Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Understanding Quotations

Theories are usually the over-hasty efforts of an impatient understanding that would gladly be rid of phenomena, and so puts in their place pictures, notions, nay, often mere words.

To understand one thing well is better than understanding many things by halves.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

All understanding begins in wonder!

The man of understanding finds everything laughable.

So long as you live and work, you will be misunderstood; to that you must resign yourself once and for all. Be silent!

The Bible grows more beautiful, as we grow in our understanding of it.

And we went our separate ways without having understood each other. As in this world nobody understands the other easily.

We love a girl for very different qualities than understanding. We love her for her beauty, her youth, her mirth, her confidingness, her character, with its faults, caprices and God knows what other inexpressible charms; but we do not love her understanding.

What one doesn't understand one doesn't possess.