Understanding Others Quotes

“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one...just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.”
― Willa Cather

“I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

“Mama used to say, you have to know someone a thousand days before you can glimpse her soul.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“When you really know somebody you can’t hate them. Or maybe it’s just that you can’t really know them until you stop hating them.”
― Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead

“Before we can forgive one another, we have to understand one another.”
― Emma Goldman

“I think that hate is a feeling that can only exist where there is no understanding.”
― Tennessee Williams, Sweet Bird of Youth

“Accepting all the good and bad about someone. It's a great thing to aspire to. The hard part is actually doing it.”
― Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye

“He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened.”
― Lao Tzu

“When you say" I "and" my "too much, you lose the capacity to understand the" we "and" our ".”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool”
― C.G. Jung

“People are shitty for a lot of reasons. Sometimes they're just shitty people. Sometimes people have been shitty to them and, even though they don't realize it, they take that shitty upbringing and go out into the world and treat others the same way. Sometimes they're shitty because they're afraid. Sometimes they choose to be shitty to others before others can be shitty to them. So it's like self-defensive shittiness.”
― Jennifer Niven, Holding Up the Universe

“When I've thought about him dying - which admittedly isn't that much - I always thought of it like you said, that all strings inside him broke. But there are a thousand ways to look at it: maybe the strings break, or maybe our ships think, or maybe we're grass - our roots are so interdependent that no one is dead as long as soneone is still alive. We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters. If you choose the strings, then you're imagining a world in which you can become irreparably broken. If you choose grass, you're saying that we are all infinitely interconnected, that we can use these root systems not only to understand one another but to become one another. The metaphors have implications...
I like the strings, I always have. Because that's how itfeels.But the strings make pain seem more fatal than it is...We are not as frail as the strings would make us believe. And I like the grass, too. The grass got me to you, helped me imagine you as an actual person. But we're not different sprouts from the same plant. I can't be you. You can't be me. You can imagine another well- but not quite perfectly, you know?
"Maybe, it's more like you said before, all of us being cracked open. Like each of us starts out as a watertight vessel. And these things happen-these people leave us, or don't love us, or don't get us, or we don't get them, and we lose and fail and hurt one another. And the vessel starts to crack open in places. And I mean, yeah, once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable...But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And it's only in that time that we can see each other, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs. When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never looking inside. But once the vessel cracks, the like can get in. The like can get out.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“To understand the man you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty.”
― Napoleon Bonaparte

“It is quite clear that between love and understanding there is a very close link...He who loves understands, and he who understands loves. One who feels understood feels loved, and one who feels loved feels sure of being understood.”
― Paul Tournier, To Understand Each Other

“We do well to be our paramount ‘significant one’. Being our best friend entails respecting ourselves, recognizing our way of living and accepting what we are and how we are. It can give us the power to understand and appreciate the others. (" Being my best friend ").”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Walk with me for a while, my friend—you in my shoes, I in yours—and then let us talk.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“Trustful people are the pure at heart, as they are moved by the zeal of their own trustworthiness.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“When we understand people;
when we understand situations;
when we understand what matters;
when we understand the why’s, the what’s and the how’s;
when we understand the trigger of actions, we least inflict pain on ourselves and unto others.”
― Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

“And that might just be the root of the problem: we’re all afraid of each other.”
― Leslye Walton, The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender

“We only know a tiny proportion about the complexity of the natural world. Wherever you look, there are still things we don’t know about and don’t understand. [...] There are always new things to find out if you go looking for them.”
― David Attenborough

“Imagine how many suicide victims would still be with us, if only the right person said the right thing at the right time.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman

“Person A understand Person B because the time is right for that to happen, not because Person B wants to be understood by Person A.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“It's a persons ego that leads them away. So I should say, let your mind be open to those things that affects your ego. Learn how to accept your mistakes and learn how to understand mistakes of others.”
― Jayson Engay

“It's important, no doubt, to understand the person we love. If we cannot manage this, it's necessary, at least, to believe we understand them. I must confess that over the entire eight years I only rarely enjoyed the contentment of the second possibility, let alone the first.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“When my daughter looks at me, she sees a small old lady. That is because she sees only with her outside eyes. She has nochuming,no inside knowing of things. If she hadchuming,she would see a tiger lady. And she would have careful fear.”
― Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

“I don't like kissing."

"I suppose it is a matter of taste." [...] "I wondered, did anyone ever," shrug, "you know, hurt you so you don't like kissing? love?"

"Nope." [...]

"I thought maybe someone had been bad to you in the past, and that was why you don't like people touching or holding you."

"Ah damn it to hell," she bangs the lamp down on the desk and the flame jumps wildly.
"I said no. I haven't been raped or jilted or abused in any fashion. There is nothing in my background to explain the way I am." She steadies her voice, taking the impatience out of it. "I'm the odd one out, the peculiarity in my family, because they are all normal and demonstrative physically. But ever since I can remember, I've disliked close contact...charge contact, emotional contact, as well as any overtly sexual contact. I veer away from it, because it always feels like the other person is draining something out of me. I know that's irrational, but that's the way I feel."

She touches the lamp and the flaring light stills.

"I spent a considerable amount of time when I was, o, adolescent, wondering why I was different, whether there were other people like me. Why, when everyone else was facinated by their developing sexual nature, I couldn't give a damn. I've never been attracted to men. Or women. Or anything else. It's difficult to explain, and nobody has ever believed it when I have tried to explain, but while I have an apparently normal female body, I don't have any sexual urge or appetite. I think I am a neuter.”
― Keri Hulme, The Bone People

“We never see the full picture. We cannot know a person’s life and challenges at a glimpse.
We never hear the full story. We cannot grasp a person’s viewpoint through mere words.
We never feel the full pain. We cannot perceive a person’s heart and mind in a conversation.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Being Bold: Quotes, Poetry, & Motivations for Every Day of the Year