Understanding

It's good to be just plain happy; it's a little better to know that you're happy; but to understand that you're happy and to know why and how … and still be happy, be happy in the being and the knowing, well that is beyond happiness, that is bliss. ~~ Henry Miller

The purpose of all higher education is to make men aware of what was and what is; to incite them to probe into what may be. It seeks to teach them to understand, to evaluate, to communicate. ~~ Otto Kleppner

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable. ~~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

If decade after decade the truth cannot be told, each person's mind begins to roam irretrievably. One's fellow countrymen become harder to understand than Martians. ~~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The solitude which is really injurious is the severance from all who are capable of understanding us. ~~ Philip G. Hamerton

There seems to be a terrible misunderstanding on the part of a great many people to the effect that when you cease to believe you may cease to behave. ~~ Louis Kronenberger

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is nothing if the audience is deaf. ~~ Walter Lippmann

It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand. ~~ Mark Twain

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust and hostility to evaporate. ~~ Albert Schweitzer

We come. We go. And in between we try to understand. ~~ Rod Steiger

No one can be as calculatedly rude as the British, which amazes Americans, who do not understand studied insult and can only offer abuse as a substitute. ~~ Paul Gallico

Home is not where you live but where they understand you. ~~ Christian Morgenstern

The human crisis is always a crisis of understanding: what we genuinely understand we can do. ~~ Raymond Williams

Philosophy is perfectly right in saying that life must be understood backward. But then one forgets the other clause -- that it must be lived forward. ~~ Soren Kierkegaard

A Mother's hardest to forgive.
Life is the fruit she longs to hand you,
Ripe on a plate. And while you live,
Relentlessly she understands you. ~~ Phyllis McGinley

In my belief, you cannot deal with the most serious things in the world unless you also understand the most amusing. ~~ Winston Churchill

The best reason why monarchy is a strong government is that it is an intelligible government: the mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other. ~~ Walter Bagehot

Everyone hears only what he understands. ~~ Goethe

No human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another's happiness. ~~ Graham Greene

The ordinary man casts a shadow in a way we do not quite understand. The man of genius casts light. ~~ George Steiner

It is easy to understand God as long as you don't try to explain him. ~~ Joseph Joubert

If men and women are to understand each other, to enter into each other's nature with mutual sympathy, and to become capable of genuine comradeship, the foundation must be laid in youth. ~~ Havelock Ellis

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. ~~ Marie Curie

No one would talk much in society, if he knew how often he misunderstood others. ~~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In most polls there are always about 5 percent of the people who "don't know." What isn't generally understood is that it's the same people in every poll. ~~ George Carlin

People have this obsession. They want you to be like you were in 1969. They want you to, because otherwise their youth goes with you … It's very selfish, but it's understandable. ~~ Mick Jagger

The roots are rationalism, and I would define that word so: "Rationalism is the idea we can ever understand anything about the state of being." It's a death trip. It always has been. ~~ Stephen King ["The Stand"]

Both dreams and myths are important communications … If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world. ~~ Erich Fromm

A professional is a person who tells you what you know already but in a way you cannot understand. ~~ Unattributed

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. ~~ Upton Sinclair

[On his short haircut in "Presumed Innocent":] Nearly every article and review had some reference to my haircut. That was the one time I was absolutely befuddled … I guess I finally began to understand that people felt they owned me in a way. ~~ Harrison Ford

If you keep your head when all about you are losing theirs -- you don't understand the problem. ~~ Unattributed

We are slaves to whatever we don't understand. ~~ Vernon Howard

There is a great difference between knowing a thing and understanding it. ~~ Charles Kettering with T. A. Boyd

[To a cat:] Stately, kindly, lordly friend
Condescend
Here to sit by me, and turn,
Glorious eyes, love's lustrous mead,
On the golden page I read
All your wondrous wealth of hair
Dark and fair,
Silken-shaggy, soft and bright
As the clouds and beams of night,
Pays my reverent hand's caress
Back with friendlier gentleness.
Dogs may fawn on all and some as they come,
You, a friend of loftier mind,
Answer friends alone in kind,
Just your foot upon my hand
Softly bids it understand ~~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

Einstein explained his theory to me every day, and on my arrival I was fully convinced that he understood it. ~~ Chaim Weizmann

Don't assume you're always going to be understood. I wrote in a column that one should put a cup of liquid in the cavity of a turkey when roasting it. Someone wrote me that "the turkey tasted great, but the plastic cup melted." ~~ Heloise

To understand the character of a cat, to respect her independence, to recognize and deplore her pitiless instincts, to be charmed by her gentler moods, to admire her beauty, to appreciate her intelligence, and to love her steadfastly without being loved in return -- these things are not often possible to the Anglo-Saxon nature. ~~ Agnes Repplier

