That is why man can also never understand himself: For he is himself a timeless act; an act which he performs continuously, and there is no moment in which he might not perform it, as there would have to be to understand himself.

Unless you really understand others, you can hardly attain your own self-understanding.

Other people can help you, but if you're not trying to understand yourself, nobody else can do it for you.

No one has ever properly understood me, I have never fully understood anyone; and no one understands anyone else

I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.

Anyone who wants to be understood will never know the delight of being understood, because this happens only to the complex and misunderstood; simple souls, the ones whom other people can understand, never feel a desire to be understood.

If I let myself really understand another person, I might be changed by that understanding. And we all fear change. So, as I say, it is not an easy thing to permit oneself to understand an individual.

One can not understand language because language cannot understand itself; does not want to understand

one can never know oneself but only narrate oneself

He did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart from their context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation of an activity unknown to him, which was his life.

No one can understand love who has not experienced infatuation. And no one can understand infatuation, no matter how many times he has experienced it.

They say to know oneself is to know all there is that is human. But of course no one can ever know himself. Nothing human is finally calculable; even to ourselves we are strange.

Pelorat sighed. “I will never understand people.” “There’s nothing to it. All you have to do is take a close look at yourself and you will understand everyone else. We’re in no way different ourselves... You show me someone who can’t understand people and I’ll show you someone who has built up a false image of himself.”

It is even more difficult to get a man to understand something when his identity depends on his not understanding it.