Quotes about feelings
page 27

“If a man truly loves, he gives no heed to what others may think. His heart has no room for that, for it is filled to the brim with the unutterable truth of his feelings.”

Juliet Marillier book Cybele's Secret

Source: Cybele's Secret

Love, Truth, Thinking, Heart

“Start believing the Word of God over our feelings. The truth always overrides our feelings. Find the truth in the scriptures.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

God, Truth

“Grief makes you feel alone, but you're not. I know you don't believe in-in religion-the same way I do, but you can believe you're surrounded by people who love you, can't you?”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Love, People, Religion, Way

“I’m having a hard time writing about Sunday. Getting the long hollow feeling of Sundays. No mail and faraway lawn mowers, the hopelessness.”

Lucia Berlin (1936–2004) American writer

Source: A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

Time

“I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.”

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

Wording in Ideas and Opinions: It is therefore easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees. On the other hand, I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research. Only those who realize the immense efforts and, above all, the devotion without which pioneer work in theoretical science cannot be achieved are able to grasp the strength of the emotion out of which alone such work, remote as it is from the immediate realities of life, can issue. What a deep conviction of the rationality of the universe and what a yearning to understand, were it but a feeble reflection of the mind revealed in this world, Kepler and Newton must have had to enable them to spend years of solitary labor in disentangling the principles of celestial mechanics! Those whose acquaintance with scientific research is derived chiefly from its practical results easily develop a completely false notion of the mentality of the men who, surrounded by a skeptical world, have shown the way to kindred spirits scattered wide through the world and through the centuries. Only one who has devoted his life to similar ends can have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is cosmic religious feeling that gives a man such strength. A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people.
1930s, Religion and Science (1930)
Variant: I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research.
Source: The World As I See It
Context: It is, therefore, quite natural that the churches have always fought against science and have persecuted its supporters. But, on the other hand, I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research. No one who does not appreciate the terrific exertions, and, above all, the devotion without which pioneer creations in scientific thought cannot come into being, can judge the strength of the feeling out of which alone such work, turned away as it is from immediate practical life, can grow. What a deep faith in the rationality of the structure of the world and what a longing to understand even a small glimpse of the reason revealed in the world there must have been in Kepler and Newton to enable them to unravel the mechanism of the heavens in long years of lonely work! Any one who only knows scientific research in its practical applications may easily come to a wrong interpretation of the state of mind of the men who, surrounded by skeptical contemporaries, have shown the way to kindred spirits scattered over all countries in all centuries. Only those who have dedicated their lives to similar ends can have a living conception of the inspiration which gave these men the power to remain loyal to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is the cosmic religious sense which grants this power. A contemporary has rightly said that the only deeply religious people of our largely materialistic age are the earnest men of research.

Motivation

“If you do not know what you feel, then it is difficult to choose love; it is better to fall. Then you do not have to be responsible for your actions.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

Love

“But you'd sell your soul for it, wouldn't you? For one day of feeling beautiful.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

Beauty, Soul

“They spoke very little of their mutual feeling; pretty phrases and warm expressions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Variant: They spoke very little of their mutual feelings: pretty phrases and warm attentions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends.
Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

“He can kill anything for need but he could not even hurt a feeling for pleasure.”

John Steinbeck book Cannery Row

Source: Cannery Row

Pleasure, Hurt

“Have a drink Tom and then you won't feel so foolish to yourself.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Drink

“In time, in time they tell me, I'll not feel so bad. I don't want time to heal me. There's a reason I'm like this.
I want time to set me ugly and knotted with loss of you, marking me. I won't smooth you away.
I can't say goodbye.”

China Miéville book The Scar

Source: The Scar

Loss, Time

“When you do nothing you feel overwhelmed and powerless. But when you get involved you feel the sense of hope and accomplishment that comes from knowing you are working to make things better.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Hope, Sense, Hope

“An empty frame, in which the picture is always changing, makes a statement about how time is always passing. It doesn't really stop, even in a single image. I t just feels that way.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Way, Change, Time

“I think that real friendship always makes us feel such sweet gratitude, because the world almost always seems like a very hard desert, and the flowers that grow there seem to grow against such high odds.”

Stephen King book The Eyes of the Dragon

Source: The Eyes of the Dragon

Friendship, World, Flowers, Thinking

“To feel forever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever-or else swoon in death.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Death

“I marmaladed a slice of toast with something of a flourish and I don't suppose I have ever come much closer to saying 'Tra la la' as I did the lathering for I was feeling in mid season form this morning.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Season

“Self-respect — The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

“It feels like my soul is slowly leaving my body and heading off to an unknown place, some "safe" place where it doesn't have to put up with me and my night terrors.”