My wife doesn't. Understand me? ~~ William Cole

In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language. ~~ Mark Twain

The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt. ~~ Thomas Merton

To understand a man, you must know his memories. The same is true of a nation. ~~ Anthony Quayle

Most people don't know that cats understand people talk. We are born with that knowledge. It doesn't matter whether it's Micronesian or Asiatic or English or Whatever, we understand it. A cat can't make words. Our voice box is different from the human kind. But we understand spoken words. ~~ Dorothy B. Hughes

Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood. ~~ Lionel Trilling

A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding. ~~ Marshall McLuhan

I can't understand it. I can't even understand the people who can understand it. ~~ Queen Juliana of the Netherlands

A sense of humor … is the ability to understand a joke and that the joke is oneself. ~~ Clifton Fadiman

If you have not known poverty, heart-hunger and misunderstanding, God has overlooked you, and you are to be pitied. ~~ Elbert Hubbard

Perhaps the purpose for which I was born is not to write about my life in search of some universal meaning that may help others to better understand their own lives -- which, in my more egomaniacal moments, is a mission I have embraced. ~~ Dean Koontz ["Fear Nothing"]

Nothing worth knowing can be understood with the mind. ~~ Woody Allen

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom. ~~ Bob Dylan

Once harm has been done, even a fool understands it. ~~ Homer

Understanding a person does not mean condoning; it only means that one does not accuse him as if one were God or a judge placed above him. ~~ Erich Fromm

I don't feel compelled to treat any creature as a fellow citizen of the planet, with rights equal to mine and deserving of all courtesies, if it regards me as dinner. I'm confident that Mother Nature understands my attitude and is not offended. ~~ Dean Koontz ["Seize the Night"]

[From a cat:] Then my Man lifts me up and buries his warm face in my fur. Just then, for a second a flash of higher existence awakens him, and he sighs with bliss and purrs something which is almost understandable. ~~ Karel Capek

We would often be ashamed of our finest actions if the world understood all the motives which produced them. ~~ Duc de La Rochefoucauld

Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood. ~~ William Penn

There are … two kinds of people in this world, those who long to be understood and those who long to be misunderstood. It is the irony of life that neither is gratified. ~~ Carl Van Vechten

All that men really understand is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know; and motives to study or practice. The rest is affectation and imposture. ~~ William Hazlitt

If you would understand your own age, read the works of fiction produced in it. People in disguise speak freely. ~~ Arthur Helps

When you say one thing, the clever person understands three. ~~ Chinese proverb

Parents have to understand: if your kid isn't you, don't blame the kid. ~~ Chastity Bono

A human may go for a stroll with a cat; he has to walk a dog. The cat leads the way, running ahead, tail high, making sure you understand the arrangement. If you should happen to get ahead, the cat will never allow you to think it is following you. It will stop and clean some hard-to-reach spot, or investigate a suspicious movement in the grass; you will find yourself waiting and fidgeting like the lackey you are. But this is not annoying to cat lovers, who understand and appreciate a good joke, even when it is on them. ~~ Robert Stearns

Nothing sways the stupid more than arguments they can't understand. ~~ Cardinal de Retz

I have never quite understood this sex symbol business, but if I'm going to be a symbol of something, I'd rather have it sex than some of the other things they've got symbols for. ~~ Marilyn Monroe

A child is a person who can't understand why someone would give away a perfectly good kitten. ~~ Doug Larson

The only religious way to think of death is as a part and parcel of life; to regard it, with the understanding and the emotions, as the inviolable condition of life. ~~ Thomas Mann

To understand a cat, you must realize that he has his own gifts, his own viewpoint, even his own morality. ~~ Lillian Jackson Braun

For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography. ~~ Robert Penn Warren

One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other. ~~ Jane Austin

You always admire what you really don't understand. ~~ Eleanor Roosevelt

People who do not understand themselves have a craving for understanding. ~~ Dr. Wilhelm Stekel

If someone tells you he is going to make a "realistic decision, " you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad. ~~ Mary McCarthy

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

It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understand each other, they would never agree. ~~ Charles Baudelaire

One of the things more beguiling to cat lovers is the intractability of a cat, its blank refusal of coercion, its refusal to surrender the least part of its spiritual independence even to those for whom it has learned to care. No one who does not understand this and accept this is fit to have the guardianship of a cat. ~~ Marguerite Steen

Those nicotine patches seem to work pretty well, but I understand it's kind of hard to keep 'em lit. ~~ George Carlin

Retirement, we understand, is great if you are busy, rich, and healthy. But then, under those conditions, work is great too. ~~ Bill Vaughn

