Quotes about Emotions

If I were physically dependent—paralyzed or disabled or limited in some physical way—I would need you to help me. If I were emotionally dependent, my sense of worth and security would come from your opinion of me. If you didn't like me, it could be devastating. If I were intellectually dependent, I would count on you to do my thinking for me, to think through the issues and problems of my life.

We are not our feelings. We are not our moods. We are not even our thoughts. The very fact that we can think about these things separates us from them and from the animal world.

It's not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us. Of course, things can hurt us physically or economically

our son's "socially impressive" accomplishments were more a serendipitous expression of the feelings he had about himself than merely a response to social reward.

It's not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts

But as proactive people, we can carry our own physical or social weather with us.

You have to build the skills of empathic listening on a base of character that inspires openness and trust. And you have to build the Emotional Bank Accounts that create a commerce between hearts.

Powerful people can love without being loved back.

Mutual fear is a principal link in the chain of mutual love.

Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust; hatred alone is immortal.

Love is never a fulfillment. Life is never a thing of continuous bliss. There is no paradise. Fight and laugh and feel bitter and feel bliss: and fight again. Fight, fight. That is life.

Withholding love is a form of self-sabotage, as what we withhold from others we are withholding from ourselves.