Cheryl Strayed Quotes

A friend should always underestimate your virtues and an enemy overestimate your faults

Maybe it was the same with people: if you studied them,you'd see new and different things. But would you like what you saw? Did it depend on who was doing the looking?

I try as best I can to enter the realm of nuances of human behavior.

A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes anothers.

Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

I don't think I'm a chameleon. I can feel where people are coming from, what makes them tick, where they are vulnerable, what makes them feel good about themselves. I get just as much out of it as they do. I love connecting.

There's a lot of clarity in hindsight.

Again, if you only know what you know, you don't know if something's good or bad. You don't have perspective.

It is not expedient or wise to examine our friends too closely; few persons are raised in our esteem by a close examination.

Before you attempt to set things right, make sure you see things right.

When you've learned to laugh at the things that should be laughed at, and not to laugh at those that shouldn't, you've got wisdom and understanding. -Aunt Jimsie

Just because you did not understand us, it did not mean we were wrong.

Seeing reality for what it is is what we call discernment. The work of discernment is very hard.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

If you take a lie and allow your desire for the truth, you'll end up with some truth - not fact, but something that gets you closer to the truth. That's what we want. When we go to a play, we need to be assured that the experience we're having.

I never knew whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.

Gossip. The more you talk about why people do things, the more ideas you have about how the world works.

If you would judge, understand.

You have to figure out who the right person is to tell the story. And often, people who are very self-aware will only sound as if they are pontificating if they tell the story.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

Visibility is a tricky thing; is someone visible when you can point her out in a crowd, or when you understand what her life feels like to her?

Sometimes we can't see our own selves, our own shortcomings, but it's so easy to see somebody else's.

Reality is an acquired taste.

I didn't look very sensitive and they didn't know me very well.