Quotes about Understanding

Though Harmon Gow developed the tale as far as his mental and moral reach permitted there were perceptible gaps between his facts, and I had the sense that the deeper meaning of the story was in the gaps.

Don't you know how, in talking a foreign language, even fluently, one says half the time not what one wants to but what one can?

Don't judge us too harshly—or not, at least, till you have taken the trouble to learn our point of view. You consider the individual—we think only of the family.

The wild gas, the fixed air is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend our judgments until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation of the troubled and frothy surface. [Alluding to Joseph Priestley's Observations on Air]

Now listen more carefully to depression. Like all feelings, it is a kind of language. Guilt says, "I am wrong." Anger says, "You are wrong." Fear says, "I am in danger." Depression, too, has a message, but the message is usually not that simple. "Whereas some emotions are clear and unambiguous, depression's language is more heavily encrypted. It might take some decoding before it is understandable, but it is worth the effort.

Knowing and being known—by design we enjoy human connections, and those connections are forged over time through normal interactions and questions that gradually ask for more. Such connections are the foundations for mutual help, and they are helpful in themselves since they are expressions of love.

Love is able to see past the clutter of a disorganized life.

You can probably identify your friends' gifts rather quickly

In our attempts to help, we can overinterpret suffering.

Humility means that you acknowledge you don't know everything, and you might be especially confused when it comes to God.

Who in your life is one step ahead of you in knowing people? What does that person do?

We don't aim to draw out problems so that we can be helpers. We are simply interested in knowing another person, which is a basic feature of everyday love.