I have never understood why it should be considered derogatory to the Creator to suppose that he has a sense of humor. ~~ Ralph Inge

Our lives don't really belong to us, you see -- they belong to the world, and in spite of our efforts to make sense of it, the world is a place beyond our understanding. ~~ Paul Auster

In youth we learn; in age we understand. ~~ Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach

What the United States does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is understand others. ~~ Carlos Fuentes

Fame! In the best of cases, a misunderstanding. ~~ Albert Camus

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. ~~ Chinese proverb

Men hate to be misunderstood, and to understood makes them furious. ~~ Edgar Saltus

We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love. ~~ Madame De Stael

I hope that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. ~~ Berry & Homer, Inc.

That must be wonderful; I don't understand it at all. ~~ Moliere

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy. ~~ Steven Weinberg

We don't understand life any better at forty than at twenty, but we know it and admit it. ~~ Jules Renard

It is better to understand little than to misunderstand a lot. ~~ Anatole France

Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon. ~~ Alexander Pope

To be great is to be misunderstood. ~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is the common failing of totalitarian regimes that they cannot really understand the nature of our democracy. They mistake dissent for disloyalty … They mistake a few committees for a country. They misjudge individual speeches for public policy. ~~ Lyndon Baines Johnson

I can't understand blessings, but I recognize them, I cherish them. ~~ Stevie Wonder

I don't ask for your pity, but just your understanding -- no, not even that -- no. Just for your recognition of me in you, and the enemy, time, in us all. ~~ Tennessee Williams

Our dignity is not in what we do, but what we understand. The whole world is doing things. ~~ George Santayana

I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood. ~~ Clarence Darrow

There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight. ~~ Vaclav Havel (See "Said Who?")

The lot of critics is to be remembered by what they failed to understand. ~~ George Moore

Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence. ~~ Hal Borland

If you want truly to understand something, try to change it. ~~ Kurt Lewin

We understand the concept of equality, that we all want to be equal. But I think this is absolutely not true. I don't think anybody really wants to be equal. Everybody wants to be more equal. ~~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

I and my public understand each other very well: it does not hear what I say, and I don't say what it wants to hear. ~~ Karl Kraus

People move forward into the future out of the way they comprehend the past. When we don't understand something in our past, we are therefore crippled. ~~ Norman Mailer

Anyone who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory. ~~ Leonardo da Vinci

It's not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting. If you have to walk around it, it's a sculpture. ~~ Joe Moore

Kindness: a language that the dumb can speak and the deaf can understand. ~~ C. N. Bovee

When men understand what each other mean, they see, for the most part, that controversy is either superfluous or hopeless. ~~ Cardinal John Henry Newman

The older I get, the more I believe in what I can't explain or understand, even more than the things that are explainable and understandable. ~~ Lillian Gish

A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5 x 11 inch paper cannot be understood. ~~ Mark Ardis

My mother used to tell me about vibrations. I didn't really understand too much of what that meant when I was just a boy. To think that invisible feelings, invisible vibrations existed scared me to death. ~~ Brian Wilson

If you don't understand yourself you don't understand anybody else. ~~ Nikki Giovanni

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words. ~~ Elbert Hubbard

I just don't understand those young people. Don't they realize I'm really one of them? I always hated cops when I was a kid, and just like them I dropped out of school and took off for California. I'm not some conformist middle-class personality. ~~ Lyndon Baines Johnson

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. ~~ G. K. Chesterton

Let us permit nature to have her way; she understands her business better than we do. ~~ Michel de Montaigne

It may have been noticed that I use the word "guardianship," in preference to "ownership" of a cat. "Ownership" implies authority over body and soul. A dog, in its devotion, will of its own free will accept this authority; a cat, never. This independence is offensive to people who do not care for cats: I have never been able to understand why. I can no more see why one should assume possession over an animal than over a human being. ~~ Marguerite Steen

Conceit is incompatible with understanding. ~~ Leo Tolstoy

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated. ~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The older generation almost always fails to understand the younger one -- they think their own immutable values the only ones…And so the older generation barks like a dog at what they don't understand. ~~ Count Leo Tolstoy

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While all other sciences advanced, that of government is at a standstill -- little better understood, little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago. ~~ John Adams (Second President of US)

My mother wanted us to understand that the tragedies of your life one day have the potential to be comic stories the next. ~~ Nora Ephron

Do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn? ~~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

Just being a Negro doesn't qualify you to understand the race situation any more than being sick makes you an expert on medicine. ~~ Dick Gregory

The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding. ~~ Albert Camus

People to whom nothing has ever happened
Cannot understand the unimportance of events. ~~ T. S. Eliot