Flowers are words
Which even a babe may understand. [ Bishop Coxe ]
Fools never understand people of wit. [ Vauvenargues ]
Enthusiasts soon understand each other. [ Washington Irving ]
In youth we learn; in age we understand. [ Marie Ebner-Eschenbach ]
They condemn what they do not understand. [ Quinct ]
Better understand the world than condemn it. [ Gaelic Proverb ]
A thing is not bad if we understand it well. [ German Proverb ]
Not to understand a treasure's worth,
Till time has stolen away the slightest good,
Is cause of half the poverty we feel,
And makes the world the wilderness it is. [ Cowper ]
Let another try to understand that; I cannot. [ A. Lortzing ]
What we do not understand, we do not possess. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
God is able to do more than man can understand. [ Thomas a Kempis ]
Nobody should be rich but those who understand it. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Pray thee, take care, that tak'st my book in hand,
To read it well; that is to understand. [ Ben Jonson ]
One may understand like an angel and yet be a devil. [ Proverb ]
The heart has reasons that reason does not understand. [ Bossuet ]
A truth that one does not understand becomes an error. [ Desbarolles ]
God grant me to contend with those that understand me. [ Proverb ]
Modern women understand everything except their husbands. [ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ]
Virtue: a word easy to pronounce, difficult to understand. [ Voltaire ]
The architect must not only understand drawing, but music. [ Vitruvius ]
And let him who cannot understand me learn to read better. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
When enthusiasts get together, they soon understand each other. [ W. Irving ]
He that would right understand a man must read his whole story. [ Proverb ]
Consider, the devil is old; therefore grow old to understand him. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Great hearts alone understand how much glory there is in being good. [ Michelet ]
The world does not understand that we can prefer anything else to it. [ George Sand ]
If you sail with a bad wind, you need to understand tacking about well. [ Proverb ]
There is a knack of shewing we understand the matter, when we hold our peace. [ Proverb ]
The learned understand the reason of the art, the unlearned feel the pleasure. [ Quinct ]
Many persons feel art, some understand it; but few both feel and understand it. [ Hillard ]
The better you understand yourself, the less cause you will find to love yourself. [ Thomas à Kempis ]
There needs a long apprenticeship, to understand the mystery of the world's trade. [ Proverb ]
We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love. [ Mme. de Stael ]
Evil men understand not judgment, but they that seek the Lord understand all things. [ Bible ]
Man must either make provision of sense to understand, or of a halter to hang himself. [ Antisthenes ]
Very few men understand the true significance of contentment; women alone illustrate it. [ Mme. Deluzy ]
That is not good language which all understand not He that burns his house warms himself for once. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
I can see how he (Sandy Koufax) won twenty-five games. What I don't understand is how he lost five. [ Yogi Berra ]
Fully to understand a grand and beautiful thought requires, perhaps, as much time as to conceive it. [ Joubert ]
The superstition in which we were brought up never loses its power over us, even after we understand it. [ Lessing ]
Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us dare to do our duty as we understand it. [ Lincoln ]
If you would understand your own age, read the works of fiction produced in it. People in disguise speak freely. [ Arthur Helps ]
Everywhere the flower of obedience is intelligence. Obey a man with cordial loyalty and you will understand him. [ Phillips Brooks ]
We can sometimes love what we do not understand, but it is impossible completely to understand what we do not love. [ Mrs. Jameson ]
Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it. [ Abraham Lincoln ]
He who loves not books before he comes to thirty years of age will hardly love them enough afterward to understand them. [ Earl of Clarendon ]
Every man is an original and solitary character. None can either understand or feel the book of his own life like himself. [ Cecil ]
Those who have suffered much are like those who know many languages; they have learned to understand and be understood by all. [ Madame Swetchine ]
Finally, we must think big and dream even bigger. In America, we understand that a nation is only living as long as it is striving. [ President Donald J. Trump, Presidential Inaugeration Speech, Jan 20, 2017 ]
Truly unhappy is the man who leaves undone what he can do, and undertakes what he does not understand; no wonder he comes to grief. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
I believe it to be true that dreams are the true interpreters of our inclinations; but there is art required to sort and understand them. [ Montaigne ]
We are accustomed to see men deride what they do not understand; and snarl at the good and beautiful because it lies beyond their sympathies. [ Goethe ]
Those with whom we can apparently become well acquainted in a few moments are generally the most difficult to rightly know and to understand. [ Hawthorne ]
Perfection does not exist. To understand it is the triumph of human intelligence; to desire to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness. [ Alfred de Musset ]
To analyze the charms of flowers is like dissecting music; it is one of those things which it is far better to enjoy than to attempt to understand. [ Tuckerman ]