Paulo Coelho book Adultery

Source: Adultery

Soul, Night

“I wonder what it's like to live in Tinaville. I get the feeling it's very shiny there.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Forever Princess

“I look back over my shoulder and feel the presence of an intense young girl and then a volatile and disturbed young woman, both with high dreams and restless, romantic aspirations”

Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher

Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Dreams, Girl

“Back at his chair he cannot remember what he was reading. He feels the books beside him to find the one that is warm.”

Thomas Harris The Silence of the Lambs

Source: The Silence of the Lambs

Books, Reading

“I could never pretend something I didn't feel. I could never make love if I didn't love, and if I loved I could no more hide the fact than change the color of my eyes.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Source: My Story

Love, Making love, Color, Change

“It always seems to me that I should feel well in the place where I am not.”

Charles Baudelaire book Le Spleen de Paris

Source: Paris Spleen

“I lifted onto my toes, put my hands aroung his neck, and pulled him down. When our lips met, that first jolt… It was everything I hadn't felt with Simon, everything I wanted to feel.
His hands went around my waist, pulling me closer”

Kelley Armstrong The Reckoning

Source: The Reckoning

“You have to understand what you’re missing before you can really feel a loss.”

Jodi Picoult book Sing You Home

Source: Sing You Home

Understanding, Loss

“When you have just been told that the girl you love is definitely betrothed to another, you begin to understand how Anarchists must feel when the bomb goes off too soon.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Summer Lightning

Source: Summer Lightning (1929)

Love, Girl, Understanding

“He is her glory. Any woman could say it. For every one of them, God is in her child. Mothers of great men must have been familiar with this feeling, but then, all women are mothers of great men -- it isn't their fault if life disappoints them later.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

Life, Women, Men, God

“Standing there, I loved myself and I hated myself. That's what the black Mary did to me, made me feel my glory and my shame at the same time.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Love, Hate, Time

“Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together.”

Nicole Krauss (1974) American novelist

Way

“What you feel doesn’t matter in the end; it’s what you do that makes you brave.”

Andre Agassi book Open. An Autobiography

Source: Open

“At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Excerpts from the two paragraphs above have sometimes been quoted in abbreviated form: At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality... We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.
Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)
Context: At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality. Perhaps it is one of the great dramas of the leader that he or she must combine a passionate spirit with a cold intelligence and make painful decisions without flinching. Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealize this love of the people, of the most sacred causes, and make it one and indivisible. They cannot descend, with small doses of daily affection, to the level where ordinary people put their love into practice.
The leaders of the revolution have children just beginning to talk, who are not learning to call their fathers by name; wives, from whom they have to be separated as part of the general sacrifice of their lives to bring the revolution to its fulfilment; the circle of their friends is limited strictly to the number of fellow revolutionists. There is no life outside of the revolution.
In these circumstances one must have a great deal of humanity and a strong sense of justice and truth in order not to fall into extreme dogmatism and cold scholasticism, into isolation from the masses. We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.

Love, Thinking

“At times like this, I'm thankful I don't feel love.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

Love, Time

“… I feel as though I made a face and the wind changed, and now I have to go through life grimacing in this horrible way.”

Nick Hornby book High Fidelity

Source: High Fidelity

Life, Way, Change

“Splendid to arrive alone in a foreign country and feel the assault of difference. Here they are all along, busy with living; they don't talk or look like me. The rhythm of their day is entirely different; I am foreign.”

Frances Mayes book Under the Tuscan Sun

Source: Under the Tuscan Sun

Business, Country

“Where is this love? I can't see it, I can't touch it. I can't feel it. I can hear it. I can hear some words, but I can't do anything with your easy words”

Patrick Marber Closer

Source: Closer

Love

“n. Garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

Mother's Day, For Mother

“Everything is the way it is because everything was the way it was. Sometimes I feel ensnared in this, as if no matter what I do, what will come has already been fixed.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

Way

“He could not feel her near him in the darkness nor hear her voice touch his ear. He waited for some minutes listening. He could hear nothing: the night was perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he was alone.”

