69 Quotes About Emotions

Emotions are the vibrant threads woven into the fabric of our daily lives, adding depth, color, and nuance to every experience. They shape our perceptions, guide our decisions, and inspire our creativity. Quotes about emotions can offer a window into the profound ways feelings impact us, providing insights and fostering connections. Whether you're seeking inspiration, solace, or a deeper understanding, our curated collection of the top 69 quotes about emotions is here to resonate with your heart and mind, illuminating the many facets of the human experience.

1. “The Yogic sages say that all the pain of a human life is caused by words, as is all the joy. We create words to define our experience and those words bring attendant emotions that jerk us around like dogs on a leash. We get seduced by our own mantras (I'm a failure... I'm lonely... I'm a failure... I'm lonely...) and we become monuments to them. To stop talking for a while, then, is to attempt to strip away the power of words, to stop choking ourselves with words, to liberate ourselves from our suffocating mantras.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

2. “That is another chamber of my heart that shows no electrical activity - the chamber that used to flicker into life when I saw a film that moved me, or read a book that inspired me, or listened to music that made me want to cry. I closed that chamber myself, for all the usual reasons. And now I seem to have made a pact with some philistine devil: if I don't attempt to re-open it, I will be allowed just enough energy and optimism to get through a working day without wanting to hang myself.” - Nick Hornby

3. “I feel too much. That's what's going on.' 'Do you think one can feel too much? Or just feel in the wrong ways?' 'My insides don't match up with my outsides.' 'Do anyone's insides and outsides match up?' 'I don't know. I'm only me.' 'Maybe that's what a person's personality is: the difference between the inside and outside.' 'But it's worse for me.' 'I wonder if everyone thinks it's worse for him.' 'Probably. But it really is worse for me.” - Jonathan Safran Foer

4. “Relief is a wonderful emotion, highly underrated. In fact, I prefer it to elation or joy. Relief lets the air out of the Tire of Pain.” - Adriana Trigiani

5. “I looked around at the rooms that I did not see as rooms but more as a landscape for my emotions, a biography of memory.” - Anne Spollen

6. “Joy is but the sign that creative emotion is fulfilling its purpose.” - Charles Du Bos

7. “Do not let another day go by where your dedication to other people's opinions is greater than your dedication to your own emotions!” - Steve Maraboli

8. “I believe that the best way to create good living conditions for any animal, whether it's a captive animal living in a zoo, a farm animal or a pet, is to base animal welfare programs on the core emotion systems in the brain. My theory is that the environment animals live in should activate their positive emotions as much as possible, and not activate their negative emotions any more than necessary. If we get the animal's emotions rights, we will have fewer problem behaviors... All animals and people have the same core emotion systems in the brain.” - Temple Grandin

9. “It is important not to suppress your feelings altogether when you are depressed. It is equally important to avoid terrible arguments or expressions of outrage. You should steer clear of emotionally damaging behavior. People forgive, but it is best not to stir things up to the point at which forgiveness is required. When you are depressed, you need the love of other people, and yet depression fosters actions that destroy that love. Depressed people often stick pins into their own life rafts. The conscious mind can intervene. One is not helpless.” - Andrew Solomon

10. “How you react emotionally is a choice in any situation.” - Judith Orloff

11. “What is this "heart"? If I tear open that chest of yours, will I see it there? If I smash open that skull of yours, will I see it there?~ulquiorra” - Tite Kubo

12. “Lacking a shared language, emotions are perhaps our most effective means of cross-species communication. We can share our emotions, we can understand the language of feelings, and that's why we form deep and enduring social bonds with many other beings. Emotions are the glue that binds.” - Marc Bekoff

13. “As adults, we hvae many inhibitions against crying. We feel it is an expression of weakness, or femininity or of childishness. The person who is afraid to cry is afraid of pleasure. This is because the person who is afraid to cry holds himself together rigidly so that he won't cry; that is, the rigid person is as afraid of pleasure as he is afraid to cry. In a situation of pleasure he will become anxious. As his tensions relax he will begin to tremble and shake, and he will attempt to control this trembling so as not to break down in tears. His anxiety is nothing more than the conflict between his desire to let go and his fear of letting go. This conflict will arise whenever the pleasure is strong enough to threaten his rigidity.Since rigidity develops as a means to block out painful sensations, the release of rigidity or the restoration of the natural motility of the body will bring these painful sensations to the fore. Somewhere in his unconscious the neurotic individual is aware that pleasure can evoke the repressed ghosts of the past. It could be that such a situation is responsible for the adage "No pleasure without pain.” - Alexander Lowen

