Comprehension Quotes

1. "A moral cynicism was sapping the strength of our society, half-lies were not only condoned, but regarded as smart. Many had remained untouched by the welter of the holocaust of battle fields, mass bombings, prison camps, the blood, pain, heartbreak and death remained to tally beyond their comprehension." Ghost of Bataan Speaks"
Author: Abie Abraham

2. "The incomprehension is when the thing happens without knowing the reasons."
Author: Adele Mandez

3. "The more science discovers and the more comprehension it gives us of the mechanisms of existence, the more clearly does the mystery of existence itself stand out."
Author: Aldous Huxley

4. "Asking Wolf to couples' skate is like bungee jumping without a cord-it may be the bravest thing I've ever done in my life.Or it could be the stupidest.There's only one way to find out.I look him dead in the eyes, summoning up both my courage and my sense of reckless abandon, but before I can even speak one syllable-"Oh!" he says, looking over one shoulder and dropping his hands. "Kaitlyn's free now. I gotta get over there!"He rushes off, blowing me an air kiss.My mouth should get used to falling open when he's around, either from his good looks or from his total lack of comprehension of all things polite. Did that just happen?My face in my palms, I lean on my elbows against the rail, invisible, and fall into an intoxicating state of self-pity."
Author: Alecia Whitaker

5. "The impulse came to her clairvoyantly, and she obeyed without a sign of hesitation. Deeper comprehension would come to her of the whole awful puzzle. And come it did, yet not in the way she imagined and expected."
Author: Algernon Blackwood

6. "IT'S ONE of those moments where life seems to pause, and the universe opens its mouth and vomits comprehension on you."
Author: Anna Banks

7. "And if that illustration will not move you, here is another: -- We are children now; we feel as children, and we understand as children; and when we are told that men and women do not play with toys, and that our companions will one day weary on the trivial sports and occupations that interest them and us so deeply now, we cannot help being saddened at the thoughts of such an alteration, because we cannot conceive that as we grow up, our own minds will become so enlarged and elevated that we ourselves shall then regard as trifling those objects and pursuits we now so foolishly cherish, and that, though our companions will no longer join us in those childish pastimes, they will drink with us at other fountains of delight, and mingle their souls with ours in higher aims and nobler occupations beyond our present comprehension, but not less deeply relished or less truly good for that, while yet both we and they remain the same individuals as before."
Author: Anne Brontë

8. "While we watched without comprehension, she moved away to where none of us wanted to follow. Ruth May shrank back through the narrow passage between this brief fabric of light and all the rest of what there is for us: the long waiting. Now she will wait the rest of the time. It will be exactly as long as the time that passed before she was born."
Author: Barbara Kingsolver

9. "PleasuresFirst look from morning's windowThe rediscovered bookFascinated facesSnow, the change of the seasonsThe newspaperThe dogDialecticsShowering, swimmingOld musicComfortable shoesComprehensionNew musicWriting, plantingTravelingSingingBeing friendly"
Author: Bertolt Brecht

10. "Love is a fragile, corruptible thing. And yet I have seen it evince a curious strength. It is beyond any comprehension Love is a weakness that once in a great while triumphs over strength."
Author: Brent Weeks

11. "Such absolute impenetrability is past comprehension"
Author: Charlotte Brontë

12. "[God says] Discipleship is not limited to what you can comprehend - it must transcend all comprehension. Plunge into the deep waters beyond your own comprehension, and I will help you to comprehend even as I do. Bewilderment is the true comprehension. Not to know where you are going is the true knowledge. My comprehension transcends yours."
Author: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

13. "Hey, bodyguard. You better get down to the gymnasium. This jumbo pixie guy is killing your sister." "Really?" said Butler, unconvinced. "Really. Juliet just does not seem to be herself. She can't put two moves together. It's pathetic, really. Everybody is betting against her." "I see," said Butler, straightening. Mulch held the door. "It's going to make things really interesting when you show up to help." Butler grinned. "I'm not coming to help. I just want to be there when she stops faking." "Ah," said Mulch, comprehension dawning on his face. "So I should switch my bet to Juliet?" "You certainly should" said Butler."
Author: Eoin Colfer

