Quotes about Understanding

There is no escaping the fact that want of sympathy condemns us to a corresponding stupidity.

Love gives insight, Maggie, and insight often gives foreboding. Listen to me, let me supply you with books; do let me see you sometimes, be your brother and teacher, as you said at Lorton. It is less wrong that you should see me than that you should be committing this long suicide.

Nature has her language, and she is not unveracious; but we don't know all the intricacies of her syntax just yet, and in a hasty reading we may happen to extract the very opposite of her real meaning.

Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.

They are always wanting reasons, yet they are too ignorant to understand the merits of any question, and usually fall back on their moral sense to settle things after their own taste. Evidently

Young ladies don't understand political economy, you know," said Mr. Brooke

I believe that people are almost always better than their neighbors think they are," said Dorothea.

No, dear, no, said Dorothea, stroking her sister's cheek. Souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

is so painful in you, Celia, that you will look at human beings as if they were merely animals with a toilet, and never see the great soul in a man's face.

Who knows that about anybody?

I suppose one reason why we are seldom able to comfort our neighbours with our words is that our goodwill gets adulterated, in spite of ourselves, before it can pass our lips. We can send black pudding and pettitoes without giving them a flavour of our own egoism; but language is a stream that is almost sure to smack of a mingled soil.