Quotes about emotion
132 quotes from 84 people
Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings — always darker, emptier, simpler.
Friedrich Nietzsche1844–1900The Gay Science (1882), Sec. 179Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.
Sydney Smith1771–1845Lady Holland’s Memoir (1855), Vol. I, ch. 10, p. 372Grief is the agony of an instant; the indulgence of Grief the blunder of a life.
Benjamin Disraeli1804–1881Vivian Grey (1826), Book VI, Chapter 7Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone,
But grief returns with the revolving year.
Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822Adonais (1821), St. XVIIIThe first and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind is Curiosity.
Edmund Burke1729–1797A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.
F. Scott Fitzgerald1896–1940The Crack-Up (1936)Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.
Carl Sagan1934–1996Cosmos (1980), p. 135As rain breaks through an ill-thatched house, passion will break through an unreflecting mind.
Gautama Buddha501–501 BCDhammapada, Ch. 1: The Twin Verses, verse 13There is no feeling so simple that it is not immediately complicated and distorted by introspection.
André Gide1869–1951“An Unprejudiced Mind,” p. 317
Sylvia Plath1932–1963Draft of letter to Richard Sassoon (December 1955), quoted in Joyce Carol Oates, “Raising Lady Lazarus,” The New York Times (November 5, 2000)- MOMary Oliver1935–2019Thirst (2006)
- Edmund Burke1729–1797A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757)
Søren Kierkegaard1813–1855The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s, 1847
Alice Hoffmanborn 1952Practical Magic (1995)
James Baldwin1924–1987Just Above My Head (1979)