Quotes about Emotions

The true end of tragedy is to purify the passions.

To enjoy the things we ought, and to hate the things we ought, has the greatest bearing on excellence of character.

Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.

Anybody can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.

You read glowing things and it doesn't feel deserved. You read things that are critical and it cuts you to the bone.

I want to go home at night and feel discomfort.

There is a fragrance in the air, a certain passage of a song, an old photograph falling out from the pages of a book, the sound of somebody's voice in the hall that makes your heart leap and fills your eyes with tears. Who can say when or how it will be that something easters up out of the dimness to remind us of a time before we were born and after we will die?

Of all powers, love is the most powerful and the most powerless. It is the most powerful because it alone can conquer that final and most impregnable stronghold which is the human heart. It is the most powerless because it can do nothing except by consent.

Welcome, welcome joy, welcome sorrow, welcome pleasure, welcome pain. You are all the ingredients of life -- and with you all, life is an inestimable blessing.

The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.

Those who do not yet love one another deeply have need of words; those who deeply love thrive on silences.

They excuse themselves, saying they are bored because they are not loved: No! They are bored because they do not love; because they have denied love.