The beginnings and ends of shadow lie between the light and darkness and may be infinitely diminished and infinitely increased. Shadow is the means by which bodies display their form. The forms of bodies could not be understood in detail but for shadow.

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

I like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.

We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love.

You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.

It took Simone a long time to understand why people want Daddy’s autograph. I’d tell her, and my wife would tell her, too, ‚People see Daddy in the movies, and they are excited to meet him.‘ But she couldn’t really grasp it.

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.

Death means change our clothes. Clothes become old, then time to come change. So this body become old, and then time come, take young body.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

Understand: any phenomenon in the world is by nature complex. The people you deal with are equally complex. Any action sets off a limitless chain of reactions. It is never so simple as A leads to B. B will lead to C, D and beyond.

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

To understand Europe, you have to be a genius – or French.

To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.

As long as your body is healthy and under control and death is distant, try to save your soul; when death is immanent what can you do?

The history of science shows that theories are perishable. With every new truth that is revealed we get a better understanding of Nature and our conceptions and views are modified.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

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

Ultimately, a real understanding of history means that we face nothing new under the sun.

If you believe in science, like I do, you believe that there are certain laws that are always obeyed.

Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.

We’re in very bad trouble if we don’t understand the planet we’re trying to save.

The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mold of the body and mind.

Glory follows virtue as if it were its shadow.

Write in such a way as that you can be readily understood by both the young and the old, by men as well as women, even by children.

Still and all, why bother? Here’s my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.

I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.

Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness.

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs… I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hurts. I had to face the fear/loathing at its source or it would consume me whole.

I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another when the best fruit is.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

An inability to handle language is not the same thing as stupidity.

Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.

I’m not claiming divinity. I’ve never claimed purity of soul. I’ve never claimed to have the answers to life. I only put out songs and answer questions as honestly as I can… But I still believe in peace, love and understanding.

Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists.

The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended-and not to take a hint when a hint isn’t intended.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

Japan’s very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don’t think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that’s already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor.

I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important. But they were only interested in the writers they admired when they were young, and I didn’t understand it then, but now, now I understand it.

Respect the burden.

Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

It’s crazy how fast you get out of shape if you miss a couple days of action.

An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

I don’t go down the road of condemning.

Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

The pause between the errors and trials of the day and the hopes of the night.

While physics and mathematics may tell us how the universe began, they are not much use in predicting human behavior because there are far too many equations to solve. I’m no better than anyone else at understanding what makes people tick, particularly women.

I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.

In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.

So there’s no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn’t necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn’t necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.

Some like to think that a keen appreciation of art can actually make us better people – more just, more moral, more sensitive, more understanding. Perhaps that is true – in certain rare, isolated cases.

There are many people in the world who really don’t understand-or say they don’t-what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin!