Understanding famous quotes
07-19-2025
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Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out . . .. Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.
-- A. E. Housman -
Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.
-- A. E. Housman -
Your career, interests and relationships are important, but they are only important insofar as they lead you toward a deeper understanding of yourself. Otherwise, they are irrelevant.
-- A. H. Almaas -
We are not separate. Our sense of separateness is superficial and exist only in the physical dimension. In our human element, we are not separate; we’re very much connected. Every other human being is just as precious as we are, and worthy of as much respect and love and consideration. This understanding needs to manifest in our conduct in each moment. This is the part of the Work that will transform you.
-- A. H. Almaas -
Fatherhood is a relationship of love and understanding It is power and action. It is counsel and instruction.
-- A. Theodore Tuttle -
A visual understanding of great composition and how to use a camera and expensive lenses can be learned, but drive and a real hunger for making photos and telling stories... I don't think that part can be learned. You either have that inside, or you don't.
-- Aaron Huey -
Real education is about genuine understanding and the ability to figure things out on your own; not about making sure every 7th grader has memorized all the facts some bureaucrats have put in the 7th grade curriculum.
-- Aaron Swartz -
Steadfastness is a noble quality, but unguided by knowledge or humility, it becomes rashness, or obstinacy.
-- Aaron Swartz -
Cats and I have an understanding, but we choose not to interact often.
-- Aaron Tveit -
Convergence of our views on global trade issues under the WTO and our common resolve to combat terrorism provide a valuable base for mutual understanding.
-- Abdul Kalam -
The beginning of knowledge is the intention, then listening, then understanding, then action, then preservation, and then spreading it.
-- Abdullah ibn Mubarak -
When time and space and change converge, we find place. We arrive in Place when we resolve things. Place is peace of mind and understanding. Place is knowledge of self. Place is resolution.
-- Abdullah Ibrahim -
The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living.
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present.
-- Adlai E. Stevenson -
I began to study again, and now for the first time really achieved an understanding of the content of the Jew Karl Marx's life effort. Only now did his Capital become really intelligible to me, and also the struggle of the Social Democracy against the national economy, which aims only to prepare the ground for the domination of truly international finance and stock exchange capital.
-- Adolf Hitler -
Can you imagine if you really let it in that you are not a problem to be solved in any way? Imagine you knew that anything that would tell you otherwise is just a movement of thought in the mind that says "Whatever is, isn't the way it is supposed to be." So the biggest act of compassion starts within. And when the self is no longer seen as a problem, this is called "the peace that passes all understanding."
-- Adyashanti -
The Universal Zulu Nation stands to acknowledge wisdom, understanding, freedom, justice, and equality, peace, unity, love, and having fun, work, overcoming the negative through the positive, science, mathematics, faith, facts, and the wonders of God, whether we call him Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh, or Jah.
-- Afrika Bambaataa -
Tolerance, openness and understanding towards other peoples' cultures, social structures, values and faiths are now essential to the very survival of an interdependent world.
-- Aga Khan IV -
The improvement of the mind improves the heart and corrects the understanding.
-- Agathon -
People who pin their faith to a catchword never feel the necessity of understanding anything.
-- Agnes Repplier -
Come find me," Leo put in, his gaze full of understanding. "Whenever you want. I'll be here.
-- Aimee Friedman -
Learn to see that it is not things that bother us, that we go out to bother them. See the world as a mirror. It is all a reflection of the mind. When you know this, you can grow in every moment, and every experience reveals truth and brings understanding.
-- Ajahn Chah -
Happiness and suffering do not depend on being poor or rich, they depend on having the right or wrong understanding in our mind.
-- Ajahn Chah -
Regarding this Dhamma, it is not something that we can simply talk about or take another's word for it. We need to develop meditation so that the understanding arises clearly within oneself. It is not the case that merely by listening to another's explanation our defilements will disappear. When we gain some understanding we need to chew on it again so that we see it for ourselves with certainty: paccattam.
