#understand

Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our heats? Can the writer renew our hope for literary forms? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power? ↗

— Annie Dillard

#reading #understanding #writing #writing-life #beauty

Patrick: How do you know so much about dating? You're a teenage girl. Tess: Because I'm a teenage girl. ↗

— Steven James

#understanding-women #dating

The most courageous act in politics is to try to understand your opponent. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#both-sides #opponents #politics #understanding #courage

Computers have become more friendly, understandable, and lots of years and thought have been put into developing software to convince people that they want and need a computer. ↗

— Roberta Williams

#been #computer #computers #convince #developing

But there was a time when each of us stood naked before the world, confronting life as a serious problem with which we were intimately and passionately concerned. There was a time when it was of vital interest to us to find out whether there was a God or not. Obviously the existence or otherwise of a future life must be of the very first importance to somebody who is going to live her present one, because her manner of living it must hinge on the problem. There was a time when Free Love versus Catholic Morality was a question of as much importance to our hot bodies as if a pistol had been clapped to our heads. Further back, there were times when we wondered with all our souls what the world was, what love was, what we were ourselves. ↗

— T.H. White

#morality #understanding-oneself-and-others #youth #age

A few weeks ago I had a dream. I dreamed I was back at the house, in the red room, reading my microeconomics textbook. Maddy outside playing with Hope, and Agnes was preparing dinner. It was just like old times. I was elated. I knew all along that they weren't really dead. It was all just a terrible mistake. Maddy joined me in the library. Strangely, she didn't smell like anything. Not her usual crème brulee or green apples or candy. That's when I realized she was dead, though I didn't know I was dreaming. She apologized for everything and then proceeded to explain why things had turned out the way they had. Her story made complete sense. It was what I needed to hear. Finally I had an answer. Finally I could let go. And then she vanished When I woke up, in a pool of sweat, I couldn't remember a thing Maddy had said. ↗

— Katherine Easer

#death #hope #spoiler #understanding #death

Fate is unalterable only in the sense that given a cause, a certain result must follow, but no cause is inevitable in itself, and man can shape his world if he does not resign himself to ignorance. ↗

— Pearl S. Buck

#destiny #education #fate #ignorance #self-determination

It is absolutely okay with me if you need to keep some secrets. I've been thinking about this and I decided that a best friend is someone who, when they don't understand, they still understand. ↗

— Nancy Werlin

#friendship #secrets #understanding #friendship

How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you? ↗

— Robert Frost

#understanding #experience

How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known? ↗

— Orhan Pamuk

#experience #understanding #experience