Quotes about emotion

A collection of quotes on the topic of emotion, feeling, feel, life.

H.P. Lovecraft quote: “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear.”

Quotes about emotion

“Literature is the emotional biography of a human being who has dared to write it.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: Interview. Portal.ucm.cl

Literature

“Without underestimating the virtues of technical, specialized and necessary education, we cannot accept an education that eliminates the other dimension of human knowledge, that which motivates us to be more cultured, more human, deeper, more emotional.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: Perú Informa. Interview. https://www.peruinforma.com/entrevista-cultural-al-escritor-chileno-jose-baroja/

Education, Motivation, Knowledge

“As a poet I am an emotional accident; a lyrical tourist.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: Klairet Levy, R. Interview to José Baroja. http://letras.mysite.com/jbar050923.html

“A society where emotions come last and selfishness is considered blessed, or placed first before anything; cannot be expected to produce good fruits!”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Selfishness

“Serial killers do, on a small scale, what governments do on a large one. They are a product of the times and these are bloodthirsty times. Even psychopaths have emotions if you dig deep enough. Then again, maybe they don't.”

Richard Ramirez (1960–2013) American serial killer

Interview with Mike Watkiss. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA6MkH9BHMg

Time

“I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

“No matter what these people say about me, my music does not glorify any image, my music is spiritual if you listen to it. It's all about emotion, it's all about life.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

1990s, Prison interviews and interrogations (1995)

Life, People, Music

“People say "Ted Bundy didn't show any emotion, there must be something in there". I showed emotion. You know what people said? "See, he really can get violent and angry."”

Ted Bundy (1946–1989) American serial killer

1977 interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEWsxCrMM1U in Pitkin County Prison, Colorado

People

“I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success … Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Quoted in Marconi and Tesla: Pioneers of Radio Communication (2008) by Tim O'Shei, ISBN 159845076X , p. 5

Love, Food, Thinking, Sleep

“Montserrat Caballé is sensational. She has that same kind of emotion as Aretha Franklin. The way she delivers a song is so very natural. It's a very different gift.”

Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) British singer, songwriter and record producer

"I am the Champion" by Nick Ferrari in The Sun (19 July 1985).

Way, Nature

“The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd: the longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world's existence. All these half-tones of the soul's consciousness create a raw landscape within us, a sun eternally setting on what we are.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Os sentimentos que mais doem, as emoções que mais pungem, são os que são absurdos – a ânsia de coisas impossíveis, precisamente porque são impossíveis, a saudade do que nunca houve, o desejo do que poderia ter sido, a mágoa de não ser outro, a insatisfação da existência do mundo. Todos estes meios tons da consciencia da alma criam em nós uma paisagem dolorida, um eterno sol-pôr do que somos.
The Book of Disquietude, trans. Richard Zenith, text 196

World, Feeling, Soul, Nostalgia

“What can be considered human emotions? Surely not only lyricism, sadness, tragedy? Doesn't laughter also have a claim to that lofty title? I want to fight for the legitimate right of laughter in "serious" music.”

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) Russian composer and pianist

From an article in Sovetskoye Iskusstvo, November 5, 1934; translation from Laurel Fay Shostakovich: A Life (2000) p. 77.

Sadness, Music, Laughter, Fight

“Never let your personal desires and emotions outcompete your reasoning capacity.”

