Feeling

“ To describe what evades description, I should call it suggestion,—a vague hinting at rather than a distinct exposition of feeling and thought,—the prescience of things which never beheld are always expected, the remembrance of things which are only known through the shadows they leave behind them, the perception of uncommon capacities for pain, the anticipation of endless energies for pleasure, the instinctive discovery and enjoyment of the secret inspirations of love. ”

“ He took a step forward in the theory of feeling, distinguishing by the term 'sensation' that which has objective reference, while 'feeling' referred to that "beyond which I know nothing except that it is a change in me." ”

“ In art, in taste, in life, in speech, you decide from feeling, and not from reason; ”

“ So feeling comes in aid
Of feeling, and diversity of strength
Attends us, if but once we have been strong. ”

“ The heart hath its mystery, and who may reveal it;
Or who ever read in the depths of their own?—
How much, we never may speak of, yet feel it,
But, even in feeling it, know it unknown! ”

“ The pleasant feeling which is to result from an act may be presented in imagination, and thought of as the end to be reached; or the thought of myself to be pleased as much as possible generally, and here by such means and in such a way, may be the end which I take as the principle and motive of my action. ”

“ She had a new feeling, the feeling of danger; on which a new remedy rose to meet it, the idea of an inner self or, in other words, of concealment. ”

“ The affections, and those virtues which signally reach them, we have for ages been accustomed to place to the heart’s account. We yield to it all the virtues of sensibility, and thus it becomes the great source and centre of feeling. ”

“ If we look into our emotional life, we find, besides the true emotions, with which we have become familiar in Chapter III, a great number of feelings or feeling-tones which color either pleasurably or painfully our emotions and our ideas. On the one hand there are pleasure, joy, exaltation, courage, cheer, confidence, satisfaction; and on the other, pain, sorrow, depression, apprehension, gloom, distrust, and dissatisfaction. Every complex which is laid away in our subconscious is tinted, either slightly or intensely, with its specific feeling-tone. ”

“ EXPRESSING THE FEELING We are in the habit of distinguishing between what proceeds from mere thinking, what is, as we say, purely intellectual, and what arises more especially from feeling, what we call emotional. ”

“ As emotions are described in novels, they interest us, for we are made to share them. We have grown acquainted with the concrete objects and emergencies which call them forth, and any knowing touch of introspection which may grace the page meets with a quick and feeling response. Confessedly literary works of aphoristic philosophy also flash lights into our emotional life, and give us a fitful delight. ”

“ A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot be safely disregarded. ”

“ My theory, on the contrary, is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion. ”

“ The face the index of a feeling mind,
And her whole conduct rational and kind. ”

“ We may now follow the evolution of the life of feeling in its chief stages, which are—pre-conscious sensibility, the appearance of the primitive emotions, their transformation either into complex and abstract emotions or into that stable and chronic state which constitutes the passions. ”

“ Life is complex in its expression, involving more than percipience, namely desire, emotion, will, and feeling. ”

“ All of them bending themselves to listen thought, "Pray heaven that the inside of my mind may not be exposed," for each thought, "The others are feeling this. ”

“ Melancholy in sooth are such representations, in the sense in which most people use the term, as a synonyme for any sentiment or feeling which bears the impress of right reflection,—of serious, yet serene emotion. ”

“ We ought to say a feeling of and, a feeling of if, a feeling of but, and a feeling of by, quite as readily as we say a feeling of blue or a feeling of cold. ”

“ Of their bad influence, and their good receives:
By objects, which might force the soul to abate
Her feeling, rendered more compassionate; ”

“ I say, if we take reason thus, the perceiving of spiritual beauty and excellency no more belongs to reason than it belongs to the sense of feeling to perceive colors, or to the power of seeing to perceive the sweetness of food. ”

“ One's capacity for expression is also affected by his experience,—not experience in time and space, but soul-experience,—joy, sorrow, pleasure, pain, love, hope, aspiration, and all intense feeling by which the genesis of the inward man unfolded. ”

“ Under the vitalising touch of the Beautiful, our consciousness seems filled with the affirmation of what life is, what is worth being, what among our many thoughts and acts and feelings are real and organic and important, what among the many possible moods is the real, eternal ourself. ”

“ They can judge with astounding correctness from a shadow on one's face, a catch in one's breath, a movement of one's hands, how their words or deeds are affecting us. We cannot conceal our feelings from them. ”

