Nothing but good understanding. [ Said of friendship ]
Friendship is love with understanding. [ German Proverb ]
Man's best candle is his understanding. [ Proverb ]
Obedience completes itself in understanding. [ Phillips Brooks ]
For man loves knowledge, and the beams of truth
More welcome touch his understanding's eye,
Than all the blandishments of sound his ear,
Than all of taste his tongue. [ Akenside ]
This fellow must have a rare understanding;
For nature recompenseth the defects
Of one part with redundance in another;
Blind men have excellent memories, and the tongue
Thus indisposed, there's treasure in the intellect. [ Shirley ]
Riches, understanding, beauty, are fair gifts of God. [ Luther ]
Understanding is the most important matter in everything. [ Hans Andersen ]
Wisdom resteth in the heart of him that hath understanding. [ Bible ]
Every man has just as much vanity as he wants understanding. [ Pope ]
Understanding is a wellspring of life unto him that hath it. [ Bible ]
Pedantry proceeds from much reading and little understanding. [ Steele ]
When God will punish, he will first take away the understanding. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
We are to seek wisdom and understanding only in the length of days. [ Robert Hall ]
Wit marries ideas lying wide apart, by a sudden jerk of the understanding. [ Edwin P. Whipple ]
Conversation enriches the understanding; but solitude is the school of genius. [ Gibbon ]
And whatsoever else shall hap tonight. Give it an understanding, but no tongue. [ William Shakespeare ]
Mediocre minds usually condemn what is beyond the reach of their understanding. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Imagination is but a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding. [ Carlyle ]
I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding. [ Samuel Johnson ]
Genius is the highest type of reason, talent the highest type of the understanding. [ Hickok ]
Understanding is the wages of a lively faith, and faith is the reward of a humble ignorance. [ Quarles ]
Understanding is a mechanically, wit a chemically, and genius an organically, acting spirit. [ French Schlegel ]
Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by the horse-power of the understanding. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding. [ Bible ]
Dangerous principles impose upon our understanding, emasculate our spirits, and spoil our temper. [ Jeremy Collier ]
Darkness, that here surrounds our purblind understanding, will vanish at the dawning of eternal day. [ Boyle ]
Men of limited intelligence generally condemn everything that is above their power of understanding. [ La Roche ]
Read and take your nourishment in at your eyes; shut up your mouth and chew the cud of understanding. [ Congreve ]
Man is man by virtue of willing, not by virtue of knowing and understanding; and as he is, so he sees. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Very ugly or very beautiful women should be flattered on their understanding, and mediocre ones on their beauty. [ Chesterfield ]
Reserve is no more essentially connected with understanding than a church organ with devotion, or wine with good-nature. [ Shenstone ]
Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason and imagination, rarely or never. [ Coleridge ]
Music cleanses the understanding, inspires it, and lifts it into a realm which it would not reach if it were left to itself. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]
Whatsoever the mind perceives of itself, or is the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding, that I call an idea. [ Locke ]
Wise men are instructed by reason; men of less understanding, by experience; the most ignorant, by necessity; and beasts, by nature. [ Cicero ]
It is a fine observation of Plato, in his Laws, that atheism is a disease of the soul before it becomes an error of the understanding. [ Wm. Fleming ]
If my heart were as poor as my understanding, I should be happy; for I am thoroughly persuaded that such poverty is a means of salvation. [ Pascal ]
He that lends an easy and credulous ear to calumny is either a man of very ill morals or has no more sense and understanding than a child. [ Menander ]
The nearest approximation to an understanding of life is to feel it - to realize it to the full - to be a profound and inscrutable mystery. [ Bovee ]
Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not onto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. [ Bible ]
A few books, well studied, and thoroughly digested, nourish the understanding more than hundreds but gargled in the mouth, as ordinary students use. [ F. Osborn ]
Drinking of wine brings poverty, shame, quarrels; leads to calumnious talk, unchastity, murder, and the loss of freedom, of honor, of understanding. [ Tosafot ]
Consciousness of error is, to a certain extent, a consciousness of understanding; and correction of error is the plainest proof of energy and mastery. [ Landor ]
Neither is it safe to count upon the weakness of any man's understanding, who is thoroughly possessed of the spirit of revenge to sharpen his invention. [ Swift ]
A sentence well couched takes both the sense and the understanding. I love not those cart-rope speeches that are longer than the memory of man can fathom. [ Feltham ]
Wisdom and understanding are synonymous words; they consist of two propositions, which are not distinct in sense, but one and the same thing variously expressed. [ Tillotson ]
Grief sharpens the understanding and strengthens the soul, whereas joy seldom troubles itself about the former, and makes the latter either effeminate or frivolous. [ F. Schubert ]
When a woman is deliberating with herself whom she shall choose of many near each other in other pretensions, certainly he of the best understanding is to be preferred. [ Steele ]
We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world, but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first. [ President Donald J. Trump, Presidential Inaugeration Speech, Jan 20, 2017 ]
Light that a man receiveth by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which cometh from his own understanding and judgment, which is ever in his affections and customs. [ Bacon ]
To the understanding of anything, two conditions are equally required - intelligibility in the thing itself being no whit more indispensable than intelligence in the examiner of it. [ Carlyle ]
Most men take least notice of what is plain, as if that was of no use; but puzzle their thoughts to be themselves in those vast depths and abysses which no human understanding can fathom. [ Bishop Sherlock ]
Neither the naked hand nor the understanding, left to itself, can do much; the work is accomplished by instruments and helps, of which the need is not less for the understanding than the hand. [ Bacon ]
