Quotes About Emotion

No matter what, that friendship is real. No matter how much you dissect it, or talk about it, or analyze it, it'll always be real.

Smiling, Jake stood up and pulled Liz closer. He kissed her deeply

When the deep limbic system is less active, there is generally a positive, more hopeful state of mind. When it is heated up, or overactive, negativity can take over.

As students of the silver screen recall, Bogart's admonition about future regret led Bergman to board the plane and fly away with her husband. Had she stayed with Bogey in Casablanca, she would probably have felt just fine. Not right away, perhaps, but soon, and for the rest of her life.

Surprise is an emotion we feel when we encounter the unexpected

Who thus define it, say they more or less / Than this, that happiness is happiness?

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.12 Feeling

If someone offered you a pill that would make you permanently happy, you would be well advised to run fast and run far. Emotion is a compass that tells us what to do, and a compass that perpetually stuck on north is worthless.

Imagination cannot easily transcend the boundaries of the present, and one reason for this is that it must borrow machinery that is owned by perception. The fact that these two processes must run on the same platform means that we are sometimes confused about which one is running. We assume that what we feel as we imagine the future is what we'll feel when we get there, but in fact, what we feel as we imagine the future is often a response to what's happening in the present.

People tend to become more emotionally intelligent as they age and mature.

The emotional brain responds to an event more quickly than the thinking brain.

Benjamin Franklin put it well: "Anger is never without a reason, but seldom a good one.

When we are in the grip of craving or fury, head-over-heals in love our recoiling in dread, it is the limbic system that has us in its grip.

A genuine smile involves two facial muscles: (1) the zygomatic major muscle, which stretches from the cheekbone and lifts the corners of the mouth; and (2) the outer part of the obicularis oculi muscle, which orbits the eye, and is involved in "pulling down the eyebrows and the skin below the eyebrows, pulling up the skin below the eye, and raising the cheeks."7 Artificial smiles involve only the zygomatic major.

But the most common negative emotion—and the second most common emotion of any kind—was regret. The only emotion mentioned more often than regret was love.

Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art." —TWYLA THARP

Motivation is deeply personal and only you know what words or images will resonate with you.

Happiness is love. Full stop.

Story represents a pathway to understanding that doesn't run through the left side of the brain.

Regret is a retrospective emotion. It springs into being when we look backward. But we can also use it prospectively and proactively—to gaze into the future, predict what we will regret, and then reorient our behavior based on our forecast.

To oversimplify just a bit, the left hemisphere handles what is said; the right hemisphere focuses on how it's said—the nonverbal, often emotional cues delivered through gaze, facial expression, and intonation.

Regret is not dangerous or abnormal, a deviation from the steady path to happiness. It is healthy and universal, an integral part of being human. Regret is also valuable. It clarifies. It instructs. Done right, it needn't drag us down; it can lift us up.

But abundance has produced an ironic result: the very triumph of L-Directed Thinking has lessened its significance. The prosperity it has unleashed has placed a premium on less rational, more R-Directed sensibilities—beauty, spirituality, emotion.

Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories." —ROGER C. SCHANK, cognitive scientist