Understanding

"Experience certainly has long known how to think of some cheer for the troubled, but, as is natural, it does not know a joy that passes all understanding. Experience knows all the many inventions of the human heart, but a rapture that did not arise in any man’s heart it does not know."

"The expectancy of an eternal salvation will reconcile everyone with his neighbor, with his friend, and with his enemy in an understanding of the essential."

"What feelings, understanding and will a person has depends in the last resort upon what imagination he has — how he represents himself to himself, that is, upon imagination."

"Give to Your servant an understanding heart to judge Your people, that I may discern between good and evil."

"Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system."

"Agape is something of the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return. It is an overflowing love; it’s what theologians would call the love of God working in the lives of men. And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love men, not because they are likeable, but because God loves them."

"Love is understanding, redemptive goodwill for all men, so that you love everybody, because God loves them. You refuse to do anything that will defeat an individual, because you have agape in your soul. And here you come to the point that you love the individual who does the evil deed, while hating the deed that the person does. This is what Jesus means when he says, "Love your enemy." This is the way to do it. When the opportunity presents itself when you can defeat your enemy, you must not do it."

"What brings understanding is love. When your heart is full, then you will listen to the teacher, to the beggar, to the laughter of children, to the rainbow, and to the sorrow of man. Under every stone and leaf, that which is eternal exists. But we do not know how to look for it. Our minds and hearts are filled with other things than understanding of "what is". Love and mercy, kindliness and generosity do not cause enmity. When you love, you are very near truth. For, love makes for sensitivity, for vulnerability. That which is sensitive is capable of renewal. Then truth will come into being. It cannot come if your mind and heart are burdened, heavy with ignorance and animosity."

"To understand fear you must also understand pleasure — they are interrelated; without understanding one you cannot understand the other. This means that one cannot say ‘I must only have pleasure and no fear’; fear is the other side of the coin which is called pleasure."

"If I draw a conclusion, I act on an idea, on an image, on a symbol, which is the structure of thought, and so I am constantly preventing myself from having insight, from understanding things as they are."

"When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind."

"He who has ears to hear, let him hear. ... He who has a mind to understand, let him understand."

"If we understood something just one way, we would not understand it at all."

"There is a difference between the ordinary person who may discuss these things occasionally over a pint of beer at the local pub, or worry about them for a while before dropping off to sleep, and the person who makes a serious lifelong commitment to struggling with them and turns that commitment into a part of his or her very self-definition. For one cannot say, I’ve finished theology; now I’ll move on to another subject. There is a sense in which one might say something similar of Akkadian grammar or the family tree of the Hapsburg dynasty, but one cannot reasonably assert it of exploration into God’s revelation, which is, by definition infinite in its implications for human understanding. To be a theological student in the full sense of those words cannot be a temporary state or a preamble to something else, such as the ministerial priesthood or an all-round education. Rather, it is a solemn engagement to developing over a lifetime the gift of Christian wonder or curiosity, which is the specifically theological mode of faith. As theologians, then, we commit ourselves to the lifelong study and reflection which the satisfaction of such curiosity will need. Our faith is from now on, in St. Anselm’s words, fides quaerens intellectum, “a faith that quests for understanding.”"

"But understand them, people say. And one does. But sometimes understanding is not comforting or flattering to the understood."

"Are you not ashamed that you give your attention to acquiring as much money as possible, and similarly with reputation and honor, and give no attention or thought to truth and understanding and the perfection of your soul?"

"Generally, poem is understood and liked on the basis of the 'sphere of intellect' of an individual."

"Every assimilation of any poem is a translation."

"Understanding is a two-way street."

"A message is given to many, but those who are meant to understand, understand."

"I always try to be understanding of people, even if they don't make sense to me."

"The mind understands something only insofar as it absorbs it like a seed into itself, nurtures it, and lets it grow into blossom and fruit. Therefore scatter holy seeds into the soil of the spirit, without any affectation of added superfluities."

"One who intends to understand grasps even the slightest hint, but the one who has no intention to understand never comprehends, no matter how loudly you shout."

"We cannot exert our understanding without from time to time understanding something of importance; and this act of understanding may be accompanied by the awareness of our understanding, by the understanding of understanding, by noesis noesos, and this is so high, so pure, so noble an experience that Aristotle could ascribe it to his God."

"Understanding, however--and sometimes a very considerable depth of it--results from seeing the obstinate difficulties in views which often seem, on other grounds, quite obviously true...Let the reader be warned accordingly, that whenever he hears a philosopher proclaim any metaphysical opinion with great confidence, or hears him asset that something in metaphysics is obvious, or that some metaphysical problem turns only on confusions of concepts or upon the meanings of words, then he can be quite sure that this man is still infinitely far from philosophical understanding. His views appear to him devoid of difficulties only because he stoutly refuses to see difficulties."

"It is the aim of public life to arrange that all forms of power are entrusted, so far as possible, to men who effectively consent to be bound by the obligation towards all human beings which lies upon everyone, and who understand the obligation."

"In the history that Franklin writes, knowledge and understanding are complementary: One without the other is incomplete. His contribution has been to make history a field of wisdom, devoid of the cult of fictitious glorification of a whole society or the cant of quantitative reductionism that analyzes parts out of context."

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."

"Not sure I understand This role I've been given"

"知止乎其所不能知，至矣。若有不即是者，天鈞敗之。"

"You wouldn't ask a blind man to appreciate a scene of beauty, nor a deaf man to enjoy the sounds of drums and bells. But it is possible to be blind and deaf in one's deep understanding, as well as physically."