Great Throughts Treasury

"Love harmonizes the three powers of our soul, and binds them together. The will, with ineffable love, follows what the eye of the understanding has beheld; and, with its strong hand, it stores up in the memory the treasure that id draws from this love." - Saint Catherine of Siena NULL

"Those who entertain an extreme and inordinate dread of being damned, show that they have more need of humility and submission than of understanding." - Saint Francis de Sales NULL

"Never yet did there exist a full faith in the Divine Word (by whom light as well as immortality was brought into the world) which did not expand the intellect, while it purified the heart - which did not multiply the aims and objects of the understanding, while it fixed and simplified those of the desires and passions." -

"Philosophy seeks knowledge for the sake of understanding, while religion seeks knowledge for the sake of worship." - William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet

"The only thing we really have is nowness, is now. Sometimes when I teach these things, a person will come up to me afterward and say: “All this seems obvious! I’ve always known it. Tell me something new.” I say to him or her: “Have you actually understood, and realized, the truth of impermanence? Have you so integrated it with your every thought, breath, and movement that your life has been transformed? Ask yourself these two questions: Do I remember at every moment that I am dying, and everyone and everything else is, and so treat all beings at all times with compassion? Has my understanding of death and impermanence become so keen and so urgent that I am devoting every second to the pursuit of enlightenment? If you can answer ‘yes’ to both of these, then you have really understood impermanence.”" - Sogyal Rinpoche

"The only way to relieve the world's ills is not by understanding each other, but by each one understanding himself; for there can be no genuine rapport between persons who are ignorant of their own deepest motivations and needs." -

"With ten characteristics was the earth created: wisdom and understanding; knowledge and strength; rebuke and might; righteousness and justice; mercy and compassion." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL

"Anger is rooted in our lack of understanding of ourselves and of the causes, deep-seated as well as immediate, that brought about this unpleasant state of affairs. Anger is also rooted in desire, pride, agitation and suspicion. The primary roots of our anger are in ourselves. Our environment and other people are only secondary. It is not difficult for us to accept the enormous damage brought abut by a natural disaster, such as an earthquake or a flood. But when damage is caused by another person, we don’t have much patience. We know that earthquakes and floods have causes, and we should see that the person who has precipitated our anger also has reasons, deep-seated and immediate, for what he has done." - Thich Nhất Hanh

"The essence of love and compassion is understanding, the ability to recognize the physical, material, and psychological suffering of others, to put ourselves “inside the skin” of the other." - Thich Nhất Hanh

"Understanding and love are not two things, but just one... True love needs understanding. With understanding, the one we love will certainly flower." - Thich Nhất Hanh

"God walks with the humble; he reveals himself to the lowly; he gives understanding to the little ones; he discloses his meaning to pure minds, but hides his grace from the curious and proud." - Thomas Kempis, aka Thomas à Kempis, Thomas von Kempen, Thomas Haemerkken or Hammerlein or Hemerken or Hämerken

"There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is to teach; the function of the second is to move; the first is a rudder, the second an oar or sail. The first speaks to the ere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy." - Thomas De Quincey, fully Thomas Penson De Quincey

""Psychological modernism," an uncritical acceptance of the values of the modern world. It includes blind faith in technology, inordinate attachment to material gadgets and conveniences, uncritical acceptance of the march of scientific progress, devotion to the electronic media, and a life-style dictated by advertising. This orientation toward life also tends toward a mechanistic and rationalistic understanding of matters of the heart." - Thomas Moore

"The true warrior is always the last to pick up the lance or go to battle. His battles are fought with the lance of love and understanding. His enemies are prejudice, greed, and bad medicine, and the biggest battles are always fought within himself. So, do not go out upon the earth to battle unseen demons of the physical world, for your hatred will be like theirs. Instead, go out as a true warrior, with love and understanding." - Tom Brown, Jr.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." -

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -

"It is the faith that is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission. If we abandon that mission under stress we shall abandon it forever, for stress will not cease. Knowledge for the sake of understanding, not merely to prevail, that is the essence of our being. None can define its limits, or set its ultimate borders." - Vannevar Bush