Hamis Kiggundu (1984) Ugandan business magnate, Internet entrepreneur, philanthropist, and author

Quoted from his first book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Success_and_Failure_Based_on_Reason_and_Reality, "Success and Failure Based on Reason and Reality" https://www.amazon.co.uk/SUCCESS-FAILURE-BASED-REASON-REALITY/dp/9970983903/ on Amazon, P.51 (July 2018)

Personality

“It would be impossible for any individual to accept the feelings, or emotions of temptation without wishing to gain something great in return.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Feeling

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fear

“People talk of “social outcasts.” The words apparently denote the miserable losers of the world, the vicious ones, but I feel as though I have been a “social outcast” from the moment I was born. If ever I meet someone society has designated as an outcast, I invariably feel affection for him, an emotion which carries me away in melting tenderness.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

The Second Notebook
No Longer Human

People, World, Feeling

“Beware most strictly of any outbursts of emotion which may engender needless complications, or any fraternal contention and strike which may create confusion, lead you astray and cause you to lose the confidence of the world.
Let the entire nation continue as one family from generation to generation, ever firm in its faith in the imperishability of its sacred land, and mindful of its heavy burden of responsibility and of the long road before it.”

Hirohito Jewel Voice Broadcast

Gyokuon-hōsō (1945)

World, Family, Faith, Confidence

“Each of us has a particular way of looking at the world, of interpreting events and the actions of people around us. This is our attitude, and it determines much of what happens to us in life. If our attitude is essentially fearful, we see the negative in every circumstance. We stop ourselves from taking chances. We blame others for mistakes and fail to learn from them. If we feel hostile or suspicious, we make others feel such emotions in our presence. We sabotage our career and relationships by unconsciously creating the circumstances we fear the most. The human attitude, however, is malleable. By making our attitude more positive, open, and tolerant of other people, we can spark a different dynamic—we can learn from adversity, create opportunities out of nothing, and draw people to us. We must explore the limits of our willpower and how far it can take us.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 8 : Change Your Circumstances by Changing Your Attitude
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Life, Hostility, People, World

“Begin by mastering your emotions, then your mind.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“When our emotions are engaged, we often have trouble seeing things as they are.”

Robert Greene book The Art of Seduction

Source: The Art of Seduction

“If you ever leave me again,’ she said, her eyes stinging, ‘I swear to all the gods-‘
Percy had the nerve to laugh. Suddenly the lump of heated emotions melted inside Annabeth.
‘Consider me warned,’ Percy said. ‘I missed you, too.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

God

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

"Supernatural Horror in Literature" (1927)
Non-Fiction
Variant: The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown
Source: The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft

Fear

“I am not a victim of emotional conflicts. I am human.”

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

Source: Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words

“I think they’ll use sounds and tones and music and use it in their virtual reality machines. And just listen to it that way and get the same emotions from it. And then go to a party. There’ll be a virtual reality machine there with a whole bunch of headphones and if you wanna talk to people and listen to the virtual reality machine you can do that and go into the other bedroom and fuck and drink and… but actually I think virtual reality machines will get you high. Technology will be that good. And then there’ll be like virtual reality junkies lying there dead on their couch from OD’ing.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

to Michael Azerrad in an interview from 1992 or 1993, in Kurt Cobain: About a Son
Interviews (1989-1994), Video

People, Music, Way, Lying

“It really came out of the blue, to be honest. I was in England, and I didn’t get a lot of auditions there. So I did the first audition — a very emotional audition — and they said, ‘Come back for a callback.’ And I was like, ‘Okay!'”

Millie Bobby Brown (2004) British actress

Source: "Meet ‘Stranger Things’ Breakout Millie Bobby Brown, aka Lucky Number Eleven" https://www.indiewire.com/2016/07/stranger-things-millie-bobby-brown-interview-eleven-11-netflix-season-2-1201707207/. IndieWire. (July 19, 2016).