14. “It is a grave injustice to a child or adult to insist that they stop crying. One can comfort a person who is crying which enables him to relax and makes further crying unnecessary; but to humiliate a crying child is to increase his pain, and augment his rigidity. We stop other people from crying because we cannot stand the sounds and movements of their bodies. It threatens our own rigidity. It induces similar feelings in ourselves which we dare not express and it evokes a resonance in our own bodies which we resist.” - Alexander Lowen

15. “Laine slowly rolled out of bed. The queen size was one of the few new things in the house. But now, even the new bed felt tainted. It was an inner-spring monument to lies, a petri dish of mendacity she had shared with her faithless husband, and shared now with creeping dreams that flew from the light but left harsh scratches and diseased black feathers. Laine promised herself that, as soon as, she could, she would rid herself of this house, this bed, her clothes, her jewelry - everything but the flesh she lived in. She would scrub herself clean and flee to start a new life whose first and only commandment would be: Never let thyself be lied to again.” - Stephen M. Irwin

16. “...our memory is enhanced by the emotion attending the event. The more intense the feelings the more accessible to the memory is the event. Few of us live lives so emotionally charged that we can truly, accurately retrieve all of it. ...Often only our crisis events are preserved with strong emotions. For our own survival we can't forget them, and then we too easily forget the good stuff.” - Robert Dykstra

17. “Please don't give me words; give me a hug. Don't tell me that I'm holding up so well; break down with me and admit our shared wretchedness. Don't feign some bright mountaintop; walk with me through the dark valley where neither of us can utter a word.” - Robert Dykstra

18. “No pain, no gain." You can hear the phrase in the world of physical exercise and conditioning. Muscles that feel no pain are probably getting neither stronger, nor more flexible. It presents an analogy for the exercise of the heart. Those who run the risk of genuine love alone must worry about emotional pain. The more friends; the more good-byes - and the more wakes to attend, the more graves to visit, the more deaths to share. Those who truly live life to the fullest will bear the full cup of suffering. Only those who are willing to pay the price in pain and anguish find life full to the brim. Happy people also suffer; they are no more lucky than the rest. They create their own happiness. That's the rule of thumb.Some thumbs, however, don't seem to rule very well. Slogans and catch-words, for all their conventional wisdom, fail to carry the whole weight of truth; they leave too much room for false inferences. "No pain, no gain" may leave one with nothing but pain - an intolerable amount of it. There is simply no guarantee that pain will bring gain, that hardship will yield happiness, that suffering will make one a better person. It may; but it's not inevitable.” - Robert Dykstra

19. “People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's damn hard to smile.” - Judith Guest

20. “Granny Weatherwax was often angry. She considered it one of her strong points. Genuine anger was one of the world's greatest creative forces. But you had to learn how to control it. That didn't mean you let it trickle away. It meant you dammed it, carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind and then, just when the whole structure was about to collapse, opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge.” - Terry Pratchett

21. “I envy people that know love. That have someone who takes them as they are.” - Jess C. Scott

22. “A feeling is no longer the same when it comes the second time. It dies through the awareness of its return. We become tired and weary of our feelings when they come too often and last too long.” - Pascal Mercier

23. “Resentment is often a woman's inner signal that she has been ignoring an important God-given responsibility - that of making choices.” - Brenda Waggoner

24. “Society can only hurt if you care for its opinion” - Jude Morgan

25. “On accepting adversity in our lives: Always it is initiated by an act of will on our part; we set ourselves to believe in the overruling goodness, providence, and sovereignty of God and refuse to turn aside no matter what may come, no matter how we may feel. I mistakenly thought I could not trust God unless I felt like trusting Him. Now I am learning that trusting God is first of all a matter of the will. I choose to trust in God, and my feelings eventually follow.” - Margaret Clarkson

