Emotion Quotes

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Plugging in to
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Emotion Quotes

Feel it, don't flee it.
(Paraphrase of Heather Dominick-Kosmicki)

Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. (Rainer Maria Rilke)

This too shall pass.
(Persian Sufi adage [Can be used as affirmation])

If people can't control their own emotions, then they have to start trying to control other people's behaviour. (Robin Skynner)

...one function of emotion is to signal the need to interrupt or inhibit current ongoing behaviour to pursue more important goals such as preserving life or seeking pleasure.
(Open University SD226 module of 2013 on Biological Psychology, Book Six, p.59)

If you’re a little girl you’re being asked how you feel all through your life. You’re being asked to name it. But as a child I was never asked how I felt. The Tibetans have 18,000 different words for emotions. The average British boy has 'I’m pissed off'. (Jim, youth worker, cited at BBC, posted 14 February 2019, accessed 17 February 2019)

Rather than being a weakness, changing mood is nature's way to of helping us adapt to an ever changing world. (Scientists cited in Daily Mail, posted and accessed 12 January 2016)

What if each time you experienced an emotion you acknowledge it, accepted it, and became curious about its message for you? Imagine how this could change your life. Imagine how heard, loved and honoured you would feel if you really listened to yourself. (Vironika Tugaleva)

We are completely ashamed of our emotional needs. And I think they are primary to the creation of what we experience in this life... And if we are ashamed of our emotional needs, then what we will oftentimes do, to get our needs met, is to let something fail in our lives as a surrogate... So, instead of saying "I need a cuddle", I'll let my business fail and then you'll have to cuddle me, and I'll never have to ask for it... You let these things speak as an emotional substitute for you - because we're so ashamed to put our emotional needs out directly. (Caroline Myss, 'How to Manifest Your Own Visions' audio tape, side two, 8m11s)

Our feelings exist to guide us through life. They show us what we want and what we don’t want so we can create more of the former and move away from the latter. When someone shames our feelings and encourages us to disconnect from them, they encourage us to disconnect from our emotional guidance system... This inevitably leads to creating an inauthentic, unfulfilling life, and stunted development.
(Marlena Tillhon, Tiny Buddha, dated 2019, accessed 3 October2020)

The only way to get to have a healthy relationship with ourselves is to be really conscious of our feelings. (David Fuller cited at BBC, posted 14 February 2019, accessed 17 February 2019)

You cannot selectively suppress feelings – the only way to suppress feelings is to suppress your ability to feel, period. (Barbara De Angelis, Making Love Work, Personal Guidebook, p.50)

Feelings are really your GPS system for life. When you’re supposed to do something, or not supposed to do something, your emotional guidance system lets you know. (Oprah Winfrey)

Cultivate fascination with all sensation, all sensation, all feelings are life - even resistance, learn how to welcome, enjoy and love them - let them have you, completely, so that their power and energy becomes available to you. Allow every sensation to be ecstatic. (Peter Warnock)

To feel is to feel pain as well as joy... To feel we must take the risk, the risk of pain – our pain. We must take the risk – the risk of criticism, even of rejection. But the reward is to be alive. (Gerry Spence, How to Argue and Win Every Time, p.171+177)

The next time you experience a myriad of emotions around one scenario, notice the language you use around it. Ask yourself: “Is there space for all of my feelings to exist, at least for now, as I process and integrate them in to my ever changing story? What information is living within and underneath what I’m feeling?”
(Remembered Practice, posted 18 June 2018, accessed 3 October 2020)

We live in a vulnerable world. One of the ways we deal with it is to numb this vulnerability. We do this by buying stuff, eating junk food, taking recreational and medical drugs. We also try to make everything uncertain, certain. But you cannot selectively numb emotions. If you numb the difficult emotions, you also numb all the desirable emotions (joy, gratitude, happiness). The result is misery.
(See Brené Brown, YouTube, 15m18s, posted 3 January 2011, accessed 5 July 2020)

Any emotion can be – and often is – unconscious.
The physiological beginnings of an emotion typically occur before a person is consciously aware of the feeling itself... they eventually become strong enough to break into awareness. Thus there are two levels of emotion, conscious and unconscious...
...once that reaction is brought into awareness... he can evaluate things anew, decide to shrug off the feelings... and change his outlook and mood.
(Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, pp.54-55)

Three Asian boys play in river, having great fun

The basic premise children learn about anger (and all other emotions as well) is that “all feelings are okay to have,” but some reactions are okay and others are not.
(Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, pp.278-279)

Recognise it’s wonderful to feel emotions very deeply if you choose. But when it’s not useful, don’t be a victim of them.
(David DeAngelo, fifth step to emotional mastery, adapted from Advanced Dating Techniques DVD3)