“Emotions, or rather feelings, cannot be felt by an individual without the presence of the mind.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Feeling

“For love is beautiful only when you have mastered your emotions and mind.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Love, Beauty

“Music is so important to us. We hear music from the moment we are born, often via lullabies, and through many of the most important occasions in our lives, from graduations to weddings to funerals. There is something about music that seems to bring us closer to each other and help us come together as a community.
Humans are wired for music. Researchers recently discovered that we have a dedicated part of our brain for processing music, supporting the theory that it has a special, important function in our lives.
Listening to music and singing together has been shown in several studies to directly impact neuro-chemicals in the brain, many of which play a role in closeness and connection. Now new research suggests that playing music or singing together may be particularly potent in bringing about social closeness through the release of endorphins.
Through singing, drumming, and dancing—all resulted in participants having higher pain thresholds (a proxy measure for increased endorphin release in the brain) in comparison to listening to music alone. In addition, the performance of music resulted in greater positive emotion, suggesting one pathway through which people feel closer to one another when playing music together is through endorphin release.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Pain, People, Music, Feeling

“Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Color, Change

“The sea is emotion incarnate. It loves, hates, and weeps. It defies all attempts to capture it with words and rejects all shackles. No matter what you say about it, there is always that which you can't.”

Christopher Paolini book Eragon

Source: Eragon

Love, Hate, Sea

“You must forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject. What part of these is really your own will be expressed in your expression of the emotion awakened in you by the subject.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

Idea, Parting, Forgetting

“Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long.”

T.S. Eliot book The Hollow Men

Variant: Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
Source: The Hollow Men (1925)

Life

“But sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions. […] True sorrow is as rare as true love.”

Stephen King book Carrie

Source: Carrie

Love

“Certain things leave you in your life and certain things stay with you. And that's why we're all interested in movies- those ones that make you feel, you still think about. Because it gave you such an emotional response, it's actually part of your emotional make-up, in a way.”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

Source: Burton on Burton

Life, Way, Feeling, Thinking

“The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Sign of the Four

Source: The Sign of Four

“I don't have emotions about a lot of things. I rarely get angry, I rarely cry. I guess I do get excited a lot, but I don't get sad and enormously happy.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

Happiness, Sadness, Cry

“I have given my life to try to alleviate the sufferings of Africa. There is something that all white men who have lived here like I must learn and know: that these individuals are a sub-race. They have neither the intellectual, mental, or emotional abilities to equate or to share equally with white men in any function of our civilization. I have given my life to try to bring them the advantages which our civilization must offer, but I have become well aware that we must retain this status: the superior and they the inferior. For whenever a white man seeks to live among them as their equals they will either destroy him or devour him. And they will destroy all of his work. Let white men from anywhere in the world, who would come to Africa, remember that you must continually retain this status; you the master and they the inferior like children that you would help or teach. Never fraternize with them as equals. Never accept them as your social equals or they will devour you. They will destroy you.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

This has usually been presented as something "said shortly before his death" without any definite source, but appears to be entirely spurious. The "FAQ about the life and thoughts of Albert Schweitzer" http://www.schweitzer.org/faq?lang=en#rasist asserts "This quote is utterly false and is an outrageously inaccurate picture of Dr. Schweitzer’s view of Africans. Dr. Schweitzer never said or wrote anything remotely like this. It does NOT appear in the book African Notebook." This refers to some citations of it being from Afrikanische Geschichten (1938), which was translated as From My African Notebook (1939) by Mrs. C. E. B Russell <br class="br">Misattributed

Life, Men, Children, World

“I am not my thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and experiences. I am not the content of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which all things happen. I am consciousness.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Stillness Speaks (2003)

Life, Sense

“Inner peace begins the moment you choose not to allow another person or event to control your emotions.”

Ralph Smart

Peace, Personality, Peaceful

“While there is no definitive formula for success and winning, there exists a deliberative mindset, confidence and emotional strength. For one must believe they are a champion before they can become one.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

2015

Confidence, Success, Self-confidence

“The amount of money you have in you is the determinant factor of the nature of business you can do, not desires and emotions. Desires and Emotions will Cost you even the little capital you hold.”

Hamis Kiggundu (1984) Ugandan business magnate, Internet entrepreneur, philanthropist, and author

Money, Business, Nature

“Emotions are a cancer in one's path to the road of prosperity in life, Emotions Defeat Reason.”

