I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it has fulfilled its purpose.

One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand.

When people get married young, you don’t really understand the true definition of marriage.

The language of all the interpretations, the translations, of the Judaic Bible and the Christian Bible, is musical, just wonderful. I read the Bible to myself; I’ll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.

It is not Kafka’s fault that his wonderful writings have lately turned into a fad, and are read by people who have neither the ability nor the desire to absorb literature.

The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.

It’s a tragedy, in a way, that Americans are brought up to think that they cannot feel for other people and other beings just because they are different. They think they’re different. It’s very limiting.

Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.

Africa is probably one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.

North Americans don’t understand… that our country is not just Cuba; our country is also humanity.

I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way – by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

See things from the boy’s point of view.

I do believe that in order to be a successful negotiator that as a diplomat, you have to be able to put yourself into the other person’s shoes. Unless you can understand what is motivating them, you are never going to be able to figure out how to solve a particular problem.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

When you learn about the teaching and the practice of another tradition, you always have a chance to understand your own teaching and practice.

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

Once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle, you are equipped with the basic means of salvation.

Most damage that others do us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion.

Anyone who is practicing understanding and compassion can exemplify true power. Anyone can be a Buddha.

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.

To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent.

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

Consider a tree for a moment. As beautiful as trees are to look at, we don’t see what goes on underground – as they grow roots. Trees must develop deep roots in order to grow strong and produce their beauty. But we don’t see the roots. We just see and enjoy the beauty. In much the same way, what goes on inside of us is like the roots of a tree.

I have a collective sense of suffering.

If you’re doing a biography, you try to stay as accurate as possible to reality. But you really don’t know what was going on in the person’s mind. You just know what was going on in the minds of people around him.

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

I don’t care how many beauty treatments you have, I don’t care which bag you’re carrying – you have to have a dress.

Let us have no machine-made ornament at all; it is all bad and worthless and ugly.

My lips, I’ve used collagen. I line my lips with collagen.

I don’t want to make money; I want to make a difference.

Most sets of values would give rise to universes that, although they might be very beautiful, would contain no one able to wonder at that beauty.

Laws should be interpreted in a liberal sense so that their intention may be preserved.

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

We shouldn’t have to be burdened with all the technicalities that come up from time to time with shrewd, smart lawyers interpreting what the laws or what the Constitution may or may not say.

The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation from their purposes.

The beauty of me being on stage is I have a voice.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

To God everything is beautiful, good, and just; humans, however, think some things are unjust and others just.

Science is nothing but perception.

I read Plato’s ‚Republic.‘ I read it through about five times until I could actually understand it.

I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.

The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.

Nature is wont to hide herself.

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem.

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?