Quotes about feelings
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“Self-discipline is the ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

“Maybe you feel pressure to be positive because so many people rely on your good, fake-positive energy? If that's the case, screw everybody else. You're not a bottle of Valium.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Surviving What You Think You Can't

People

“I decided that giving a girl a ring when you're not in a serious relationship is sort of like giving a guy a blow job when you have no real feelings for him. It makes everything feel a little cheap. It cheapens the giver and the recipient.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Baby Proof

Guy, Girl

“The culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it. Create your own.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

People, Strong

“I'll leave it to you, Sassenach," he said dryly, "to imagine what it feels like to arrive unexpectedly in the midst of a brothel, in possession of a verra large sausage.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Imagination

“If you have experienced an evening more exciting than any in your life, you're sad to see it end; and yet you still feel grateful that it happened.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Life, Sadness

“Pity is the feeling of well-intentioned people who are unable to act.”

Pramoedya Ananta Toer book Bumi Manusia

Source: Bumi Manusia

People

“When at last I came upon the right book, the feeling was violent: it blew open a hole in me that made life more dangerous because I couldn't control what came through it.”

Nicole Krauss book Great House

Source: Great House

Life, Books

“If you like her, if she makes you happy, and if you feel like you know her---then don't let her go.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

Happiness

“People with mental illnesses aren't wrapped up in themselves because they are intrinsically any more selfish than other people. Of course not. They are just feeling things that can't be ignored. Things that point the arrows inward.”

Matt Haig book Reasons to Stay Alive

Source: Reasons to Stay Alive

People, Selfishness

“It is not only species of animal that die out, but whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know, but pity yourself for what it did.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Source: The Magus

Past, Animals

“The flames surround me, and I feel myself slipping further from life, thinning to only the faintest shiver in the air. I yearn for the darkness and silence of the underworld, where I can rest.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

Life, Silence

“The biggest mistake any of us can make is thinking that love is a feeling, an emotion. It's not that at all. It's an action.”

Luanne Rice (1955) American author

Source: Follow the Stars Home

Love, Thinking

“It was one of those dangerous moments when speech is at once sincere and deceptive - when feeling, rising high above its average depth, leaves flood-marks which are never reached again.”

George Eliot book The Mill on the Floss

Source: The Mill on the Floss

Sincerity

“But I want to feel like life matters. I
had something real with you, but then the realness scared me. I decided to go for other things instead.”

David Levithan Boy Meets Boy

Source: Boy Meets Boy

Life

“I feel the need to endanger myself every so often.”

Tim Daly (1956) American actor, director and producer

“But you want murderous feelings? Hang around librarians," confided Gamache. "All that silence. Gives them ideas.”

Louise Penny (1958) Canadian woman writer

Source: A Rule Against Murder

Confidence, Idea, Silence

“Hey, for a scythe, cookies, and a chance to commit murder, Kronos could hide his true feelings.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Source: Percy Jackson's Greek Gods

Chance

“How do you feel?" he asked him.
"Like a military academy," said Arthur. "Bits of me keep on passing out.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Every impulse of feeling should be guided by reason; and, in my opinion, exertion should always be in proportion to what is required.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“I've always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Change

“When the fire goes out, you'll start feeling the cold. You'll wake up whether you want to or not.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: After the Quake

“There has to be a moment at the beginning when you wonder whether you’re in love with the person or in love with the feeling of love itself.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Love, Personality

“As far as I was concerned men were something you had around the place, not particularly interesting, but quite harmless. I had never shown the slightest feeling for them, and apart from my never wearing a skirt, saw nothing else in common between us.”

Jeanette Winterson book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Source: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Men

“The way you think determines the way you feel, and the way you feel determines the way you act.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Way, Thinking

“Walter Mitty: To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

Life, World, Drawing

“Look at the rain long enough, with no thoughts in your head, and you gradually feel your body falling loose, shaking free of the world of reality. Rain has the power to hypnotize.”

Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun

Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

World, Reality

“People leave traces of themselves where they feel most comfortable, most worthwhile.”

Haruki Murakami book Dance Dance Dance

Source: Dance Dance Dance

People

“Still, being able to feel pain was good, he thought. It's when you can't even feel pain anymore that you're in real trouble.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Pain

“I think holidays create so much pressure because people feel they should be having a good time. But you shouldn't.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

People, Thinking, Time, Holiday

“You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

"My Neighbor's Son"
To My Daughters, With Love (1967)

“For as long as I can remember, I have always had the feeling of not quite fitting in, not being the same as everyone else.”

Jane Green (1968) British writer

Source: Summer Secrets

“It’s just that I feel so sad these wonderful nights. I sort of feel they’re never coming again, and I’m not really getting all I could out of them.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book This Side of Paradise

Source: This Side of Paradise

Sadness, Night, Sad

“I don't suppose you have to believe in ghosts to know that we are all haunted, all of us, by things we can see and feel and guess at, and many more things that we can't.”