Hamis Kiggundu (1984) Ugandan business magnate, Internet entrepreneur, philanthropist, and author

Life

“The wise man has always treated religions with respect, not adoration nor blind following alone. He's more logical rather than emotional.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Religion

“To help and guide someone, you have to rise above their feelings or emotions. Otherwise, you can't help if you want to stay at the same level as them.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Feeling, Help

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Pain, People, Music, Feeling

“If a rat is a good model for your emotional life, you're in big trouble.”

Robert M. Sapolsky (1957) American endocrinologist

Stress, Neurodegeneration and Individual Differences (2001)

Life

“When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.”

Catherine Ponder (1927) American priest

Way, Forgiveness, Personality, Relationship

“The only thing that stands between you and your wellbeing is a simple fact: you have allowed your thoughts and emotions to take instruction from the outside rather than the inside. On”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Variant: The only thing that stands between you and your well-being is a simple fact: you have allowed your thoughts and emotions to take instruction from the outside rather than the inside. On
Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

“I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Beauty, Time, Past, Beauty

“My emotional life: dialectic between craving for privacy and need to submerge myself in a passionate relationship to another.”

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

Source: Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

Life, Passion

“But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Love, Fear, Victory

“The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Understanding, Joy

“Pain is always emotional. Fear and depression keep constant company with chronic hurting.”

Siri Hustvedt (1955) novelist, essayist, poet

Source: The Shaking Woman, or A History of My Nerves

Pain, Fear, Hurt, Heartbreaking

“The artist is a receptacle for emotions derived from anywhere: from the sky, from the earth, from a piece of paper, from a passing figure, from a spider’s web. This is a spider's web. This is why one must not make a distinction between things. For them there are no aristocratic quarterings. One must take things where one finds them.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 258 (translation Daphne Woodward)
1960s

“Our most important thoughts are those that contradict our emotions.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

“How strange! This bed on which I shall lie has been slept on by more than one dying man, but today it does not repel me! Who knows what corpses have lain on it and for how long? But is a corpse any worse than I? A corpse too knows nothing of its father, mother or sisters or Titus. Nor has a corpse a sweetheart. A corpse, too, is pale, like me. A corpse is cold, just as I am cold and indifferent to everything. A corpse has ceased to live, and I too have had enough of life…. Why do we live on through this wretched life which only devours us and serves to turn us into corpses? The clocks in the Stuttgart belfries strike the midnight hour. Oh how many people have become corpses at this moment! Mothers have been torn from their children, children from their mothers - how many plans have come to nothing, how much sorrow has sprung from these depths, and how much relief!… Virtue and vice have come in the end to the same thing! It seems that to die is man's finest action - and what might be his worst? To be born, since that is the exact opposite of his best deed. It is therefore right of me to be angry that I was ever born into this world! Why was I not prevented from remaining in a world where I am utterly useless? What good can my existence bring to anyone? … But wait, wait! What's this? Tears? How long it is since they flowed! How is this, seeing that an arid melancholy has held me for so long in its grip? How good it feels - and sorrowful. Sad but kindly tears! What a strange emotion! Sad but blessed. It is not good for one to be sad, and yet how pleasant it is - a strange state…”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

Stuttgart. After 8th September 1831.
Source: "Selected Correspondence Of Fryderyk Chopin"; http://archive.org/stream/selectedcorrespo002644mbp/selectedcorrespo002644mbp_djvu.txt

Life, Children, People, Lie

“I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes. It may even lie on the surface; but we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions — especially selfish ones.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

"Peace and Violence" (1973).

Truth, Lie, Selfishness

“Over the years I kept everything and anything from stuff and things that I came across during my life in trade, if they had emotional value to me. Always the simple goods and tools, from the farmers, the blacksmith, the carpenter, the baker and so on. I loved those things most in which I saw reflected the struggle for life very clearly.... old used up shoes, trousers, jackets, hats and children's vests, which I found in the rags, often patched up endlessly.”

