English, August: An Indian Story

Men, Happiness, People, Peace

“God’s plan and His ways of working out His plan are frequently beyond our ability to fathom and understand. We must learn to trust when we don’t understand.”

Jerry Bridges (1929–2016) American writer

Source: Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts

God, Way, Learning

“I would never understand photography, the sneaky, murderous taxidermy of it.”

Lorrie Moore (1957) American writer

Source: Anagrams

“It was deeply a part of Lee's kindness and understanding that man's right to kill himself is inviolable, but sometimes a friend can make it unnecessary”

John Steinbeck book Cannery Row

Source: Cannery Row

Parting

“Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness?”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Source: Night

Nature, Madness

“I can see myself now, she said. And I can see what I want to be, ten years from now. But I don't understand how I'm going to get from here to there.”

Jodi Picoult book The Pact

Source: The Pact

“People just weren't interesting. Maybe they weren't supposed to be. But animals, birds, even insects were. I couldn't understand it.”

Charles Bukowski book Hollywood

Source: Hollywood

People, Bird, Animals

“Conservatives understand Halloween, liberals only understand Christmas. If you want to control a population, don't give it social services, give it a scary adversary.”

Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All

Source: Skinny Legs and All

Christmas

“To write a novel, you begin with what you can see and then you add what came before and what came after.

… You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It's all there and you just have to find it.”

Thomas Harris Red Dragon

Source: Red Dragon

“I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Effort

“Random Girl after a hookup: "Do you love me"
Tucker: "I don't understand the question.”

Tucker Max I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

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.

Love, Girl, Question

Quotes about understanding page 14

Quotes about understanding
page 14