Quotes about feelings
page 38

“I was a glaring blot on the perfection. But I didn't care: I didn't feel I owed him beauty.”

Source: Uprooted

“I loved the feeling of talking and having somebody really listen to what I have to say. It was like a high or something.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: The Summer I Turned Pretty

Love

“Meeting someone you like and dating him is supposed to make you feel better, not worse.”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Source: He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys

“The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: On Love

Kiss, Forgetting

“No matter how you feel today, get up, dress up & show up”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

“I know that even now, having watched enough television, you probably won't even refer to them as lepers so as to spare their feelings. You probably call them 'parts-dropping-off challenged' or something.”

Christopher Moore book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Source: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Parting

“I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

People

“It seemed to me the way it must feel to people who cut themselves on purpose. Not pretty, but clean. Not good, but void of regret. I was trying to heal. Trying to get the bad out of my system so I could be good again. To cure me of myself.”

Cheryl Strayed book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Source: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

People, Way

“She has spent most of the day reading and is feeling rather out of touch with reality, as if her own life has become insubstantial in the face of the fiction she's been absorbed in.”

Maggie O'Farrell (1972) British writer

Source: After You'd Gone

Life, Reality, Reading

“Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

Past, Future

“People simply feel better about themselves when they’re good at something.”

Stephen R. Covey book The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness

Source: The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness

People

“Some people feel love in their hearts, Julie. Some of us feel it all way into our souls. We're the ones who can't forget.”

Judith McNaught (1944) American writer

Source: Paradise

Love, People, Way, Soul

“A lady should never feel anxious about her behavior. The status is bred in the bone. To show anxiety is to lower oneself. Anxiety is.”

Eloisa James (1962) American academic

Source: A Kiss at Midnight

Behavior

“That's because no one is born with anger. And when we die, the soul is freed from it. But now, here, in order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did, and why you no longer feel it.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Soul, Understanding, Anger

“I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

“Sage?" Adrian lightly touched my arm, and I jumped at the feel of his fingertips against my skin. "You okay?"
"I don't know," I said softly. "I just thought of something crazy."
"Welcome to my world.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

World

“Even in darkness it is possible to create light and encourage compassion. That it is possible to feel free inside a prison. That even in exile, friendship exists and can become an anchor. That one instant before dying, man is still immortal.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Source: Open Heart

Friendship, Light

“The power of patriarchy has been to make maleness feared and to make men feel that it is better to be feared that to be loved. Whether they can confess this or not, men know that just is not true.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Love, Men, Fear

“Sexuality is not meant to be this way - an honest, consensual expression in which a girl might take an active role when she feels good and ready and not one minute before. No. Sexual desire is meant to sell soap. And cars. And beer. And religion.”

Libba Bray (1964) American teen writer

Source: Beauty Queens

Religion, Cars, Way, Girl

“It was so much easier to be angry. Being angry made him feel strong, even though-- and this contradiction did nothing to diminish his anger-- he was angry only because his position was so weak.”

Lev Grossman The Magicians

Source: The Magicians

Strong, Anger

“One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

War, Peaceful

“Have you ever given someone a book you enjoyed enormously, with a feeling of envy because they were about to read it for the first time, an experience you could never have again?”

Jack Finney book Time and Again

Source: Time and Again

Books, Time, Reading, Envy

“He makes me feel like that. Like flying.”

Scott Westerfeld book Goliath

Source: Goliath

Flying

“But we comforted ourselves with what we really meant to say, which was: "I don't normally feel this good about what I'm doing."
Measure the hope of that moment, that feeling.
Everything else will be measured against it.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Hope

“It's strange how men feel they have the right to criticize a woman's appearance to her face.”

Marilyn French (1929–2009) Novelist, critic

Source: Her Mother's Daughter

Men, Appearance

“Don't think. Believe. Trust your heart, not your brain. Don't think. Feel. Believe.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Thinking, Heart

“I paid, got up, walked
to the door, opened
it.

I heard the man
say, "that guy's
nuts."

out on the street I
walked north
feeling
curiously
honored.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

Guy

“Leeda knew friends never turned out to be what you expected. They came and went in waves, pulling away and coming back, leaving you feeling safe one minute and lost the next.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Peaches

“Much of the stress that people feel doesn't come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they've started.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

People, Happy

“All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Le Coq et l’Arlequin (1918)

Music, Motivation

“A sense of unspeakable security is in me this moment, on account of your having understood the book. I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 1851); published in Memories of Hawthorne (1897) by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, p. 157
Context: In me divine magnanimities are spontaneous and instantaneous — catch them while you can. The world goes round, and the other side comes up. So now I can't write what I felt. But I felt pantheistic then—your heart beat in my ribs and mine in yours, and both in God's. A sense of unspeakable security is in me this moment, on account of your having understood the book. I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the Gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling — no hopelessness is in it, no despair. Content — that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination. I speak now of my profoundest sense of being, not of an incidental feeling.

