Anonymous
There's a wonderful family called Stein,
There's Gert, and there's Epp and there's Ein:
Gert's poems are bunk,
Epp's statues are junk,
And no one can understand Ein.
Appleton Sir Edward 1892-1965
I do not mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand.
Bagehot Walter 1826-1877
The best reason why monarchy is a strong government is that it is an intelligible government: the mass of manking understand it, and they
hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.
Beaumarchais Pierre-Augustin Caron de 1732-1799
It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them.
Behn Aphra 1640-1689
The Rover
Money speaks sense in a language all nations understand.
Coty René 1882-1962
It's taken me all my life to understand that it is not necessary to understand everything.
Eliot George 1819-1880
You must either give people what they are used to, or what they don't understand.
Ellis Havelock 1859-1939
If men and women are to understand each other, to enter into each other's nature with mutual sympathy, and to become capable of genuine
comradeship, the foundation must be laid in youth.
Greenaway Peter
Ultimately the best way to undertsand a highly charged situation is to take a step back.
Hazlitt William 1778-1830
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 practise. The rest is affectation and imposture.
Lawson Sonia
You're not meant to understand-They're
bloody works of art.
Lessing Doris
The Grass is Singing
When old settlers say „One has to understand the country," what they mean is, „You have to get used to our ideas about the native."
Lombroso Cesare 1836-1909
The Man of Genius
The ignorant man always adores what he cannot understand.
Major John
Society needs to condemn a little more and understand a little less.
Morgenstern Christian
Home is not where you live but where they understand you.
Murrow Edward R. 1908-1965
(of the Vietnam War)
Anyone who isn't confused doesn't really understand the situation.
Newman John Henry, Cardinal 1801-1890
`Faith and Reason, ...'
When men understand what each other mean, they see, for the most part, that controversy is either superfluous or hopeless.
Patmore Coventry 1823-1896
The Angel in the House
A woman is a foreign land,
Of which, though there he settle young,
A man will ne'er quite understand
The customs, politics and tongue.
Picasso Pablo 1881-1973
Everyone wants to understand painting. Why don't they try to understand the singing of birds? People love the night, a flower, everything that surrounds them without
trying to understand them. But painting - that they must understand.
Proverbs and Sayings
Chinese
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
Salinger J.D.
The Catcher in the Rye
Sex is something I really don't understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are. I keep making up these sex rules for myself, and then I break them right away.
Santayana George 1863-1952
Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavour to understand him.
Spinoza Baruch 1632-1677
Tractatus Politicus
I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.
Stein Gertrude 1874-1946
I understand you undertake to overthrow my undertaking.
Twain Mark 1835-1910
In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did
succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.
Virgil 70-19 BC
Georgics no.2 (of Lucretius)
Lucky is he who has been able to understand the causes of things.
