Quotes About Emotions

For better or worse, then, my attack on empathy is nonpartisan. Or to put it more positively, individuals of all political orientations—liberal, conservative, libertarian, hard right, hard left, all of us—can join hands and work together in the fight against empathy.

It turns out, then, that if you think something is really going to hurt and it hurts just mildly, the magic of contrast can cause this mild hurt to transform into pleasure.

I know many people who defend this, who argue that humiliation is necessary to deter ugly racist behavior, so, perhaps reluctantly, we carry it out. But if you look at tweets and Facebook posts, or at the faces of those protesting Schlossberg on the streets of New York—many of whom are progressives, the sorts of people who explicitly disdain vengeful impulses—you'll see glee. People enjoy watching Schlossberg get what he deserves.

Some degree of unsettledness, anxiety, and ambition may be baked into the human condition.

As Jennifer Senior notes, children provoke a couple's most frequent arguments—"more than money, more than work, more than in-laws, more than annoying personal habits, communication styles, leisure activities, commitment issues, bothersome friends, sex." Someone who doesn't understand this is welcome to spend a full day with an angry two-year-old (or a sullen fifteen-year-old) and find out.

So what's the difference between people who are high in communion (positive) and those who are high in unmitigated communion (negative)? Both sorts of people care about others. But communion corresponds to what we can call concern and compassion, while unmitigated communion ends up relating more to empathy or, more precisely, empathic distress—suffering at the suffering of others.

The first involves attachment. Most parents love their children, and it seems terrible to admit to yourself and others that the world would be better if someone you loved didn't exist. More than that, it's not just that you feel compelled to say that you are happy they exist—you are happy they exist. After all, you love them.

Compassion is feeling for and not feeling with the other.

But what about the more emotional side of empathy? Here it's more complicated. He seemed to get the most from doctors who didn't feel as he did, who were calm when he was anxious, confident when he was uncertain. And he was particularly appreciative of certain virtues that have little directly to do with empathy, such as competence, honesty, professionalism, and certainly respect.

Statistics are human beings with the tears wiped off.

War is still going on in the hearts and minds of men. This is where it must first be stopped, for it is there that the explosives, whether they later take the form of small bullets or tremendously destructive atom bombs, begin their existence.

It is a grave misconception to regard the mystical progress as passing mostly through ecstasies and raptures. On the contrary, it passes just as much through broken hearts and bruised emotions, through painful sacrifices and melancholy renunciations.

arriving from Scotland, she had cried herself

John Quincy Adams' depression was treated by his aunt with some reliable remedies, first sleep and then compassion. She said, " He was half cared for by having someone to care for him.

Amusement and annoyance are, perhaps, both forms of denial.

Quite possibly, this depressive illness was the familiar sort that grew from perfectionist expectations.

Since chess was such a painful test of intellect, it affected his emotions too much to be sport.

Genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience.

I have been thinking about our conversation and about your book, and I am afraid that I expressed myself badly yesterday. When I said that one may love and be loved at any age I ought to have added that sometimes this love comes too late. It comes when one no longer has the right to prove to the loved one how much she is loved, except by love's sacrifice.

Have the courage to analyze great emotions to create characters who shall be lofty and true. The whole art of the analytical novel lies there.

The distinguished psychologist Martin Seligman has conducted a sustained programme of research on the attainment of well-being. His conclusion is unambiguous: 'If you want well-being, you will not get it if you only care about accomplishment . . . Close personal relationships are not everything in life, but they are central.'14

The never-angered person is morally deficient.

Recently, Dr. Michael W. Fox, in his book, Understanding Your Cat, wrote: 'It is not anthropomorphic to say that the cat experiences emotions as we do. It is logical to conclude that they do since they have the same brain center for such feelings as we have.

Sometimes love creeps upon me, and I suddenly sort of just realise that it's there when i start shaving my legs every day and singing on my bicycle.