Quotes about feelings
page 19

“It was like she was cheated. Only nobody had cheated her. So there was nobody to take it out on. However, just the same she had that feeling. Cheated.”

Carson McCullers book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Source: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

“I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

“I want something else. I'm not even sure what to call it anymore except I know it feels roomy and it's drenched in sunlight and it's weightless and I know it's not cheap. Probably not even real”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Variant: I want something else. I’m not even sure what to call it anymore except I know it feels roomy and it’s drenched in sunlight and it’s weightless and I know it’s not cheap. It’s probably not even real.
Source: House of Leaves

“Why should I tell you everything about how I feel when you never tell me anything? It's like banging my head on a wall, except at least if I were banging my head on a wall, I'd be able to make myself stop. - Jace Wayland.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Jace and Clary, pg. 244
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)
Context: "I wish I could hate you. I want to hate you. I try to hate you. It would be so much easier if I did hate you. Sometimes I think I do hate you and then I see you and I-"
"And you what?"
"What do you think? Why should I tell you everything about how I feel when you never tell me anything. It's like banging my head on a wall, except at least if I were banging my head on a wall, I'd be able to make myself stop."

“When I see a beautiful shell like that I can't help feeling a regret about what's inside it.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night

Source: Tender Is the Night

“Do it first and feel about it afterwards.' - Dagny Taggart”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

“You always feel like you are the only one in the world, like everyone else is crazy for each other, but it's not true. Generally, people don't like each other very much. And that goes for friends, too.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“He wished she knew his impressions, but he would as soon as thought of carrying an odour in a net as of attempting to convey the intangibles of his feeling in the coarse meshes of language. So he remained silent.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

“I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

“They're fake bullets, so why do I feel like Im bleeding out?”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

“The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The black goddess within each of us - the poet - whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Source: Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984), p. 38

Dreams, Thinking

“This was freedom; to feel what the heart desired with no thought to the opinion of the rest… She was free, for love liberates.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Fifth Mountain Intl

Love, Freedom, Heart

“What every girl dreams of when she's dumped is - that the guy will someday feel regrest and come back and tell her all about it. And the beauty of it is you have no regrets whatsoever.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Beauty, Dreams, Guy, Girl

“Some people feel like they don't deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Love, People, Past

“When men are inhuman, take care not to feel towards them as they do towards other humans.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

“For a moment he felt good about this. A moment or two later he felt bad about feeling good about it. Then he felt good about feeling bad about feeling good about it and satisfied, drove on into the night.”

Douglas Adams book So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Source: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“Sometimes grace works like water wings when you feel you are sinking.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

“Men reveal what they think when they look away, and what they feel when they hesitate. With women, it's the other way around”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Women, Men, Way, Thinking

“A clear vision, backed by definite plans, gives you a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

Source: The Gift of Self-Confidence

Confidence, Personality, Motivational

“I feel something vibrating and I really hope it's your phone." Serana told Dan, who blushed.”

Cecily von Ziegesar (1970) American writer

Source: Because I'm Worth It

“It’s very difficult to feel contempt for others when you see yourself in the mirror.”

Harold Pinter (1930–2008) playwright from England

“You could feel things or you could find a way to shut down. But once you were feeling things, you couldn’t decide exactly what to feel. That was the trouble with letting them in at all. They made a mess of the place.”

Ann Brashares (1967) American children's writer

“The ragamuffin who sees his life as a voyage of discovery and runs the risk of failure has a better feel for faithfulness than the timid man who hides behind the law and never finds out who he is at all.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out

Life, Faith, Law, Failure

“This emotion I'm feeling now, this is love, right?"

"I don't know. Is it a longing? Is it a giddy stupid happiness just because you're with me?"

"Yes," she said.

"That's influenza," said Miro. "Watch for nausea or diarrhea within a few hours.”

Orson Scott Card book Children of the Mind

Source: Children of the Mind

Love, Happiness, Stupidity

“The best kind of friend is the kind you sit with, never say a word and walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you ever had.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“I really did not feel okay about any of this, and there was really nothing I could do about any of it.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

“Did I hurt your feelings again? Sorry. When this is all over I'll send some flowers to your inner child.”

Richard Kadrey (1957) San Francisco-based novelist, freelance writer, and photographer

Source: Sandman Slim

“It's delicious to have people adore you, but it's exhausting, too. Particularly when your own feelings don't match theirs.”

Tasha Alexander (1969) American writer

Source: A Fatal Waltz

“I feel dead, wasted, awful, broken and useless. It's not the kind of feeling you forget.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

Dead, Forgetting

“If you spend your life sparing people’s feelings and feeding their vanity, you get so you can’t distinguish what should be respected in them.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Source: Tender is the Night & The Last Tycoon

“I'll always miss her. But our love is like the wind: I can't see it, but I can feel it.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Variant: Our love is like the wind... I cant see it, but I sure can feel it.
Source: A Walk to Remember

“Never be afraid to tell me anything,” he whispered against her hair. “No matter how ashamed you might feel. I’ll never judge you, Rachel. I love you.”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: The Darkest Hour

“There are only four points of warmth and brightness, in the whole world, that burn fiercely enough for me to feel something like the person I was. Your mother, your father, Lucie, and you. You love, and tremble, and burn.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Nothing but Shadows

Love, World, Personality

“It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you were aiming for.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Cordelia's Honor (1996), "Author's Afterword"

“There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feeling; none when they are under the influence of imagination.”