Allow the emotions, but not the spiral
(Elle Hunt, The Guardian, posted and accessed 1 September 2021)

Turn Down the Emotion Dial is a visualisation technique that can support softening strong emotions. There will be times when your emotional reaction is bigger than it needs to be. I remember when I was grieving in advance of my father’s death (anticipatory grief), and I just couldn’t hold it together. Feelings are great teachers, but this immobilising grief wasn’t appropriate at that time. My father was alive, well, and, yes, ageing. This grief helps us process but doesn’t need to overtake us. When I was mindfully aware that I was flooded with my emotions, I visualised a volume dial and connected it to my emotional reaction. I simply watched as I turned that dial down. Slowly following that connection, my emotions softened, and I could find myself in a state where I could interact and process my feelings rather than be overrun by them.
(Amelia Vogler, Kindred Spirit, posted 20, accessed 31 January 2022)

As soon as you feel sad, irritated or in a bad mood, do something about it. Try your best to extricate yourself from these states of darkness by lighting the lamps the Creator has placed within you – all kinds of lamps: large, small, and coloured. You may ask how you are to go about lighting these lamps. Very simply, just as you would in your home.
Your home is wired up to electricity from the mains and when you want to bring some light into the room, you turn on a switch. Well, inwardly you possess a similar system, which could be said to tap into the cosmic mains, in other words God. In the physical world you have a switch, which you have to turn on; in the psychic world, all you need is thought to turn on the lights, and you do this by concentrating on the Lord, the Light of all Lights, as you think of lighting lamps in the whole of your being. But do not stop once some lamps have been lit; continue and others will come alight too, until in the end there will be a true illumination. (O.M. Aïvanhov)

Internal States
Finally, I’m going to address the idea of your ‘states’. By ‘state’ I mean the feeling that you have in your body.
Can you remember a time when you felt happy and excited?
Can you remember a time when you felt powerful and energetic?
If you can, then you can HAVE THESE FEELINGS ANY TIME YOU WANT THEM. Most people don’t use their memories to help them feel good because they say, “Well, that’s not really how I’m feeling; I’m just imagining it.” Well, I have news for you: You’re ALWAYS just imagining it. You might as well imagine it at times when you need it instead of having it happen on accident!
Here’s how to apply this idea:
Write down three states that you’d like to be able to put yourself into anytime you’d like. Then, write down three times in your life when you felt each of those states. Finally, close your eyes and put yourself into each of the three situations that made you feel the state that you want. Also, do SOMETHING UNIQUE with your body as you’re remembering. For instance, if you’d like to feel powerful and confident, while you’re remembering times when you felt this way, breathe out quickly while puckering your lips.
If you do this process of remembering the states and exhaling quickly at the same time, all you have to do in the future is close your eyes, breathe out quickly while remembering the feelings, and you’ll have the states that you want. It’s like having a ‘push’ button for feeling good about yourself.
Next, you have to practice putting yourself into your three powerful states when you’re in different environments. So go to different places and practice getting yourself into your states with distractions, etc. This might take some doing, but once you have it mastered, you’ll be able to get yourself into a positive state when you’re not feeling it to begin with...
(David DeAngelo, Double Your Dating eBook, pp.42-43)

You need to be aware of how dangerous it is to linger in the grip of negative thoughts, emotions and feelings. No one can avoid feelings of disappointment, sorrow or annoyance, but you must try not to wallow in them, or you will end up being completely shackled and overwhelmed. Take advantage of the window of time in which you can still easily extricate yourself. Do not remain on that level wrestling with such feelings; you are simply not equal to it. Struggling in the dark has never made the light shine forth; you have to get out of the hole you are in. If you persist in feeling disgruntled, jealous, bitter or angry, these sentiments will eventually gain the upper hand and destroy you. So make every effort to snap out of this state and rise above it, replacing your negative thoughts and feelings with more positive ones – this is how you will be saved. (O.M. Aïvanhov)

When you feel distressed and tormented, do not just stay there struggling with these negative states of mind, for there is no guarantee that you will be able to shake them off. You must find other ways. You have seen what a bird does when it is pecking at seeds on the ground and a cat comes along. The bird does not wait to confront the cat; it flies away. You will say, ‘Yes, but how can we fly away?’ By using prayer and thought, you can travel to regions where peace, beauty and light reign. Certain books or certain pieces of music can help you to take wing, as can contact with nature or working with your imagination. The important thing is to move to another plane. (O.M. Aïvanhov)