26. “The goal with hostages is to gradually lower expectations; in nonhostage crises, it's to lower emotions.” - Dave Cullen

27. “There is an emotional promiscuity we’ve noticed among many good young men and women. The young man understands something of the journey of the heart. He wants to talk, to “share the journey.” The woman is grateful to be pursued, she opens up. They share the intimacies of their lives - their wounds, their walks with God. But he never commits. He enjoys her... then leaves. And she wonders, What did I do wrong? She failed to see his passivity. He really did not ever commit or offer assurances that he would. Like Willoughby to Marianne in Sense and Sensibility.Be careful you do not offer too much of yourself to a man until you have good, solid evidence that he is a strong man willing to commit. Look at his track record with other women. Is there anything to be concerned about there? If so, bring it up. Also, does he have any close male friends - and what are they like as men? Can he hold down a job? Is he walking with God in a real and intimate way? Is he facing the wounds of his own life, and is he also demonstrating a desire to repent of Adam’s passivity and/or violence? Is he headed somewhere with his life? A lot of questions, but your heart is a treasure, and we want you to offer it only to a man who is worthy and ready to handle it well.” - Stasi Eldredge

28. “Certain things leave you in your life and certain things stay with you. And that's why we're all interested in movies- those ones that make you feel, you still think about. Because it gave you such an emotional response, it's actually part of your emotional make-up, in a way.” - Tim Burton

29. “I'd never heard of them, but at that moment, it was the best song I'd ever heard. I went out and bought Ten and listened to it on repeat. When I listened to track five, "Black," it was like I was there, in that moment all over again.After the summer was over, when I got back home, I went to the music store and bought the sheet music and learned to play it on the piano. I thought one day I could accompany Conrad and we could be, like, a band.” - Jenny Han

30. “Do not only think about it, but feel about it, also, before taking appropriate action.” - T.F. Hodge

31. “Music is the beat of a drum that keeps time with our emotions.” - Shannon L. Alder

32. “One of the greatest gifts from God is the eternal perspective. It is a level of fearlessness, a level of understanding where one can experience even emotional harmony with God.” - Criss Jami

33. “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you do, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” - Jason Barger

34. “Having their feelings make sense is how people get their kicks.” - Mark Vonnegut

35. “Hope is the crystal meth of emotions. It hooks you fast and kills you hard.” - Jennifer Donnelly

36. “There were those emotions down there, and though she couldn't quite feel them, they were strong and she feared them. It was like watching a thunderhead from high up in a plane, and though you weren't under it, you knew how it would feel if you were. You knew you'd have to land eventually.” - Ann Brashares

37. “I think there is something beautiful in reveling in sadness. The proof is how beautiful sad songs can be. So I don’t think being sad is to be avoided. It’s apathy and boredom you want to avoid. But feeling anything is good, I think. Maybe that’s sadistic of me.” - Joseph Gordon-Levitt

38. “The feeling of love comes and goes on a whim; you can't control it. But the action of love is something you can do, regardless of how you are feeling.” - Russ Harris

39. “Your heart is the beacon, your heart is the storm. Dare to embrace it; you'll never be torn.” - Vanna Bonta

40. “Sex is always about emotions. Good sex is about free emotions; bad sex is about blocked emotions.” - Deepak Chopra

41. “Your emotional capacity is an empty motor, and your values are the fuel with which your mind fills it. If you choose a mix of contradictions, it will clog your motor, corrode your transmission and wreck you on your first attempt to move with a machine which you, the driver, have corrupted.” - Ayn Rand

42. “Up until then it had only been himself. Up to then it had been a private wrestle between him and himself. Nobody else much entered into it. After the people came into it he was, of course, a different man. Everything had changed then and he was no longer the virgin, with the virgin's right to insist upon platonic love. Life, in time, takes every maidenhead, even if it has to dry it up; it does not matter how the owner wants to keep it. Up to then he had been the young idealist. But he could not stay there. Not after the other people entered into it.” - James Jones

43. “Our emotions can be either corrupted or elevated. Human love was not created to be without premeditated purpose.” - Manis Friedman

44. “...men aren't in touch with their emotions, and don't share enough [?]” - Meg Cabot