Beth Gutcheon (1945) American writer

Source: More Than You Know

“It gave me a strange feeling, and the rest of that night I didn’t say much, but merely sat there and drank, trying to decide if I was getting older and wiser, or just plain old.”

Hunter S. Thompson The Rum Diary

Source: The Rum Diary

Night

“I'm feeling generous today. You get to live.”

Frank Beddor American skier and writer

“Darkness approaches from outside.
I feel no light inside me strong enough to resist it.”

Christopher Pike book The Last Vampire

Source: The Last Vampire

Light, Strong

“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Joy

“It makes you feel good to know that there's other people afflicted like you.”

Harvey Pekar (1939–2010) writer

People, Affliction

“Ah, how good it feels! The hand of an old friend.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Friendship, For Friend, For Bestfriend

“One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.”

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

Lovers, Thinking, Passion

“I found it quite easy to carry on a casual conversation it was as if my real feelings were down fathoms deep in my mind and what we said was just a feathery surface spray.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

“Waiting silently is the hardest thing of all. I was dying to talk to Jim and about Jim. But the things that we feel most deeply we ought to learn to be silent about, at least until we have talked them over thoroughly with God.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ's Control

God, Learning, Waiting

“Besides, it happens fast for some people and slow for some, accidents or gravity, but we all end up mutilated. Most women know this feeling of being more and more invisible everyday.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Women, People

“Few things linger longer or become more indwelling than that feeling of both completion and emptiness when a great book ends. That the book accompanies the reader forever from that day forward is part of literature's profligate generosity.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

Source: My Reading Life

Books, Literature, Parting

“She felt as if she bled her regret and loneliness from her very pores, and yet she could not shape those feelings into any sentiment she could imagine her parents could bear reading.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Imagination, Parent, Reading, Loneliness

“But sometimes normal just isn't happening. Sometimes crazy feels too good to resist.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Blue-Eyed Devil

“Why were you so old when we met? I answered with the truth: Age isn't how old you are but how old you feel.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Truth, Age

“I suppose I do have one embarrassing passion- I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately.”

Susan Orlean (1955) American journalist

Source: The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession

Passion

“For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1850s, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? (1852)
Context: At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

God, Light

“We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Source: Kavanagh: A Tale (1849), Chapter 1.

“My gosh, Nick, why are you so wonderful to me?'

He was supposed to say: You deserve it. I love you.

But he said, 'Because I feel sorry for you.'

'Why?'

'Because every morning you have to wake up and be you.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Love

“some of us have so much defeat in our past that we feel we lost the race before we knew it started.”

Beth Moore (1957) American evangelist

Source: Believing in God - Member Book

Past

“We always know when we are awake that we cannot be dreaming even though when actually dreaming we feel all this may be real.”

Ruth Rendell One Across, Two Down

Source: One Across, Two Down

Dreams

“Lara: Because sometimes you just feel sad and you can't explain it.

Kitty: PMS?

Lara: No. It's not PMS. Just because a girl is sad, it doesn't mean it has anything to do with PMS.”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Sadness, Girl

“My faith is whatever makes me feel good about being alive. If your religion doesn't make you feel good to be alive, what the hell is the point of it?”

Tom Robbins Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

Source: Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

Faith, Religion, Hell

“We're all people", he said simply. "It doesn't matter if you're two, thirty-two, or ninety-two. Everyone wants to be treated with respect. Everyone wants to feel like they matter in this world.”

Megan McCafferty (1973) American novelist

Source: Charmed Thirds

People, World

“Dispel, v.
It was the way you said, “I have something to tell you.” I could feel the magic drain from the room.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Way

“Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

“He who has not God in himself cannot feel His absence.”

Simone Weil book Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace

God

“Hey, Clary. You take care of yourself," he said. "I know you can." He paused. "And take care of Jace, that poor, helpless blond."
Jace made an obscene gesture, which actually did feel familiar to Simon, so he knew that was their thing.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Welcome to Shadowhunter Academy

“A girl doesn't always want to go out, you know, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. Sometimes she feels like being nasty--like, if the guy's gonna wait, let him really wait.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Guy, Girl, Bird, Waiting

“When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it - don't back down and don't give up - then you're going to mystify a lot of folks.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

“This was the reason there was music, he realized. There were some feelings that didn't have words big enough to describe them.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Variant: This is why there was music. There were some feelings that just didn't have words big enough to describe them.
Source: Between the Lines

Music

“The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure.”