“ It has its origin in an atmosphere of feeling; for the first vital movement of the mind is emotional, and is expressed in a dim tendency, a feeble feeling after the object, or the class of objects, related to the peculiar constitution and latent affinities of its individual being. ”

“ His keen and fresh perception of nature, furnishes him with beautiful pictures, the truthfulness and clearness of which are admirably presented in the lucid language with which they are painted, and, in his expression of deep personal feelings, we find a noble union of sad emotion and manliness of tone. ”

“ But are there not various modes of manifesting, more or less appropriately, the inward emotions of our hearts? Are not our ideas dissimilar as to the manner of exhibiting our feelings, according to our various means, situations and vocations in life—high or low—in cities, towns and country? ”

“ The deep, the true, the honour'd of my song,—
If but one worldly soil has been effaced,
That song has not been utterly in vain.
All true deep feeling purifies the heart.
Am I not better by my love for you? ”

“ As in describing natural objects, it impregnates sensible impressions with the forms of fancy, so it describes the feelings of pleasure or pain, by blending them with the strongest movements of passion, and the most striking forms of nature. ”

“ Our enumeration commenced with Feelings. These we scrupulously distinguished from the objects which excite them, and from the organs by which they are, or may be supposed to be, conveyed. Feelings are of four sorts: Sensations, Thoughts, Emotions, and Volitions. What are called Perceptions are merely a particular case of Belief, and Belief is a kind of thought. Actions are merely volitions followed by an effect. ”

“ What rapturous flights of sound! what thrilling, pathetic chimes! what wild, joyous revelry of passion! what a delirium of sense!--what an expression of agony and woe! all the feelings of suffering and rejoicing humanity sympathized with and finding a voice in those tones. ”

“ The perceptional world is the stream of subject-recognitions and of presentments of activity. The affectional world is the stream of feelings of pleasure and pain generated by the two aforesaid worlds. ”

“ A conspicuous case will come to view when we treat of the emotions. Every emotion has its 'expression,' of quick breathing, palpitating heart, flushed face, or the like. The expression gives rise to bodily feelings; and the emotion is thus necessarily and invariably accompanied by these bodily feelings. ”

“ That the feelings we have by these senses are generically distinct from the emotions of Sublimity and Beauty, might, I imagine, be trusted to an appeal to each man’s consciousness. There are innumerable cases, however, which may be regarded as decisive experiments upon the subject. ”

“ It is necessary to keep a very tight hand upon all our feelings, whether they be the natural desires of the sensuous part of our nature, or whether they be the sentiments of sadness, or doubt, or anxiety, or perplexity, which are the natural results of outward circumstances of trial; or whether, on the contrary, they be the bright and buoyant ones which come, like angels, along with prosperous hours. ”

“ The Emotions or Feelings.—The emotions are joy, love, grief, hatred, anger, jealousy, and other like conditions, and we speak of them as “natural,” because they appear without the operation of our intellect or will, and the capacity for them seems to be a part of our existence. ”

“ It is this infusion of passion and sentiment, the addition of the warm breath of his personal experience, that gives the motion of life to his analytic essays, and a deep and solemn humanity to his abstract speculations. Hazlitt felt [Pg xxi] life with an intensity which reminds us of a more spacious age. “What a huge heap, a ‘huge, dumb heap,’ of wishes, thoughts, feelings, anxious cares, soothing hopes, loves, joys, friendships, it is composed of! ”

“ In the series of states in which the mind has existed, from the first moment of our life, to the present hour, the feelings of extension, resistance, joy, sorrow, fragrance, colour, hope, fear, heat, cold, admiration, resentment, have often had place ”

“ With these two capacities of suggested feelings, simple and relative, which are all that truly belong to the class of intellectual states of the mind,—various emotions may concur, particularly that most general of all emotions, the emotion of desire, in some one or other of its various forms. ”

“ Stronger passions--or perhaps the same passions but less under control than in the present day--took their part therein, from time to time, and prompted to all those wild energies which spring from deep and highly-excited feelings. ”

“ The persistence of the feeling tone in a pleasant or unpleasant mental attitude after the 385experience giving rise to it has become dormant is observed in everyday life and can be explained on this principle. ”

“ If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar that lies on the other side of silence. ”

“ Only where there is sentient life can there be feelings of pleasure and pain, sorrow or joy. ”

“ But the first glad moment in our first love is a vision which returns to us to the last, and brings with it a thrill of feeling intense and special as the recurrent sensation of a sweet odour breathed in a far-off hour of happiness. ”