45. “He wanted to say that all this talk of feelings was irrelevant. Thatemotions come and go and can't be controlled, so there's no reason to worry about them. That in the end, people should be judged by their actions, since in the end, it was actions that defined everyone.” - Nicholas Sparks

46. “The secret of our emotions never lies in the bare object, but in its subtle relations to our own past.” - George Eliot

47. “Love was something different. Love was pure delight, a fountain of emotions, sensual delights, and enjoying spending time together.” - Sergei Lukyanenko

48. “But pain's like water. It finds a way to push through any seal. There's no way to stop it. Sometimes you have to let yourself sink inside of it before you can learn how to swim to the surface.” - Katie Kacvinsky

49. “Because people are more than emotions. People have thoughts and reasons for doing things.” - Veronica Rossi

50. “Ciss says, 'People have less emotions than actors think they have. For much of the time we hide our emotions, we haven't time for emotions. Our brains work so much faster than our emotions.” - Antony Sher

51. “We bury things so deep we no longer remember there was anything to bury. Our bodies remember. Our neurotic states remember. But we don't.” - Jeanette Winterson

52. “I ate some emotional soup in my childhood and have spent a lifetime trying to digest it.” - Billy Ray Chitwood

53. “Artists shouldn't wait until they are told what their art should be, they shouldn't follow trends or allow other people to influence their work, an artist should only create from the strongest emotions within their heart” - Andrew James Pritchard

54. “Only death consistently excites your emotions, whether contemplating when life is safe and stale, or fleeing it when life is threatened and precious” - Yann Martel

55. “Not merely hope, but any burdensome yearning: ambition, hatred, love (especially love) - how rarely do our emotions meet the object they seem to deserve? How hopelessly we signal; how dark the sky; how big the waves. We are all lost at see, washed between hope and despair, hailing something that may never come to rescue us. Catastrophe has become art; but this is no reducing process. It is freeing, enlarging, explaining. Catastrophe has become art: that is, after all, what it is for.” - Julian Barnes

56. “and it was the pretending that might explain how she could smile so brightly while her mind felt nothing - as if, at these times, there existed a disconnection between outer and inner, a shutting off, and the key to her happiness lay in warding off pain, or dodging it, or pushing it into the shape of something else - like shame or anger or even hope.” - sue saliba

57. “It is beautiful, it is endless, it is full and yet seems empty. It hurts us.” - Jackson Pearce

58. “There is still a popular fantasy, long since disproved by both psychoanalysis and science, and never believed by any poet or mystic, that it is possible to have a thought without a feeling. It isn't. When we are objective we are subjective too. When we are neutral we are involved. When we say ‘I think’ we don't leave our emotions outside the door. To tell someone not to be emotional is to tell them to be dead.” - Jeanette Winterson

59. “We cannot let go of the past enough to live in the present unless we are able to grieve our losses. We must deeply feel our emotional pain in order to accept that what is happening is not what we wanted.” - John Kuypers

60. “In order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did and why you no longer need to feel it.” - Mitch Albom

61. “A flock of sheep near the airport or a high voltage generator beside the orchard: these combinations open up my life like a wound, but they also heal it. That's why my feelings always come in twos.” - Yehuda Amichai

62. “No man stops caring as long as he breathes. As long as he has a mind and memory, he will care. This is what separates us from the animals. We have feelings.” - F. Sionil José

63. “It's so hard to find the place somewhere in the middle of the best and worst I've felt.” - Ashly Lorenzana

64. “I don't think I've ever dared to write down what I see in the ruins of me, or tell in any detail the scars and all their secrets.” - Ashly Lorenzana

65. “She knows what it is to be sad and miserable, but those emotions are almost enjoyable. They throw moments of happiness and laughter into sharper relief.” - Simon Mawer

66. “I hate you!''That's good. Hate is a passionate emotion.” - Stephenie Meyer

67. “The loss of these tastes [for poetry and music] is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.” - Charles Darwin

68. “Subject to the law(s) of nature, hate is born to die” - T.F. Hodge

69. “Families start out, most of the time, with unconditional acceptance of one another. That acceptance starts in childhood and continues into adulthood. Somewhere in there, between childhood and adulthood, the ability to distinguish right versus wrong is born.” - Bart Hopkins