Quotes about Understanding

one cannot seek for what he knows, and it seems equally impossible for him to seek for what he does not know. For what a man knows he cannot seek, since he knows it; and what he does not know he cannot seek, since he does not even know for what to seek.

The supreme paradox of all thought is the attempt to discover something that thought cannot think.

Now the story of Abraham has the remarkable property that it is always glorious, however poorly one may understand it; yet here again the proverb applies, that all depends upon whether one is willing to labor and be heavy laden. But they will not labor, and yet they would understand the story.

Lord, give us weak eyes for things of little worth, and eyes clear-sighted in all of your truth.

AÅŸk için her ÅŸey imgedir; ama imge de hakikattir.

Christianity will not be content to be an evolution within the total category of human nature; an engagement such as that is too little to offer to a god. Neither does it even want to be the paradox for the believer, and then surreptitiously, little by little, provide him with understanding, because the martyrdom of faith (to crucify one's understanding) is not a martyrdom of the moment, but the martyrdom of continuance.

Job endured everything — until his friends came to comfort him, then he grew impatient.

What good would it do me if truth stood before me, cold and naked, not caring whether I recognized her or not?

let us speak of the wish and thereby of the sufferings; let us properly linger over this, convinced that one may learn more profoundly and more reliably what the highest is by considering suffering than by observing achievements, where so much that is distracting is present.

If a person does not become what he understands, then he does not understand it either.

So soon as I talk I express the universal, and if I do not do so, no one can understand me.

If you can do that, if you can find exactly the place where the other is and begin there, you may perhaps have the luck to lead him to the place where you are. For to be a teacher does not mean simply to affirm that such a thing is so, or to deliver a lecture, etc. No, to be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner.