Understanding Why Quotes

Knowledge is not power, it is only potential. Applying that knowledge is power. Understanding why and when to apply that knowledge is wisdom! ~ Takeda Shingen

I certainly do believe anyone engaged in the management of money should have a standard of measurement, and that both he and the party whose money is managed should have a clear understanding why it is the appropriate standard, what time period should be utilized, etc. ~ Warren Buffett

I love her with all my soul. Why, she is a child! She's a child now - a real child. Oh! you know nothing about it at all, I see."

"And are you assured, at the same time, that you love Aglaya too?"

"Yes - yes - oh; yes!"

"How so? Do you want to make out that you love them BOTH?"

"Yes - yes - both! I do!"

"Excuse me, prince, but think what you are saying! Recollect yourself!"

"Without Aglaya - I - I MUST see Aglaya! - I shall die in my sleep very soon - I thought I was dying in my sleep last night. Oh! if Aglaya only knew all - I mean really, REALLY all! Because she must know ALL - that's the first condition towards understanding. Why cannot we ever know all about another, especially when that other has been guilty? But I don't know what I'm talking about - I'm so confused. You pained me so dreadfully. Surely - surely Aglaya has not the same expression now as she had at the moment when she ran away? Oh, yes! I am guilty and I know it - I know it! Probably I am in fault all round - I don't quite know how - but I am in fault, no doubt. There is something else, but I cannot explain it to you, Evgenie Pavlovitch. I have no words; but Aglaya will understand. I have always believed Aglaya will understand - I am assured she will."

"No, prince, she will not. Aglaya loved like a woman, like a human being, not like an abstract spirit. Do you know what, my poor prince? The most p ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I remember the only time I ever saw my mother cry. I was eating apricot pie.
I remember how much I used to stutter.
I remember the first time I saw television. Lucille Ball was taking ballet lessons.
I remember Aunt Cleora who lived in Hollywood. Every year for Christmas she sent my brother and me a joint present of one book.
I remember a very poor boy who had to wear his sister's blouse to school.
I remember shower curtains with angel fish on them.
I remember very old people when I was very young. Their houses smelled funny.
I remember daydreams of being a singer all alone on a big stage with no scenery, just one spotlight on me, singing my heart out, and moving my audience to total tears of love and affection.
I remember waking up somewhere once and there was a horse staring me in the face.
I remember saying "thank you" in reply to "thank you" and then the other person doesn't know what to say.
I remember how embarrassed I was when other children cried.
I remember one very hot summer day I put ice cubes in my aquarium and all the fish died.
I remember not understanding why people on the other side of the world didn't fall off. ~ Joe Brainard

Some people erroneously believe that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members are not Christian. We have difficulty understanding why anyone could accept and promote an idea that is so far from the truth. ~ Joseph B. Wirthlin

Even now, I have a lot of trouble understanding why Sharon stayed – or why she married me in the first place, come to think of it. I mean, she was actually afraid of me half the time. And the truth was I was afraid of me, too. Afraid of what I'd do to myself or, even worse, to someone else. ~ Ozzy Osbourne

I read a page of Plato's great work. I can no longer understand anything, because behind the words on the page, which have their own heavenly brightness, to be sure, there shines an even brighter, an enormous, dazzling -why- that blots out everything, cancels out, destroys all meaning. All individual intelligence. When one has understood, one stops, satisfied with what one has understood. I do not understand. Understanding is far too little. To have understood is to be fixed, immobilized. It is as though one wanted to stop on one step in the middle of a staircase, or with one foot in the void and the other on the endless stair. But a mere why, a new why can set one off again, can unpetrify what was petrified and everything starts flowing afresh. How can one understand? One cannot. ~ Eugene Ionesco