-- Ajahn Chah -
You can be totally rational with a machine. But if you work with people, sometimes logic often has to take a backseat to understanding.
-- Akio Morita -
Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad and helping your loved one grow. Love takes attention and work and is the best thing in the world.
-- Al Franken -
I'm naturally an optimist, but my basis for hope is rooted in my understanding of human nature.
-- Al Gore -
The more deeply I search for the roots of the global environmental crisis, the more I am convinced that it is an outer manifestation of an inner crisis that is, for lack of a better word, spiritual... what other word describes the collection of values and assumptions that determine our basic understanding of how we fit into the universe?
-- Al Gore -
USA TODAY hopes to serve as a forum for better understanding and unity to help make the USA truly one nation.
-- Al Neuharth -
The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "luxury.
-- Alain de Botton -
It has been my experience that competency in mathematics, both in numerical manipulations and in understanding its conceptual foundations, enhances a person's ability to handle the more ambiguous and qualitative relationships that dominate our day-to-day financial decision-making
-- Alan Greenspan -
Understanding- -like civilization, happiness, music, science and a host of other great endeavors--is not a state of being, but a manner of traveling. This great road has no final destination. The journey itself is the reward.
-- Alan Kay -
I wish I had been a better mother and a more compassionate and understanding wife in both of my marriages.
-- Alana Stewart -
You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.
-- Albert Camus -
Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.
-- Albert Einstein -
Understanding of our fellow human beings...becomes fruitful only when it is sustained by sympathetic feelings in joy and sorrow.
-- Albert Einstein -
I didn't arrive at my understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe through my rational mind.
-- Albert Einstein -
To understand the world one must not be worrying about one's self.
-- Albert Einstein -
As for the search for truth, I know from my own painful searching, with its many blind alleys, how hard it is to take a reliable step, be it ever so small, towards the understanding of that which is truly significant.
-- Albert Einstein -
I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance - but for us, not for God.
-- Albert Einstein -
If God has created the world, his primary worry was certainly not to make its understanding easy for us
-- Albert Einstein -
I was sort of a half-breed of colonization, understanding everyone because I belonged completely to no one.
-- Albert Memmi -
I've been fifty thousand times to the Louvre. I have copied everything in drawing, trying to understand.
-- Alberto Giacometti -
And we all know love is a glass which makes even a monster appear fascinating.
-- Alberto Moravia -
Patience is about understanding the right moment for action and the right moment for stillness.
-- Alberto Villoldo -
But then every man is ludicrous if you look at him from outside, without taking into account what’s going on in his heart and mind.
-- Aldous Huxley -
Their false compassion is called compassion and their false understanding is called understanding, for this is their most potent spell.
-- Aleister Crowley -
The first thing I didn't understand was my life. It's a mystery. And today I don't understand economy or politics. I don't know why politics or economy are destroying the world, but I will understand after understanding.
-- Alejandro Jodorowsky -
A man used to riding in a car cannot understand a pedestrian.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn -
If you need to know history, the real story of those before you, then you should go to the library and read newspaper clippings of someone like Muhammad Ali every day, then it might giver you some understanding of the man.
-- Alex Haley -
For my victory over Capablanca I am indebted primarily to my superiority in the field of psychology. Capablanca played, relying almost exclusively on his rich intuitive talent. But for the chess struggle nowadays one needs a subtle knowledge of human nature, an understanding of the opponent's psychology.
-- Alexander Alekhine -
The question you raise, 'How can such a formulation lead to computations?' doesn't bother me in the least! Throughout my whole life as a mathematician, the possibility of making explicit, elegant computations has always come out by itself, as a byproduct of a thorough conceptual understanding of what was going on. Thus I never bothered about whether what would come out would be suitable for this or that, but just tried to understand - and it always turned out that understanding was all that mattered.
-- Alexander Grothendieck -
Be content with who you are and where you are, and do whatever you can do to bring to others such contentment, and joy, and understanding that you have managed to find yourself.
