Once we recognize what it is we are feeling, once we recognize we can feel deeply, love deeply, can feel joy, then we will demand that all parts of our lives produce that kind of joy.

- Audre Lorde

So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

We need to attach a reason to our emotional states. At the high end of the emotional spectrum, we believe that true joy is an effect rather than a cause. Because of this deep-seated belief, we spend most of our lives chasing whatever we think causes the effect of joy -- it may be a perfect relationship, lots of money, fame, the perfect place to live, even our God. At the low end of the emotional spectrum, the game we play is blame. We blame anything from the food we have just eaten to our partners to the government for the reason that we feel bad.

- Richard Rudd

The greatest happiness is to transform one's feelings into action.

- Madame de Stael

We rely upon the poets, the philosophers, and the playwrights to articulate what most of us can only feel, in joy and sorrow. They illuminate the thoughts for which we only grope; they give us the strength and balm we cannot find in ourselves. Whenever I feel my courage wavering I rush to them. They will give me the wisdom of acceptance, the will and resilience to push on.

- Helen Hayes

This human tendency to look for outer causes for our moods is the greatest addiction on
our planet.

- Richard Rudd

The heart is the first feature of working minds.

- Frank Lloyd Wright

We all have our moments of fear. I'm a human being and I have moments of fear. Fear is a very crippling emotion.

- Betty Williams

Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one's own despised and unwanted feelings.

- Alice Miller

Almost all of us long for peace and freedom; but very few of us have much enthusiasm for the thoughts, feelings, and actions that make for peace and freedom.

- Aldous Huxley

The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.

- Baruch Spinoza