Quotes & Sayings About Knowing Then What You Know Now

You told me trees could speak
and the only reason one heard
silence in the forest
was that they had all been born knowing different languages.

That night I went into the forest
to bury dictionaries under roots,
so many books in so many tongues
as to insure speech.

and now this very moment,
the forest seems alive
with whispers and murmurs and rumblings of sound
wind-rushed into my ears.

I do not speak any language
that crosses the silence around me
but how soothing to know
that the yearning and grasping embodied
in trees' convoluted and startling shapes
is finally being fulfilled
in their wind shouts to each other.

Yet we who both speak English
and have since we were born
are moving ever farther apart
even as branch tips touch. — Carol Goodman

Perhaps you don't desire poetry as much as you would like to have my torchy knowledge of your possible futures, but I dare say poetry will do you far more good. For knowing the future only makes you timid and complacent by turns, while poetry can shape you into the kind of souls who can face any future with boldness and wisdom and nobility, so that you need not know the future at all, so that any future will be an opportunity for greatness, if you have greatness in you. — Orson Scott Card

A heckler once interrupted Nikita Khrushchev in the middle of a speech in which he was denouncing the crimes of Stalin. "You were a colleague of Stalin's," the heckler yelled, "why didn't you stop him then?" Khrushschev apparently could not see the heckler and barked out, "Who said that?" No hand went up. No one moved a muscle. After a few seconds of tense silence, Khrushchev finally said in a quiet voice, "Now you know why I didn't stop him." Instead of just arguing that anyone facing Stalin was afraid, knowing that the slightest sign of rebellion would mean certain death, he had made them feel what it was like to face Stalin - had made them feel the paranoia, the fear of speaking up, the terror of confronting the leader, in this case Khrushchev. The demonstration was visceral and no more argument was necessary. — Robert Greene

The existential attitude is one of involvement in contrast to a merely theoretical or detached attitude. "Existential" in this sense can be defined as participating in a situation, especially a cognitive situation, with the whole of one's existence ... There are realms of reality or - more exactly - of abstraction from reality in which the most complete detachment is the adequate cognitive approach. Everything which can be expressed in terms of quantitative measurement has this character. But it is most inadequate to apply the same approach to reality in its infinite concreteness. A self which has become a matter of calculation and management has ceased to be a self. It has become a thing. You must participate in a self in order to know what it is. But by participating you change it. In all existential knowledge both subject and object are transformed by the very act of knowing. — Paul Tillich

But at the same time you know that if a time like that spring were to come around again, and even knowing what you know now, you might well end up making a similar choice to the one you'd made then. — Han Kang

And thus I learned that at Harvard, while knowing a great deal is the norm and knowing everything is the goal, appearing to know everything is an acceptable substitute. I pondered this great truth during the two-hour seminar. I was so buoyed up by it that I didn't pay enough attention to snorkeling up little bits of food in order to keep my nausea under control. I sailed right on into my next class, another seminar, confident that I could get through it without losing my lunch. — Martha N. Beck

Even knowing all, being forbidden to tell. Even wanting to help, rescue is impossible. I know of no condition more painful than that. — CLAMP

That's one of the great sadnesses of any life - knowing what you know now and then remembering what you did not know then. — Michael Ondaatje

Our rash faults
Make trivial price of serious thing we have,
Not knowing them until we know their grave. — William Shakespeare

The fatal mistake is waiting for life's circumstances to be right before we begin. Simply begin with your heart, look deeply into it and trust what you feel. Practice knowing and you will know. — Hugh Prather

You have to start knowing yourself so well that you begin to know other people. A piece of us is in every person we can ever meet. — John D. MacDonald

The ability to be good is not the ability to do nothing. It is not negative or passive. It is the ability to do something well
to do good work for good reasons. In order to be good you have to know how
and this knowing is vast, complex, humble and humbling; it is of the mind and of the hands, of neither alone. — Wendell Berry

Knowledge and personality make doubt possible, but knowledge is also the cure of doubt; and when we get a full and adequate sense of personality we are lifted into a region where doubt is almost impossible, for no man can know himself as he is, and all fullness of his nature, without also knowing God. — Thornton T. Munger

The man who thinks he knows does not yet know what knowing is — Michel De Montaigne

Granted, we never gave you a choice, but wouldn't you have agreed to transfer those dreams to us, knowing now what you could not know then? This sort of subjunctive calculus, nobody teaches in school. Artificial sleep, for example, "sleep for all" - who can say if we will achieve it? I keep roto-dialing strangers, begging for their surplus unconsciousness. — Karen Russell

There are always more questions. Science as a process is never complete. It is not a foot race, with a finish line ... People will always be waiting at a particular finish line: journalists with their cameras, impatient crowds eager to call the race, astounded to see the scientists approach, pass the mark, and keep running. It's a common misunderstanding, he said. They conclude there was no race. As long as we won't commit to knowing everything, the presumption is we know nothing. — Barbara Kingsolver

A body can't prosper if a person don't know who they are. That makes you poor as a pea, not knowing who you are inside. That's worse than being anything in the world on the outside. — James McBride

Being infinitely patient means having an absolute knowing that you're in vibrational harmony with the all-creating force that intended you here. You know that everything will happen at just the right time, at just the right place, with just the right people. — Wayne Dyer

You know, there's nothing you could tell me that would change my mind about you."

