Quotes About Emotions

In bed that night, in the darkness, with the illuminated dial of her alarm clock glowing from the bedside table, she asked herself whether one could force oneself to like somebody, or whether one could merely create the conditions for affection to come into existence and hope that it did, spontaneously.

Late people do not altogether leave us, she thought; they are still with us in memories such as that, wherever we are, no matter what time of day it was or how we were feeling, they were there, still shining the light of their love upon us.

Not forgiving was like scratching at a sore to keep the healing scab from forming.

All of us had hard choices, she thought; the greatest of us and the least of us, and we had to feel our way through them and accept that there would sometimes be regrets.

If you are there to staunch the tears of the world, then it does not cross your mind that you yourself may weep.

We all had to say goodbye, sooner or later, to those we loved—or they had to say goodbye to us. Those were the only two possibilities that this world allowed. But no matter how much we tried to face up to it, it never became easier.

What is beauty, she thought, but the promise of happiness, as Stendhal said it was?

Some people cannot bear news like that. They think they must live forever, and they cry and wail when they realise that their time is coming. I do not feel that, and I did not weep at that news which the doctor gave me. The only thing that makes me sad is that I shall be leaving Africa when I die.

If you knew what is was like to be another person, then how could you possibly do something which would cause pain? The problem, though, was that there seemed to be people in whom that imaginative part was just missing. It could be that they were born that way--with something missing from their brains--or it could be that they became like that because they were never taught by their parents to sympathise with others.

Love] may bring surprise, joy, despair and, occasionally, perfect happiness.

I like you when you're algebraic, said Ulf--and immediately regretted it. It was a flirtatious remark--describing somebody as algebraic was undoubtedly to cross a line. You would not normally describe an ordinary friend as algebraic, and then say that you liked her that way.

Anger, Obed Ramotswe had explained to her once, is no more than a salt that we rub into our wounds.

Words that are full of hurt sometimes need to be left in the air where they have been spoken.

She watched him take the trumpet from its case and fit the mouthpiece. She watched as he raised it to his lips and then, so suddenly, from that tiny cup of metal against his flesh, the sound would burst out like a glorious, brilliant knife dividing the air. And the little room would reverberate and the flies, jolted out of their torpor, would buzz round and round as if riding the swirling notes.

And she, Isabel, had gone along with this and all the time what was happening was she was becoming increasingly possessive of Jamie without ever having to acknowledge it. Now there was another woman, a girl really, and there was an obvious intimacy between them, which would exclude her as it would have to do, and that would be the end of everything.

It's easy to be foolish... It's dead simple, really. All you have to be is human and to allow yourself to do the human things, like fall in love with somebody when you know that there's no point and when you know, too, that it's just going to make you unhappy.

He knew that one should not punch people who annoyed one, although there was a case for it at times, a seemingly irresistible case.

The unmerited dislike of another made one think less of oneself. We are enlarged by the love of others; we are diminished by their dislike.

At the heart of Scots culture, though, was an awful interdiction of such emotional closeness between men and women; a terrible separation inflicted by a distorted football-obsessed emotional tyranny, such a deep injury of the soul.

them that if we do not forgive then we run the risk of being eaten up with hatred inside

You're not angry, Mma?" She shook her head. What was the point of anger? There were occasions when Mma Ramotswe, like all of us, could feel angry, but they were few—and they never lasted long. Anger, Obed Ramotswe had explained to her once, is no more than a salt that we rub into our wounds. She had never forgotten that—along with the things he said about cattle, and Botswana, and the behaviour of the rains.

of day it was or how we were feeling, they were

IF EITHER OF THEM had felt tetchy, the concert put them both in a good mood.

In the lives of most of us, the list of unsaid things was, he thought, a long one.