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Understanding quotes

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“You never understand anybody that loves you.” Ernest Hemingway, “Islands in the Stream” - 1970

“You have to know the past to understand the present.” Carl Sagan, “Cosmos” - 1980

“My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.” John Green, “The Fault in Our Stars” - 2012

“In Nature's infinite book of secrecy a little I can read.” William Shakespeare, “Antony and Cleopatra” - 1623

“Why, stand-under and under-stand is all one.” William Shakespeare, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” - 1623

“How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm...” Lewis Carroll, “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” - 1865

“She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of a lack of knowledge.” Maya Angelou, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” - 1969

“It is only when a man feels himself face to face with such horrors that he can understand their true import.” Bram Stoker, “Dracula” - 1897

“It's the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them.” Paulo Coelho, “The Alchemist” - 1988

“Woman, don't you know, is such a subject that however much you study it, it's always perfectly new.” Leo Tolstoy, “Anna Karenina” - 1877

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.” Francis Bacon, “The Essays of Francis Bacon” - 1597

“He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either be not minded or not understood.” John Locke, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” - 1689

“All our knowledge begins with sense, proceeds thence to understanding, and ends with reason, beyond which nothing higher can be discovered in the human mind for elaborating the matter of intuition and subjecting it to the highest unity of thought.” Immanuel Kant, “Critique of Pure Reason” - 1791

“We only labour to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.” Michel de Montaigne, “The Essays of Michel de Montaigne” - 1580

“The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point.” Albert Camus, “The Plague” - 1947

“It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.” Haruki Murakami, “Norwegian Wood” - 1987

“You women have a way of understanding without thinking. Woman was created out of God's own fancy. Man, He had to hammer into shape.” Rabindranath Tagore, “The Home and the World” - 1916

“All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.” J. D. Salinger, “The Catcher in the Rye” - 1951

“Much learning does not teach understanding, otherwise it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, Xenophanes and Hecataeus.” Heraclitus, “On Nature” - c. 535 – c. 475 BCE

“Silence is the snare of the demon, and the more one keeps silent, the more terrifying the demon becomes; but silence is also the mutual understanding between the Deity and the individual.” Søren Kierkegaard, “Fear and Trembling” - 1843

“So soon as I talk I express the universal, and if I do not do so, no one can understand me.” Søren Kierkegaard, “Fear and Trembling” - 1843

“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “The Little Prince” - 1943

“If anything, I wanted to understand things and then be free of them.” Bob Dylan, “Chronicles, Volume One” - 2004

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.” George Orwell, “1984” - 1949

“I often have long conversations all by myself, and I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.” Oscar Wilde, “The Remarkable Rocket” - 1888

“Tiger got to hunt, Bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, Bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.” Kurt Vonnegut, “Cat's Cradle” - 1963

“What you don’t understand you can make mean anything.” Chuck Palahniuk, “Diary” - 2003

“Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone.” Leo Tolstoy, “War and Peace” - 1869

“Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you—except the things that count?” Ayn Rand, “The Fountainhead” - 1943

“A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something that he can understand.” Bertrand Russell, “A History of Western Philosophy” - 1945

“We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything.” Ayn Rand, “The Fountainhead” - 1943

“You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.” John Steinbeck, “East of Eden” - 1952

“Isabel’s written in a foreign tongue. I can’t make her out.” Henry James, “The Portrait of a Lady” - 1881

“It's extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it's just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome.” Joseph Conrad, “Lord Jim” - 1900

“We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements . . . profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.” Carl Sagan, “The Demon-Haunted World” - 1995

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.” Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” - 16 April 1963

“The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy, but they were listening in gibberish.” Terry Pratchett, “Small Gods” - 1992

“Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Emile, or On Education” - 1762

“While we loved each other we didn't need words to make ourselves understood.” Albert Camus, “The Plague” - 1947

“I understand a fury in your words, but not the words.” William Shakespeare, “Othello” - 1623

“Look, he's winding up the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.” William Shakespeare, “The Tempest” - 1623

“My desolation does begin to make a better life.” William Shakespeare, “Antony and Cleopatra” - 1623

“It's so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.” George Bernard Shaw, “Man and Superman” - 1903

“Friend, we understand not one another: I am too courtly, and thou art too cunning.” William Shakespeare, “Troilus and Cressida” - 1609

“That's what they mean by the love that passeth understanding: that pride, that furious desire to hide that abject nakedness which we bring here with us, carry with us into operating rooms, carry stubbornly and furiously with us into the earth again.” William Faulkner, “As I Lay Dying” - 1930

“Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter's remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. 'I don't quite understand you,' she said, as politely as she could.” Lewis Carroll, “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” - 1865

“Eloquence, when at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection; but addressing itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding.” David Hume, “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding” - 1748

“Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a...” David Hume, “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding” - 1748

“No one understands so well as a woman, how to say things that are, at once, both sweet and deep.” Victor Hugo, “Les Misérables” - 1862

“The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects, too, are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention, in finding out...” Adam Smith, “The Wealth of Nations” - 1776

Related topics

love knowledge life reason God words meaning feeling heart teaching women wisdom ignorance language philosophy belief man empathy woman experience

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John Steinbeck (4)
J. K. Rowling (3)
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Jane Austen (2)
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Carl Sagan (2)
Michel de Montaigne (2)
Albert Camus (2)
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Related sources

Fear and Trembling (3)
Tao of Jeet Kune Do (3)
Pride and Prejudice (2)
Antony and Cleopatra (2)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (2)
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (2)
The Fountainhead (2)
The Alchemist (2)
Heart of Darkness (2)
The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (2)
The Plague (2)
East of Eden (2)
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (2)
Chronicles, Volume One (2)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2)
The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1)
Othello (1)
The Tempest (1)
Man and Superman (1)
Islands in the Stream (1)