"That's 'cause you know me now, June. You don't ever want to know about me then. I don't want to know about me then."

"Think I would have ever ripped my back open on barbed wire to get away from you?"

"No - no, Jesus, June. Are you crazy? I could never, I could never - "

"Then I'm okay knowing you, whenever. I don't care what you say - you're a good guy. You're the best kind of guy. The things you've done for me, I - "

She couldn't speak, then. The glow was almost completely gone - it would never return if she started bawling.

"Hey, hey - okay. Okay, baby. It's okay. — Charlotte Stein

I'll never see them again. I know that. And they know that. And knowing this, we say farewell. — Haruki Murakami

You're not a bad person," she told him, knowing where his thoughts had taken him. "I'm not saying you're perfect. You're cocky and a know-it-all and you're addicted to working. But you've got a nice big dick and great bedroom skills, so I'm willing to overlook all that. — Suzanne Wright

But there is a truth that ought to be made known; I have had the opportunity of seeing it; which is, that notwithstanding appearances, there is not any description of men that despise monarchy so much as courtiers. But they well know, that if it were seen by others, as it is seen by them, the juggle could not be kept up; they are in the condition of men who get their living by a show, and to whom the folly of that show is so familiar that they ridicule it; but were the audience to be made as wise in this respect as themselves, there would be an end to the show and the profits with it. The difference between a republican and a courtier with respect to monarchy, is that the one opposes monarchy, believing it to be something; and the other laughs at it, knowing it to be nothing. — Thomas Paine

It's never been about trying to look well-behaved. It's just how I am. I guess it's a weird thing to be 19 and not ever have been drunk, but for me, it just feels normal because I don't really know any other way. I don't know if I'd be comfortable getting wasted and not knowing what I've said. That doesn't mean when I'm older I won't have a glass of wine. I just don't think it's such a strange thing for me not to be wasted all the time. — Taylor Swift

The people on their part may think that cognition is knowing all about things, but the philosopher must say to himself: When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence, 'I think,' I find a whole series of daring assertions, the argumentative proof of which would be difficult, perhaps impossible: for instance, that it is I who think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an 'ego,' and finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking - that I KNOW what thinking is. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It was wonderful to walk down the long flights of stairs knowing that I'd had good luck working. I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know." So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that you knew or had seen or had heard someone say. — Ernest Hemingway,

You don't have to be worried, okay? You don't have to be scared." His voice is twinkling again. "I'm not flirting with you."
Embarrassment sweeps through me. Flirting. A dirty word. He thinks I think he's flirting. "I'm not - I don't think you were - I would never think that you - " The words collide in my mouth, and now I know there's no amount of darkness that can cover the rush of red to my face.
He cocks his head to the side. "Are you flirting with me, then?"
"What? No," I splutter. My mind is spinning blindly in a panic, and I realize I don't even know what flirting is. I just know about it from textbooks; I just know that it's bad. Is it possible to flirt without knowing you're flirting? Is he flirting? My left eye goes full flutter. — Lauren Oliver

The horror of knowing someone and living with them and even thinking you're lucky and then wham and now you know that every person is really two people and how can you ever know what the other half is up to. — Michelle Tea

Whenever I put the headset on now," he'd continued, "I really do understand what I find there. When those kids sing about 'She loves you,' yeah well, you know, she does, she's any number of people, all over the world, back through time, different colors, sizes, ages, shapes, distances from death, but she loves. And the 'you' is everybody. And herself. Oedipa, the human voice, you know, it's a flipping miracle." His eyes brimming, reflecting the color of beer.
"Baby," she said, helpless, knowing of nothing she could do for this, and afraid for him.
He put a little clear plastic bottle on the table between them. She stared at the pills in it, and then understood. "That's LSD? — Thomas Pynchon

You must forgive yourself, you know, for not knowing any better than you did at the time that you make something so. If you can do this much, you can release yourself from a magnitude of contention that you have created against the self. If you decide, right now, that every choice that you have ever made was born in awareness that you held at the moment that choice was made, you can be understanding of the way that you operated and when. If you knew now what you knew then, you may well have done differently, but you cannot — Paul Selig

She is the sort of person who can do things she doesn't know yet. There are things you know you know and you know you don't know and you don't know you know and you don't know you don't know. She may not know what she does know. — Thomm Quackenbush

A cop told me, a long time ago, that there's no substitute for knowing what you're doing. Most of us scribblers do not. The ones that're any good are aware of this. The rest write silly stuff. The trouble is this: The readers know it. — George V. Higgins

Whenever it shows itself - hope, that is - hands from the crowded streets reach for it with such violent urgency because of the fear that they may never see it again. They do so without knowing that their desperation frightens hope away. Hope also doesn't know that it is its scarcity. that causes the crowd to lunge at it, shredding its robe. And as it struggles to escape, the fabric scraps land in the hands of some but last only for hours, a day, days, a week, weeks, depending on how much fabric each hand is able to catch. — Ishmael Beah

Is it dangerous to want so much to know someone without first knowing yourself? — Christina Lauren

Son, I hope your opinion of your mother hasn't lessened, knowing what you now know."
Gavin glanced up; incredulity skewed his eyebrows. His expression appeared both stunned and appalled. "Never, Father! I love her! It makes no difference to me where she came from."
The man nodded, a show of relief in his features. His large hand, soft in touch, went to brush a string of hair away from his wife's peaceful profile. "Your mother loves you too, son, more than anything in the world. She worries about you, day and night."
That sentiment stirred something profoundly pleasant inside the boy. He grinned at the internal warmth it created. — Richelle E. Goodrich

The most important aspect of leading is knowing oneself. Know yourself, know the people around you, and then get on with it. — Mervyn Davies

Is what how it is for me?" "Do you still know everything, all the time?" She shook her head. She didn't smile. She said, "Be boring, knowing everything. You have to give all that stuff up if you're going to muck about here." "So you used to know everything?" She wrinkled her nose. "Everybody did. I told you. It's nothing special, knowing how things work. And you really do have to give it all up if you want to play." "To play what?" "This, — Neil Gaiman

The way I feel about suicide is, I like knowing it's there. I like having it as an option. Because if I'm going to kill myself, then nothing really matters, so I might as well stick around for one more day. Just to see what happens. Out of curiosity. If I'm going to die anyway, then nothing is of particular consequence, so why not see what happens next? That way all I have to do is live until tomorrow. I know I can always handle one more day. — Nina De Gramont

A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours' time by Mrs. Dursley's scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley ... He couldn't know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: To Harry Potter - the boy who lived! — J.K. Rowling

Most people can motivate themselves to do things simply by knowing that those things need to be done. But not me. For me, motivation is this horrible, scary game where I try to make myself do something while I actively avoid doing it. If I win, I have to do something I don't want to do. And if I lose, I'm one step closer to ruining my entire life. And I never know whether I'm going to win or lose until the last second. — Allie Brosh

The truth is this: We always have sure and sufficient reasons for knowing why we can trust God, but do not always know what God is doing and why. — Os Guinness

There are situations when all answers and explanations fade. When you fully accept that you do not know, you give up struggling to find answers with the limited thinking mind. That is when the greater intelligence can operate though you. Sometimes surrender means giving up trying to understand and becoming comfortable with not knowing. — Eckhart Tolle

Do we know ourselves - our "self"? How are we supposed to be ourselves if we are not our selves? And how can we be our selves without knowing who we are, such that we are certain of being the ones we are? — Martin Heidegger

19. All possibilities I will attempt
And as I am here now,
Knowing what I know now,
I have faith in myself
That I will succeed
And I will succeed.
And I will succeed. — Priscilla Koranteng

It's a risk I'm willing to take. This happens once in a lifetime. You meet someone and have this crazy reaction ... you touch her skin and it's the best skin you've ever felt, and no perfume on earth could be better than her smell, and you know you could never be bored with her because she's interesting even when she's doing nothing. Even without knowing everything about her, you get her. You know who she is, and it works for you on every level. — Lisa Kleypas

I know that I'm very susceptible to getting caught up in storylines like, "I want him to be different. I want him to be more open. I want him to call." We have all of these storylines that kind of take over sometimes, and I think there's real grace and a peaceful heart at the center of just accepting what is, and knowing that everything's OK. The good, the bad, the ugly, the pain, the hurt, the frustration - all of that is valuable and part of this human experience, so we should lean in to all of it. — Sara Bareilles

The essential feature, and necessity of life is to know reality, which means knowing God. — Malcolm Muggeridge

Even some rock star girls, which I didn't really know her name. I will probably find out and probably get slaughtered for not knowing her name, but she brought some of her clothes that she used to wear on stage. I wore one of the corsets and stuff. I don't know why I'm blanking. It was not Pat Benatar. It's like Debbie Gibson, Pat Benatar, Joan Jett, I know those girls. — Julianne Hough

When a path opens up before us that leads we know not where, don't be afraid to follow it. Our lives are meant to be mysterious journeys, unfolding one step at a time. Often we follow a path worn smooth by the many and in doing so we lose our authenticity, our individuality, our own unique expression. Do not be afraid to lose your way. Out of chaos, clarity will eventually rise. Out of not knowing, something new and unknown will ultimately come. Do not order things too swiftly. Wait and the miracle will appear. — Ann Mortifee

Anne?" said Dacy sitting up in bed and propping his chin on his hands, "Anne, where is sleep? People go to sleep every night, and of course I know it's a place where I do things I dream, but I want to know where it is and how to get there and back without knowing anything about it ... and in my nighty too. Where is it? — L.M. Montgomery

Tell me I may dream of knowing you better."

"It's kind of you to say those things."

"No kindness, lady, when I speak but the truth."

"Yes. Well. I appreciate it, still. But you haven't the slightest hope, I'm afraid. You'll always know me as much as you do now, and that'll have to be enough for you. Good day. — Rebecca Hahn