Books, Sense

“Harry Dresden: Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it.”

Jim Butcher book White Night

Source: The Dresden Files, White Night (2007), Chapter 31

Pain, Dead, Forgetting

“When a feeling was there, they felt as if it would never go; when it was gone, they felt as if it had never been; when it returned, they felt as if it had never gone.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

“If you are feeling good, it is because you are thinking good thoughts.”

Rhonda Byrne book The Secret

Source: The Secret

Thinking

“When two people respect each other, the ability to be vulnerable and to reveal hurt feelings can create a powerful emotional connection that is the source of real intimacy and friendship.”

David D. Burns (1942) American psychiatrist

Friendship, People, Hurt

“I don't feel the need to explain my actions to her. I don't clarify, I don't doubt, I don't worry. I don't tell her everything, not anymore, but I tell her more than anyone else, by far. I tell her as much as I can.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

“It's hard to concentrate when your feelings are hurt.”

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

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Hurt

“one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing into her soul”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

Dreams, Soul, Reality

“Drinking is fun! It makes me feel horrible and sexy!”

Warren Ellis (1968) English comics and fiction writer

Drink

“Hey, you created me! I didn't create some loser alter-ego to make myself feel better. Take some responsibility!”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

“I can't help feeling that there is no beauty without hope, struggle, and conquest.”

Luis Buñuel (1900–1983) film director

Source: My Last Sigh

Beauty, Hope, Help

“.

The natural state. Our moods change. Our lives change. Our feelings for each other change. Our bearings change. The song changes. The air changes. The temperature of the shower changes.
Accept this. We must accept this.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Mood, Nature, Change

“You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

People, Understanding

“Don't tell me anymore. You should have your dream, as the old woman told you to. I understand how you feel, but if you put those feelings into words they will turn into lies. (from Thailand)”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: After the Quake

Dreams, Understanding

“It was all right to be sad. It was all right to lament. It was all right to feel anger. But [is] not all right to run away.”

Miyuki Miyabe (1960) a popular contemporary Japanese author active in a number of genres that include science fiction, mystery fictio…

Source: Ico: Castle in the Mist

Sadness, Anger

“In a weird way I must have loved my little collection of hurts and wounds. They provided me with some real nice sympathy, with the feeling I was exceptional.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees (2002)

Love, Way, Hurt

“My feelings can perhaps be imagined, but they can hardly be described.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Imagination

“I have a sort of empty feeling; nothing in the world seems of sufficient importance to be worth the doing.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

World

“It's because I'm alone.. If I could just feel it, it would be different, because I would not be alone. But if I were not alone, everybody would know it. And he could do so much for me, and then I would not be alone. Then I could be all right alone.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying

“I love the way music inside a car makes you feel invisible; if you play the stereo at max volume, it's almost like the other people can't see into your vehicle. It tints your windows, somehow.”

Chuck Klosterman book Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Source: Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Love, People, Music, Cars

“This behavior may… counteract feelings of'numbness'and depersonalization that aries duriing periods of extreme stress.-153 Girl, Interrupted”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

Behavior, Girl

“When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels that one is at one with one who once…”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

Reading

“No matter how puny your frontal equipment, don't wear the kind with the giant pads inside. If a guy squeezes them, he will wonder why they feel like Nerf balls instead of boobs.”

E. Lockhart (1967) American writer of novels as E. Lockhart (mainly for teenage girls) and of picture books under real name Emily J…

Source: The Boy Book: A Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them

Guy

“I can let you in, Eva. I’m trying. But your first response when I screw up is to run away. You do it every time and I can’t stand feeling like any moment I’m going to do or say something wrong and you’re going to bolt.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Time

“Life is like a hot bath. It feels good while you're in it, but the longer you stay, the more wrinkled you get.”

Jim Davis (1945) American cartoonist and creator of Garfield

Life

“One remedy for the fear of not being loved is to remember how good it feels to love someone. If you're feeling unloved and you want to feel better, go love someone, and see what happens.”

Dossie Easton (1944) American author and family therapist

Source: The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities

Love, Fear

“The truth doesn't set you free, you know. It makes you feel awkward and embarrassed and defenseless and red in the face and horrified and petrified
and vulnerable.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Saving Francesca

Truth

“You can't run from feelings, Charity. You have to face them. Otherwise your future will look just like your past.”

Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923–2014) writer

Source: Mr. Wrong

Past, Future

“How I feel is that if I wanted anything I'd take it. That's what I've always thought all my life. But it happens that I want you, and so I just haven't room for any other desires.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Life

“I feel my fear moving away in rings through time for a million years.”

Breece D'J Pancake (1952–1979) American writer

Source: The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake

Fear, Time

“How could she feel nostalgia when he was right in front of her? How can you suffer from the absence of a person who is present?”

