Otto Weininger Quotes

In some mysterious way, once one has gained an insight into human nature, that insight grows from day to day, and he to whom it has given to experience vicariously even one single form of earthly suffering acquires, by reason of this tragic lesson, an understanding of all its forms, even those most foreign to him, and apparently abnormal.

Great fiction shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually, it may show us how to face our feelings and face our actions and to have new inklings about what they mean. A good novel of any year can initiate us into our own new experience.

To play any character, you have to have a total understanding of why they do what they do.

In order to make characters real - no matter what the character is doing - you have to see yourself as capable of having done that.

What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

I'm interested in the human more than I'm interested in building suspense.

Basic emotions can be conveyed through anything. As long as you show people that you're human, they'll relate to it.

I feel like people assume if a character is very different than you, that means it's difficult to get into their head or into their skin.

It's important to determine not just the quality of your mind but the fullness of your heart.

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

People treat serious subjects so seriously, which is so obvious a way of dealing with them. I'm always thinking that the best way of dealing with them is to show people as human beings.

I can find some part of me that relates to even the most evil characters. At least in my imagination.

Acting requires a great amount of empathy for real lived human experiences.

Characters, like people, don't need to be right - only understood and, perhaps, accepted. We are all grey, lighter and darker, depending on our state of security.

You understand people better if you look at them-no matter how old or impressive or important they may be-as if they were children. For most men never mature; they simply grow taller.

I don't believe that to understand is necessarily to pardon, but I feel that to understand makes one forget that one cannot pardon.

You can't tell what a man is like or what he is thinking when you are looking at him. You must get around behind him and see what he has been looking at.

We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.

Try to understand men. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love.

Try to understand why it is happening, from where it is coming, where the roots are, how it happens, how it functions, how it overpowers you, how in anger you become mad. Anger has happened before, it is happening now, but now add a new element to it, the element of understanding -- and then the quality will change. Then, by and by, you will see that the more you understand anger, the less it happens. And when you understand it perfectly, it disappears. Understanding is like heat. When the heat comes to a particular point -- one hundred degrees -- the water disappears.

How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently?

If one can understand why people behave as they do then often the road to forgiveness is opened. Not only is forgiveness essential for the health of Society, it is also vital for our personal well-being. Bitterness is like a cancer that enters the soul. It does more harm to those that hold it than to those whom it is held against.

All you have to do is take a close look at yourself and you will understand everyone else.

The important thing is not whatever nonsense the voices are saying, but what the voices are feeling.

It's a sad comment on humans that none of them are tolerable to one who can read their minds