"If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"Faith consists in believing not what seems true, but what seems false to our understanding... Divine faith... is evidently nothing more than incredulity brought under subjection, for we certainly have no other faculty than the understanding by which we can believe; and the objects of faith are not those of the understanding." -

"You can’t pursue happiness and catch it. Happiness come upon you unawares while you are helping others... Happiness does not depend upon a full pocketbook, but upon a mind full of rich thoughts and a heart full of rich emotions. Happiness does not depend upon what happens outside of you but on what happens inside of you; it is measured by the spirit in which you meet the problems of life. Happiness is a state of mind... Happiness doesn’t come from doing what we like to do but from liking what we have to do... Happiness grows out of harmonious relationships with others, based on attitudes of good will, tolerance, understanding and love... The master secret of happiness is to meet the challenge of each new day with the serene faith that: “All things work together for good to them that love God.”" - Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson

"Those who have the largest hearts have the soundest understanding: and he is the truest philosopher who can forget himself." - William Hazlitt

"Though God is everywhere present, yet He is only present to thee in the deepest and most central part of thy soul. the natural senses cannot possess God or unite thee to Him; nay, thy inward faculties of understanding, will and memory can only reach after God, but cannot be the place of his habitation in thee. But there is a root or depth of thee from whence all these faculties come forth, as lines from a centre, or as branches from the body of the tree. This depth is the unity, the eternity - I had almost said the infinity - of thy soul; for it is so infinite that nothing can satisfy it or give it rest but the infinity of God." - William Law

"The realization that everyone perceives things differently, whether greatly or slightly, is a very important principle for dealing effectively with others. The greater your understanding of someone else’s perception of reality, the greater your ability to communicate effectively with him." - Zelig Pliskin

"People can only exhibit freedom in proportion to their comprehension of existence and grander realities. Only through an expanded knowledge, wisdom and the understanding of greater truths, do people have a greater capacity to express their freedom." - Alan William Smolowe

"Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving." - Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey

"Growing up is after all only the understanding that one's unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares." - Doris Lessing, fully Doris May Lessing, born Doris May Tayler

"Patience, kindness, love, good will, joy, happiness, wisdom and understanding are qualities which never grow old. Cultivate them and express them and remain young in mind and body" - Joseph Murphy

"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen" - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"Democracy, like any non-coercive relationship, rests on a shared understanding of limits." - Elizabeth Drew, aka Elizabeth Brenner

"There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other. " - Eric Hoffer

"There is but one quality necessary for the perfect understanding of character, one quality that, if man have it, he may dare to judge—that is, omniscience. Most people study character as a proofreader pores over a great poem: his ears are dulled to the majesty and music of the lines, his eyes are darkened to the magic imagination of the genius of the author; that proofreader is busy watching for an inverted comma, a misspacing, or a wrong font letter. He has an eye trained for the imperfections, the weaknesses." - William George Jordan

"The environmental crisis can only be forestalled when there is a broad new cultural understanding of what it means to be human. Sources of this new understanding would be myth – New Story - a spiritually based on an understanding of nature as the primary revelation of the divine." -

"All our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them. " - Felix Frankfurter

"But by far the greatest hindrance and aberration of the human understanding proceeds from the dullness, incompetency, and deceptions of the senses; in that things which strike the sense outweigh things which do not immediately strike it, though they be more important. Hence it is that speculation commonly ceases where sight ceases; insomuch that of things invisible there is little or no observation." - Francis Bacon

"The human understanding is moved by those things most which strike and enter the mind simultaneously and suddenly, and so fill the imagination; and then it feigns and supposes all other things to be somehow, though it cannot see how, similar to those few things by which it is surrounded." - Francis Bacon

"The human understanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds. And though there be many things in nature which are singular and unmatched, yet it devises for them parallels and conjugates and relatives which do not exist. Hence the fiction that all celestial bodies move in perfect circles, spirals and dragons being (except in name) utterly rejected." - Francis Bacon

"The human understanding is unquiet; it cannot stop or rest, and still presses onward, but in vain. Therefore it is that we cannot conceive of any end or limit to the world, but always as of necessity it occurs to us that there is something beyond... But he is no less an unskilled and shallow philosopher who seeks causes of that which is most general, than he who in things subordinate and subaltern omits to do so." - Francis Bacon

