Insight Quotes - Page 33

• Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight.

  Helen Keller

  Inspirational, Patience, Acceptance

  Helen Keller (1920). “Out of the Dark: Essays, Lectures, and Addresses on Physical and Social Vision”

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• We who have touched war have a duty to bring the truth about war to those who have not had a direct experience of it. We are the light at the tip of the candle. It is really hot, but it has the power of shining and illuminating. If we practice mindfulness, we will know how to look deeply into the nature of war and, with our insight, wake people up so that together we can avoid repeating the same horrors again and again.

  Nhat Hanh

  War, Light, Together We Can

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• Harry, despite your privileged insight into Voldemort’s world (which, incidentally, is a gift any Death Eater would kill to have), you have never been seduced by the Dark Arts, never, even for a second, shown the slightest desire to become one of Voldemort’s followers!” “Of course I haven’t!” said Harry indignantly. “He killed my mum and dad!” “You are protected, in short, by your ability to love!” said Dumbledore loudly.

  J. K. Rowling

  Art, Dad, Dark

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• This was not a good idea coming home for Christmas. I'm too old. Years ago, coming back from schools or trips, I always expected some sort of new perspective or fresh insight about the family on returning. That doesn't happen anymore-the days of revelation about my parents, at least, are over... its time to move on. I think we'd all appreciate that.

  Douglas Coupland

  Moving, Home, School

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• Insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Success, Intuition, Blink

  Malcolm Gladwell (2007). “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking”, p.68, Hachette UK

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• No, the secret is that there's no reward and we have to endure our characters and our natures as best we can, because no amount of experience or insight is going to rectify our deficiencies, our self-regard, or our cupidity. We have to learn that our desires do not find any real echo in the world. We have to accept that the people we love do not love us, or not in the way we hope. We have to accept betrayal and disloyalty, and, hardest of all, that someone is finer than we are in character or intelligence.

  Sándor Márai

  Betrayal, Real, Character

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• Omigod,' I said on a sudden flash of sleep-deprived insight. 'You're the big bad wolf.' There are some similarities.

  Janet Evanovich

  Sleep, Bigs, Flash

  Janet Evanovich (2007). “Twelve Sharp”, p.203, Macmillan

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• Socrates, whose mother was a midwife, used to say that his art was like the art of the midwife. She does not herself give birth to the child, but she is there to help during its delivery. Similarly, Socrates saw his task as helping people to 'give birth' to correct insight, since real understanding must come from within. . . . Everybody can grasp philosophical truths if they just use their innate reason.

  Jostein Gaarder

  Mother, Art, Children

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• A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little. That is why he constantly strives to achieve true insight. Socrates was one of these rare people. He knew that he knew nothing about life and about the world. And now comes the important part: it troubled him that he knew so little.

  Jostein Gaarder

  Reality, People, Important

  Jostein Gaarder (2010). “Sophie's World”, p.66, Hachette UK

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• Assessing existence while failing to embrace the insights of modern physics would be like wrestling in the dark with an unknown opponent.

  Brian Greene

  Wrestling, Dark, Would Be

  Brian Greene (2007). “The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality”, p.5, Vintage

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• In my own life, as winters turn into spring, I find it not only hard to cope with mud but also hard to credit the small harbingers of larger life to come, hard to hope until the outcome is secure. Spring teaches me to look more carefully for the green stems of possibility; for the intuitive hunch that may turn into a larger insight, for the glance or touch that may thaw a frozen relationship, for the stranger's act of kindness that makes the world seem hospitable again.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Kindness, Spring, Winter

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• I want to be violated by insight.

  Aimee Bender

  Want

  Aimee Bender (2011). “The Girl in the Flammable Skirt: Stories”, p.15, Anchor

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• We can either have a twenty-first-century conversation about morality and the human well-being - a conversation in which we avail ourselves of all scientific insights and philosophical arguments that have accumulated in the last two thousand years of human discourse - or we can confine ourselves to a first-century conversation as it is preserved in the Bible.

  Sam Harris

  Philosophical, Years, Two

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• The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  Ideas, Mind, Quiet

  Erich Maria Remarque (2013). “All Quiet on the Western Front: A Novel”, p.11, Random House

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• The golden rule for understanding spiritually is not intellect, but obedience. If a man wants scientific knowledge, intellectual curiosity is his guide; but if he wants insight into what Jesus Christ teaches, he can only get it by obedience.

  Oswald Chambers

  Jesus, Men, Understanding

  Oswald Chambers (1935). “The Golden Book of Oswald Chambers: My Utmost for His Highest; Selections for the Year”

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• I used to say to my classes that the ways to get insight are: to study infants; to study animals; to study primitive people; to be psychoanalyzed; to have a religious conversion and get over it; to have a psychotic episode and get over it; or to have a love affair with an old Russian. And I stopped saying that when a little dancer in the front row put up her hand and said, 'Does he have to be old?

  Margaret Mead

  Religious, Animal, Hands

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• ...if I die suddenly, my gravestone might appropriately offer this insight into my departure: "God got tired." I require lots of work.

  Beth Moore

  Tired, Departure, Might

  Beth Moore (2015). “Believing God”, p.86, B&H Publishing Group

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• The bones and flesh and legal statistics are the garments worn by the personality, not the other way around.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Personality, Flesh, Statistics

  "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

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• At the time, I didn't have the insight to wonder at the transient nature of despair, but now that I'm older I've seen how little it takes to turn a person's life around for better or worse. An event will do, or an Idea. Another person. An idea of a person.

  Meg Rosoff

  Ideas, Despair, Events

  Meg Rosoff (2008). “What I Was”, p.35, Penguin UK

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• The purpose of a short story is ... that the reader shall come away with the satisfactory feeling that a particular insight into human character has been gained, or that his (or her) knowledge of life has been deepened, or that pity, love or sympathy for a human being is awakened.

  Lin Yutang

  Character, Pity Love, Feelings

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• In a world so redolent with wonder, how can we allow ourselves to conduct our daily lives with so little insight, such absence of dignity?

  Bruce Sterling

  World, Littles, Dignity

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• The human mind works at low efficiency. Twenty percent is the figure usually given. When, momentarily, there is a flash of greater power, it is termed a hunch, or insight, or intuition.

  Isaac Asimov

  Intuition, Mind, Twenties

  Isaac Asimov (1986). “Foundation Trilogy”, Del Rey

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• I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain; and never shut myself up in a numb core of nonfeeling, or stop questioning and criticizing life and take the easy way out. To learn and think: to think and live; to live and learn: this always, with new insight, new understanding, and new love.

  Sylvia Plath

  Pain, Thinking, Understanding

  Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Frances Monson McCullough (1991). “The journals of Sylvia Plath”

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• I find flaws attractive. I find scars attractive.

  Angelina Jolie

  Inspiration, Humor, Scar

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• Understanding requires insight. Insight must be anchored.

  Brian Greene

  Understanding

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