Edmund Burke book An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 460

Men, Imagination, Passion

“Maybe all of her strangeness, her curse, her always feeling like an outsider, had all existed so that she could belong here, with Peter.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

“I feel strangely normal.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship

“Love is a verb. Love – the feeling – is the fruit of love the verb or our loving actions. So love her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

“When you show yourself to the world and display your talents, you naturally stir all kinds of resentment, envy, and other manifestations of insecurity… you cannot spend your life worrying about the petty feelings of others”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

Life, World, Nature, Envy

“I swear, I end up feeling empty, like you've taken something out of me and I have to search my body for scars.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

“I've never been in love. I will die without knowing what it feels like to need to see one person's face when you go to sleep at night, to crave seeing it when you wake up. I wish I knew.”

Libba Bray (1964) American teen writer

Love, Sleep, Personality, Night

“are you saying that the feeling of searching for a missing sock is like searching for love?”

Cecelia Ahern book A Place Called Here

Source: A Place Called Here

“I sank onto the deck. My heart was pounding a million trillion times a minute. I never felt more alive. Anger, sadness, joy. He made me feel it all. No one else had that kind of effect on me. No one.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Sadness, Time, Heart, Joy

“when I think about sex, you know, I want it to feel good. Not feel good, shut up, but right. Happy, not just banging away somewhere. You know, you should not just do it to do it. You should love the guy.”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Source: Why We Broke Up

Love, Happiness, Sex, Guy

“Sometimes, I look outside, and I think that a lot of other people have seen this snow before. Just like I think that a lot of other people have read those books before. And listened to those songs.
I wonder how they feel tonight.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

People, Books, Thinking, Reading

“But in the night he woke and held her tight as though she were all of life and it was being taken from him. He held her feeling she was all of life there was and it was true.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

“I hope I make people feel better. I hope I take people out of their situations a little bit and make them happier. That's really why I do what I do.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

“You're alive," I whisper, pressing my palms against my cheeks, feeling the smile that's so wide it must look like a grimace. Peeta's alive.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

“In Seattle we live among the trees and the waterways, and we feel we are rocked gently in the cradle of life. Our winters are not cold and our summers are not hot and we congratulate ourselves for choosing such a spectacular place to rest our heads.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Life, Tree, Winter, Summer

“Danger lurks when people are dissociated and detached from their own story or feelings.”

Eve Ensler (1953) American playwright, performer, feminist, activist and artist

Source: Insecure at Last

“It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us… There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you… We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

God, People, Light

“Life's full of opportunities to make crappy decisions that feel good. And after the first one, the rest get a whole lot easier.”

Holly Black book Red Glove

Source: Red Glove

“The times I have tried to get close to someone resulted in me feeling threatened and weak.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

“When we played softball, I'd steal second base, feel guilty and go back.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

“I feel like I'm playing chess underwater. The pieces keep floating away. I don't know where things are. I can't figure out tomorrow.”

Jerry Spinelli Smiles to Go

Source: Smiles to Go

“How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

“Doing the right thing for someone else occasionally means doing something that feels wrong to you.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

“The longer I live, the more uninformed I feel. Only the young have an explanation for everything.”

Isabel Allende book City of the Beasts

Source: City of the Beasts

“Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings”

David Sedaris book Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Source: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Love, Truth, Hurt, Perfection

“A man must feel he runs things, but as long as you control yourself, you control him.”

Jacqueline Susann book Valley of the Dolls

Source: Valley of the Dolls

“The sound of the pages turning was the sound of magic. The dry liquid feel of paper under fingertips was what magic felt like.”

Emma Donoghue (1969) Irish novelist, playwright, short-story writer and historian

Source: Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins

“One can never ask anyone to change a feeling.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

“It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), Ch. 51

“It was almost enough to make me feel emotion.”

Jeff Lindsay book Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

“Never ignore the feelings that don't seem to make sense.”

Susan Mallery (1950) American author

Source: The Knitting Diaries: The Twenty-First Wish\Coming Unraveled\Home to Summer Island

“There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Source: Persuasion

“Life is a slope. As long as you're going up you're always looking towards the top and you feel happy, but when you reach it, suddenly you can see the road going downhill and death at the end of it all. It's slow going up and quick going down.”

