Comprehensibility Quotes

“Bunnu was no amateur when it came to escape. And even in his drowsiest moments, he understood implicitly that to forget his circumstances, even for a short while, meant first to forget himself. Who he was and why he was—to strip it all bare and start from scratch, as it were. In his nearly 250 years of life and, now, as an old emaciated man completely estranged from his family and closest friends—albeit more by circumstance than by choice—he understood the importance of this process and revered it, for there were far greater things to be done and achieved in the dark, uncertain areas of existence than in those circumscribed—and thereby strained—by comprehensibility.”
― Ashim Shanker, Only the Deplorable

“...Alan, the first winter we knew him, stood at my desk in the Cathedral library and remarked, "I think you and Hugh live more existentially than most people."

I felt we'd made it: we, like Sartre and Camus and Kierkegaard, were existential; we were really with it. It doesn't matter that I'm still not quite sure what living existentially means, though I have a suspicion that it's not far from living ontologically, because it's one of those words that's outside the realm of provable fact and touches on mystery. Nothing important is completely explicable.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet

“At the present time... we certainly do not know all the laws of nature, and it is a good bet that most of our current formulations of those laws will be revised in the future.

Yet the great majority of scientists believe that a complete and final set of laws governing all physical phenomena exists, and that we are making continual progress toward discovery of those laws.”
― Alan Lightman, The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew

“কবিতায় দুর্বোধ্যতার ব্যাপারটা আমি খুব ভালো চোখে দেখি না। দুরূহতা এক, দুর্বোধ্যতা আরেক। যাঁরা ভাবেন, কবিতা শুধু কবির নিজস্ব অনুভূতির উন্মোচন, পাঠকের সঙ্গে সংযোগ ঘটানোর কোনো দায়ই নেই কবির, তাঁদের মতে পুরো সায় নেই আমার। কবির নিজস্ব অনুভূতির শিল্পরূপ যদি দরোজা-জানালাহীন এক দুর্গে পরিণত হয়, তাহলে পাঠক উঁকি মারবেন কোন্ পথে? সে-কবিতা তাহলে ছাপতেই বা দেওয়া কেন? কবির নিজস্ব অনুভূতি যেমন থাকবে তেমন থাকবে পাঠককে আমন্ত্রণের একটি খোলা দরোজা। সেই দরোজাটুকু লেখককেই করে দিতে হবে। যে-কোনো কবির কাছে পাঠক হিসেবে এ আমার ন্যূনতম দাবি।”
― Pronabkumar Mukhopadhyay

“Extraverts... cannot understand life until they have lived it. Introverts ... cannot live life until they understand it”
― Isabel Briggs Myers