Understanding Oneself And Others Quotes

Just because I understand does not mean I agree. ~ Carlos Wallace

though aging reduces speed, it increases experience and understanding ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Understanding breeds empathy. ~ Christopher Paolini

Beauty is seen in repetition; keep repeating your beauty even if your beauty is not all that beautiful, you shall still leave a mark and there shall come a moment when the beauty will be seen ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

My personality traits don't determine my destiny, they inform it. ~ Anne Bogel

Belief is just the place of understanding you are at the moment. Without an open mind, you will be standing in that one spot forever. ~ Dannye Williamsen

When the world kicks your ass, don't step in line.
book: stuff i think about ~ Sondra Faye

If others are judgmental and do not appreciate your life's work, don't be dejected. Try to see the incapability of others who are unable to understand the things you understand, and appreciate the capability of seeing something which is not visible to others. ~ Ashish Mandlik

You were...are...what I heard. Every note. ~ Gina Marinello-Sweeney

In a dark time, the eye begins to see. ~ Theodore Roethke

We need to get to a place where we discuss privilege by way of observation and acknowledgment rather than accusation. We need to be able to argue beyond the threat of privilege. We need to stop playing Privilege or Oppression Olympics because we'll never get anywhere until we find more effective ways of talking through difference. We should be able to say, "This is my truth," and have that truth stand without a hundred clamoring voices shouting, giving the impression that multiple truths cannot coexist. Because at some point, doesn't privilege become beside the point? ~ Roxane Gay

The secret of successful relationships is found in an understanding heart, preferably your own. ~ Dada J. P. Vaswani

Understanding our personalities makes it significantly easier to change the things within our grasp. This is whole point of studying various frameworks! Some people resist personality frameworks because they say such frameworks put them in a box. I've found that understanding my personality helps me step out of the box I'm trapped in. When I understand myself, I can get out of my own way. ~ Anne Bogel

As you have seen the treachery of love because of me, I have seen my cruelty because of you. But you learned mercy from me, and from you I learned resilience. As you came to understand me enough to know the value I placed on selfless love, I understand your nature better. ~ D. Morgenstern

It's very strange that WE always wish to listen good for ourselves from others, but at the same time becomes tough for us to speak good for OTHERS. ~ Neeraj Bhanot

If God gives you comfort, extend a comforting hand unto others. If God saves you, extend a saving hand unto others ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

the greatest clue to changing people is to know and understand what trigger change in people and effectively apply such things in wisdom. ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

And then I notice the music flooding out of every part of the apartment at once - the couch, the walls, even the floor - and I know Bennies alone in Lou's studio, pouring music down around us. A minute ago it was "Don't Let Me Down". Then it was Blondie's "Heart of Glass". Now it's Iggy Pop's "The Passenger". Listening, I think, You will never know how much I understand you. ~ Jennifer Egan

First one must understand conditioning - only then can we speak of choice ~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

Questioning authority doesn't make you resistant; who should follow blindly without knowing the destination ~ LDarnell

There were several ways of understanding her: there was what she said, and there was what she meant, and there was something between the two, that was neither. ~ Henry James

I would like to show that we can become so much more through awareness. That is why I speak of conscious evolution. If we understand ourselves, how we think and react, why we do things... Then we can work out how to think more constructively, act more usefully, do things more easily, become more of the person we really want to be deep down inside. ~ Julia Woodman

Your own guilt is your own fault. ~ Katerina Stoykova Klemer

Reasons were invented, and stories were reasons that allowed us to connect ourselves to the world, to compose ourselves in ways that others could read. Fragments were true but we needed stories greater than fragments. We needed stories in order to imagine the mad world we lived in. ~ Bilal Tanweer

To be different is to be irreplaceable. ~ Bree Lenehan

I really tried, or so I thought, to avoid lying, but it seemed to me that they forced it on me by the difference in their vision of things, so that I was always transposing reality for them into something they could understand. ~ Mary McCarthy

If you are not actively seeking the truth, you are destined to only know what people tell you, and people will only tell you what they want you to know. ~ Jack Mierop

So many people have understanding, but in reality, they don't really understand understanding! When you really understand understanding, you get a real understanding! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Ignorance is an illusion; we seek understanding. Compassion paves the way towards understanding and understanding paves the way towards acceptance. ~ Alaric Hutchinson

The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one. The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see other people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one's desires and fears. ~ Erich Fromm

I'm starting to realize that people lack good mirrors. It's so hard for anyone to show us how we look, & so hard for us to show anyone how we feel. ~ John Green

Life is a chain of interrelated puzzles.Pain and Sorrow are some necessities to greater heights and people may be the architects of our woes. We may develop some hatred for such people through whom the woes of life came our way but when we get to the point where we fully understand why sorrow and pain came our way, we ought to be grateful to those through whom the woes that propelled us to our greatness came. ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The underlying struggle - between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and the ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together, and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies cruelty toward those not like us ... ~ Barack Obama

He used to annoy me with sophistry that we all chose our destiny. Then one day I told him that that's great when fate offers you a nice set of destinies to choose from, but when you find yourself choosing between risking being raped, tortured and killed, or moving to another country to live like an alien without tongue, money or understanding, you are buggered either way. And that's not even to mention how easily he could navigate through the mine filed of his mistakes... ~ Dunya Look

If the key to life is figuring yourself out; family must be the lock. ~ LDarnell

There is a quiet subtlety about keeping some things personal and not everyone will understand, and that is fine - but it is important to have a bit of yourself that just stays inside…. ~ Debbie Lynn - 360 Degrees Full Circle

A common understanding is the pivot and a common way to bond the disintegrated ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

There's an old saying that great writing is simple but not easy, and so it is. The search for that one plain but inobvious [SIC] word that will do the work of five, the agony of untangling a complex idea that has become a mess of phrases in the writer's mind, the willingness to keep doing it over and over again until it is right
all of that plus some luck yields prose so clear that it seems a child could have written it. ~ William Souder

To be honest about it, I didn't even always like Sharley. Maybe that's the way it is with friends. Maybe the liking isn't the most essential part of being friends.

Maybe it's the sticking by. Maybe it's the impression of yourself you get through your friend's eyes.

Or maybe it's all the little lessons you learn. ~ RK Vetter

Bitter people always want to show you their bitter side in different forms, sometimes gently and sometimes bitterly, as if that is your bitter side, but always remain positive with understanding! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Once you tell somebody a story, you are all in the same world and you can all speak to each other about the same things and understand the same things. ~ Bilal Tanweer

It is worthwhile studying other peoples, because every understanding of another culture is an experiment with our own. ~ Roy Wagner

Then he asked me which one I thought was most likely to happen. I wish I knew. I really do. But I don't. You'd think that after living with these people for fifteen years I'd know a little something about them. But right now I feel like I don't know my parents at all. I guess
when you get down to it, I've never really thought about them as people. They've always been my parents. Now I have to think about them as people with feelings. What a pain.
The funny thing is, I bet they feel the same way. ~ Michael Thomas Ford

I wasn't sure Lorraine and others like her-ones who were so despairing of marriage, ones who were so sure their expectations could never be met-understood that it was these small moments of caretaking that meant the most, that forged the real relationship. The way one pulled the blanket over the sleeping other, the way one prepared a snack for oneself, but made enough to share. Such moments made for the team of two, which made for one's sword and shield. ~ Elizabeth Berg

I had never been so close to death before.
For a long time, as I lay there trying to clear my mind, I couldn't think coherently at all, conscious only of a terrible, blind bitterness. Why had they singled me out? Didn't they understand? Had everything I'd gone through on their behalf been utterly in vain? Did it really count for nothing? What had happened to logic, meaning and sense?
But I feel much calmer now. It helps to discipline oneself like this, writing it down to see it set out on paper, to try and weigh it and find some significance in it.
Prof Bruwer: There are only two kinds of madness one should guard against, Ben. One is the belief that we can do everything. The other is the belief that we can do nothing.
I wanted to help. Right. I meant it very sincerely. But I wanted to do it on my terms. And I am white, and they are black. I thought it was still possible to reach beyond our whiteness and blackness. I thought that to reach out and touch hands across the gulf would be sufficient in itself. But I grasped so little, really: as if good intentions from my side could solve it all. It was presumptuous of me. In an ordinary world, in a natural one, I might have succeeded. But not in this deranged, divided age. I can do all I can for Gordon or scores of others who have come to me; I can imagine myself in their shoes, I can project myself into their suffering. But I cannot, ever, live their lives for them. So what else could come of it but failure?< ~ Andre Brink

1. Accept everything just the way it is.
2. Do not seek pleasure for its own sake.
3. Do not, under any circumstances, depend on a partial feeling.
4. Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.
5. Be detached from desire your whole life long.
6. Do not regret what you have done.
7. Never be jealous.
8. Never let yourself be saddened by a separation.
9. Resentment and complaint are appropriate neither for oneself nor others.
10. Do not let yourself be guided by the feeling of lust or love.
11. In all things have no preferences.
12. Be indifferent to where you live.
13. Do not pursue the taste of good food.
14. Do not hold on to possessions you no longer need.
15. Do not act following customary beliefs.
16. Do not collect weapons or practice with weapons beyond what is useful.
17. Do not fear death.
18. Do not seek to possess either goods or fiefs for your old age.
19. Respect Buddha and the gods without counting on their help.
20. You may abandon your own body but you must preserve your honour.
21. Never stray from the Way. ~ Miyamoto Musashi

Now, sorcery rules the world. Of course, most don't call it sorcery; indeed, many would be horrified by such a notion. Instead, they use words like ideology, politics, defence, security, patriotism, commerce, industry, marketing, consumerism and belief. But where there is power-seeking, especially power over others or for oneself, though also over oneself, and be it wittingly or unwittingly conjured up, make no mistake: there is sorcery afoot. It just comes in different shades and colours, that's all. ~ H.M. Forester

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement. ~ Oscar Wilde

In love, one always begins in deceiving oneself, and one always ends in deceiving others. ~ Oscar Wilde

The metaphysical mutation that gave rise to materialism and modern science in turn spawned two great trends: rationalism and individualism. Huxley's mistake was in having poorly evaluated the balance of power between these two. Specifically, he underestimated the growth of individualism brought about by an increased consciousness of death. Individualism gives rise to freedom, the sense of self, the need to distinguish oneself and to be superior to others. A rational society like the one he describes in Brave New World can defuse the struggle. Economic rivalry - a metaphor for mastery over space - has no more reason to exist in a society of plenty, where the economy is strictly regulated. Sexual rivalry - a metaphor for mastery over time through reproduction - has no more reason to exist in a society where the connection between sex and procreation has been broken. But Huxley forgets about individualism. He doesn't understand that sex, even stripped of its link with reproduction, still exists - not as a pleasure principle, but as a form of narcissistic differentiation. The same is true of the desire for wealth. Why has the Swedish model of social democracy never triumphed over liberalism? Why has it never been applied to sexual satisfaction? Because the metaphysical mutation brought about by modern science leads to individuation, vanity, malice and desire. Any philosopher, not just Buddhist or Christian, but any philosopher worthy of the name, knows that, in itself, desire - u ~ Michel Houellebecq

While one lives in a foreign country, language's main function is as a means of self-protection and a weapon in one's fight with the world. You can't fight without a weapon. But perhaps its human instinct that makes it even more imperative to somehow express oneself, convey meaning, connect with others. ~ Iwaki Kei

Since the primary motive of the evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church. What better way to conceal one's evil from oneself as well as from others than to be a deacon or some other highly visible form of Christian within our culture ~ M. Scott Peck

Only a lunatic would fail to distinguish between himself and his representative self. This banal distinction may be most obvious in the workplace, where invariably one must avail oneself of an even-tempered, abnormally industrious dummy stand-in who, precisely because it is a dummy, makes life easier for all the others, who are themselves present, which is to say, represented, by dummies of their own. ~ Joseph O'Neill

The darker side of Nietzsche's ideas was incorporated into the Nazi belief system. Part of the link was straightforward: some things Nietzsche said were pure Nazi doctrine. His comments that 'The extinction of many types of people is just as desirable as any form of reproduction' and that 'the tendency must be towards the rendering extinct of the wretched, the deformed, the degenerate' could come from any work on racial hygiene.

Nietzsche's central contribution was not these explicitly Social Darwinist views, but his rejection of the Judeo-Christian morality of compassion for the weak. Self-creation required hardness towards oneself: a strong will imposing coherence on conflicting impulses. It also requires hardness on others. Conflicts between the self-creative projects of different people made inevitable the attempt to dominate others. The whole of life was a struggle in which victory went to the brave and to the strong-willed. Noble human qualities, linked with the will to power, were brought out in combat but atrophied in peace. Compassion was weakness, cowardice and self-deception. The Judeo-Christian emphasis on it was poison. In drawing these consequences from his beliefs about the death of God and from Social Darwinism, Nietzsche provided the part of the Nazi belief system which 'justified' the cruel steps they took to implement their other beliefs. ~ Jonathan Glover

In Varenka, she realized that one has but to forget oneself and love others, and one will be calm, happy, and noble. ~ Leo Tolstoy

If talent is a natural aptitude for creation with an outlook on life peculiar to oneself, then genius is to have an outlook on life, peculiar to oneself, which yet appeals to everybody. Talent is for oneself and a few others, but genius is universal. ~ D.E. Stevenson

Toxic shame, the shame that binds us, is experienced as the all-pervasive sense that "I am flawed and defective as a human being." Toxic shame is no longer an emotion that signals our limits; it is a state of being, a core identity. Toxic shame gives you a sense of worthlessness, a sense of failing and falling short as a human being. Toxic shame is a rupture of the self with the self. It is like internal bleeding - exposure to oneself lies at the heart of toxic shame. A shame-based person will guard against exposing his inner self to others, but more significantly, he will guard against exposing himself to himself. Toxic shame is so excruciating because it is the painful exposure of the perceived failure of self to the self. In toxic shame the self becomes an object of its own contempt, an object that can't be trusted. As an object that can't be trusted, one experiences oneself as untrustworthy. ~ John Bradshaw

To grow in love-ability is to accept the boundaries of oneself and others, while remaining vulnerable, woundable, around the bounds. Acknowledgement of conditionality is the only unconditionality of human love. ~ Gillian Rose

It is a painful thing to say to oneself: by choosing one road I am turning my back on a thousand others. Everything is interesting; everything might be useful; everything attracts and charms a noble mind; but death is before us; mind and matter make their demands; willy-nilly we must submit and rest content as to things that time and wisdom deny us, with a glance of sympathy which is another act of our homage to the truth. ~ Antonin Sertillanges

Part of me thinks that your very vulnerability brings you closer to the meaning of life, just as for others, the quest to believe oneself white divides them from it. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Most people are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others, frightfully objective sometimes
but the task is precisely to be objective toward oneself and subjective toward all others. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Then I close my eyes, and I imagine a world where I sabi and you sabi that we are okay, as we are. ~ Diane Brown

Ingesting a powerful dose of a psychedelic drug is like strapping oneself to a rocket without a guidance system. One might wind up somewhere worth going, and, depending on the compound and one's "set and setting," certain trajectories are more likely than others. But however methodically one prepares for the voyage, one can still be hurled into states of mind so painful and confusing as to be indistinguishable from psychosis. ~ Sam Harris

To acquire the full consciousness of self is to know oneself so different from others that no longer feels allied with men except by purely animal contacts: nevertheless, among souls of this degree, there is an ideal fraternity based on differences,
while society fraternity is based on resemblances.
The full consciousness of self can be called originality of soul, -and all this is said only to point out the group of rare beings to which Andre Gide belongs.
The misfortune of these beings, when they express themselves, is that they do it with such odd gestures that men fear to approach them; their life of social contacts must often revolve in the brief circle of ideal fraternities; or, when the mob consents to admit such souls, it is as curiosities or museum objects. Their glory is, finally, to be loved from afar & almost understood, as parchments are seen & read above sealed cases. ~ Remy De Gourmont

One pays a price for innovation, and innovators, knowing this, are hardly conciliators: books are not written specifically to please others; they are written, like it or not, to please oneself. ~ Alexis Lykiard

In Zen Buddhism an action is considered good when it brings happiness and well-being to oneself and others, evil when it brings suffering and harm to oneself and others. ~ Thich Thien-An

The Fascist accepts life and loves it, knowing nothing of and despising suicide; he rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest, life which should be high and full, lived for oneself, but not above all for others those who are at hand and those who are far distant, contemporaries, and those who will come after. ~ Benito Mussolini

It wasn't always like this. There was a time when I imagined my life could happen in another way. It's true that early on I became used to the long hours I spent alone. I discovered that I did not need people as others did. After writing all day it took an effort to make conversation, like wading through cement, and often I simply chose not to make it, eating at a restaurant with a book or going for long walks alone instead, unwinding the solitude of the day through the city. But loneliness, true loneliness, is impossible to accustom oneself to, and while I was still young I thought of my situation as somehow temporary, and did not stop hoping and imagining that I would meet someone and fall in love ... Yes, there was a time before I closed myself off to others. ~ Nicole Krauss

Everything is a subject; the subject is yourself. It is within yourself that you must look and not around you ... The greatest happiness is to reveal it to others, to study oneself, to paint oneself continually in [one's] work. ~ Eugene Delacroix

I am thirty-five years old, and it seems to me that I have reached the age of grief. Others arrive there sooner. Almost no one arrives much later. I don't think it is the years themselves, or the disintegration of the body. Most of our bodies are better taken care of and better looking than ever. What it is, is what we know, now that in spite of ourselves we have stopped to think about it. It is not only that we know that love ends, children are stolen, parents die feeling that their lives have been meaningless. It is not only that, by this time, a lot of acquaintances and friends have died and all the others are getting ready to sooner or later. It is more that the barriers between the circumstances of oneself and the rest of the world have broken down, after all - after all that schooling, all that care. Lord, if it be thy will, let this cup pass from me. But when you are thirty-three, or thirty-five, the cup must come around, cannot pass from you, and it is the same cup of pain that every mortal drinks from. ~ Jane Smiley

Treat others with respect, and one should seldom be in need of protection. As for the times when this is not effective, one should do oneself a favor and get a knife. ~ Leslye Walton

To write is to rewrite, he kept reminding me. One writes for oneself, and one rewrites for others. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Prayer provides an opportunity to remind oneself of how one should be living, our responsibilities to others, our own failings, and our relative good fortune, should we have it. This is, I think, a pretty worthwhile practice and it is not something you can only do if you believe you are talking to an unseen creator. ~ Julian Baggini

Swamiji: That is but a state of stupefaction, as under liquor. What will be the use of merely remaining like that? Through the urge of Advaitic realisation, you should sometimes dance wildly and sometimes remain lost to outward sense. Does one feel happy to taste of a good thing all by oneself? One should share it with others. Granted that you attain personal liberation by means of the realisation of the Advaita, but what matters it to the world? You must liberate the whole universe before you leave this body. Then only you will be established in the eternal Truth. Has that bliss any match, my boy? (VII. 162-63) ~ Swami Vivekananda

Hard work and results should be recognized by others, but when they aren't, advocating for oneself becomes necessary. As discussed earlier, this must be done with great care. But it must be done. ~ Sheryl Sandberg

Every decision a person makes stems from the person's values and goals. People can have many different goals and values; fame, profit, love, survival, fun, and freedom, are just some of the goals that a good person might have. When the goal is to help others as well as oneself, we call that idealism. My work on free software is motivated by an idealistic goal: spreading freedom and cooperation. I want to encourage free software to spread, replacing proprietary software that forbids cooperation, and thus make our society better. ~ Richard Stallman

We all live far away and anonymous; disguised, we suffer as unknowns. For some, however, this distance between oneself and one's self is never revealed; for others it is occasionally enlightened, to their horror or grief, by a flash without limits; but for still others this is the painful daily reality of life. ~ Fernando Pessoa

we fight every battle with our imaginations: the battles within, the battles in the world beyond. This is the truth of command, and a warrior must learn command, of oneself and of others. It ~ Steven Erikson

The idea of freedom can never be disassociated from real Prussia. The real Prussian spirit means a synthesis between restraint and freedom, between voluntary subordination and conscientious leadership, between pride in oneself and consideration for others, between rigor and compassion. Unless a balance is kept between these qualities, the Prussian spirit is in danger of degenerating into soulless routine and narrow-minded dogmatism. ~ Henning Von Tresckow

I think that for humans, the most regrettable of omissions, along with unshed tears and unexamined lives, is untold stories, the things not shared, the lost opportunity to be honest about oneself and tender toward others. ~ Martha M. Moravec

But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea the very fiend himself - that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved - what then? Then, as a rule, the whole truth of Christianity is reversed: there is no more talk of love and long-suffering; we say to the brother within us, "Raca," and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide him from the world; we deny ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves, and had it been God himself who drew near to us in this despicable form, we should have denied him a thousand times before a single cock had crowed. ~ C. G. Jung

First set yourself right, and only then set out to improve others. Change the hearts of men and the world will surely change. But one must begin somewhere; and one can only begin with oneself. ~ Ramana Maharshi

It is only through literature that one can put oneself in someone else's shoes and understand the other's different and contradictory sides and refrain from becoming too ruthless. Outside the sphere of literature only one aspect of individuals is revealed. But if you understand their different dimensions you cannot easily murder them ... ~ Azar Nafisi

Kindness - that is, the ability to bear the vulnerability of others, and therefore of oneself - has become a sign of weakness (except of course among saintly people, in whom it is a sign of their exceptionality). ~ Adam Phillips

Not the least of the problems in clarifying one's consciousness is developing the stoic determination to criticize one's own softness or sentimentality toward oneself. Ego, self-solicitous about its own tenderness, is the ultimate policeman over its own false consciousness, dementedly uprooting every healthy seedling of insight into the truth. As Kierkegaard remarked, most people are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others, but the real trick and task of life is to learn to be just the very opposite. ~ Kenny Smith

Always demanding the best of oneself, living with honor, devoting one's talents and gifts to the benefits of others - these are the measures of success that endure when material things have passed away. ~ Henry Ford

Nothing among all human emotions is more beautiful and more hopeless than the wish to be loved for oneself alone. Who are you anyway, next to countless others, to deserve such preference ? We do not want to be interchangeable; let no one be able to pinch-it for us. A figurative unmistakability claiming to be spatial and siritual. As though the earth had only one heaven, and heaven only one earth, we lay claim to the validity of both and, if we have one, we want to be the other. In reality, however, we are filled with planets, and countless heavens open their doors to us. ~ Elias Canetti

We are all human. Absolutely everything else is negotiable. ~ Remittance Girl