How can humans be taught to control their thoughts and desires so that they stop polluting nature and the etheric regions? They are not vigilant enough to avoid the pollution of the physical plane that is right before their eyes, and are even less so with regard to the psychic plane which they do not see; and they continue emitting bad thoughts and feelings that permeate the people they spend time with. And maybe these people's consciousness is not sufficiently elevated for them to sense the noxious elements that enter them either; even if they are not aware of these elements, they take immediate effect. And since everything is recorded, those who sent them will one day be punished.
We must always seek to live in harmony with this great universal body in which we are given ‘board and lodging’ and strive to fill space with pure, luminous, and good thoughts. Since these purifying currents do not remain in one place only, they will be a blessing for the whole of humanity. (O.M. Aïvanhov)

When you name it [the emotion you are experiencing], you feel it and it moves through you. Emotions need motion. It’s important we acknowledge what we go through. One unfortunate byproduct of the self-help movement is we’re the first generation to have feelings about our feelings. We tell ourselves things like, I feel sad, but I shouldn’t feel that; other people have it worse. We can — we should — stop at the first feeling. I feel sad. Let me go for five minutes to feel sad. Your work is to feel your sadness and fear and anger whether or not someone else is feeling something. Fighting it doesn’t help because your body is producing the feeling. If we allow the feelings to happen, they’ll happen in an orderly way, and it empowers us. Then we’re not victims...
Sometimes we try not to feel what we’re feeling because we have this image of a “gang of feelings.” If I feel sad and let that in, it’ll never go away. The gang of bad feelings will overrun me. The truth is a feeling that moves through us. We feel it and it goes and then we go to the next feeling. There’s no gang out to get us.
(David Kessler, cited at Harvard Business Review, posted 23 March 2020, accessed 1 April 2020)

Emotions, particularly anger, are like fire. They can cook your food and keep you warm, or they can burn your house down. (Cus D’Amato)

Listen to your heart
Your heart is a brilliant barometer. When something energises you, pay attention. If your heart lifts at the thought of making that job application, going for that interview or setting up your own business, stay tuned. Lightness of heart is a green light that says, ‘Walk this way’. Ask yourself, ‘What door might be opening here? What would I really love to happen? What could I do to help myself move forward?’
When you feel heavy-hearted, take note too. This is valuable data that something might be off-track in your life. Instead of ignoring it (as I did for the four years before my Mum intervened), listen to what the heaviness is telling you. Other signs that you might be wandering off your path include a health crisis, feeling depressed or simply being restless.
Our journey... has been compared to the flight path of an aeroplane. A plane spends most of its time slightly off-track. The job of the pilot is to take notice and course correct. This requires some monitoring. Our heart is the biggest dial we have on the dashboard of our life. Heaviness in our heart is a red light flashing. Ask yourself, ‘What change is needed? What might I have to let go of? How can I create some space for myself?’
(Sarah Rozenthuler, psychologist, Kindred Spirit [broken link], posted 4 and accessed 22 September 2015)

Accepting yourself... what does that actually mean and what can you do to achieve such a state? Self-acceptance means giving yourself permission to feel... whatever it is that you are feeling. That does not give you license to think that you are perfectly entitled to think or act in any way. It doesn’t mean that what you are feeling suddenly becomes ‘good’ just because you are feeling it. Feelings such as anger, jealousy or envy do not end up making you or the person involved feel ‘good.’ But, by letting go and experiencing these feelings, you may get a glimpse at their root cause which can help you know and understand yourself better. (Judy Fraser, Second Aid, p.11)

However, we can train ourselves to regard our emotions as barometers or inner states, as hazard signals or as warnings that some part of us needs work – that something in our past needs resolving. We may have been unconsciously held back in past shadows. If we haven’t acknowledged and worked with the situation, we may remain daunted or stunted rather than free to go forward. If we make the effort to readjust ourselves, we will find we are healthier and happier for having undergone the experience...
We have to give ourselves and others permission to release emotions. We can certainly also discipline our emotional reactions so as not to create chaos or misery; but we should never restrict or suppress them. (Judy Fraser, Second Aid, pp.124+126)

Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.
(Joseph Campbell)

But while our emotions have been wise guides in the evolutionary long run, the new realities civilization presents have arisen with such rapidity that the slow march of evolution cannot keep up. Indeed, the first laws and proclamations of ethics – the Code of Hammurabi, the Ten Commandments of the Hebrews, the Edicts of Emperor Ashoka – can be read as attempts to harness, subdue, and domesticate emotional life... society has had to enforce from without rules meant to subdue tides of emotional excess that surge too freely within.
Despite these social constraints, passions overwhelm reason time and again... In terms of biological design for the basic neural circuitry of emotion, what we are born with is what worked best for the last 50,000 human generations, not the last 500 generations – and certainly not the last five. The slow, deliberate forces of evolution that have shaped our emotions have done their work over the course of a million years; the last 10,000 years – despite having witnessed the rapid rise of human civilization and the explosion of the human population from five million to five billion – have left little imprint on our biological templates for emotional life.
For better or for worse, our appraisal of every personal encounter and our responses to it are shaped not just by our rational judgments or our personal history, but also by our distant ancestral past.
(Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, p.5)

