Yearn to understand first and to be understood second.

To understand is to perceive patterns.

Understanding brings control.

Perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I should simply recognize, learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten.

I don't understand you. You don't understand me. What else do we have in common?

No person was every rightly understood until they had been first regarded with a certain feeling, not of tolerance, but of sympathy.

It has taken me all my life to understand it is not necessary to understand everything.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

I started out with nothing. I still have most of it.

I understand people's suffering, people's pain, more than you will every know yourself.

To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts expressed -- That can make life a garden.

The motto should not be: Forgive one another; rather understand one another.

The thing is plain. All that men really understand, is confined to a very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they have an opportunity to know, and motives to study or practice. The rest is affectation and imposture.

Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.

A man who pretends to understand women is ad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals.

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.

No one is going to turn down a good meal because he does not understand the digestive mechanism.

When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely -- the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears- when you give your whole attention to it.

If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.

The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others.

When a man begins to understand himself he begins to live. When he begins to live he begins to understand his fellow men.

To understand one woman is not necessarily to understand any other woman.

What we do not understand, we cannot control.

Return to the root and you will find the meaning.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present.

Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.

The key to understanding others is to first understand yourself

UNDERSTANDING does not necessarily mean AGREEMENT.

Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.

Please Note: Ashleigh Brilliant epigrams ("BRILLIANT THOUGHTS" ®) are individually protected by international copyright, and appear here by special permission. All rights reserved. To read more BRILLIANT THOUGHTS ® or to get permission to use Ashleigh's quotations, visit his website (www.ashleighbrilliant.com).