Quotes about Emotions

And with respect to feelings that are inherently injurious and wrong, their strategy is not one of resisting them in the moment of choice but of living in such a way that they do not have such feelings at all, or at least do not have them in a degree that makes it hard to decide against them when appropriate.

Anger indulged, instead of simply waved off, always has in it an element of self-righteousness and vanity. Find a person who has embraced anger, and you find a person with a wounded ego.

Those who continue to be mastered by their feelings—whether it is anger, fear, sexual attraction, desire for food or for "looking good," the residues of woundedness, or whatever—are typically persons who in their heart of hearts believe that their feelings must be satisfied. They have long chosen the strategy of selectively resisting their feelings instead of that of not having them—of simply changing or replacing them.

One has to feel strong revulsion toward the wrong feeling one now has or is likely to have and at the same time strong attraction to good feeling that one does not now feel.

And worry are worthless—indeed, vain—emotions. If you are frightened or afraid, there is no use feeling guilty about it. What you need to do is fix your mind upon God and ask him to fill your mind with himself. And as your mind is transformed, your whole personality will be transformed, including your body and your feelings. The transformation of the self away from a life of fear and insufficiency takes place as we fix our minds upon God as he truly is.

Those who let God be God get off the conveyer belt of emotion and desire when it first starts to move toward the buzz saw of sin.

In feelings we really know that something is "there," and solidly so. But what it is and why it is remains obscure—though hauntingly present.

We have a terrible time understanding love, because we confuse it with desire. Desire and love are two utterly different kinds of things. Not only is desire not love; it is often opposed to love. Right action is the act of love, regardless of the desires of anyone involved.

Ignoring our emotions is turning our back on reality; listening to our emotions ushers us into reality. And reality is where we meet God.

Emotions are not amoral—they vocalize the inner working of our souls and are as tainted as any other portion of our personality.

The route to facing what we feel is not by devaluing the darkness of what we feel, but by valuing the deep structure of why we don't want to feel. Once we face why feeling is so hard, then we can move beyond what we feel to the deeper energy within us that keeps us from grappling honestly with our emotions. Then we will not only feel more deeply, but—more importantly—we will feel our feelings in a way that exposes our struggle with God.

iI we view difficult emotions as problems to be solved, we will end up looking for answers that will work rather than pursuing relationship with God, regardless of immediate outcome. A determination to resolve our emotional struggles inevitably subordinates God as a servant of our healing rather than a Person to be praised.