Lachlan frowned as he misjudged the distance and his forehead hit Cormag's head with a bump. He wrapped his arms around his neck to steady himself, two big hands reaching up to hold onto his arms as if to offer extra support. "You," he began, talking quietly into his ear, "are so beautiful," he confessed, resting his heavy skull against Cormag's for a moment.
He meant it as well. Cormag was stunning. He was taller and broader than he was, very much the fine figure of hotness. His dark hair was well kept, but a little messy, he had amazing bone structure; the type that made him look more like a model than a museum manager. A chiselled jaw, nicely defined cheekbones and a rugged quality that
made him so appealing. He had never noticed how handsome a male face could be until those eyes drew him in.
"And so are you," his companion chuckled, "but we discussed this…I've ruined every relationship I've ever had. I get needy, possessive and my baggage gets in the way.
Besides," he lowered his voice to a whisper and brushed his hand over his upper arm, "You're not gay," he protested, reminding him yet again that they were different.
"Nope. Not gay," he agreed with that, nodding his head as he pulled back a little to see him better. "But that doesn't make you any less beautiful. Why is it wrong that I can see how special you are?" he asked, having difficulty understanding why part of his brain
was telling him he was being a drunken idiot and that the man be ~ Elaine White

Everybody is trying to dominate. That is the nature of the ego: to make every effort to dominate the other – whether the other is husband, wife, or children, or friends, makes no difference – to dominate, to find ways and means to dominate.

And if everybody is trying to dominate and you are also trying to dominate there will be struggle. The struggle is not because others are trying to dominate; the struggle is because you are not trying to understand how the ego functions.

You drop out of it! The others cannot be changed, and you will be unnecessarily wasting your life if you try to change the others. That is THEIR problem. They will suffer if they are not understanding, why should you suffer? You simply understand that everybody is trying to dominate, "I drop out of it, I will not try to dominate"... your struggle disappears. And a very beautiful thing happens. ~ Osho

The clue to everything a man should love and fear in her was there right from the start in the ironic smile that primed and swelled the archery of her full lips. There was pride in that smile and confidence in the set of her fine nose. Without understanding why I knew beyond question that a lot of people would mistake her pride for arrogance and confuse her confidence with impassivity. I didn't make that mistake. My eyes were lost swimming floating free in the shimmering lagoon of her steady even stare. Her eyes were large and spectacularly green. It was the green that trees are in vivid dreams. It was the green that the sea would be if the sea were perfect. ~ Gregory David Roberts

I am fascinated by the engineering. The science of constructing and understanding why it stands. And I am drawn by the madness, the beauty, the theatricality, the poetry and soul of the wire. And you cannot be a wire-walker without mingling those two ways of seeing life. ~ Philippe Petit

The presence of some serious budgetary myopia is obvious here, as the vast majority of money is spent on studying diseases and virtually none is spent on understanding why healthy people are healthy in the first place. ~ Richard Matthews

I fear falling in love and understanding why. ~ Dominic Riccitello

Understanding why so many western women are giving birth to unnaturally large babies that either damage the birth canal or will not fit down it is one of the greatest challenges to modern medicine. ~ Steven Magee

Is the sky painted?" Isidore asked. "Are there really brush strokes that show up under magnification?"

"Yes," Mercer said.

"I can't see them."

"You're too close," Mercer said. "You have to be a long way off, the way the androids are. They have better perspective."

"Is that why they claim you're a fraud?"

"I am a fraud," Mercer said. "They're sincere; their research is genuine. From their standpoint I am an elderly retired bit player named Al Jarry. All of it, their disclosure, is true. They interviewed me at my home, as they claim; I told them whatever they wanted to know, which was everything."

"Including about the whisky?"

Mercer smiled. "It was true. They did a good job and from their standpoint Buster Friendly's disclosure was convincing. They will have trouble understanding why nothing has changed. Because you're still here and I'm still here." Mercer indicated with a sweep of his hand the barren, rising hillside, the familiar place. "I lifted you from the tomb world just now and I will continue to lift you until you lose interest and want to quit. But you will have to stop searching for me because I will never stop searching for you."

"I didn't like that about the whisky," Isidore said. "That's lowering."

"That's because you're a highly moral person. I'm not. I don't judge, not even myself." Mercer held out a closed hand, palm up. "Before I forget it, I have something of y ~ Philip K. Dick

Before, they had laughed at me, despising me for my ignorance and dullness; now, they hated me for my knowledge and understanding. Why? What in God's name did they want of me? ~ Daniel Keyes

Music can be appreciated from several points of view: the listener, the performer, the composer. In mathematics there is nothing analogous to the listener; and even if there were, it would be the composer, rather than the performer, that would interest him. It is the creation of new mathematics, rather than its mundane practice, that is interesting. Mathematics is not about symbols and calculations. These are just tools of the tradequavers and crotchets and five-finger exercises. Mathematics is about ideas. In particular it is about the way that different ideas relate to each other. If certain information is known, what else must necessarily follow? The aim of mathematics is to understand such questions by stripping away the inessentials and penetrating to the core of the problem. It is not just a question of getting the right answer; more a matter of understanding why an answer is possible at all, and why it takes the form that it does. Good mathematics has an air of economy and an element of surprise. But, above all, it has significance. ~ Ian Stewart

I am a child of the American Century, and I feel a genetic commitment to understanding why it happened, and why I take it so personally. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

We've been very bad at understanding why the right-wing does things. ~ Kathy Acker

That is why the second coming of the Lord is not only salvation, not only the omega that sets everything right, but also judgment. Indeed at this stage we can actually define the meaning of the talk of judgment. It means precisely this, that the final stage of the world is not the result of a natural current but the result of responsibility that is grounded in freedom. This must be regarded as the key to understanding why the New Testament clings fast, in spite of its message of grace, to the assertion that at the end men are judged "by their works" and that no one can escape giving an account of the way he has lived his life. There is a freedom that is not cancelled out even by grace and, indeed, is brought by it face to face with itself: man's final fate is not forced upon him regardless of the decisions he has made in his life. This assertion is in any case also necessary in order to draw the line between faith and false dogmatism or a false Christian self-confidence. This line alone confirms the equality of men by confirming the identity of their responsibility. ...

Perhaps in the last analysis it is impossible to escape a paradox whose logic is completely disclosed only to the experience of a life based on faith. Anyone who entrusts himself to a life of faith becomes aware that both exist: the radical character of grace that frees helpless man and,no less, the abiding seriousness of the responsibility that summons man day after day. Both together mean that the ~ Benedict XVI

I like to know why a video has suddenly gone viral, why a song has broken, why a TV show is suddenly rating out of pattern ... I'm pretty good at understanding why things are becoming popular. ~ Simon Cowell

Far more difficult than implementing change is figuring out what works, understanding why it works, grasping when to change, and knowing when not to. ~ James C. Collins

My focus is on understanding why people commit violent and predatory acts, not to help them become better, more law-abiding citizens, but to aid in catching them, prosecuting them, and putting them away ~ John E. Douglas

Understanding why something happened does not help to reduce the problem. ~ Richard Bandler

My friends stood on the ground two feet below me, and miles away from understanding why I would want to sleep on a trailer platform... I couldn't possibly begin to explain what was only beginning to bud inside me: I wanted a home. I wanted to be at home, in the world and in my body (a feeling I had been missing since I'd woken up in the hospital) and somehow, in some as yet undefined way, I knew that windows in the great room and a skylight over my bed were going to help with that. ~ Dee Williams

I must admit, Peter, I have difficulty in understanding why an innocent man would want to spend twelve years as a rat. ~ J.K. Rowling

Listening is not understanding the words of the question asked, listening is understanding why the question was asked in the first place. ~ Simon Sinek

Experts have called Donald Trump's ignorance "breathtaking." Jeffrey Goldberg has said that Trump has "no understanding of the post-war international order that was created by the United States." Goldberg further stated that Trump shows "little interest in understanding why the world is organized the way it is. ~ Gizmo, The Puzzled Puppy

And right then, I come the closest I think I ever will to understanding why Knight left. He left because the world is not made to accommodate people like him. He was never happy in his youth -- not in high school, not with a job, not being around other people. It made him feel constantly nervous. There was no place for him, and instead of suffering further, he escaped. It wasn't so much a protest as a quest; he was like a refugee from the human race. The forest offered him shelter (p 182) ~ Michael Finkel

Understanding why we are afraid to grieve is a prelude to transforming our lives. Getting in touch with our deepest fears and airing them in a safe space can be incredibly liberating. ~ Christopher Dines

Something that's bothered me for a while now is the current profligacy in YA culture of Team Boy 1 vs Team Boy 2 fangirling. [...] Despite the fact that I have no objection to shipping, this particular species of team-choosing troubled me, though I had difficulty understanding why. Then I saw it applied to Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games trilogy – Team Peeta vs Team Gale – and all of a sudden it hit me that anyone who thought romance and love-triangles were the main event in that series had utterly missed the point. Sure, those elements are present in the story, but they aren't anywhere near being the bones of it, because The Hunger Games, more than anything else, is about war, survival, politics, propaganda and power. Seeing such a strong, raw narrative reduced to a single vapid argument – which boy is cuter? – made me physically angry.

So, look. People read different books for different reasons. The thing I love about a story are not necessarily the things you love, and vice versa. But riddle me this: are the readers of these series really so excited, so thrilled by the prospect of choosing! between! two! different! boys! that they have to boil entire narratives down to a binary equation based on male physical perfection and, if we're very lucky, chivalrous behaviour? While feminism most certainly champions the right of women to chose their own partners, it also supports them to choose things besides men, or to postpone the question of partnership in favour of ~ Foz Meadows

Cate Blanchett is mesmerizing. I don't know why. It's beyond my understanding. Why we all want to work with her is she elevates the rest of us. She's just got some ethereal grace and elegance that's beyond me, and an acute understanding of human nature. She's just exquisite. She's otherworldly. ~ Brad Pitt

Not understanding why affliction occurred has caused many to struggle with their faith. If we knew all the reasons and had the answers to all of our questions we wouldn't need faith. God wants His children to depend on Him. We are not to work through our struggles with our own strength. Rather, we are to move through our tribulation with the strength God provides. ~ Cheryl Zelenka

The Saxon/Norman origin of liberal democracy in the English-speaking world is the key to understanding why the discoveries of sociobiology have appeared to be so congenitally politically controversial. ~ Mitchell Heisman

There may be men who act without understanding why. I do not. To listen much, pick out the good and follow it; to see much and ponder it: this comes next to understanding. ~ Confucius

I don't have any problem understanding why people flunk out of college or quit their jobs or cheat on each other or break the law or spray-paint walls. A little bit outside of things is where some people feel each other. We do it to replace the frame of family. We do it to erase and remake our origins in their own images. To say, I too was here. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

Not knowing how venom kills does not take away the usefulness of knowing that it does. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Wow!" He uttered, not understanding why he said it. Lost for words, he decided to smile back at her, rather than appear dumb-stricken.
"Liked it?" she wanted to know. What else could he say other than, "Fantastic!You are delicious!"? He knew that these were not the words the Chairman of the Board should say to a junior secretary, but the words just tumbled out of his mouth. "I love you! I love you so much!" he found himself saying. Again , he could not understand why he said that.[MMT] ~ Nicholas Chong

I would simply ask why so many critics, so many writers, so many philosophers take such satisfaction in professing that the experience of a work of art is ineffable, that it escapes by definition all rational understanding; why are they so eager to concede without a struggle the defeat of knowledge; and where does their irrepressible need to belittle rational understanding come from, this rage to affirm the irreducibility of the work of art, or, to use a more suitable word, its transcendence. ~ Pierre Bourdieu

Butters's voice turned bitter. "Them or us, choose a side?" "It's not about taking sides," Karrin said. "It's about knowing yourself. About understanding why you make the choices you do. Once you know that, you know where to walk, too. ~ Jim Butcher

We judge and punish based on facts, but facts are not truth. Facts are like a buried skeleton uncovered long after death. Truth is fluid. Truth is alive. To know the truth requires understanding, the most difficult human art. It requires seeing all things at once, forward and backward, the way God sees. ~ Greg Iles

Don't try to understand things and you won't feel confused. ~ Marty Rubin

Everyone wants an iPhone, but it would be impossible to design an iPhone in China because it's not a product; it's an understanding of human nature. ~ Ai Weiwei

The City of London has never been known for understanding technology and has never matched Silicon Valley's tradition of knowledgeable investment in technology start-ups, just as the U.K. government has never matched the vast investment made by the U.S. government. ~ Geoff Mulgan

If we can figure everything out, if we can be so smart that we can fit everything into some sort of a plan or order, a complete intellectual understanding, then perhaps we won't be threatened. ~ Charlotte Joko Beck

With gray thread Beezus carefully outlined the steam coming from the teakettle's spout and thought about her pretty young aunt, who was always so gay and so understanding. No wonder she was Mother's favorite sister. Beezus hoped to be exactly like Aunt Beatrice when she grew up. She wanted to be a fourth-grade teacher and drive a yellow convertible and live in an apartment house with an elevator and a buzzer that opened the front door. Because she was named after Aunt Beatrice, Beezus felt she might be like her in other ways, too. ~ Beverly Cleary

We become happier by advancing our understanding of life and by finding its endless beauty. ~ Debasish Mridha

When life brings hardships beyond our understanding, it's not up to us to look for the silver lining. We are the silver lining. We become God's well-tuned instruments of peace, His gift to one another, each of us a miracle, according to His strange and wonderful plan. ~ Christy Wilson Beam

I've always been fascinated by science - anatomy, quantum physics, space and time theory. I don't understand these things, but the mystery is a part of what attracts me to them. That the world I live in now is complex beyond my understanding only encourages me to believe that there are wild possibilities in creation beyond even the things of this dimension of time and space. If this universe has alternate dimensions outside of our understanding, isn't it possible that we might exist in a life beyond this one, in another kind of dimension that is fuller and more alive than the one we know? ~ Bethany Pierce

Designing memorable experiences is easier said than done. Most importantly, you need empathy and understanding for your fellow human. It's the love for mankind that ultimately makes UX interesting. ~ Safari Content Team

No matter how smart YOU THINK you are or how smart others THINK that you are, you're never going to be somewhere OR someone you're not. _nickc ~ Nick Catricala

Rest assured, dear friend, that many noteworthy and great sciences and arts have been discovered through the understanding and subtlety of women, both in cognitive speculation, demonstrated in writing, and in the arts, manifested in manual works of labor. I will give you plenty of examples. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies 1405 ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

We become merciful, she wrote, when we behave as the "concerned reader of a novel," understanding each person's life as a "complex narrative of human effort in a world full of obstacles. ~ Martha C. Nussbaum

We never actually have serious conversations about anything for more than 20 seconds. So there's a beautiful superficiality to our relationship which sometimes gets covered up by all the genuine affection flowing back and forth. ~ Kamila Shamsie

We can never skip growing old. As we grow older, we understand old things and things of old times better! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

When I say 'The Hunger For More', it could be referring to more success. It could be more money, or respect, more power, more understanding. All of those things lead up to that hunger for more, because my more isn't everybody else's more. I feel like I made it already, because I got already what everybody on the corners of the neighborhood I grew up in is striving to get. God forbid anything happen to me, my family is straight. So anything that happens after this is just me progressing as a person. ~ Lloyd Banks

Poetry, she thought, wasn't written to be analyzed; it was meant to inspire without reason, to touch without understanding. ~ Nicholas Sparks

The pioneering anthropologist Louis Leakey once stated, Without an understanding of who we are, we cannot truly advance. ~ Gregg Braden

It is a mistake easily made by every man, saint or scholar, Church leader or day laborer. Ultimately, we come to expect God to accept our understanding of what his will ought to be and to help us fulfill that, instead of learning to see and accept his will in the real situations in which he places us daily. The simple soul who each day makes a morning offering of "all the prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day" - and who then acts upon it by accepting unquestioningly and responding lovingly to all the situations of the day as truly sent by God - has perceived with an almost childlike faith the profound truth about the will of God. To predict what God's will is going to be, to rationalize about what his will must be, is at once a work of human folly and yet the subtlest of all temptations. The plain and simple truth is that his will is that he actually wills to send us each day, in the way of circumstances, places, people, and problems. The trick is to learn to see that - not just in theory, or not just occasionally in a flash of insight granted by God's grace, but every day. ~ Father Walter J. Ciszek

A new vision and understanding of something demands a new way of talking about it, for the old terminology gets in the way of this effort. Stubbornly entrenched behind the words coined by a particular conceptual orientation are its secrete prejudices. Any attempt to open out an adequately human vista onto the phenomena of undisturbed existence must include a critique of the most important idea of traditional biology, physiology, and psychology. ~ Medard Boss

When you're used to being at a point where you're deadlifting close to 600 pounds, getting to be 5.5 percent body fat and seeing veins in places you shouldn't see them, it kind of skews your understanding of what is normal and OK. ~ Matt McGorry

One must learn to love, and go through a good deal of suffering to get to it, and the journey is always towards the other soul. ~ D.H. Lawrence

Understand and challenge your personal narrative. Narratives become choices and actions - which become your life. ~ Bryant McGill

Have you come to help Me?"

The sensayer waited, uncertain whether the words were meant for her. "Help you how?" she asked.

The stone-still Speaker did not turn. "To understand the God Who made this portrait of Himself."

Carlyle looked to the altarpiece, the choirs of Heaven shimmering in their concentric circles of cracking paint and gold. "People made that, human beings searching for their own understanding."

"If God made Man and Man made this, it is still a Self-portrait. ~ Ada Palmer

Alice leaned first one way and then the other, down the line of children. She said, Is everybody understanding this?"
One child said, "The misuse of power is the root of all evil?"
Alice said, "Well ... "
Another child said, "There is no justice on the earth?"
Alice said, "Well ... "
Another child said, "We are all alone in the world?"
Alice said, "Well ... "
Another child said, "The greatest depth of our loss is the beginning of true freedom?"
Alice said, "Well ... "
Another child said, "The disposal of human waste is the responsibility of the brokenhearted?"
These were all phrases Alice had put on the chalkboard after other field trips. It occurred to Alice, hearing these phrases now, that she might have attempted to do too much with a class of fourth graders. She was willing to admit to some excesses.
Alice said, "Just listen. ~ Lewis Nordan

[On art:] I believe that it not only enriches the spiritual life, but that it makes one more sane and sympathetic, more observant and understanding, regardless of whatever age it springs from, whatever subjects it represents. ~ Abby Aldrich Rockefeller

Not to talk with people although they can be talked with is to waste people. To talk with people although they can't be talked with is to waste words. A man of understanding does not waste people, but he also does not waste words. ~ Confucius

Understanding God's Word is an essential ingredient of wisdom, which is the ability to apply God's truth to life's complexities. Having wisdom does not mean that you understand all of God's
ways; it means that you respond to life God's way (Deut. 29:29). The better you know the Bible, the wiser you will be and the more effectively you will deal with conflict. ~ Ken Sande

You are your own most important resource for making your life work. Life rewards action. Until your knowledge, awareness, insights, and understandings are translated into action, they are of no value. ~ Phil McGraw

Delusions are hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding insane people living in a backwards world. ~ Shannon L. Alder

Dr. Freeman said she couldn't have children. Christ, I'll never touch her again."
"You'll touch her," Houston said.
Dallas looked up, determination etched deeply in the lines of his face.
"No, I won't."
"Yes, you will. One night, she'll curl up against you, all innocent-like - " Compassion, understanding, and a wealth of sympathy filled Houston's gaze. "You'll touch her. ~ Lorraine Heath

Every day we should stand in awe of Him, as He is with us, and do what is pleasing before Him. If we are unable now to perceive Him with our physical eyes, we can, if we are watchful, see Him continuously with the eyes of our understanding, and not just see Him, but reap great benefits from Him. This vision destroys all sin, demolishes all evil, and drives away everything bad. It gives birth to purity and dispassion, and bestows eternal life. ~ Gregory Palamas

Americans are a decade behind Canada when it comes to sex education and understanding their bodies. ~ Sue Johanson

A deep love resides inside each of us. This love is independent of the desires, thoughts, and opinions, good or bad, which are readily offered to us. It is a love that is gentle and kind, accepting and nonjudgmental, playful and spontaneous, courageous and curious. It is always encouraging and always evolving. This love can be discovered only through turning off the noise around us, coming to ourselves in silence, meditation, and prayer. If we listen carefully we will hear the murmurs of our inner voice tell yearnings of our truest selves. What is available to us is a profound understanding, appreciation, and full acceptance of self, all of the good and all of the bad.

Only when we truly know that we are able to tap into this part of ourselves can we begin to love others fully. Love for others is the manifestation of love for self. We cannot love another more than we love ourselves. Life is a mirror. If you want to know what love for yourself looks like, look at your love for others. If you want to know what your love for others look like, look at your love for self. When you love yourself this way, you love God this way. This relationship is the divine love triangle; self, God, and others in any order. ~ Marlon Hartley Lindsay

Y-You love me?"
Gazing down at her pert nose and the freckles that made him think of an adorable pixie, he felt his throat constrict. "I want you every hour of the day. I can't imagine a future without you in it. The idea of returning to my empty house alone is so hellish that I'd rather wander the world at your heels than be without you. Tell me, is that love?"
She cast him a blazing smile. "It sounds like it."
"Then I love you, my wonderful, sword-wielding, tart-tongued angel. I want you to be my wife. I want you to preside over my table and accompany me to balls and share my bed." A most uncharacteristic happiness surged through him. "And I want to have children with you, lots of them, filling every room in Halstead Hall."
A sudden understanding lit her face. His clever love didn't miss the fact that he was offering her not just himself, but everything else he'd neglected, as well. Everything that he wanted to put to rights. That he needed to put to rights.
"Not filling every room, I hope," she teased, even as tears shone in her eyes. "There are three hundred, after all."
"Then I suppose we'll have to get started right away," he said, matching her light tone. His heart near to bursting, he reached again for the buttons on the back of her gown. "These things should never be left until the last minute."
As a laugh of pure joy bubbled out of her, she began to untie his cravat. "I can see you're going to be quite the lusty husband, aren't you ~ Sabrina Jeffries

Memory is slippery. It bends to our understanding of the world, twists to accommodate our prejudices. It is unreliable. Witnesses seldom remember the same things. They identify the wrong people. They give us the details of events that never happened. Memory is slippery, but my memories suddenly feel slipperier. ~ Holly Black

After several days, I had a pivotal interview with my teacher. When I described how I'd become so overwhelmed, she calmly asked, "How are you relating to the presence of desire?" I was startled into understanding. Her question pointed me back to the essence of mindfulness practice: It doesn't matter what is happening. What matters is how we are relating to our experience. For me, desire had become the enemy, and I was losing the battle. She advised me to stop fighting my experience and instead investigate the nature of my wanting mind. Desire was just another passing phenomenon, she reminded me. It was attachment or aversion to it that was the problem. ~ Tara Brach

Mature adults gravitate toward new values and understandings, not just rehashing and blind acceptance of past patterns and previous learning. This is an ongoing process and maturity demands lifelong learners. ~ David W. Earle

The stubborn of a captive mentality can be clearly seen in the formulation of national development plans in most developing nations where the fundamental meaning and criteria of knowledge and development, modernization and reform, progress and change, happiness, tolerance, pluralism and their respective antonyms - such as under-development and corruption - are all derived from Western frameworks. Sometimes the strangest phenomenon surfaces - such as when the methodology of understanding and teaching indigenous religions is regarded as being uncritical and less objective if it does not utilize the methods developed by Western scholars in the understanding and teaching Western religions and religious texts. ~ Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud

The beginning of art is not reason. It is the buried treasure of the unconscious ... that unconscious which has more understanding than our lucidity. ~ Edgard Varese

He finally understood ... the thing that the people during the Paleolitic Age, freaking 20,000 to 8,000 B.C., were after when they came up with mythologies to do with flight - a desire for the magic of the sky, for something bigger than their feet treading the earth. ~ Maud Casey

The journey of the mind always has longer to travel than the heart because dreams carry weight, while love makes you float. ~ Shannon L. Alder

What I have always loved about modelling is the chance to play a part. I am quite shy naturally, but I like getting into somebody else's head space, understanding how people work and the psychology behind their actions. ~ Liberty Ross

In the teaching of geography and history a sympathetic understanding (should) be fostered for the characteristics of the different peoples of the world, especially for those who we are in the habit of describing as primitive. ~ Albert Einstein

Learning philosophy is learning a particular kind of intuitive understanding. ~ Iris Murdoch

I wasn't understanding enough about drug addition. No one seemed to know much about drug addiction. Things like LSD were all new. No one knew the harm. People thought cocaine was good for you. ~ Mick Jagger

I am passionately interested in understanding how my country works. And if you want to know about this thing called the United States of America you have to know about the Civil War. ~ Ken Burns