14. "Things have ends (or scopes) and beginnings. To/ know what precedes and what follows will assist yr/ comprehension of process."
Author: Ezra Pound

15. "It is not the reverence for words, but for their meaning that determines our deepness of comprehension of a given assertion about Nature."
Author: Felix Alba Juez

16. "Language is almost the most unique creation of humankind which defines itself; the alternative way of communication/comprehension/conception, yet overusing any invention, can cause Alienation."
Author: Fereidoon Yazdi

17. "The Cross of Christ is to be a reality to me not only once for all at my conversion, but all through my life as a Christian. True spirituality does not stop at the negative (death), but without the negative - in comprehension and in practice - we are not ready to go on."
Author: Francis August Schaeffer

18. "Ready comprehension is often a knee-jerk response and the most dangerous form of understanding. It blinks an opaque screen over your ability to learn. Be warned. Understand nothing. All comprehension is temporary."
Author: Frank Herbert

19. "Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness, and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was time when they both loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other moral trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore."
Author: Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

20. "It is our habit to say that while the lower nature can never understand the higher, the higher nature commands a complete view of the lower. But I think the higher nature has to learn this comprehension, as we learn the art of vision, by a good deal of hard experience, often with bruises and gashes incurred in taking things up by the wrong end, and fancying our space wider than it is."
Author: George Eliot

21. "The Divine Light is always in man, presenting itself to the senses and to the comprehension, but man rejects it."
Author: Giordano Bruno

22. "You may not agree with a woman, but to criticize her appearance — as opposed to her ideas or actions — isn't doing anyone any favors, least of all you. Insulting a woman's looks when they have nothing to do with the issue at hand implies a lack of comprehension on your part, an inability to engage in high-level thinking. You may think she's ugly, but everyone else thinks you're an idiot."
Author: Hillary Clinton

23. "It's perfectly clear to me that religion is a myth. It's something we have invented to explain the inexplicable. My religion and the spiritual side of my life come from a sense of connection to the humankind and nature on this planet and in the universe. I am in overwhelming awe of it all: It is so fantastic, so complex, so beyond comprehension. What does it all mean -- if it has any meaning at all? But how can it all exist if it doesn't have some kind of meaning? I think anyone who suggests that they have the answer is motivated by the need to invent answers, because we have no such answers."
Author: Hugh Hefner

24. "Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know—and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know—even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction—than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too."
Author: Isaac Asimov

25. "These fond parents were not blind to the value of education it was that they realized only its external value. That is to say, they could not look beyond the fact that education enabled folk to get on in the world so far as the acquisition of rank, crosses, and money was concerned.Certain evil rumours had arisen regarding the necessity of learning not only one's letters, but also various branches of science which until now had remained unknown to the world of Oblomovka; but, as I say, the good folk of that place had only the dimmest, the remotest, comprehension of any internal demand for education, and therefore desired to secure for their little Ilya only certain showy advantages, and no more--to wit, a fine uniform, and the getting of him into the Civil Service (his mother even foresaw him become a provincial governor!)."
Author: Ivan Goncharov

26. "Every thing was a friend, or bore her thoughts to a friend; and though there had been sometimes much of suffering to her- though her motives had been often misunderstood, her feelings disregarded, and her comprehension under-valued; though she had known the pains of tyranny, of ridicule, and neglect, yet almost every recurrence of either had led to something consolatory... and the whole was now so blended together, so harmonised by distance, that every former affliction had its charm."
Author: Jane Austen

27. "If comprehension lay at your feet, there would be no need to walk in search of it"
Author: Jessica Shirvington

