Personal Understanding Quotes

To him who has had the experience no explanation is necessary, to him who has not, none is possible.

Let each man take the path according to his capacity, understanding and temperament. His true guru will meet him along that path.

If I can listen to what he can tell me, if I can understand how it seems to him; if I can see its personal meaning for him, if I can sense the emotional flavor which it has for him, then I will be releasing potent forces of change in him.

It is never possible to understand completely any other human being; and no individual will ever really understand himself - the complexity is too great and there is not the time to constantly take things apart and examine them.

Definitions belong to the definer, not the defined.

A movie is just like a work of art or a book or a piece of music. The intent of its maker is one thing, but its interpretation by an audience is something else. I don't stop at what the filmmaker wanted to do.

It is one thing to remember, another to know. To remember is to safeguard something entrusted to the memory. But to know is to make each thing one's own, not depend on the text and always to look back to the teacher. "Zeno said this, Cleanthes said this." Let there be space between you and the book.

I never had one beer. If I bought a six-pack of beer, I kept drinking till all six beers were gone. You have to have that kind of understanding about yourself. I haven't had a drink now in 12 years.

I don't particularly like messages, because everybody takes whatever they take from whatever.

I write books to find out about things.

People reacted to how I looked, and that was certainly a power to have as a young girl, but not one that you really understand.

When I read profiles of myself, I sometimes think: 'I have spent my whole life struggling to understand my motivations and impulses, and I've never quite sorted them out.'

Every individual acts and suffers in accordance with his peculiar teleology, which has all the inevitability of fate, so long as he does not understand it.

I believe the greatest gift I can conceive of having from anyone is to be seen by them, heard by them, to be understood and touched by them.

I realized I didn't want there to be anything left unsaid with my mom. I didn't want there to be questions that I still had about who she was and what her life was like. And I didn't want her to have questions about me as an adult.

Know the enemy and know yourself.

German is my mother tongue and as such more natural to me, but I consider Czech much more affectionate, which is why your letter removes several uncertainties; I see you more clearly, the movements of your body, your hands, so quick, so resolute, it’s almost like a meeting.

I had developed a relationship with one of the anti-abortion sidewalk counselors who stood in front of my facility. We talked regularly through the fence and she had asked me to go have coffee with her one day. I was impressed with her persistence and, honestly, I thought I would really like her if I got to know her.

The hunter for aphorisms on human nature has to fish in muddy water, and he is even condemned to find much of his own mind.

Freedom of expression is actually a way for people to know themselves better, and to understand themselves better. Because without it, you become a stranger to yourself.

I know what my role is.

It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else's meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

Doreen had intuition. Everything she said was like a secret voice speaking straight out of my own bones.

Feelings, too, are facts. Emotion is a fact. Human experience is a fact. It is often possible to gain more real insight into human beings and their motivation by reading great fiction than by personal acquaintance.

Books have always helped me make sense of things. With any life experience, you can find someone who has documented it in a poetic way.