James Joyce book Dubliners

Source: Dubliners

Waiting, Night

“Take me from this earth
an endless night-
this, the end of life.
From the dark I feel your lips
and taste your bloody kiss.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Life, Kiss, Night

“There are moments when i wish i could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but i have a feeling that if i did, the joy would be gone as well. So i take the memories as they come, accepting them all, letting them guide me whenever i can.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Sadness, Memory, Joy

“You can't be beautiful until you feel beautiful.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Invisible Monsters

Beauty

“She did what girls generally do when they don't feel the part: she dressed it instead.”

Zadie Smith On Beauty

Source: On Beauty

Girl, Parting

“I think I'm a bit in love with these girls. They make me feel giddy. Like I haven't a care in the world. Like I'm fearless.

Like I used to be.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Saving Francesca

Love, World, Girl, Thinking

“Love is not a state, a feeling, a disposition, but an exchange, uneven, fraught with history, with ghosts, with longings that are more or less legible to those who try to see one another with their own faulty vision.”

Judith Butler (1956) American philosopher and gender theorist

Love, History

“The best baby-sitters, of course, are the baby’s grandparents. You feel completely comfortable entrusting your baby to them for long periods, which is why most grandparents flee to Florida.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Baby

“I feel like I'm lost in an anime movie" I said, as Coyote picked the thing up. "One of the tentacle-monster ones." Most of them were X-rated and ended up with a lot of dead people.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

People, Animals, Dead

“To be closed from everything, and yet to feel, to think… This is the truth of hell, stripped of its gaudy medievalisms. This loss of contact.”

Joanne Harris book Chocolat

Source: Chocolat

Truth, Hell, Thinking, Loss

“If you're feeling helpless, help someone. ”
― Aung San Suu Kyi (from Freedom from Fear)”

Aung San Suu Kyi book Freedom from Fear

Variant: If you're feeling helpless, help someone.
Source: Freedom from Fear

Fear, Freedom, Help

“As it was, I couldn't escape the feeling that I was out of my element. I found myself thinking of a book I'd left half-read at home and wishing I'd stuck it in my purse so I could pull it out now.”

Charlaine Harris (1951) American writer

Source: Last Scene Alive

Books, Home, Thinking, Reading

“There are moments when I wish I could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but I have the feeling that if I did, the joy would be gone as well.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

Sadness, Joy, Sad, Depressing

“A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something he can see and feel.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

“If I could always read I should never feel the want of company.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Reading

“When death captures me," the boy vowed, "he will feel my fist in his face." (31.26)”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Death, Boy

“The cloak of the past is cut from patches of feeling, and sewn with rebus threads. Most of the time, the best we can do is wrap it around ourselves for comfort or drag it behind us as we struggle to go on.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Time, Past

“I cry intermittently, like a summer rain. I don't feel racked by the crying; in fact, it hydrates me. Then rage wells up in me, and I want to take a crowbar to all the cars in the neighborhood.”

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

Source: Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year

Cars, Rage, Summer, Cry

“To be desired is perhaps the closest anybody in this life can reach to feeling immortal.”

John Berger (1926–2017) British painter, writer and art critic

Life

“The past is weird. I mean, does it really exist? It feels like it exists, but where is it? And if it did exists, but doesn’t now, then where did it go?”

Ruth Ozeki book A Tale for the Time Being

Source: A Tale for the Time Being

Past

“It is not half so important to know as to feel.”

Rachel Carson (1907–1964) American marine biologist and conservationist

“At moments like this I envy those who have found a safe haven in which to bestow their hearts; or perhaps I envy them for having a heart to bestow. I often feel that I myself am without one, and possess in its stead merely a heart shaped stone.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Heart, Envy

“No man is an island,' said John Donne. I feel we are all islands -- in a common sea.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh book Gift from the Sea

Source: Gift from the Sea

Sea

“If you wake up feeling no pain, you know you're dead. (Russian expression)”

Andrew Solomon book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Pain, Dead

“Just because you had every right to feel sorry for yourself didn't mean you ever took the opportunity to do so.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

“those of us who read because we love it more than anything, who feel about bookstores the way some people feel about jewelers…”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Source: How Reading Changed My Life

Love, People, Way, Reading

“Silence has sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied sould of feeling wandering without its carcase, and it is then more impressive than speech. In the same way to say a little is often to tell more than to say.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

Way, Silence

“LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities; NY gets god-awful cold in the winter but there's a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in some streets. LA is a jungle.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

God, Winter

“Jealousy has always been my cross, the weakness and woundedness in me that has most often caused me to feel ugly and unlovable, like the Bad Seed.”

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

Source: Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

Jealousy

“In politics, my dear fellow, you know, as well as I do, there are no men, but ideas — no feelings, but interests; in politics we do not kill a man, we only remove an obstacle, that is all.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Men, Idea

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Love, Success

“No good has ever come from feeling guilty, neither intelligence, policy, nor compassion. The guilty do not pay attention to the object but only to themselves, and not even to their own interests, which might make sense, but to their anxieties.”

Paul Goodman (1911–1972) American novelist, playwright, poet and psychotherapist

Intelligence, Sense

“For a woman, language spoken is an expression of what she is feeling. For a man, language spoken is an expression of what he is thinking. A woman says what is on her heart while a man says what is on his mind.”

Myles Munroe (1954–2014) Bahamian Evangelical Christian minister

Source: The Purpose and Power of Love & Marriage

Thinking, Heart

“At the moment when her eyes closed, when all feeling vanished in her, she thought that she felt a touch of fire imprinted on her lips, a kiss more burning than the red-hot iron of the executioner.”

Victor Hugo book The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Source: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Kiss

“I can feel Peeta press his forehead into my temple and he asks, 'So now that you've got me, what are you going to do with me?' I turn into him. 'Put you somewhere you can't get hurt.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Hurt, Romantic

“Don't talk for five minutes, there's a good chap! I've a strange feeling come over me--almost as if I were going to think!”

Aleister Crowley book Moonchild

Source: Moonchild

Thinking

“When you feel someone else's pain and joy as powerfully as if it were your own, then you know you really loved them.”

Ann Brashares book Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

Variant: Live, laugh, love.

When you can feel someone else's pain and joy as if it's your own, thats when you know you really love them - Tina Lowell
Source: Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

Love, Pain, Joy

“Do not try to explain feelings. Live everything intensely and treasure what you feel as a gift from God.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

God

“Arturo Bandini: -What does happiness mean to you Camilla?
Camilla: -That you can fall in love with whoever you want to,
and not feel ashamed of it.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust

Love, Happiness

“Do you love him?"
Deryn swallowed, then pointed at the screen. "He makes me feel like that. Like flying.”

Scott Westerfeld book Goliath

Source: Goliath

Love, Flying

“How to Overthrow the System: brew your own beer; kick in your Tee Vee; kill your own beef; build your own cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

Beer

“To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Source: The Souls of Black Folk

Question, Problem

“To lack feeling is to be dead, but to act on every feeling is to be a child.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

Dead

“Apart from my heart, I feel everything grows old in me. Even my heart has something artificial. It has been sewn by the dancers in a soft, pink satin purse like their shoes.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Quote in Degas' letter to the sculptor Paul-Albert Bartolomé, January 1886; as cited in 'Performing Fine Arts: Dance as a Source of Inspiration in Impressionism, by Johannis Tsoumas http://rupkatha.com/dance-in-impressionism/ <br class="br">1876 - 1895

Shoe, Heart

“I shot up, now as angry and frusterated as him. I had a feeling if i stayed, we'd both snap. In and undertone, I murmured,"this isnt over. i won't give up on you."
" I've given up on you,"he said back, voice also soft. "Love fades. Mine has.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Variant: Rose. Please stop. Please stay away."
[... ]
In an undertone, I murmured, "This isn't over. I won't give up on you."
"I've given up on you," he said back, voice also soft. "Love fades. Mine has.
Source: Spirit Bound

Love

“Smaller World:
I know he's not really gone, she said, but the world still feels smaller to me today.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

World

“He saw that I was shy, and at the time I was still scared of feeling with another person, so he put his arm around me and pulled me and put my head on his breast and gave me love actually.”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

Love, Time, Personality

“Most of all she loved that when she hugged him her head would rest neatly just below his chin, where she could feel his breath lightly blowing her hair and tickling her head.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: P.S. I Love You

Love

“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever…it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.”

Aaron Siskind (1903–1991) American photographer

Aaron Sussman, cited in: The Amateur Photographer's Handbook, (1973), p. vi
Sussman, Aaron. The Amateur Photographer's Handbook. Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1973.
Context: Photography is more than a means of recording the obvious. It is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever, whether it be a face or a flower, a place or a thing, a day or a moment. The camera is a perfect companion. It makes no demands, imposes no obligations. It becomes your notebook and your reference library, your microscope and your telescope. It sees what you are too lazy or too careless to notice, and it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.

Love, Way