28. "Throughout the time in which I am working on a canvas I can feel how I am beginning to love it, with that love which is born of slow comprehension."
Author: Joan Miro

29. "Man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out what he has to do; and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension."
Author: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

30. "These are all direct quotes, except every time they use a curse word, I'm going to use the name of a famous American poet:'You Walt Whitman-ing, Edna St. Vincent Millay! Go Emily Dickinson your mom!''Thanks for the advice, you pathetic piece of E.E. Cummings, but I think I'm gonna pass.''You Robert Frost-ing Nikki Giovanni! Get a life, nerd. You're a virgin.''Hey bro, you need to go outside and get some fresh air into you. Or a girlfriend.'I need to get a girlfriend into me? I think that shows a fundamental lack of comprehension about how babies are made."
Author: John Green

31. "Whoever acquired any real or substantive intelligence from reading newspapers? I'm sure I have no in-depth comprehension of American villany; yet I can't leave the news alone! You'd think I might profit from my experience with ice cream. If I have ice cream in my freezer, I'll eat it--I'll eat all of it, all at once. Therefore, I've learned not to buy ice cream. Newspapers are even worse for me than ice cream; headlines, and the big issues that generate headlines, are pure fat."
Author: John Irving

32. "Running to him was real; the way he did it the realest thing he knew. It was all joy and woe, hard as a diamond; it made him weary behond comprehension. But it also made him free."
Author: John L. Parker Jr.

33. "Philosophy can only be approached with the most concrete comprehension."
Author: Karl Jaspers

34. "People cheat when they are afraid. When there is no cost to being wrong or confessing ignorance, there is no reason to cheat or fake comprehension."
Author: Leah Hager Cohen

35. "The doctrine of Christ, which teaches love, humility, and self-denial, had always attracted me. But Ifound a contrary law, both in the history of the past and in the present organization of our lives – a lawrepugnant to my heart, my conscience, and my reason, but one that flattered my animal instincts. I knewthat if I accepted the doctrine of Christ, I should be forsaken, miserable, persecuted, and sorrowing, asChrist tells us His followers will be. I knew that if I accepted that law of man, I should have theapprobation of my fellow-men; I should be at peace and in safety; all possible sophisms would be athand to quiet my conscience and I should ‘laugh and be merry,' as Christ says. I felt this, and therefore Iavoided a closer examination of the law of Christ, and tried to comprehend it in a way that should notprevent my still leading my animal life. But, finding that impossible, I desisted from all attempts atcomprehension."
Author: Leo Tolstoy

36. "In my view the study of fairy origins assumes a greater degree of importance than popular opinion is wont to concede to it. Indeed, the ideas associated with it strike at the very roots of human belief and primitive methods of reasoning. It is scarcely to be questioned that the explanation of fairy origins is of the utmost value to the better comprehension of primitive religion. Later it will be made clear that, for the writer at least, the whole tradition of Faerie reveals quite numerous and excellent proofs of its former existence as a primitive and separate cult and faith, more particularly as regards its appearance and tradition in these islands."
Author: Lewis Spence

37. "Bewilderment is the true comprehension. Not to know where you are going is the true knowledge."
Author: Martin Luther

38. "If every statement is incomplete and every expression is situated upon a silent tacit comprehension, then it must be that things are said and are thought by a Speech and by a Thought which we do not have but which has us."
Author: Maurice Merleau Ponty

39. "All empires fall, eventually." "But why? It's not for lack of power. In fact, it seems to be the opposite. Their power lulls them into comfort. They become undisciplined. Those who had to earn power are replaced by those who have known nothing else. Who have no comprehension of the need to rise above base desires.["]"
Author: Max Barry

40. "Should you choose to test my resolve in this matter, you will be facing a finality beyond your comprehension, and you will not be counting days, or months, or years, but milleniums in a place with no doors."
Author: Meet Joe Black