Music is a source of surpassing delight to many minds. From its power to soothe the feelings and modify the passions, it seems desirable to understand it. [ Mrs. Sigourney ]
I cannot see why women are so desirous of imitating men. I could understand the wish to be a boa constrictor, a lion, or an elephant; but a man! that surpasses my comprehension. [ T. Gautier ]
For as much as to understand and to be mighty are great qualities, the higher that they be, they are so much the less to be esteemed if goodness also abound not in the possessor. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
It is expedient to have an acquaintance with those who have looked into the world; who know men, understand business, and can give you good intelligence and good advice when they are wanted. [ Bishop Horne ]
Beautiful it is to understand and know that a thought did never yet die; that as thou, the originator thereof, hast gathered it and created it from the whole past, so thou wilt transmit to the whole future. [ Carlyle ]
Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: Mankind
. Basically, it's made up of two separate words - mank
and ind
. What do these words mean ? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
There are two kinds of genius. The first and highest may be said to speak out of the eternal to the present, and must compel its age to understand it; the second understands its age, and tells it what it wishes to be told. [ Lowell ]
When I meet with any persons who write obscurely or converse confusedly, I am apt to suspect two things; first, that such persons do not understand themselves; and secondly, that they are not worthy of being understood by others. [ Colton ]
Every rose is an autograph from the hand of the Almighty God on this world about us; he has inscribed his thoughts in these marvelous hieroglyphics which sense and science have been these many thousand years seeking to understand. [ T. Parker ]
By necessaries I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to appear without. [ Adam Smith ]
Beauty in dress, as in other things, is largely relative. To admit this is to admit that a dress which is beautiful upon one woman may be hideous worn by another. Each should understand her own style, accept it, and let the fashion of her dress be built upon it. [ Miss Oakey ]
None but those who have loved can be supposed to understand the oratory of the eye, the mute eloquence of a look, or the conversational powers of the face. Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words, and resorts to the pantomime of sighs and glances. [ Bovee ]
By eloquence I understand those appeals to our moral perceptions that produce emotion as soon as they are uttered. This is the very enthusiasm that is the parent of poetry. Let the same man go to his closet and clothe in numbers conceptions full of the same fire and spirit, and they will be poetry. [ Bryant ]
I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all the mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut. [ Goethe ]
They that have read about everything are thought to understand everything too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with the materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections, - we must I chew them over again. [ Channing ]
Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property, of a man; like light, it can give little or nothing, but at most may show what is given; often it is but a false glare, dazzling the eyes of the vulgar, lending, by casual extrinsic splendour, the brightness and manifold glance of the diamond to pebbles of no value. [ Carlyle ]
If I were to choose the people with whom I would spend my hours of conversation, they should be certainly such as labored no further than to make themselves readily and clearly apprehended, and would have patience and curiosity to understand me. To have good sense and ability to express it are the most essential and necessary qualities in companions. When thoughts rise in us fit to utter among familiar friends, there needs but very little care in clothing them. [ Steele ]
We have more poets than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one. There is, indeed, a certain low and moderate sort of poetry, that a man may well enough judge by certain rules of art: but the true, supreme, and divine poesy is equally above all rules and reason. And whoever discerns the beauty of it with the most assured and most steady sight sees no more than the quick reflection of a flash of lightning. [ Montaigne ]
Those who worship gold in a world so corrupt as this we live in have at least one thing to plead in defense of their idolatry - the power of their idol. It is true that, like other idols, it can neither move, see, hear, feel, nor understand; but, unlike other idols, it has often communicated all these powers to those who had them not, and annihilated them in those who had. This idol can boast of two peculiarities; it is worshipped in all climates, without a single temple, and by all classes, without a single hypocrite. [ Colton ]
Gratitude is a link between justice and love. It discharges by means of affections those debts which the affections only can discharge, and which are so much the more sacred for this reason. Gratitude never springs up in the soil of selfishness, for self-interest in its eagerness to appropriate is unable to understand the impulses of generosity or to measure the true value of the gift. And, when we do understand it, we must love much to be willing to accept, we refuse when we love but little. Gratitude is the justice of the heart. [ Degerando ]