The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. [ Bible ]
Eloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. [ Hume ]
He who calls in the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own; and he who profits by a superior understanding raises his powers to a level with the height of the superior understanding he unites with. [ Burke ]
Love, when founded in the heart, will show itself in a thousand unpremeditated sallies of fondness; but every cool deliberate exhibition of the passion only argues little understanding or great insincerity. [ Goldsmith ]
It is no proof of a man's understanding to be able to confirm whatever he pleases; but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false, this is the mark and character of intelligence. [ Swedenborg ]
Bashfulness is a great hindrance to a man, both in uttering his sentiments and in understanding what is proposed to him; it is therefore good to press forward with discretion, both in discourse and company of the better sort. [ Bacon ]
Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and scruple in an instant, accommodates itself to the meanest capacities, silences the loud and clamorous, and brings over the most obstinate and inflexible. [ Addison ]
Eloquence, when at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. Happily, this pitch it seldom attains. [ Hume ]
We love a girl for very different qualities than understanding. We love her for her beauty, her youth, her mirth, her confidingness, her character, with its faults, caprices and God knows what other inexpressible charms; but we do not love her understanding. [ Goethe ]
Exaggeration is neither thoughtful, wise, nor safe; it is a proof of the weakness of the understanding, or the want of discernment of him that utters it, so that even when he speaks the truth, he soon finds it is received with large discount, or utter unbelief. [ W. B. Kinney ]
Never to speak by superlatives is a sign of a wise man; for that way of speaking wounds either truth or prudence. Exaggerations are so many prostitutions of reputation; because they discover the weakness of understanding, and the bad discerning of him that speaks. [ J. Earle ]
Two qualities are demanded of a statesman who would direct any great movement of opinion in which he himself takes a part; he must have a complete understanding of the movement itself, and he must be animated by the same motives as those which inspire the movement. [ Lamartine ]
Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding; and those who are conscious of their inferiority have the modesty not to talk; when they have drunk wine, every man feels himself happy, and loses that modesty, and grows impudent and vociferous; but he is not improved; he is only not sensible of his defects. [ Johnson ]
Writers of novels and romances in general bring a double loss on their readers, - they rob them both of their time and money; representing men, manners and things that never have been, nor are likely to be; either confounding or perverting history and truth, inflating the mind, or committing violence upon the understanding. [ Mary Wortley Montagu ]
It is sufficient to have a simple heart in order to escape the harshness of the age, in order not to fly from the unfortunate; but it is to have some understanding of the imperishable law, to seek them in the forgetfulness against which they dare not complain, to prefer them in their ruin, to admire them in their struggles. [ Senancour ]
The word necessary
is miserably applied. It disordereth families, and overturneth government, by being so abused. Remember that children and fools want everything because they want judgment to distinguish; and therefore there is no stronger evidence of a crazy understanding than the making too large a catalogue of things necessary. [ Lord Halifax ]
Quality and title have such allurements that hundreds are ready to give up all their own importance, to cringe. to flatter, to look little, and to pall every pleasure in constraint, merely to be among the great, though without the least hopes of improving their understanding or sharing their generosity. They might be happier among their equals. [ Goldsmith ]
Facts are to the mind the same thing as food to the body. On the due digestion of facts depends the strength and wisdom of the one, just as vigour and health depend on the other. The wisest in council, the ablest in debate, and the most agreeable in the commerce of life, is that man who has assimilated to his understanding the greatest number of facts. [ Burke ]
A pure mind in a chaste body is the mother of wisdom and deliberation, sober counsels and ingenuous actions, open deportment and sweet carriage, sincere principles and unprejudicate understanding, love of God and selfdenial, peace and confidence, holy prayers and spiritual comfort, and a pleasure of spirit infinitely greater than the sottish pleasure of unchastity. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
If I might venture to appeal to what is so much out of fashion at Paris, I mean to experience, I should tell you that in my course I have known and, according to my measure, have cooperated with great men; and I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business. [ Burke ]
Courage, by keeping the senses quiet, and the understanding clear, puts us in a condition to receive true intelligence, to make just computations upon danger, and pronounce rightly upon that which threatens us. Innocence of life, consciousness of worth, and great expectations, are the best foundations of courage. These ingredients make a richer cordial than youth can prepare. They warm the heart at eighty, and seldom fail in operation. [ Collier ]
Legitimately produced, and truly inspired, fiction interprets humanity, informs the understanding, and quickens the affections. It reflects ourselves, warns us against prevailing social follies, adds rich specimens to our cabinets of character, dramatizes life for the unimaginative, daguerreotypes it for the unobservant, multiplies experience for the isolated or inactive, and cheers age, retirement and invalidism with an available and harmless solace. [ Tuckerman ]
Business in a certain sort of men is a mark of understanding, and they are honored for it. Their souls seek repose in agitation, as children do by being rocked in a cradle. They may pronounce themselves as serviceable to their friends as troublesome to themselves. No one distributes his money to others, but every one therein distributes his time and his life. There is nothing of which we are so prodigal as of those two things, of which to be thrifty would be both commendable and useful. [ Montaigne ]