Understanding Quotes

Dictionaries stop where the heart starts.

~ David Foenkinos

There’s a larger point to be made here than my own obtuseness, which is the fragility, beauty, and at the same time resilience of any communication. An inchoate impulse forms into a feeling that resembles but can never match the dreamy intensity of the original impulse. This feeling then articulates itself, but the words at best approximate a shadow of the feeling. I speak or write these words, and of course the person who receives them brings to that receiving his or her own connotations: Cinnamon, for example, may conjure different memories and may mean something different for you than for me. These words may then settle into feelings, leading finally, perhaps, to some impulse on your part. With so many layers of interpretation, it's no wonder we so often misunderstand each other. And this is between two people who speak the same language. How much more difficult understanding can be, then, when the people do not share a common cultural background, or native tongue? How much more than this may we misunderstand when we then hear a dog speak, or a tree or stone?

~ Derrick Jensen

Words are powerful instruments. Handle them and your understanding level of new information will grow in a spectacular way.

~ Kim Kiyosaki

The hardest things to talk about are the ones we ourselves can't understand.

~ Elena Ferrante

Is not most talkingA crazed defense of a crumbling fort?I thought we came hereTo surrender in Silence.

~ Hafiz

…the way people understood things had a lot to do with the way people were, how they had been shaped, what the wanted; tricks of rhetoric would not shift them.

~ Ian Mcewan

There are things known—things experienced, felt, and understood—that words hold no power to convey. Attempting to do so only dilutes their substance and does them injustice.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

...come lie beside me again and understand - the others can show by actions, but I alone will immortalize you in words...

~ John Geddes

I like the sound of words, but I don't ever really expect my slow, slanted impression of the world to change by what I read.

~ Gregory Maguire

True friends never turn you away when all you need is someone to talk to. Ever. It's not the only thing that helps, but it's the only thing that works. Real friends never walk away, letting you slip deeper into the pit of despair.

~ Northern Adams

it has to be emphasized that if the pain were readily describable most of the countless sufferers from this ancient affliction would have been able to confidently depict for their friends and loved ones (even their physicians) some of the actual dimensions of their torment, and perhaps elicit a comprehension that has been generally lacking; such incomprehension has usually been due not to a failure of sympathy but to the basic inability of healthy people to imagine a form of torment so alien to everyday experience.

~ William Styron

There is nothing that we are enduring that Jesus does not understand, and He waits for us to go to our Heavenly Father in prayer. If we will be obedient and if we are diligent, our prayers will be answered, our problems will diminish, our fears will dissipate, light will come upon us, the darkness of despair will be dispersed, and we will be close to the Lord.

~ Robert D. Hales

Prayer is knowing that what I ask for is always far bigger than what I could ever articulate, but it is never too big for God to understand nor is it ever too vast for Him to deliver.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

What we call the Lord's prayer is actually the Disciple's Prayer because It says Forgive us our trespasses and Our LORD Jesus had no sin. Selah

~ Kingsley Opuwari Manuel

Whenever you can’t balance what you see with what you believe you have conflict.

~ Shannon L. Alder

To live, pray. To learn, read. To love, give. To listen, pay attention. But to be wise, apply all that you have acquired

~ Israelmore Ayivor

there is no understanding between me and this worldthey don't understand me and i don't care them.

~ Adnan Khan

There's a difference between thinking you can't be wrong and having no regrets. Wrongness is what occurs prior to empiricism, in hindsight a counterpart of revelation, and revelation is nothing to regret.

~ Criss Jami

At a certain level of learning and understanding,right or wrong ain't the issue, but different interest.

~ Toba Beta

When people recover from depression via psychotherapy, their attributions about recovery are likely to be different than those of people who have been treated with medication. Psychotherapy is a learning experience. Improvement is not produced by an external substance, but by changes within the person. It is like learning to read, write or ride a bicycle. Once you have learned, the skills stays with you. People no not become illiterate after they graduate from school, and if they get rusty at riding a bicycle, the skill can be acquired with relatively little practice. Furthermore, part of what a person might learn in therapy is to expect downturns in mood and to interpret them as a normal part of their life, rather than as an indication of an underlying disorder. This understanding, along with the skills that the person has learned for coping with negative moods and situations, can help to prevent a depressive relapse.

~ Irving Kirsch

This flawless night sky adorned with crystal pendant stars is nothing more than a fragile glass of potential - shattered only to those who dare to break through it.

~ Kylee Carrier

Just cuz you get to the end doesn’t mean you know what happened.

~ Karen Tei Yamashita

It is far kinder and smarter to show someone a better path in life than to darkly follow down their's with the self-righteous belief that you do so with the purer intentions of justly punishing them for their previous actions, making you hypocritically the same and thus influencing further negative repercussions.