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
Every man has just as much vanity as he wants understanding.
-- Alexander Pope -
Use them with care, and use them with respect as to the transformations they can achieve, and you have an extraordinary research tool. Go banging about with a psychedelic drug for a Saturday night turn-on, and you can get into a really bad place, psychologically. Know what you're using, decide just why you're using it, and you can have a rich experience. They're not addictive, and they're certainly not escapist, either, but they're exceptionally valuable tools for understanding the human mind, and how it works.
-- Alexander Shulgin -
Designing a product and understanding how it filters through into the market and into the rest of the company is very important to me.
-- Alexander Wang -
Gabriel: Bethany lacks understanding about the ways of the world. She still has much to learn and that makes her vulnerable." Beth: "Do you have to make me sound like a full-time babysitting project?" Xavier: "I happen to be an experienced babysitter. I can show you my resume if you'd like.
-- Alexandra Adornetto -
Some things are beyond human understanding.
-- Alexandra Adornetto -
Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory and the second philosophy
-- Alexandre Dumas -
Capricious and unfaithful, the king wished to be called Louis the Just and Louis the Chaste. Posterity will find a difficulty in understanding this character, which history explains only by facts and never by reason.
-- Alexandre Dumas -
The influence of prayer on the human mind and body is as demonstrable as that of secreting glands. Its results can be measured in terms of increased physical buoyancy, greater intellectual vigor, moral stamina, and a deeper understanding of the realities underlying human relationship.
-- Alexis Carrel -
The science of the mind can only have for its proper goal the understanding of human nature by every human being, and through its use, brings peace to every human soul.
-- Alfred Adler -
I admit that I myself am far from having a complete command of every topic I touch on, but my knowledge of my subject is always greater than the interest or the understanding of my auditors. You see, there is one very good thing about mankind; the mediocre masses make very few demands of the mediocrities of a higher order, submitting stupidly and cheerfully to their guidance
-- Alfred de Vigny -
The coercive effect of this policy is particularly pronounced in the school setting given the age and impressionability of schoolchildren, and their understanding that they are required to adhere to the norms set by their school, their teacher, and their fellow students.
-- Alfred Goodwin -
Understanding the knowledge and wisdom of the Qur'an is by far, higher than memorizing.
-- Ali ibn Abi Talib -
A man's behavior is the index of the man, and his discourse is the index of his understanding.
-- Ali ibn Abi Talib -
Healing does not come through intense affirmation of divinity, or by simply pouring out love and the expression of a vague mysticism.It comes through mastering an exact science of contact, impression, of invocation plus an understanding of the subtle apparatus of the etheric vehicle.
-- Alice Bailey -
All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.
-- Alice Walker -
Writing about people helps us to understand them, and understanding them helps us to accept them as part of ourselves.
-- Alice Walker -
One thing that never ceases to amaze me, along with the growth of vegetation from the earth and of hair from the head, is the growth of understanding.
-- Alice Walker -
I don't have any understanding of a human being who doesn't respect the beauty of life and that goes for all creatures that have thoughts, feelings and needs.
-- Alicia Silverstone -
Be kind, be decent, be generous, be tolerant, compassionate, and understanding. Be fast to praise, slow to judge. Remember, we're all human, and don't cast the first stone.
-- Allen Drury -
Vocal study before age 20 is likely to be injurious, though some survive it in the hands of very careful and understanding teachers.
-- Alma Gluck -
I can't talk about anything or write about anything if I don't understand it. So a lot of the stuff that I go through and a lot of the time that I spend is understanding.
-- Alton Brown -
My school friends are really understanding and still want to hang out with me. Ever since I was in sixth grade, I was at the gym every day to work out while my friends were getting their nails done or going to the mall. I used to feel left out, but I don't anymore.
-- Aly Raisman -
KISS, n. A word invented by the poets as a rhyme for "bliss." It is supposed to signify, in a general way, some kind of rite or ceremony appertaining to a good understanding; but the manner of its performance is unknown to this lexicographer.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
Thought is more important than art....To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is.
