Quotes about feelings
page 21

Jane Austen photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
Arthur Conan Doyle photo
Jeffrey R. Holland photo
Brené Brown photo

“Shame works like the zoom lens on a camera. When we are feeling shame, the camera is zoomed in tight and all we see is our flawed selves, alone and struggling.(page 68)”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Augusten Burroughs photo
Sarah Vowell photo
Jodi Picoult photo
Albert Einstein photo

“What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Draft of a German reply to a letter sent to him in 1954 or 1955<!-- (also not known if this reply was sent) -->, p. 39
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)
Context: I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of "humility." This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.

John Irving photo
Jerry Spinelli photo

“Because life doesn't always happen according to a timetable or calendar. And feelings can't be scheduled.”

Jerry Spinelli (1941) American children's writer

Source: Today I Will: A Year of Quotes, Notes, and Promises to Myself

David Levithan photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Ernest Hemingway photo

“Don't you like to write letters? I do because it's such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you've done something.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (1 July 1925); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker
Context: Write me at the Hotel Quintana, Pamplona, Spain. Or don't you like to write letters. I do because it's such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you've done something

Francine Prose photo

“I’ve always found that the better the book I’m reading, the smarter I feel, or, at least, the more able I am to imagine that I might, someday, become smarter.”

Francine Prose (1947) American writer

Source: Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

Tori Amos photo
Jonathan Safran Foer photo
Eoin Colfer photo
Jodi Picoult photo
David Levithan photo
Sarah Dessen photo
Gertrude Stein photo
Kay Redfield Jamison photo

“If I can't feel, if I can't move, if I can't think, and I can't care, then what conceivable point is there in living?”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Alexis De Tocqueville photo

“A man's admiration for absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.”

Original text: Les despotes eux-mêmes ne nient pas que la liberté ne soit excellente ; seulement ils ne la veulent que pour eux-mêmes, et ils soutiennent que tous les autres en sont tout à fait indignes. Ainsi, ce n'est pas sur l'opinion qu'on doit avoir de la liberté qu'on diffère, mais sur l'estime plus au moins grande qu'on fait des hommes ; et c'est ainsi qu'on peut dire d'une façon rigoureuse que le goût qu'on montre pour le gouvernement absolu est dans le rapport exact du mépris qu'on professe pour son pays.
Ancien Regime and the Revolution (L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution) (fourth edition, 1858), de Tocqueville, tr. Gerald Bevan, Penguin UK (2008), Author’s Foreword :
1850s and later
Variant: We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.
Context: Even despots accept the excellence of liberty. The simple truth is that they wish to keep it for themselves and promote the idea that no one else is at all worthy of it. Thus, our opinion of liberty does not reveal our differences but the relative value which we place on our fellow man. We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.

Henry Rollins photo

“My feelings for you shame me into silence.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

Markus Zusak photo
Theodore Dreiser photo

“Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean.  Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.”

Variant: How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.
Source: Sister Carrie

Elizabeth Wurtzel photo
Zoë Heller photo

“It's similar to the way you feel cuddling an infant or a kitten, when you want to squeeze it so hard you'd kill it…”

Zoë Heller (1965) British writer

Source: What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal]

Glen Cook photo

“Soldiers live. He dies and not you, and you feel guilty, because you're glad he died, and not you. Soldiers live, and wonder why.”

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 99, “By the Military Cemetery: Missing Persons” (p. 664)
Context: “It doesn’t make much sense, does it?” my darling whispered to me. “People go at the oddest times and from the oddest causes.”
“Soldiers live,” I muttered.
“You’re turning that into a mantra.”
“You feel guilty. You wonder why him and not me, then you’re glad it was him and not you, then you feel guilty. Soldiers live. And wonder why.”

August Strindberg photo
Deanna Raybourn photo
Jane Austen photo

“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Variant: In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will no longer be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.
Source: Pride And Prejudice

Philip Larkin photo

“I feel the only thing you can do about life is to preserve it, by art if you're an artist, by children if you're not.”

Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian

Source: Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

D.H. Lawrence photo
Anaïs Nin photo

“How can I accept a limited definable self when I feel, in me, all possibilities?… I never feel the four walls around the substance of the self, the core. I feel only space. Illimitable space.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

Leni Riefenstahl photo
Ian McEwan photo

“But the absence of tears wasn't the same as an absence of feeling.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Mine Till Midnight

Libba Bray photo
Hugh Laurie photo
Anaïs Nin photo
Zora Neale Hurston photo
Jim Butcher photo
Jane Austen photo

“True feeling justifies whatever it may cost.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist
Dorothy Koomson photo
Meg Rosoff photo
Patrick Rothfuss photo

“Feel free to call me by my first name: Master.”

Source: The Name of the Wind

Malorie Blackman photo
Raymond Chandler photo

“Some days I feel like playing it smooth. Some days I feel like playing it like a waffle iron.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

Source: Trouble Is My Business

Don DeLillo photo
Ann Brashares photo
Meg Cabot photo

“Maybe you just saw what you wanted to see. Or maybe you justfelt what you wanted to feel.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Queen of Babble

Charles Bukowski photo

“The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.”

Tales of ordinary madness (1967-83)
Variant: .. the free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them...
Source: Tales of Ordinary Madness

Walter Dean Myers photo
Laurell K. Hamilton photo
Suzanne Collins photo
E.E. Cummings photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo

“I feel like a fox in a henhouse full of Catholic girls.”

Cate Tiernan (1961) American novelist

Source: Sweep: Volume 2

Sylvia Day photo

“.. nothing in your past can change how I feel about you. And God knows I’m no saint.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Reflected in You

Elizabeth Wurtzel photo
Scott Westerfeld photo
Carrie Fisher photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Susan Sontag photo
Sarah Mlynowski photo
D.H. Lawrence photo
Jim Butcher photo
Candace Bushnell photo
Carrie Fisher photo
Khaled Hosseini photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
Gordon Korman photo
Helen Fielding photo
Rick Riordan photo
Stephen King photo
Wilhelm Reich photo

“And the truth must finally lie in that which every oppressed individual feels within himself but hasn't the courage to express”

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) Austrian-American psychoanalyst

Source: Beyond Psychology: Letters and Journals, 1934-1939

Carl Sagan photo

“We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Source: By Art Koroma, from page 256 of Holy Axiom Truth Exposed... the Bible Is a Myth (2014) note: It appears President Barack Obama started this misattribution. I can find no reference to this quote on the Internet prior to his May 15, 2016 commencement address at Rutgers State University. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/05/15/remarks-president-commencement-address-rutgers-state-university-new

Horace Walpole photo

“Life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.”

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician

Letter to Anne, Countess of Ossory, (16 August 1776)
A favourite saying of Walpole's, it is repeated in other of his letters, and might be derived from a similar statement attributed to Jean de La Bruyère, though unsourced: "Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think". An earlier form occurs in another published letter:
I have often said, and oftener think, that this world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel — a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept.
Letter to Sir Horace Mann (31 December 1769)
Variant: The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel.

Robert Burns photo
Sylvia Day photo