All emotions are, in essence, impulses to act, the instant plans for handling life that evolution has instilled in us. The very root of the word emotion is motere, the Latin verb “to move,” plus the prefix “e-” to connote “move away,” suggesting that a tendency to act is implicit in every emotion. That emotions lead to actions is most obvious in watching animals or children; it is only in “civilized” adults we so often find the great anomaly in the animal kingdom, emotions – root impulses to act – divorced from obvious reaction.
(Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, p.6)

...feelings are typically indispensable for rational decisions; they point us in the proper direction, where dry logic can then be of best use... it is not that we want to do away with emotion and put reason in its place, as Erasmus had it, but instead find the intelligent balance of the two... The new paradigm urges us to harmonize head and heart.
(Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, pp.28-29)

The emotional mind is our radar for danger; if we (or our forebears in evolution) waited for the rational mind to make some of these judgments, we might not only be wrong – we might be dead. The drawback is that these impressions and intuitive judgments, because they are made in the snap of a finger, may be mistaken or misguided.
(Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, p.292)

...the more open we are to our own emotions, the more skilled we will be in reading feelings. (Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, p.96)

Feelings Lesson 1: Feelings aren’t evidence that we are broken or insane. They are evidence that we are human.
Feelings Lesson 2: We are meant to feel all our feelings and can’t selectively numb them.
Feelings Lesson 3: Shame-bound feelings express themselves in different and destructive ways, meaning we simply can’t not feel.
Feelings Lesson 4: Our feelings tell us when we engage in harmful thinking.
Feelings Lesson 5: Our feelings ask us to act in ways that are good for us.
(Marlena Tillhon, Tiny Buddha, dated 2019, accessed 3 October 2020)

Five Main Domains of Emotional Intelligence

Knowing one’s emotions [self-awareness].
Managing emotions [handling them].
Motivating oneself [using emotions for a purpose].
Recognizing emotions in others [empathy].
Handling relationships [largely about managing emotions in others].

(Adapted from Salovey and Mayer, cited in Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, pp.43-44)

While strong feelings can create havoc in reasoning, the lack of awareness of feeling can also be ruinous, especially in weighing the decisions on which our destiny largely depends [e.g. career, relationships]... Such decisions cannot be made well through sheer rationality; they require gut feeling, and the emotional wisdom garnered through past experiences... The key to sounder personal decision-making, in short: being attuned to our feelings. (Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence, pp.53-54)

Horses travelling over landscape with colourful sky

Horses are models of emotional agility. When something scares them, they startle and bolt. When the danger passes, they relax and go back to grazing. They don’t spend the afternoon ruminating over the fact that they had to run from a predator, and they don’t stay up all night worrying about future encounters with lions and tigers and bears. Trust in the universe flows through their veins. The world, after all, is a salad to them.
(Linda Kohanov, Way of the Horse: Equine Archetypes for Self-Discovery)

Four Point Method for Emotional Agility
By becoming more horselike in your responses to emotion, you can successfully align thought, feeling, and action for optimal performance, enriching your personal and professional relationships in the process. Horses, especially those who haven’t been traumatized by abusive handling, are models of emotional agility. They:-

Feel the emotion in its purest form
Get the message behind the emotion
Change something in response to the message
Go back to grazing (They let the emotion go, and either get back on task or relax enjoying life fully. They don’t hang on to the story, endlessly ruminating over uncomfortable situations.)

(Linda Kohanov adaptation, The Power of the Herd)

We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions. (Brené Brown)

When we are able to acknowledge, express and process our emotions we return to our natural state of peace, calm and joy. One of the added benefits is that we then emanate this good feeling state out into our close relationships and our environment. Literally, by taking the time to ‘work through our stuff’ it can make a difference to all those around us!
(Rosie Withey, posted 14 October 2020, accessed 6 November 2020)

On a pebbled beach lies a message in a bottle. The cork is off and within the bottle there is the fantasy image of a sailing boat on a swirling sea.

Emotions are messengers and motivators. (Mark Michael Lewis)

A depression is a blessing of God. I mean, in the individual, it's the greatest blessing somebody can have... Jung always talked about the blessing of a neurosis because it's the only way you are tempted to look within. As long as things go well, you run away from yourself. Or most people do.
(Marie-Louise von Franz, The Jungian Aion, YouTube, 6m29s, posted 7th, accessed 8th January 2025)

A painting of a bright, beautiful flower. The image has a soft, ethereal focus.

This is part of a series on Emotion

Also see:-

Emotion

Emotion Index

Mental Health

Mental Health Quotes

On Suffering

Suffering Quotes

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