Milan Kundera book Identity

pg 40
Source: Identity (1998)

Nostalgia, Suffering, Personality

“I feel in colour, strong tones that I hue down for the comfort of the pastelly inclined. Beige and magnolia and a hint of pink are what the well-decorated heart is wearing; who wants my blood red and vein-blue?”

Jeanette Winterson book Gut Symmetries

Source: Gut Symmetries

Strong, Heart

“We both laugh and run and the moment is so thick around me that i feel like dropping into it to let it carry me.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

“Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Behavior, Thinking

“Being a hero means ignoring how silly you feel.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Fire and Hemlock

Source: Fire and Hemlock

“The antidote to feel-good history is not feel-bad history but honest and inclusive history.”

James W. Loewen book Lies My Teacher Told Me

Source: Lies My Teacher Told Me

History

“My chest feels full of glitter and helium, the way it used to when I was little and riding my father's shoulders at twilight, when I knew that if I held up my hands and spread my fingers like a net, I could catch the coming stars.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Way, Star

“It's nice to see something more pathetic than I feel right now.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

“After his kisses and hugs it feels like without them my body will fall apart into pieces.”

Francesca Lia Block Missing Angel Juan

Source: Missing Angel Juan

Kiss

“If you have to ask, you've never been in love. More than that, you've never had your feelings hurt by the one you want to trust and cherish you most of all.”

Cameron Dokey (1956) American writer

Source: Golden: A Retelling of Rapunzel

Love, Hurt

“Leaving behind the babble of the plaza, I enter the Library. I feel, almost physically, the gravitation of the books, the enveloping serenity of order, time magically dessicated and preserved.”

Jorge Luis Borges Dreamtigers

Source: Dreamtigers

Books, Time

“Youth is quick in feeling but weak in judgement.”

Homér Ancient Greek epic poet, author of the Iliad and the Odyssey

Youth

“When I'm with you, I feel a kind of calm I've never felt in my life. I'm tangled up in you and you're tangled up in me and it feels right. Like it was meant to be. I love you, Maddie, and I'm sorry it's taken me so long to say it to you again.”

Rachel Gibson (1961) American writer

Source: Tangled Up In You

Love, Life

“I've lost someone, too; someone I loved. I know how you feel."
- Does it get easier?
"Yes. But you'll never be the same again.”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

Love

“Hark, now hear the sailors cry,
Smell the sea and feel the sky.
Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Into the Mystic
Song lyrics, Moondance (1970)

Soul, Cry, Flying, Sea

“Maybe it's good to put things in perspective, but sometimes, I think that the only perspective is to really be there. Like Sam said. Because it's okay to feel things. And be who you are about them.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Thinking

“If you don't feel as close to God today as you did yesterday, who moved?”

Chris Heimerdinger (1963) American writer

Source: Feathered Serpent, Part 1

God

“If I never meet you
In this life
Let me feel the lack
A glance from your eyes
Then my life
Will be yours”

James Jones book The Thin Red Line

Source: The Thin Red Line

Life

“He is much stronger than I think I am. He is mischievous, outgoing, ready to soar
through the clouds, while I often feel
like the cloud itself.”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

Thinking

“Behaviors and feelings rarely line up”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Behavior

“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate, so let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.”

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

Song lyrics, John Wesley Harding (1967), All Along the Watchtower
Context: "No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late"

Life, Fate, Falseness

“I feel that others live up to me, if they want me.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

“But I can hardly sit still. I keep fidgeting, crossing one leg and then the other. I feel like I could throw off sparks, or break a window--maybe rearrange all the furniture.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

Source: Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories

“Oh… God. What was a male supposed to do in this situation?
"I'm sorry," he muttered. "If I… uh, hurt your feelings or something."
She glared at him. "I'm not hurt. I'm pissed off and sexually frustrated.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Awakened

God, Hurt

“There was something about having someone care about you like that that made you feel like you could never be totally alone.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

“To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

“When she smiles, it feels like the first warm day of March-- after an eternity of snow, when you suddenly remember how summer feels on the backs of your bare calves & in the part of your hair.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Smile, Summer, Parting

“and I feel so distinct”

Garrett Hongo (1951) Pulitzer-nominated fourth-generation Japanese American academic and poet

The River of Heaven: Poems

“… morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

"The Reasons for My Involvement in the Peace Movement" (1972) http://www.shalomctr.org/node/61; later included in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity (1996) <br class="br">Context: There is immense silent agony in the world, and the task of man is to be a voice for the plundered poor, to prevent the desecration of the soul and the violation of our dream of honesty.<br>The more deeply immersed I became in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the Prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.

Suffering, Evil, Indifference

“I won’t lie. I want to beat the hell out of any man who’s had you—you’d be smart to keep them the hell away from me—but nothing in your past can change how I feel about you.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Reflected in You

Lie, Hell, Change, Past