1,420 Emotion Quotes

I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don't remember ever having seen one weep.

Do you know what makes the prison disappear? Every deep, genuine affection. Being friends, being brothers, loving, that is what opens the prison, with supreme power, by some magic force. Without these one stays dead. But whenever affection is revived, there life revives.

Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy.

When I have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.

There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied. You cannot talk yourself into it or rouse it by straining at the emotions or by dedicating yourself solemnly to the service of mankind. Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self love bad names in the universe. It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.

No, this trick won't work... How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?

To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory's vault and mix in a sad memory from one's own life.

To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.

In the meantime, it just makes it a little harder to smile. But so does the world.

During the 1960s, I think, people forgot what emotions were supposed to be. And I don't think they've ever remembered.

The truth is, laughter always sounds more perfect than weeping. Laughter flows in a violent riff and is effortlessly melodic. Weeping is often fought, choked, half strangled, or surrendered to with humiliation.

Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.

I watched them from the window, thy children at their play, And I thought of all my own dear friends, who were far, oh, far away, And childish loves, and childish cares, and a child's own buoyant gladness Came gushing back again to me with a soft and solemn sadness; And feelings frozen up full long, and thoughts of long ago, Seemed to be thawing at my heart with a warm and sudden flow.

By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings.

I'm not always depressed: only when I think and feel.

There's nothing on my mind that couldn't be expressed by a long insane outburst of hysterical rage.

You will never know the feeling of a driver when winning a race. The helmet hides feelings that cannot be understood.

I write just because the fire of my emotion is burning. Had I not, I would not have been able to find peace.

Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.

Commanded love of all men indiscriminately is an obliteration of distinction between love and hate, and therefore is not love at all.

A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.

The man who laughs has simply not yet had the terrible news.

Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

I wouldn't worry too much about your heart. You can always put that award where your heart ought to be.

About six months ago, I listened to Siamese Dream. That was the first time I'd ever really heard my own album, because I had separated from the experience of making the record. And it really moved me. It made me cry, it's so beautiful.

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.

The piano is always true to me. In times of despair, happiness, and joy, its mood is always my own.

A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough.

By adopting a certain physical posture, a resonant chord is struck in spirit.

This music is forever for me. It's the stage thing, that rush moment that you live for. It never lasts, but that's what you live for.

Reason must be the universal rule and guide; all things must be done according to reason without allowing oneself to be swayed by emotion.

There is something magical about watching a man who has lost himself find his way back home... He sang with the kind of power people no longer expect from rock 'n' roll singers.

It was the finest music of his life. If ever there was music that bleeds, this was it.

' Perhaps the only other voice to touch me ( Luciano Pavarotti's voice being the first), was the voice of Elvis Presley; to watch him perform as I did along with Carl (Palmer), and Keith (Emerson), both in 1971 and again later in 1976 was an absolutely awesome and breathtaking experience; like Pavarotti, Presley had the power to reduce most people to tears very quickly and indeed to move them to think very carefully about their inner spiritual beliefs; as far as singing is concerned, the human voice is a matter of the expression of passion in the understanding of the human condition and, upon seeing both of them perform, I very quickly came to realise that they were each capable of expressing more feeling, with their voices, than I had ever thought possible'.

'In Elvis, you had the whole lot; it's all there in that elastic voice and body. As he changed shape, so did the world. His last performances showcase a voice even bigger than his gut, where you cry real tears as the music messiah sings his tired heart out, turning casino into temple. I think the Vegas period is underrated. I find it the most emotional. By that point Elvis was clearly not in control of his own life, and there is this incredible pathos. The big opera voice of the later years -- that's the one that really hurts me.'

'He had a musically textured rhythmic voice that had emotional intelligence; concentrate on his voice: sweet, remorseful, defiant, suggestive'

'There comes a point when the voice starts to wash over you. You get inside of it, start to really hear what he's doing, and you realise his singing has this extraordinary, effortless quality to it. Sometimes it's like listening to a stream of honey. It's a very smooth ride, the voice of Elvis Presley. I don't think you focus on the words when he's singing. I think he's doing what bel canto singers do - you don't listen to the words, 'just' to the beauty of his voice-. When I say 'just', that makes it sound as if he's denying you something else but, actually, that's quite enough'.

'Elvis' range was about two and a quarter octaves, as measured by musical notation, but his voice had an emotional range from tender whispers to sighs down to shouts, grunts, grumbles and sheer gruffness that could move the listener from calmness and surrender, to fear. His voice can not be measured in octaves, but in decibels; even that misses the problem of how to measure delicate whispers that are hardly audible at all.'

'Heartbreak, jealousy, loneliness-, Elvis Presley gave luxuriant voice to these less than cheerful emotions, but did you ever think of him as a balladeer of the unbearable bleakness of being, of the horror of existing without purpose in a godless universe? In the improbably vivacious London-born production of 'Woyzeck', vintage Elvis recordings provide much of the background music for Daniel Kramer's adaptation of Georg Buchner's great, prophetic drama of existential emptiness from the 1830's. Dolly Parton and, more predictably, Beethoven, make aural guest appearances but it's the voice of the Pelvis that sets the rhythm of life. And if the 'wedding' of Presley and Buchner is more shotgun marriage than natural love match, at least you leave the theater feeling less suicidal than you normally do, after two hours with one of the grimmest heroes in Western literature.

'I was always mesmerized by strong, pure, beautiful voices, (and) Elvis' voice, the emotion in it, was unbelievable; I'd never heard anything like it, and I was listening to my parents' records, like 'Heartbreak Hotel' and all the '50 s stuff, the real raw Elvis...and that's how I gravitated into Patsy Cline, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris.'

'I was about 10 years old, the first time I heard Elvis Presley's voice, pouring from my father's car radio, in East St. Louis, Illinois; I can't recall the song, whether it was a ballad or a rocker (but), what I remember is how his voice, that smoldering rumble of a voice, made my skin tingle; I don't know why, but I just loved his voice, his sound just did something to me'

'He treats the song as a private meditation, full of pain and the yearning to believe. Though the lyrics speak of hope, Elvis turns them into a cry, as if reaching for one last sliver of light in engulfing darkness. 'I am alone', he seems to be saying. But maybe, just maybe, we can find someone or something to cling to. In his case, it's God. But each of us, hearing him, reaches for our own salvation; if great art needs nakedness (then), those few minutes of Elvis alone at the piano amount to the most naked performance I've ever witnessed.'

'Had Presley never sung a note he might have still caused a stir, but sing he did. Watershed hits such as 'All Shook Up' (1957) or, for instance, 'Are You Lonesome Tonight', (1960), were eminately Presley's from the moment he put his stamp on them. His jagged, bubbly highs, and Southern baritone jump from those recordings like spirits from a cauldren. Elvis crooned romantically, then screeched relentlessly, always pouring his heart into the lyric and melody. After Elvis, the male vocalist could no longer just sing a song, especially in the new world of rock-n-roll. The 'feel' of a performance far out-weighed the perfection of the take.'

'Elvis' 'Love me tender' (1956), is a timeless classic that his fans return to, time and again, when choosing their favourite love song, but why is this early recording such a favourite? It could be the simplicity of the lyric, that wonderful vocal which quivers with an understated power and beauty, or the honest, pure sentiment of a song that has touched millions. Two minutes and 40 seconds have never been used more beautifully.'

'The accompaniment is ornamented with bells, horns, and female choir, but it is Elvis' voice upon which the words depend for their dramatic effect. In a departure quite uncharacteristic of country music, there is a fierce, almost shocked indignation and passionate intensity in his voice, transforming a fairly ordinary song into a vehicle for savage social protest.'

To Whom the Mornings stand for Nights, What must the Midnights - be!

Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things. (5)

My whole life long, I was ceaselessly in need of love and support, though I let this show as little as possible.

He [ Titian ] is the least mannered and consequently the most varied of artists. Mannered talents have but one bias, one usage only. They are more apt to follow the impulse of the hand than to control it. Those that are less mannered must be more varied, for they continually respond to genuine emotion.

I hate the place like poison with a sincere hatred.

That Kitty was capable of any deep grief was unbelievable. He had gradually grown to think of her as something unapproachable and callous. She would get a divorce, of course, and eventually she would marry again. He began to consider this. Whom would she marry? He laughed bitterly, stopped; a picture flashed before him-of Kitty's arms around some man whose face he could not see, of Kitty's lips pressed close to other lips in what was surely: passion.

A series of scenes put in a particular order designed to leave the viewer with no choice but to feel one particular way.

Suffering, sad 'female humanity!' What are these feelings which they are taught to consider as disgraceful, to deny to themselves? What form do the Chinese feet assume when denied their proper development? If the young girls of the 'higher classes,' who never commit a false step, whose justly earned reputations were never sullied even by the stain which the fruit of mere 'knowledge of good and evil' leaves behind, were to speak, and say what are their thoughts employed upon, their thoughts, which alone are free, what would they say?

It is very difficult to explain what takes place in me when I see or hear anything majestic which allows no doubt that it proceeds from the actualization of Our Maker Creator. Each time, my tears flow of themselves. I weep, that is to say, it weeps in me, not from grief, no, but as if from tenderness.

To be crushed in the winepress of passion.

'Shit!' she shouted. Amaranta, who was starting to put the clothes into the trunk, thought that she had been bitten by a scorpion. 'Where is it?' she asked in alarm. 'What?' 'The bug!' Amaranta said. Ursula put a finger on her heart. 'Here,' she said. (p. 251)

A boy's hunched body loved out of a stalk The first song of his happiness, and the song woke His heart to the darkness and into the sadness of joy.

For I am shave as neigh as any frere. But yit I praye unto youre curteisye: Beeth hevy again, or elles moot I die.

Allas! allas! that evere love was synne!

My head lies at least a foot closer to my heart than is the case with other men: that is why I am so reasonable.

Rat shit, bat shit, dirty old twat! 69 assholes tied in a knot! Hooray! Lizard shit! Fuck!

His hallelujahs open the heavens. He utters the word 'Wonderful,' as if all their trumpets spoke together. And then, when he comes to earth, to make love amidst nymphs and shepherds (for the beauties of all religions found room within his breast), his strains drop milk and honey, and his love is the youthfulness of the Golden Age.

We cannot imagine an Eisenhower, a Pershing, a Lee, dancing with joy on a dock, but Washington did it.

When, like the rising day, Eileen Aroon! Love sends his early ray, Eileen Aroon! What makes his dawning glow Changeless through joy and woe? Only the constant know!- Eileen Aroon!

Hope had grown grey hairs, Hope had mourning on, Trenched with tears, carved with cares, Hope was twelve hours gone.

Margaret, are you grieving Over Goldengrove unleaving?

'Bosh,' he said, 'On what else is the whole world run but immediate impressions? What is more practical? My friend, the philosophy of this world may be founded on facts, but its business is run on spiritual impressions and atmospheres.'

Sola la miseria e senza invidia nelle cose presenti.

'It makes blood shoot out of my eyes.'

When you get off stage with all these thousands of people loving you, the saddest part is to go back to your hotel room by yourself.

I went into a line of work in which jealousy is the principal emotion between practitioners. I don't think I ever suffered from it, because there was no need. But I was aware of it in others, and I found it a regrettable fault.

The sentimental songs she sang in music class were all about little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagoons, gondoliers -- mawkish compositions that allowed her to glimpse, through the silliness of the words and the indiscretions of the music, the alluring, phantasmagoric realm of genuine feeling.

She might have been glad to confide all these things to someone. But how to speak about so elusive a malaise, one that keeps changing its shape like the clouds and its direction like the wind? She could find no words; and hence neither occasion nor courage came to hand.

But even as they were brought closer together by the details of daily life, she was separated from him by a growing sense of inward detachment. Charles' conversation was flat as a sidewalk, a place of passage for the ideas of everyman; they wore drab everyday clothes, and they inspired neither laughter nor dreams.

There was a silence. They looked at each other; and their thoughts clung together in their common anguish like two throbbing hearts.

Poor little thing! She's gasping for love like a carp on a kitchen table gasping for water.

Our duty is to feel what is great and love what is beautiful -- not to accept all the social conventions and the infamies they impose on us.

Never had her eyes been so enormous, so dark, so deep: her whole being was transfigured by some subtle emanation.

His rage had sent him into Latin: he would have spouted Chinese or Greenlandic had he been able to, for he was in the throes of one of those crises in which the soul lays bare its every last corners, just as the ocean, in the travail of a storm, splits open to display everything from the seaweed on its shores to the sand of its deepest bottom.

It wasn't the first time in their lives that they had seen trees, blue sky and lawn, or heard the flowing of water or the rustle of the breeze in the branches, but never before, certainly, had they looked on it all with such wonder: it was as though nature had not existed before, or had only begun to be beautiful with the slaking of their desires.

She looked at him sadly. 'Whatever it was,' she said, 'I suffered a great deal.' He answered philosophically: 'Existence is thus!'

And in his eyes she read a love such as she had never known.

Singing is what you do when you want to make a noise but haven't got anything much to say.

He is not there but You know you are tasting together The winter, or a light spring weather. His hand to take your hand is overmuch. Too much too bear.

I shall not sing a May song. A May song should be gay. I'll wait until November And sing a song of gray.

Believe me, I loved you all. Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you All.

Sometimes when earth's gods are homesick they visit in the still of the night the peaks where once they dwelt, and weep softly as they try to play in the olden way on remembered slopes.

We are indeed a strange lot! There are times we doubt that we have any emotions we can honestly call our own. I have approached every dynamic scene change in my life the same way. When I married Charlie MacArthur, I sat down and wondered how I could play the best wife that ever was.... My love for him was the truest thing in my life; but it was still important that I love him with proper effect, that I act loving him with great style, that I achieve the ultimate in wifedom.

Without passion there is no art.

I've had the most extraordinary longing to say 'Bloody Hell'!

Let me but feel thy look's embrace, Transparent, pure, and warm, And I'll not ask to touch thy face, Or fold thee in mine arm. For in thine eyes a girl doth rise, Arrayed in candid bliss, And draws me to her with a charm More close than any kiss.