quotations about emotion
Imagine that a strong negative emotion is like a mud swirling inside a fish tank. To get the mud to sink to the bottom of the tank so that you can have a clear view of the fish, the last thing you want to do is submerging your hands in the muddy water and try to push the mud to the bottom. The more you try to push it down, the more you turn it up. Similarly, you know, attempt to control a negative emotion, you may try to push it down. Unfortunately, the harder you try, the more it resurfaces.
HAEMIN SUNIM
Rest
This awareness of emotion is like the sun, which eliminates darkness. When you are aware of the emotion, it becomes powerless.
YONGEY MINGYUR RINPOCHE
"Meditating with Beethoven", tricycle, March 12, 2019
This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.
HORACE WALPOLE
letter to the Countess of Ossory, Jan. 19, 1777
There are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion
That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble
Drops some careless word, it overflows and its secret,
Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"The Courtship of Miles Standish"
The taste for emotion may, however, become a dangerous taste ; and we should be very cautious how we attempt to squeeze out of human life, more ecstasy and paroxysm than it can well afford. It throws an air of insipidity over the greater part of our being, and lavishes on a few favoured moments the joy which was given to season our whole existence. It is to act like school boys--to pick the plums and sweet-meats out of the cake, and quarrel with the insipidity of the batter: whereas the business is, to infuse a certain share of flavour throughout the whole of the mass; and not so to habituate ourselves to strong impulse and extraordinary feeling, that the common tenor of human affairs should appear to us incapable of amusement, and devoid of interest.
SYDNEY SMITH
Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy
No book or expert can protect us from the range of painful emotions that make us human.
HARRIET LERNER
The Dance of Connection
The heart is a strange beast and not ruled by logic.
MARIA V. SNYDER
Touch of Power
An emotion is like a colored sticky note that you unconsciously put on your experience. You don't respond to the experience, you respond to the sticky note.
NICOLE GRAVAGNA
"How Emotions Shape The Way We Experience The World", Forbes, January 4, 2018
Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
Middlesex
The emotion that can break your heart is sometimes the very one that heals it.
NICHOLAS SPARKS
At First Sight
The emotions I feel are no more meant to be shown in their unadulterated state than the inner organs by which we live.
HANNAH ARENDT
The Life of the Mind
We become our own enemy when we are thrown out of balance by anger, hatred, grief or any other intense emotion. We are for the time being obsessed by something alien.
PARAMANANDA
Message of the East, vol. 12
For my part, I think we need more emotion, not less. But I think, too, that we need to educate people in how to feel. Emotionalism is not the same as emotion. We cannot cut out emotion - in the economy of the human body, it is the limbic, not the neural, highway that takes precedence. We are not robots...but we act as though all our problems would be solved if only we had no emotions to cloud our judgement.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Stone Gods
You don't just embrace your emotions, you make love to them hard-core.
GENA SHOWALTER
Catch a Mate