~ Isabella Poretsis

Don’t be too quick to leave the tree you are highly convinced of its future sweet fruits and comforting shade just because you see its present fruitlessness. Just sit under it and endure the scorching sun, one day, its branches will give you comfort and its fruits will give you smiles and nourish your body!

~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

It is more important to understand the book you are reading than to finish the book you are reading.

~ Clifford Cohen

My discourse leads to the truth; the mind is great and guided by this teaching is able to arrive at some understanding. When the mind has understood all things and found them to be in harmony with what has been expounded by the teachings, it is faithful and comes to rest in that beautiful faith.

~ Hermes Trismegistus

Life's lessons aren't always new. Often they're the same old worn-out truths offering us greater depths of wisdom and understanding.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

I hope that you will be faced with difficult choices and decisions, trials that won’t undo you, but that will drive you toward reflection and understanding. Trust that your fears will sometimes tell you about your desires. You will see that you can survive the terror that comes with growth and change, with vulnerability and risk.

~ Donald Antrim

We seek to understand Jiu Jitsu as a vehicle to understand ourselves. We have different explicit goals, from getting in shape, learning self-defense or competition, but tacitly we all seek mastery of ourselves.

~ Chris Matakas

Jiu Jitsu is meant to serve us, not the other way around. It is meant to make you more of whatever it is you already are. It is meant to separate the wheat from the chaff. It is meant to bring to conscious attention all that once went unseen. It is meant to make you more loving. It is meant to make you more wise, but less certain. It is meant to make us humble, yet supremely confident. It is meant to remind us of our frailty while simultaneously making us feel invincible.

~ Chris Matakas

If Jiu Jitsu does not make you a better father, son, mother, daughter, wife or husband, you are missing the point. If Jiu Jitsu does not leave you viewing strangers in a kinder light, you are missing the point. If you are not better equipped to deal with the vicissitudes of life due to your training, then you are not really training.

~ Chris Matakas

Jiu Jitsu has shown me that we are not confined to the lot which we inherit. We are not bound to these fetters eternally. They are temporal. We can transcend them should we sincerely choose to. Sincere effort is in fact the rarest virtue among man.

~ Chris Matakas

I wanted to get to the most essential aspect of my being, and look around for a while. I wanted to explore what I am in my most basic self. I wanted to chip away at all of the nonsense I have acquired through my twenty-nine years on this earth. I wanted to find truth. Thoreau went to the woods. I went to the mats. Jiu Jitsu has peeled the veil of daily life, and has shown me what lies beyond the curtain. We willingly accept the chains that circumstance forces upon us, and we grow to find comfort in them. We attach various fetters of day-to-day living to our being, and we do so with a smile. We accept these constraints for they come in the way of comfort. We accept conformity for it appears the path of least resistance. We strive toward the middle, and we run from ourselves.

~ Chris Matakas

Thoreau went to the woods. I went to the mats.

~ Chris Matakas

We call it training. Not because we are training for Jiu Jitsu. We are training for life.

~ Chris Matakas

I have seen far by seeing through the lens of Jiu Jitsu. I have exchanged a great deal of physical health for these insights, and these were trades worth making. My efforts were worth the return. I have sacrificed much in the name of this craft. Not for trophies or belts or prestige. For these fall away like dust. I pursued this art so fervently because it was not actually Jiu Jitsu I pursued. It was myself.

~ Chris Matakas

Jiu Jitsu can be a source of total transparency such as a mirror, but it takes a conscious choice to see what it has to say.

~ Chris Matakas

Don't ever get to the point where you can't be taught because life is a classroom and everyone owns a pen.

~ Shannon L. Alder

I don't really care if people forget me. My legacy wasn't about me. It was about everything I could do for another. When that sinks in...well you try a little harder. You dream a little broader. Your heart stretches a little farther and you find that you can't go back to the same place and make it fit. You become a person of ideas and seek out your own kind. And then it happens: One day you discover that staying the same is scary and changing has become your new home.

~ Shannon L. Alder

To inquire and to learn is the function of the mind, By learning I do not mean the mere cultivation of memory or the accumulation of knowledge, but the capacity to think clearly and sanely without illusion, to start from facts and not from beliefs and ideals. There is no learning if thought originates from conclusions. Merely to acquire information of knowledge is to not to learn. Learning implies the love of understanding and the love of doing a thing for itself. Learning is possible only when there is no coercion through influence, thought attachment or threat, through persuasive encouragement or subtle forms of reward. Most people think that learning is encouraged through comparison, whereas the contrary is the fact. Comparison brings about frustration and merely encourages envy, which is called competition. Like other forms of persuasion, comparison prevents learning and breeds fear.

~ Jiddu Krishnamurti