Quotes about Understanding
The only way to ease our fear and be truly happy is to acknowledge our fear and look deeply at its source.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
If you can see your mother as a fragile five-year-old girl, then you can forgive her very easily with compassion. The five-year-old girl who was your mother is always alive in her and in you.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
The most effective way to show compassion to another is to listen, rather than talk. You have an opportunity to practice deep, compassionate listening. If you can listen to the other person with compassion, your listening is like a salve for her wound. In the practice of compassionate listening, you listen with only one purpose, which is to give the other person the chance to speak out and to suffer less.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Shallow understanding accompanies shallow compassion. Great understanding goes with great compassion.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Understanding is a gift. The other person may feel understood for the first time. Understanding is the other name of love. If you don't understand, you can't love. If you don't understand your son, you can't love him. If you don't understand your mother, you can't love her. To offer understanding means to offer love. Without understanding, the more we love, the more we make ourselves and others suffer.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
In fact, father and mother are two aspects of the same reality. Father is more expressive side of wisdom or understanding, and mother the side of love or compassion...Without understanding there cannot be true love, and without love there cannot be understanding
— Thich Nhat Hanh
We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love. We must look deeply in order to see and understand the needs, aspirations, and suffering of the person we love. This is the ground of real love. You cannot resist loving another person when you really understand him or her.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
We still have not yet fully understood electrons and nuclei; for scientists, a speck of dust is very exciting. A particle of dust is a marvel.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
The fear, the anger and the despair is born on the ground of wrong perception.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
To "love our enemy" is impossible, because the moment we love him, he is no longer our enemy.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Everything is in your own heart.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
Whatever views we hold, we should be careful not to get caught up in thinking that our view is the "best" and that only we have the truth.
— Thich Nhat Hanh