41. "And so, it comes to pass in time, that the earth ceases for us to be a weltering chaos. We walk in the great hall of life, looking up and round reverentially. Nothing is despicable - all is meaningful; nothing is small - all is part of a whole, whose beginning and end we know not. The life that throbs in us is a pulsation from it; too mighty for our comprehension, no too small.And so, it comes to pass at last, that whereas the sky was at first a small blue rag stretched out over us and so low that our hands might touch it, pressing down on us, it raises itself into an immeasurable blue arch over our heads, and we begin to live again."
Author: Olive Schreiner

42. "She had always thought that if only people could communicate mind-to-mind, eliminating the ambiguities of language, then understanding would be perfect and there'd be no more needless conflicts. Instead she had discovered that rather than magnifying differences between people, language might just as easily soften them, minimize them, smooth things over so that people could get along even though they really didn't understand each other. The illusion of comprehension allowed people to think they were more alike than they really were. Maybe language was better."
Author: Orson Scott Card

43. "But pattern-matching doesn't equal comprehension."
Author: Peter Watts

44. "What is needed is this, and this alone: solitude, great inner loneliness. Going into oneself and not meeting anyone for hours – that is what one must arrive at. Loneliness of the kind one knew as a child, when the grown-ups went back and forth bound up in things which seemed grave and weighty because they looked so busy, and because one had no idea what they were up to.And when one day you realise that their preoccupations are meagre, their professions barren and no longer connected to life, why not continue to look on them like a child, as if on something alien, drawing on the depths of your own world, on the expanse of your own solitude, which itself is work and achievement and a vocation? Why wish to exchange a child's wise incomprehension for rejection and contempt, when incomprehension is solitude, whereas rejection and contempt are ways of participating in what, by precisely these means, you want to sever yourself from?"
Author: Rainer Maria Rilke

45. "Only in some very special cases is comprehension the point of reading--in things like recipes and "reading material." The point of reading is understanding, and comprehension is to understanding as getting wet is to swimming. You must do the one before you can hope to do the other, but you don't do the other simply because you do the one."
Author: Richard Mitchell

46. "Neither comprehension nor learning can take place in an atmosphere of anxiety."
Author: Rose Kennedy

47. "Parts are not to be examined till the whole has been surveyed; there is a kind of intellectual remoteness necessary for the comprehension of any great work in its full design and its true proportions; a close approach shews the smaller niceties, but the beauty of the whole is discerned no longer."
Author: Samuel Johnson

48. "John's eyes turned to me...I saw no resignation in them, no hope of heaven, no drawing peace. How I would love to tell you that I did. How I would love to tell myself that. What I saw was misery...fear, incompletion and incomprehension. They were the eyes of a trapped and terrified animal. (The Green Mile/Paul Edgecomb character)"
Author: Stephen King

49. "People rely on intelligence to solve problems, and they are naturally baffled when comprehension proves impotent to effect emotional change. To the neocortical brain, rich in the power of abstractions, understanding makes all the difference, but it doesn't count for much in the neural systems that evolved before understanding existed. Ideas bounce like so many peas off the sturdy incomprehension of the limbic and reptilian brains. The dogged implicitness of emotional knowledge, its relentless unreasoning force, prevents logic from granting salvation just as it precludes self-help books from helping. The sheer volume and variety of self-help paraphernalia testify at once to the vastness of the appetite they address and their inability to satisfy it. (118)"
Author: Thomas Lewis

50. "The fateful law of human semiotics is this: that of all the objects in the entire Cosmos which the sign-user can apprehend through the conjoining of signifier and signified (word uttered and thing beheld), there is one which forever escapes his comprehension--and that is the sign-user himself...The self of the sign-user can never be grasped, because, once the self locates itself at the dead center of its world, there is no signified to which a signifier can be joined to make a sign. The self has no sign of itself. No signifier applies. All signifiers apply equally."
Author: Walker Percy

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