Quotes about Emotions

Where I once constantly lost my temper, I found myself arriving at a crisis and experiencing peace.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.

Imagine if our negative feelings, or at least lots of them, turned out to be illusions, and we could dispel them by just contemplating them from a particular vantage point.

So if meditation did liberate you from obedience to these feelings, it would be, in a certain sense, dispelling an illusion—the illusion you implicitly subscribe to when you follow the feeling, the illusion that the rage, and for that matter the revenge it inspires, is fundamentally "good." It turns out the feeling isn't even good in the basic sense of self-interest.

Real love—our love of God and our love of each other—must involve a choice. But with the granting of that choice comes the possibility that people would choose instead to hate.

Oh, don't go on like that! cried the poor Queen, wringing her hands in despair. Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you've come today. Consider what o'clock it is. Consider anything, only don't cry! Alice could not help laughing at this, even in the midst of her tears. Can you keep from crying by considering things? she asked. That's that way it's done, the Queen said with great decision: nobody can do two things at once, you know.

I wish I hadn't cried so much! said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That will be a queer thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer today.

She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into her eyes;

We do not walk away from others to punish them; we turn away so the embers of anger can cool and reason can again rule our hearts.

Our first response when angered should be to turn away momentarily, mentally or physically, so we can separate the offense from the offender.

For some of us, our feelings are an idol. If we feel beautiful, we believe we are beautiful. If we feel good, we believe we are good. If we live by our feelings alone, they will lie to us and it will not be long before we are led astray.