Jopie Huisman (1922–2000) Dutch painter

translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jopie Huisman, in het Nederlands: Door de jaren heen heb ik van alles en nog wat bewaard aan dingen en voorwerpen die ik in mijn leven in de handel tegenkwam, als ze gevoelswaarde voor me hadden. Altijd eenvoudig gebruiksgoed en gereedschap van de boer, de smid, de timmerman, de bakker enzovoorts. Dingen waarin ik de strijd om het bestaan het duidelijkst weerspiegeld zag vond ik het mooist.. ..afgetrapte oude schoenen, broeken, jassen, hoeden en kindervestjes, die ik in de vodden vond, vaak tot in den treure versteld en opgelapt.
Source: Jopie de Verteller' (2010) - postumous, p. 19

Love, Life, Children, Shoe

“If I feel a painting I'm working on doesn't have imagery or emotion, I paint it out and work over it until it does.”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

1950's, Conversations With Artists, 1957

Feeling, Painting

“Forget the takes. Takes are cheap shots. Anyone can do a goddamn take. […] You don't have to be a genius to draw a take. It's emotions— the full range of emotions— that works in Clampett's cartoons.”

John Kricfalusi (1955) Canadian animator

Wheeler W. Dixon (2001), "Creating Ren and Stimpy (1992)", Collected Interviews: Voices from Twentieth-Century Cinema (SIU Press): 89

Drawing, Forgetting

“So, in the end, have we learned anything from this look at why the world turned out the way it is, that's of any use to us in our future? Something, I think. That the key to why things change is the key to everything. How easy is it for knowledge to spread? And that, in the past, the people who made change happen, were the people who had that knowledge, whether they were craftsmen, or kings. Today, the people who make things change, the people who have that knowledge, are the scientists and the technologists, who are the true driving force of humanity. And before you say what about the Beethovens and the Michelangelos? Let me suggest something with which you may disagree violently: that at best, the products of human emotion, art, philosophy, politics, music, literature, are interpretations of the world, that tell you more about the guy who's talking, than about the world he's talking about. Second hand views of the world, made third hand by your interpretation of them. Things like that [art book] as opposed to this [transparency of some filaments]. Know what it is? It's a bunch of amino acids, the stuff that goes to build up a worm, or a geranium, or you. This stuff [art book] is easier to take, isn't it? Understandable. Got people in it. This, [transparency] scientific knowledge is hard to take, because it removes the reassuring crutches of opinion, ideology, and leaves only what is demonstrably true about the world. And the reason why so many people may be thinking about throwing away those crutches is because thanks to science and technology they have begun to know that they don't know so much. And that, if they are to have more say in what happens to their lives, more freedom to develop their abilities to the full, they have to be helped towards that knowledge, that they know exists, and that they don't possess. And by helped towards that knowledge I don't mean give everybody a computer and say: help yourself. Where would you even start? No, I mean trying to find ways to translate the knowledge. To teach us to ask the right questions. See, we're on the edge of a revolution in communications technology that is going to make that more possible than ever before. Or, if that’s not done, to cause an explosion of knowledge that will leave those of us who don't have access to it, as powerless as if we were deaf, dumb and blind. And I don't think most people want that. So, what do we do about it? I don't know. But maybe a good start would be to recognize within yourself the ability to understand anything. Because that ability is there, as long as it is explained clearly enough. And then go and ask for explanations. And if you're thinking, right now, what do I ask for? Ask yourself, if there is anything in your life that you want changed. That's where to start.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

Connections (1979), 10 - Yesterday, Tomorrow and You

Life, People, Books, World

“In contrast to the flux and muddle of life, art is clarity and enduring presence. In the stream of life, few things are perceived clearly because few things stay put. Every mood or emotion is mixed or diluted by contrary and extraneous elements. The clarity of art—the precise evocation of mood in the novel, or of summer twilight in a painting—is like waking to a bright landscape after a long fitful slumber, or the fragrance of chicken soup after a week of head cold.”