Guy De Maupassant Bel-Ami

Source: Bel-Ami

Life, Death, Happiness

“… reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays….”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World

People, Reality, Holiday

“We can love with our minds, but can we love only with our minds? Love extends itself all the time, so that we can love even with our senseless nails: we love even with our clothes, so that a sleeve can feel a sleeve.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

Love, Time, Clothes

“You don't make me feel like you used to.
That's why I'm leaving
That's why people leave each other
They come to their senses and get selfish again.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: See A Grown Man Cry/Now Watch Him Die

People, Sense, Selfishness

“We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal, private, solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Pain, Fear, Personality

“I can’t exactly describe how I feel but it’s not quite right. And it leaves me cold.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

“Maybe that's what love is. Having someone who guides you through different experiences, coaxes you to try news things but still makes you feel safe.”

Wally Lamb (1950) american novelist

Source: We Are Water

“That's the trouble with caring about anybody, you begin to feel overprotective. Then you begin to feel crowded.”

John Updike book Rabbit Redux

Source: Rabbit Redux

“perfection. I have been waiting all my life to be with you. My heart slams against my ribs when I think of the slaughtered nights I spent all over the world waiting to feel your touch.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

Life, World, Thinking, Waiting

“The atheist view is correspondingly life-affirming and life-enhancing, while at the same time never being tainted with self-delusion, wishful thinking, or the whingeing self-pity of those who feel that life owes them something.”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion

Life, Thinking, Time

“The true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

“A romantic man often feels more uplifted with two women than with one: his love seems to hit the ideal mark somewhere between two different faces.”

Elizabeth Bowen book The Death of the Heart

Source: The Death of the Heart

“We’ll make out for a while and you’ll feel better.”

Robyn Carr American writer

Source: Harvest Moon

“I know you feel inhuman, and as if you are set apart, away from life and love, but…"
His voice cracked a little, the first time Tessa had heard him sound unsure.
He cleared his throat. "I promise you, the right man won't care.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Love, Life, Time

“Sometimes I feel like a caretaker of a museum -- a huge, empty museum where no one ever comes, and I'm watching over it for no one but myself.”

Haruki Murakami book Pinball, 1973

Source: Pinball, 1973

“That's what I consider true generosity. You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

[C]'est la vraie générosité ; vous donnez tout et rien ne semble jamais vous coûter.
All Men are Mortal (1946)

“… though she had not had the strength to shake off the spell that bound her to him she had lost all spontaneity of feeling, and seemed to herself to be passively awaiting a fate she could not avert.”

Edith Wharton Summer

Source: Summer

“If you have a past with which you feel dissatisfied, then forget it, now. Imagine a new story for your life and believe in it. Focus only on the moments when you achieved what you desired, and that strength will help you to get what you want.”

Paulo Coelho book The Fifth Mountain

Source: The Fifth Mountain

Life, Imagination, Past, Help

“Sometimes people say terrible things when they're scared. They don't mean to, but they can't help it. They lash out because if they can see that their words hurt someone else, it makes them feel as if they aren't completely powerless.”

Jonathan Maberry book Dust & Decay

Source: Dust & Decay

People, Help, Hurt

“Each person feels pain in his own way, each has his own scars.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Pain, Way, Personality

“Being touched by Jericho Barrons with kindness makes you feel like you the biggest, most savage lion in the jungle, lying down, placing your
head it its mouth and, rather than taking your life, it licks you and
purrs.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Bloodfever

“For now, I only wish to make a simple acknowledgement of the woman who held the power just before me.
Of all of us who touched it, I feel she was the most worthy.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Hero of Ages

“You can run but you can't hide… but I can try. I feel air catch in my lungs and I get a cramp in my side and this pain, this wonderful physical pain that I can place, reminds me that after all I am still alive.”

Jodi Picoult book Songs of the Humpback Whale

Source: Songs of the Humpback Whale

“I feel an almost overwhelming interest in the methods of daylight abduction employed by the modern youth.”

Georgette Heyer book Devil's Cub

Source: Devil's Cub

“It was nice standing out in the darkness, in the damp grass, with spring coming on and a feeling in my heart of imminent disaster.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Source: Wonder Boys

Spring, Grass, Heart

“Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, for everyone can see and few can feel. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince

Men, Appearance

“Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels.”

Elizabeth Berg (1948) American novelist

Source: The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted: And Other Small Acts of Liberation

“D'ye think I don't know?" he asked softly. "It's me that has the easy part now. For if ye feel for me as I do for you-then I'm asking you to tear out your heart and live without it.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Thinking, Tear, Heart, Parting

“It is my favorite thing, I think, that I have ever seen. Sometimes I catch myself staring at it and forget my duties. It seems big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Thinking, Forgetting

“You either have the feeling or you don’t.”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Variant: Either you have the feeling or you don't. Hawk Davies
Source: Why We Broke Up

“It is better than going on loving someone who cannot love me back. Better wasting all that feelings"
-Tessa gray”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel

“I have no feelings of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read; I know that my books have unlimited patience. They will wait for me till the end of my days.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: The Library at Night

Books, Waiting, Reading, Patience

“Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

“You know how I get angry sometimes? That's because it's the only way I can still feel. And I need to test myself, to make sure I'm really here.”

Jodi Picoult book Sing You Home

Source: Sing You Home