Quotes about Understanding

Every human being must be viewed according to what it is good for. For not one of us, no, not one, is perfect. And were we to love none who had imperfection, this world would be a desert for our love.

Do not be too severe upon the errors of the people, but reclaim them by enlightening them.

Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more.

Surrender your own poverty and acknowledge your nothingness to the Lord. Whether you understand it or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you and offers you an understanding and compassion which are like nothing you have ever found in a book or heard in a sermon.

God, Who is everywhere, never leaves us. Yet He seems sometimes to be present, sometimes to be absent. If we do not know Him well, we do not realize that He may be more present to us when He is absent than when He is present.

The only thing to seek in contemplative prayer is God; and we seek Him successfully when we realize that we cannot find Him unless He shows Himself to us, and yet at the same time that He would not have inspired us to seek Him unless we had already found Him.

We have what we seek. We don't have to rush after it. It was there all the time, and if we give it time it will make itself known to us.

How deluded we sometimes are by the clear notions we get out of books. They make us think that we really understand things of which we have no practical knowledge at all.

If you find God with great ease, perhaps it is not God you have found.

Means and Ends The purpose of a fish trap Is to catch fish, And when the fish are caught The trap is forgotten. The purpose of a rabbit snare Is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught The snare is forgotten. The purpose of words Is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped The words are forgotten. Where can I find a man Who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise, we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them

It is when we insist most firmly on everyone else being reasonable that we become ourselves, unreasonable.