-- Amiri Baraka -
Understanding comes with compassion and compassion comes with truthfulness
-- Amit Abraham -
Vipassana arises as you pay awareness to the inner and outer experience unfolding at the present moment. Vipassana is not associated with any rigid formula or methods. Whenever you are aware of your mental or physical feelings like tension in the muscles, movement of limbs, stiffness, heat or cold, you have begun to develop special understanding of realities.
-- Amit Ray -
We at Google have made tremendous advances in understanding language. Our knowledge graph has been fundamental to that. The new algorithm that we launched today called Hummingbird has been a great leap forward.
-- Amit Singhal -
Hindsight is not necessarily the best guide to understanding what really happened. The past is often as distorted by hindsight as it is clarified by it.
-- Amos Elon -
There's a lot I don't understand... but not understanding is better than not believing
-- Amy Harmon -
You remember only what you want to remember. You know only what your heart allows you to know.
-- Amy Tan -
The best-dressed women I know pay very little attention to the picayune aspects of fashion, but they have a sound understanding of style.
-- Amy Vanderbilt -
You're no longer fighting God, trying to make Him do what you want. You're accepting what happens, and your main prayer transforms into one that asks God for nothing more than understanding and perhaps strength to endure.
-- Amy Welborn -
The value of the personal relationship to all things is that it creates intimacy and intimacy creates understanding and understanding creates love.
-- Anais Nin -
Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.
-- Anais Nin -
Don't say anything, because I see that you understand me, and I am afraid of your understanding. I have such a fear of finding another like myself, and such a desire to find one! I am so utterly lonely, but I also have such a fear that my isolation be broken through, and I no longer be the head and ruler of my universe. I am in great terror of your understanding by which you penetrate into my world; and then I stand revealed and I have to share my kingdom with you.
-- Anais Nin -
What I have sought is to understand what has been said.
-- Ananda Coomaraswamy -
There is a state that is able to understand the demand in the economy. That state should use prices as an instrument for implementation of this understanding.
-- Anatoly Chubais -
At the outset, it is only liking, not understanding, that matters. Gaps in understanding ... are not only important, they are perhaps even welcome, like clearings in the woods, the better to allow the heart's rays to stream out without obstacle. The unlit shadows should remain obscure, which is the very condition of enchantment.
-- Andre Breton -
History may clarify our understanding of the supreme work of art, but can never account for it completely; for the Time of art is not the same as the Time of history.
-- Andre Malraux -
I learned everything I ever need to know about questioning artful dodgers by covering the most artful of them all, Ronald Reagan. For Reagan, performance was as much a part of governing as understanding the details of the federal budget.
-- Andrea Mitchell -
No one can do inspired work without genuine interest in his subject and understanding of its characteristics.
-- Andreas Feininger -
What matters is not what you photograph, but why and how you photograph it. Even the most controversial subject, if depicted by a sensitive photographer with honesty, sympathy, and understanding, can be transformed into an emotionally rewarding experience.
-- Andreas Feininger -
Proper worship in any age is critically predicated upon adequate and accurate knowledge of the God worshiped. No matter how ceremonially elaborate, emotionally rousing, or sermonically eloquent, worship that is not offered from a proper understanding of who God is falls short.
-- Andreas J. Kostenberger -
We need to kind of refresh our fear in order to refresh our understanding of how a safe place works.
-- Andrew Pyper -
This is a timely and relevant initiative. The environmental challenges facing Singapore and the region are becoming more complex. Tackling them will require inter-disciplinary approaches combined with a good understanding of science, economics and governance aspects. The NUS Bachelor of Environment programme will fill a much needed gap in the current framework. NEA is pleased to be a partner to this programme.
-- Andrew Tan -
I tried to fit it in with some previous broad conceptual understanding of some part of mathematics that would clarify the particular problem I was thinking about.
-- Andrew Wiles
