Quotes about Understanding

You know,' he went on, 'novels are the fruit of the human illusion that we can understand our fellow man. But what do we know about each other?' 'Nothing,' said Bibi. 'True,' said Joujou. The professor of philosophy acquiesced with a nod of the head. 'The only thing we can do,' said Banaka, 'is to give an account of our own selves. Anything else is an abuse of power. Anything else is a lie.

The invention of printing formerly enabled people to understand one another. In the era of universal graphomania, the writing of books has an opposite meaning: everyone surrounded by his own words as by a wall of mirrors, which allows no voice to filter in from the outside.

The tons of steel of the Russian tanks were nothing compared with it. For there is nothing heavier compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.

A single metaphor can give birth to love. To love someone out of compassion means not really to love.

Suspending moral judgement is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality. The morality that stands against the ineradicable human habit of judging instantly, ceaselessly, and everyone; of judging before, and in the absence of, understanding. From the viewpoint of the novel's wisdom, that fervid readiness to judge is the most detestable stupidity. Not that the novelist utterly denies that moral judgement is legitimate, but that she refuses it a place in the novel.

He understands that that impatience to speak is also an implacable uninterest in listening

Love does not to be understood. It needs only to be shown.

Love one another, but let's try not to possess one another.

How does light enter a person? Through the open door of love.

Love doesn't need to be discussed; it has its own voice and speaks for itself.

Love doesn't need to be understood, it needs to be demonstrated

Love is an overarching style of relating to another.