"The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate." - Francis Bacon

"Leaving aside genetic surgery applied humans, I foresee that the coming century will place in our hands two other forms of biological technology which are less dangerous but still revolutionary enough to transform the conditions of our existence. I count these new technologies as powerful allies in the attack on Bernal's three enemies [the world, the flesh and the devil]. I give them the names 'biological engineering' and 'self-reproducing machinery'. Biological engineering means the artificial synthesis of living organisms designed to fulfil human purposes. Self-reproducing machinery means the imitation of the function and reproduction of a living organism with non-living materials, a computer-program imitating the function of DNA and a miniature factory imitating the functions of protein molecules. After we have attained a complete understanding of the principles of organization and development of a simple multicellular organism, both of these avenues of technological exploitation should be open to us. " - Freeman John Dyson

"What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives, acts and experiences otherwise than we do?" - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"The universal presupposition of conversation is the identity between thought and word. All understanding rests on this." -

"The goal of hermeneutics is understanding in the highest sense. Lower maxim: one has understood everything that one has really grasped without encountering contradiction. Higher maxim: one has only understood what one has reconstructed in all its relationships and in its context. – To this also belongs understanding the writer better than he understands himself." -

"The higher order of logic and understanding that is capable of meaningfully reflecting the soul comes from the heart." - Gary Zukav

"You may seek companionship and warmth, for example, but if your unconscious intention is to keep people at a distance, the experiences of separation and pain will surface again and again until you come to understand that you, yourself, are creating them. Eventually, you will choose to create harmony and love. You will choose to draw to you the highest frequency currents that each situation has to offer. Eventually, you will come to understanding that love heals everything, and love is all there is. The journey may take many lifetimes, but you will complete it. It is impossible not to complete it. It is not a question of if but of when. Every situation that you create serves this purpose. Every experience that you encounter serves this purpose. " - Gary Zukav

"Do not insist that the universe comply with your understanding of it" - Gary Zukav

"Pain by itself is merely pain, but the experience of pain couples with an understanding that the pain serves a worthy purpose as suffering. Suffering can be endured because there is a reason for it that is worth the effort. What is more worthy of your pain than the evolution of your soul?" - Gary Zukav

"An essential part of any successful action on the part of the United States is an understanding on the part of the people of America of the character of the problem and the remedies to be applied. Political passion and prejudice should have no part. " - George Marshall, fully George Catlett Marshall, Jr.

"A very strong military posture is vitally necessary today. How long it must continue I am not prepared to estimate, but I am sure that it is too narrow a basis on which to build a dependable, long-enduring peace. The guarantee for a long continued peace will depend on other factors in addition to a moderated military strength, and no less important. Perhaps the most important single factor will be a spiritual regeneration to develop goodwill, faith, and understanding among nations. Economic factors will undoubtedly play an important part. Agreements to secure a balance of power, however disagreeable they may seem, must likewise be considered. And with all these there must be wisdom and the will to act on that wisdom." - George Marshall, fully George Catlett Marshall, Jr.

"We must present democracy as a force holding within itself the seeds of unlimited progress by the human race. By our actions we should make it clear that such a democracy is a means to a better way of life, together with a better understanding among nations. Tyranny inevitably must retire before the tremendous moral strength of the gospel of freedom and self-respect for the individual, but we have to recognize that these democratic principles do not flourish on empty stomachs, and that people turn to false promises of dictators because they are hopeless and anything promises something better than the miserable existence that they endure. However, material assistance alone is not sufficient. The most important thing for the world today in my opinion is a spiritual regeneration which would reestablish a feeling of good faith among men generally. Discouraged people are in sore need of the inspiration of great principles. Such leadership can be the rallying point against intolerance, against distrust, against that fatal insecurity that leads to war. It is to be hoped that the democratic nations can provide the necessary leadership." - George Marshall, fully George Catlett Marshall, Jr.

"These cases . . . teach us the immense importance of Right Knowledge. Love is not enough unless it is complete love; that is, understanding as well as attachment, comprehension as well as compassion, intelligent interest as well as emotive affection. We must grasp what the process is, of which we are the growing edge. " - Gerald Heard