Yi-Fu Tuan (1930) Chinese-American geographer

Passing Strange and Wonderful: Aesthetics, Nature, and Culture, ch. 10 (1993).

Life, Art, Mood, Summer

“Love is the grounding of our existence as humans, and is the basic emotioning in our systemic identity as human beings.”

Humberto Maturana (1928) Chilean biologist and philosopher

Humberto Maturana et al. (1996) " Biology of love http://www.lifesnaturalsolutions.com.au/documents/biology-of-love.pdf"

Love

“For each of us as women, there is a dark place within where hidden and growing our true spirit rises, “Beautiful and tough as chestnut/stanchions against our nightmare of weakness” and of impotence. These places of possibility within ourselves are dark because they are ancient and hidden; they have survived and grown strong through darkness. Within these deep places, each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling. The woman’s place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

"Poetry is Not a Luxury"
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

Women, Beauty, Feeling, Strong

“The films are realistic fantasies. Bullets are easy. You can buy them. Emotions are not. They're priceless.”

Sylvester Stallone (1946) American actor, screenwriter, and film director

http://gulfnews.com/arts-entertainment/celebrity/sylvester-stallone-stop-him-if-you-can-1.688775

“(if he's ever been in a 'romcom' or 'chick flick' before) "I think there’s a strength in expressing emotion. If you were a guy, you used to have to be really masculine, but now expressing emotion is accepted and respected."
As 'guy who has a twin sister' on 2017-03-20,”

Zayn Malik (1993) British singer

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2017/03/zayn-malik-interview-the-times-quotes

Guy, Thinking

“The male is a biological accident: the y(male) gene is an incomplete x(female) gene, that is, has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion…. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.”

Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol.

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. [1] ("y(male)" & "x(female)" spaceless in original).

Disease

“I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

§ 4
"Looking Back on the Spanish War" (1943)
Context: Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’.

History

“The best stories in the world to me are the ones that elicit a real emotion, but have humour.”

Jim Carrey (1962) Canadian-American actor, comedian, and producer

As quoted in This much I know: Jim Carrey, actor, 46, Los Angeles http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/oct/19/jim-carrey-interview by Tony Horkins in The Observer (19 October 2008) <br class="br">Context: Comedic actors can be looked at as a lower form because we have to put ourselves in a lower place than most of the audience. I think lofty emotions are somehow considered more special. The best stories in the world to me are the ones that elicit a real emotion, but have humour.

World

“It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"The Prevention of Literature" (1946)
Context: Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable. It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands. But to be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a totalitarian country. The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes. Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy — or even two orthodoxies, as often happens — good writing stops. This was well illustrated by the Spanish civil war. To many English intellectuals the war was a deeply moving experience, but not an experience about which they could write sincerely. There were only two things that you were allowed to say, and both of them were palpable lies: as a result, the war produced acres of print but almost nothing worth reading.

Truth, Sincerity

“If one harbours anywhere in one's mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, although in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible. Here are just a few examples. I list below five types of nationalist, and against each I append a fact which it is impossible for that type of nationalist to accept, even in his secret thoughts:
: BRITISH TORY. Britain will come out of this war with reduced power and prestige.
: COMMUNIST. If she had not been aided by Britain and America, Russia would have been defeated by Germany.
: IRISH NATIONALIST. Eire can only remain independent because of British protection.
: TROTSKYIST. The Stalin regime is accepted by the Russian masses.
: PACIFIST. Those who "abjure" violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.
All of these facts are grossly obvious if one's emotions do not happen to be involved: but to the kind of person named in each case they are also intolerable, and so they have to be denied, and false theories constructed upon their denial. I come back to the astonishing failure of military prediction in the present war. It is, I think, true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind. I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Notes on Nationalism (1945)

War, People, Secret, Fools

“I cry too much and I find it strange. It must be indicative of some issue within me that I’ve yet to identify. Whether it’s crowds or whether it’s people being nice… Hospitals make me cry very, very easily. Merely entering a hospital – just sensing care, you know. People trying to help others, I find, inspires a very emotional response.”

Rowan Atkinson (1955) English actor, comedian, and screenwriter

As quoted in an interview with The Times (2011)

People, Making love, Sense, Help

“I concluded that women are flawed. There is something mentally wrong with the way their brains are wired, as if they haven’t evolved from animal-like thinking. They are incapable of reason or thinking rationally. They are like animals, completely controlled by their primal, depraved emotions and impulses. That is why they are attracted to barbaric, wild, beast-like men. They are beasts themselves. Beasts should not be able to have any rights in a civilized society. If their wickedness is not contained, the whole of humanity will be held back from advancement to a more civilized state. Women should not have the right to choose who to mate with. That choice should be made for them by civilized men of intelligence. If women had the freedom to choose which men to mate with, like they do today, they would breed with stupid, degenerate men, which would only produce stupid, degenerate offspring. This in turn would hinder the advancement of humanity. Not only hinder it, but devolve humanity completely. Women are like a plague that must be quarantined. When I came to this brilliant, pefect revelation, I felt like everything was now clear to me, in a bitter, twisted way. I am one of the few people on this world who has the intelligence to see this. I am like a god, and my purpose is to exact ultimate Retribution on all of the impurities I see in the world.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Building to Violence

Women, Men, God, People

“England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old and silly. But in any calculation about it one has got to take into account its emotional unity, the tendency of nearly all its inhabitants to feel alike and act together in moments of supreme crisis. It is the only great country in Europe that is not obliged to drive hundreds of thousands of its nationals into exile or the concentration camps.”

George Orwell book England Your England

Part I : England Your England, § III
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)

Feeling, Sun, Country

“He held her hand because he wanted her heart; then gazed into her empty eyes and realized nothing was there. Often, the emotions of someone we love are dismissed in a continual effort to remain.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1984

Love, Making love, Effort, Heart

“We all acquire two types of scars; one is visible for all to see and the other resides deep within us. Both possess pain but others can only determine if the external scars have healed. The emotional scars within are usually more painful and can linger for years.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1983

Pain

“Verona is full of pictures which have never been painted. Every step excites emotion and gives rise to unaffected reflection. In the course of a short stroll, you may pass by a Roman amphitheatre, still used, then the castle of some petty prince of the Middle Ages, and while you are contrasting the sublime elevation of antiquity with the heterogeneous palace of a Scaliger your eyes light on a gate of Oriental appearance and fantastic ornament... The illusion is perfect, the eye rests with pain on the passing citizens in their modern costumes; you look for black velvets and gold chains, white feathers and red stockings.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Letter to Isaac Disraeli (September 1826), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (1929), p. 107

Pain, Age, Light, Appearance

“Gratitude eliminates negativity, disappointment, resentment, and anger. And when those emotions disappear, room is made for the energy of love for God, for life, and for yourself to reappear—now more fully than ever.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Love, Life, God, Disappointment

“It is shaming sometimes, how the body will not, or cannot, lie about emotions.”

Ian McEwan book On Chesil Beach

Source: On Chesil Beach

Lie

“If your body goes in search of a relationship, we call this sexuality. If your mind goes in search of relationships, we call this companionship. If your emotion goes in search of relationships, we call this love. If your energies go in search of relationship, we call this yoga.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Life and Death in One Breath

Love, Search

“All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Nine (4 November 1904)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)
Context: All feelings that concentrate you and lift you up are pure; only that feeling is impure which grasps just one side of your being and thus distorts you. Everything you can think of as you face your childhood, is good. Everything that makes more of you than you have ever been, even in your best hours, is right. Every intensification is good, if it is in your entire blood, if it isn't intoxication or muddiness, but joy which you can see into, clear to the bottom.