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

“And even if you didn't fall in love in the eighties, in your mind it will feel like the eighties, all innocent and airbrushed, with bright colors and shoulder pads and Pat Benetar or the Cure on the soundtrack.”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

Source: This is Where I Leave You

Love, Color

“Lucian was beginning to get used to hearing her small observations at night. More than anything, he realized he liked her voice in the dark. It made him feel less lonely.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Froi of the Exiles

Night

“I happen to feel that the degree of a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes she can bring to bear on the same topic.”

Lisa Alther (1944) Novelist

Intelligence, Personality

“I get the feeling," Alec said, and smiled, "she hasn't forgiven me for betraying you, as she sees it."
"Good girl," said Jace with appreciation.
"I didn't betray you, idiot."
"It's the thought that counts.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Smile, Girl

“You know, feeling and action are always linked, one can't exist without the other. It's sort of a hippie thing.-Wes”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

“The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

Life, Success, Future, Despair

“And then there's the sickness I feel from looking at legs I can't touch, or at lips that don't smile at me. Or hips that don't reach for me. And hearts that don't beat for me.”

Markus Zusak book Fighting Ruben Wolfe

Source: Fighting Ruben Wolfe

Smile, Heart

“What remains of your past if you didn't allow yourself to feel it when it happened? If you don't have your experiences in the moment, if you gloss them over with jokes or zoom past them, you end up with curiously dispassionate memories.”

David Rakoff (1964–2012) writer

Source: Fraud: Essays

Memory, Past

“Nowadays I know the true reason I read is to feel less alone, to make a connection with a consciousness other than my own.”

Zadie Smith book Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays

Source: Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays

Reading

“Because she deserved my tears if anyone on earth ever did. I could feel the tears within me, undiscovered, and untouched in their inland sea. Those tears had been with me always.”

Pat Conroy book Beach Music

Source: Beach Music

Tear, Sea

“My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.”

Joseph Conrad Lord Jim

Variant: My task is to make you hear, to make you feel, and, above all, to make you see. That is all, and it is everything.
Source: Lord Jim

“It was a joy! Words weren't dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you.”

Charles Bukowski book Ham on Rye

Source: Ham on Rye

Pain, Hope, Reading, Joy

“I keep feeling like everyone wants me to apologize for something.”

Michael Thomas Ford (1968) American writer

Source: Suicide Notes

“take your best orgasm, multiply the feeling by twenty, and you're still fuckin miles off the pace”

Irvine Welsh book Trainspotting

Source: Trainspotting

“The more you try to simplify things the more you complicate them. You create rules, build walls, push people away, lie to yourself and ignore true feelings. That is not simplifying things.”

Cecelia Ahern book If You Could See Me Now

Source: If You Could See Me Now

People, Lie

“we unwittingly project onto God our own attitudes and feelings toward ourselves… But we cannot assume that He feels about us the way we feel about ourselves -- unless we love ourselves compassionately, intensely, and freely.”

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

Source: Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging

Love, God, Way

“I must feel the fire of my soul so my intellectual blues can set others on fire.”

Cornel West (1953) African-American philosopher and political/civil rights activist

Source: Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, A Memoir

Soul

“Camille leaned forward. When she did, the neckline of her black silk blouse gaped open. If Simon had still been human, he would have blushed. "Will you let me see it?"
Simon could actually feel his eyes pop out. "See”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

“The joy I feel is immense; it burns inside me as though I have swallowed a piece of the sun.”

Edith Pattou book East

Source: East

Sun, Joy

“It was hard to feel the right emotions at the right times. They didn’t come at all when you set a place for them, and they sacked when you weren’t ready, when you were just innocently flossing your teeth, for example, or eating a bowl of cereal.”

Ann Brashares book The Last Summer

Source: The Last Summer

Time

“I didn't feel like I was in my own body; my body was just a lonely, temporary container I happened to be borrowing.”

Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun

Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

“Happiness isn't a thing. You can't go out and get it like a cup of tea. It's the way you feel about things.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Fire and Hemlock

Source: Fire and Hemlock (1985), p. 311.

Happiness, Way, Tea

“They say when you are missing someone that they are probably feeling the same, but I don't think it's possible for you to miss me as much as I'm missing you right now”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Thinking, Sad

“You feel fine, and then, when your body can't keep fighting, you don't.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

Fight

“When someone dies, it feels like the hole in your gum when a tooth falls out. You can chew, you can eat, you
have plenty of other teeth, but your tongue keeps going back to that empty place, where all the nerves are still a little raw.”

Jodi Picoult book House Rules

Variant: when you [lose someone], it feels like the hole in your gum when a tooth falls out. You can chew, you can eat, you have plenty of other teeth, but your tongue keeps going back to that empty place, where all nerves are still a little raw
Source: House Rules

“You don't need water to feel like you're drowning, do you?”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Water

“How are you feeling?"
"Like someone massaged me with a cheese grater."
-Clary & Simon, pg.297-”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones